#in other words: totally up for change depending on plotting!

[kanene-yaaay]

The Benefits of a Restful Sleep (and other things that a friend can help you with)

Kanene's notes: In my defense, Dogday is way too cute and kind. That was his mistake. Now I just HAD to make an entire story where he is alive and the Player is both the most stubborn bean ever and the biggest softie to set a foot in the factory. That is it. That is the entire story. Warnings: Mentioned death as a form of reset, angst and mention of injury and blood. It's discussed but not too deeply and isn't the main plot of the story. Raspberries, nibbles, lots of teasing, hurt/comfort and roothing fluff. Reader is adressed with they/them. Around 9.500 words. Heavily inspired by @fluffymary 's wonderful, incredible stories. Take a look at them too :D

[~*~]

You were exhausted.

That was a problem.

Sure, tiredness wasn’t really a new feeling in your life when you looked at the big scheme of things. Even before you went back to your old workplace, it used to cling on your bones, to fill your mind with memories and to pull your spirits down at any time of the day when a kid’s laughter or flowers would remind you of everything you tried so hard to leave behind.

(And look where you are now.)

The constant ‘fighting for your life’ thing also hasn't been helping a lot lately. Adrenaline and the will to keep on living were perfect for the battles but could only get you so far when the feeling of danger and fear scrutinized all of your steps, stalking in any and every corner, waiting for the right moment to strike. Days and hours became a total mess and the longer you spent on exploring and surviving, the more and more things that were once important started to fade to a background thought in your head.

Food was one of them. Water. Sleep. The debris and destruction brought a lot of memories and enemies but hardly a safezone where you could actually sit down, breathe and rest for a bit. It was fine, though. The solution was simple and quick. 

Dying.

Sounded harsh when you thought about it in that way, to be honest. 

Resetting. 

Or something like that.

Not during a fight, of course. After the first couple of times, it quickly became annoying and no fun at all to have to experience all the chase and… other things more than once. However, on other occasions, missteps into an abyss happen and sometimes a bad calculation using the grabpack could be fatal (and more frequent than you should admit.) 

You couldn’t deny its convenience. In a blink you would wake up, not hungry, thirsty or exhausted, a few meters behind your previous location and then you would be ready to go until the pain of hunger or the feeling of being in a brick of passing out appeared once again.

It was not the best, you knew, but it was a good enough solution. 

It was fine.

(It was fine.) 

Especially now, when you have someone else depending on you to survive. Saving Dogday had been tricky and much, much harder than the alternative. Keeping him alive after that, during the smiling critters chase and the aftermath, even more so. None of this didn’t really matter, though. It was worth it. 

The beginning had been tougher. With all the emotions, the changes, pain (and how to keep going after all of that), going back to Home Sweet Home and getting into more trouble trying to turn on all the generators. The fact that, not very longer after getting into the Daycare, you found a new, clean fabric and a set of tools to take care of Dogday’s injuries was the perfect help, even if the coincidence of that encounter had bordered on a miracle that made your skin prickle in discomfort as you had stared at the sewing kit localized (placed) just a few meters away from you two. There was no way that this could have been accidental. 

(Ever since you set a foot in this factory not a single encounter, voice, tape or battle seemed a coincidence and the fear of the image that this puzzle was creating haunted your every choice.)

Nevertheless, beggars couldn’t be choosers. Even though Dogday stayed unusually quiet for a really long time after his injuries were taken care of, he still insisted on using it despite both of your strong suspicions, not wanting to be a ‘burden’, anymore.

You disagreed strongly with that word, of course. Not only because his knowledge of the place and the little shortcuts or hidden spaces had been essential both to escape from the hungry toys and to make your path confusing enough to mislead any pursuers you had was essential to your survival, but also because… 

Damn. 

You just really missed this.

Chatting. Having someone truly by your side. No second intentions or guesses or working around to earn a couple of moments of dialogue. Just a companionship and a fighter if needed, someone bright who could, just with their presence and company, help to keep your focus and your objectives in mind. 

Dogday’s voice was raspy and rough but his words were light and kind. He would insist on calling you ‘angel’ and gesture excitedly around when he was talking, pulling your attention back when you began losing yourself in your thoughts. He would help solving the complicated puzzles spread through the factory and hold your hand tight to hide the tremble of his own paws when you both went through somewhere too dark. He would joke and hold and help and you wished you could put in words how no trouble in the world could make his presence here not worth it. 

That is why you couldn’t afford passing out right now. That is why you kept pulling one foot after the other and continued your path to the end of this hell.

Unfortunately, the very reason that kept you moving forward was the same one blocking you from actually managing to reset your body and get over that tiredness.

The fact that Dogday cared.

He was smart and quite smooth too. That was clear after all the times he would ‘accidentally’ get in front of you when you managed to step a bit too close from a deepless hole or how he would suddenly remember a shortcut that would have you to deviate from the giant abyss you had been eyeing for a few moments ago or when he distracted you as he followed another direction, a light pull on your wrist and a inviting conversation on the tip of his tongue, the pit getting farther and farther away.

It was a bit endearing, you couldn’t lie.

However, when a badly placed hand of your grabpack successfully made you slip from a fatal high and you only had time to listen to a surprised yelp (or more like a ‘yap’?) before a giant orange arm held you close to a fluffy chest you were actually torn between hitting something in frustration and melting in the warmth.

Dogday smiled, looking down. 

“Ops, you almost fell in there, angel.” His eyebrow was crooked and his expression filled with tension and confusion. Yep. He definitely realized what was going on. That kind of sucks.

He started heading the other direction, taking a different path to where you were going. “You‘re really tired, aren’t you? Saving everyone must cost a lot of energy.” His eyes softened. You struggled to keep yours open, body inevitably relaxing with his voice and kind touch. “And, well, I don’t think you had a lot of opportunities to rest since you got here too, right? Ehehe. That is… a bit worrisome. Humans need plenty of sleep and we have been walking for a long time already!”

You have survived longer without it. It was fine. There were more generators that had to be turned on before anything else. Those were your priorities.

Dogday acknowledged the end of your sentence before shaking his head vehemently, his ears flopping around in an endearing way. 

“The generators have been turned off for a long time now, a few more hours won’t hurt. You are our priority, angel.” Dogday tried to not let his tail wag in adorableness when he pulled you closer to his chest and you let your head and eyelids fall with a really tiny, quiet sound for a moment too long before opening them and watching him in a stubborn manner. “And I think I know somewhere where we can hide for long enough before continuing.” 

He watched as you deviated your gaze, thoughtful. Almost there.

“Besides, my kind angel” he let his posture go, just a little. The exhaustion from… everything showing from the light of his eyes to the darkness of his mouth. Trusting had been what got him stuck but also what freed him. He could offer this human a bit more of it. “I-I really think I need time to recover. Sometimes it just… hurts.”

He looked down and you didn’t need to follow his gaze to get what he was saying.

Oh.

Oh.

That was what settled it. You nodded. But he had to put you on the ground. 

You kept your expression firm and ignored his playful chuckle and the way he only pulled you closer with your words, because if he kept holding you, there was no way you would not fall asleep instantly and you both couldn’t afford that until he got to that safe place.

With a huff and a beginning of a pout he acquiesced and put you on the cracked floor, getting your point. He had to hide his snickers with his paw when you wobbled on the same spot for a second before eventually gathering your strength back, feeling a million times more tired. 

Urg. Relaxing was a mistake.

“Don’t worry, it’s not too far from here. We will get there in no time!” 

(...)

Took longer than he expected for you to finally lay down, but it was worth it. The place was one of the old dorms so there were a lot of pillows and mattresses thrown around, a few somewhat still holding a good condition for use. With the help of some furniture and moving around, you managed to barricade the door and build a sort of nest hidden in a farther corner so that it would be really difficult to notice through any window. 

The human seemed ready to pass out at any moment, yawning and giving the door a last look, watching every creek and tear on the walls for anything that could be dangerous, even after all their previous care to make this place as safe as possible. Silly dear.

Dogday has always prided himself in being perceptive. Both because of the kids he once needed to watch and take care of and also because it’s important to notice and understand the details around your teammates so he would know when to help them.

(Old habits die hard, as it seems.)

And, yeah, maybe it had something to do with how long he spent without seeing a human or how he missed having someone (anyone-) who cared so much around. But he couldn’t really help to watch, prod and pick every little detail and gesture of yours around as if he was collecting flowers in a garden. Humans were so… expressive, and this one wasn���t different at all. 

Angel was fierce and determined, going silently and non stop through the facility and all their objectives with a focused mind and precise movements. Their senses and general environmental awareness were good, too, catching hints and dangers just a second or two after Dogday himself caught them, which, considering their small ears and eyes, was an incredible feat. 

Still, like a true angel, strength and kindness walked side by side with them. Dogday didn’t say that only because that person was the literal reason he was alive today, but simply because it was clear as water how much of a true softie you were inside. It was in the way they fired only around the small smile critters, avoiding to actually burn and kill them (even though he didn’t really know how he should feel about it), on how they carried and treated his wounds and how all their features - tensed, anxious and angry - softened everytime they looked at him. 

It was on the way that they walked slower to accompany him, amusing his rambles with pokes of fun and interesting additions and in how each touch or word was filled with tenderness and respect. He didn’t feel like a toy with them like some old employers had made him feel before or a failure as… others made him believe.

So, his companionship was extremely captivating and maybe that was why it hadn’t been really hard to notice how the little tiny hints and actions came together to form a quite worrisome image of how disregarding about their own safety they were. Jumping into fights, crawling into dangerous, small spaces without thinking twice (he couldn’t get them there, if he needed he couldn’t get them there-), following strangers’ orders and running over cliffs as if their life wasn’t the thing that mattered the most and Dogday would always be there to catch them when they fell.

(What did they use to do when he wasn’t?)

Even now, he huffed as the human slowly took off the grabpack while still not even lowering themselves on the mattress or trying to get comfortable even though they seemed ready to slip into unconsciousness at any time now. Alert to the very last second.

It felt a bit nostalgic, if he was being honest. At least helping someone to go to sleep was a kind of problem that he knew how to solve. 

With no further ado, he let himself fall on the soft pile with a ‘oof’, slowly rolling around the cleanest pillows they found and hugging the mattress as a loud, relaxed sighing fled from his mouth. His entire body seemed to untense with the unexpected comfortable feeling. How long had it been since he could just enjoy being surrounded by softness and safety like this?

His tail began contently thumping on the pile, another sigh leaving his mouth and making him forget for a moment his objective as he rolled more and more on the spot, the pure feeling of bliss taking over his senses until the sound of amused chuckles brought him back to reality.

He opened his eyes only to find an incredibly fond gaze looking right back at him. The absurd weight that haunted his friend’s shoulders seemed to have disappeared for a moment and, if he really concentrated enough on those kind eyes, it was like the rest of the world became unfocused. That is right! Dogday shook his head, as if cleaning it from his distracting thoughts. He had a mission to accomplish! Get the human to rest! No more fooling around!

“Hmmmm, It’s so, so, sooo comfy here!” Dogday controlled his voice so his playful tune wouldn’t show too much and give away his plan. He got a pillow and shoved his face on it just to highlight his words. “Like a kingdom made of clouds, where all the citizens get to lay down and rest all day, everyday and their favorite hobby is to cuddle and snuggle. Sounds like a nice place, don’t you think?” 

You agreed, snorting when two expectanting lights turned around and Dogday patted the spot right beside him, only smiling bigger when you pretended to roll your eyes and finally, finally, laid down, barely touching the pile before your body crumbled the rest of the way.

It was… really soft. Even more than you expected from such old furniture but that could be the exhaustion talking. A relieved groan filled the place and before you could process that it came from your lips two arms came and carefully pulled you to a bunch of even softer fluff, which automatically made you snuggle closer, hugging the pillow (friend?) and relaxing, body aching with how much tension flew away from it so quickly.

A sweet voice said something in the background, but all of your senses melted together with your muscles when a hand began rubbing your back, drawing light circles on your spine and following it to your neck, briefly massaging it before going back to the back rubs.

That nice voice kept talking and you could briefly distinguish the words ‘deserve’, ‘rest’ and ‘good’ before the hand got a bit too close to your side and you giggled. The hand stilled but it was okay, it just tickled, that is all. No need to stop. 

This was really nice, you kind of missed it. 

You snuggled more.

All of it. It’s been a while.

As the darkness of the unconsciousness started taking you away, an amused, fond ‘aww’ was the last thing you heard.

(...)

You woke up with a scare.

Nothing necessarily happened, but your body immediately tensed, in alert. Blurry eyes traveled with speed around the room in search for any kind of movement, the silence helping to amplify the sound of any enemy that could be closer. 

One second, two seconds…all you could pick up was the paused, calm snoring of Dogday still being deeply asleep.

Right. Safe. You were both safe.

You let go of a breath you didn’t even realize you were holding, blinking rapidly to scare the sleep out of your sight as you looked up, mind finally getting time to grasp the memories from last… (night? hours? day? irrelevant). The quick beating of your heart started to slow down to a normal pace and you laid down again on the mattress, now wide awake.

Dogday was still sleeping. That was good. He deserved all the peaceful rest he could get after everything that happened.

And, to be honest, it was quite amusing to watch him sleep. Each time he snored his big ears flopped just the slightest bit around and from time to time those little muffled barks would appear on the back of his throat and his tail would wag a bit, not so different from a real dog.

(He truly was a marvel of science.)

At one time you could almost swear he said a name, but it was so low that you couldn’t quite catch it.

Beyond all of that, you couldn’t deny how right Dogday had been, resting really did wonders to your body and mood. You could feel your mind clearer and your muscles less stiff, even if still quite sore. Also, it was made in a rush, that is true, but the soft pillow pile really was comforting enough that it didn’t make it any easier to get up and go on about your day.

Still, as always, there was work to do. It really wouldn’t hurt to get up in the vents and walk around a bit to see if there was any murder toy wandering close so you could attract them away before they could interrupt Dog’s sleep. 

It wasn’t anything really that urgent, however,… It felt weird not doing anything in this place, to deliberately choose to stay instead of to move. Letting your guard down last night had been literally the only thing you could do with how exhausted you were and having a trustful friend close by your side, but now? When you were more rested and nowhere close to the exit? The jittery feeling was already catching up to you. 

You tried to get up, only to be stopped by an arm closing on your midriff, a nose being pressed on the top of of head and nuzzling it with care before a raspy voice - you really needed to find some kind of oil or toolbox to help with his voicebox, sometimes it felt like he was always with a sore throat - glitched for a half second before coming to life in a quiet, slurred “Angel?”

Good morning, sleepy beauty.

Dogday huffed in amusement. Silence washed over you both once again.

A while passed and no more words were exchanged. Uh, probably went back to sleep already. You tried to carefully extract yourself from his hold. 

“Mm? What happened?” Dogday yawned, sounding a bit more awake this time. “Do we have to go?” He propped himself in one elbow, using his enormous height to peak over the hiding place and watch the door and windows, ears perking up in a search of any strange sound. “I’m not listening to any danger. This is a good spot.”

You agreed, feeling a tad bad that you woke up your companionship unnecessarily with your unrelenting thoughts. Nothing really happened, you assured, he could go back to sleep if he wanted. You could stay with the guarding shift.

Rubbing his eyes and yawning more, the sentient toy then changed his focus to you, noticing the slight drop in your tune, mind becoming clearer as he added to that detail the stiffness that went back in your shoulders. His brain tried to connect the dots.

“Did you have a nightmare, sunshine?”

No, not really. 

“What happened?”

It’s all just… too much thoughts. You wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep like this, not without a distraction. It would be the best if you got something to do, so he could go back to his nap. It was fine, you would stay awake in guard.

“I see.”

He laid back down, however, instead of letting you go and immediately go back to sleep, as you expected, he began massaging your shoulders, mouth turning into a pout when that didn’t make you melt completely in blissful slumber like last night, but at least got some of the tension out. 

Even if it felt like the human continued to hold onto every last drop of stress for some reason, refusing to close their eyes or fully relax. Knowing their current situation, Dogday could understand. But still, his friend should be able to enjoy this little chance of a rest that they’ve got. They were both so tired and finally had a good place to spend some good old lazy time without being worried about running for their lives or seeing nightmares at each blink of eyelids. It was not the best spot that the factory could once offer, of course, yet nowadays it was like a piece of heaven.

He wished he could help his angel to enjoy it. Yesterday they seemed so happy. But unless he could think in a good distraction…

A sudden thought then popped in his head, a memory from what happened the previous night. An idea.

Hm.

“Sunshine, do you like games?”

Games? Like… hide and seek or catch? 

Dogday nodded, looking eager. 

Yeah, you did. Even so, you don’t think that making up some ruckus will be good to keep up their hidden spot, well, hidden.

“No, no! This one doesn’t involve running or anything that could give up our location. Actually, you won’t even need to move from where you are to play it.”

Really? Well, it was worth a shot, then. 

“Alright. Do you remember what happened when we found those old rags in one of the corridors a few days ago?”

Yes, you did.

You watched as Dogday chuckled, like he knew something you didn’t and, with a crooked eyebrow, you stared at him, trying to remember the mentioned moment better. 

Nowadays his fur was no longer the bright orange that it once was like the old cardboards and tv episodes showed, but at least it got a resemblance of a cleaned state after using some good-enough rags you found on the way to one of the generators. You both did the best to take out the debris, dust and blood from him. It took longer than it should because the taller toy kept squirming and wiggling around in an adorable inescapable fit of giggles, not really being a big help as, in between his laughter, he kept claiming that it really, really tickled. 

As a good friend, of course, you just grabbed the rag he let fall after a bit of lil cleaning on his poor ticklish tummy and racked both hands up and down his sides, scribbling away while he hid his smile behind hands, muffling his loud crackles. The cleaning didn’t stop there and hunted each tiny spot and slight hint of dust off him with plenty of scratches, prodding and drumming everywhere your hands could reach, catching all the titters, snickers and snorts that danced in the rhythm of your fingers. Your own giggles did not take much longer to follow them. 

Dogday’s paw continued to run in a light touch on your back and suddenly a bolt of electricity jolted you up when your mind connected the memory of his playful demisse to what he just said.

Your eyes widened and his expression opened into a smirk, sensing the very same moment you got to the conclusion that you were about to get absolutely and utterly destroyed with tickles.

You tried pushing him away, one hand twisting behind to catch his wrist as the other hand fought to snatch his free one, which kept flying away from yours in a game of mouse and cat. 

“Wait, angel!” He couldn’t help but laugh, especially as your movements got more and more uncoordinated the longer they kept this little game, even before he truly attempted to do anything. A wobbly smile was already taking over your face, only growing bigger when every swipe he did in your direction - only to be deflected by your hands - made your entire skin tingle and prickle in anticipation. Each adorable reaction only assisting in making Dogday more determined that he choose the right distraction. “Don’t you want to know about the game? I bet that you will love it! I used to play and win all the time so I can teach you every special trick of mine.”

No, no, no, no! You knew exactly what he was doing! There was no such thing as a game!

“Gasp!” You were sure that Dogday would be dramatically putting a hand on his chest if it wasn’t for the rough housing, but sudden noise was successful to break your concentration. He used his trapped hand to sneak a quick jab on your side, ripping out a delightful screech before you slammed your back again on the mattress, both hands now in front of you, no longer moving, yet still ready to defend and attack. “I would never lie to you, my beautiful, beautiful beacon of light, the only and one sunshine, my angel.”

He was not going to succeed in distracting you again with those sugary sweet nicknames! You knew exactly what he was doing and you wouldn’t let him get you.

“No, no, you got me wrong, angel.” Dogday booped your nose, seeming like he couldn’t control himself with excitement and a smug kind of joy that only grew the longer you both stared at each other, waiting for the moment to strike. His tail wagged and he pretended to lounge at your stomach, stopping inches before touching it and drinking the way that a squeal escaped from your mouth, body stuck into a position between laying down and curling on itself, giggles quickly filling the room. Actually, you could feel yourself getting giddier at each second, completely aware that there was no way for you to get out of this and no other option besides wait for the next attack.

The way that this thought only made butterflies go crazy on your belly should be illegal.

Dogday continued as if nothing happened. “This isn’t the game. The game only starts when I start to tickle you, silly! And it is called ‘Try To Not Laugh’.” He managed to waltz through your defenses, his index finger and thumb catching your side in a grip way too light to even be considered a pinch. It made you try to squirm with a snort to the other direction, as if he just had unleashed a ruthless attack of squeezes on the spot. 

His grin glimmered and he let you go, chuckling. You could feel the phantom touch still. 

(Why did his paws have to be so fuzzy!?) 

“It means that you can’t giggle, squeal, snicker, chuckle, snort, chortle, shriek or laugh! No matter how much it tickles, itches or ‘feels funny’.” Dogday counted each reaction pulling up a finger and you tried to not let your face melt as he just kept talking, looking more and more delighted with how each word seemed to make you twitch on the spot, his paws clawing in your direction when he was done. 

Before you could think, he went for your neck, fingertips barely, just the slightest bit, grazing the skin before you catched his wrists and pushed them away, scrunching your neck as tiny tickly sparks spread like fire across your nerves. A sound akin to a keysmash left your lips and Dogday looked like you had just given him the best news of his entire existence.

He tilted his head and watched his own captured paws for a piece of moment before shrugging. He continued on with his explanation.

“In turn I will try my true best to make you laugh. And that can mean anything! I can fill your entire cute neck with aaaaall the raspberries that it could ever want, wiggle my claws on your ticklish armpits, play your ribs like a very lovely piano, squeeze your sides non stop until you’re dancing around like a wiggly worm, maybe even give your tummy a few scratches and scribbles, or, or even better! I can play ‘This little piggy’ with your toes over and over again until your sweet laughter fills this entire room like the sweetest melody. And then we can do it all over but with you giggling and snickering ringing free the entire time! Doesn’t it sound like a fun idea, my angel?”

Oh, you were going to die. Whether he decided to tickle you right away or keep the teases for who knows how long, you don’t think that your face would survive being under so much heat for so long.

Besides, this is not fair at all! He will win it anyway, you couldn’t hold on your laughter forever while he t-, while he attacks you.

“Aww, but, sunshine, tickling is hardly an attack!” His face got closer and suddenly you realized that he did not need any free hand to accomplish his first promise of tickles. 

With wide eyes you tried to roll away, but to do so, you would have to let his paws go, and you knew very well that the moment this happened, it would be a game over for you. For the way that Dogday grinned in your direction, he reached the same conclusion as well. “Also, I can’t even touch you, right now! I think you can win this.” Dogday wiggled his paws in your hold, as if proving his point. 

With (an eager) trepidation, you watched as his face continued to get closer, prying a couple of titters when his floppy, fuzzy ears brushed your own ears. He chuckled at your reaction, a mix of fondness and playful, fake frustration painting his words. “Sunshine, you’re already giggling? I will have to take my last words back, then, I don’t think this game will last too long, anymore.” 

Oh ho ho, he should just wait, because when you get him back you then he was going to see who was-

Dogday shoved his face on the crook of your neck and immediately began nuzzling the spot without a worry in the world, successfully cutting your threat short.

Wait! Wait!

“Don’t mind me, angel, please continue.” He huffed and puffed on the spot, shivers running in a hilarious cacophony across your every sense, almost ripping a squeal from your lips. Actually, just like his words hitting the skin, you could feel the way that snickers began pooling in your throat, waiting for any tiny chance to escape. You clamped your mouth shut, a muffled snort taking over. You were going to at least try to hold them in and try your chances at winning this childish game, for your own pride, if nothing else. 

He didn’t have his paws to tickle, right? I mean, how bad could it really be?

Dogday hummed, each word vibrating on the skin in an almost unbearable manner, making you want to jump away and at the same time let yourself get lost in the sensations. “What were you saying, angel? Please, don’t stop because of me! You know I always love to hear what you have to say.”

You shook your head, partially in an attempt to somehow escape from the tickling and partially to dissipate the energy that was building up on your system. Anything to not focus on the snickers bouncing freely in your chest.

“No? Not a word? Aw.” You could feel the fake pout the sentient toy did right before letting his features go back to that dangerous, mischievous grin. “I have a question for you, then! Do you know what is the tickle puppy favorite’s fruit?”

You knew a trap when you saw one, so you kicked your legs, trying and failing to let out any protest because you were sure that if you stopped pressing your lips in a tight line for even half of a second, there would be no stopping from the waterfall of laughter.

“Raspberries!”

A shriek almost made you lose when he unleashed the first raspberry, more and more of them being quick to follow right after. On the base of your neck, your collarbone, under your chin and in every inch on the unprotected spot. There was nowhere safe from the awfully buzzing that made every other feeling disappear, seeing to tickle every nerve and making tingles to run crazy in absolutely everywhere. He even grazed the back of your ears with a couple of raspberries, cooing when you tried to shrink and hide the spot by pressing them on your shoulder, only succeeding to leave the other side of your neck completely free for more nuzzles and tickles, an opportunity that Dogday was fast to take, taking turns in bashing every side of your neck in a tickly attention. 

Another quiet, muffled squeak painted the air.

Dogday lifted his head again, entire demeanor completely melting for a piece of time when he saw you (oh my stars, look at this amazing smile!) before that joyful light was back in his eyes. Once more, he tried wiggling his paws out of your hold, but your grip continued to be as firm as ever, your wobbly smile shining in a challenge.

Oh, you’re just so fun!

“Gasp! It seems like I am stuck! Oh no, angel, what will I do now?” His gaze then traveled to your stomach, and all the hints that softness had ever been present in his features instantly evaporated as his face became something more playful, even a tad devilish, with a hint of hunger. 

“My, my,” you didn’t exactly know why, but his voicebox glitched, jumping between a light taunting tune and his usual lower one. “Is that a delicious tummy that I see? Poor thing, it must be so cold to be shaking like this. Well, and what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t offer any help, huh?”

Your friend was quite tall and kind of clumsy when he walked around, too. Now, how that clumsy toy was able to, in a span of less than a blink, take a gigantic breath and immediately attack your stomach with it was a true mystery that you didn’t had a lot of time to think about when your entire body took a screenshot for a long, long second, ticklish sensations exploding in a frenzy, before your entire torso instinctively beginning to trash, loud peals of laughter jumping freely on the tip of your tongue, begging to be free. They cheered in excitement and only grew stronger when other smaller raspberries took their turn to explore every spot, every sensitive creek or place of your stomach, breaking more and more of your barriers, little by little. It took every single ounce of strength to not lose the game right here and there.

Dogday didn’t even pretend to be holding back, anymore. Right as you survived another tiny raspberry that got way too close to your side to be an accident, a nibble appeared, catching you so out of guard that it made your arch your back, legs kicking with adrenaline. But the tickly, light nibbles weren’t diverted, intertwining with tiny raspberries in a mischievous dance that increased your internal laughing into a tenfold.

That was when one of them hit the spot closer to your bellybutton and you couldn’t take it anymore. Your hands let go of his wrists to push his stupid smiling - so proud and so bright - face away, body squirming and eyes crinkling on the corners with mirth.

“I am free!” He laughed, pretending to not hear the tiny low titters flying from your mouth as you regained your strength, taking the breather as what it was. His ears twitched with every cute little giggle and he kind of wanted to immediately go back to bash every sweet, soft spot in tickles you until that beautiful laughter was ringing loud and free across the entire room and that soft, relaxed state you were in became so much common that he wouldn’t see you stressed ever again.

But he was going to wait for you to rest a tadbit first, that was the main objective of their game, afterall.

Feeling calmer, you looked at your friend, who jolted in the same place, seeing to get out of a trance. He recovered quickly and lifted his paws, easily slipping into the tickle monster persona as he slowly clawed in your direction.

“Now that my hands are free, I wonder where I should attack next…” He looked thoughtful, slowly bringing his paws closer and closer to your torso, wiggly fingers softly scrapping the ticklish skin, but not really drumming on it, not yet. “Maybe I should try your armpits first? Aw, but you were so jumpy when I squeezed your side that one time! And you seemed really excited when I mentioned tickling your ribs… Ah! So many options, so many options… We will have to try every single one of them, of course. What do you think, my giggly angel? Which one do I tickle first?”   

None! Absolutely none of them!

“None?” He tilted his head, knowing very well how cute he looked like when he did that. “But then … Oh! I see!” Dogday snapped his fingers and you were pretty sure that if this was a cartoon a lamp would appear shining right above that absolute, silly, mean, goofball. “You want me to tickle your legs!” 

What!

At your wide stare and sputtering pretenses of protests his smirk turned sharp, which didn’t quite help the anticipatory bolts of electricity that suddenly left you feeling even more ticklish than usual, trying to curl and hide your legs but feeling him dig more on your torso every time you did so. He continued. “That is why you didn’t stop kicking and squirming the entire time I was tickling your neck and tummy, right? Aww, sunshine, if you wanted my attention so much, you could’ve just asked!”

That was literally not the reason at all! Dogday!!

He hummed in an answer, turning around and easily pinning your legs by holding your ankles down, his touch so gentle that you were pretty sure that if you really wanted and struggled you could escape from it.

(And if that didn’t make everything even more endearing, you honestly didn’t know what would.)

Without wasting any more time, Dogday started squeezing the sensitive spot right above your kneecap, skillfully jumping from one leg to another unexpectedly, digging on the skin and following your leg around with no problem as a new round of kicks started once again, keeping up with the tickling. The ticklish sensations made your head spin, tingles spreading across your muscles and teasing all the nearest tickle spots, leaving them prickling in anticipation and a funny kind of energy that made every nerve of your knees crazy as more and more squeezes and pinches continued unmercifully assaulting the spot non stop. 

A sudden move and you yelped when your legs were lifted, his curious hand worming its way under your knee to lightly scratch the sensitive skin there. The touch was so incredibly fuzzy, so adoringly soft that the sudden change from the rough to light technique almost ripped a series of snickers from your throat without permission, the hilarity and urge to laugh taking over your every thought. 

Dogday continued scribbling and drawing shapes, leaving a couple of pokes here and there just so he could listen to those delightful muffled snorts.

(He would really love to listen to them more clearly, though.) 

“You really love this, don’t you, angel?” 

You barely sputtered out an answer before being obligated to clamp your mouth shut, uncontrollable laughter making your shoulders bounce as he took the chance to crawl his fingers upwards to your thigh, skittering them there for a couple of seconds before spidering them right back to under your knees, repeating the cycle for a couple of times before mirroring them on the other leg. 

“When I tickle you.” He scratched under your knee. 

“When I tease you.” He squeezed your calf.

“When I fluster you.” He swiped at the space right under your toes.

“It’s really adorable!” His paw stopped right on your sole and he pressed it, firmly enough that it didn’t tickle, still, for some reason you couldn’t stop your smile from becoming even more wobblier, the giddiness growing stronger and spreading in your every cell just like the heat that seemed to take over your face. 

“Especially because I can’t wait to hear aaaaall those cute giggles and beautiful laughter that you have trapped right there.” Suddenly, he raked his fingers up, from your heel to under the toes. A squeal filled the air. Dogday’s eyes shone, like an arrow findings the target. His fingertips curled, kneading on the skin. “That is why I have to apologize, angel, because I lied to you. That is a game that I just have to win.”

He then attacked.

It was less than a half of a piece of time, but suddenly your soles were being overcomed with scribbles, scratches and wiggling everywhere they could reach. There were digging fingers under your toes and a spidering that followed them to the pads, tweaking and scritching them all while curious pokes payed attention to the entire path of your arches, even if shouldn’t be possible for him to be tickling both places at the same time. Nevertheless, Dogday’s paw was so big that he was able to torment both of your feet at once while still holding them through all the resulting kicks those created.

And the teasing… Of course there was also the teasing.

“There we go! Oh my, oh my, look at you! You just can’t help being so adorable, now, can you? Awww, angel, you always get this… sweet expression when you are happy, so I like to call it your happy face! It’s delightful. The corner of your eyes gets all crinkly and your face gets all soft and your smile… your smile is the best part, it’s so bright! No matter the size or the time, it really feels like we have our own special rays of sun down here.”

He found a rather sensitive spot right above your heel and immediately concentrated on it with all his might, drumming and prodding there as if the salvation of this entire factory depended on making you laugh.

“That is why it was so easy to see how much you love tickles, sunshine. First when you were tickling me a few days ago and now. Since we started that game… you didn’t even ask me to stop and all while you simply never ceased looking so adorably full of joy like this! I could really spend the entire day just here, you know? Tickling you silly over and over again.”

That did it. The barrier broke. Loud peals of laughter were fished from your lips. Every sound and reaction filled the air in a frantic, unrestrained melody of mirth. 

Now, with them flying freely in the room, there were uncontrollable, hysterical giggles when Dogday decided to knead your calves up and down, those only being taken down by an unstoppable crackling, painted with one or two snorts, as his paws wiggled away to squeeze right above your kneecaps, taking his sweet, sweet time to give the ticklish skin under it a few swipes before moving away.

Finally, he let your ankles go, both paws resting on your sides, unbothered by all the squirming and protests that this simple act created, drinking in every reaction with a so fond, so tender gaze that it bordered on dotingly as you got another break.

You tried to take big gulps of air, but everytime your gazes found each other, titters grew anew, distracting you and leaving you in a constant state of a silly, giggly kind of joy.

M-Maybe he should reconsider! You laughed already, he won the game! That should be the end of this, right!

Dogday chuckled, fingers tuttering in their spot, curling and uncurling slowly, content to feel the trembling on the skin under them. 

“The end? But we just started! And you still got so much beautiful laughter trapped right here to show.” With his index finger, he highlighted his word by tapping on your belly, right in your bellybutton, ears perking at the screech this brought. “So many cute snorts and melodious shrieks that I would love to meet. What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t help to let them out, huh?”

A flow of words, more unintelligible than anything, fell off your lips. A mix of pleas,  threats, high pitched giggles and some indistinguishable sounds that could only be considered a true keysmash rather than a sentence. Dogday hummed in agreement and nodded his head as if it was all a well constructed and understandable sentence.

“I knew you would eventually see my point, angel. You’re such a delight, you know, that?”

He smiled, so kindly and caring, and then he digged.

His paws, big enough to cover your entire midriff drummed non stop, squeezing the lower part of your stomach while scratching everywhere they could reach. He stayed there for a while before his wiggling fingers crawled up, scribbling and pinching your sides unmercifully. They looked for any weak spot, any lovely place that would make you snort and squirm away and latched there with pinches and kneading until your back arched, only then moving back to tickle your stomach until you went back to try to curl yourself in a ball, starting the cycle over and over again. 

You felt almost high with laughter, the thought that it tickled, it tickled so so much and more than anything ever taking over your brain in sync with the loud, high pitched squeals and belly laughter (ha- Dogday would love that pun if you could say it to him) that chased after each other. After so much teasing, every tickle seemed to be accompanied by the brush of thousand of tiny phantom feathers that still tormented your stomach even when he moved away to your ribs, carefully pressing down on the bones and quickly scribbling with so much skill that it should be illegal the actual, loud crackle such a simple action created.

Your hands flied to hold his wrists, caught between pushing them away and pulling them close and, at seeing that, the sentient toy couldn’t help but feel himself melt and snicker fondly, barely controlling the urge to shove his face back on your neck and nuzzle and nibble the daylights out of it in a pure attack of cuteness. His tail was wagging so much that it dislodged a few pillows from where they were.

“Such a good friend. Such a cute, nice friend for me. For us.” The praises fell from his mouth naturally, your companionship too focused on keeping those happy reactions to really think too much about them. “You do so much to all of us, to me, and keep going above and beyond just to accomplish what you set your mind in. You’re brave and one of the strongest humans I’ve ever known. And there is so much kindness in you that I could talk the entire day about it! You saved me, you cared and tried and sometimes down here it feels like a nightmare but you… you make everything so much better, like a true angel. That is why I love this nickname so much. It really fits you.” 

You tried to answer, to say how much especial, strong and essential Dogday was for you as well, but every time a single coherent word slipped from your lips he immediately reinforced his attack, fully aware that if you said anything sweet he would inevitably let his guard down and you would be able to turn the tables, and he really needed to say all of that to you before that. 

His tickles were now focusing on keeping up the flow of starry laughter, watching them grow up to chortles and tune down into snickers as he scribbled in between each bone, keeping track of every special spot that pried a shriek from your lungs only to randomly attack it with prodding and poking, slowly fishing all kinds of joyful sounds that you could make.

He then buried his paws in your armpits, swirling the fingertips there for a few moments before digging energetically, fingers dancing and prodding every inch they could reach, which immediately made your arms come down with a loud chortle, head shaking and legs kicking at the sensation.

How was he so good at this?

Dogday gasped dramatically (not again-) and lightly pulled his paws in faux alarm, not really stopping his attack. “Oh no! Once more, you have trapped me!” Such a goofball. Such a silly, mean goofball and you could not wait to put your wiggly hands on and see how flustered you could make him be. “Dang, I really didn’t want to resort to this but I guess that I have no other option but to keep tickling and tickling and tickling on your poor ticklish pits forever and ever until the end of our days.” He then winked when he found your shining eyes. “But you would actually love that, wouldn’t you, my giggly sunshine?”

That was it. You were going to die. Right here and there. The playful tickles, the unrelenting teasing, the fond stares and gentle words… you could actually feel your entire body about to melt.

With a strength you didn’t even realize you had, you pulled your arms up to hide your flaming face, a pitched ‘eee’ sound mixing with the hysterical, absolutely uncontrollable laughter, your body rolling to the side and curling, shoulders bouncing with the force of each of your giggles.

Dogday let go of you, giggling together with your reactions, resting his hands on the ground and just observing, amusement and care clear as water in every trace of his features.

After a while, you felt a paw lay on your back, retracting for a bit when just that made you wiggle away, a new round of chuckles spilling, before it came back to rub your shoulders, touch kind and too firm to tickle. “Okay, okay, sunshine. I’m done. You can calm down for now.”

Laying down on the floor giggling yourself silly didn’t feel so embarrassing when Dogday’s own quiet snorts and snickers were quick to accompany you, especially since the rubbing really felt relaxing, making you melt on the touch bit by bit. 

After a few minutes, when a comfortable silence had fallen on you both, you rolled on your back, finally being able to stare at your companionship without feeling like you would explode. Dogday smiled bigger at your direction. He lifted a paw to gently wipe a tear from your cheek, not thinking too much about it.

“That was so fun! I didn’t know you were so ticklish, angel. You are almost as bad as m-” He stopped right in his tracks when a gasp and a new string of titters fell like a waterfall from your mouth and you pushed his paw away, fastly rubbing your cheek so the feeling of fuzzy tickles would go away. It was like the softest makeup brush had just touched your skin, and you had no idea that just this could tickle so much.

Dohohogday! You sahaid you werehe done! 

But your companionship didn’t answer. Astonished, he stared at his paw before looking at you again, gaze jumping from one to the other like he was watching a tennis match.

Suddenly his entire face brightened like the sun and he looked at you as if you had just said the funniest, most brilliant pun he had ever heard in his entire life.

“Aaaangel!” Every letter was bathed in pure, disbelieved delight.

No! You knew very well what that tune meant! No way! Nononono! Don’t you dare!

“Are your cheeks…”

Dohohogday! Don’t you come closer!

“Ticklish?”

Before you could push yourself from the mattress and jump away, there were two thumbs softly scratching on your cheeks, scribbling so lightly that it immediately made a giant smile take over your expression. Titters started to fill the air once more.

“Oh my… angel! This is adorable!” Dogday looked like he was about to bounce around the room with how much excited he was, his voice getting higher and glitching in excitement. “I can’t believe how fun and cute… You just… Ah, sunshine, I can’t help but!”

And before you could even blink, he shoved his smiley, stupidly fuzzy face right on your neck again, nuzzling there without a single worry in the world. His fingers kept  tickling your cheeks, sometimes even slipping to tease the back of your ears with a few scratches as he giggled in joy since he could literally feel the rumbling of your snickers. They twirled and spun in the air for much minutes more until his tickly attack from cuteness overload was finally finished and you both just kept layed down on the comfy pile, cuddling in between content sighs.

Dogday listened to your calm breath, saw how relaxed your entire body was and, according to the few sneaky peaks he had, saw that happy, full of mirth, smile was still in your face, leaving him melting in contentment, entire body relaxing as well. 

Perfect. His plan had worked.

Not that it was that big of a deal, but it had been such a long time since he had the opportunity to…

He was just glad that it worked. That he still got it in him. 

(Being playful. Happy. Helping the others. Being there when they needed him. Matter when it was necessary. Being silly and fun)

He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t sense the hand coming until it laid on his head, playing with the fur there and scratching on that place right behind his left ear that never failed to make him embarrassingly become a mush of pleased hums and wagging tail. A low, sleepy voice crossed the air.

You said you would take him out of here. It’s a promise, Dogday.

How his angel knew exactly what to say was a mystery to him. And, it didn’t quite hurt, but his entire being ached at those words. His smile was sad and he was glad that the human couldn’t see as he blinked quickly, eyes suddenly moisty. “Alright.”

There would still be some revenge when you woke up, though. Be ready.

And that reminded him so much of others playful, sleepy conversations he had before everything happened that it ripped a surprised laugh from him. He tried to look up to see the very much likely mischievous glint in his friend’s eyes, but a few more purposeful scratches turned him right back to a content puddle. He nuzzled the human a bit more. “Sleep well, angel.”

You too, Dogday.

(And sleep well they did. Lost in a peaceful rest as the entire world outside left them be.)

[~*~]

Random fun facts!

-There is a parallel I made by mistake between CatNap and DogDay and the whole 'trusting and following the being that saved your life'. It's not too deep and Dogday isn't as bad as Catnap but that was an interesting thing I noticed :D

-Different from the reader, Dogday is more used to the time down there so he has a good grasp when day and nights happens in general.

-I am actively ignoring the plotholes here about food and water here. Ya know when you have to poke holes in a lid so the bugs in the container can breathe that is what I doing kjhgfdfghyhgfd

-Nothing to do with the fanfic but I kept listening to this song when I was writing it and I think it's cute.

#Had so much writing this! It's been a good year and something since I wrote some good ol reader insert #xreader #Ticklish!Reader #Lee!Player #Lee!Reader #Ler!Dogday #Mentioned Lee!Dogday and Ler!Reader #poppy playtime tickles #poppy playtime tickling #wanted to say more on the tags but woke up sick so brain is fuzzy #Kanene's fic #Kanene's fanfic

[the-modern-typewriter]

Are you planning to publish any more books in the future? other than the God Key, already finished that :D

Yes :)

Though I don't have a complete first draft of either of the next ones yet. I have a lot of projects up in the air which means that it can be slow going on any one project.

Contenders for up next, depending on what I finish first, are:

Totally WIP/not really posted anywhere...

Moonlight Drowning - girl trying to rescue her sister from a fairy king (probs king, dithering on changing to a queen), appetite, desire, I'm thinking dark romance fantasy vibes.

Say Yes - my initial idea was a fluffy contemporary ace YA romance. But honestly, I'm not a fluffy person, and I might veer adult instead. We'll see what happens.

Then there is all the Patreon stuff. These are probably the closest to actual novels at this stage.

Adrian and Demarion - gay pirates, so help me god I want it done at this stage. It's been lingering on my to do list for far too long and it's driving my nuts!

For Kingdom, Come - dark fantasy gay royal romance??? Magnus and Leo. Idk. Good prince gets captured by evil prince. Shenanigans. Currently sitting at 48,000 words. Nearing the end. It's definitely in the last act now.

The Forbidden Section - weirdly fluffy/angst/ust romance about a Dark Lord (Eiran) and the scholar the dark-magic obsessed scholar (Akira) who he blackmailed into being his apprentice. It's primarily a romance with a sprinkle of magical school/chosen one plot. Currently sitting at 52,000 words. Over halfway through. Maybe beginning of third act?

The Birthday Gift - a novella about a villain's nonbinary sidekick (Absolute Zero/Zee) who gets giving the hero (Evolution/Jason) as a birthday gift. Story spins out from there. Currently sitting at 25,000 words. Nearing the end.

Cheating Death - human (Sebastian) walks in on his human lover (Kristian) cheating on with a vampire (Ansel). He finds out that he's secretly been their mission to protect all along, because he has magical blood that can cure vampirism. Plot shenanigans and polyamory to follow. Currently sitting at 37,000 words.

And that's not getting into the WIPs that are currently sitting on my abandoned/needs serious re-work pile.

Double Exposure - f/f serial killer thriller. The first few drafts are finished, but I'm not 100% happy with it. Needs a lot of work still.

The Forever Girl - a middle grade novel about a girl (Maeve) who becomes best friends with Time after her dad dies. I think I need to spend more time with children if I'm ever going to finish that one. It's outlined and the first draft is 75% written haha.

#my novels #wips #my wips #stories #writeblr #there's also always the self pub versus do I try and trad pub debate #I love The God Key but I think it's pretty niche #anything from Patreon would be a self-pub as it's already out there

[kess-in-the-perthchimzone]

In defense of Dangerous Romance

I am genuinely so confused by like 80% of the criticism I have been seeing of Dangerous Romance and since it increasingly has moments it drowns the tag, I felt compelled to take some time to put thoughts to paper in defense of the show. Obviously there is always going to be an extent to which a piece of media just doesn’t work for someone personally, which is totally fine! For example, I will never be obsessed with OF no matter how much I enjoy seeing the gifs on Saturdays, because at my heart I’m a big ole romantic sap and it is REAL MESSY (affectionate).

But there are two things I really don’t understand I’ve seen said about DR —

Feedback about the overall tone of the show — specifically that it wasn’t as dark as expected or that the bully scenes weren’t more dragged out. And the reason this one confuses me is because I feel like people just made up this expectation in their minds?? There were TWO trailers and TWO (now three) music videos about Dangerous Romance and they are absolutely chock full of two boys being obsessed with spending time with each other — smiling at each other, giving each other cheek kisses, holding hands, etc. Did people not watch those? It’s not really fair to say that a show isn’t what you thought it would be when the show pretty accurately so far told you exactly what it would be.

Complaints about the B plot being prioritized right now. Let me explain this one a bit. To use a very familiar example, there’s been a lot of discussion this week comparing Bad Buddy and DR. Bad Buddy had two major plot points: the conflict with the friends, which was prioritized in the first half of the show, because it was lighter and more prone to shenanigans; and then the conflict with the families, which ripped our fucking hearts out.

Right now, Kang is yes, getting a little more development (the B plot). But here’s the thing — he had to develop for Sailom to be able to be with him. He had to start growing and changing as a person for that to be possible. And at the end of the day we are watching a BL — where the end goal is for the two main characters (because there are two) to end up together.

I also find some of the criticism of Kang’s storyline to be inadvertently condescending towards Sailom. Because while the show has Kang saving Sailom repeatedly via external actions (primarily getting him money), Sailom is also doing the same to Kang. But his saving is internal, so less visible. Kang would have continued to drown in his own misery and anger and cruelty if weren’t for all of Sailom’s interventions. To me, Sailom is the hero in Kang’s story.

It seems pretty undeniable to me that Sailom’s story is going to become the significant focus in the back half of the show. Going back to the trailers, we know we’re going to see Saifah get arrested, Sailom returning to escorting, and Sailom getting held hostage (not sure this is quite the right word) just to name a few.

All of these are focused on Sailom. All of them are either directly tied to his poverty or will have repercussions on his financial situation. Yes, Kang is present for many of these moments that we’ve seen, but he is the second love interest in the show?? So I would be pretty freaking disappointed if he wasn’t.

If at the end of these 12 episodes all that happened is Kang played the rescuer over and over, then becoming Sailom’s sugar daddy, I will join people in critiquing the plot. But I’m willing to be patient because I believe they are going somewhere and I think it’s going to lead to a beautiful payoff.

But right now, as fun as it is as a plot device, DR is showing us pretty clearly that the way Sailom is financially dependent on Kang’s family is NOT healthy for them long-term, despite the ways has allowed them to bond and develop feelings (exhibit #1: Sailom having to ask permission to go home to sleep the night Kang rejected his confession). What will matter is if Dangerous Romance will allow them to meet on equal footing at the end - to not have Sailom be reliant on Kang, but instead be a more equal partner (who can still be allowed to occasionally enjoy what Kang might want to give him).

This is (hopefully) ultimately a love story about two people from very different backgrounds who will make things work despite all odds and I, for one, am so excited to be on this ride.

#dangerous romance #dangerous romance the series #meta meta meta #kess babbles about dangerous romance

[bugeater101]

Truth or Dare?, pt. 1

Synopsis: Minho and you played a game of Truth or Dare, and when you don't comply with the rules and refuse to obey your orders as a loser, you must face the consequences.

Content: SMUT !!!! slkfsdlkjf anyways. sub!reader x dom!Minho, fem!reader, perv!minho, best friends to lovers, school au, mentions of weed, mentions of masturbation (f. and m.), discussion of dick size, sex toys, Minho's an ass man (and i stand by that!!!!), panty sniffing, as always the reader is curvy/plus size but it doesn't really play into the plot but Minho's super hot for her obviously, suggestive content, slight fluff if you squint ig.

Word Count: 6.8k

Author's notes: I've been playing with this idea for a while and I'm so excited to finally put pen to paper! I hope you enjoy this mini series (should only be 2/3 parts, depending on how long I decide to make them) and they will be all out fairly shortly since I intend to release them a day after another. Even though the characters in this fic are portraying students, it is just like my Han fic, Public Display of Affection. Meaning that both characters are 18+. Please, do not interact with my work if you are a minor. Thank you everyone and enjoy!

Edit: Originally, when leeknow's... size was discussed, it was wayyyy too big. So I have (sadly) shrunk him a bit. The story does not change at all other than that detail!

Taglist: @scribblemetae, @mygsis, @9900z, @taekbokki

part 1, part 2, part 3

"Truth or dare?" Minho questioned as he undid his tie, freeing himself from his school uniform

"Hmmm... truth!" you answered, leaning your head on your hand that was supported by a layer of forgotten homework on the table below.

"What's your opinion on Mr. Nam?" Minho questioned, making you squeal with laughter and make him laugh too.

"Oh my God!" You hollered as you fell back, laying on the ground in fits of giggles as Minho clapped. The secrets and rumours surrounding Mr. Nam made him a living legend, a feared yet benevolent dictator at your school. You sat up and cleared your throat, containing yourself as you cleaned some of the work that you had scattered off your table.

"He's a total snob, and I do believe the rumour that he's gay and called off his engagement to elope with the former Phys. Ed. coach," you responded, finally answering his question.

"No way!" Minho shouted back, amused at your response. "Not possible! I total believe the one that he got the former drama teacher pregnant but that it turned out to be a hysterical pregnancy because she wanted him to leave his fucking wife." You snickered at his assertion, loving how he entertained the beloved "Nam Theories" just as much as you did.

"Good for her. I always respect a woman who knows what she wants," you remarked with satire in your tone. With a nod to your homework, you silently suggested to Minho to return to the task at hand. The schoolwork had piled up throughout the week, waiting for you two to try and tackle it all in one day as you usually did. You too always did schoolwork at your house after Thursdays, shut away in your bedroom and attempting to diminish the growing pile of work before the weekend began.

Throughout the years of friendship between you two, your bedroom had become a safe haven for Minho, adorned in memories you two had gathered throughout your years of schooling and bathed in sunlight that pour in from your skylight and west-facing windows. Minho also just liked being close to you in general, watching you giggle at his jokes, toppling over at the melodramatic responses he gave and giving him a chance to sneak a peak up your skirt or down your shirt.

Okay, yeah. There's that.

So he had a crush on you. Big deal. Everyone in the school did. He loved how your personality reflected his mischievous ways and adored the way you smiled at everything he said, yet remained stone-faced with everyone else. Plus, you were obviously well-endowed to the point that the school uniform didn't fit you as conservatively as it should have, but you didn't mind (or you chose not to notice). You two had other friends but were just closer with each other, which was how Minho liked it, especially when he got to be in your room with you exclusively once a week; it was a gift. Sometimes, you two played games to distract from the mountainous pile of work, like today. Other times, too even cuddled together while watching a movie to finish the evening off. He enjoyed holding you, having you play with your hair, your tits pressing against his arm, your thighs crushing his hands to keep them warm, and... God... your ass was just perfect.

He loved when you laughed like this now, cackling and bending over from fits of giggles, giving him the perfect opportunity to stare at your pretty body. Now, however, you wanted to stop playing games and get back to work, which was never fun in Minho's opinion. It was sometimes annoying that you were always the more diligent one of the two of you, even though you always kept him on track.

"Booooo," Minho pouted, laying his face on the coffee table that you used to study on. He kicked you under the table as you both sat on the floor, nudging you and making you smack him back. "C'mon! Let's keep playing! It's your turn!" He protested.

"No, Minho," you scorned him. "We have this test next week and we have to study for it."

"Please, God, no, kill me now," he cried out, burying his face in the workload. "C'mon, please?! We can make it interesting?" You stopped scribbling on your work and silence filled the room. Minho smirked: you could never resist a good bet.

"...What kind of bet are you thinking of?" You responded, not lifting your face from the work.

"Oh, so now you want to play," Minho mused, sitting up and leaning against the wall behind him.

"Shut up and set the rules," you groaned at him, tossing a pen at his chest and grabbing a new writing utensil.

"Ah! Christ, okay," he laughed, blocking the pen with his forearms. "Hmm let's see..." he leaned his head back and thought to the annoying tapping of your pencil.

"Ooh! I got it!" He shouted, making you jump. A maniacal smile spread across his face as he rubbed his hands like an evil mastermind.

"Why do I feel like I made a dumb decision," you pondered out loud, sighing at his ridiculousness. Minho cleared his throat, pretending as if he was making a huge announcement to an anxious crowd rather than to the singular annoyed you.

"This round of truth or dare will be like no other! The questions will be aggressive, dangerous, and downright inappropriate for any normal game," he mimicked a posh accent, acting as if he was speaking some royal decree into effect, "Additionally, this game will have raised stakes! If one refuses to answer the question of truth or do the dare, that individual will be forced to do anything that the victor— i.e. the person who gave them the request—demands of them. And, the loser will do it without question. If the loser refuses or does not comply, the victor gets to punish them any way they deem fit."

You thought for a moment about the terms of the agreement, crossing your arms at Minho's proposition.

"Anything I want you to do, you'll have to do it?" You questioned.

"Precisely," Minho nodded. You blew some air out before looking back at him.

"What did you mean by 'punish the loser any way they deem fit?'" You raised your eyebrows, concerned about that portion of the rules.

Minho shrugged, "I dunno. It could be anything, like a horrible prank or even spreading a rumour about the loser or something. Anything you set your mind to."

You shivered slightly. What would such a punishment resemble? However, the idea of winning and making Minho do something so embarrassing—or something even worse if he was defiant against you—was too sweet.

You shrugged. "Fuck it." You stuck your hand out and Minho reached out to grab it and gave it a firm shake. "I've been wanting to start a rumour anyways that Mr. Nam was having an affair with you. This will be a great opportunity."

"Wait, what?" Minho looked taken back as he released your hand, making you giggle.

"Don't worry, I'll be incredibly benevolent as a victor. The rumour will say you ended it."

"You forget that I will reign triumphant," Minho retorted, making you snort.

"In your dreams," you sneered back. "Anyways," you leaned on your palms, staring back at Minho. "Go for it."

"What are you talking about, dumbass? It's your turn in 'Truth or Dare.'" Minho crossed his arms in annoyance and rolled his eyes back, making you chuckle.

"Fine, I'll start this show then," you giggled, pretending to be annoyed that you got to begin this game of dares. You thought for a moment, glancing up and looking around. Though you took long, Minho didn't mind. Not only did get to prolong his humiliation for picking truth or dare, but he got to stare at your tits while you absent-mindedly arched your back, causing the buttons of your uniform to stretch against your chest.

"Ooh! Okay! I got it," you snapped back into reality and leaned forward, ruining Minho's view and his good time. "Truth or dare."

"Truth," Minho's response was almost automatic, choosing something safe for his first round.

"What..." you let the tension build as you placed your elbows on the table and then cradled your head in your palms, "is your cock size?"

Minho gagged a bit on nothing, not expecting you to be so forward and taking out the big questions on your first round. He cleared his throat and stared at you before awkwardly laughing

"Damn, really?"

"Why, too scared to respond?" You egged him on, sitting straight again and looking at him like he was a coward who refused to fight in a war.

"Not on the first round, no!" He defended.

"Well, then answer! May I remind you that you were the one who set the rules of the game!" You shot back. Minho leaned back and smiled at you as his face turned slightly red. He glanced away, too embarrassed to meet your gaze.

Never, ever had you seen Minho blush. He was so flustered, genuinely embarrassed by your question! You would never admit it, but he looked kind of cute being so taken back as someone who was normally so forward.

Minho cleared his throat before muttering something.

"What was that?!" You shouted at him with a dramatic hand to your ear, hoping to catch what he said. Minho shot you a look in an attempt to scare you but to no avail. Instead, you looked back at him with a devilish grin. "I'm waittinggggg," you chanted in a sing-song voice.

"Seven inches, okay?!" He shot back, turning his head to you and making deadly eye contact. Your hands immediately flew to your mouth and your eyes shot wide, surprised at his confidence and the fact that he responded at all. Silenced crept in again before you shook your head in disbelief.

"No... way..." you whispered. "You are not packing that much, not you! No!" Minho nodded as your hands slowly held your heart, acting like someone who just heard the most tragic news.

"That's kind of a dick thing to say," he scolded you.

"I—I'm sorry, I'm genuinely just like... shocked I guess?" You laughed before you began blushing too. "Damn, good job!"

"I already regret encouraging you to play this game," he sighed, shaking his head.

"Does that mean you secede?" You questioned teasingly.

"No! Especially not after I told you my dick size," he said. "God, it's my turn anyway."

"Fine, fine," you gathered yourself, smoothing your skirt and beginning to loosen the school tie that made you feel claustrophobic. "Go for it." Minho thought for a second before looking back at you, his face finally losing its redness

"Truth or dare?"

"Seven inches..." you whispered.

"Y/N!!!" He shouted.

"Yes, fine!" You giggled. "Dare!"

Minho smirked at you. "Wrong choice." Suddenly, you felt your stomach become queasy. You didn't like the glimmer in his eye nor the way he licked his lips. You agreed with him: you had definitely made the wrong choice. Minho stared at you for a second longer, admiring how wide your eyes went at his words, enjoying how you realized that you have brought upon your own demise.

"Show me the most embarrassing thing you own," he stated with a nod.

Dread washed over you and your face became a deep red.

"No... please... anything but that..." you whispered out, flustered at the request. Minho just laughed.

"Though I love to hear you beg for mercy," he chuckled, "rules are rules. Are you going to comply, or are you going to take your punishment?" You felt your throat go dry at his words. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, huh? Either show him the thing you were most ashamed of or be subjected to a slave-like status, forced to do his bidding.

You went with the former.

Wordlessly, you rose from your spot and turned around to go to your bed across the room.

"Ooooo," Minho called. "I'm excited!!!"

"At least one of us is," you mumbled back loud enough for him to hear.

"What's Y/n's little guilty pleasure, hmm?" He teased, his playful tone ringing in your ears. You knew your shameful secrets, you just didn't want anyone else—especially your best friend—to know them, too. You sat beside your bed and bent down, reaching deeply underneath the frame to pull out something tucked closely to the wall. It took a long time to pull out what you were looking for, but Minho didn't mind: he was more engrossed in listening to your little groans and watching your skirt ride up your thighs, your back arching just enough to stick your backside out at him and have the bottom of your ass show. He licked his lips, hoping that you'd stay a little longer in the position as he felt his cock grow in his pants.

Sadly, you had found what you were looking for and shot back up. Your eyes gazed at the black shoebox in your hands, wondering if you were really going to complete this dare. Yet, Minho's words rang in your ears: are you going to comply, or are you going to take your punishment? It was obvious that feeling guilt now would be better than any future retribution.

You stood up and walked back to the table, sitting cross-legged on the floor and holding the box in your hands before looking back at Minho. His eyes were amused, enjoying your guilty expression and the flushed nature of your face.

"Don't tell me the biggest shame you own is an ugly pair of heels or some weed or something," he taunted, his frustrating giggles filling the room again.

Then, you remembered. Minho could still lose this game, and maybe your own boldness could scare him away. If your embarrassment couldn't get you to win, maybe your bravery could.

You smiled up at him, your expression quickly making suspicion replace his amusement.

Ripping the top of the box off, you flung the lid across the room and threw the container on the table, cascading papers across the surface and leaving the contents of the box on display.

Minho's eyes went wide and his face immediately became crimson again. He couldn't believe what his eyes were feasting on, unsettled by your sudden act of courage and the sudden tightness of his pants.

Various sex toys were displayed in front of him: dildos ranging from smaller sizes to enormous lengths, assorted vibrators with numerous settings and sizes, butt plugs, handcuffs, and flogs, just to name a few. Minho's felt uneasy by the sight, but also incredibly turned on.

Somehow, he was a bit angry too. Maybe it was because he knew that you had violated your pussy in countless ways before he's even had the chance to even taste you. Though the thought of you touching yourself with all these toys made him jealous, his mind also relished the fact that these toys had been used on you. He even briefly considered picking on up and licking it, choking on the fake cock, hoping to get a taste of your cunt that lingered on the silicone or glass.

Yet, to your eyes, he remained stagnant, supposedly shocked to stillness by the exposing state you just put yourself in. You laughed at his astounded expression.

"You can touch them if you want, by the way, " you giggled as you picked up your biggest cock. "They're clean. I always clean them after I use them." Minho's eyes followed you, watching you stroke the cock teasingly as if you were studying every artificial vein with the eye of an artist. Your finger traced the ridges of the dick before slamming it on the table, sticking the suction cup to the wooden surface and causing Minho to jolt back at the agility of your actions. He became hypnotized by the swaying phallus, fixating his eyes on it. Slowly, he tore his gaze away to watch you study the other contents of the box.

"You can always quit the game," you stated with a straight face before placing a glass dick along with a butterfly vibrator on the table. Minho shook his head, finally snapping out of his trance.

"What?!" he shouted, his face straight.

"Well, if you were shocked by my answer," you studied a glass butt plug before placing it back in its box, "then there's no saying how you'll react to the next questions I ask."

"Well... that's— I-I can't even—" Minho scoffed but it was obvious that he was still stumped by your reveal. Could he beat you in this game? He so desperately wanted to win, but he still had to survive his next turn, and then yours after. And, with what just happened, there's a possibility he can fail on your turn. Not to mention the hardness of his cock and the disappointment he feels knowing that your toys were clean and not coated in your juices clouded his mind.

However, he had to remain focused. His diligence had to override yours, he had to win this game as the defeat could be so bitter in so many ways. So, with a clearing of his throat and a wipe of his brow, he looked back at you who still examined your various toys and was beginning to put them away.

"It's my turn," he mumbled at you, making you acknowledge his existence for the first time in a bit. "Ask me: truth or dare."

You looked back at him for a second before placing the last toy back in the box and moving it to the side of the table, not placing the lid back on it and torturing Minho with a view of everything that had stuffed your pussy or ass or teased your clit and inevitably made you cum. It pained him to know that none of those toys were him, but he was pleased knowing that the size of your biggest dildo at least resembled the measurements of his cock. God, you knew his cock size now. He had thankfully forgotten for a brief second before the memories of minutes before came flooding back. Goddammit! Now he was hard thinking about you struggling to take it, having to work your way up to that size and still barely managing to squeeze it into your little pussy. Fuck, he had to focus!

Minho shook his head as he looked back at you, trying to shake the thoughts from his mind and avoid the box to his right. Your eyes showed your enjoyment of his suffering as you leaned on your hand, studying his expression just as you studied the toys moments before.

After a moment of silence, you finally spoke.

"Truth or dare?"

"Dare," he immediately answered to his regret.

You laughed. Really laughed. Like, leaned back and cackled like a super villain.

Fuck. He made the wrong decision.

You stared back at him

"Let me see it," you stated.

"W... what are you talking about?"

"Your cock. Let me see it."

Okay, so Minho was surprised by you a few times already today.

But this took the cake.

"You wanna see my cock?"

You laughed out, yet his expression showed his true concern at your dare.

"Yeah You see, you're sporting seven inches hard, and I know for a fact that you're rock solid right now." Minho's embarrassment skyrocketed, horrified that you knew of the state of his cock and more worried that you might know that you were the one who caused it. "You always get that weird look whenever you have a boner, and I'm assuming seeing all these sex toys and maybe it just fucked with your male hormones or something."

Oh. Minho forgot for a second who he was talking to. Thank God you were too dumb to realize that it was what those toys represented that made him hard. That it wasn't the fact that there were just sex toys around, but that it was because he knew you used them. But, you always assumed that he was just like other guys. Even when you two went into that sex shop for shits and giggles one time, you supposed his awkwardness was because of all the fleshlights and pornstars on the wall. In reality, Minho couldn't handle the shop because everything made him think of you. Constricting you in that red harness which hung the wall, edging you for hours with that fat vibrator stuffed up your cunt, gagging you with the various ball-gags in the shop—it was all too much. With his mouth going dry and his pants unable to hide his growing hard-on, the shop quickly became an unsafe location for him. He left unexpectedly and you teased him for weeks after about it, starting a rumour that he was a prude and a virgin who couldn't handle even discussing sex— none of which being true. Minho didn't mind, however; he'd rather you'd think he was a stiff than a slag who was desperate to fill your holes with his fingers, cock, and toys. Plus, he was plenty happy with the happy fantasizing about you and all that stuff in the shop in his free time.

But now... this was different. Now, you were making him put his cards on the table, or fold. Either show you his cock or succumb to your whims, practically becoming your male odalisque instantaneously. Though at this point either option sounded insane to him, he still preferred to have the upper hand.

His eyes met yours, yours burned back into his, and he decided that it was time you saw how similar your larger toys were to him.

To your shock, Minho stood up and frantically began unzipping his dress pants, knowing that if he was too slow he'd psych himself out. His dress shirt came out next, Minho pulling it out of its previously neatly tucked form and freeing the wrinkled fabric. Then, with a single tug, his pants were just low enough to reveal the top of his boxers. Soon his cock would be out and he would be done this—

"STOP!" You yelped.

For the first time since he started undressing, Minho looked at you. Your expression was confusing, a mixture of holding back laughter and genuinely horrified.

"I..." you began, "I didn't think you'd actually do it... holy fuck you want to win." You began laughing loudly, making Minho pull up his pants to cover his boxers.

"You mean to tell me that you just wanted to see if I actually would do it?" he spat. "You dumbass this is literally truth or dare! If I don't comply I lose, you get that?!"

"Yes!" You laughed, "But I couldn't actually make you do it! I can't see your penis! I trust your seven inches and all but I don't want this to be how I see your dick, okay dude?"

"What the hell do you mean by that?" Minho argued back, aggressively zipping up his pants and crashing to the floor, pissed and ready to move on with the game.

You glanced away, "Nothing, don't worry. Just... let's move on okay? That counts as your turn."

"You're damn right that counts as my turn," he mumbled as he re-rolled his sleeves. "Can't believe I almost just showed my cock to win this fucking thing. Let's end this." You didn't like the sound of that. If Minho meant that and you just put him through hell, then what would he subject you to?! What diabolical things could he make you do, or make you admit to? Worse, what if you lose? Your mind starts to panic and you barely hear Minho speak those terrifying words.

"Y/N!" He shouted.

"What?!" You replied, snapping out of your worries.

"I said, 'Truth or dare?'" That stupid fucking mischievous smile came up on his face again.

No matter what you chose you were screwed. What could be worse: truth or dare? Goddamit!

"Truth... no, dare!" You corrected. "Wait..."

"Tick tock, y/n," he urged.

"Goddamit! Dare!" You shot back. "Final answer!"

You believed that this was the better choice. It was better to do something than have to admit to anything, right? Then you met his eyes again, the crescent moon shapes indicating his happiness at your choice.

...Ah.

Fucked. You were fucked.

"I want you," he leaned forward and shoved the box to his right onto the centre again, scattering some of your homework off the edge table, "to show me how you use these."

No. Fucking. Way.

Your immediate response was to laugh. Why wouldn't you? Being who he was, Minho was probably just getting back at you for the last dare you gave him. But why was he so worked up? You got him out of it and it was just a little prank. You didn't really want to see his cock because of a stupid dare, so he wouldn't want to watch you play with yourself in return turn.

Wouldn't he?

"I'm not joking, Y/N," Minho stated, straight-faced.

Your laughter was cut short, the room filling with silence.

"Oh God..." you mumbled. "You're actually serious, aren't you!?"

"You're damn right I'm serious," he replied. For the first time, Minho reached into the black shoebox and pulled out your toys. His imitation of you was impeccable, matching exactly how you studied the fake cocks and butt plug before placing them down in front of your still figure. As you watched his motions, a cocktail of fear, embarrassment, and overwhelming anxiety filled you. He was like a mob boss deciding what method of torture to use on you. "It's my turn. First, you show me these toys— some of which your perverted self probably bought when we hung out together at the mall and you snuck off! Then, you make me think you wanna see my cock, know what I'm packing, see if you can take it or some shit, and then make me stop?" He spat, "Heh. I don't fucking think so." He slammed down a vibrator on the table, making you shiver. You looked so small across from him, your nipples peaking through your shirt and your hands nervously fiddling with the edge of your skirt. Minho chuckled again. He knew what he was saying was on the money, that what he spoke wasn't an accusation, but a statement of fact.

"You're a bit scared, aren't you?" You nodded as a response, not daring to utter a word. He erupted in laughter. "Good! I hope you're terrified."

"M-Minho, you can't do this!" You protested, "I didn't make you show me your dick, I was just fooling around, but this is ridiculous! You can't make me—"

"Do you want to lose?" He shot back, quieting you instantly. "You know the consequences if you do." You did know. What would he make you do as retribution for your non-compliance? You dared not to think of it.

Instead, you occupied your mind with the various toys laid out in front of you. In an attempt to calm yourself, you began calculating the amount it all added up to. How much money have you spent on each one? How much time have you spent scouring the internet for them? How many hours have you spent using them? Unintentionally, your mind became filled again with the unbearable memories of how these toys made you feel, how you know they can make you feel, and how strangely good you felt after Minho's little speech just now. What the fuck were you going to do?

Finally, you glanced up at Minho's eyes, meeting them for the first time in what felt like forever.

"No," you said, "I don't plan on losing." Minho respected your courage, yet his smirk suggested he was calling your bluff.

The spread of the phallic objects and other various suggestive shapes in front of you gave you plenty of options, but you opted for the bunny vibrator, snatching it quickly and decisively so you couldn't hesitate on doing what you had to do.

"Fine choice," Minho muttered in response to your action. You rolled your eyes at him and then sat up on your knees, placing the vibrator beside you on the floor. You leaned forward slightly, giving Minho a perfect view of your cleavage from your unbuttoned top, though you took this position to attempt to give yourself some sense of privacy. Your hands ran up the back of your thighs tentatively, careful to not ride your skirt up too much. As your hands found the hem of your panties, you quickly pulled them down, not wanting to stay in this embarrassing position any longer. Minho let out a small yelp from across the table, indicating to you that he was excited by your exposure. Sitting back on your spread knees, you held your white lace panties between your thumb and index finger. Looking back at Minho, you saw him lick his lips and noticed his stiff posture. His cock was just as tense as the rest of his body and you knew it. You would enjoy how torturous this would be for him. You dropped your panties to your side. Picking up the vibrator on your other side, you looked up at Minho one last time before you would ruin any last shred of dignity you had remaining.

"Last chance to back out," Minho stated. Your face was just as blank as his, attempting to hide any lingering regret or the horniness either of you was experiencing.

You clicked the vibrator on, the low hum filling the room.

"I'm not backing out."

With your tongue already out, you placed the tip of the vibrator on the muscle and wet it with your spit. Minho took a deep inhale at the site, watching you hum slightly at the sensation. God, were you really going to do this? Both of you worried the same thing, wondering how far this game was going to go.

"Stop... stop teasing the tip," Minho said dryly. "Go on, show me how you work your little pretty pussy." Your heart tightened at the words, feeling stupid that your panties weren't there to absorb the wetness growing between your thighs.

"Let me take my time, Minho," you whispered back, making him moan lowly at your response. You chuckled at him. "Don't worry baby, I like it slow."

What had this game become between you two?

"If you take too long, you're going to lose by default," he responded, leaning forward, palms flat on the table and his hard-on clearly visible in his pants. He was getting antsy and it amused you, though you knew how serious your predicament was.

"That's not fair," you tutted, attempting to act dominant in a situation where you were clearly pitted against. "I can't do it right if I go too fast." You pouted slightly, letting the drool-covered vibrator buzz in your hands.

Minho shook his head, "Do it now or take your punishment."

Now it was your turn to gulp. He was serious.

You nodded, glancing down to your spread knees, your only privacy your school skirt, then at the buzzing bunny in your hands. Though you couldn't see him, you could feel Minho's look seethe into you, his breath heavy. At a snail's pace, your hands began to move the toy lower and lower. One hand parted from the object, caressing your thighs before lightly grasping the edge of your skirt. You pushed the hem higher and higher, raising the skirt to your mid-thighs as the toy continued pushing downward. Suddenly, you found Minho's hand touching yours, the one that held the vibrator, guiding it down to your cunt.

"C'mon, show me..." he whispered, a mixture of a beg and a demand. "I know you can, y/n."

His entire body was stretched across the table, face-to-face with you, noses and foreheads almost touching as you both stared down past your tits and tummy to the rising fabric with the vibrator as a guide. So close, the space closing and closing until finally your skirt was bunched so much it almost showed your soaked pussy. Minho could feel himself drooling, his hand upping the speed on the vibrator until it violently buzzed in his and your hands. Your chest rose and fell quickly with the speed of your breath, confusing Minho as he tried to watch your entire body at once. The toy now was only a few inches from you, your pussy still covered by your skirt, but one final movement and—

"WAIT!" You shouted, scaring Minho and causing him to collapse on the table and making you fall back. The vibrator was flung across the room and you scurried to cover yourself, pulling your skirt down. Minho groaned at the impact of the fall on his chest, his hand cradling his ribs as he closed his eyes in pain.

"Oh-oh my God, Minho!" You sputtered out, clamouring over to him and picking up his face in both of your hands and looking up at him. "I-I'm so sorry! Are you okay? How are you feeling?"

Minho shook his head, "Uhh... fine, I think...." he slowly pushed off the table, sitting back against the wall and across the table from you again.

"I'm sorry about that," you quickly apologized, "I just got a little... I just think that dare was too much, maybe... I don't know... I—"

"Don't apologize," Minho looked up at you, sincerity deep in his voice. "It was intense, and you don't have to do it if you don't want to."

You opened your mouth to say something again, another apology you suppose, before shutting it and nodding, silently appreciating his understanding. Slowly Minho rose, stretching and rolling his neck back.

"Are you okay?" You asked. He nodded.

"I'm fine, just a little sore." He walked around a bit, stretching his legs that had almost fallen asleep from the long period of sitting on the floor. "Are you okay?" You nodded, watching him cross the room so now he stood across the carpet from you.

"Yes, I'm fine." Minho nodded at your response and then looked down beside him to the humming bunny. The buzzing hadn't ceased: the vibrator still bounced aggressively beside him. He looked down at it then at you.

Abruptly, you became extremely embarrassed. God, what the fuck did you just do!? Minho smiled at your reddening face before bending down to pick up the toy. He shut it off and then looked up at you, waving the toy in your direction. With a smirk, he tossed it back in the box before sauntering over to you and sticking his hand out. The last of your pride was already torn to shreds after that debacle, you might as well let him help you up. You grabbed his hand and jumped up with the support. Yet, you didn't realize that your legs had fallen asleep, and you stumbled into Minho. Quickly grasping the small of your back while his other hand remained intertwined with yours, Minho caught you and let you stumble into him.

It was quiet for a moment, the seconds passing as you stood like two dancers frozen in a performance. He smiled at you, and you smiled back. Then, he ruined the moment.

"You won't be fine for long," he whispered. Confusion hit you first, then, after a brief moment of thinking, you realized what his words meant. Horror swept across your face.

"I... I lost..." you muttered.

"Yep," Minho said, his hand rubbing your back, "and I won."

You gulped. "What will you make me do?"

Minho chuckled, "Nothing too bad." His hand continued to stroke your back, calming you in this moment of terror. "Just want to show you off, is all." The sound of that made your knees weaker than they already were.

His hand began to rub lower and lower down your torso before caressing the curve of your ass through your skirt. You hiccuped at the feeling, realizing how close you two were with him holding you like this. Minho leaned into you, lips touching the curve of your ear.

"Do you feel me, y/n?" He asked, "Do you feel how good you make you feel?" You did. It was undeniable that you felt him through his pants. He was still so hard, aching to be buried in you, and you realized how much you actually would enjoy his seven inches, the slight curve of his cock hitting your g-spot perfectly. You were a fool to think that it was just the toys and all that stuff getting Minho hard: it was you.

You tightened your grip on him.

"W-What will you make me do, Minho?" You asked again, hoping that it wouldn't be as embarrassing as this moment was.

"I know exactly what I want. Do you know what you want, y/n?" he asked, his breath tickling your ear. You buried your face in his neck.

"I don't know..." Your voice came out as a hushed mumble, your shyness making him smile. He could be sweet if he wanted, ease your self-consciousness and feed your begs by letting you not experience the suffering he had in store.

But Minho wasn't nice. He wasn't sweet and only was if he wanted to be. And right now, it seemed like charity was the furthest thing on his mind.

"You look so pretty right now, without your panties on," Minho's hand slowly bunched your skirt up, clasping the fabric underneath his wrist as his fingers played with and caressed your ass. Whimpering at his touch, you realized how wet you still were, how much you needed him. That almost went away with the words he spoke next.

"I wonder if you want everyone else to see you like this." The world stopped for a moment, fear freezing your body.

"...what?" you muttered, glancing at him.

Minho hummed, "I wonder how long you could stand not wearing panties." Minho pulled back his hand from your back and moved away from you, making you ache to feel his cock again. He cupped your chin and forced you to face him "You'd like that, wouldn't you baby?" You were too stunned to speak. Could he really make you do that? What would happen if you didn't comply?

"Minho... please.." you begged. Minho chuckled and separated away from you, making you drag your reach out for him. He walked towards the table and started gathering his homework in his bag, picking up every last scattered paper that was his.

"Now, now, y/n you knew the rules and you still obeyed," he tutted. "Tomorrow at school: no underwear, shorts, tights: anything. I don't want anything covering your pussy or your thick ass." He looked up at you, staring deeply into your wide eyes. "I want to be able to bend you over any time I want and enjoy the view." He looked down to check if he had forgotten anything, and he did. The white lace of your panties peaked through a flipped-over notebook, almost escaping his searching gaze. Minho picked them up gingerly, smirking at you as he stood up straight. Balling them up and sniffing them lightly, Minho basked in your scent before dropping them in his bag and zipping it tightly shut. "You won't be needing these, will you, y/n?" He asked. "You'll get them back when you've been good."

He walked up to you and patted you on the head before bending down and meeting your eyes. You had said nothing, stunned to a motionless figure at what was happening.

"But..." you muttered out, meeting his eyes. "But I've been good..."

"Not good enough," he laughed out. With a lean, he kissed the top of your forehead before patting you again. He stood straight and walked past you. Your gaze followed him towards the door of your bedroom, watching him turn the knob and swing the door open. Before taking another step, he stopped and turned back towards you.

"See you tomorrow, y/n!" Happiness and monotony layered his voice, making one think that what just happened was a regular occurrence and that what was to come wasn't out of the ordinary either. Minho turned again and walked out, closing the door behind him and beginning his journey home.

Silence filled the room as you looked at the mess around you before turning back towards the shut door.

"Tomorrow... no panties... nothing..." you recited. Your mouth was dry and you felt lightheaded. Oh, fuck... what were you going to do?!

"See you tomorrow, Minho."

continued in part 2

#skz smut #stray kids smut #leeknow smut #lee minho smut #skz leeknow smut #skz leeknow #skz minho #stray kids minho #leeknow x y/n #leeknow x reader #perv!leeknow

[prpfs]

🫀 hello! i am looking to write some prose-y highly literate dead dove-y content. if you want to write some pretty words about some fucked up characters, i am your gal. 

i am 26, she/her and on gmt-3 timezone! my happy spot is writing somewhere between 400-700+ words and i’m happy to go even longer, but i don’t love to do shorter. no one-liners, i like to have a good chunk of introspection going at all times, so i’d consider myself adv. lit. and i hope to find partners who are the same! activity wise, i really don’t mind taking a couple days or even a couple weeks between replies, very chill with long hiatuses too, as long as we keep ooc communication open. otherwise i’ll assume you’ve ghosted me, which is fine too, but i won’t be chasing. i have a lot of free time at the moment, but i’m usually a full time uni student and i can’t always do rapid fire. besides, i like my replies hefty and long, so it’s quality over speed.

this is a request for 23+ writers preferably, and the muses will be 25+. bonus points for anyone who’s also a pinterest and playlist fiend. i really love using fcs, and i usually prefer actors, but i can be persuaded to accept descriptions only.

for my character, he’s a guy with some razor sharp edges. a functional alcoholic in most verses, roughed up, very much traumatized by life. originally lawful man who’s been corrupted. lost his unrequited love years ago to a murder and hasn’t recovered since, holds everyone an arms’ length away. big guy, manly man, “boys don’t cry” type of toxic masculinity. i’m looking for mxm or mxnb at this time. he is very much a top, but i am not looking to pair him with babyfied subby bottoms. if anything, he could use a more powerful/dominant partner he can worship and meet halfway, and i think it’d be a fun subversion of tropes with the plots i have in mind anyway.

so for the plots i want, i have a few dynamics in mind (bolded are the roles my character fits into): cop x prostitute, cop x stripper, bodyguard x famous person. verrrry into making these into low or high fantasy, or period pieces. also totally open to change cop for a vague “military man” title, and depending on the age, he might be retired. and if you have other scenarios you could see fitting and would like to play out, i’m all ears!

this will be written on a private discord server. i have writing samples ready to share and i hope you can do the same, so we can see if we match! i can share my character’s pinterest board and tell you more about him, and i hope you have a character in mind when we chat. i’ll always match energy and i’m really hoping for someone i can vibe with ooc. give this post a like and i’ll find you!

Leave a like, and anon will get back to you!

#oc roleplay #oc rp #oc x oc #m/m #m/nb #dead dove

[elephant-in-the-pride-parade]

20 Fic Writer Quesions

First, thank you @singeart and @mytardisisparked for tagging me!. I did a set of these last year and it was fun to see how my answers have changed since then!

How many works do you have on Ao3?

61

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count?

1.6 million and counting!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Star Trek Voyager

Star Trek Prodigy

Sailor Moon

Harry Potter

Madam Secretary

Ive debated writing SwanQueen for a long time but by the time I had the energy and time to write, I'd lost interest in the show. I might rewatch and come back to it one day...

I have thought about writing Wynonna Earp or Tamora Pierce universe fanfiction but have yet to get an idea that grabs me. I like to find things i want to fix and it's hard when the source material is perfection.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

The Parent Trap (305)

Sailor Moon H Order of the Phoenix (289)

Sailor Moon H Half Blood Prince (222)

Eden's Deception (167)

Out of Reach (150)

5. Do you respond to comments?

I try to! although if I'm busy or feeling down it can take me a while. Sometimes I forget.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I still think What Even is 3 Minutes takes the cake. Or I'll be Your First if You'll be my Last

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I Heard the Comm on Christmas Morn and Parent Trap

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Unfortunately I've gotten hate on fics since I started writing them... and it's become just something I expect to happen. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it confuses me. Sometimes it makes me sad. It really depends...

The memorable haters:

There was the delightful Fanfiction.net reviewer who got pissed i was "making everybody gay" (that was funny actually). I forget if they were the same person who flamed me when Mcgonagall and Hooch kissed under some mistletoe. I digress. They thought queering up the canon was like sinful or whatever. I was delighted to disagree and make the story even queerer.

Another person cussed me out for magically restraining Sailor Plutos time travel powers so my plot would work and for making her have feelings about it. aparently mad the senshi were not all powerful deus exmachinas who never feel feelings... That one stung. That was the reason I left FFN.

Hate because in Sailor Moon H, Harry Potter was not the main character.

Hate that I made a magic bio baby for the magical lesbians. (I can't have a biobaby with my wife irl, can't I at least let the fantasy girlies have one!)

Hate for including C/7 in a story

...I wouldn't call it hate for the fic but I have had an uncomfortable amount of commenters who hate on Chakotay any time I have him involved with Seven / don't have him grovel to Kathryn / really any time I let him advocate for how he's been hurt... at first comments like this stressed me out because i worried i had not written the character sufficiently sympathetic. But then Parent Trap breached containment and I got enough comments to be able to see I had definitely written the character fine... it was just that some people were always just rooting for a "Chakotay falls over himself to apologize to Janeway for not immediately dating her" storyline that... I'm not sorry 😅 I'm never going to write that. The older I get the more I feel like both of J/C just need therapy! They've been through so much trauma. Their feelings are valid (yes, even for other people).

Parent Trap breaching containment also meant that when I hit an irl rut and couldnt get in the writing headspace for a bit, a bunch of - sincerely, well meaning - fans got into their heads to start a commenting campaign to get me to update. I heard about it and panicked (i had bad experiences that year of getting people who only commented "update soon" and those conversely stressed me out and made me not want to write - I love fic writing for the conversations and community... so it made me feel like readers thought i was just a content vending machine). so just the thought of potentially getting an avalanche of guests, well meaning or not, begging me to update made me lock commenting until the fic was done. I wound up deciding after that that since "update soon" requests were becoming a lot more frequent that I'd consider before posting whether getting them would hurt my ability to finish. So most of the time now if I know a fic is going to reach a bigger potential community, I don't start posting it until it's almost done. That has had some upsides! (Im less dependent on positive feedback for motivation now!) and some downsides (no one comments on my fics with their theories anymore) but on a whole, a good decision.

Immediately after finishing Parent Trap I wrote Fever and got this amazing guest comment from someone who said (paraphrasing cuz i'm too busy to go find it) "Youre better than this. how dare you write this filth. J/C are better than this" that one had me laughing for days. But the comment did prompt me to create a second account later when I wrote a tentacle fic. At the time I worried i'd get a ton of similar flame comments from people who were subscribed to my main for other types of fic... but I am even feeling like that's unnecessary now. I write what I write! Yes, some of it is really dirty, weird smut. I'm not sorry.

Currently any time I post a Threshold AU fic an anon drops into my comments section in order to call me "Sick" and "Deranged"... they make me so sad I don't even make a quippy reply. I just delete them. I write that universe for my own wish fulfillment... Someday (soon, hopefully) I'm gonna have kids. And I am going to have to have conversations with them about who their biological dad is. Why they look like one mom and not the other, whether their non bio family love them even if theyre not blood related. I might have a kid who feels different from everyone else because they're queer or they're neurodivergent or they're some new alienating feeling I am totally unprepared for. and I'll need to help them navigate that.. Writing about hybrid salamander kids getting raised in a blended family is FUN. But more importantly... it helps me practice those situations. It comforts me to know that if the characters can figure this out in the AU then I can figure this out in real life! What the hell is sick and deranged about that!?

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I write all sorts of smut. I post the stuff that doesn't totally mortify me once i've gotten out of whatever mood had me writing the smut in the first place.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I have exactly two crossovers to my name: Sailor Delta and Sailor Moon H. I think on the basis of word count alone Sailor Moon H (>500,000) is definitely the craziest.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I consider the unlicensed use of the AO3 archive for ChatGPT and similar LLMs theft. (and there are several court cases pending that are also seeking to address whether it is legally theft as it pertains to published fiction and newspapers). The canon creators of the fandoms I write for aren't allowed to make money by using uncredited ideas pulled from my fanfiction (just like I am not allowed to make money from writing fic with their copyrighted settings and characters) and i continue to be apalled that ChatGPT and other LLMs think they can get away with using others copyrighted ideas without permission. Especially that they can take advantage of people who cant profit off their own work.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? 

No but i would be open to it!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! Once with @magdalenejaneway, once with @jellybeansarecool and once with @trekflower and all three were fantastic!

Most of what I write for Threshold AU is also increasingly collaborated on a great deal by the AU creators and a few other folks. It's been going for over 2 years now and doing that more and more has enabled us all to drop more references to previous fics and to create a more cohesive body of fic for the AU. in general its just been so fun and fulfilling to make these stories with other people who are as invested in the characters as me and it just fills me with joy. I'm really grateful for you guys.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

On the one hand J/C have inspired over 50 fics, But on the other I have also been loving Sailor Moon and those ships since before I knew what fandom or shipping were. And really the only reason J/C inspire more fic is that all the sailor moon characters got a happy ending.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I never want to give up on a WIP...

but I am in knots about what all to do with Out of Reach.

Out of Reach is a St:Prodigy S1 AU where Chakotay has amnesia and doesn't remember anything from his time on Voyager, all the while he and Kathryn are in a situationship with a baby.

There's two questions I never figured out how to answer: 1. Does he get his memories back. If so, how much and what enables it. and 2: Do he and Kathryn stay together?

On the memories front. saying he never recovers seems unfair to the character. But saying he magically does thanks to 24th century science feels cheap and disrespectful - to the reality of real memory loss and to the plot that built up so much tension around this. Saying he gets back some or more over time is more realistic, but left me uncertain of where exactly to end the story. Tying his retrieval of memories to Kathryn also tied me up in knots. On the one hand they're in love and thats romantic. on the other hand the optics of his recovery totally dependent on one person is icky.

I also found the baby really annoying to have there by the end - I still think he's cuteeee i really do!!! - it's just... he makes the "we should stay together and try to figure this out" answer a bit too convenient 😅. and he complicates Kathryns reluctance to restart their relationship. The more she resists, the more callous she seems (deliberately not trying to patch things up with her kid's father) when i really just want to focus on her fears that Chakotay would be happier without her and that even if they restart their romance, she might lose him again on a future mission. It's ironic because i originally created the baby to ensure she wouldnt just run away from her fears. And now hes contributing to my difficulty ending the fic...

Actually the more I think on it, my real problem is I could write my way out of this, but I cant do it in only one or two chapters and that makes me feel tired. i was sorta hoping to wrap that fic up. 😅🙈

16. What are your writing strengths?

Imagery has always been a strength for me. But i think I'm also getting really good at action scenes too.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Oneshots.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Only if it was information i wanted the reader to understand but not the POV character.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

W.I.T.C.H way back when I was 15.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Universe to Mend - I even have a few sequel or companion novel ideas to come after it.

This has gone on a while... 😅 - thank you for tagging me and letting me ramble! i'll tag anyone else who wants to answer! have at it.

#writing asks #elephantwrites

[digitalmidnight]

Hey y'all

So I'm almost on spring break! Finals puts me in the mood to write for some reason. Long story short, my total Ao3 word count is 91,884. I therefore want to write 8,116 words to get to that sweet sweet even 100k.

Below are story ideas. One for Loonatics Unleashed, rest for Tom and Jerry. There's also a poll and I will write whatever wins. Poll ends around 2am, March 14th, PST

Loonatics Unleashed:

Solution [name pending]

"After another failed demonstration, Tech and Rev return to their home 3.5 minutes before the meteor falls, and their lives are changed forever." An expansion off this post. A different remimaging of Tech and Rev's relationship right before they get their powers. Based technically on the AU I had in my head, but I will write it with their canon powers and such. Rev will have his speed prior to powers, though. Oh, and some light angst as they figure out their powers, including Tech's :)

Tom and Jerry:

Rewrite/Remake: Don't fall in Love

"Jerry makes bet with Tom, the first one to fall in love loses." The rewrite will contain the same plot, but with updated writing, grammar and jokes. Don't fall in love has a mere 788 words. The updated version will be more expanded with lots more imagery.

Back again (Human AU + Ship):

"After many years of hyping it up, Tom finally takes Jerry to a multi-day event in his hometown. However, he begins to get cold feet as he remembers how unwelcoming it can be." A fic that takes place over 3 days involving almost comical amounts of miscommunication that takes place in a rural farm town.

[Warning! Potential to go over word limit. If it does, I'll post second place, get the pic, then post this]

Boxes (Human AU + Ship):

"Mentally, Tom puts everyone into boxes (stereotypes). Everyone is supposed to stay in their little box and be predictable. Tom can not put Jerry into a box, and Jerry seems to be dragging Tom out of his." Tom centric. Tom trying to overcome his own mental stereotypes while also coming to the realization he might have a crush.

Instincts (Canon + Implied)

Jerry hurt his legs and they are lost together in the woods. Tom has to get them out while also fighting his prey drive/hunger that gets worse the longer they are out there.

Last Night (Canon)

Tom irreparably breaks his owner's prized heirloom. Knowing he'll be punished no matter what he does, he decides to have one last night of fun. Tom centric and mostly about the feeling of dread that comes with making a mistake and fearing the consequences.

Amnesiacat (Canon + Friends)

5+1. 5 times one of them tries to remember, and 1 time they do. One of them (still picking who. Leaning towards Jerry) gets amnesia cartoon style. The amnesiac believes their relationship mimics the first cartoon, while their relationship has evolved to what it is in the later cartoons.

[Least developed idea mentally]

Winner of poll will be the fic written. The losers may or may not be written someday depending on hyperfixation/ideas being put into other fics.

For the Tom and Jerry fics: Human = they will be human. Canon = they will be cat and mouse. Ship = 100% romantic interest. Implied = it's possible. Friends = written as friends.

#writing midnight fanfiction #tom and jerry #loonatics unleashed #tumblr polls #ao3 #techrev #tech e coyote #rev runner #tom and jerry fic #tom cat #jerry mouse #tom x jerry

[annabtg]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Tagged by @squintclover, thank you so much!! ❤️❤️

AO3 username: AnnaBtG

1. How many works do you have on A03? 55 (plus one unreleased)

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 233k (about 7k of which are other people's writing in co-authored works)

3. What fandoms do you write for? My AO3 only has HP stuff, and most of it is Jily.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Nom De Plume

The Great James Potter

Mistletoe Mishaps

AO3 Is Down

As If By Magic

5. Do you respond to comments? Always!! I am the staunchest advocate of commenting on fics and replying to comments is the least I can do to show a reader how appreciated their comments are. :)

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? I'll say Fixed Luck, because it pretends to give you hope even though in reality all it does is fill you with dread.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I have a lot of fluffy and happy fics! Maybe Nom De Plume, because it's a no Voldemort AU and by the end everything is settled and they live happily ever after!

8. Do you get hate on fics? I wouldn't say full-on hate but some people have objections with the ways I portray Sirius and Lily's relationship, both in romantic and platonic contexts. :p

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? A bit, yeah! Most of it is loving, tender and not super graphic.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Not really! Though I still want to finish writing that "Lily is a Lois & Clark fan" story. xD

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? I don't think so!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Over Spilt Coffee has been translated in Russian (and I've also written a Greek translation). The translations are linked in the author's notes. There was also a Spanish translation of Birthday but it's been deleted.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? A couple! I've collaborated on taller than the trees with @eemolu, and there are also the two Jily Express Jilytober fics, Soups and Broom Closet Shenanigans and The One Where All The Smut Had Already Happened.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? Jily, obviously!!

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Through Times Of War on FF.net.

16. What are your writing strengths? Being evocative with few words, and a very polished style with attention to detail.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Coming up with ideas! Particularly for longer works. Elaborate plots are not my friends.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I've done it in the past, and I think it served its purpose, but I would rather avoid it unless absolutely necessary.

19. First fandom you wrote for? Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written? The answer changes depending on various factors, including the definition of favourite xD but My Best Friend's Girl is one of the stories that are dearest in my heart!

Tagging @abihastastybeans @charmsandtealeaves @chierafied @eemolu @fiendishfyre @ginnyw-potter @jamesunderwater @kay-elle-cee @nodirectionhome-ao3 @roalinda!

#20 questions

[flameunquenched]

okay so i've decided i have some concerns regarding netflix's adaption of avatar: the last airbender (which for the sake of my poor fingers, i'm shortening to natla). i will admit that i may have been taken in by the beautiful trailers and i can further admit that the actual cinematics do look fantastic. i love the costuming, the cgi of the elements themselves, and the animals. but...the more i hear about the overall storyline of natla, the more concerned i become.

first, the removal of sokka's sexism shows that the showrunners simply fail to understand his characterization and the innate flaws that make him a character to root for as he grows and changes. sokka grew up the only real man in his tribe because his father and the other men left to fight in the war against the fire nation. not only that, but we can see based on the northern water tribe that there is a sort of innate sexism therein entirely with women being relegated to healing duties when they could bend and men as warriors. and honestly, when you really view it through the correct lens, it makes sense.

but removing that deprives sokka of a great piece of his character arc. not only does his sexism eventually become broken by his sister, but he learns from the kyoshi warriors new ways to fight and comes to respect them not only as 'girls' but also as seasoned, accomplished warriors. my concern is that the removal of his innate sexism is not only going to do a disservice to the character but also to the viewer themselves by sanitizing a story that, frankly, can get quite dark when you think about it.

second, what really worries me is the change to avatar aang. i read an article where they decided to remove the random stops here and there and instead basically have the gaang go immediately to the north pole to begin learning waterbending which...that's not really staying true to aang's character, in my opinion. the article i read basically says that aang learns about the fire nation, goes 'well, let's get to the north pole asap' and off they go. but that does a disservice to aang's character as well. a key point of aang's entire arc is that he does not want to be the avatar. he never wanted to be. it was a title forced onto his shoulders and a mantle he never desired to wear.

by removing those random stops throughout the earth kingdom - and eventually, i assume, the fire nation given that they REMOVED THE FUCKING COMET WHAT THE ACTUAL FU--okay, no, ran, breathe. stay on topic. woosah. - then they are also taking away the chance of the audience to see how severe the war, colonization, and oppression has become throughout the world thanks to the fire nation. not only does this offer the potential sanitization of the fire nation's hundred-year-long war for total conquest and dominion, but it also takes away key parts of the storyline, depending on how much of the early plot lines they scrub.

it is key for aang to see those things. he needs to see the forest that the fire nation burned and help to soothe the angered spirit (which i will say i think we are getting, thankfully). he needs to see the fact that the fire nation is in so many towns and cities throughout the earth kingdom. there may be no war in ba sing se but the rest of the earth kingdom has been feeling the effects of the war with the fire nation for a century now.

i'm not touching the removal of sozin's comet in this post. like. nope. not doing it.

basically, i am concerned. i am beginning to see why the original creators decided to leave over differences and i am really worried that netflix does not understand how to adapt atla and the importance it has with so many of us, myself included, who grew up with it and adore it so. i rewatch atla at least twice a year, often far more than that, and while i desperately want to see a live action version, the "it's a remix, not a cover" line concerns me. and sure, it doesn't need to be a word-for-word, shot-for-shot cover, but i feel like the scrubbing of the two above issues has already broken the heart of the storyline and the hearts of its fans.

i dunno. maybe i'm wrong and need to trust the process and wait. but i've been badly burned by a live action atla before and i don't wanna go through that again.

#netflix avatar #live action avatar #avatar the last airbender #atla #atla sokka #avatar aang #pers.text #i am just Concerned

[goldheartedsky]

tagged by my beloved @ongreenergrasses for this writer's ask so here we go!!

1) how many works do you have on AO3?

Right now, 192, though some of them are art. So if we're talking strictly *fics*, then I think around 180?

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?

a whopping 1,012,726!!!! 😵‍💫

3) What fandoms do you write for?

Right now it's almost entirely TOG, but I have written for Captain America, Agent Carter, Wolf, Close Enemies, and there are a few orphaned hockey RPF fics written by me floating around Ao3 🫣

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Carry the Field, When All The Boys Can’t Be Men, Fireproof, Lines in the Sand, and Tripping On Stars which, honestly I kind of expected, though it does bum me out that none of my AndyBooker fics made it into the top 5

5) Do you respond to comments?

almost always unless it's like... real weird or an emoji that I don't know how to respond to hahah

6) What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I might have to go with Beginning to Feel the Years, solely because it's so open ended with the angst. I really love angst with a happy ending because I love a little ray of hope through the clouds, but the morning after this fic is just going to be so hard, no matter what.

7) What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I really gotta hand it to North Star for the softest ending in the world. I said fuck the haters and gave Andy a husband, 2 kids, and a picket fence with zero regrets

8) Do you get hate on fics?

not usually, people tend to save that for Tumblr, but I did get a little whining on Change Your Ticket when I started redeeming Francesca the way she deserved.

9) Do you write smut?

the fact that this is even a question and not an automatic yes is so funny. Of course I write smut. Raunchy smut, romantic smut, angsty smut, you name it, I've written it.

10) Do you write crossovers? If so, what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Other than old Bandom crossover fics, I don't think so! I think the only thing that might count as a crossover fic is the MajidxManuel Wolf/Close Enemies fics

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

NO thank god 🥲

12) have you ever had a fic translated?

I have not, but I've gotten a few podfics done by @cookiemom6067

13) have you ever cowritten a fic before?

no, but I'd honestly love to cowrite one!

14) What’s your all time favorite ship?

As much as I want to say it's AndyBooker, I really gotta give it up to Steve/Bucky. They were the blueprint for a lot of my shipping patterns now.

15) What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Everything gets finished eventually, though it might take me a bit right now

16) What are your writing strengths?

Other than my smut writing skills, I think either dialogue or handling a lot of tough topics with nuance. People in fandom right now love their black and white subjects and I am all about that grey matter.

17) what are your writing weaknesses?

action sequences, without a doubt.

18) thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I tend to either keep it to small little pieces of dialogue in latinized form (especially with stuff like Arabic/Yiddish) but with Prodigal Son, I really wanted the language to be a little symbolic of how othered Ilan feels. Because most people can't read Hebrew, keeping it in its original form felt the most isolating. If you're not Jewish and know Hebrew, you won't know what Ilan's saying unless you *try* to translate it, which is more than what he gets in the fic.

So I think it can be an interesting plot device, depending on how you use it.

19) First fandom you wrote for?

Harry Potter but I was like...12 and that fandom got abandoned quick ahahah

20) Favorite fic you’ve written?

FAVORITE? Oof I usually say the Cherry Wine fics or North Star, but I'm gonna broaden my answer this time and offer a couple little one shots. I REALLY love Color Him Father just because I love the idea of transmasc!Booker, and then the one I love that doesn't get enough love is From Adam’s Rib, my golem!Winter Soldier fic

tagging @druckkugelschreiber @quinbi @captain-grammar and @shatterthefragments, as well as anyone else who wants to do this!

#ask games #writers meme

[mjjune]

How to Handle Beta Feedback (or: how to analyze, synthesize, and improve your story)

So this is the 3rd (and potentially final?) in a series I'm doing, so I recommend reading the first two posts first! I also took inspiration (and wholeheartedly agree with) another post which I recommend below.

Part 1: How to Have a Good Beta Experience (alpha vs. beta)

Part 2: How to be a Good Beta Reader (critique vs. beta)

Other recommended reading on writer mindset/accepting feedback here!! by @shaelinwrites

Now that you've read those posts (because you definitely read all that lol) and are ready for even more info--

As usual, this is very long post, and disclaimer that this is all based on personal experience and what helps me as a writer.

Topics:

So You've Got a Bunch of Comments... Now What?

Conflicting Comments

Negative Feedback: Headspace

Editing Your Story

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

So I've Got a Bunch of Comments... Now What?

First, you thank your beta readers. They took the time to read your book, usually for nothing in return. So thank them!

Then, here comes the fun part (or the worst part, depending on who you ask, lol).

Now, you have the hardest part of writing, after getting the words down in the first place. Now, you have to read all those comments, over and over, and figure out what to do with your story based on them.

But, MJ, how the hell do I do that?

Well, a lot of this is trial and error and figuring out what works for you. But I can break down what I do. Keep in mind this is basically a skeleton version of what I do and may not work for everyone. You'll have to adapt this to you.

So I'll split this up by type of comment. In my experience, the majority of comments will fall into these categories. Some of these are "easy" to make changes on, and some are not.

Typos & Grammar

Style & Prose

Plot & Structure

Character Arcs & Development

Typos, Grammar, Style, & Prose

So, this is where personal style/taste will differ. For me, when I'm in the beta stage, I ignore these comments. Yep, you read that right. Ignore them. Completely. Like they don't exist.

During beta rounds, my goal is to analyze and fix the story and grammar and prose have very little to do with that. This is something I will edit right before I give it to another set of betas, but I never start here (unless it's a glaringly annoying typo).

However, if you are overwhelmed by how many comments you have, or have conflicting or hurtful comments (which I address below), or if you are sweating because you think you might have to rewrite large portions -- maybe start here. These edits are short, quick, and don't require Hard Decisions™, so you can edit these and feel productive, get back on track, dig a little deeper into your story, and it'll give you some time before you have to tackle the harder stuff. Overwise, I would hold off and not bother with this until other edits are made (because, if you end up rewriting a whole portion, then the typos/prose might change, anyway, so it's more work in the long run). But this is totally personal preference!

That said, when it comes to feedback on style and prose, I would be hesitant to jump in and change everything that readers recommended. In a lot of cases, this comes down to personal preference. Making your prose more/less descriptive, more/less concise, etc. etc. might not be making your writing better, just different. So, dive into these comments with a goal for your writing style in mind and only edit based on comments that 1) agree with this goal and 2) you agree that the change would make the prose stronger.

Examples: If you know you want your story to be fluffy and descriptive, you might ignore comments that ask you to shorten or remove descriptions, and instead act on comments that strengthen your descriptions. If you know you want your story to be minimalist, then you might ignore comments that ask for more descriptions, or only add in description if all betas agree that something is unclear or difficult to picture/follow.

Plot, Structure, & Character Arcs

This part is harder and can be overwhelming. This is the part where you might actually have to scrap, rewrite, and/or drastically change.

When I'm reading these bigger-picture comments, I jump in with these mindsets to help me focus:

All comments are opinions and suggestions. Regardless of how they are worded, I am not obligated to follow them.

They are trying to help me and want my book to be the best it can be. (If some readers seem to not have this intent, perhaps ignore those comments for now*.)

*I will discuss this more below

These reminders help me hold on to the positives, and I tend to start there. Which parts of my story did everyone across the board respond well to? Perhaps it's a specific character arc, or a particular plot point. I always like to make mental note of these, because no matter what happens with the rest of the comments, I don't want to lose these. I don't want to edit these parts out, I don't want to lose the most engaging parts of my story, even if there are a lot of issues that need editing. Even if the entire scene gets redone, I don't want to lose what people connected with.

Maybe even write these down. I don't do this personally, but maybe start a document and keep bullets of the parts that most/all betas collectively agree are the strongest parts.

Then, go through and do the same for the weakest parts. The hardest part of all this is figuring out which parts are actually weak, and which parts are just not to some readers' tastes. Then, on top of that, once you have found the flaws, you have to figure out how to fix them.

So how can you tell if a comment is pointing out an actual issue, or if it's personal taste? Here are some pointers:

Keep your goal in mind (re: the themes, a character's development, etc.) Does the comment conflict with your goal? If yes, it could be personal taste. (Or, it could mean something is unclear and/or they've interpreted it differently, in which case it's your decision to edit or not)

How many betas commented on it? If it's 1/5, then it's probably personal taste. If it's 4/5, you should take a deeper look.

Is the comment pointing out something you were considering changing / something you already suspected was weak? If yes, then it's probably a real issue. Always trust your gut.

Is the comment telling you how to change or fix something? If yes, take a step back. It might be a real issue, but you need to decide for yourself how to fix it.

Personally, I take notes and leave comments within the manuscript like sticky notes of what I'm going to change. For example, for a recent wip, multiple betas felt a particular scene was slow so I made a note for myself so the next time I go to edit I'll dig deep and figure out why it was slow for myself (regardless of what they think the reason is) and fix it.

But, when it comes right down to it, you have to make these decisions yourself. It can be very hard to determine which comments need action and which ones don't. A lot of it comes with experience.

On a side note (not to worry you lol) I thought when I went through multiple beta rounds with my first finished manuscript that it would be easier the second time. I thought: ok, I know what bad comments look like now. This will be easier on my next wip. Nope. Wrong. A new story meant a new audience meant new problems and new comments. It was easier, because I know how to handle the emotional side of it better. But actually discerning the major issues in the manuscript and how to fix it was not easier.

And one of the hardest parts about it is the next two sections, which is why I separated them out...

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Conflicting Comments

When you have multiple readers providing feedback, this is going to happen. It's inevitable.

One person might think your story is super slow, or that a plot point didn't make any sense, that a character's arc was pointless, or that the climax was a huge letdown. Another beta might say the exact the opposite. So what do you do?

Essentially, you have to decide for yourself and your story what to do. I don't have much advice here other than you're not alone in going back and forth.

I can tell my own story, though, and maybe you'll get something from it. Twice now, for two totally separate manuscripts (and genres), I have struggled with what to change when betas have incompatible criticisms and recommendations.

And over and over again, I have come across the same result:

Betas read it and make suggestions, and I make changes that I think are best at the time even though the comments were conflicting.

I let those betas reread it, and they LOVE it. So much better than the previous draft. Great!

I hand it to new betas, and they make the same exact comments that were made on the original draft. Again, just as conflicting as before.

And it's an endless cycle. And from it, I have learned that there is no such thing as a book that will satisfy everyone. No matter how polished, when you edit things to fit others' wants and needs, there are going to be others who don't like it.

And especially in my first manuscript and beta experience, I realized (after 5+ drafts) all I was doing was changing the story, but not making it better. I was adapting it to people's personal tastes, and in doing that, it was losing the me in it. I actually ended up going back and doing a full round of edits through the whole manuscript to literally inject myself back into the narrative. And it is wholly better for it.

I have gone through this twice now, where I have adapted manuscripts based on beta feedback and ended up in this loop.

If this does happen to you, the only recommendation I have for this is to step back. I wish I had done this sooner, both times. Force yourself to not look at the feedback or the manuscript for weeks—if not months. All of these changes you've made, all these different comments and feedback and drafts? Let it marinate, go work on something else, and come back later.

Conflicting comments are a part of writing. You're going to have to get used to it, and know that it's impossible that your story is going to resonate with everyone, or that your style is going to work for everyone. It takes experience and practice, like everything else, to get good at interpreting comments and acting on them.

But just know that conflicting comments doesn't mean your story is bad or that you need to scrap it and rewrite the whole thing. Conflicting comments is actually a good thing. It means, like all works of art, there are various interpretations, and readers with those differing interpretations are making recommendations based on them. You, as the writer, must decide your own intent for the work, and no one can tell you what to change or how to edit (at least, not until you have an editor/publisher lol). That's part of the writing process you have to figure out on your own.

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Negative Feedback: Headspace

Rude comments. Condescending comments. Comments that feel like a punch in the face.

They happen. To everyone that writes and has the guts to share it.

Sometimes comments had no intent at all to hurt your feelings but did, and sometimes comments just genuinely are condescending and mean.

Regardless, this is when writers get these nasty imposter syndrome thoughts. "I'm a bad writer" "a good writer wouldn't have gotten comments like this" "this beta is a good writer so what they say must be right and I'm a fraud."

Firstly I highly recommend reading the post I linked above and is linked again right here. What I'm about to say is along the same vein.

As the post says above, these negative thoughts are not objective.

That's not to say that you can't be upset about comments that trigger these thoughts. I've gotten comments before that, honestly, I can't think of a reason why someone would say that except with intent to hurt my feelings (or even in some instances gaslight). And it works, unfortunately.

So how can you get a handle on your negative, imposter-y thoughts?

Control Your Headspace: Be Objective

Take a step back and say, "This is an opinion." Writers and readers can be very good at stating their opinions as if they are facts. (See: this whole series of posts, which is really just all my opinion and personal experience, yet likely reads like an instruction manual. Nothing here is fact, either, by the way.)

"This book is unfinished." "Descriptions are required to set a scene." "You're not using this word correctly." "It doesn't make sense that this character would make this decision." "The beginning isn't as polished as the rest of the book."

None of these comments are, by themselves, hurtful (though the first one definitely stung). But all of these comments easily tried to sneak in and plant doubt: "the book needs to be redone, it's bad the way it is, I'm not a good writer."

Because yes, these are all real comments (slightly paraphrased) that I've gotten in various beta rounds. And they all sound like facts, don't they? And probably, some of the people leaving these comments believe they are facts.

But they're not.

And this is why I'm going to emphasize two points made in the above post I linked: do not dwell on the most recent comments only, and be objective.

Having 3+ betas is so, so important for this reason. Having multiple sets of eyes and feedback can be the difference between dwelling on one person who didn't click with your story, and being able to clearly see "ok, this person just didn't get it" because other betas did.

That's not to say that if someone didn't like it or is telling you to change something or that something didn't work for them that you should ignore it. But it does mean you shouldn't let these comments seep into your subconscious with negative self-talk.

And there are a few points I want to make here, regarding being objective when you look at comments like these.

Even if a comment is harsh or hurtful, that does not mean it's useless. Being objective means you can take a step back, acknowledge that the comment stings, and come back to it later when you can be more objective.

Condescending and (purposefully) mean/hurtful comments can actually be useful. They force you to defend your work! Defending your work, seeing the worth in your work, is a huge part of the battle against negative self-talk and imposter syndrome. See this post for more discussion on this.

Even if you do multiple betas and they all collectively agree (including yourself) that your book needs a complete rewrite or needs to be scrapped, this objectively does not make you a bad writer.

Being objective means you can distinguish not only opinion from fact, but acknowledge that needing massive edits, even dropping the book entirely—these negative thoughts are not true.

Objectively, all writers have shitty drafts. All writers have stories hidden in a drawer somewhere that are so unfixable they won't ever see the light of day. Yes, even the Big Ones™ like Neil.

Getting negative feedback, harsh or mean comments, readers who don't connect with your work, having shitty drafts, and tossing drafts away entirely are all part of writing and none of these things make you a bad writer.

Fighting with your inner imposter syndrome and negative thoughts is an ongoing battle that all artists face. It comes with the territory. Hopefully some of my rambling will help you fight that battle.

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Editing Your Story

Alright. I'm not going to tell you how to actually edit your book because that's not my job and every writer works differently. What works for me probably won't work for you.

But I do want to say that even though this is often seen as the hardest part of writing (other than getting the words down the first time, I guess), it can also be the most fun and hopeful time as well.

You finished a manuscript. That's a huge accomplishment. Even though having all this feedback can be daunting, especially when everyone has their own ideas of how your story needs to change, this can be the most rewarding time because you are creating a plan on how to make your story exactly what you want it to be.

So, at least for me, the only thing I can really recommend is to break down your own book as if you are a reader yourself - taking a break from it (again, for months) can help you come back with fresher eyes for this - and analyze your own story as a fake audience member.

What are your themes? What are you exploring? What are your take-home messages? When you put the book down, what do you feel and what did you learn?

Then, compare: Did beta readers, in general, have the same experience you did? Were they able to name the themes and have a similar experience reading your story? If not, focus on the comments they made that reveal insight into why they didn't. These comments are probably going to point you in the right direction of what to change.

Other things to consider, regardless of comments:

If you outlined, go back to your original outline and see what's changed. Did you leave anything out? Were any themes or plot points lost that you would like to include? (or vice versa)

Are there any themes you want to explore that you haven't yet? Or any that need more emphasis?

Do all the characters that you want to have development have satisfying arcs? Do any of them need more page time or feel unfinished?

Does the prose style align with what you want?

Regardless of whether readers agree/disagree or even commented on these at all, I like to take these into account during the editing process. Because editing isn't just "what did readers say and how do I fix it?" Betas are here to show you how your work will be interpreted by an audience and share opinions—that's all, really.

In reality, editing is you analyzing your own story and making it the best version of itself as humanly possible, while knowing that it isn't possible.

You do what you can. You make changes that you agree with, that strengthen your story, to tell the story you want to tell, even if others don't always like it. That's what makes it yours.

So go forth and make your stories magic. That's what all stories are, after all.

Peace out

~MJ

#writeblr #writblr #writers on tumblr #writeblr community #writerblr #writer community #beta reading #beta readers #writing community #novel writing #writers of tumblr #wtwcommunity #mj posts #mj talks about beta reading

[farfromstrange]

Total Eclipse Of The Heart | Matt Murdock

Matt Murdock x Vampire!reader (f!reader)

Part 1 // Part 2 (currently here) // Part 3 (coming soon)

PART TWO - Humans are dying at the hands of her species and she has to do something about it, but how can she when the object of her attraction just so happens to stumble into her path over and over again, as if he's just as addicted to her as she is to him?

Warnings: 18+ MINORS DNI! Very explicit sexual language, dubious consent (inappropriate touching, dirty talk), blood, vampires, death, bad humor, plot, religious imagery (?), submissive Matt Murdock, Dom!Reader, DARK FANTASY (dead dove do not eat), really, this is absolutely filthy dark, AND not proof-read

A/n: This is so dark, holy shit… Here’s the second part! I hope you’re not mad at me that I left you waiting. 2023 already feels so weird I don’t know why, but I’ve finally finished this chapter and I’m getting to work on the third one as we speak. The smut is coming soon, I promise. Until then, I’m just going to get you all worked up :)

DARK CONTENT UNDER HERE, 18+ ONLY!

Ever since the beginning of time, humans have felt threatened by their fellow species. The goal is self-preservation rather than preserving the world around them. At the same time though, there has never been another species so hell-bent on destroying their habitat than the human race. 

She watched the seasons come and go. Where one life ended, another started. Humans were fast to reproduce, she realized, but they were also just as fast to die. Sickness and injury are the biggest threats to the human body.  You could be okay one second, then on your deathbed the next. While the female body could withstand the terrible strain of childbirth, it stands no chance against cancer. You could bleed out in seconds if the right vein is nicked, and if you fall the wrong way, a broken neck will either kill you instantly or leave you dependent on machines for the rest of your life. 

While humans are considered the most sophisticated species since the beginning of time, they are all collectively fragile. 

The last time she was actively human, she didn’t even have a quarter of the knowledge at hand that she gained later in life. Times have changed since then. The world grew into something new, something modern, and the human race evolved with it. 

They’ve never had many nice words to say about her kind, so it came naturally to be terrified of a species that was more than willing to eradicate her own.

Sure, killing and blood-sucking isn’t something that goes over well with a crowd, but she often emphasized that they weren’t all cold-blooded murderers. Not all vampires were the same, and the lore often got it wrong.

Cold, they were, but only temperature-wise. Her half of the litter, anyway. And they were murderers too, else they wouldn’t have survived this long. Drinking blood to survive was a curse she wished upon no one. It naturally made her species reborn killers; they had to take a life to sustain their own, and since death and starvation weren’t in the cards without a stake through the heart, they had to follow their most primal instincts.

She tried to refrain from murder like a good citizen, and it worked, most of the time. There are other ways to get blood that doesn’t involve murdering an innocent. In Hell’s Kitchen, she could easily roll open a map and point to a random place, and she surely would have found criminals deserving of punishment.

But there were also humans who didn’t fear her species, those who were willing to give to the cause voluntarily. They liked to call themselves blood-submissive as if it were a sexual practice on its own – the sex was a nice byproduct, and some of those people were born to be whores, but making it a new trend was something she wished would never happen.

Though she was well aware of the subculture around humans fetishizing vampires, who were all more than ready to give their blood. Humans are so susceptible to overstimulation, especially through strange forces, even the smallest taste of a vampire’s blood could get them high enough up the precipice to push them into an orgasm.

That was the one thing that enticed her the most; the human anatomy, and how responsive they were to stimuli. She knew all about it, and yet she found herself surprised again and again whenever she lay with someone new. 

That evening though, she woke up with a heavy feeling in her stomach. One that wouldn’t go away. 

She entered the kitchen of her shared home to find a stranger sitting on one of the stools at the kitchen counter. Two very obvious holes adorned the young man’s neck. He didn’t look terrified when he saw her, only overly tired and perhaps a little drained. 

She sighed heavily, moving to get herself a drink from the fridge. Not that she had one already sitting there, but he wasn’t hers to take. He had already been labeled with two very sharp fangs that could only belong to one person.

“Eli, you left your dinner in the kitchen!” her voice bounced off the high walls, doing black flips until it finally made the human twitch. “No offense,” she said. “I’m just not a fan of waking up to blood banks sitting at my kitchen counter.”

He opened his mouth, but no words would come out.

She grinned. With her mug in hand, she returned to ask the boy, “Coffee?”

He declined.

“Well, you can’t say I haven’t tried to be hospitable with you.”

Just in time, Eli came around the corner wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs. She rolled her eyes. It was one of those guests. 

She met Eli somewhere around 1800 when she spent some time in the deserts of Egypt. He was only a couple of days old then, bitten by a passing vampire with no regard for human life. Eli was lucky to have survived, but with no one to teach him, he went rogue and slaughtered his entire village in a hungry haze. When he came to, the life he once knew had been destroyed beyond repair.

She saved him. Initially, she planned to just pass through, but the word about a vampire on the loose traveled fast, even back then, and so she found herself in Eli’s village soon after, convincing him to join her. She saved his life and therefore, he felt as if he owed her. They never left each other's side again.

Though sometimes, Eli was particularly hard to live with. He was almost like an unruly child, and he left his food lying out most of the time – he tended to forget that wasn’t the only hungry one in the household. 

“Would you stop calling every human I bring home a blood bank?” he said. 

“If you stop letting them stay for breakfast,” she retorted.  

He met her bitter smile with a sour one of his own. “Not everyone feels the need to submit to you as Talon does.”

“Maybe I should make that a rule then. I mean, I am the head of this coven, after all. The least you can do is give me some respect.” She eyed the young man still sitting at the counter, completely hypnotized by the shirtless man prancing around the kitchen. “And your blood whores, too, before you start giving them a sexually transmitted human disease. Or turn them into one of us.”

He scoffed. She patted his shoulder as she passed by him, taking the chance to whisper into his ear, “Would be a shame if I had to drive a stake through one of them when all they signed up for was just a little fun.”

She couldn’t help herself. On her way out, she passed by the helpless human, pulling his head back by the hair to reveal his deliciously long neck, and she dipped her nose to take him in. The blood running through his veins smelled beyond divine. Sweet temptation. She wanted to bury her teeth in his soft skin and suck until he was empty. “Ah, delicious,” she said. “Youngblood, untainted, pure. Excellent pick. I wonder if he tastes as good as he smells.” 

The tips of her sharp fangs scratched at his neck, and she had to force herself to pull away before she could make the mistake of taking Eli’s food off his plate. 

“Get him out of here,” she told him. “Before I make you bathe in holy water for the rest of the week.” 

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”

The respect issue was a problem she had to deal with. She wasn’t someone to play around, with except for the bedroom. She was nothing if not playful there, with someone writhing underneath her and begging for the mercy of pleasure, and they would always get what they wanted and deserved. She was considerate like that. But her lovers also never struggled to pay her respect. That seemed to be a family problem only. 

Perhaps she had to assert more dominance over them too, even if it was just for kicks. They would learn soon enough. It wasn’t exactly easy to be a leader, after all. That was common knowledge even amongst the undead.

The vibrations of the phone in her pocket caused her to look up. She checked the text – a piece of technology she was quite fond of, the cell phone – and if she hadn’t been pale enough already, she surely would have turned white as a sheet right about now. 

“What happened?” she asked as she entered the main room. 

Talon nodded his head. “I just got word from my source at the police station,” he told her.

“And?”

“There’s been several suspicious murders in Hell’s Kitchen in the past week.”

“If I wanted a broken record player, I would have gone into the attic. Spit your words out now, Talon, or I will cut out your tongue.”

He flinched, remaining in his position with his head bowed downward. He couldn’t look into her almost blacked-out eyes and be met with disappointment. 

“The victims have been drained of most of their blood, but the injection sites are sloppy, so a lot of the blood got wasted and spilled around the corpses,” he said.

“That’s… graphic.” She rolled her eyes. Chaos only compelled distraction. “But not at all the details I need,” she said.

“Yes, I was just getting to the important part. There’s security footage that shows a foreign party escaping from the site of the murder, and the same person is shown a couple of days later attacking the third victim in a blood-thirsty rage.”

The scenery sounded all too familiar. She tilted her head, intrigued by his report, and moved forward. “What exactly are they saying?”

“The police are blaming it on a new drug epidemic that has the users acting out to the point they would cause a blood bath. The drug supposedly triggers hallucinations that make them unaware of their surroundings and crave violence.”

“You mean blood. The drug is making them crave blood.”

“That’s what they’re thinking, but it’s not in the official report.”

“Yeah because that drug is called vampirism and that’s not exactly an epidemic that should be happening,” she said.

Talon nodded. “Police are issuing a warning,” he told her, “without knowing what they’re warning from. It’s just a couple of kids overdosing and bleeding out in the most ghastly of ways. They’re saying it’s drugs because they don’t understand.”

She grew more and more agitated with every word that slipped past his lips. The pedestal that kept her above the man made her seem much taller than she actually was. She paced the floor. It gave her a sense of superiority that she fought very hard to receive. Her status surpassed those of the people around her. She was older and wiser and perhaps slightly more sophisticated. Her moves were calculated yet often brutal because she learned that you get nothing in life if you’re not willing to spill a little blood, literally and figuratively. To have something or someone threaten her precious freedom like that was an obvious call for action

She halted her movements when he went quiet. “Do they have proof?” she questioned as if she expected him to tell her himself. 

“No,” Talon said. 

“Good. Call a meeting. I need to know who did this. And make sure no one knows beforehand. The last thing I need right now is a fucking vampire uproar.”

“What, you suspect it was one of us?” He had a doubting frown resting on his pale face. 

“While I have faith that you can keep your fangs in your jaw, I need to make sure I’m not misplacing that faith,” she stated. “If I’m wrong in my suspicions, that is good for you. If I’m right and one of you idiots is behind this, I will drive you to hell myself.”

“If you want to have my opinion…”

She smirked, “I really don’t.”

“But if I may?”

“You may not.” Stepping down from the pedestal, she eyed him. “Call the meeting,” she ordered. “In the meantime, I’m going to get myself a bottle of Scotch to drown my sorrows, and then I’m going to steal from the police.” 

Talon yelled after her, “Do you need any help, boss?”

“Yes. You can help yourself to stop crawling up my ass! That would help me a lot, actually. Don’t get me wrong,” she said, “I like my men submissive, but your behavior is just getting pathetic now. I’m your boss, not your mother. She’s dead. Deal with it.”

It wasn’t the first time she broke into the police station in Hell’s Kitchen. Crime rates exploded at night, which meant a higher police presence in the building, but at the same time, the cells overflowed with the many criminals they caught. They were always drowning in paperwork, and the crime never seemed to take an end. 

She waited until the commotion in the bullpen caused the officer at the front desk to jump from his seat and escalate the situation. She sped toward the file cabinet, retrieved what she needed, and disappeared just as fast as she had come. 

The officer looked up to find nothing but a strong breeze knocking the documents off his desk. He frowned, choosing to ignore it as the man underneath him writhed against the handcuffs.

Talon said a lot yet nothing at all. She eyed the pictures in the moonlight, the dead eyes staring straight into the security cameras, the man’s body covered in blood as he left a trail of bodies along the Hudson’s riverbed. He downplayed it. This was bad, a monster out of control, someone who shouldn’t even have existed in the first place and yet somehow came to life. There were clear rules. Those rules had been broken in more than one place, shattered on the ground, and then walked over with utmost disrespect. 

And he wasn’t the only one. Every murder was accompanied by one of the herds escaping, later appearing on the scene of another crime. To the untrained eye, it appeared as if these kids were high and just playing around. The blood around the bodies was significant, so the ordinary human might sort it as an overdose after all. An accident. Though none of the things she saw were accidental. 

They killed without a care, without remorse, and at the rate they were going, she was sure they wouldn’t stop anytime soon. 

It wasn’t the first time she had to run against the clock, but it had been a while since she was tossed into such a situation where she had to choose between peace and her most primal nature. She had to appeal to her common sense. She knew better than to let them continue this.

Humans aren’t stupid but often underestimated. At this rate, if they kept going, war seemed inevitable. 

These strangers were hunting on her turf and they turned everything upside down. She wasn’t having it. She had to do something. 

The wind came from the far east and blew through the streets. Many different smells lay in the air that night, but the most prominent hit her nose at the front step of the precinct. 

She tilted her head. She could sense him clearly now. He still smelled the same, his blood a bittersweet taste on her tongue, and she craved more. His heartbeat filled her ears, an elevated sound. She searched for him in the night until the sound of his scruffy, careful voice caught in her ears. 

He stood on the fire escape of the precinct’s second floor. The metal creaked. A door fell shut. He wasn’t alone. 

“Look, man, I’d be happy to help you, especially because we are way in over our heads with this case, but I told you,” the second voice said, “The file is gone.” 

She stared down at the brown folder in her hands. 

“What do you mean gone?” he asked, finally, and her eyes rolled back at the mere sound of him. 

He was everywhere, so goddamn overwhelming, all she wanted was to pull him off that fire escape, into the alley, and turn him into a helpless mess until he was begging her for mercy with tears in his eyes – she could only imagine the soft color behind the red glasses. Were they brown, green, or perhaps even blue? They surely would turn black with lust and then gloss over with exhaustion from the sheer overstimulation when she was done with him. Though she would only stop when the color of his eyes would disappear behind his eyelids as he slipped into a state of unconsciousness, the pleasure causing his mortal body to shut down and submit even more to the power she wielded. 

“Apparently, someone took it.”

“Since when do people steal files from a police station, Sergeant?” 

The man shrugged. “It’s not the first time,” he said. “Happens more often than you might think.”

“What now?” her nameless stranger asked. 

She could only imagine his mouth moving in sync with his gravelly voice, the movement of his Adam’s Apple in his throat as he swallowed, and the way his hands balled to fists at his sides, the beautiful veins protruding and his knuckles turning white. She wondered how those hands would feel somewhere other than a cane or a metal rod. How they would look tracing not the brim of glass but rather a different opening. Playing with wetness until his hands were coated in it the same way he played with the condensation on the glass of his drink. 

“Sergeant, if you want me to help you, I need more than a whim to go on. Do you have anything you could give me?”

“Look, I can’t help you,” the Sergeant said, “but if I did know something, I would suggest scouting out the docks. Ground zero seems to be close to the docks, but I’ve also got word that the rest of Manhattan might be involved too, so I’d be careful if I were you.” 

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, whatever. We have heightened police presence there since the first suspected overdose, consider that before you make any wrong moves.”

That stopped him. “Suspected?” he questioned.

He was a smart one. Her lip curled into a distant smirk.

“I’m not saying it’s not an overdose, I’m just saying they’re too suspicious to be instantly ruled as such. It’s my opinion, not the official statement, and everyone else here at the station and even the DA’s office agree with the drug epidemic explanation. But I’m not sure it’s right to assume that, not yet, not without evidence,” he said. “We judge people way too quickly these days.”

The stranger chuckled again, his voice darker than when she met him, but the darkness he displayed was something she thoroughly enjoyed. It was enticing, eliciting an excitement she hadn’t felt in quite a while.

“Are you talking about me?” he asked sheepishly, and she imagined him smirking. He seemed more confident in that alley, fully in his element, not at all as submissive as he had been around her. 

She wondered if there were two sides to that man whose name she still hadn’t figured out. 

The Sargeant scoffed, opening the door back into the precinct. Hot air met the cold one outside, causing the air to condensate. She could feel it even from a distance, the changes in temperature, the warmth that felt more wrong than it felt right. 

“Just be careful,” he told him. 

The fire escape squeaked and the sound of his boots disappearing into the distance had her frowning. Blind men don’t jump rooftops and they don’t do parkour. There was more to him than she first suspected. He wasn’t the innocent man he made himself out to be. He had dark secrets that went way below the surface. Her curiosity was spiked. She needed to see him again and she needed to have him now. 

She held the file in the air, watching as the edges started to crinkle and the fire spread from her fingertips, infecting the paper. The folder lit up, filling the night with yellow flames and the ashes of the several documents gone with the wind. 

When the paper fully dissolved, she closed her fist and the last remaining flame vanished. 

As the mysterious stranger made his way over the rooftops of the city, she turned in the opposite direction. Her first instinct was to follow, but there was no fun in chasing him just yet. She wanted to play some before she did that and wanted him to know more about her before she completely destroyed and corrupted him. His beautiful soul would only remain a faint memory. 

The doors into the old, abandoned church swung open. The benches were occupied with exactly five people, two of them Eli and Talon, and the rest of what she liked to call her family, but historians would have called them a coven. An assembled group of vampires qualified as such, as did more than one witch sharing the same ideologies and sharing the same living space. That’s what the two species have in common - they are both widely hated by all kinds of religions except for Satanity. 

Six vampires living in a church sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but the place had been abandoned years ago and there was no official owner, so it was run-down and, most importantly, they didn’t require an invitation to enter. So they made their home there, choosing Hell’s Kitchen as their turf and claiming it as their territory. That had been years ago and the small chapel grew significantly to feel like home since then.

“Cold-blooded murder,” she recited as she walked down the aisle, “Blood baths, two injection sites on the neck, suspicious behavior making humans thirsty for blood, and the police declared it a fucking drug epidemic!” she said. “What century are we living in, people? Is this the seventeenth or the eighteenth? Have we traveled back in time so that these words can be used in the same sentence again, right here in New York? What bad dream am I having right now, because it surely can’t be real?”

She reached the pedestal, stepping up in front of the altar. 

“Seriously, what is happening?” she asked. 

They all stared at her with wide, confused eyes. Those weren’t the faces of people who were about to cause a supernatural war of the undead. They were pretty much caught off guard by her accusations and that gave her hope, considering she knew them pretty well by now to know their tells when they were lying. 

“Please tell me that it’s not one of you currently going on a rampage in Hell’s Kitchen, turning innocent teenagers into ruthless, blood-thirsty vampires, and breaking every rule that was set for us when it comes to hunting humans. Tell me none of you is going on a fucking murder spree!”

Her voice boomed off the high stone walls, almost cracking the colorful windows that adorned the church, pictures displaying passages of the bible and glowing bright red under the moonlight while others shone in blue and green. Though that night, red was truly prominent, and it fell right on her pale face, making everything appear dangerously dark about her. 

One of the younger men raised his hand. 

“William,” she called. 

He stood up, clearing his throat, his hands tangled together in front of his body. He was the shy one, the one she had to pick up because he was starving himself due to his fear of what he had become after he was brutally turned by a woman he thought he could trust. It had been a very dark time back then, early twentieth century, and vampires in the States were still on the loose without a care in the world. There were no rules, only bloodshed, and the covens had body counts higher than the entire population. 

“None of us is going on a murder spree,” he said. 

“Are you saying that just because I want to hear you say it or do you actually mean what you just said?” 

“I, um… you know what, I’m just gonna sit back down.” 

“Wise choice.” She nodded. “So, William’s not a killer. What about the rest of you? Anyone trying to start a rebellion?”

Eli shrugged. His answer was obvious, “It’s not me.”

“I figured. You let your dinner stay for breakfast, and you know, you prefer blood whores. Gives you a sense of superiority, which of course, is not how this works. But anyway…”

The group burst out in laughter and Eli glared at her from across the room. “Very mature,” he said. 

“I’m just giving you a taste of your own medicine,” she said. “Now, anyone else wanna share?”

Another hand rose in the air. “I’m honestly just knitting,” the woman said. As a demonstration, she lifted the half-finished scarf - they didn’t even wear scarves - and threw the ball of wool in the air. “I tried my hand at a very complicated cardigan, but that project failed, so I’m just going back to my roots.”

“Thank you, Helen, but I never doubted you, not even for a second. You’re a total sweetheart.”

“It also wasn’t me,” Talon spoke up. “But you already knew that.”

“Yes, because you are too stupid to cause such mayhem,” she stated plainly. “That leaves only one…” she let her eyes roam over the pews until she found who she was looking for. 

His head hung low. Was he… sleeping?

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, for fuck’s sake! Can someone please punch Adam in the face?”

Eli stabbed him with his finger. The man shot up, causing the bench to creak. “I’m awake!” he declared. 

“Thank you for gracing us with your presence,” she answered sourly. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

Adam looked around. All eyes were on him. He rubbed his very heavy eyes. “I zoned out after you said bloodbath.” At least his confession was honest. 

She sighed. She was living with a bunch of idiots. She shouldn’t have suspected them. They weren’t capable of the monstrosities that she saw in the police file. 

“Never mind,” she said in exasperation. “You’re all dismissed. Now please, fuck off. I need to be alone so I can fucking shoot myself.” 

She wondered how they even managed to make it this far without getting caught. 

“Talon.”

“Yes?” he replied.

“I need to get back out there. You’re in charge while I’m gone. Make sure that these idiots don’t kill themselves or each other.” 

“Are you sure that is such a good idea? Going out there, I mean? We don’t know what we’re dealing with,” he said. 

“No,” she stated after a slight moment of hesitation, “but I’m the only competent one in this house, so I have to step up.” 

Her version of stepping up was simple. Scout the docks, stake out if necessary, and confront anything she deemed suspicious enough to risk getting caught. She hoped to run into one of the young vampires, at least, so she could make them answer her – the young ones were never bright, always controlled by hunger and the new intensity of their emotions. The anger was the most brutal one. 

It’s like that even for humans – anger blinds, anger poisons, and anger can tear worlds apart and start new generations built on the same ideals. She witnessed anger and greed topple empires that had once been strong and flourished. There is no limit to what anger can make a person do. And vampires, like any other enhanced species, experience most emotions ten times deeper and worse than the ordinary human being. 

She felt that effect even after years of being trapped in the same body, in the same state she was left in back then, and especially as she stood on the roof of the warehouse by the docks, overseeing the Hudson and the city that laid on the other side of the shore. She learned how to control and live with her anger. She learned how to survive. Though there were moments when even the highest form of self-control failed and she was stranded with the blade of a hot knife stuck in her sternum, digging further to tear apart her cold, dead heart. 

The hunger was the worst part. It had the ability to cloud her mind completely and dictate her every behavior with the purpose to stave that hunger, which was a near-impossibility. There was no satisfying a hunger that had been there for centuries, that not even pints of blood could satisfy. In the years she lived, she learned how to live with it, but always going hungry was also no real way to live. It was awful, constant torture, and with every passing century, she grew more tired of the life she was forced to live. 

In the distance, the wood creaked. One of the boats on the harbor displayed movements in its belly. The light only faintly fell on the source of the noise. A figure emerged behind the barrels stocked on the pier, heading straight for the oblivious fisherman who seemed to have stayed around to have a celebratory beer after bringing home quite a large catch of fish. She could smell them across the docks, already tied in bags to take home, but the victor was still inhabiting his boat. Humans have always been particularly obsessed with the art of fishing; it had once been their largest source of food income and fish is still pretty high up on the list of shippable goods. Though there was nothing worse to her nose than the smell of several fish perched together in one place. The stench was astronomical. 

A young vampire was far more sensitive, though once hungry, there was nothing but blood on their minds and so none of them would run at the smallest hint of fish in the air, let alone the fear of getting caught. They didn’t have that kind of perception, not yet at least, because this particular behavior was taught. Primal nature dictated them to be monsters and without the proper training, the hunger would control them instead of them gaining control over the real monster – the insatiable thirst. Self-control is one of the hardest traits to gain, but it goes a long way, especially for creatures of the night who were born to be the opposite of compliant and self-aware. 

If you want to live amongst an emancipated species, you have to learn how to conform to their rules and compromise, if necessary. You have to be willing to change your true nature to fit in and become something more than what history made of you. All of it comes back down to self-control. Without self-control, there can be no rules and without rules, society is doomed to collapse. Rules are what make a society habitable. 

If there was one thing all young vampires had in common it was their lack of stealth. The young boy she had heard lurking behind the barrels across from the fisherman’s boat only checked the corner to his right, his eyes bright red as the moonlight fell on his blacked-out irises. 

She cocked her head to the side. Someone trying to preserve themselves would have gone about this much differently. He stopped tip-toeing when he caught her scent in the air, slowly turning in her direction, and the way he looked straight at her reminded her of a frightened deer or a child caught in the act of stealing something. He was stealing, it just wasn’t something so easily explained. What he was stealing and risking went beyond what the human mind was capable of comprehending, let alone the brain of a young vampire that had absolutely no rational thoughts left behind. 

He froze dead in his tracks and she sighed, almost like a condescending mother trying to teach her disobedient son a valuable lesson.

“I see what you’re doing,” she stated.

The boy licked his lips, revealing parts of his very sharp fangs. Another thing about the young ones – they didn’t know how to mask. One look at them and your first thought would be a vampire. Red eyes, protruding veins around the sockets, pale, clammy skin, and strength and speed they couldn’t control yet. Stealth was little to non existent, as was their sense of self-preservation and control. They were like unruly babies turning into toddlers overnight, the Devil on their shoulders whispering sweet sins into their ears and causing them to make the worst decisions. Right or wrong didn’t exist in their world. They knew what they wanted and they would try everything to get it, rules be damned. 

Even though they all started out like this, not many chose to stay that way anymore. Once you learn how to live by the rules, it’s not that hard, and she grew to love the routine. 

Without someone to teach them, young vampires could turn into everyone’s worst nightmare, and then everything she had worked so hard toward for centuries would have been for nothing. 

“Fair warning,” she said, “Don’t.” 

He bared his teeth. 

“Oh, I’m shaking in my boots. Not. What’s your name, kid?”

He looked no day over seventeen, at best. His mother was probably worried sick. Little did she know that her worst fear, her son dying, had come true but in a far worse sense than she could ever imagine. Who he was now had nothing to do with the boy he used to be. The young vampire staring back into her eyes dark and empty had nothing left inside of him but insatiable hunger. His soul was clouded by the demon inside of him and chances were that it would never fully recover from the monstrosities he committed and would still commit. 

She couldn’t stop him, she knew that. If she took him with her, whoever was responsible for the sudden spike in bloodless corpses would only create more of him, and take more teenagers from their parents until they got what they wanted. She needed to know what that was so she could stop the war that was looming on the horizon. She couldn’t have an apocalypse, not when her life was going semi-normal for a change. She quite liked New York, she wasn’t done yet. 

“Who did this to you?” she asked again. 

“Leave,” he growled. 

“You see, I can’t do that. I want to, believe me, but I can’t. You’re too young, too inexperienced, so I’m trying to tell you this as easy as possible. What you’re doing right now is breaking all sorts of rules. You’re hunting on our turf,” she said. “My turf. My coven and I live here now. If you continue causing mayhem and destruction and turning innocent people into vampires, you’re breaking a truce that is far older than you, your parents, and great-great grandparents together. There is a set of rules for a reason…”

“You need to leave,” the boy repeated.

She ignored him. “This truce,” she continued, “was put in place over a century ago to assure that vampires and humans can live together in peace. Covens are not supposed to turn innocent people into vampires, let alone leave them without someone to teach them the ropes. A vampire out of control poses a danger to all species and if you continue what you’re doing, your actions will lead to war.” Her eyes narrowed. “Or perhaps that’s what you want. Is that it? Do you want us to be at war again?” 

He smirked. 

“You weren’t there the last time. It was ugly. That’s why there are rules, right?” She motioned as if explaining the way the world worked to a toddler. “To prevent such unnecessary bloodshed from happening again. To prevent us from killing each other,” she explained. “That’s what those rules are for, okay? Prevention, not causation. You’re supposed to stick to the rules to prevent a war that would destroy more than it would fix, and world domination doesn’t happen just because you say ‘fuck it!’ And shine a dangerous light on all vampires in the process. We’re not all alike. Every coven knows that,” she said. “Whoever made you is only using you to get ahead. In other words, you’re fucked and doomed to get slaughtered in the end. Either by your own kind, a war, or maybe even one of the very ancient vampire hunters that are only waiting for a chance to get back at us.”

Talking to him was futile. He didn’t follow a word she said and even if he had, he wouldn’t have understood. Young vampires were so stupid, naïve, useless and a nuisance. To think they all started out this way grossed her out, even though she made saving the lost causes of the world her life’s work. 

Her logic was twisted and more often than not illogical, but she was wise and considered herself above average in intelligence, simply because she had been around for quite a while. She saw empires rise and fall. She stared into the darkest pits of existence and still managed to come back from the abyss. Her life had been a series of doors in her face, which led to several life lessons being taught over the course of centuries. She was no angel, but she wasn’t stupid and she had one job: make sure the truce would remain intact. And she would do just that, even if she had to eliminate that young boy in order to do so.

He didn’t say anything for quite a while. “Get out of my way,” he growled. Of course, he would settle on something as dramatically pathetic as this catchphrase. “I’m starving and I won’t hesitate to hurt you if you keep me from my meal.” 

“Ouch,” she cocked an eyebrow, “You really bruise my ego, thinking you can get through me without getting hurt yourself. I’d suggest you think about your actions,” she said, “but I know that I’m practically talking to a wall right now, so thinking isn’t an option. You’re incapable of rational thought.”

Fear was the last thing that came to her mind when he showed off his teeth again.

“Listen, I just want to know who’s behind this. Who’s leading your coven, kid?”

“Fuck you!” he spat.

“Hey now, no need to get vulgar. I asked you a normal question. Who’s behind this and is there a chance I might get to have a conversation with the one in charge? Tell me and I will gladly point you in the direction of a different hunting ground,” she said. 

The boy nodded toward the boat. “I want that one. He’s mine. Don’t even try to stop me.”

“Yeah, but you can’t have him.”

“I’m going to have him.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Stop disagreeing with everything I’m saying!”

She shrugged. “Can’t help that you’re wrong all the time. I’ve never learned how to shut up. It’s genetic; centuries of untreated trauma are at fault here, and of course, your general wrongness plays a big part in my need to disagree with your embarrassing hypotheticals.”

“Go to hell!”

“Already did. You know, of course, pride always goes before the fall. Such a human trait to have; multiply it by a thousand, where does that leave you? Certainly not more sophisticated than me, someone with hundreds of years of experience. You need to be careful, young vampires like you are at an even higher risk to be discovered and murdered before you even get the chance to learn what you were given with this transition.” 

Finally, he launched at her. She sped away, gone in a matter of a second, and appeared a few feet behind him, heaving a heavy sigh. “You kids are all the same,” she declared, looking into his very distraught eyes. He couldn’t believe she had switched that fast. “Fast but reckless and extremely easy to trick.”

A moment later, he stood in her spot and she was gone again, crossing her arms behind her back.

“You done?” she asked. His attempts to attack her only made her laugh, “Oh, so terrifying.”

She had him right where she wanted him, so agitated that he spiraled out of control, no longer aware of where he was going or what he was doing. She watched him dance for a bit. By now, he surely must have realized he wasn’t going to win. But the pride was stronger and he kept going, trying to get to her in all kinds of ways, though never succeeding. 

“I feel bad for you. What would your mother say if she saw you like this?”

He stopped. His left eye twitched. She saw the wheels on his head turning and she thought, finally, I got him. 

What did she say? Pride goes before the fall.

She caught the billy club that soared through the air in their direction only a few inches from the boy’s face. Her lips pursed and she stared at the red object, feeling the heavy metal between her fingers and the small ripples in the material. 

When she turned her attention back to the target, the boy was gone. He had sped away, using the moment of distraction to run. She couldn’t sense him anywhere; he must have escaped the docks completely, not even staying close to the Hudson. He was on his way home. The fisherman was safe and she had diverted quite the disaster, but she still deemed the interruption rude, including the attempt to impale that poor boy with the billy club. She had thought about it, but she would have never gone through with it. Whoever the weapon belonged to had to have been close by. 

Her night just kept getting better and better. That was her assessment, at least, until she heard his heartbeat again. The scent of him brushed the hairs in her nose and she took a whiff, feeling his presence so close in the air, she stopped to let the sensation wash over her. The fire inside of her belly ignited once again, the excitement tickling her cold skin and leaving nothing but lust and hunger to rummage through her veins. 

Footsteps thudded against the asphalt, stones crunching under his weight. They were slightly wet from the previous rain, causing a slight slip. 

She lowered her hand with the billy club, turning to look over her shoulder at the supposed blind man in a suit. She had seen that get-up before in the papers when he first showed his masked face in Hell’s Kitchen. She never thought much of it since he had never posed a problem before. 

The tables had officially turned.

Her lips parted to chuckle. “This is awkward,” she said. In the distance, the waves of the Hudson crashed into the riverbanks. It was colder than usual with a breeze in her hair that caused the water to go wild. 

She fiddled with the red billy club, smirking, “Does this belong to you?” 

“Who are you?” his voice sounded significantly lower than the night she first met him at that godforsaken gala. 

To think she didn’t want to go in the first place; she would have never met him if she hadn’t let Talon convince her that she was supposed to show her face. A political move, he called it, to assert her dominance, which she did, but not in the areas that mattered. 

“What are you doing in my city?”

She pouted. “So many questions.”

“Who was that boy you were just talking to? Where did he go?”

“What happened to hello, how are you? What’s your name?” She retorted. “Take a girl out for a drink first, would you? Back then men used to still be gentlemen.”

His chuckle was rather dark, a sound that made her shiver and imagine what it would sound like to reduce him to whimpers instead. The man was a brat, no doubt, not easy to force into submission, but she had cracked worse nuts. Surrendering wasn’t her forte, but she could make it everyone else’s.

“I’m not here to play games,” he told her.

“But I am,” she said. 

“What do you want?”

“As far as I can recall, I made that pretty clear when we first met.”

“When we- I don’t know you,” he lied and she realized how bad he was at it for a lawyer. 

She licked her lips, the fangs threatening to come out. She was starving. “I quite like an oblivious man. Makes things so much more exciting.”

“Listen, I don’t have time for small talk. There have been several suspicious murders around this part of New York and you’re currently my only connection, so you better talk before I make you.” 

“Just out of curiosity,” she said, “what does making me entail?” 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

He headed straight ahead, determined to grab her, and she watched with an amused crinkle in her eyes. The downward tilt of his lips was truly something to laugh over. 

She allowed him to push her against the wall behind them. His force was surprising – those arms didn’t just look scrumptious, they actually carried a lot of strength for a human. 

The stranger bared his teeth and she smirked, eyeing his focused expression. He tried to look intimidating but failed miserably. One of his hands braced against the cement beside her head and the other landed around her neck, a threatening motion to assert dominance. They were all so predictable and foolish enough to think that a woman like her couldn’t fight back.

Everywhere she went, she was underestimated. If only everyone knew her true nature, they wouldn’t be so reckless as to push her into corners over and over again. Or in this case, against cement walls on the docks in the middle of the night, right in the middle of her hunting ground with not another human soul close enough to hear him scream. And water is knowingly a great way to dispose of a dead body.

He squeezed tighter and she unclenched her jaw, wriggling out of his grasp in the process. “You’re a kinky bastard, aren’t you?” she asked. 

“Answer my question,” he bit back.

“If you answer mine first.”

“This isn’t a game. Lives are at stake here! Listen, I don’t know who you are or what you are,” he said, “but if I find out that you had anything to do with these innocent kids getting slaughtered or know something about this new drug everyone is talking about, I will find you and I will destroy you.”

“You know, if it weren’t for the way you smell, I wouldn’t have recognized you, all confident in your little devil’s costume,” she purred.

Her finger slid up the leather of his suit, brushing over his tensing abs hiding behind the protective gear and she sucked in a sharp breath at the illusion she received.

“All of this tension and I still don’t know your name.”

He caught her hand and pinned it over her head. She squealed. He was full of surprises, and it only turned her on more. She wanted to bite him, really bite him, and suck on his pulse until he was crying her name and praying for God to save him, but the pleasure would only drive him further to hell and God wouldn’t be coming. She wanted him to writhe under her touch, taste him and make him come undone over and over again and once he believed she was done with him, she would start her torture anew, right from the beginning, pushing him from the precipice just far enough so she could catch him, bring him back to the top and then do the same thing in repetition all over again.

He roamed her face aimlessly, as it seemed, but barely visible behind the mask. “How?” he growled.

“Wouldn’t you want to know?” She chuckled. “It’s unfortunate that we had to meet again like this, but…” In an instant, she had them flipped around, her arms pinning him to the wall instead of herself and her strength remained unmatched. He could struggle, it was of no use. She had the upper hand.

Her breath tickled his ear as she spoke, far too close for comfort, “You smell absolutely divine. It’d be a shame to waste all that sweet, sweet blood for a second time,” she said.

He couldn’t move. Sharp nails raked through his hair and over his scalp, tugging his head to the side until his throat was completely bare to her, naked, exposed. His aorta pulsated wildly under his skin. She could see it bulge with every beat of his heart. That strong, masculine heart, stronger than anything she had heard or felt before.

She tasted the sweat on his skin and the salt of threatening tears in the air. If he was turned on or scared, she wasn’t sure. The lines between fear, pain, and pleasure blurred. It was all the same to her, anyway. Getting close to her would most certainly draw everyone under her spell at some point, no matter the sex or gender, and all the heads would continue turning to her whenever her presence entered a room full of lively human beings. Only then her pheromones could work their wonders.

The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen struggled against her grasp but to no avail. He was powerless, just how she liked him, how she wanted and craved him.

She licked a long stripe over his pulse point. “I want to taste you so badly,” she whispered. “I want nothing more than to dig my teeth into your pretty little throat and suck you dry, and then I want to get on my knees and eat your cum so I can feel it mix with the essence of what your heart has to give, and then you’d be mine. I’d own you. You’d be completely at my mercy, you’d be bound to me and it would feel so fucking good. It would feel so fucking good for the both of us.”

Her fangs began to scratch the surface, enough to make him feel it but not nearly enough to break the skin. She tasted the salt of his sweat even clearer now, wondering how much deeper she had to go to finally reach the source of the sweetness that surrounded him.

“Don’t you want that?” Her hand joined the words slipping from her silver tongue and wrapping around him like a poisonous snake. “Don’t you want to let me corrupt you, to bite you, to eat you until all you can feel is the pure pleasure of having me all over you? My lips, my tongue, my teeth, my body on yours everywhere, all the fucking time… oh, that would be such an orgasmic sight, and the pleasure you’d be feeling, I can’t even describe it. You won’t know until you at least try and believe me, you should. Isn’t that something you want, darling? Doesn’t your body crave to be caressed and receive undivided attention from someone who knows how to make you feel good?”

He sounded small, fragile, and utterly broken when he next spoke, and she hadn’t even started yet. “What are you doing to me?” he asked. The heat of his breath mixed with the cold night air. “What are you?”

She chuckled. “The better question is, what am I not?” The tip of her tongue moved from his neck to his cheek until she reached the corner of his luscious lips. Her nose dug into his cheekbone. “Fuck,” she said. “The things I want to do to you are far from innocent.”

But so fucking good. 

Even with fear holding the reins to his body, he melted into her touch. He turned into a puddle of melted chocolate right at her feet. She could have asked anything of him, he would have done so just for the sake of pleasing her. But she wanted him to do it voluntarily not because the smell of her pheromones managed to drive any man into a state of co-dependency. 

She wanted him to want her for the sake of wanting her. Like this, she would only compel him to do things he would never choose to do out of his own free will, and while the thought of having him right there on the docks was exciting and had her cunt squeezing around thin air, already wet and wanting, the only treacherous thing about her that was entirely defenseless and could be forced into submission with just a simple flick of the tongue over plump, rosy lips. He had her on the cloud of dangerous euphoria in seconds, already stumbling on the edge and about ready to slip, lose herself, and lose control only to have him, finally, in all the ways she pleased and all the ways that would make him feel good. 

She could give him anything he had ever wanted, give him a time that not a single human could give him, and make him come undone inside and outside so many times, he would pass out from the pure pleasure. But he wouldn’t regret it. He would go out this as the winner, fucked out and blissful and perhaps a little addicted to the taste of her as well – she was sure she would be addicted to him as well. She almost already was, just from the scent of his blood and the way his body shivered at the slightest touch. He was so responsive, so human, yet stronger and more unique than anyone else could ever be. He was the one thing she wanted and she was ready to take it as soon as he wanted it, too. 

She was used to taking what she wanted however she wanted and screwing the consequences, quite literally, but not with him. With him, the need bubbling up deep inside of her belly was different. It wasn’t just a hunger for blood or a hunger for sex and pleasurable violence, he caused much more than that within her already conflicted soul, and as enticing as that was, the connection confused her. There was a reason she didn’t let anyone close, using sex as a mere pastime activity to get the edge off – she couldn’t toy with him because chances were she would reduce his survival chances to zero. 

Allowing a human like him close would only cause pain in the long run, and she’d been through enough of that for several lifetimes. And that wasn’t even an overstatement. 

Her lips brushed over his momentarily before she forced herself to pull away, widening the distance between them. 

The poor man slumped against the wall, his world rotating. He took it much better than most people, but the sweet taste of his fear in the air reminded her that he was just human, after all. A curious, enticing, and mysterious human, but a human being nonetheless.

Humans serve only one purpose for vampires like animals serve a purpose to humans – predators hunt their victims to feast, sustain themselves and survive. Humans are essentially animals and vampires used to be humans turned into hunters, predators, and dangerous perverts who craved blood to survive while at the same time using it for twisted, sexual purposes that had God locking the gates of heaven to anyone who even dared to fantasize about it. There is no ancestor ready to turn around in their grave because vampires were born from lust and hunger, and the first vampires had been carnal creatures as well, ready to go at it like animals without a single brain cell at their disposal.

Vampires weren’t like that anymore. Sex still played a huge role in their existence, but their main purpose was to fit in. They wanted a peaceful life. Taking everything they wanted was no longer possible, their chances were limited, but at least they didn’t have to fear imminent death anymore. Not ever since the truce was first established, anyway. 

If those young vampires continued killing and turning innocent children without mercy, and their coven even supported their decisions, the peace would have been short-lived. She could already see it swindling with every passing second, though fear was not something she wanted to concern herself with, not yet. Her life had more important things to offer before she rang the warning bells on all the vampires she knew, therefore causing a certain commotion that would send the gravestones rolling. Not yet, she decided, but if they kept going at this rate, certainly very soon. 

“Go,” she growled into the night. “Do yourself a favor and stay away from the Hudson until further notice. You can never know what blood-thirsty and murderous monsters might lurk in the dark around here,” she said. 

He didn’t move. 

“Did you hear what I said?”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” he said, his voice remaining steady. 

She frowned. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, you don’t scare me. Manipulate me all you want, this isn’t the first time an otherwise scary woman fails to put me under her spell. But,” he smirked, “don’t take it personally. I’m sure you look pretty scary.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” she cooed, her eyes switching from their natural color to a glossy black. “You have no idea who you’re talking to, do you?”

The red nails adorning her fingers grew sharper and in size. If only he could have regained his eyesight, he surely would have changed his mind. Her skin turned even whiter, the bags under her eyes sinking deep into her skull, replaced instead by thick, purple veins that transported the venom from the core of her existence into them. She was chaos, an abomination, humanity’s biggest threat – not scary was a description she wouldn’t accept.

No matter how blind he was, he had to follow the natural order of things like everyone else. He was supposed to be afraid of her. If he couldn’t find it in himself to show her, all of her games would inevitably lose their fun factor. And her ego would suffer the most. 

Open an ancient book about demons and a picture like that might stare back at you. 

“It takes a lot more than dark magic to scare the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” he told her.

It was cute. Remarkable, really. She laughed at his attempt to make himself feel better, and partly because she was starting to grow upset with him.

“Somehow, being infuriated with you only makes you so much more attractive to me,” she said. 

“You still don’t scare me.”

“Enjoy it while it lasts.”

Five seconds. The heartbeat of the fisherman rang loudly in her ear. She was starving, her last meal far too long in the past. He wriggled in her grasp, crying, begging for her to let him go, to have mercy on him and, “Oh, God, your face- what happened to your face? Are those- are those fangs? Please, I have a family!” 

Her laugh reverberated in her chest. The man stiffened when she tore at his hair to position his head sideways, his neck in perfect reach for her mouth. She looked at the man in the suit before her, his jaw clenched, and he had his billy clubs at the ready. They weren't going to hurt her, he knew that. She would catch them with ease. He could only stand by and pretend he wasn’t scared even though he had never been more in sync with the feeling. They were a package deal when it came to her. 

“Don’t worry,” she told the poor fisherman, “You’ll see your family again, and you won’t even have to remember a thing.” 

Her mouth opened.

“Don’t,” Daredevil threatened – yes, it was a threat, not even a warning – from the other side of her, and she saw the conflict dance clearly over the revealed lower part of his face. “You don’t have to hurt him,” he said. “The man’s innocent.”

She shrugged. “I know.”

“He has a family.”

“I know. My ears are quite impeccable, can you believe that?”

“How about you think this through before you act? There’s a lot of ways you can go about spiting me, but pulling an innocent bystander into this is not fair. Come on, you said you wanted me, so take me.” 

As lucrative as that sounded, she had a different plan. 

She hummed, “No.”

“Why? Are you scared? Perhaps you’re not such a bad person after all. Is that it? You want me to be afraid of you, so you’re trying to hurt that man until I cave? Well, I won’t, but I’m offering myself to you instead of him, so don’t try so hard. Just take me. Take your shot.”

Oh, he sounded so amused – time to wipe that smirk off his beautiful face. 

“Ancient advice,” she ignored everything else he had said, “Don’t be a martyr,” she said and her lips rained down on the fisherman’s throat in a fiery passion. “History hates martyrs.”

“No, history only consists of martyrs.”

“The official version. The truth lies much deeper than your little human brain could ever explore.”

Daredevil was right about one thing; the man was innocent. No matter how she turned it, there was nothing wrong with him, so death would have been unnecessary punishment.

She wasn’t going to kill him just to spite the man she craved to actually have a taste of. She was just going to take a sip, still a quarter of her hunger and then move on, heal the man’s wounds and make him forget this ever happened. He would be disoriented, but he would be fine. 

Humans are the most susceptible to manipulation.

“Don’t be afraid,” she told the fisherman, “I’m just going to have a little taste of the forbidden fruit.”

Her teeth dug into his aorta and she sucked, tasting the blood that squirted into her mouth and all over her face in thick stripes. He tasted nothing like the feast standing right across from her, but it didn’t matter. Her mind shut off. The hunger moved to the forefront and at that moment, everything else stopped existing. It was just her and the life of this particular human in her hands, the taste of his blood exploding on her tongue and her stomach churning with the endless hunger that only got fueled with the small taste. She wanted more, needed it, but she knew better than to let the desperation overpower her. 

Passed out and short of a few pints of blood, the fisherman fell to the ground. She licked her lips. He was everywhere, even stuck on her clothes and traces of him had gotten tangled in her hair. He was a bleeder, that much was sure, and if she hadn’t licked over his neck to seal the wound, he surely would have bled out. 

Poor thing, but sentiment was useless in a case like this. He would make it. No use crying over a blood bag, she was taught. Humans lived to feed them. It was their purpose and she had no reason to feel bad for wanting to be full for a change, not go to bed hungry because she wouldn’t dare touch someone that wasn’t already in a plastic bag. She deserved this. 

And Daredevil cowered in fear at the sounds he was met with. Her night had turned from a total shit show into the sight of victory. 

She stepped forward and he flinched away, finally. “You wanted to know what I am. This is it!” she declared. “I’m the monster parents warn their children about and I’m the one thing every church fears because I happen to stand against everything religion stands for.”

“Dear God,” he breathed out.

“God can’t help me now,” she said. Her eyes moved to the sky, watching the stars disappear behind a thick cloud of smog and thousands of lights from the city center. “He stopped doing that the second I died. He’s dead to me now. He cannot be found. There is no God, there is only hunger and I’m probably the most merciful of them all, so I’d run if I were you. I’d run before another one of those demons God gave up on saving, jumps out of the dark and decides to suck the life from your pretty little body. I’d run,” she said, “because there is not a millisecond that goes by in which I do not want to tear your neck open and drink your blood while I also desperately want to suck your dick between my lips and do the same to those veins too, and the longer you stay the more my self-control starts to fade into the thin smoke that comes out of your mouth whenever you speak.”

He shivered and the color faded from his skin, blood pooling in his veins at twice the amount and the smell almost knocked her off her already hazy feet from the first course. 

More, her body screamed, but she held back. She learned how to hold back. No one had to die tonight.

“Run now or I’m cutting this short, and then Hell’s Kitchen will no longer have a Daredevil to protect them from the likes of me. They won’t even get the chance to mourn because it’d be impossible for me to drop your body in the Hudson after getting a taste of your blood.” 

He turned around, finally getting the hint to run. He jumped the wall up to the rooftop too gracefully for a blind man. She watched, her bloody lips moving into a smile. 

“Fear is healthy,” he heard her loud and clear. “Don’t let your pride cloud that healthy feeling from manifesting. And find me,” she said, “when you’re ready to talk without underestimating me.”

By the time she looked back up, Daredevil was gone with the wind, but his scent still lingered long after he had left and she would take it to bed with her where the most unholy of things would happen to the sound of a name she didn’t even know. 

She should have fucked him when she had the chance.

#matt murdock x reader #dark fantasy #matt murdock x f!reader #matt murdock #daredevil #matt murdock imagines #matt murdock smut #daredevil smut #daredevil x f!reader #matt murdock x vampire!reader #vampire au #daredevil au #matt murdock au #human disaster matt murdock #sub!matt murdock #dom!reader #reader insert #no y/n #afab!reader #dead dove do not eat

[the-marron]

Tagged by @miss-ingno - I was certain I did this twice already, but I cannot for the life of me find these posts for some reason, so I shall reply again 😅 Thanks for the tag!

How many works do you have on AO3? 150

What's your total AO3 word count? 1,284,770

What fandoms do you write for? recently I used to write the most to Guardian and Weilan derivatives (Luolin!~) but I am slowly and surely slowing down on writing altogether

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? skipping that one, I am certain I answered this one around five times and the answer is still the same. I can say that my most kudosed work is at 1,220, because I think this is the only new info I can offer on the topic.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? I love writing comments and responding to them, no matter how much time passed! It's great to get a comment on something I posted around 10 years ago and remember what I thought about, how I saw that ship back then, and all that, plus sometimes people simply share their thoughts about the canon work itself in the comments and I love to have discussions with people I would not meet otherwise.

What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? eh, idk? My angst-meter is broken, so I cannot discern what is the saddest thing I committed. Probably either Unceasing Path (Luolin) or When I Make an Oath to the Flames (Weilan), but I don't know really.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? well, not sure at all either. But I think the Grindeldore series?

Do you get hate on fics? More like hate on me personally, but not often, thankfully

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? I don't. Usually the story I want to tell doesn't need any sex scenes, because the emotions that would come up in those were already explored earlier, in a different way, and I do find them boring, so why force myself.

Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? Oh, I absolutely do and I enjoy them both in reading and in writing. Weilan derivs are crossovers already, so I've written quite a lot of those. I think the craziest crossovers I've written are also the ones I will not publish, so I shall remain silent 😆

Have you ever had a fic stolen? not all of it, just ideas and scenes

Have you ever co-written a fic before? YES! And I love the experience!

What's your all-time favorite ship? No idea, any time I find a new ship I adore it pretty much looks like this:

What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? I have only one WIP in the works and I am pretty sure I will finish it, as for the rest - I only have ideas and I might end up abandoning them and never doing anything about them, so not exactly WIPs, are they

What are your writing strengths? I guess variety? I like changing genres and styles, to have fun with POVs and different settings?

What are your writing weaknesses? I am rather careless, keep on making typos, changing my idea of a sentence after writing half of it, forgetting which version of the plot I am ultimately going with, so I am a mess that keeps on updating stories years after publishing them because I spotted yet another typo while scrolling through them.

First fandom you wrote for? Inuyasha, an OC that was the main hero's half-sister, trying to fit into the family after realising she has it. It was a gen fic, surprise, surprise, and it ended up in a crossover with another girl running an Inuyasha blog - our respective characters made guest appearances in our stories. It was fun.

Favorite fic you've written? No idea. Really, depends on the mood, I sometimes think I did a good job with something, other times I decide everything I've written is terrible in new, exciting ways

Apologies for the short answers, I am truly out of my writing era 😅

Not tagging anyone because I am certain I did this tag twice so I probably would end up tagging the same people all over again, so if someone is reading this and would like to share, I would be very happy to read the replies (tag me please, so I can see), but no pressure~

#my writing #fandom #fanfiction #tag game #marron gets personal

[loudblonde]

Simon "Ghost" Riley x Male!Reader Mafia AU (Chapter 5) Friendship and New Beginnings

Simon and (Y/N) talk things through and agree on something that is totally friendly, right guys? Physical touch guys, we have hand-holding. Hurt/comfort but very mild, Simon talks about having nightmares but no details given, as usual expect canon typical violence as something like that is mentioned. A bit of fluff and soft Simon.

Day 2

Edit: word count: 1.5 K

Warnings; Mentions of nightmares and canon typical violence. Simon kinda spiralling but not really, (Y/N) is there to bring him back down before anything is happening.

(Y/N) felt a strange sense of joy as he had been permitted to use Simon's name, even though he knew Simon was mostly never Simon. That the Ghost part of Simon was far too deeply rooted in his entire foundation to ever change or shift. He was never going to try, though perhaps getting Simons’ friendship?…. (Y/N) liked the idea of that. It was a nice thought, a fantasy worth exploring. Friendship with one of the most terrifying men in all of Europe?

He had barely known this man for more than two days and yet… thinking back to the time they trained, to getting permission to use his name. It somehow felt far too intimate for how little time they spent together. (Y/N) smiled softly at the fleeting idea of Simons’ friendship. Them training together, drinking together, having long discussions into the night, hugs… cooking or attempting to cook together, Simons’ lips on his- (Y/N) shook his head and looked away. He couldn’t be thinking like that, not when he was stuck here for another 28 days. Not when he was only able to see Simon.

He glanced up and looked over as Simon entered, a quick glance (Y/N)’s way. Something seemed to shift inside Simon as he quickly left. (Y/N) simply shrugged and went back to mindlessly sketching. His mind went blank as he just drew the scenery outside, the lake and Simon standing in the water for that one-second while (Y/N) had a headstart as they ran back from having fought. (Y/N) smiled softly without ever realising it, he just kept drawing, shading it in all the right places.

(Y/N) found his muse, someone who made him want to draw more and more. Simon made him wish to draw him anywhere in the world. Perhaps they could travel together one day, go see the world? Get away from everything and everyone. A food adventure?

(Y/N) shook his head. Simon didn’t seem like that type. Maybe, if they go to eastern Europe they could go hiking together? Then (Y/N) could draw Simon in various places in the forest.

(Y/N) flipped a page as he started drawing Simon lighting a fire, his smile softened as the idea was further cemented in his brain. He needed to take Simon camping one day. Maybe they could go hunting too. (Y/N) quite enjoyed it. He usually sold the animal hide to the nearest person or in the nearest village, depending on where he went. He had a bear hide in a safe house, from a black bear that tried to kill him despite (Y/N) doing everything to escape it.

It was nice and warm, especially when you cuddled up close to the fire. He flipped another page over just as Ghost came back in. “Are you allergic to anything?” (Y/N) asked, unsure if he had asked before.

Ghost sat down on the couch on the other end of (Y/N). “No, not that I know, why?”

“Hmm, plotting some fun. Do you like camping and or hunting?” (Y/N) started sketching Simon as he sat down on the other end, it took him about 4 looks before he realised that Simon wasn’t wearing his mask. His eyes widened briefly as he took him in, but he didn’t make any comments on any scar, the tired look on his face or the dark heavy bags under his eyes.

“Yeah, I shoot wolves to manage the population in some areas where it's needed, or else I just hunt for food, deer or on occasion when the opportunity presents itself, I like to hunt alligators, it’s… I like the adrenaline I get from it. It’s fun.” Simon said, looking at (Y/N), he brought one leg up and rested it on his other, without crossing his legs. “Or I hunt small game.”

“Fantastic. We should go hunting some time, I like shooting big game, possibly also elk if we can.” He said, not looking up from his drawing for more than half a second, but he didn’t miss the ghost of a smile on Simon's lips. It made him bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling like a little schoolboy.

Simon raised an eyebrow. “What? You are looking at me all funny.” He said, feeling self-conscious. He regretted taking his mask off.

“You are really pretty, but by god you look like you haven’t had a good night's rest in 30 years.” (Y/N) said.

Simon’s eyes widened as he looked away, a light rose blush covered his cheeks. “Oh… I have never been called pretty before.” He said before clearing his throat. “I would be honoured to go hunting with you sometime, it may be fun.” Ghost said.

“It would be… do you get nightmares?” (Y/N) asked, placing his drawing block down in his lap. “I know I do, sometimes.”

Simon nodded and looked to (Y/N). “Yeah, I get nightmares, most nights.”

(Y/N) thought about it as he moved the drawing block away and onto the table. He looked at Simon. “How can I help?”

Simon tilted his head slightly. “You are offering help?”

(Y/N) nodded. “Yes, we are to be working together and we are stuck with each other for 28 more days. So, Simon, tell me how I can help, please.”

“I..” Simon looked at him for ten seconds, being fully silent. His breath was caught in his throat as his heart hammered so fast he thought it would leap out of his chest. He knew not why, or how, but (Y/N) with his magical ways and charming smile, had broken down almost all of Simon’s walls, made him vulnerable and opened his whole world up without ever even trying and without knowing it himself, the kindness that Simon had been shown in these past few days were very much so a rarity, something Simon had never expected. He had even taken off his mask, feeling far too vulnerable and exposed. But now, with (Y/N) asking that and Simon knowing the answer he was gonna get, he dreaded what he was going to say.

“I don’t like sleeping in a bed alone, it leaves me feeling too exposed, so whether it be the nightmares or waking up twenty times a night, I rarely get a good night's sleep,” Simon said and averted his eyes down in his lip, he didn’t fiddle with his own hands. No. He was frozen at that moment, awaiting the inevitable rejection and dismissal of his problems. After all, Simon and Ghost was nothing if not just a living breathing meat shield for the Price’s and Simon was completely fine with dying for either of them, John Price had given him a family, a strict family, but still a family nonetheless and (Y/N), god forbid, had opened Simon up and gotten him attached in ways Simon didn’t understand or rather, didn’t want to understand.

(Y/N) nodded a bit to himself, while he didn’t get those problems when sleeping alone rather than with someone else, the idea of sharing a bed and of being close wasn’t all that bad. He… wanted it? No? He wasn’t sure or certain of anything. “Then we will share a bed, just cuddling or whatever you are comfortable with, I don’t mind and I do sleep better knowing there is someone there, plus, it’s a lot safer, if someone were to break in, we would be gathered in the same place.” He said.

Simon looked up, eyes wide and questionable. “You don’t… mind?” He asked, voice devoid of emotions on purpose, he didn’t want his uncertainty betraying him or showing weakness to (Y/N) who trusted him enough to share a bed.

(Y/N) shook his head and moved over, sitting next to Simon but facing him. “No, I would like a friendship with you, I don’t know why and it most certainly isn’t my fathers doing, but I trust you with my life… the scars… that boundary is… it’s something I am not proud of, something I hide even from people I care about, I am not angry at you for that or hurt by it, I just, never expected someone who I am starting to care about would see them and think me unworthy or ugly.”

Simon shook his head and did something he never in a million years would have done to someone else. He reached forward and took one of (Y/N)’s hands. Their hands seemed a perfect match but Simon pushed that far far out of his mind. “I trust you too, I don’t know why and as for the scars… I don’t think I am one to talk about scars.” He said. “My Glasgow smile is an eye-catcher for all the wrong reasons… thank you.” The always so quiet, man of few words, Simon, spoke more in a single sentence of emotional vulnerability than he had ever done before.

(Y/N) smiled and looked down at their hands, he too pushed the idea of how well their hands fit together. “To friendships and new beginnings.” He said.

Simon smiled and let go of his hand. “To friendship and new beginnings.”

Tag list:

@rasberry-jupiter @one-green-frog

#ghost #simon ghost riley x male reader #simon ‘ghost’ riley x male reader #cod men x male reader #cod x male reader #loudblondes cod mafia au #male reader #simon ghost riley #simon riley x you #fanfiction #simon riley x male readef

[vacayisland]

HIII! YOURE LIKE MY INSPIRATION I HAVE LIKE A QUESTION SOO,,im having trouble writing a fanfic

do you plan out your stories beforehand?

(because personally when i write i would want to add a bunch of things and ended up dragging the whole story)

i did try to make a plan but i keep changing it because if i added something, i will want to change the whole thing. and it will get me nowhere (i hope it makes sense)

I LOVEE YOUR WORK THEYRE AMAZING 💕💕

Okay I totally gets this, because this happens to me with longer fanfictions! It's a real struggle for many writers I've talked to, so you're actually not alone in this. But for starters, for my one-shots or "head-cannon" like stories I don't really plan them out. I have a vague idea of where I want to go and just kind of follow the flow with most things. But that's how I do it, and I know not many people are like that. I have a friend who needs to plan everything out, reread their stories thrice and then change things they don't like. Which is totally fine! Remember writing is a creative art, it's meant to represent the person who is typing the words just as art is meant to represent the person drawing it.

So, going into planning works gets a bit more complex because it means you might actually have to stick to a vague plot. I'm going to try and explain this through the rough idea that I have going for the Mafia! Trolls au that I've scrapped up. You'll want to start with a basic idea first. You cannot get anywhere without a starting idea to bounce off of! (and this does not mean this has to be your story through and through, this is just a starting idea. It can be changed. But too much change might mean you'll be writing a different story than what you started with so be weary of that.)

Example: Brozone Mafia au where the reader gets sold to Brozone.

A one sentence starting idea is your baseline. From there, depending on how long your fanfic is you'll go between two options.

Shorter fic: what is the plot that I want to do? Longer fic: How can I make this fit into the already established world and/or how do I make it fit?

For shorter fics, you don't need as much world building as longer fics. This is because they're meant to be little chunks of your writing; think of it like a snack instead of a full meal or maybe a sampler. Shorter fics are meant to be digested in relatively one sitting, they're meant to be sweet and fulling but not stuffing. As such, that'll severely hurt how much you want to put into a fic! Personally, I do an average 2-5 scenes for a short fanfiction. And for those, if you really need to structure and limit yourself, pick the top 2-5 things you want and/or need to put into the short fic. Remember, not everything has to be used, the more you store for later fics the better! Because one day you're going to run out of ideas and wish you didn't shove them all into one fic when you could have expanded it out between multiple. Furthermore, I don't know if this will help but to stop myself from dragging on I remember one rule:

If you get bored writing and reading your own writing other people will get to!

Literally, if you're sitting there bored out of your mind writing something because it keeps dragging and dragging and dragging very few people will want to read it. And it's not because your writing is bad it's just boring because scene A keeps dragging when scene B should have started and there is a lot of dead space between actions of dialogue. Remember you can achieve the allusion of time passing with words instead of writing full paragraphs detailing everything a character is doing. Furthermore, you can also achieve the same illusion of background characters doing things without fully describing what they're doing! If it's not important don't spend more than three sentences on an action!

In example, say Branch is doing bunker up-keep in the background and Poppy is trying to talk to him. Would you rather read: Option A "Branch come on!" Poppy exclaimed towards Branch, standing in the center of his bunker tapping her foot. watching as he climbed his later to grab his ration jars. He was doing his daily bunker upkeep, counting out his food and tallying his water all the while Poppy kept pestering him. or Option B "Branch come on!" Poppy exclaimed towards Branch, standing in the center of his bunker tapping her foot. Branch was scaling up his latter to grab jars of peanuts, nuts, berries, and anything else he had managed to scavenge from the wilderness; Bringing them back down to pour on the table as he began to slowly count each nut. Poppy was less then amused watching this, hearing Branch's slow counting as he went from one to two to three to four.

That might have been a poor example because I'm not in my writing mode, but it serves its purpose. Most readers know what Branch is like, furthermore what his rations is and how he's about them! So option A gives off the same idea as option B in fewer words and it lets the reader to visualize it a little more in their own way. Which also goes into knowing your audiences. If you're writing fanfictions you're writing to a specific audience who knows your media! In which, you don't have to describe as much as you would for a story you've just made up. Readers know what Branch's bunker looks like, what Pop village looks like, who characters are and what they look like. You can describe them, always, but don't go full out and be like:

Branch is a grey toll who stood a little higher than me. His dark-grey hair stood up in and... etc.

Know your audience, only describe what is needed. Such as facial expressions, differing clothing or hair that a character has in your story than cannon, if someone is losing or gaining their colors, and honestly anything important. I'll say this again, a good way to kill a story is to get bogged down in the unimportant factors.

Backgrounds and scenes are important! Setting a tone and mood are important! Setting a place for your readers to visualize is important!

But they're not more important than your plot. Do not spend 1/4 of your story describing a village that people know. Do not spend 4+ sentences describing what background characters that are adding nothing to plot are doing. Do not spend your effort writing something the readers will forget by the end, spend your efforts on other things! Of course, there is no defendant rule to how everything should go and how everything should be. There is no oh, this should be x sentences or x paragraphs. Writing is an art, it's meant to be free styled, to the most part, and a lot of this is decided upon the writing and their style. As such, you can push the boundaries of things, you can describe some things more in detail and some not at all. The most powerful tool you have is honestly your imagination and that's all you need to start writing. But here is just a few things I believe personally kills stories and I try avoiding, if you want to reference them:

1) Describing what villager B is doing for a whole paragraph or more. 2) Handling too much and doing way too much. Let there be one major plot point over arching the story and not several that keep stacking upon each other. It will confuse the reader. 3) dragging out plot points. 4) Unnatural reactions or speech 5) Plot holes or unexplained plots later in the story.

And that's honestly just a few that I can think of off the top of my head. Personally, I've only been writing since 2018-2019, so I have a little experience but sure not a tone. Much like art and theatre, or anything else creative, writing takes times and practice and effort to make good. Listen to your gut more, let yourself just write. Soon you'll find some sort of balance between everything that'll make it work. Because trust me, my first stories were all over the place and those will forever remain locked in the wattpad vault. Also, much like art, don't be afraid to get inspired by other people's writing styles. Identify what you like about them, wording choices, transitions, flow, etc. and try using it with your style! It's a lot of experimenting, a lot of revising, and honestly (for me) a lot of turning off my mind and just writing.

For bigger stories, it's a lot more complex. It takes more effort to plan everything out before you can actually begin writing and that's honestly a whole separate post upon itself. Since oneshots are snippets and not full stories they don't follow the natural flow of stories, they don't have those extremes ups and downs, they're kind of always dissected straight from the middle of a story, a don't have a true ending or beginning. So with longer stories you need to spend time actually plotting it out, trying to figure out how it'll go and get a good plot going with some sub plots to make the story feel alive. That requires a lot of different little traits such as world building, character building, and understanding troupes, and growth, and plot. Longer stories are always going to be harder because it encompasses so much more and it's harder not to go off once you set a plot down for it. Because unlike oneshots they're a continuous story being told in different snippets called chapters and those chapters are different parts of a full meal. If you choose option A, which is like potato, and you throw in option B mid way, which is like brownies, they won't mash and just taste and read awful together. So you have to plan it much more than oneshots.

But honestly writing is supposed to be fun, even if it takes a lot of time and a lot of practicing to do so. So please do not stress yourself over it, things can be changes and things can and can't be helped. Just keep writing and find your flow, it'll come and you'll impress yourself will all the things you do.

Writing is an art, I will say this over and over. And like any art it takes practice, patience, referencing, and time to develop. It doesn't just grow off trees and while some people might have some natural talent they still need to practice and develop it like everyone else. It's okay to be burnt out, take a break. It's okay to not have the perfect story, it's practice. It's okay to not like a work, you're not always going to. It's okay to write something you're not going to publish, it's your decision. It's okay not to write everyday, you need breaks. It's okay to take writing at your own pace and time. It's okay to get through things fast or slow. It's okay to do whatever you need to do to write in a way that makes you happy, in a way that makes you want to pick up a pen or a keyboard or laptop and write what's in your head.

But it's never okay to give up. You can take breaks, pause from writing for however long you might need. But never give up.

#writing advice #creative writing #trolls fandom #trolls 3 #dreamworks trolls #trolls #trolls band together #trolls dreamworks

[stygianpen]

The Self Publisher’s Guide to Editing

Self Publishing is an amazing option for so many reasons. You have total control over every aspect of your publishing process and don’t have to rely on others for approval in many areas — such as deciding if your novel is marketable enough to publish in the first place.

One thing to keep in check when you’re self publishing however, is your budget. When a traditional publisher picks up your work they’ll handle much of the financial end of things and you’ll get a percentage of royalties for your end of the labor. But when self publishing, you’re covering everything, so it becomes even more important to pinch those pennies where you can.

Prior to self publishing OR traditionally publishing, you’re going to have to go through the editing process. But it’s a bit different depending on which direction you’re headed.

While traditionally published books will do best with an experienced editor who understands the current literary landscape and can help your book become publisher-ready, the self publishing writer can have a more personalized approach. And so, the question becomes…

Should you edit your own novel?

Well, right off the bat you are going to have to do some level of editing on your own. You should always proofread your novel and check for spelling and grammatical errors along with plot holes and really meditate on what needs to stay, what needs to go, and what needs to be added that you missed when you review your first draft.

But, after you feel you’ve done enough in those areas you’ll be looking to further content editing, copy editing, and line editing.

While you can do all of these things, the primary benefit of an editor is the outside opinion. It is rare that you will not overlook something in your own work because you are simply so close to it! But if you are alright with that sacrifice, then let’s chat about how to edit your own novel.

Content Editing your own novel

Content or developmental editing focuses on the big picture elements of your story and plays a large role in manuscript development. It addresses such things as plot holes, character arcs and pacing.

Plot holes

This is one of the areas in which an outside eye can help. If you do not want to hire an editor though and still have that outside eye, you can reach out to a beta reader or two to do their thing and give you some general feedback.

To find plot holes on your own, I recommend using the read aloud option in Word or getting a text to speech app on your phone so you can hear another voice dictating your story to you. This will allow you to detach a bit and view your novel from a reader’s point of view.

Plot holes can actually be quite the gift if you’re looking to expand your novel’s length — fixing them builds opportunity to explore your world even more!

Character arcs

Lucky for you, there are plenty of resources online about character arcs. While you don’t have to follow a pre-set pattern to a tee, these tried and true methods work for a reason and are likely to help your novel succeed through birthing relatable characters.

If your character is set to have a transformational act, make notes through your novel of when the following points occur:

Inciting incident

Call to action

Defining moment

Awakening

Moment of enlightenment

Death experience

Transformational moment

Climax

Resolution

If you are missing any of these points in your character’s arc, see if you can work it into your novel. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the change it brings about to the novel as a whole!

Pacing

The percentages in this method have been especially useful to me personally as it makes the entire process of pacing quite mathematical. If your opening image and theme building up to the catalyst is 50% of your novel for example, you need to edit that down.

For even more connection with how to pace your novel, check out thesebeat sheets of familiar films where you can see Save the Cat in action.

Copy Editing your own novel

Where content editing may result in expansion of your novel (especially when fixing plot holes), copy editing is for tightening up your work.

Find your trouble words

Let’s start off right away with ‘trouble words’. As defined by Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing these are:

a lot/alot

affect/effect

can/may

further/farther

good/well

i.e./e.g.

into/in to

it’s/its

lay/lie

less/fewer

that/who

their/they’re/there

then/than

who/whom

your/you’re

If your eye catches on any of these, wondering “wait… I thought those meant the same thing” then you’re not alone. You’ve just found your trouble words!

Of course by no means does this include all trouble words, but it’s a good start. Personally my trouble word (as I’m reminded of regularly by my editor) is ‘led’. I just can’t stop writing ‘lead’! 😅

Find your crutch words

What words do you use over and over again? I’m constantly saying ‘a little’ in my writing. Once you listen your words read aloud you will REALLY pick up on these. Locate them, and do something about it. You don’t want your novel to sound clunky and repetitive. Another good tip is to make sure you’re not using the same word in the same sentence or even paragraph. This is called ‘tautology’ and is jarring to the reader.

Thesaurus.com is out there, and it exists purely for your use. So use it!

Check for consistency

Do you spell a particular term differently every time you use it? You’re going to want to make it uniform. Words such as daycare often wind up switching from day-care to Day Care to daycare all in the same novel!

Other words that are commonly inconsistent include:

Organise/organize

Centre/center

Focussed/focused

Recognise/recognize

Analyse/analyze

Pick one, and stick with it! And of course, make sure you’re sticking with one voice and tense as well. In some cases, a switch can be pertinent to the story, but make sure if you’re doing this it’s intentional and you don’t leave in any accidental switches.

Additional Tips

Before this becomes an entire course, I’d like to list in point form a few more suggestions for your copy editing process. If you’d like to see more blogging on copy editing, please leave a comment below saying so!

Remove adverbs that weaken your copy (When I finish writing I snap my laptop shut. I do not shut my laptop quietly.)

Choose positive over negative (After reading this I want you to keep each point in mind as you edit. Another blogger may not want you to make any editing mistakes as you revise.)

Check transitional phrasing to see if it’s necessary (in order to, begin to)

Line Editing your own novel

Working sentence by sentence, line editing takes a deep dive into your prose, focusing on how to use language and communicate with your reader. Sound similar to copy editing? Not quite.

Line editing is the most meticulous of your three major novel editing types as you are looking at small pieces of your writing rather than larger concepts and errors.

Before starting on any editing, it’s a good idea to let your book rest a bit as another way to detach from the words you’ve put down on the page. After a couple of weeks or a month you can get back in there and tear things up!

Check for passive voice

While this can be applied to copy editing, it’s perhaps an even more useful check to do as the first step in your line editing process. Best of all, there’s an app for that making this a minimally daunting way to ease into your detailed edit.

Grab that Thesaurus

This is it friends — if you were keeping an eye out for tautology and crutch words in your copy editing process you can get rid of every last one of them through line editing. Grab your thesaurus or head to Thesaurus.com and tighten on those lines. By the end of your line edit every paragraph should be wonderfully unique from the one before it.

Grab your Dictionary, too

Did you throw a word in thinking it would sound good, but if someone asked you to define it you’d mumble your way through? Make sure you know for sure what you’re saying in every sentence.

If you’ve done your job right, when you finish your line edit, your novel will be consistent and concise while retaining its creativity!

Invest your time or invest your money

When deciding whether or not to do the full edit of your self published novel, it comes down to what you’re able to invest: time, or money. Now that you’ve had a glimpse into the world of editing, you can see why editors charge for their services and how valid that charge is.

There are many things in the literary world that you can do yourself, and this is one of them. But you do risk sacrificing quality, experience, and that outside viewpoint especially if you’re new to the game.

Should you choose to edit your novel, all the power to you! It’s a commendable choice and I'm behind you 100%.

#writing #writing community #creative writing #new author #writing help #writing tips #writing advice #writing resources #writing tips and tricks #editing #self publishing