#dunno how this will fare

[demonsfate]

playing dead by daylight with my bro... (pros of owning ps5 and him owning switch + two tvs). now i'm thinking about au where jin is a survivor......... but dj's a killer. >:)

#✏️ - ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴏsᴛ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏsᴛ // (ooc) #// i dunno how the other survivors would fare with that.......... #// this is my first time playing dbd!! pretty fun!!! #// probs more fun 'cos i'm playing it with my bro

[fazcinatingblog]

my phone was like dying, on 15% battery, for the netball game and then it had just enough life to let me call an uber and then i was home and charged the phone around 9:30pm-ish???? and a voicemail only came through from my boss now????? she called at like 10:54pm on a saturday night????? "i suppose this can wait till monday but i'm thinking about it now" AT 10:54PM ON A SATURDAY NIGHT?????????

#you know what i was thinking about at 10:54pm last night???? probably nothing #i was probably asleep #or trying to get to sleep #i was sleeping in a village family motor inn in launceston on the ground floor with a communal balcony #as in the balcony seemed to stretch across all the cabins #i dunno #my brain was like 'look this is like the set up of like every horror movie/crime show' and i don't even watch crime shows #weird #like how do i know these things?????? #anyway #i didn't hear my phone ring #but also maybe it didn't ring #oh right the other thing - i was stupidly standing in the rain waiting for an uber that was 7 minutes away #like me staring at my phone in the pouring rain watching an uber creep toward the silverdome #i meanis #so yeah between my phone dealing with low battery and getting waterlogged no wonder it was like NOPE CAN'T DEAL when my boss rang #and it was in another state as well #so the phone was like I GET TAKEN OVER A BODY OF WATER AND SPENT THE DAY SHOWING MAPS OF THE MOST CONFUSING CITY THAT HAS TWO COLES. #FORCED TO GOOGLE THE MOST RANDOM THINGS LIKE 160 BUS FARES #SOAKED IN THE POURING RAIN TRYING TO HOLD ON UNTIL THE UBER ARRIVES #yeah no wonder the phone didn't even alert me that my boss rang #it's too much #till now

[cocotine]

im not anti-medication by any means but i have to wonder how good it is that i need antidepressants to the point of numbing myself just to barely function in society. i think maybe its the circumstances time to change. or maybe im just weak oops

#i try to imagine how i would have fared 100-200 years ago and id probably be dead then and i kinda wish i was dead now woops #or maybe i would have had a steadier path from the lack of choice and felt a sense of purpose in my life #i dunno. exisiting sucks #negativity

[m-an-u]

Which entrance exam are you giving?

Clat!!

#anon! #we’ll see how it goes my average scores are in the 90s but I haven’t taken any coaching so I dunno how it’ll fare against others

[luvring]

UNCONVENTIONAL DATES

gn!reader | gojo, geto, yuta, nobara, itadori

“satoru gojo if you don’t get your ass to figuring out a puzzle i’ll kill you.”

your boyfriend stares at you from the velvet armchair, leg hanging over the side and cheek resting against his knuckles. “aw, baby, relax. we still have so much time.”

“i knew i shouldn’t have trusted you to pick our date.” you huff and turn away from him.

it wasn’t that satoru couldn’t think of a good date idea. he’s brought you to countless places across the city—a roof to stargaze (he crossed his heart and hoped to die if he got you in trouble for it), a hole in the wall cafe with some of the best desserts you’ve ever tried, a vintage store that smelled of old books and sweet coffee, and had a fluffy balinese cat who would lay on its back and stare at customers, waiting to be pet.

but this time, in an escape room where he’s barely grazed the row of evidently suspicious paintings on the wall, and answered “hm, that’s a good question,” or something like it to three of your guesses, you wonder if you should signal the employees through the security cameras to let you, and only you, out of here.

“y’aren’t having fun?” he teases.

you roll your eyes, hard, hoping he could sense it even with your back turned to him. “i have to figure out some curse by a guy named frederick, alone. what do you think?”

and then you hear him stand up, hear the sound of him tapping, shuffling?—you’re not really sure, something, before coming closer.

his steps are slow, purposely louder than usual so that you can hear him travel all the way until he’s right behind you. then satoru, in typical satoru fashion, holds the key to the vault you’ve been trying to get into for five minutes in front of your face, before leaning over your shoulder with a grin. “how about now?”

“top 10 people i’d break up with my boyfriend for?” geto reads out the title of the slideshow before you can.

“hear me out.”

“you know i’m your boyfriend, right?”

“no way, really?” you ask in faux shock before giving him a look. “be quiet and listen, i’m presenting.”

“who you’d break up with me for?”

“number one.” you ignore him and switch slides. suguru doesn’t miss how your lips twitch, wanting to smile at your own cube slide transition you apparently took the time to apply.

“no one,” you say easily. “i love my boyfriend despite how annoying he is, and i would never ever think of breaking up with him. also, if he tried to break up with me, i’d throw up and cry to make him feel guilty and remember all the good times we’ve had and why he’s dating me in the first place.”

your boyfriend in question leans further back into the couch and lets his chin rest in his palm as he hums thoughtfully. “happy to know you’re willing to throw up and cry and beg, but—”

“i didn’t say beg.”

suguru says your name—quietly, smoothly, with an amused lilt at the end despite your slideshow and what he’s about to ask next. “you know i can see there’s 12 more slides, right?”

a beat passes.

he’s still watching you intently as you finally smile.

“of course. so for the real number one—”

“can you just fall over once so i can feel better about myself?” you huff with slightly bent knees, and fingers intertwined with yuta’s while he slowly skates in front of you despite, apparently, never having had the chance to try ice skating before this.

the sun keeps you warm despite the chill as a few other couples skate around the rink—some mirroring you, others faring better.

yuta blinks, and then he lifts his head just enough so you can see how the corner of his mouth twitches past his scarf. “would it really make you feel better?”

“i dunno, maybe. try eating some ice first.”

“okay.”

and before you can say anything, his hands leave yours as he falls onto the ice with an ‘oof!’

“yuta!” his name leaves your lips in panic. the sudden disappearance of support makes your legs wobble, and your skates dig into the ice before you make your way toward him.

your boyfriend groans, his cheeks flushed, though whether from the cold or embarrassment, you’re not sure. you feel guilty for laughing a little when you speak, “i was joking, oh my god, are you okay?”

his hands move instinctively as he goes to push himself up, before he quickly realizes how cold ice is against bare skin. “yeah, ouch—ah, cold, cold! i know—i just thought i’d be better at fake falling.”

he winces as you awkwardly help him up, standing still as you give him a once over and rewrap his scarf around his neck. you joke softly, “you know what? seeing my boyfriend hurt himself didn’t make me feel better. sorry for asking.”

despite the slight ache in his tailbone, yuta manages to laugh. “you know what would make me feel better?”

“what?”

his face, already tinted red, flushes more as he realizes what he’s asked. but it’s too late now, and he probably deserves it—”...a kiss?”

an ad for a vintage market had popped up a few days ago, and nobara had excitedly agreed to go when you sent it to her. (she was slightly less excited at the thought of waking up early to get there first, but the competition, fashion, and “getting to buy rich people’s things” were enough to motivate her.)

you’re pulling at the sleeves of the coat you’ve found when she pops up beside you, flaunting a grin and pair of shades on her face. “do you think i look cool or super pretentious?”

you smile back. “depends on if you think i look cool or super pretentious.”

she taps her chin and hums before looking you up and down, exaggerating the head movement so you can tell despite not being able to really see her eyes.

“want me to spin?” you ask. but before she can even answer, you turn 180° and lift your arms, letting her soak it in. she watches as you walk around the stall, careful not to go too far so it didn’t seem like you were stealing.

“maybe if you were older and lived in a house with four cars or you were gojo, super pretentious.”

the mention of gojo makes you snicker. “...but?”

nobara’s smiling at you when you turn to face her with eyebrows raised. she lifts her hand to shoot you a thumbs up. “you’re not, so i say you look super cool.”

her face suddenly gets serious. “but seriously, what do you think about these shades? cool? pretentious? gojo?”

“what would you do if i said gojo?”

“break up with you.”

“i never took you as a cat person.”

“neither did i, i don’t think i am? but look how cute he is. his name is waffle,” itadori says without looking at you, focused on the fluffy grey cat in his arms.

waffle purrs and rubs his head against yuuji’s chin, who lets out a noise between a whimper and coo in response.

you huff. “coming here with you was a bad idea.”

he gasps. “don’t say that in front of waffle.”

“because now i want to adopt a cat,” you continue, laughing a little at yuuji’s tightened grip around waffle.

he makes a noise of agreement and pouts. “but if we didn’t come, we’d have never met waffle.”

“and porridge?”

“and russell.”

you snicker at the thought of russell—an orange cat in one of the other rooms who was one of those cats that really looked like he didn’t have a thought in his head. maybe because he was orange. “yeah, you know what, fair enough.”

yuuji decides to put waffle back in his kennel, but keeps playing by pulling the pipe cleaner tied to one of the cage bars up and down, getting him to jump up and grab it. “ahh, hi waffle, you’re so cute. i hope whoever adopts you is the best person ever.”

the sight of them playing makes you smile and pull out your phone. turning on your camera and pointing it toward yuuji who tilts his head and laughs, eyes lighting up as his new friend flops onto his back, you think it’s as good a time as any to get a new lockscreen.

surprise.! Get jujutsu kaisen'ed. i've never done this format i had no idea how to divide them so i just. used dividers. hm. i'll figure out if i like that or not later. no i didn't have anyone in mind for geto's slideshow. didn't know who wouldn't be... weird.

@danyisapingu @lilithlunas @anime-ships-gay @todorokiskitten @curiouslilbeast @fiona782 @cvhenia @mitskiologist @libbyistired @milkbreadforlife @sirimirihiro @aria-chikage

#jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen fluff #gojo x reader #geto x reader #yuuta x reader #nobara x reader #itadori x reader #jujutsu kaisen x gn reader #.. cant tell if theyre ooc. choosing to not think too hard about it. or at all. amen

[tropes-and-tales]

Ten Months as Yours

Colonel Horacio Carrillo x F!Reader

CW:  Angst (reader is CIA and has feelings about it; failed first marriages; talk of Catholicism); smut (oral, m! and f! receiving; PiV, unprotected); 18+ only.

Word Count:  10,951

AN:  This was from an "Arranged Marriage" prompt list. An anon asked for it, and it was supposed to incorporate dates where the couple gets to know each other. I, an idiot, didn't remember that until nearly the end, but if you kind of squint, you can see it.

AN2: Not edited. Not even a little bit.

AN3: Sigh. I dunno, folks. It's whatever.

Horacio Carrillo’s first marriage was standard Catholic fare:  the reading of the banns beforehand, then the long wedding Mass.  Heavy on the incense, crowded church, a red-faced priest droning through the Gospel.  Juliana, his blushing bride in a heavy lace veil, clutching a bouquet of lilies already wilted and brown at the edges in the Colombian heat.

Then, years later, the dissolution of that marriage.  Papers signed separately in the presence of lawyers after an ice age formed between the couple.  Then more years of Horacio being single again, but the time slipped by like water.  He was so busy with work, he hardly registered the empty house he returned to every evening.

Horacio Carrillo’s second marriage is something else entirely.

It’s not, strictly or spiritually speaking, a real marriage.  It’s a bit of maneuvering on the  part of the U.S. government, logistical choreography as part of a larger plan.  To the world at large, Horacio Carrillo is dead:  murdered by Escobar’s men in a trap.  Only a handful of people know the truth—the doctor and nurses at the American hospital who healed him under a temporary alias.  And this man, Johnson, a U.S. Marshal and handler for the U.S. Witness Protection program

Johnson is the sole witness to this so-called marriage, if one could even call it that.  It happens on the cargo plane from Bogota to Atlanta.  Johnson sits in the jump seat across from his two charges:  Horacio…and you.

Horacio doesn’t even learn your real name.  There’s no exchange of vow and certainly no incense or bouquet of lilies.  Instead of a blushing bride, there’s a silent one.  Your mouth is set in a thin, straight line as you listen to Johnson’s rundown of your new life, and every time Horacio chances a look at you, he only sees the tension in you.  Grim-set mouth, clenched jaw…and the white edge of a bandage on your temple, mostly hidden under the sweep of your hair.

Horacio wonders if you’re dead to the world too.  You aren’t DEA or CIA, at least not in the Colombian theater, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t nearby.  The U.S. agencies have their sticky fingers all over South America.

The broad strokes of the situation:  you and Horacio are newlyweds.  You met in Spain and are returning to the U.S.  Horacio is dead, but he’s been replaced by Davide, and Johnson hands over a thick packet of official documents—Spanish birth certificate, Spanish passport, U.S. green card. 

You are also dead, but you’ve been replaced by Gwen.  Another thick packet of documents detailing your fake life as an ex-pat American in Spain.

Each packet also contains a simple gold band for each of you.  Horacio turns it over and over in his hand, contemplates the little twist he gets in his gut to put a ring back on his finger after years of being divorced.

You slide yours on too, but you fuss with it the rest of the flight, twisting it around and around your finger.

“You’re going to Vermont, of all places,” Johnson tells you.  “There’s a mid-sized college there with a lot of international folk coming and going, so you’ll blend in.  The house is handled, and you’ll get a stipend every month, but we expect you to find jobs as quickly as you can.”

Johnson doesn’t even attempt to say how long it will be.  Horacio knows he has to wait out Escobar before he can return to Colombia.  You?  Who can say?

The rest of the flight is silent except for the low roar of the engines and the creak of the netting holding the cargo in place.  Once you land, you stand and follow Johnson and Horacio off of the plane to transfer to a smaller passenger plane that will take you to Vermont.

The final leg of the journey is silent too.

When you deplane in the small regional airport in Vermont, you stumble on the step down from the fuselage.  Horacio catches your arm, keeps you upright.

“Watch your step,” he says softly.

“Thank you,” you reply.

It’s the first words you exchange, and his hand on your clothed arm—that’s the first time he touches you.

-----

Horacio has never been to the United States before, but when he thinks of it, he thinks of what he’s seen in the movies:  New York City, perhaps, with the traffic and skyscrapers and Statue of Liberty.  Or Miami with its white beaches and turquoise water and neon-tinged nightlife.

Vermont is something else.

It’s green.  Everything is so green.  The rounded mountains in the distance, the old trees with huge, spreading branches.  The grass of the lawns in this college town.  Even though it is near twilight, even the shadows are green-tinged as the sun sets.

“At least we arrived in the spring,” you say.  You glance at him, explain that New England winters can be brutal.

The house is small, trim.  It’s a simple ranch but well-built.  There’s a fair amount of land, and the nearest neighbors are far enough away that there’s privacy.

Of course it’s awkward.  You don’t know each other at all, and you’re both in hiding.  Horacio is out of habit with living with another person, and he has to guess you are too.

That first night, the first moment of awkwardness:  when you arrive at the house, there’s two bedrooms, and you both hesitate in the hallway that leads to both.  You’re married on paper (kinda) but who would expect you to share a bed?  But you’re also both exhausted, and Horacio takes in the dark circles under your eyes.  The larger room has a full-sized bed, but the guest only has an uncomfortable-looking daybed.

“Take the master bedroom,” he says.  “I’ll take the guest room.”

“You sure?”  Your words, Horacio notices, are slightly accented, like you’ve been around people like him who speak English as a second language.  He wonders about your past and what landed you here with him.

“Of course.  Take the room.  We’ll talk in the morning.”

You nod, and he glances down at where you twist that gold band over and over around your slim finger.  It’s here, he’ll realize later, that he starts to feel something for you, but at the moment, it’s only sympathy.  You’re trapped in the same miserable situation as him, so sympathy is an easy emotion to access.

“I appreciate it…Davide,” you reply, and you give him a nod, then turn in for the night.  He hears the quiet click of the bedroom door as you shut it, and he turns in too.  The daybed is cramped, and he can’t stretch out completely, but he’s so bone-tired that he’s asleep the minute his head hits the pillow.

-----

The first month, April. 

It’s awkward.  It’s more awkward for Horacio; everything in the U.S. is familiar, but just different enough to make it seem like he’s dreaming.  You’re already an American, and life in an idyllic New England college town is easier for you to settle into.

Living with another person is strange.  Horacio finds that the two of you engage in a civil, stilted dance each day that first month.  You each tiptoe around the other, defer to each other in a painfully polite way.  When Horacio catches you singing along softly to the radio one night, you snap the music off and go quiet.  When you walk in on him in the bathroom once—he was only brushing his teeth, so it is hardly salacious—you apologize and refuse to meet his eyes for the rest of the week.

The two of you don’t really talk, not that first month.  You aren’t supposed to share details about your real lives with each other, so neither of you know how to converse in the weird liminal space you find yourselves.  Your conversations are limited to menial topics.  The weather, the house and yard, what you each want for dinner that night.  You trade off chores, you drift around each other, and it’s like living in purgatory with another ghost.

Sometimes, Horacio swears he can hear you crying softly through the wall that separates your room from his, but you never offer any insight into your feelings and he doesn’t ask.

-----

The second month, May.

Johnson told each of you to find work, and you land a job first:  you get a position at the college.  You ask him, a bit shy, if you can take a certain portion of the monthly stipend to buy some new clothes for your office job, and Horacio’s gut does that twist again.  Of course you need new clothes.  You left wherever with nothing, the same way he left Colombia with nothing.

“Of course,” he says.  “You don’t even need to ask.”

That makes you smile a little, and you make a weak joke about not wanting to be the sort of wife to spend frivolously.  It makes Horacio chuckle.  It breaks the uneasy tension in the house a bit, and he ends up going to the mall with you that weekend as you shop.

There’s nothing like a mall to encapsulate American culture, and Horacio tries to play it cool at the conspicuous consumption on display.  The giant building, the icy air conditioning, the cacophony of sound echoing around the marble floors and walls.  There’s so many people and only a handful of security guards.  When Horacio studies them closer, he sees that they don’t even carry guns—they only have walkie-talkies as they saunter around at a lazy pace.

His life now is a far cry from his life as the leader of the Search Bloc.  And when he glances over at the woman walking beside him, he realizes how far this second marriage is from his first.

But the thought leads to him ruminating about his first marriage and all the little ways he failed Juliana.  This situation with you isn’t a marriage, of course, but it doesn’t stop him from wanting to be better.

So once you are done shopping, he pulls you into the Sam Goody and insists that you buy an album to celebrate.  He catches you singing all the time in the house, listening to the radio, humming or singing along.  When he imagines your mysterious life before now, he imagines an apartment filled with a big stereo and shelves of albums.

“Seriously?”  It makes you smile again, and Horacio thinks you have a nice smile, though he wonders how often people ever get to see it.

“Well, it’s our stipend,” he clarifies.  “It’s not like I’m treating you, really.  I guess it’s not really a gift if it’s ours.”

Another smile, and he stands back and watches as you rifle through the stacks of vinyl records and CD’s, as you pull one out and read the list of songs, then replace it.  You finally settle on one, and the two of you check out, and Horacio pulls out his wallet and pays.

And even if it’s your shared stipend, you thank him and smile again, and it feels like something that he can’t quite name.

-----

The third month, June.

You leave the house every weekday for work.  Horacio finally has some firsthand knowledge of what Juliana must have felt when he left each day.  He had always prided himself that he was able to provide for both of them, that she never had to work. 

He had never considered how bored she must have been.

He wakes up early out of habit, but you do too.  In the soft pre-dawn light, you go out for a run every day.  Part of him remains Search Bloc; he stands at the living room window and watches for you until you return, panting, your t-shirt ringed with sweat.  He finds he can breathe easier once you’re in sight. 

While you shower and dress, Horacio makes you coffee.  The two of you sip at your coffee in companionable silence, and then you’re off.

It leaves him with a full day with little to do.

He cleans the house, but that takes no time at all because both of you are fastidious and neat anyway.  He maintains the lawn, trims back the unruly rhododendrons.  He bought a weight bench and a set of free weights from a yard sale a few weeks after you moved, and he spends some time lifting in the garage.

That takes him to noon, if he’s lucky.

His afternoons are when he thinks of Juliana the most.  Is this what her life with him was like?  Back then, he used to scoff at the claim that women needed a life outside of the home.  His mother had seemed happy to be a housewife and mother, and he had always assumed that Juliana was the same.  Except the children never came, and Juliana had a degree in fashion design from the university—yet when she broached the idea of a job or even an internship, Horacio had dissuaded her.

He had thought he was being a good husband.  Now, as he sits and drowses to “Days of Our Lives,” he wonders how he had missed the obvious.

But if he’s Juliana in this situation, you are no Horacio.  For one thing, you return home in the late afternoon—he’s never left to eat dinner alone in a too-quiet house.  For another, you immediately kick off your shoes and pad over to where he’s cooking dinner, and you fall into an easy rhythm of helping him finish it off.

Halfway through June, you get comfortable enough to start calling out, “honey, I’m home!” each time you return.

Which makes him smile, every time.

And he’s only a passable cook, but you praise every meal he puts in front of you.  You joke once, say “I should have gotten a husband a long time ago,” and that makes him smile even wider, and it is easy to fall into the fantasy that this easy domesticity is real.  The fantasy only falls apart at night, when you each retire to your separate rooms, as you do every night.

-----

The fourth month, July.

The easy domesticity cedes to something deeper and darker right at the start of the month.

Horacio has never been to the U.S. before, so he hasn’t experienced the usual Independence Day celebrations.  When he asks, you grin and tell him that a good old-fashioned U.S.-style barbecue might be nice, and that’s what the two of you plan.  You and Horacio as Davide and Gwen:  patriotic Americans.

The day starts off great.  The weather is hot and humid enough to feel like Colombia, and Horacio will admit that you look nice in your cut-off shorts and cotton tank top.  He will admit that if you were really his wife, he might never even make it to lunchtime before taking advantage of a quiet house set apart from its neighbors.

The barbecue is nice.  It’s all-American fare:  hot dogs and hamburgers, corn on the cob steamed over hot coals.  You buy an apple pie from a nearby farm stand, and you also make some trifle type dessert, and the two of you wash it all down with ice-cold beer.  By the time dusk rolls around and lightning bugs start to flicker across the lawn, Horacio is pleasantly buzzed.

The town puts on a fireworks display, and as the sky turns a velvety black, the light show starts.  Your house is in the perfect place to see it, slightly set on a ridge, and blossoms of red and white and blue sparks explode across the sky.  Horacio, tipsy, watches the first few minutes, completely mesmerized…but when he turns to say something to you, he finds you missing.

He finds you in the house.  More specifically, he finds you in the bathtub, hugging your knees to your chest, forehead pressed to knees.

“Gwen?” he says, and he feels stupid saying the obviously fake name, but he doesn’t know your real one.

You don’t answer anyway, and he steps into the bathroom.  Studies you closer.  Sees that you are shaking, and between the muffled booms of the fireworks, he can hear your panting breath.

He moves without any real thought.  He knows—or can guess, at least—at what is happening to you.  Horacio has led enough men through enough battles to recognize a panic attack when he sees one, but you aren’t one of his men and this is no battle, so he puts a gentle hand on your shoulder to alert you that he’s there.  Then he climbs into the bathtub with you.

“Scoot forward a little,” he orders softly, and you do.  He maneuvers himself behind you, then pulls you closer to him.  Your back pressed against his chest, and his arms wrapped around you, he holds you close despite the heat and humidity of the day. 

“Just breathe with me.”  He takes a deep, slow breath, feels his chest push against you.  He does it again and again, and after a long while, you start to mimic him. 

The fireworks end, and eventually you stop trembling.  Tucked this close to him, Horacio can see the edge of a thick scar disappearing under your hair, and he remembers the bandage on the plane from Bogota.

He wonders if the moment that caused that scar is linked to this moment now. 

After you calm, and after you sheepishly untangle yourself from him, he urges you to do whatever you need to.  To take a cool shower or go to bed.  That he’ll clean up.  You gaze back at him a long moment, like you’re trying to decide something, and then you nod.  You leave the bathroom and disappear into your bedroom, and he hears that quiet click of the door closing.

The rest of the month is uneasy.  The panic attack seems to have dredged up the muck in your past, the trauma of a life that has resulted in you being in Witness Protection, injured enough at some point to have a thick scar on your head.

Something about this feels like an echo from his first marriage.  Juliana went silent on him too, but for different reasons.  Your silence is driven by an inner turmoil that he can only guess at, and he feels powerless to help.

So he only does what he can.  He makes you coffee each morning before work.  He makes you dinner each night.  He asks gentle, tame questions about your work day, and when you don’t have much to say in that quarter, he tells you that day’s drama on “Days of Our Lives.”

“Stefano DiMera is back,” he tells you one night.  “And Marlena is possessed by el Diablo.”

That’s the sole smile he is able to coax from you all month.  You pick at the dinner he made, pushing it around with the tines of your fork, and repeat, “the Devil?”

Horacio nods.

“Like, Lucifer the Devil?”

“Yes.”

You smile.  “That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard.”

He nods again, smiles back at you.  “It really is.”

-----

The fifth month, August.

Horacio finds a job with a state nursery, and when he applies, he nearly despairs at the cliché of it:  a South American immigrant becoming a landscaper. 

But it’s not landscaping at all.  It’s a quiet, peaceful job.  The summer interns have already left for the year, so Horacio is hired on to help the old-timer, Lawrence.  Lawrence has a thick Yankee accent, says little, but Horacio finds the job a revelation.  He walks the rolling grounds and checks on the saplings that will one day be planted across the state.  They’ll go into parks and line city streets, and it knocks something loose in him.  A job where he’s nurturing life that will potentially live on long after him.  The oak sapling he waters and feeds today could live hundreds of years when he’ll be long forgotten. 

With him working now, you and Horacio switch off on meals.  You teach him how to use the most American of small appliances, the slow cooker.  You make him the most American of working class meals, the one-pot dish.  He makes you the comfort food from his childhood, and together you find an egalitarian balance.

But something about July and your low mental health…it makes Horacio want to do better.  Who knows how long the two of you will end up living like this?  He wants to understand you better, and he wants you to know him, because the two of you exist as the sole inhabitants of this weird, unlikely life as Davide and Gwen.

“Let’s each say one true thing about ourselves,” he proposes over dinner one night.  He’s bone-tired from work—he spent the day mulching rows and rows of tender little Eastern Hemlocks (and he knows the difference now between them and a balsam fir and a spruce).  You look tired too, but at his suggestion, your eyes light up.  Maybe you’ve been wanting some familiarity with him too and just were waiting on him to suggest it first.

So August is this:  getting to know each other.  Dumb stuff, usually.  Favorite colors, favorite songs, favorite foods.  Most embarrassing memory.  Best memory.  Age of first kiss. 

-----

The sixth month, September.

The weather starts to turn.  The nights grow cold, and the leaves transform from all that green to a riot of reds and yellows and oranges.  Work at the nursery slows way down, and Horacio spends long hours following Lawrence’s lead, which means an hour or two of paperwork, then lunch, then quietly reading a book at his desk.

You’re busy with the new academic year, but the weekends are spent doing day trips.  You’re six months into this, and you’re both braver, more willing to travel afield.  You go into the mountains to look at the leaves from a different angle than what you see from your house.  You go to pick apples, and you spend a weekend cooking them into pies, cobblers, and apple sauce.

The dinner-time “one true thing” game ends, and it turns into natural conversation.  It’s so comfortable now.  You chat and laugh and joke, and sometimes he teases you, and it makes you duck your head to hide your pleased smile.  You like being teased, Horacio finds.  You like being the butt of gentle jokes, so he obliges you as often as he dares. 

It’s a revelation to find that he has a sense of humor after all.

Over one dinner, he mentions his first marriage, his first wife.  You ask him questions, and he answers them honestly, and then he asks if you’ve ever been married.

“No.”  You shake your head to emphasize the point. 

“Ever engaged?”

You hesitate, then nod.  “Yes.  A long time ago.”

“What happened?”

You shrug, lifting one shoulder up before dropping it back down.  “Life.  Expectations.  It’s hard to say.”  You take a sip of your water, then settle your gaze somewhere past Horacio, like you’re looking at the specter of your failed engagement.

“I was young and very career-driven,” you add.  “And not many men want that in a wife.”

“I’m sorry.”  He is, of course, and he’s doubly-sorry because he was arguably one of those men.  He kept Juliana at home, stifled her own career aspirations.  A flush of shame courses through him at the memory of his own failings.

Another shrug.  “It was for the best.”

“And now here you are, married to me,” he teases, and yes—you duck your head, but he catches the shy little grin, the curve of your cheek as you smile at the joke.

-----

The seventh month, October.

It’s the first time you’ve actually ordered him to do anything, so Horacio finds himself busy each weekend, decorating the house for Halloween.  There’s ghosts strung in the trees in the front yard.  Fake gravestones jut from the lawn like rotting teeth.  Purple and orange lights are strung around the windows and banisters of the porch, and the two of you set to carving more pumpkins than Horacio thought possible.

But it’s worth it, because your town goes all out for the holiday.  You bought him a costume weeks ago, and when he dresses after dinner, he’s surprised to find you openly checking him out.  Your gaze sweeps from the hair on the top of his head—longer than Search Bloc reg, curling at the nape of his neck—to his shoes, and you take in his vampire costume.

“You look handsome,” you tell him, and he tries not to ogle you in turn and utterly fails, because you’re dressed up like a witch but the black dress hugs your curves, and the ridiculous hat, complete with a floppy brim, does nothing to detract from how sexy you look.

Horacio finds himself sitting on the front porch with you, handing out candy to the children that come by.  And it charms him, how much you get into it, how you guess at what each child is supposed to be.  You read the kids perfectly—you’re sweet with the scared little ones, but you play up the witchiness with the older ones, crooking your fingers and cacking at them.

When there’s a lull in the crowd at one point, he catches you as you shiver, so he pulls you close to him and wraps his cloak around your shoulder.  He never touches you much, but this is blatant, and the moment feels heavy with intent.

You lean into him.  A moment later, he feels your arm wend its way around his waist, under his cloak, so he holds you closer.

The evening continues like that.  The two of you play it up more and more, comfortable with pretending.  Not you and Horacio, and not Davide and Gwen, but a vampire and a witch, and the more you cackle and scare the children, the more Horacio flashes his fake teeth and hisses at them. 

Who ever knew handing out candy in a cheap drugstore costume could be so fun?

When another lull happens, he pulls you back to him, and the motion takes you off balance a little.  You hold him back but lean away from him, searching for your equilibrium, and it bares the smooth column of your neck to him.

Horacio forgets himself.  Davide forgets himself.  The vampire he’s pretending to be dips his head, and he presses the plastic points of his fake teeth into your pulse point, and you give a squeal of surprise, but when Horacio lifts his head to study you, he sees you staring back at him, your eyes wide and dark with obvious desire.

“That’s a good way to get a hex on you,” you warn, but there’s a smile on your red lips, and you don’t release your own hold on him.  You don’t shove him away.

“I enjoy a good hex,” he replies. 

The stream of children eventually dies off.  The bowl of candy has been replenished multiple times, but you fill it one last time and set it on the porch for any stragglers. 

Inside the house, you go from room to room and check the locks on the doors, turn off the lights.  Horacio lingers near the hallway, and when you turn to make your way to your room, he stills you.  He puts his hand on your waist, lightly, and he doesn’t say anything.  The moment hangs suspended as you both stand there, silent.

What does it mean for Horacio Carrillo to take you to bed? 

He has always tried to be a good Catholic (the killing of narcos aside).  He’s never been with anyone other than Juliana, and he feels a tinge of doubt.  Guilt, too.  He’s always prided himself on his fidelity, and post-divorce, he took a perverse pride in the fact that he never took a lover.  That he still honored his vows despite the legal fact that he was no longer married.

He doesn’t mourn Juliana anymore, and he knows that something is growing between the two of you now, but what does it mean?  Would it be right to sleep with you, knowing that this is just circumstantial?  That it may end at any moment?  That if you both weren’t in WitSec, you’d have never met, and might have never liked each other if you had?

Is this thing growing between the two of you only the result of being flung together by circumstances out of your control?

All of those questions rapid-fire through his head, and you seem to see the doubt in his eyes because the moment deflates.  The energy and anticipation sour, and he sees it on your face.  Your soft smile falls, and then you nod to yourself, as if you knew it would happen like this.

Then you smile again, thank him softly for his help handing out candy.  You stretch towards him and brush the lightest of kisses against his cheek, and you step around him to go to your room.

When Horacio goes to bed, it takes him a long time to fall asleep, and he swears you must be awake too, separated only by the wall between you.

-----

The eighth month, November.

Your department at the university puts on a wine and cheese social, and spouses are encouraged to attend.

“We never really practiced our cover story,” he says as he bends over to tie his dress shoes.  “Do you remember all of it?”

“I have a eidetic memory.”

“Yeah?”  He glances up at you.  “You’re full of surprises.”

“Don’t sweat it.  It’s a bunch of tenured professors.  They love to talk about themselves and nothing else.  They are all narcissists of the worse variety.”

But you aren’t entirely correct.  The party is at the house of the department chair, and Horacio finds himself cornered by a pair of fellow lecturers.  They are older women, charming and gregarious, and they sing your praises…and his own.

“I can see why she’s kept you hidden away,” says the taller of the two.  “She said you were handsome but—”

“You make a gorgeous couple,” the shorter one cut in.  “And she’s brilliant, you know, she planned out this—”

On and on they go, cutting each other off, redirecting each other, not letting Horacio get a word in edgewise.  It’s not far off base from how you explained it would go, and when he catches your eye from across the room, you smile but mouth, “you okay?”

He nods, smiles back at you. 

The evening is halfway over when he realizes with a start that he hasn’t cased the room once. 

He hasn’t counted the exits and windows, hasn’t studied the egresses and any obstacles to them.  He hasn’t scowled at each face to try and determine what dirty secret they held, if Escobar or one of his men had compromised them or their family.  He hasn’t studied the lines of their clothing to see who might be hiding a piece.

What does it mean for Horacio Carrillo to lose his edge? 

It’s another question he ponders at night, since the minor disaster of Halloween.  He knows he hurt you by hesitating in that moment in the hallway, but it’s a subtle hurt.  He can see it in your eyes each morning, the way they study his face as if you could perhaps read his thoughts if you watch him closely enough. 

More and more, these questions plague him because there’s no easy answers.  Horacio is used to solving problems, but he’d be the first to admit that many of his solutions were just brute force.  Displays of power.  The Search Bloc has a problem?  Send in men, armed men, men with guns and night-sticks, men with flint in their souls, men with hearts cased in granite.  Send in Colonel Carrillo himself to a clandestine meeting place where a suspect is strung up.  What’s a little light torture and murder when the fate of a country hangs in the balance?

That man is dead now.  Horacio Carrillo received a state funeral, and his empty coffin lies in the mausoleum.  Davide, his replacement, spent the week wrapping tender saplings in burlap in anticipation for the coming snows—all the while considering his place in the greater world and what his legacy may be.

At the end of the evening, Horacio finds you, brings you your coat, holds it out while you shrug your way into it.  When the two of you leave, you pass the pair of lecturers who had cornered him, and their exchange is like a Greek chorus that follows him home.

“He is handsome, isn’t he?” says one.  “She’s a lucky woman.”

The other one scoffs lightly.  “He’s the lucky one.”

You must not hear them because you don’t react.  You only let him lead you to the car, and when he brushes away the light dusting of snow with the snow brush, his eyes find yours through the windshield—and you smile at him.

-----

The ninth month, December.

The university shuts down for most of the month, and Horacio is on an abbreviated schedule a the nursery. 

The two of you have so much time together.

Horacio has seen snow before, but never like this.  Vermont, so green when he arrived, is swaddled in thick layers of white like cotton batting.  It absorbs and reflects sounds in weird ways, and a hush falls over your little home.

Being Colombian, he should hate it.  He should curse the cold and the snow and the quiet, but it does something to his soul.  It soothes him in a way he never would have guessed.  True, the cold is difficult at first, but you take him to the mall one weekend and load him up with sweaters and thick woolen socks, and he’s better after that.

Everything is so calm.  Peaceful.  Horacio has never slept so well in his life, bundled under layers of blankets, even on the uncomfortable daybed.  He sleeps, he doesn’t dream, and he wakes up naturally, in slow measure, to a soft light creeping across his bedroom floor.

Being on break, you still wake up early.  Earlier than him, some days, and when Horacio wakes to the scent of brewing coffee and something delicious baking in the oven, he wishes sometimes that this was the afterlife.  He wants to freeze the moment in time and never let it slip past him.  He wants nothing more, in this moment.

He’s always half-asleep those mornings, but the smell of food draws him out.  One morning, he pads out to the kitchen in his thick socks and startles you when he grumbles “good morning.”  You shriek, then swear, then lightly try to swat him with the spatula in your hands, but he’s still half-asleep, still incredulous that this is his life at the moment, and he takes the spatula from you and pulls you into a big bear hug.

“What’s this for?” you ask.  Your words are muffled against his chest, but after a beat, you wrap your arms around his midsection and hug him back.

“Just because,” he replies.

You spend your days doing puzzles, reading, listening to music.  You watch “Days of Our Lives” with him and you both laugh at the bad cosmetics and even worse acting on the demonic possession storyline.

Your evenings are spent cooking dinner together.  You make the trip into town every few days, and you rent movies and watch them too.  You watch everything together—old Hollywood classics, campy horror, meandering romances.  The two of you sit on the couch side by side, and it takes all of a day before you’re tucked in against his side, his arm firm around your shoulders.

Sometimes he glances down at you and sees your face in profile lit by the flickering light of the television.  Sometimes he can make out the edge of your scar, but he doesn’t linger there.  Instead he takes in the whole of your face—the curve of your cheek, the sweep of your lashes as you blink.  When something funny happens on the screen, you smile, and it makes Horacio’s heart stutter in his chest to see it.

What does it mean for Horacio Carrillo to fall in love?

Another question to ponder.  Another riddle to solve.  He’s losing sight of the man he was.  Maybe that man is completely lost already.  The thought doesn’t unnerve him; he thinks he likes the man he is here.  He likes the man he is with you, the job that coaxes life into being instead of snuffing it out.  He likes wearing cable-knit sweaters and thick socks and eating the banana bread you bake on mornings you don’t have to work. 

He likes sitting on the couch with you and watching a rental VHS of “Beetlejuice.”  He likes the feel of your body pressed against his, and he likes looking down to see you smile.

That’s the night he dares ask for more.

After the movie, you do your usual pre-bedtime sweep of the house—locks, lights—then brush your teeth and go to your room.  The usual quiet click of your door closing.  Horacio, as usual, goes to his room, peels back the layers of blankets, prepares to tuck himself into the cramped bed….then doesn’t.

Instead, he returns to the hallway.  He taps a finger on your door, a soft staccato, and he hears you call out, “Davide?”

“Yes.”

You tell him to come in, and you’re sitting up in bed.  Your eyebrows are furrowed together. 

“What’s wrong?” you ask.

He shakes his head.  How can he begin to explain it?  He’s fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and his Italian is passable, yet not a single language he knows can capture the maelstrom of emotions roiling through him.  He loves you, he wants you.  He’s afraid you don’t feel the same for him.  He’s afraid you do feel the same for him.  Is this just situational or are you truly the woman he was meant for all along?  Has he gone mad?  Is this some tame mental breakdown, the result of coming close to death and then finding himself, improbably, in Vermont with a woman who also was near death? 

From your “one true thing” game, he knows you’re a polyglot too—English and Spanish and Russian—but that shake of his head to your question seems to transcend the need for language.  You seem to read it exactly, the turmoil in him, and you climb out of bed slowly, make your way over to where he stands by the door.

You reach down and take his hands in yours, and the touch bolsters him.  Reassures him.  He’s Horacio and Davide both, and you’re both Gwen and yourself, and he doesn’t need to parse the two.  He can be both with you.  You’re both complicated people with complicated pasts, but none of it matters right now because the world is swathed in layers of snow, and the two of you are the only two who exist in it.

Neither of you say much else for the rest of the night.  When you turn your head to peer up at him, Horacio tilts his head to kiss you, and it’s like a bolt of lightning when he does.  Maybe he fell in love with you by small moments, but this is the moment that seals it forever:  this first kiss, his mouth on yours, writes your name—your real name, even if he doesn’t know it—on his heart like a line of fire.

You each lead the other back to bed; you tug him, he pushes you, and you fall gracelessly back on the rumpled covers, but each kiss, each searching touch peels back another layer of reserve.  Horacio slides his hand under your shirt and cups the softness of your breasts, pinches lightly at your hardened buds.  You slip your hand under the waistband of his flannel pajamas and grasp his growing erection, stroke it into full hardness as he groans into your mouth.

There’s no art to it.  No seduction.  You’re both starving for each other, ravenous, and you both kiss the other as you each strip out of your layers.  He kisses down your neck, nips at your pulse point like he did on Halloween.  He licks against the hollow at the base of your throat, draws the sweetest goddamned moans out of you, then returns to kiss you, to lick against the inside of your mouth so he can feel the sounds you’re making too.

If he’d known how vocal you were in bed, he would have summoned his courage months ago.

Your mouth is on him too.  It’s another line of fire, each press of your lips on his bare skin.  He finds himself on his back and you astride him.  He reaches up to touch your bared breasts, but you don’t even notice because you lean down, focused only on him.  Your mouth on his neck, along his stubbled jaw.  You kiss his collarbones, his chest.  You bite lightly against his nipples, your teeth making him huff at the sensation, and then your warm tongue laving him.  Further down, a trail of kisses across his belly, which is less firm than it was in his Search Bloc days but you make a pleased noise as your mouth places wet, lingering kisses there.

Then even lower, and this is uncharted territory.  Love-making with Juliana was only ever for the purpose of making children, and while Horacio had convinced her a time or two to go down on her in the interest of foreplay, he never has received head in his life.  Juliana had called it dirty, and he had left it at that.

He doesn’t even register it until he feels your hand grasp him at the root of his cock, then feels the smallest, most kittenish little lick of your tongue against his leaking tip.

“Dios,” he groans out, and then he feels the rest:  your tongue tracing a pattern along the length of him, then a teasing rhythm where you work him into your mouth.  First just the tip.  You lavish him with attention there, suckling against the most sensitive part of him, lapping up the pre-cum that leaks from him.  Then more and more and more; you work him into your warm, wet mouth, and he feels your breath tickling against his groin, feels you breathing carefully through your nose as you take him as far as you can, and then you swallow against him, you hum against him, and it’s nothing like he’s ever felt before.  You press your tongue against the underside of him and you hollow your cheeks, and when your warm palm reaches up to lightly fondle his balls, Horacio’s orgasm breaks around him like a tidal wave.  His hips judder once, twice, and he thinks he warns you, but you don’t move.  You only hold yourself there, and when he comes, you swallow every drop of him, and he wishes he could explain this feeling to Juliana:  that it doesn’t feel dirty at all.  It feels like a sacrament.  That it feels like love.

It's only fair that he shows you his love for you in turn.

Once he recovers, he flips you onto your back and repays you in kind.  He kisses his way down your naked body, makes a note of all the spots that you moan at.  Make a note too of all the scars that speak to a life a lot like his was in Colombia.  He kisses your scars, presses his lips to each raised ridge as if he can take away any lingering pain.

Then he settles between your legs.  There’s no shyness he can detect; you spread your thighs eagerly for him.  You allow him to put a pillow under your hips to tilt your pelvis into a more agreeable angle.

He’s not especially skilled at this.  The handful of times with Juliana had been a race against the clock—a sprint to coax her to orgasm before she gripped his hair and made him stop.  There’s no clock now, so he takes his time.  He settles your legs on his shoulders and he bends his head to your gorgeous pussy, and he takes his time.

He licks against your folds, then reaches down to part them with his fingers.  Licks a slow, tortuous route from the firm bud of your clit to your entrance.  Over and over and over until you squirm underneath him—then he slides a finger into your clenching heat, then another, then a third, and he feels how your pussy twitches against the intrusion, how you grab against his fingers like you’re trying to pull him deeper into you. 

He fingers you in a lazy rhythm, and he circles his tongue against your clit.  That does something for you; you whine out a curse, and a moment later your hand is on his head, your fingers tugging against his hair, so he purses his lips, suckles against your clit, and that turns your whine into a wail.

He wishes he could tell Juliana this too, that this isn’t dirty either.  When you come, he feels a flush of pride at drawing pleasure from your body—your thighs tight against his head, your pussy clamped down on his fingers, and the slick cum that pulses from you, that coats his tongue and lips in the taste of you.

He’s hard again, but he wouldn’t press his luck.  This is more than he ever dared hope for.  He’d be happy to curl up with you now, to fall asleep beside you, but when he lifts his head from where he’s perched between your thighs, he sees you gazing back at him.

“Please,” is all you say, and he knows what you’re asking for because he wants it to.

If there’s an argument about this being two people pushed together because of circumstances beyond their control, there’s also an argument about the two of you fitting together so well.  Because you do.  Your body seems like it was made for his; you fit together like two jagged puzzles pieces.  Horacio settles over you, lowers his body onto yours, and it’s like magic:  his cock bumps against your inner thigh, but he moves half an inch and he finds your wet heat, and then he’s pushing into you, feeling your feverish flesh part and mold to the shape of him, and then your legs are around his waist, holding him to you as he bottoms out inside you.

He stills for a long moment.  He’s unable to move.  It’s not because he’s afraid he’ll come too soon but because he’s afraid he might cry.  Horacio Carrillo is not a man who cries (maybe Davide is), but gazing down at your face, seeing the stunned love written in your expression, he nearly cries at how lucky he feels.  How blessed.  That shootout in the Medellín alley should have killed him, yet here he is.

Eventually, you give him the faintest of nods, and he starts to move.  He’s gentle at first.  He warms you up to the feel of him, and him to you.  You lay one hand on the side of his face, cupping his cheek as he thrusts into you, but the other hand settles over his heart.

He could love you like this forever.  He coaxes a second, then a third orgasm from you, and he watches your face during each one—the way your eyes go wide, then close tight, the way your mouth takes a hitching breath then goes slack as you breathe through it.  The look on your face as it ebbs away, your eyes shiny with tears, and happy little smile curving your lips.

“I want you to come,” you whisper to him.  You must feel the tension in him, and you bear down on his pistoning cock to urge him along.

“Where?” he pants out. 

“Inside me.  Please.  Come inside me.”

He knows you’re safe.  He’s lived with you for nine months now, and he’s run enough errands with you to know that you have that little plastic compact you pick up from the pharmacy once a month.  He sees you swallow the same pill each morning with your vitamin.  But still—he’s a man with his history, so he doesn’t register your contraceptive use in this moment.  The thought comes to him that if he comes inside you, he may make you pregnant, and Horacio is surprised by how quickly the thought urges his orgasm forward.

“You sure?”  At your words, he’s amped up his thrusting, driving forward in deep, strong strokes until he swears he can feel the crown of his cock nudging against the end of you, and the thought takes hold:  you round with his child, the two of you in this bedroom with a child in the guest room converted into a nursery.  At this moment, it’s the tamest of breeding kinks, but in the morning, he’ll realize it’s just more of this perfect life extrapolated.  You not as his pretend-wife but as his real wife.  A child as tangible proof that this isn’t just an incongruous moment in time.

“Yes.  Please.”  You lick your lips, blink up at him.  “I-I want to feel you coming inside me.”

It’s only fair that he obliges you.  You ask so nicely, so he does:  he thrusts three, four times more, then feels his pleasure snap and spark up his spine as he fills you.

Then he collapses on top of you, and a moment later, he feels your fingers combing through his hair, lightly running over his back.

“You can sleep here, if you want.”  You say it shyly, like you think this might just be a physical release for him, so he lifts his head to kiss you and reply that he wants that very much.

Horacio never sleeps in that cramped daybed again.

-----

The tenth month, January.

What does it mean to Horacio Carrillo for the lines between real and pretend to blur?

It means that through Christmas and into the new year, you live as husband and wife.  You live as newlyweds.  You make love in every room in the house, and you spent lazy days tangled up together.  It means you draw straws to see who has to drive into town for provisions, and it’s all a joke anyway because you always go together.  It means your world collapses down into the most basic of human needs:  feeding and fucking. 

It means that between love-making, the two of you share more about your real lives.  Horacio learns about your family life.  He learns that you’re CIA, and you’ve been stationed in Panama post-Noriega.  He learns that it was an explosion, a car bomb outside of your headquarters, that left you with that scar on your head.

You learn about the Search Bloc and Escobar.  You learn about his childhood as the son of a great military leader, and how that legacy shaped his own life and career.

But what does it mean when that line blurs?

It means that when Johnson returns to your lives, everything ends abruptly. 

“Everything is all clear,” he tells you when he turns up one Saturday in the middle of January.  He sips at the cup of coffee you made him, and if he notices the stunned silence of both of you, he doesn’t remark on it. 

“Escobar was gunned down early today.  It hasn’t hit the wire yet.”  Johnson glances at you.  “And the group that bombed your HQ has been cleared out too.  You’ve been safe for a few months, but we didn’t want to upset the situation here.”

“So now what?” you ask, and Horacio feels sick to his stomach as Johnson explains that your old lives are waiting for you and that it’s time to go.

-----

The end comes that day, but not the way Horacio thought it would.

You gesture to Johnson after he gives the rundown on the logistics, and the two of you go outside.  Horacio watches from the kitchen window as you cross your arms against the cold.  You talk, Johnson listens.  Then Johnson talks, you listen.  Back and forth, and by the end Johnson shakes his head, shakes your hand, and returns inside.

“Okay, so change of plans,” he says, and he rubs his hands together briskly to bring the warmth back to them.  “It’s just you and me now.  Go pack and say your goodbyes, and I’ll be back in an hour.”

He leaves, and Horacio watches him pull out of the driveway, and when he turns back to the interior of the house, he sees you standing there.  Crying openly, tears cutting tracks down your face.

“I can’t go back,” you explain, your voice thick with tears.  “I won’t.”

Then you break down into sobs, and it’s second nature to stride over to you, to pull you into his arms.  He tries to soothe you—rubs your back, holds you to him—as you choke out the words.  That you have had a crisis of conscience.  That you wonder if your work in the CIA did more harm than good.  That you think it’s the former, and how you want to spend the balance of your life not doing more harm than good.  That you want to live in a quiet town that is green in the summer and swaddled in white in the winter.  You want to teach, you want to come home to a house with….and you catch yourself at the last minute.  You don’t say it, but Horacio can guess it.

You want to come home to a house with him in it.  You want to come home to him.

“I love my life here,” you amend hastily, but you push away from him, aware he’s leaving and that your life won’t be exactly the same either way.  You mumble something about not wanting to say goodbye, about wishing him the best, and then you disappear down the hallway.  He hears the click of the door and your crying, and it doesn’t abate while he packs. 

When Johnson returns, Horacio taps on the bedroom door, but you don’t answer and he doesn’t push it.  He’s sleepwalking through the moment, numb, so he leaves.  He doesn’t say goodbye.  He only climbs into Johnson’s rental car, and each mile that Johnson puts between you and Horacio only makes the numbness grow.

“Women, huh?” Johnson says as they near the airport.  “That’s why I said they should never take field work.  They don’t have the stomach for it, in the end.”

Horacio grunts a non-reply, but he thinks Johnson is off the mark.  It’s not that you don’t have the stomach for it.  It’s that you don’t have the heart.

-----

February.

He goes from Vermont to Miami, this time around.

Horacio is given a hotel room, and he’s given the orders to just chill for a bit.  Johnson has extricated him from his fake life as Davide, but his old life as Colonel Horacio Carrillo isn’t quite ready for him yet.

There are mountains of paperwork to bring a man back from the dead.  There’s talk of giving him a cushy role in Madrid.  There’s talk of commendations, medals, a comfortable pension to retire on.  He’s done a lot for his country of Colombia, and Colombia wants to reward him.

He sleepwalks through this liminal space.  The not-Davide, not-Horacio time.  He wanders the streets around the hotel and picks at the food he orders in restaurants, and each time he hears a woman speak, he looks up expecting to see you. 

I don’t even know her real name, he thinks. 

Gwen, his one-time pretend-wife.  Gwen, who had a panic attack on her country’s birthday.  Gwen, who questioned the harm she may have caused to another country, another people.  Gwen, who only wants the chance to do a little good now, or at least to do no more bad.  It wasn’t Gwen at all, but he has no other name to use, so he runs through all the lovely little moments he had with Gwen.

Watching for you to return from your daily jogs.  Walking through the falling leaves of autumn with you.  Making you coffee, pressing the steaming mug into your hands each morning.  Handing out candy to the children at Halloween, tucking you under his cloak at the autumn chill.  Watching movies with you as the snow fell outside, then curling up in bed with you, slotting his body against yours, giving you pleasure and taking pleasure from you in equal measure.  Threading his fingers through yours as he arched over you, his eyes falling on the glinting light in the gold band in your ring finger, it’s twin on his own.

What does it mean for Horacio Carrillo to finally make a choice?

Of course he’s made choices before.  Every day, he made a million choices, large and small.  But the big stuff, the giant stuff, the life-shaping stuff—did he have much choice?  His father’s military career pretty much guaranteed his own career in the Search Bloc.  His family’s status pretty much guaranteed he’d marry a Catholic girl from a family of similar standing.  And when Juliana chose to leave him, he really had no choice then, either.

Same with his pretend life of ten months.  He had no choice in being paired with you, no choice in ending up in New England, little choice in working as a man who tended trees.

He imagines you in your shared home, alone.  Johnson explained on the plane that you’d be able to buy the place, that WitSec only rents homes across the U.S.  He explained that this has happened more than once, and that it’s actually not too difficult to let a witness slide into their pretend-life permanently.

The choice comes down to the most mundane thought.  Horacio stands in his hotel room in Miami and wonders, who will make her coffee in the morning if I’m not there?

*****

Winter always loses its charm by the time February rolls around.  The fleecy white snow turns into grey slush, and everything is cold and soggy and depressing.

Davide leaving doesn’t help at all.

You knew it would end eventually.  You didn’t have much insight into his situation, but you knew that the cartel targeting you would be easy enough to neutralize.  They were only there because of the power vacuum left behind by Noriega, and they were poorly organized.

You just thought when it ended, you’d have more time.  Which is one of your fatal flaws, always thinking you’ll have more time.  Your father died from a heart attack when you were in high school, and your mother died from a car crash when you were in college.  You, more than anyone, should realize that time was never a guarantee, yet you always think you have a surfeit of it.

It's not your proudest moment, those final minutes with Davide.  Not falling apart in a wash of tears, and not fleeing to your room.  You should have committed to one extreme or the other.  You should have either calmly explained your decision and bade him farewell…or you should have given in to the emotion of the moment and spilled everything.

Why do you never learn your lesson?  You never had a chance to tell your parents that you loved them before they died.  Why didn’t you tell Davide you loved him before he left to return to whoever he was before?

You know you could find him.  You’d caught his lightly accented English and guessed at South America.  Colombia, if he was hiding from Escobar.  He told you about the Search Bloc.  You knew some people in that theater.  You could find him and tell him that you loved him, but would it do more harm than good?  Doesn’t he have the right to return to his previous life without any baggage from this one?

February, then:  grey, cold.  You go to work.  You teach your classes and hold office hours.  Political science can create real monsters, so you gently try to steer your students towards the path of diplomacy and not war.  Maybe this is how you make amends, if such a thing is even possible.

You go home each evening and pull together a sandwich for dinner.  Sometimes you get take-out, and you eat over the sink.  Sometimes you watch T.V. and sometimes you read, but you always sleep alone with Davide’s pillow clutched to your chest, the lingering scent of him fading away within days.

-----

Then March.  The snow starts to melt a bit, and under some of the trees in your backyard you start to see the little purple and white jewels of budding crocuses.

You resume your runs in the mornings.  The campus shakes off its doldrums too and the students seem livelier.

You made the right choice to stay.  You go to the bank with your real name and get a mortgage.  You buy the house under your real name, and you go to the university human resources and hand over the paperwork Johnston gave you, and it’s weird at first, explaining why you’re not really Gwen, but it shocks you how quickly people adapt to using your real name.

-----

March is still fresh when there’s a knock at your door one Saturday morning.

Your first guess is that it’s a delivery.  Johnson promised to ship all of your stuff from your apartment in Panama City.  Not that you have anything valuable, but it would be nice to have your record collection back.  You don’t want to have to rebuild that from scratch.

You’re already out of practice from your prior life.  You don’t bother to check who it is, don’t look out the window before you open the door, and so it’s a shock to see Davide standing there, his fist lifted like he’s about to knock again.

He drops his hand and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.  You are speechless too, but you don’t need words to because as he drops and unfurls his hand by his side, you see the way the gold ring on his finger catches the morning light. 

He’s still wearing his wedding ring, you think, and your body moves towards his, you leap into his arms and he’s there to catch you.  You breathe out his name, but he chuckles, pushes you gently away from him.

“No, cariño,” he replies, shakes his head.  “Not Davide.”

“Well, no.  I mean—”

“I’m Horacio,” he interrupts.  You reply with your own name, and he repeats it, almost to himself.

“Everything else was me,” he adds.  “Everything but the name.  What we had…”  He trails off, fixes you with that dark-eyed stare of his. 

“Everything else was me too.”  All of the bare facts of your fake life as Gwen hold little weight to that nebulous everything else:  every joke and shared laugh, your Fourth of July panic attack.  The feel of his hand on your waist when you went apple picking.  The way his hair curled after a shower, and how you loved to run your fingers through it when he fell asleep beside you.  All of it.  Every stupid little moment that most other people would have already forgotten. 

Horacio holds up his hand to show you the ring you’ve already noticed.  “I never took it off.  It didn’t even occur to me to.”

You hold up your own hand.  “Me neither.”

He looks away, squints his eyes as he looks off into the distance, but you swear you can see tears there.  He clears his throat, but his voice comes out rougher than usual.

“I’d like to see if I’m as good a man as Davide was,” he says.  “I’d like that chance, but only if you…”  Another cough as he clears he throat, then continues.  “Only if you’ll have me.”

You reach out and take his hand in yours.  You touch the warm metal on his finger, then the thought comes to you.  You slide the ring off, and you feel Horacio watching you.  On the plane, you each put your rings on yourselves, but that wasn’t how it was supposed to go, was it?

Now, nearly a year later, you take his wedding ring off.  For a long beat, you study it—it’s a simple thing, nothing elaborate.  WitSec wasn’t going to waste money on an expensive ring for a fake marriage, and it already has a shallow scratch in it, likely from his job at the nursery.

Then you lift your head and gaze at him, and without breaking eye contact, you slide the ring back on his finger.  The smile that spreads across his face when you do is enough of a promise as any vows recited in a church, and he repeats the motion with your own ring—takes it off, then slides it back on with intention.

And then, because there’s no priest there to give the order, Horacio bends down and kisses you for the first time as himself, and the first time as yourself, and perhaps you learn your lesson about time after all because the moment you part, you whisper, “I love you” to him.

And perhaps he needed to learn the same lesson because he sighs, pulls you closer to him, and whispers “I love you too.”

#colonel horacio carrillo x reader #colonel horacio carrillo #horacio carrillo x reader #horacio carrillo imagine #horacio carrillo #colonel carrillo #colonel carrillo imagine #colonel carrillo x reader #narcos #tropes and tales

[david-talks-sw]

When 'Star Wars' dilutes the impact of a "Kurosawa samurai standoff"...

It's no secret that one of the major inspirations for Star Wars was Akira Kurosawa movies. The Hidden Fortress influenced the basic structure of the first film, was a basis for Lucas' character archetypes and his use of narrative POVs.

But, really, all of Kurosawa's films were an influence on the making of Star Wars. Including the duels seen in his and other samurai films from the 60s.

Dunno if you've seen a kendo fight, but they're pretty similar.

The duelists size each other up, and there's a lot of mind games going on before the strike actually happens.

If you hold your sword this way, the other guy adjusts his stance.

You move your foot that way, the adversary responds accordingly.

Cinematically, this process allows you to play with a whole treasure trove of elements to build up the drama and suspense. We see this slow-yet-tense approach to dueling reflected all over the Original Trilogy. And we've seen it again in recent Disney-released content.

The perfect and first real example of this in Star Wars is the fight between Ben Kenobi and Maul, in Rebels.

The tension increases more...

... and more until the two fighters move, the music swells...

... and then it reaches its climax.

Beautifully executed.

Dave Filoni's done his homework, it shows, and while it's an awesome homage, narratively it also holds weight. There's a reason why this fight is so quick:

This time, Obi-Wan isn't fighting to avenge the death of his master, he's not fighting to save his own life... he's fighting to protect Luke's. And that means there's no time to fuck about. He'll end the conflict swiftly and decisively, he won't let it come to a prolonged acrobatic fight. So he lures Maul in by making him think he's taking Qui-Gon's form, and strikes true when Maul, increasingly consumed by his own rage to the point of blindness, falls for it.

Again: a wonderful fight and an excellent homage.

Then we get to Luke's stand-off with Kylo on Crait, in The Last Jedi.

An interesting take on the trope, also with meaningful narrative impact. As Rian Johnson writes in the TLJ screenplay:

"This is not like a saber fight. This like an old-fashioned samurai duel."

Here too, the tension gets built up...

... and every time we're close to getting that climax, Luke dodges.

It leaves a feeling of dissatisfaction, which is exactly what Kylo is feeling as he boils with rage.

Suddenly, we do get the climax...

... and a twist. Luke was never actually there. Boom. Those inserts during the build-up phase? If you look at them again they're clues (Luke doesn't leave a mark on the ground, salt doesn't land on his clothes, etc). Luke wasn't engaging because he wasn't actually there, he was buying time for the Resistance to escape.

Okay. Cool.

Next time we see a "Kurosawa" duel... it's here, in The Mandalorian.

Again, a lot of posing, slow movements and patience, as is expected from the trope.

But we know nothing about the opponent Ahsoka is fighting other than her name is Morgan... so no emotional impact, there.

At some point, Ahsoka loses a lightsaber. The apprentice to the Chosen One is struggling against some rando.

We find out later on that Morgan is a Nightsister from Dathomir, and that's cool... but we already know how Jedi-trained folks fare against the Dathomiri.

If you ask me, it feels like manufactured stakes. But that's beside the point. In fact, y'know what? It's fine.

Though the impact of this duel isn't as great as its predecessors, the whole episode is filled with visual homages to Kurosawa's work.

It makes sense that the duel would be too. Also it's the first time we're seeing Ahsoka in live action, in a lightsaber duel, the hype is real. Let's cut 'em some slack.

So we come to the series Ahsoka... where almost every duel in the the show has the Kurosawa posturing and tip-toeing and... I dunno. I was bored?

Like, the primary purpose of this approach to duels is that it's meant to be suspenseful and intense... and now it's not.

Because we know Ahsoka is gonna beat the crap outta these droids...

... so why even bother faking some semblance of "what's her next move gonna be?" suspense? There's a hole right behind her, gee, I truly wonder.

Oh, you think putting her against an Inquisitor's gonna make us fear for her life, wonder if she's gonna get outta this situation unscathed?

She was wiping the floor with two of them at the same time, a decade prior. At 17, she was killing Inquisitors while disarmed.

Do you really expect your audience to fear for her life in a fight against Marrok?

So we get to the fight with Baylan, and the posturing and studying opponent's next move would be welcome here (two Order 66 survivors, knew Anakin, both well-trained former Jedi)...

... if we hadn't literally seen that same dynamic with Marrok who, again, we knew was gonna die.

No tension was built in either moment, the only thing it achieved was me pressing >> on my keyboard.

It's not captivating anymore, it's just slow and un-dynamic.

Bottom line:

Tributes to Kurosawa are nice. They're part of what makes Star Wars what it is. But c'mon, we get it already.

Lightsaber duelists don't need to tiptoe around each other and change poses at every fight. Because when the actually meaningful duels come up (like the one with Baylan), the impact will be lessened.

The "Kurosawa samurai duel" is artistic and interesting, but it should be used sparingly in order to maintain its charm and not get old and trope-y. AKA too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing.

#ahsoka series #ahsoka tano #baylan skoll #marrok #ahsoka #star wars #meta #sw negativity #long post

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Treat You 3

Warnings: dark elements, noncon, violence, abuse, other dark elements. Proceed with caution. (Tall!reader)

Note: Please let me know what you think as it helps me a lot with ideas and I love interacting with you all.

Part of The Club AU

"You're useless!" Your dad slather's spit on your face as he holds himself over you, penning you in on your bed, "fucking idiot!"

You whimper as he growls and huffs his tobacco-tinged breath in your face. You wrinkle your nose and bat your lashes as tears prickle along the brims of your eyes. You shudder as he shoves himself off of you, snarling as he heaves his weight off the mattress. Another rude awakening, though for what you don't know.

"I'm sorry, da-" You begin as you sit up, only to have him spin and crack his knuckles across your cheek. You fall back and cradles your skull as it vibrates. "Ow, dad, what did I do?"

"Where the fuck are my smokes?!" He hisses.

"I dunno, I dunno," you sit up, holding out an arm to shield yourself, "you know I wouldn't touch them."

"I know you're a sneaky fucking bitch," he barks and goes to your dress, shaking it as he tears open the drawer. He scoops out the contents and throws them so the fabric scatters over the floor.

"I didn't touch them," you sniffle.

"Stop fucking lying!" He blusters as he stomps over to you, grabbing you by the front of your tee shirt, "look at you, lazy piece of shit, hiding in your room all day, doing what?!"

"Dad," you murmur.

"Bitch!" He shoves you back and you once more fall flat, biting your own tongue.

He surges around the room and there's a thunderous crash as he swipes your desk clear of its contents. You sit up and watch, helpless as he rips like a tornado through the space. He hollers and hurls until he's out of breath. He leaves you with a slam of the door. A promise in the shake of the frame. If he sees you again, it will only get worse.

You get up and switch your pajama bottoms for jeans. You retrieve the clunky laptop from the floor and tuck it into your bag. It's the only thing of value you have. It's how you make your living, typing away captions and sending the words in for pennies. You swipe up your book and the small change purse with not much in it.

You listen before you emerge from your room. You creep down and take your denim jacket and sneakers from the entryway, tiptoeing out and putting them on in the hallway. You stand straight and touch your throbbing cheek. You must look a mess. It doesn't matter, you just need to get out of there.

You get out to the street and find a bench just around the corner, sitting to think of where to go. You need to get the next project done. Tonight's the deadline to get a few extra dollars on the next deposit. You need wifi. Usually you can leech off the neighbours' but there's no way you're staying in the apartment with your father like that.

The library isn't an option. You can't even access the wifi without an account and you have fines since your father destroyed several borrowed books last month. Besides, it's too far out of the way and you have no bus fare. Maybe...

Is it worth it? You don't know if you have any change. You sift through your bag and open your change purse. A couple of quarters; seventy-five cents. Hmm, how much is a cookie? Just one of the small ones?

All you know is the cafe has wifi. You'll test your luck and see how long they put up with you. You head off, disappearing into the urban ebb and flow, happy to drown in it and forget the morning.

🍵

The cafe is busy enough for you to sneak in with the rush. You find a seat in the corner and set up there, hoping you can fade into the background as usual. You glance over at the menu, there's nothing you can afford there. You sigh as you slip the heavy laptop out of your crochet bag.

You open it and hit the power button. Nothing happens. You lean in and try again. You notice how the frame of the screen is split at the seam. Oh no. The thing's taken a beating over the years but it's usually fine. He's done it now. It's broken.

That's it. That's the only thing you got and it's just as garbage as everything else in your life. You hang your head, holding it in your hands as you stare at the table. You're numb, to hollow to feel anything. You should cry but you can't.

Your vision blurs as you sit there, frozen. What do you do? What can you do? You are totally screwed.

You don't know how long you stay like that. The world skews around you until suddenly it centers on a gentle tap on your shoulder. You pop your head up, nearly tipping the chair as you look up at the barista. It's the same one as last time. Peter, you think he said.

"Excuse me--" He begins but he gapes and stares at you.

"I'm sorry, I... I'll go," you gulp and shake your head, "I don't have money for a coffee."

You stand but he doesn't move. He's close as you reach for your laptop and he reaches to stop you from closing it.

"What happened?" He asks.

"Nothing," you lie.

"Something must've happened--"

"I must've hit it on the door when I came in," you mutter pushing until he moves his hand, snapping shut the broken screen.

"Not the computer," he says, "you?"

"What?" You frown and wince as the bruise twinges and you notice how you can see your cheek swelling from your left eye.

"Did someone hurt you?" He asks.

"Please, it doesn't matter," you turn to unhook your bag from the chair, "I'm just going to leave. I told you, I don't have any money--"

"Coffee's on the house. Or tea," he insists, "please, sit down."

"I can't."

"Why not?" He asks.

You cringe and stop. You turn to face him, looking down at his warm brown eyes, "why are you bugging me?"

"Am I?" His forehead ripples, "I wasn't meaning to."

You squeeze your lips together and a pang of guilt tweaks in your chest. You hang your head, "I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to talk back."

"Look, seems like you've had a rough morning. If you stay, I promise I won't bug you. I'll just bring you some tea and let you be."

You look away as your nose flares, tingling dangerously, "why would you do that?"

"Nice things always come around," he shrugs, "and they don't cost anything."

You nod and hide your face, "thanks."

"No problem, oh uh, one thing," he turns a palm out, "I didn't get your name."

You put your bag on the table as you touch the back of the chair. You eke out your name before you sit. He repeats it brightly, "alright, I'll be right back."

You stare out the window, refusing to look anywhere else. You're too embarrassed to let him see the tears in your eyes.

#peter parker #dark peter parker #dark!peter parker #peter parker x reader #drabble #the club #treat you #spider-man #mcu #marvel #avengers #au #series

[ecogirl2759]

Here's Sakura, as promised!

-NOTE-

All of these photos are from the Danganronpa 4コマ KINGS series. I do not own any of the drawings, but these photos are mine. All credit goes to Spike Chunsoft for the characters and the books themselves.

THANK YOU FOR THE SUGGESTION! Time for the photos!

(This post isn't long guys it's just buff)

She so strong :D

And also very intimidating .w.

She's so strong not even mosquitos can bite her lol

She's so strong that she can't put on workout clothes anymore :(

SAKURA KNOWS HOW TO MAKE RICEBALLS AND SEW!! SHE IS THE PERFECT WOMAN!

Dandelionssss :)

LOOKIT HER LITTLE BUNNY EAR MUFFS OMFG SHE IS SO CUTE

Tea time :D

Sweep sweep

FLUSTERED SAKURA FLUSTERED SAKURA

She just wants an autograph

Sakura after a shower :)

(Plus Aoi cameo lol)

What to do when it's hot out? Train, of course!

(Plus Mondo cameo hehe)

Protein fixes everything >:)

WRESTLING SAKURA OMG I LOVE HER OUTFIT

IF NO ONE DRAWS A PICTURE OF HER IN THIS OUTFIT THEN I WILL AND I SUCK AT MUSCLES

Happy Sakura is best Sakura <3

She looks so done with Monokuma, and honestly.... yeah

Sakura fighting the real villain of this series: Gambling

(Plus Makoto cameo)

You walk in a room and see this. Wyd?

Sakura's people need her, goodbye!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I love the illustrators <3

I'm really glad Sakura had so much to do in these books! There were a lot of gags about how strong she was lol, which I feel like could've been played up more in the games. Dunno how well that would've fared without the visuals tho.

AGAIN, THANKS FOR THE REQUEST!! I got Sakura's request in my first ever ask and I COULDN'T BE MORE HAPPY :DD

And sorry for the small cover image, most of her photos on the covers were wider than they were long lol.

Anywhosits, the Makoto pt. 2 post will be up soon, so keep an eye out for that :)

Next up: Makoto pt. 2!

Contents || <-Previous : Next->

#danganronpa #dr1 #trigger happy havoc #manga #4 koma #4コマ #danganronpa thh #dr1 thh #drthh #thh #sakura ogami #sakura oogami #oogami sakura #ogami sakura #Her name has the same problem as Mondo's lol #They both use the same kanji but are spelled different in English #But Sakura's so cool I love her #:) #long post

[melanieph321]

Ruben Dias x Reader - Fake Love Part 3/8

Reader is a kindergarten teacher. Nothing more nothing less. But following an accident whistle vacation in Dubai she somehow makes her boyfriend believe that she does somthing else for a living, something that earns her way more money than she has. Her boyfriend, Ruben, is just happy to have found someone who understands him so well, someone who doesn't want him for his money since money isn't an issue for neither reader or himself. Or so thinks. Would finding out the truth ruin their newfound relationship? Readers thinks so, and does everything to keep up the lie, although it has some bad people from the middle east looking for her.

Enjoy!

"Hmmn. No speedos in sight." You observed the beach from left to right.

"Maybe you were thinking of Brazil?" Alicia said, appearing beside you. "Yeah, that must be it. Brazil. "

You shrugged, happy nevertheless. It was a beautiful day, no clouds in sight, the sun hot against your skin. You wore a sundress to Alicia's frustration. However, it was not worth getting burned again.

"So where are the guys. They told us to meet them here, no?"

"I dunno?" You said. Perhaps they were running late.

"Found them." Alicia shirped.

"Where?"

She turned your shoulders for you to look in the right direction. What you saw made your cheeks burn more than the sun did. It was Ruben, Fabio and Theo, all sweaty playing a game of beach volleyboll.

"Ladies, you made it!" They stopped the game, to their opponents dissatisfaction. They were playing against children, really small children. "Y/N, you're here, at the beach." Ruben approached you with a brimming smile on his face. He wore no shirt only swim trunks. Never had you seen so many outlined abs on such fare skin. His body tanned easly.

"Yes, no speedos in sight." You joked, trying to play it cool. However it was difficult, seeing as Ruben was checking you out. Sure, your sundress hid more skin than a bikini, but it did nothing to hide your curves, and the fact that you wore no bra.

"You look..."

"Warm." You smiled, cutting Ruben off from complementing you. He chuckled.

"Yeah, that's the word I was looking for, hot. You look hot."

You shook your head at his smugness, it was silly, but tempting.

"So, do you girls want to join us?" Theo asked, raising the volleyboll in his hand. "In that case it will be you guys against me and my nephews." He turned to the children who looked displeased to have their game interrupted by two females.

"Um, I think we'll pass." Alicia said, dragging you with her to where the taning beds were.

"Did you see how fit he was?"

"Who, Ruben?"

"Yeeees. You should definitely climb that."

"Pardon?"

Alicia giggled, rubbing sunscreen on her legs. "You know, tap that."

"Alicia. English please." You demanded.

She rolled her eyes. "You should fuck him Y/N. How long has it been since you had sex? And don't...." She said, seeing as you were about to protest. "Don't count that little rendezvous you had with your coworker Byron."

"First of all, he was not my coworker when we...you know. I wouldn't do such a thing."

"Oh please. Save that for whoever caught his head between your legs, which by the way, is your current boss."

"Again." You said, fueling Alicia's laughter. "None of us worked together back then. We were all still in university."

"Funny how life works." Alicia held her flat stomach to ease her spasms. "The three of you, now working at the same school." One might think she would die from laughing so hard.

"Yeah yeah, very funny."

"Oh come on, don't be mad. All I'm saying is that if you have the chance to fuck a hot rich guy, take it. Ruben is both of those things."

You chuckled in response as the two of you fell back against your taning beds. There was a marina up ahead. With boats the size of houses.

"Imagine being on one of those." You dreamed.

Alicia nodded. "I would definitely fuck a old rich guy for that."

"I suppose." You grimarced. Alicia always had a strange way of seeing things.

"Oh my god, look!"

"What?" You sat up, raising your sunglasses to see better.

"That one."

Alicia was pointing towards one of the smaller fleets. A yacht named Deria. "Check out the flag." She said, reffering to the one waving on top of a mast. You recognized it as the flag of the UAE. As a kindergarten teacher you knew most of the flags of the world, it came with the job. Alicia however, only knew of this particular flag because you had spotted it every where in Dubai.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" She said, raising the usual concern within you.

"No."

She stood. "Come on, let's ask if they'll take friends of Muhammed Siddiq for a boat right."

Apperently the Siddiq family was known all over the middle east, especially in Dubai. After a brief phone call, the crew was happy to have you Alicia, Ruben Fabio and Theo on their boat. Theo's nephews were happy to come along too.

"Again, tell me what you do for a living?" Ruben asked, once all of you were on the boat, somwhere in the middle of the sea.

"You know...." You said, trying to snort the question away. However, you and Ruben were alone at that moment, making it hard for you not to give him a straight answer. And so you lied. "I have a consultant company that deals with clients all over the world."

Ruben raised a brow, impressed by the fact.

"Yeah. I guess you can say that I'm a busy woman."

"Not too busy, I hope?"

Ruben leaned over the boat railing, enjoying the view of both the ocean and.... "I really like you Y/N. I hope that we can...."

You were interrupted by sudden commotion on the top deck of the boat.

"It's Remy." Theo said.

Ruben and you had rushed upstairs to find everyone surrounding Theo and one of his nephews. The boy looked pale, struck by a sudden seasickness.

"He has never been on a boat before. His mother won't let him." Theo said, voice shaking. "I didn't know it was because...."

"Hey, it's okay." Ruben stepped forward calming his friend.

A sudden instict within you kicked in. Quickly you rushed to be by the boy's side, swooping in to care for him. Everyone even gave you the space to do it. The crew adviced you to stay on the top deck whilst they turned the boat back to shore. And so you did, the boys head resting in your lap to the slow movments of the ship.

"Mamãe." He groaned.

"Shhh." It's gonna be okay."

You stroked his head to calm him down. He closed his eyes, allowing you to go on. The sun was setting in the sky to a low summer breeze. As you gently held his head and offered him a cold compress, you felt a presence behind you. It was Ruben, admiring the way you were soothing his friends nephew by telling him random facts about earth. Facts he probably didn't understand, since they were all in english. Nevertheless, the purpose was to be patient and nurturing, and it was clear that the boy felt safe and comforted in your arms.

"You have children of your own, no?" Ruben asked.

You turned your head and smiled. "I just want to make him feel better."

He nodded understandingly, slightly annoyed that you didn't answer his question. He approached, plotting down beside you.

"You're good with children."

"Thanks."

"Do you have any of your own?"

Yes, twenty of them.

"No. But someday."

He nodded. "How many do you want?"

It was cute, how serious he seemed with these questions. You chuckled. "I guess as many as my husband decides to put inside of me."

Ruben's eyes widened, his gaze shifting to the boy asleep in your lap. "You're kidding?"

"Not really." You shrugged. "It all comes down to that, no? How many children a man wants to put inside of a me. I mean how many babies would you like to put in a woman?"

He blushed, regretting having gotten you into this topic. But then his face stilled, his expression confident, eyes piercing yours. "It depends on the woman."

You gasped, but not because of what he said and how it made your insides errupt. "I wasted our night." You said, in a sudden realization.

Ruben's expression faltered, but did not look disappointed at you. "You'll give me your number, no?"

"Sure." You mumbled, wanting to give him more than that.

"Hey." He raised your chin, seeing as it fell. "I'll see you again, no?"

His face, it looked so handsome in the pink son. That's what you did what you did. That's why you leaned forward and kissed him, although Ruben's hand under your chin was already brining you towards his lips.

#fanfiction #football imagine #ruben dias #man city #manchester city #ruben dias x reader #ruben dias imagine #footballer imagine #footballer x reader #football angst

[lou-struck]

Shaping Hearts

Osamu Miya x reader

~ Onigiri Miya has a line out the door, but it's owners thoughts are elsewhere.

WC: 1.1K+

a/n: This was a WIP i forgot about posting for Valentines Day...oops

Onigiri Miya seems to be trending on Instagram…again.

When you first set up your boyfriend’s restaurant on social media, you did it just to help him get the word out a bit more and maybe get featured on a few food bloggers' websites, but now thanks to 90% Osamu’s fantastic cooking and about 10% his gorgeousness. The page has gained thousands of followers.

Curiously, check some of the most recent tagged posts and see that Osmau’s usually pristine triangular rice balls are shaped into plump little hearts.

“Cute,” you murmur as you scroll through the pages of aesthetically pleasing rice ball pics. It’s a nice little change for the holiday, but you are confused as to why Osamu hadn’t told you about his little plan earlier, especially since you could’ve made a promo post about it on the account.

But as your cab driver pulls in front of the beloved restaurant, the long line that stems out the door and around the block tells you that Osamu is more than busy enough today.

You pay your cab fare and walk towards the front door of the restaurant past the groups of young people who, from the conversations they are having amongst themselves, are there for much more than the food.

You hear a few people grumbling about how you are walking past the line, but you continue onwards.

Pushing open the doors you slip into the restaurant and feel the warmth of the heating system on your skin. You pass the full tables of people eating their heart shaped onigiri's and talking amongst themselves. Everything feels so homey it warms your heart. This is exactly what Osamu had dreamed of when he first opened Onigiri Miya.

Making your way to the kitchen you open the door slowly so you don't startle your boyfriend. Who is hunched over one of the prep tables, a steaming bowl of rice and a tray of fillings on either side of him.

He scans the tickets as they come in shaping the rice balls and stuffing them with care and smoothing out the little heart shape before sending them off to the pickup counter, despite the crowd his eyes are lidded and he his lips are upturned in a soft smile.

His motions are fluid and practiced, and he softly sings along to the cheesy love song on the radio as he works, Knowing he is in the zone you take the opportunity to surprise him.

“Hey Samu,” you say, sneaking behind the counter and wrapping your arms around his beefy muscles.

“Hey darlin’,” he says shooting you a sleepy smile. “What brings you here? Didn’t ya have plans?”

Nuzzling deeper into his arms you feel the softness of his soft t-shirt on your skin. “I guess I missed you,” you hum, noticing the way his shoulder slump in relaxation. “And we just met for some drinks,”

“Drinks?” he parrots. "It's a bit early for that isn't it?"

"Nope, its after five." you say watching the cute look of confusion on his face.

He curses under his breath and turns his head a bit to glance up at the clock, his tired eyes making out the placement of the tiny hands and shakes his head “There’s no way it’s that late.”

You raise a brow in concern “What time did you think it was?"

He shrugs, "I dunno, it felt like I was still in the lunch rush. I haven't had time to take a breather since I was on the phone with ya.”

"You do have quite the crowd out there." you say giving his shoulder a little squeeze. "Probably because of the little promotion you are doing today."

“Promotion?” he asks, letting that adorable look of confusion take over his features.

You nod, "Yeah, the heart-shaped onigiri you have been making, they are all over Instagram today." you explain gesturing to the tray of little rice hearts on the table.

A pink flush covers his cheeks as he stares down at the balls picking one up carefully. “I-i didn't realize they were hearts.” he mumbles.

Your eyes widen a bit as you look at the man in front of you. "But you have made hundreds of them today, how could you not know?”

He lets out a little chuckle and brings the tray to the counter. "I just...you know... get into the zone when m' cookin."

“Yea, but you’ve never made hearts before.” you tease “What exactly were you thinking about in,” you lift your hands and make little air quotes with your fingers. “‘the zone’”

“Someone special,” he smirks, placing his on your waist and pulling you into his chest and peppering your neck with gentle kisses that tickle your skin. “

Turning your head, his kisses come to land softly on your lips and you smile. “I guess you missed me, too Samu.”

“Obviously,” he grins, his teeth graze his bottom lip and his eyes stare down at you hungrily. Looking all too ready to spend the dinner rush lip locked with you.

And you would’ve let him.

“H-hey, Mr. Miya,” one of the servers stammers from the window, “how are we doing on those tickets?”

“ shit, “he sighs, glancing out of the corner of his eyes to see the influx of tickets that keep getting sent to the kitchen and the line that stretches out the door of the restaurant and around the corner. “I guess I gotta finish these off."

“Probably,” your murmur internally cursing to yourself as he pulls away. “ The only thing worse than a crowd is a hungry crowd.“

“Ya got that right.” He smiles, taking a ticket off the line and scanning its contents. “The sooner I fill these orders, the sooner I get to spend some time alone with ya.”

“What can I do to make that happen sooner?” you ask tilting your head to the side.

“How about you give me a kiss every time I finish a ticket?" he asks, giving you that little lopsided smile that never fails to send butterflies into your stomach.

Glancing at the dozens of tickets that your boyfriend has to go through you nod thinking it sounds like a pretty sweet deal. “I-i can do that.”

“Good, M’ countin on ya.” he smiles and slides a heart shaped onigiri over to you. "Here’s a little somethin to keep yer energy up. We’ve got a long shift ahead of us.

You take a bite of the cute little rice ball with a grateful smile, "It's so good Samu," you beam "I don't know if it's the heart shape, but I can definetly taste the love."

"It's all cause of you darlin'" he smiles "I rice ball ya."

"I rice ball you too," you grin at his corniness and take another bite. And as you feel the love it was cooked with dance on your tongue you prepare to help your boyfriend complete order after order.

#Haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu osamu #osamu miya x reader #miya osamu #osamu x reader #x reader #hq #hq x reader

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

I just wanted to pop in and tell you again how much I adored The Hedgehog’s Dilemma and Flightless Birds. Truly they are two of my favorite fics to come out of this fandom. I’m so excited for everything else you’re working on and I just know they’re going to pleasantly destroy me <3

That said, consider this an open invitation to share anything you might want to share! General thoughts, fic ideas you’re working on or not working on, writing snippets, or even how end of semester grading is faring- whatever you want!

Thank you!! It’s still amazing to me that something I’ve written is favourite fic-worthy, especially when there’s so many talented writers in the fandom. As for the end of semester marking: I'm at paper 50/101 and answering this ask to procrastinate before I start my marking for the day. Because the papers are all answering the same prompt and it's making me feel a bit like I'm stuck in a time loop, here's a snippet from Wrong Answers Only from Ted's first day in the time loop, before he realizes it's a time loop — from his perspective, he's just invited Jamie back and is expecting him at Nelson Road, but from Jamie's, they haven't met up yet.

Out in the hall, he opened his call history, but the glitch that was affecting the rest of his phone had got to that and his messages, too. By the time he’d located him between Martin Tanner (one of the boys from his third season coaching) and Laura Taylor (a uni friend who’d gone on to be a surgeon), Ted had wandered his way to the empty weight room and sat on the bench. The ringtone echoed tinnily through the empty space as he waited — one ring, two, three, and then the call connected a second before it dropped. “Coach?” “Hey, Jamie, where are you, bud?” “At— at the studio, you know. ‘Bout to go on Holly and Phil,” Jamie said. He sounded a little quiet, uncertain, same as he’d been at the bar the other day. “They’re, you know. Doing my hair and all. Gotta look fit.” “You gotta do that twice?” Ted asked. A long pause. “No, I— I dunno what you mean, coach.” “Well, you were just on a couple’ve days ago, weren’t you?” Ted said. “No,” Jamie repeated. Ted scrubbed his free hand over his face, filled with a sudden rush of exasperation — he’d really thought Jamie had left all this behind him, the poking and prodding and pushing back against everything Ted said for no other reason than he could. “C’mon, man, I really thought we were getting somewhere.” “You’re the one that sent me back,” Jamie said, sharp. “You think I wanted to go back to City? You saw what my—” he cut off in a choked breath. “I was trying, coach. Why’d you send me away?” Ted’s fingers trembled. He scrubbed them viciously against the fabric of his pants, but when he spoke, his voice came out steady. “Jamie, I invited you back.” “Why’re you still playing mind games?” Jamie asked, plaintive. It was a strange sound on him, and not one Ted was sure he liked. “You won. Just leave me alone. Please, just leave me alone.” And then he hung up.

#fic: wrong answers only #thank you! #it's a two-day time loop that covers all the events of 2x02 #finally got past the canon retelling bit into the subjecting ted to the torments of the universe bit! very fun for me! less fun for ted! #ted lasso #jamie tartt #kvetch oc #tw implied abuse #*edited because i noticed a bunch of typos when i read it back oops 😭

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

sorry i have to brainfart this somewhere but mersault chuuya wearing almost damn near similar clothing to his youth got me thinking about dazai and chuuya's fashion choices.

dazai, in all the eras where he was in the mafia....never changes his outfit. it fitting, given his character and such.....so his ada outfit makes him look like a rainbow. dark blue vest, blue gem(?) bolo tie, striped shirt and a tan coat similar to oda's. i think it's cool, to show the stark contrast between his pm days and how he's faring now, aswell to show how much effect oda had on him.

chuuya.....is the complete opposite. boy changes his clothes all the time. but it's so interesting.

his fifteen outfit is very "him" in a sense. street kid, street kid style- red shirt, grey hoodie, green leather jacket, bright blue sheep armband. he fits right in with the rest of the sheep, and hes so...colorful here. almost similar to ada dazai's outfit. and then theres the outfit he wears in the mafia- the first one we saw back in the manga where he seems to be wearing like a..."beta" version of his current outift- but the way it was drawn (disregarding the anime for a second) it looks like its almost ill fitting for him. the vest is too big, the coat looks so heavy, the tie isnt properly tucked, and his pants are baggy. like hes struggling to "fit in".

then theres sb outfit- hes wearing the standard mafia outfit like higuchi, but with his own touches- rolled up sleeves, glasses tucked in his breastpocket, choker, gloves. its not much, but even higuchi doesnt do anything to hers. we kinda see him "getting into" the mafia work, and theres no pop of color here. the dragon head conflict outift is different though- hes wearing clothes that are "his style" again. simple shirt, jacket, choker, gloves. he also has his red petticoat (i think thats what it is? whatever that long cloth underneath his jacket) that, once again, gives him some color. i dunno what spured the outfit change, but i honestly think the red color is his own touch- his own "color"

and then current chuuya. no color at all, maybe safe from the ribbon on his hat. he wears his coat on his shoulders, similar to pm dazai. (also, slight off tangent here- he always loses his coat whenever hes dealing with dazai?? i think?? which is. interesting. given with how glued pm dazai's coat is to his own shoulders. like he actively takes it off/gets it taken off and i SWEAR this only even happens when hes with dazai. idk. ever since asagiri said beast dazai wearing his coat fully to signify him accepting his role as the pm boss ive been. thinking about it. a lot.)

where was i going with this?? oh yeah. why is mersault chuuya wearing his old clothes?? specifically fifteen clothes? like was it his off day or something. bc if you look at chuuyas various outfit as his progression towards the mafia then him wearing his old non mafia clothes either means two things : 1. this is to signify chuuya, under vampire influnce, is well. obviously not loyal to the mafia atm. or 2. something might happen in the future that makes him swear allegiance to someone else which i dont find possible but??? who knows. im overthinking this

Oh my god I opened my asks to find this monster in here and scrolled through it like ?????????

Please feel free to do this anytime this was an absolute joy to read hahaha

"dazai, in all the eras where he was in the mafia....never changes his outfit." His outfit stays pretty similar, you're right, though he does actually change it once during his mafia days. The left image is the outfit he wears in Fifteen and Stormbringer, while the right is what he wears in DHC and Dark Era.

The difference is the blazer jacket he adds under his coat. It's a minimal change but I think it's significant. I mentioned in this post how I believe the change might be related to his change in pronoun from boku to watashi, but really it's more the added layer of distance that makes this significant. Dazai just looks a little... odd, in the first outfit. The coat hangs off him loosely, his shirt is a little baggy. He looks very boyish, and that makes his deceptive tendencies and deeply concerning outlook all the more disturbing to others.

The second outfit makes one change but his clothes now look like they fit him (still with the exception of the coat, which never fit and never will... in this universe anyways. You mentioned Beast so... you know already hehe). In the case of the second outfit, he looks more mature and formal, which lends itself to a person who withdrew further and further away from people (with the exception of the other two at Bar Lupin); who became a terrifying executive in other's eyes, moving away from the "creepy intelligent child" image he had earlier - even though he is still very much a kid. No one knows Dazai - I think the added image of formality and authority here is just one of the many barriers he constructed to keep people from getting too close.

"so his ada outfit makes him look like a rainbow. dark blue vest, blue gem(?) bolo tie, striped shirt and a tan coat similar to oda's."

hjdfvbdjf rainbow - entering his no longer closeted gay era (sorry lol i couldn't resist)

No but you're right about the coat looking a bit like Oda's. He cared for and respected that man like no other and I think when Dazai thinks of "a good person" Oda is the first person who comes to mind. His shirt in the manga is also stripy like Oda's, a little detail that got lost in the anime. :')

"his fifteen outfit is very "him" in a sense. street kid, street kid style- red shirt, grey hoodie, green leather jacket, bright blue sheep armband. he fits right in with the rest of the sheep, and hes so...colorful here."

Yeah. He looks every bit the street kid and blends with the Sheep near perfectly - more than fitting in though, I think it's more than implied that he wants to fit in and changes his look to do so. Chuuya goes to great lengths to give the appearance of fitting in - because he never felt like he truly did (and certainly the Sheep did not treat him like an equal or a friend).

"and then theres the outfit he wears in the mafia- the first one we saw back in the manga where he seems to be wearing like a..."beta" version of his current outfit- but the way it was drawn (disregarding the anime for a second) it looks like its almost ill fitting for him. the vest is too big, the coat looks so heavy, the tie isnt properly tucked, and his pants are baggy. like hes struggling to "fit in"."

YES you get it!! And adding onto that, Chuuya doesn't really have a lot of reason to want to fit in yet. He hasn't found his personal groove yet, because he has little personal attachment to the mafia at this point in time.

Yeah in Stormbringer he's got a few personal touches but is still pretty non-descript (though you're right, it's much more than Higuchi... something to think about for her character too, and how it seems the mafia may be more of a job than an investment to her). By Dead Apple though, Chuuya's outfit is... well, back to his punk vibes, just a little more mafia-classy, I guess. (I don't know fashion I'm sorry, please don't kill me)

"but i honestly think the red color is his own touch- his own "color""

Red makes a lot of sense as a colour for Chuuya. It's energetic, emotional, fierce and aggressive. It's also considered protective, so yeah it suits him for sure. Red clothes, red ability... red camellias...

"and then current chuuya. no color at all, maybe safe from the ribbon on his hat." Ooo ok. So in the anime, this is true but in the manga, I believe his vest is actually a pale red.

Well. Brown with red undertones. Your point still stands though because the colour is very muted. It's not like Fifteen or DHC Chuuya for sure.

"(also, slight off tangent here- he always loses his coat whenever hes dealing with dazai?? i think?? which is. interesting. given with how glued pm dazai's coat is to his own shoulders. like he actively takes it off/gets it taken off and i SWEAR this only even happens when hes with dazai. idk. ever since asagiri said beast dazai wearing his coat fully to signify him accepting his role as the pm boss ive been. thinking about it. a lot.)"

Oh. Thinking on this. Um. Embarrassed to say - I don't think I noticed that actually. Like obviously he loses the coat a lot and that was already something to think on but... only around Dazai, is that right? Hold on, I'm gonna check.

Ok so my check wasn't super thorough (read: I am too tired and drained to go through each and every panel he appears in) but...

By god, I think you're right.

That's. Hm. I'm going to join you on thinking about that for awhile.

I see the coat as a representation of his role and responsibility he takes on, really, so it's interesting that the formality and symbolism of his service to the mafia gets quite literally discarded in the scenes with his foil and equal. Fascinating.

He's also not wearing it in any of these now infamous panels from Chapter 101:

Huh. Well. Thank you anon. You've just given me a whole new thing to whir about.

"why is mersault chuuya wearing his old clothes?? specifically fifteen clothes?"

Honestly, I'm still waiting to figure this out too.

Because of the purplish hue over this piece of new art, I find it hard to tell what the actual colours of his outfit are but it does look awfully similar to his Fifteen outfit. It could just be his "day-off" outfit but I think there's got to be more to it than that. It could have to do with allegiance, like you suggested. May I also suggest the return to a sense of inhumanity?

These are also the clothes he wore when his journey to find answers on himself began. Might he be entering a new arc where he has to "find" himself again?

I still feel we don't have enough information to make a solid judgement. As the meursault pov continues, I think we'll have a better reason as to why he's dressed like this.

#thanks for the ask! #feel free to dump thoughts at any time whoever you are anon this was so fun #also i'm so annoyed with myself that i didn't notice that bit about the coat earlier but also so happy you pointed that out! #things to think about when i am less tired... #bsd #bsd chuuya #bsd dazai #soukoku #skk #storyrambles #as always if i screwed up somewhere... just tell me. rip the bandage off lol

[hootbon]

Im back sorry

More thoughts I had

1. Could the gangles fight off the npcs if they absolutely had to go outside?

1.5. What about that buff gangle from a few asks ago?

2. What about if they all had to go outside? Would they fare any better as a group?

3. Also what do the outside npcs do to circus members if they go outside anyways?

3. Is the eclipse permanent, does it have a cycle of light and dark, or is it a rare occurrence?

4. Does Caine control the npcs thoughts?

5. Do the sun&moon do anything to circus members that wander outside, or is that left to the ground npcs?

6. Would the npcs hurt Caine if he went outside?

7. Is there a cafe that Caine and bubble and npcs can go to like we saw in the pilot?

8. What would happen if gangle abstracted (if this has been asked before I'm sorry)?

9. Would ai-gangle decapitate her?

9.5. Would zooble steal the severed parts?

10. If kinger COULD get angry (like the triggers for the other members that you mentioned a while ago), what would be his trigger?

10.5. Same question for pomni

11. I like how pomni is clean and has no blood or faded colors on her. Will this change as time goes on?

12. Are the sun and the moon melted together, or are they separate entities?

Man this au is good

Have a good day, friend!

Great heavens that’s a lot of questions

..no. She’s not that strong

..maybe/j

They could, in fact it’s almost recommended you go in groups.. problem is they’re not the greatest at voluntary teamwork

They bombarded them with questions/JJJJ

It has a cycle

Nah.. he’s an npc himself but he can’t control what they do or how their code works himself

They will stare at you and make pained noises.. though actually it’s more of a pair of eyes, if it can see you then the audience knows exactly where you are at all times, avoid them and you’ll be invisible

No.. even if they tried nothings stopping them from despawning them.. he can’t control them but he can control where they are

Yeah

It has but essentially the ai would detatch and tell Caine

..they can’t, the both of them are needed for that, thus why it even convinces gangle to do it in the first place

In the event all the above was possible.. yeah. Though it’s hard to use a bunch of ribbon as a structurally sound body part

Talking shit about his wife infront of him

I dunno, she’s meant to be the player so I’m unsure

Maybe… likely

Melted

#the amazing digital circus #tadc #freakshow au #tadc freakshow

[killian-whump]

KW Does Shit So You Don't Have To

I know there's a lot of arguments and debates about AI generated art and how horrible it is, both for the artists it rampantly steals from and in the quality of art produced.

But, you know... I'm a curious person.

So I went and plugged Colin's name into a bunch of these things just to see what would happen and... absolutely nothing worthwhile happened. I mean, stuff happened... and you can hit the Keep Reading link to hear about it, but... I dunno, man.

These things have no clue what Colin actually looks like. It's bizarre. None of them got him right, yet they ALL seemed to get him... equally wrong? Like, there's some guy out there that AI thinks is Colin, but isn't actually Colin at all, and he looks about like this:

They did no better with Killian Jones, Colin O'Donoghue as Killian Jones or even Colin O'Donoghue as Killian Jones from Once Upon a Time. In fact, at that point, I was pretty much just throwing words at them that they were entirely ignoring.

Admittedly, one of the sites (Craiyon) actually got relatively close to Colin's appearance, but they also looked like they weren't making art so much as cutting and pasting his face onto art and blurring the edges. That, and they seem to think he has glowing blue laser eyes for some reason, and I swear I didn't tell them that but I kinda wish I had, because that would be a fun rumor to start. Anyway, this is the best approximation of Colin I was able to create on that site, using "Colin O'Donoghue as Killian Jones from Once Upon a Time" as the prompt:

I mean, that's not... THAT bad. But it sure as shit isn't about to take the place of fanart any time soon. And, mind you, this was the BEST of the bunch. The rest were... Well, here's a less-good example with the laser eyes in full effect:

Apparently, Once Upon a Time is now Game of Thrones and Killian Jones is Baelish and Colin has blue laser eyes pew pew pew. Again, the face is kinda spot-on, but I feel like that's because they just copy/pasted his actual face in there. Even the image quality and color depth differs on the face versus the rest of the "art". They just literally stuck his face in some art template and gave him laser eyes.

Mind you, my side piece (Tom Payne) fared no better. They seem to have him confused with that kid who played the elf-like boy in... Game of Thrones. Actually, I feel like all of these things are stuck in some kind of Game of Thrones time warp where that's all that exists and everything they don't understand must surely come from that... and there is very, very little they DO understand.

Now as a litmus test of sorts, I stuck Keanu Reeves' name in some of them, as well, and they did all seem to know what he looks like - so if you're looking to play with the face of some uber famous celebs, this might be fun for you to play with. But anybody with fewer than 5 mainstream memes devoted to them probably just makes the AI go, "Who? Must be someone from Game of Thrones."

Which makes it completely useless for those of us gathered here, even aside from the obvious ethical quandaries of art theft and the devaluing of human-made artwork.

As a final test, I asked Craiyon to show me "Colin O'Donoghue as James Bond" and it basically returned the exact same results as the Killian Jones prompt did. Though it did hilariously encourage me to try, "handsome scottish actor colin o'donoghue dressed in a tuxedo and carrying a gun as he attends a james bond movie" which is definitely not what I was looking for, but bonus points for creativity, I guess? Also, carrying guns in movie theaters is bad form and super illegal, even if it is a James Bond film, but I guess AI doesn't know that. And Colin isn't Scottish.

But he does have laser eyes. This is a rumor I'm starting right here in this post on this blog. Laser eyes. He's got 'em.

#i don't even know what to tag this #really #just #feel free to keep scrolling #pew pew pew

[vintagerpg]

Dungeon of Mystery (1992) is one of several terrain kits put out by TSR. These are a step up from just tiles — with some folding and some glue, they create a 3D dungeon environment (Cities of Mystery, 1989, the Castles box set, 1990, and the Falcon series of Greyhawk adventures, 1990, and Strongholds, 1992, are some other similar products). I suspect that in some way most of them were some kind of reaction to the success of HeroQuest and its 3D furniture.

One of my favorite things about the Art of Dragon was the fact that it included a cardboard fold-up castle. I liked Falcon’s Revenge because of its fold-up monastery. I should probably like Dungeons of Mystery, but nope, I don’t. The fold-up components just seem so…dull. Maybe I only like fold-up cardboard things that have roofs, I dunno. Whatever the case, I am not at all tempted to fold these sheets of patterned cardstock up in the slightest.

The included booklet fares better. It goes into detail on dungeons — their purpose, their construction, how they age. I feel like this paraphrases another book, but I can’t quite remember which. It definitely downplays the idea of randomly generated dungeons, favoring plausibility. The best bit of cardboard in the box is the Dungeon Wheel assembly, which allows a dungeon, its inhabitants and traps to be generated thematically, rather than randomly. Its delightful. I love a wheel.

The booklet also has some dungeon configurations for the fold-ups. Nothing really stokes my enthusiasm as much as the wheel though.

#¶ #RPG #TTRPG #Tabletop RPG #roleplaying game #D&D #Dungeons & Dragons #Dungeons of Mystery