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with-my-calamitous-love · 2 months

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A DWINDLING, MERCURIAL HIGH

odasaku x reader

long fic, angst, brief smut, themes of abusive marriage/family poverty, cheating, pregnancy

a/n: i had to split this into two parts! it was getting so long but i wanna get this out now. part two is in the works <3

a/n: mourning someone a lot recently, someone who’s love i can still feel. this one is very self indulgent and i hope you enjoy

you were 18 when you met odasaku, and 18 when you were forced apart.

in the bustling city of yokohama, it was often hard to find serenity.

it often felt like the city’s people never truly rested. they tore through the streets like a bullet through paper. always a place to go. always an important job to make little money at, always a date for a failing relationship, always somewhere to be and somewhere to go. no matter where you drove, walk or ran to, there was almost never a place that felt calm. not boring, as others would call it. calm. like a checkpoint just for you. so when you did find those hidden caverns, forgotten by the world to busy to pay attention, you savoured it.

you thought of it like your superpower. being able to scope out the places of sweet refuge.

the hidden away, small coffee shop covered by graffiti- small you called cozy and graffiti you called art- was rourou cafe. you knew the owners well. it seemed only you knew to order the green curry because it tasted the best with the jasmine rice they always served fresh. it didn’t taste like the pompous food they served only to the finest, with refined flavours and an astonishingly large bill that always managed to ruin a meal. it had the aroma of comfort, and the flavour of home.

kogaya park was a sight for sore eyes on your long walk home. in its heyday, it seemed to be the only right place for a romantic confession. now, you see couples lose their love like the trees lose their leaves to the enemy we call time. you met an old man there once. he was blind, yet saw the world better than anyone you had ever known. “[y/n],” he spoke in slow breaths like the sun rising over the land before anyone had awoke in its grace. “age is not a number. age is how many times you’ve felt the suns warmth. age is how many times you’ve heard a beautiful song. age is how many times your feet have carried on and moved you forward. when i die, that is what i’ll remember.” you knew he was a man who bared stories like they were his clothes. this park was the only place where the warmth of the sun remained uncovered, the only place he could slow down and feel. you felt that too.

your favourite place, if you could truly choose, had to have been the aishi library.

part of it was that you worked there, and so loving it made your mundane tasks easier. but you were by no means forcing yourself to love it. it seemed everyone who walked in and out were much like you- people who longed for a quiet life. while you spent your hours of the day sorting books into shelves and keeping the place clean, after hours was the true beauty of it all. you’d bury yourself in the stories, pages that opened a gateway to different worlds. relationships that lasted, lives that were fair, and endings that truly mattered. those pages were your true home. fantasies are much nicer than reality, anyway.

perhaps the reason not everyone found escapes as easy as you was because they never needed to.

ever since you were young, you were always forced to search for something more pleasant. you were someones daughter, and that meant helping with dinner and hoping that the sound of chopped vegetables and boiling water could overpower the sounds of your parents falling apart in the other room. being someones daughter meant trying to heal your mothers trauma while she hid away in the closet, scared to come out and look for you knowing he might be there too. being someones daughter meant forgiving your father over and over again. not because you truly forgave him, but because you didn’t want to find out what would happen if he knew that.

your father was a dangerous man. one who owed debts to unsavoury people. people you had only read about in books. people you would soon come to know all too well.

as the days passed on, you grew more and more reliant on that little library. winter soon came, and the familiar faces you knew slowly began to phase out. people left to be somewhere warmer, and you knew that longing for warmth better than anyone else. you stayed focus on the task in front of you, arranging a pile of books back into their rightful homes.

ring!

the front door bell announces that someone has walked inside. in your peripheral, you see him- a young man you presume- enter the library and scan his surroundings. you look over your shoulder. indeed you were right, a young man you had never seen before. soft, reddish brown hair framing his strong jawline with eyes like the ocean to match. he dressed well, you noticed as a tinge of blush blooms on your cheeks.

he notices you too, and smiles.

you immediately turn back to your books.

all is still for a moment. he walks around for a bit, examining his choices of stories to read. he carries a pen and paper by his hip, as if ready to note the anecdotes of life at a moments notice. he must have been writer. or maybe you were thinking of him a little too much.

“excuse me, ma’am. do you have a book you’d recommend?”

wow. you thought. his voice was deep but honeyed. you turn to face him, as he gets a good look at you without your nose stuck in a book.

wow. he thinks as well upon seeing you.

“follow me.”

you take him to your favourite section, the fantasy novels. the stories that made real life seem like a poorly written, unfinished drama. “any one of these here are beautiful reads, i would know.”

you pulled out a velvety green book from the bottom shelf. “but if i had to recommend, i’d start here.” you handed the book over to him like it were a prized possession.

“the cave of two lovers?” he asked, curious blue eyes scanning the treasure you had gifted him.

“the story of oma and shu, two lovers from enemy villages who-‘’ you began to ramble. “oh i wouldn’t want to spoil it!”

he smiled again. “i’ll have to give it a try, then.”

you had grown terribly fond of your new friend, odasaku. he’d make sure to come in once a week at least to tell you his thoughts on your recommendations. the setting sun by osamu dazai was a riveting read, one that he’d lazily get back into while eating the green curry you let him in on. the tears of the kingdom, the story of a princess and her knight torn apart by evil was the book he relaxed into while at kogaya park. he even spent a day reading his favourite verses to a kind old man who reminded odasaku of himself. he absolutely adored the cave of two lovers, but thought that the avatar’s love- it’s sequel- deserved a better ending. he felt as though zuko and katara would have been a much better fit.

“i’m glad you’re enjoying youself.” you hummed while you sorted away more books. odasaku had taken it upon himself to help you with this task, reaching the taller shelves you couldn’t get to- much to your dismay. and he insisted he didn’t mind, though he was embarrassed to admit he did it simply to he around you more. everytime he’d reach over you, you were gifted the scent of his cologne and the sight of him. you could spend the rest of your life putting books away with him.

“you have great taste. i’m happy to come here.” odasaku paused in his tasks to admire your rhythm. every now and then you’d pick up one of your precious books, flip through the pages before sorting it alphabetically. sometimes you had to run and grab tape or pen, but it didn’t matter how far those were- you knew the library like the back of your hand. he knew you spent a lot of time here and hoped he wasn’t intruding.

“i’m happy you like my recommendations. i don’t always like to share my favourites.” you hum, now facing him and giving him your attention. “the people who come here don’t usually care about what i think.”

“well, i do.” he reassures you, his lips forming into a smile that could light up the world. “but i actually have a recommendation for you.”

“oh?”

“i recommend..” he placed down the book he was holding and took your hand in his, rubbing his thumb over yours in small strokes. “that you let me take you out tonight.”

your heart nearly leaped out of your chest.

“we can go to that cafe you introduced me too. i find it lovely, but maybe more so with you there, [y/n.]” the way he said your name made you melt, like molten honey dripping from his lips. each syllable of your name sounded like poetry as soon as he said it.

“i’d love that.” he took your hand and brought it to his face, pressing a kiss to your wrist. his blue eyes didn’t blink once as he stared at you. he had feelings and knew you felt them too, and he was taking advantage of that now.

in hindsight, you wished he would have just pressed his lips to yours and made you his right then and there. because life gives you no warning when it changes, and that night it was all about it change.

as soon as the door to your house swung open, the feeling of uneasiness rushed at you. something screamed wrong, and you were about to find out why. you followed the sounds of anguish to your living room, finding your mom on the couch. her head was buried in her hands wrinkled with guilt and age. you were used to the sight of her crying, but never without reason.

seated across from her was a man you had never seen before. dressed in a black suit with hair like midnight, tied in a neat ponytail. his white gloved hands sat orderly in his lap, a disturbingly calm contrast to your mother in distress.

“mom, whats going on?” you cautioned as you sat down next to her weeping form. she slowly removed her hands shielding her face, turning to you. her eyes screamed pity.

“[y/n], we h-have a visitor. this man is ogai mori, and well… he’s your fathers boss.”

mori smiled, his eyes piercing through your soul and screaming nothing but bad news. “it’s very nice to meet you ms. [l/n], i’ve head very good things.” his words seemed nice on paper, but his tone spewed venom.

“ms. [l/n], i’m sure your aware that your father owes me quite a bit. your family is also struggling to stay afloat right now.. i’ve come here to tell you that that will no longer be an issue for you.” he smiled, but hie eyes remained sinister.

you looked to your mother desperately for answers. how could your debt have been solved so easily? why was she crying if all your problems had supposedly been solved?

“ms. [l/n], kindly lend me your hand.”

hesitantly, you reached out your hand- the same hand that has previously been blessed by odasaku mere hours before. his slender and much larger fingers grasped your palm as he slid a silver ring onto your finger.

you froze. cold sweat dripped down your forehead at the sight. you jerked back, staring down at the ring mori had forced on you.

no. no. no. no. no. no. NO.

“what the fuck is this supposed to mean?!” you cried, knowing what it meant but not wanting to accept it. your mothers tears dried, motioning behind you. it was only then when you noticed the suitcase of clothes- your clothes- packed and ready. your mother looked down. she looked ashamed.

“ms. [l/n], don’t be startled. we have plenty to do together, afterall.”

meanwhile, odasaku sat and waited patiently at rourou cafe. he was deep in thought, worry and insecurity rattling in his shaky hands. everything seemed find when he had asked you to this date. maybe his worst fears were true. maybe there was nothing between you after all.

“is [y/n] coming?” the cafe owner asked.

odasaku shook his head.

7 years later.

you had thought that marrying the leader of the port mafia was punishment enough. you cried and cried and cried, mourning what you had lost in the blink of an eye. your husband reminded you that this was the contract that your father signed you off to- now that you two were married, your family could live debt free. but that wasn’t your choice. it was decided for you.

it wasn’t just a marriage where you turned into some pretty housewife- no. mori had taken it upon himself to train you. to turn you into one of his most deadly weapons. you hated it. you hated learning to shoot and to look away as you stole the breath of someones life. but over the years, your heart hardened, and your tears dried. perhaps it would a good thing he had made you this way. now not even he could touch you.

long were the days you read and weeped for the fictional. ougai had promoted you to executive status, a rare feat for someone with no ability. but your skills were exceptional, and only the broken could do such unspeakable work. that had to have been why he broke you in like a god damn shoe, after all.

but no matter how much he forced your heart to fortify, someone stayed in your mind. someone who left his kiss on your now wedded hand.

you had influence within the mafia. as an executive and as ougai’s wife, you knew that you could track down odasaku. you knew that you could have your men summon him into your office with the snap of your fingers. so why didn’t you?

your high heels tapped against the floor as you were just about to turn a corner. you head the voices of some subordinates, mocking your name.

“theres chuuya, the short ginger, kouyou, the hot one, and queen bitch [y/n] mori. what does that make you, just some bandage freak?”

you peered the corner to see two of your subordinates, challenging your fellow-executive dazai. you were always a fond of him, and by the smirk on his face when you turned the corner, he seemed quite fond of you too.

“ah ah ah boys, you’re going to regret what you just said.” he provoked them further. its clear that whatever he was doing he was clearly aware of. he was a demon prodigy- yet he had his fun toying with the minds of others.

“oh yeah? why’s that?” one of the men challenged.

dazai chuckled. “queen bitch, you say?“

“bitch! i bet shes only one of you fancy ass executives because shes married to the boss!”

“ahem.”

dazai chuckled and backed up, giving you room to enter the scene. the two boys blood ran cold at your sight.

you slammed the particularly loud one into the wall, pressing your arm up against his chest. the other bolted in the opposite direction.

“y-y-[y/n]! i didnt mean any of that! we were just j-joking around..”

“you don’t get to address me by my name.” your voice was cold as ice. no one had called you by your name in years. no one you would ever let.

your knee flew up, hitting him right in the crotch. you released him from the wall and watched as he wailed, grabbing the sensitive area in pain. you began to walk away, dazai following shortly after you.

“what are you doing? you’re an executive, act like it.” you spewed. dazai sighed like a little boy.

“well, i only stepped in to investigate all the things they said about you! so really, you should be thanking me.” you chuckled; childlike stupidity was always funny.

later that evening, you found yourself desperately needing a drink. the mafia was fond of a few different bars in the surrounding area, but one you knew of well was lupin. it was a cozy and elegant setting, one that reminded you of your past enough to draw you in but not too much that it made you want to burn it down.

you ordered a glass of white wine, drinking it down as though you never used to hate the taste of alcohol. so far, you’ve managed to shut down every piece of your past. this was you now. you couldn’t escape anymore, you had become the thing you hid away from all those years ago. and you had no choice but to move forward.

“whiskey, neat.”

the man next to you ordered. his voice was comforting, but you knew not to be lured in. only the mafia came to this bar, and that meant everyone waa bad news.

but, you couldn’t resist tilting your head and hearing him speak. he was a deep, husky baritone, one that made you wonder who’s lips it came from. you looked down at your wine glass and lightly spun it, watching the liquid as it sloshed! around the cup in boredom.

you wondered what your name would sound like in his voice.

“[y/n]?”

you chuckled to yourself, knowing your imagination called out to you in delusion.

that was, until the voice called out again.

“[y/n]…”

you finally looked over, and there he was.

age had done odasaku justice. he looked stronger and adjusted, like his life had sculpted him into a beautiful man. those eyes stayed the same. the ones you had dreamed about for years.

your lips stayed agape. his blue eyes examined the sight in front of him. he noticed you changed as well. your sweet blush, gentle hands, and forgiving eyes had been buried away. you seemed older, like life forced you into a corner you fought back to. but you were still fucking beautiful.

“i-i, wow, odasaku. i mean. you look great.” you spoke as if you slapped the few words in english you learned when you were 5.

he was forgiving, and chuckled at your demeanour. “is that your way of making it up to me?” he teased.

“no! god no! i- wow. i mean, what are you doing here?” you questioned. you had to admit that the subtle reference to the past caused you a tinge of pain. but all you could do is be thankful that he was actually here, alive and well in front of you.

“i could ask the same about you.. though, since we’re both here, we can assume one thing.” odasaku’s eyes never lingered off of you, as if he wasn’t trying to lose the image of you in his mind.

“i see… i guess life forced you into this as well.” you spoke before taking a deep sip of your wine.

“i guess so. but i never stopped thinking of you.” there it was. odasaku’s warmth, his radiance like the sun that kept you warm throughout the harshest 7 year winter you had endured. you wanted to bathe in it forever. he placed his hand on your thigh, moving closer to you. but something caught his eye.

“you’re married?” he asked, tone changing to confused as he looked down at your silver ring. he remembered that hand, the one he wished he could hold the rest of his life.

to be honest, you had completely forgotten about that as soon as you saw odasaku. “oh!” you took your hand and studied the ring. “yes, i’m married to ougai.” that last part of your sentence fell flat with resentment.

this was the moment odasaku had realized how much you’ve changed. how could someone as sweet as you marry that monster? but oda knew to act better than he felt.

“i see..” he calmly replied, removing his hand from your thigh and finishing his whiskey. you panicked, knowing that look of disappointment all too well. you had seen it on many men before you, but his seemed more worried than anything.

“i’m so sorry if i made you think..” you lied through your teeth, trying to comfort the man in front of you.

“its okay, [y/n]. a beautiful woman like you.. it was bound to happen.” he reassured you, knowing that the rose of love had its thorns.

the way he said your name broke down every wall inside your head. god, how you wanted to tell him the truth of your marriage. how it hurt knowing he simply thought loved another man. how it hurt he didn’t know that that man was him.

“i’m really glad i ran into you, odasaku.”

“i’m glad to see you, [y/n].”

the rest of the night you spent laughing and chatting like you never had before, taking you back to your secret book club meetings with just him years before. this is what warmth felt like. you hadn’t felt that in years.

it started out with simple, nightly phone calls. you’d call him on your way back home since ougai worked such late nights and often didn’t bother to check on you. oda would. he’d text you to confirm you’d got home and wait up for your goodnight text.

it then evolved into private, clandestine meetings at the bar. you’d meet late into the night, sometimes joining ango and dazai in their chats. odasaku would introduce you as a mere “friend”, though everyone knew that that title felt wrong on many levels. you pretended not notice odasaku take a swig of his drink everytime your husband was brought up in conversation.

but you relearned everything you loved about odasaku. his jokes, his way with words, and how he always managed to make everyone the worst parts of yourself feel like a eulogy. he had filled your empty heart with something you longed for. something you hadn’t felt from your parents in years, something your husband had never given you once: love.

you didn’t mean for it to happen. but you were falling back in love with him.

well, its not like you tried to stop it.

and even though odasaku was a man of class, and wanted to respect the vow of marriage, he too could not deny the lingering feelings he had kept like a locket all these years. and it burned inside of him knowing that even though his words were the ones you kept in your heart, at night you laid next to another man. he was the man that held your hand on hard long days, but it was not his ring that wedded you. that even though he loved you more than the air he breathed, you were married to ougai mori.

it wasn’t him. it wasn’t him. but it should have been. he thinks every time he sees that fucking ring on your finger.

odasaku could be content knowing that at least, you were loved by another man. but you weren’t. the more he learned about your marriage, the harder it became to act better than he felt. he wanted to respect that you were a wife, someone else’s wife, but that was some made up vow on a sheet of paper somewhere. your heart belonged to him.

odasaku had taken you to the rooftop of his apartment. it was late at night, so late that you thought even the stars had longed to go to sleep. you knew ougai would begin to grow suspicious, but right now your fear was overpowered by the man beside you.

he held you close with a firm arm wrapped around your waist, securing you to your rightful place by his side. your eyes watched as the stars blanketed the night sky in a bright hue that stretched for infinity, singing a choir of celestial beauty that only those fortunate enough could see each night. you watched the sky, and oda watched you.

all these years and you still looked so fucking beautiful. bathed in the moonlight, you heart was beating like it were about to burst. you turned to face him, placing your hands on his chest and allowing yourself to be enveloped by his scent. he hummed in response, hands keeping a firm grip on your waist as if you would be pulled away from him at any second.

you never wanted to kiss someone more desperately than now.

“i love you.” you whispered, finally allowing your heart to breath. for what felt like the first time in 7 years, you spoke the truth.

odasaku let his forehead drop, pressing it against yours. his eyes closed, hands never wavering from off your body. he felt like you lifted bricks off of his back, confirming that you had felt the same for him all these years. but there was just one problem.

“you’re married, [y/n].” he wanted to scream. scream how it was unfair, scream how you should be married to him instead. but his lips could only muster our the first half of the truth. he had to put you first, always.

you scoffed. “do you really care?”

that right there, was all he needed. “no.”

he pressed his lips to yours with passionate fervour, like he were to die without feeling your kiss. you wasted no time returning the favour, pouring every ounce of your love for him. odasaku kissed you like he hopelessly, desperately needed you- every bit of you. probably because he did.

you desperately grasped his shoulders as he used one hand to cup your face, the other remaining diligently on your waist. you were pushing him past his limits. your beautiful eyes, waist shaped like it was just for him, and a soul that could dare any man to fall in love with you.

you couldn’t stop kissing, even when both your lungs scratched for air. you only pulled apart to look into his eyes once more before going back in, pressing your lips to his like he was your lifebuoy. you needed to feel him, all of him. you needed his love. you were deprived of it for years and subjected to a hell without it. but he was here now, and god damn it if you weren’t going to feel all of him. your husband waited for you in a barren, cold apartment, but the love of your life kissed you under the warm gaze of the heavens.

you were what he needed. he was what you needed. this is what love felt like.

you were everything he wanted love to be, and he wasn’t going to stop at just your lips.

for a man so gentle, sweet and loving, you had never expected him to be this way in bed.

“odasaku!” you moaned out of breath, barely being able to speak his full name. he thrusted his thick, throbbing cock into your pussy. he groaned, relishing in the feeling of your tight walls clenching around him. he pinned your hands above your head, while his free hand rubbed circles on your throbbing clit. he fucked you like he was going to lose. he needed to feel you, all of you.

the sounds of skin slapping echoed throughout the room. with a sharp thrust, he buried himself deep inside your willing body, a guttural groan of pleasure escaping his lips. “this is where you belong. not with him, with me.” he reassured you as he pressed his lips to your already hickey-infested neck. he was going to send you home with his marks. he was going to make sure your piece of shit husband knew who you really loved you. he might have been married to you, but odasaku was the one who fucking you now.

he set a relentless pace, pounding into you with ruthless abandon as he chased your pleasure. he wanted you to forget ever feeling unloved, only being able to think of the way his cock fucked you. the sound of flesh slapping against flesh filled the air, and by the end of the night you would only be able to remember his name.

he continued to pound into your pussy. your desperate moans and cries of pleasure fuelled his relentless pace. he reveled in the feeling of your tight heat enveloping his throbbing cock, the sensation almost enough to make him lose control. he let out a deep moan as he leaned down, his lips and teeth hungry against your flesh. he sucked and nipped at the soft skin of your breasts, determined to leave his mark - a possessive display that would show the world that you belonged to him and him alone.

“f-fuck! fuck oda… fuck please.. i need you.” you desperately cried out to him as you felt your core begin to slowly unravel itself. you were coming undone from underneath him. gripping your hips firmly, he resumed his relentless pace, his thick shaft plunging into your body over and over. the sound of your shared moans and the slap of skin on skin filled the air as he chased your release, intent on thoroughly ruining you for anyone else.

“i’m gonna cum.. fuck please…” you cried out. he kissed your chin as he felt himself come close as well. his vision swam with stars, his only mission now to plant himself so deep inside of you your husband couldn’t even think of touching you. he clutched your hips with bruising force, driving himself in as deep as he could go. with a few more sharp snaps of his hips, you let out a cry of ecstasy as his release crashed over him and you hot spurts of cum flooding their intimate embrace. he let out a groan as your pussy clenched around him so tight, cumming around his cock desperately. he continued to pump into you slowly, drawing out your orgasm. you were practically seeing stars.

slowly, he pulled out, a trickle of his spent release dripping down your thighs. leaning in, he placed a possessive kiss on the nape of their neck, a satisfied l smile playing on his lips. he removed himself from on top of you and laid down beside you. odasaku pulled the blanket over the two of you, pulling you closer to him and his embrace. he kissed all over your face, making sure that you were okay. you lazily nodded, reassuring him that you simply needed to come back down to earth.

your head fell into the crook of his neck, allowing the sleep to overtake you. for the first time in your life, you laid next to someone who loved. odasaku could sleep soundly, knowing you were safe. knowing you were with him.

“my wife, i was so worried about you the other night. tell me dear, where have you been?”

bullshit. you thought.

ougai had summoned you into his office, a rather rare occurrence considering your relationship. if he wanted to assign you a job, he’d simply call you. when he wanted to see you in person, it was because he needed to see you. as a doctor with extensive knowledge on the human body, ougai knew how ro detect a lie. but you knew how to hide one well.

“i was assisting the black lizard in a raid.” not a complete lie. hirotsu was a personal friend of yours, and often called upon you as backup. he also had a distaste for mori, so he’d have no problem confirming this in your favour.

ougai pressed his lips into a calculated smirk. “i see.” something was up. he was testing you.

“my dear… the mafia speaks of you in such high regard.” he began, turning in his chair and facing the portrait behind him. he had a painting of you made, one that required you to stand in an uncomfortable silk dress that barely fit you properly for hours on end. he didn’t want a wife, he wanted something beautiful he could own.

“they speak of your power and your beauty, your voice and your and your heart. many think of you like a goddess, and their eyes twitch with jealousy upon learning that you are married to me.”

your brows furrowed. “whats your point?”

he stepped up, carefully walking towards you. that wretched smile of his never fell off his lips, and it was anything but comforting. he moved until he was mere inches away from you, leaning in to your ear.

“what would they think if they… knew you were pregnant with another mans child?”

#bsd dazai #bsd x reader #bungo stray dogs x reader #bungou stray dogs dazai #bsd chuuya #bsd fanart #bungo stray dogs dazai #bungo stray dogs fanart #bungo stray dogs manga #bungou stray dogs #oda sakunosuke #bsd odasaku #odasaku sakunosuke #bungo stray dogs odasaku #odazai #odasaku x reader #dazai and odasaku #oda bsd

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keegansgf · 2 years

Text

"my angel, my paradise"

pt.2

pairing: Keegan P. Russ x fem! reader

word count: 2.2k

synopsis: You got injured enough to need a recuperation period. It's unsafe to leave you alone on Rorkes ghost hunt, so Keegan is left to watch over you.

tags: injured reader, comfort, coworkers/friends to lovers, fluff

A/N: My friend gave me the idea for this fic so thank you <3 I hope you guys enjoy this fic!

Having two more ghosts on the team has been easier for all of you. Logan and Hesh Walker may be good at what they do– but it never stops inevitable injuries during battles from happening. Three gunshot wounds to the thigh aren't enough to take you out, yet they're enough to decrease your performance until you recover. Being stuck laying on a thin cot didn't help stop your mind from wandering, now that you have time to think about your position. What if the federation gets one over your team? What if the team falls because of your own failure?

Your thoughts were cut short by the sound of doors opening– Elias and Keegan stood next to your cot, Keegan closer to the foot of it. He occasionally made comfortable eye contact with you. You could see Logan, Hesh, and Merrick outside the door's small window with their gear, fully armed. By the looks of it, they were heading out soon. Elias was here to fill you in on what you assume to be the same mission the rest of the ghosts were doing, which was nothing new– but why was Keegan here? You didn’t mind his presence– in fact, you welcome it.

You and Keegan rarely have moments where you're alone, but when you both have the time, you have a few conversations about mundane or personal topics. He’s caught your eye the more you’ve gotten to know him. Underneath the cool, cold guy act, he loves dogs, music, and adventure. It almost felt like you were a teenage girl memorizing your high school crush's interests. You patiently listened to your check-in, taking in any new information so your return wouldn’t need much of a catch-up. Elias was about to finish his update.

“–It would be a dangerous idea to think about leaving a ghost alone, knowing Rorke is hunting us down. I'm leaving you with Keegan. I doubt an attack will happen here, or at least not now– But we can't take any chances, understood?"

"Yes, sir." You responded. Thankfully, your question got answered without the need to ask. You were happy to get some more time with Keegan. It’s been a while since your last one-to-one talk with him.

"Good. If anything goes wrong, you both know basic escape protocol." With that, Elias walked out of the room, taking the rest of the team, leaving you and your coworker alone. Keegan isn’t much of a talker outside of missions, even with you. He’s always happy to listen to you rant about anything you like, no matter the topic. You and him are always in harmony, except for now, your own thoughts are taking over, stopping you from starting your usual conversations.

The silence was interrupted by the occasional buzz of the white LED lights, which served as the background noise for your mind to wander to those same worries earlier. They get louder the more you look at your bandaged wound. The fear of being a failure is something you’ve struggled to cope with– but it isn’t any easier when this affects your friends… your family. On your breaks, you’re told stories about your coworkers' happy lives before the war started. Those stories were about hiking, sightseeing, and enjoying simple hobbies– average things before the downfall of society. Maybe in another life, you and your friends live calmly and happily. You didn't notice your company taking notice of your distracted demeanor.

“Hey, you okay?” Keegan seemed to notice your spaced-out expression. The earlier mentioned harmony you shared included reading each other pretty easily. During the first few conversations you and he shared, you caught his interest too. Your mannerisms were what interested him the most. You were so expressive. He always paid close attention to how you would look up while recalling a memory, or how your eyebrows furrowed while bringing up something upsetting. He could tell your worries were related to your injury. It almost looked like you were creating another hole staring into your thigh by how hard you were staring at your bandages.

“Yeah, just a few thoughts circling my head. Nothing new.” You weren’t exactly lying, but you sure were minimizing.

“If that were the case, I wouldn’t ask. You like to downplay a lot.” He caught on quickly. Keegan has always been observant– of his surroundings, situations, and even people. To your team, he’s been an older brother of sorts. Perhaps it was just the desire to seek some type of ‘family’ as comfort during a war. Something about the way Keegan interacts with you is far from a brother. It almost felt like he was more of a lover, something you wish was your reality. He works well on the field– but he’s more than a killing machine. He’s sweet and comforting, like a warm cup of hot chocolate on the coldest of winters. You glance at him and collect your thoughts to avoid scrambling your words.

“I’m just disappointed in myself, or disappointed that I got this injured.”

“Why is that?” Keegans' full attention is on you.

“It’s hard to ignore the feeling that you’ve failed your team when you’re... excluded. Even if it’s for recovery purposes.” You look up at the lights above your cot before continuing.

“I don’t want it to sound like I don’t believe in the ghosts, because I do– I just get worried about them, it’s even harder to process because they’ve been like one big family. I don’t want them to end up like this… or worse.” Keegan takes a moment to process your words before he thinks of a response. After around four seconds, he takes a deep breath and takes a seat at the edge of your cot.

“They’re going to be okay, y/n. Injuries aren’t some sort of weakness. Hell, I know you’ll recover quickly, but I need you to take the time to heal. You’ll be back out soon.” His tone was softer than usual– it’s the tone he uses when he’s alone with you.

“Trust them the same way they trust you. If you’re able to come out alive, they’ll be okay too.” If it were up to him, you wouldn’t be here risking your life with him. Something about you was so pure, an unfitting description for this line of work. There’s never a day that goes by where you’re not checking in on your friends after a mission, or taking the time to get to know them personally– asking about pets, family, or their favorite things. Just like you do with him. You were the first person to treat Keegan like a friend. He wasn’t just a respected teammate or just a ghost, but a true friend in your eyes, maybe something more. He watches you take in his words, hoping it relieves your stress in the slightest bit. You look him in the eyes and smile. That same friendly, warm, raw smile that had him obsessed with you. Your hand reached for his.

“Thank you, Keegan. That calmed my nerves a bit.” You smile in appreciation. He calmly nodded in response. His eyes darted to your interlaced hands. He subconsciously lightly tightened his grip on your hand. Why couldn’t you have met under different circumstances? You’re his light, his escape in this hellhole of a war. The long conversations you two would have were precious to him. He remembers everything you say, just like what you do with him. How you would’ve decorated your home, your disliking for overly sweet foods and drinks and how it stings your throat, your favorite color– Everything about you was perfect. He looks at your wounds and looks back up at the room.

“Nothing hurts?”

“Not a lot.”

“Hungry?”

“Not really.”

“Are you cold?” “A little.” He stood up to grab an extra blanket from the cabinets, disappointed that he had to break the contact from your hands. He tossed the blanket over you, checking that you were as comfortable as possible. Maybe this was his form of special treatment– treatment no other soldier would see or receive. This was him behind closed doors... next to you. He’s truly a softie, especially for you. If he could take your place in that cot, taking the pain in your place, he would.

He loves you.

“Keegan?” His eyes met yours the second he heard his name come from your mouth. The way you said it was sweet and powdered with love. It drove him crazy– in a good way. He glances back at you as a silent cue to continue. You began to speak again once you got his attention.

“What do you want to do after this is all over?” The question took him by surprise.

“I don’t really know. I’m sure I never want to go through this again.” He jokes. You both softly laugh.

“Ever thought about settling down with someone? Perhaps a lover?” He tensed up after hearing that.

“I have.” He sat back down, linking hands again. That lover was you. All he wanted was to see you in a white dress and a veil, with a golden band signifying your mutual love. You felt him drawing shapes with his thumb on your palm. You sighed softly at the action.

“Me too. Maybe I’ll move somewhere quieter, like the countryside. I’ve always lived in the city– even growing up.” You reminisce the memories of cars constantly driving down the street as late as 2 am. Nothing ever seemed to stop in the city of your childhood. Not much has changed in that way– now you’re constantly moving around, hoping to see another tomorrow. The city was Keegans’ last guess on what type of area you grew up in. The city is chaotic, dangerous, and forever awake. You were so down to earth, despite citylife doing anything to sweep people up. He’d do anything in his power to live that quiet life you dreamed of right at your side.

“–But back to settling down with someone, I think I want to do that too. A break from hazards is one thing, but I hope I share it with someone else.” You looked up at the ceiling trying to picture the sight. Keegan looked at you, then looked down at his feet.

“What about your special someone–”

“It’s you. I love you.” He interrupted, letting his impulsive thoughts win. He was pleading deep down that he didn’t make a fool of himself, that you reciprocated his feelings. You snapped out of your trance. It took a second to hear that correctly. You looked into Keegans’ eyes, shock being present in your expression.

“Really–? I mean– you’re being one hundred percent serious?” There was doubt in your head. You were telling yourself this was too good to be true– but this is Keegan. He wouldn’t do or say anything to hurt you. He was too enamored with you, drowning in love to be lying. His thoughts are consumed by everything he adores about you. He picked up your hand and brought it to his masked lips. You took that as his confirmation and sat up, being careful of your leg pain. Keegan turned his body to face yours better. You leaned into him and wrapped your arms around his torso as he embraced you. The warmth made you happily sigh as you let out a soft giggle. The feeling of euphoria washed over you. He really loves you, and you love him.

“I love you too, Keegan.” He rested his head over yours, lightly rocking you from side to side. It felt unreal to hear that out of your mouth. He goes back and forth from how you both made it official to thinking about his future with you. Your, no, both of your shared futures, hand in hand.

“After this is all over, I’ll make sure that quiet countryside life you dream of comes true– I promise. No more war, no more dangerous circumstances, nothing. Maybe we’ll get a dog together.” You hummed in response, feeling drowsy from the amount of emotion and the long day you’d had. He kissed your head through his mask, holding you tighter. You look up at him and pull his mask high enough to expose his lips. He leans down to share a short, sweet, soft kiss. No matter how short, it was a kiss full of love and adoration for each other. Keegan felt as if his life was complete. He could call you his and you could call him yours. Your head leaned against his shoulder as the both of you enjoyed the comfortable silence. Keegan pulled away slowly and motioned you to lie back down, sensing your tiredness by how your grasp around him was loosening.

“Rest up, okay? I’ll wake you up if I have to leave.” You nodded and got yourself comfortable. Keegan lovingly kissed your head and brushed his hand over your hair. You’re his to protect. He’ll do anything to keep your comforting, gentle smile on your face. No matter how dangerous things get out there, he knows how to keep his promises. He’s promised your teammates that they’ll win the war together– but he promises that you’ll live in the home of your dreams outside of rolling green fields full of wildflowers and berries. He’ll wake up next to you to see the morning sunlight making your skin glow and go to sleep seeing the moonlight cast a halo behind you, like the angel you were– his sweet angel, his paradise.

#keegan p russ #keegan p russ x reader #keegan x reader #keegan p. russ #keegan p. russ x reader #cod ghosts #cod ghosts x reader #call of duty #call of duty ghosts #fluff #keegansgf

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campgender · 25 days

Text

from “Soft Butch” by Nora E. Derrington, published in Fat & Queer: An Anthology (2022)

image description below the cut.

I: Soft

There’s an onomatopoeia to the word. It begins with a sibilant, sinuous, sensual ess, then moves on to a gentle ah that caresses the palate. Then the quick succession of consonants hitting the lips and teeth like a playful kitten batting a toy mouse. The word is a delicacy, smooth and subtle.

As a descriptor, it can be tactile: pliable, cushioned, comfortable. Cotton sheets worn silky smooth. Downy puppy fur. Velvet rose petals drawn across bare skin. But of course, the negative associations slip in quickly: pliable becomes yielding, yielding becomes weak. A soft touch. Soft-hearted. A big softie. An antonym not just for hard but for strong.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be strong, to be tough. I didn’t want to be soft. How could I be anything but soft, though, when PE was my worst subject and I was so sensitive that the slightest injustice—Nikki’s mom yelling at me for wearing shoes on Nikki’s waterbed, even though the tell-tale footprint clearly came from Nikki’s shoe—or most mundane tragedy—restless teens dismembering a cheap claw-machine teddy bear in my presence—never failed to make me cry?

II. Butch

More onomatopoeia here, too: a voiced plosive, a deep vowel, three consonants in a row. Similar in feel to “macho”—but subtly different in meaning. Stereotypically masculine. Nothing about me has ever been masculine, so how could I ever be butch?

Dickies pants became the rage when I was in high school. As an alternative-rock aficionado who obsessed over the sound and aesthetics of the movie Singles—it came out when I was 12 and changed my life—I knew I needed them. When I was 16 and had both a job and transportation, I made my way to the local Tillys to snag a pair. The black cotton twill was stiff under my fingers as I stepped into the pants and pulled them up.

The Dickies pulled against my hips, uncomfortably snug, and gaped so wide at my waist I could fit a fist between my skin and the cloth. I left the store disappointed. Why did I even bother? “Good, child-bearing hips,” people would tell me, even as an adolescent. I resigned myself to a presentation that never quite matched the ideal in my head.

VII. Soft butch

Despite my fitting comfortably under the queer umbrella, I’d never really given all that much thought to the specifics of my gender identity and expression. I met a trans man when I was 24 who used the same nickname I do, which made it easier to see our similarities, but I knew immediately that his path wasn’t mine. Later that year I met someone who epitomizes high femme, and, again, I could immediately see both how perfectly she embodied that expression, and how poorly it would suit me.

The person I thought of at the time as my boyfriend, then my husband, used to joke that I was the man in the relationship— despite my tender heart, my frequent tears, my undeniable softness—but I was more or less content in just knowing what I wasn’t. It seems possible I could have stayed in that liminal place forever, but then when we were in our mid-thirties, my wife came out as trans.

This is not a story of my adapting to my wife being trans. I’d always known we were both queer, and discovering I was married to a woman came more as a pleasant surprise than anything else.

What did happen, though, was that her coming out gave me permission to do more soul-searching, to try to pinpoint my gender identity and ideal gender expression. I first encountered the term “soft butch” in one of those joke “futch scale” charts—the ones that sort musical instruments or tropical fruits on a scale from high femme to stone butch—but it stuck with me. It didn’t seem to be something I was allowed to call myself, though: image searches on Google or Pinterest just led to rows of photos of beautiful slender white people with artful short haircuts and distressed jeans. Lots of Kristen Stewart and Elliot Page and occasionally Justin Bieber. I am definitely too old and too fat to try to emulate those folks! Eventually I lamented on Twitter that I was drawn to the soft butch aesthetic but didn’t know if I could pull it off, given that I’m not thin. I quickly received a slightly baffled but firm response from a genderqueer acquaintance that of course I could. In some ways I’m still a kid, seeking others’ permission to accept myself.

I realize as I write this that I’m wearing what might be my quintessential soft butch outfit—it fits me almost without my trying. Distressed jeans—a pair that I stole from my wife long before she transitioned. They fit my hips and thighs beautifully, which means I have to cinch a belt tight to make them stay up around my waist, but I know how to manage that now. A close-fitting t-shirt celebrating a punk band I’ve seen in concert a good dozen times. Hair pulled back into a messy bun. Fuzzy gray slippers with arch support, because I’m a middle-aged fat person, so of course I have plantar fasciitis. A gentle breath before a firm statement: the perfect mixture of soft and butch.

#butch #soft butch #fat butch #fat literature #fat & queer #nora e derrington #quotes #mac’s bookshelf #they are our stigmata #image described

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thornybubbles · 11 months

Text

JJBA Yandere Scenario: Jealousy (The Jo-Foes) Diego (with Outlaw Reader)

**Note: Been a while I know. I’m not sure I have a great grasp on Diego’s character here, but I tried. If this seems rushed and jumbled I’m sorry. This particular story was cobbled together from two different ideas and it might seem a little weird. Sorry this took so long to get out, too. I’ve been occupied with other things lately. I also didn’t do much in the way of proofreading this, so I apologize for any grammar or spelling mishaps. I’ll fix any that I find later. I just wanted to get this one out there as I was overdue for another fic. The next chapter of “Kinder Than Love” will be out soon for those of you that follow that story. **

Diego wasn’t too proud to admit to himself that he adored you. He should be angry at allowing himself to catch feelings when he had more important things to worry about. He had hired you in secret to keep tabs on Valentine and make sure that the underhanded politician kept his side of their bargain and didn’t do anything shady behind his back. He didn’t trust that frilly fop any more than he was willing to let Johnny Joestar win the race. Naturally, he couldn’t take part in the race while also keeping an eye on Valentine. You were also meant to spy on Joestar and Gyro and let him know what they were up to. Having you around had already made his life much easier... and a lot more fun.

Diego hired you due to your strange ability to hide in plain sight. You had no Stand that he was aware of, but you had an uncanny, almost supernatural ability to blend into your surroundings in such a way that you could be standing right beside someone and they would never notice that you were there. Diego thought that you would make a wonderful assassin. Unfortunately you had no interest in such things. It was a shame. There were quite a few people on Diego’s “to be eliminated” list. Ah well. It was far better to handle one’s enemies on one’s own terms anyway.

Diego admired your survivalist spirit. You were practically one with nature and exemplified the notion of “kill or be killed”. But you were willing to take a life only if it was absolutely necessary. It was the one flaw Diego saw in your otherwise perfect design. There were other little things that you did that drew him to you but the main thing about you that he loved was… a little bit twisted.

He loved the fact that he had you trapped. You didn’t know it yet, but he had you in a deceitful snare that you would never, ever be able to escape from. You would not know the nature of that snare until many months into the race, when an unforeseen change in the weather and damage to the area due to the resulting storms caused the race to be postponed for a few days.

It was then that you met the strange, but sweet soul who you came to know as Mr. Le Mans. While you prided yourself on your ability to be unnoticeable even in a crowd, Le Mans noticed you when no one else did. Every time he stepped into the saloon where you were having your meals, his eyes would zero in on you. He would come over to your little corner where you hid to have your meals, and the two of you would talk.

At first it made you very uncomfortable. Diego had made it expressly clear that he didn’t want you talking to anyone. You were supposed to remain as a living shadow, moving through the crowds, blending in, and never doing anything to call attention to yourself. Not only that, but due to certain unpleasantness from your past, you couldn’t afford to have anyone get too close to you. You tried to get away from him a few times but, you found yourself beginning to crave the attention he gave you.

It had been ages since anyone had a real conversation with you (that didn’t involve something shady). You found that you rather enjoyed talking about mundane things like the weather, food, and local landmarks. After years of living on the outskirts of society, never allowing yourself to mingle with others, and becoming something like a living ghost while surrounded by people, it felt nice to have someone do something as simple as notice that you were there.

You didn’t realize how lonely you were until Le Mans entered your life. You’d only known him for a few days and already you were beginning to feel attached to him somehow. Diego was less than pleased. He walked into the saloon one day, spotted you and Le Mans sitting and chatting together, and gave you such a scathing look that you felt as if you'd actually been slapped. That night, he found you at your usual camping spot outside of town, and verbally ripped into you.

“What the hell are you thinking?!” he hissed. “You’re supposed to be laying low, not getting chummy with the locals! If anyone realizes that you’re working with me, it could put all of my plans in jeopardy! You stay the hell away from the dandy or you’ll find yourself out of a job!”

That’s what led to you meeting Le Mans in secret. What Diego didn’t know wouldn’t hurt you. Unfortunately for you, Diego did know. He knew all about you and Le Mans and your secret rendezvous. He also knew about how Le Mans pressed an adoring kiss to your lips at the end of each of your meetings. The thought of someone else kissing you caused him to go absolutely feral. The image of Le Mans’ filthy mouth tainting your precious lips played over and over again in his mind until his vision blurred and he could feel his teeth lengthening inside of his mouth. Even as he lurched into the wilderness, hunched over like a beast on the hunt, he couldn’t erase the image of your flustered face from his mind.

They found what was left of Le Mans a day later. A bear got to him, so they said. You were stunned. Just as soon as you found the slightest spark of joy, life came along and snuffed it out completely. It was karma, you supposed. You didn’t deserve any joy really. Not after the things you’d done. Though, Le Mans didn’t deserve to die in such a way; partially eaten by some wild animal…. What a horrible way to go. You spent the next few days sobbing in your dark corner of the saloon. No one came to comfort you. No one even looked your way. It was like nothing changed. People passed you by as if you weren’t even there. You’d gone back to being unnoticed and overlooked. It didn’t bring you the feeling of safety that it used to. Now, you just felt miserable and more lonely than you ever thought possible.

The damage from the storms had finally been cleared and the Steel Ball Run race was no longer being delayed. Diego would be leaving the little town along with the other racers, and you would be expected to follow after him. And so you did. Your half blind mule was nowhere near as fast and agile as some of the race horses, but he made up for it with his ability to sniff out shortcuts through rougher terrain and his sure-footedness. If anyone spotted you they would assume that you were just some wandering vagrant and nothing more. They wouldn’t suspect you to be a spy or have anything to do with the Steel Ball Run race. They wouldn’t even bother to approach you, much less think to question you.

It had been at least three days since you’d been back on the trail. Your mule managed to find a nice spot that overlooked the Joestar group’s camp and was situated in a way that prevented them from seeing your own campfire. From your vantage point, you could use your binoculars to watch what they were doing. While you were too far away to hear them, you could read their lips. So far Joestar was being sarcastic and the Zeppelli fellow was making jokes about his steel balls. So nothing special. You sighed, lowered your binoculars, and leaned back against a rock. You looked up into the starry sky and thought about Le Mans for the hundredth time that day. You’d been thinking about him alot lately. You’d only known him briefly, but got so attached to him in that short amount of time. You sighed again, closed your eyes for a moment, and did your best to choke back the tears. You wouldn’t cry again. It took so much out of you when you did. You missed Le Mans. You missed him very badly. You glanced back down at the Joestar group only to see that they had gone to sleep for the night. You may as well do the same.

The sound of your campfire being stirred startled you. You turned to look to your right only to get startled again to see that Diego was sitting next to you, poking your fire with a stick.

“M-Mr. Brando!!” You cried and he chuckled at your shocked expression.

“Some spy you are.” he teased. “You let me sneak right up on you. Not only that, but you were letting your fire go out. You must be awfully distracted tonight if you’re that unaware of your surroundings.”

He snapped the stick he was using to poke the fire in half and tossed it into the flames. Then he turned to you with a smirk.

“Tell me what it is that has you so preoccupied.” he said, leaning towards you.

You scooted back from him, feeling very uncomfortable. You didn’t know what it was but Diego’s presence had you on edge. He often visited your camp to hear what you had to say about either Valentine or Johnny Joestar, so it wasn’t as if his arrival was unusual… but something about him felt different tonight. He always seemed to have an air of danger around him, but tonight that air of danger felt downright deadly. You looked away from him, not willing to spill your personal thoughts to him.

“I don’t have any information for you, tonight.” you said, attempting to change the subject. “Joestar and Zeppelli haven’t done anything out of the ordinary lately…”

Diego interrupted you.

“I didn’t come here to talk business. Not tonight.” he said.

He moved around you so that he was once again in your line of vision. He was smiling in a way that made your stomach knot up.

“W-what did you c-come to talk about then?” you asked, dreading the answer.

“About us,” he answered. “About you and me…”

You looked up at him in confusion.

“About us? What about us?” You asked.

“First let’s talk about you. I bet I can guess as to what you were thinking about before I snuck up on you…”

And he was back on that topic again. You took a deep breath and tried to calm yourself.

“I don’t really want to talk about that.” you said.

He ignored you completely.

“You were thinking about that dandy boy again, weren’t you. What was his name again? Leemen? Layman?”

“Le Mans,” you corrected. “Please, I really don’t want to talk about…”

He cut you off again.

“I know it must be hard losing someone like that. Especially, when you seemed so fond of him…”

Your irritation flared and you stomped your booted foot on the ground.

“Mr. Brando! I said I didn’t want to talk about it!” you shouted.

“Shhhhhh,” he shushed you and suddenly he was holding your hands in his gloved ones, gently rubbing his thumbs against your knuckles.

The action startled you and your anger was forgotten. His eyes had taken on a soft look that caught you off guard and shocked you into silence. Never since you’d known him had Diego Brando appeared soft or comforting in any way. He was either cold and calculating or a beacon of hate and rage. This was a side of him you’d never guessed existed. You made a slight attempt at pulling your hands out of his, but he used the opportunity to pull you closer to him. You found himself staring into his eyes for a moment. Finding the situation far too intimate, you turned away from him, staring at the ground instead.

“Listen to me,” he began. “I understand. I do.”

You looked back up at him.

“Understand?” you questioned.

He offered you a gentle smile.

“Yes. I understand what it means to lose someone, believe me.” he said and his eyes grew distant for a moment.

“It’s not easy is it?” he said.

“Mr. Brando… what are you getting at?” you asked.

“You’re lonely, that’s what I’m getting at.” he said.

You pulled yourself out of his grasp feeling that the situation was becoming a bit too intimate for your tastes.

“Come now, don’t be that way.” he said with a light chuckle.

He moved closer to you and you shied a little further away from him.

“Fine, be the shrinking violet if you want, but hear me out.” he said, growing slightly annoyed with your standoffishness.

“I know it’s been hard for you and I can’t imagine how it feels to have to skirt around on the outside of civilization unable to connect with anyone. You must feel like some kind of outcast. I can’t imagine how lonely it gets…”

He took a single step closer to you and you froze. You understood now. You knew exactly what he was trying to say. In the time that you’d been working for him, Diego had become more and more “friendly” with you. Then came the complements, the gifts of supplies and equipment… it was Diego that bought you the binoculars that you’d been using. At the time you thought he was just giving you a means to better do your job, but when you thought back to some of his other behaviors, (how close he sat to you when he came to hear your reports, the pet names and out-of-nowhere complements, and the nasty looks he gave you when he saw you with Le Mans) you realized that there was far more to it than that.

Diego was crushing on you. Very badly.

He suddenly had his arms around you and was pressing you into his chest. Panic rose into your chest and you tried to push away, but he tightened his hold on you.

“If you stay by my side, you’ll never have to be lonely again.” he whispered into your ear.

You managed to rip yourself out of his arms.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Brando,” you said, straightening yourself out and trying to quell the panic that was swelling up in your heart. “I just don’t have those kinds of feelings for you.”

Diego's reaction was not what you expected.

He stared at you with a blank expression for a moment before his lips stretched into a wicked grin. Then he laughed. He laughed and laughed until you started to become even more uncomfortable than you already were. After a few minutes of this, you couldn’t take it anymore.

“What’s so funny?!” you demanded.

Diego managed to reign in his laughter long enough to answer you.

“It’s funny…” he started, wiping tears from his eyes. “It’s funny because you think you actually have the right to refuse me.”

You raised your eyebrows, stunned at the audacity of the statement.

“Excuse me?” you said with disgust in your voice. Your panic was very quickly turning into anger. “Did you just say that I don’t have the right to refuse you?”

Diego merely grinned at you.

“I most certainly do have the right to refuse you! What makes you think YOU have the right to tell ME who I can and can’t refuse?”

Diego’s grin seemed to stretch to the far reaches of his face for a split second and there was a flash of something utterly inhuman in his eyes. It shocked you right out of your tantrum. Your anger dissipated and slowly went back to panic. When Diego spoke again, your panic turned into pure horror.

“No, you don’t have the right to refuse me, sweetheart.” he said in a mockingly soft tone. “You can’t refuse me, because if you do, a certain event from your past is going to make national news.”

Event from your past? He couldn’t mean… Oh no.

“Go on,” he said with a chuckle. “Ask me what I’m talking about.”

No, no, he couldn’t be talking about that, you tried to reassure yourself. I’ll play dumb. I’m not going to let him know he’s affecting me…

“What ARE you talking about?” you asked, trying to keep your voice from shaking.

“Oh nothing much.” he said. “Just a little bank robbery that happened a few years back… a bank robbery that you were involved in… a bank robbery that cost a little boy his life. Ring any bells?”

No.

NO!

He knew!

He KNEW!!!

Eight years ago, before you got involved with Diego, you had been a part of a gang of criminals that terrorized the state. You left them after an incident that made you question everything that you’d done up to that point. It was just supposed to be a bank heist. You were supposed to go into the bank, wave some guns around, demand the money, and leave. You hadn’t expected the sheriff and a posse of deputized locals to show up and try to stop you. There had been a shootout in the streets. A child ran into the crossfire in a panic, trying to get to his mother. He was killed. Shot in the head… by you. You killed that child right in front of his mother. You panicked and fled, leaving your allies behind to fend for themselves. You didn’t escape unscathed, however. A bullet grazed the side of your face, mutilating your ear in a way that would instantly give you away if anyone saw the wound. It was the reason you always wore your hair down. It covered your mangled ear and prevented anyone from relating you to the robbery.

At least you had hoped that it would.

Stubbornly, you continued to play dumb.

“I’m not sure what you could be referring to.” You said. “Though if I was involved in such a thing, you have no proof of it.”

Diego cocked his head to the side in a playful manner.

“Oh don’t I?” he said.

Your heart felt like it was going to leap out of your chest and your body felt like someone had just doused you in ice water.

“I remember reading about it in the paper. The sheriff said that only one of the robbers got away. But not before he shot them in the ear…”

Your blood ran cold.

He reached out, pulling your hair away from your right ear. You were frozen to the spot. You could only look up at him with wide eyes as you began to tremble like a scared mouse. He examined what was left of your ear, making note of the scar across your head and your missing helix and antihelix.

“Hmm.” he mused. “Not much left of it, is there? You poor thing. That had to hurt like hell…”

His gloved fingers traced your scar. You shuddered and jerked away from him. You pulled your hair back over your injured ear and stared at him in horror.

He snickered at your reaction.

“Pretty damning evidence, I’d say.” he said in a casual manner, while affixing you with a glare.

“T-the kid got in the way!” you stammered. “It was an accident! I never meant to kill him!”

“Do you think the law cares about that? In their eyes, you’re just a lowly child-killing criminal. You don’t deserve any sympathy. Just a trip to the gallows.” Diego said with a scoff.

You were going to be sick.

“I have a lot of connections, love. One word from me and you’ll be in a noose faster than you can blink. So, no, you don’t have the right to refuse me, dearest.”

You shrank in on yourself, clutching the sides of your head and squatting down on the ground. Your eyes were wide and unfocused, staring at the ground, unable to see anything but the visions of encroaching doom floating around in your head.

Diego grabbed you by your arms and pulled you to your feet. He wasn’t even going to allow you a moment to have a mental collapse. You found yourself, once again, forced to look at his smiling face. There was something different about him now though. His features seemed sharper, longer somehow and his eyes had taken on a strange yellowish color. You had to be seeing things. The shock of having your darkest secrets revealed must be messing with your head more than you thought.

“Did you think that you could just run away from what you’d done and pretend that it didn’t happen? Did you think that the blood washed off of your hands over the years? No! Once a killer always a killer! You didn’t stop with the child, did you? You have quite a gallery of victims, don’t you?”

Diego licked his lips and you felt like he was savoring your guilt and terror.

“I had no choice!” You protested. “They got too close! They were going to find out who I was and what I did! I had to defend myself!!”

Diego snickered sadistically.

“Defend yourself against what? Your rightful punishment?” he mocked.

Tears were streaming down your face now and you felt your knees go weak. The only thing keeping you upright was Diego’s hold on you.

“How do you know these things?” you demanded.

Diego shook his head.

“I have my ways. Not that it matters…” he said with a sneer.

“Why then? Why are you doing this to me?”

“Because I own you.” Diego said with a hungry smirk. “I owned you from the moment you started doing my dirty work.”

You looked up with him in horror. Just how long had he… felt this way about you? Was this his plan from the very beginning? Did he already know about your past in advance and mean to use it against you before you’d even met him?

You supposed that none of those answers really mattered.

In the end this was probably what people called “karma”.

You ran from your life of crime years ago hoping to put all of that nasty business behind you and start anew, but it wasn’t that easy. People came looking for you: lawmen, bounty hunters, people who were too nosey for their own good. Your life became one of paranoia and unrest. People were dead because of the decisions you made. A child was dead because of you. A mother was heartbroken because you took her child from her in an act of carelessness. If you had never decided to join up with that group of bandits all for the sake of relieving boredom and money woes, none of it would’ve happened. And you wouldn’t be here at the mercy of a one Diego Brando.

You reap what you sow…

“Dry those tears,” he said. “It’s rather insulting that you act that way after I ask you to be mine. Really, you act as if being with me is a punishment or something.”

He chuckled darkly and shoved you away from him.

“I’ve got to head back to my own camp or Hot Pants will start wondering what I’m up to.” he said as he started to walk away. “We’ll talk about this another time. I wouldn’t try to run off if I were you. Sweet dreams, love.”

He disappeared into the darkness, laughing lowly at your plight.

You sat there on your knees wanting to scream in despair and frustration. You should never have gotten involved with a man like Diego. Even after you swore off involving yourself with crime or shady dealings, you still found yourself lured to men like him. Either they came to you or you stupidly sought them out for one reason or another. And now you were stuck being the unwilling romantic companion to a madman.

You suddenly found yourself thinking of Le Mans again.

You weren’t sure, but you had a sickening feeling that Diego was involved with his death somehow. You couldn’t forget the look he gave you when he saw you with Le Mans in the saloon. What you knew of Diego said that he was absolutely the type to kill a man out of jealousy. Still people said that Le Mans had died to an animal attack. No human could rip a man apart like that… could they?

Whatever the case, you couldn’t stay with Diego. You had only agreed to work for him until the Steel Ball Run race was over. You never agreed to being his lover. The idea made your skin crawl. Surely there was a way to escape him? If you ran now, it wouldn’t matter who he told about your crimes. You’d be long gone by the time anyone came for you. That was it! You would leave right now!

You got up to begin packing up your things when your left arm started stinging horribly. You gasped in pain and looked at your arm to see that your sleeve was ripped and bloodstained. How on earth had that happened? You pushed the fabric of your sleeve aside to see that there was a bloody gash there. Did Diego do that when he grabbed you? Did he have a knife in his hand at the time? You vaguely remember feeling his fingernails jabbing into you, even through his gloves, as he grabbed you, but surely they weren’t as long and sharp enough to cause a cut like that! And how could he have cut you through his gloves? The wound didn’t seem too deep but it was bleeding a lot. You would have to treat it before you made a run for it. You wouldn’t be able to escape if you bled out beforehand.

Pain abruptly shot through your arm. It seemed to spread from your wound to the rest of your body. You grasped your bloody arm, panting in agony for a moment. After a few minutes, the pain faded. If you didn’t know better, your thoughts of escape were somehow linked to the pain in your arm. But that’s ridiculous. You examined your wound again. It looked… strange. The skin around it was red and swollen, hinting an oncoming infection if not treated. But it also looked cracked and kind of scaly. Odd. Gangrene? No. You’d seen gangrene before. It was ugly, but it didn’t look like that. You really needed to patch that wound before it got worse. Then you could pack your things and…

Another jolt of pain surged through your arm and your mind went fuzzy.

You were vaguely aware of your mule, who was tied nearby, snorting and pawing nervously at the ground.

The pain only lasted a few seconds this time. Your brain still felt like it was in a haze though. You were probably just tired. You couldn’t focus on much except your arm… and thoughts of Diego…

You wanted to fix your arm and… there was something else you wanted to do but you couldn’t remember.

Was it… escape?

Escape from what?

Diego told you not to run off. So you wouldn’t.

You looked down at your arm again. It really looked strange now. Far too scaly, but you weren’t too worried about it. Your tongue lolled out of your oddly lengthed mouth and you gave the cut a few licks. Once the blood was cleaned off you looked at the wound. It seemed to have stopped bleeding. You would put some antiseptic on it later. At the moment you needed sleep. You flopped over into the dirt, not even bothering to crawl into your sleeping bag.

Your poor mule didn’t get much sleep that night. He spent the better part of the night keeping a wary eye on the beast that used to be his master, just in case it decided to wake up and devour him.

You dreamed of Diego and nothing else.

#jojo's bizarre adventure #jjba #yandere jojo #reader insert #yandere jojo's bizarre adventure #jojo no kimyou na bouken #yandere jjba #yandere jjba x reader #jojo x reader #jojos bizarre adventure #steel ball run #jjba part 7 #diego brando #yandere Diego Brando #outlaw reader

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venus-haze · 2 years

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Fire - Part 2 (Yandere!Austin!Elvis x Reader)

Summary: It’s been a whirlwind year since Elvis ripped you from your mundane life as a waitress scraping by in LA. Even though he slipped a ring on your finger faster than you could blink, you want out, but you find that’s much easier said than done.

Note: I genuinely wasn’t expecting Fire to get as many notes or as much interest in a second part as it did, so thank y’all so much! This is also based on an anonymous request, which I incorporated into this part. I hope y’all like it and it meets everyone’s expectations. Please consider the warnings before deciding whether or not you want to read this fic. Do not interact with my blog or posts if you are under 18 or post ED/thinspo content.

Word count: 5k

Warnings: This is a yandere fic, so expect dark themes such as emotional blackmail, obsessive and manipulative behavior, violence, abuse of power, use of guns, drug/alcohol abuse, and sexual content and gun play which involves coercion, which some people may find disturbing or triggering. Cheating on the reader’s part. Do not interact if you are under 18.

Part 1

The first few months of being Elvis’ wife were odd, to say the least. He wanted the world to know that you, this nobody waitress, were his fiance, but was also unreasonably jealous at the thought of you being featured in the dozens of bridal magazines that had reached out to his management in hopes of getting an interview with you. He tried to get you to dye his hair like he did and was upset when you refused. He wanted you to quit smoking, something you’d been planning to do at some point anyway, but you continued to do so out of spite.

It was like walking on a tightrope with him, and despite his promises to take care of you, that you wouldn’t have to worry anymore, you didn’t find yourself any less stressed and dissatisfied with your life than before. If anything, the stress and dissatisfaction had shifted from being over finances to your romantic life, he made sure of that. Not to mention, you were still stuck in LA every few weeks, even though you’d begged him to let you just stay at Graceland, promising to not step foot off the property. His answer was always a firm ‘no’. You needed him, and he couldn’t take care of you if you were apart. Sometimes, though, you felt like you had to take care of him more than he took care of you.

He was obviously an extremely lonely and troubled man, but you didn’t understand why he had to make that your problem. You counted yourself lucky that you hadn’t gotten pregnant after the first time you and Elvis had sex, but your insisting on him using a condom every time definitely wore on him. Part of you was hoping that he’d deem you insufferable to be around and dump you, but as soon as he put a ring on your finger and signed the marriage certificate, you were locked in for life.

Especially since when you first called home after Elvis requisitioned you from your shitty apartment, you were horrified to find he was one step ahead of you. He had already called your parents to regale them with the details of your fabricated love story and ask for their blessing to marry you. They expressed their congratulations to you, and you didn’t know what else to say but a quick ‘thanks’. You still had no idea how he even got their number or how long before Elvis moved in on you that he called them, since they seemed to be under the impression you and Elvis had been dating in secret for months before the ‘relationship’ went public.

Whenever you thought maybe you could make things work, have a somewhat normal relationship with Elvis, he would do something that would unnerve or scare you, reiterating that the last thing you wanted was the long-term marriage he’d envisioned. Just a year prior you had convinced yourself that if you were in the spot you were currently in financially, you’d never worry about anything again. You hated your past self for being so naive.

You sat outside of Elvis’ trailer on the studio lot, a cigarette burning between your fingers as you flipped through Vogue Italia, wishing you were sipping wine on the Amalfi Coast without a care in the world. Instead, you were still in Los Angeles, a sweating bottle of Coke at your side, signaling the start of yet another unbearably hot California summer. Fanning yourself with the magazine, you watched as your husband stormed out of one of the studio buildings and into the trailer.

“Darlin’!” he shouted from inside.

You were always darlin’. You wondered if he even remembered your real name anymore. Darlin’ wasn’t horrible, though. Early on, he had tried to bestow the pet name ‘Satnin’ to you, but when he revealed it was the same nickname he’d given his mother, you wouldn’t answer to it. That was the closest you got to him ending the relationship, and even back then you knew it was a long shot.

After spending months on studio lots as Elvis worked on movie after movie, you quickly found that his film career was one of his biggest sources of stress and frustration—another reason to hate LA added to your already extensive list. He wanted to be a serious actor taking dramatic roles, but audiences weren’t interested in movies where he didn’t sing. From what you’d seen of the box office, though, people were hardly interested in that anymore.

Wordlessly, you threw your cigarette into the bottle and joined him, almost getting hit in the face by the jacket he threw off in his rage. You waited for him to calm down a bit before asking, “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t do any more of these damn movies,” he ranted. “No one watches them, and the Colonel wants me to do some hokey Christmas TV special for some sewing machine company.”

You raised an eyebrow. “You don’t do Christmas specials.”

“I know! But what else is there for me to do?” he asked. “You saw the other day—Dr. King got killed and I’m supposed to sell sweaters?”

“You need to win your old fans back and get new ones,” you said. “You can’t do that by pretending the world is candy canes and gumdrops when it’s anything but right now.”

“So what do I do?” he asked. “You got the answers, darlin’.”

“When the inspiration hits, you’ll know,” you said. “I just don’t think you’re working with the right people.”

As much as you hated to admit it, the two of you did think alike, and the times you felt closest to him were when you were giving him advice or making fun of the uppity people you came across in LA. Sure, Elvis had expensive tastes which you gladly took on yourself, but he was somewhat grounded. You knew if he had just gone about everything like a normal person, you wouldn’t have held so much resentment toward him, but that ship had long since sailed.

He sat on the couch in a huff, and you moved to occupy the spot next to him, as was expected. You wrapped your arms around his torso, resting your head on his chest.

“Wanna go to our spot later?” you asked, trying to assuage his anger when it wasn’t directed toward you for once.

It wasn’t your spot anymore, that worn out first ‘O’ of the Hollywood sign. He’d taken that from you, only allowing you to go up there if he were with you.

“That’d be great, darlin’,” he said, stroking your hair.

The two of you sat in silence for a few minutes, before Elvis was requested back on the movie’s set for more takes of the scene he’d stormed off from. He gave you an exasperated look, and you knew this would be it for him. His career in Hollywood was coming to a close, and he faced the great unknown of what would come next.

You headed back outside, pulling a fresh cigarette from your pocket and grabbing a new bottle of Coke from the cooler outside. After a few hours of flipping through magazines and eating the food that was catered on set, you and Elvis headed up to the Hollywood sign. Usually the two of you would travel in a chauffeured car, but in instances like this, he preferred to drive.

Returning to the previously unassuming place where your life changed so rapidly never failed to bring an unsettling feeling to your stomach. Ever since that night, you could never fully feel comfortable there, the way you used to when it was just your place to blow off steam after work. Your memories, too, were tainted by the knowledge that even when you thought you were alone, he was always there–eavesdropping, lurking, waiting for the perfect moment to take advantage of your anger, hurt, and desperation.

Paradoxically, it was also where you had most of your pleasant experiences with Elvis. You weren’t sure if it was the location itself or the fact that you were alone with no worry of being interrupted that made him more relaxed, but you found you didn’t need to worry about his shifting moods as much up there. Sometimes, though, he would bring up things he’d overheard you say in the past, as if it were an inside joke you were both in on and not his violating your privacy for months.

As the two of you walked over to the first ‘O’ of the Hollywood sign, he kept his arm draped over your shoulder. The city’s nightlife was bustling in the distance, its bright skyline outshining the stars in the sky so that they weren’t even visible. You lit a cigarette to his visible displeasure, but he didn’t comment on it.

“With everything goin’ on, the Colonel wants me to do a Christmas special,” Elvis scoffed. “It’s like he wants to bury my career.”

You didn’t disagree with his statement. The last thing people wanted was a corny Christmas special, that was for the old timers–The Rat Pack and all of those former variety show stars. The songs that topped the charts were socially relevant, reflective of the state of dissatisfaction and anxiety that had swept through the country in the wake of unprecedented violence. Elvis needed to hone in on that, be the familiar face that wasn’t woefully out of touch, and his career would be set, at least for the next decade.

“I think a fresh set of eyes on your career would do you good,” you said, taking a drag from your cigarette. “I don’t know much about the music industry, but people want authenticity.”

He nodded. “I think so too. Somethin’ has gotta change.”

The rest of the night was uneventful, the two of you returning to the studio lot around one in the morning. The following week, however, was chaos as Elvis grew increasingly irritated by the Colonel’s antics, his manager more concerned with the Christmas special than the current events everyone was glued to. Elvis was more angry and frustrated than ever, which meant you had to exhaust yourself doing damage control so he wouldn’t take it out on you. He hadn’t been this consistently upset since you told him not to call you Satnin.

To your confused relief, he walked into the trailer with a spring in his step a few days before production for the Christmas special was supposed to start. He sat across from you at the small kitchen table where you’d been reading the newspaper. You noticed the conspiratorial gleam in his eye and gave him your full attention. You hoped whatever he was going to tell you would make your life easier.

“Darlin’, you were right. These new guys I’m workin’ with, they were just what I needed,” he said.

“Any names I’d know?” you asked.

“Steve Binder and Bones Howe,” he said, elaborating as he watched you struggle to put the names to what you knew them for. “They put The Stones and James Brown together.”

“That’s great,” you said. “I’m sure they’ll come up with something good.”

“Oh, they did, and I want you in the studio with me while we’re filming.”

“What do you need me around for?” you asked. The one reprieve you got from him was when he’d be filming for hours on end. That had worked out fine before, you didn’t understand why this new endeavor required your involvement.

His expression fell, “Don’t backtalk me.”

“I wasn’t—“

“I’ll drag you to NBC my damn self if I have to.”

It terrified you how quickly his mood could change. As much as he claimed you thought like him, you could never predict when exactly he’d flip on you.

“Do it, then,” you snapped, getting up from the table. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

You were, of course, referring to your wedding, which in your determination to sabotage the event led to his dragging you out from the bridal suite and up to the altar for the ceremony. He knew better than to have a full house for the event, predicting you’d cause a scene. At no point on your wedding day did you even try to put on a pleasant facade, which resulted in a shouting match on your wedding night that ended with you getting the message that you were his, and there was nothing you could do about it.

His voice was low as he growled, “Get your ass back in that seat, darlin’.”

You stared him down, but after a few moments withered under his unforgiving glare and sat down again, feeling tears welling up in your eyes in frustration at not being able to stand up for yourself like you always wanted to.

“You’re too emotional,” he said. “I can’t leave you by yourself. Who knows what you’d get yourself into.”

You almost, almost bit back with a comment of your own, but decided against it, opting to clench your jaw and fold your arms over your chest instead. The rest of the day you gave him the silent treatment, answering his questions with non-committal ‘hmms’ and turning your head whenever he tried to kiss you. It was childish, sure, but if he was insistent on treating you like one, then you’d oblige and play the part. Maybe I should be the one with the acting career.

Even though he insisted you be in the studio while he recorded the special, you had a lot more freedom than when he was working on movies because he was actually involved in the making of it, rather than showing up to read lines and sing songs for whatever movie had been churned out by overworked screenwriters. For the first time since you’d been with Elvis, you felt like you had room to breathe.

If this were your life, minus Elvis having anything to do with it, you’d be more than content, happy, even. Though his presence was everywhere, things began to feel somewhat normal. You supposed part of it could be attributed to speaking to people other than Elvis and his entourage for once. You almost wanted to thank Steve and Bones for keeping your husband so busy.

While your life had previously been dictated by your work schedule and limited funds, it was ultimately your own, as much as you hated it. You could get up and go to the store without having to ask for permission. You could walk to places on a nice day without having to be driven everywhere. You had no entanglements or commitments. Part of you knew you were just looking back on that time with rose-colored lenses, but you didn’t want to admit how long it had been since you’d been truly happy.

You made your way over to the catering table while the set for the live audience was being put together, and the crowd slowly began filtering in. Out of all of the ideas Elvis had told you about for the special, you were most excited for the live performance. Sure, he’d sung to you before, and you had watched him sing on movie sets, but it certainly wasn’t the riotous concerts of his early career that you’d read about.

Giving a quick smile to one of the caterers, you looked at the sandwich platter in front of you.

“Y/N, long time no see,” he said.

You recognized that voice. “Dylan, how are you?”

Dylan was one of the line cooks at Lloyd’s and mostly worked the night shift. He was always incredibly funny, and while the two of you regularly flirted when you had shifts together, nothing ever came of it, though you did think he was attractive.

“Not bad,” he answered. “Got a shiny new gig that pays a whole dollar more now.”

“Shit, that dollar makes a difference.”

“Oh, I’m sure you know all about that,” he teased.

If it were anyone else saying that, you’d be pissed, but at one point you considered Dylan a good friend, so you gave him a pass, glad more than anything to have a normal conversation with someone for once.

“Shut up,” you laughed.

“Hey, as long as you’re happy.”

“I don’t know if happy is the word I’d use.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Trouble in paradise?”

“I’m not about to unload my relationship baggage on you. This isn’t Lloyd’s.”

“So? We’re still friends,” he said.

He was right, and you certainly weren’t in a position to push away a friend. It almost felt like being at Llyod’s again, as you took it upon yourself to help Dylan with catering duties so he wouldn’t get in trouble for talking to you for so long. Maybe unloading so much on a former coworker you hadn’t seen in a year wasn’t the best idea, but it wasn’t like you had anyone else to talk to about anything.

You withheld some of the more disturbing details of yours and Elvis’ relationship as if anyone would believe you anyway. Still, as much as you talked, Dylan listened. Half an hour had passed by the time you finished giving him an overview of how your life had been going in the past year.

Just as he was about to respond to everything you told him, you heard someone call for you, saying Elvis wanted to see you in his dressing room.

“Will you be here tomorrow?” you asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, we’re booked for the whole shoot.”

“See you then.”

You made your way over to the production assistant, who led you to Elvis’ dressing room where he’d been preparing for the live performance segment of the special. You quickly thanked the assistant before knocking on the closed door that read ‘RESTRICTED ACCESS’.

“It’s me,” you said.

“It’s open!” he called back.

Walking in, you closed the door behind you. As soon as you saw him, though, you knew you must have looked like a deer in headlights. You felt your mouth go dry as your eyes raked over him. For all of his faults, you couldn’t deny your sexual attraction to him, especially in the leather jumpsuit he’d squeezed into.

He grinned smugly. “I guess you like it.”

“Yeah, a lot,” you answered honestly.

“Gimme a kiss for good luck, darlin’.”

You gave him a kiss, yelping as he smacked your ass.

“I want you back in here waitin’ for me when I’m done, alright?”

You nodded, jumping a bit when there was a knock at the door.

“EP, you’re on in five!”

“Go on now, darlin’. I’ll make sure I put on a good show for you,” he winked.

You left the dressing room, thinking that whoever had the idea to put Elvis in all leather like that was simultaneously insane and a genius. The studio was a bit maze-like, but you were able to get back to the set just before Elvis was supposed to go on. You wouldn’t be part of the audience, who’d already been gathered around the small stage that’d been set up, but you were close enough from your spot with the production crew.

Elvis sauntered out from the hallway that led to the studio floor, giving you another kiss as he walked onto the stage. He joked around with the crowd a little bit before getting into his performance, and as he sang, as he moved, you felt it go straight through you, involuntarily biting your lip when he turned around, giving you a perfect view of his ass.

By the time his performance had ended, you felt like you’d just had a religious experience. You got why women and girls would faint at the sight of him, he was unlike any other musician you’d ever seen when he performed, owning the audience for the hour or so he was on stage. You wondered why the hell he’d trade that for Hollywood.

As things on set wrapped up, you rushed back to his dressing room. Unsure of where exactly he wanted you to wait for him, you sat on the couch with your hands between your legs, waiting anxiously for his arrival. Just as quickly as the door opened, it shut with the click of the lock.

Elvis wasted no time in closing the distance between you, sweat dripping from his face, leather-clad chest heaving as he pushed you back onto the couch and climbed on top of you. Though his eyes were illuminated by the bright vanity lights, they were still dark with lust. He grabbed your hips, pressing himself against you before ravaging you like a man possessed.

Getting the leather jumpsuit off of him was easier said than done, but if you were being honest, you wanted him to keep it on. When you told him as much, he pulled you onto his thigh, making you ride it until you came and then teasing you for doing so.

“Look at the mess you made, darlin’,” he scolded, as you rested your head against his shoulder, trying to catch your breath. He played with your clit, a self-satisfied grin spreading across his face when you rolled your hips against his thigh. “Bet I could make you come again, huh? You want that?”

“Yes,” you breathed as he did just that, making you orgasm again so quickly you were almost embarrassed.

The live performance was what really seemed to get Elvis worked up, because none of the other scenes he shot elicited that kind of reaction in him. Not that you minded when you were preoccupied with Dylan. You weren’t sure why you hadn’t considered a relationship with him when the two of you were working together at Lloyd’s, but the more time you spent with him, the more you wish you had. You liked to think that having a boyfriend would have prevented Elvis from developing his obsession with you–maybe you wouldn’t have gone up to the Hollywood sign as often as you did, maybe your schedule wouldn’t have been so predictable. All you had were hypotheticals, and with how unhinged Elvis was, you doubted Dylan could have stopped him once he had his mind set on you.

You considered it more of a tryst than an affair, when the most you and Dylan did was make out in an empty storage closet every now and then, but sometimes you got risky and would do it in hallways, hoping no one would pass by, at least no one who’d tell Elvis. Maybe you were stupid or selfish, or both, for putting Dylan in a position where he could get his life ruined by your volatile husband, but every time you were with Dylan, you couldn’t find it in you to care. You were having too much fun, the thrill of your clandestine relationship making up for the lack of sex. It wasn’t that you didn’t think about it, but you really didn’t want to have sex with a guy you were actually into in a TV studio.

Besides, Elvis was so preoccupied and excited with planning and filming the special that he didn’t suspect a thing. He just assumed your own good mood was reflective of his, and not your relationship with Dylan. At least, that’s what you thought when you’d go to bed at night, glad to be in control of something in your life again. Like the night before a day off from filming, which meant you wouldn’t get to see Dylan, but you were awoken in the middle of the night with a whisper.

“Wake up, Y/N.”

As you opened your eyes, you realized the lower half of your body felt heavy, and the silver barrel of a gun came into focus. Your heart stopped when you realized Elvis was straddling you, a gun pointed at your face. His own face was flushed, his eyes red and watery.

“Elvis, what are you doing?” you asked softly.

“After everything I do for you, you have the nerve to step out on me?”

“Elvis, honey, take it easy.”

“Do you love him?” he asked, his voice shaky as he held the gun between your eyes. When you failed to answer, he pressed the gun against your skin and nearly shouted, “Do you?”

“No,” you responded softly. “I love you, Elvis. You know I love you.”

He didn’t answer, barely holding himself together.

“C’mon, honey, put the gun down,” you implored him. “You know you’re all I want.”

He stared at you for a few agonizing moments before wiping his eyes with his sleeve. You were almost always frustratingly indifferent or annoyed with him. He knew you, though, how you thought and what you wanted. If only you weren’t so proud and stubborn. You gulped, the shaky breath you let out betraying your nerves at the situation. He’d go through this a thousand times if it meant you’d say you loved him, even if he had to have a gun in his hand.

“Say it again,” he demanded.

“I love you, Elvis,” you repeated, hissing as the cold metal barrel dug deeper into your skin. “I only want you.”

“Tell me why I shouldn’t pull this trigger, darlin’.”

“I just wanted your attention,” you lied. “You’ve been so busy—“

“Then I oughta keep you on a fuckin’ leash so you don’t whore yourself out every time I turn my back.”

You could feel his hard cock pressed against your stomach from how he was straddling you, panic washing over you as you realized he was enjoying this. He dragged the gun against your skin slowly, the cold metal sending chills down your spine as it slid from the side of your face, to your throat, your heart, and finally to your abdomen.

With his free hand, he reached between you to slip his fingers between your folds, a wicked grin spreading across his face upon feeling how wet you were.

“Your little boyfriend ever make you feel like this?” he taunted, sliding his fingers inside you. When you didn’t answer, he pressed the gun against your temple. “I want an answer, darlin’.”

“No, fuck,” you moaned as he curled his fingers. “He didn’t make me feel this good. All we did was—“

“I know he didn’t touch your pussy. As much of a bitch as you can be, you know this is mine,” he whispered huskily, adding a third finger for emphasis. “Ain’t it, darlin’?”

“Yes.” You struggled to answer as you felt your core tighten, your orgasm getting closer as he kept relentlessly fingering you. “It’s yours.”

“I don’t think he’d want anything to do with you if he knew what a slut you really were. Gettin’ off with a gun to your head,” he gloated.

You were close, unbelievably close when all of a sudden, it was gone. You nearly screamed when he pulled his hand away from you, leaving you aching for anything, something, him.

“Why would you—“

With a patronizing click of his tongue, he cooed at your hurt expression. “You didn’t really think I was gonna let you cum tonight, did you, darlin’?”

You weren’t sure whether he wanted an answer or not, but couldn’t bring yourself to say anything when he put his fingers in his mouth, licking them clean before grabbing your face. His other hand still had a firm grip on the gun, but if you were being honest with yourself, you’d been so caught up in the pleasure he’d been giving you that you almost forgot it was there until he mentioned it.

He leaned over, and you watched wide-eyed as he spit in your mouth, the foreign taste of your own juices mixed with his saliva on your tongue.

“Swallow,” he ordered, releasing your face.

With no other choice, you did as he said, feeling your face heat up in humiliation. You wondered how long he’d known about you and Dylan, how long he’d been planning this. The confrontation seemed to go as he wanted it to, because Elvis set the gun aside, kissing you deeply, possessively, as if he wanted to be part of you, or you part of him. You supposed there would be no difference anymore, your own carelessness had made sure of that.

Your pleasure and comfort were put to the wayside as Elvis used your body how he pleased the rest of the night, denying you release even when he came inside you without a condom. He was rough and mean, cumming twice when he fucked your mouth until you cried.

“Thought you wanted to be a slut?” he teased, as he came inside you.

Your body ached, and you weren’t sure how he wasn’t tired yet when you were sure he’d been going at it for hours. Despite your best efforts, you came too, and he took your disobedience out on your ass and made you thank him for it. You had no leverage anymore, all of your being petty and difficult was for nothing as you knew you couldn’t go as far as he was willing to go to keep you with him. Even then, you tried to ignore the part of your mind that thought it was hot, the way he took control.

The next few days, your jaw especially ached, and you hated how he put on the front of being the caring husband as he’d order milkshakes to be brought on set especially for you. You didn’t need to worry about going to the catering table anymore, you lamented to yourself as you watched Elvis sing during some elaborate scene with scantily clad women and kung-fu fighters. You knew Dylan wouldn't be there anyway.

Taglist: @eliseinmemphis @crash-and-cure @kittenlittle24 @im-lame-irl @loudwombatmugkid @rxsesss @roseymary04 @queendelrey @jovialladyaurora

#elvis x reader #austin!elvis x reader #elvis presley x reader #yandere!elvis x reader #yandere x reader #austin!elvis #elvis 2022 #elvis

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togglesbloggle · 1 year

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Free Will is a Value Statement

When I was a kid, we had a dog. It didn’t go well.

This particular dog- one of several in my childhood, and the only time it went awry- loved us very much, and we loved him too. But when it came to strangers, he was very aggressive, and very dangerous, and not fully under our control. We’d have to lock him up when there were visitors to the house, and even then it was less ‘barking’ and more ‘baying of hounds’, and unlike some animals he didn’t suddenly turn nice when he was in the same room with them. And he was large, much too large for this to be safe. Things came to a head when my mom was taking him for a walk and he started threatening a small kid playing in their own yard, and she came back terrified that if he ever got out, somebody would be badly hurt.

I remember quite clearly the conversation where my parents told me we couldn’t keep him. They’d made the unfortunate choice to feed me cookies at the same time, to make the bad news go down easier; the net result is that there’s a specific brand of cookies that, to this day, I still can’t eat. They just turn to ashes in my mouth.

(The good news is that, against all odds, it seems the ‘farm upstate’ that they sent him to was actually real. They literally saved the receipts, so that when I got old enough to realize what that kind of story usually meant, they could give me proof that they hadn’t lied. He did live what I believe to be a happy life in what was, more or less, a wild animal sanctuary. Not all dangerous animals are so lucky, but sometimes, they are.)

The reason to dredge this up is to notice how unthinkable it was for any of us to call him ‘evil.’ Even when he was straining at the leash as hard as he could snarling and growling at a three year old, he wasn’t evil. ‘Dangerous’, yes. ‘Violent’, certainly. But not that, not ever.

And that’s how it works, right? We recoil at using the E-word for pets, young children, anyone that’s enough weaker than we are. Evil-as-an-adjective is for peers and superiors, things which present a genuine threat to us. You can watch this change for the natural world in real time- us moderns watch nature documentaries about predators avidly, and not as horror films, but our received culture still has ancient fairy tales about the ‘big bad wolf’ that date from before our conquest of Earth’s ecosystems. What a difference a little power makes! What was once a real and imminent fear, and a central figure in the atlas of evil, has withered away to a narrative archetype with no material referent, while the wolves themselves become objects of admiration and wonder, or a focus of conservation efforts, in direct proportion to our own sense of security against them.

And maybe you’re not the sort of person who thinks about evil much at all, which is honestly a pretty good strategy most of the time. It can often obstruct thinking more often than it clarifies. But even if you don’t, I’ll bet you still think about ‘justice’ a fair bit- and that follows the same rules, for about the same reasons. The punitive and remunerative kinds of justice, anyway. Was it some kind of punishment, to have that part of my family broken away when I was a child? Was my dog’s loss and confusion something he deserved? Of course not. It was just- disharmony, I suppose. We couldn’t find a way to put the world right, and so we suffered instead.

And yet when we reach a certain level of direct personal injury or threat of injury, especially by human causes- political enemies, alien people, angry mobs- then, almost without fail, we find ourselves reaching for this idea of justice. (And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?) Show me, anywhere in the world, where a person has in all sincerity called for justice- and I’ll show you someone who feels weak.

Now, I can point at sentences like ‘my dog was not evil,’ and it should be pretty clear that I’m making a value statement, rather than expressing mundane factual belief in the same mold as ‘grass is green.’ That is, I’m not disputing any mechanism of action, or trying to explain why events occurred as they did. I’m not giving you information you could use to prevent this from happening to you too, much as I hope you can. I’m telling you how I feel, about what I want, about who I am. I’m telling you about my grief.

Loosely speaking, you can imagine beliefs falling along a spectrum. Don’t take this typology too seriously, it’s just a useful distinction to make for present purposes. The first extreme of our spectrum is just the observational set of beliefs- the ‘sky is blue, grass is green’ category. These are especially good for making plans that work, since they model a system that we usually want to work with in some capacity. If you don’t want to fall off a cliff, it helps to have a good map. The second type is imperatives or value statements, beliefs about how to direct our efforts. ‘Murder is bad’ is a belief like any other, but instead of telling us how to accomplish a goal, it tells us what goals we ought to have and what ends we should work towards. (Moral realists will think of this second category as being a subset of the first; that’s perfectly reasonable but orthogonal to my point.). Both types of belief are absolutely necessary for acting in the world: the means and the end, if you like.

Here’s where I reveal my thesis: When, honestly, was the last time you used the concept of free will to make a plan?

“People have free will” sure feels like a factual belief, from the inside. It’s a description of who we are, right? Like saying we usually have two legs, like saying the Earth goes around the Sun? Only… it isn’t doing any of the things I do with factual beliefs. It doesn’t make predictions, it doesn’t expand my capacity to act on the world. If anything, ‘free will’ as a concept has a weird twisty negative definition (often something like ‘nonrandom indeterminacy’) that resists analysis of the reductive kind we usually use for this sort of thing.

And if we look at how it’s positioned in the grand constellations of human thought, it’s awkwardly conjoined with a lot of the other things I’ve been talking about here. Good, evil, justice. I use my belief in free will a lot when I’m talking about culpability or praiseworthiness, when I’m deciding what to act towards, when to cheer and when to boo.

I use it when I’m feeling weak.

Or, less personally, think about where ‘free will’ crops up in our court system. And it does, in more than a few guises. For example, altered states that compromise our volition are taken into account, and might even qualify as fully mitigating circumstances that tell the court not to punish the transgression. (“I was not negligent on that construction site, your honor, I’m a diabetic and I was having a blood sugar crash.”) In other cases, such as in murder charges, malice aforethought or planning the crime carefully might upgrade the sentence to be more harsh, whereas a crime ‘of passion’ might net fewer years in prison. (First-degree versus second-degree murder.) What all of these have in common, notably, is in assessments of culpability, relevant to the question of how strongly the community wants to punish or condemn the situation. But when it comes to the presentation of evidence, the chain of material observations that we use to establish confidence in the story of ‘what happened’, we invoke ‘motive’ instead- that is, we ask what benefits, inducements, insults, or other circumstances might have led the defendant to commit the act. “Your honor, the accused is ordained with free will and is capable of choice,” is, notably, not considered sufficient to establish motive- but “your honor, the defendant was listed in the victim’s will as a primary recipient, and they were seen to have a large argument two days before the murder,” very much is. Interesting discrepancy, no? When we ask whether we should condemn others or show mercy, we care deeply about the defendant’s capacity to exercise free choice. But when we ask material questions about what happened, trying to get a clear picture of the world as it is, we instead ask where the defendant is positioned in a causal web of material and social circumstances.

It’s hard, really hard, to reliably tell when our beliefs are about facts, describing things other than ourselves, and when they’re doing something else, paying rent in other ways. But I notice, when I was a little kid crying in the car, I never once asked whether any of this was my dog’s fault. It’s not that I didn’t know whether he had free will or not; it’s that it didn’t occur to me to ask. I asked if it was my fault, certainly. I’m sure my parents did too. But we never asked if it was his, whether he’d decided to be this way. That’s just not what ‘free will’ as a concept was for.

So, am I saying there’s “no such thing as free will” in the sense that I’m saying humans are fully deterministic and mechanistic? Nah, not really. To reiterate: I’m not saying that I have any confidence whatsoever that humans are deterministic, mechanical agents. I think there’s plenty of room for consciousness to complicate the story of causality in ways I can’t anticipate; there’s every chance that human brains aren’t just billiard balls bouncing around in a universe running on linear algebra or whatever. But I don’t think that ‘free will’ as currently discussed is in any sense an alternative to that model, either. What I’m trying to say is that ‘free will’ isn’t really a claim about what the world is like at all.

The opposite of a belief in free will isn’t ‘I assert humans are chemical robots governed by deterministic electrochemical reactions’. Instead, the opposite is ‘I am not angry at you for hurting me.’ Free will is a value statement.

Remember that ‘rate my dog’ parody account, and the central joke was that all the dogs got scores of like 12/10 or whatever? And the punchline to it all, when somebody tried to call them out on the uselessness of a rating system that always stayed maxed out: “They’re good dogs, Brent.” If I were at a high enough perch- strong enough, wise enough, safe enough- then that same optimism, I think, is the only part of my need for justice that would survive. True power doesn’t rank humans from best to worst, or spend time blaming us for outcomes that cause suffering to ourselves or to others. It doesn’t need to.

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outlaw-apologist · 1 year

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Just seen the Charles x micah's sister reader, very cute :) !! Could we get some headcannons for micah and his sisters relationship? Like do they get along ? Thank you :)

Thank you for requesting, anon! It's a nice spring day. The sun is shining brightly and the mountain looks beautiful. I'm listening to the birds while the deer eat my bushes. This is a perfect day to write some HCs, so let's get to it!

Micah's Younger Sister - Headcannons

- Micah loves his sister but his version of love is very skewed. We know by the stories he tells of Amos he doesn't seem too fond of his brother; however, the letter Amos sends Micah suggests Micah cares enough about his brother, (and thought his brother cares enough about him), to inform him that he was not hanged and that he's doing well.

- This suggest to me that Micah does have some love for his siblings. I think he would really love a little sister. Especially if the age gap is big enough because he can probably easily get her to listen to him and do whatever he wants.

- We know that Micah Bell the II was an awful father. If Micah's sister grows up with him, I can't see Micah ever protecting her from their father's wrath. However, I do think he would offer to teach her how to stand up for herself.

- I view this in more of a 'sibling unity' type of way. He's not doing it to protect her, but because he wants his siblings to be at his level. They grew up the same way and endured the same abuse. I think Micah might feel as if his siblings are the only people on earth who will ever truly understand him.

- He teaches her how to use a gun. Probably buys her a gun specially engraved. Of course, his sister has a wicked quick draw, taught by one of the finest gunslingers.

- I also think Micah would gift her a hat that looks similar to his. It would make him swell like pride to see her in his image.

- They hang out a lot! Neither of them would admit it but they're best friends. His sister is his little buddy.

- It's odd having a brother who doesn't like women but likes you. It fills her with a sense of pride whenever Micah treats her better while simultaneously disgusting her.

- They'll go into town to see a show together every once in awhile or do mundane things like getting their horses shoed or stocking up at the general store.

- Of course Micah's favorite activity to do with his sister is to put her to work so he can rob folk easier. This is all she's even know, so to them it's more like a hobby and they always end up having a blast!

- Micah is clearly very bitter Amos didn't stick by him. After Amos leaves Micah would immediately sink his teeth into his sister, figuring out how to make sure she stays by his side.

- Because of this she ends up in the Van Der Linde gang!

- Micah has ways of being charming. Charming enough to eventually make a massive gang of his own. His sister is much more charming than Micah could ever be. She has a unique perspective on life. Being the youngest child of an outlaw, and a woman in a time where she had no rights. She knows a good sense of humor can be a matter of life or death.

- The SECOND Mary-Beth asks her if she likes to read they're immediately best friends! Micah's sister opens up to the other women of the camp easily and creates fantastic relationships with them.

- Despite being friendly with all the women, Micah's sister would be very weary of the men. Of course, she's probably out robbing with them. Used to violent misogyny all her life, it's much harder for her to connect with them even when she spends so much time amongst them.

- Javier would be the first one she opens up to, I think. And it's his music that lulls her into a sense of security. Every time Javier sits down to play his guitar or sing she comes to sit near him and listen until one day she finally compliments him and they start a very pleasant conversation. It also helps that Javier has befriended many of the women in camp. This helps her trust him more.

- Because she hasn't been treated the best by her father or other outlaws, Micah's sister has more empathy. I also don't think she'd follow Micah's footsteps when it comes to racism.

- Dutch repulses her. She's noticed his lingering eyes. His 'compliments' towards her spoken with hot breath. How many times had she been around men who've looked at her that way? Too many. She tries to avoid him the best she can.

- But Hosea???? She's shocked at how fatherly he is. He's kind, wise, and one of the first people to sit down with her to try and really get to know her. I think Micah's sister would yearn for a father figure who is gentler and more human than her father ever was. She opens up to him and wishes he would replace her father.

- The blow-out fights start when she develops a sense of security within the gang. No longer does she listen to Micah. She stopped dropping everything for his beck and call. She's beginning to form a better sense of self. She's safe here, secure, no longer does she have to do what everyone else wants her to do. Obviously Micah isn't very happy and it starts fights.

- Micah assumes it's just a phase and so he drops the subject after they scream back and forth for awhile.

- It isn't until Micah notices that his sister spends a lot of time with Arthur that he becomes furious and jealous. He begins to feel like she's slipping away from him. Their fights become worse and more viscous His sister refuses to back down because she can't understand why Micah is so threatened by her happiness. She doesn't realize, from Micah's point of view, she's abandoning him.

- Eventually Dutch has to step in and tell them to cut it out because they're disturbing the camp's peace. Micah and his sister hardly speak to each other after that except to give the other a snide comment every once in awhile.

- Despite this I think both siblings would be very broken up about it. Micah will feel abandoned while his sister feels betrayed.

- After awhile they're put on a job together. Things go south pretty quickly and they both manage to narrowly escape. While hiding in the forest, struggling to catch their breath, they look at each other and burst out laughing. Neither Micah nor his sister ever talk through their issues with one another. They simply decide they're okay with each other again and resume talking as if nothing ever came between them. Forgiveness is their silent apology.

- Sometimes you just have to accept your sibling chooses a different path but that bond can still remain.

- If she ever gets hurt or shot, Micah will go ape shit!!!! He loves an excuse to slaughter someone. That paired with the threat of his final family member being injured? Oh he'll wreck havoc on the poor soul that decided to fuck with his sister.

- As the days go on and Micah's betrayal becomes more and more clear. Some of the gang start projecting their feelings for Micah onto her. Watching her with great suspicion. This would hurt her deeply. She doesn't want to lose her new family and she'll struggle with this a lot.

- If she falls in love with anyone from the gang, she knows it needs to be kept a secret. If Micah ever finds out.... She knows her lover will "mysteriously" go missing one day.

- I think during the final showdown she wouldn't choose Micah's side. She decides to choose whatever life she started building for herself. Micah destroyed the gang that made her feel loved and accepted for the first time in her life. She's furious with him and can't even look at him anymore. If her lover survives, she'll choose to stay with the lover.

- After a few years guilt will eat away at her and she'll return to Micah, joining his gang. Despite her 'betrayal' I think Micah would welcome her with open arms.

- At the end of the day they're just two lost souls who accept each other in a very raw humanity type of way. No one will ever know them the way they know each other. After everything Micah and his sister have been through together they will always end up in the same place again and again.

#Micah Bell #Micah Bell x reader #Micah Bell's sister #rdr2 #my writing #answered

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howtofightwrite · 1 year

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I read your posts on different type of body armor. My story is a fantasy set in real life history and involves time travel. Magic to be honest is sporadic and most things are not magic. Can I just have modern armor being simply passed off as low grade magical armor due to it being superior to any normal weapons of the time? Low grade because it obviously isn't actually magicial armor, and thus fantasy weapons generally all are superior.

Probably not, for a couple reasons. Or, at least, not unless your modern era is radically different from what we see today.

The biggest issue is that modern body armor isn't designed to deal with medieval weapons. The kind of force that armor protects against has dramatically changed. Modern ballistic armor, like plate carriers or vests, aren't particularly effective against someone coming at you with an axe. Nor are they particularly effective against arrows. They're designed to deal with bullets, and while they'll offer some protection against someone with a knife, it's not what it's designed for.

Even the parts of the body that the armor protects, and the way heavier armor is fitted together, is not especially effective in prolonged melee combat against foes armed with swords, axes, or spears.

Though, the perk in this is that modern armor wouldn't have any issues dealing with archaic gunfire, assuming those shots connected with the armor at all. (Which isn't assured.)

Normally, if they were bringing modern firearms back with them, those would offer a significant advantage. Unsurprisingly, medieval armor was not designed to deal with 21stcentury gunfire. Unfortunately, this is not a certainty, because it's quite possible that the magical armor in the setting can withstand those gunshots. Worse, the enchanted weapons others are using may be able to carve through the modern armor with ease. It really depends on exactly what those enchantments are, but if there's an enchantment arms race going on (which seems likely), your characters might not get much value from their armor at all. (Though, this is a little speculative.)

Let's expand on that arms race theory a little, if you have multiple factions armed with magical gear, there's going to be a direct incentive to develop more effective enchantments. Given enough time, unless there are extremely harsh limits to what can be done via magic, any low magic setting will transition into a high magic setting. From a world building perspective, magic functions as parallel to technology, and these can advance independently of each other. If your foes have magical armor that can resist your weapons, it will be in your interest to develop enchantments that can overcome their armor. At the same time, you'll need armor that can resist their weapons. While this is happening, your enemies will be doing the same. This also applies to any spell with a potential military application. Mages would become increasingly important strategic resources as the potential edge they provide in warfare becomes more pronounced. Any faction that voluntarily abstained from using magic would find itself in an extremely tenuous position, as their neighbors, “teched up.” Failure to keep up is an invitation for any more ambitious ruler to vassalize your kingdom.

It's worth noting that this doesn't mean that any magical setting would automatically degenerate into a bipolar system. You could certainly see the same kind of splintered feudal system that dominated Europe in the middle ages, while also adding magic to the mix. Though, if magic facilitated easier communication and oversight, it's quite possibly this could result far more unified empires than what real world feudalism permitted.

The other major problem is that the modern armor isn't magical. So, this is a potential problem for any fantasy setting, whether time travel is involved or not. Magical gear is going to be more valuable than it's mundane counterparts. It's going to be rarer (unless you have of some kind of high magic, industrial revolution.) It's almost certainly going to be more difficult, and probably more expensive, to produce magical objects than to produce mundane ones. (Again, you could specifically engineer a setting where this isn't the case, but without carefully working around this, it's a very safe assumption.) So, magical items are going to be more valuable, and more expensive.

A suit of magical armor that offers additional protection to the wearer will be more valuable than an identical, mundane counterpart. Probably significantly more valuable. Even if the production costs aren't that much greater, the price tag is going to take a significant hike.

If you're an individual living in that world who is economical with their ethics, there's a lot of money to be made selling mundane arms and armor that looks magical. Particularly, if you're making your living as a wandering trader. That arcane sword you sold to a wannabe adventurer six months ago is just money in your pocket, it's not your fault that they ended up dead in some cairn, or ancient ruin. If by some miracle they did survive, well, that's why it's important to have guards who are loyal to you. So what's to stop you?

For any functional economy in magic items to exist, there need to be ways to quickly and accurately authenticate them. Without that, traders like the above example would be a plague. Enchanted gear would still be significantly more valuable, but your ability to sell it to people you don't have an established relationship with would be seriously limited, after all, convincing a stranger to pay for a, “magic sword,” when there's no way to prove that it actually is magical, would approach being a con job. (There are potential, partial workarounds for this problem. Such as having some kind of unified magical authority who certifies enchanters, but, again, that's trending back towards high magic settings.)

So, the critical problem about passing modern combat gear off as magical is that it's not. That it also looks strange (and probably looks ineffectual to the contemporaries) adds to this issue. Trying to claim, “oh, it's magical armor,” would look more like someone who's trying to pass off a cheap counterfeit as a luxury item, or an easy mark.

Now, it's possible that the armor might trick some magic identification techniques, either because of some quirk of its manufacture, or because the time travel has given it some faintly magical aura (which may also apply to the characters as well.)

So, the shortest version is, claiming their armor is magical probably wouldn't have the desired result, unless they wanted to be viewed as easy marks.

-Starke

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#how to fight write #Starke answers #writing advice #writing reference #writing tips #world building #writing fantasy

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juniperss · 2 months

Text

“Days Between”

Jinny {OC} x Eugene Sledge

Author’s note: uh yeah this wasn’t supposed to turn into a story but here we are…..I’m so normal about the childhood best friends to lovers trope with Eugene. I had this song on repeat the entire time I was writing

Tagging: @rosies-riveters (pls lemme know if you don’t wanna be tagged that’s totally fine LOL)

Content warnings: none

Word count: 1,580

“You’ll write when you have the time?” Jinny asked, turning her head to the side to peer at Eugene. He was propped up on his elbows and twirling a strand of golden grass between his fingers, the sunlight shining against his face giving him an almost ethereal quality.

Feeling her eyes on him, Eugene met her gaze and offered what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “ ‘Course I will. It’ll be like I never left.”

But of course that wasn’t true and they both knew it. Besides Sid Philips, Jinny was Eugene Sledge’s closest friend and he was her’s. The absence would be felt strongly and bitterly. It was bad enough that Sidney had already gone and the trio had been cut down to two, but now Eugene was going to leave too and Jinny wasn’t sure what her life looked like without him.

The grass around them gave them the illusion of shelter from the reality that in just a few days he would be gone for bootcamp and then to war. The fields and woods were their safe place; their childhood playground and teenage hideaways when the responsibilities of everyday life got to be too much. If one of them wasn’t at home it was likely that they could be found here.

“I’ll miss you.” Eugene spoke to the sky, but the words were meant for her.

Jinny looked up too, catching sight of a flock of birds taking off. There was so much she wanted to say to him: that she didn’t want him to leave, that she loved him more than a friend should love another and that she had for so long but the words were stuck in her throat and sat there choking her. It would be selfish for her to tell him those things, she chided herself. Telling him not to go when she knew how long he had dreamed of fighting was selfish. And telling him she loved him and risking ruining a friendship before he went to war? So instead she put all of the meaning and desires that made them up and put them into another phrase:

“I’ll miss you too.”

—

He was a liar.

Jinny knew the thought were harsh, unfair, and frankly untrue as soon as they flashed in her mind. She quickly banished it, sending up a “I’m sorry” to the heavens, and retrieved the box of bandages from the top shelf of the supply closet she was currently standing in.

Eugene had written, just like he said he would and as often as he could, and with each letter was the confirmation that he was alive. A sweet balm of relief however temporary. The real reason for the stinging pain in her chest was that no amount of letters would truly make up for him not being home. Because she did miss him and she felt it so acutely every moment. She had carefully folded each letter and tucked them into her nightstand to read again and again when her mind refused to stop worrying. And after she had read and reread them, she penned her own letters to him.

Recounting the mundane aspects of her life had seemed pointless and almost ridiculous when s he first put pen to paper. But the more she wrote and as her life shifted with her job at the hospital and rehabilitation center, the easier it came in sharing everything with Eugene. She hoped the stories about her visits to his parent’s home for dinner, her talks with soldiers during rounds, her ramblings about Sidney’s latest schemes now that he was home, her thoughts about everything and anything might lend the same sense of comfort his letters brought to her.

Even now as she set to work organizing the boxes meant to be shipped overseas she began drafting a letter to him, one that she knew she would never send.

“Dear Eugene, I love you. I can’t wait to take our walks together again and talk. I don’t even care about what we say. I just miss hearing your voice. When you’re home, I’ll tell you that in person, as much as you can bear to hear me say it. Just come home safe, that’s all I want more than anything now or ever. Yours always, Jinny.”

—

The grass tickled her calves as it moved in the breeze that was sending the trees into a frenzy. It wasn’t as warm as it had been earlier in the day and Jinny was thankful for the reprieve from the constant sweating under its rays. Her eyes closed and arms crossed against her chest she let her mind drift away from the day just like she had when she was younger. Even though Sidney’s return wasn’t enough to erase the ever present stain of Eugene’s absence, having him home was a blessing and made walking their childhood route less bitter. Jinny had missed his constant talking and easy to come by smiles and she found some solace in busying herself with asking details about his upcoming wedding.

But today she was making the walk by herself since Sidney was busy and just for a few moments with her eyes closed she could almost feel the peace that had been gone since the war began. How much she had changed shocked her when she truly sat down to think about it. She had been so concerned about others and focused on their wellbeing that her own growth and maturity had come as a surprise. She was tougher now in so many ways but a heaviness came with it and sat on her shoulders even as she left work behind for the day. There was still much of herself that she was figuring out. Yet in moments like this, in the silence and the familiarity and in the missing of her friend, she knew that there were still pieces of her old self there that hadn’t changed.

“Hey, Jinny.”

The air left her lungs like she'd suffered a kick to the chest, mind not quite comprehending who that voice belonged to and how he was there and how it had most definitely come from behind her. She turned slowly as if he was Eurydice and she was Orpheus and looking back would send Eugene’s soul back to the underworld.

Because it was Eugene and he was standing right there with his arms at his sides looking so smart in his uniform. She stared, soaking in all of him, searching for signs of how much he changed in the time he had been away. He was skinnier and he looked tired, and there was that bone deep exhaustion that she saw in the face of every soldier she met at the hospital. But she could still see the laugh lines around his eyes and the sun touching his ginger hair making it glow, and she knew that this was her friend even with all that he brought back with him.

And then she was moving and throwing her arms around him and pulling him into her body. There was the possibility that she was hugging him too tightly but she couldn’t quite bring herself to care as all the fears dissipated with him against her. He was solid and warm and his arms were around her waist now holding just as tightly as she was to him. She could feel cheek against her head and his breathing on her ear, and she wondered if he could feel her tears falling on him.

“Sorry I didn’t write the last few weeks. I was going to write you one last letter, but I figured I could say it all to you once we were face to face.”

Eugene’s voice was muffled but she could still hear him. There was a half hearted laugh against his shoulder and finally, after another few moments of holding onto each other, Jinny allowed herself to step back. Her hands were still clasping his arms as if he would vanish without her there to anchor. He was smiling now and so was she, reaching up to touch his cheek. “I guess I can let it slide this time.”

His hand covered hers to hold it there. It was calloused and strong, so different from the hands she remembered before. She was surprised to see him looking at her with the same curiosity and searching that mirrored her own. He was trying to see the parts of her that had changed and fill in all the pieces of what her letters did not tell him about what he had missed of her life. Eugene swallowed hard and shook his head, still smiling.

“I love you Jinny Collins.”

There were seldom moments in her life that she remembered being too stunned to say something. But standing here with Eugene in her arms Jinny found her mind reeling with his declaration. How many times had Jinny thought those same words? Even before he had left, she had dreamt of saying them to him. How many times had she thrown away a draft of a letter that had those three words written carefully at the end? She had loved him for so long. And he loved her? She cupped his cheek in her hand and stared up at him with teary eyes and uttered the phrase that she wished she had said the last day they were together in the field of grass:

“I love you too.”

#oc: virginia ‘jinny’ collins #jinny x eugene #the pacific #the pacific oc #hbo war #hbo war x reader #my writings #my writing #🏷️ my writings #🏷️ my ocs

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fictionadventurer · 15 days

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I don't know why this feels like such a revelation, but after watching the latest Moffat episode of Doctor Who, it clicked for me that the core difference between RTD and Moffat Who is that to RTD, the Doctor is God (or a metaphorical substitute for God), while Moffat's Doctor is a man in need of God.

Like, it's obvious RTD deifies the Doctor. The imagery is not subtle. And Moffat's Doctor is obviously a much more fallible man. But I hadn't fully considered how this affects the kinds of stories they tell.

In RTD's Who, the Doctor is someone who comes into a mundane human existence and gives it meaning. An encounter with the Doctor changes your life forever. You would follow him to the end of the universe if he asked, because life with him is infinitely better than life without him. Humans who try to reach the Doctor's level are struck down, because mere mortals cannot rise to the level of godhood. From a Christian perspective, this offers valid storytelling possibilities ("Human Nature/The Family of Blood", with its musings upon the Incarnation, fits perfectly in this era), but it does have the Doctor standing in the place of God, which suggests that the universe of RTD's worldview doesn't have one and needs the Doctor to fill that gap.

In Moffat's Who, on the other hand, the Doctor is a wondrous, impossible, legendary being--but still just a man. He can guide you through some of the best or most terrifying moments of your life--but your life has meaning outside of him. His companions learn over and over again the perils of relying on him too completely. Ordinary people can be just as good--or better--than him, because the Doctor is just another man, growing and changing and trying to find his place in the universe.

Moffat's Doctor is extremely aware that he's in a story--and he is not the author. In "The Doctor Dances" he is aware of how death-filled his stories usually are, and is ecstatically grateful when he is permitted a story where everybody lives. In "Blink", he and Sally are both following a script--but neither one of them wrote it; though they have free will, this story came from outside of them. Of course, these are examples of Moffat's meta exploration of storytelling--but the fact remains that his Doctor exists in a world where there is a greater force that runs everything.

And the Doctor resists this. He remains skeptical, arrogant, independent--but he is always searching for something more.

All this crystallized when watching "Boom". There, the Doctor is facing soldiers in a religious war, and he sneers that they didn't notice anything fishy because they "had faith, which keeps you from ever having to think for yourself." Those are the brutal words of every hackneyed internet atheist, and since the soldiers were wrong to have faith in this war, it seems like the story's saying the Doctor's right, and religion's just the "opiate of the masses".

And yet.

The episode ends with the Doctor telling a little girl to hold onto faith, and when the religious character points out that the Doctor was stridently against faith, the Doctor replies, "Just because I don't like it doesn't mean I don't need it."

Isn't that the Christian experience in a nutshell? How many of us are tempted to think that life would be so much easier if we didn't follow God? And yet we can't leave it aside because we need God. We need meaning outside ourselves, and life with God is better than life without him.

But this isn't the Whedon-ish universe where it doesn't matter if it's true so long as believing does something good for you. There is objective truth, and the Doctor is aware of it. He is aware that love is the most powerful force in the universe. (God is love). He is aware that everyone and everything dies, yet knows that something lingers on. (God is stronger than death). The Doctor is in a world where God exists, and even if he (or his writer) doesn't know it, he needs him, is searching for him, and to some extent, believes in him, because he can't deny these truths that he's seen. And I cannot get over how many different ways Moffat has been exploring these themes all these years.

#doctor who #steven moffat #catholic things #i went to that episode hoping to see the usual themes #but i didn't expect to see them escalated to the ultimate extent #i am going to be thinking about that ending scene for the rest of my life #i know i've always said moffat's who is catholic but this is the first time i've thought the doctor could be catholic

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shirohige-pirates · 6 months

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Birds of a Feather

CisFem Reader x Marco

CW: Violence, blood, language, adult themes and scenes. 18+ only

Summary: Life has not been kind to you. After a string of bad relationships, you're a little jaded and a little depressed in all honestly. The worst day of your life seems to be the turning point, but the roller coaster ride that follows could either throw you soaring free, or have you caged forever?

Tag List: @clumsyraccoon

Chapter 27: Birthday Day

Monday to Tuesday, Wednesday moving into Thursday, the week went by easily. Breakfast together in the morning, lunch when you could together, and dinner at night. Having someone else around made your routine more routine, and less routine at the same time.

It’s hard to skip meals when someone else is looking out for you, it’s easier to wake up to a house that isn’t empty. Not that you felt like you had been struggling before, but there was just something motivating about having Marco around.

He went to work at the animal Hospital on Saturday, and you almost asked if you could tag along. Even if Saturdays were generally laid back, you didn’t want to intrude in a space where you had no idea how to help. Maybe one day you’d swing by during an easy Saturday and bring coffee for everyone. Or some weekday when Ivankov made you take a day off work whether you wanted to or not.

In the quiet moments of being together you had comfortable conversations. You learned more about his brothers, and through that more about him. You spoke of favorite foods and moments, of shows or books you enjoyed. You swapped stories of work, and all the little mundane moments that made life quietly interesting.

Your grocery list became less a reflection of yourself, and more a reflection of yourselves. You were both so easy going at the end of the day that the changes were gentle, subtle, and welcome.

One thing that had become more difficult, however, was trying to plan anything without letting on that you were planning things. It wasn’t like telling Marco you were going to surprise him for his birthday would ruin the surprise, but you wanted to be able to keep as much quiet as possible.

You did inform him that he would need to be absolutely sure that he was done with work on time. It was bad enough he was working on his birthday, but working over was wholly unacceptable as far as you were concerned.

Especially when you had plans.

It was the first day since the two of you had moved in together that you went into work in separate cars. You wanted to get home early and get some stuff set up, and had already worked out working half a day in order to make that happen. Marco had a full day, but had promised to neither leave early nor work over, giving you plenty of time to do whatever you needed to.

He even promised to send a text before he left the clinic.

Nearly four hours was plenty of time, but even so you had to constantly slow yourself down as you went about setting things up for his surprise. You couldn’t get much done before hand, but you were able to swing by the local adult store to grab a couple things before heading home.

A little nervous cleaning, a little food prep so dinner would be easier to put together, and a quick shower, and you got yourself ready.

Presenting yourself as the gift for his birthday was a little over the top, but honestly you weren’t sure what to even get him. If he collected anything, or had a specific kind of book he liked, or anything along those lines you weren’t sure. You knew some of his interests, but maybe because he was effectively the eldest brother, most of his conversation slid into talking about his siblings.

You probably could’ve gifted him gloves, except that had a specific double meaning between you both already. A sweater, maybe could’ve been a safe choice, but when he’d moved some of his clothes into your house he’d admitted he already had what felt like too many and needed to consider donating some.

You could’ve made a run to the bookstore, and hoped that Gram was working, but even then it was hard to say if you would’ve gotten anything useful out of her in a short conversation. Plus there was something that Marco had said, about still getting to know one another.

So here you were, watching the clock as you pulled on a crotchless fishnet style body stocking. You put a sheer lingerie set over it, that has a blue-ish tint to it. It was dappled with cute little bows in different pastel colors, and had a lacy, half-boxer style bottom to go with it. Your phone dinged, the text message from Marco that he was on his way.

You sent him a text back, letting him know that there would be something he needed to read when he arrived, and to be careful coming home.

It was all relatively cheap, not that you were overly concerned with the cost, but the idea was that if he wanted to destroy it, he could. The body stocking especially, as they rarely survived two or three uses at most. Once you got all that on, you put on a of strappy wedge shoes, the type that were hard to move silently in, and placed a fluffy sleep on a small tray.

You slipped a note under the mask and set the tray in the hallway. Far enough away from the door he wouldn’t accidentally step on it before seeing it, and close enough that he wouldn’t find you before reading it. It wasn’t long before you heard the car pull in, the turn of a key in the lock, the soft swing of the door opening.

It’d been years since you were so wound up before things even truly began, but anticipation was killing you.

“I’m home, pretty bird.” Marco says, voice going soft as he notices the tray. You can practically hear the smile on his face as he takes off his shoes and coat and picks up the items on the floor. “Let’s see what you have planned,” he murmurs almost too himself as he opens the note.

Dear Marco,Happy birthday!

Your “gift” is loose in the house, and you need to find her - it, I mean it. Please put on the special “goggles” provided and seek out your shy, and elusive prey gift.

P.S. You’re welcome to unwrap your gift as you see fit.

“Alright, my sweet little bird,” he says, amusement dripping from his voice. “I accept.” You hear a little shuffle followed by the sound of the tray being set down on the counter and the sound of, you assumed, the mask being put on.

“If I stub my toe,” he teases, “you’re taking all my birthday spankings, yoi.”

“You’re what?” You question, surprise overtaking sense. You and Marco move at the same time, the clack of your shoes causing him to adjust his course. You duck under an outstretched hand stepping onto one of the rugs, stepping carefully and slowly for a bit, putting some distance between you and him.

“It’s a tradition.” He explains, hands out a little in front of him before he straightens up and starts to focus again. “You get as many swats as you are years young, yoi.”

You press your lips together, biting back a small flood of snarky comments, and you can see Marco smile.

“Ah, couldn’t get you to speak again, could I?” He muses. “That’s alright. I won’t even use my haki for this.”

Right. Observation haki.

Despite Marco’s words, something about how confident he was to handicap himself even further sent a chill through you. You stepped off the carpet a little heavier than you meant to, the soft clack of your wedges hitting the hard floor. You saw his body tense, even though he didn’t even turn toward you, and you tried so hard to stay still.

But the entire situation had your heart pounding in your ears, and the point was to eventually get caught. You couldn’t stay still forever.

You and Marco move at the same time, and his sudden movement in your general direction pulls a surprised squeak from your lips. Clapping your hands over your mouth so you don’t devolve straight into nervous giggles, you take long strides across the wooden floor. You can feel long finger graze across your back and a strange noise bubbles up in you as you turn aside, letting Marco step past you before you head back in the opposite direction.

There’s no stealth currently, and you both probably look like utter fools, but the only thing keeping you just out of his reach is your ability to see. You can’t stop the laughter that’s escaping you in a mix of nerves, need and delight.

Marco looks almost as relaxed as he usually is, but you can tell he’s honestly trying to catch you. There’s a tension in his arms and fingers that’s not usually there, muscles twitching beneath smooth skin, tendons taut. He might not be using haki to find you, but you’re certain he’s using other skills to do so. The smile on his face is one that seems both amused and challenged.

“You’re going to make this too easy if you don’t stop laughing.” He teases, teeth bared in his smile. If you could see his eyes right now, you imagine the fire in them would consume you entirely.

“I’m tryiiiiiiiing, ah hahaha, no, wait - ack!” Your giggled whine turns into a bit of surprise as you just barely manage to twist away from a quick hand.

You dart away from him, leaving the living room and heading down the hallway. There’s more than just the bedroom down that way, so you purposefully clack around and open a couple doors before pressing yourself against a wall and forcing your breathing to steady.

You’ve only been still for a few seconds when Marco appears in the hall, arms spread wide enough to brush his fingers against either wall at the same time. You’re glad there’s at least one door between you and him, but you’re starting to think that you needed to just go to the end of the hall at the least.

Your hope had been that he’d go into the bedroom, expecting you to be in there, giving you plenty of room to very carefully work your way back into the more open space of the living room. But from the looks of things, he was likely to just walk the entire hall before bothering with any of the rooms.

He stops at the bedroom door, fingers slipping into the open air. A smile slips along his lips and for a moment you’re reminded a little of Eustass Kid. At least, in so much that you never thought anyone else could smile with such a cocksure grin quite like he could.

Oh what a time to be wrong.

“My pretty bird,” he muses, voice dripping with celebration. “Who sounds so sweet,” he states, taking a step forward. “Who tastes… so sweet,” he nearly purrs the words, stepping closer to you like he can see you through the mask.

You can’t move. He’s too close for one, and for two his words have you held in place as sure as if his fingers were wrapped around your throat.

“And who smells so sweet.” He says, hands on the wall on either side of you. His body doesn’t even touch yours, but he leans down, nuzzling against your hair before leaving gentle kisses against your ear and neck. Soft gasps of pleasure escape your lips as your body shivers against the wall. “Something to say, pretty bird?”

“Haa-Happy Birthday, Marco.” You manage to stammer as he leans back and pulls the sleep mask off. The sure smile on his face breaks a little, eyes going wide and jaw going slack for a second as he takes in just what you’re wearing.

His finger slips under one of the straps of the lingerie, and he follows the line of it before hooking his finger around it and pulling it down your shoulder slowly.

“It seems my gift was wrapped so well, I’ll need to take my time unwrapping her.”

#Birds of a Feather #Marco x reader #x reader #reader insert #marco the phoenix #marco the pineapple #modern au

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hush-writes-preg · 2 years

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Could I get a story about a pregnant guy in the military? After a few too many romps with one of his cadets, an officer finds that his uniform has grown snug in the belly and sensitive in the chest. Maybe he’ll try to hide it at first, but eventually has to come clean. Preferably angsty in the beginning, but pure fluff by the end. And I think the whole situation would be 10x funnier if the cadet kept teasing him about knocking up the one who supposed to be in charge :)

I truly love your work! Thank you for all that you do!

Aww, thank you so much! I hope this story makes up for the delay I experienced in responding to your ask.

You're a captain at the local military academy where you act as an instructor. You're a familiar face around the campus and fairly popular with the students, though you do your best to retain a certain amount of professional distance from them. Your career is your life, and you feel that there are certain lines that shouldn't be crossed.

But everyone has needs, even a straightlaced army captain like you.

There's a bar in a neighboring town with a certain reputation, and you find yourself gravitating there when you're in need of some physical relief from the stress of life. One night, you meet a young man with bright eyes and a stunning smile who looks at you like he'd gladly lick every inch of your body, and it doesn’t take long before the two of you are stumbling into a hotel room. He's energetic and voracious in his sexual appetite, and you found yourself fucked from nearly every angle you can think of that night while he makes you feel like a horny teenager all over again.

You part ways before the sun rises, just as you always do, and you return to your mundane life with a bit more pep in your step.

It isn't until a few weeks later when the newest batch of recruits rolls in that you find yourself face-to-face with the guy who'd nearly fucked your brains out. Unfortunately for you, he's one of the cadets-- and he recognizes you as well. And the memories of your steamy night together make it very hard to hold on to your morals.

You manage it for about two days, in fact, until he finally confronts you in your office. The next thing you know, you're bent over the desk with your pants around your ankles, biting at your shirt sleeve to keep from crying out.

Another day, he takes you in a bathroom stall. Then in a study room at the library. And then late one night in the gym showers. You discover all sorts of hidden nooks and quiet janitor's closets together over the coming weeks as you struggle to keep your hands off of each other.

This sort of fraternization goes against everything you believe in, but when he's balls-deep inside of you, it's hard to do anything other than take it and let the pleasure drown out those nagging thoughts.

Months pass. Neither of you can put a name to this thing you have, but that doesn't stop you from fucking whenever you can.

But as time goes on, you're embarrassed to find your uniform growing a little tight around the middle as your belly starts to swell. Not only that, but your chest has gotten weird-- a little puffy, a lot more sensitive, and your nipples even seem to grow darker.

You have a sneaking suspicion that you know what's going on, and the thought terrifies you.

You start to find yourself avoiding your cadet lover out of fear that he'll be disgusted by the changes. You swap out your uniform for a larger size in hopes that it'll hide your increasingly round belly, but you know it'll only be a matter of time before people start asking questions. What will your coworkers say? How will the other cadets react? What's going to happen to your reputation?

The added stress doesn't make your morning sickness any easier to deal with.

But you can only avoid your lover for so long. You're in your office one afternoon doing a little paperwork when he barges right in, pausing only long enough to lock the door behind himself before he's rounding the desk. "Alright, we need to talk."

"You're out of place, Cadet," you choke out, avoiding his gaze. "I don't have time for this right now."

He drops to a crouch at your side, the same bright eyes that first caught your attention now searching yours in concern. "Why are you avoiding--" Then his gaze drops down to your middle and he immediately grows silent.

You stare down at your paperwork, unable to look at him in fear of what you might find.

The next thing you know, the same strong hands that have grown so familiar wrapped around your hips are sliding over the firm bulge of your belly. He smooths over fabric that's already starting to be stretched a little too tight yet again, and the gentle touch leaves you shivering. "So this is what you've been hiding from me."

"What do you expect? Can you even begin to imagine how the brass is gonna react when they realize what I've done?"

"Hey, Cap." He leans up to press a kiss against your cheek. "We'll figure it out, okay? I'm not gonna let you shoulder all of this alone. It's mine, isn't it?"

"Yeah," you softly reply, and all goes quiet again for a moment. His hands are a soothing balm against both your belly and your soul, and the warm strokes of his fingers start leaching away some of the tension in your shoulders.

"…You know, most people would probably expect our positions to be switched."

"How so?"

"I mean, isn't the stereotype usually of an innocent cadet getting taken advantage of by their superior officer?" He chuckles, glancing up at you with a crooked grin. "But I went and knocked up the guy who's supposed to be in charge instead."

You groan, dropping your pen to drag fingers through your short-cropped hair. "Cadet."

"Yes, Captain?" His voice is serious but the smirk on his face is anything but, and the mischievous hands drifting down to your belt buckle suggest that he's about to take his insubordination to a whole new level. He settles on his knees just as he peels your trousers open to press an open-mouthed kiss against the front of your underwear. "Would you like me to stop, sir?"

You shake your head. "As you were, soldier," you manage to choke out, and it's the last thing either of you say for a long time.

#hush answers #Anonymous #hush writes preg #military pregnancy #male pregnancy #mpreg #ftm pregnancy

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frociaggine · 1 year

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i also don't know if this is an unpopular opinion, but: I felt like the "mundane" scenes in ntn were actually some of the most interesting and thematically relevant parts of the whole. the way the sections about the new rho refugees are paired with john telling his story as a series of "necessary evils" was especially compelling to me -- it feels like all of the consequences of his/the empire's power are finally being revealed, and one of the worst consequences is that kids are still being traumatized by war and displacement in the same ways they were on pre-apocalypse earth. i feel like that's why new rho had to feel so "familiar" and "modern-day" compared to the fantasy vibes of the nine houses. like, until ntn we had no clear picture of what the rest of the empire looks like, or even what war(s) the cohort is involved in. but then when you find out, it hits you that for the average subject of the empire, there's no "heroic" interpretation of anything necros and cavs train to do -- they're nothing but parts of the machine that's constantly destroying people's lives. and this pov is presented as just as important as that of the main characters! idk, it's a jarring shift and the pacing is pretty off-putting, but it worked for me (thematically and emotionally). another thought: when harrow and mercy were off killing planets, there was no indication that humans lived on any of them, iirc, but in ntn it's revealed that lyctors have forced large numbers of people off of their home planets. so were john & co. lying to the new lyctors about that, or is it just considered normal/justified in-universe and not worth mentioning? in any case, harrow seemed really disconnected from what killing a planet means (in htn), and i feel like that could end up being a big deal when we get back to her perspective. especially given that she's finally interacting with alecto

I love this ask, thank you. I think a lot about this post about John and Kevin, two kids playing with dolls ten thousand years and a galaxy apart. Humanity is fundamentally the same; there's love and there's bad everywhere. Both John (duh) and BoE ("necromancy is a disease you released" don't get that).

On John's revenge: the thing is, the Cohort isn't killing people. Like, they definitely don't mind killing people, but it's not their primary mission by far. John could literally kill millions in a heartbeat if his objective was extermination. He could have sent the Lyctors to wipe out entire planets generations earlier. Instead, he's using the Cohort and the resources of the Houses to drive the population of the occupied planets from place to place, over and over. He's dooming the descendants of those who left earth "on dollar store support" to a perpetual hell as climate refugees. Like Augustine says, it's purely symbolic retribution.

(IMO, this quest has an end point and we would have been in the home stretch no matter what; this is more of a verge into theoryland, but I think he does have a plan and a time limit, and he's playing capricious deity biding his time. After that, it's reboot, and maybe (?) actually letting go. Something something forgiveness not so hard nor anger long. This time will be the time we get it right.)

On Harrow & co killing planet: I think HtN actually lays the difference out pretty cleary! They were killing all planets on the path of Varun (so he couldn't kill them first and absorb them). When a Lyctor kills a planet, it's immediate. The Cohort does it to make it easier for necromancers to use thanergy; we don't know the specifics but I'm pretty sure it's fucked up (since John, of all people, says that the way Lyctors do it is "kinder"). Anyway, dead planets can no longer support native lifeforms, but iirc the process takes a long time to complete. Ianthe says that New Rho was "settled" 700 years earlier; what I'm assuming happened is that all planets in a given corner of space are "flipped" within a very short timeframe, remain viable for life for a few generations, and then probably become inhospitable for native lifeform all around the same time and everyone needs to be evacuated. I THINK they can be resettled after, but like, the entire biosphere is fucked.

#Anonymous #ntn #tlt #tlt thoughts #ejg #me every time i have a john emotion: TERRIBLE GUY (affectionate)

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knackfandomarchive · 3 months

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could i ask for some lucas headcanons bc all of the ones you've posted so far are really cute lmao (he is my son)

Oh Bestie, you sweet-talker, you!

Umm... I'm so sorry; I had already talked about most of these before; I don't have much and only have like 15k words of prose across all my documents. I'm bringing these ideas up again mainly for context and in case some readers haven't seen them yet. This is sort of like an overview for the first segment of my story, and also some brief character analyses of certain scenes. I'm also not sure what would spoil my story or not.

I forgot how English works (and it's my only language).

Also this is depressing AF... I tried to put all the doom and gloom into this first part, so if anyone reading this wants to skip to the part that says, "I avoid giving Lucas any diagnosis..." then be my guest. It's. Half the post, tho.

And I'll post the art separately tomorrow, so people won't have to read the depressing stuff to see it.

With that, I can shakily point to a few foundational scenes I over-analyzed. Especially this one:

Where to start...

As we may recall in the first game, the Doctor complains to Ryder that it was easier to take care of Lucas when he was younger, and, "now he wants to know How and Why and debate everything. It's really quite trying at times."

This just sounds like puberty to me. Dad agreed; the Doctor probably received Lucas at a young, easy-to-please age and got used to that lifestyle. But as Lucas grew older, taking more independence, and forming his own opinions - normal development stuff - this resulted in conflict - the form of which I'm still unsure of.

So, I have Lucas lose his mom around eight years old. It's that vulnerable spot where he's old enough to remember her well, and young enough that he has little in the way of coping mechanisms. And while puberty is right around the corner, it gives the Doctor some time to know him before then.

Another thing to add, my Dad mentioned something Lucas said while reaching for his locket:

We're taking a literal approach to this. Not only is this device the last thing he has left of his mother, it's also the only thing he has left of his old life; all of his belongings had been destroyed or lost. We discussed possible causes, and I prefer something horrible and yet mundane. Not super newsworthy outside of his hometown. A fire, maybe?

Lucas needed a new home. And his father was never mentioned, which could mean anything (I haven't gotten around to that). In any case, they were not in the picture by this time. Next of kin would be Ryder or other family members.

We can recall Ryder in a later scene asking if Lucas wonders why the Doctor takes care of him, rather than Ryder doing so. Ryder explains his own unavailability as being very busy. I take this to mean two-fold: he was the only alternative when it came to raising Lucas, and it wasn't due to his capability to parent. So, if Lucas had other blood relatives, they never stepped up. Naturally, this results in Lucas feeling unwanted.

So many characters I need to get right... Lucas lost his mom, and Ryder lost his sister. Ryder may have thought himself and his life situation too unstable. Like he couldn't afford the responsibility on top of the grief and whatever else he had going on. Lucas stays with him for only as long as it takes to arrange a plan with the Doctor. I think Ryder might have some mental troubles of his own that would make raising a child difficult. But the Doctor isn't much better on that front.

Doctor Vargas seems to have had a lingering emotional wound since Charlotte disappeared, and based on vibes was likely a lonely, somewhat reserved man. But his living situation is the most stable, and he has kept it together for so long. And if he ever imagined having children, this would fill that need. So the arrangement - as my Dad suggested, and as I will have Ryder suggest - is a two birds, one stone kind of deal. The hope is that Doc and Lucas would help each other get better, and not worse.

Lucas is taken to the Doctor's Mansion, where Ryder will say goodbye. I have Ryder keep a stoic demeanor; he's trying to stay strong for Lucas. Even holding his breath to keep it from shuddering when they hug. But Lucas really could have benefitted from a more vulnerable moment with him, instead. Ryder is the one who gives Lucas the locket as a parting gift. Lucas begs him not to go, but Ryder can only say he's sorry.

I don't know the boy's educational situation exactly, but after that, his grades drop, he becomes more withdrawn, and his friends, if he has any, don't know how to help him. What are the chances they're mainly fair-weather friends, who go play with someone else when Lucas starts being a bummer? At least I haven't invented bullies to harass him on top of this. Actually, there's a chance that Lucas would be the bully, but I haven't decided.

Have I mentioned Lucas crying at night? He can just about gloomily keep it together during the day, but at night, when he's alone with his thoughts, he falls apart, and his crying soon wakes up the Doctor. Losing his mother and then feeling abandoned by his uncle and other relatives, it's a major blow to the self-esteem. And when his whole world is turned upside down in one fell swoop, it leaves him with a peculiar feeling.

Here is where I point out the next aspect:

Right here, this could have been the end of Lucas. And the Doctor can only watch him go. If I look at it from a more thematic view, Lucas's loss is so devastating to him that he'll clutch the memory of his mother and what he had before she died, at the expense of living himself.

So we have a semi-suicidal eight-year-old living with an older scientist and anyone else who lives in the same building. Scientists and their families from all over the world! I still don't know how the Doctor is going to take care of him. Lucas when he's older is grateful to the Doctor for taking him in, but doesn't seem to me to think of him as a father figure (but perhaps I just forgot something). And my grasp on the Doctor's character is extremely flimsy, despite him virtually being the protagonist of the first game.

I'm not sure how familiar Lucas is with Doctor Vargas. The boy's mom was a colleague, and Ryder trusts the Doctor a great deal, so at least they're not strangers. But Little Lucas might not have paid much attention to the Doctor. Maybe they played peek-a-boo a time or two. I can imagine a dark-haired toddler running under tables at company picnics or something. Doc might have showed him a couple neat gadgets or gifted him some. I dunno yet. What could be the KNACK-equivalent of a Game Boy?

During Lucas's crying spells, I kind of have the Doctor treat him like he's physically sick. Hold him while he cries, put a hand on his shoulder while he throws up, that sort of thing. Uhh, soup - in a big ol' thermos. Gotta stay hydrated and replenish those electrolytes.

Lucas crying and the Doctor consoling him is a regular occurrence for maybe a week or two, and the Doctor can't hide his exhaustion well. Still working out the details, but essentially Lucas doesn't really stop crying after that, he's just quieter about it and lies about it and Doctor Vargas doesn't press the issue. But the Doctor does worry. Lucas seems exhausted all the time, and when he's not hunched over and listless, or politely playing along with whatever to satisfy the grown-ups, he's throwing tantrums about the pointlessness of homework and anything else he doesn't want to do. I made that up. Sometimes he does still find joy in some things, and while it's temporary, it gives Doctor Vargas some hope.

The Doctor's thoughts, as they often do, turn to Charlotte, and how he felt after losing her. And what happened on that fateful day.

Lucas has a well-known love of puzzles. Because I want him to. And especially puzzles in video games. And what is science but a series of puzzles?

Before his mother's passing, I imagine Lucas enjoyed school and gained some reputation among his peers for being a nerdy kid and very smart. Naturally this would result in some peers getting close to him to improve their academic metrics or because they have similar interests. Maybe he has an interest in - the foundational stuff a seven-to-eight-year-old learns about - physics. I imagine he found his mommy's work very interesting and would ask her a lot of questions, sometimes rehashing the same ideas again and again (as my sibling did when they were little).

After she's gone, he still loves puzzles, but much like anything else, the experience of playing with them is tinged with regret. At the Doctor's place, I'm sure there are some other children and young folk living there, too, but I don't know how Lucas feels about them. I have to make so many characters...

I think Lucas would piece together some jigsaw puzzles in the lounge areas. And also slurp up much of the hot cocoa during winter time, but I digress.

Hmm. I need him to accumulate a small collection of toys, but I'm not sure yet who gives them to him and when. If he receives them all too soon and from strangers (scientists who find him endearing), he might feel sour about being pitied. At the same time, if he had a lot of toys before the fire, he'll sure miss their absence. Anyway, some things like: a small chess set, from which he'll lose some pieces, sidewalk chalk, a new gaming device with Tetris and a few other games on it, jump rope, a skateboard (actually a longboard), a Rubik's Cube, and some plushies. I want him to get the device and a plushy or two fairly quickly.

He mainly plays with the gaming device, and while it fills time and is entertaining, it does not fill the void. Still, the Doctor taps his shoulder one day.

"So. I heard you like puzzles?" Said more like a statement than a question.

Lucas doesn't fully understand the situation at first, on the order of a few hours or a day or so, when the Doctor shows him the orb. Doc tries to have a heart-to-heart moment with Lucas, but what the Doctor *says* reads like Chekhov's plasma cannon and I don't have the 'payoff' for that lined up, so I might change it.

But once it clicks for Lucas, it's like a switch is flipped. He smiles more and starts getting genuinely excited about things again. It helps that I had a pipe-dream of making Knack's puzzle a mini-game, so Lucas finds it fun. I'll want to add more to it, probably, depending on how I interpret Knack. I also have a headcanon that Knack's orb resembles a plasma globe in some tactile characteristic; Lucas likes to touch or hold it at every opportunity because it vaguely feels like something is going on in there. It's just so cool! The Doctor may or may not appreciate the novelty.

So it's like, Knack provides Lucas an opportunity to climb to his feet again. More indirectly than the screenshot, though.

I apparently got someone's game-play video confused for a trailer, and misinterpreted the YouTuber's voice as Lucas's voice, so one version of this post mentioned Knack having an incidental role of 'guardian' to Lucas. I still might want to play with that, though.

Anyway, if you're curious as to why Lucas finds the orb so much more satisfying than other puzzles, it's because of the angst. I had initially intended for Lucas to work on the project as something to distract him, much like any other puzzle, give him something to look forward to, and help him bond with Doctor Vargas. The Doctor himself hopes it can help the both of them move on from their losses, and hopes it can help him teach Lucas a thing or two.

But, somehow surprising even to me, Lucas seems to have taken it upon himself to solve this particular puzzle as a measure of value. If he can play a big part in solving it, and contribute to a grown-up scientific achievement, then he's worth all the trouble, right? Then he'll actually amount to something and be worth loving.

... I'm not sure what to say next except that I want to bonk him on the head with a paper towel roll and tell him he's being silly. And then give him a big hug.

At least he lets himself be happy again. In fact, his educational situation might flip from being too aloof to being too distracted. Doodling odd symbols in the margins of his homework and tapping his feet when he should be studying.

He still cries at night sometimes, though. Umm... trying to rack my brain here...

I avoid giving Lucas any diagnosis. Is this a bad idea? Would it be preferred I name his issues, and do research on them?

I kinda just make stuff up.

Okay, switching gears now. This part is more scattered because I don't know how to string the ideas together.

I think I mentioned the Doctor taking Lucas to places like museums and carnivals and aquariums.

Lucas might be prone to jealousy, at least when he is young, and becomes slightly possessive over the orb. This doesn't come up much beyond pressing his lips together, avoiding eye contact, and nursing a bitter feeling when the Doctor improves some experimental hardware without Lucas's prior knowledge. Lucas wonders if the Doctor had continued solving parts without him. Not sure if I should drop it.

Lucas is about ten years old by the time Knack is Manifested. I picked ten years old just 'cause that's about two years of working on the puzzle, enough time to build that machine. I don't want it to take too long or short because the puzzle I'm going with currently makes the Doctor look a bit stupid.

I have Lucas as twelve years old when the first game starts, because that's about middle-school age where the puberty does the things. And about 16 or so in the sequel, trying to balance the moved-out thing with the uncharacteristically immature behavior.

Also because Ava seems about 16 and Dad said that number makes sense for her role as a youth leader, and Ava and Lucas seem like peers. Man, they really flopped on the framing for the scene in this shot! I can hardly see Lucas at all with low brightness. Maybe it's different when you play it yourself.

Dad also told me something that I interpreted to mean most media is really bad at establishing ages. So I'm not sure what to do with that.

Anyway, ten years old.

I'm still not sure how, after the excitement of success subsides, Lucas will initially react to the creature made of stone. His reaction will probably depend on his background. Early drafts have him fed fairy tales that paint goblins unfavorably. And since the creature resembles a goblin in some aspects, Lucas freaks himself out or intimidates the little guy. But these drafts felt silly or off, because the creature is all smiles when he wakes up, and we know he's friendly. Also the Doctor just stands there. So I'll come up with something else, probably.

Regarding Knack's relationship with Lucas: When I see other people describe their relationship as sibling-like (a headcanon), they tend to position Knack as the elder. I may need to double-check; the fandom is pretty small and I haven't read much of the fanfictions. Another headcanon I saw a couple times is that Knack had been alive/conscious a long, long time ago.

But recently someone told me they interpret Lucas as the elder!

My interpretation is that Lucas steps up to that particular plate, first.

My idea goes: before anyone knows for sure that Knack's creature type also includes being a person, Lucas treats him a bit like a toddler and a pet, himself acting as the older brother and sorta babysitter. Still trying to decide if Knack knows he is a person at this stage... It seems like in both games, Lucas tends to talk to him like he's giving him a tutorial.

So I gotta figure out how the Doctor, Lucas, and some other folks turn a sweet little bean into the Knack we all know and love. And how Knack and the Doctor etc, do the same with Lucas.

Lucas is so silly!

I know you saw the one about the first night, Bestie [D;? but I'm not sure how to explain it concisely here. A lot of these I feel would be best shown in a comic series.

There is very much a theme of reciprocation in my story. That might be the wrong word. I'm thinking of familial affection. Lucas just doesn't get enough, and so, doing unto others as he would want to be treated, offers attention to Knack. What to list as examples... Reading him stories, nuzzling, very simple dancing. Probably more but I am my brain is made of Swiss cheese.

I did mention Knack being a sleepy baby on here at first, but I don't think I mentioned that Lucas worries if he's dying or something. It's like if you brought home a baby creature, but had no idea what it eats or needs to live, and then it acts groggier and less responsive, and can barely hold its head up... The Doctor kind of scoffs and says it's highly unlikely (not in a mean way), possibly thinking of Knack more like a device. But even if the Doctor is confident, Lucas isn't convinced. And Baby Knack doesn't know how to ask for what he needs, so he kind of furrows his brow and squints and makes little grumbling noises and like. I'm not sure how to describe it. It's like he kneads invisible dough or something? And he frequently glances up at Lucas or the Doctor.

Lucas tries really hard to not-cry and seem reasonable, but he can't help reaching out to pet the little guy's head. The creature responds very favorably, still sleepy. Leading Lucas to bring him into a hug, possibly picking him up. The creature is soothed by this, and after wrapping his arms around Lucas, he promptly falls asleep. Or something idk. Everything is a work in progress.

Knack occupies a weird role at first, and even later on occasion: something sort of like a pet, but not quite. Lucas is primarily the one who initiates the interactions like that, but sometimes the Doctor does as well. Knack himself does not understand until later.

I know it's silly to have Lucas pet him. He's basically a rock, even if he reminds me of a teddy bear sometimes. But look at that face! Lucas can feel warm and fuzzy just knowing that his little puzzle buddy likes him.

I also have Lucas very interested in Knack as a person, like how he's feeling and what he thinks. I think it would be funny if he gets good at reading Knack's body language, but not so good at interpreting his words sometimes. I'm kind of throwing out that scene in 2 where Knack gives Lucas an odd look for presuming what he's thinking and framing it as a 'talk'; if Lucas paid any attention to Knack, he would have done something like that a long time ago. And so I have him *do*: Early on, Lucas talks to the Doctor for Knack, like an untrained interpreter. And sometimes even airs his own grievances as if Knack is 'saying' so.

I mean, I *guess* I could have Lucas be oblivious to Knack's emotional situation unless it suits him, but then like. I dunno. That doesn't fit the little guy I made up so far. What feels more like Lucas?

Lucas sometimes imitates Knack's mannerisms and vice versa. Also expect recycled dialogue. I think Lucas vicariously experiences some adventure through Knack.

I still think Lucas gets swole by playing with Knack all the time.

Later, Knack and Lucas switch big-brother-little-brother roles based on the scene.

(I got this screenie from MoeePlays. The rest of the unwatermarked ones are from FullPlaythroughs.)

You may also see Knack playing the big-brother role while being Little Knack, if I can communicate that well enough. I think it's interesting. And the reverse.

Dad compared the way I describe Knack to Lennie Smalls in "Of Mice and Men", and suggested Lucas could be made somewhat like George. I must say, I hadn't read that story before then. So that was a wild ride! Now George, he's kind of prickly, which Lucas seems to be in the second game, but I'm a little hesitant. Dad also mentioned something about George's dream, and maybe Lucas could have something like that. I think I know what he means, and it's probably a reason I feel stuck in the 'ending' I had written; the dream feels impossible.

Jumping around again; if you were to talk to Lucas about Knack, and Knack was nowhere to be seen, Lucas would probably think of him as Little Knack. I looked too far into Lucas calling Knack "little buddy" at the start, and couldn't remember if Lucas called him something different later. I also interpreted this to mean Knack often hangs out with Lucas as Little Knack, which is supported by a brief shot or two in 1, and the title screen of 2.

Lucas considers Knack to be his achievement on some level. In fact, I consider this to be what he was alluding to in the museum in 2; that "without me, the Doctor would never have known-" how to bring Knack to life. I can imagine a young Lucas, when people are told that the Doctor had solved the puzzle and created Knack, saying quietly or thinking to himself, "*I* made this."

He goes back on that idea later. For Reasons. I might change that also, though. Then again, if I change the story every time I get caught and scraped up in a prickly patch, I wouldn't have much of a story anymore. I wouldn't necessarily say Lucas is naive. He's pretty smart and can sometimes pick up on things, but he can be willfully ignorant. If that doesn't make sense out of context, don't worry.

Changing the subject, Lucas kick-starts Knack's mischievous streak. He kind of teases him? Best example is the GIF I wanted to make but turned into a slideshow. In the garden, Lucas growls in jest at a Little Baby Knack, who reacts ferociously and growls back with rough red lettering, lifting his paws a bit and shifting his weight from foot to foot. Lucas laughs, delighted, and Baby Knack's expression shifts a little into amusement, before the GIF loops and they return to growling.

To clarify, Knack is playing, here. Although it does take him a few moments of fleeing and fawning to realize Oh, you're threatening me as a joke. Two can play at that game! Eventually, Lucas feels that Knack is acting too aggressive for his comfort, and, failing to notice that Knack is mirroring his own body language, worries he'll get a good punch to the gut. Or worse. He tries to de-escalate with the offer of a hug, which allows Baby Knack to play a mean prank.

And at one point I want Lucas to try smuggling Knack to school for the express purpose of scaring the crap out of Lucas's peers. For fun!

Another thing about how I wrote Lucas is that, when he is younger, at least, he isn't all that shy with Knack after like a day or so. I'm not sure how to say what I mean... It's like, Lucas has a tendency to get excited and touch, lightly pull, or grab Knack's arm(s), to get his attention, turn him around, or drag him somewhere. It's also a means of affection. He's gentle about it, but still. He isn't usually so grabby with other kids.

One of the things I considered playing with Knack is whether he might bite a family member when he is a 'baby'. But the more I think about it, the more the answer resounds no, he wouldn't. In one scene I wrote, Knack makes a non-lingual, idle threat (growling at him), but Lucas calls his bluff and takes something from him anyway. Lucas actually scoffs at him, incredulous.

Do not look to Lucas for guidance on how to treat children, animals, or operate heavy machinery.

Umm, what else. I bet Lucas would pass out if someone strokes his hair. First thing that comes to mind is Charlotte experimentally trying motherly things, feeling awkward about it and stopping. Lucas murmers something like, "You can keep going :)" Realizes what he just said, "I mean, if *you* want to," and scratches the back of his neck and looks away.

Along with a grappling hook (or maybe the Doctor gave him that), Ryder gives Lucas a butterfly knife for his twelfth birthday. This sounds very familiar to me, so either I thought about it before, it's practically canon, or someone else had mentioned it and I just can't remember. Or it could be a regular pocket knife.

At some point, to someone else, I have Doc describe Lucas as becoming more responsible since Knack came into his life. But of course, since the Doctor can never let Lucas have anything, he amends it with, "at times."

I also have this screenshot:

What was I going to put down for it...?

I remember seeing a review where someone mentioned this scene, gave an extremely reductive summary of it, and they thought "It plays out like a parody of kids movie/game “you-can-do-itism” but it’s not parodying anything in particular." I was rather miffed about that, to say the least; I thought this scene was a major characterization moment.

Lucas is curious/a scientist.

Knack puts so much faith in the Doctor that he limits himself. He also comes off like a major teacher's pet with his quoting ability.

The Doctor thinks himself so smart like he knows everything without testing it thoroughly. To the point where he has told Knack that he is incapable of something.

Lucas encourages Knack to try new things.

Not sure how to put this, but it comes up again in the Key Confrontation. Could be related to 4. Lucas is skeptical of the Doctor's authority and offers an opposing viewpoint. He prompts Knack to stop viewing the Doctor's words as gospel, at least temporarily. This is why I want Lucas and the Doctor to be/become foils in my story. Lucas sees himself in Knack.

Knack believes in the Doctor, sure. But he also trusts and believes in Lucas.

And one last thing, because I can't escape upsetting topics: there may be some parental favoritism going on between the Doctor and the boys. I loathe the idea, but it slots into my current framework with unfortunate agreement. I had a conversation with Dad about it, and he said, uhh trying to remember... it's a reasonable idea. He spoke of Lucas coming into his own and how it challenges the Doctor's ego, meanwhile Knack does whatever the Doctor says without question.

I don't think Lucas would resent or blame the Doctor's Greatest Creation, but it would impact his self-esteem. I don't know what that looks like yet.

Umm, I hope this was worth the wait; I had a lot of fun! I want to add more but I'm kind of scatter-brained. Also this is 4.6k words apparently.

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aelaer · 1 year

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Another whump icon prompt filled! And this is the last of my pre-written fics before my first poll, so now I *have* to work on figuring out how to write Loki...

Also a fill for @badthingshappenbingo! The bad thing happening to the protagonist is pretty light, *but* it's still a not-terribly-fun thing, so I figure it works out.

I was trying to write something else for this for ages (read: almost 3 years), but it never came out the way I wanted it to, and I still had this ancient prompt to fill so I figured I'd try not to make a huge story out of it and just do some writing exercises to get back into it. And the normal stuff wasn't working so I flipped the angst on its head to something a bit more BAMFy. Still a bad thing happening though.

The MacGuffin here is pretty simple but hey, it works.

Lightning Before The Thunder Rating: Gen No pairings

On occasion, Doctor Strange still had to do mundane, normal-people things. He still needed to buy food and even magic wasn't quite as effective as the dry cleaners two blocks away for his suit, whenever he needed to wear it for whatever occasion presented itself.

Today it was the bank. The New York Sanctum still sat in the city it was named after, which meant that every year property taxes were due. And sometime between the Blip and now, the automatic payment to the city on the Sanctum's bank account stopped going through despite nothing changing, which meant Stephen had to go talk to someone to get it fixed. He figured it'd be easier to do it in person than try to navigate the menus in the bank's phone system and never ending hold times that characterized every customer service center after the Blip.

Despite his rather unfortunate infamy that came with his involvement with the Infinity Stones and the last battle against Thanos, he wasn't recognized nearly as often as, say, Tony Stark or Steve Rogers once were. In casual wear people rarely recognized him, and it was only once he gave his name that recognition lit up in stranger's eyes. He was thankful for the relative anonymity.

Stephen wasn't sure if said anonymity was a blessing or a curse when four armed robbers stormed the bank five minutes into his appointment. On one hand, they may have shot him for it if they thought he was a threat.

On the other hand, maybe that would have meant that the security guard wouldn't have been shot.

Each second of calculation felt like a minute. He could go immediately on the offensive and attack them, but their guns were pointed at clerks and patrons as they shouted for everyone to get down. They had already shot someone and the man was bleeding heavily.

He had a life to save first. He needed to play doctor—and hostage—before he could do anything else.

Stephen crawled to the security guard even as the robbers shouted orders across the building. He shed his outer shirt and pressed it against the security guard's bleeding shoulder. When he cried out in pain, one of the gunmen turned to him.

"The fuck you doing? Get on the ground!" He turned the barrel at him.

"I'm a doctor," Stephen said, voice even. He'd certainly faced worse, though he was really regretting not bringing the Cloak with him. "Let me help him."

The man hesitated, but another spoke up as he addressed the majority of the people by the counters. "Stay on the fucking ground and y'all live, right? Just stay there. No phones!"

That seemed to be enough for the gunman focused on Stephen. "Stay there," he ordered.

Stephen complied. Underneath his blood-soaked dress shirt he silently applied subtle healing magic to constrict blood flow from the wound, the glow barely going through the cloth. The security guard frowned at what would have been an unusual, warm feeling.

"What…"

"I'm a doctor," Stephen repeated. The blood flow was slowing down. He glanced over his shoulder to gauge the situation. Once he heard sirens outside and the gunmen were separated, he could act.

The security guard winced. "Is it—supposed to feel like that?" He glanced at his shoulder with a grimace that twisted into a confused frown as he caught some of the glow from underneath Stephen's shirt. "What the—"

"My name," he cut him off, words soft yet sharp, "is Doctor Stephen Strange. Do you understand?"

The man's eyes lit up in recognition. His gaze went beyond him to the action in the background. "Can you—can you help—"

"Everything will be fine," Stephen reassured him. "Just concentrate on breathing."

"Hey! No talking!" It seemed one of the robbers noticed their whispers. Stephen glanced up to see a gun being waved in his general direction, which was more annoying than frightening if he was to be entirely honest. Then again, his line of work had rather desensitized him, perhaps to a rather alarming degree. He wouldn't be able to get a shield out fast enough to stop a bullet.

Hmm. Were there spells out there that could? Probably. It was physical damage, so those that held against that may hold up.

His silence seemed to appease the gunman enough to get him to back off—or maybe it was the sirens finally at the building. Good. It would take a couple minutes for them to set up a perimeter, then he would act.

Stephen's chance came soon enough. The gunmen were split now with only two in the main foyer, and one of the two was wandering to the far end of the room to peek down the halls. Great.

He moved the security guard's hand to his wounded shoulder. "Press as hard as you can," he muttered. When the man did so, Stephen slipped his sling ring out of his pocket.

The first gunman was out in a blink. With one gesture Stephen tore the gun from the man's hands, scattering it to the other side of the bank. In the next the man fell through a portal that deposited him on the stairs of the building outside with barely a second to shout.

Still, his buddy heard the brief commotion, which worked perfectly for Stephen. He came from around the corner at a quick walk. "Jerry?"

That gunman suffered the same fate as Jerry.

The bank employees and clients were staring at him now, naturally. With the other two robbers in the back room, Stephen felt it was safe enough for him to stand without anyone else getting hurt.

"Stay there," he told the other hostages. "I'll be right back." He strolled his way into the back where the other two robbers were.

They weren't even facing him when he approached. Disarming them and placing a portal under them almost felt like cheating. So it wasn't even two minutes later that Stephen was back in the front of the building. "All four of them have been deposited outside," he said to the person that looked like she was a manager. "Call the authorities and let them know it's only civilians within the building now, and that we need an ambulance."

At her startled nod, he went back to the wounded security guard to see how he was holding up. "Medics will be here soon," he told him. "You'll be just fine."

"Thank—thank you."

"Don't mention it."

As he heard the front doors open a few minutes later, Stephen realized that he probably couldn't just slip away as he would have preferred to after giving the paramedics a summary. The civilians would definitely point his way, which meant he'd have to talk to the police.

Ugh. There went the rest of his day.

#bad things happen bingo #prompt: hostage for macguffin #mcu #stephen strange #doctor strange fanfiction #doctor strange #prompt fill

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