#also i hate making layouts feel free to judge

[papaver-decervicatus]

Cat/Mouse/Den: Pt. 5, Royally Caught

While tied down in a cartel interrogation room, König is forced to his mental breaking point when a certain sniper makes an appearance. Is she a rat, or here to chew him free...?

CW: Obsession, stalking, canon typical violence, intrusive thoughts, unsanitary wound care, graphic mentions of sex trafficking victims, abusive language, mentions of sexual violence.

Author's note: Please notice that warning have indeed changed for this chapter! Nothing happens in the story, but many hard themes come up as intrusive thoughts. Please be weary of these and feel no obligation in reading if doing so would make you uncomfortable!

Ahhh, well well well... it's finally here. Originally the concept of this chapter came from this YouTube Video as inspiration, specifically Labyrinth by OOMPH! And it sort of... wrote itself? The title is supposed to be a play on the phrase "Royally Fucked" because I did not feel like using a swear as a title. Anyways, you'll notice from my headcanons on König that I believe working as an insertions specialist for human trafficking seriously fucked him up. I also believe that he typically does not act out violently against women. So... what happens when he thinks Mouse is doing the very thing he hates so much? Well, you will have to see!

This chapter requires some suspension of disbelief, but the inspo was taken from the El Sin Nombre mission in MWii. Mouse is in the cartel house, undercover at a party and in an attempt to take out her target she saw an interesting video feed....

I must admit, this chapter has my favorite single or one off lines. I am really proud of it, please enjoy! But be warned, this is unabashedly horny/desperate/angsty/and the pining goes fucking nuclear. Have fun!

Also, if youre into the fake interrogation thing, then next chapter stays good for you, especially if you want mouse in the hot seat...

❣️Cura ut Veleas ~ Caedis 🥀 PREV | Pt. 5, Royally Caught | 4.2k words | Mouse POV | NEXT (coming soon!)

König did not expect his Friday night to end up with him locked in a storage container turned jail cell in Mexico. 

Yet here he is. 

At some point while raiding the Cartel Mansion in Las Almas, or more appropriately, trying to open an exterior wall so that KorTac could raid it, he had been shot with a tranquilizer gun. The shot didn’t knock him out entirely, the dosage was probably not completely calibrated to his weight, but it was enough to slow his escape down. He got about two miles out before men in an armored Jeep jumped him. 

And he woke up, here, about three hours ago. 

Two hours ago he broke his thumbs in an effort to get out of his cuffs, but someone must’ve caught his plan because immediately afterward two masked cartel members came into his cell and stuck a syringe into his arm. When he awoke for the second time, there was a durable cord keeping his wrists together instead. Feeling around he could tell that the rope had been burned into itself, creating a lack of weak spots for him to abuse in escape efforts. 

His legs were in a similar position, chorded down thick and heavy to the legs of the rusty metal chair he was in. He was still in most of his combat outfit, save his vest, weapons, and any tools he had on him when he was captured. 

They’d kept the hood on his face and they hadn’t removed his helmet. This, to König, showed an extraordinarily eerie amount of understanding for his position within KorTac. None of his comrades would recognize him by his face, and judging by the multitude of cameras in the room, he was intended to be… recognizable. 

At first, anyways. 

This cell was, unfortunately, familiar to him. The layout of the cot, the chair, the metal table, the haphazardly soldered-in door and door frame, the holes drilled into the sides of the metal container, and even the rudimentary sink and toilet combo was something he’d become viscerally acquainted with. 

This was a typical Al Qatala human trafficking cell, specifically designed so that multiple humans could be chained up in one space without sacrificing the capacity for good camera angles. Typically, these were set up in storage containers twice the size of this one, but he doesn’t really have any room to be complaining about getting put into a non-standard torture chamber. 

His specialty was cracking these when he was with the Austrian Special Forces. His real calling in life, his one true hatred. 

Fall on the sword you forge, he thinks. The understanding of what will become of him in short order is horrifying. He’s one of the few people on the face of the planet who’s seen this exact routine played out for other prisoners of war, usually at the behest of desperate governments seeking his expertise in getting their soldiers out of such dire confines. He wrote the book on what happens in these situations, when it happens, and where the person ends up. 

They never end up alive. Prisoners of war are different from sex trafficking victims. In some terrible way, it’s almost better to be the prior because at least then you don’t have to live the rest of your life after what’s happened to you. Death is a shitty kind of freedom, but it’s freedom nonetheless. 

Of his 86 consults, only seven were successfully rescued. 

Two of those died in trauma surgery. 

The last five had been in custody for less than 24 hours, he had personally rescued that group. To his knowledge, they’d all recovered decently well. Their mental health, however, could be a different story. Not like he was allowed to ask.

He’s going over every possible route of escape when he’s shocked out of his plans. 

The door directly in front of him opens, and his dark cell erupts with sickeningly bright, white light. His eyes strain trying to adjust to the intrusion as he takes in the form. 

A silhouette stands in front of him, all soft edges of black, arms braced on either side of the door frame. The backlighting gives the figure an almost angelic quality, a soft and fuzzy etherealness blends outlines and light. It’s the telltale curves of a woman, of soft thighs, of ample hips, of a woman’s bust. Little strands of fluorescence peek through a crown of hair on her head. 

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, meine majestät.” The cruel Angel hums, voice like forbidden fruit any man could be forgiven for falling for. 

“Maus?” He calls out, desperate and confused and ready to shatter. 

“Quiet as a.” She calls back, composed as if entrenched in amber and equally as unmoved by his predicament. 

He’s always wanted to get his teeth around her pretty neck. He’s always desired to have his hands around her waist. He’s always hoped to be able to pound down into her quaking form. He’s been desperate to have her underneath him since their very first chance encounter. These feelings have been constant since he heard her beautiful voice, but suddenly they’re not the same. 

Now he wants all those things, but instead of their motivation being love, it is bloodlust. 

And intense bloodlust at that. 

He’s never wanted to kill a woman, he finds it despicable that women more or less get turned into cattle during war. He’s sure that Freud would have something to say about his neurotic insistence on not harming the fairer sex even with his typical caliber of violence, but he’s never once cared to self-examine that. His entire military career, in fact, was dedicated to saving women and children from the horrors of a very male, very sexual world. Insertions specialist, yes, but specifically for human trafficking situations. 

Looking into his wartime paramour's eyes, the intensity of hellfire overcomes him. His entire world crashes around him. He’s breathing in debris and dust as comes to the terrible conclusion that this entire time, it’s been her that has been perpetuating the injustice he so hates. That it’s been the thing he’s romanticized that’s been the fall of Rome. That it’s his savior that’s really been the perpetrator all along. 

Perhaps the devil was once an angel, but to see his Angel for the demon she is? It breaks his heart into gory chunks of splintered bitterness and hacked arteries where once love pumped. 

Never in his life has he ever wanted to kill a woman, never in his life he had loved a woman so completely either. 

Those two ‘never’s die loudly and crudely in his chest as he recounts how to kill her most painfully in his own mind. 

For her now obvious position perpetuating his most loathed evil? For tricking him into loving her? For both and neither? He doesn’t know. He’s about two seconds away from frothing at the mouth like a rabid animal that’ll break its bones escaping a trap. He’s got nothing in his brain, just white-hot anger from the tips of his combat boots to the tips of his ears. 

Not even the outfit, or more appropriately the lack thereof, that she’s wearing can dissuade his anger. In any other circumstance, to see her in a black draped silk dress with hip-high slits on both sides and a full set of harness garters holding up sheer pantyhose would make him go feral. It would make him kneel, it would give him all the power to break out of these bindings on his own with no help and slam her down into the metal floor and have her right here. He has the desire to do all these things right now, but for all the wrong reasons. 

She’s taking something out from beneath her left breast as he recounts every thought he’s ever had about her and how foolish they’ve all been. He thinks that the only consolation he may ever receive for this betrayal is if he can crush her windpipe in between his teeth. 

“If you can get your teeth around it, it’s yours.” He remembers her saying to him in one of her flirtations during their secret radio romances. 

The phrase echoes rough and screeching in his head as he thrashes against the metal chair and restraints. He doesn’t formulate any words, he can’t, she doesn’t even deserve them, as she takes the lighter and cigarette she’s produced from her brassiere to her mouth. Her expression is unconcerned when she takes the flip-top lighter (that has a fucking crown carved into it, the audacity, his teeth clench and voice roars at the implication she’s been planning this for a long time) and its little flicker of brimstone to the end of the cancer stick. 

She takes a short drag and holds it between two perfectly manicured fingers. She’s gotten a little lipstick on the filter. 

“You don’t smoke.” That is all he manages to spit out. The only thought he can think of. Nothing makes sense and he’s liable to maul her to death over it. Her tongue darts quickly and sinfully across the filter, her eyes never leaving his. She tosses her stare towards him playfully, her hips swing wide as she waltzes closer to him. 

“No,” she says, as she takes another step towards him. Even in those ridiculously tall, faux leather heels meeting the tips of his combat boots, she doesn’t particularly dwarf his size. She's got the tips of her shoes to the tips of his, her stance is wide to accommodate the positioning. The edges of the stockings on her legs disrupt in wave-like patterns where they collide with the rough edges of his tac pants. He looks and thinks about how if his clothes were a little thinner he may be able to feel her warmth. He wonders just how long it would take her corpse to go ice cold, because she clearly does not deserve to be alive. He forces himself to look up at her and he thinks about clawing out her eyes. 

“But you do.” 

She reaches her hand towards his hood and strokes his cheek through the fabric. He snarls and snaps his head away from her, reeling from the touch he’s so deplorably yearned for. Her placid expression drops entirely as she sees his reaction. 

If he didn’t know any better, he’d say that his perfect little Mouse looked heartbroken over his refusal of her blandishments. 

He wants to rip her still-beating heart out of her chest for the sheer nerve to display that sort of emotiveness to him. That she acted like there was something there when there very clearly wasn’t. That she lied so thoroughly to him. 

That she made him love her when now he can see she never loved him back. 

She takes a shuddering breath in and makes a concerted effort to put her expression back into place, to impose some sort of divine rule back over her features. It’s strange to see her trying so hard when she’s obviously been such a good actor for so very long. 

“I just need some information, darling. No need to be so skittish, I brought you creature comforts for your cooperation.” She purrs, flicking some ash from the cigarette. “I know you could use a smoke right now, handsome.” 

The bile in his stomach flips at the pet names he would usually kill for. Pet names he’s never had until this moment. His two addictions lay in front of him, together, wrapped up in black silk, and the only thing he can think about is how much he wants to tear it all to shreds. 

Her hand follows his cheek to where it’s escaped her grasp. He is powerless to stop her as she rolls up his mask. 

To his surprise, she stops rolling it up just high enough to expose his mouth and leaves the bunched cloth on the bridge of his nose. He wants to scream at the tenderness of the action, she’s giving him as much of his well-loved privacy and solitude as she can while bringing him, an active prisoner of war, a fucking cigarette while wearing the sexiest thing he’s ever seen. 

The cruelty of it all had found the border of divinity and reality and ripped it open like C4 explodes plywood doors. There must be a God, and he must be in hell. 

She gets dangerously close, close enough for him to bite, and her hand with the cigarette makes contact with his jaw. Her sharp, black, fake nails trail from close to his ear, down to his mouth at a tantalizingly languid pace. She bends down and puts her lips a hair's breadth away from his ear and he is about to actually bite her neck to kill-

“I’m trying to get you out. Play along.” She whispers and flips the cigarette into his mouth. 

He takes a long drag. 

He feels the relief of nicotine in his lungs. 

He closes his eyes. 

He thinks about what she said. 

He doesn’t quite believe her as she takes the cigarette out of his mouth before he has to fumble to exhale around it. Her thumb traces the outline of his thin, scarred lips. Her eyes bore into his from above. 

She puts it back into his mouth. 

He takes a long drag. 

She takes it out of his mouth and puts it into hers. She takes a shorter drag. He doesn’t miss the way that she keeps all the smoke in her cheeks, not actually smoking it at all. A little taste of non flavored-wax sticks to his mouth from the lipstick and he wonders if she can taste his mouth too…

The takes the lipstick-stained tube out of her lips, taps it clean, and puts it back into his. 

He takes a long drag. 

She takes it back out of his mouth and wipes at his lips with the pad of her thumb. His brain is too busy switching between wanting to bite her thumb off and wanting to suck on it like a dog for him to decide what to do before the obtrusive digit has been taken away. 

“Sorry, big guy. Got some lipstick on you.” 

She retreats from his form and goes to sit on the metal table slightly adjacent to the chair he’s strapped to. She puts the still-lit cigarette to rest in an ashtray next to her hip. She also puts the flip-top lighter down. On the bottom of the lighter, he sees some engraving, but he can’t make it out from how far away it is. 

She crosses her legs on the edge of the table and the black silk she’s wearing all but flees off of the expanse of her now exposed thigh. She taps her fingers slowly on the metal, the pitter patter of plastic-press-on-nails on metal goes in time with his heartbeat. 

“Who are you with?” She asks, and he laughs. She knows. 

“Nein.” He responds. Is he refusing her, or this little game? He doesn’t know. She seems to understand, though, when she leans into his personal space and he has to fight the urge to look down her lack of dress and perfect tits-

“That’s no way to act after I got you a present, now is it?” She hums at the pulse point between utter cruelty and complete levity. He tests the restraints keeping his hands tied and sighs at the realization that they are still tighter than he can manage to worm out of effectively.

“I will not repeat what you already know.” He bites out. 

“Clever boy,” she smiles and he can’t help but think and hope that maybe this cruel Angel is being genuine, maybe she really does want to get him out of here. He murders the hope in his brain the second he recognizes what it is. “So tell me, what were you doing here?”

“You know.” 

“I’m afraid I do.” Her lips tense into a thin line and she looks down at her watch. She begins to swing the foot of her raised leg idly and-

She puts her foot onto the back of his chair right on his shoulder and oh my god her cunt is right next to my mou-

“Audio just cut out. I’m undercover here. Site goes dark for 2 minutes or less in 30 seconds. I’m going to pretend to interrogate you for a little while after we come back online to sell it. And then I’m out.” She warns, voice low and quick. 

Once again, he has to fight every electric cell in his body to not lunge at her and rip her clothes to tatters (and maybe her, the jury’s still out on her trustworthiness) as he breathes in the smell of fresh nylons and her cunt like a fucking dog. Not making eye contact with her panties is also a losing game, and it’s one he seriously wishes he had decided against playing because it’s a sheer black lacy pair, because of course it is, and he can very nearly make out the curves of her sex through it. 

“How do I know how to trust you?” He spits and blood flows out of his brain when he sees a tiny, minuscule amount of his saliva landing on her clothed cunt. He snaps his gaze back to her face. She looks rather smug and pleased with herself, he scolds his inner monologue when he dares to notice just how hungry her beautiful eyes look... He wants to wipe the smile off her face, through a kiss or through slicing it off with a knife, he’s not sure yet. 

“You don’t.” She shrugs and somehow scoots even the littlest bit closer to him. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here, if I was I’d have brought a little more stopping power.” Stopping power? What is she talking about? Her beautiful features soothe themselves into a giggle and Gott, she’s very pretty with eyeliner and lipstick on, the little vixen. I want to ruin it. 

“I’m surprised you haven’t noticed it. Put your cheek against my thigh.” She laughs. 

Even if it’s a trick, König decides that if he’s going to die anywhere, it might as well be in between Mouse’s thighs in mere milliseconds. The throbbing in his pants also suggests that he’s probably forgiven her by now as well. He leans his cheek and feels cool metal hit it. He whips his head to look and tucked into her garter is a sizable knife. 

When he looks back to her eyes he notices dumbly that she must be able to tell how desperately he’s in love with her because she’s smiling something wicked down at him. Angels aren’t supposed to be cruel, but he’s forgiven anything and everything she’d ever done wrong in exchange for the expanse of her thigh and the promise of a knife. 

“If you can get your teeth around it, it’s yours.” She says with a smile like absolution. His mind alights with a terrible test of faith for her, with a truly awful proving method to try her loyalty to his rescue. He turns his mouth to the knife, and instead of taking it in his teeth, he takes her flesh in his teeth. 

She whimpers as he teeth attempt to gain purchase through the nylon of her stockings. He gnaws at them until he makes a little opening, and through it, he punches down his teeth until he’s sure he will leave a mark, but not draw blood. 

“Does that include you, mein Mäuschen?” He purrs into her now-exposed flesh. He peers up at her and he revels in the shock on her face. She shudders at his words and attention and something worse than pride finds a home in his hollow but newly hopeful chest. 

She doesn’t move her leg away and he hums in satisfaction at the gesture. Instead, she looks worryingly down at her watch. 

“You have 1 minute. Take the knife, keep it in your mouth under your hood, and give me 30 minutes to get out of here before you escape.” She says instead of responding. 

While realistically he knows that she doesn’t really have an option in leaving him, that it would be too dangerous to leave together, that they are still technically enemies even on neutral ground- he can’t help but be disappointed that his Angel intends on leaving without him. Even more so that she doesn’t seem to want to answer him when she made the rules in the first place. 

“Why are you helping me?” He asks, hoping for some clarity, for some tell-tale sign that this isn’t some weird horny fever dream he’s made up in his own little hell, worried that she will drag him back down from heaven and reveal that this, too, was part of the ploy to destroy whatever of him remained. 

“Because I know you’d do the same for me.” 

She says it without question but instead questions the motive. She says it like someone prays, like believing in the possibility of salvation but not quite sure how to get there. She says it like a guardian angel takes missions, unsure of her exact purpose but faithful in her understanding that there is one. 

The deep cavern of his obsession temporarily closed and covered by the implication of her treachery, widens and deepens impossibly as he smiles into the knife on her thigh. It’s just a knife, but she believes in him enough to offer her only protection to him, and she believes that it is all he will need to make it back to her on the field. 

He plucks the knife from her garter with his teeth. He tries to memorize her smell, her taste, the feel of her soft and plush skin on his cheek. It’s an intoxicating experience he isn’t quick to squander, but the implied hope that when not if he can get out of this she will be there waiting for him? That makes ending this warm-up worth it if it means he can get to the game and maybe, finally, win the prize. 

She retracts her foot from his shoulder and lets down his hood from his face. She leans in terribly close and whispers, “After 20 yards, take your first left outside the second retaining wall. There’s only two guards there, it’s your best shot.” He hums in affirmation and adoration and she sits back into her position on the table. She looks at her watch and gives a curt nod: the game is back on. 

She takes the cigarette back and draws the smoke into her cheeks and lets it flow out like a deadman’s soul floats to heaven, somehow rushed and languid all at once.

“We’ve been having quite the time trying to figure out your-“ he completely zones out whatever she’s saying in favor of watching the mark his mouth gifted her turn darker as the seconds draw on. It’s not like he could respond even if he wanted to, that would risk the knife she’s so lovingly gifted him into his lap and ruining the whole escape (and worse, endangering her.)

So, instead, he stares at her like the goddess she is. He burns the curve of her stomach between her hips behind his eyelids, he imagines resting his head there and kissing the smooth skin. He savors the way her ass flattens ever-so-slightly where it meets the metal table she’s sitting on, he thinks about holding her up by her ass alone and the plush yet firm give of her flesh. He drinks in the sight of her cleavage heaving when she emotes after a particularly loud question, he hopes what little he can’t see is the same type of perfect as the rest of it. Every once in a while he lets out a quiet huff around the blade in his mouth, in a vague response to something she’s said. Mouse gets “angry” in response, she even slaps him once or twice. 

He doesn’t mind. It’s all a waiting game, after all. 

König is many things, and a competitor is first and foremost. 

If Mouse knows where he’s staring for the duration of their play date of an interrogation, she doesn’t mention anything. With one last stinging (and dizzying…) strike to the cheek, she all but yells “Fine! Let’s see if you’re so tough after 8 hours alone in this hell hole.”

When she turns to walk out of the door she came in, König feels a part of his heart leave with her. He breathes harshly over the outline of the metal in his teeth as he admires the confident sway of her hips. He bites harder on the metal when she tosses a sympathetic look back to him and blows a fucking kiss. 

Sitting, alone in the dark of the converted storage container, he spends the most excruciating thirty minutes of his life occupied only with her phantom touch and his depraved fantasies. 

“Because I know you’d do the same for me.” Echoes in his head in time with his heartbeat, in time with his imaginary minstrations on her form, in time with what he is sure will be the death of him. 

That and so much more, he thinks when he finally, finally, manages to rid himself of his binds with the knife his Engel so graciously snuck him, 27 minutes after she leaves when some cartel member comes to check up on him.

König loses himself in the beautiful catharsis of stabbing the man who comes to fetch him so violently, that the blade to the knife literally snaps off somewhere in his bowels. He loots the cadaver for his gun and ammunition as well as another knife. He feels awful to leave one of her gifts discarded in the abdomen of some filthy cretin of a man, but he recognizes he really does not have much of a say in the matter when he hears the footfalls of his fellow cartel members rushing towards his location.

With one last sigh and a wayward glance to assure himself that he really did get his mouth around her and this wasn’t some dream, he prays in the form of bullets as he guns down anyone stupid enough to get in his way to escape. 

Be safe, my darling Maus. I will be back for you. 

I promise.

taglist! @kneelingshadowsalomegshadowsalome @sprout-ficsout-fics @bucca2cca2 @dead-cipher @gallowsjoker @lostagoodcigar @berryjuicyyy @haisebo @crowbird

#Navigation -> Cat/Mouse/Den #König #König x reader #König x OC #König MWii #König COD #Char: Mouse #CW: human trafficking

[nicadilly]

im cringing a bit but at the same time MY BABY (this is an outdated sprite btw)

not really used to doing public char bios, but arcana got it’s claws in me and i wanted to whip up something for my apprentice ;<; also Merlin is a shameless insert of my irl pet, noticed arcana devs do that so WHY THE HELL NOT.

I hope i can do some more Arcana/Cas-related stuff in the near future, like pics of how i imagine Hjalle, worldbuilding etc. but i need to catch up on my uni work for now, booooooo

*sneaky voice claim here

*her patron fusion

*portrait

#fan apprentice #fan mc #the arcana #nix hydra #the arcana game #the arcana apprentice #i cant help but feel like i will regret this in near future #i have a mouth and i will scream #also i hate making layouts feel free to judge #the arcana mc #apprentice castor #castor aran #cas #castor arcana #castor oc #nicadilly

[jennibeultimate]

Personal recap Worlds 2021 - Ladies SP

Yes I am back with personal recaps 😁 and as in personal it's totally my opinion and you can agree or not. Tell me what you think if you want.

First I needed to calm down because this was a nerve wrecking ladies short program and I thought I wouldn't care that much for the scoring (knowing it would be sh*t anyway) but yes I was mad. But I think I am calm enough now to put normal sentences out.

Rika Kihira was robbed. Period.

Her mysterious "q" calls were just bullsh*t and watching the replay multiple times I would say ok for the 3T being a bit short on rotation but the 3A I just don't see it. (and German ESP commentators had the same opinion) The program is fire 🔥 🔥 🔥 Rika performed so well. And this deserved just sooooo much better. Sorry bby that you don't get the benefits like some others. ❤️

Anna is my lovely fairy. ❤️❤️❤️ I do like her skating a lot. Her jumps not that much, but I can live with that (I am not a technical nerd). Her musicality is otherwordly. I don't see her being that much better than Rika though. Didn't see such a clean and secure combination from her in ages. She really is mentally very strong. In practice she was in tears a lot, in competition you could see no insecurity.

I am happy for Liza! Her story is really impressive. She is not a skater I root for because I like her skating so much, but because I think her fighting spirit and her guts are amazing and big role model for other skaters in Russia and in general struggling with puberty. You can make it again after 6 years, you have to fight. The 3A was one of the best for her. Her jumps are superb and I am glad that she at least did get a higher TES than Anna, but her PCS are really questionable. But well looking at Sasha's PCS, Liza's doesn't seem so astronomical anymore. Still ridiculous...but at least Liza was flawless. I am not a fan of her new program, I liked "Spartacus" better but it seem to serve her well. So.

Kaori my love 😍 The layout just didn't play out well for her. The combo being shaky costed dearly. But also the 3Lz edge call dropped her score badly. I don't actually have a problem with her score, but just looking that she is the only skater in the Top 10 field to receive a real edge call, while Bradie and Anna get away without any "edge" problem is just unfair. If you score favorably than do the same with everyone. Kaori's speed is unparalleled. Her program grew so much during the season, a very difficult program to make it work but I like it. Anyway Kaori was good and chances for the podium are super slim anyway.

Sasha Trusova - her trainings looked super secure (5 quad clean free) but when it counts she hardly delivers. 34 PCS were super generous for her program. Compare that to Kaori and Karen and so many others and it's just undeserved. 12th place hurts though. I predicted her to not be Top 3 after the SP but 12th place was hardly in my guessing. If she can skate a somewhat clean free skate, she still has a little chance on winning. That would ofc depend on other skaters and favorable PCS but it's not impossible. I hope she can leave the competition with a good feeling. 12th place is not what she is capable of.

Yelim Kim - what an excellent combination. 👌She had plenty of time at landings. The program is a bit bland and risk free. The dress game is A+++! ❤️ I have a soft spot for Yelim since juniors, the fairytale like appearance and movement makes her a sentimental favorite of mine. I was gladly surprised by her score. One of the only scores I could agree on.

Karen Chen - Karen skated beautifully. I am not super flashed by her program but I am happy she delivered so well. And superb 3Lo! 👌 I think if Rika received a "q" on her combo Karen should have gotten the same, but she is American so nope...

Bradie Tennell - anyone knowing my recaps, knows I am hardly a Bradie fan but her programs are interesting and I like this short a lot. But today she just didn't deliver. Her score should not have come this close to Kaori.

Haein Lee - same as for Rika. If a "q" is applied to Haein and Rika than why not Karen? Hello? Haein is really lovely to watch and musical. She has all the right abilities to place high in the future. Wonderful. 😍 I was a bit surprised to hear Helene Fischer's "Ave Maria" (Helene is on of the biggest stage names in Germany) There are so many Ave Maria's and they chose a German singer? 😂

Absolutely heartbroken for Satoko. 😭💔 Her program should receive the highest PCS but she didn't even get as much as Trusova. What a big joke that is. She is such a beautiful skater. What a beautiful dress too. Just nothing worked for her today. What a tragedy. 💔💔💔

The other heartbreak was Maé Méité. 💔💔💔What a sad story that is. Finally she was able to practice without pain and now probably achilles tendon. She could barely walk. I am so devastated for her. Wishing all the best to her. May she return soon.

Alexia Paganini was also really off. Sadly she didn't make the cut. 😢

Lastly I want to add a few pleasant surprises:

Loena Hendricks - Shame about the fall, but everything else was excellent. Glad she got a good scores. So glad she is back!

Josefin Taljegard - She is on 🔥. Surely her technical content isn't as good as that of other skaters but her emotional connection and performance to the music are extraordinary! ❤️ Watch Josefin, you won't regret it!

Madeline Schizas - pleasantly surprised by Madeline. Delivered greatly. I wish for her to maintain that 2nd spot.

Lindsay Van Zundert - Skating first you are usually out of the free skate, but she made the cut with a lovely "Allegria" performance. 😊

Good luck everyone for the free skate! May the judges get the memo that we want fair scoring!

Any complaints about judging I do are always against the judges not the skaters themselves. I hate how unevenly applied the rules are and that judges are playing favorites so hard it's apparent. It's so unfair. Be strict or lenient on every skater from 1st to last the same way. Scores are so whack they only make me mad.

This was a wall of text, sorry. 😅 If you see me not talking about COVID-19, it's not because I don't care but because that's not my main object here and I absolutely won't watch out for behavior that violates any rules. I think everyone is doing everything with the best intentions. I don't wish ill upon anyone. Covid plays a big part here as well, but I like to concentrate on the positive aspects of Worlds and the skating in general instead of being mad about things that are hardly in my power. I'd rather look at what I can do myself and how I can help my locals. I am also tired about my whole day normally being all about covid that I just don't have the energy to talk about it any further.

#figure skating #anna shcherbakova #rika kihira #kaori sakamoto #karen chen #Alexandra Trusova #satoko miyahara #Personal recap #stockholm 2021 #wall of text sorry

[refriedweeb]

LET ME SANCTIFY YOUR BODY (SHINSOU + PLUS SIZED READER 18+)

A/N: refriedweeb here my little chickadees. Here’s another plus size reader one for all my beautiful thick babes out there. I’ve started hardcore sipping over everyone’s fave emo boy (who I always thought would prefer a thicker girl bc it just screams at you he would be) not responsible for any emotional trauma caused. ALSO, I used the same quirk from the Hawks’ series I have going on don’t judge me it’s honestly my favorite quirk I’ve thought up (and totally not bc I'm self-inserting) also if anyone draws y/n/me/yourself in this hero costume y/n chooses I'd die bc I think it’s so incredible

Prompt: Your hero agency has been pressuring you into a more scant, sexually appealing hero costume. Though you’re a hero, you’re still coming to accept your body and feel that the new costume they’ve put you in is anything but. Your boyfriend has other thoughts.

Tags/Warnings: body worship, oral, sex, spanking, shinsou being an absolute god

Word Count: 6,009

You stared at yourself in the reflection of the mirror in your bedroom. It’d been a long, exhausting past couple of weeks between you and the hero agency you worked for. They were insistent on changing up your hero costume, eager to add some sex appeal and tighter material around the assets that made you such a ‘feast’ as they called it. You were fuller figured, plump in spots that other female heroes weren’t. Your curves had caught the eye of the media surrounding the hero discourse, and you’d become something of a source of body positivity for the public. It wasn’t about your health, rather, but that strength and power came at any size, and a hero didn’t need to look like the heroes of the past in order to do good and be worthy of everything you had in your life. At first you’d been a little skeptical, sure that the other shoe was going to drop and you were going to be shunned for the tummy you had, the thickness of thighs that made you look ‘more beautiful than Venus being born’ according to one of the magazines that had commented on your body. 

However, you hadn’t seen anything wrong with the hero costume you’d been rocking prior to the media’s public obsession with you. It hid the insecurities that you wished to conceal, like that very tummy so many people had started to praise. The dimples in your thighs that showed through in the latex and skin tight material that made up so much of hero costumes. Many designers of said hero costumes had been scrambling to get their designs to your hero agency, practically groveling for you to pick theirs. You’d left that day after your seemingly endless patrol (thankful that nothing out of the ordinary outside of small, petty crimes) had come to an end. But...that didn’t mean the work was over just yet. The agency you worked in had been persistent that you needed to pick a new costume by the end of the week, and it was already Thursday. 

Your eyes moved from the mirror to the laid out costumes on the bed. The hero alias you went by was that of Nightmare. Your quirk was an Emitter quirk, and worked in a way that many people had been careful to get within your reach of. Once you activated your quirk, you could raise your target’s worst nightmare into a warped physical reality around them, or at least they perceived it to be a physical reality. What it really was, was a field of false reality with layers so thick it was hard to look through in order to see that it wasn’t real at all. A hallucination of the worst kind. You, much like your boyfriend Shinsou, had been people that your fellow classmates had thought would be best as villains, rather than heroes. People didn’t trust you, didn’t want to get to close to you lest you reach out a hand to their forehead and bring forth their own personal hell. 

They wanted to make someone they had once demanded be too dangerous to be a trustworthy hero into a sex symbol. The fleeting thought caused you to snort, your eyes moving back over the costume layout once more. Shinsou hadn't popped around to yours yet, likely still finishing out his own patrol. His opinions might have helped, but you weren’t sure when he’d get to yours and you’d rather get the uncomfortable trial and error of why your body didn’t look right in any of the costumes that had been sent to you over with. That way you could curl up in bed under the sheets and wait for Shinsou’s warm embrace. It’d always managed to make you feel better when you were sure the world hated everything about you. That very reason had been one of the reasons you and Shinsou had bonded so quickly. The world was determined to make you a villain before you’d even had a chance to prove them otherwise. You were each other’s biggest support system, the team cheerleader while you raced to make the world a better place. 

What would Nightmare wear? What would the unstoppable, dangerous Nightmare wear? The first costume was definitely not your speed, a deep plum color that was beautiful on its own. Yet, it was cut deep in the back with a half-peplum tiered skirt at the back of your waist. To you, it made you feel like a joke of a circus ring leader, feeling more like an overripe raspberry than a hero worth going toe to toe with. You didn’t have a body like Midnight or Mt. Lady. You were fuller all around, a pooch of a stomach that stuck out more than theirs, thighs that were thicker in muscle and fat then theirs. An ass, that as Shinsou had once said when he was drunk on sake, wouldn’t quit. Once again, you didn’t see anything wrong with the hero costume you had now. It was baggier, yes, allowing you to obscure a body you hadn’t fully come to terms with despite the years of progress you’d made with self-acceptance. Sure, the trench jacket did nothing to show off much of the body you’d worked hard to maintain and love, but it hadn’t been about how good you looked. It’d been about being able to do good and save people from villains. If you’d wanted to be judged for your looks, you would have signed up to be a model. But hero politics were the same politics that existed in every aspect of reality, and you had gotten used to it. It was really only a matter of time that you’d be up next in the line of speculation. The first costume was a hard no, and you peeled yourself out of it already feeling the sinking feeling of defeat as it crawled up into your spine. 

The second costume was better in some aspects, worse in others. It was black in color which was much more your speed, with a black mask to match that shielded the top half of your face. Yet, over your bust and over the widest part of your hips ran horizontal white lines, giving the effect of making them appear wider than they were. It wasn’t as if they just ran the front of the costume, either. Traced around your back and your butt, you only felt that sinking feeling grow. You looked wrong, and felt worse. There was no way people actually thought this was going to look good on you, did they? An annoyed sigh passed through your nose, doing one last turn around in the mirror confirmed your thoughts. These people had no idea what would look good on you. The cynical part of you was sure that this was the other shoe dropping. This was some grand joke that you were the punch line of. If you picked any of these costumes you’d be ridiculed for your body just like you’d been when you were a kid. That mere thought sparked tears in your eyes, but you pushed them down. There was one costume left. Though you didn’t have much hope for it. 

You were so in your negative thoughts at the moment as you stripped down from the second costume, you hadn’t heard the front door of your place open and close. Nor the sound of shoes being kicked off. 

The third costume was by far the most aesthetically pleasing to your tastes. Like Goldilocks and the three bears, it’d been the one you thought would be best. It was a one piece jumpsuit as the rest had been, cut deep in the front and back, low plunges that exposed everything to your naval in the front, and the small curve of your lower back. Though where freshly exposed skin would have been free, black mesh was laid overtop to give the graft appearance. There were winding slits down the long sleeves of the costume, making the mesh look like ropes winding down the length of strong arms and deliciously thick thighs. The mesh at the lower back connected to the beginnings of the mesh at the back of your thighs, lining up with the mesh that curved down from your naval and over your hips to meet up with the front mesh of your thighs. The mesh of the costume was one continuous running line, and you had to admit you liked how it shaped your body. It was tight as the other costumes, and certainly left nothing to the imagination of anyone who’d see you. If you picked this costume, everyone would know what it was you were working with. And that was what they wanted, right? The final costume was by far your favorite, opening and closing the fingerless gloves that had come with it. But were you okay with the world seeing the rest of your body? You didn’t think you were ugly by any means, and hadn’t felt ugly since you were a teenager. But...that didn’t mean the world wouldn’t take that chance to pick you apart if they thought you’d gotten too confident. 

You leaned up on your toes, angling to this way and that so you could get a full view of how you’d be seen from all angles. Your hand rolled over the little pooch of your belly, over the curve of your backside into that meshed lower back of the costume. The way your thighs blossomed against the costume, looking strong as hell. In the platformed boots you wore to do hero work, it’d look good. You thought. But was it too risky? Would you look like a joke? Your shoulders sagged in defeat, not sure you had the confidence to pull this off like the world seemed to think you did.

“Well, well...” came that deep drawl of the man you cared so deeply for. You jumped, completely unaware that for the last five minutes you’d been examining yourself in the mirror, that Shinsou had been eyeing you up from his position. Leaned against the frame of the door, hands tucked into his pockets with a shameless look on his face. “These those new hero costumes you were talking about?”

Once you were sure you wouldn’t about faint from the racing of your heart, you nodded. “Yeah, they weren’t that great,” you said and jutted your chin to the ones you’d hung back up on their hangers to be sent back. “Those were the first two options, and they looked...gross on me.” you said, voice dropping as the negative term against yourself left your throat. Shinsou angled a brow upwards question, violet eyes moving over to look at them. He doubted that they looked bad on you, almost disappointed he hadn’t gotten to see your skin slip under that tight material, the way it ran so flush over that body of yours he’d worshipped for so long. For all Shinsou cared, you could be running around in a trash bag and he’d find a way to think you were the most beautiful person in the world. But, one thought he shared in common with you on the first two hero costumes, was that they didn’t speak Nightmare. Your quirk was exceptional, like his in a way. It needed something as equally daring, as enticing as you were.

“I doubt that...” Shinsou strolled over to look at them, running the fabric of the raspberry suit between thumb and forefinger. “But they’re not you. They’re too tame for you.” the comment was innocent enough, but your mouth dried up at it. Sunken eyes moved over to look at you once more in that black suit number, one that he found himself to be a growing fan of. “What about that one?” His expression was hungry as he dragged his gaze up and down your body, over the curves showed off so freely.

Shinsou had never had an issue with your body. Rather, he preferred a partner that was on the thicker side to begin with. He liked being able to feel you in his hands without worry about hurting you too much. Your skin was a comfort to him, the way you were soft and plush drove him up a fucking wall. He might not have been the biggest fan of public affection, but when it was just the two of you he couldn’t keep his greedy hands off you. And how could he? Even in that moment, his fingers twitched with the carnal need to have your flesh under the pads of his fingers. 

“It’s definitely the best of the bunch.” You shrugged, hand running down the shape of your belly once more, your mind still stuck on whether or not it was going to get you ridiculed. “I just don’t...I think it’s too much. I don’t think...” you trailed off. “I don’t know if I look good in it.”

The sound of a snort from behind you had you meeting Shinsou’s gaze through the mirror. He wore an incredulous expression as if you’d just claimed that there was no such thing as gravity. He shook his head and approached you slowly. “You’re kidding, right?” Shinsou stood behind you, his chin resting on the top of your head. His body was pressed flush against yours, and you could feel the half-hard length of him pressed against your backside. “You don’t think you look amazing in this, (Y/N)?”

A blush hit your cheeks as his hands rested on your shoulders. “It’s not that, Shi. I just don’t...I guess...I don’t think people will want to see me like this. So...exposed.” Being sexy wasn’t the problem here. It was how others would see you and if they’d take the same thought away that the agency had, that Shinsou had, that some of the media had about you. You could take being ridiculed for your ability to act as an hero, if you messed up on the job or anything like that. Those criticisms pertained to your ability to help and change the world, and nothing to do with your physical appearance. Changing your hero costume would open up that path to criticisms about your appearance that had never been there before. 

“Ah...so that’s it.” Without having to say much, Shinsou understood where your mindset was. He sighed, feeling somewhat guilty. Had he not shown you how beautiful you were each time he settled his mouth or his cock between your thighs? Had he not told you how you were the only person who was ever going to have his eye whether you were dolled up in a face full of makeup or drooling while you slept? The last thing he wanted for you to feel about yourself was inadequate because of how much you weighed or what your body looked like. He knew it wasn’t for him to decide, that only you could determine your self-worth, but you were perfect for him. And if he was selfless enough to let the world see you how he saw you, he would in a heartbeat. But just because he wanted the world to see it, didn’t mean he was a fan of sharing. Timidly, you met his indigo gaze through the mirror’s reflection. “Here’s what I think, kitten.”

A chill ran down your spine as his fingers started to ghost over your shoulders. “I think...” He slowed his movements,  tracing the seam where mesh met spandex, Shinsou’s eyes narrowed as they followed where his fingers met. They ended at the inner point of the V that formed the front of a potentially new costume. Goosebumps erupted over your skin wherever his fingers trailed, and all you could do was watch in the mirror as his head came to rest on your shoulder, doing the same. “This looks downright sinful...” his fingers moved back up the V of the spandex material, only to pause as his fingers cupped the fullness of your breasts, thumbs whispering over piqued nipples. He hovered there for a moment, tracing circles around them as you shivered against the well defined muscle of his chest. “Not a thing left to the imagination...” Shinsou murmured, taking as his hands swept over the top of your chest to your shoulders, slowly down your arms. The winding tightness between your thighs had started, and he’d only been gentle with you so far. His thumbs moved along your inner forearm, traced circles along the sensitive part of your inner wrist before they flowed back up the length of your arms, returning to your breasts where he pulled and teased once more. “You’re telling me I might have to share this with the public...”

Shinsou’s eyes, a beautiful shade of setting sun, were narrowed as his hands traveled down the mesh material of your stomach once more. His fingers spread as he traced your belly, fingers bent just slightly so you felt the drag of his fingertips through the material of the suit. It was just a prototype, after all. The real work effectiveness of the suit would be put in place if you agreed to have it. At the sensation of his nails scratching along your stomach, your thighs turned inwards, backside pressing in against a growing erection. It only caused Shinsou to smile that smarmy smirk that had caught your attention all those years ago at UA. “You’re telling me everyone’s going to get to see this goddess body I get to claim night after night...” Shinsou continued, pulling the soft pudge of your skin in his hands as he raked them to the side to grip your hips. Those fucking hips. His fingers dug in sharper there, knowing your skin could handle it. So full, so fucking lush. “Hell, kitty, you might just raise the crime rate because everyone wants to see you in this costume...” He released his iron grip on your hips, hands sweeping towards your backside to grab at the bountiful ass you had. How it drove him up a fucking wall to see how it bounced against his hips when he took you from behind. “You have no idea...” Shinsou paused to pull up the legs of his pants before he squatted down to his knees, his hands still on your ass.

“How fucking good you look in this...” You were speechless as he continued to knead at your ass, giving that plump backside of yours a soft slap that sounded through the room. He worshipped your body day in and day out, and had simply no problem letting you know how much he loved every square inch of it. Shinsou let out a low hum. His hands continued their march, coming to cup the lower part of your ass in his hands. He was greedy when it came to this, the best fucking handful and then some any god could have given him. “Your ass looks so fucking good...” he whispered, side of his face nuzzled up against the curve of your thigh. One hand slipped from the grip it has on your backside, slipping between your thighs. An idle thumb swept through your lips, so thick and full that when he ate you out he simply rested his head there. A sharp gasp escaped you, rolling into the touch that ended before it’d even begin. This didn’t go unnoticed by Shinsou, that devilish smile there once more. “And these fucking thighs...” he whispered, his second hand repeated that sinful sweeping motion between your legs, his hands gripping your inner thighs, slowing pulling them apart. All the while, you watched through the mirror, his eyes zeroed in on the puffy mound of your pussy that seemed particularly swollen in that jumpsuit. “These fucking thighs that I love to have wrapped around my head...” Shinsou turned in so his nose was pressed against your left thigh, his teeth soon enough caught the material of the jumpsuit between them and pulled it back from your supple skin. A moment later, a sharp snap hit the air as it slapped back against your skin, causing you to squirm. “You’re telling me the world is gonna know how fucking delicious these thighs are...”

He wasn’t the jealous sort, Shinsou. He knew that you wouldn’t be with him if you didn’t want to be. That you came home to every night because you wanted to. In that sense he was secure in his relationship with you. But he wanted to make it astoundingly clear to you just how beautiful your body was, and how everyone else in the world who had their head screwed on tight enough was going to see it too. He was hungry to devour you in that suit right there, to fuck you and mark you so greedily so that the world would know his mark on you, but this wasn’t about him or his selfish wants. This was about making you feel like the strongest, sexiest, most powerful woman on the entire earth. And based off the heat he was feeling so close to his hands that gripped your thighs, his mission was working. He hummed, digging his fingers into your skin. “I could spend hours on your skin, kitten.” he murmured, his nose inching up the length of your thigh to where it curved, the crease of hip into thigh his goal. “Kissing it all over, tasting all of you...” you squirmed as Shinsou shifted on the ground slightly, so that he knelt in front of you. The sight of him looking up at you, sunken eyes dark with lust, made your waver on your knees. It was next to holy imagery, his legs spread wide, hands gripping your thighs for purchase as if he didn’t, he’d disappear entirely. “You gonna let me taste you, kitten?”

Shinsou didn’t wait for your answer, moving on his own agenda. He leaned forward into that sweet, tantalizing mound of yours. His nose burrowed in, hands moving up to grip your hips as he pulled you in against him. The flat of his tongue slipped over the clothed length of your cunt, warmth radiating against the sweetness of your pussy as he pulled your thighs apart for him. You moaned out his name, the action he took so simple but enough to threaten you over the cliff. Shinsou had only touched you, slow and measured at that, and this was the first he’d put a hand or tongue where you needed him most. The fabric that had been between your legs was in his mouth, Shinsou sucking on the fabric there to get as much of you in his mouth that had already escaped you while he’d been busy touching you. The fabric fell from his mouth when he was done, slapping against your heat and causing you to jolt forward. Your fingers found themselves wound through the thick tendrils of indigo hair, balancing as he smiled up at you with his head tipped to the side. The look was downright bastardly, and you tugged on his hair. “Don’t tease me,” you said, breathless.

“No teasing here, baby...” Shinsou breathed, pausing to blow hot air against your sex. “I want to make my girl feel good,” while he spoke, he stroked his middle and index finger up and down the slit of your cunt, pushing in slightly so the fabric dipped in your glaze. “I want to make you feel good about this fucking body I intend to destroy...” He sounded so bored as he played with your pussy that it only drove you crazier. You knew from the bulge in his pants that he was far from bored, but how nonchalant he could be while he was winding that coil of an orgasm tighter and tighter inside of you could have pushed you over the edge. “I want to take my time getting you there...”

You mewled, rocking against his fingers as they slipped back and forth, agonizingly slow in their rhythm. Shinsou had never been a fan of when you doubted yourself or your abilities, your worth and your beauty. This wasn’t exactly what he would have called a punishment, rather a reminder that there wasn’t a single part of you that he would want to change about you, and that you should have felt the same. He worshipped you, every second of every day. Frankly, in his eyes, there wasn’t enough hours in the day to give thanks to whatever deities were out there that created the fucking perfect version of yourself that was stood over him currently. “Sit on my face, kitten.” he drawled, eyes raking upwards over those delicious curves of your body, the thickness of your skin so plump, until he was looking into your eyes. “Let me taste you.”

With the way he’s looking at you, you know you don’t stand a chance of saying no. “Yes,” you rasped out, Shinsou’s hands soothing you as they smoothed up and down your thighs. You took a step back from him, Shinsou staying where he was, frozen as he watched you pull down the suit.

 It was like a work of art, his cock hardening as you pulled the front of it down, exposing your mounds of flesh, nipples piqued and flushed from when he’d been teasing them earlier. As the black material folded over your arms, exposing soft skin he ached to get his hands on. Down over your midsection, exposing the little roll over your belly that had his mouth watering. “You look so fucking beautiful,” his voice had hollowed out, thick with need to have your thighs practically suffocating him. He watched the blush deepen on your cheeks, only serving to make him grow harder. His eyes snapped back as the skintight material rolled over your hips and his cock twitched. The way your skin pushed out, full and so fucking desirable from the spandex material sent him over the edge. And then there it was. That glistening pussy with the softest patch of hair extending up towards your naval, a landing strip you’d called it once. Shinsou couldn’t help himself as he reached up to his mouth and ran his index finger over the swell of his bottom lip. He could see how wet you were already from the teasing he’d put you through, how your glaze seeped onto the thighs you’d pushed together. He was motionless as you slowly rolled the jumpsuit the rest of the way, over the curve of thighs into calves, finally at those fucking ankles he rather enjoyed having up by his face when he drove into you like a man starved for your fluids. 

“You look so fucking tasty, kitten.” he whispered, settled onto his back. Not once had his eyes left yours. “Let me have you, please.” The please and desperation in his voice caused you to squeeze your thighs together again, and he moaned. But you indulged him once he’d taken his shirt off, your eyes directly tracing the spattering of indigo chest hair that lead a thin trail to his naval, the patch at his waist thickening as it disappeared below his pants. Slowly, you lowered yourself until you were sat on his chest. The slickness that spread on his chest from your cunt caused Shinsou to moan as his hands wrapped around your thighs once more, spreading you so he was face to face with that precious cunt he called his. “Gonna make you feel real good, baby.” he said and pulled you forward so that your thighs were pressed in against either side of his head. When he spoke next, the breath he exhaled was right against your heat. “The world’s prettiest cunt, all mine...” Shinsou’s chuckle had you fisting your hands. “One thing I won’t share...”

And then he dived in, having dessert before he’d even had dinner. He’d been aching to get his mouth on your cunt since he’d seen that swollen mound of the hero suit you’d tried on. Now that he had it, he was going to ravage you until you were begging him to stop. His nose pressed in against your mouth, hands spreading your legs further as he lapped noisily against your wet pussy. You were so wet for him already, his tongue lapping up those juices only spurred you to drip more. He was always sloppy when he ate you out, simply because Shinsou wanted to have as much of you on him as possible. You tasted like honey, like a lazy Sunday morning, like the feeling of victory. He slurped and suckled, his teeth grazing over your clit as you found the rhythm of his tongue and started rocking against him. Soon enough the sounds that filled your bedroom were the wet, sloppy noises of Shinsou eating you out, and you whispering his name like a prayer as he suckled on your clit with feral need. His face was slick with your silk glaze, running down his chin and onto his neck, the floor underneath him. But frankly, he didn’t give a fuck. Your thighs had done what he’d hoped they would, squeezing and flexing against his head as he played with and teased your clit. Shinsou could hardly breathe, but if this was how he was supposed to go, he certainly didn’t mind. 

He’d started to flick and circle, traced his tongue around your bundle of nerves faster, and you started to ride his face harder. It was a chase to your orgasm, and just before you reached that finish line, he stopped. A desperate whine escaped you, writhing in an attempt to get back on his tongue and finish out your eye. Except, Shinsou was hiking one leg over his shoulder so that you were off his chest entirely. You whined once more, your core throbbing at how wet his face was. “You taste like fucking heaven...” he groaned as he wiped his fingers over his face, coating his hand in all your silk. Then, he undid the button of his pants, the zipper. And as you adjusted yourself with legs spread, you saw the brilliant pink tip of his cock, dripping pre-cum as he sprung free. You whimpered, desperate to be full once more and to reach your orgasm. Shinsou eyed you up, taking the wetness of your slick from his face in his hand and pumping himself as he came to rest between your thighs once more. 

“I want to cum,” you groaned as you reached out, fingers ghosting through the curls of the violet hair around the base of his cock. Shinsou pried your fingers away, returning it to where it’d been beside your head.

“I’m gonna let you, kitten.” he said, as he continued to coat himself in your silken drip. First, he wanted to take a mental picture of how fucking good you looked on the floor. Hair fanned out around your head, your cheeks flushed, eyes blown wide with lust. The rapid rise and fall of your chest, your divine breasts moving with each movement. On your back, you were subject to his mercy. The only plan Shinsou had was to make you cum, to make you realize how fucking incredible you were. “You feel good for me?” he asked as he pulled you close to him by the legs, leaning over so that he could hike them up over his shoulders. 

You nodded, any of the previous doubts about your body and how you looked quieted as you watched Shinsou turn his head to the side and nip at your ankle. “You’re so fucking perfect. These fucking legs drive me wild every time, kitten.” You felt Shinsou pressed up against the entrance of your cunt, feeling him leak onto your slip. “I don’t ever want you to feel bad about yourself when you look so good.” He was slow as he pushed into you, feeling the stretch around his cock as you moaned out his name. “Your body is fucking perfect,” he said through gritted teeth as he propped himself up on his forearms, leaned in over you so that violet hair hung over your face. Once he started thrusting, he was slow, hitting deep against your walls. 

“This tummy is so fucking beautiful,” he groaned as your walls clamped around him once he picked up pace. “Feels so fuckin-nngh,” he sputtered, your feet locked behind his neck. “So good to rest on.” His pace quickened again, purple shaded eyes dropping to your breasts as they bounced in time with his thrusts. “These fucking breasts,” he grunted. You whimpered as you felt that mounting wave of your high start to climb again. “So fucking hypnotizing to watch while I fuck you,” he hissed, your hands braced against his muscled biceps as his pace started to turn sloppy. Your nails dug in, and Shinsou tossed his head back as he hit the final turn.

When he looked back down at you, there was carnal need in his eyes. “These fucking lips,” he moaned, leaning down to capture your mouth in a sloppy, wet kiss that left behind traces of your cunt. “I can’t get enough, kitten...” His tongue ravaged the rows of your teeth, lapped against your tongue as he fought to taste every part of you could. You were at the climax of that wave mounted in your heat, and you moaned his name, the only indicator he needed of to hurry the fuck up. He started to fuck harder into you to the point where bruises were likely to blossom against where his skin slapped against yours. “That’s it, kitten, that’s it.” he cooed, listening to the mewls falling past your lips as you started to spill over, the wet sound of sex filling the room louder than it had been. 

Shinsou leaned back just slightly and returned his hand to your clit, the final push you needed as he paid it loving attention. You came undone around his cock and thumb, the shuddering orgasm ripping through you as you cried out his name. Your legs spasmed, squeezing against once more as he followed after you moments later, spilling hot ribbons of cum inside you. He continued to thrust after he’d come, emptying whatever remains he had until he was empty and spent. Breathless, Shinsou flopped against your chest. His head rested against your breast, moving in time with your rapid breaths that mirrored his own. His thumbs traced loving circles over your hips, his cock soft inside you but Shinsou not wanting to leave you aching and empty of him just yet. “That’s my good girl,” he rasped, swallowing heavily. 

Your hands raked through the thick wave of indigo hair, gentle as you combed through it. Words and thoughts were out of your functionality for a passage of time, but when you finally remembered how to do both, you asked a simple question. One that you really already knew the answer to, no longer abashed about how it hugged the curves of your body, just another indicator that you were human. After how much attention Shinsou had dedicated to your body, you almost felt silly for having felt insecure to begin with. “The black suit?”

He chuckled, pressing a kiss to the breast opposite the one he was slumped on.  Shinsou turned his head slightly so that he could look at you, admire all that you were. And what you were to him was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life making feel that good about herself, about her place in the world. However he had to do that, he would. It was only right because you had supported him through so much and had never asked for anything in return. You were the only person who had ever looked at him like he was normal, like he wasn’t some type of freak. And he’d done the same for you when you’d both attended UA. As far as he was concerned, the only forever he needed was right there, pressed up against his naked body. Shinsou’s grin was lopsided and he nodded. “The black one.” 

#my hero academia #boku no hero #boku no hero x reader #boku no hero headcanon #boku no hero x y/n #boku no hero x you #my hero headcanons #my hero academia x you #my hero academia x y/n #hitoshi shinso x reader #bnha shinsou #shinsou imagine #mha shinsou #shinsou x y/n #shinsou hitoshi #shinsou mha #shinshou x you #shinsho x reader #shinsou hitoshi smut #mha smut #bnha smut #mha x plus size reader #bnha x plus size reader #plus size reader #shinso x plus size reader #shinsou imagines #shinsou headcanons #hitoshi shinsō #shinsō hitoshi #don't y'all dare sleep on shinsou

[takerfoxx]

Blood Island, Chapter Eight

Friend or Foe?

Peeling off her shirt, Nuriel held it up to regard with a critical eye.

It was a total loss. The back, shoulders, and sleeves had all been ripped to ribbons, and the front had a few large holes where the crocomonster’s teeth had gone through. Most of it was now brown with bloodstains. Shit, she must have been gushing.

Perhaps it could be repaired? But with what, though? Nuriel had no thread or needle, and while she knew her way around both due to the many voyages in which she was made to mend rips and tears in the clothing of whatever crew she happened to be sailing with, this was far beyond her modest skill.

Wrinkling her nose, Nuriel looked up at the towering cliff face and the rest of the island beyond. She didn’t care for the idea of walking around while being so…exposed. Not necessarily for modesty’s sake, as who would see her? But because she hated the thought of leaving herself vulnerable like that.

To whom?

Well, to no one, actually. Save perhaps for her mysterious, red-eyed friend. But even so! It was the principle that mattered!

Why?

Well, it just did!

Why?

Because they did! Because she shouldn’t allow herself to get complacent! Because she had to remain vigilant and not let anything slip, despite being all alone on an unknown island filled with monsters and spirits, and-

Then with a sigh, Nuriel balled the shredded shirt up and tossed it into the open hatch to the cargo hold. Oh, what did it matter? She wasn’t eking out a living in a crowded metropolis or shrouding her identity on a ship, she was marooned on a fantastical island full of monsters and mysteries. The rules were different now.

That decided, Nuriel turned her attention to the Carmilla’s Fancy itself. It didn’t seem to have taken much damage during the rain, if any at all. Which made sense, as it had probably weathered rainstorms before.

She walked around the deck, inspecting each and every hole, crack, and knot. If she had some sort of binding agent, something to plug them up with, she could probably fix those. It would mean she could store stuff in the cargo hold and not worry about it being ruined when it next rained.

Then she glanced over to the captain’s quarters. She probably ought to focus on fixing that up first. It was the place best suited for her to live, after all.

Thinking of settling in?

Nuriel winced. Though it existed only in the back of her mind, Father’s voice was quite loud.

Ought you not be planning how to escape? Or have you resigned yourself to being a prisoner of this island?

No of course not! she replied inside of her head. But finding a means of escape might take some time, and until then I need a home base, so until then…

The thought trailed off. Her face screwing up, Nuriel turned to stare out over the network of canals and tiny islands, out to sea.

Even if she were to escape, where would she go? She didn’t have a home, didn’t have a family, didn’t have any sort of trade beyond thieving, didn’t have anything. She didn’t even have any friends worth speaking of. Her life was one of a constant struggle to survive, fighting to keep herself fed and out of jail. And yes, it was fine, but how much longer would that last? She had been caught more than once, and this last time had nearly cost Nuriel her life. It was pure happenstance that she wasn’t a rotting skeleton at the bottom of the sea, her bones picked clean by fish.

Then Nuriel turned around, facing toward the island itself. Yes, it was in many ways just as dangerous as her previous life had been, perhaps even moreso. An angry man could be outrun, guards could be evaded, but these monsters were like nothing she had to face back in the world of people. She had nearly been torn to pieces by the birds alone. The birds!

No, wait, scratch that. there was no “nearly” about it. The birds had torn her to pieces, and it was only by the grace of her new red-eyed friend that she was even alive.

Then Nuriel frowned. She lifted her right arm and ran the fingers of her left hand up and down its length. Then she reached up over her shoulders to probe her upper back. Come to think of it, how exactly did the red-eyed one heal her? Did it have some strange demon medicine it had given her? Did it invoke hellish magics? She had never heard of the power of Hell being used to heal someone. Usually the stories had it going in the opposite direction.

Furthermore, she was reasonably certain that the green-eyed sea-creature was also involved. Did the two know each other? Were they friends?

Just the thought made Nuriel feel strange. Troubled, but in a way that was unfamiliar. Monsters…with friends? Could that even be a thing?

And here you are, said Papa’s voice. Wanting to make friends with them as well.

Gritting her teeth, Nuriel responded with, I do what I must to survive. What else would you have me do?

To this, there was no answer.

Nuriel shook her head and turned her attention back to the ship. Well, if it was to be her home for the time being, the first thing she ought to do is give it a careful inspection to see what needed fixing and judge what she even could fix. At the very least, it would keep her busy.

…

All told, the condition of the Carmilla’s Fancy was…not good. It definitely would never be seaworthy again. And yet, it wasn’t that bad either.

The worst was the deck. Apparently the birds had tried and fortunately failed to claw through to get in even before Nuriel had taken up residence. It was solid for the most part, but there were still several cracks and holes to deal with.

As for the hull itself, it also was in a state of disrepair, including one particularly large cracked area where it had struck the trunk of one of the trees. But it didn’t look to be in danger of falling apart anytime soon.

But her main attention was with the captain’s cabin, which she wished to turn into her living quarters. For some reason the overpowering stench of bird had faded considerably, perhaps due to the red-eyed monster having cleaned out all trace of its nest, but also perhaps due to the heavy rain.

She walked around the empty space, kicking at the floor with the heels of her boots at times and rapping her knuckles against the wall at others. The beams seemed to be good. A little creaky in places, but they felt like they would hold. Whoever had constructed this ship had known what they were doing. Given the ornate trappings on the hull, it had been someone with money, so the materials were probably of very high quality. It did seem to be some rich wanker’s pleasure craft, but not the flimsy sort never intended to leave the sight of land. This craft had been built for the open sea.

Interesting.

Then she turned her attention to the window, which was smashed and crusted with gunk and mold. The glass was a loss, so she probably should smash out the rest of the way and cover the hole with something a little more substantial, something to keep the creatures out. She wasn’t sure what, but there had to be something on hand.

In the meantime, the interior could be dressed up a bit. The cot could be made more comfortable with grasses and tree fronds, and she supposed she could even make some furniture. Out of what, she still didn’t know, but she could learn. She was good at learning.

Nuriel looked around one more time and then put her hands on her hips with a satisfied nod. Yes, this should do nicely.

…

Now that she had an idea of what she wanted to do with the ship, it was time for Nuriel to assess the area surrounding it.

The Carmilla’s Fancy sat in a small grove of trees on a tiny island that was part of a network chain. To its back was a hill of solid rock topped with moss. And behind that, just across a small channel that wound around her island, was the main island itself, with a beach bordering the channel and the sheer cliff walls rising up beyond that.

Nuriel surveyed the area, doing calculations in her head. Okay, she could probably set up some kind of barrier to seal off the beach right in front of the grove on both ends. A fence, perhaps. Maybe even a wall, one with swinging doors.

As for the hill, its top wasn’t exactly flat. Still, if she could get some kind of platform up on there, it would be an ideal place for a watchtower.

A platform? A watchtower? Made from what? And made from with what labor?

Mine, came the response. It’s not like I don’t have the time.

And when have you ever built anything?

Nuriel shrugged. Good time to start.

The island that the Carmilla’s Fancy sat upon, which she was now thinking of as her island, lay nestled near the back of a large gulf, with the cliffs curving around it like a pincer. The other tiny islands and the canals that split them filled the rest of the space, with the last ones spread out just beyond the shore.

Nuriel looked out over the archipelago. She hadn’t encountered many of the local monsters out on the islands, chirpers aside. Still, she couldn’t afford to not be sure.

Nuriel looked out at the network chain, memorizing its layout the best she could. She ought to ask her new friend for some blank pieces of parchment. A map would be invaluable.

When she was sure that she had a fairly good idea, she climbed down from the ship to the beach. And she started to walk.

Exploring the archipelago turned up little of any value. Few things had made their nest in the islands themselves. Here and there were a few gulls pecking about, she found some pretty big crabs, as well as a few free-standing pools that many spiny and squishy bits of sealife had made their home, but little she could use.

Still, there was also little that could threaten her as well. That was good as well.

There were a few things of note, though. One island was large enough to have a few plants take root, which included a trio of coconut trees! That was good to know. And if there were a few out there, there were probably others.

In fact, now that she thought of it, if her new friend had been able to gather so many kinds of fruit, there was probably plenty of edible plants nearby. Another thing to ask about.

The gulf was large, and there were many islands sitting within, but not so many that Nuriel wasn’t about to get through all of them in under a couple hours, and before long, she was standing on the shore, again looking out to sea.

The surf was calmer during the day, and the tide lower. It sure seemed peaceful enough, and if Nuriel were anyplace else, she would think it a good place to lay down in the sand and take a nap. As it was, she just wanted to take stock of her surroundings.

There didn’t seem to be much out there immediately beyond the island, no seafaring monsters or anything of the sort. But further out there was something.

Nuriel pulled out her spyglass and took a look.

It was as she had thought. Several sharp and jagged spikes of rock were protruding just out of the water’s surface. There were quite a lot of them too, and from where she was, it seemed that they stretched far in either direction.

Nuriel shivered. They probably surrounded the whole island. No wonder it seemed that nobody had visited in a long time. If the tide were higher, the spikes would be hidden from the naked eye, and yet would still rip the hulls out of any approaching vessel, something to keep in mind should the opportunity to escape ever present itself.

Then Nuriel looked down the coast to her left, where she had fled. Her new friend had said that the birds hunted at night, but she wasn’t really interested in pushing her luck just yet.

Then she looked to her right.

Nuriel paused.

There was something there, further down the beach. Actually, there was a lot of somethings. And Nuriel had a pretty good idea what they were.

Swallowing, she cautiously made her way down the coast, keeping her eyes on the objects as they came nearer and nearer. It did not take long to confirm what she had thought upon her first look.

She had come across a graveyard for ships.

Littered all over the shoals and reefs were the decaying carcasses of watercraft, from brigs like her own to smaller schooners. They had been broken and smashed to pieces, some partially intact but clearly never to take sail again, while others had been shattered so thoroughly that it was impossible to tell what kind of boat they once had been. Splintered masts rose into the air like the headstones of an abandoned cemetery, noting to all that might come across them that this was where the dead were kept.

But most impressive was the devastated remains of a Navy frigate, or half of one anyway. It was thrust partially up on the beach itself, one entire side ripped off, exposing what remained of the crew quarters.

Nuriel felt a strange shiver looking out on the skeletal remains of all those ships. At least the Carmilla’s Fancy had been mostly intact. But it was harder to look deader than these things.

Or more haunted.

The smart thing to do would to be to turn around and head right back to her island. She had enough troubles with monsters and spirits of the night to risk disturbing the sleep of the dead. There had to be dozens, if not hundreds of corpses of sailors out in those shoals, their bones picked clean by gulls and sea creatures. That would make one restless enough without some foolish girl poking about their graves.

And yet…

She did have at least one creature of the night on her side, and her new friend had not warned her away from any wrecked ships. It was sort of odd that she would find that comforting.

Besides, with so many wrecks to choose from, there had to be plenty of useful items she could salvage.

Taking a deep breath, Nuriel started to walk toward the remains of the beached frigate. But as she rounded a splintered mast complete with a crow’s nest that was jutting out of the sand, she saw something that made her stop in her tracks.

There was something reclining across the beach, the tip of its tail dangling in the surf. Something alive.

All the stories Nuriel had heard of merfolk had painted them as ethereally beautiful creatures with the bodies and faces of human women and the tails of massive fish where their legs ought to be. They would swim around seafaring vessels or recline sensuously upon reefs and rocks, tempting sailors to their watery deaths with the sound of their songs and their enchanting beauty. Those tales had served as a warning, to not allow one’s heart to be beguiled no matter how lonely you might be, but Nuriel had often come away from those stories not fearful of the sirens of the deep, but envious of them. How much better her life would be if she had the tail of a great fish and could swim wherever she pleased! Hell, there were a few sailors of her acquaintance that she wouldn’t mind leading to their deaths.

But now that she saw one in the flesh, she realized how wrong those descriptions had been, and yet how right.

The mermaid did in fact have a tail that she obviously used for swimming, but it was not the scaled tail of a cold-blooded fish, but a the long and sinuous tail, one that was finned, yes, but not with a split flipper at the end. Instead, it was more like the tail of a great serpent…no, not a serpent, as it had no scales. More like a giant eel, one with greenish-blue skin and stripes of a blue so dark that they were almost black.

As for the mermaid’s body, it was human…ish, and definitely feminine, but no one would mistake it for that of a human. The skin was the same greenish-blue as the tail, with no clear divide between the two parts like mermaids had been described having. Aside from the coloring, her torso was…mostly human in shape, trimmer in the middle and flaring out a bit where her hips extended down to her trail. She even had a navel, so she probably had not hatched from an egg. Her breasts were small, with two tiny, dark-blue nipples. Her arms, which were laid in the sand at her side, were long and slender, and her fingers, six of them on each hand, were likewise longer and more delicate-looking than they had any right to be, with a thin membrane stretching between her fingers. Short black claws protruded from the ends of her fingers.

The mermaid’s face was perhaps the most human-looking, with two eyes, a nose, and mouth all were it ought to be. Long, silky hair of a blue so dark that it was almost black flowed down her back as well. But the teeth in her mouth were obviously sharp and predatory, her eyes glowing a faint green even in the afternoon sun, and the lobe of each ear was a large, fin-like membrane, one that reminded Nuriel of the wings of a bat. Three horizontal black strips slashed their way across her nose.

There was no doubt about it. This was the green-eyed sea monster that Nuriel had seen on her first night on the island.

The mermaid was propped up on her elbows and looking out upon the wreckage all around her, the tip of her tail lazily flicking at the surf. And as Nuriel stared at her, she found herself realizing that while the mermaid clearly did not look like the fishy women from the sailors’ tales, she was still quite beautiful, and Nuriel could understand well the desire to leap in after her after a long and lonely voyage.

Though Nuriel didn’t make a sound, the mermaid must have sensed her anyway, as it suddenly jerked her head to one side and then flipped around onto her belly, hands splayed in the sand, eyes wide and watching warily. Nuriel stiffened.

Then the mermaid saw her. She blinked her green eyes once, head tilted in a manner that reminded Nuriel of that of a curious dog.

Or a wolf.

Then the mermaid seemed to relax. She rolled onto one side, propped up on her arm, and smiled warmly at Nuriel.

Then she raised one webbed hand and waved.

Nuriel was unsure of how to respond. She had spent her whole life fearing the unknown and the inhuman. She had shivered at tales of creatures that looked human but…weren’t, that preyed upon children, that drank blood and devoured souls. And ever since arriving on the island, she had been running from two monsters in particular, one with glowing red eyes that stalked the jungle and one with glowing green eyes that prowled the depths. She had been convinced that if either got their hands or claws on her, it would be all over for her.

But now one was leaving her notes and gifts while the other was waving to her in a friendly manner.

That was odd.

Nuriel waved back. What else could she do?

Satisfied with her response, the mermaid then beckoned at her, indicating for her to come closer.

Now this presented a conundrum. Did she acquiesce and trust that the inhuman creature of the deep, of which many terrifying tales had been told, truly did mean her no harm, or did she play it safe and keep her distance?

Seeing her hesitation, the mermaid sighed in exasperation and beckoned at her again, more insistently this time.

Well, if the mermaid did truly mean her harm, she could have done whatever she wanted to her after plucking her from the crocomonster’s grasp. And Nuriel truly could not see what the mermaid could possibly do now that they were on land.

Nuriel approached, walking through the sand until she was only a few feet away. Then she sat down on her haunches. There, that ought to be close enough.

The mermaid glanced her over, and as she did, Nuriel found herself staring fascinated at her face. Everything about the girl from the sea seemed more monster than woman, from the color of her eyes and skin to the length of her arms. And yet there definitely was a humanlike quality to her, not just because the shape of her body had a resemblance to a woman, but in how she moved, how she looked at Nuriel. As otherworldly as she was, there was a calm intelligence in her eyes, one that didn’t seem alien at all.

Then the mermaid’s brow furrowed. She lifted one webbed hand to her wing-like ear and let out a strange clicking sound.

Confused, Nuriel lifted a hand to her own ear, and found her fingers touching the ragged flesh of her lobe.

The mermaid made that clicking sound again, made a point of looking to the jungle, and then lunged her head forward, her sharp-teethed jaws biting at the air. Nuriel jumped a little, but it wasn’t a threat, it was a question.

What happened to your ear?

Right. Of course a maiden of the deep wouldn’t speak any human language. Actually, a speech made up of clicks and other similar vocalizations made perfect sense, given the environment. It was just bloody useless for Nuriel.

A girl who can’t speak and a girl who can only click, Nuriel thought despondently. This is going to make for a very trying conversation.

Still, at least the mermaid was making an effort to communicate. Nuriel touched her ear again, and then mimed biting onto something with her teeth, her neck twisting as she tore off an imaginary piece of flesh.

The mermaid blinked twice. And by that, it wasn’t that she shuttered her eyelids two times in a row, but that a thin, transparent membrane passed sideways over her eyes before her eyelids closed normally before opening again, with the membrane opening a second later.

And then her face contorted in anger.

The mermaid looked to the jungle again and pointed. She made another clicking sound, this one harsher sounding.

Nuriel stared blankly.

Hissing, the mermaid leaned over and rubbed her palm over a section of the sand, smoothing out an area. She lifted one hand, her index-finger extended.

The black claw at the end suddenly shot out, revealing itself to be long and needlelike.

Nuriel jerked a little. Oh. Retractable claws. Swell.

But the mermaid still didn’t mean her harm. Hunching over, she starting drawing in the sand with her claw.

Still apprehensive but now very curious, Nuriel leaned in to see what the mermaid was drawing. It was a very rough stick-figure of a long-haired woman wearing a dress. The jagged line that the mermaid used for the woman’s mouth indicated sharp teeth.

The mermaid again made a biting motion and indicated the jungle.

Then Nuriel understood. The mermaid wanted to know if the red-eyed monster had been the one to rip part of her ear off, and was angry about the possibility.

Interesting. So, the two did know each other, or at least of each other, but it seemed that they might not be on friendly terms.

Nuriel empathetically shook her head. Then she thought. All right, how could she explain this?

She entwined her thumbs and spread her fingers to imitated the wingspan of a bird. Then she fluttered it around before making her hand-bird dive at her own ear. Then she imitated the mermaid’s biting motion.

The anger cooled on the mermaid’s face, but she still looked horrified. She then pointed to the shoals, where a group of gulls were resting on a piece of railing.

Nuriel couldn’t help but chuckle at the thought. Honestly, she wouldn’t be surprised if gulls turned out to be that vicious on this island.

She shook her head again and did her best to use her rarely-employed voice imitate the hoarse, cackling cries of the deadly birds that had twice almost ended her life.

The mermaid’s brow rose in understanding. Her shoulder slumped and the gills in her neck fluttered in a manner that Nuriel took for a sigh.

Nuriel was struck then at the strangeness of it all. Here were two girls from completely different worlds and even completely different species, both incapable of human speech for their own reasons, still managing to have a conversation. Still, she couldn’t say that the experience was unpleasant.

The mermaid wiped away the sketch of the red-eyed monster from the sand. Then she began drawing again.

First she drew a wavy line. Then beneath it she drew another stick-figure, this one of a person falling backwards, limbs flailing. She pointed at the falling person, and then at Nuriel.

That part was easy enough to understand. It was a picture of Nuriel herself, after she had been thrown overboard into the sea.

Then the mermaid sketched out a person with a long tail instead of legs, clearly herself. She drew a line between herself and the depiction of Nuriel, and then drew a hump on top of the wavy line. This she connected to the sketches of herself and Nuriel with an arrow.

Nuriel slowly nodded in understanding. The mermaid was the reason she was still alive. She had found Nuriel drowning in the sea and brought her to the island. If so, then when she had first appeared to Nuriel on the beach, she had probably just been coming by to check up on her, which was much more

Then she nodded again and held her hands to her chest, as if clutching her heart. Thank you, she mouthed. She didn’t know if the mermaid could read lips or even understand English, but hopefully the sentiment would be conveyed.

The mermaid smiled, so at least some things were universal. And then her expression turned dour.

She wiped away the sketches in the sand. Then she drew the figure of the red-eyed monster again and jabbed a finger at it while shaking her head.

Nuriel frowned. What was the mermaid trying to communicate?

The mermaid again jabbed a claw at the stick-figure. Then she tilted her head to one side, exposing her neck. She tapped the side of her neck, pointed at the stick-figure, and made that biting motion again.

Nuriel still stared blankly at her. Did the mermaid want to eat the red-eyed monster? She really hoped that wasn’t the case. The last thing she needed was to be stuck in the middle of some kind-

And then she got it. The mermaid wasn’t saying that she wanted to eat the red-eyed monster, she was saying that the red-eyed monster had tried to eat her!

Seeing the look on Nuriel’s face, the mermaid nodded once, clicked her teeth together again, and pointed to the sketch of the red-eyed monster with an empathic shake of her head.

Nuriel cast a wary eye over to the jungle, where the red-eyed monster dwelled. Being stalked by inhuman creatures had been bad enough. She had not expected to be caught in the middle of a feud between two of them.

Then the mermaid suddenly stiffened. She looked up at the island, eyes flitting this way and that. Nuriel tilted her head and frowned, silently asking her what was wrong.

The mermaid glanced back at Nuriel, unease in her eyes. She pointed at the marooned girl and let out a low, repeating click. Though the gesture didn’t come with an illustration, Nuriel felt that she had caught the gist.

Be careful.

Moving with the smooth grace of a slithering snake, the mermaid turned herself around and slid back into the sea, her long tail swaying in the sand. A moment later she had disappeared among the flotsam and jetsam.

Nuriel stared after her, out over the partially sunken wreckage. All this time she had assumed that the monster that prowled the night and the monster that prowled the deep had been in cahoots, that there had been some kind of alliance between them. But now, just as she was starting to perhaps trust them both, she learned that such was not the case.

But they had both saved her life! Nuriel would be dead at least three times over if it weren’t for them. And they had both ample opportunity to do her harm had they wanted to.

There was something else going on.

…

The next morning, Nuriel found that her new “friend” had once again returned.

The note Nuriel had written thanking it was gone, and in its place was yet another long letter. There was also yet another basket of fruit and a basket of fish, along with a jug of clean water.

Nuriel ate cautiously, wishing that she could taste the food, if for no other reason than to tell if it had been tampered with. But when it failed to kill her, she turned her attention to her other gifts.

In addition to the note, several sheets of blank parchment had also been left. So her new friend intended to keep communicating from afar as well.

As for the note, Nuriel again had to work to decipher it, but it was shorter this time.

I am so glad! Now, I know this must be very (st…string…strange!) strange to you, so I shall keep my (dictan? No, distance!) distance for now. However, should you need or want anything, do not (oh damn, there was no way she was going to get this one. It started with a “He,” but the next was a jumble of letters) to ask.

And again she had signed her name. And again, Nuriel couldn’t read it.

Once she was done, Nuriel sat back to contemplate what she ought to do.

The red-eyed monster had basically told her to ask for anything, and Nuriel had no doubt that she could provide. But what she really wanted was information.

But should she ask it? Would doing so anger her new benefactor?

Well, only one way to find out.

Nuriel knelt down over a piece parchment, charcoal stick in one hand, the note that the red-eyed monster had left for her in the other.

Writing was not her strong suit. She read well enough to get by, and she could write a little bit, but mostly short phrases she had memorized in order to get by. Complex questions such as the one she wanted took some work.

Fortunately, while hurried, the red-eyed monster’s penmanship was neat and readable, so Nuriel was about to use it as something of a cross-reference to get the words right. Unfortunately, the two words she needed to use weren’t anywhere to be found. Damn it.

Then she sighed. Oh, who cared about spelling? The point would be made regardless.

Sticking the charcoal against the parchment, she carefully etched out the words, HU IS MURMAD?

Hopefully the red-eyed monster would glean her meaning, but just to be sure, Nuriel also took a page from the mermaid’s book and sketched out a person with a fish’s tail beneath her question.

That done, she picked up the hammer and nailed her question to the mast. Now all she had to do was wait. And pray.

#original writing #my wriitng #blood island #vampires #dinosaurs #pirates #mermaids #happy mermay everybody!

[mamushroomoracorn]

Heista (Dorm)

(This is my fan dorm of my old oc Luna this is for the challenge, I spend a long time on this, Please click for better, quality/Keep reading for the dorm leaders, Rooms, Information | I worked very hard on this Days , Please Reblog) This dorm is based on the stealth of Luna  In order to become the dorm leader of Heista you must last longest in a massive game of hide and seek, In order to become vice you must catch the most people This dorm is based off of stealth skills, Parkor and staying hiddin

Meet Zersiro, Iri, and then Lavender,  Zersiro is the vice dorm leader, Age 17, Year 2, Nick names, The trickster, Card Man,weeb and Tower Iri is a Year 1 student. is at the age 17, Nick names,Sweet tooth, bubble gum addict Lavender, Age 18, Year 3, Nick Names, Grape, Leader

Being the son of divorce parents, he already believes he was at fault as a kid he was shy and timid he is still is. Only having one close friend. He lived with his father when he was little. Lavender adored his father, often playing games like in the dark hide and seek, parkor and climbin Even though he was shy Lavender was very active. Later in his life, his father found someone else to love Lavender didn’t mind but very happy for his dad. He loved to look at his father book and art , and knows he needed someone because of the dark topic and often paintings of women The women was a recovering alcoholic, it started out nice for 1 year, but slowly she lost her grip His step-mother was a aggressive drunk who often, was emotional,Verbally, and sometimes physical abusive Used to hide for fun, hide in fear.  Avoiding his house by staying at his friend house, adding a lock to his room. finding areas so the lady can’t reach or know about He practice magic when she is gone, and work hard to be far away from her wrath He was happy to be accepted into NCR far away from his home town - Favorite color is red , reminds him of his father - Hates hide and seek but gets a nostalgia for it - He doesn’t like getting touch or yelled at - Have a leaky eye from being hit in the eye - Have a fear of women - Avoids Leona and savanaclaw students - Atheist but will not judge other or say in other regions - Bad at uno

Zesiro grown up poor, he learned how to scam, gamble, and sell over the years. This boy is very sly and cunning. He made friends with lavender as a kid After askng tricking Lavender to play uno, still have a win ratio of 250 - 0 Zersiro have run under ground casino to get AP test answers, Money, and items He would scam , play, act and sometimes cheat. When he grew older he learned to make sells to go on field trips butt not smart in spending his money or investing he ask his mom who is a shop keeper Later in life he watched a lot of anime, ninja videos and japanese movies and videos.  Zersiro joined rock climbing club, then later the ninja club/summer camp after selling girl scout cookies for money to afford He doesn’t want to become japanese, but love the entertainment  - Doesn’t like shoes and socks - hoarder but clean - Very envious , Jealous of other people stuff he will ask to hold it/ look at it to have a taste of what you have  - Is a weeb,  - Listens mainly to Jrock and Kpop/rap, Groups/people he listens to, is DEAN, Jay park, LOONA, Miso - have similar grounds with ruggie and rook

Iri was raised by his older sister when his parents went to jail/rehab when they have been caught processing drugs and was high Iri worked at age 14, often after school he would buy sweets, cakes, candies He lives off sugar, “It calms me” He doesn’t really like talking, he does it rarely  Loves to do parkour it makes him feel big and tall Teased often for his height, he grown to hate it a little,  He works at monstro lounge, as cook He had many experiences cooking because of his older sister long work hours Helps with the money inside the dorm - Loves cooking/baking sweets - Iri is listener and don’t talk often - He likes to do stuff himself and hates others when they try to help him - Iri have once kick down a kid for giving him a yard stick - Learned sign language who lacked in hearing - Listen to vocaloid related music - Have a pet goldfish name orange chicken

This is dorm layout, It is underground, and travels through sides and lifts and one elevator It have three public restrooms(all rooms have bathrooms) 2 areas are,  3+ rooms, biggest area and closer to the enterance since having the most people. Many first years and half of the second years live here 3 areas, are 2 people rooms, the other half of the second years live there, They can travel up to top dorm in order to go on the elevator 1, 1 singular person room, is on the bottom and the biggest one is there, normally they are the size of the regular but, The dorm leader/vice is the 1st and 2nd biggest  Jungle gym is one of the most popular area having outsiders paying to get in to often explore, hang out, have fun in this area, the room is really tall and have many areas to clime and zipline,Use gliders, fly or just rest The hangout is where you can relax and sit down and read often used by parents, guardians, can be used by students Also allow pets and many games of hide and seek in the dark is played often in this dorm, other dorms can join and request a challenge for a free week at the jungle gym

Enterance

Elevator 1

Rooms hallway 

Hang out

Jungle Gym

Uniforms look like this, you can choose which style of poncho you want, but you always have to have a orangy-red bandana or a pale yellow, and poncho on with something underneath, colors can be alternated with theses only patterns only if you are heads you can change the poncho pattern, but you can chang the circle into square if you want. Luna often wore ponchos so in honor we will @dreamerwicked-sweet​ for the fun challenge it was fun to do)

#twisted wonderland #fan dorm #heista #twstdormcreations

[wondereads]

Personal Recommendation (09/27/20)

Seven Devils by Laura Lam and Elizabeth May

Why am I recommending this book?

This is actually a rather recent book, and it’s been calling to me from the new releases table at my bookstore for weeks. Whoever said you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover was wrong because I chose this book specifically because its cover, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Plot 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

The plot revolves around multiple main characters; Eris, Clo, Ariadne, Rhea, and Nyx. Eris and Clo are members of an intergalactic resistance effort who hate each other while Ariadne, Rhea, and Nyx are members of the Tholosian Empire trying to escape their respective cages. They all converge on a Tholosian ship carting a brand new, dangerous material-right before the peace talks of the millennia.

I’ll be honest, the plot isn’t anything groundbreaking. There’s an evil empire hell bent on taking over the world complete with brainwashed soldiers, there’s a struggling resistance complete with an unknown leak, there’s a horrible weapon that they have to stop the empire from using before they wipe out pretty much every alien race, and everyone’s got a traumatic backstory. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t interesting. It took me a bit to truly get into it (and I was insanely busy this past week), but once I got through all the lovely exposition I devoured it. There’s also some really cool worldbuilding that neatly explains why Tholosians aren’t against committing war crimes and helps them get away with all the crazy ship-stealing and soldier-killing. Just don’t go into this expecting the masterpiece of the century. My only significant complaint was the ending felt very rushed. I was scrambling to keep up.

Characters 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

As good as the plot was, it was the characters that really kept me going. It was impressive how the authors managed to give them all hopes, ambitions, and fully fleshed-out personalities despite there being five of them. This book was an average size (large dimension-wise and around 400 pages), but each character now has a special place in my heart.

My personal favorite is Eris; my favorite type of character are the calm, rational ones. Eris joined the resistance after devoting her entire life to the empire because someone incredibly close to her died. Because of who she was in the empire, she has a completely new face and name. She often wonders if she made the right choice, but a big theme in the book is about looking forward, not back. (Spoiler! I love that since her original name was Discordia, her new name is Eris, the Greek goddess of discord End Spoiler)

Clo used to be close with Eris, but they now hate each other. Clo is a mechanic with a prosthetic leg (courtesy of Eris), and she lost her best friend in the resistance to Damocles, prince of the empire. Ariadne is the Oracle’s... apprentice? daughter? It’s unclear. Anyway, the Oracle is the AI that keeps track of everything in the empire and programs that citizens from birth, so you can see why Ariadne is such a convenient and trauma-ridden character. Rhea is essentially the former personal prostitute of Prince Damocles, but she’s also hiding her identity, just like Eris. Finally, Nyx was a decorated soldier until the Oracle’s programming weakened in her, and Ariadne and Rhea worked together to free her so they could all escape.

It seems overwhelming, right? Well, it actually isn’t. Despite the high-action plot, this book is mostly character-driven. Each character has at least two flashback chapters about their history, and how they interact with each other is very realistic. For example, Nyx and Eris don’t trust each other at first, but they respect each other and understand what the other went through as a soldier. I’d honestly love to meet them, but perhaps once the intergalactic conflict is over.

Writing Style 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

I think one of the benefits of having two authors is you get some unique voices in there. I wonder if they split up the characters or collaborated on everything. The book has a not uncommon layout, chapters that switch between different points of view. Personally, my favorite points of view were Nyx and Eris. They’re both very cool, rational characters, and I found it easier to read from their perspectives than the others. I also thought their ways of revealing their backstories and personal feelings were more subtle than the other three. There were some points, especially from Ariadne’s point of view, where I thought her expression of feelings could have been better integrated to her actions. However, other than that and the rushed ending, I think Lam and and May have a wonderful thing going on. I hope they decide to write more together!

Meaning 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

I think the main message in this book was about doing things yourself. All the characters don’t want to be fighting an evil empire. Ariadne, Nyx, and Rhea mention multiple times that they just escaped and they’d rather by seven galaxies away from the Tholosians. However, if they don’t do it, no one will. It’s further enforced by the Tholosian form of religion, the seven devils. Their gods represent war, honor, survival, fear, agony, salvation, and, of course, death. None of them represent love or life or anything nice in general. It is up to regular, living people, not some all-powerful gods, to make things right. It may not be what they want to do, but they know they have to do it.

Overall 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

I really enjoyed this book. It was full of revelations, action, and great relationships, and, despite being a cliffhanger, there’s still a note of hope in all of them. Also, talk about a feminist work. All the main characters are females (except Cato, but he’s there for like fifty pages at the end), the leader of the resistance is female, they have a variety of skills, personalities, and appearances, and there’s even an LGBT relationship (not telling you who!). As someone who needs worthwhile female characters in her books, this was perfect. There’s supposed to be two books, and I kind of regret reading this so soon because now I have to wait ages for the next one! I would recommend this book for people who like science fiction, feminist literature, and traumatic character backstories.

The Authors

Laura Lam: http://www.lauralam.co.uk/

Elizabeth May: https://www.elizabethmaywrites.com/

The Reviewer

My name is Wonderose, and you can learn more about me here! 

#books #recommendations #reviews #seven devils #laura lam #elizabeth may #science fiction #sci fi #lgbt #feminist literature

[anxietysroomsupport]

(1/?)Um so school has just recently started and on the third day I was already crying having a break down. I think that writing would help me be a bit more calm you know organize the brain and all that good stuff. But the thing is I've kinda told myself that 2 months ago that I was gonna write and I still haven't. I even deleted my discord and told myself that I would not log on again till I write. And well let's just say I still haven't reinstalled discord. The thing is writing just ✍🏽🚫

(2/3)Writing just sucks so much I hate it. I'm not even writing like a book or anything its just suppose to be my feelings, but I hate it. I feel like it takes forever just to write less then half a page. I also feel like my thoughts and my hand writing speed are so off. I also just don't like thinking about half the things going on in my head. ✍🏽🚫

(3/3)Sometimes I cant even get the thoughts I need to write out of my head. Like my brain just turns off. My hand writing also be ugly. So can I get some advice on how to make writing not so miserable so I actually do it. Idk me and writing just dont get along. 

Hi ✍🏽🚫 Anon,

Let’s get a little meta.  How did you feel after you wrote these asks?  Any calmer?  Maybe not..

But, how long did it take you?  Because these three asks are just under half a page.  And it kind of seems like you accomplished some of your writing goals: 

You wrote something

You wrote about feelings you’re having

And, yeah, it’s just your feelings about writing, but give yourself the credit!  You might be struggling because you’ve set up too many rules about what, and how, you can write.  If you can’t write what you intended, just write anything.  Write about how pissed you are that you can’t write what you wanted.  Write about how frustrating it is, and how there was that other time you felt frustrated, and then that thing will remind you of something else, and something else, and pretty soon you’ve got a whole page.  If you can’t form your sentence, a single word will do.

Try free writing.  Here is the first example, and the second.  Sometimes it just involves writing the same word over and over again until your brain lets it go.  Sometimes it’s about writing every synonym you can think of for a word until you find the one that feels right, even though you were just in the middle of a sentence.  Throw grammar out the window.  The only goal is to get letters on the page.

Before you do that, though, put yourself in a good mood and reinstall discord.  Punishing yourself for not doing an activity, when that activity’s only purpose is to make you feel better, can be surprisingly counterproductive.  You’re bored and in a bad mood because you’re punishing yourself, and writing sucks more because it’s associated to the punishment.  If you’re mind is stimulated by all the discord happenings, then you’re going to be in a better place to write if you let yourself have it.  Give yourself that downtime each day.  Put a limit on the total time, like 30 minutes, and then switch your attention to your paper and pencil.  If you miss your time limit, that’s okay, just start when you remember.

A lot of people struggle to write a fast as they think.  That’s just because our muscles can’t keep up with the super-computer that is our brain.  A lot of people turn to typing to get around that, but if you don’t have that option, you can practice to write faster by hand.  Here’s a youtube video that gives some fast-writing tips, and here’s a wiki link that talks about Teeline Shorthand, which is a journalism trick to get information down fast.  These two strategies could be combined so that you train your hand muscles to get faster, and at the same time, you’re learning an altered alphabet that is designed to be written quickly.  If no one else has to read it, it won’t matter if they don’t know shorthand.  

You can also use shorthand to make coded messages to your pals.

As far as ugly handwriting... this is one of those things that no one worries about except the person themselves, and maybe your teachers.  No one else is judging your handwriting.  It doesn’t matter how it looks once you’re out of school.  I know a guy who writes as well with his foot as he does with his dominant hand, which is it say, it’s completely illegible both ways!  And it affects exactly zero aspects of his adult life.  

Other ways you can make writing more enjoyable would be, use colored inks!  Get some sparkle pens!  Make some lemon juice ink and write your friends secret messages!  Model your layout after the illuminated manuscripts, and make some doodles!  Writing to calm yourself means it should be something that’s actually enjoyable, so let yourself do whatever you need to do to actually enjoy it.  There are no rules but the ones you set yourself.  

-Miss Fay

#✍🏽🚫 #✍🏽🚫 anon #school #break down #writing #discord #feelings #thoughts #handwriting #writing hacks #free writing #speed writing #teeline shorthand #lemon ink #long post

[chasseurdeloup-retired]

Ten CCs of Sass || Ricky and Kaden

TIMING: A few days after Ricky took on an asanbosam and after Kaden’s mime stabbing PARTIES: @ricky-corderbro and @chasseurdeloup SUMMARY:  Best roommates ever.

Kaden was starting to lose track of time in this stupid place. It was hard to know when was what when there were no windows in the room and time seemed to move at a snail’s pace. But he was pretty sure he remembered the layout of the room. And this was not it. Everything was similar but slightly off somehow. “Regan?” he asked, knowing full well he didn’t see her or Blanche or anyone else babysitting him at the moment. Maybe he hoped they would pop up around a corner or something. Still, no answer. But there was a fucking curtain halfway open and another patient on the other side. Putain de merde, just when he thought this fucking hell pit couldn’t get any worse. They must have moved his fucking bed in the night and now he had a goddamn roommate. And better yet, his IVs were taped down so thoroughly to his arm, he was pretty sure getting them off was going to take a solid ten minutes and take off hair and maybe even a little skin. He was thoroughly stuck. Fuck.

All in all it had not been Ricky’s favorite week. While thankfully they’d put him under for the harrowing process of putting his ribs back together and removing a portion of one of them from his lung, the pain afterwards had been almost enough to make him wish the asanbosam had finished him off. Sleep had been an elusive target, and it was only after a nurse had come in and given him something to knock him out that he’d managed a couple of hours. Waking up though, had brought a resurgence of pain everytime his heart beat and he took a breath, and it wasn’t until he heard a voice asking for someone named Regan that he realized how fucked his day was truly about to get. He recognized that voice, even if the last time he’d heard it they’d been on a rickety boat arguing about saving lives. He also knew that that voice was attached to someone he’d promised to try to kill, even if he was in no position to actually take action on the threat, “Oh you have got to be fucking kidding me.” he rasped out, voice still not up to par, “Did I actually die? I must have. This has to be fucking hell if I’m stuck here with you”

Kaden’s brows knit together. Something about that voice sounded vaguely familiar. He turned to get a better look at his new roommate. “Putain.” He groaned. It was the fucking do gooder lifegarud boy who was probably some kind of monster. Or knew a few. Of fucking course they ended up in the same room at the same time. What a cherry on top of being stabbed by a mime a few times the other day. “You’re right about one thing, this is fucking hell.” Kaden wanted to throw something but there was nothing but the pillow in reach to toss and, uh, he didn’t want to have to call a nurse to come pick it up off the floor. “The hell happened to you, anyway? Have a run in with a perfectly innocent supernatural monster? Or did your dudley do-right routine finally screw you over?”

Through the haze of pain and pain meds Ricky could feel Kaden’s voice grating on his every nerve, “Jesus fucking christ. Of course it’s fucking you” He attempted to push himself slightly more upright and was rewarding with a white hot pain shooting through his chest, “God. Do you ever tire of the sound of your own fucking voice? I will reach into my chest, pull out one of the many fragments of ribs floating around in there, and stab you in the fucking eye with it if it’s going to net me a reprieve from your sanctimonious bullshit.” He resigned himself to staying laying down and sighed, “You know, fuckhead mcfuckstick, there are those of us capable of distinguishing between an animalistic monster that lacks sentience, and a perfectly harmless member of the supernatural community. I’m sorry you somehow failed Humanity 101”

This little shit really thought he talked too much? Kaden scoffed. “You should ask yourself that. I’m not the one ranting over there.” He started picking at the tape on his arm as the kid ranted the same bullshit grumbling he’d heard a million times before. More colorful than most, he’d give him that, but more of the same. “Fuckhead mcfuckstick, that’s a new one.” He shrugged and continued to try and peel the tape away so he could try and leave before things got any worse. “So how’d that distinguishing go for you? Broken ribs, you said? Sounds like you had a really wonderful encounter.”

“It seemed fitting, given that you are both a fuckhead, and a fuckstick, and I’m Irish so we add Mc to everything.” Ricky rolled his eyes and managed to find the controller for his bed, raising himself so he was sitting upright, “Well it went great. Since I very clearly distinguished that an asanbosam is not a contributing member of society and is instead an animalistic hunter. But these were things I knew before. But you know something about being an animalistic hunter don’t you?” His breath came short for a few moments and he stopped talking, breathing as deeply as he could and balling his fists to try to work through the pain, “We were ambushed. Broken ribs, punctured lung. But I lived so, that’s something. They’re not great ones to run into.”

Irish. Noted. Kaden was sure he’d have plenty of time to figure out what kind of monster he was sharing a room with. Unfortunately. “Asanbosam? Too bad no one was around to stake it. If only there had been an animalistic hunter nearby. Guess they were all at home.” Or stuck in a fucking hospital. “That or no one thought you were particularly worth saving. Shame, you clearly handled it so well on your own.” Still, sounded like the kid had it worse over there than he did. “You got lucky. Even with all that.” Not that he was glad he was okay. That wasn’t his concern at all. “Ran into one of those the other week, seem to be out in force with all the eternal darkness shit going on. Almost stole someone up into the trees.”

“I managed just fine. No deaths, so, that’s a win. It’s currently somewhere in the forest trying desperately to get the rosary I knotted around it’s ankle free. They’re particularly averse to religious iconography.” While most children had a childhood full of nursery rhymes, a solid portion of Ricky’s home education had been the various varieties of vampire that would inevitably try to attack him; he knew a fair few of them by heart. “Ah yes, there’s that good old Hunter “judge, jury, and executioner” mentality that we all know and love so much. Good to know whatever didn’t do a good enough job of killing you left you up on your high horse.” Ricky reached for his phone on the bedside table, scrolling through several texts in all capital letters before deciding that was a problem for later in the afternoon, “I always hated the idea of those fuckers.” He muttered, trying to find a more comfortable position that didn’t put pressure on, well, anything. “Iron teeth. Prehensile tail. They’re straight out of some dnd dungeon master’s nightmare. What the hell is a west African vampire doing in Maine, though?”

“Oh are they? Wow, gee, I never fucking knew that. Slayed my first vampire at age ten but wow, thanks for that riveting new information. Where would I be without you?” Kaden rolled his eyes. He just told the guy he’d encountered an asanbosam the other week, so he would’ve thought he wouldn’t go and explain the obvious to him but guess he was wrong. “Yeah well, sorry to disappoint you by my survival. But if you tell me where that fucking thing was I can probalby deal with once I’m out of here. Or get someone else to. You know, if you can lower yourself off that pedastool to cooperate with an animalistic hunter for two fucking minutes.” This was going to be a long goddamn day. God help him if was two. He wasn’t sure he could survive that. The tape on his arm must have been something akin to duct tape because it wasn’t budging. At this point he wasn’t sure he cared if Regan insisted he stayed the full two plus days. No way would he last that long. “They’re a pain in the ass. Species origin doesn’t really seem to be a barrier to entry in White Crest. I mean, for fuck sakes, the sky’s been dark for a few solid weeks now and you’re questioning how an African vampire got here? This place is fucking weird.”

Kaden’s abrasive voice was honestly on par with the subtle grinding and shifting of his ribs that he could still feel every time he breathed, “God. It just so fucking shocking to me that you’re top of seemingly everybody’s ‘kill him becore he kills us’ list. People skills like yours you should be in public relations. As to the where would you be? Fish food. We’ve gone over this. You’d be fish food.” Ricky let talk of killing a roommate fall silent as a nurse came in to administer meds and bring up his breakfast tray… which was seemingly full of things he didn’t want or couldn’t really eat. One insipid slice of ham seemed to be about the only thing he trusted, and he quickly ate it, keeping his face turned away from Kaden so there were no erstwhile glimpses of fangs, before pushing the tray and the rolling table away, “I don’t want the rest of that, if you’re feeling extra peckish.” He could feel the gentle wave of pain meds crashing on the beach of his mind and pulled his phone towards him, tapping out replies to texts as he listened to Kaden prattle on in the singularly sanctimonious way that he seemed to have cornered the fucking market on, “Yeah as long as there’s a fucking tree vamp wandering the forests near my home attacking members of my community I’m going to fucking question it. But in answer to the question that was sandwiched between the insults… it was the forests to the north of the Docks, bout half a mile before the bridge to Harris Island. It felled a tree right in front of my truck, blocked the road.”

“Yeah, yeah. And I thanked you already, alright.” Kaden bristled at the reminder that he was somewhat in debt to the other man for saving his life. Fucking hated that. Normally he made it easy enough for him to push that aside but then it would rear its ugly head. Still, he noted where that vampire was last seen; he’d be sure to kill it once he was out of there. Not long after, a second nurse came in to give Kaden his tray full of what he assumed was awful lumps of sadness pretending to be food. He wasn’t wrong. The food looked awful, alright, but that wasn’t what his eyes were focused on. No, his eyes went straight to the black and white striped shirt folded neatly with a beret on top and the red blood stains seeped into it. His eyes grew wide with confusion and his pulse picked up as he looked at the nurse. She gave absolutely no indication that anything was out of the ordinary and simply smiled and asked if there was anything else he needed. Kaden was stunned for a moment but it didn’t take long for him to flip the try, tossing it away from him the way someone might flick away a bug that had crawled onto them. He tried to quell the panic that was rising up in him. The nurse just looked confused, not like she was going to kill him on the spot. Which was good, but honestly he still wished he had a weapon in hand. Then she shook her head and looked around like she was unsure of what room she was in or what hat just happened. “Did I do that?” she asked, looking at the try and bending down to pick it up. “I’m sorry, I’ll bring you another tray. Is that your shirt?” Kaden shook his head. “Uh, no. Not-- No, that’s not my shirt. And you didn’t-- Sorry, I lost control of the…” He wanted to run more than ever, his hand reaching for the metal stand where the bags of fluids were hanging. It’d be a decent blunt weapon in a pinch. “Oh, that’s alright. I’ll be right back,” the nurse said, all the fallen food and tray in hand and left with a smile, like nothing ever happened. “Putain de merde, what the actual fuck?”

“It’s really hard to take the thanks seriously when it’s always tied to some sort of insane purge-and-purify human-centric rhetoric. Really sort of dulls the shine on that particular compliment.” He’d been focused on his phone and not on the speciesist fuck in the bed next to him when there was suddenly a ruckus that made him snap his head over to look at that side of the room. “What the absolute fuck you lunatic?” Ricky was so taken aback by the scene that he attempted to push himself out of bed to help clean it up, before bolts of white hot pain reminded him why he didn’t do that, “oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck oh fuck.” The nurse’s response to the whole ordeal was what really made him narrow his eyes, “What…. What the fuck is happening over there.” A tiny spot of red appeared on the bandage around his chest and started to grow fractionally, “Well that’s not good. But… that wasn’t normal. What the fuck landed you in here? I mean I had just assumed it was something along the lines of “finally got what was coming to him” but that was fucking weird.”

“Nothing, nothing, it’s--” he started. Kaden’s eyes darted back and forth between where the tray had just fallen and the door. He ran a hand through his hair, trying to slow his breath, bring his pulse back to normal. He let out a deep sigh, trying to rationalize that nothing else was coming in, no one else was there, it was probably safe. But Regan wasn’t back yet. What if something happened to her? Fuck. “Uh, shit. Don’t fucking laugh,” he told his current rommate as he rubbed his palms against the sheets, trying to dry the sweat off them. “I’m here cause I got stabbed by a fucking mime.” He thought about hitting the call button, get another nurse in here. But what if that didn’t help? What if that’s what brought another possessed person to send him more warnings and threats? Shit. He was more or less defenseless if someone came back for him. This is why he fucking hated hosptials (among all the other reasons). “So yeah, that striped shirt, it, uh-- Fuck.” He felt like such a paranoid idiot.

Ricky didn’t really think of himself as a cruel man. He tried to do right by his friends and his neighbors, be a good upstanding member of the community, and generally behave in a way that would make his mother proud of him; since she was his metric for what a good person should be. But the minute Kaden a) told him not to laugh and b) mentioned he’d gotten stabbed by a fucking mime, Ricky knew he was in a losing battle where all of his attempts to be good were going to falter in the face of a chance to ridicule his enemy. The laugh bubbled up inside of him and the piercing pain in his chest battled for dominance but he couldn’t help but throw his head back in laughter, shaking slightly in his bed, “Oh god…. Oh my fucking god…. I”m sorry I’m sorry… did you… did you… the great fucking hunter… bane of the supernatural… did you fucking get put in the hospital by a goddamn mime?!” His laugh turned into a painful cough and he bit down abruptly, a fang piercing his lip “ow fuck.” The laughter died down and he shook his head, “Ahh it feels good and at the same time fucking terrible to laugh. How… how did you manage to get stabbed by a fucking mime?! Was it even a real knife or was this just some A+ really top of the line pantomime that this fucker did?”

Well that was one way to quell the panic. Kaden could feel the anger rising up as the other man laughed. No, fucking cackled. “Shut it!” He looked down at the edge of the bed where his tray fell. Maybe there was still a shitty clementine or something he could chuck at Ricky’s fucking head. No luck. There was still a beret, though. It’d have to do. He scooped it up, scrunched it into a ball, and threw it across the room. He practically huffed as he stewed over on his bed, but a quick glance over to his roommate practically splitting his stitches and he saw it. It was subtle enough, but there was no denying those were fucking big ass fangs sticking out while he cackled. Well that answered that question he was pretty sure he already had the answer to: Monster. What kind, he’d figure out later. Couldn’t be undead if he had a heartbeat to monitor, he knew that much. And couldn’t be a wolf since he didn’t send all of Kaden’s hairs on edge. “Putain, yes it was a real fucking knife, connard! He was fucking possessed or cursed or some shit! Broke into the restaurant and just b-lined to stab me and wouldn’t fucking stop until he died.” It was goddamn karmic watching Ricky in pain over his laughter. Deserved at least that much.

“Oh no, Fuckstick McMimeChow, you have to deal with this fucking laughter because it is infinitely hilarious that a hunter got hospitalized by a motherfucking mime.” Ricky allowed the beret to hit him in the face if only because Kaden deserved at least that tiny victory, and as he held hit in his hands he took as subtle a smell of it as he could, but picked up nothing more than dollar store shampoo and dried blood, “Well… while you can make the argument that choosing ‘mime’ as your profession is in and of itself a curse… he was definitely human.” He threw the beret to the foot of Kaden’s bed, “but I’d wash your hands. There’s blood on that.” Pressing a slightly trembling hand to his chest; the pain was now greater than the mirth he’d received at Kaden’s attack, “That’s gotta be like… top three for shitty dinners. I mean I’ve had some bad fucking meals in my day and while I’ve had both a beer and a dinner roll thrown at me on separate occasions nobody’s actually stabbed me before. Did you kill this maniacal mime or did he just… I don’t know… suddenly expire after coming into contact with undiluted Blood of Douchebag.”

If Kaden had something else to throw, he would have. Instead all he could do was glower at the laughter. “Congrats, Detective pain in the ass, I figured that much out. Of course he was human. Problem was you didn’t see him. The look in his eye. It was like the lights were out but he was going through the motions anway. Really fucking determinedly, too.” At Ricky's evaluation of the beret, he looked down at his hands and decided to just wipe them off on the side of the bed again, in case there was any blood. “We barely got to wine let alone dinner. So yeah, I’d say so.” He sighed, thinking about the poor chardonnay that was the only thing that was murdered that night. What a waste. His head snapped to face his current roommate at his last comment. “Hey, I did not kill him! I mean I didn’t take it lying down, but I’m not a murderer, alright!”

“I’m really feeling like you’re not putting the same energy into this rivalry I am, Kaden. I come up with Fuckstick McMimeChow and you counter with Detective Pain in the ass? I’m a little hurt.” Ricky shot as withering a look as he could manage across the room, “Are you sure that was a curse/possession and not just… you know… people’s kneejerk reaction to being in your presence? I know I always get the urge to stab you repeatedly.” Watching Kaden wipe his hands on the bed he listened before chuffing a sigh of a laugh, “Wait wait wait… did you get stabbed by a mime on a fucking date? Jesus fucking Christ talk about just compounded shit luck. That’s just… woof. I don’t even have anything cutting or scathing for that… that’s just… that’s just rough.” Any pity he might have felt for the other man quickly evaporated however, “Oh yes. This old chestnut. I spend my life hunting things down but am somehow not a murderer. What is this… verse 78 now?”

“Sorry, what can I say. I don’t spend as much time thinking about you as you think about me.” Kaden rolled his eyes at the remark. “He came into the restaurant seemingly just to stab me. I know I’ve pisseed people off but that just doesn’t track, alright. I never saw the guy before. And yeah I was on a fucking date, alright. Shocking as it may be. Still not sure if it’s one of the worst dates I’ve been on.” He sighed at the remark. Of course, couldn’t get through one conversation without the bleeding heart bullshit. “Look you don’t have to fucking agree with me but don’t act like you don’t know where I stand. Murder is when you kill people and monsters aren’t people. Been over this.” There was a long stretch of silence and it seemed like they might be done snipping for the moment. Fine by him, but the whole place was too quiet. And he couldn’t bear to sit and watch this shitty infomercial. He waited a moment, maybe he could just sleep or something. But he wasn’t tired. “Hey, uh, I think you have the remote. Can you change the thing. The Price is Right is about to come on.”

“Jesus. And I thought my fucking love life was grim. You make me look like a fucking Casanova if that wasn’t one of your worst dates. Am I surprised? No. But still… blech. Poor woman. I’m just assuming you’re straight because I’m fervently praying you’re not gay. We don’t want you on our team. Please stay far the fuck away.” It was still a little surprising how robotic and immediate the return to the hunter party line was. There was almost a moment, for just the briefest of seconds, where Ricky had thought that they were actually on the road to… well whatever was one step above immediately homicidal. But all of that was swept away in an instant as they returned to ground zero. A zone which did not net Kaden any tv privileges. “Sorry.” He picked up the remote and plucked its batteries out, tossing the powerless shell to the other man, “Sharing is what people do.” He smiled a wide bright smile, every perfectly maintained fang shining in the horrible hospital lighting, “and I guess I just don’t qualify. Besides…. Price is Right with no Bob Barker? One of us is the monster here and it isn’t me.” This was going to be the longest hospital stay ever.

#chatzy #writing #wickedswriting #ten ccs of sass #ricky #rickycorderbro

[thesilentspyawaits]

I have finished MID and I have thoughts

This review/thought thingy will NOT be spoiler-free so please be aware of that! Before I put anything under the cut though, I wanted to point out one thing. I think I’ve said this before but I’m a beta tester for the ND games and we had the option in SEPTEMBER (an actual month before the game was to be out for pre-order) to come in and test the puzzles (I’m currently studying abroad so I couldn’t go) but we were told we were not going to have the option to get the actual beta version of the game so... I don’t think it was actually ever beta tested??? Maybe I’ll make a post about it idk we’ll see anyway here are my thoughts/comments: 

I’m just going to say the things that I love right off the bat and not go into too much detail about those: 

Voice Acting 

Lots of Characters/NPCs

Most of the plot

The ghosts especially when they were running around in the tunnels, that was super cool and a few scared me 

That nostalgic feeling

Here are the things I didn’t like about the game and I’ll go into some details: 

ASH: This was a knock-off version of Alibi in Ashes with some Ghost of Thornton hall mixed in you can’t change my mind 

Graphics: I don’t want to go too much into it. They sucked. I have a Macbook and tried to turn the graphics up (this helped a lot) but my game go so slow and my computer crashed a lot so I turned them down 

Lots of Characters: I know I said I loved how many characters there were, but I felt like we never got the time to know them. The game was about the same amount of time as the older ones so I think that’s the reason why we never got to really know any of them. I have no idea what the motives were for anything, I learned no background about the characters, Jason and Mei seemed forced, I wanted more info about the young Coven group, I basically just wanted more from each character especially Alicia and the Judge. They could have easily been taken out of the game in my personal opinion. I think if the game was longer it would have been a LOT better. 

Dialogue/not a lot of puzzles: My favourite part of the game was when Mei and Nancy had to figure out how to get out of that small room because it was just a big puzzle and I really liked the puzzle with Frank/Joe/Deirdre in the basement of the Hathorne House! But the dialogue just seemed so... yikes. It was also annoying that we couldn’t work on multiple puzzles at the same time. It felt very linear that way. I also think a lot of people back in 2015 when they did that survey said they wanted more puzzles in the games. I think having six characters instead of four and having more puzzles would have been a lot better. Something similar to Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon! That’s SUCH a good game because of the characters and the puzzles! 

Characters in general: Why the FUCK did they have like no facial movements??? Besides their mouths which were not in sync with the words a lot of the time?? Why the fuck was the judge so sad 25/8? Why was Teegan stuck in t-pose the entire game??? Why did they move so much? They were so unnatural and awkward???? I honestly just like... why???? Also NONE OF THEM BLINKED 99% OF THE TIME! Deirdre was the wORST! I stared at her for like two minutes and she never blinked. She was by far the worst looking one which sucked since she was behind us a lot during the game which I thought was very annoying. 

Glitches: Oh my goshhhh I had so many little bugs and glitches. Frank’s feet were in the ground so many times, Nancy wasn’t sitting in her chair part of the time, the characters’ arms would clip through them I think at one point Joe’s arm just went straight through his face. I also had to shut my game down more than once in order to progress in a puzzle it was just not good 

Ned: PUT NED IN THE FUCKING GAME YOU COWARDS! And why were him and Nancy fighting so much???? It doesn’t make sense! It added nothing to the game!! 

Frank: He was so awkward??? Did not seem like Frank Hardy at all I was very concerned 

Other stuff: I hated the text. I have ADHD and space out sometimes and I loved how in the old games I could scroll up so I could remember shit. It also isn’t good for hard of hearing or deaf fans or other people who may need the text to read since it would get cut off. I was not very impressed with the world. I thought the upstairs part of the library was really weird, it seemed way too big for no reason. Lauren should have been living in the Hathrone house instead of next to it. Also the Hathrone house and the Perry house have the same layout. Two rooms on the ground floor, only one place you could access upstairs. It was a bigger world, but I would have enjoyed a smaller world with more areas to explore in the world. The ending was just chaos too. So much talking. I missed the letter at the end too! I hated that we had to go say goodbye to everyone?

Finally, I was confused a lot. Some of the dialogue didn’t make sense, there weren’t a lot of hints, the puzzles needed a lot more explaining than they were providing us, and I didn’t notice things until Nancy told us (the picture we got of Lauren, Olivia, and Teegan, didn’t realize I had to look at it). There was just a lot of things that left me saying “what�� and it was really frustrating. I was pretty much done with the game by the end. 

In conclusion: I would have preferred waiting another year for a REALLY good Nancy Drew game (why did this one feel so... rushed?) Or just stuck with the old point-n-click version! There wasn’t anything wrong with the point-n-click version! I think it would have been easier for them to just add in six characters instead of the traditional 4, put in some more difficult puzzles and like three more than usual, and make the game a little bit longer! 

I am really worried HeR won’t be able to recover from this which sucks but I hope they learn and are able to grow and we get some better games in the future! I gave the game a fair shot and... I wasn’t impressed. Especially after they hyped it up like crazy and we had to wait so long. 5/10 sorry and if you’re thinking about buying the game, I say do it. I actually really liked feeling nostalgic and my little brother and I were talking about it and it was like the good old days! It brought me back and made me happy for some weird reason?

#Midnight in Salem #Nancy Drew #Midnight in Salem Spoilers #MID spoilers #long post #I am so sorry this was long #I have more I want to say too but idk ahhh #maybe I will make that beta tester post #would anyone read it lmao #even just one person and i'll write it

[chibimultishipper]

Zerhys prompt: dinner party

(Okay so just a heads up, this prompt request will be split into parts!  I was writing the dinner party out and it was just getting much to long, so here is part 1!)

(Slight AU in which Zer0 and Rhys’ friends have no idea they are dating each other.)

Rhys had been trying to keep his relationship with his current datefriend a secret from his friends.  It wasn’t that he was ashamed of Zer0 or anything like that, he just knew his friends could be very judgemental.  Vaughn and Yvette were overprotective and Sasha and Fiona were skeptical of just about anything.  He wouldn’t be surprised if they somehow thought Zer0 was just using him for free weapons or whatever.

On the other hand, Zer0 had also kept their relationship a secret from their friends.  Okay, secret was a strong word, they just never told them.  When Rhys had asked out of sheer curiosity Zer0 shrugged and stated “They have not asked me.”  Which in Zer0 terms was a pretty valid argument.  Rhys also had no right to judge since he had been actively avoiding telling his own friends.

Rhys would have honestly been content with just keeping quiet for another year, maybe two, but he got too comfortable.  

You see, Zer0 was still one of the best assassins out there, so Rhys often hired them for missions.  He strictly forbade all romantic interactions when on Atlas property.  Rhys excuse was that he had an ‘image to maintain.’  Zer0 had for some reason found that hilarious, but respected his wishes.

Then Rhys got greedy.

He figured a little flirting was fine as long as he was in the office.  He wanted to blame Zer0, since they had originally instigated with heart emojis and suggestive banter but it was really his own fault.  Rhys had to admit that he was a huge sap and that ended up being his downfall.  After giving Zer0 another assignment, Rhys had leaned over and quickly kissed their helmet.  It was something so simple, just a quick peck, but of course Yvette had to open the door at that EXACT moment.

Before Rhys could explain, Yvette briefly apologized, left some papers on his desk and left.  Rhys silently hoped that she wouldn’t mention it once Zer0 left, and she didn’t.  However an hour later he got many angry texts and voicemails from Sasha and Fiona and also Vaughn coming into his office screaming about “Making out with a highly trained assassin who could kill you in seconds!”

They didn’t take the news well.  Overall, they seemed more upset that he didn’t say anything and assumed the reason was because Zer0 was secretly holding him hostage. (“Blink twice if you’re in trouble.” Sasha had joked at one point).  They were all very adamant about meeting his new partner so they could “size them up” as they put it, whatever that means.

Okay so that was fine.  He knew he had to go through this at some point.  He hadn’t expected to keep their relationship a secret forever after all.  Also, he could handle his friends.  He knew that at the end of the day they just wanted the best for him and even if for some reason they didn’t approve of Zer0, he would tell them that it wasn’t their choice to make.

No, what really threw him off guard was when after he returned home and received a knock on his door.  Opening it revealed Zer0 covered in blood.

“Are you okay?” Rhys asked on reflex.  It was a silly question really, the blood on their suit was clearly not theirs.  Still, Rhys felt the need to make sure.

“We have a problem.” Zer0 said walking in.

“Zer0…” Rhys scolded as blood dripped onto the floor.  Thank goodness the apartment was hard wood.

“Sorry, I’ll help clean later.”  They promised.

“Okay good you know how squeamish I get.” Rhys said with a smile, but it fell from his face when Zer0 didn’t follow up with a witty comment.  “What’s wrong?”

“Do not freak out Rhys.”

That was not the right thing to say, as Rhys was already pre freaking out. “What? What happened?”

Zer0 shifted from one leg to another, a habit Rhys noticed they had whenever dealing with awkward or uncomfortable conversation. “My friends are aware / we are dating. Meeting is / inevitable. “

Rhys paused as he processed the information.  And then the panic began to set in. “So you’re telling me that not only do my friends want to meet you but now your friends want to meet me?” Rhys groaned. “This is the worst case scenario.  What if your friends don’t like me? What if they think I’m lame? What if they help you realize how lame I really am and you break up with me because I am so lame.”

“I’m fully aware / of how lame you currently / are. I still like you.” [ :) ]

Rhys raised an eyebrow. “Is that suppose to make me feel better?”  Zer0 nodded. “It doesn’t.” [ :( ] “Okay… it does but just a little!” [:D]

“My comrades often / spend time at Moxxi’s.  I can / accompany you.”

“No no no.” Rhys groaned. “Sanctuary is basically there turf.  They know the layout the best.  No, we should all meet at least on equal ground. Oh, better yet let’s meet up in a place they’ve never been!  It’ll throw them off guard.  Unfamiliar territory, that’s a thing right?”

“They’re not enemies.” [:/]

“I know that! I just feel it would be easier for everyone to meet each other somewhere I’m comfortable in. It’ll help me be less nervous.  Oh! We could get everything out of the way and invite my friends too!  Most of them already know who you are after the traveler mission but they don’t KNOW know you.  And then our friends could meet each other! Hopefully keep each other busy and keep some attention off us, the perfect strategy.”

[?] “You’re overthinking again.”

Rhys shook his head. “Zer0 this is your first time around the relationship rodeo isn’t it? You have no idea how big of a deal this moment is!  I mean our friends meeting us and also each other is like, it’s like in movies when the couples family meet each other.  If for whatever reason they hate each other or the other’s partner that’s it!  Wacky Shenanigans that lead to complete turmoil and potential ending of relationships!”

Zer0 was almost positive that Rhys was blowing things out of proportion.  Rhys was known for being a bit dramatic.  Still, they had spend many nights in watching movies and TV shows with Rhys.  Plus, Zer0 still didn’t fully understand human relationship customs.  Maybe Rhys had a point…  “It’s that serious?”

“Yes! That is what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

Zer0 nodded in understanding.  “Then we should come up with a / strategy.  Ideas?”

Rhys grinned.  “Now you’re talking!  As I was saying, if we have everyone meet at the same time not only would it get both awkward encounters out the way, but also draw some attention off us.  But we need to set up a place to meet where you and I are both comfortable.  That will throw both of our friend groups off guard.  That’s going to be pretty tough though…”

Zer0 tried to think of a place that would be new to both parties, make them slightly uncomfortable, and give the two of them the advantage.  The struggle was Zer0’s friends were vastly different from Rhys’ so it didn’t leave a lot of options.  Zer0 turned to look around the apartment.  “Have any of your / friends visited this place yet?”  Zer0 asked.  Rhys had recently got a new apartment with his new Atlas money.

Rhys shook his head no. “Only Vaughn, he helped me move in.  No one else has seen it yet.  Why?”  [:D] “Oh my gosh Zer0 you are absolutely brilliant, I could kiss the beautiful mask of yours.”

“Later.” [;)] “First we must /  think of a way to /  convince them to come without  / raising suspicion.”

“Okay let me think, what can I offer here that can simultaneously  convince a bunch of vault hunters and former Hyperion now Atlas employees to come over to my apartment?” Rhys questioned.

“Something in common?” [?]

Rhys bit his lip. “Something they all have in common? Uh they’re all human?” Rhys joked. [:/]   “Yeah sorry that wasn’t funny.  Alright um-”  Rhys glanced over at his unused kitchen and snapped his fingers. “Food! That’s what they have in common they all love food! Right?”  He turned towards Zer0 for confirmation and was reinvigorated when Zer0 nodded.  “Alright I have the perfect idea! A dinner party! It can be semi formal.  You know, not too formal but formal enough to make everyone uncomfortable.”

Zer0 didn’t looked impressed.  “Rhys, you cannot cook.  At all.”

Rhys scoffed. “I can cook alright?  I can make basic stuff.”  

“You will need food for / at the very least / ten people.  I am unsure / if it’s possible.”

“Yvette is great at cooking so I’ll just ask for some of her recipes.  How hard is it to follow a recipe.” [ … ] “Come on Ze, have a little faith in me? Please?”  With that Rhys batted his eyes at the assassin.

Zer0 still seemed unconvinced, but they showed their support with a heart emoji. [  “I will assist in / anyway I can.  When should / We host the event?”

“Can you see if your friends will be free this Saturday night?  It’ll give us time to get the ingredients and do any prepping.  It’ll also give everyone time to find something formal to wear.”

Zer0 pulled up their Echo and began to send messages to everyone in the vault hunter squad.  “I’ve notified them / I should hear back shortly.  Are / you sure about this?”  Zer0 asked.  It was more of a formality since they had already sent the invitations.

Rhys laughed nervously.  “As sure as I’ll ever be.  Operation dinner party is a go.  Don’t worry, we are going to nail this.”

They weren’t going to nail this.  

(That’s it for part 1! I am definitely going to continue this so keep a lookout!

#zerhys #zer0 #zer0 the assassin #rhys the company man #rhys strongfork #rhys tftbl #borderlands #long post

[jennibeultimate]

Personal recap 4CC 2020 - Men FS

You know you are a skating nerd if you wake up at about 6 am to watch your favorite skater win his title to produce a grand slam. So I will only recap the last group and catch up later on the rest.

Keegan Messing is a skater I really enjoy watching. Sadly he can never quite manage to get it together. The 3As weren't behaving at all, too many mistakes. I still wonder who they will send to Worlds, because Roman Sadovsky won Nats but Nam placed the best here. But I am sure we won't see Keegan...adding one thing that is remarkable about Keegan is the sportmanship and friendship he displays even before his own turn of skating. Hats off for that.

Yuma Kagiyama a 4CC Bronze medal at age 16 and in his first big senior competition! Wow! 🥉😍

Almost clean program. And I think he leapt bounds in the presentation since I first saw him in the junior GPs. Great skate! May he stay injury free and sail smoothly into seniors.

Junhwan Cha really delivered his best free skate this season on hom ice. I think he looked far more secure than before. I enjoyed the program, especially that layback Ina Bauer looks stunning. He still is always left at the judges mercy with the URs. 10 points went down in his technical score. (as they haven't shown those UR marked jumps in the replay I have no idea what to think about that, just that another time the URs prevent him from taking a medal)

Yuzu is a fighter! And Seimei is a breattaking program! ❤️ 4CC crown for the first time! 👑 And congrats on the grand slam! You wrote hystory again! 🎉🎉🎉❤️

Of course Yuzu had no one to match him here, so his win was a sure thing, but let's just be real this wasn't his best free skate, but for me he still looked more free in his performance than he looked with Origin, so from an emotional point it seemed like the best choice. The crossrolls always do it for me. 😍 To have the program shortened was the problem I think. That he just didn't have as many run-throughs as he probably would have liked (he skipped his run-through in the morning practice, but I am sure one more wouldn't have made the difference). The way he went from the 3A to the 3F without any preparation is stunning. I could watch Seimei forever. I really like it that much.❤️ I mean sure he has some work to do 'til Worlds but I am pretty sure he won't go down without a fight. And to face his real rivals will spark a fire in him. I really wonder what layout he will work into Seimei, because today didn't give much away of his plans.(And yeah judging is wack when his step out on the 4Lz gets as much - GOEs as a fall by some judges, to give Jason the same GOEs on a 3A is really something by some judges too. Yeah I do feel Yuzu is judged to a higher standard here and that was exactly what I feared for Seimei's return, that he would always be held to his WR performances of that program. It makes me cringe. His PCS being low is ok considering the PCS cap rule, but wouldn't the rule apply to Jason to with a popped jump? Ok he had no fall...still a fall only prevents a 10 in PCS segments...so how did Jason get more? 😑)

Congrats for finally Gold at 4CC 🥇!

Boyang Jin did show himself much bettter than at the GPF and that matters. Also 4Lz seems to be there again. It really looked like he was in the air forever. He would have been the only one that could have surpassed Yuzu's technical score but not with two pops. He was one that started the race with multiple quads, but as of late it doesn't quite seem like he can manage 4 quads. I really like the music of his program and the last part of the program is really a performance, but his preparation for the quads are really a bit too long of a wait. Still considering his season that was a good showing!

Jason Brown - where do I start? Congrats on the 🥈 medal! Job well done! 👍 Well the way his triples are scored I am not sure he needs a quad to place well. Everyone says quads make your PCS fly high and without them that's normally not the case, but nothing is normal when it comes to Jason. Because he gets the PCS and the GOEs for everything that others need quads for. It's no way to hate on Jason, I do like him and his style and way of jumping, but I just can't quite grasp that his triples (barring the 3A) should be the only ones that can receive these kind of GOEs. (you cannot get those GOEs unless you are from Eteri or your name is Jason Brown I think) Anyway it's not Jason's fault and he did well. The program is well constructed and he feels the music, it just doesn't do much for my own emotion. I have probably just seen too many of Schindler's list programs.

So the last group was enjoyable overall and not a splatfest which is a good thing in men's skating!

#yuzuru hanyu #jason brown #yuma kagiyama #4cc 2020 #figure skating #personal recap

[gaelstudies-blog]

As I’m going into my third year at a London University, I realised that there isn’t a lot of advice on here that is geared towards UK university life. So I’ve decided to put together some of my top tips, with a particular emphasis on how UK universities operate. If you have any questions don’t be afraid to send me a message!

1. Beware of fake freshers events

This is a big one that I see people fall for time and time again. They’ll see people enter freshers groups promising a fantastic club night, that you have to buy a separate wristband / ticket for. They’ll continually post about how it’s almost sold out, and show off videos etc of times before. These events are usually fake events, and a lot of the people promoting these are fake too. They use fake promotional videos, some of which is from other events in different parts of the UK. Some of them go to different universities and pretend to be a new student that’s just heard about this fantastic event, some of them don’t go to  university at all, some of them manage the club night. They get paid a commission for every ticket they sell, which is why they try and encourage as many people to go as possible. A lot of these events will be so much quieter than official Freshers events, and some of them can be a lot more expensive too. Try and stick to official Freshers events for your university. Some of them are straight up scam websites too, which can steal your card details. Really do your research if you’re looking to do an unofficial Freshers event.

2. You don’t need to go out clubbing to make friends

I didn’t particularly go out clubbing during Freshers because my flatmates weren’t interested in clubbing, and I hadn’t really met any of my classmates to go out with them. I was still able to engage with people during introductory week, there were a lot of daytime activities at different student halls and at different campuses. If you don’t mind being around alcohol, don’t be afraid of just hanging about with your flatmates while they predrink to go to a club. This can be a great way of meeting people, bonding with your flatmates, and also not putting yourself in a situation that you don’t want to be. Don’t force yourself to spend money to go out clubbing if you know you’ll hate it. But likewise, don’t be afraid of giving it a go and leaving early if it’s not for you.

3. You don’t need to take drugs to make friends

I’ve seen people talk about how they were worried that when they joined university they’d be left out because they didn’t do drugs. This is absolutely not the case. Like yes, there will be people around you doing drugs. And you absolutely should try as best as you can to be careful around them. But don’t feel like you have to take drugs to fit in. Because you can make plenty of friends without them. And if people are pressuring you into doing drugs, then they’re not the kind of people you want to associate with. Chances are they’re pressuring you into drugs not because they think it’ll be fun for you, but because they think it’ll be funny to laugh at your reaction. These people won’t care about your safety, and they won’t care to know the real you. 

4. Be prepared for Freshers Fayre!

Missing out on Freshers Fayre isn’t the end of the world, but it’s definitely something you shouldn’t miss if you can help it. But do be careful that sometimes these place can be very busy. Do some research before you go, so you can focus on visiting societies that you’re interested in learning more about. Typically your university will have a student union website where you can see all the societies on offer. Make a note of which ones catch your eye and any questions you have for them. Also, some of these societies you’ll have to follow up with. Although some of them might take your email, they might not send you an email out with more information. So don’t be scared to send them an email as a follow up to ask about upcoming events. 

5. Don’t join every society at once

At some universities, joining societies can cost money. Which whilst it might only be £2 there and £2 here, it can definitely add up. And it can be a waste of money if you’ve never done anything with the society. Try and be realistic. Remember, you have classes, you have assignments, you might have a part time job to work. Think about how much time that’s going to leave you for a society and try to pick just 1 or 2 at the start. As the year goes on don’t be afraid to add more or drop some societies. And don’t just join societies because your friends are. Join them because you’re genuinely interested in it and you want to meet people with a similar interest.

6. Get set up with your doctor as soon as you can

Don’t leave it until you’re really ill to get set up with your doctor. Make sure that you know where your local doctor is, make sure you’re registered with them. Be sure to ask any questions that can be useful. Home students can also fill out a form which can entitle them to free healthcare. So try and get that set up as early as possible, because you don’t want to have to pay for any medication you need from the doctors further down the line because you haven’t sent in the form in time.

7. Find out about your mental health support as soon as you can

A lot of students with mental health issues don’t get support because they don’t know what support they can get from the university. Which is why it is so so important to do your research. Look on the university website and the student union website and find out what kind of mental health support is available to you. Don’t be afraid of trying to meet up with them to ask questions and advice. Beware that student counselling waitlists can be extremely long, so get in there early if you feel that counselling can benefit you or look into private options. Make use of all the support you can get, they are there for you and want to help you. It can be scary, but it’ll be so worthwhile to do. 

8. Don’t be scared of going to events alone

Note: it’s not a good idea to go to clubs by yourself, for one a lot of them will not let you in on your own and two it can be extremely unsafe. This is aimed at day events / non-clubbing/drinking vents.

I made the mistake of missing out on a bunch of events at first because I didn’t have anyone to go with. My flatmates weren’t interested in hanging around with each other, and I didn’t know any of my classmates yet to be able to hang with them. But I eventually plucked up the courage to go to a day event by myself and had a great laugh. It can be extremely daunting, but there will also be other people in the exact same situation. Pretty much everyone just wants to make friends, and they’re not going to judge you for looking lonely. 

9. Don’t worry about everyone around you ‘having friends already’

It can sometimes appear like everyone around you has a bunch of friends already. Some of them even do, some of them have came with siblings or friends from home. But here’s the thing, people don’t really limit the number of friends they have, and appearances can be deceiving. Flatmates hanging around because they’re scared of looking lonely aren’t really friends, and chances are they won’t speak to each other when they do make friends. But you can make friends with people no matter what point of the year it is. There’s going to be so many opportunities, so don’t feel bad about not suddenly having a group of friends on the first day. Because nobody will, you’ll just have people that you’re hanging around with. And yes, that can be lonely but it doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way forever.

10. The friends you make at Freshers aren’t always going to be your actual friends

It can seem really easy to think that the people you’ve went out clubbing for a week or so are your new found best mates. But here’s the thing, that friendship was likely built around a shared love of alcohol and not wanting to be lonely. Which, whilst it can be a great way of meeting people, it doesn’t make for a great friendship. If people are only interested in hanging out with you when they want to drink alcohol, then don’t be afraid of telling them no and meeting people that want to be your friend regardless of whether alcohol or clubs is involved. Because if they’re only interested in clubbing with you, they’re not going to be there for you when you’re overwhelmed by uni work and don’t have as much time to go out clubbing. It sucks to think about, but just know it’s not a reflection on you. This happens to everyone. People think they get along great with someone until they realise they were only worried about being lonely. Chances are you might be like that to someone else. Don’t beat yourself up about it, but don’t force yourself to hang out with shitty people just because you don’t want to be lonely

11. Now is a great time to try and organise yourself

This period of university is where your work is likely to not be so overwhelming. Now is a great time to get yourself a routine in place. Organise and structure your time, and yes look into how you can fit future studying in place. Go to introductory classes that will tell you about the university - don’t just avoid them because they seem boring or because you’re too hungover. These can be a great way of finding out more about your university that you wouldn’t have found out otherwise, and it can be a great way of meeting people in a calmer environment. Going to these can be great for working out what time you’ll need to leave in order to get to classes on time, and it can be a great way of getting to know the layout of your university and ask lots of questions.

#studyblr #uniblr #university #studying #studyspo #mine

[purplesurveys]

594

How are you today? I’m doing okay. My classmates in my least favorite class, Newspaper Layout and Design, have been a big pain in my ass and I’ve been carrying the entire class on my back because no one has the initiative to start giving a fuck about the requirements (I’d want to not give a fuck either, but someone has to and I’m probably the most grade-conscious person in that class) – but it’s a Friday and I’m having amazing coffee right now so it balances out. Do you have mean comments that replay in your head and haunt you? Not really. Some days I’ll remember the one hate comment I got on my ask.fm which led me to delete my account altogether, but it doesn’t bother me because I kinda proved that person wrong eventually.

For context, they told me I should stop wishing to be in UP so bad and to actually pass the entrance exam first before I’m allowed to talk about how much the university means to me. Joke’s on them – I passed the UPCAT not long after. Doesn’t mean I’d forgot the demotivating message, though.

^If so, do you know why that is? I always want to please people and thrive on compliments, so I’m bound to remember every single bad thing anyone tells me. What are you currently worried about, if anything? I’m worried about my deadlines for my Layout class. The requirements are a group effort, and so long as my classmates don’t start moving, I can’t really pass my parts anyway because I have to wait on them. UGH Did you go Black Friday shopping this past Black Friday? Pls stop asking me first-world references

^If so, what was the best deal you got? Have you ever been Black Friday shopping? What is your favorite Thanksgiving food? Do you wear a watch every day? No. Wearing them always makes me feel like there is something on my wrist, and that bugs me haha.

Pineapple or pepperoni? I don’t like either. All-cheese pizzas are my favorite. What food makes you feel nauseous? Not to say that it makes me feel like vomiting or dizzy, but I was never really a big fan of blue cheese. I can handle it on my pizza and sometimes its flavor jibes well with the other cheeses, but the taste always sticks out so I’m not particularly obsessed with it. Have you ever seen a spirit? No. When you have your own house someday, what color Christmas tree do you want and how will you decorate it? I want it traditional, so I’m going with green. It’s gonna have all sorts of decor like baubles, snowflakes, tinsel, leaves, etc. My family has always made an effort to make our trees look super nice and detailed and I wanna pass that on when I have my own place and maybe even kids down the road. Name 3 youtube channels you've been loving lately. HiHo Kids, Mankalor, and Moon Jeongwon’s vlogging channel. Do you have a youtube channel? I do but it’s only so that YouTube can tailor my homepage to what I’m into at the moment, and so that I can like/dislike videos haha. I don’t post my own content. ^If so, does your family approve? ...I don’t think they should have an opinion about me owning a YouTube account. But in any case, they don’t really mind. What do you think about the new "for kids" or "not for kids" rules? Like, parental control? I guess it’s a good thing. Kids have always had very makulit hands and end up seeing stuff they’re not supposed to. Makulit is a Filipino word that defies translation, but I guess the closest thing to it is either mischievous or restless.

Case in point: Back when I was in high school, I was working at one of the library computers when these Grade 1 kids sat at the computer beside me. They were searching images of the movie Frozen and it was all normal for a bit, but they scrolled too far down and eventually they landed at this very questionable manip of Elsa and Anna doing some stuff that kids that age definitely shouldn’t be seeing. ^ Do they affect you? No. I’m neither a kid nor a parent. What is the most disgusting thing you have ever eaten? [slight trigger warning for the vegans!!! Sorry, Filipino cuisine can sometimes be a lot to take for non-Filipinos]  I’m super adventurous when it comes to food so I haven’t found anything I’ve tried disgusting. I don’t particularly like the flavor of bopis (pork/beef lungs and heart) and pinapaitan (goat and ox innards meat flavored with bile, tamarind and chillies), but I don’t find them disgusting, and I’d still eat them if that was served at a family party.

What food is so disgusting you could absolutely never eat it? Dog/cat meat. Do you like sushi? Love sushi. What color was the last sweater you wore? Gray. Name 3 material items on your wish list right now. Nintendo Switch, a new pair of shoes (wow I really am a grown-up), and cash. Are you planning on doing Vlogmas (for youtube) this year? No. Zoella’s the only person I know who still does lmao Have you ever done Vlogmas before? No. Have you ever made money off of youtube? Omg no Are you happy that the year is coming to an end? SO HAPPY. 2019 felt like it was three fucking years long. Have you ever bought a designer purse? I haven’t bought any with my own money. Do people tell you that you look sick when you wear a certain color? No? ^If yes, what color? Do you consider yourself creative? Not at all. ....outgoing? Kinda. It depends on the situation. If I’m meant to be doing something I like or hang out with people I know, I can be very outgoing; but if it’s an unfamiliar situation, I tend to be more shy and let other people lead the way. ....free-spirited? I don’t think I’d call myself that. ....shy? Yep, at first. ....socially awkward? It’s a hit or miss. Sometimes I’m great with socializing; other times I just miss the mark. Do you often feel alone? Mostly during the Christmas season. Otherwise it’s an on-off thing for me, but the loneliness is for the most part turned off. What could be the theme song to your life? I never know what to answer in questions like this. My life has had a lot of phases and it’s hard to sum it all up into a single song. List three new songs you've discovered this year that you like a lot. I Saw You In A Dream by The Japanese House, the Summer section of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (thanks, Portrait of a Lady on Fire), and Joji’s Dancing in the Dark. If you could win a shopping spree in any store, what would it be? Fully Booked. Do you wear jewelry often? Very seldom. List 10 of your favorite girl names. I list them on surveys all the tiiiiiimeeeeeeeee. Uhh Olivia, Mia, Arden, Harper, Juliana/Julia, Isabella, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Lily, Emilia. I’m feeling the name Eloise tonight too, so let’s throw that one in as a runner-up. List 10 of your favorite boy names. Miguel, Joaquin, Javier, Jacob, Mason, Noah, Liam, Seth, Leon, Luis. Andres is also good, so I’m putting that in even though it’s name 11. List 10 girl names (or up to 10) that you don't really care for. That’s so many and possibly offensive :((((( I’ll just go with boomer names like Sally, Linda, Agnes (sorry to my Lola, who’s named Agnes), Karen, Pamela, Susan, Brenda...and maybe more common ones like Angela, Marie, Sam. List up to 10 boy names that you don't really care for. Not a big fan of boy names in general, but ones I don’t particularly like nor dislike are names like John, George, William (lmao just naming all the royals now I see LOL), Benedict, Jeffrey, Donald, Michael, Daniel, Drew, Mark. How old were you when you found out Santa wasn't real? Five. I didn’t find out; I just put the clues together. Do you own a Polaroid camera? Nope. I want one though. ^If so, what color is it? List one past regret. The one dumb thing I did in one of my classes where I forgot to submit something on time, and I had to make do with a late submission, which would already have deductions. Do you own Converse, and if so, what color? i used to; they were red. I stopped wearing them after a bit though so my mom threw them out. We have white Chucks now – my sister brings them with her in her dorm but when she’s home, I’d borrow it sometimes. What color was your senior prom dress? Let’s plz avoid talking about the stuff we purposely want to forget Are you colorblind? No. Name the people you know who are colorblind. Nobody, other than the colorblind folk on Twitter/Tiktok who make wholesome videos separating different colors of Skittles or M&Ms heh. What's one pet peeve of yours? People who DRIVE IN THE MIDDLE OF TWO LANES YO WHAT’S UP WITH Y’ALL Would you ever consider a career in writing? Sure, I’m kinda headed that way anyway. What was the first thing you wanted to be when you grew up? Astronaut. What was your first favorite color? Purple. What is your favorite color now? Pink or black. Do you know a lot of people with the same middle name as you? Yeah, Isabelle is very common. But where I live it’s usually spelled Isabel or Ysabel. Do you like the name Brynn? Not really. It sounds very 2010ish, wherein people would give their kids double-N’s like Kaitlynn, Rylinn, Brooklynn, Ashlynn and I was never a big fan of that trend (except for Finn, Flynn, and Quinn, which I find cute). List five names you hate the spelling of. Literally those 4 names I just mentioned. Oh and in the Philippines, there’s this trend of putting H’s on otherwise normal names, e.g. Jhulia, Mhae, Ghabriella, Mhark...it’s common in the lower classes so I don’t judge, but like it’s just not really not my taste lmao. Do you watch Niki and Gabi on youtube? No. Do you watch Brooklyn and Bailey? No. ....Bethany Mota? No. But I did see her once when YouTube held a FanFest here in Manila and she was part of the lineup. ......Gillian Bower? ....LaurDIY? .....Family Fizz? ....Chronically Jaquie? No to literally all of those. Have you ever purchased a youtuber's merch? No they are always way too expensive lol ^If so, what did you buy?

#survey #surveys

[latchingontoallofyou]

DWTS Premier- day after live blog

Since I didn’t watch last night, I promised to give my “Live blog” as I watched today. If you care to read what I thought, feel free. 

Opening number:

Starting with an interview, this is odd. Really, let’s play the Hannah is single from the get go. I love Kel so much! Whoa, that mirrorball opening this was trippy. I love when the pros open the dancing. Oh, Tom and Erin, I’ve missed you! I really hate this lets not say who they are dancing with and make everyone come in by themselves. They should never do that again. This is quite the process to get started. I think I like the set. It’s very shiny.

This judges twist: I’m guessing they get to save a dancer. Que the eye roll.

Hannah: This is the most of the Bachelor/ Bachelorette I’ve ever seen. That was the most unenthusiastic hello ever. Gosh I love Alan so much! She smiles a lot. I don’t like her costume. She was off timing with her arms a few times. Her movements just seem slow and small. The moves she knows, she hits sharply though. Not bad for the first dance. I think they could go on to do well. Let’s not play the showmance and I’ll be good with them staying for a while.

7,7,6

Kel: I freakin love Kel! Always have. Bringing good burger, love it! I love the reaction. I’m also glad she has someone I like again. Sliding down his tongue. I kinda love their costumes. Opps, missed hands twice in a row. So serious faced. Is he chewing gum? That wasn’t great but I still enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to more from them. Stay around long Witney and Kel! He is really listening to the judges. I like that. And man, those gems on Witney’s lips have to be uncomfortable.

6,5,5

HEY BOBBY! Love that man’s smile!

Kate: I never watched the office…. Pasha, a new cutie. Nice dimples on him. That was the shortest segment. Weird opening to the dance. She almost forgot to take off her costume. She struggled at the beginning. She seems to be almost slipping around on the floor. She’s did well in some spot, struggled through others. I think she’ll do well as the weeks go on. I love that the judges complimented Pasha too. One thing about costumes, why is she in blue and he’s in red? They just don’t really go…

5,5,5

I just love how everyone keeps mentioning that it’s been a year. Maybe they’ll learn and not do that again.

Lamar: I heard this one was bad… Don’t know him. Nice slow clap Peta. She shoots, she scores! He makes her look so tiny and she’s really not that tiny. Oh boy. I like his costume. Oh, so slow! He arms aren’t bad. Those kicks lol. He’s leg don’t need to be flexible for basketball. I mean, it really wasn’t great but knowing what the scores were, I didn’t think it was that bad. Poor guy looks horrified. Carrie Ann, good for you for being kind and really complimenting him. He did the best with what he could.

5,3,3 (Way too harsh!)

Bobby Bones! (If only I could write it like it say it) I’ve missed him on my TV.

Lauren: She’s so sweet and I love her already. I don’t even like country music. But like, why Gleb! Anyone but Gleb! He’s my least favorite male pro. Maybe she’ll take him though. Wow, go girl! She hung right in there with the ladies. She’s acting the part and doing the steps so well too! Weird song for her but it works. That was so short! She did great though! I can’t wait to see more of her. Very well choreographed Gleb.

7,6,6

I saw Kym and MumI!

Christy/ Sailor: Poor Christy! So sad for her but so happy her daughter could replace her. Such a sweet simple meeting. Ah, her excitement over the song. So cute! Aw, Val! He’s so distraught. So amazing that Sailor took over. She’s so beautiful nit like in a normal looking person type way. They are so sweet to each other.  Oh she looks so gorgeopis! Three days and she dances like this! Wow. She’s going to thrive as the season goes on. She’s really jolding her own. And she looks like she is having the time of her life! I love it! I think I’m the most excited for them so far. I loved that she went to her Mom at the beginning of the dance and then the kiss and cry after. Amazing job. Lol, she looks taller than Val. Could just be the hair.

Wow, the worst break the doctor had ever seen. Poor girl! She should have a sling on to hold it elevated!

6,6,6 (I would have liked a 7 or two. I thought it was better than Hannah)

Karamo: Never watched this show either but I think I want to… just need some time… He just looks like so much fun! I am so glad he got Jenna! They are going to be so fun to watch together, like Jenna and Adam. That was the shortest video again. Kill it you two. Haha, there is the camera mess up. So embarrassing for whoever that was. They are killing this, and they just look so good. He’s having a blast! That was so fun! He did really well too. They could do really well too. Can’t wait to see more of them, without the camera mess up.

6,5,6

And I already want to tell Len to shut up! Remember, they are just learning to dance. How can you expect them to have every piece perfect already! You trained for years so you don’t know how hard this is for them so shut up and stop being so grumpy. Yes, idealistically, the dancers need to be able to do all things but why be so angry week one when the can’t? Ok, end of rant, for now at least. Back to the show.

Ray: He’s handsome and he just looks like a good man. He looks so happy to see Cheryl. It’s so sweet.  I always have mixed feelings when she comes back but I’m glad she did. Um. Nice little solo there. Those facials were creepy. He danced better on his own but he’s hanging in there. Stand up a little more Ray. Ok, yea, that was kind of creepy but that may have been thanks to the song… Not my favorite but not horrible. He seemed to be having so much fun. Good for him.

5,5,5

Mary: She’s beautiful! 75  and a half… I love it! What a personality. She is so sassy and she’s gonna be so fun! I love how he said, “you got some good rhythm” and she just goes “I’m black” lol. Brandon, love you too. We get to see so much of personality in the video. He’s leading her so well and she looks so elegant. She’s moving well. He arms could be a bit sharper bit She did well. They are so fun. Carrie Ann is being so sweet, and Len can’t stand it. Lol, Len saying they are the same age and she asks him if he’s 75 and a half and he’s just speechless!

6,5,6 (I love how excited she is about her scores. You can tell she is loving every part of being here)

Ally: She’s so tiny. There was no doubt she’d get Sasha (eye roll) Love her brutal honesty about not being flexible. Where was the package. Nice solo to start but that was girl group dance moves. She has a lot of energy, but Sasha brings that out in all of his partners. I’m not even sure what this dance is supposed to be. Oh, she missed timing and spacing towards the end there. Sasha’s fighting Len already. Len, I actually agree with you for once tonight. More like a Beyoncé dance, not ballroom. No real connect to them at all for me. Sasha has a pink snakeskin jacket, lol

5,5,6

Oh, I just saw Andrew East, but I didn’t see Shawn. I knew they were both there thanks to Instagram.

Sean: I have no feeling about him other than I wish he would have got someone else besides Lindsay because I just love her so much and I don’t want her to go out early like I expect him to. Not sure who I would want him to have otherwise. Maybe Cheryl (sorry Cheryl). Having trump say to vote for you probably isn’t going to help him… pre preschool level dancer lol, oh Linds. That shirt is just awful! He really is bad! He put effort in. This is kind of scary! I still love you anyway Lindsay. At least he seems like he had fun. Bruno couldn’t even talk about the dance. He was stuck on the bongo playing. I really don’t need him to go on past next week. Best comment from Carrie Ann “You were off beat most of the dance” love it!

4,4,4 (how did that get 4s and Lamar got two 3s?)

I love that no one has to go up those awful steps after their dance for interviews. So much better. And maybe we’ll get cool videos from the pros and stars from there.

James: Yes for brunette Emma! I hope she keeps her hair brunette. It breaks up all the blonde. I have no clue who he is either but he’s handsome. Oh my gosh, his kids are so adorable! All those blonde curls. Emma’s reaction is priceless. They are going to be a fun partnership too. Um, best solo part of the night. She looks gorgeous! Strong frame James. Sharna said that he reminds her of her James, and I agree. She just looks almost like a natural. Wow! That was just awesome. He’s definitely a front runner.

7,7,7

Overall, it was a good premiere. I still miss Sharna and Artem. I miss seeing their beautiful faces. I’m happy the good band is back. One of the band members has Sharna’s hair…I like the new ballroom layout. They are going to be a fun cast. I think Sean might go home at the end of next week but maybe Lamar. I’m ok with either.

I missed live blogging with you all last night, but I will be back to it next Monday, Lord willing. In the meantime, here to actually getting pictures and videos throughout the week.

#DWTS #DWTS liveblog #Hannah and Alan #Kel and Witney #Kate and Pasha #Lamar and Peta #Lauren and Gleb #Sailor and Val #Kamaro and Jenna #Ray and Cheryl #Mary and Brandon #Ally and Sasha #Sean and Lindsay #James and Emma

[flavourlessfiction]

Ice Melts When Heated ~ Chapter 7

Relationships: Jason Todd/Tim Drake

Rating: Mature

Tags: Alternate Universe - Skating, figure skating, Rivals, Slow Burn, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies is a slight overstatement tho, Banter, Time Skips, Rating May Change

Ao3: x

Eyes were on him, well on both of them. It was something that was normal for official competition practices but Tim couldn’t help but feel uneasy, worried that any mistake would make him look like he’d lost form completely. That Four Continents hadn’t been a one off and that Bruce was right about him.

It would change the narrative entirely, people would start saying he’d been kicked out for the outburst even though all talk before had been his leaving by his own choice. Every mistake wouldn’t be costly but enough could be. Falls happened in practice and there’d been plenty from Conner in this practice but Tim chose to take it easy for the first two days of practice. Not risk an injury from a bad landing, having clean skates in competition and feeling prepared was more important than getting people talking if he had all his jumps clean or if he was a complete mess.

It was better to just be relaxed.

Meeting Bruce’s eyes in the second row of the stands wasn’t relaxing though, despite it being an ice rink, Tim felt all the warmth leave his body the moment he saw Bruce, noticed how as he moved Bruce seemed to be watching him.

Waiting for him to mess up, to get exactly what he wanted from him. To prove that he was completely washed up. Bruce didn’t coach anyone in the men’s senior division anymore, he had no purpose being here, there was no need for making notes to see how the US and Japanese teams were practicing and he wasn’t sitting with Iris West-Allen who was reporting on every little detail of the practices for international fans. Bruce had no reason to be here other than to get into his or Jason’s head.

It had Bruce that had gotten it into his head that he was the one to psych himself out of first place, yet every practice had felt fine, even this one had been good until his eyes had landed on Bruce. Now he felt like a nervous wreck, leaning into the boards as one of the Chinese skater’s music played for the runthrough. Jason stretching into a lunge against the barrier, as Talia talked softly to him, giving corrections from the runthrough.

“The hammer on the flip lends itself to looking weak, sure you get the ro- why is Bruce here? The ladies have a practice in less than two hours.” Jason’s head jerked across the rink, having to grip the boards to stop himself from falling from the sudden movement.

“I see we’re employing chapter 13 this year.” Jason mumbled as he stood, making the point to keep his back to Bruce.

Tim pursed his lips, shrinking back as the skater whose runthrough it was stepped out towards them. “Or chapter 3, know your enemy and yourself kind of thing.” Tim sighed, if Bruce was going to play mind games he had to just stay away, look everywhere but into the crowd, he wasn’t going to let himself get thrown off at the biggest competition of the season just because Bruce wanted to hide in plain sight.

He couldn’t let that happen.

He needed to be focused.

“Well he’s not going to say a word to you, I’ll make sure of it.” Jason grumbled, glancing around again, squinting as he stared at Bruce.

“How do you pl-” He was cut off, the announcer calling for Conner Kent’s runthrough with his to come next. “Just don’t do something stupid that will get us both into trouble with the federation or the skating union. There’s enough drama already without Bruce reporting us.”

How many questions had he already gotten about the coaching situation? Jason at least drew attention from him by being unpredictable, people wanted to know exactly what shenanigans he was getting into so if Tim just acted somewhat normal people would quickly look to Jason screwing around with his layout plans and doing other absurd things as though he wasn’t taking World Championships seriously.

If there was anyone taking this competition serious it was Jason Todd, it was why he had Talia recording both of their runthroughs, analysing the mistakes that were made, making mental notes of what the scores would be despite the marking of elements here or there, until he decided it was late enough to sleep.

He would have done three laps of the rink at best before he was called for his runthrough, taking centre ice, biting his lip as he waited for the music, and waited, and waited… tension ran through his shoulders and arms, allowing them to drop and straighten his body up. What the hell was this practice?

Step away from Bruce Wayne for five minutes and music mistakes are being made. He’d never had that happen before. “We’re having a technical issue with the music, we’re not going to be able to do the last two runthroughs for this practice.” He could feel his face scrunch up almost involuntarily, hands on his hips as he moved over to the boards, taking his US team jacket back and zipping it up to his neck.

“Relax, you’ve got one more official practice tomorrow and the draw is tonight, mistakes happen.” Despite how calm Talia sounded he could see the fire behind her eyes, pissed off about the mishap, mistakes happen but not like this, not mistakes that result in runthroughs getting cancelled.

God the only exit they were using was right near where Bruce was sitting. “Can I have my guards, there’s no use in doing the full practice if I can’t do my short program.” He uttered, taking the blade guards the second they were held out to him… if it weren’t for the fact he’d find himself in trouble if he climbed over the barriers, he’d also get more attention than he could possibly want.

Leaving practice early would lead to some questions but people would likely take it for what it was and that he was irritated by the music issues.

At least he hoped.

---

God he hated skating first, hated skating last too but first meant waiting, worrying that even your best isn’t enough whilst five others skated after you, five of the best in the world, skating first meant it was completely out of your control. Whilst when he skated last Tim always couldn’t shake the feeling that it was no one’s fault but his own when he didn’t win.

It was the short program though, his specialty, certainly his specialty this year, some would call him a choker but not when it came to the short program. He was first, Jason was fifth, it meant he wouldn’t sit with him in the kiss and cry but he’d sworn he’d be there for him before the warm up and had kept to that word, the two of them warming up together, barely talking but still seeming to be on the same wavelength, Jason knew what he wanted and needed and seemed to do it without Tim having to open his mouth, the two of them spending the first two groups throwing a ball around, Tim remaining silent whilst Jason would utter words of encouragement that were more related to their lazy game than the competition.

But now skating around the ice, hearing the murmurs of the crowd under the music that was blaring, they always played the same songs during the warm ups and whilst he didn’t really listen to them it almost felt like it was apart of the competition ritual that without it he’d be more of a nervous mess than he normally was. A stupid bundle of nerves always ready to break with a moments notice.

He didn’t have enough speed, but let himself go into the inside 3-turn out of instinct driving his toe pick into the ice, his body tightening as he rotated, awkwardly spotting his height to open up early, it might have only been a triple and he might have landed slightly too far forward on his toepick but he saved it, it wasn’t perfect but he needed the skate to be perfect not the warm up, Jason would say he didn’t need to be perfect, he just needed to have a good skate, that the short program wasn’t everything. But who was Jason to talk, he’d always had incredibly strong free programs, no, unbeatable free programs, however, even Jason had said if anyone could beat him it was Tim.

“Skaters you have one minute left in your six minute warm up.” it was clear as a bell, one minute until everyone else was off the ice, a minute and a half until his music needed to start and four minutes and twenty seconds until it was out of his hands and in everyone else’s, especially the judges. That is until the free skate. But still medals were handed out for winning the short and free programs at worlds, which meant it was still important to bolster his score as much as he possibly could.

It was instinctual, running through a small part of his step sequence, marking the twizzles and shaking the tension out of even his fingertips. Lifting his eyes to see Jason land a jump, eyes forward, focused and not smiling, he’d switched on even though he still wouldn’t be skating for almost half an hour, a long time to stay focused but Jason was Jason and Tim didn’t doubt he could do it.

Just as Jason said he believed in him, and was genuine about it, perhaps not as kind as Dick was but he hadn’t gone to Jason for kindness. “This concludes the six minute warm up, could all skaters leave the ice.”

He skated towards the exit, removing his jacket as he and Jason moved side by side. “You’ve got this, make sure to check your jumps one of the corners feels soft and don’t stress about the running edge on landings.”

He felt his tongue run over his top lip as he nodded his head slowly, throwing the jacket over the barrier. “Just be clean…”

“No, kill it… but don’t break my record.”

Kill it… that was different to being clean, it was asking, well telling him to have a perfect performance rather than being technically perfect. Everyone was off the ice, which meant the thirty second timer started, taking a twenty seconds to skate around, filling it with a few steps and a half flip before moving to the centre ice, glancing at the timer, five seconds before he’d get a deduction for a late start.

A small breath escaped him the moment before the music started, his body moving with the music without having to think about it, so much of it was muscle memory at this point, Jason had said he needed to not think so hard but that wasn’t the easiest of things to do.

As soon as he hit the 3-turn and crossed his left foot in front of the right he could tell the jump was going to float, springing off the ice, it was slightly higher than normally spotting the forth rotation and opening his body to slow himself before landing. It hit the outside edge almost too easily leading into the choreography before the combination jump.

For how dodgy the toeloop had felt in the warm up, that had felt fine. Quad toe triple toe, he’d been doing it for years, didn’t have to think too hard about it, the quad rotating fine, however, he found himself scrunching his nose slightly at the triple, there was nothing obviously wrong with it but that slight hook on the outside edge as he landed… that would get reviewed for being under rotated.

He couldn’t dwell on it… starting with the flying camel spin, one hand up for the first few rotations before drifting it down and back as the free leg bent towards his hand, linking two fingers between the blade and the heel of his boot, the donut never quite felt right this year but as he allowed himself to let go and finish the spin in an upright position, the tension that had started to pain him flew right back out of him.

Sit spin… a cannonball into a broken leg spin on the opposite foot, eight rotations, a rotation as he changed positions and then seven more, it was a level 4 but missing that last rotation might cost some point in GOE.

The axel didn’t come not long after, a spread eagle entrance, practically throwing himself into the air as he took off, three and a half, natural… easy… a foot down after the running edge was held for long enough to go into another spread eagle, allowing it to glide off the outside edge into the inside, Tim biting back as smile, two elements left the step sequence and a change foot combination spin.

He was lying if he didn’t say he already felt tired. Still he had to dig in… prove he still had it, his head turning sharply towards the judges table in the moment that he paused before the step sequence started, they had to be watching him, but to get a bigger score they had to want to watch him, his expression shifting, less hard, softer, as though competing this pattern was something he did in his sleep.

God if he had a fall on the step sequence that would be way worse than the five falls on jumps at four continents, step sequences where were he rarely got lower than 2s in GOE.

Maybe people thought it looked feminine but it also looked easy and that was what was supposed to be impressive about it, that even though a two minute and fifty second piece was exhausting with so few moments to breathe he looked like he didn’t have to think. The edges were clear and deep, rotations and upper body movement moving together, it was controlled and precise without looking like he was focusing every last ounce of energy into it.

Now the spin- and then he could stop, and crash if needs be. Four positions, and he’d be done, barely even counting the rotations, just waiting for the right notes in the music to switch pulling out of it and coming to a stop perhaps a little late but that might have been the dizziness.

Tim pressed his tongue into his cheek as he smiled, almost laughing to himself, as he made his way back into the middle of the rink, facing the judges first and bowing, turning in the other three directions and bowing before he made his way to the exit… there were a lot of gifts and flowers being thrown onto the ice, several sweepers already one the ice gathering them, Tim scooping up a stuffed toy in the shape of a takeaway coffee cup, it was as big as his head, only shaking his head as he laughed at it.

“That was fantastic…” Talia stood in front of him as he stepped off the ice, handing him his guards and providing support as he slipped each on, guiding him to the kiss and cry, only handing the jacket over once they sat down, Tim undeniably feeling grateful that the music was loud enough as the replays started playing that the mics wouldn’t pick up what they had to say. “Considering what happened in practice, you looked more comfortable out there than you have in weeks.”

“Yeah, aside from that weird little hook on the landing of the triple toe it all felt right.” He uttered, wiping some of the sweat away from his mouth as he spoke, it muffling his voice slightly. “After the axel I was like if I die on a step sequence that will be more embarrassing than anything else in my career.”

He can see Talia smile out of the corner of his eye, she would have been better off with Jason given he was actually her skater but he was sure the other had made sure he had someone familiar enough to meet him. To say they’d all secretly been bracing for the worst was an understatement. “Worse things could-” She paused at the cameras switched back to them, Tim putting on one of his more genuine smiles as he waved, not saying too much, the crowds clapping getting louder. “Don’t forget they love you… regardless the score.”

“The scores please-” A hush quickly fell over the crowd, Tim feeling his fingers tap out each second on his knee as they waited, everyone holding onto their breath.

Timothy Drake – USA

TES: 60.79 PCS: 48.26 Deduction: 0.00

SP: 109.05

First

Seasons Best

Seasons best but also a career best, Tim finding himself on his feet waving. It was a tough score to beat, the third highest score ever recorded and the two ahead were from last season, were scores by Jason last season.

Solidly in first with five of the best in the world to skate, with one person who was a known threat to take leading the short program from him.

---

“I said no lifts…” Tim whined as Jason practically picked him up as he hugged him, the other laughing in his ear. “Are you happy because I did well in the short or because you finally ended your ongoing relationship with the single axel?”

“Well is an understatement and you know it.” Maybe that’s true, he’d watched everyone that followed him, everyone but Jason had a fall, missed the combo or lost levels. They’d both been clean and yet he still finished over four points ahead of Jason.

It wasn’t a big gap when their seasons bests in the free had a bigger point gap but that didn’t matter. How many times had Jason repeated that it only mattered what happened on the day, neither of their previous records meant anything. As the toes of his shoes scraped the ground Tim wriggled out of his grasp, laughing softly at how Jason held a hand of his heart. They’d have to file out from behind the backdrop they were hiding behind, sit in their rankings for the short program and pretend to be alert enough for the press conference.

It wasn’t even five yet, the pairs competition would start in another hour but he honestly could just hide under a table and take a nap. God, they’d still have to have a meeting to go over what happened, he’d say there was no rest for the wicked but he couldn’t pretend like it was anyone’s fault but his own for waking up before six this morning.

“Are you going to talk like a real person for the first time in your life or will you short circuit and speak in binary?” The robot jokes had made a comeback, how long had it been, five minutes since he’d heard one of them?

It was so easy to just tell Jason to fuck off, or hit him with several other insults. “I prefer to say meep morps, than the zeros and ones. But if you’d like I can let you touch my small medal for a short program once we get them, i know you haven’t held one in your hands for over a year.”

He bites his lip as Jason turns him around, hands at his waist, pushing him towards the edge of the backdrop for the press conference, the staff running it beckoning for them to come on. “I’ll take all the credit for this cockiness, thank you.” The hands drop as soon as Tim pops out from behind the backdrop shuffling between the table and the backdrop until he was at the centre most seat. Garth on his left and  Jason on his right, God he looked smug, despite not leading right now.

It started off with the standard questions asking them how they felt about their skates and the scores, everyone giving the same standard answers they normally gave. Jason maybe gushing about finally getting the triple axel clean again a little more than expected. However, the question he’d prepped himself for since stepping foot in Oslo followed shortly after. “This one is for Tim, can you elaborate on your coaching situation as Talia Al Ghul has stated she’s only working in a support capacity?”

His eyes flickered to Jason, he didn’t go in to say anything, no surprises there, Jason had joked that he was going to make Tim answer all questions about coaching and he should have known he was serious about answering them initially. “That’s true, I- there’s no way to make this sound uncomplicated. Jason Todd is currently my coach, which has been cleared by the federation and skating union.” All it took was a moment to look at the group of reporters and how their eyes shifted from him to Jason, Tim trying his best to keep a straight face as Jason sat there shaking his head and laughing. “Yeah so that’s who I went to after leaving the Gotham Rink.”

He can see Jason’s trying to formulate a response, trying to settle down the laughter, as he tries to cut off any questions. “This was an offer I made some time ago, and I’ve had the accreditation for over two years… however, what matters is that a skater feels comfortable and supported, at this level any one of us knows what will and won’t do well, we need people we trust around that will make sure we maintain our training and will keep us from taking risks that are too great.” There it was, a public dig at Bruce Wayne, his name didn’t need to be said but everyone would know exactly who that comment was directed at.

Any other reporter seemed to want to ask further questions about the coaching, the moderator looking like she was losing control of it quickly, ending it almost ten minutes earlier than scheduled. Tim standing and stretching, unable to fight back a yawn. “Well that went better than expected, no one asked about a certain enemy’s opinion.”

“I’m sure he has one. Although the demon will voice it.”

Jason let out a whistle, poking Tim in the side as they made their way towards the rink, at least that was his thought, the poking seeming more to be to push him in a new direction. “Please tell me how you really feel.”

“I think you’re in the mood for drama even though we have a free program tomorrow night and won’t skate until like midnight if we’re lucky.” He chuckled, grabbing the finger before he could be poked again. “If you don’t want to watch pairs just say it, stop being annoying.”

There’s no struggle as Jason freed his fingers from his grip, Tim biting back any snide remarks. “I would have thought- oh joy, want to really get your feelings out now?” the shift in demeanour is sudden, Jason barely having looked behind them for a second but he didn’t need to guess at who was nearby. “You’d think he would have gotten the message after Talia told him to leave you alone.”

“Great, I think the coach bomb dropping changes things… I’m going to see if I can find the seats my parents got.” Jason gripped his arm, stopping him from leaving. “Jay, I don’t want to hear what-”

“He’s not going to get the chance to speak to you.” Jason’s grip doesn’t relent as Tim tried to jerk his arm free, turning and standing half a step behind Jason, Tim watching out of the corner of his eye as Bruce barely opened his mouth before Jason cut him off. “No, you don’t get to speak to him.”

Tim felt himself stiffen, tension mounting as Bruce seemed to be waiting for one of them to say something more. He wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t so much as utter the name Bruce Wayne unless he had to. The best way to show someone you were above them was to act as though you didn’t think of them much and whilst that was impossible, he could at least avoid Bruce at all costs. “In fact, if you show up at another practice without someone to coach, try and corner or even offer congratulations to my skater, I’ll report you for interfering with another skater.”

“You think you can play politics, he’ll come home once he realises the grass isn’t greener.” Cold, Tim shifting his eyes forward, at the wall as he gripped Jason’s wrist, pulling the hand off of his arm.

His feet stayed in place, despite wanting to get the hell away from Bruce he was willing to hear whatever it was Jason had to say. “The only person who’s coming to terms with the fact that they made a huge mistake is you, you didn’t enjoy that did you? Being unable to take complete responsibility for a career best score, having a junior world champ who barely won, didn’t touch either of our junior world records in the past two years either.”

“And he’s from a practically non existent federation whilst you two are from one of the big four, that effects judging.”

Tim couldn’t help but laugh, still keeping his eyes away on the wall away from Bruce. “Please, he’s a student of you and your blood, everyone knows that name carries more weight than USFSA or any other fed.” He didn’t wait a beat before turning completely around and leaving, Bruce wasn’t getting the last word in, he wasn’t going to play that game anymore and if Jason wanted to keep arguing then he wasn’t going to stop him.

Bruce was a brick wall, the proof was in their own personal histories with him and whilst making snide comments every now and then held a certain appeal. He’d rather not play these games like he was a high schooler, he’d left high school less than halfway through his freshman year to have more time on his career and the best part was he’d left a lot of the high school bullshit behind him.

Twenty-seven that’s how many steps it takes for Jason to get in whatever his version of the last word is and catch up to him, linking his arm around Tim’s. “I can’t believe you’d abandon me with him.” Jason huffed, now letting Tim lead the way. “You’d think we’d get to wait until next season for the mind games to start.”

“We literally referred to the Art of War in practice and you thought this shit was going to wait?” Tim sighed, glancing over his shoulder to see that at least they weren’t still being followed. “Either he thinks I can’t do it, or he doesn’t want me to be able to do it without him.”

“It’s the latter, and even when I win you’ll still have proven that you’re better without him than with him.” When not if, because Jason liked to tease him. When not if, because the reality was Jason had to still put Jason first. When, because if he really beat Jason everyone would blame him for Jason not winning.

Everyone... even he wouldn’t be able to pretend like it wasn’t his fault.

“Just be glad you’re not skating last tomorrow.” God, his mouth was dry, and he’d so quickly gone into that practiced robotic manner of speaking. Something he’d avoided doing at all costs lately because it made it obvious that there was something wrong, that he was either upset or uncomfortable. So quickly he’d gone from being guarded and impossible to read to being completely transparent, to any vulnerability being obvious even when he acted the same as he’s always had. He’d allowed himself to look weak once and now people could see his weakness the moment he started to doubt himself. “Why do you hate skating last so much? First I get because it’s hard to watch and wait to see if and who will beat you but last means it’s only in your hands.” So he was just going to continue the conversation, not call him out even in a playful manner. Either Jason wasn’t paying enough attention or he was choosing to ignore it for his own reasons.

Sabotage.

Ridiculous, Jason wasn’t out to sabotage him and if he was he’d run a better gaslight than he was, Tim trusted him because he didn’t tell him every little step, because the advice was more about being stronger not better. He needed to answer, the small squeeze of his arm told him as much. “It’s in your hands, if you lose it’s no one’s fault but your own.” He uttered, each word almost feeling like it was being forced out of his mouth. “I like skating third, I’m just more comfortable there.”

“But you score better when you skate first and last, like historically speaking.”

He took a deep breath, trying to ignore whatever doubts wanted to creep in. “I also fall six times and fall off podiums though.” The entire sentence came out as he exhaled, earning another gentle squeeze at his arm.

“And the lesson from that was the boards are not our friend in the middle of the program.” He was forced to stop, god even when he thought he was leading the way Jason didn’t even have to try and he was able to drag him around. “You’re starting to freak me out, what’s going through your head right now.”  Jason turned him so easily, gripping both of his arms, the touch firm but so careful.

Any playful energy was gone now. “It’s nothing.”

The grip got tighter, only just but he could still notice it. “Oh no, we don’t do that.”

“It’s nothing, stop reading into noth-”

“Tim! if you say nothing it’s going to keep bothering you, tell me so I can help.”

He looked left, right, there were few people around and none of them were paying any attention to them. “Everyone’s going to blame me.” He barely got any sound out, but the look on Jason’s face told him that he’d heard the five words.

“Who the fuck cares?” Of course Jason wasn’t phased by it because even though he was just as much apart of this if he wouldn’t be the one everyone thought was responsible.

For how long had he only ever let things out in private, and now he was having confrontation after confrontation. “You don’t get it.”

“No, I don’t. You need to explain it to me.” How was he supposed to explain it? He’d either sound crazy or as though he was trying to get attention. All Bruce had to say was a few words, and it had him second guessing himself. Second guessing his abilities.

Jason let go of him, waiting expectantly but with each second that passed he seemed to be more aware that Tim didn’t have an answer, well more that he wasn’t willing to explain it. “We’re going to talk later then. You said you wanted to see your parents tonight, after that we’re talking. You aren’t going into the free skate head fucking yourself for being in first.”

#Jaytim #Jason Todd #Tim Drake