#anyway OH WELL onwards to other projects

[michaelsheens]

✨ GOMENS FIC RECS ✨

i asked for people's favorite fics and sharing is caring :)

(i included my own recs as well)

feel free to reblog and add more!

❤️ recommended by @oldzhishen ❤️

Crown of Thorns series by irisbleufic (rating G-E)

This series was never intended to be a series as such: I wrote "A Better Place" in the wake of rather accidentally getting to ask a certain question (What are Aziraphale and Crowley doing on the South Downs, anyway?) of both authors within a week of each other back in 2005 and actually getting an answer (Sharing a cottage), thinking it'd just be a happy little one-off. But something curious happened when my Good Omens Exchange 2010 assignment resulted in "The Walls, the Wainscot, and the Mouse." From that point onward, interest in this little 'verse slowly, but steadily picked up momentum, and I kept finding more stories to tell. Some of the characters that appear herein (Phillippa [Pippa] Morrison, the Mouse, Amanda [Mandy] Tomlin, Uriel, Raphael, et al.) first turned up in my one and only attempt at a second-Apocalypse dark mirror universe, A Crown of Stars (AO3 posting of same) and its follow-ups, which predates this series considerably. The two universes parallel each other, but this one is, for our purposes, post novel-canon and set in our reality. That's pretty much what you need to know. Thank you all for continuing to read and also for giving this project life. I'll continue to add stories and ficlets until I run out of ideas or until my heart stops (whichever comes first)! The current existing pieces are complete; the series overall is ongoing on an as-and-when basis, which means that the time between additions may be weeks or months or, in rare instances, up to a year.

Madman and a Fool by loserchildhotpants (rating E)

God considers Crowley's unyielding pining for Aziraphale, his acts during the End of the World, and his very genuine desire to protect Aziraphale, worth rewarding. She can't make him an Angel again, but She can nudge Aziraphale in the right direction. If nothing else, She'd really just like Crowley to stop using Her prayer inbox for endless soliloquies about Aziraphale.

Demonology and the Tri-Phasic Model of Trauma: An Integrative Approach by Nnm (rating T)

As soon as Aubrey Thyme, psychotherapist, had opened her office door and seen her new client, Anthony J. Crowley, sitting in her waiting area, she was observing and assessing him. At first glance, she paid attention to the following: --His clothing was expensive and stylish; --He wore very strange but noticeable cologne; --His relationship to the seat he occupied could only, very loosely, be described as “sitting;” --He looked angry; --He was wearing sunglasses. What Aubrey Thyme, a professional, thought, upon first seeing her new client was: you’re going to be a fun one, aren’t you?

A Home at the Beginning of the World by stereobone (rating E)

"Oh," Aziraphale says. "I think Crowley might have moved in with me."

For the Angel Who Has Everything by triedunture (rating E)

Crowley likes giving Aziraphale things. Whatever he wants, actually. Which, happily, includes Crowley himself, as it turns out.

I'm the treasure baby, I'm the prize by stereobone (rating E)

"Are you working for Mrs. Sandwich?" Nina asks. "No," Crowley says. "Well, yes. Well, define 'working'." -- Or, Crowley is very good at faking sex work, as it turns out.

🧡 recommended by @reloha 🧡

let me feel your heartbeat (grow faster, faster) by thehoyden (rating T)

Aziraphale saw him sometimes in all-staff meetings, sitting toward the front but off to the side, lounging against a wall. Even then, he’d had style—wings tipped in gold and face painted with gold flakes in the pattern of the first constellation he designed. He was amazing, and eye-catching, and it was no exaggeration to say that he did not know Aziraphale even existed.

You'll Find Something Waiting (Right There Where You Left It) by PrimalBeatsOurHearts (rating T)

"Lets go in the Garden, "You'll find something waiting" "Right there where you left it" "Lying upside down" ------------ Or What if Crowley was Erased from The Book Of Life?

Moving Forward While Standing Still by Justanothernerdsstuff (rating G)

“Uh, yeah, sure! Thanks,” They replied and walked away, not sure why this specific book was so important to the angry man, but they were £50 richer, so they didn’t really care. Crowley flipped through the book, stalling making the decision to go into the bookshop to confront Muriel. He turned to walk away, stopped, groaned, and stalked his way into the bookshop. *** Crowley finds himself at Give Me Coffee Or Give Me Death a month after Aziraphale left to run Heaven, and ends up back at the bookshop, something he never planned to do again.

7 minutes in heaven by waddlesthejoghog (rating T)

"If Crowley and Aziraphale couldn’t figure it out, Muriel would have to take a different approach. It wasn’t enough to put them in the same location. They had to plant some seeds of conversation. They had to come to a conclusion naturally, but with a push." OR Muriel reads every book in the shop, then comes up with a plan to get Aziraphale and Crowley back together.

In the Pocket of the Universe by indieninja92 (rating E)

Immediately after the church scene (and The Slow Zoom of Homosexual Panic), Aziraphale takes Crowley out for dinner in the only place still open in the middle of an air raid. Feelings closely follow.

How to Run a Bookshop by IneffableDoll (rating T)

Muriel has been running Aziraphale’s bookshop ever since his promotion Upward. Mr. Crowley seems intent on sticking around, and Muriel has no idea what to do about that. Then, Muriel stumbles upon a collection of sketchbooks full of a familiar redhead. Did…Aziraphale draw these? Has Mr. Crowley seen them? * (“No. No. Put that back.” “Oh, but isn’t it cute? A little cup with wings! I don’t suppose it can fly like those birds can? I don’t see what a cup needs wings for, really.” “You can’t use that.” “Of course not! These wings are too small for me, and I have my own if I want to get around.” “Wh – okay, first off, you can’t go flying about London. You’ll freak people out, cause a bunch of chaos – actually, you know what, do what you like. Heaven if I care. But don’t touch that mug.” “Is it dangerous?” “…No. But it’s not yours. And it’s not polite to use something that’s not yours. Not very angelic of you.” “Oh! Of course. I knew that.”)

💛 recommended by @cheeekycharchar 💛

Together We're Golden series by Guardian_Rose (rating G-T)

Crowley & Aziraphale move to a small town, into their own little cottage but it's not without its difficulties.

True Disaster by NuriaSchnee (rating E)

After Crowley saves him in 1941, Aziraphale realises he's fallen in love with the demon. Scared this dangerous feeling of his will cause problems to his friend, he tries to break their relationship. However, his plan to push the demon away fails and they end up admitting their feelings to each other. To be able to be together and keep it a secret, Crowley stops time every time they meet. However brilliant this seems at first, it doesn't take long to backfire, opening new wounds and raising more barriers between them.

Nanny Knows Best by DictionaryWrites (rating M)

Being a nanny, that should be simple. Simple. Easy as pie. Crowley wished that were true.

💚 recommended by yours truly 💚

Strange Moons series by racketghost (rating G-E)

“At least they were together for a time,” Crowley says, staring at the lit end of his cigarette, “maybe that’s enough.”

tales from a bookshop by Rizandace (rating T)

Post-season-two. Crowley's moping, Aziraphale wants to fix things, and turns out, there's enough blame to go around. ----- "You're being ridiculous." Crowley very nearly falls over. Like, actually. He very nearly loses balance for no reason at all and tumbles to the sidewalk next to his car. He’s been playing Aziraphale’s voice in his head for weeks, he’s been trying very hard to drown out the sound of it, in fact, and now suddenly, abruptly— “What are you doing here,” is all he can think to say. He whirls around, and there he is. on Crowley’s right, standing there like he’d never left. Where he belongs, Crowley’s mind helpfully supplies. He wishes he could punch himself in the brain, knock the thoughts right on out of there.

Meanwhile the World Goes On by lineslines (rating G)

Crowley looked at him. He was still wearing his suit, there was tartan in it, but it had become polished, the worn edges returned to pristine, boring perfection. He looked prim. Proper. Perhaps this hurt most of all. (Crowley is on earth, Aziraphale is not. Meanwhile the world goes on. Plans, great and possibly ineffable, are set into motion. They are--always, inevitably--drawn back together. Long before reconciliation, long before they can bear it. The only thing they can bear less is staying apart. Oh, and Heaven seems to have misplaced Jesus.)

So You Need To Get Into A.Z. Fell & Co.; Now What? (A Guide For Unfortunate Bookworms) by c4llistrad (rating G)

London’s antique enthusiasts and rare lit nerds alike know that if you’re looking for a specific vintage or antique book, you have a good chance of ending up in A.Z. Fell & Co. as a last resort. And if you’ve ever been in (or are currently in) this predicament, you know how much of an absolute nightmare it is trying to even get in the door. Luckily, this handy guide, the fruit of a months-long collaborative effort to create the perfect formula for gaming the A.Z. Fell system, will tell you everything you need to know, complete with a comprehensive breakdown of what, exactly, the opening hours are. Compiled by pageknight and inky of the Rare Antique Forums.

Like Icarus Before Me by Arokel (rating T)

If Aziraphale were a Good person, a virtuous person, he wouldn’t have taken Crowley’s hand at all. Aziraphale muses on the nature of Goodness, and finally shares those musings with Crowley.

It's Something Like a Corkscrew by Arokel (rating G)

“How do you live with this… this inevitability? This knowledge of what’s to come?”

So let us melt by Arokel (rating G)

Of the two of them, Crowley thinks Aziraphale has held on to more of his faculties than Crowley has, but then again, he is putting off angelic heat like a particularly virtuous furnace.

So Much to be Consoled as to Console by Arokel (rating T)

“What are you,” Crowley drawled, “the patron saint of queer kids?” A series of lost souls over the centuries who prayed, whether they knew it or not, to the Angel Aziraphale.

Factory Settings by Anonymous (rating T)

Crowley gets reinstated as an angel.

such surpassing brightness by bibliocratic (rating G)

The revelation that Aziraphale might have been in love with him for thousands of years is surprising. The fact that literal books have been written on the subject comes as even more of a shock.

knowing this will I reach for you by Aria (rating E)

It wasn't as though his interest in Aziraphale was entirely appropriate. Of course it wasn't bloody appropriate. He was consorting with the Enemy, nothing about it was appropriate.

The Sandford Flower Show by Mussimm (rating E)

Crowley had waited six thousand years, kept it all in check. But this was the slipperiest slope he’d ever set foot on and as soon as he’d indulged in a few discretionary acts of kindness he was falling face first into pining, tumbling into flirting, about to dislocate his knees on the sharp rocks of intimacy. Was this really it? What he had waited six thousand years for? A stupid flower show? Aziraphale wasn’t pulling away from him. Maybe… maybe this time he wouldn’t? Maybe they’d hold hands again. Maybe tonight with a bottle of merlot in them he’d finally work up the courage and just kiss him and he wouldn’t pull away. The very moment he’d thought it he spotted the problem at the flower show.

you knew my name on sight by brinnanza (rating G)

“This wasn’t me, you know,” Crowley says, the words out of his mouth before he’s made the conscious choice to utter them. “Not just the library, but the whole civil war. You know me; I’ve mostly been getting drunk at Bacchanals.” “I know,” says Aziraphale.

The Longest Night series by charlottemadison (rating T-E)

The night the Apocalypse doesn't happen, an angel and a demon share a bus bench on the way home to face their fates. This is the story of their evening spun out line by line, all the little moments that carried them through the night they knew might be their last.

Witness the Fall by Waifine (rating G)

Crowley never talked about his time as an angel. Aziraphale never asked. But when Hell sends Crowley a package containing his most painful memories, it is Aziraphale who is plunged into the nightmare history of when his beloved friend, the angel who had once been Crowley, was hurled from the Heavens into the bowels of Hell.

An Angel who did not so much Fall In Love as Settle Into It Gradually by TheLadyZephyr (rating G)

Crowley was standing in the middle of the room, hands in his pockets, looking a little lost. Aziraphale eyed the distance between them. Five steps. Five steps, and six thousand years, and a battlefield spanning an eternity. The story of the little moments over the millennia that shape an angel’s regard for a demon, and the way he slowly, with great reluctance but inevitable surety, falls in love.

This Soul Outstreaming by Rend_Herring (rating E)

“Why did you come here?” Aziraphale interrupts. “Why do you keep doing this?” All the saving, he means, all the chasing after Aziraphale he does. It can’t only be that he’s not keen to endure a replacement. That can’t be it, not anymore. He’s going to get himself in trouble, and then it’ll be Aziraphale’s fault. Crowley’s mouth shuts with a click. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, reaches for the handle of the fork and taps his fingertips against it before setting his hands in his lap. When he speaks, it’s very soft. “Don’t you know?” he asks. Aziraphale, unnaccustomed to his heart refusing to translate why it throbs with such haste, shakes his head.

a lighthouse (burning) by books-and-omens (rating M)

In good weather, one can see the lighthouse at the Rock from the shore: a dot on the horizon, a distant star flashing red and white and red again. It’s been dark for a fortnight, of course—ever since the incident that every newspaper had breathlessly written about, that the paper-boys on the corners had shouted themselves hoarse over. This is where Aziraphale is headed: it is his duty, after all, to find out what happened, to make sure that the beacon can be safely lit once again. He does not expect Crowley to follow him to the windswept isle, to the lonely lighthouse at what could just as well be the edge of the world. Crowley follows him anyway.

paint the skies by ToEdenandBackAgain (rating G)

“This was one of yours, wasn’t it?” Aziraphale remarks casually, and Crowley feels like the warmth of the room has been sucked into space. A cold, uneasy feeling begins to creep into his gut. One of yours thrown out so casually. One of yours said like he... like he knew “What.”

Good Endings by WyvernQuill (rating T)

A Narrative of Certain Events following the Ending of the World (Except Not Quite), as vaguely hinted at in The Slapdash and Not Very Helpful Prophetic Tidbit of Agnes Nutter, Witch (And Matchmaker.) "Their lives are in horrible, terrible danger that only we can save them from!" Anathema held up the Prophetic Tidbit. "It says so. Right here." Madame Tracy peered at the page. Raised a meaningful eyebrow. "Dearie, as a woman of, well, considerable experience, I really don't think that's what 'the lyttle Deathe' means in this context..." "Huh." Anathema squinted. Flipped the page. Read another bit. "....huh." (Or, alternatively: Eight - give or take - matchmakers trying really, really hard, honest; two clueless ethereal/occult beings mutually pining their endless days away; and one witch, who can't leave well enough alone when it comes to matters of the heart, no matter how many centuries ago she died.)

If We've Got Nothing (We've Got Us) by Kedreeva (rating G)

Two months after the failed apocalypse Aziraphale finds the first dark feather growing in his wings. A story about middle grounds, ineffable plans, and what happens when the world doesn't end.

lit in the darkness by ToEdenandBackAgain (rating M)

Aziraphale returns to Crowley's flat for the night after Armageddon. After all, it's hardly the first time they've shared sleeping arrangements. Or: Times throughout history Crowley and Aziraphale have shared a bed.

💙 recommended by @vonlipwig 💙

Petrichor & Parchment by MrsNoggin (rating E)

“Mr. Crowley, I presume?” Aziraphale asked in lieu of an introduction, which was not forthcoming. The guy hadn’t even removed his sunglasses. Oh God, he had a tattoo on his face. Aziraphale wasn’t one to judge, but… what kind of gardener had a snake tattoo on his face?

💜 recommended by @darthbreezy 💜

post-professional endeavours by darcylindbergh (rating T)

Retirement is a four-letter word.

💗 recommended by @thegeekyartist 💗

Fire, Bridges, and other Sensible Idioms by KiaraMGrey (rating E)

To: The person who stopped the washer in the middle of my wash cycle and took my clothes out just to wash your own… You are an arsehole! Unfortunately for you, so am I. You can find your wet clothes frozen outside in the snow. If you have any problems with this, come see me in 301. or Aziraphale has a new neighbor, and they certainly don't start off on the right foot.

❤️ recommended by @weiwnxian ❤️

Any Other Name by mostlyanything19 (rating T)

“The Angel of the Eastern Gate.” Crawly grins. “What’s your name, anyway? You never said.” “Oh...” Apologies, Aziraphael almost says, but then he doesn’t. That would be taking things a bit too far. This is still the Enemy. “Aziraphael.” “Aziraphael,” repeats Crawly—or tries to, because halfway through the word he chokes. Quite badly. Or: What if Aziraphale’s name was originally "Aziraphael", in keeping with the conventional spelling and pronunciation of angel names, but because of its divine nature Crowley is physically unable to say it out loud.

#under a read more cause it's a lot #thanks for sending stuff in <33 #fanfic #good omens

[animebw]

So I'm gonna try not to make too many comparisons between Sunshine and School Idol Project, cause this is its own series and it can stand or fall on its own merits. But episode 3 is very clearly trying to recapture the magic of SIP's episode 3, with the group's first ever concert toward a mostly empty auditorium as the first big "Oh fuck, all is lost" moment before rallying to a triumphant finish and telling the disapproving student council president that they intend to carry on... and it's just so much weaker in every respect.

Part of that's the repetition itself. A huge part of what made SIP's empty auditorium gut punch work so well is it that it wallops you out of nowhere; none of the other characters bring it up as a possibility beforehand, and while you probably don't expect a very high turnout for this freshly formed idol group, the fact that nobody's there at first is genuinely shocking. And you can't capture that kind of shock a second time now that your audience knows to expect it. Sunshine tries to mix it up with a power line blowing mid-concert as well as the initial low turnout, but the impact just isn't there. Especially when the whole town shows up seconds later.

Which brings me to another point: even when Muse turned it around, their first event was still realistically miniscule. They could count the number of people at that concert on their fingers. But even that small level of support was enough to keep them striving onward and soaring higher until they became icons. Maybe it wasn't the most realistic zero-to-hero story ever, but it grounded their future success with a baseline of how far they had to grow to get to that point. The whole town showing up for Aqours' first concert, on the other hand? I'm sorry, no matter how close-knit a rural community might be, I don't but that much support for them right off the bat. I can't root for that success as easily because it doesn't feel nearly as believable. Muse made a sub-ten-person audience count feel electric; Aquors packing its stadium full just feels cheap.

And as for that big confrontation with the student council president... look, there's a difference between having that conversation in a mostly empty auditorium and having that conversation in front of an adoring audience. Eri and Honoka's talk made sense in context because they were basically the only people in the room anyway, but Dia's got a whole crowd of people listening to her rant about not liking idols. Imagine how fucking awkward it must be to be in the audience, cheering for these girls on stage, and all of a sudden this weirdo's pushing through the audience telling them they're not gonna make it? Like, what? It just doesn't make sense for Dia to try and have that debate right there and then, nor does it make sense for the audience to have no reaction to it beyond clapping for Aquors. It turns the people in that crowd into faceless window dressing instead of, well, people, and it shatters the reality of the moment just as much as such a big crowd being there in the first place.

(Also I could rant about Eri's reasons for disapproving of Muse making so much more sense than Dia's thus far but I will save that for another day)

Maybe it seems overly nitpicky to spend this many words on a single scene. But I need you to understand that Muse's first concert was the moment I started to love this series. The fact it was able to sucker-punch me so effectively, to make me feel genuinely upset for Honoka and genuinely relieved when they were able to keep their dreams alive, is what made me realize that Love Live might just be something really special. It's what made me realize this series could sink its claws into me and make me care so much more than I ever could have imagined. That scene matters to me. It matters to Love Live. And if Sunshine wants to end up more as than a derivative, it cannot rely on ripping off its predecessor's triumphs without the skill of its own to justify them. It needs to carve its own path without the shadow of School Idol Project hanging over its every decision. And the sooner it starts doing that, the better.

#anime #tabw #the anime binge watcher #love live! sunshine!! #love live! #love live #2013 aniwatch

[mermaidsirennikita]

Have you read Captive Bride by Johanna Lindsay?

This year I decided to try more old school historical romances

I haven't--I'm not yet sure that I want to go into sheik romances, tbh. Even for the project, where I'm going to intentionally read problematic books.

My next Johanna is going to be Prisoner of My Desire, which I actually think I did read at an outrageously young age. That one is pretty legendary, though it does have noncon and dubcon, enacted by both parties.

If you are looking for more old school authors, I would definitely recommend:

Julie Garwood--active from the 80's onward, just recently left of us. She writes a mixture of historical, romantic suspense, and I think contemporaries as well, and her historicals are all over the place in terms of time period and location. My favorite by her thus far is the verrrry classic "The Bride", which is an English/Scottish border marriage medieval. Has the classic "You call her mine" "I won't take you until you're wearing my plaid" Alec Kincaid. Technically a heads up for dubcon because Alec... gets the party started while Jamie is asleep (and not in a Sebastian St. Vincent "you're hard to wake up" way, in a "oh boy that is in there" kind of way). To be fair, she loved it. To be fair, I also loved it.

Judith McNaught--80's onward, known for her Westmoreland books. My favorite is A Kingdom of Dreams, another Scottish/English medieval but this time SHE'S the Scottish one, and is literally known as "the Merrick bitch" because she's a nightmare and basically emotionally terrorizes this man for most of the book after he kidnaps her. He does outsource his kidnapping! But by the time the king forces them to marry he's hauling her to the altar like "LOOK BITCH I DON'T WANNA BE HERE EITHER" and it's soooo funny. Heads up that she's like... a cool 17 (so is Jamie in the above book, I think, it was a different time) and there's some dubcon by way of coercion. But again, she loved it.

Jude Deveraux--80's onward, kinda writes a little lighter? And her genres are all over the place too. Still working. Did a delightful Trailblazer episode on Fated Mates. My favorite Deveraux is A Knight in Shining Armor (I have a hard back with the original cover and it is an AMAZING cover) which is a medieval time travel book in which the 80's era heroine is ditched by her fiance and his daughter with no money in the middle of nowhere, so she's like dramatically sobbing in this church or something and wishing for a knight in shining armor and one just APPEARS. But he's kind of the worst? And like tries to spend her money and shit lmao? ("Hero has no concept of money and keeps running bills up" is a microtrope I love.) Anyway, there is definitely some problematic stuff in this book and I haven't read it in a whiiile so no promises there, but I did enjoy it a lot back in the day. And it taught me a thing.

So those other three make up, with Johanna, the "4 J's". Other authors I'd recommend checking out:

Elizabeth Lowell. I guess the 90's romances are old school? But yes, I adore her Medieval trilogy--Untamed, Forbidden, and Enchanted. All of them involve pushy alpha heroes, medieval high drama, INSANITY, vague mysticism which is present more in older books. Enchanted definitely has a harder plotline--the heroine is recovering from rape, and some of the approach is dated but overall well-intentioned imo.

Anne Stuart--Just started reading her. DARK. A Rose at Midnight has noncon (past experiences, sorta the hero???), dubcon (with the hero), a very dark and murder-heavy backstory. It's a tough book, but I found it beautiful and super romantic.

#romance novel blogging #book recs #romance novels

[mareenavee]

for the fanfic asks, 1, 3 and 15!

Hello! :D Thank you so much for asking these. I particularly love this set of questions.

The ask game is just here.

Fanfic asks for my fic, The World on Our Shoulders!

Without further ado, onward to the answers! :D

1. What inspired you to write/update this work?

I did talk about the origin of my fic a little bit here. What inspired me to update it? Well. I could talk about the ground-up edit.

I had been writing this as sort of a challenge mode back in February, getting the draft down on paper and posting every day just to prove to myself that I could. By the time the challenge ended, I had over 100k words, which was more than my goal (it was more or less a NaNoWriMo challenge I made for myself) and I was able to go back, read it with fresh eyes, and realize pieces that weren't hitting the way I wanted them to. So I decided to go back in and edit iirc somewhere before April. I had something like 52 chapters posted by then lol. So it was a big undertaking. I had plot threads I'd dropped, I had characters whose voices weren't coming through in the way that I hoped. There'd been some waffling about phrasing and word choices and scenes that just felt rushed.

This time, though, instead of simply just feeling awful about my work I decided it could do with some love. So I took the time to start revisions and didn't post anything until I had a big chunk of the story ready to be proofread and edited more ahead of a posting schedule. I've been adding in an extra chapter update or two here or there on certain weeks. But anyway, the inspiration behind updating this is because I want it to be the kind of story I wanted to read, but could not find, even in its first iteration. (: All I can do is hope I'm doing it justice.

3. If this work is an update/new chapter, how do you stay motivated on multi-chapter works? 

I am motivated to keep updating this thing because the story is living rent free in my head, and what else am I going to do but write it if it's allowed to clatter around in there anyway? (: LOL But no, seriously, I'm invested in the characters at this point. It's a personal challenge besides that, which I was going over here and here. I just wanna write a fun story besides all that. I figured, what is the most dramatic thing that can happen to an NPC who discovers they're the dragonborn? WELL. After a series of bad decisions on her part, we have the prologue of World lol. It's more than that, of course, but still. (:

15. What is one question you wish someone would ask you about this work? Ask it and answer it.

OH another one of these, my poor brain LOL. Okay. Here goes nothing! (Thank you, btw. I love having to really think about my work like this!)

Are there alternate ways this story could have gone? Do you have plans to make what-if sort of stories for this series?

I've been wanting to write a series of shortfics or one shots that go over alternate events counter to what happens in World, really, because I think it's important for writing practice and for reaffirming that, while the alternate story is fun and good to think about, you're on the right path with how you've been going in your project (:

Some of the questions I ask myself are:

"What would have happened if Nyenna and Eris actually made it to Solstheim as intended?"

"What if she stayed with Hadvar and went straight to Solitude?"

"What if Nyenna rejected Athis?"

"What if she never learned magic?"

"What if she wasn't the Last Dragonborn? Who would be?"

Among so, so many others. All of them would have affected her character arc in some significant way. Most of them would still have her being pulled into her destiny, though, except that last one. Most of them would have her missing out on trusting herself to get stronger, especially the first one. Some of them would shift the whole setting of the story to a different part of Skyrim altogether, and a setting shift has the ability to change the tone of the whole story, if you think about it.

I want to take a minute to answer those what-ifs briefly.

1: She'd have never been guided to reconnect with her power. Teldryn probably would have seen her just as another traveler, not as a patron. He might have left for Skyrim without her the following morning. She'd have to be saved from a dragon, likely, instead of do the saving or escaping on her own, before the whole soul absorption thing happens.

2: She'd have joined the Legion, likely, convinced she could be anything she put her mind to. She'd be a good soldier, and of course would stand and fight a random dragon with Hadvar in the battalion at her side. She'd discover her powers and then Tullius would, sensing an opportunity, use her in his plans to end the war as quickly as possible. If either of them survived to the end of either quest, she'd probably hire Hadvar as her housecarl. Or maybe marry him instead.

3: Athis is quite smitten with Nyenna at the beginning of their story. If Nyenna wasn't so rash and grabby-hands about that kind of attention, she'd probably have been nice enough to him, but would have focused on recovery first and then moving on toward Solstheim as was her original intention. I like the idea that she'd discover she's Dragonborn on Solstheim rather than at the watchtower, though... it'd be interesting considering she'd not have trained at all in this situation, too.

4: If all went exactly as the fic was going, but she never learned Flames to begin with, she'd not have known she had a bit of an unusual aptitude for magic. It would affect how she'd fight. She'd probably still focus on archery, I'd assume, but also would need to have an even better handle on fighting with weapons that actually have weight to them. I feel like she'd fit the image the Nords have of the LDB a little better. Also, without healing magic, Athis probably would have died at a certain point. Twice she'd been there to staunch the bleeding and close wounds when others couldn't or didn't. So that would have complicated things.

5: If Nyenna wasn't the Dragonborn but everything went exactly as the fic is going, I'd have given that to Athis, I think. He wishes more than once over the course of the story that he could have been chosen, mostly regretting being unable to take the burden off of her. If that was the case, I wonder how Nyenna would have reacted to being the wife of the Dragonborn. I feel like Athis would have prioritized her anyway, even in the wake of the quest. I don't know if Nyenna would have stayed home per se. She'd probably have still been training and retrieving artifacts. She'd probably have gone with Athis on some pieces of the quest, too, because he wouldn't have thought HE was the one causing the chaos and danger as Nyenna believes in World.

So yes. Alternate what-if fics :D If I were to write a one shot of any of these, would you guys like to see a specific one? Feel free to comment or send me asks and I can also write fragments out, maybe, of certain changed scenes as writing practice. <3

#AskMareena #MareenaWrites #The World on Our Shoulders #Nyenna #Teldryn Sero #Athis #LDB/Teldryn Sero #LDB/Athis #Skyrim #Elder Scrolls #tesblr #fanficblr #writeblr

[truessences]

Ramblings: Tom Holland's career

I'm going to do a couple of other posts about Insomniac's Spider-Man 2, I played it the week it came out and I've just been watching clips and videos and I loved it. But anyway, this is about Tom Holland.

So, I've been of the opinion that while Tom is a fantastic actor, he keeps choosing projects (or his agent is) that he's either too good for, or the writing for them is less than stellar.

So here is a list of his films that I've seen. I haven't seen The Crowded Room but I heard it wasn't good but that Tom was good in it, which isn't surprising, story of his life I think.

The Impossible Lucas Bennett - First live action film, he's fantastic in this, should have been nominated. Made me cry.

How I Live Now Isaac - Weird little movie but he's good in it. Also made me tear up.

In the Heart of the Sea Thomas Nickerson - I forget about this one but he's fine it, the movie is fine.

Captain America: Civil War Peter Parker / Spider-Man - His Spider-Man debut and though he has a small part, he's great. Great debut.

The Lost City of Z Jack Fawcett - He plays the older version of the son and it's sad what's implied that happens to them but he's fine in this. His little mustache though had me cackling.

Pilgrimage The Novice / Brother Diarmuid - This movie is interesting and good and he's very good in it. Apparently while filming this, he and Jon Bernthal were sending in their tapes for Spider-Man and The Punisher lol.

Spider-Man: Homecoming Peter Parker / Spider-Man - Great solo film, felt like a John Hughes movie wrapped in comic book pajamas. I really love his suit, I guess we call it the "Stark Suit" since in the games, that's what it's called.

The Current War Samuel Insull - I don't remember him in this movie at all.

Avengers: Infinity War - Loved him in this, still wish he got to interact with Steve more than he did. I don't like the Iron Spider suit that much, but his scene with the snap was great, they knew who they had and capitalized on it.

Avengers: Endgame - Not in this one as much as IW, but I liked the scene where he has the gauntlet and he says "Hi, I'm Peter Parker" and Carol is like "Hey Peter Parker..."

Spider-Man: Far From Home - I feel like people are really hard on this movie, I love it. It was my fave Spidey movie for a while. I really loved the whole Mysterio thing. There are some things I might have wanted done differently but I overall loved it. I also love his Upgraded Suit and I liked how he used his intelligence to fight at the end.

Spies in Disguise Walter Beckett - I thought this was cute, it was fun and he does a great job with voice acting.

Dolittle Jip - the movie was not good and his role is small, but the voice acting was fine.

Onward Ian Lightfoot - Cute movie, made me tear up, the voice acting was really good. Love the brother relationship in this.

The Devil All the Time Arvin Russell - This should have been a mini series but he's good in it.

Cherry Cherry - Not a good movie but he's fine. He does despair very well lol.

Chaos Walking Todd Hewitt - Not a good movie, lots of potential, might have worked better as a tv series since it's a book series. Also, should have been made in the boom of YA dystopian movies or maybe now thanks to The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes coming out. But he's fine it.

Spider-Man: No Way Home - Great movie, really fun, the emotional aspects of this movie he does so well. Yes it sucks that none of the villains in this movie are HIS villains but it just goes to show that he needs to have his own Green Goblin, can you imagine the PTSD that would come from that?

Uncharted Nathan Drake - I actually very much like this movie, I watch it often on Netflix lol. It's probably a movie I've put on repeat. It's not great but it's not as bad as people were saying. I've only played maybe 2 hours of the first game so I'm not nostalgic lol. I think he's good in it, and it's the first time I looked at him and was like "oh... he's an adult" and was attracted to him lol. I think he's handsome but he always just skewed young to me but after this, I was like... oh that's a man.

A lot of his career is Spider-Man and maybe he doesn't like that anymore, maybe he feels like he's being stuck since his Non Spider-Man movies haven't been well received, but I don't think that's the case. I feel like he isn't stuck, he just needs to take this break he said he wanted to take, and reevaluate his choices.

And when he's ready, he needs to be in a Romantic Comedy (Rom-Com), like a pure Rom-Com. Also, let him keep his own accent, I know this man is British lol but I haven't seen him use his own accent in a movie in a while. He can be a college student, or a young adult just trying to find love. Put him and Zendaya in a rom-com together, capitalize more on their chemistry lol. But not really, I'm just kidding, I just couldn't think of anyone but Saoirse Ronan would be good!

Let him do a road trip brother movie with Jamie Bell, since they look so much alike. Or let him do an action drama with Jamie Bell lol. Or some kind of family drama movie with Jamie Bell. Do something with Jamie Bell.

I know he's going to be playing Fred Astaire soon, which that will be interesting. He'll be dancing, which we know he can do, and singing, which can he still do well? Not that Fred Astaire could sing so it doesn't really matter. But do a musical for fun, something light.

If he wants to do something gritty, then that's okay, oooooo he should do a horror film. That'd be interesting to see.

I think he needs to not worry about doing franchise things right now. Just let Spider-Man be the franchise, because Chaos Walking and Uncharted didn't turn out the way I guess they were hoping though I think Uncharted could get a sequel. Shoot for 2026 because then Tom will be 31 or so and people can stop complaining that he's too young.

But I just feel like, he's too talented to not act anymore. I want to see him in more things, I want to see him win. I think he wins as Peter Parker/Spider-Man even with his detractors, I like him a lot.

As for Spider-Man, after finishing Spider-Man 2 and how they handled the symbiote (which I have plenty to say about that too), I really want to see Tom Holland's Spidey tackle that storyline. They already set it up by Tom Hardy's Venom leaving behind a piece of the symbiote in Tom's world. Plus, with where we left him, he's pretty vulnerable I'd say. I think he would do it so well, I'm not sure how much more of Spider-Man he has in him, but I need at least one more trilogy from him *cries*. If the MCU and Sony were smart, which in some aspects, they're clearly not lol, they would give Tom another trilogy, or at least 4 or 5 more movies and in one of them, introduce Miles and then bam, a clear out for Tom to leave (they could even have another Peter from another universe appear who isn't Tom if they want to keep a Peter) and have Miles for a while.

But anyway, I wish the best for Tom Holland's career, he's too talented and he deserves some movie wins, that aren't Spider-Man. Rom Com I feel like is the best course corrector to do. Even if it just ends up on Hulu... like have ya'll seen Rye Lane?

But just some ramblings that I've had on my mind for a while.

#Tom Holland #Zendaya #Spider-Man #Spider-Man 2 #insomniac spider man #Miles Morales #Peter Parker #Tom Holland movies #tom holland spiderman #Marvel #MCU #movies #romantic comedy

[honnojis]

Wow just read about your flower parade post and I have so many questions! is it like a pride parade? How did you learn to make something so amazing?! Is there anywhere online I can watch that parade?

ohhhhh you have opened the floodgates dear anon. welcome to one of the biggest joys in my life; the Zundert flower parade

It's not a pride parade, but a full blown artistic flower parade in my hometown that was first held in the 30's and has grown to become the world's largest! Originally it was in celebration of the Dutch Queen's birthday at the time, but nowadays it's held on every first Sunday of September. The max dimensions of a float are 9 meters high, 5 meters wide and 19 meters long (unless you're using more than one chassis, then the totaling length of your creation can be 50 meters including any potential actors on the ground)

The coolest part that it's organized and built ENTIRELY by volunteers, relying entirely on sponsors to be made a possibility, so it's very much a cultural thing, not a commercial project as no one's getting paid for anything. It's what I generally like to call an out-of-control hobby, LOL. It's so integrated in the culture of the town/municipality where I live that people always talk about times of the year as "before corso" or "after corso", kinda as if it's our version of new year's.

It is an actual competition though, so there's prizes involved! Tho it's more for the honor than having actually anything big at stake. The parade passes by the main grandstands twice, the first time to put everything on display for the jury and the second time when it's time for each workgroup to receive their results and placement, which is literally the most exciting thing of the entire parade oh god the nerves

Oh and, all the money earned during the events goes back into organizing the next year's parade and the 20 different workgroups that build the floats each year! So pretty much all the remaining money is kept to improve on the parade and help the workgroups out.

I've been part of one of the workgroups (Heikant) for my entire life, and have had the honor of being one of the float designers for the workgroup since 2019, having designed a float 3 times now. I work together with my oldest brother and three other friends from the workgroup! We've managed to get 2nd place twice in 2019 and 2021 (2020 edition was cancelled bc of covid lol), and we took the win home last year :) We've also won the 1st public's choice award twice and got the 3rd public's choice award once as well! The float you actually see on the front page of the site I linked is the one we built last year!!! Tho really, you should look up video footage. It's so much more impressive when it's in motion.

If you wanna explore what's been built in the past, you should check out the archives! It's got all the creations listed from all the workgroups over the course of years. I recommend checking things out from 2001 and onward :) Most of the coolest stuff built is in there LOL.

The event usually gets streamed on Omroep Brabant every year! There's a livestream on their website. But you can also watch back older parade videos on the youtube channel of the parade! Here's the full video from last year!

anyways GOSH thank you for letting me gush anon bc this is such a huge part of my life and has done an insane amount for me in terms of helping getting rid of a lot of my social anxiety, so it makes me stupidly happy whenever i get the chance to talk about it

#zumi answers #Anonymous #flower parade ramblings

[514ko]

YNaM Retrospectives — Chap. III

          And we’re back with another Retrospective!  Just baaaaarely managed to squeak it out tonight.  I have ambitions to do these weekly until I’ve caught up, but I’m working on other stuff in between, so we’ll see how well I can keep to it...

          As usual, here’s the chapter in question:

          So without further ado, onwards into the scene I dislike most in all of YNaM!

          Okay, I’m being dramatic.  99% of it is just me being miffed by how I characterized Satori in the first scene.  She’s legit one of my top five favorite characters, like I absolutely love her, but man this scene reads like character bashing to me now.  And I wasn’t going for that!  I was going for a really explosive, biting sort of feeling from Satori, but I must’ve, like, completely forgotten the meaning of the word nuance???

          Like, okay, the story needs to have an antagonist.  Someone whose actions are extreme enough to warrant Koishi being the way she is.  Plus, someone to stop Koishi and Flandre from just getting all buddy-buddy immediately.  There’s gotta be social pressure somehow, someway.  That’s just how it is in romances.

          But I swear I just OOCed the heck out of poor Satori to do it.  I mean, I do that with all the characters to some extent (Koishi’s entire personality is inherently OOC, after all), but as I said in the last Retrospective, I still want to make them recognizable as themselves!  But Satori’s just kinda mean-spirited in Chap. III, and as smug and haughty as SA Satori is, she’s not, like, mean.

          I don’t even know if this is, like, a significant problem for people or it’s just me and I’m just blowing it way out of proportion, but I do genuinely regret it lmao.  But the nice thing about a serialized format is that, when you do something like that and realize it before the end of the run, you have a chance to rewrite things and fix them.  So I’ve since rewritten a lot of things, and hopefully fixed them lol

          If this bothered you, even just a little bit, hopefully next chapter of YNaM will explain some things…

          Anyway, scene 2 was kind of a spur-of-the-moment, worldbuilding sort of thing.  It really didn’t change much from draft to final; I just needed a scene in which Flandre learns about Koishi’s mind-reading.  I don’t have much to say about it; it kind of just exists.

          It did give me a chance to show some of my Flan headcanons, though.  Like, for instance, that she’s actually really smart, and knows a bunch of stuff from just idly reading all day.  A book of Old English linguistics might be super dry and boring to us, but for a vampire stuck in a room all day—well, it beats staring at a wall.  Though frankly, if you actually do find Old English linguistics, I applaud you.  You’re much stronger than me.

          Another funny thing—when I showed this chapter to a friend, they were like “oh, one of your favorite characters is Patchouli, right?”  Aaaand nope!  I don’t even like Patchy.  I mean, I don’t dislike her; she’s just not super interesting, I guess?

          And the final scene…  I don’t really have much to say.  It’s still among my favorite scenes I’ve ever written, YNaM or otherwise; I’m still super proud of it!  It’s also probably one of the most personal, so even just rereading it is a little tough.  So I’ll say this—it’s the closest I’ve ever come to capturing that particular feeling into words.  It’s far from perfect, but I’m still really proud of it, and at the time it represented the achievement of a personal goal I’d held for myself for a long, long time.

          I think that, in any creative field, it’s important to be self-critical, even perfectionistic sometimes—if chasing the dragon is motivating to you, it can be a great way to grow.  But I think it’s equally important to be able to look at what you’ve created and find something of worth within it, even if it’s just to point at it and say “oh hey, that bit was kinda cool.  I’m gonna try doing more of that!”  And it's difficult to do that sometimes, really difficult, especially when you're in the pits. But if you are able to find that balance, I think your relationship with your work becomes way healthier, and you can actually build some self-confidence that way. I used to loathe my work, thinking that in order to share it with others it had to be some arbitrary shade of perfect. But as I got older, I started letting go a bit--and my writing got way better for it. And besides, at the end of the day, it's just 2hu fanfic, like--I take it kinda seriously, but in the end that's all it is looool

#ynam #ynam retrospectives

[strangerficsforeddie]

Eddie Munson x reader: Rebuilding the Shire: Part 3

“So um… do you mind me asking what grade you’re in?” Eddie asked, his confident demeanor slowly drifting at the sudden resort to small talk. You deflect, “I feel like that should’ve been asked before you asked me to ditch with you, big boy.” There was that laugh again, almost like a symphony but not quite as confident, or maybe that was a projection. He rolls his eyes and shoots you a look that tells you to cut the shit, you puff the joint and pass it back to him. “Senior… well more like senior 2 point oh… the Oh stands for ‘oh my god, how could you take English again, what are you an idiot’ if you're my father…” you stumble out, more weed than you and a little bit of nerve. Man, you really need to quit. “Anyway, this is my second year of senior year.” 

There was silence for a second as Eddie starts fiddling with the roach before he passes it back to you. “Idk, (y/n), you’re a freak. Taking English twice? Repeating senior year twice? Novice work, truly.” He stands up in a rush, his hair moving in the wind like a flag flying tall, and, for a second, your paranoia swears he’s judging you. “you see, this is going to be my third and final year.” There's a smile on his face when he says this, and for a second you, too,  feel hopeful. “It’ll be your final year too, we can go up to that lousy old dude of your dad and tell him, ‘Fucken passed English bitch!” The statement is a confident voice like no other, something sweet and yet firm. You finish the jay, crunch it on the heel of your shoe, and stuff it in your bag, “Alright Big man, let's get to that English class.” you smile, he laughs as he sticks out his hand to help you up. 

Now it was your turn to blush, you feel a wave of warmth flood through your face and suddenly it was harder to talk. You shake away that feeling with a laugh as he lifts you up verbosely, “on your feet my dear boy, onward we must go to slay the medieval wonders that lie before us, ghouls and vampiric bats lie the halls, two will enter, and one will die.” 

You laugh and roll your eyes, “I see someone has been playing too much Dungeons and Dragons.” You lightly brush his shoulder, letting go of his hand, and for a second, wishing you could reverse time. Nonetheless, you walk into the school with a new level of confidence, and maybe that is because you had a new friend with you. Friend… hmm, weird… was Eddie even a friend? That was a thought for future you and you really didn’t know him well enough to analyze that dynamic yet. The back doors of the school grew closer, “meet me after school?” Eddie asks as he leans over, and a part of you couldn’t help and focus on his confusing homemade shirt. “uh sure?” 

you wonder why? 

#Eddie Munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x male reader #Eddie my beloved #eddie munson x nonbinary reader #stranger things #stranger things fanfiction

[hylianengineer]

For the fic writer post, do you have any ideas for fics you wanna write at some point that you just haven't gotten around to yet?

Oh boy do I! I have SO MANY ideas and so little time. For Star Trek I don't tend to plan that well, but I really want to write the Culmets family playing monopoly, and just generally as much fluff as I can. I'm not that good at fluff but I'm trying to get better. And I have this little fragment about Julian Bashir's augment status being revealed to a friend (OC) and how they would react but I really need to give it some context. I know it's an idea that's been done a lot but I really wanna do it anyways.

I also have like 50 Torchwood ficlets I'm trying to fit together into a coherent plot, focusing on an OC who would become a close friend to Owen after them initially not being able to stand each other. I just want to give Owen a friend- and I want to be his friend so I am totally projecting on my OC here.

And then there's Percy Jackson, for which I have like 10 mini ideas for demigod powers and backstories. I haven't been able to make anything of them yet but hopefully someday.

And Avengers- I have this idea for an outsider POV showing what it's like to live in New York during the absolute chaos of 2012 onwards, which I posted as a oneshot, but I feel like there could be a lot more to explore there.

That's just off the top of my head, there's probably more buried in the drafts somewhere. I have fic ideas beyond both my level of free time and my level of skill.

Thanks for the ask, friend! It's fun to talk about my ideas, even if I might never get around to writing them.

#fanfic #a day in the life of a fanfic author #writer problems #ask game #asks

[hareefluffs]

ART CHECK IN FOR START OF JUNE

I should really make this account an art account…. I have a lot of work guys I promise I just am too nervous to finalize them and scan them and format them and do the performance/interactivity aspect of them… and being an active participant on social media is hard ;-;

Some stuff I’ve been pushing onwards on!

procrastinating on my reel (rip my hireability it’s just hard to deal with file management and I suck at editing)

slowly but sure printing my interactive anti-suburb fungus zine project (my current printer is being a dick so I currently have two prints in the wrong color, one of which I need to bind), I’m going for 10 prints before I release them into the wild and get the documentation site up

ignoring my unfinished animation projects bc. I just don’t have mental energy y’all work is exhausting. Of these, I’m backburning finishing my during-the-school-year films and trying to get in the headspace for a short film I’m working on with a friend (which needs a script and a storyboard) and my thesis script.

the two t&b fanarts!! I wanna do more but the other things on this list need to take priority ;-;

I’m organizing a charity Pride zine with an org I’ve been part of for a while and I’m super excited!! My personal entry is a poem/illustration about queerness in the suburbs and fungi and how you can’t kill fungi or queerness bc we’re there and we’re important even if we’re invisible to the naked eye!!

learning unity 2D and C# for unity2d so I can actually start getting my game ideas in a place!! I really wanna make a point/click about how warehouse work fucking sucks since that’s where I’m stuck this summer and I want to do a story-based co-op game about a codependent mother-daughter relationship at some point. I’m super excited to be taking a narrative design class this year ahhhh

oh shit, finishing my commission sheet for 2022-23!! I’ll be trying to do illustration commissions throughout the year so I can have some extra grocery/supply/student loan payoff money since my work money will be focused on rent while I’m in school ;-; capitalism sucks y'all

Anyway!! That’s where I’m at! I’m still pretty behind unfortunately but I’ve also finally been prioritizing my social/emotional well-being and trying to earn some monies in a regular way since I’ve generally been unsuccessful with getting commissions :(. Maybe that will change but if not, I’m just trucking on!

Uh. If ur curious about my work or want to push me to like. Push out a specific project listed here, lmk. It kinda feels lonely and hard to find the energy to work on stuff in part bc very few people engage with what I’m making outside of classmates in the art-school bubble. My asks are opening if ur interested in my stuff or even the weird shows I’ve been sillyposting about. Or if people are interested I can post some poetry or other works I’ve been working on here.

Bye sorry for the long post, enjoy y’all’s day!!

#sketchbook #I like doing lil check ins like this it kinda helps me get organized #sorry again for the long post ;-;

[drrealityslenderverse]

Dangerous Meet-up

Ethan unwisely follows Alex into Rosswood at night

Back to Contents || Back to One-shot Contents

“Hey, erm, Alex… Not to sound like I’m complaining but why are we meeting in the woods?” The man ducked under another branch as he tried to keep up. “Mostly concerned about why we’re doing this at night, you know?” 

“How much has Jay told you about what’s been going on?” 

“Jay? Oh, um, nothing really. He only reached out like, a few days ago mentioning something about your college project… Not really sure why he called me. Don’t really know how he got my number.” 

“So nothing about tapes or anything weird?” 

Ethan laughed, though the sound was laced with nervousness. “Only weird thing is this.” 

“Well… I guess Jay did act strange when I brought up this meeting earlier…” He didn’t know the guy that well and assumed he was just like that. Now however, he wasn’t so sure. 

“Amy’s missing.” Alex glanced back at him, his glasses reflecting briefly in the faint beams of weak moonlight that managed to reach through the leaves and branches above. “Disappeared without a trace, so we’ve been looking for her.” 

“Oh… I… I didn’t know. Sorry to hear that.” He let the silence drift back over them. Leaves and twigs cracked beneath their feet. Every so often he swore there was something moving in the forest around them—a deer perhaps with how big it sounded. “...Wait… You don’t think it has any relation to my cousin going missing, do you? Because they’re fine! Well, not… totally, but they aren’t missing anymore. But have you called the cops? They might be able to help.” 

“Of course I did.” Alex lied through his teeth, trying to avoid seeming overly agitated by Ethan’s talking. “They didn’t find anything. Even her roommate doesn’t know where she went.” 

“Oh…” He bought it without question, as he felt it’d be odd for Alex to lie about his girlfriend.  

Once again they fell into silence. Ethan wasn’t sure how long they’d been walking but it was enough to know that he wouldn’t be able to easily get back out again. Looking back, he swore for a moment a shadowed figure had ducked between the trees. A shudder went through him and he quickened his pace to walk next to Alex. 

“So how much farther? Where’re we going anyway? You just said you wanted to catch up, not… walk around the woods at night. It’s kinda creepy.” 

“Up ahead.” 

Alex’s hand twitched on the gun in his jacket. Not long now. Soon another loose end would be tied up before Jay could make it an issue. It was nothing against his old classmate, but his fate had been sealed the moment he answered Jay’s call—or perhaps when Ethan’s cousin had gone missing. He’d never actually thought of the incident as related, and honestly had forgotten about it for the most part, but hearing it again played with his paranoia. 

“Better to be safe. This needs to be contained.” 

“Wish one of us thought to bring a flashlight… Keep hearing something behind us, I’d be nice to see what it was, or you know, where we’re going?” He stared at the back of Alex’s head as the man picked up the pace again. Squinting, Ethan thought he could make out a large tunnel peeking through the trees; his footsteps slowed. “Hey, uh, you keep going. I… I have to uhm… tie my shoe.” 

There was silence. 

“Alex?” Ethan looked around, realizing he’d somehow lost the man in the dark. “Why don’t I feel like I’m alone?” 

He stumbled onward and hesitantly into the tunnel, hoping to find him, after all it wasn’t like Alex could just disappear into thin air! Ethan’s heart leapt and a startled shout left him as he tripped over one of the large boulders near the other side. He screamed even louder when he saw what he’d landed on: a mutilated body. Behind him came an unnoticed click as Alex turned off the gun’s safety. 

---

Hoody had been watching the pair ever since he’d seen Jay’s entry where Ethan ignored the admittedly dodgy advice to avoid meeting up with Alex. Now he burst into action, silent as a shadow as he charged Alex from behind. His gloved hand clamped down and sharply twisted Alex’s hand. A satisfying snap of bone and the clatter of the gun made a grin spread over his masked face. 

Not long after, his partner showed up to take it from there. Masky was such a good attack dog. It was unlikely that either of them would succeed in killing the murderer before the thing in the suit showed up, but they could try.

He grabbed Ethan, signaling to the distraught man that it was time to go as he tugged them away from the corpse. Behind him, the sounds of a struggle were starting to worry him. It would be bad for all of them if Alex got the upperhand long enough to grab the gun. Ethan wasn’t doing much to help the situation, as he was trying to get out of his grip—and was succeeding at it. 

“I can’t leave them!” The man reached his free hand out towards the body. 

“And I thought Jay was hard to keep alive.” 

With a wave of nausea, the Operator showed up as expected. Masky shot him a look before staggering off into the trees. Hoody turned and ran in another direction, luckily with Ethan now on his heels. At least he had that much sense. The hooded figure doubted he’d want to come near here after tonight and hopefully would stay out of this altogether; Ethan had no place in this mess anymore than Jessica did.

#marble hornets #alex kralie #a03 fanfic #slenderverse #creepypasta #one shot #marble hornets one shot #brian thomas #hoody #mh brian #mh hoody #mh alex #marble hornets oc #original character #slenderverse oc #slenderverse one shot #jay merrick #mh jay

[no-droids]

Rumors, Freebies, and a Race for Last Place

Part Two of The Bet series

Pairing: Poe Dameron/Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 22.5K DONT say shit alright just don’t

Warnings: Okay. There is degradation in this, some name calling and heated interactions. There is a LOT of smut, dirty talk and rough sex. If these things offend you, please do not continue reading.

***

It’s recommended to read part one first.

***

Getting into the x-wings is always fun.

It actually might be your favorite part.  Granted, alarm bells ringing and thousands of jumpsuits scrambling in all directions is never typically a good thing, but there’s also an inherent rush about it, a thrill in launching up the metal paneling as quick as you can and suiting up to provide aid.  It’s a side-effect of camaraderie, of being surrounded by like-minded individuals willing to do everything they can to help.  You never feel like you’re going to your death, even though that’s often the grim reality for at least one of you on a good day.  There’s always a roaring in your ears while you do it, adrenaline sharpening your senses and preparing yourself for conflict, not thinking anything beyond gogogogogo—

But getting out of the x-wing is… not great.  At least for you.  It’s sluggish.  Your body is always completely drained and you never come out of it feeling the same way you went in.  Even in times of victory, there’s a somberness inside you after battle.  As much as you tell yourself you’re fighting for good, for prosperity against an evil machine hellbent on enslaving the galaxy, there’s only so many explosions lighting up in front of your eyes and screams cutting out through your comms you can take before winning just doesn’t really feel like winning anymore.  Most pilots are able to handle it better than you are, but since you joined the Resistance, you’ve never truly felt the desire to celebrate.  Not even when you serve a massive, glaring defeat to the other side.  There’ll always be at least one missing x-wing, one empty seat at the table, one person not here to celebrate with you.

You came back in one piece this time.  Barely.

The whole mission went sideways—literally.  You’d purposefully stationed the tandem just outside the coordinates you were meant to be surveilling so that you’d be hidden from sight and dead to the scanners should the fleet arrive, but something must’ve happened.  You must’ve powered down a few seconds too early after he turned the thrusters off, because apparently the ship drifted in dead space for close to eight hours without either of you noticing, having no working computers to actively read your location and correct it.  You were sitting ducks right in the hyperspace drop zone by the time the First Order showed up, and by that point you had no choice but to engage.

“Gold-Ten,” a voice murmurs from behind you, and you blink, suddenly seeing the base landing platform stretching out long in front of you, hundreds of docking ships and boisterous pilots scrambling out of them to hug their comrades and congratulate them even as medics rush past with white coats and gurneys.  They’re never for the pilots, but they dispatch healers anyways whenever a convoy returns in case a straggler gets picked up.  There’s an unspoken understanding in space battle—pilots never get injured.  They either come back unharmed, or they don’t come back at all.

Dameron.

You turn around and watch him slowly approach you with an unreadable expression, his jumpsuit still bunched halfway down his torso.  The once bright white sleeveless undershirt is now greasy and damp with sweat,  his dark curls sticking to his forehead.  He winces with every bow-legged step—you know the feeling—before he’s standing directly in front of you and something is carefully being pulled out of your hands.  You didn’t even realize you were holding onto anything.

Your helmet.  You forgot to leave it in the x-wing, and you’ve been carrying it around under your arm aimlessly while mentally checking off the squadrons as they return, counting the numbers you lost today while everybody else hugs and whoops and claps each other on the back.

It’s not as bad as you were expecting it was going to be, not as bad as it seemed just an hour earlier when you were listening to Dameron bellow out evasive flight maneuvers a millisecond before he enacted them and you adjusted your firing at the TIEs accordingly.  You used to think you were quick with how rapidly you could suit up and fly out, drop in to assist and engage, but on the other side, it felt like your reinforcements lollygagged for ages before arriving.  You were left to defend against an entire fleet in one stupid ship, more lines of TIEs sinking like flies from launch decks every second.

“Gold-Ten,” you hear again, and you blink a few times, needing to focus your vision before you can find his gaze.

Dameron’s palm, previously hovering a few inches above your shoulder, suddenly drops to spread along the curve of it and you take a deep breath, almost wanting to shudder at the feeling of something touching you.  You channel all your focus into it, feel his fingers branch out strong along the tight muscles in your neck, giving you an anchor you automatically lean into.

You and him are no strangers to touching.  Before today it was mostly reserved to poking and prodding and flicking and light slapping in an effort to piss each other off, but now… you can’t even think about it right now, your body will just fucking glitch out on you.  After everything that just happened, you cannot think about where else that hand has been recently, not right now.

“You did… you did really fucking good today,” he tells you quietly, slowly trailing his hand down the length of your entire arm until he catches your wrist and a few of your fingers in his loose grip.  “Seriously.  That was… we were…”

His touch is so present, so reassuring.  Grounding, when all your mind wants is to just float away.  You glance down at where his fingers are gently tangled with yours and you feel your hand tighten just slightly, the smallest squeeze while he blinks down at you.

“We almost died, like… every single second,” you barely manage to croak, not really having the words to express it right now.  You always need at least an hour or two after missions like this to just sit in one place and regroup.  Usually you find yourself wandering back to your room to lay on the bed and stare up at the ceiling while you consider your own mortality, but Dameron interrupted you this time before you could process it by yourself.  “We…”  Your voice sounds absolutely shredded.  “W-We shouldn’t even be alive right now.”

“I know,” he nods in soft agreement, taking a small step closer to you.  “But we are alive.  Hey.”  He dips his head as soon as your gaze starts to drift, catching your eyes once more and drawing your attention back to the present with a squeeze of your hand.  “We’re alive, right?  Be alive with me.”

You take a big breath in and close your eyes, feeling the oxygen fill your lungs once more, but this time, it’s… restorative.  A wonderful, beautiful reminder of your existence.  You’re alive.  Usually the word just feels like a synonym for persevering.  Pushing onwards despite trials and tribulations, not looking back.  But the way he says it, especially with his hand in yours and a quiet invitation to tag along, it sounds… breathtaking.  Full of light, and hope.  It suddenly leaves the dim shadows and slides into a completely different category of feelings, feelings you’d never imagine being able to conjure so quickly after such a close brush with death.  Alive—it slots right in next to words like colorful, radiant, sunshine, and butterflies.  Enchanting words, ones you’d like to hear again and again.

Your eyes slowly open and there he is, the man you were sure was going to accompany you to the afterlife.  You were stuck with Poe Dameron in one of the closest calls you can remember, and strangely, his presence was nothing if not… a comfort.  For the first time in your life, you were grateful he was there.

You open your mouth, suddenly feeling the needy, unfounded urge to tell him that.  “I’m gla—”

“Dameron!”  You hear a series of voices call from somewhere to your left, and he immediately drops your hand to whip his body around and place himself directly between you and the approaching onlookers, using his large frame to hide you from their sight.

“What’s up, Briggs?”  Dameron projects to one pilot in particular that seems to be leading the group, his back oddly close to you in this position.  Your fingers still feel tingly from where he was holding onto them.

A chorus of congratulatory, “Nice flying, Captain!” and the like can be heard floating through the air from beyond his shoulders, before the leader speaks loudly over them.  “Hey—me, Seven, Six, and Twelve were gonna grab some drinks in the mess hall with a few of the Blue girls,” he tells Dameron, slowing to a stop as soon as he sees you standing awkwardly behind him.  “Oh hey, Goldie.”

You lift a hand and clear the remainder of the dissociation from your throat, not knowing him well enough beyond the squadron he and his group fly with.  “Greenies.”

“Anyways, I guess they wanted to know if you’d come too.  These idiots are convinced they’re never gonna give us the time of day unless you—”

“Uh—fine, whatever, just give me a few minutes alright?”  Dameron quickly assures him with a dismissive wave of his hand.  “I’ll meet up with you guys later.”

A few of them take turns giving him heavy claps on the shoulder and acclamatory words before the group eventually disperses, and he waits a few more seconds for their attention to fully scatter in another direction before turning back to you.

Shit, he’s standing really close.  Why is he so close to you?  You take a step back and blink up at him, the noises of the landing deck gradually amplifying back up to normal volume as you retreat back into your own space.  Since when did he have that effect on you?  You suddenly feel wide awake, and the chorus of happy chaos surrounding you is something you’re finally able to take in.  You knew it was happening before, but it was like it just existed outside of the creeping numbness.  Now, the knot of internal turmoil has untied itself a bit and you feel your surroundings start to fight for your direct attention.

Dameron continues to look at you the same exact way, though.  Like you’re still the only one here.

You look down at his half-suited figure and blink at the helmet loosely held in one of his hands.  Hey.  Hey, that’s yours—

“Give me that,” you hiss, suddenly snatching it from his fingertips.  “You have people waiting.”

The cutting words serve to snap him out of whatever spell he’s under.  Dameron quickly lifts his head and looks around a few times with sharp eyes, before hooking your elbow and twisting you into a complete 180 until your back faces most of the excitement.  You resist, immediately trying to push him off you and worried he’s going to confront you about… things, but he’s determined.

He doesn’t say anything to you at all, though.  His fingers quickly grasp the baggy fabric of your jumpsuit even as you sputter and start to ask what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, and you glance down just in time to see him yanking the gaping velcro closed at your crotch.

Your cheeks instantly start burning as he tugs and smooths the fabric down until it’s seamless once more, especially when his eyes flick up to yours without moving his head.  Fuck, you’re instantly hot with some wicked emotion, a mixture of embarrassment and outrage and… something else.  Maker, you almost wish you were numb and disoriented again, if only so you could avoid feeling whatever the fuck this is.

You quite suddenly shove your helmet back into his stomach with an infuriated sound even as he doubles over with a shocked whoosh of air, changing your mind about returning it to the ship yourself before storming off without another word.

*** 

Okay, so you’ve done some thinking, and.  Well.  Fuck him, that’s what you’ve decided.

No—not… fuck him.  But like, fuck him.  You know.  In the negative sense of the word.  The bad fuck.

There’s a full tray of food sitting in front of you but you’ve so far been unable to touch it.  Mostly you’re just wondering why the fuck you’re even here.  Well, you know why you’re here—you should eat, it’s dinnertime and this is the mess hall.  You’ve been known to skip out on meals after heavy missions, secluding yourself away and just wallowing for a bit, but you… strangely didn’t feel like doing that today.  You don’t want to self-isolate when you feel okay enough to avoid it, not again.  So you’re here, because the clock says your tummy should want food, but you can’t bring yourself to even look at it.

No, you’re looking at him.  Glaring, actually.

Across the mess hall and beyond the transparisteel divider that separates the cafeteria from the bar area, Dameron is all eyebrows and smiles and side nudges and winks right now.  You can’t hear him—the sound won’t travel this far, but you can see him situated in the middle of a rowdy group of pilots.  He laughs in that disgustingly charming way of his, where his stupidly cute nose scrunches up all cute and stupid and you want to just ask the Maker why he’s doing this shit to you.  What have you done to deserve this torture?  Sure, you may have willingly agreed to it, even… conceived and propositioned the idea, and sure, absolutely nothing is stopping you from forfeiting and walking away at this exact second, but does that make it okay?  No, you’ve decided.  It’s not okay.  He’s not allowed to… to make you feel like this, so fuck him.  In the bad way.

“Just fuck him already,” a voice suddenly grumbles as someone plops down into the seat to your right, plastic trays of food clattering loudly on the table and snapping you out of your reverie.  Gold-Sixteen blocks your view as he silently drops into the seat in front of you and wraps his green lekku around his neck a few times before immediately beginning to shovel food into his mouth, while Gold-Three opens her box of blue milk next to you and continues.  “The Blues never fucking shut up about it, it’s getting annoying.”

“Don’t listen to her, Dime,” Gold-Eleven tells you, quickly occupying the seat on your left and biting into a crunchy piece of fruit, talking loudly over the chatter even as he chomps.  “Rossi just knows her pool is up tomorrow, she doesn’t want to lose any of her precious credits.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Gold-Three immediately snaps, leaning forward and around you to point the prongs of her fork at Eleven threateningly.  “Zhang’s pool starts on Sunday.”

“Oh fuck off, you guys are betting on this now?”  You groan, shoving your plate away with a flick of your fingers now that you’re certain you’ve completely lost your appetite.  Sixteen immediately snatches up one of your bread rolls while Zhang swipes your juice and Rossi goes for a packet of glockaw sauce.

“You’re the one who announced it in front of everybody, we’re just being active spectators,” Rossi returns, ripping the packet and pouring the sauce on her vegetables with a shrug.  “How the fuck do you bet against fucking each other though, that’s my question?  It’s a paradox, wouldn’t you both just lose at the same time?”

“Dameron and I aren’t going to fuck,” you tell her very slowly and clearly, starting to get a headache.  Why is it impossible to avoid this conversation topic, even with an entire Resistance base to roam around in?  “Ever.  The bet never had anything to do with fucking each other, it’s about not fucking other people.”

“Literally what is the difference?”  You hear Rossi ask with her mouth full, but Zhang speaks over her.

“Somebody should probably tell Nine that, she’s the bookie,” he tosses out carelessly, dropping the core of his piece of fruit to his tray before wiping his hands on his jumpsuit.  You bury your face in your hands and let out a loud, exhausted sound into your palms, not knowing which response serves to aggravate your already emotionally overloaded ass even more.  Nine is the bookie, of fucking course she is.  “But hey, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think any of it actually goes outside of Gold, so.”

“I’ve heard the Blues talking about it, but that’s it,” Rossi chimes in while chewing some of her veggies.  “Maybe some Reds.  Point is everybody else thinks it’s already happening, honestly.”

“What the fuck,” you whisper, using your knuckles to rub at the backs of your eyes until bright spots appear.  Where are stress headaches localized?  Are those the ones right under your brow bone?  Because stars, you feel it.  “Fucking… why?  Why do people think that me and Dameron are…?”

Nobody at the table immediately responds, and you drop your hands after a moment to look at each of their astounded faces in turn.

“You fucking serious, bitch?”  Rossi blurts first, her voice completely deadpan, and you growl in vexation.

“Have I not been vocal enough about my severe dislik—”

“And yet you kicked Nine out of your room to let him bunk with you,” Zhang immediately suggests.

“You request mission assignments together,” Rossi adds.

“Spend your off-days together,” Zhang continues.

“You’re both really weird about how long it takes the other person to shower,” Rossi tacks onto the list Zhang is now making on his fingers and you shake your head frantically.

“No—no, that’s so that we know neither one of us is cheating,” you try to explain, and you already know it sounds unconvincing without needing the two quick, lofty and sarcastic nods on either side of you.  “Showers and off-days are prime masturb—no, you know what?  No.  I’m tired of the assumptions, I don’t owe anyone shit.  This is super fucking uncool of you guys, you know that?  It’s insane that this is what counts as gossip in the Resistance nowada—”

“There’s only so much bad news people can take, Ten,” Gold-Sixteen grunts down at his almost finished plate, and all three of you snap your gazes across the table at him.  The forest-tinted twi’lek doesn’t speak much, it’s uncommon to hear his voice without distortion over the comms, but you blink as his sharp teeth continue to form words without looking at you.  “Quit being so sensitive.  Rather bet on this shit than which system is getting demolished next.”

And with that, Sixteen excuses himself with a silent nod, having gobbled down his full plate while you, Three, and Eleven were bickering.  You feel your cheeks flare with anger and shame—you didn’t deserve that, you immediately reassure yourself, but the hidden self-doubt the comment sows just further contributes to your upset.  You want to call out to his back that just because the First Order exists doesn’t mean you have to put up with your own fucking squadron turning you and your mortal enemy into glorified race fathiers, but he’s already leaving the mess hall while Rossi and Zhang have moved on to other topics, both of them continuing to grab more food from your tray as they talk.

You have a tough shell.  But today was… a lot.  You bite your lip down at the table against the sudden wave of emotion, blinking quickly to clear the weakness watering your vision.

See, this—this right here is why you use last names.  These people aren’t your friends.  Betting on who you fuck for laughs, using you as a source of entertainment without your consent just because they’re in the middle of a war, and then guilting you into feeling like you’re the one acting like a stuck up bitch about it?  You’re fighting in the same fucking war—you’re on the front lines just like everybody else and nobody gets to lecture you on the devastation of battle.  You almost died today.  You fought tooth and fucking nail to stay alive and by all accounts, you shouldn’t even be sitting here right now, much less dealing with this childish shit.  This is your squadron.  These people are supposed to be the ones closest to you out of everyone, the ones you’ve been flying into chaos in formation with for years, and yet not a single damn person has even mentioned your performance to you today, all anyone can ever seem to talk about is—ugh.

Unfortunately, your unobstructed view also allows you to look at the source of your bad mood once more, immediately noticing the way more people have crowded around him now, and the headache continues to throb painfully behind your eyeballs.  You were in the same ship, does nobody realize that?  You were gunning, he was flying—you were offense, he was defense—that’s the only fucking difference, and yet, it’s like that side of the mess hall is just completely lit up with hearty laughter and music playing from someone’s holopad and congratulatory drinks being passed around, while yours is… well.

You continue to fume inwardly, struggling somewhere between bitter and hurt, and you can see your reflection through the transparisteel giving him a death glare, wondering how many of the people surrounding him have made bets with Nine.  How many of his little entourage have their money wagered on Dameron getting in your pants by a specific dat—

You stop short while staring at his handsome face, an infuriating, horrifying thought suddenly striking you.  No… no, he wouldn’t…

“Does he know?”  You immediately interrupt the chitchat between Three and Eleven to ask with a deadly edge in your voice, tipping your forehead at pretty boy.  Ooh, you can already feel it burning.  It would be so fucking typical.  Oooooh, Maker, if he’s heard even a fucking whisper about this outside wagering going on amongst the pilots, you will fucking smother his ass in his sleep tonight.  How could he not know?  With as many friends as he has?  If you’re just being made aware of it, then it’s a given that somebody has to have told him by now, which just means that it’s all the more possible—shit, even more likely—that he’s… participating, too.  You do your best to keep your voice even, but you can hear the quiet fury shaking in it.  “The bet about when me and him are gonna fuck, does he know about it?”

“Who—Dameron?”  Zhang turns his head.  “No, I don’t think s—”

“Yeah,” Rossi says at the exact same time, and your blood instantly turns ice cold as Zhang leans around you to blink at her stupidly.

“No.  Yeah?  What?”  He says, sounding genuinely confused.

“Yeah, remember?”  Rossi confirms with a shrug.  “Nine was mad as all shit, came at me in the rec room a few weeks ag—fucking Maker, Eleven, you were there.”

“Oh,” Zhang suddenly exhales, “yeah, that’s right.  Oh, yeah, Dime, he knows.”

You’re—fuck, you’re about to rampage.  You’re burning a fucking hole through Dameron while he converses animatedly with his numerous buddies, waving an open hand and shaking his head at someone with a smile and then gesturing broadly to this side of the transparisteel.  His pool is probably up soon, you figure.  That’s why he came onto you so strong earlier today.  He was going to get two weeks of your pay, plus whatever he must’ve offered up to Nine that says he’d get it to happen within a certain amount of time.  Perfect, your old roomie and the arch nemesis you stupidly agreed to trade her for, two asshole peas in an asshole pod.

“—she thought I was the one who told him—”  You know Rossi is still talking but you’re not actually hearing any of it.  Nobody has any fucking idea.  Nobody has any idea what he did to you today, how unbelievably close you were to… to actually…  “—was all just for fun, but then he had a few choice words for her and told his squad that if any of them had made a—”  You don’t know why you’re so surprised honestly, you should’ve expected…

Wait.

“Wait,” you suddenly blurt, and while she shuts up immediately, your mind starts whirling even faster.  Dameron had some… what?  “Wait.  Explain.  You’re saying he didn’t…”  You slowly shake your head, furrowing your eyebrows and trying to piece it together.  “He didn’t… place a bet with her, or anything?”

“What?  No,” Rossi shakes her head a lot more forcefully than you, getting frustrated.  “No, fucking—didn’t you hear anything I just said, Ten?  He got all high and mighty for some stupid reason, totally reamed her ass out for it.”

“But…”  You blink, stunned.  “But… why?  Why would he…?”

Rossi shrugs.  “Fuck if I know.  All she said was that he ordered Black not to throw in, made her lose a fuckton of money from it.  Had no idea Dameron would be so touchy about his sex life, honestly.”

He… he isn’t.  He isn’t touchy about his sex life—you feel like he never shuts up about it.

Rossi continues talking, but you’re not listening again.  You stare stupidly at yourself in the clear transparisteel as Dameron’s voice comes back to you, repeating something you specifically remember him saying earlier today.  Something you thought was just a careless jab at the time, aimed blindly at one of your comrades with nothing more than the intent to piss you off.

…I swapped housing assignments with your shitty roommate and slept in the bunk below yours for a month and a half… 

You blink beyond your own reflection to focus on him once more, still lost in his own little world, not paying a single lick of attention to you while you’re essentially having a fucking crisis over here.  You didn’t think the insult had any real substance to it at all.  You just naturally assumed that was the result of him wanting to lash out at anything or anyone remotely close to you, if only to get a reaction, so you never gave him one or paid it any mind.  

This is why he said that about Nine?  Because he knew she had organized this fucked up betting pool behind your back?

Stars, you need to get out of here, all these rumors are fucking with your head.  Your assumptions and the hairpin turnarounds are giving you worse whiplash than Dameron’s… well, admittedly spectacular flying today.  You were wrong about wanting to avoid isolating—in fact, that suddenly sounds like a phenomenal idea.

So, you just get up and leave right in the middle of Rossi’s sentence, needing some time alone.  Neither of them call out to you as you quickly walk around the table and through the barrier towards the exit, thank the Maker, and you’re just about to retreat with no interruptions until suddenly two Greenies step in front of you and block your path.

You halt immediately, looking up at them with a furrowed brow.  “What now?”  You grunt, not having the patience to even wait for a response before attempting to squeeze around them.

“Hey, so you really saved our asses out there today, Goldie,” the one on the left quickly sidesteps in front of you and rushes to say, and you settle your weight back on your heels with a huff.

“What are you talking about?”  You glance back and forth between them, not recalling a time you’ve ever spoken to either one, before jerking your head to gesture over your shoulder.  “Go congratulate trophy boy over there, he was the one flying.”

“We did,” the one on the right tips sideways to look at Dameron behind your shoulder, likely still laughing and joking with someone about something, something super fucking dumb probably.  “Well, uh.  We tried.”

“What?”  You let out a heavy sigh and rub your temples.  “The fuck is that supposed to mean?  I don’t have the time.”

“He won’t take any credit, just keeps saying that all he did was steer you around,” the other one shrugs as his companion straightens and looks down at you once more.  “Wouldn’t accept any drinks we offer him, nothing.  So we thought we’d buy you one instead.  Unless you’re… leaving?”

It takes you a few seconds to process that, even as he allows the open invitation to hang in the air.  You can’t stop the way your torso automatically twists around to study your copilot from across the mess hall in baffled silence, suddenly realizing that they’re… they’re right.  Dameron has no congratulatory drinks sitting in front of him even though more and more people have made their way into the bar.  He’s just sitting there grinning and nodding along to something someone else is saying, completely and blissfully unaware of the extent to which he’s fucked with you in the past twenty minutes.  The past… whole day.  Month and a half.  Or… fuck, how long have you known him?  Two years?

But then Dameron’s gaze gradually drifts this way, before suddenly locking with yours.  His eyes flick behind you to look at the two Greenies blocking your exit, and then back to the way you’re staring at him, wide-eyed and startled.

He suddenly stands up and starts to take a few steps towards you, and the sheer abruptness of the movement causes you to react immediately.  You stumble your way backwards through the two pilots, feeling a few hands reach out to steady you through the awkward fumbling, but you slap them away and announce loud enough for Dameron to hear beyond them that you’re taking a shower, and you don’t give a fuck how long it’s gonna be this time.

***

The knob squeaks as you turn the water on.  Usually you’d step back and wait the grueling five minutes or longer it takes for it to heat up with your arms crossed over your naked chest, but this time you move directly under the freezing spray, hoping to use the ice cold to shock your system.

You're finally alone.

Technically solitude doesn’t really exist within this base.  You’ve heard of others that are a little nicer, having a little more room for the ranks, but not here.  Housing assignments, showers and restrooms, mess and recreation halls—they’re all communal.  Everyone is given rotating shifts, so while that means there’s never any true quiet to be found, it also means that showers are spread out well throughout the day and night.

But, at least for this moment, there’s nobody else around.  At least in here, in the tiled chamber with multiple shower heads stationed around you—you’re sure there are a few girls lingering in the locker room and the entry area beyond it, but for right now, you’re blissfully by yourself.

And yet, you can’t seem to enjoy it.

You know you should be basking in the isolation.  You should be thrilled at the rarity of only hearing your own flipflops slap against the floor as you turn around and drench your hair with the icy spray, but the lack of an immediate distraction for your focus allows it to wander to things you don’t want it to.

Explosions, mostly.  Lighting up like fireworks in front of your eyes even as they flutter closed and let water drip down them.  Constant, never-ending.  Some of them small—TIEs you shot down, allies drawing fire away from you and then subsequently getting overwhelmed, zipping through dense debris from deadly collisions so quick that you had trouble distinguishing friend from foe.  Some of them were massive—star destroyers splitting apart, warp drives overloading, enormous casualty counts.  You don’t know how many lives you took today, not directly.

The beginning was the worst—when you were still slightly disoriented, when you were panicked and screaming into the comms for assistance.  Then the closest stationed tandem showed up first—Red-Two and Eight, you think it was.  Doesn’t matter now.  They took some heat off you before the cavalry arrived, but you remember Dameron barking out your name the second their left thruster got nicked and they started spiraling, a ferociously deep, “With me!” cutting through the white noise.  It was enough to snap you back, forcing you to instantly flick your eyes away and focus dead ahead without witnessing their demise.

It wouldn’t have normally been necessary.  You’ve been flying with the Resistance for years, you’ve seen way too much bloodshed by now.  But you’ve never been the catalyst of it—you’ve always been able to confront threats accompanied by your squadron, right between Nine and Eleven, the flight controls rumbling steady under your palms.  You’ve never faced down an entire fleet in one single ship.  You’ve never had to rely so directly on the skills of another pilot in order to stay alive.

The water slowly heats to a lukewarm while you reach for the shampoo.

Surprisingly, for as much as the two of you clash in normal interactions, it was like everything eventually became… synchronized.  Spectacularly so.  Dameron started off the enemy confrontation by calling out his flight patterns to give you a chance to adjust your firing in real time, but then at some point, it just stopped being necessary.  There was a moment where you both were able to suddenly… get it.  Get each other.  He didn’t have to say anything after that—you could predict each other without second guessing, react instantaneously, and work your way through the littered battlefield accordingly.  You never thought it would be possible to collaborate so well with someone you’ve spent ages despising.  Sure, you’d both die if you didn’t—shit, you’d probably still both die regardless—but this kind of teamwork extended beyond the need to survive.  It doesn’t matter how much you want to stay alive when reading someone else’s mind is physically impossible, but for some reason…  You have no idea why, but it apparently came naturally between you.  It fell to pure instinct, pure reaction, and remarkably, his would somehow match yours perfectly, every single time.

You lather the shampoo in your hair, remembering how his voice changed over the course of the mission.  How it gradually shifted from panicked roars and barked orders into ecstatic cheers and genuine praise after landing a difficult shot, how he just couldn’t seem to stop whooping.  

You smile softly as the tepid water rinses away the dirt and sweat from your body, until the temperature is brought up to a gentle, comfortable warmth raining down you and echoing in the empty shower room.

And, your first name.  Dameron kept calling you that, the whole time.  The one you’re now absolutely certain you’ve never personally given to him.  The one he would’ve had to have listened for specifically.  Remembered, or at least asked the right person about.  But why?  It’s not… it makes no sense, he doesn’t give a shit.  He’s notorious for not giving a shit.  He can’t even be bothered to remember the names of the girls he’s actually with—so why did he go to the trouble to figure out yours?  You’ve been nothing but a thorn in his side the same way he is to you, right?

Right?

Your mind starts recollecting more recent events, trying to work through and process it by yourself.  He was… singing your praises today.  He was openly giving you credit for the win while you pouted in the corner and assumed the absolute worst of him.  As much as you’re frustrated that nobody else seemed to give voice to your contributions, you’re even more surprised that he was the one who did.

And then even earlier.  Gold-Nine, holding wagers with members of your squad (and others, apparently) about when you’re going to fuck him.  Dameron, tearing her a new one for it, forbidding Black Squadron from throwing in and not attempting to hide his disdain for her from you.  He… he defended you.  Stood up for you when your own squad was being a bunch of dicks behind your back.  And nobody ever fucking mentioned it to you.  What did Rossi say—a few weeks ago?  He’s known all this time and only today, only after you… openly showed more interest in him than you ever have, after you worked up enough nerve to try in your own little way to flirt back this time instead of responding to his casual comments with contempt and disgust, only today is when he decided to make a real move on you.

…Your mind is completely blank and yet you still feel yourself start to heat up just a bit at even alluding to the events that took place earlier.  The way his fingers felt—

Steam begins to fill the open concept chamber while you shake your head against the train of thought and reach for the soap, beginning to circle the bar along your arms and shoulders with a sigh.  This is already the longest shower you’ve taken in almost two months, and your body slowly relaxes under the mist and heat as you take forever cleaning yourself, slowly and hypnotically rubbing the soap along your skin.

The second you let your eyelids dip shut at the feeling, you immediately shiver at a flash of Dameron dragging his finger out of his mouth and blinking dark eyes at you through the transparisteel.

Fuck.  The soap slips from your hand and you quickly catch it against your body before it falls to the ground completely, suddenly feeling the need to breathe in the misty air a bit harder.  Shower, you’re in the shower.  Come on.

The dirt and grime is scrubbed from your face and you tilt your head to move the bar of soap across your neck.  As it lathers, you can’t help but remember the way his lips felt against the skin right there, the scratch of his beard.  You keep working the soap against that same spot for a while, not knowing if you’re trying to wash away the sensation or simulate it, until you gradually slow and make it lighter, softer—yes, that’s closer to how it felt, that’s—

Soon the water is boiling hot and you’re trying not to boil along with it, remembering everything he said against this spot, the filth he whispered to you here.  Your pussy starts to throb between your legs as the memories play out in your mind, how close he got you to shattering bliss without even really working for it.  If you put it all together collectively, you don’t think he actually touched you for more than a minute or two total today.  Mostly he just talked to you, but stars, he hit buttons you didn’t even think you had, had you a split second away from cumming harder than Maker knows while his finger rested just above your clit and provided no stimulation whatsoever.

Fuck, you enjoyed it.  You did, you’ll admit it when there’s no one else here but you.  You enjoyed the fuck out of it.  You wish he’d do it again.  Force you to lose, force you to cum so you can at least blame him for it, remove your responsibility from the equation and allow you to put just one more thing on his shoulders, to taste ecstacy instead of expecting you to bear the weight of pretending you don’t need it any longer.  He was doing you a favor, you realize that now.  Your body is staging a fucking coup and you wish you could’ve called mercy before it got to this agonizing point.  He turns you on, you fucking admit it.  He inspires violent emotions in you—jealousy, arousal, anger, temptation—thoughts you don’t want to have and consolidating it all into various forms of hatred makes the finer details easier to ignore.  Your perception of him has always been skewed by your iron will, but he all but took a fucking sledgehammer to it today, dented it beyond all recognition.  You want him, you want to him to take it all away, you want him to fuck you—in the… fuck, in the good way.

You don’t have a thought beyond that.  Your hand quickly falls down the length of your body to wash your private parts, biting your lip as your hips slowly start to rock into it.  You’re getting clean, you’re getting clean, this is how you clean yourself, this is… yes, as long as you keep the bar of soap pressed between your palm and the top of your curls like this, you’re cleaning yourself and you can just… ease your finger down just a little bit and—

Flipflops suddenly echo from the twisting hallway leading to the tiled freshers, and you immediately snatch your hand back up again, not needing to turn around to know another girl is walking into the room.  A knob somewhere to your right eventually makes a dull squeak as you quickly finish washing up and turn your showerhead off, grabbing your towel and wrapping it around yourself.

Maker, you feel like your pussy is plotting your demise.  Fuck, you can’t believe you almost cheated in the fucking showers just now where literally anyone could walk in, you thought you would’ve had more self-control than that.  You make your way into the changing rooms and grab your pajamas, starting to tug them on without fully drying your body and having only one thought in mind.  

Dameron will probably be celebrating late tonight.  You can tuck in early, scurry back to your room and cheat there.

Well, no, not cheating, because you clearly remember making a very compelling argument about wet dreams earlier today.  Maker, a freebie, the word has never sounded so enticing.  What you’d say amounts to a… bye-week orgasm basically, since you know he’s already lost at least one match against his own body and you’re meant to be competing on the same level.  It’s only fair to let you persevere through the toughest part of the challenge if he was allowed to throw a game early on and still stay in the competition.  Maybe he threw multiple games, you never got a straight answer concerning that, so it’s still under review.  He could’ve thrown… three games, even.  Or four.

You dress as quickly as possible and then nearly bolt through the entrance area to the restrooms with all the sinks and stalls.  The balled up dirty clothes and wet towel in your arms allow you to hide the way your nipples are stiff and tender against your thin pajamas, and you can’t wait to climb into your bunk and take everything off under the covers.  You’ll be able to cum, at least once.  It’ll relieve so much stress, get rid of this nightmare headache, rip through your body like lightning and paralyze it until you can start over from square one and think like yourself again.

And, you’re just about to power walk your ass back to your quarters when a body nearly slams into yours as soon as you step foot outside the door, your shoulder jerking back just in time to avoid a collision.

A mechanic, you think.  You’re not exactly sure, you don’t hang out with too many of them—he’s Chiss and his glowing red eyes don’t even land on you as you gasp and sidestep him at the last second, but it’s not him that catches the majority of your attention.  He just exited the men’s room at the same time you left the women’s, and the door takes a moment to swing shut behind him.

You freeze.  It can’t be more than a few seconds—but it feels like everything slows down and it lasts a fucking eternity.

Dameron is standing at a sink in the far corner of the room, naked except for a towel identical to the one in your arms wrapped loosely around his waist.  He cradles the base of his own throat with one hand and gently drags a razor down the smooth contour of it with the other, his chin tilted up high and regal while his eyelids dip low to concentrate on his movements.  He glances down and holds the foamy blade under the running faucet, tapping it twice against porcelain before the door slides him out of frame.

I can shave, a low, silky murmur slowly fills your ears, heat swelling low and hot in your tummy.  Tonight, I’ll shave it off.  Make it nice and smooth for you.

You feel like your body is just a collection of rigid knots all tied together, and the one between your legs is the tightest it’s ever been.  Stars, on another day you’d say it feels like a bad cramp, even though you know your injection makes your period rare and like clockwork.  Regardless, the split second image makes you shudder and clamp up painfully, and you just stand there and stare at the closed door for a second, trying not to shake.

Fuck, this is so fucking… presumptuous of him.

Realistically, you know it could have absolutely nothing to do with you.  It’s his face—you’re not self-centered enough to have completely lost your concept of autonomy.  He can do whatever he wants to his body, and that includes facial hair, full stop.  You also know that he’s not being… obvious about it, no matter how much it feels that way to you.  He’s using the sink and mirror at the very end of the room, not any of the ones nearest to the door—but even if he was, it’s not like he could’ve planned for you to walk out at the exact moment the metal hinge was angled wide open.  He couldn’t possibly have intended for this, for you to see him doing this.  He wasn’t making a show, didn’t even notice you standing there.  You blame literally everything on him, or at least you always try your absolute best to—but this one…

It sends a hard shudder down your spine and you clutch the fabric in your arms tighter, trying not to drop it.  Fuck.  This is torture.  Fuck him.  Good and bad—both ways, all the ways he can be fucked, fuck him.  Your head is spinning, you’re sweating fresh out of the shower, you need to cum.  Maybe if you hurry, you can get that precious orgasm before he’s finished, because if Dameron is able to intercept you before you can tend to this, you’re… you’re not sure how you’re going to say no to him.

You don’t even think you want to anymore.  

You feel like you’re just… holding onto it on principle now.  Too stubborn and hardheaded to want change.  Too stuck in your own ways to recognize how much everything already has changed.

Somehow, you end up making your way back to your room, but the whole thing is a blur.  Your flipflops plap against your heels as you navigate through hallways as quick as you can, emptier than you’ve seen them in months.  You know most of the pilots are probably out celebrating in either the mess hall or rec room, but the thought doesn’t really presently register.  Almost nothing registers besides your continuous forward motion and the way you feel yourself throb with every step, aching for something you are going to get tonight.  Fuck, you are so attached to this orgasm now, it’s not going anywhere and neither are you.  You deserve this, you deserve some relief.  Come hell or highwater, it’s happening tonight.

As soon as you step into your room and slap your hand blindly against the wall panel to close the door behind you, you’re carelessly dropping the bundle of fabric to the floor and then shrugging out of your pajamas in the cool pitch darkness, having exactly one mission in mind.  You don’t bother with lights, with brushing your hair, with literally anything besides clamoring up the ladder to your top bunk and wiggling under the thin bedsheet, making sure to pull it up to your chin before your legs butterfly open.  The tip of your finger wets itself on your tongue and then you’re dropping it down and sliding it against your poor clit, the pleasure arcing and flaring so sharp and sensitive even from your touch that you have to give it just a second.

…No, no you don’t.  You don’t have to give it fucking anything.  You keep moving your finger hard and quick even as your hips naturally want to jerk away from it, shoving yourself through the sensitivity with gritted teeth and a ferocious will.

Fuck, how long do you think you have?  Was Dameron shaving pre or post-shower?  You can’t remember, all you know is he had a towel around his waist.  And that thin gold chain hanging down his neck.  Was his hair wet?  Fuck, why can’t you remember?  His chin and jaw were smooth as silk, you know that much.  Post-shower, then.  Probably.  Probably?

His chin and jaw were smooth as silk.  You keep getting stuck on that no matter how chaotically your thoughts whirl; they fling out in different directions at different velocities but all somehow manage to go in a perfect circle and end up at the same place you started.  His chin, his jaw, his mouth, his neck, his chin, his mouth, his jaw, his mouth, his mouth, his mouth—

You feel yourself start to clamp down and you speed up, chasing it.  The pleasure starts burning deep inside you, the fire slowly licking down your thighs and rising up into your abdomen, and then—

And then a series of quiet beeps from the hallway practically blare like alarm bells to your frantic mind.

You immediately stop moving your finger, snapping your legs tight together and flat to the mattress as soon as the door to your room shifts open and fluorescent light spills inside, and you feel like you could actually fucking cry right now.

All this edging is just a form of self-flagellation at this point.  You lay there and try not to make a sound, try not to tremble hard enough to shake the whole bunk with it, but even your breathing feels like it’s going to give you away.  Dameron, shirtless with his towel draped over his shoulder, slowly steps into the room and then pauses almost immediately, making your heart stutter for a second at what so blatantly caught his attention.

One quick glance down towards his feet confirms the simultaneous hope and fear—you left everything on the floor.  The towel, the dirty clothes, and your pajamas are strewn about haphazardly right where he needs to walk.

You know what it must look like to him.  A trail of clothes leading directly to an occupied bed isn’t exactly subtle, even though you didn’t necessarily intend it that way.  Still, what can you say?  Your hand is shoved in between your legs right now and you’re in your birthday suit under this thin sheet, what the fuck can you say to him?  Sorry Dameron, got too caught up with how stupid wet you get me that I left those there on accident on my way to cheat, but totally not because I lowkey want your help doing it.  Convincing, that’ll go over great.

Dameron slowly lifts his head to look at you.  Or, at least you think he does—the light from the open door behind him casts his body in a dark silhouette, but you know your face is perfectly illuminated for him right now.  Blinking down at him from the top bunk with your brows pulled up in the middle, wide-eyed and desperate and caught red-handed.  Fuck, you don’t know if he can see the way your knees are clamped tight together and your hand rests perfectly still against your pussy like this from the angle he’s at, but you know it has to be super fucking obvious either way.  You’re breaking the rules, you’re touching yourself, and you both know it.  You can’t lie, you can’t even sit up without confirming his very valid suspicion.  He can call the game at any point, but…

You watch his head fall back down to study the mess you left for him once more.  Fuck, are you positive that was an accident?  Normally you wouldn’t second guess anything about your own understanding of the interactions that occur between you and him, but—you’ve never done that before.  You’ve lived with roommates on this base for years, you don’t just… get naked before getting into bed, that’s bad form.  How are you going to get up in the morning without having your pajamas shoved near your feet while you sleep?  Wrap this thin bedsheet around yourself and scamper down the ladder until you can snatch them up from the floor, and then what?  Climb all the way back up just to wiggle the clothes on underneath the blanket before going back down again?  Maker, you fucked up, your pussy is plotting your fucking demise.

But then everything inside you pulls taut as Dameron suddenly decides to move.  Slowly, he leans down to catch your orange jumpsuit closest to his feet with a few fingers, before he stands upright and carefully begins folding the fabric without saying a single word to you.  Electricity buzzes through you as he very obviously takes his time with it, using nearly his whole armspan to lengthen and fold the sleeves while his chest and chin meet for support.  When he’s eventually satisfied with it, he takes a few steps toward the empty desk on your side of the room and then sets the neat rectangle of fabric atop it where you usually keep it.

You bite your lip and you can’t help it—you start to move your finger as he goes back to sort the pajamas you wore for barely two seconds from your dirty clothes, folding and putting away whatever is clean and then tossing the rest into the shared laundry basket that gets collected every week.  Somehow it makes you feel even more naked, seeing all your clothes be returned to their proper places, realizing that this is your base state now, this is what you’re going to wear tonight.  Nothing.  You left everything on the floor and trapped yourself up here, he’s simply shifting a pawn forward two spaces in kind now that you’ve made your first move.

You can feel yourself pulse threateningly against your own fingertip while he collects your wet towel and drapes it over your closet door to dry, and your breath comes louder through your nose while you bite back the noises you want to make, the way your movements so desperately want to speed up.  Your hand working the way you want it to under the white sheets would be too much, too revealing, but you don’t know how much longer you’ll be able to care.

But then of course, the asshole has to go and put away his towel and clothes, and you endure through the whole thing while pressing back and forth against your clit so hard and slow that your toes curl and pull the sheet tucked under your chin taut.  After that’s done, he makes his way over to the portshade above his desk and slowly slides it open a few inches, the light of three moons outside gradually filling the room.  However, when Dameron goes back to press a button on the wall panel and close the door to the hallway, you immediately see how much softer it is in here, how the artificial fluorescents have thankfully disappeared and the room illuminates more than it blinds, glows more than it beams.  He presses one more button as the lock inside the paneling slides into place.

You bite your bottom lip and try your best to hide the pleasure you’re building for yourself while he makes his way back to his desk, quietly swiping the radio off it and lowering the volume knob completely before he flips it on.  The noise slowly amplifies until you’re able to catch two distinct voices conversing in Huttese—it’s the only lingua franca that still broadcasts on this old technology in this part of the galaxy, but he’s already flipping through the stations in search of something specific.

If you were thinking straight, you may have actually recognized this for what it is, but you’re having trouble even processing the details of your general surroundings right now, your mind is lagging and too slow at reading between the lines.  Dameron’s doing exactly what he said he would do.  He laid it all out earlier for you in the x-wing, telling you exactly what he wanted plain as day, and now he’s checking the whole list off one by one.  The shade is open and the room is lit just enough to make him out, the door is locked, and he’s finding something to listen to.  Something quiet, and easy.

If you were thinking straight, you’d realize that there’s a much more obvious reason why he shaved his beard—you never told him the truth about how much you liked it.  You never tell him the truth.  You allow—even encourage him to think the sharp things you say to him are exactly how you feel.  He did it because he believed you.

Oh, but you’re not thinking straight.  Your thoughts are scattered and the only thing they can agree upon is how good this feels, even as your breathing starts to grow heavier, grow louder underneath the sound of the radio.  The thought stays right beneath your consciousness, tugging at your preoccupied mind.  You work your finger with just a little more verve now that he’s flipping through the stations, knowing he’s distracted by spinning the dial through intermittent white noise while different voices and songs fill the room for just a second at a time.

Your bed, his voice suddenly echoes through your thoughts, originating from your subconscious but almost sounding like it’s coming from the radio in your delirious mind.  I want you comfortable.

Fuck, the understanding finally clicks the second he flips to a slower song and you start to burn at the thought of what’s next.  The silent promise that his actions allude to.  You have the realization way too late but at least it still comes at all with the state you’re in.  Your hand slows down immediately, not even needing to consciously consider the choice between achieving orgasm through your finger or his mouth.  Still, it’s hard to stop touching yourself completely when it feels so fucking good to your deprived body.

Fuck, it’s barely been a few seconds since your realization and yet you immediately bristle in distress at how fucking long he’s taking.

So you open your mouth.  You’re desperate and needy and on the verge of something, and it comes out without thought.  You don’t think it’s loud enough for him to hear, but his head immediately lifts and looks unseeingly at the wall in front of him for a second, as if he’s questioning if he imagined it.  A soft melody plays on a bluesy guitar while you hiccup and wait, but he doesn’t move.

And then you say it again, higher and tighter in your throat, pitched up to an impatient, girlish whine.  “Poe…”

The radio is tossed onto the bottom bunk as soon as he spins around and walks towards the ladder, but it’s like your finger has a mind of its own the moment he disappears underneath your line of sight.  Your legs spasm against the mattress and you bite your lip, not caring about the frantic way your hand begins moving under the sheet as his muted footsteps climb up the rungs.

Your eyes snap to his as soon as you can see him beyond the railing at your feet, heaving himself up until everything above his waist is above you, too.  His pauses there and his lashes quickly dip to the shameless movements between your legs as you work yourself towards that approaching bliss, and then flick back to the way you’re biting your lip and looking at him so torn, wanting so badly to wait for it but not being able to right now.

Slowly, he begins to move forward, crawling his way up the mattress and over your body, noticeably careful with where he places his limbs.  You’re not hard to dodge, though—you’re like a rigid stick of desperation under him, knees and ankles still clamped tight together and your arms streamlined as close to your body as possible with tension as you keep rubbing your clit.  Not to mention the sheet is thin and shows your figure almost perfectly with how tight you’ve hooked it under your chin, only leaving the finest details to the imagination.

But then there starts to be a little strain against the fabric, an unspoken question he’s still bothering to ask even though you could’ve told him to fuck off ages ago.  Poe could yank the sheet down and flip your shit over and destroy you right now if he wanted—fuck, like you want him to do—but his face slowly appears in front of yours instead and his dark eyes search your features for answers.  The length of his chain dangles from his muscular neck and glows against his golden skin, his whole upper body stretched long and bare over you.

From the gradually increasing tightness pulling on the fabric, you expect the sheet to rip down your body as soon as you lift your chin and let that resistance go, but instead… stars, it’s slow.  Why is he going so fucking slow??  The bedsheet barely flutters down to your collarbone before he’s able to stop tugging on it so hard, and then he just gently inches the hem down from that point on.

Fuck—your eyes drop to his lips as he eventually reveals your shoulders and sternum to the room, and then lower to your cleavage while you let out a hushed whimper, praying he understands the extent of how vulnerable you’re allowing yourself to be.  You don’t do this often—and you definitely don’t do it with someone like him.  He’s the one who said you needed this, isn't he?  So why the fuck is he dragging out the anticipation?  Pretending like he doesn’t see the way you’re begging for help in the middle of another warzone that’s breaking out for the second time today?

Poe’s head drops down to give the contour of your neck a long drag of his tongue, slow and hot and wet, the sheet eventually dropping beneath your nipples and exposing them to the cool air.  You bite your lip and keep working yourself under the fabric even as it’s led down the length of your tummy, and you just get wetter and wetter feeling him mouth at your skin as the radio continues to play soft from the bottom bunk.  He follows the skin as it’s revealed, licking down from your collarbone and working with the increasing rate of your breathing.  His lips never feel like they vary in pressure, even as your chest heaves up and down and your lungs work hard for air.

His open mouth slowly drags down the curve of your breast and it makes your blood burn fire through your veins.  You nearly choke when your nipple is enveloped in soft heat, his tongue quickly fluttering up under the stiff peak and giving it to you so gently, contrasting so light and vernal with how brilliant and neon bright the need between your legs is.  Your hand starts to work quicker, and fuck—you can hear it now, your desperate movements audible over the shallow breaths and the sound of one song gradually fading into another below you.  You’re just too fucking wet and your pussy is smushed with how tight your legs are pressed together—the noise is unavoidable, and Poe’s knees are planted too close to either side of your thighs to spread them really at all.

Fuck, you knock against the resistance regardless to let him know what you want, but he doesn’t budge and it makes you just about lose your damn mind.  Does he have to make everything so fucking difficult?  You couldn’t close your legs earlier and now you can’t open them, and it’s like he’s able to take perfect advantage of each opposing position to prolong your torture.

But then his tongue leaves you even as his jaw opens just slightly, and that’s the only warning you get before his teeth graze your nipple with a sudden arc of sensation and you flare up all at once.

It’s a miracle and a curse that you’re able to stop at the very last second, your hand jerking away from your pussy and flexing into a fucking death claw on your thigh at how close you were, and you don’t know why.  Why did the fuck did you stop?  There’s nothing standing in your way right now, you’ve consciously given yourself express permission to cum, but still.  It must just be learned instinct at this point—hammered into your muscle memory for weeks on end to not allow the pleasure no matter what, especially when you’re this fucking close to it.

Nonetheless you garble out nonsense and cinch inwards on yourself to fight it off now that you’ve apparently decided against it.  There’s nothing worse than a half-assed orgasm, and you have to quickly summon the conviction behind your split second reaction before it’s too late and your body takes the pleasure any way it can get it.

Poe’s mouth releases your nipple at the way your whole spine suddenly hunches in and he drops his forehead to your chest, breathing heavy down the slope of your breast as you tremble and grapple for your sanity.

“Did you just cum?”  Is the first thing he says to you, his voice is so ragged and stony it’s practically gravel crunching as he speaks.

“N-n-no,” you quickly stammer at the ceiling, trying to remember how to breathe correctly.  Inhale, exhale—fuck, which one is inhale again, which one comes first?  Maker, does he need to call a fucking medic?  “Huhhhhalmost?”

Poe takes a deep breath and slowly releases it with a bassy and warm mmmm rumbling against your skin, so coarse but pleased enough to sound like melted chocolate dripping down your body.  The noise sends a violent shudder through you and it’s almost enough to knock you back to that edge again, even without your fingers assisting it.  

His head dips and the sheet pulls down even more, just below your belly button now, and you let out a quiet gasp in anticipation, nearly on the verge of begging him to keep moving downwards.  But when Poe’s eyes close and his mouth suddenly moves back up to open over your other nipple instead, your patience snaps.  

Fuck him, bad way.  This is your orgasm, you’re done waiting.

“I’m gonna cum,” you snarl furiously down at him, shoving your hand between your legs even as Poe’s lips quirk against your skin.  It’s not a warning, it’s a threat.  If he’s gonna be like this, he doesn’t get to share it with you.  It’s your orgasm, you’ll give it to yourself if he doesn’t give a shit about it.  “Thought you wanted it, guess not.”

You immediately feel his teeth again in response to your admittedly slightly bitchy comment and this time he lets your nipple roll just a bit between them, making you jerk at the sensation and quickly find your clit again.  Oh, you’re soaking fucking wet, you’re wet everywhere.  Slick and swollen and burning, and it’s not going to take much at all.  The sheet sticks to your overheated body and you can’t tell the difference between your sweat, his saliva, or wetness from between your legs—it all just feels damp and slippery as you gradually lose your bearings under his mouth.

“Fuck this, I’m gonna cum,” you breathe once more, possibly nothing more than a mindless reiteration but most likely just one last veiled plea for him to give you what you both want.  As if he can tell, Poe quickly lifts his mouth and suddenly the sheet is ripped the rest of the way down your naked body completely, sharp and frustrated, and then his lips brush against your elbow as it twitches, nipping the sensitive skin there.

“Brat,” he growls quietly against your forearm as he keeps dragging his lips down further, following the path it makes along your tummy.  “Just likes making shit difficult.”

“You’re the one—” you hiccup, trying to sound angry but just melting into a puddle at the tip of his tongue slowly trailing down your frantically moving wrist, “—you’re the… the o-one who… who…?”

But you’re already sprinting towards that edge, feeling him drop even lower and his hot breath fan against your fingers, and at this point you’re too far gone.  Poe gently kisses at your closed thighs, in perfect position and ready for you, but you can’t stop yourself anymore unless he makes you stop, and the longer he waits down there without grabbing your hand to replace it with something better the more you don’t give a shit about whether or not it’s going to happen.  You can feel the orgasm rising, you can feel your toes flex and everything start to lock down for the approaching tsunami.  You’re going to get it this time, you’re going to cum, you’re going to—

“This is—” you rasp, “—this is a f-free, a fffff-ffreeeeb—”

His tongue softly grazes your knuckle as it works.

And then there’s a moment.  A suspended moment that seems to go on forever, where you’re launched directly over that cliff and yet you still seem to be gaining altitude.  Where’s the drop?  You’re already cumming—you can feel it, there’s absolutely no fucking going back now, but it’s like your sheer desperation has so much momentum that your body tricks itself into believing there’s nothing to land on, no gravity to immediately rip you straight down to your demise.

You choke out his name and your back arches with it and that must be the signal, because Poe finally pulls your hand away and lets his chin dip, and then his jaw falls open and allows you just enough time to catch the glimmer of his pink tongue before it slides wet and slow through your swollen folds.

Heat.  It sears through your whole body with a wracked shudder, the slick glide over your clit as his eyes flutter closed, and within the very first second of feeling his mouth on you, you’re instantly cumming inside it.

There.  There’s the drop.

The burning erupts into molten chaos, crumpling your whole body on impact like an accordion, but he sinks all his weight down on your legs and forces you to endure it with everything below your waist pinned to the mattress.  It’s fucking mayhem.  You feel like your voice actually rips itself in half with the ragged cry of blinding relief, so enormous and soul wrenching in power that you couldn’t even hope to muffle it.  You can’t move your hips through it, you can’t stutter up to ride it out—you have to experience the whole thing with your lower body completely still while his tongue takes slow, gentle licks at your throbbing clit, only able to sit your shoulders up and slam them back down and grab his head as you endure.

You cum hard.  Fucking hard.  It’s daunting and explosive and utterly devastating in the havoc it wreaks, and just when you think you’ve seen the worst of it, it’s just so slow.  Creeping along and obliterating everything in its path, taking an eternity to pass because of how fucking big it is.

When you’re finally able to float back down into your own body again, the first thing you notice is how tight his hold is.  Poe’s arms are wrapped around your thighs to keep them pressed tight together and you can feel the wetness all the way down to your fucking knees as they tremble against each other.  Stars, what did he do to you?  You feel like you actually wet yourself, there’s way too much dampness on the mattress underneath you to feel anywhere close to normal for you.

His mouth eventually leaves you but his head doesn’t move, nothing else moves.  Even his hot breath feels like rough stimulation to your throbbing pussy.

And then Poe shifts and adjusts his body just enough, catching the backs of your knees and slowly spreading your legs up and apart like you wanted to do ages ago.  They feel like jelly, wobbly and unsteady even as his thumbs hook right under your knees and easily support most of their weight.  Your pussy is soon exposed completely, and his shoulders move down just before his head drops to lick the collection of wetness right from your entrance.  Fuck, he couldn’t get it from the previous angle your legs were at, just your clit at the very top—but this is deep and personal and you know he’s probably getting mouthfuls of how hard he just made you cum, using the tip of his tongue to scoop your arousal up and swallowing it quietly before going back for more.

“Poe,” you whisper, and he rumbles low in his throat in response without stopping.  This isn’t for you, this isn’t for your benefit right now.  Your pleasure receptors aren’t concentrated right here, just the physical evidence of them being overloaded just a few moments ago, but he stays for longer than necessary.  He keeps his mouth here far longer than you need to push past the throbbing sensitivity and start to crave the sensation again, forcing you to bite your lip to stop yourself from telling him to move back up just a couple inches.

So you seek it out instead, the lower part of your body clearly not listening to a damn thing your mind tells it right now.  Your hips drop and his velvet tongue catches your clit at the apex of its repetitive motion, and you gasp and rock upwards again as Poe groans and immediately rises with you to chase it.  He attaches to the swollen flesh and sucks at it gently for you, following your lead, letting your wet fingers comb his hair back from his face and clutch a good fistful of it as you plant your feet and slowly grind up into his mouth.

Fuck.  He was right.  You needed this.  Everything about it is heaven—endorphins pour off you in waves as you roll your hips against his face, and he lets you do it.  He’s not just pliant, he’s willing.  His tongue works diligently, his eyes close and he moans into your pussy, allowing you to tug his hair and fit to his mouth exactly how you want.

Oh, everything burns.  Everything smolders and sparks, because he’s always been so withholding and now he’s just going for it.  He’s reading your mind better than he did during the battle today, not necessarily submissive in his approach but… servicing.  Accommodating.  Finally giving in and putting real effort into helping you chase after another shot of ecstasy without being so stingy about it like before.

As soon as you feel another familiar swell of something deep down, your mouth is suddenly dropping open.

“How many—” your ragged voice comes out without thinking, and it takes so fucking long to actually attach the train of thought to its conduit of translation.  You swallow thickly and flex your fingers in his hair, tugging at him to ground yourself, trying to anchor yourself to the very thing that’s about to fling you into oblivion again.  “—fuck, how many times did you… how many fr-freebies do I—do I…”

Poe eases his chin back just enough to respond, and the slick sound his tongue makes leaving your clit makes you shudder and miss the wretched words at first.  “Mm.  Just the one.”

And then his tongue is already sliding back through your pussy by the time your eyes pop open in immediate panic, and your clit is in his mouth again as soon as yours drops to frantically contest.

But the words aren’t coming, it feels too fucking amazing.  Your jaw goes slack and your fingers tighten in his hair.  Maker almighty, the orgasm swells up so sharp and quick that you have to fucking kick him at the very last second to get away from it.  Thankfully Poe’s mouth abruptly leaves you with his oof of shock at your audacity, lifting his head as you snap your legs together and grit your teeth through your miserable retreat from ecstasy.  You don’t even notice the way your knee almost knocks into his jaw with it—you just focus on shamefully easing your way back down again from the platform overlooking bliss like you’re too afraid of the high-dive.  After a second, you actually have to turn on your side and rock yourself like a child as Poe slowly sits up with a grimace, lifting his arm to rub at his ribcage where your heel slammed into him.

You peek an eye open to watch him do it and oh no, it’s not a good plan.  He’s so… fucking hot.  Fuck.  He’s unbelievably good-looking—his hair curls and frames such handsome features, his body is lovely and warm and seeing his chest bare and up close like this makes you want to reach out and slowly drag your hand down the smooth curve of his side.  But then your gaze catches on the dark sweatpants tented shamelessly between his legs and how he’s glistening with perspiration, too, and how he tugs at the fabric covering his crotch and sighs softly, blinking down at you slow and intoxicated with lust.

You have to close your eyes and bury your face into the pillow because your body is latching onto anything to keep you within inches of that edge.  The mere sight of him is enough to make you worry for yourself.  You take deep breaths and do your best to tune his existence out entirely.  Just you, just you in your bed, trying desperately not to cum without even touching yourself.  You’re naked and curled up and there's no one here to look down at you with deep brown eyes, no one else breathing and especially not equally as loud as you are.  Just you, just you.

And, just when you think you might finally get to the point where you’re not teetering anymore, where you’re at least mostly certain that moving around and looking at things and just existing in general isn’t going to make you completely unravel hands-free at any moment, he has to fucking… go and be himself.

You peek up to see him staring down at you, dark and intimate and devouring, before his hand gently brushes down the curve of your hip.  “Maker, you are so fucking hot right now.  Was that a close one, pretty baby?”

Your hand snaps out to grab his wrist with a whimper and you don’t know if your intent is to stop him or just hang on for dear life, but your grip is weak and you shake and Poe takes the opportunity to grab a handful of your ass while you do absolutely fuck all to stop him.

“Mmmm.  Open your legs,” he murmurs, releasing your flesh just to give it a soft smack.  “You’re only making it worse like this.”

“What?  W-What do you—” you stammer, but Poe drags his hand down your thigh to catch one of your knees and pull it up without waiting for your babbled reply.  Both knees go with him, your pelvis wound too tight and frozen to do anything but rotate your whole entire body on your tailbone.

“You’re just adding more pressure by keeping them closed,” he explains, wiggling his fingers in between your knees to try and get enough of a grip to pry them apart.  “C’mon—open your legs, let yourself breathe.”

“Nnnnnnstop talking,” you groan, trying to slap at him, but he’s strong enough to force the movement regardless, levering your knees apart and then pushing them tight to the mattress.  And, though he would normally be right about it, you’re fighting your mind to get away from the orgasm just as much as you are your body.  The sudden exposure and the positioning and the way he automatically drops his gaze down at your needy pussy with his cock still hidden in his pants like that only serves to displace the cause instead of eliminating the effect.  Closing the door and opening a window, shifting the stimulation somewhere else but allowing it to throb steady and aching regardless.

“Much better,” he sighs lowly, digging his fingers into the sore muscles inside your thighs and you just keep your hands loosely attached to his wrists as he works.  “Fuck me, baby’s got such a pretty pussy doesn’t she?”

“Poe,” you wheeze up at him, hearing him rumble at the sight of your cunt contracting around nothing, probably shining and glistening with your desperation for him.  By this point, you’re worrying again.  You have no doubt whatsoever that he could talk you into cumming just like this, with your hands trembling and clutching at his wrists.  If he keeps murmuring filth while holding your legs open and staring at your pussy like this, you have no doubt you’ll find a way to get there somehow.

Thankfully, he seems to understand.  He goes quiet and just keeps massaging your sore muscles while you try not to writhe underneath him.  Stars, it’s like he’s genuinely doing what he can to take it easy on you and you’re still all kinds of fucked up about it, still frantic and desperate while all he’s doing is just squeezing your legs.

“Calm down,” he gruffs, but you can’t.  “You’re working yourself up, don’t—”

“Stop talki—” your ragged growl is cut off by your own hiccup as you quickly find the strength to shove at his hands, knowing they’re at least mostly to blame for your prolonged tightrope walk.  You can’t fucking think when he’s touching you, you become too hyper-aware of your own body, it feels too good in a way that’s hard to describe and impossible to explain.  Poe’s palms immediately listen and raise in front of him in surrender, his back lifting to give you space while you hide your face from him with shaky hands and gasp.  It’s pathetic and your legs are still held wide open and your fingers tremble hard enough to resemble a malfunction.

You just.  You need a hard reset.  You need that thirty seconds of complete idle, of figuring shit out on your own without an electric current running through you before you can start working properly again.  It can’t be rushed, it’s necessary when most people just want to power down and then right back up again.  The wires connecting your parts are all criss-crossed and tangled and sparks are lighting up at the slightest stimulus, you just need to experience absolutely nothing for thir—

“I’m sorry,” Poe murmurs, still staying in his own space but the gravelly voice shooting a bolt of lightning down your spine.  Thirty seconds, of course he couldn’t give you thirty fucking seconds.  “Fuck, you’re so hot, I’m sorry—”

“Please stop talking,” you beg him, your fingers curling against your face, “Maker, I—I don’t want to cum—”

“Fuck, I know, it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever fucki—”

You go to kick him again and even though it collides wrong and does nothing more than get your message across, the jostle is enough to knock you back from the approaching oblivion just slightly.  It serves to wake you up way more than it remotely hurts him, the equivalent of someone just smacking a piece of machinery and fixing the problem temporarily.

You heave an enormous breath and blink your eyes open behind your fingers, immediately locking with his.  Poe’s teeth are digging into his bottom lip but he’s mercifully silent, even when you drop your shaky hands down to your spread thighs and stay equally silent another full minute while you make the effort to right yourself.  After awhile though, you realize he must be taking cues from you, waiting for you to speak.

Only, you suddenly don’t know what to say.  You’re at a complete loss, looking up at him through your eyelashes in uncertainty now.  Something you’ve never been around him, even as your pussy is wide open for him to look at.  He hasn’t recently, though, you don’t think.  He’s just keeping his eyes on your face, watching you bite your lip and blink up at him while your mind whirls, the only sound that can be heard is the radio continuing to lull from the bottom bunk.

You wish he’d say something.  How come he’s choosing right now to listen to what you tell him to do?  You don’t… you don’t know what to say to him.  Why can’t you figure out something?  You fidget but then suddenly feel your expression lose all its struggle and just look… innocent.  Needing his help.

“Do you want me to leave?”  Poe eventually asks after another moment, tentative of breaking the silence, and you frantically shake your head before he’s even finished speaking.  Fuck, something drops in your stomach at how desperate you’re probably coming off right now, but you’re so lost and you know that’s at least one question you know the immediate answer to.

Poe tilts his head thoughtfully, slowly reaching a hand towards your thigh without removing his eyes from yours.  “Want me to make you cum again?”

You shake your head again, wide-eyed and worried.  He immediately pulls his hand back and blinks slowly at you.

“You want to be edged more?”  He asks lowly, and you shake your head vehemently for the third time.  Poe sighs and sits back, planting his palms to his thighs and pulling at the fabric of his pants in budding frustration, clearly tired of playing twenty questions.  “Well what do you want, baby?  You wanna just hang out?  That’s fine, I don’t care, but you gotta tell me.”

Fuck, he’s right, what do you want?  The only thing that’s standing in your way of feeling better, you soon realize.

“Want you to cum first,” you mumble, cheeks warming at how childish you sound.

“Not a fucking chance,” Poe immediately scoffs, crossing his arms over his bare chest.  “And pouting at me isn’t gonna help.”

“Why not?”  You breathe, dipping your gaze down his body.  “I can use my mouth.”

“I don’t—” he stops short, suddenly registering what you said and switching gears.  “You can—?”  Poe narrows his eyebrows and looks suspicious.  “You’ll let me… cum in it?”

“Okay,” you whisper in breathless agreement, sitting up and reaching for him, but Poe groans and pushes you back down on the mattress with a flattened palm against your shoulder like you just aced a test he was hoping you’d fail.

“Fuck whoever’s idea this was,” he grits darkly to himself while you arch up against his hold, wanting him to grab your tits but knowing it’s not a good idea right now.  “Maker, I’m so fucking hard—fuck whoever’s idea this was, making me turn that down—”

“You said,” you pant, licking your dry lips and blinking up at the ceiling, trying to control yourself, “before, you said that you’re… you’re not doing this for a bet, right?  So why not?”  Your voice goes softer when you flutter your gaze back at him, even though the accusation feels like it should be sharper if anything, since it comes from a very real place of distrust.  “Were you just… lying to me about that?”

“Fuck, come on,” Poe groans, his voice starting to waver as he shakes his head and squints one eye at you, exasperated.  “You don’t get it.  You can’t think of a single fucking reason I don’t wanna blow my load just yet?  Really?”

The sentence coupled with his rock solid hold on you skitters a thrill through your body and you automatically reach up to run your hand along his forearm.  He looks down at the caress and then back to your face and fuck, even you feel like you’re sending mixed signals right now.

“You could… fuck me,” you whisper, and Poe’s dark eyebrows pull up as his gaze falls down your naked body, nodding and digging his teeth into his bottom lip.  An agreement backed by so much unspoken desire that it looks like it almost hurts him just to hear you say it out loud.  “And we can just… see who cums first.”

“Yeah?”  He croaks, his eyes pinned between your open legs.  “Just say fuck it all and race for last place?  Okay.”

Your heart pounds, having just enough wherewithal to preemptively establish a safety net for yourself.  “And—and we can’t finish at the same time or we both lose.”

“Fuck,” Poe groans, reaching down to catch the hem of his sweatpants with his thumb and lifting his hips until his cock is exposed to the dim room.  “We can’t stop once we start, then, we’ll have to see it through.”

Except you don’t catch any of the last part because, uh.  Well, to sum up.  May the Maker have mercy on you all.

Just like that, the only thought in your mind is… you get it.  Okay, you get it.  He told you before that girls were only interested in him for his cock, and it actually… stars, it makes so much fucking sense now, you totally get it.  You thought maybe he was just boasting as a form of overcompensation at first—or, to put it another way you’ve probably used in conversation with him before, talking big talk but walking small walk.  Only now, you’re… humbled.  By a fucking dick, you’re humbled.

You haven’t seen more than a few of them in this context, so you know you’re not necessarily qualified to give an informed opinion, but heavens it’s a sight.  It’s thick and swollen and just a shade darker than his complexion and everything inside you rockets to attention as soon as he wraps his hand around it.  It’s big.  It fills his whole palm without much room to spare.  Far larger than what you’re used to, and you know that no matter how he fucks you with it, you’re gonna feel it tomorrow.  Next weekend, probably.

Your eyes must betray you, because Poe suddenly loosens his grip and breathes your name softly, causing you to flick your eyes back up to his.  You didn’t realize you were staring so openly.

“I’ll go slow,” he reassures you quietly, voice gentle and knowing.  The complete lack of sarcasm or aggression in his tone is enough to snap you back to yourself, knowing that can’t possibly be right.  He’s talking to you like he did when you stumbled your ass out of the x-wing today, when you were barely responsive and lost in dumb shock.  He doesn’t have to… be nice to you right now, like you’re still only moments away from losing it.  It’s offensive.

“I can handle it,” you harumph, widening your legs while Poe immediately suppresses a grin.

“'Course you can,” he sighs with the slightest note of fondness creeping into his voice, dropping his hips as he lines up at your entrance.  “And I’ll go slow anyways.”

You open your mouth to respond but at the first push of his head inside, you inhale sharply and your palm immediately shoots out to press against his chest on complete instinct.  The stab of pain is impossible to mask from your features and Poe instantly stops with a shaky breath, watching how your jaw drops at the intrusion and your face contorts.

“Ahh.  Shit…” he whispers as his head tips down, dark eyes clamping shut and his hold on you tightening.  “What—shit, what the fuck…”

“Keep going,” you growl out, even though you know you’re just making it more difficult on yourself.  You can take Poe’s cock, you can take it, he has absolutely nothing to brag about, it’s completely normal-sized—

His hips inch forwards and you gasp at the excruciating arc of sensation, slapping at him harder.

“Keep going,” you babble while locking your elbows and shoving him back, “fuck, keep going, keep going—”

“Baby,” Poe groans, wrenching one of your hands from his chest and bringing your wrist up to his mouth to kiss and breathe hot air on it, “baby, you gotta let me—”

He moves a little more and you cry out, jerking your hand back from his lips and knocking it hard against his chest before you even realize it.  Oh shit, you can’t handle it, you haven’t been fucked in so long—

“I’m sorry,” you choke out, trying to be nicer by flattening your palm but then immediately digging your nails in, “fuck, I’m sorry, it’s just—it’s been awhile since I—”

“Shit, I can tell,” he pants brokenly, his fingers dropping back down to flex hard on your hip.  “Hoooolyfuck, I can te—ah, fuck, it’s alright, it’s alright, just—nnnnnnshit, okay, just relax, don’t tense up too muuuh… much—”

His cock pushes deeper even as he keeps rambling through it and you feel yourself being rearranged to make room for the slow movement, giving way to a rich pleasure even as the discomfort increases.

Poe stops once more when your hands shove up against him, somehow simultaneously shakier and firmer than all the other times put together and a little more than half of him inside you at this point.  You’re so slick and hot between your legs that there’s no resistance besides the stretch, nothing to stop him from slamming home besides your weak hands trembling at his collarbone, but everything about the way he stays completely frozen for ages says he’s controlled and patient.

Everything except his face, you soon realize.

When your body is finally able to come to terms with the sensation and you blink up at him, Poe isn’t looking at you anymore.  He’s staring directly over your head at the wall, tangible regret manifesting itself in seething frustration marring his expression.  His eyebrows furrow and he scowls but all of it is silent and directed at himself, as if he’s asking why the fuck he actually agreed to do this.  You know then that it must be really fucking wet.  You know then that you must be just blazing hot and tighter than sin and as if in rhythmic agreement, his cock jumps inside you with each pounding rush of blood through it.  You can see the sweat beading at his hairline as he continues to ignore you for the moment, choosing instead to silently lament at the wall like it did something to mortally betray him.

You could… make this a sprint, something devious suddenly whispers to you.  He’s struggling through the pleasure and you can outlast.  From the severity of that look alone, you can put an end to it before it even starts.

Admittedly, you don’t even let the devil finish his damn sentence before you decide to take your own initiative.  You clamp down around him as hard as you can and Poe whips his attention down to you and punches out a curse that sounds like you wrenched the word from his throat before he was anywhere near ready for it.  It comes from somewhere high and defenseless in register and then quickly falls down into a growly pit as his hips automatically lurch forwards the rest of the way inside, hard, smacking into yours as you squeeze wickedly around him.

You keep squeezing through the sudden upward shove of bliss, you keep tightening up even though you’re making agonizing noises and your eyes clamp shut and it hurts.  But stars, it feels good, why does it feel so good when it hurts so bad?  It makes your throat scrape and your face twist up, but you can hear his cursing getting louder and more desperate so you still don’t relax your viselike hold around him.

“Stop it—” he snarls down at you rabidly, “—oh fuck, stop or you’ll make us both cu—”

Shit, he’s right.  You know he’s never been more right about anything as soon as his hips stutter and kick up to a full blown gallop in the middle of his furious scolding, and the sudden build of ecstasy is so fast and intense that you sob his name, not being able to loosen your muscles anymore as soon as it overtakes you.  But it’s like a closed circuit, you’re both recycling the same pleasure without knowing how to shut it off.  The harder you bear down on him, the faster his hips work, the vicious cycle compounding and circling and manifesting in the perfect typhoon within just a few tumultuous seconds.

But then suddenly he rips himself out of you with a gasp and it’s not a moment too soon, because both of you have to scramble and grab onto things to brace yourselves through the worst of it.  You choose the mattress and he chooses the railing, and through the searing discomfort and settling of the chaos that’s becoming more and more familiar to you as this exhausting day passes, you know you fucked up.  You underestimate his self control, time and time again.  But, exactly like earlier today, you feel a thrill skitter up your spine at how he’s going to respond to your brazen treachery in the face of a newly established truce.

“Fuck,” he jerks his head to spit the obscenity at you, sounding more pissed off than you’ve ever heard him, the shredded anger in his voice starting to burn through you.  “Fuckfuckfuuuuck—you make me so mad.  You make me so mad.  I wish I could fuck you right now, on Maker, I’d ruin you.  I’d wreck your shit until you learn and you’d deserve every single fucking second of it, you—”

He stops short and growls jagged sharp in frustration, but you can’t help yourself.

“Say it,” you whimper on a dare, feeling your heart pound.  The words quiver with an inexplicable sort of excitement as you dig your fingers into the mattress, wanting to hear his voice snarl the mysterious profanity.  “Say it.  ‘You…’—what?  Say it.”

Shock suddenly paints his previously tense expression blank, even though his pupils blow out and his chest heaves.  Your voice is too breathless, it’s too needy to sound nearly as antagonistic as you want.  

And then Maker, it’s as if the sheer control he’s clinging to serves to spark his vexation even more.  Mad that you would ask for something so enticing at a moment like this.  Your heart thunders as Poe nearly flashes up close to you and points a threatening finger at you.

“You’re not going to get what you want from me,” he snaps, quiet and furious.  “Not tonight.  I don’t give a shit, I told you I’d slow fuck you and now I’m gonna do it until you act right.”

“You’re an asshole—” you move to lift up onto your elbows, but his hand suddenly plants against your clavicle and shoves you back down flat on the mattress.

“Not even ten minutes after I make you cum and you’ve already got a fucking attitude problem again,” he shoots back, positioning his cock at your entrance with his other hand once more, and Maker you’re drowning between your legs.  His sharp rebuttal and the firm hold on the upper part of your chest makes it that much wetter, knowing you can’t do much more than lift your legs the way you need when he eases his way back inside.  

“P-Poe—” you gasp breathlessly, but it's like he doesn’t hear you.

His expression tenses and he shudders out a low growl.  “Fuck.  Tight little baby.  Rude little baby, just wants everything her way but doesn’t know how to behave herself.”

You have to bite your lip hard to hold back a whine when he’s completely sheathed and his hips connect to yours, and… shit.  You already feel it.  You already feel that simmering starting to take hold deep down once more, that monstrous second orgasm you’ve been fighting now digging its claws into you and licking the base of your spine with fire.  And, as if he can tell, his demeanor instantly changes.

“Uh, oh,” Poe murmurs quietly, equal parts lilting and baiting, slowly dragging his cock out and then starting up the laziest pace you’ve ever experienced with his hand still planted high on your sternum right below your collarbone.  “Can you feel it coming?  Fuck, I can,” he shudders.  “Already.  Fuck, you’re so wet, you’re so wet—wish you had let me eat you out mor—”

“You can’t c—umm,” you hiccup, grasping his wrist and writhing through the building ecstasy, and you don’t know who you’re talking to at this point.  Your other palm slaps at his shoulder with increasing urgency—fuck, he’s been fucking you for barely ten seconds and you’re already struggling to hold everything back.  Only, his hand quickly grabs yours and pins it to the mattress, his face dropping closer as he rolls his hips achingly slow.  You feel his back working with the steady pace, you see his neck flex as his cock drags so thick inside you, and then your gaze starts to lose focus a bit.  It slides up his throat as lazily as he’s augmenting your pleasure, following the contour of his smooth skin until it reaches his face.

And mercy, Poe’s tongue comes out to wet his lips and a dark curl hangs down his forehead, concentrating hard on fucking you steadily without giving into the same creeping euphoria you’re feeling, and you have to turn away and bite back a whimper at the metal railing when the image starts to burn you alive.

“No,” Poe gruffs and his hand slides up a few inches to frame your jaw, twisting until you face him directly once more.  “Right here, you stay right here with me.”

Your eyebrows pull up weakly and your eyes flick across his stunning features, the way he’s so present, so focused and determined while you’re starting to drift.  His skin is so smooth, so golden when his jawline used to be dark, and—

“I—” you choke, starting to lose it, “—I-I…”

“What is it, baby?”  Poe growls, staring down at you with unwavering, intense concentration.  “Tell me.  You gonna cum?”

“I…” you whimper, blinking at him slowly, “I… liked your… b-beard…”

Poe’s eyes, previously hardened and steadfast, suddenly go a bit dumb, a bit dazed.  After a second, his eyebrows lose all strain, his gaze turns warmer and he rolls his hips deeper—

But the swell begins to become the only thing you can comprehend—that and the fact that you should be fighting it.  You should be revolting against it, but now he’s looking so softly down at you and you can’t remember what could possibly be so bad about letting him take away all this ache and desperation again.  Let him continue to take it away, over and over and over until it’s nowhere to be found at all.

And then Poe leans down and kisses you.  And it’s… nothing like you’d expect.

It’s gentle.  It’s tender.  It goes on forever while he rocks into your soaking wet cunt, easing his throbbing cock in and out of you with such a smooth, repetitive motion that sends sparks of ecstasy down your spine at the apex of each thrust.  

You handle it silently.  At first.  You don’t audibly react to any of it, you force your voice to at least keep quiet if you can’t hide the pleasure from your face or body, but then true to fucking form, he has to go and ruin it all.  Poe uses his knees to scoot up just the slightest bit, and then his moan breaks through the absence of the desperate sounds you’ve been holding back as his tongue slowly slides into your mouth.

Your pussy flares, contracting painfully around his cock as it hits a spot that makes your legs shake against his sides.  Your eyes roll back as his soft tongue dips into your mouth and everything just gets tighter, and tighter.  Poe moans again and his hips push a little bit harder into yours on the next thrust, and it’s almost like a domino effect, except that doesn’t do it justice.  It doesn’t topple one by one, it doesn’t take any time at all for the beginning to reach the finish—it’s a house of cards, the whole thing collapses and crashes down in on itself all at once.

You cum.

You lose.  Fair and square.

You make a long, anguished whine into his mouth as you just start spasming, clutching hard at his shoulders and drenching his cock with it, your eyes squeezing shut as you cum so slow and fucking helpless around him.  Oh Maker, it’s fucking devastating, it feels even more destructive and powerful than the first one.  You pull and shove and claw at him equally, mouth slack as Poe tightens his hold and keeps tasting your whimpering cries, fitting his hips snug to yours as he slowly pushes you down through the debilitating ecstasy.  You sob in euphoric defeat and a low, bone-shattering groan of satisfaction rumbles through his chest in response, grinding his cock into you and holding it deep as your pussy convulses.

All those weeks of holding out, just to lose.  You had a freebie, he gave you an orgasm already and it was like a massive dose of spice to your deprived system—all it did was make your body want it more.  Even worse, your orgasm doesn’t immediately inspire one in Poe like a part of you hoped it would, if only so you could reasonably contest the validity of the outcome.  He’s able to ride out every twitch and flex as you shudder your way through it, continuing to lazily slide his tongue into your mouth while it’s held open and slack.  He tastes like you.  He tastes hot and slick and everything about your body feels the same way, damp and unbearably warm from your nape to your elbows to your cunt to the backs of your knees.

You lay there for what feels like a lifetime afterwards, powerless to the way your thighs tremble violently against his hips and letting the tip of his tongue slowly trace the bottom edge of your teeth while he firmly keeps his cock buried inside you.  It pulses thickly and you know he wants to cum, you can feel the tension pulling at his shoulders as he keeps perfectly still.  But then Poe shuffles his arms up until they’re braced around your head, using himself to box you in completely without moving his lips from yours.  His teeth close on your bottom lip as he inches his hard cock out long and aching from your sensitive channel, and then groans and goes back to the same exact dragging pace from before.

Your expression furrows, even as he keeps kissing you and the movement lights up your oversensitive nerves.  Fuck, you want him to speed up, it’s all the more shattering and viseral when he takes his time.  What is he doing?  What is he waiting for?

“Fuck me,” you whine against his lips, demanding a quicker pace.  You don’t know why he isn’t just letting loose on you now, giving into his body’s need to cum.  He’s aching for it, still rock hard inside of you.  “Come on, I already l-lost, just fuck m—”

“Told you before,” Poe whispers back, refusing to speed up.  He keeps his pace dragging and steadfast, no matter how much you work to entice him.  “Never… fuck.  Never gave a fuck about that stupid bet.  Suffer though.”

The complete lack of harshness in his tone sears through your nerve endings even though what he said wasn’t exactly nice.  You never thought hearing him tell you to suck it up could be delivered in a way that inspires so much arousal in you, but then his tongue is in your mouth again as his hips work slow and easy, and your eyes roll back at how… overwhelming it feels.  So intimate.  You’re completely surrounded by him, his forearms propped next to your head and his mouth on yours, and… Maker, there it is again.  Your body is so deprived that it’s already gearing up to go again.  He’s being lazy and you can’t fucking stand how it’s breaking you down.  Gradually, with incredible stamina and a patience you never expected from him.  When you first feel that pull, part of you still wants to pick up the other end and start a tug-of-war with the sensation.  You’ve been fighting for so long that your body almost doesn’t know any different, its automatic reaction is to resist.

A distraction, that’s what you need.  That’s what guys do to stop themselves from cumming too soon, right?  Fuck, think of something, think of…

—Poe, you can't think of anything but Poe.  Fuck.  His cock sinking deep, the way he tastes, how his fingers thread into the damp hair at your crown so you can feel him that much more, how you can hook his biceps with both hands and swirl your tongue around his while he fucks you open.  Your hips roll up with the pace and almost immediately stutter back down again, not sure if you can handle the wicked shot of oversensitivity—but then Poe groans and shifts up until his thighs are under your ass and he can curl you in more, lift your feet a bit more and make you feel smaller.  And—stars, the next thrust in is enough to nearly make you bite him on complete accident, an unexpected sound ripped from your throat as he keeps that specific angle.

Poe keeps going.  He keeps kissing you, keeps rocking into you.  He lets you claw at him, lets you grapple helplessly while his cock shreds molten hot euphoria deep inside you, and then everything tightens up again.

“Ah, fuck,” Poe breaks away and curses a whole few seconds before you descend into mindless chaos once more, garbling out broken syllables with the absense of his mouth keeping yours occupied.  Your voice crescendos and breaks at the same time you do, the pleasure arcing through you over and over and wringing you out repeatedly around his throbbing cock.  Poe’s lips quickly move forward and give your whole cheek an open kiss while your expression crumples with it.  Teeth drag down your skin as he moans hot air across your skin, his hips slowing to a complete stop with an obscenely slick sound.

You throb and clench around him and his lips are suddenly on yours again, his tongue sinking deep and dominating.  Your mouth is slack and all you can do is squeeze him through the bliss, scrape your fingernails down his back and hope it leaves a mark.

Eventually the tremors pass and you’re dead in the aftermath, you don’t have energy.  Your body is starting to acclimate to the slow orgasms and just let them steamroll you flat, fully accepting now that you can cum but still putting everything you have into it like every single one might be your last for a while.  You come back to yourself enough to feel Poe’s cock solid and achingly hard inside you, and your bottom lip is being tugged between his teeth.

And then he eases out and goes back to fucking you.  Same speed, same control.  

Your eyes nearly fucking cross.  “P-Poe—”

He immediately makes a noise of disapproval with his mouth closed, a nuh-uh but kept tight in his throat.  He doesn’t want to hear it, he’s not even letting you finish your thought.

You can’t take it, though, you didn’t think he was capable of this.  This is torturous in an entirely different way, overstimulating and shattering you with every thrust.

So, you think back to the one thing that got him to nearly snap earlier, the one time you really got to see that fire you love playing with.  Only now, you need that fire, you need him to take everything out on you.  Your floor muscles clamp down without warning and squeeze him as tight as possible, squeeze squeeze squeeze until you feel his hips stutter to a halt once more.  Your breath catches—fuck, is this gonna work?—but then Poe breaks away from your lips to drop his head and sink his teeth into your neck.

You nearly squeal at how careless he is about it—an animal that bites you lazily even though it sends sharp agony rocketing through you.  Again, your attempt at sabotage backfires spectacularly as a subsequent flare of pleasure swells up, and oh, that’s what you want, you want him to be mean—

“Please,” you whimper, hooking your ankles behind his back and locking down hard enough to make your toes curl.  Poe groans as you grab a fistful of his hair and tug at the way your skin pinches between his teeth—you know you’re gonna have a bite mark for a few days and it thrills you.  “Fuck, please, Poe—please just fuck me, please, I want you to fuck me until it hurts, fuck me the way we both nee—”

“You and me almost died today,” Poe grits into your neck, cutting off your desperate whimpers with a short growl.  “Maker, it was so close, I don’t think anybody has any f-fucking…”  His hips pull out and then spear deep and you choke, tightening and tightening.  “But—shit, we didn’t, we lived and now—oh fuck, now baby’s finally letting me fuck her and I’m not cutting it short, no matter how pretty she sounds asking.”

His words sound slurred against your neck and you can’t tell if it’s his delivery or your perception that’s lagging.  But when you feel Poe inch his cock out and start to slowly fuck you through the tightness, you let out a weak little whine and feel yourself drifting… somewhere else.  

Things subtly lose their clarity, your eyelashes dip and you stop talking because words won’t come.  You can’t tell if you’re staring at the ceiling or your eyelids or the back of your head, but Poe’s voice abruptly breaking through the silence makes you realize you don’t have a concept for time anymore.  You couldn’t tell him how long you’ve been floating, but you almost don’t understand what he’s saying at all and it takes you a remarkable delay to fully comprehend.  But judging from what he says, it sounds like it hasn’t been long.

“Shit, are you cumming again?”  He suddenly gasps into the crook of your neck and grinds his hips achingly hard into yours,  “O-Oh—fuck yeah, you are—baby’s cumming again—”

“P-Poe?”  You stutter and smack your hand against something, him maybe, not knowing literally anything else.  Not knowing what he’s talking about, not knowing where you are, not knowing your own name, “Poe—oh m-my… God—”

“Whhh—W-What—?”  You hear him breathe a split second before everything compresses down tight, and then it all shoves forward at once.  All of the buildup makes itself known the very moment it becomes too much to control, like a flash flood but the downpour happened miles away.  You think you might actually squeak this time, helplessly cry out like it hurts because stars, it does.  It hurts so fucking good, it spiders pure plasma through your entire body with rhythmic jolts and wipes your mind completely vacant.  Your shoulders shoot you up and knock your chin into something and you think you might be crying?  You don’t know anymore.  Your spine comes back down to the mattress like the damp fitted sheet covering it is made of pure ice—your body is overheated and you keep tensing and jerking back up until Poe forcefully pins you tight against it, growling filth under his breath as he slow fucks you through it.

You feel his hand dropping down between your bodies and you sob pitifully at the ceiling when the tip of his calloused finger brushes your clit.

***

You lose count.

It’s just… constant, there isn’t a point in keeping track anymore even if there happened to be the ability—which, nope.  Not even close.

He ruins you slowly.  Meticulously, with nothing more than steady, unwavering determination.  Every structure you built, he takes apart by hand instead of bulldozing it the way you beg him to when you find the words.  You’re certain you find them—you must find them at some point, but they’re interspaced between babbled gibberish and breathy whispers of his name.

Even though it’s slow—Maker, it’s so slow—you’ve never been so fucking exhausted.  He makes you give him everything and then he drains the reserves, the hidden ones you weren’t even aware existed.  He never goes fast enough; in fact, you think he’s actually slowed down over the unknown amount of time it’s been since you first called out his name and asked for this.  If you were in a frame of mind to notice, you’d probably realize he’s trying harder and harder to not cum, but in your wild headspace, it just feels like a prolonged punishment for you.  It still feels like he’s depriving you for his own pleasure, even though he’s actually depriving himself for yours.  But you always do manage to find some way to read things wrong with him.

Eventually, he begins to waver.  He stops talking so much, stops chastising you when you plead with him.  He hasn’t looked at you since he first kissed you—he���s either hidden his face in your neck or closed his eyes as his soft tongue slides across your bottom lip before dipping inside.

But then there comes a point where even you realize he’s struggling not to let go now, and in your faded traces of sanity, you hear your broken voice cut through the sounds of the soft radio.

“Y-Y-You—” you gasp, trembling under him, “—youneedtocum.  You need to—”

“No,” Poe grits against your chin, sounding shaky and weak no matter how sharp he makes his consonants.  “Fuck, not yet, I—I-I don’t want to yet.”

“Oh no,” you wheeze out, feeling the swell begin again, the familiar flicker of warning you get as his cock slowly rocks into you.  Maker, the pleasure is getting raw and painful even as your pussy is drowning his cock with it, allowing him to glide slow and deep into your sensitive channel and letting the sheer tightness of it be the only resistance your body puts up.  You can feel the wetness on your cheeks though, the tears of frustration gathering as your body prepares itself for yet another wave of attack.  “Oh no, ohhhhhnononononono—”

“I don’t want—” Poe gasps, his hips stuttering just a bit and one of his hands coming down to smack the pillow next to your head as he chokes, “—don’t want this to… e-end yet, I—”

Your next orgasm suddenly slams through you and Poe immediately rips himself out of you before it’s too late.  He shushes you frantically while you sob in distress and writhe side to side through the contractions solo this time, having nothing to clamp down on, not even able to grind up into him because he keeps his leaking cock elevated far beyond your reach.

Oh, that’s it.  That is it.

“Fuck me!”  You wail up at him, water blurring your vision and tears streaming down your cheeks, “Stop fucking around and just fuck me, you asshole!  Fuck me and fuck me hard Dameron or I swear to every fucking star in the sk—”

You don’t get too far.  He’s immediately scrambling over top of you and a strong hand is clamping down tight over your mouth, muffling your high-pitched cries against his palm.  Your legs are shoved apart and one is caught under his arm and wedged back as far as it can go.  His head drops to your neck, and then he snarls a ragged, “Brat—“ under your ear before ramming his cock back inside you.

Stars.  Stars light up, it’s so much—the angle, the force, the speed, the sound his hips make as they start ruthlessly colliding with yours.  Your eyes screw shut and you dig your nails into the meat of his back, but he doesn’t slow down—he speeds up—

“Fuck, you still think that throwing your little fucking fits works on me?”  He hisses, drilling into your g-spot with such blinding hard precision that you can’t do anything more than just claw at his chest, gasping for air that just won’t come into your lungs.  “Huh?  Think you can just be a little bitch to me about it and it’s gonna change anything?  You still don’t have any fucking idea, do you?  Look at me—” he snarls, grabbing your face and shaking it to get you to respond, “—look at what you fucking do to me—”

But you can’t.  You already came countless times and he’s lurching you up the bed with every single rabid thrust into your blindingly sensitive cunt, fucking you into the railing and then the wall behind it.  You still feel his fingers grasping at your jaw, forcing you to address him, to look at him, and you can’t seem to focus your vision on his blurry features even when your eyes flutter open.  You’re too dumb with grinding pleasure to see anything besides blurs and stars, to say literally anything back to him.  But that’s not what he cares about.

“Oh fuck yes, there it is,” his voice whines, pitching up something vulnerable as his hips ram you into the corner hard and unyielding, “fuck, there’s those pretty eyes, that’s what I wanted, baby, that’s all I wanted—th-that’s—fuck, that’s—”

They must cross, or roll back, or something, because suddenly you can’t see him at all anymore.  You don’t know what happens—but you know it’s wet.  You know it bursts forth something fierce and you shriek his name with a hoarse and shredded voice like he steals the last part of your whole fucking soul with it.  Fuck, you’re not even there for most of it, you might actually black out.  

In your conscious moments, you can feel his whole body flexing over and over again on top of you.  He empties his load deep inside you and takes a fucking eternity doing it, so many breathless praises leaving his mouth so quickly that they slur together and you can’t understand any of it even if you could hear him.  All you can do is feel your cunt tighten and convulse in tandem with the throbbing of his cock, rhythmically working the cum out of him until Poe stops stuttering his hips, until he finally trails off into nothing but labored gasps and slumps down on top of you in exhaustion.

You both lay there for a while, dead weight breathing.

You want to hold him, your cum-struck mind quietly provides in the comedown.  You want to feel his body now that you can finally think straight and take a moment to enjoy this blissful relief.  He fucked you so good and you want to touch him, you want to run your fingers through his hair and massage the tight muscles at the base of his neck.

But then you just start giggling.

It’s stupid.  It’s so fucking stupid.  You smack your hand over your mouth but the garbled noise easily floats beyond it, completely elated and having absolutely no explanation at all.

Poe quickly pulls his head back to look at you and you try to twist sideways under him to hide it, but you can’t stop—like a complete loon, you snort and start to laugh harder at the ridiculous sound.  Oh, you don’t just float, you’re the air itself, so light with endorphins that you close your eyes and get lost in the fit until water wets the outside corners.

After a moment, a hand gently grasps your wrist and slowly pulls it down until he can see the way your mouth opens as you giggle, hear it unobstructed and let the sound bubble up at him and fill the room.  And you blink your eyes open just in time to see him slowly break into the most dazzling smile you’ve ever seen him bestow a person.

And… you’ve seen him grin a million times.  He’s almost always smiling, as long as you’re not right in front of him.  He smiles at his squadmates, he smiles at girls, he smiles at complete strangers, and you always thought it was pretty.  Always knew that he could light up a room with it, you always knew he could get anything he wanted with it, but this… this isn’t that kind of smile.  That one is practiced and alluring.  It wasn’t fake, necessarily, but that smile’s purpose always had more to do with making anyone who happens to witness it feel a certain way than it did about signifying his own emotional state.

This one is… goofy.  Amazed, and uncoordinated.  Thunderstruck in a way, except the clouds all part at the same time and let you see a rainbow.  It makes you feel… alive.  Colorful.  Radiant.  Sunshine.  Butterflies.

Poe quickly drops his lips to catch yours and you moan happily, sliding your tongue into his mouth this time.  You both adjust, you arch into him as he pushes your damp hair back and makes a deep noise of satisfaction, letting you explore while he wraps his arms around you and finds a way to make this atrocious position comfortable.  Every part of you is smushed up against him and there’s absolutely no space to be found, and you’ve never been happier.

“We made a mess,” he groans against your lips, rocking his hips into you with a disgustingly slick sound as if to illustrate, and his cock is soft but it’s still so thick that it stays buried inside your sloppy entrance.  “Shit, I—I think I might be bleeding.”

“What?”  You ask breathily, and he heaves himself up with his elbows just enough to reveal his chest.  You both tuck your chins unattractively to look and you don’t immediately see any blood, but your claw marks are clearly red and visible scraping down his pectorals.  “Oh.  Pfft.  You’re fine.”

He drops back down with a huff and your head is tilted at the perfect angle catch on the tiny droplets of blood decorating the marks criss-crossing his shoulder blades.  Oops.

But he’s already kissing up your neck and over the curve of your jaw and making out with you again like he can’t get enough of it, and you forget.  You forget everything.  You forget every disagreement, every gripe with him you’ve ever had.  It’s all wiped away and replaced with giddy, childish adoration.  Resetting completely and starting off on the rightest foot imaginable.

“Let’s go to my bed,” he murmurs, and you make a tight noise of disapproval.  No.  This is good, this is how you want to stay.  The railing is digging into your lower back and he’s heavy but you’re perfect like this, this is perfect.  “Baby,” Poe pants against your lips in exasperation when you quickly clutch the back of his neck and keep him glued to you, “mmph—you got everything all wet—”

This time you make a low hum of agreement and drag your hand down the bare curve of his spine to his ass to give it a squeeze.  A testament to how hard and raw he fucked you.  Poe shudders hard enough for you to feel his body tremble but you just kiss him harder, pulling him down onto you more.

“You’re gonna have to give me, just like—I don’t know, at least an hour or two,” he chuckles, grabbing your hands to make it easier to peel himself from your body and groaning when his cock finally slips out.  “Come on, let’s hang out in my bed.”

You’re so boneless when he pulls you to sit upright, you roll a little bit and Poe has to catch you, and you laugh again.  Maker, you’re a complete mess and absolutely delighted about it.  Your attempts at grumbling and complaining don’t hold any sway when you’re still trying not to giggle, and Poe is able to pull you to the top of the ladder and make his way down first.

As soon as he’s out of sight and calling up to you, you weakly slide into position with a groan and feel yourself leaking at the movement.  “Gah—look what you did.  I’m all… gooey.”

“I know, s’the hottest fucking thing,” he says under his breath from the floor, before beckoning you by tapping on the closest rung a few times.  “Come on, be careful.”

You do as he says, easing your naked body down one step at a time with wobbly legs.  It’s clumsy and you whine the whole way through, wordlessly grousing and mumbling.

“Oh, I just know it,” he comments on the sound, “nice clean sheets, I’ll get the violin.”

Normally, you probably would’ve snarked something back down at him, but you’re still so loopy and shaky-legged that you just start laughing again.  The fact that he’s absolutely right and you’re being ridiculous about something like moving beds suddenly strikes you as incredibly fucking funny for some reason.  You don’t realize his hands are hovering inches away from your hips until your legs buckle and Poe quickly supports your weight.

“Maker,” Poe chuckles before giving you a firm yank, and then catching you before you can tumble down the ladder in your naked, teary-eyed mania, “let’s go, giggles.”

He carries you a few steps to the mattress and plops you down on top of the comforter, letting you take up the whole bed while he sits on the end and puts your feet on his lap.  Poe grimaces for a second and then shuffles until the radio is pulled out from under him, and you can hear the soft sound of it playing once again.  You bury your face into his pillow, inhaling the warm scent lingering there while he tosses it carelessly to the side and rubs your shins for a little bit, watching you stretch out naked on his mattress.  

“I’m not giving you two weeks of pay,” you suddenly grunt, and he just grins down at you, not arguing.  Not saying anything.  Sitting in comfortable silence with you when you’re expecting him to bicker.  So you stay like that for a long time, breathing deep and relaxing, until Poe’s hands leave you for a second…

… to pull a bag of chips out.

Maker, at the first squeaky sound of the wrapping assaulting your eardrums, you want to roll your eyes.  You want to tease him about how fucking typical it is.  Like clockwork, you could probably set your watch to his middle of the night cravings.  You don’t know why you thought fucking him would change any of that.

You want to give him shit for it.  You even open your mouth, the snark on the very tip of your tongue.  But then your stomach growls as soon as he rips the thin plastic apart.

Poe’s eyes shoot to yours and neither one of you move, but apparently your tummy doesn’t get the memo.  It takes forever to trail off into silence again, and he blinks.  Fuck, you know you should’ve forced yourself to eat at least something earlier.  Warmth floods your cheeks and you scramble for something to say, but there’s no way to play it off.

“Would you like some chips?”  Poe suddenly asks with a boyish grin, raising his eyebrows and tipping the open bag freely in your direction.

The corners of your mouth pull downwards even as the inside of it waters.  You wouldn’t call it stubbornness necessarily as much as it is a… a desire to stick to consistency.  After the unbelievably hard time you always give him about midnight snacking, you’re hesitant to partake.

Though, the chips rustle against each other and sound absolutely fucking delicious as Poe shakes the bag and bounces his eyebrows, and you know what?  Fuck it.

You snatch it without thinking, cradling the precious food to your chest as you dig your whole hand in and shove a bunch into your mouth at once.  You catch him smiling again, but he doesn’t comment.

You both take turns, and by take turns you obviously mean you take turns stealing the bag from each other instead of just setting it equidistant between you and openly agreeing to share it, but it works for you.  It seems appropriate.  And then it’s quiet again, just munching and crinkling, except for the radio continuing to play from its place in his lap.  You have to work to listen over the loud crunching vibrating through your skull, but when you finally manage to stop chewing and catch a few bars, you suddenly find yourself trying not to smile again.  Fuck, it’s been years since you’ve heard this song, you love this s—

“Fuck, I love this song,” Poe promptly exclaims with his mouth full, licking the tips of his fingers before scrambling to pick the radio up and twist the volume knob without using his wet fingertips.  He starts humming over the melody, loud enough to almost drown it out completely, because of course he does.  The one damn time you actually want to listen to his radio and he still finds some way to mildly irritate you.

But this irritation is almost… fun.  You want to laugh just as much as you want to yell at him.

“Hey, who sings this song?”  You immediately ask over the sound of him clearly not knowing the lyrics, already ready with it.  Oh, the round is in the chamber, your finger is on the trigger, you are ready, and Poe’s eyes sparkle as he seems to stop and think about it.

“Mm, not sure,” he eventually shrugs, just before you rush, “Let’s keep it that—”

And then he’s slapping a hand on your leg and belting out the chorus while you scoff, giggling.  He ruined the punchline on purpose and is now getting chip dust all over you, but you know any complaint you make will be drowned out by his suspended notes and backing track, so you just roll your eyes and swipe the bag of chips from him while he continues to serenade you.

“My ears are bleeding,” you mutter under your breath.

He has a nice voice, you think.

#poe x reader #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron #reader insert #Smut #no-droids

[stellocchia]

something i noticed,and maybe this is just me projecting: c!tommy's relationship with food is pretty complicated (if that's even the word for it). like,he's (likely) a child soldier in the l'manburg wars,food in wartime isnt exactly plentiful. and then comes pogtopia where all anyone really has to eat is potatoes. and then exile,where his food is either blown up with the rest of his stuff,or he isnt eating at all. it's just something i thought about recently idk

Oh yeah!

I had a talk about this once with a couple other people, but that's definitely supported by canon!

Well, from one point onward...

We don't have any canon confirmations that there was a scarcity of food during the independence war or Pogtopia (not on the Pogtopia side at least, we know there was a food shortage under Schlatt).

That said it wouldn't be that weird of an assumption to make.

Then we have the exile where starvation is straight-up canon. Tommy was not allowed farms and generally depended on other people giving him food + Mushroom Henry. That said he hardly ate anything either way because depression very famously can decrease your appetite quite a lot.

Then we have the fact that he's been locked in prison for like 3 weeks having to share rations of raw potatoes with Dream. 2 of those weeks were after he got resurrected and we know that Dream was either not getting food or possibly getting less than when it was known that there were 2 people in there.

Even now Tommy doesn't really have a stable source of food. He has a measly carrot farm that produces almost nothing and people steal from anyway and even the things he has in chests are stolen CONSTANTLY. He is possibly the one single person people steal from the most despite him having almost nothing because his house is in a frequented location.

Even now we often see him ask for food from others because he hardly has any.

As an added bonus:

Last stream, when Quackity put Tommy's chair too close to the table, Tommy made a comment about how that was because of his weight.

So basically yeah, he has been through a lot and food is a resource that hasn't been readily available to him in a long ass time.

#anon ask #dream smp #tommyinnit #tw starvation #character analysis #c!tommy analysis

[dawnsociety]

best friend!rowoon

hello everyone, I decided to start my writing work for sf9 with a bullet scenario for rowoon. the tall man has been bothering me a lot recently, idk why but I felt the urge to write something about him being y/n’s bff. I think he’d be an amazing friend, always there to support you :(((((((( okaY ANYWAYS, HERE IT IS.

lemme know if you like it, my ask box is always open!!

best friend!rowoon

okay SO

i think he’s be the most supportive friend you could ever have in your life

no matter what you’re doing, what goal you’re trying to achieve, HE’LL BE THERE FOR YOU

studying hard for an exam? he’ll bring you coffee, trying not to interrupt your study session. working on a very difficult project at work? he’ll send you a text in the morning cheering you up for the day that has just started, or at night, telling you how hard you worked that day.

honestly, you have no idea how he always finds the right words to make you feel bettere but hE DOES!!!! 

you’ve been friends for years yet sometimes you’re amazed by him

he’s the friend you’ve known the longest, and you’re pretty sure you two will get old together

“my friend, it’s time to look for a lovely nursing home where we’ll spend the rest of our lonely lives together”

“who told you I am not going to get married and that i’ll die alone?”

“you won’t, you’re too tall and don’t understand memes”

dsjklfjdlkfd you love teasing him for his height, bc he sulks when you do so and it makes you laugh (evil)

(he’s not the type to sulk easily, but when you call him a hag for not knowing the latest memes his lips turn into a lovely pout)

you’re glad to have this gentle toll man by your side tho!!!!

after all, your friendship started off thanks to his unexpected grow (when you were in 3rd grade and went to his place after school once, you’d ask his mom to cook you what she would usually make for rowoon so you’d grow as tall as him)

(his mom got all flustered and promised you to cook the both of you a delicious meal for dinner)

ANYWAYS, you were in kindergarten, coloring the drawing that you teacher had asked you to make for Mom’s day

you were really proud of it, and were coloring all happily when suddenly this little kid came to you and took the yellow colored pencil from you

you asked him to give it back to you and when he said no, you started crying (ofc, you were a little kid)

before your teacher could intervene, rowoon came to you

the kid who stole your pencil got scared as soon as he saw rowoon, due to his height (he was taller than all the other kids in class)

rowoon told him kindly to give the pencil back to you, and he quietly did so before running away

in the meantime, you had stopped crying. to thank him, you gave him half of you snack

from that point onward, you became besties!!!

always by each other’s side

you basically grew up together, always being at each other’s house

your parents became friends as well, thanks to you

what you love the most about your friendship is how you’ve always given each other space to grow: even when you opted for a different major at uni (which meant moving to a new city) he did not budge, and gave you his unconditional support

(even tho he was dying a little inside, the thought of not having his best friend by his side made him sad but didn’t want to show it so to not upset you)

time passed quickly tho, and you two soon reunited when you found a job near him

he spends most of his time at your place, stealing your food helping you taking care of the house (since you often get back home late from your new job)

as an acting major, he doesn’t have a typical 9 to 5 job so his schedule allows him to adjust his life accordingly

(which means that yes, he’s always at your place)

when you moved, he rented a pick up and came to your old place to help you move

you complained abt it, telling him he didn’t have to but NO!!!! everything for his bestie

when you started showing interest in boys and got into dating, you’d often ask him for advice

and he would tease you, telling you how clueless you are when it comes to love and romance lololol

you’d defend yourself saying how it’s men who aren’t used to communicating (unlike him tho, he was an open book and viceversa)

sometimes you think you don’t reciprocate his affection for you as much as you wish/he deserves, so you get all silent

once you were watching a movie at your place and this thought occured to you

so you got all silent, and rowoon could sense the tension immediately

“hey, is something wrong?”

“uh? uhm no, why?”

he knew you so well he could almost read your mind. “c’mon, tell me. is something going on at work?”

“oh, no no. it’s just... you do so much for me...”

he was looking at you with his big, doe eyes, waiting for you to continue

“...and i don’t do much for you. you helped me move, you’re always there for me when i need to rant, the other day your friends from uni asked you to hang out together but you said no bc of me”

“you were sick, how could i leave you alon-”

“it was just a headache, i took a painkiller and it went away”

“yeah but what if it got worse?”

you paused the movie and turned to him, his gaze fixed on your face

“i don’t want you to get overly worried, or put your life on pause bc of me”

“but i don’t”, he laughed. “to be honest i wasn’t in the mood to hang out that night, but this doesn’t mean i’ll never do that. besides, you do a lot for me, don’t be silly. remember when i injured my back and you halted your schedule to help me? this is not something anyone would do”

you two then hugged (HIS HUGS ARE THE BEST!!!!) and he promised to take you with him the next time he’d hang out with his uni friends

he introduced you to all of them, especially this guy, youngbin, who was older than both of you (he was really cute)

did i mention how he makes the best gifts?

like, you mention something once and he’s like “here!!!! :D for your bday!!!!!”

all in all, rowoon is the bestest of friends you could ever have 

please love him a lot, he deserves nothing but the best :(((

#writings #my writings #sf9 scenarios #sf9 imagines #sf9 reactions #sf9 requests #sf9 fanfic #rowoon scenarios #rowoon fanfic #rowoon ff #rowoon imagines

[holdyourbreathfornow]

OOOO 49 with romantic coomer and bubby :D

49. Giving them a tight hug that makes them lose their breath.

Put this under a read-more to save space! Hope you like it, Lovelace!

You can also find this on my AO3 under the same username!

Harold isn’t expecting for someone to be in his office when he gets to work that morning. He turns the corner to his office and the first thing he notices is the pattern on the ground caused by light shining through the wired glass. His guard up, Harold readjusts his grip on his suitcase so he can use the thing like a club, and heads for the door.

A scientist he doesn’t recognize sits in one of his guest chairs, examining their finger nails, and he figures they must need to see him about something. Some of the tension drains from him and he makes as much casual noise as possible opening the door, so he doesn’t startle his unexpected guest like they startled him.

The scientist shifts their gaze from their nails to Harold as he enters the room, but otherwise doesn’t acknowledge his presence in anyway as he sets his briefcase down and shrugs his own labcoat on.

“I apologize for keeping you waiting! I didn’t know anyone was waiting for me this morning.” Harold finally says, plastering his best customer service smile on and extending a hand to his guest. Their grip is barely there as they shake his hand, and they wait until he hesitantly sits down to speak.

“I don’t mind waiting, Dr. Coomer. Sometimes our profession requires a bit of patience, wouldn’t you say?” The scientist smiles, but something it seems… Fake, like they’re testing him on something, though he has no idea what.

“This job has certainly helped me practice that particular virtue, yes.” He agrees, slowly and carefully changing his genial smile into a look of confusion. “If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly have you come to see me about?”

“One of the projects in Experimental Biology, specifically one that you seem to have… Befriended, as odd as that is. B-U-88-Y, I believe, should be the identifying tag.”

“...What about xem.” Harold does his best not to seem too affected by the question, but he knows he’s failed when the scientist’s lip twitches minutely, finding amusement in his sudden worry.

“Well, since the two of you were so buddy buddy, I’ve been tasked with informing you that that project’s been disbanded.” When Harold freezes, the scientist cocks their head in confusion. “Dr. Coomer? Are you alright?”

“So, then… Then what will they do with the old project?”

“Oh. Oh, Dr. Coomer, I think you’re concerned over nothing. The project’s only been disbanded because the higher ups figured that the goal’s been accomplished. Even if I always personally thought B-U-88-Y was far from perfect, the final say was never mine.” The scientist watches as Harold sags with relief, and they blink in bemusement. “Xe even has xer own lab now, if you’d like the room designation code.”

“Please.” Harold mutters and the scientist nods, fishing a pen out of a pocket and snatching a pack of Post-Its off of Harold’s desk. “Thank you. For letting me know.”

“Well, the security sector tipped me off to how often you visited.” The scientist mumbles as they write, distracted. “Seems that that group of goons were really rooting for the two of you, much as they could with no audio on those cameras. I was cornered by some very concerned guards this morning, talking about how they felt you should be informed that the lab hosting the B-U-88-Y project was being refurbished so you didn’t walk into a completely new project and think the worst.”

“I’ll have to send them a fruit basket.” Harold chuckles and that makes the scientist snort, ripping the Post-It away from the pack and planting it on Harold’s desk.

“Yes, it seems a fair number of us were rooting for you.” They stand to leave and Harold stands as well as soon as his brain registers what they just said.

“Wait, who all do you mean by ‘us’?”

The only answer he gets is an echoing laugh as the scientist continues on down the hallway.

-

As soon as he has a spare moment, Harold picks up the Post-It still clinging to his desk and heads for the room number listed on it. Bubby’s new lab is in the astronomy sector, and Harold smiles at all the star charts and pictures of other planets’ surfaces. At least Bubby’s found a group just as interested in outer space as xe is.

Speaking of the devil, Harold finally finds the room that matches the number he’s been hunting for. The door doesn’t have a window for him to look into but he can see light filtering out from under it. Harold’s quick to knock on the door, though instead of waiting for an answer, he tries the handle and find it’s unlocked.

Bubby stands in the middle of the room, obviously having been on xer way to see what the knocking was all about. Xe must be able to see the stark relief on Harold’s face, hurrying towards him.

“Harold, is every-?” He cuts xem off, closing the gap between the two of them and dragging Bubby into a crushing hug. “Harold… Can’t… Breathe.”

“Oh, sorry!” He quickly loosens his grip and Bubby wheezes for air as xe rest xer chin on his shoulder.

“Not that I’m not happy to see you…” Bubby starts once they’ve got their breath back, “...But why are you happy enough to break ribs?”

“I didn’t, did I?” Harold asks, pulling away just enough to meet Bubby’s gaze, and Bubby rolls xer eyes and smiles.

“If you did, I’d be a lot more pissy. Now, answers, please?”

“Someone… Well, I found out about your project getting disbanded before I found out about you getting transferred to a new sector and I thought the worst, because. You and I both know it had always been a possibility and-”

“And you thought they killed me or something equally fucked up.” Bubby finishes the thought with a sigh, and Harold nods. “Well, whoever informed you was a dumbass and could have phrased the news so much better! They didn’t need to give you a heart attack! Who was it? I’ll set their ass on fire.”

“It doesn’t matter now.” Harold shrugs and smiles, and Bubby’s eyes dart over his face before xe nod.

“I guess you’re right. And! An upside to being out of that damn tube is that we can take our lunch breaks together. And it’s about that time now. So.” Xe disentangle the two of them and hook xer hand into the crook of Harold’s elbow, starting to tug him out of the room. “Let’s go! I want the best seat in the cafeteria, Harold!” He laughs at that and the two of them start hurrying down the hall.

“Very well! Onwards and upwards, my dear!”

#hlvrai #hlvrai boomer #dr. coomer #hlvrai bubby #kai writes #kai fills prompts #asthecrowrambles #kai answers

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

gotham’s on its own, now.

Titans 3.10

moving onwards! we’re back to the core team (hopefully) in this episode, at a delicious cliffhanger at the end of 3.08, so i have High Hopes

as always, typing this up as i watch the episode.

SPOILERS AHEAD

1. this opening scene is so deliciously bizarre. is that dick in his old hospital room brooding at the snellen chart that he hallucinated about? is dick astral projecting? is that a future dick? a dead dick? 

i just know we’re not going to get answers and i love it and i hate it and i love it.

2. not sure why barbara’s being put on the spot over the situation since as a police commissioner she wouldn’t really have the power to fix the issues with the pipes and the toxin? maybe gotham is a city so overrun by police that they’re looked to for every issue that comes up. it’s bizarre though.

2.25. also not a fan of how barbara’s authority is repeatedly undercut--especially by other nameless men--and how she defers to dick when she was (rightfully) furious at him just a few episodes ago for making rash plans and, well, undermining her authority! 

what’s dick grayson to the gcpd anyway? he’s bruce wayne’s son and an ex-cop from detroit who hasn’t been in one in nearly a year. why in the world are they ok with him consulting in this case and dragging the commissioner’s attention away from a crucial matter? ronnie from schitt’s creek, why???

2.45. dick complains of “brain fog from the accident”. AHA! not to mention unspecified chest/back trauma from being slammed into a car at high speed, and a gunshot wound from before that. take a nap, grayson. i see shitty decision-making in your future.

3. oh gawd, it’s the scarecrow again. do we have to listen to him talk? i hate his character so much.

3.25. “you fucked it up--they were about to take me back!” at first blush this seems like jason genuinely regrets that he couldn’t reconcile with the titans, but his demeanour makes me think that he wanted to plant himself among them. i don’t know. i think he’s playing a balancing game with the options he does have: he’s not ready or secure enough to strike out on his own, and the door to the titans seems closed for now. all he’s got is scarecrow and he can’t risk completely alienating the guy.

3.5. all that big talk about Edward Bernays and the power of an Idea and he releases a... Boomer Facebook ad?

it seems utterly over-the-top and ridiculous, but i guess in a charged situation like now, and in a city like gotham... with the right suggestions wrapped in the right kind of context, well. 

3.75. maaaaan i have a feeling i’m going to be in the minority here, but i feel for dick and barbara so much here. especially when barbara says “even when things were at their worst, gotham trusted batman and my dad.” neither of them really wanted this legacy though on paper they’re the ones best suited for it. and now that they’ve taken charge, things have shattered so beyond their control that now the legacy is a source of guilt. you have to fix it--it’s hard to think of anything else, be it friends or family or yourself.

at the end there’s just... burnout. giving up.

3.8. (who’s projecting? shut up, you’re projecting.)

4. “one river, many wells”... oh i see what you’re doing, Show. :/ there just happened to be a lazarus well in gotham, sure. 

5. i have loved every single gotham taxi driver on this show and i demand a spinoff based on them.

6. i thought this anti-fear toxin was only supposed to remove your inhibitions, not turn you into a stereotypical zombie. it’s perfectly possible that some people are going to do terrible and reckless things that don’t involve fighting, like make ruinous financial decisions or bake bare-handed or try parkour on a multi-storey building. honestly, that would’ve made for a much more interesting aftermath.

6.5. “the worst of it is over”??? are we going to do something for the tens of thousands of people poisoned by this toxin, even the ones you brutally beat down? withdrawal facilities, medical support, anything?

7. i love how titans loves to give everybody mind-bending powers at a whim. so now lydia can just teleport whomever she wants to some ethereal “training ground”? what’s next?

the way this show’s building up the rules of its universe, time and space and the mind and soul are interlinked and constantly bleeding into each other; it’s providing a framework for every deus ex machina to come.

8. so they meet in a bar. while there’s a city wide zombie crisis going on and the literal water from their taps is poison. taking away police resources when they’re stretched thin. taking a shot of absinthe after admitting that you’re still experiencing post headinjury “brain fog”. i know, i know.

the bad decisions are just beginning.

8.5. hmmmm. you know, i can just about see where dick is coming from with the idea to have nightwing surrender to the gcpd--this is now a PR battle, after all, and making a big, public gesture is a good move. but dick, it’s not the police that gotham has lost trust in (any more than usual anyway) but in you and your team. you were in a precarious position anyway even before scarecrow’s video as a brand new team in a city that’s used to its larger-than-life heroes and villains; now is the time to go big, to show that you care for the city. maybe by working hard on an antidote to the toxin. maybe by using WE resources to medically treat the poisoned. maybe by providing clean drinking water from outside the city. honestly there are so many options.

but dick’s not thinking straight, is he? he’s thinking about saving barbara’s image. he wants her employees to trust her again because he just can’t let go of his guilt and his tendency to throw himself on the cross at the slightest shift of the wind. he’s still obsessed with the idea of penance, not realising how much it would affect the people around him. 

8.9 and honestly we complain about dick making dumbass decisions but that’s the point? the show is not justifying these decisions by making them work out; they keep backfiring on him until he learns the lesson he really needs to learn. victory is in self-actualisation; not strategy or training or fancy weapons or martial arts moves. 

9. fuck off, crane.

9.5. it’s obvious he doesn’t quite have jason in his thrall now, and it’s quite possible he’s begun to misread and underestimate him as well. jason wants purpose, true, but not for power or legacy; it’s for safety and guidance.

10. i’m disappointed, but not surprised, to see the rest of the team agree with dick to surrender themselves. nobody had other suggestions or even opposition--not even gar, who has so far been the most sensible of the bunch. 

i can believe kory’s own guilt over being the one manipulated into blowing up the pipes that led to this whole crisis pushing her to agree with dick’s decision, but we’ve spent zero time lingering over her feelings on the matter, so that’s a huge opportunity wasted isn’t it?

(oh, i just remembered! what happened to Hot Psychiatrist Guy? has she spoken to him again? Show, if you tell me you’re just going to drop that thread i swear--)

10.5. “as a team, as a family.” well, this is one dysfunctional fucking family. 

there’s still a weird level of deference to dick that i both understand and don’t understand at all. he’s the one with the most training, the most experience under his belt as a hero after all; he’s the one who stepped up to lead and so he’s the leader. but he’s also clearly unwell and has been for a while. his leadership last year was a fucking disaster and though he’s been much better this year, he’s still closeted and self-sacrificial and under stress, utterly reckless and self-absorbed. the team’s continued reliance on him as a leader despite all of this is bad not just for them, but for dick too.

11. “you were born not just to protect people, donna, but to lead them.” huh. just as i was talking about dick taking a break from being the leader...

12. wait, is that the police guy...?

“say it. say my name.”

“uh... red mask? scarface? motor voice? oh, oh, oh! toothless! because of the, uh, no, uh, mouth line on the mask? ... hey, hey, hey, now put the gun down--”

13. why do they keep repeating “this is just for show” and “optics” in front of all the police officers? remember, they’re trying not just to rehabilitate barbara’s image in the eyes of gotham, but also in the rest of her force, who think she’s been too chummy/lenient towards the titans.

13.5. *siiiigh* well. that went downhill fast. and predictably so. again, barbara has frustratingly little power... (though that could just mean she’s in the wrong profession). a stunningly bad decision all around. 

a bad decision going demonstrably sideways i think says more about where the characters are than the quality of the writing at that stage, imo. not to say that titans is well-written (even i can’t compel myself to say that).

13.8. wait whaaaaaat. kom has kory’s powers now????

13.9. oh, kory. she looks exhausted... defeated. the guilt around being a possible catalyst for this crisis, the shock of losing her powers, her growing horror that her sister might’ve deceived her in order to steal her powers, the utter despair that is their carefully crafted plan utterly falling apart...

i wish we had just as enough time in kory’s head as we do in dick’s to really explore these feelings and pick them apart.

14. sooooooooooo barbara’s in jail. holy fuck. 

15. i guess i was hoping for a more emotional reunion between rachel and the rest of the titans, but eh. there’s a crisis on. i guess i can excuse a bit of an anti-climax... for now. (though i’m sure they’d want me to call it understated.)

16. dick’s reached the burnout stage, i see.

and i’m sorry, the police know that the titans are based out of wayne manor? then from there it’s a very, very small leap--infinitesimal, really--to figuring out that dick grayson is nightwing and bruce wayne is batman. and speaking of batman, do we know what this guy is doing after a fucking suicide attempt????

and there are only three episodes left?????

good god.

17. also: fuck off, crane.

#titans #meta #dick grayson #koriand'r #garfield logan #donna troy #barbara gordon #jason todd #a byronic cupcake #badass strawberry truffle #manic pixie pop tart #a tragic jalebi