#because these are genuinely good descriptors

[freejamtime]

actually i'm crazy about this now. astarion and gale are perceived by the fandom in a lot of different ways solely because astarion has been clocked as "the sexy one" and gale has been clocked as "the incel" and it is sooo fucking annoying to read about half of the time.

like people are willing to stomach the idea of astarion being rude and willing to do bad things as a survival tactic, because those things don't stop them from degrading him to the descriptor "sexy" and nothing else. people talk about his addiction to blood positively because the way you sate it is by doing something perceived as intimate. so they believe sexy elf man is sexy and nothing else and then whine when he perpetuates the cycle of abuse and doesn't actually care about them.

and then meanwhile gale, who is arrogant and a little too ambitious for his own good (but still has the common decency of "hey bad thing bad"), is treated more poorly because how are you supposed to degrade him to being attractive/sexy and nothing else when his suffering is much more impersonal?? HIS addiction is now a haha funny crack joke because it's not "sexy". HIS relationship is "haha he fumbled a goddess" because he constantly talks about his ex. because he has issues. and mystra is, while not the person who put it there directly, the reason he's got a bomb in his chest

so you have this issue where people are sooo determined to mischaracterize people to the point where they make astarion the "hot twink" or whatever (COMPLETELY ignoring that's the entire point, he wants you to think that because that's what he's been forced to behave as for survival) and gale the "annoying incel man" because there's such a difference of what they can and can't sexualize about the two of them.

this isn't a real genuine issue or anything but it makes traversing this fandom SUPER annoying when people hate one of my favorite little dudes for something they mistakenly love astarion for. like i'm sorry astarion is not your flirty little meow meow he IS putting up an act he IS dissociating throughout half of his romance scenes i hope you know that. and also gale is traumatized and not the "nice guy complex" man for wanting to win back mystra's favor. hope that helps

#bg3 #gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #astarion #baldur's gate 3 #.txt

[communistkenobi]

Hi, genuine good faith question if you'd like! How is TOS racist? It was my understanding that the OG Series was like, huge for equality in media?

I’m speaking primarily about the content of TOS itself, not its historical impact - I understand it had various historic firsts in terms of having characters of colour in respectable roles, which I’m not dismissing. My experience with the discourse on here surrounding the show is that people front-load these character representations as emblematic of the show’s progressive politics. Which, if we want to go that route, TOS was contemporary to the US civil rights movement, which provides us with a handy measuring stick to see how TOS actually grapples with race, not just the presence of characters of colour themselves. I'm going to be kind of defensive in this explanation, not towards you specifically, but because I have had this conversation with people online many, many, many times, and so any defensiveness on my part is in anticipation of arguments I know will come up as a result of making the basic claim that a show made in America in the 1960s is racist. I'm also going to be copy + pasting from an older post I've made on the subject since it's been a while now since I've watched TOS so some of the details are fuzzy.

Like okay, the premise of TOS is that the Enterprise, as an ambassador of Starfleet/the Federation, is seeking out new alien life to study. The Prime Directive prohibits the Enterprise crew from interfering with the development of any alien culture or people while they do this, so the research they collect needs to be done in an unobtrusive way. I think this is the first point at which people balk at the argument that TOS is racist or has a colonial conception of the world - the Enterprise’s mission is premised on non-interference, and I think when people hear ‘colonial’ as a descriptor they (understandably, obviously) assume it is describing active conquest, genocide, and dispossession. Even setting aside all the times where Kirk does directly interfere with the “development” of a people or culture (usually because they’ve “stagnated” culturally, because a culture "without conflict" cannot evolve or “develop” beyond its current presumed capacity - he is pretty explicitly imposing his own values onto another culture in order to force them to change in a particular way), or the times when the Enterprise is actually looking to extract resources from a given planet or people, I’m not exactly making this claim, or rather, that’s not the only thing I’m describing when calling TOS racist/colonial.

The show's presentation of scientific discovery and inquiry is anthropological - the “object” of analysis is alien/foreign culture, meaning that when the Enterprise crew comes into contact with a new being or person, this person is always read first and foremost through the level of (the Enterprise’s understanding of) culture. Their behaviour, beliefs, dress, way of speaking, appearance, and so on are always reflective of their culture as a whole, and more importantly, that their racial or phenotypic characteristics define the boundaries of their culture. Put another way, culture is interpreted, navigated, and bound racially - the show presents aliens as a Species, but these species are racially homogeneous, flattening race to a natural, biological difference that is always physically apparent and presented through the lens of scientific objectivity, as "species" is a unit of biological taxonomy. Basically species is a shorthand for race. This is the standard of most sci-fi/fantasy genre work, so this is not a sin unique to Star Trek.

Because of this however, Kirk and Co are never really interacting with individuals, they are interacting with components of a (foreign, exotic, fundamentally different) culture, the same way we understand that a biologist can generalize about a species using the example of an individual 'specimen'. And when the Enterprise interacts with these cultures, they very frequently measure them using a universalized scale of development - they have a teleological (which is to say, evolutionary) view of culture, ie, that all cultures go from savage to rational, primitive to advanced, economically simple to economically complex (ie, to capitalist modes of production). And the metrics they are judging these cultures by are fundamentally Western ones, always emphasising to the audience that the final destination of all cultures (that are worthy of advancing beyond their current limited/“primitive” stages) is a culture identical to the Federation, a culture that can itself engage in this anthropological mission to catalogue all life as fitting within a universal set of practices and racial similarities they call “culture.”

This is a western, colonial understanding of culture - racially and spatially homogeneous people comprise the organs of a social totality, ie, a society, which can then be analysed as an “object,” as a “phenomenon,” by the scientists in order to extract information from them to produce and advance state (ie Federation) knowledge. The Enterprise crew are allowed to be individuals, are allowed to be subjects with a capacity for reason, contradiction, emotion, compassion, and even moments of savagery or violence, without those things being assigned to their “race” or “culture” as a whole, but the people they interact with are only components of a whole which are “discovered” by the Enterprise as opportunities to expand and refine the Federation’s body of knowledge.

Spock is actually a good example of what I'm talking about, because he is an exception to this rule - unlike the others in the crew, his behaviour is always read as a symptom of his innate Vulcan-ness, where his human and Vulcan halves war for dominance in his mind and character. Bones (the doctor, one of the main cast) constantly comments on Spock's inability to feel things, that he is callous and unsympathetic, ruled by Vulcan logic to such an extreme that his rationality is a form of irrationality, as his Vulcan blood prohibits him from tempering logic with human emotion and intuition. Now you can argue that Bones is a stand-in for the racists of the world, that Spock proves Bones wrong in that he is able to feel but merely keeps it under wraps, that Vulcans are not biologically incapable of emotion but merely live in a socially repressive culture, but this still engages in the racial logic of the show - Vulcans are a racially-bound species with a single monolithic culture, and Spock's ability to express and feel 'human emotions' is the metric by which he is granted human subjectivity and sympathy.

And on the flip side you have the Klingons - a “race” that is uniformly savage, backward, violent, and dangerous. In the episode Day of the Dove, where Klingons board the Enterprise along with an alien cloud that makes everyone suddenly aggressive and racist (this show is insane lol), the Enterprise crew begins acting violent and racist, but the Klingons don’t change. They aren’t more violent than before (because they already were fundamentally violent and racist), and they don’t become less violent when the cloud eventually leaves (because they are never able to emerge from their violence and savagery as a social condition or external imposition - they simply are that way). Klingons are racially, behaviourally, psychologically, and culturally homogeneous, universally violent and immune to reason, and their racial characteristics are both physical manifestations of this universal violence as well as the origin of it. The writers and creators of TOS are explicitly invoking the orientalist idea of the “Mongolian horde,” representing both the American fear of Soviet global takeover as well as blatantly racist fears about “Asiatics” (a word used in the show, particularly in The Omega Glory where a fear of racialised communist takeover is made explicit) dominating the world.

This is colonial thinking! Like, fundamentally, at its core, this is colonial white supremacist thinking. Now this is not because TOS invents these tropes or is the origin of them, it is not individually responsible for these racial and colonial logics - these conceptions are endemic to Western thought, and I am not expecting a television show to navigate its way outside of this current colonial paradigm of scientific knowledge. I’m also not expecting an average person watching this to pick out all the intricacies of this and link it to the colonial history of Europe or the colonial history of western philosophy/thought. But this base premise of Star Trek is why the show is fundamentally colonial - even if it was the case that the crew never intervened in any alien conflict, never extracted any material resources from other people, this would still be colonial logic and colonial thinking. The show has a fundamentally colonial imagination when it comes to exploration, discovery, and culture.

I think a good place to end is the opening sequence. The show's first line is always "Space! The final frontier." I do not think the word frontier is meant metaphorically or poetically - I think the show is being honest about its conception of space as an infinitely vast, infinitely exotic frontier from which a globally Western civilisation (which the Enterprise is an emblem of) can extract resources, be they material or epistemic

#tos.txt #< have more posts in there also

[cosmerelists]

Ranking Various Cosmere Fantasy Swears

If there's one thing Brandon Sanderson likes, it's avoiding any real swear words in favor of Fantasy Swears. I am genuinely a huge fan of this technique. So here how I'd rank some of the ones I can remember! (And thanks to 17th Shard [here and here] and to Reddit for compiling some lists!).

#14: Colors (Warbreaker)

This one feels a little bit...lazy, I guess? Like yes, Warbreaker's magic is color-dependent, so colors are a big part of the world-building, so I guess it makes sense that people use it as a swear. But it feels like if, in fantasy USA, people swore by "eagles" all the time: "Eagles! I dropped my hamburger!"

#13: Moons (Tress of the Emerald Sea)

I mean same problem as with "colors"! Yes, the moons are a big aspect of the worldbuilding, but it just feels like a semi-boring swear. Although maybe that's just the swear that Tress tends to use.

#12: Shadows/Shades (Shadows for Silence/Sunlit Man)

Okay, maybe this one is a bit boring, but anything Threndy-related gets extra credit from me. So therefore I think this is one of the least boring of the "basically boring descriptors of world building elements" swears.

#11: By the Lord Ruler (Mistborn)

I mean...eh. This one is world specific, but it's basically like swearing by god only in this case the god is the Lord Ruler, right? It makes sense 'n' all but isn't as interesting as some of the later ones.

#10: By the Survivor's Scars (Mistborn)

This one is better because it's more specific--Kelsier's scars are rich with meaning, and swearing by them does feel like it carries cultural weight.

#9: By Harmony's Armbands (Mistborn)

Putting them all in a line like this...I just like how they get ever more specific. Now we're swearing by Harmony's feruchemical armlets? Okay!

#8: God Beyond (Shadows for Silence)

I mean, Threnody is, like, haunted by a god's corpse, so I think any of their god-related swears are more interesting as a result.

#7: Nights / Nights afire (Emperor's Soul)

I like this one because I just don't know what it refers to and it seems kinda creepy. What are nights on fire for??

#6: Rust and Ruin (Mistborn)

Frankly, the alliteration gets this one extra points. And "Rust and Ruin!" just feels like a good thing to shout when you've stubbed your toe.

#5: Storms/storming/Stormfather (Stormlight Archive)

I know this one SHOULD lose points for being exactly the sort of boring descriptive swear I maligned above...but I enjoy this one simply because it's such a clear linguistic stand-in for "fuck" and that leads to such amusing translations as "Kaladin Fuckblessed" or the "Fuckfather" and that just never stops being funny to me.

#4: Herald body parts (Stormlight Archive)

I didn't notice until looking at various compiled lists of Cosmere Fantasy Swears, but Rosharans really like to swear by specific Herald body parts, huh? From here: Kelek's breadth, Kelek's tongue, Ash's eyes, Ishar's soul, Nalan's hand, Pali's mind, Talat's hand...I'm a fan of this. It's interesting and feels culturally relevant.

#3: Glories Within (Stormlight Archive)

This one is just Szeth so far, but people speculate it's probably a Shin curse. That makes it interesting to me since we don't know a whole lot about the Shin. What inner glory are they using to swear?

#2: Starving (Stormlight Archive)

This one is pretty similar to "Storming," I suppose, in being a pretty clear linguistic stand-in for "fucking." But I just like that the food-obsessed Lift has her own personal swear relating to starvation.

#1: Lowly/Highly (Yumi and the Nightmare Painter)

I'm a big fan of the lowly/highly thing from Yumi & the Nightmare Painter, where words can be linguistically marked as meant in either a high way (complimentary) or a low way (insultingly). It's fun worldbuilding and leads to some comic beats in the novel. Plus, this post tickled me greatly: https://www.tumblr.com/cabinetcreature/722030379790401536?source=share. It's so true!

#cosmere #cosmerelists #Stormlight Archive #Warbreaker #Mistborn #Sunlit Man #Tress of the Emerald Sea #Yumi and the Nightmare Painter #Shadows for Silence #Emperor's Soul

[skaldish]

Y'all…I'm having a very disturbing realization dawn upon me. I don't really have a way of articulating this clearly yet, but I wanted to bring it up in case other people know about it:

I'm noticing that many people (namely white Americans) seem to act as branded-versions of themselves rather than who they genuinely are. Specifically, what I'm beginning to understand how insanely pernicious it is. I knew it existed because I grew up in it, but didn't realize how uncanny it actually looks when you watch it happen, nor what the implications are that we do this instead of connecting with each other as people.

It seems like any descriptor under the sun can become a brand, so long as it's understood that way more than it's understood as just a descriptor. "Man" is a brand. "Punk" is a brand. "Conservative" is a brand. "Left" is a brand. "Queer" is a brand. "Protestant" is a brand. "Catholic" is a brand. "Anticapitalist" is a brand. "Young professional" is a brand. "Good" is a brand. Words like "BIPOC" are also interpreted within a brand context.

I'm not sure if this is something that has always been there, but I only just noticed? Or if it's on the rise with commercialization? A bit of both? Something else?

#zan speaks #humanitarian issues #I am legit on the fence about posting this #but wanted to try anyway #feel free to ask for clarification is something isn't making sense #tbd #maybe #also I'm not trying to trap anyone into discourse with this I just genuinely want to know

[starrrbakerrr]

I’ve noticed that Tumblr is the only platform that widely acknowledges the fact that Katniss, Gale, and Haymitch were severely whitewashed in the films. On Twitter I’ve seen people get downright offended at the mention of Katniss being Indigenous, mixed, or simply non-white. I’ve seen people say that people with olive skin can be white and yes that’s true, but Jennifer Lawrence does not have olive skin which still makes her casting inaccurate.

I think this is because Twitter and TikTok focuses on videos, images, and short blurbs of writing - which caters to the movies. It’s the only visual representation of the books outside of fanart. Tumblr allows users to write long think pieces and the books are the primary reference instead of the movies. I’ve only seen the books mentioned outside of Tumblr when talking about Peeta’s characterization and missing lines in the movies. BookTok has also opened discussion of Katniss being non-white but otherwise non-white Katniss is generally not well received outside of Tumblr. Even fanart of Katniss with darker skin isn’t regularly distributed outside of Tumblr.

It’s disheartening but unsurprising. I mean, back when the first movie was released people were outraged that Rue was Black even though it was explicitly referenced multiple times. I just remember being in middle school and obsessed with the books and so excited when the movies were announced, and I was really disappointed with the casting of Katniss because I always imagined her as non-white like myself. Katniss is also supposed to be short and small in stature so that was difficult for me to grasp but I’m glad Jennifer didn’t pressure herself to lose weight for the role (she mentioned this in an interview). I think Jennifer and Woody did great in their roles, and Liam did good with what he was given, but I don’t see them as Katniss, Haymitch and Gale when reading the books or fanfiction. I remember Suzanne saying in an interview that the Katniss she imagines doesn’t exist, but Jennifer is close enough. I’m really curious to know how she imagines Katniss beyond the general descriptors of olive skin, dark hair, and grey eyes.

I’m also genuinely glad that Rachel Zegler is playing Lucy Gray Baird. She has tanner skin, which is great. However, the unfortunate reality is that she’s still “white enough” to be palatable to a white audience.

#I think it’s the viritol and anger that people have at the idea of a nonwhite Katniss is what frustrates me the most #but this is the society we live in #the hunger games #katniss everdeen #gale hawthorne #haymitch abernathy #catching fire #mockingjay #the hunger games trilogy #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #THG #thg meta #text #peeta mellark #jennifer lawrence #woody harrelson #liam hemsworth #rachel zegler #lucy gray baird #thg rue

[galacticgraffiti]

Sugar (I've developed a taste for you)

❁ 2 ❁

!!! NSFW ⋆ 18+ ⋆ Minors DNI !!!

Summary: A favour for a favour - Astarion's world has worked like that for centuries. Except- you don't know that yet.

Rating: Mature Wordcount: 3.3k Descriptors: I try to keep my reader-inserts fairly neutral, but let me know if anything slips through the cracks! Still debating how to go about C3... CW: nicknames, flirting, lusting after the pale man, blood, blood play, talks about biting, feelings talk

« Chapter 1 ⋆✦⋆ Main Masterlist ⋆✦⋆ If you prefer AO3 ⋆✦

༻────• ༻❁༺ •────༺

Chapter 2: I'm a Winged Insect, You're a Funeral Pyre

You wake up wrapped in your bedroll, barely able to open your eyes. You feel exhausted - drained.

Drained.

You sit up, your hand flying up to your neck to feel for the wound Astarion’s fangs must have  left there. They are small, barely tangible, but you can feel the small holes nonetheless.

You breathe out slowly, trying to gain some control over your feelings. The world blurs before your eyes as you recall last night.

This really happened. You let him do that to you. You gave your blood, willingly - and you found out Astarion’s big secret. Not just an elf, but a vampire. You knew he was hiding something, but something this big? May the gods have mercy on your soul because you have certainly sinned.

You shiver when the memories of last night push to the forefront of your mind - Astarion’s hand in your hair, his lips on your neck - his teeth in you. How it felt to be drunk from, how easy it was to give in and let him have what he wanted.

You don’t remember passing out, but you must have, because you have no recollection of making your way back to the campfire.

Carefully, you stretch out your sore muscles, bones and joints cracking.

“Good morning, darling.”

Astarion’s voice makes your head whip around. He is sitting there, on the thick stump of a tree right next to where you always sleep, watching you with concerned eyes.

“Good morning.” Your voice is scratchy, your throat drier than the seventh circle of the hells.

Astarion’s tongue peeks out from between pink lips, and you notice that he looks… invigorated.

“How are you feeling, sweet thing?” He sounds genuinely worried, and your heart flutters. “There was a moment last night- I thought I may have taken too much, but then you stirred in my arms… I am sorry, my dear, you just make me… hungry.”

The way his voice drops on the last word makes your heart flutter. If this is how he acts after you do him this favour, it may well have been worth it.

“Mhm.” You nod slowly, trying to focus your mind. You are not nearly as angry as you probably should be. “May have been a bit much. I’m feeling sort of woozy.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I do apologise. I promise I’ll be more careful next time.” He saunters over, kneeling next to you, his finger stroking your cheek. 

“Next time?” You laugh weakly. “You sound very certain there will be a next time.”

His eyes darken.

“Well, won’t there be?”

Your neck cracks when you stretch, then exhaustion makes you sink back into your little nest of warmth again.

“Mhh. I’ll have to think about it.”

“But- but I thought you liked it.” Astarion’s voice sounds vaguely distressed, his hand pulling away from your cheek. “I could taste it on you- I could feel it-”

“I- Gods, I’m not saying I didn’t… enjoy myself,” you clarify, though your cloudy thoughts are making it hard to put into words what exactly it is that you are feeling. “I’m just- you said it yourself, just a taste, but now you admit you lost control-”

“-I’ll get better at it with time, who was ever perfect the first time they did something?”

That shuts you right up. What in the hells does that mean?

Astarion’s face is guarded when he looks at you.

“It was… the first time I did not drink from an animal,” he explains quietly. “You were my first, and you were perfect. Better than anything I could have ever dreamed of, simply divine. A delectable treat that I was not in the least prepared for. I am sorry if I got a bit wrapped up in the moment, my love.”

Your cheeks flush at his words. Never in a million years would you have thought you might enjoy being called a ‘treat’, and yet, here you are.

Astarion pats your blanket, gently pushing you back down until you give in and roll up in your blanket once more. His voice is soft and gentle when he regards you.

“Now, now, my pet. Rest some more; it seems you need it. And… thank you.”

You can barely keep your eyes open, and the small smile on his face is the last thing you see before you slip off to sleep again.

*****

It becomes a regular occurrence after that. You know it shouldn’t, you know it is a stupid risk each and every time. You know you have less strength the next day, your head swimming and your throat aching. But, oh, to watch Astarion fight fuelled by your blood is a delight you never expected.

He is stronger, much more powerful than you ever saw him before - and happier. His behaviour does not change, exactly, but every once in a while, you now catch him trying to take care of you in small, nearly imperceptible ways. It astounds you, it surprised you - but you can’t help feeling flattered by his attentions.

Each time he drinks from you, the pain grows less and the odd ecstasy that accompanies it takes over more and more. It is intoxicating, to feel him so close to you, to witness the noises that escape him, and feel the bobbing of his throat when he swallows what your body provides. You start to look forward to the nights where he finds you.

Each time feels more intimate than the last: From the beginning of it all in that stream, to a secluded place in the woods by the campsite, to his lavish encampment, then yours, then his again, and finally, against a column in a forgotten crypt, when you two stay behind to loot the place while the rest of the party moves on.

It’s getting harder to separate your body’s reaction to something so visceral from feeling aroused by the power that comes with it. To look into Astarion’s blood-red eyes and know they are shining only because of you has an odd effect on you.

And while he whispers sweet nothings, while he groans and whimpers as he drinks you down, you always try to keep up some semblance of control: After that first time in the river, no noise ever escapes you, even though your jaw hurts from clenching.

You wonder vaguely if it is sick that you derive pleasure from this arrangement - but then again, so does he. It is all worth it to see how happy he is, though he waves Gale and Karlach’s comments of his improved mood off like bothersome flies.

Astarion keeps his promise - he never drains you as much as he did the first time, even though you can see in his eyes that he would keep going every time if he thought you might survive it. He never asks for seconds again, and you are grateful. If he did, you are not sure you could deny him.

It has been a while since he last came to you - a few days, no more, but you have gotten so used to your little ritual that it feels like an eternity.

You have moved camp since the last time you got to spend time together; deeper into the forest, on your search for the druid Halsin. You try not to think too much about the fact that Astarion has not sought you out. Trying to keep all this a secret has turned out to be harder than either of you thought. No opportunity has presented itself for a while now, and you have to be rational about the arrangement. It’s not in either of your best interest for the group to find out what you two have been up to. You would rather bear the lewd comments in quiet dignity, thank you very much.

Astarion consumes - well, not your every waking thought, but you find yourself thinking much more about him than you should. It’s not just his fangs that you daydream about either - his lips have snuck into your dreams, his hands, his voice. It’s just not fair.

Thus, tonight, you are determined to find a quiet place for the two of you. The urge that grows inside you must be satisfied. You tell yourself that you do this to make Astarion stronger - you have seen him weaken throughout the week, trying to survive off of animals the way he used to. But it’s not the same.

Now that you have seen what Astarion can do, you want to see him like that all the time: powerful, striking down enemies quicker than you can draw your weapon sometimes. And it’s not just for selfish purposes, either: You want him to feel like that all the time.

And so, you concoct a plan - simple yet effective.

After dinner - Karlach cooked, so it was actually quite enjoyable - you excuse yourself to go explore the surrounding woods. You tell your companions that you want to find another source of water, under the pretence of needing to wash your clothing. Actually, it may not be all pretence - you do smell. So do your companions, which is why no one has complained yet. But you may as well use the time exploring the forest for something helpful aside from just luring Astarion away.

When you catch the way Astarion’s head pricks up when you say that you are looking for a quiet place with water, you know that he has caught on. He is too smart for his own good sometimes, but this time, you are glad about it.

Anxiety grips your  stomach as you wander through the darkness below the thick trees and hope that he might follow you.

What if he doesn’t? What if you happen upon a wild animal before he finds you? Maybe he has lost his taste for you, or-

“There you are, darling.” His voice has become so familiar in the last few days, quiet and demanding at the same time. You wish you didn’t like it so much.

You turn around to find Astarion much closer to you than you had anticipated. He is always so quiet.

“Here I am.” You cock your head. “Was there something I could help you with?”

“Oh, don’t play coy with me now, sweet thing.” He steps closer, cupping your face in his hands. “You knew exactly what you were doing when you left camp. You were hoping I would come find you, were you not?”

“Maybe.” You try not to give in, but he feels too good- too warm, too comforting. His teeth shine in the moonlight when he laughs and your belly tightens.

“Ah, I knew it. You missed me.”

You raise a brow and stare at him defiantly: “You have lacked in battle recently. I thought you might need to be… replenished.”

“And that was the only reason, was it?” As he leans closer to you, you step back, one, two, three steps until your back is pressed up against a tall fir tree. “You were worried about my… performance?”

“Yes,” you whisper. His lips are so close to yours you can feel his breath on your face. Your eyes flutter shut as you let your head fall to the side to expose your neck.

“Liar.” Astarion sounds amused by your weak attempts to defy him. “You missed me- you missed the way I make you feel.”

His lips descend onto your neck in a way that feels nearly like worship. You suppress a sigh at the sensation - gods, you have missed this more than you should have. He smells so good, despite the rough days you have been having, and the way his hands pull at you makes you shiver all over, tiny fire of desire exploding on your bare skin where he touches you.

“I was thinking…” he mumbles. “Your neck seems a bit… sore. Maybe we should grant you some reprieve.”

“I’m fine.” Your answer is too fast, and Astarion’s chuckle makes your heart beat faster.

“Of course you are, little pet. I’ve kept my promise after all, haven’t I?” His tongue flicks at the tiny scars his teeth have left in your neck and you bite your lip to cut off a moan. Your body quivers, though, your back arching for a split-second before you regain control. Astarion’s smile is audible in his voice. “Even if you don’t want to admit it, your body has missed me, my love. I think it’s time we stopped pretending, don’t you?”

“Stopped pretending what?” Your voice is breathless, and all you can do is hope that he might mean what you so desperately hope he means.

Astarion’s lips lift from the sensitive skin of your neck.

“Why, pretend you don’t want me, of course.” He says it like it is the most obvious thing in the world. And maybe, it is. “Pretend like you don’t need me just as much as I need you. Did you think you could hide how your pulse quickens when I touch you? The flush in your cheeks, your little breaths… Your body betrays you, little pet. You have been careful, my darling, but not as careful as you might think you have been. All those small noises you thought I couldn’t hear… tsk.”

He shakes his head. You chew on your lower lip, anxiously waiting for his reaction to your not so secret secret. A coppery taste floods your mouth and you realise you must have broken the skin of your lip by worrying it.

You raise your finger to wipe away the drop of blood, but your hand is caught by a pale one. Astarion inhales sharply, his body pressing up against you, his thigh slotting between yours as easily as if it had always belonged there. The rough bark of the tree presses into your back and you become acutely aware how trapped you are by Astarion’s arms in a way that turns the spark of arousal in your belly into a full blown fire.

Astarion’s thumb paints circles on the back of your hand as he stares at the drop of blood on your lip intently, hypnotised by the dark red sliver of pain against your skin.

His voice is gravelly in a way you have never heard before, and you shiver when he raises his hand to smear the blood until it covers your lips.

“Mhh.” He cocks his head. “That’s better, my love. Perfect rosy lips for my perfect little pet. Oh- don't look at me like that, darling, it’s alright. Does it hurt? Let me help you with that…”

It’s not a kiss, not really. His mouth meets yours desperately, licking at the small wound where your lip split. You tell yourself it’s not a kiss, but your body reacts like it is anyways. Your nerve endings light up in a fiery cascade of pleasure, and your hands fly up to Astarion’s waist, pulling him closer into you.

His tongue licks at you and your lips part easily, but he does not take the opportunity. Instead, he laughs quietly as he pulls back.

“Oh, you liked that, didn’t you?” He sounds content with himself in a way that would infuriate you if you were not so turned on right now.

You ashamedly stare down at your boots. And you nod.

Astarion’s finger tilts your chin up gently until you have to raise your head and look him in the eye.

“Don’t look away, my darling.” He strokes your cheek. “There is no need to be ashamed. You should have told me earlier that this was what you really wanted… mixing pleasure and pain is always a good idea, sweet thing.”

“I wasn’t- I mean, I didn’t-”

“Didn’t what? Don’t lie to me now, little pet. You know I can always tell.” His lips are so close to yours it feels like you can taste him already, his eyes dark and fiery even in the dim light of dusk. “What do you want? Be honest with me now.”

Your hands bury in his hair almost of their own volition, soft silver curls tangling between your fingers.

“Kiss me,” you whisper. “Please.”

You sound desperate, but you cannot bring yourself to care. Not as Astarion exhales, and closes the distance between you. His lips taste of your blood, bitter and coppery, but his tongue in your mouth is the sweetest honey. By the gods, he is good at what he does - soft noises falling from his mouth, his hard body pressing against you. His thumb rests against the pulse point of your neck, right where he left you scarred, and you feel like you are floating.

When he finally pulls back, you are both out of breath. His lips shimmer red from the blood on your own, and you can feel his desire - he looks at you like you are the most delicious meal he has ever seen after starving for years.

Maybe you are.

“Why did you bring me here?” he asks, his voice quiet and commanding. “What is it that you really desire, sweet thing?”

“I want you,” you admit, hating how your voice breaks even between those two words. “You may… need me, but I have come to realise I need you too. It’s not… you- I mean…”

“What is it, my darling? Use your words.” The gentle encouragement mixed with just the vaguest tint of mockery goes straight to your core and you curse your body for being so weak.

“I… I know this began as a favour,” you start, unsure of how to phrase what has been growing between you in such a short time. “But I… you know, it’s not just that anymore. Not for me. I… I like it.”

Your confession makes heat rise to your cheeks, and you bite your lip. Astarion stares at you, uncharacteristically lost for words, so you drone on.

“I like doing this for you- I like knowing I am helping you, I like knowing that you feel better- that you have become stronger because of me. I like seeing that your hands don’t shake so much anymore, and I like seeing you smile across the battlefield. It makes me happy- you make me happy. And you know, the pain fades after a while. I actually find it… quite… well, enjoyable. The way I feel when you drink from me… gods, Astarion, it’s indescribable.”

The flood of words spills from your lips like you have been holding it in for months, not days. Astarion still just stares at you, dumbfounded by your confession. Finally, he clears his throat.

“You… like it?” It sounds more like a question.

Gently, you take his hand into yours.

“Yes,” you confirm, smiling at him softly. “I’ve loved seeing you happy.”

“You- oh.” A plethora of emotions plays out on Astarion’s face in mere fractions of a second. You watch him intently. Finally, he clears his throat. “Well, I… I really don’t know how to respond to this. You, my love, are simply… incredible.”

Your smile grows broader.

“Why, thank you. I’m glad you finally noticed.”

A small smile appears on Astarion’s face at your teasing remark.

“I have been happier, haven’t I,” he muses. “I haven’t really… been happy in so long, I never noticed until you pointed it out.”

You worry your lip, but decide not to press him about it.

“I’m glad I can give you something,” you simply say. 

Astarion’s hand holds yours a little tighter.

“You give me more than I have ever dreamed of,” he murmurs. A devilish smile darkens his features as his eyes wander up and down your body. “I think it’s about time I give something back, don’t you think, my darling?”

༻────• ༻❁༺ •────༺

Previous Chapter « ❁ » Next Chapter [coming]

Hmmmm he is consuming my brain (much like the tadpole hshsh get it) ANYWAYS I am way too emotionally invested in him I support his evil. He has actively made me worse and I love him for it.

If you'd like to sign up for my taglist, please follow this link.

@purgetrooperfox @ashotofspotchka @dream-alittlebiggerdarling @ulchabhangorm @queen--kenobi @samspenandsword @rescuethewretched @pinkiemme @baba-fett @witchklng @ladykatakuri @certified-anakinfucker @fanfiction-i-llike @tonysoffice @voidinfernal @foxferret02 @rosieofcorona @savagemickey03 @perseny @codename-indigo @margoisthemoon2 @shiiunn

If your tag is not underlined or you do not receive a notification, please check your blog settings because I could not tag you.

#bg3 #astarion #astarion bg3 #bg3 smut #astarion x reader #astarion x you #gala writes #sugar series

[silentcrowsilentravens]

Good day Raven! Could you please write Resident Evil's villainess's reacting to their SO calling them cute?

Just because they're murderers and stuff doesn't mean that I don't do this constantly.

Mother Miranda, Donna Beneviento, Daniela Dimitrescu, Cassandra Dimitrescu, Bela Dimitrescu, Alex Wesker, and Alcina Dimitrescu reacting to their s/o calling them cute.

(Gender neutral).

Warnings: brief reference to sex.

Masterlists here!

Mother Miranda

You are not only the only person to consider Mother Miranda cute of all things, but also the only person comfortable enough with her to say it to her face. 

When the words first leave your lips, you make her pause what she's doing.

It takes her a moment to fully process what you said. Then, she slowly turns her head to look at you and hits you with a >:^ face.

You're lucky that you're cute and Miranda loves you. Otherwise, a comment like that would make her kill you where you stand <3

She seems genuinely offended that you would regard her in such a way. Have you forgotten who she is? The things she’s done? What’s she capable of? How could you—

(Alright, maybe there’s a very, very small part of Miranda that’s... amused? Clearly, she’s too soft with you).

(Not that she’s going to do anything about it). 

“I am most certainly not ‘cute’,” she tells you flatly before returning to her work. 

Donna Beneviento

Uh oh! Seems that you've rendered Donna unable to form a coherent sentence!

Or thought, for that matter. 

The remark instantly flusters her. Her brain is just going agdadjshkjakall.

She bows her head down slightly. 

Although she has her veil on, she brings her hands up to cover her cheeks, which you’ve managed to make flush red.

I hope that you plan on paying Angie the same compliment because she’ll be upset and offended if you don’t. 

And she’ll probably bite your ankle. Or whatever gets closest to her mouth first. She isn’t picky. 

Daniela Dimitrescu

Daniela is super fucking cute and she knows it. A cute lil' 6'3" murderous fly woman <3

And she loves hearing you call her cute. It’s one of her favorite compliments to receive. 

You say the word and Dani just...

Gives you a big ol’ (often bloody) grin. Starts full on cheesing. 

You get to hear a giggle from her as well. 

She tells you that you are too, and then she gives you a quick kiss. 

Cassandra Dimitrescu

Cassandra immediately bristles and gives you an offended look. 

Cute? Cute??? Never before has a mortal dared to say that to her. 

...You know, when she thinks about it, you’ve dared to do a whole lot around her that most other mortals don’t. 

That’s the thing that drew Cass to you in the first place. 

 "And?" she eventually says.

Upon reflection, surprisingly, she doesn't mind being called cute. By you and you alone, that is. 

...As long as you also call her fearsome or hot right after.

"And also so very terrifying."

Oh! If you're going to go around saying it, it better be in private. She will be genuinely upset if others are around. Especially her sisters. She would never hear the end of it. 

Bela Dimitrescu

Bela is quiet for a moment. 

“No <3.”

“No?” you echo.

In her eyes, you are mistaken. Wrong. Factually incorrect!

You see, that is a word Bela sometimes uses to describe you, but it simply is not applicable to her. 

Don’t even try to argue with her. After all the time that Bela has spent around her sisters, she’s gotten very good at winning arguments.  You will lose.

Alex Wesker

At first, Alex doesn't even realize that you're talking to her.

She does hear you, though, and wonders what the hell has you using that loving tone you reserve just for her.

When Alex turns to you and finds your gaze on her, she is not very amused.

Cute is not a descriptor she’s going to let you use for her. 

Alex will let you get away with it just this once. But do that again and she'll take you to the bedroom to punish you. Then you'll see just how "cute" she is.

...Well, I guess that might be an incentive for you to keep saying it...

Alcina Dimitrescu

Many words have been used to describe Lady Alcina Dimitrescu and cute is not one of them.

When you call her that, it fully takes her aback.

You can't help it, though. This woman can be so ridiculously soft with you, and when she gives you a blatantly pouty look? Right after you push back her request to cuddle a few minutes so that you can finish what you're doing? It's cute.

Alcina straightens up and by the expression on her face, you'd think that you just said the most insulting thing possible.

She lets out a scoff.

The scoff is then followed by her going on an impressively long rant about the reasons why you’re wrong.

#x reader #resident evil x reader #mother miranda x reader #donna beneviento x reader #daniela dimitrescu x reader #cassandra dimitrescu x reader #bela dimitrescu x reader #alex wesker x reader #alcina dimitrescu x reader #mother miranda #donna beneviento #daniela dimitrescu #cassandra dimitrescu #bela dimitrescu #alex wesker #alcina dimitrescu #gender neutral insert #resident evil revelations 2 #resident evil village #resident evil 8

[thezombieprostitute]

Hummingbird - Part 8

Summary: You didn't want to break into someone's party but you were desperate to see the art at the gallery before it was gone. You're so busy trying to make sure no one sees you that you miss the ever present gaze of Steve Rogers who is wondering why you crashed his party.

Word Count: ~1.8k

A/N: Reader is AFAB. No physical descriptors used.

Warnings: Rough sex, Smut. Please let me know if I missed any.

Part 7 -- Epilogue

Series Masterlist

In the weeks following Steve made sure your move was as easy and simple as possible. During the days he gave you free reign to reorganize and redecorate whatever you wanted, except for his office. During the nights he made sure to hold you tight and cuddle you as you fell asleep. You’d never felt more relaxed than when you were with his strong arms wrapped around you. 

After the dust settled from your move and redecoration, Steve suggested an art gallery visit to celebrate. You put on the dress you wore during your first art gallery date with him, the gift from Monica’s mothers. Part of you wonders if Steve knew, way back then, that you would eventually be living together. You know you certainly had no idea. It was amazing how much had changed for you since you crashed that party. 

Steve finds you getting ready and he smiles at you, eyes full of love and your heart flutters. He’s so good at schooling his expressions and body language that you treasure how genuine he is with you. 

“Are you ready, Hummingbird?”

“Just about. I’m guessing, given the late hour, it’ll be just the two of us at the gallery?”

“Correct. But don’t worry about it looking like a break in. I got the curator to let us in.”

“Thank you for that,” you chuckle. “I know you like the roleplay but I really do prefer the easy way.”

The gallery had a special theme for the month based around flora of all kinds. There were plenty of paintings based on native flora but the main event was a wing that had been filled with sculptures and made to look like a park. They called it the Garden of Wonders. Glass flowers, some made to look like they’d been encased in ice. Bronze trees with copper leaves, already showing signs of turning green. Marble lilac bushes where you could make out the individual petals. There were even small animal depictions mixed in to add to the ambiance. You felt like you were walking in a magical garden. 

Every bit was breathtaking.  

As was your custom, Steve let you take the lead. You would flit between pieces, occasionally staring, divining the most subtle of touches as he smiles at you. Steve never told you but after every visit he made sure word got to the various artists about all of the details you loved, noticed and appreciated. He never told you because he was worried it would temper your reactions or make you feel guilty for not noticing more. But he knew you’d appreciate the artists getting their due praise. 

Your happiness was probably the most important thing in the world for him. You’d never once taken advantage of his power or money. You supported his plans and ideals. You were so much stronger than you thought. He smiles fondly at the memory of how nervous you were when you’d been “caught’ crashing his party. How your eyes widened in surprise when he finally got you to take him up on his offer. How deliciously evil your smirk was when you showed his guests that you were his partner, not his charity case. 

True to your word, you never did tell him who it was that put those ideas in your head. He did figure it out, though, and had to agree that Carter and Lane’s faces of anger and frustration were a lot more fun than not inviting them ever again. He had to give it to you, you know how to do revenge right. You really made his social obligations that much more fun and enjoyable, making it easier for him to do his work, support his communities, keep his people paid and well taken care of. 

There were still moments you doubted, though you tried to hide them. Steve hated that you could still doubt yourself, or doubt his intentions. He hoped tonight would help allay some of those. 

Flitting through the Garden you pause at one of the pathways and blink. A small table had been set out. There was a small bouquet of purple roses with a card. Steve refrains from chuckling as he watches you circle the table, trying to figure out if it’s part of the display. Your eyes light up when you get close enough to see your first and last name on the card. You look to Steve and he nods as he moves behind you. 

Opening the card it reads, “turn around”. You do, confusion giving way to surprise as you see the open box in Steve’s hand. Inside is a gorgeous golden ring, made to look like a hummingbird holding a blue diamond. Your hand flies up to your face in shock as tears start forming in the corners of your eyes. You search his face for any indication he’s not serious or has hesitations. Of course you find none.  

“Y-you, you mean it, Steve?”

“I do, Hummingbird.”

You hold out your left hand and he gently places the ring on your finger. Of course it’s a perfect fit. Just like with the dress you’re wearing now, Steve has always been able to size you up. You smile, eyes full of happy tears, before wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him in for a kiss. 

“Thank you, Steve.”

“No thanks needed, Hummingbird. You saying ‘yes’ is all I need.”

The second you had gotten home he helped you out of your dress and started kissing every inch of you. He’d ended up not being able to wait for the bedroom and bent you over the back of the couch, smacking your butt-cheeks until they were sore and your pussy was dripping wet for him. He’d barely undone his zipper before shoving himself into you, making you cry out in pleasure at the stretch. 

“You always feel so good,” he grunts as he keeps slamming into you. “Always able to take me so well, like the good girl you are.” You can barely hear him over your own lewd moans. He reaches around your hips and starts playing with your pearl, making you cry out appreciatively. 

His other hand goes to your throat and moves so your back is right up against him. “Look so fucking pretty with that ring on your finger. Can’t wait to make it official. Make sure everyone knows you’re mine.” 

“Yes, please, Sir,” you pant. “Please mark me as yours.”

“So fucking pretty when you beg,” he nips at your skin. “Come for me, Hummingbird.” Your response is immediate and he groans as your walls clench around him. “Always feels so damn good,” he grumbles. His hips stutter as he finds his own release and he starts kissing along your back. “So good for me. So wonderful.”

He pulls out slowly and your whine is replaced by a gasp as he pushes his fingers into your pussy. 

“Not gonna let a single drop spill out,” he states. “Gonna mark you in every way, Hummingbird.”

“Yes, Sir,” you gasp. “Yes, please mark me with your come, Sir! Want everyone to know I belong to you!”

Instead of switching to aftercare mode Steve gets you to the bedroom and gently pushes you onto the bed. You proudly note that you’ve ruined his pants with your slick. Steve lays over you, one of his arms holding his weight, the other continuing to play with your oversensitive pussy. 

“Yes! Yes! YES,” you scream as Steve makes you come on his fingers yet again. 

“I don’t recall giving you permission, Hummingbird,” Steve snarls as he nips the skin on your neck. “You’re gonna have to make that up to me.”

“Y-yes, Sir,” you moan, fighting the urge to pull away from Steve’s hand that hasn’t stopped. You’re so sensitive it’s almost painful but Steve’s hands have always made you feel so good. So have his lips, his arms, his everything.

He stands up away from the bed, finally removing his fingers. You’re simultaneously grateful for the reprieve and missing the fullness his fingers gave you. 

“On all fours, facing me,” he orders and you move quickly to obey. He undresses and you let yourself ogle at his figure. You’re not surprised he’s already hard again as you wait for your next order, mouth open. “Always so eager for me,” he chuckles. 

“Yes, Sir. Just for you.”

Steve puts his hands on each side of your face as he shoves his erection into your mouth. You lick, hollow your cheeks, moan, whatever you can to make sure it feels good for him. You love when he uses your mouth so roughly you’re left hoarse for hours. He fucks your mouth with abandon as you focus your energy on keeping yourself from collapsing. You can feel yourself leaking down your thighs and it only makes everything feel more debauched, more erotic, more pleasurable. 

You can tell Steve’s ready to come and prepare yourself but he pulls out of your mouth. You whine and his hands guide your face to look at his. “No whining, Hummingbird. Only one of your holes is getting my come. Now get on your back.”

“Y-yes, Sir,” you croak as you move to obey. You’re slower than he’d like but he recognizes that you’re dazed and strokes himself as he watches you. 

As soon as you’re on your back he pushes your knees to your chest and thrusts into your pussy. You moan appreciatively, though he doesn’t give you time to adjust. His eyes are fixated on where your bodies meet and he’s relentless in his movements. One of his hands moves to your overly sensitive clit and starts rubbing. You gasp at the sensation and he groans as you clench down on him. 

It doesn’t take long for you to become a babbling mess of, “please, Sir,” “yes, SIr,” “thank you, SIr,” “need to come, Sir, please!” 

“Go ahead, Hummingbird, come all over my cock. Push me over the edge.”

“Thank you, Sir,” you scream as you fall apart. You’re so lost in your own pleasure you don’t hear Steve’s pants and grunts as he spills into you. 

The next morning you wake up in Steve’s arms and smile at the ring on your finger. You snuggle in closer to him and he sleepily kisses your hair.

"Good morning, Mrs. Rogers," he coos.

"We're not married yet," you gently chide.

"No, but we will be soon enough. And hopefully by then we can start looking into making a nursery." You feel your thighs clench at his words and he chuckles, "maybe should go a few more rounds to make sure it sticks."

Part 7 -- Epilogue

Series Masterlist

Tags:

@alicedopey; @aryhyuuga; @cynic-spirit; @icefrozendeadlyqueen @jaqui-has-a-conspiracy-theory; @ktficworld; @leryg0; @rayofdawnworld; @rebekahdawkins; @texmexdarling

#mob boss!steve rogers #mob!steve rogers #mafia!steve rogers #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x female reader #mob!steve rogers x reader

[psshaw]

In a story on internet pathologization for i-D, James Greig writes that easily categorizable people are also easy to market to. “While there is genuine support out there and a lot of good intentions, it’s worth bearing in mind that some of the people involved in pushing these diagnoses have a vested interest in doing so,” he writes. (Consider the zillions of products that claim to quell anxiety, a market that’s exploded over the past decade.) Perhaps the solution to this sort of categorization and grouping is to redefine the terms. “To me, we should start seeing identities more as things you do rather than descriptors of who you are,” says Moskowitz. “I am trans because I care about trans life, because I commune with other trans people, because I donate my money to other trans people. It’s all well and good if you want to claim an identity, but I think every identity comes with responsibility to the communities it represents, to the histories that made those identities possible.” (...)That stuff is hard, though. It’s a lot easier to scroll TikTok and Twitter, whiplashing between outrage over a hastily written tweet and electrifying realizations that perhaps every aspect of your identity could be explained by a single diagnosis. Either way, we’re sitting around, thinking about ourselves. And that, ultimately, is what it is to be a person — not someone with narcissistic personality disorder.

[intimidating-fettuccine]

Ooh! Some creeps with a reader who is an SFX artist?? I took schooling for creating fake injuries for films! Blood effects, cuts, corpsing, bruises, burns, frostbite- All that! I love to hear about gruesome details. I’d never pull a prank like pretending I was injured though, by the way. Also a horror film junkie. ^^ Most people are surprised by all that, being a short, incredibly soft-spoken and polite lass.

Helen:

Incredibly impressed and interested in the work that you do. Helen, as an artsy person himself, definitely takes to the fact that you're also quite artistically talented, and he's very complimentary of your work. Honestly, I can even see Helen working off of you, if you ever do some fake injuries on yourself, I can see Helen doing drawings of you with him as a way for him to have references and practice himself, and he always says that you're the best model, so if you don't mind posing for him that's definitely a possibility. I can also see him volunteering for you to practice your skills on him if you need to, and I'd encourage it honestly even if you don't need the practice, because he loves your touch and attention above all else, and it makes him so happy to just sit there and have you working on him, even if he doesn't admit it out loud. Also very down to watch horror movies with you, and honestly, the more he takes notice of your own work, the more easily he's going to try and point out bad makeup in a movie if he sees it, claiming that you could have done it much better, because after all, in his mind, you're just the best SFX artist there is, and he will not think otherwise, and he genuinely means it. You impress him every day with your skills, and he always works hard to try and create things to impress with his own art as well.

Laughing Jack:

Has a moment of severe panic the first time he walks in on you, injuries decorating your form, but when you finally calm him down and prove to him that they're fake injuries, that you were just doing some warmup practice on yourself, all his anxiety and fear is gone he's actually extremely impressed. Jack is a big fan of things like SFX makeup, as he thinks it takes a lot of talent and skill to be able to do it well, and he praises you very heavily for your work, although he teasingly tells you not to scare him like that anymore. I can honestly also see Jack asking you if you'd be open to teaching him how to do it, and if you are, he gets so excited and giddy. He always works carefully and slowly, much different from his normal rambunctious nature, but he wants to actually impress you and do a good job, so please give him lots of praise and tell him he's doing awesome, it'll genuinely make him so fucking happy. If you ever need any descriptors for injuries, Jack wouldn't mind telling you, although he's not as gruesome as you might expect about it, as he just doesn't want you to be part of that more violent side of his life, but he will tell you if things come out accurate to how he describes them, and give you pointers if not. He's always extremely impressed with you regardless, and he always lays the praise on thick for your work.

#creepypasta #creepypasta headcanons #creepypasta x reader #creepypasta headcanon #bloody painter #bloody painter headcanon #bloody painter x reader #bloody painter headcanons #laughing jack #laughing jack x reader #laughing jack headcanon #laughing jack headcanons

[leclerc-on-the-clace]

Something that I love to see is people’s “review” after meeting drivers. It’s often very similar in how drivers are with most people and it makes it way easier to tell when someone is lying about an interaction because they dislike the driver. So here’s a few summaries.

Charles seems to always be, by far, the nicest, everyone mentions how long he stays with fans and how much he signs and takes pictures. Always see people saying he’s super smiley no matter the occasion and is the driver who will visit no matter the weather. He’s also the one who people say you know he’s actually listening to whatever is being said based on eye contact and how he reacts and responds.

Lewis is similar to Charles with how nice he is, although he’s not as interactive and doesn’t sign as much or he’s just busy biking and doesn’t stop but will wave and say hi as he passes by.

Seb and Danny were both described as what i’d call “boyband style people pleaser” descriptors. Signing away, taking pictures, chatting to fans for 10 seconds all with a big smile on their face and the second they’re far enough away the smile drops. Not in a fake way but in a lets make fans happy by being happy even if we’re not actually happy kind of way.

George and Lando often get similar stories and are paired together a lot. Both sort of have the same energy as they do with interviews where they’ll have genuine interactions but it’s like a chore to them, some days it’s fine but others they’ll be robotic, pose, sign, smile repeat. Both also seem to try and be funny but it sometimes just flops.

Max is polite but doesn’t stay long and doesn’t really sign much. He’s kind but would clearly rather be busy on his own away from loud screaming fans. However he has got a lot of people saying he’s got the same level of listening intently as Charles does. Max along with Checo, Carlos, Fernando and Lando all seem way happier to be surrounded by fans at home gps which is understandable.

Carlos is very often described as “if he wasn’t next to Charles he wouldn’t interact with fans as much” a lot of people said he, similar to Lewis, will be either biking past fans and just wave or he’ll sign a few things and dip, he’s nice just does quick signs and leaves after a minute or two. If you want to meet Carlos you can either pray to be in the front or you should gamble on him arriving with Charles / fanzone with Charles. However if you get him in a good mood he’s way more talkative.

Yuki, Mick, Alex, Esteban, Lance and Toto Wolff tend to get similar stories. Polite, very clearly overwhelmed when there’s a lot of people, will happily joke with fans and very positive energy. Their interactions tend to mostly be bumped into them at the pitlane which seems to be when they’re more willing to take pictures and talk more. 

A lot of fans have mentioned that most drivers will stop for younger/child fans. Charles is notorious for interacting with kids so much that it appears in official videos when he’s supposed to be working. Most drivers apparently somehow manage to find time to detour to the small child decked in merch so if you want to meet a driver maybe rent a child or something. 

I haven’t seem too much about the remaining drivers other than both Alfa Romeo boys being polite but not super talkative. Logan and Oscar seem to currently be in the middle of Lewis and Max with fan interactions but it’s only been half a season

#charles leclerc #lewis hamilton #sebastian vettel #daniel ricciardo #max verstappen #george russell #lando norris #carlos sainz jr #carlos sainz #fernando alonso

[transmutationisms]

possibly too broad but do you have any thoughts on the discourse around self-pathologizing? seems like there’s weird territory there since there are so many barriers to diagnoses and people should be free to self-report, yet some pathologies are essentially capitalist inventions and it may be more harmful than helpful for people to fixate on them without some kind of external guidance (though i don’t mean to imply they need to consult medical practitioners). i also don’t really think faddishness is the big concern it’s made out to be, but what do you think?

yeah to me this is a good example of how genuinely epistemologically radical critique of psychiatry can become assimilated into pretty staid liberal discourses of self-empowerment / -care / -improvement. pathologisation, imo, is basically materially meaningless if it's not backed by the sorts of institutions and power relations that characterise the psychiatric establishment. which is to say, if we're only talking about diagnostic labels in a kind of personal-choice framework (as so much of the medium dot com industrial complex seems to be doing lately) then it robs these conversations of a lot of their urgency and impact. i don't think overreliance on the language of the dsm is particularly helpful, as a general matter of seeking to develop political consciousness as well as self-knowledge, but i also don't think it really matters one way or another if someone self-dxes or un-dxes. what makes a difference is things like: is this person being robbed of their autonomy? are these explanatory frameworks being imposed on them by credentialled experts levelling their professional status to claim epistemological authority over the psyche? what social and economic violence is being committed here? some rando online relating to a diagnostic label and using it for themself is not doing these things, and may very well be helpful to that person (it may also not. but again the harm here is p limited).

i have said before, a lot of what puts me personally off dsm labels is the essentialism they're in bed with. ie, it's not just a shorthand descriptor of behaviours or symptoms—these terms are pretty much always being wielded as claims to have identified a biologically based 'neurotype', eg, or some as-yet-unverifiable misery-engendering genetic complex, or whatever else. and to be clear, i think these types of claims do actually carry widespread social harm, because no matter what rhetorical games you play, you're never just saying these things about yourself. it's a claim to certain forms of bio-essentialism that both shores up professional psychiatric authority and applies to people besides yourself (this is just the nature of such universalising claims about human biology). but this is an issue that goes so far beyond use or disuse of diagnostic labels; plenty of people who have embraced superficial principles of anti-psych critique still make all manner of such essentialist claims when it comes down to it, with or without grabbing onto a specific diagnostic label. so i think the kind of panicking we see in certain left-leaning circles about self-dx is not actually about this issue at all, and is certainly not capable of addressing it productively.

without going insanely long here i would just add that this is kind of a general answer because different labels have different histories and functions (eg, compare the social and political function of pathologising a depressive episode, vs autistic traits / behaviours, vs a so-called personality disorder). and also, whenever talking about self-dx i think it's important to add that one of the most important functions of these labels from a patient perspective is they function as means of gatekeeping access to certain accessibility measures, so any kind of anti-self dx position in current political conditions will harm people who need those accommodations. and i have less than zero interest in questioning anybody who wants accessibility measures for literally any reason or uses any method to obtain them.

#psychiatry

[communistkenobi]

I'm not gonna lie Nick, I've been following you for a long time and I almost always agree with what you say so this isn't in any way meant to be polemic or hostile and you don't have to answer if you don't want to. But, as a trans person myself, I don't understand how genital preference can be transphobic? I mean, the way people declare it can be transphobic, or the reason for it - but preference itself? isn't it, for most people at least, an intrinsic thing? Again I'm not asking this to bait you into discourse or anything I just. Genuinely trust your judgment on things. that's all, love <3

If you don’t want to sleep with someone because they’re, for example, fat, or disabled, or intersex, or have some other physical characteristic that would alter a sexual encounter in a way you wouldn’t expect with a “default” or “normal” body - is that not on some level bigoted? If you tried to sleep with a cis guy but found out he had a micro penis and decided against sleeping with him, or you tried to hook up with a cis woman with large labia and got turned off, is that “just an intrinsic preference”?

Yes people have preferences and preferences do not carry inherent moral judgement. But it’s worth asking: where do my preferences come from? if you meet a trans person, and you are attracted to them, and the only reason you don’t want to sleep with them is because you don’t want to interact with their genitals, because you believe a trans person’s genitals are universally unattractive, then like, why lol? “Transphobic” is a flat descriptor for bigoted beliefs or assumptions about trans people, and in the pantheon of transphobic things to believe or say or do, that’s not like super high on the list. I don’t think you’re an irredeemably bad person or whatever. You are also not doing activism by having sex with people you’re not attracted to or don’t want to have sex with, I’m not suggesting anyone do that because that would be bad for everyone involved. But attraction is socially mediated and explored - fetishes, kinks, turn-ons and turn offs can have embedded social values in them, some of them good and some of them not - and if your only hang-up with fucking a trans person is because they have “incorrect” or “incongruous” genitals to what you normally expect, then I think that’s a shitty hang-up to have. Is it “intrinsic” to find a trans person’s body a turn off? Are we intrinsically programmed as human beings to find transgender people’s genitals unsexy? I think any appeals to intrinsic nature quickly get into essentialistic territory, because whatever is intrinsic or “human nature” is necessarily outside of the social, incapable of change, and I don’t think it does any good to insist that the domain of sexual preferences exists outside of the social and political realms.

Yes sex will be different with a trans person who hasn’t had full bottom surgery than it would be with a cis person, and yes you will need to have conversations about what feels good or look shit up online (which you would do with a cis partner anyway!), but unless you’re solely interested in like, missionary reproductive PIV cishet sex catholic style for the rest of your life, I think it’s worth interrogating why trans genitals are a hard no for someone, especially when “genital preference” is such a handy shorthand for cis people to articulate their deep seated rage, disgust, and fear of trans people in a “polite” or inoffensive way - and, often, in a violent way, and that violence is rationalised on the basis of the “common sense” belief that trans people trick cis people into having sex with us despite our “bad” genitals.

I don’t want to have sex with anybody who thinks my body is disgusting and I’m assuming most people don’t want that either lol. But a lot of cis people find my body disgusting because it’s a trans body, and a huge part of that disgust is because I don’t have a dick - worse, I have a “mutilated” “grotesque” version of “female anatomy” because of T. None of those evaluations of a tran’s guys genitals are intrinsic, nor do they exist outside of social values about what “normal” or “beautiful” bodies look like.

And again to use the fat example, it took a lot of personal work for me to properly admire fat people because of how ingrained fatphobia is, and part of that fatphobia was directed towards myself - it took years for me to find myself even remotely attractive, especially as I progressively gained weight into adulthood. And that is not for “activist” reasons, it’s not activism to find fat people hot - but I am consciously working through some of the shit society tells you is gross or bad about human bodies and it’s made my life better lol, and as a consequence I can fully allow myself to admire other fat people. I think any state of mind that allows you to find beauty in more places, find pleasure in a wider range of human forms, is generally a good thing. I once dated a guy who hated his nipples being touched because he thought it was gay to enjoy that, and like, sex with him sucked lmfao. he was incredibly homophobic and that homophobia directly impacted the amount of pleasure he was willing to engage with, both with himself and with a partner.

So yes I do think it’s transphobic. It’s not end-of-the-world transphobia, you’re not a permanently shit human being, but anyone who refuses to have sex with trans people on the basis of us having the “wrong” genitals is not worth pursuing because we deserve to sleep with people who find us hot and don’t need to “rationalise” away touching our genitals. I don’t want to have sex with those people and no trans person should either. But I’m not giving cis people an out with “oh it’s just a preference” because I think that’s a very lazy and unserious way of engaging with your own desires

#asks #transphobia tw #ableism tw #fatphobia tw #intersexism tw #just tagging all that to be safe #also lmk if you need this tagged with anything else #not mad at you btw I’m cool with answering this #even old new york was once new amsterdam

[lostloveletters]

A Long, Lonely Time (David Webster x Reader)

Summary: You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, but when Webster returns to Easy Company, you find it difficult to reckon with the very real possibility of losing him again, maybe even for good.

Note: Gender neutral reader, and no descriptors are used. The draft script of episode 3 provides more background on Webster transferring into Easy Company, which isn’t explained in the show for some reason (a shame because they cut out some pretty great scenes), but I included a handful of the details here. This is based on the fictional portrayals in the HBO miniseries and not the real individuals. Do not interact if you’re under 18, terf or radfem, or post thinspo/ED content.

Word count: 2.5k

Warnings: Hurt/angst with comfort. Mentions of Eugene Jackson’s death. Playing with the timeline of episode 8 a little bit. Probably some other historical inaccuracies. Do not interact if you’re under 18.

Two days. David Webster had only been back for two days, and you kissed him.

Your crush on him had hibernated in his absence, frozen in a forest with the rest of you. It thawed as soon as you saw him for the first time in months.

The other members of Easy weren’t so quick to warm up to him again. No matter, it just gave you more time to spend with him. You appreciated how from the moment the two of you first bonded over your shared love of literature, he was genuinely interested in your thoughts and opinions, assuaging your fears that you’d be a lackluster companion to the Ivy Leaguer.

He could’ve taken the easy route as others with a privileged background like his had done and allowed his social status to get himself a cushy position. However, he, like Caption Nixon, inexplicably chose the rest of you. Unlike Nixon and yet just as inexplicable, he rejected any promotions. Odd, yet admirable, like when he’d approached Winters in Aldbourne after D-Day, requesting to transfer from Fox to Easy to put his skills as an assistant machine gunner to better use.

None of that mattered to your comrades anymore, but as a medic, you appreciated that he took recovering from being wounded seriously. You told him such, and he smiled, confessing that he had used his stint in the hospital for one selfish indulgence. Later, when the two of you were alone; he pulled a brown paper package from his pack, privately presenting you with a gift he got his hands on for you. Ripping back the wrapping, you beamed when you saw the cover of a brand new ASE copy of The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Your worn copy of Jane Eyre had been waterlogged from the snow and rendered illegible. New books were low priority in the Bois Jacques, so you were left without reading material for longer than you would’ve liked.

The book was the first time in what felt like years you’d received a gift. You had almost forgotten how nice it was, especially something so thoughtful. So you kissed him, impulsively, passionately, threading your fingers through his hair to pull him closer, your other hand gripping the book tightly. 

He kissed you back with a tenderness that had long since become foreign to you and felt almost too overwhelming as a result. His lips were soft and warm compared to yours, chapped from weeks of unrelenting cold, but he was undeterred. His hands held your waist, his fingers gently pressing against the skin that’d been exposed as your untucked shirt had ridden up. You shuddered against him, feeling goosebumps rise on your skin–either the cold air, or his touch. Probably both.

Hearing the clamoring of nearby voices, you reluctantly broke the kiss.

“I don’t have anything to give you,” you lamented breathlessly.

His blue eyes seemed to sparkle when he smiled. “I think we’re even.”

“You know,” you began, turning the book over to glance at the synopsis, “all I ever heard when this came out was that it was dirty. Are you trying to tell me something?”

“Books aren’t dirty. It’s embarrassing that Boston even bans them the way they do.”

“Have you read it?”

“I haven’t, but that’s not the point. They’d ban Shakespeare if he were publishing today.”

“I don’t disagree with you,” you said, suppressing an amused smile, “but I only asked because I thought we could read it together, if you don’t mind the company.”

His expression softened. “I’d love that.”

Smiling, you leaned in for another kiss when the door opened, and the two of you jumped away from each other like the other was on fire.

You relaxed when you saw Roe standing in the doorway. He gave you an almost exasperated look, but that was all. For the moment.

“Webster,” Gene said, giving him a nod of acknowledgement before shifting his attention to you. “Will you sort through those supplies Luz got earlier? I gotta check on Lipton.”

“Sure,” you said with a nod. “Thanks again, Web–David, the book’s great.”

He smiled. “Of course.”

You followed Gene out of the room, walking side-by-side down the hallway until you were a decent distance from Webster and out of earshot from anyone who might otherwise eavesdrop. When your best friend stopped in his tracks, you mirrored him, flattering a bit beneath the weight of his disapproving glare.

“Are you crazy?” Gene scolded.

“He gave me a book. It’s not–don’t look at me like that.”

“However wounded he gets, it’s gonna be a lot worse for you.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t know. This ain’t the time or place.”

“There might not be another time or place,” you argued.

He sighed, either conceding to your argument or not finding it worth wasting any more breath over. For how long you’d known him, he could be impossibly difficult to read. “Just be careful, alright?”

Gene brought you to the recently delivered boxes of medical supplies, desperately needed weeks ago. Better late than never. You rifled through bandages and morphine, hands shaking a bit as you tried not to think about who might have still been there if it’d come in sooner. But Webster came back, even though you’d long been convinced you’d never see him again. At least if the worst happened, you wouldn’t have to wonder if your feelings for him were reciprocated.

The worst. You weren’t sure what, out of everything you’d seen the past few months, could have been considered the worst. Slow deaths, blown off limbs, or men whose bodies and psyche were trapped in that place between life and death. But you couldn’t let yourself spiral, not when so many people were relying on you. Hope seemed increasingly hard to find, and if indulging in whatever you had with David gave you the slightest bit more, you’d take it.

As if materializing from your thoughts of him, he walked into the room, silent concern etched in his face.

“There’s a patrol tonight,” he said. “We’re going across the river to bring back prisoners.”

“Who all’s going?” You figured if he was breaking the news to you, he’d be included. A sinking feeling dropped in your stomach when he answered, nevertheless.

“Most of 2nd platoon, except Liebgott and Malarkey.”

“It’s always 2nd platoon,” you muttered. “So you’re going as translator, then?”

He nodded. “The Krauts won’t expect us, at least that’s what they say.”

“I’m still gonna worry,” you said softly. “Just got you back.”

“Comes with the territory, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, it does.”

“I’ll find you as soon as we’re done,” he promised.

“Can I give you a kiss for good luck?”

“I’ll never say no to that.”

You pressed your lips to his, craving the tenderness he’d given you earlier like it was missing from your veins. You hadn’t realized how much you needed it, soft words and tender touches that made you finally feel something other than numb and tired. Desire that would long remain unfulfilled had settled deep inside of you, and you desperately wished you and David were somewhere, anywhere else. 

Holding onto him just as tightly as you were trying to keep your restraint, you went as far as he led you, open-mouthed kisses burning into your skin until a moan escaped your lips, nearly giving the two of you away.

“You’re the most incredible person I’ve ever met,” he said, giving you a quick kiss that felt achingly insufficient for what you wanted from him.

“Wait ‘til you get me in bed,” you joked.

He laughed, caressing your cheek. “I mean it. I’ve never known anyone like you.”

“Shame we had to meet this way, huh? But then we probably would’ve gone the rest of our lives not knowing each other at all.”

“That’d be a real tragedy.”

“You’re telling me.”

Far too soon for your liking, though you weren’t sure how much time had passed in all honesty, he made his leave as the sound of approaching footsteps grew louder and darkness began to fall. 

You tried to keep your mind off of the patrol, assure yourself that you were worrying for nothing. Sitting on an empty couch, you finally got a better look at the book he presented you with, not having a chance to before. He’d written on the blank cover page, filled the whole thing and then some.

Beneath your name, carefully written in pencil, an inscription, detailing the longing he felt from your absence, his heart growing fonder of you with each passing day but struggling to assuage the loneliness and doubt that began to coil around it. The sound of your voice, your laughter, so vivid in his dreams that he’d wake up looking for you. He’d taken your friendship for granted, he claimed, but though the two of you met during less than ideal circumstances, getting shot was worth meeting you. Your vision began to blur with tears by the time you reached the end of his confession, ‘I missed you before we ever met, and now that we have, I miss you even more.’

You slammed the book shut, choking out a sob. It wasn’t fair. You’d just gotten him back, and in the blink of an eye you could lose him again, possibly for good. In that moment you understood better than ever why medics were supposed to keep their emotional distance, but the pain in your chest, the salty tears that stung your eyes were all worth it for the brief comfort you had found with him. You’d been so lonely otherwise, constantly surrounded by people but still feeling something missing until he returned.

Your name sounded muffled to the ringing in your ears, until Gene sat next to you, putting his arm around your shoulder. 

“Don’t get too stuck in your head. Won’t be able to help no one like that,” Gene said, holding you in the hug. “Don’t think about it.”

“How can I not? It’s all around us–I can’t–”

“Yes, you can. You wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t.”

You let out a shaky breath. “I don’t feel like it sometimes. I feel like I’m just–”

“Just one person and it’s never gonna be enough.”

Something had happened in Bastogne, the last time he went back to the town. He never spoke of it, even when you offered to be an unjudging ear to spill his thoughts to, but you could tell it affected him deeply, even still. Knowing he was speaking from experience was an almost painful comfort.

“Why don’t you get some rest? I’ll be up,” he said.

“You sure?”

He nodded. 

When he left, you set the book aside, silently promising yourself that you wouldn’t read it without Webster. If he didn’t return, it’d stay with you, unread until you met your own demise. An unnecessarily dramatic gesture to only yourself, you hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

The following hours found you in and out of sleep, almost unable to discern your erratic dreams with troubling reality. Footsteps and voices muddled together into unintelligible ramblings that you couldn’t help interpret as the worst in your near fugue state. Your worry was laced with frustration at letting the situation cause you so much distress. You were a medic, after all. You were supposed to be prepared for this.

Still, you couldn’t help but feel a momentary wave of relief crash over you when Webster walked into the room.

“Thank god,” you whispered, throwing your arms around him and kissing his cheek. 

His embrace was stiff, awkward, and the far away expression on his face gave you pause.

“David, what happened?”

“Jackson’s dead. It was his own grenade. He didn’t wait long enough. It just…”

“Oh my god.”

“He didn’t die right away.”

“Why didn’t someone get me? Maybe I could’ve–”

“By the time Sergeant Martin got Doc Roe it was already too late. There was nothing Doc could do—nothing you could’ve done,” he said quietly, before adding, “I’m glad you didn’t see it.”

“I’ve seen worse by now.”

“Why add onto it?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too. That I didn’t write to you, that I didn’t tell you sooner how I felt about you, but it’s no use dwelling on all of that now,” he said. “It can’t change anything, and no matter how sorry we are, it won’t bring Jackson back, or anyone else, for that matter.”

It was settling in, that same bitterness that’d made its home in the bones of your comrades. A taste in your mouth that could be mistaken for blood by anyone else, but you knew it all too well. Your heart ached at seeing it finally get to Webster, too.

“Do you wanna just sit for a while?” you asked.

He nodded. The two of you settled onto the couch, his head in your lap as you ran your fingers through his hair, gently tracing the soft lines that ran across his forehead, betraying that despite his closed eyes, his mind was still racing. 

“This isn’t exactly how I wanted to spend the rest of the night with you,” he mumbled after a while, his eyes fluttering open.

“David, it’s alright,” you said, your thumb brushing back and forth across his cheekbone, trying to pull his mind out of the depths you knew too well. “I’m glad just to do this. I’m kind of crazy about you.”

“Kind of?”

“Yeah, just a little bit.”

“What would I have to do to make you a fully-fledged lunatic?”

“Horrible, indecent things that would get me sent home in shame.”

He laughed. “But crazy about me?”

“Absolutely wild.”

He took your hand from his face, kissing your palm before holding it in his. 

You weren’t sure when you’d fallen asleep, but you awoke the next morning with an unforgiving crick in your neck, and the thought of the recently delivered aspirin tempted you for a split second before you realized you’d woken up by yourself.

He probably slipped out at some point, returning to his bunk so neither of you would get into any trouble. It didn’t stop you from asking around for him until you finally caught him alone.

“Hey, where’d you run off to?” you asked.

“Sink wants another patrol,” Webster told you, watching cautiously as your hands balled into fists at your side.

You fought back tears of frustration. “Then I wanna go too. I’ll make sure nothing like what happened last night happens again. Where’s Captain Winters? I’ll–”

“Winters is going to tell him a phony story about how we went back but couldn’t get any more prisoners.”

You paused, your brain taking a moment to process the information before you let out a weak laugh in disbelief, the tears that’d welled up in your eyes rolling down your cheeks regardless. Maybe you were delirious. Or sleep deprived. And your neck still hurt. “That man is a fucking saint.”

Webster smiled, putting his arm around you and pressing a kiss to your temple. “He is. Especially since that leaves me free the rest of the night.”

“You know, this handsome guy just gave me a brand new copy of The Postman Always Rings Twice.”

“Sounds like he has good taste.”

You smiled. “Yeah, I’d say so.”

#david webster x reader #band of brothers x reader #band of brothers #band of brothers fanfic #david webster #band of brothers imagine #anyway read the postman always rings twice! or watch the movie the one with lana turner not the other one #do you ever think about how a book with a dysfunctional and murderous semi sadomasochistic relationship was given out by the us government #webster and the reader sure will!

[chicagoandthetrenches]

No gloves - Keegan Russ x gn!reader

Reader is a Walker sibling. I tried my hardest to make sure it was gender neutral but a few things might have slipped through the cracks during editing - so sorry!

Warnings!!

descriptors of blood/gore, self-harm (please take care of yourself and don’t read if not in a good headspace), mentions of death (familial), slight stalking(? if you squint really hard)

Original character.ai prompt from @L3thal_Angel

*You where the quiet one of TF-141. Which, spoke Keegan’s curiosity. No one rarely saw you unless In the canteen, on missions etc. you always wore a half mask, covering your lower face.*

*One night, Keegan was walking through the halls when he heard punching from the training room. He peaked inside, seeing you absolutely destroying a punching bag with no gloves…*

*Jab, cross, right hook, left hook, repeat..*

*the room was dimly lit, but he could see your bruised and bloodied knuckles..*

please do not edit or reupload my work! 🫶🏻

You were the quiet one of the ghosts. Which, sparked Keegan’s curiosity, he was used to being the quiet one. No one really saw you unless In the canteen, on missions etc.

One night, Keegan was walking through the halls when he heard punching from the training room. He peaked inside, seeing you absolutely destroying a punching bag with no gloves…

Jab, cross, right hook, left hook, repeat..

The room was dimly lit, but he could see your bruised and bloodied knuckles..

Keegan, decided for a moment, to just watch the rest of your training. To just observe from the shadows and see exactly what you where capable of.

You continued to jab, cross, hook, repeat. In sync with each other, every motion was calculated, timed, and thrown with precision. As you continued to beat the bag, your intensity built. You picked up the pace, your hits becoming more precise and stronger.

Keegan was still watching you. Taking in each movement. Your determination, strength, and precision. All of your movements were like a machine… he couldn’t look away…

You threw a flurry of blows at the bag. A barrage of punches were thrown. Speed, power, accuracy, each punch delivered was strong and on target, never losing its intensity and strength.

As you threw a barrage of punches you finished it off with a power uppercut, your knuckles hitting the heavy bag and shaking the bag violently.

Your body went limp for a second, catching your breath. The heavy bag was swaying back and forth… covered in blood…

You took another moment to catch your breath…

“Enjoy watching me, Russ?” you said without turning around, taking time to inspect the damage to your hands.

He jumped slightly, as he realized you noticed him…

“I thought you’d never notice. I’ve been watching you train for about 5 mins now…”

“I know, I felt your eyes,” you hummed as he walked across the gym towards you.

He walked over to you, and looked at your knuckles.

“No gloves, no wraps… and to top it off, a heavy bag. You really are trying to destroy your fists, aren’t you?”

He looked back up at you, curious as to why you were doing this to your hands. A mixture of admiration and confusion could be seen on his face…

“I’ve wondered this for a while now… Why the hell do you never wear gloves…? Why do you beat up that damn bag so damn much? And why do you never stop when you feel the pain in your hands?…”

You chuckled lightly, “you ask a lot of questions.”

“I do… but only because I’m genuinely curious about you… I mean, you rarely talk… I know literally nothing about you besides your relationship to Hesh and Elias… you are the most quiet, calm, collected one out on missions besides me… but then I come here and find you beating up a bag like it owes you money…”

“And I know that can’t feel good, yet you always push through. I just can’t stop wondering ‘why?’…”

“The pain helps me focus,” you shrug.

“And does it ever get to the point where the pain actually makes you stop?”

“Not usually,” you shake your head, beginning to clean your bloodied hands.

“So you just train until your hands are just bloody and bruised?”

“Pretty much.”

He looked at your hands again, “They must hurt like hell, though?”

“I get used to it. I usually will swap out for the firing range while they heal.”

He took one last look at your hands before standing up straight, “You’re insane…”

You send him a soft smile, “yeah, I know.”

“And one last question…” he pauses, “What drives you to do this..? Is it a way to escape feelings of anger? Grief? Guilt?…”

You tilt your head slightly, “What drives you to do what you do?” You leave him pondering as you walk away.

”Good question…” He mumbles to himself as he watches you walk away.

He sighed to himself. Now he was even more curious to know more about you…

Your brother, Hesh, was one of the two besides Merrick who could read you like a book. But most of the time only Hesh could tell what you were thinking…

The next mission was a long and tiresome one. It took a mental and physical toll on all the members. It took every ounce of stamina, strength, and endurance to make it through this mission… yet you didn’t seem tired at all. You were just silent, as always. Keegan found you in the gym again, beating the bag until your hands bled.

This time he decided to come over and watch you closer. He wanted to know if beating the bag was the way to calm you, or to distract you. Something just drove him to seek out every piece of info about you…

He watched you for a few minutes… You were hitting the bag with everything you had. Power, precision, speed, and accuracy. Your knuckles kept smashing into the bag… slowly you could feel the pain, but you pushed through.

The blood from your hands kept dripping as your hands slowly started to crack, knuckles splitting open. You continued to go at it, showing no sign of weakness. You eventually had to take a breath as you took a small break. You took a second to lean on the bag, blood dripping on the floor…

Eventually you take a deep breath, and open your eyes. Your hands were drenched in blood. You looked down and inspected the damage, taking a moment to look at your knuckles, which were all bloody and bruised.

The pain began to slowly rise up, as you felt it in your hands and wrists. You closed your eyes tightly, ignoring it all for as long as possible, as blood dripped onto the floor.

“Keegan,” Your voice, almost a warning, you knew he was watching again. You heard him approach as you kept your eyes closed, focusing on the pain.

“You know I’m gonna watch… always do. Your hands look a lot more worse then usual though..”

You took a deep breath, steadying yourself before you spoke, “yeah, they feel it too….”

Keegan walked a few steps closer, inspecting your hands.

“The pain helps you focus?” He asked, reiterating your earlier statement.

“Something like that… It just… helps me forget about the other stuff… forget about the emotions… forget about my thoughts…. It kind of… helps me relax in a way….”

“You have a lot on your mind?” he asks.

You just shrug, opening your eyes to finally look at the damage.

“And do you have any coping mechanisms, other than beating the ever living snot out of this bag?”

You softly laugh a little, “not really, other than annoying Hesh with my problems.”

“And is Hesh the only one who can really read you?”

You nodded, the small smile dropping off your face, “My dad could. Merrick tries but he gets frustrated unless it’s obvious what’s wrong.”

“Do you think I’ll ever be able to read you? Ever be able to get in your head?”

You shrugged, “Maybe if you try hard enough.”

“Challenge accepted.”

#cod keegan #cod ghosts #call of duty keegan #call of duty #call of duty angst #keegan russ x reader #keegan russ #keegan x reader

[crash-and-cure]

If I Were You Part 2 (Yandere!Austin!Elvis x Reader)

Summary: Reader tries to navigate the immeadiate aftermath after that fateful night with Elvis, to varying success. WIth his return to performing on the horizon reader questions is if there is a way of forward that causes the least amount of damage for both parties. Elvis sees only one path forward.

Note: This is based on @venus-haze One shot If I Were You. Please go read that before this because it’s absolutely incredible. And yes before anyone asks I had her full permission to continue the story and she has been on board the whole time. I swear on my life this was originally a one-shot to continue on and let it be known what I saw for reader and Elvis’ future. Then about 5k into this story and realizing there were so many scenes I wanted to add within the first week alone for these two, I just went all in and decided to restrain this chapter to a week. There will be at least one more chapter following this. Reader is cis female, and aside from that no other descriptors are used. Full disclosure I do use this song, which, while never performed by him, has all the makings of one, and it fit to well in the scene it’s in. I do have a Bachelor’s in Psychology, but I am not a therapist, so nothing here should be treated as genuine mental health advice. That being said there is alot more focus on reader this time around. Please read the warnings before deciding to read.

Word Count: 10.5k

Warnings: Yandere fic so there are themes of obsessive , manipulative, and delusional behavior as well as some heavy allusions to blackmail, emotional and otherwise, here too. There is an informal therapy session depicted here as well in which topics such as performance anxiety, sex, exploitation, and substance abuse are discussed. Depictions of drinking that may be seen as delving into alcohol abuse territory, as well as some other erratic behavior on readers part. Explicit sexual content depicted that includes oral (f. recieving), pentrative sex (m/f), spanking, some daddy kink, and other dom/sub undertones sprinkled throughout. And of course Elvis’ mommy issues and readers daddy issues (truly aa match made in hell). Finally depictions of a toxic relationship that include power imbalances, manipulation, and uses of coercion. Please do not interact if you are under 18.

Part 1  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5

My Masterlist

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You kept that bottle of wine, you can’t fully explain why though. Worse yet you kept it in the bottom drawer of your desk, and every time you opened that drawer these past few months you were always secretly hoping that it wouldn’t be there and would always feel the disappointment when it continued to be there out of your sight. How poetic you thought idly as Elvis forced open that locked drawer after curiosity over the glass clinking sound had gotten the better of him.

Recognizing the bottle he let out a dark chuckle. “Well I’ll be damned. Thought you didn’t take gifts from us patients, Doc?” he said, very much amused as he used his teeth to take the cork out. “Don’t worry though mama,” he paused taking a swig, “I forgive ya’. Least I could do after all ya’ gave tonight.” 

Shaking both in shock and humiliation, you grabbed the bottle and after nursing it for a beat too long, you proceeded to ride him to oblivion as he sat in your own desk chair in some twisted attempt to regain control of the situation. Though the closer you got to your peak, it became clear that this was all in vain. The way he sat there, lounging back, one hand behind his head and the other leaving finger-sized bruises on your rear, guiding you as you desperately chased your release, he was the very image of a King on his throne. It was on that thought that you proceeded to shatter around him once again that night, drifting as he whispered in your ear what a good girl you were. 

The rest of the night proceeded as a blur as the next conscious thought you had would be wondering how you were going to get to work the next day as he drove you home in his own car. You don’t quite remember giving him directions, but for the sake of your sanity you just assumed you did. And in some perverted form of chivalry, he even walked you to your front door and gave you a tender, almost sweet, kiss as though he didn’t have you bent over your own desk not even an hour ago, before departing into the night. 

You’re in a fugue state as you work toward your nightly routine. You don’t taste your dinner, you don’t hear the music from your neighbor’s radio, and you especially don’t feel his cum flaking on the skin beneath your blouse. Nope. Definitely not. You’re too ashamed to even look at yourself going so far as to shower with your lights off. 

As you settle into bed that night, your sleep is fitful as you try your best to decide what to do about this night. In the end, with all the evidence of your tryst washed away, you resolve to ignore these feelings at the very least until you have to see him again. 

What you can’t ignore the next morning is your car, that had no business being there, in its usual spot, along with your keys in the ignition. Not really trying to think too hard on the implications you would rush to work hoping to clean up before your first client of the day.

To your surprise everything in your office is already in order: No furniture askew, no suspicious stains on the desk or chairs, not even the panties that you swore didn’t come home with you anywhere in sight. The only proof that last night even happened at all was the broken desk drawer and the slight tenderness on your ass.

The days following that session were hazy at best to you as, even during work, your mind was occupied by him. You formulated plans as to how best to address what happened and why it must never happen again. Elvis has always had a reputation as a bit of a cad, so perhaps you can both treat this as a one time thing. Something that he had to get out of his system in order to successfully further his treatment. Even in session he confessed that he had trouble with maintaining monogamy to almost all of his previous partners - though, you thought, he did immediately follow that up with the justification that he was looking for the “right” girl. 

You pushed that notion away, he will understand - he has to understand - that it would be better to return to the previous professional relationship. So come Thursday morning, you take steps to effectively unsex yourself; no makeup, loose fitting pants and blazer, hair in a less than flattering style, the whole nine yards. All of this done in an effort to make yourself a less viable option for a sexual partner .

As you leave your apartment you catch a glimpse of your ill-fitting attire and you can’t help but be reminded how as a child you would wear your fathers suits and declare you were going to be a Doctor like him. As you would swim in his oversized coat, you remember feeling lucky to receive a dismissive glance your way and monotone orders to return the clothes back where you found them. You rush out to your car before you can dwell on that train of thought.

If your other patients noticed your sudden change in style that day, no one mentioned it. You had previously taken pride in the level of professionalism you were able to maintain, but in the grand scheme of things, looking frumpy for one day of work could hardly be deemed the worst thing you have done. 

As 4 PM rolled around you were still in the process of convincing yourself that you were ready to confront this head on by not confronting it and acting as though nothing ever happened. You can do this- you have to do this- you told yourself. 

4:15 PM, you were ready for the knock on the door that would not come that night. 

4:30 PM, you were still waiting in a rigid state with your pen and notebook clenched in your hands, full attention at the wooden door, like a dog waiting for its owner to come home. You shudder at the comparison. 

4:45 PM, you were justifying his tardiness with his upcoming concert, and even with your barebones knowledge of performing, you realize that these types of things are planned weeks, even months in advance. And so you wait.

5 PM and you’re already mentally packing up to go back to your apartment. You know that all of your things are sitting at your desk but you wanted to spend as little time looking at it as possible. These past few days, you had the irrational fear that even so much as looking at where your indiscretion happened would tip off everybody. You disregard that reflexive response that makes you clench your thighs together when you look in its direction. 

5:15 PM you can no longer ignore the stiffness in your back but you're doing your best to disregard the feeling of rejection that has settled in the pit of your stomach. Because this seems to be the place where you make your worst decisions, you decide to pull out that damned bottle of wine. You see the teeth marks on the cork, and you push down the part of you that blushes at the thought of putting your mouth where his was. 

It is in that moment with the stopper wrenched free and you thinking about a man you definitely shouldn’t be thinking about, does the shrill tone of your office phone ring. It’s embarrassing really how quickly your hand shoots to answer it, moreso when you answer with a mouthful of cork. 

“Hww-” you quickly spit it out. “Hello this is Dr. Y/L/N.”

It is little comfort when you recognize the voice. 

“Baby I’m so sorry that I missed tonight, but I coulda swore I told one a my boys to let ya’ know I wouldn’t make it.” he said apologetically. “We got rehearsal’s all this week for Saturday and my minds been all over the damn place.”

Baby, you thought as you took a quick gulp of wine. Early on, he had slipped and called you tha, maybe a month or two into his treatment. You, as gently as you could, informed him how you would appreciate it if he wouldn’t refer to you as such. He reassured you that he meant nothing by it as he apparently calls everyone that from time to time. You accepted that answer and didn’t say anything the few times he would say it later on. 

Looking at the bottle in your hand, you had spent the last few days blaming it for being your first misstep in your career, but retrospect is funny like that and you’re now realizing it was one in a series of many over the last year. With him continually elbowing his way back into your life, you doubt it will be your last. 

“That’s alright Mr. Presley, just please don’t let this happen again in the future.” is your response, wanting to end this conversation as quickly as possible. “I’ll see you for your next session on Monday.” 

“Speakin’ a that. I was hoping we could reschedule today for Saturday,” he said before you could lift the receiver from your ear. 

“Mr Presley, I don’t work on Saturday’s,” you half-heartedly protested. 

“Then you’re free,” he quickly countered. “Doc, it’s just that… I’mma need some help gettin’ my head straight before the show, cause it’s been over a year since I done this, and even longer since I done a show sober.”

You immediately clock what he’s trying to do, and for all the ill-advised actions you’ve taken in the last week, you didn’t get your license out of a cracker jack box. “Elvis, that is in no way appropri-”

“Well it’s the show,” he quickly cuts you off. There is a dark edge to his tone as he continues. “And what happened on Monday. I think I really need to talk to someone ‘bout it.”

It doesn’t have to be you, goes unsaid.

He’s got you there and you know it, and currently you’re in no state of mind to try to find a way around this. So rather than doing anything semi-responsible and enforcing the boundary you have set, you down most of what’s left of the bottle and agree. 

“Darlin’ that’s perfect. If there’s one thing I can promise, it's a helluva show” You can almost feel the self-satisfied grin over the phone. “I also been thinkin’ ‘bout what you said with not lettin’ people know that you’re my therapist, and you’re right.”

The neck of the bottle is clenched so tightly in your fist, you’re concerned it may shatter at this point. That earlier feeling of rejection being quickly replaced with dread.

“So I think I best I send you a lil’ somethin’ to wear for the show, I want them knowin’ you’re my girl, not my shrink, and you don’t exactly dress the part Doll.” he says this with such a cool authority that leaves no room for argument.

You stared off into space with this offer. You’re idly reminded of months ago when you had him practice an exercise in control. He did, you observed, have an excessive need for control in almost every aspect of his life, but this mindset also held the detrimental effect that everything that went wrong was also his fault due to the control he felt. So you came up with this exercise so you could both figure out where it is reasonable to be in control, and in which places he could relinquish it a bit. One aspect he mentioned that he often controlled was the way his girlfriends dressed, which you will admit made you do a double take. The only thing you commented on that detail was that so long as both parties were consenting he was truly not in control of the entire situation. 

Doll indeed, you think bitterly. Did he take it as a challenge? Whatever the case may be, one thing becomes evident. You have no doubt what his intentions are anymore, no overwhelming emotions clouding his judgment, nor any post-orgasmic high having him say things he doesn’t mean. 

As you look at the near empty bottle of wine while you sit in the room where your career has lived and will inevitably die, you can hardly say the same thing about yourself.

Mark had insisted you keep it that night months ago, and after realizing that there was no way of returning it to Elvis without bringing up the incident again, you kept it in your office for the sole reason that it felt wrong to keep it in your apartment. Too Intimate, you had thought. You begin to wonder how your life would have been had you told Mark why you wished to refuse the wine. Maybe you would have been strong enough to put your foot down and keep this relationship professional… or maybe he would have taken the same approach you took, and let it slide under the guise of Elvis not knowing any better at the time. Elvis seemed to have that effect on people, of wanting to justify his actions in spite of it everything.

Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the way he sounded when exhausted, or just maybe it was looking into Pandora's proverbial drawer and finally finding those lost panties with the evidence of your attraction to him stained into the fabric. Whatever it was you found yourself finishing off the bottle and agreeing to his requests - demands really-  and drunkenly trying your best to rationalize to yourself why you shouldn’t burn your license to ash at this very moment. 

The next day rolls around and you return to your normal wardrobe. Though that morning you can’t help but take an extra long look at it as though the promised new addition will change it fundamentally. You chalk that thought up to you still being hungover. As the day continues, you try your best to be more attentive to your patients that day, because even if you failed to do so once, these people deserve a space free from your own personal issues.

You’re not surprised to be met with a package at your doorstep, though the colored box and large bow it arrives in are a bit much for what you assumed to be a single dress. What you’re met with inside is in fact a full outfit complete with even the undergarments you assume you’re expected to wear. The style itself so far from your typical business professional taste, it circles into the territory of a disguise. You even have to admit that there is an air of brilliance to it, since you doubt even you would be able to recognize yourself in this outfit.

Though in that regard, you already have a lot of trouble doing so lately.

Your tentative plan as of right now is to attend the concert and take part in this impromptu therapy session, and you will discuss with him what happened and explain why it is in fact critical to his mental well-being that this affair goes no further. You begrudgingly admit that come Monday, you will have to start from square one with him, but this is the only path forward you can see anymore.

That Saturday morning is devoted to running in and out of grocery stores, trying to gather as many tabloids featuring Elvis as possible, if you’re going to -temporarily- play the part he wants you to play, you will have to look like it. The rest of the day is devoted to primping and preening to get said right look. This brings back memories from undergrad, you and a friend preparing for a double date and Priscilla, along with various other celebrity faces, taped to the mirror for inspiration. Specifically you remember after being able to achieve her dramatic cat eye, your friend joking that if this college thing didn’t work out for you, you could put in an application for being Elvis’ next girl. You laughed at how preposterous that idea was at the time.

Your thoughts of the past are quickly interrupted by rapid knocking at your front door, and you quickly put the finishing touches on your makeup and throw on the ensemble. At the door you’re met with a familiar blonde whose apparent agitation swiftly surpasses whatever momentary discomfort he clearly feels at encountering you once again. Though in that moment you’re at least grateful Elvis had the good sense to not involve anyone else in this matter (that and the fact he didn’t send a limo).

Getting into the car you’re praying for a long and silent trip to the show. Jerry not reading the room says to you “Sorry for rushing you out the door back there, um…” he says. “It’s just been a bit of a crazy week, and the Boss is just wigging out about every single detail.”

“I understand” you attempt to placate, wishing for this exchange to end as soon as possible. “You have a job to do.”

“By the looks of it, so do you,” he says in an attempt to joke, though he quickly cuts himself off after seeing you tense up. He quickly apologizes and as you turn to look out the window, you hear what sounds like a flask being opened and Jerry downing a good portion of it. 

You resist the urge to demand a shot of whatever he’s drinking because, as poorly timed as that joke was, you are on the clock. And for as unprofessional as you have been lately, you don’t think you’ve quite gotten to the level of drinking right before a session. Because that’s what this is: an emergency/supplemental session that will precede a momentous occasion for your patient, and out of respect for his privacy, you are in disguise so that no one will know he’s even seeing a therapist. You’re hoping the more you tell yourself that the less ridiculous it will sound.

And due to the fact you're on the job you reason, it may be best to get an idea of his state before going in. “How has he been today? I’m sure the stress of the event is getting to him,” you ask.

“Yeah, uhh… he’s been in a bit of a mood all day,” he says carefully.

“Meaning?” 

“He’s basically been sayin’ that he wouldn’t perform until he saw you,” he says, looking anywhere but at you.

And there it is, you think. You give a simple nod in acknowledgement to Jerry, as he is all too happy to let this conversation peter out. You now recognize what Elvis is attempting and using Jerry as a proxy for. Despite all your training that tells you that you’re not responsible for any actions your patients take, you feel yourself start to shoulder the burden of getting him to perform tonight. Not only that but it seems you also bear the responsibility of putting him in the right headspace to perform well tonight. 

The rest of the ride to the show itself is quiet, which you’re grateful for, as it gives you time to steel yourself. Jerry as well seems to ease into a more relaxed demeanor the way one would when doing something that has become routine. It seems he’s no stranger to ferrying women to the King of Rock and Roll. 

Regardless of the slight pang of sorrow you feel momentarily at that observation, you try to see the upside to it. That this… thing with Elvis, your patient you have to remind yourself, will be short-lived. 

Arriving at the venue, you are immediately led backstage, and you’re not sure you can write off the feeling that everyone was watching you to paranoia on your part. Whatever it was, you surmised, there were more than a few people beyond Elvis expecting your arrival. As you were ushered to his dressing room, you felt equal parts dread and anticipation as to what would be on the other side.

What you weren’t expecting was your office. Though that may be a stretch, you can’t seem to find the logic in a dressing room having two chairs facing each other with a small table between them complete with a box of tissues right on top. The entire arrangement takes up an inordinate amount of space in an already cramped room, and you can’t help but conclude that it is intentional. 

You find the man of the hour in an open robe (sans shirt, though thankfully with pants on) sitting cross legged on the sofa in what you recognize to be a meditative position. You wouldn’t say he is quite disheveled, but every time you’ve seen him, he’s looked nothing less than immaculate. So finding him in this state with his hair undone and no ostentatious clothing is slightly jarring. Upon hearing the door open he cracks open one eye, and seeing you his face breaks into that handsome grin you’ve become far too familiar with. “Y/N, baby you’re here.” he says feigning surprise.

Not even acknowledging what he just said, you make your way into the room and Jerry, clearly just as disturbed by the setup, closes the door behind you. You glance at the clock on the wall showing that you had a little over 2 hours until the concert was set to start, just enough time for a full session and then some for him to get ready for the show. There is no way this was not meticulously planned, you conclude. 

You sit down placing your bag on the floor, as he takes his time to stretch out for a bit before he strolls his way to sit astride the chair across from you. There with an amused look on his face, he says nothing apparently wanting you to start. 

Considering there is no protocol as to how to conduct a session in this highly specific situation, and not wanting to immediately open with the elephant in the room, you decide to begin with just idle chit chat. “So… um, I didn't know you practiced meditation.”

“Yeah, it was somethin’ I picked up in San Diego,” he says off-handedly.

“I’m glad that it works for you,” you say as neutrally as possible. 

“Oh, it don’t,'' he clarifies. “It works in gettin’ everyone to leave me the fuck alone for awhile. But not in the other ways it’s supposed to.”

You nod your head in acknowledgement as he continues. “I got into yoga when I was down there too.”

“Do you find that works better for you?”

“Yeah,” he verifies. “When I feel somethin’ real bad, I gotta move. It don’t matter how.” This makes sense as he's a very physical person. You are aware of his love for Karate, and you briefly consider recommending he pick up Tai Chi as a happy medium between meditation and martial arts to help him in achieving mindfulness. Your thoughts are interrupted as he continues. “Too bad I ain’t been able to practice in a while.”

“And why is that?” you softly probe.

“I been needin” a partner,” he said with a sly grin, very much an offer.

There’s your opening, you think to yourself. This is the moment you can make a bid to reinforce some level of boundaries between the two of you. Where you can tell him that Monday was a mistake and should never happen again. That this infatuation with you is in fact detrimental to his mental well-being and will destroy your career. And most importantly that there is no future between the two of you.

“Elvis, please” you say, exhaling in frustration. “About what happened on Monday… I think it would be best if we-”

“Well,” he chimes in, “I think it best we save that talk for another time,” his severe delivery leaving no room for argument. Fear grips your throat as he continues in a notably softer tone, “Everything out there is ready for me to play, but up here,” he says, putting two fingers to his temple. “I don’t know ‘bout. Darlin’ I need your help right now, because I can’t do this without you”

Almost everything within you says to push forward no matter what, and tell him right here and now. The one thing that stops you is knowing for a fact he will be devastated with what you have to say. And then what? You leave and he’s unable to perform, leaving hundreds devastated. And come Monday will he even show up, or will he make the call and have you immediately reported for your part in this whole ordeal. Not to mention the long-term variables of if he will even want to continue therapy should you fail to get him ready tonight.

You sigh in defeat, as it appears you have no choice but to concede on this matter and focus on the immediate task at hand. “So you mentioned over the phone that your head’s been all over the place this week. Tell me, is this how you normally feel in the days leading up to a performance?” 

He looks pleased with your question and answers “Not in the last few years no. I mean, first time in Vegas it was a little like this, but after a while that all became routine.”

He leans his chair back and reaches behind him to the vanity table to reach for a glass of water. This angle puts his full chest on display and you can’t help but rake your eyes over the hair there and follow the trail of it down to his-

Focus, you think to yourself.

He offers you a glass, and in spite of how dry your mouth feels at the moment, you are trying to no longer accept anything from him at this point regardless of how small, so you refuse. “Tell ya’ what though,” he says, taking a sip. “I ain’t feel this nervous since my early days of performin’ and I would shake somethin’ fierce on stage,” he laughs a little at this statement. “That’s actually parta where all my dancin’ came from.” 

“I see.”

It’s unsettling how you could almost mistake the rest of your time together as a typical session with him. The only cosmetic differences being the harsh lighting from the vanity behind him and the uncomfortable feeling from the leather chair sticking to the back of your thighs. You’re also at a bit of a loss as to what to do with your hands without anything to take notes in, and the outfit has you feeling particularly vulnerable. As for his part you doubt you’ve ever seen him this relaxed in your presence before; leaning back with his legs spread and his robe exposing a mouth-watering amount of his torso. If you had to guess, it may have something to do with you being in his territory so to speak, as opposed to the typical setting of your office. Or maybe he’s just into your humiliation.

Aside from those factors, you would have even labeled today as a successful session… that is until the conversation takes a turn.

“I’ve done what feels like a thousand shows, most of them without all that crap Nic was pumping me with, but it feels like… I don’t know. Like that was some other guy that was performin’ and that he ain’t here tonight.”  

“This ‘other guy’ has he always been a part of the way you perform?” 

“I ain’t feel like myself on stage in a long time.” he said morosely.

“Elvis, I want you to try to recall a concert where you did feel like your true self. It doesn’t have to be the last time you felt this way, just the most memorable.” You replied leaning forward.

The half smirk that creeps on to his face makes you regret that question though. “Actually the show that comes to mind is the comeback special. You seen it before?” he asked. 

Yes. “...No, I-I believe I missed that one,” you manage to stutter out.

He grins knowingly, “Well they had me in front of an audience, maybe less than a hundred people and had me dressed all in leather with only a small square for a stage. In spite all that I felt free especially since Parker had almost nothin’ to do with it,” he said wistfully. “He chewed me out later for it, sayin’ shit like how it was no real audience and that they were told when to clap. But I knew…”

His hungry gaze meets yours and you feel a kin to prey about to be devoured. “You wanna know how I knew?” he said.

In spite of your gut instinct that you are delving into dangerous territory with this conversation, you’re far too curious at this point. So you try to swallow that uneasy feeling and reply in the affirmative.

“I came in my pants,” he says, taking a sip of his water, as neutral and matter of fact as if he were just telling you what he ate for dinner last night. 

“Wh-what?” you said, for the first time in your career, truly at a loss for words. 

Sex certainly wasn’t a taboo subject to discuss with your patients, and it wasn’t even the first time you discussed it with Elvis himself. But those conversations typically surrounded your patient's fears of intimacy with a new partner, and even though that wasn’t a concern for Elvis, he did make reference to it when discussing his need to please others. Most importantly though when discussing sex with a patient, you’ve never actually had the experience with them.

“It was the weirdest thing, Doc. Never happened before, hasn’t happened since,” he said, at complete ease with himself. “Sure a few close calls here and there, but it never got to that point. Hell, it mighta been the suit itself that did it for me. What ya’ think it means doll?”

And what can you say to that really? You try to even out your shallow breathing as your mind races through the possible implications of this reaction. You have certainly never met another performer before so you’re unsure whether this is even unusual to those in his line of work, but at the same time most people who do what they love for a living also aren’t sexually aroused by it, let alone reach climax through it alone. Previously you would have labeled yourself as firmly within that category, but that damp feel beneath your dress proves otherwise. 

Across from you, he waits patiently for your reply, but he is also openly delighted by your squirming state. 

“I-” you clear your throat. “Um… Sex is a perfectly natural thing.”

“Don’t I know it,” he smiles rakishly.

“Yes I…” you say, briefly losing your train of thought. “A way of interpreting the… arousal you feel on stage is that being there and performing in front of an audience comes just as naturally to you. As for what happened at your special, it may have been the moment you felt most acutely aware of your desire to be on stage.”

He nods his head and you continue. “You’ve mentioned previously how you were unsatisfied by your movie career by that point in time. So the return to the stage may have also acted as a cathartic release of all these pent up frustrations you were feeling up until that moment.” 

He raises an eyebrow at that in the way he typically does when he’s confused by your wording. “Basically you were feeling unhappy for a long period of time, so when you felt the joy of being back on stage, you’re…” you hesitate, suddenly embarrassed. “Body, as a result misinterpreted that joy as arousal. And adding to that, Parker’s disapproval as well as the feeling of being free that you described. It all culminated into that… reaction.”

He sits on your presumption for a moment, before chuckling a bit. “I see where you’re comin’ from on that doc. Though I gotta ask.”

You pause, apprehensive to what he may ask. “Ask what?”

“What are my chances for a repeat performance tonight?” he asks in a way you could almost mistake as innocent. As you feel close to hyperventilating, he continues. “I mean those things you brought up from the special are here tonight sooo…” he quirks an eyebrow, putting it on you to continue.

“...well… um” you draw out, truly dumbfounded and without any words to respond to that. You’re only saved from this conversation by hurried knocking at the door behind you. 

“Well, looks like we’re outta time here doc,” he said standing up, prompting you to stand up as well. With a hand on your lower back guiding you to the door, you don’t miss the fact he’s effectively dismissing you. “Baby, thank ya’ for comin’ down here tonight and settin’ me right. And I just want you knowin’ that this whole show is because of you. I don’t think I woulda made it this far without my girl” he said looking down at you and bringing you close while his other hand was on the doorknob. 

Your primary focus is trying your best to collect yourself before you need to go out there, but you’re so astonished by how he just so casually slipped in “my girl” into there. You know then you have to say something.

“But… I’m not your gir-” you quickly cut yourself off as you see his jaw clench, the previous look of satisfaction on a dime replaced with one of intense indignation at your denial. Before you can even begin to feel regret for your refusal, his expression just as rapidly shifts to one of downright mischief. 

Not wanting to find out what that look meant, you attempt to turn towards the door, only to be halted by an iron-like grip on your jaw. “Not my girl, huh?” he says, forcing you  to look at him, as he brings his face closer to yours. He then whispers, his lips just barely brushing yours, “tell that to them.” 

You can’t say you weren’t expecting him to bring his lips closer to yours, but you can say you weren’t expecting to be such a willing participant this time around. You can tell yourself all you want that you did it to save him from the embarrassment of being walked in on with a less than willing woman, but it seems, deep down, the both of you knew better. So you played your part as you grabbed a fistful of hair at the nape of his neck as your lips came together, and he was all too willing to believe in your role as his hand snaked down your back. You’ll never fully know (or at least admit) who closed the distance that night.  

All you really know is that being in here with him as he was now, was nothing short of intoxicating, in a way it had never felt in your office. You were not one to participate in drugs, but as his tongue slips past your lips to wrap around your own, you truly believe you could become addicted to this. His scent, his taste, his touch, all of it threatened to consume you whole and never let you go.

He was so all consuming in fact, you barely registered the sound of the door opening beside you, but you definitely don’t miss what feels like a dozen sets of eyes in full view of the both of you. You’re aware that you should in fact be more embarrassed of your compromising position with your arms thrown around his neck and his hand firmly on your ass. But with all the shame you’ve been feeling this past week, this hardly registers as the worst. Though you do feel a spark of it when he pulls away, and you let out a small whine from being denied his plush lips, until you feel them near the shell of your ear. 

His breathy demand for another session after the show is hard to deny in your state, and more so when you see the color of your lipstick haphazardly smeared across his downright sinful smirk. It goes without saying what that will entail, but you surprise even yourself by not immediately running for the hills. Instead you, with all the grace of a newborn fawn, stumble past a line of people rearing to get in and do their job. This venture, not at all aided by the playful swat he gives your behind. The “knowing” looks on some of their faces tells you what they are all assuming. Part of you wishes they were right, because doing that would somehow have been less shameful than what actually happened.

After that “session” you try to compose yourself as best as you can, and make your way to the ladies room. Alone in the restroom you see your face in the mirror and to your relief aside from the smudged lipstick, you look relatively fine. You reach for your bag to touch it up, only to realize that you forgot to grab it when he was leading you to the door. As you shudder at the thought of going back to retrieve it, you finally realize how much of a sopping mess you’ve made of your underwear. 

Insanity is truly your only defense for your next course of action, as you quickly remove your panties and dispose of them. 

After cleaning yourself up a bit, you end up wandering around backstage with a new resolve to not think about him. You still have roughly another hour to kill before the show is set to start, so unsure what to do with yourself until that time, you attempt to strike up conversations with your fellow VIPs. Your attempt at keeping your mind off of him proves fruitless though, as it becomes apparent that word travels fast behind the curtains, and their interest in you begins and ends with Elvis. You’re flooded with questions as to what he’s going to wear tonight, what he’s going to sing, if there will be an afterparty at Graceland and subsequent requests for you to try to get them invited. The only time any questions are directed at you, it’s simply polite inquiry as to where you met him and how long you’ve known him, and you try to be as vague and non-descript as possible.

One woman remarks how she thinks she saw you in a magazine last week along with “the big man himself.”

“Guilty,” you reply with a nervous laugh, because you truly are. How would you even begin to try to explain the truth?

You are able to meet most of the members of the so-called “Memphis Mafia,” and get the rundown as to who does what in the group after asking in an effort to get a basic conversation going. It doesn’t go unnoticed that none of them ask what you do for a living, only mildly interested in the fact you’re the new girl, as though being Elvis’ “girl” is supposed to occupy the totality of your existence. Usually you would take offense to this, but under these circumstances, you know the fewer in the know, the better. 

You don’t think you’ve ever truly considered the world he lives in until this moment. A world in which he’s surrounded on all sides by women that want him, and by men that admire and/or envy him. What does that do to a mind when everybody he meets falls into one of those two categories? How would one handle someone who doesn’t fit into either category? 

Eventually though Jerry finds you and brings you to your seat, front row and center, because of course Elvis would. You know from his stories about his Vegas residency that he would often kiss women in the front row, and you already have a feeling as to how this is going to play out. As Jerry leaves, you contemplate making a break for it at this point, but without your purse, that idea is quickly tossed out.  

You look around your area and breathe a sigh of relief at the fact that all are virtually unrecognizable. You know from the tabloids that this concert was deemed one for the ages already, being essentially his second comeback and with rumors flying around that there would be more than a few international attendants this fact is not all too surprising. There’s a small swelling of pride within you knowing that he is so loved worldwide that you quickly try to stamp down.

As the curtain goes up and the music starts to blare, you make the conscious decision that at this moment you are not his therapist, and that you are merely a fan. That you will be without worries at the state of your career right now, without fear that the APA is breathing down your neck, and definitely without any guilt to the sexual attraction you feel for him at this moment. Afterall you’re a fan, isn’t that just par for the course?

So as he steps on stage and immediately makes eye contact with you, you play your part. You get lost in it even, as you dance and sing and make a fool of yourself. He’s just… incredible doesn’t even begin to describe what he is as you’ve never seen someone move like he does, never felt music as you did in this moment. There’s not a single inch of the stage that’s not occupied by his presence as he’s able to keep the crowd fully enraptured for music they’ve undoubtedly heard hundreds of times before. His command over everything truly brings a new perspective to his King epithet. 

Despite your best efforts you cannot help but think of the comeback special incident and in the brief moments between songs you can’t help but observe and this makes you feel all the more  like a voyeur. In spite of the fact that there’s a couple hundred people watching the same show you are, they aren’t cursed with what you know. Unintentionally you read into every gyration, every hip thrust, even every time he throws his head back looking for any indication. You had thought about what he looks like in the throes of ecstasy an inordinate amount of times already this week, so you even compare every face he makes up there as well. 

Eventually, after two demands for an encore, Elvis merely has to put a finger to his lips to command the rowdy crowd down. “Now before I go,” he pauses with a slight quirk in his lips as he hears their protests, but continues with “I’m gonna leave y’all with somethin’ new.” This statement is met with uproarious applause as he gestures to the band behind him and begins. 

Want me to love you in moderation?

Do I look moderate to you?

Not even two lyrics in, you know you’re in trouble. Previously he had the decency to not single you out as he worked the entire crowd in front of him, but as he sings you know exactly who he’s directing this song to. 

And are you any better? Like the other women in the front row you move to the stage, as you're overpowered with the urgent need to be as close to him as possible. You’re overwhelmed with just about everything at this point: the audience, the song, him, and all your conflicting emotions this past week all reach a crescendo as he kneels on the stage before you. You’re crowded by his fans all reaching out to touch him as though he were some divine being. But you knew better.

Girl, you better learn

Can’t hold it in,

And girl you better learn

I just can’t win

Cause I don’t see the worth

I don’t see the worst

He is something monstrous, demonic almost. Elvis is a siren-like creature who is leading you to your doom. As he leans down closer to you, you stand on your toes, willing your knees to not give in at a time like this. The women around you flock even closer, all trying to get a piece of him, while he puts a hand underneath your chin, his eyes challenging you to stop him. He may very well be a siren but you’re his victim who is all too happy to drown at this point.

And I’m still tryna figure out if it

Always

Always 

Always 

Has to hurt

Unlike the last few times, you were very much prepared for this kiss. At least you were, until he proceeded to lean away from you and plant the kiss on the woman directly next to you. Time slows at this moment, truly forcing you to take in every single detail of what is happening not even a foot away from your face. He kisses her with all the filth and passion you were craving in that moment, and she just as enthusiastically kisses him back. 

His face is glistening with sweat from his performance that runs down onto her, but this woman doesn’t seem to mind. She will leave this concert and forever be able to have an interesting anecdote to tell at every party she will ever attend. This will be her one crazy story to tell about Elvis Presley, and the more logical side of you truly envies that about her. 

Finally, after what was perhaps only seconds but felt like an eternity, he breaks away from the kiss, though that doesn’t ease the heavy stone that has settled in your stomach. You want to cry, you want to scream, and judging from the state of the women around you, you wouldn’t be at all out of place. You’re upset that you’re in this position, you’re devastated over the fact that this is the man who holds your career in the palm of his hand, and most of all, you’re heartbroken that you even wanted him to kiss you at that moment.

Did he not see you? Did he mistake her for you? Shouldn’t you be glad about this new development? That hundreds of people weren’t witness to you flagrantly breaking every rule and ethical responsibility you made upon becoming a therapist? 

He answers all these questions with the single look he gives you as he stands before you, his lips now stained red from that random woman. 

You want looove

You feel a tug at your elbow as Jerry once more guides you backstage. Elvis for his part shamelessly watches you walk away all the while belting out those final lyrics of his song. As the lights from the stage blink out, and the crowd proceeds to explode in near-deafening screams and hollers, and you see him bow out as the curtain drops. You try to make yourself numb to it all as you make your way through the bustling corridors, but in reality you can’t ignore your heartbeat thundering through you, nor the uncomfortably slick feeling between your thighs. 

You have to get out of there and you know it. But you also want to stay and there’s no denying that. You have accepted that he has an unhealthy attachment towards you, and you naively thought you could work to dismantle it over the next few months to get him back on track. But seeing him kiss that other woman made you realize that this attachment threatens to be mutual, and that is truly where it will derail. 

Before you can figure out what you’re going to do, you’re back in front of his dressing room door and you walk in not even having bothered to knock. You find him along with several members of his crew already in there but upon seeing you he grins and a simple wave of his hand has them all scurrying out, leaving the two of you alone. He stays seated at the vanity, too comfortable apparently, with his feet propped up, the upper half of his suit peeled off of him, and a towel around his neck. He doesn’t even bother to fully turn around to look at you directly, he simply watches you through the mirror. 

“You enjoy the show Darlin’?” he says, lightly dabbing himself with the towel. “It sure as hell looked like you did out there.” 

Despite knowing he saw how you behaved, you still try to lie with an indifferent, “You did good up there.”

“Ahh, baby” he draws out in a light teasing tone. “Don’t be like that. Why don’t you come over here and tell daddy what’s wrong?” Your breath hitches at his casual use of that word and you find your feet making the decision for you. You make your way over to him and you finally find your purse on top of the vanity. You go to grab it but in one fluid motion he grabs your hand and you find yourself on his lap. As he leans forward for a kiss, you see the red that still paints his lips and without even thinking you use the towel to wipe some of it off. 

He makes a pleased hum at that, believing that this is what has you acting this way. 

Is it not though? You think sarcastically. After rubbing off most of the color you drop the towel letting it fall back into place on his chest. He takes your hand into his, and your heart does an embarrassing little skip as he gives it a sweet kiss.

“Baby, I was raised to be a gentleman,” he said, adopting a chivalrous affect. “If my bestest girl don’t like me kissin’ others, all she’s gotta do is say so. Then I ain’t never gonna do it again.” His eyes pleading as he waits for your answer.

So that’s what his plan was, you think bitterly. You’re resentful over the fact that it worked at all. But he doesn’t need to know that.

You rip your hand away from him as you reply with as much resolve as you can gather, “You can do whatever you want Elvis,” before mulishly looking away. He evidently didn’t like that answer, as he stood up to prop you onto the vanity and placed himself between your legs. You try to escape his grasp only for him to place his hands at the top of your thighs, effectively pinning you in place.

“I can do whatever I want?” he says in a low, challenging voice, looking you directly in your eyes. It is only then do you regret your wording. Were you not so petrified, you would have admired his ability to quickly turn your own dismissive words into seemingly an invitation. There is no denying the trembling force in your body at this point and with the way he’s holding it is only inevitable that he will find your secret. And as though reading your mind, you feel his thumb brushing your inner thigh, and he finally notices the slick feeling in between. If you're going to be honest with yourself, you think you’re even more wet than when you walked in.

He makes an approving hum as he flips your skirt up, and you get the momentary pleasure of seeing his eyes widen at your lack of underwear. That is until he quickly bunches up the material past your hips and you feel mortified at being naked from the waist down in a room you don’t remember locking. You’re even more mortified as he kneels down and begins to pepper your inner thighs with light kisses. You instinctively try to close your legs, but his grip makes it impossible, and he notices your effort.

“Ahh, sweetness none of that,” he drawls out, emphasizing his point with a small nibble at the sensitive flesh that has you cursing. You feel his hot breath waft over you and as you’re trying to wrap your head around what’s happening, he teasingly licks a stripe up your slit, giving you a taste of what he has to offer. You gasp for air as though you’re about to drown. 

“I can do what I want, can I?” he asks knowing you’re far too preoccupied to answer. “Well I want this,” he purrs, emphasizing his point with a soft kiss to your clit, which you meet with a strangled moan. He chuckles at your reaction before resting his head on your thigh and looking up at you. “But I gotta know what my girl wants,” he trails off.

Your muddled mind cannot even begin to process the question itself before he follows up with. “What’d ya’ say mama? Do you wanna be my girl?” he says looking up at you with those piercing blue eyes of his, and you know there is not even a choice anymore. You’re so far gone at this point, you hardly hesitate in saying yes. “No, no mama. I wanna hear you say it.”

You can already feel a few shameful tears trailing down as you cover your face with your hands, as though that will absolve you of your next words. “Yes… I want to be your girl,” you cry out desperately, and he dives straight in. 

All of your composure is tossed out the window the moment you feel his mouth on your needy cunt, you moan and shout freely, no thoughts given to the people undoubtedly outside of the door. He’s going at an unhurried languid pace, exploring your nether regions, seemingly trying to learn what gets the biggest reaction out of you. He’s apparently indifferent to how desperately you need to cum. You grab at his hair and try to bring him closer, desperate for some control of this situation but the noticeable tightening of his grip on your legs make it clear that he’s going to take all the time he wants.

You’re there for what feels like hours before you’re at the point of begging him to let you cum. The King finally takes mercy on you as he stuffs his fingers into you while simultaneously nursing at your clit as you are finally allowed your release.

You’re a mess after that devastating orgasm, and as he brings himself back up to you, you don’t put up a fight to this kiss. You taste yourself on his lips, and the smallest, pettiest part of you feels victorious over that woman whose name you will never get to learn. Before you can dwell on that part of yourself, he spins you around so you’re facing away from him. Despite all of that you still feel yourself wanting for more, and as you look over your shoulder at him, you know he is very aware of that.

“Were you watching mama?” he said, pressing kisses to your neck as he undoes his belt. “Were you sittin’ there, wonderin’ if I did it again, and that’s how you got this wet?” You let out a small keen as you feel his cock just barely brushing at your entrance, and he presses a hand on your back, prompting you to bend over the vanity fully. You give a slight shriek as you feel a sharp swat on your ass. “Answer me,” he growls out, sending another shiver down your spine. 

“Yes,” you say, pushing yourself backwards to him. 

Another swat on the other side, “Yes what?” he rasps.

“Yes daddy,” you nearly cry out and you bury your head into your arms in shame as he drives into you. Once slotted fully inside, he pauses giving you time to adjust to him. The stretch of him burns only slightly this time around, though mostly you feel satisfaction as he feels achingly familiar. 

“You don’t gotta worry mama,” he pants next to your ear. “I saved it all for you,” he says as he slowly begins to push his hips back and forth into you. You find yourself just as eager as you push backwards to keep him within. You close your eyes to the sensations, as this feels like the closest you’ve come to a reprieve in this whirlwind of a week he’s caused. You want to lose yourself here, and for once want to believe as he does that this is any way healthy or sustainable for the both of you. This delusion has the ability to ruin you, but for the moment you truly just want to indulge yourself in it.

Reality will always win out though. At some point he thrusts so hard, your feet no longer meet the ground, and you have to brace yourself on the mirror. Here in this position you’re truly forced to look at yourself for seemingly the first time as you truly are. You see your eyes bloodshot and pupils blown, your mascara trailing down your face, and, mortifyingly, you're drooling from the pleasure at not only what he’s doing to you but the sight you're met with in the mirror. You also see him behind you, looking more animal than man with the way he forces your hips to meet his pace and the snarl that mars his face. It’s all too much for you to handle. The only way to describe how hard you came in that moment would be violently, as you convulse and sob terribly at all the shame and pleasure you’re experiencing in that moment. 

You feel him pull out, and moments later you hear a shuddering howl as he paints your lower back with his cum, effectively marking you as his. You sob even harder with the realization you had not even been thinking about protection in the last week, and now you fear that there will be another cord that will forever tie you to him. 

If he sees your tears he ignores them and places a kiss on your cheek before sitting you down in front of the mirror. He lets you know that he has a press conference soon, but that he will meet you back home for the afterparty. He quickly dresses himself while you use a tissue to fix your makeup and try to make the wrinkles in your dress less noticeable. Once outside the door he hands you off to one of his men with orders to take you back to Graceland.

It is only as you’re pulling up to Graceland do you realize you gave no resistance whatsoever to his whims and didn’t even try to insist you go back to your own apartment. You pay no thought to that as you see there are already many of his people there to celebrate his astonishing performance, and the last thing you need is to draw more attention to yourself by being the one woman having a breakdown at the party. 

So you slip back into your role as his girl, though can you even say that it is simply a role anymore when you fully agreed to it. 

Eventually he arrives home and is met with all the praise and glory he has earned tonight. Yet he barely looks at anyone before he seemingly sweeps the room to zero in on you. He grins and approaches you to sweep you into a hungry kiss which is met with various wolf whistles and cheers from those around you. You are still playing your part for the audience you tell yourself. 

The rest of the night is spent on his arm essentially advertising to all attendants that you're his. Eventually he announces to no one in particular that he is starting to feel tired, and it feels like only moments later when a mass exodus occurs, no one daring to stay past their welcome. The grip he has on your waist though tells you that he has no plans of letting you go.

That night and the following day in Graceland you spend in a daze of fucking and resting and even more fucking, interspersed with conversation between the both of you. Surprisingly you find yourself opening up to him as well, and with the conversations being not so focused on him, it’s easy to pretend that this is even remotely natural. 

You do make a few attempts to leave that day, each time met with some pushback on his part to get you to stay. Each attempt is met with some excuse on his part be it being too early, his fans outside the gates, his exhausted state etc., and immediately following your concession, you are bombarded with physical affection and compliments as to how understanding and what a good you are for him. You allow yourself to indulge in this fantasy for a little while longer, and stay another night with him.

The next morning, reality sets back in, and there is no denying your active part in this anymore. He kisses you good morning and he reminds you that you have work today. You’re amazed that he hasn’t already made you cancel all of your appointments today, until you remember who you have your final session with later. You shower and use his toothbrush, no longer hesitating to do something you would previously labeled as far too intimate to do with anyone, let alone a patient.

You are however disturbed but not surprised when you exit the restroom and find a full outfit ready for you. This one is more in line with your regular work attire but the blouse does have a rather loud pattern, a far cry from your admittedly limited, colorwise, wardrobe. Without the tags, you briefly wonder if this is something left behind by the previous stand-ins or if he bought it for one of them to better pretend they were you. You push that thought aside as you finish getting ready for the day. Being early on a Monday morning you are able to be driven to your office without the worry of any ogling eyes. He even gives you a parting kiss at the door and it feels far more domestic than it has any right to be.

You would deem that day almost normal. You are of course exhausted from the strange weekend you had, but somehow you also feel unfettered when compared to the stressful week you had previously. You receive some compliments on your blouse, and you are able to, through tightlips, confirm yes when someone asks if you got it from someone special. 

Other than that you are able to get back to your standard attentive self for your patients. Having worked with Elvis for nearing a year at this point, has had the unexpected benefit of making your other patients seem easier in comparison. You laugh at their funny stories, you dole out advice and insights when asked, and you comfort them when needed. These moments in between your nearly all encompassing thoughts around Elvis, you find, are a welcome respite from the looming black cloud that is your future as a therapist. 

Eventually though 4:30 PM arrives and you hear a knock at the door.

#my fic #elvis x reader #yandere!elvis x reader #yandere x reader #for once #elvis #elvis 2022 #austin!elvis #yandere #yandere!austin!elvis