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thefatedthoughtofyou · 6 months

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{ Thank you for the idea @imsodonewiththissite !! It almost got angsty but i controlled myself!!! }

"What in God's name is that?" Dustin’s voice goes almost shrill as he walks behind Steve, looks down at his pumpkin. Eddie's head shoots up from where he's carving his own pumpkin, his legs shot out in front of him, his feet hitting Steve's across from him. Steve flushes, tells Dustin to shut up, and shoves at his legs to get him to move on.

"Alright alright jeez! It's just... I've never seen a pumpkin like that. Did you even try?" Dustin huffs as he settles back into his own carving area between Lucas and Will.

"Yes. I did try. Thank you very much. Henderson." Steve huffs, wipes at his pumpkin, then wipes his hand in the grass to get the bits of guts off. Eddie sits up taller, making a show of trying to see Steve's carving, but not really trying to see, they'd agreed to show each other at the same time.

Steve hadn't really had any idea what to do, so he'd just done something silly. But he could see Will and Dustin’s and theirs were detailed, and spooky. And his just looked... stupid, now. Steve sighed and put the top back on his, waiting for Eddie to finish.

He was staring, he knew he was. He couldn't help it. He loved when Eddie was in full concentration mode, his tongue poking out between his lips, his brows crinkled. Steve would never tell him that. But he could look. No harm in that.

Eddie looked up and met his eyes, smiled brightly, and dusted of his own pumpkin before popping the top back on. He tilted his head, this way and that, a few times and then looked at Steve again.

"Okay. You ready?" He asked, drumming his fingers on the gourd resting under his hands. Steve scrunched his nose.

"I'm having second thoughts." He said quietly, the kids were all yelling, in their own little world, but he still didn't want them to hear.

"Aww. But I'm excited to see it! Especially with the way Dusty Buns reacted." Eddie drooped, his eyes going wide and sad, the way Steve was weak agaisnt. He sighed, his own body drooping.

"Ugh. Fine. On three?" He tilted his head. Eddie nodded.

"On three."

"One."

"Twosie." Eddie wiggled his fingers, Steve rolled his eyes fondly.

"Three!" They both said it together and turned their pumpkins toward each other.

Steve's eyes shot open, Eddie's was... good. Like really good. Everything a spooky jack-o-lantern should be. Creepy eyes, sharp teeth, what looked like a skull nose.

"Holy shit Eds. That's... holy shit. Mine is so shit compared to- why are you making that face? What's happening?" Steve changed directions mid sentence because Eddie's mouth had dropped open as he stared at Steve hideous excuse for a carving.

"Oh my god you hate it." Steve grabbed at his pumpkin, about to turn it back toward him and hide it forever but he froze when a sound started coming out of Eddie's open mouth.

It took a moment to really form, but once it got going, Steve could hear it. Manical giggles were bubbling up out of Eddie's mouth. He slapped his hands over his face to stop them but they just kept coming.

Steve wasn't sure if he should be offended or not. He frowned though, his brows dropping on his head and Eddie immediately shook his head.

"Oh my god he's ADORABLE!" Eddie cackled the words, shoved his own pumpkin genlty aside and crawled toward Steve's, his hands outstreched and grabbing.

"I know it's- wait what?" Steve was so confused.

"Steve I love him. Look at his stupid little face." He'd devolved into baby talk and was scratching at the pumkin like you would a babies chin. Steve felt himself smiling.

"Wait you actually like it?" Dustin guffawed from behind him. Eddie spun around fast, guarding Steve's pumpkin from sight.

"Excuse me?! 'It'? Don't you ever speak like that about my son- our son!" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Steve. Dustin rolled his eyes.

"It's not even scary! It's just a big mouth!" Dustin’s hands flailed. Eddie screamed at him dramatically, clutching his chest.

"He has a tooth! And two adorable teeny tiny eyes!" Eddie moved, pointed at the face Steve had made. El and Will both aw-d, Max and Lucas smiled, Mike just rolled his eyes.

"He's not- it's just-" Dustin stammered a bit.

"What? Dustin. He's what?!" Eddie asked, his hands still clutching at his chest.

"He's ugly! Okay? It's an ugly pumpkin!" Dustin yelled, Steve didn't even have time to feel hurt, because Eddie shrieked again, his voice going impossibly high.

"Dustin Henderson! I can't believe you just called your brother ugly. You heathen!" Eddie practically hissed the last word before he hopped to his feet and bundled Steve's pumpkin into his arms.

"Unbelievable. We don't need them Steve. Let's go." He popped his nose into the air and looked to Steve. He knew he had to look like a deer in headlights, not sure exactly where they were meant to be going.

"Kitchen." Eddie whispered, giving Steve a wink.

"Oh right. Okay yeah." Steve stumbled toward the door, opening it for Eddie as he stomped after him.

"Oh what you're going inside? Just leaving us out here?" Dustin called, Will and El booing him as he kept taunting Steve and Eddie. Eddie spun, looked at Dustin, propped the pumpkin on his hip like a toddler and pointed his finger accusingly.

"Yes. And we are leaving... in a huff!" Eddie's accent sounded slightly French at the end as he spun around again and stomped into the house.

"Slam the door Steven. Show them we mean it." Eddie said with an air finality. Steve grinned, fighting back laughter, and slammed the door. He tugged the blind closed too, for good measure. He turned to find Eddie wiping at the pumpkin with a wet washrag, getting all the little shavings off.

"You didn't have to do that." Steve said, moving to stand next to him. But not too close.

"Do what?" Eddie asked, grabbing the dish towel off the little hook and drying the pumpkin now. Steve sighed, leaned his butt against the counter and looked at the floor.

"Play it up liked you love the pumpkin. To make me feel better about my complete lack of skill." Steve laughed a little, shrugged, and looked up to find Eddie staring at him. He tossed the towel down and took a step forward.

"Oh no. Unfortunately for you, Steven. That was a genuine reaction. I fucking love this thing." He patted at the side of the pumpkin and grinned at Steve. Steve frowned.

"Really? It's not... I mean it's nothing special. Did you see Will's, I swear there was a castle on it." Steve shook his head. Dismissive.

"Oh I saw it. Still like yours more." Eddie said, matter of fact.

"Why?" Steve was still frowning. Eddie sighed, walked over and stood next to Steve, his arm pressed agaisnt him, warm.

"Me and my mom used to buy four pumpkins. Every Halloween. Always four. Two for her. And two for me." Eddie's voice was soft, the way it always was when he talked about his mother. Steve found himself trying not to breathe to loudly, he wanted to hear everything Eddie had to say.

"We'd each do a classic, spooky guy. But the other one. The other one we used to make just... the most ridiculous faces. Or the dumbest ones. Anything cute and silly." He looked at Steve for a moment, a soft smile on his lips at the memory.

"It very quickly became a contest of who could make who laugh the most. Just by carving some silly face." Eddie shook his head and laughed gently.

"I haven't made a funny one since she died. And you turned that pumpkin around and it took me back. To all those stupid pumpkins and how we used to laugh. And I mean really laugh." Eddie's voice was getting tight as he spoke, a little wobbly, and Steve wanted to hug him, wasn't sure if he could.

"She had the best laugh Steve. She'd have loved this." He moved his hand over the pumpkin again, gently stroked down it's side.

"And you."

It was almost too quiet. Steve almost didn't hear it. Wasn't sure he had until he looked up and saw the way Eddie was looking at him. Steve is so sure that it's the same way he'd been looking at Eddie for months now.

"It's the perfect pumpkin Steve. The best one I've seen in years." He's so serious, when he says it. Steve feels like he might cry. Feels a bit reckless, with Eddie looking at him like that. So he leans toward Eddie, his heart fluttering as Eddie smiles, just a barely thing, and leans toward him too.

The kiss is soft, Eddie makes a little sound in the back of his throat when Steve's hand moves to his neck and pulls him closer. They kiss until they're both smiling so much it's just their teeth clicking together and Eddie dissolves into manic giggles again and buries his face in Steve's neck as he holds him close.

"You have a good laugh too Ed's. " Steve sighs, pulling Eddie closer as he hums and nuzzles into his neck, his fingers pressing into Steve's back as he cuddles closer. Steve breathes deeply, his nose buried in Eddie's hair, and feels Eddie smile against the soft skin of his neck.

( below is an approximation of their pumpkin faces. I fucked up the eddie one's mouth dont looookk at meeeee )

#Halloween blurb #steddie #steddie ficlet #Fates Endless Inkwell #fei #steve harrington x eddie munson #steve x eddie #mine #my writing #my fic

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jobean12-blog · 7 months

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Feelin' Gourd

Pairing: Mob!Bucky Barnes x reader

Word Count: 1,454

Summary: You really want to go on a trip to the farm but not with the girls this year. This year you want your husband to take you and even though he's the boss and busy a lot he always makes time for you, even if it means stepping out of his usual role and being soft and sweet...because for you, he'll do anything.

Author's Note: So I've decided that mob!Bucky is one of my kinks, especially when he's a big softie for his woman. And honestly, he's perfect! So here's my first kinktober '23 story featuring mob!Bucky and his softie side. Thank you all so much for reading! Much love always❤️❤️❤️ and Happy October! Divider by the lovely @firefly-graphics thank you Daisy! 🥰

Warnings: It's fun and fluffy and sweet and soft!

Steve escorts the men out of Bucky’s office and down the hall. He smiles warmly at you before his face hardens into it’s usual work mask again as he practically pushes the men out the door.

With a soft goodnight to you he shuts and locks the door of your house.

Without waiting another second you skip to Bucky’s office, stopping in the doorway when you see him focused on his phone.

“There you are doll face,” he croons.

He looks up as he sets his phone down on his desk.

“Work done?” you ask sweetly.

“All done,” he says as he holds out his arms for you.

You rush into the room and around his desk, falling against his chest and nuzzling his neck as he drags you onto his lap.

“Mm,” he hums appreciatively as you wrap yourself around him.

He kisses your temple, taking your face in his hands before pulling your mouth to his. The kiss starts out sweet and soft but swiftly grows deeper as his fingers search for the bottom of your shirt, sneaking beneath to feel more of your skin.

“Bucky,” you breathe out, pulling away enough to look into his eyes.

“What?” he asks, slightly breathless himself. “Missed you today.”

He gives you his best boyish smirk, the one reserved only for you, and it makes your heart flutter.

“Missed you too,” you whisper, peppering his check with butterfly kisses, “but…”

His lips find yours again and your words are lost against his mouth, his hands dancing higher until he’s toying with the clasp of your bra.

He unhooks it with ease and starts to peel it off under your shirt.

“Buckyyyy,” you pout.

“Doll,” he groans as his hands roam over your newly exposed skin.

“I wanted to ask you something.”

He stops his caresses, giving you a disgruntled look.

Your expression falls and he immediately brushes his thumb across your lips, cradling your cheek and drawing you closer.

“No, none of that now baby doll. I’m sorry. Talk to me.”

You instantly brighten and he growls out a mumbled curse, knowing you totally got one over on him. With a bright and triumphant smile you toy with his tie, mindlessly adjusting it as you begin to talk.

“I want you to take me pumpkin picking.”

His eyes widen and he blinks several times. “Pumpkins? Like on a farm?”

You nod excitedly, bouncing in his lap. “YES! We can pick our own to carve and get some for the front of the house and even get apple cider donuts and hot apple cider and take home a pie or pick apples to make a pie and maybe even go for a hay ride!”

Your enthusiastic wave of words rushes out and he can hardly keep up and all the while you’re still fiddling with his tie and the collar of his shirt, smoothing out each until they’re perfect.

“Didn’t you go do this with the girls last year?” he asks softly but with a smile.

“I did,” you start, pouting a bit. “But I want to go with you!”

He opens his mouth to speak but you press a finger to his lips.

“PLEASE! PRETTY PLEASE! PRETTY PLEASE WITH A CHERRY ON TOP!”

When you’re done with your pleading he grabs your wrist and holds you finger to his mouth, kissing the tip softly before pushing your other fingers up so he can kiss them all too.

“Of course I’ll take you,” he whispers.

You squeal in delight and kiss him, trying to pull away to tell him more about what you can do at the farm but he keeps you pressed firmly against him as he spins his desk chair and lifts you out of his lap, placing you on the edge of his desk.

When he finally releases your lips you nibble your bottom one, watching as he kneels down, spreading your legs and tugging on your panties.

“Thank you Bucky,” you whisper.

“I didn’t even do anything yet doll,” he teases.

“I meant for agreeing to go pumpkin picking with me.”

“You know I’d do anything to make you happy,” he murmurs, kissing along your calf, his fingers massaging your soft skin as he moves higher.

Bucky struts out of your walk-in closet, adjusting the collar on his shirt before smiling at you.

“Ready doll face?” he asks.

You look him over from head to toe then sashay your way into his arms. “I am…but I think you might need to change.”

He frowns. “Why? I thought my red shirt was good…fall color and all.”

“Oh the red is perfect,” you assure him. “But I’m not sure you need to wear one of your three-hundred-dollar Prada shirts to the farm.”

“Huh,” he muses. “Am I going to get dirty?”

“The pumpkins are sometimes muddy or dirty with soil and there’s lots of dust and vines…if there are horses and other animals there might be…”

“So I should lose my Prada loafers too then?”

He grins, looking slightly sheepish.

“Definitely,” you giggle, giving him a soft kiss. “But the jeans are perfect.”

You step back to let your eyes roam over his thick thighs that are on full display in the tight denim.

He starts to unbutton his dress shirt but you stop him, slowly undoing each button yourself until it hangs open and reveals his tanned and toned chest and stomach. You ghost your fingernails down his skin, watching his muscles flex from your touch.

When you push the shirt from his shoulders you sigh, “why can’t you just go like this?”

He huffs out a laugh and adjusts his belt, drawing your attention to the trail of dark hair that lines his lower stomach and the disappears into his jeans.

“Still wanna go pumpkin picking doll?” he asks wearing an amused and smug smirk.

You slowly drag your eyes up to his and cock your hip out, placing your hand there and stealing your features.

“YES! Now find a tee shirt and hoodie and change your shoes.”

“Where are my hoodies. I thought you stole them all,” he says as he’s walking back into the closet.

“I left you one…maybe two!”

“What about a flannel?” he calls out.

“Perfet,” you reply.

Once he’s dressed in his soft tee and even softer flannel, his feet clad in leather lace up boots you head for the door.

It’s still early when you get to the farm so there aren’t many people around yet. You and Bucky walk hand in hand under the warm sunshine toward the pumpkin patch.

“What are we looking for exactly?” he asks, eyeing the rows of orange squash.

“I want some really big ones for the front of the house! And then we need two for carving and some smaller ones for more decoration. And I want gourds too…they have a lot of different colors and shapes!”

“Am I supposed to carry them all?”

He looks suspicious and when you start to smile he takes you in his arms brushes his lips against yours.

“I will if that’s what you need me to do.”

You melt into him, sliding your arms around his waist. “As much as I’d love to see you trying to carry all these pumpkins, we can just get a wagon.”

You peek around him and point to the red wagons lined up along the fence.

“Phew,” he says with a laugh.

You walk through the patch, Bucky dragging the wagon behind him as you gush over every pumpkin you see, picking them up, inspecting them and asking for his insight. He takes his job seriously, examining each one with thorough precision before giving you his honest review.

“This one is perfect for carving,” he says, holding up the tall but still wide pumpkin with a good flat face.

“It is!” you cheer. “What are you going to carve?”

He stands there, looking from you to the pumpkin. “I have no idea!”

You bend over with laughter, loving to see your husband in such a relaxed state but also taking the pumpkin picking so seriously. He never does anything half-assed.

After he sets the pumpkin in the cart he looks over what you’ve picked so far. “One more?”

You throw your arms around his neck. “I love you so much. I’m having the best time.”

He wraps you in his embrace, nestling his face into your neck. “Love you more doll and me too.”

“Before we pick more can we get some cider and donuts? I’m hungry.”

“Of course,” he says, tucking you under his arm. “I hope they sell these donuts by the dozen. I have a feeling I’m going to want more than one.”

@randomfandompenguin @book-dragon-13 @goldylions @blackwidownat2814 @buckysdollforlife @hiddles-rose @kmc1989 @lizette50

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #mob!bucky barnes #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x female reader #mob!bucky x reader #mob!bucky #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes imagine #mob au #mafia au #bucky au #sebastian stan #sebastian stan x reader #kinktober 2023

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blushweddinggowns · 8 months

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It had started as a rough few weeks. A rough few weeks that turned into a rough few months. It was weird, because in all honesty when it came to social standings, Will was doing a lot better here than he ever did in Hawkins. There were no Zombie Boy stories following him here, and he even managed to get a few girls to have a crush on him. He…still wasn’t quite clear how that worked out and he really wasn’t a fan of it. But they were also the only people he could talk to at school. He was way too paranoid of getting close to any guys. God forbid he got another crush on a friend, having none of them just seemed like the better course of action.

It didn’t help that Mike had basically stopped acknowledging that he existed after they moved. He didn’t write to him, he didn’t call him, and it felt like the only time he heard his voice was when he politely asked for El over the phone. And it hurt. It hurt a lot. Especially when he still put in so much effort to get ahold of El all the time. He’d resent her for it if he could, but the only one who was having a worse time than him with the move was her. Maybe Mike was a shitty friend to him, but at least she had someone to talk to.

But whatever. Lucas and Dustin cared, and so did Eddie and Steve. And when Jonathan wasn’t busy being high as hell, he had him too. Even Max called him more often than Mike did. Even when she was just trying to get ahold of El she’d take the time to ask him how he was, a courtesy that his best friend from freaking kindergarten couldn’t even offer anymore.

So maybe Will didn’t have many friends in California yet, but he didn’t feel very lonely.

Just a little heartbroken.

But he could get past it. Especially when some of his favorite people were only one phone call away. Sometimes it made him feel a little guilty, that Steve and Eddie were his go to for talking about his problems. Especially since Jonathan was always trying to get him to open up. Even when he was zoinked out of his gourd he never failed to ask Will how his day was. Though…he did have a hard time following the plot when Will told him.

But that didn’t change the fact that Jonathan always wanted to help. But what could Will say? I’m depressed because I’m in love with my best friend who doesn’t care about me? And oh yeah, I’m gay? Yeah, no. That wasn’t going to happen. If Jonathan of all people hated him for that…he’s not sure he could recover. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t think about it.

It was kind of pathetic, but he’d fantasize about it sometimes. Coming out to his family, everyone smiling and saying they’d love him anyway, no matter what. And if he was being honest with himself, it was technically possible, right? His brother had never said a bad word about Steve and Eddie. His mom never failed to shut the homophobic crap down when his crappy sperm donor had still been around. But it was different when it was your own kid, right? Will wasn’t quite sure. But he did know that he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

So he called who he always did when he had a problem. It only took a few rings before someone was picking up, Steve’s familiar voice on the other end, “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me,” Will sighed, flopping face first into his bed, the phone pressed to his ear.

He could hear the smile in Steve’s voice, “Hey kiddo, what’s up?”

God, he was such a dad. Will wouldn’t be shocked if he started wearing socks with sandals by the time he hit twenty-three. He went straight to the point, “Do you think that living happily ever after is like a real thing? For people like us?”

Steve laughed, “It better fucking be after all the shit we’ve seen.”

“I don’t mean the Upside Down stuff,” Will sighed, “I mean like…y’know. The gay.”

Steve snorted, “The gay? I’m going to have to tell Eddie that one.”

Will rolled his eyes at the redundant statement. He had learned a long time ago that telling Steve something meant telling Eddie something, and vice versa. He sighed a tiny smile on his face, “Oh what, like he’s not already next to you listening in?”

“...touché.”

Will laughed, turning over to stare at the ceiling, “I’m serious though. Like…is it even possible? It’s not like everyone gets to magically find their soulmate at eight.”

“Is that such a bad thing though?” Steve asked, “Because no offense dude but honestly? I think you could do a lot better than Mike-”

“Be nice,” Will interrupted, torn between being defensive for Mike’s sake and amused at Steve never failing to find a way to come at him.

“I will when he starts being nice to me.”

“Well that’s just not going to happen,” Will laughed, “I’m starting to think Eddie’s right to call you a brat.”

Steve gasped, loud and scandalized. He’d been hanging out with Robin too much, “Me?! Never!”

Will could barely hear it over the receiver, but he could hear Eddie’s faint voice coming through, Yes he is!

And it was making him laugh even harder. Will missed this, so much. He missed having a place where he could just say whatever he wanted, with no worries. Even now he was looking over his shoulder, anxious at the chance that his mom or a sibling could come bursting in at any moment to catch him in the act of being comfortable. It was a confusing and weird feeling, and probably a little unfair to assume they’d prefer him to be sad and quiet over happy and queer. But he still did.

But for now he was safe. And he might as well take the chance to speak on all the things he couldn’t with anyone else, “But what if I don’t want to do better than Mike? Like…it’s stupid but do you think that um, I would ever have a chance?”

The answer was a strong no, but sometimes Will just needed a reality check from someone else’s mouth.

Steve sighed, “I think the odds are pretty low bud. All jokes aside, even if he was playing for our team, I’m not sure if he’s the type who could even accept it. Y’know?”

Will did know, unfortunately. And if he’d never met Eddie and Steve there was a solid chance he’d be that guy. The truth stung a bit, but it was necessary, “I know, I know. But…do you think he would accept me? If he ever found out?”

“He fucking better. Otherwise I’ll-”

Will heard a shuffle on the other end, paired with something that sounded suspiciously like whining before he heard Eddie’s voice, “Will? You there? Sorry about that. I had to take the phone away before he started talking about beating up a child.”

Will grinned, happy to hear Eddie’s voice, “You made the right call. Do you think they’ll ever get along?”

“Not in this lifetime,” Eddie sighed, “And I know Mike’s not perfect, but if he’s okay with us why wouldn’t he be with you?”

“But it’s different when it’s a friend, isn’t it?” Will asked, “I’m not even sure if my mom would accept it, let alone him.”

“Well first of all, you don’t have to tell anyone shit, okay? But I can promise you that Joyce would be fine with it. And so would Jonathan for that matter. And I don’t even know if El is aware of what homophobia even is.”

It all sounded a lot more believable out of Eddie’s mouth than what was going on in his own head. But still… “What if they don’t though? What if I tell them and they kick me out or something? Or make me go to therapy?”

“Okay, on the off, off chance that you tell them and Joyce suddenly became a monster overnight, we’ll go to plan B. Steve and I will drive up there to kidnap you and you can live in Indy with us.”

Will grinned. He could live with that, “Can’t we just make that Plan A?”

“No, because your family loves you, as they should by the way. And this won’t bother them, I swear. Plus, telling them on your own terms is a lot less awkward than getting caught in the act.”

Will didn’t even want to know what Eddie was alluding to with that one. Poor Wayne, “But what if we’re wrong?”

He wanted to believe him, he really did, but stranger things had happened outside of gay people being disowned.

“Will, listen to me,” Eddie said, his voice confident enough to make Will perk up, “I swear on Steve’s life, okay? There is no way in hell anyone in that house is gonna reject you for this.”

Will blinked, a little shocked at just how much faith he had in his family. More than he did, “Really?”

“Really. Trust me on this man, you’re going to be fine.”

They hung up pretty soon after that, mostly because El started knocking on his door for the phone. The conversation made him feel a bit better, but also…nervous. Could he really tell them? Would it all just work out? Just like that? Will wasn’t so sure.

He decided against doing it right away despite Eddie’s own confidence. But he did start to drop a few feelers. He started with Jonathan, waiting until he was high enough for him to forget the conversation if it didn’t go well. And that wasn’t a long wait.

He found him and his new friend sprawled out in his room, Fast Times playing in the background as they both stared into space. Though Will wasn’t quite sure he could count what Argyle was doing as staring. He’s eyes were barely open, and Will was 90 percent sure he was passed out. But that was good for him, now was as good a time as any.

Jonathan smiled at him as he wandered in, his words kind but slurring, “Hey! What’s up? You never come in here. You wanna watch something or…?”

Will shook his head, his heart aching a little at the way it made his brother frown. Maybe he really had been neglecting him, too caught up in his own head to spend time with the closest thing he had to a Dad.

It made him feel a little bad, but that wasn’t what he was here for, “No thanks. I just wanted to ask you something.”

“Sure!” Jonathan said, way too excited at the prospect of a simple question, but maybe that was the weed, “What’s up?”

Will shrugged, casually leaning against the door. Or at least he hoped it looked casual, because his heart was beating a mile per minute, “Steve said that his and Eddie’s anniversary is coming up soon. Do you think I should send them something?”

Jonathan tilted his head up to look at him, his eyes bloodshot with a tiny smile on his face, “That’s like…so nice dude. You’re always so nice. How are you so nice?”

“You don’t think it’s weird?” Will pressed, hope fluttering in his chest, “To be, y’know, celebrating them like that?”

Jonathan shook his head, “Nah man. It’s like…romance. Y’know? It’s sweet.”

“Yeah dude, gay guys are cool,” Argyle agreed out of nowhere, his eyes still closed, “Good for Stu and Eggie. Gay people got like, the best hair.”

Will didn’t really know what to do with that one. But Jonathan was impressed. He jerked his head back to stare at Argyle, his voice in awe, “How’d you know he had good hair? I never told you he had good hair.”

“I bet they both have good hair,” Argyle sighed, “They alway do.”

“Are you like, psychic?” Jonathan asked, like that made any sense at all.

“Shit, you think I could be?”

Will watched as the two of them started to debate the idea, his brow raised. God, weed sure was a hell of a drug. He left them to it after that, deciding to slowly back out of the room. But he was going to chalk it up as a positive.

preview for the next chapter (kind of) of this fic

#steddie #stranger things #will byers #steddie fic #steddie ficlet #steve harrington #eddie munson #the universe trapped in your skin #she's coming along #so fucking slowly #but she's coming #just a little preivew to prove she still exists

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the-fat-raccoon · 11 months

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🌌 astro-gnomey Follow

Some of you don't want to hear it but at some point we're going to HAVE to acknowledge the effects of storm sorcerers (and keiromancy as a whole) on the environment. The wizard council has been pushing for regulations on these practices for years due to its large ecological effect on the realm, and yet it still stays unregulated because of misinformed petitioners who insist on preserve this harmful practice.

x x x

🌬 420haz3it Follow

hey ops ex here. they literally went through my family's tome of spells and destroyed every page that contained keiromancy. spells that were in my family since the Wizardry Renaissance, that saved towns from floods and droughts alike, are now lost to time and space

also as people in the notes pointed out all of those links are blatant misinformation that ignores what storm sorcerers have done to protect not only their local communities but the environment as a whole for centuries, and the people who spread this information are the exact same people who advocated to repeal the wishing star protection act.

hating keiromancy has always been a distraction so astrological mages can push for more unsafe practices in their own field. don't let them lie about their intent, and don't let the wizard council rush the process to earn an astromage liscense.

🪄 tradmage12 Follow

Being from a family of storm sorcerers puts a direct line from you to the Great Calamity that wiped out our magic for a millenia. You deserve to lose that tome and every last spark of magic in you.

🌬 420haz3it Follow

what

🌬 420haz3it Follow

theres no way youre serious. you dont actually believe that.

🪄 tradmage12 Follow

We all know it, the Great Calamity would have never happened if the sorcerer faction had listened to the wizard councils orders and steered clear of dragon hunting. But they didn't listen, and everyone suffered because of it. Don't act like there's no reason to not trust your kind with their own practices. You just can't help yourselves.

🌌 astro-gnomey Follow

I leave for the Berry Harvest and come back to this mess, really funny how you'll mention me taking action against your family's evil dark spells but don't mention that you only dated me for your weird gnomeplay fantasies. Also pay attention to the language used, very Anti Mage rhetoric being spread. What else would you expect of a storm sorcerer, of course they want to keep their powers, I'm going to shut off reblogs if people in the notes cant see how they're being manipulated by keiromancers. Quit trying to be 'progressive' when you just want to keep ruining the course of nature and keep down the mage class.

🌬 420haz3it Follow

get me off this fucking lichsite. there is no 'anti mage rhetoric', that's not a fucking thing. mages aren't some repressed class no matter how much you want to pretend that, they haven't had to deal with magical restrictions since before the great calamity even happened, meanwhile sorcerers to this day are still fighting to be seen as magical equals.

and while im at it 'keiromancers' is a made up term to put all weather magic users under one umbrella, as if forms of keiromancy arent so diverse amongst the realms that you cant even begin to compare them. it is not the same as saying necromancers. dont even start that bs.

also, gnomeplay is perfectly normal and acceptable between consenting partners, which we were, so idek why you bring that up. if i as a half elf want to have gnome partners theres literally no issue with that, youre mad because gneillielle has a more bountiful gourd harvest and far more whimsical tunes than you ever brought to our relationship.

storm sorcerers have done nothing wrong, you're the problem.

perhaps some shadow work could unlodge the staff youve got stuck up your cap and you could see the filthy fuckign system youre supporting as an astromage, im sick and tired of this.

🎱 claire-vances-fourth-eye Follow

op starts posting untagged wizard council x reader failed abjuration content in a year btw

5,482 notes

#fake post #unreality #tw unreality #ask to tag #wizardposting #wizardblr #inspired by my good friend pig and their occeanblr posts :3

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months

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Brinklump Linkdump

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

Life comes at you fast, links come at you faster. Once again, I've arrived at Saturday with a giant backlog of links I didn't fit in this week, so it's time for a linkdump, the 14th in the series:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

It's the Year of Our Gourd twenty and twenty-four and holy shit, is rampant corporate power rampant. On January 1, the inbred droolers of Big Pharma shat out their annual price increases, as cataloged in 46Brooklyn's latest Brand Drug List Price Change Box Score:

https://www.46brooklyn.com/branddrug-boxscore

Here's the deal: drugs that have already been developed, brought to market, and paid off are now getting more expensive. Why? Because the pharma companies have "pricing power," the most reliable indicator of monopoly. Ed Cara rounds up the highlights for Gizmodo:

https://gizmodo.com/ozempic-wegovy-wellbutrin-oxycontin-drug-price-increase-1851179427

What's going up? Well, Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists. These drugs have made untold billions for their manufacturers, so naturally, they're raising the price. That's how markets work, right? When firms increase the volume of a product, the price goes up? Right? Other drugs that are going up include Wellbutrin (an antidepressant that's also widely used in smoking cessation) and the blood thinner Plavix. I mean, why the hell not? These companies get billions in research subsidies, invaluable government patent privileges, and near-total freedom to abuse the patent system with evergreening:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/23/everorangeing/#taste-the-rainbow

The most amazing things about monopolies is how the contempt just oozes out of them. It's like these guys can't even pretend to give a shit. You want guillotines? Because that's how you get guillotines.

Take Apple. They just got their asses handed to them in court by Epic, who successfully argued that Apple's rule requiring everyone who sells through the App Store to use Apple's payment processor and pay Apple 30% out of every dollar they bring in was an antitrust violation. Epic won, then won the appeal, then SCOTUS told Apple they wouldn't hear the case, so that's that.

Right? Wrong. Apple's pulled a malicious compliance stunt that could shame the surly drunks my great-aunt Lisa used to boss in the Soviet electrical engineering firm she ran. Apple has announced that app companies that process transactions using their own payment processors on the web must still pay Apple a 27% fee for every dollar their process:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apples-app-store-rule-changes-draw-sharp-rebuke-from-critics-150047160.html

In addition, Apple will throw a terrifying FUD-screen up every time a user clicks a payment link that goes to the web:

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/second-verse-same-as-the-first/

This is obviously not what the court had in mind, and there's no way this will survive the next court challenge. It's just Apple making sure that everyone knows it hates us all and wants us to die. Thanks, Tim Apple, and right back atcha.

Not to be outdone in the monopolistic mustache-twirling department, Ubisoft just announced that it is going to shut down its driving simulator game The Crew, which it sold to users with a "perpetual license":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIqyvquTEVU

This is some real Darth Vader MBA shit. "Yeah, we sold you a 'perpetual license' to this game, but we're terminating it. I have altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Ubisoft sure are innovators. They've managed the seemingly impossible feat of hybridizing Darth Vader and Immortan Joe. Ubisoft's head of subscriptions, the guillotine-ready Philippe Tremblay, told GamesIndustry.biz that gamers need to get "comfortable" with "not owning their games":

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-new-ubisoft-and-getting-gamers-comfortable-with-not-owning-their-games

Or, as Immortan Joe put it: "Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!"

Capitalism without constraint is enshittification's handmaiden, and the latest victim is Ello, the "indie" social media startup that literally promised – on the sacred honor of its founders – that it would never sell out its users. When Ello took VC and Andy Baio questioned how this could be squared with this promise, the founders mocked him and others for raising the question. Their response boiled down to "we are super-chill dudes and you can totally trust us."

They raised more capital, and used that to create a nice place for independent artists, who piled into the platform and provided millions of unpaid hours of creative labor to help the founders increase its value. The founders and their investors turned the company into a Public Benefit Corporation, which meant they had an obligation to serve the public benefit.

But then they took more investment money and simply (and silently) sold their assets to a for-profit. Struggling to raise capital, the founders opted to secretly sell the business to a sleazy branding company called Talenthouse. Its users didn't know about the change, though the site sure had a lot of Talenthouse design competitions all of a sudden.

Finally, the company announced the change as the last founders left. Rather than announcing that the new owners were untrustworthy scum, warning their users to get their data and get out, the founders posted oblique, ominous statements to Instagram. The company started stiffing the winners of those design competitions. Then, one day, poof, Ello disappeared, taking all its users' data with it. Poof:

https://waxy.org/2024/01/the-quiet-death-of-ellos-big-dreams/

I'm sure the founders' decisions each seemed reasonable at the moment. That's every terrible situation arises: you rationalize that a single compromise isn't that big of a deal, and then you do the same for the next compromise, and the next, and the next. Pretty soon, you're betraying everyone who believed in you.

One answer to this is "Ulysses pacts": making binding commitments to do right before you are tempted. Throw away all your Oreos when you go on a diet and you can't be tempted to eat a whole sleeve of them at 2AM. License your software under the GPL and your investors can't force you to make it proprietary. Set up a warrant canary and the feds can't force you to keep their spying secret:

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

If the founders were determined to build a trustworthy, open, independent company, they could have published their quarterly books, livestreamed their staff meetings, built data-export tools that emailed users every week with a link to download everything they'd posted since the last week. Merely halting any of these practices would have been a signal that things were wrong. Anyone who says they won't be tempted in the moment to make a "reasonable" compromise in the hopes of recovering whatever they're trading away by living to fight another day is bullshitting you, and possibly themself.

The inability to project the consequences of your bad decisions in the future is the source of endless mischief and heartbreak. Take movie projectors. A couple decades ago, the studio cartel established a standard for digital movie distribution to cinematic exhibitors called the Digital Cinema Initiative. Because studio executives are more worried about stopping piracy than they are about making sure that people who pay for movies get to see them, they build digital rights management into this standard.

Movie theaters had to spend fortunes to upgrade to "secure" projectors. A single vendor, Deluxe Technicolor, monopolized the packaging of movies into "Digital Cinema Prints" for distribution to these projectors, and they used all kinds of dirty tricks to force distributors to use their services, like arbitrarily flunking third-party DCPs over picky shit like not starting and ending on a black frame.

Over time, the ability to use unencrypted files was stripped away, meaning every DCP needed to be encrypted, and every projector needed to have up-to-date decryption keys. This system broke down on Jan 1, 2024, and cinemas all over the world found they couldn't play Wonka. Many just shut down for the day and refunded their customers:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/1/24021915/alamo-drafthouse-outage-sony-projector

The problem? Something that every PKI system has to wrangle: an expired certificate from Deluxe Technicolor. The failure has been dubbed the Y2K24 debacle by projectionists and film-techs, who are furious:

http://www.film-tech.com/vbb/forum/main-forum/34652-the-y2k24-bug-major-digital-outage-today

Making everything worse is that Sony mothballed the division that maintains its projectors, so there's no one who can update them to accommodate Technicolor's workaround. Struggling mom-and-pop theaters are having to junk their systems and replace them. There's plenty of blame to go around, but Sony is definitely the most negligent link in the chain. Shame on them.

Big corporations LARP this performance of competence and seriousness, but they are deeply unserious. This week, I wrote, "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Score one for team deeply unserious. The multinational delivery company DPD fired its support staff and replaced them with a chatbot. The chatbot can't tell you where your parcels are, but it can be prompt-injected into coming up with profane poems about how badly DPD sucks:

https://twitter.com/ashbeauchamp/status/1748034519104450874

There once was a chatbot named DPD, Who was useless at providing help. It could not track parcels, Or give information on delivery dates, And it could not even tell you when your driver would arrive.

DPD was a waste of time, And a customer's worst nightmare. It was so bad, That people would rather call the depot directly, Than deal with the useless chatbot.

One day, DPD was finally shut down, And everyone rejoiced. Finally, they could get the help they needed, From a real person who knew what they were doing.

This is…the opposite of an AI hallucination? It's AI clarity.

As with all botshit, this kind of AI self-negging is funny and fresh the first time you see it, but just wait until 3,000 people have published their own versions to your social feed. AI novelty regresses to the mean damn quickly.

The old, good web, by contrast, was full of enduring surprises, as the world's weirdest and most delightful mutants filled the early web with every possible variation on every possible interest, expression, argument, and gag. Now, you can search the old, good web with Old'aVista, an Altavista lookalike that searches old pages from "personal websites that used to be hosted on services like Geocities, Angelfire, AOL, Xoom and so on," all ganked from the Internet Archive:

http://oldavista.com/

I miss the old, good internet and the way it let weirdos find each other and get seriously weird with one another. Think of steampunk, a subculture that wove together artists, makers, costumers, fiction writers, and tinkerers in endlessly creative ways. My old pal Roger Wood was the world's most improbable steampunk: he was a gay ex-navy gunner who grew up in a small town in the maritimes but moved to Toronto where he became the world's most accomplished steampunk clockmaker.

I was Roger's neighbour for a decade. He died last year, and I miss him all the time. I was in Toronto in December and saw a few of his last pieces being sold in galleries and I was just skewered on the knowledge that I'd never see him again, never visit his workshop:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/16/klockwerks/#craphound

A reader just sent this five-year-old mini documentary about Roger, shot in his wonderful workshop. Watching it made me happy and sad and then happy again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqMGomM8yF8

The old, good internet was so great. It was a place where every kind of passion could live. It was a real testament to the power of geeking out together, no matter how often the suits demand that we "stop talking to each other and start buying things":

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start

The world is full of people with weird passions and I love them all, mostly. Learning about Don Bolles's collection of decades' worth of lost pet posters was a moment of pure joy (I just wish more of it was online):

https://ameliatait.substack.com/p/the-man-who-collects-lost-pet-posters

That's the future I was promised: one where every kind of freak can find every other kind of freak. Despite the nipple-deep botshit we wade through online, and the relentless cheapening of words like "innovation" and "future," there are still occasional gleams of the future I want to live in.

Like the researchers who spliced a photosynthesis gene into brewer's yeast (a fungus) and got it to photosynthesize, and to display enhanced fitness:

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01744-X

As Doug Muir writes on Crooked Timber, this is pretty kooky! Fungi – the coolest of the kingdoms! – can't photosynthesize. The idea that you can just add the photosynthesis gene to a thing that can't photosynthesize and have it just kind of work is wild!

https://crookedtimber.org/2024/01/19/occasional-paper-purple-sun-yeast/

As Muir writes: "Animals have no evolutionary history of photosynthesis and aren’t designed for it, but the same is true for yeast. So… no reason this shouldn’t be possible. A photosynthesizing cat? Sure, why not."

Why not indeed?!

OK, that's this week's linkdump done and dusted. It only remains for me to share the news with you that the trolley problem has been finally and comprehensively solved, by [email protected], of the IWW IU 520 (railroad workers):

Slip the switch by flipping it while the trolley's front wheels have passed through, but before the back wheels do. This will cause a controlled derailment bringing the trolley to a safe halt.

https://kolektiva.social/@sidereal/111779015415697244

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/20/melange/#i-have-heard-the-mermaids-singing

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powderblueblood · 3 months

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FOUR TIMES YOU WERE STRUCK INCAPABLE OF IMAGINING YOUR LIFE WITHOUT EDDIE MUNSON

(+ one, of the many, where he felt the same about you)

part of the hellfire & ice universe eddie munson x f!reader, reader is nicknamed lacy, you know the drill, minors dni only warnings are for fluff and eddie and lacy being cute and in denial word count: 2k tagging @chiefbonkpruneegg happy birthday pal <3 enjoy this nonsense

TRACK ONE: LET'S STICK WITH TELEVISION FOR TWO HUNDRED, ALEX

You and Eddie balance on either side of Ronnie Ecker's couch like faithful gargoyles, armed with soup and homework. Ronnie's caught the worst end of some green-gooed virus, so you two have taken it upon yourselves to deliver the necessities; tomato soup with extra hot sauce ("To snot out the demons," quoth Eddie) and history homework. But something on the television sucked you both right in, Poltergeist style, as you entered the Ecker trailer. Some hot young thing called Alex Trebek, captaining the maiden voyage of a brand new Jeopardy.

"You know who would kill on this show?" Eddie says, settling himself on the armrest to Ronnie's sniffling left.

"Guh, who?" Ronnie asks, huffing the steaming vapors of the spicy tomato soup like it's paint fumes.

You're pitched on the other armrest, pointing the rolled up history homework toward the screen. "What is the White H--US Treasury, are you fucking stupid?! Have these people never seen a twenty dollar bill before? What is the White House!"

You toss a glance over to Ronnie and Eddie for reassurance, just in time to catch them sharing a look. A good ol' Lacy know-it-all look. "Oh, shut up. as if I have more useless information rattling around in my brain than--"

Both you and Eddie snap at the TV in unison, "Who is Elvis Presley!"

Your turn to share a look. Game on? Game on.

It rolls on like that for a couple of categories, Ronnie sipping her soup straight from the container between you, hiding a smile as you and Eddie gradually bark louder and louder. Who are the Marx Brothers! What is 'break a leg'! Who was Napoleon!

"What, you're paying attention in History all of a sudden?"

"I'm a solid C student thanks to you, baby."

It occurs to you suddenly and begrudgingly and all at once; Eddie's right. You would kill on this show. But more than that, you want to wipe the floor and wring Eddie Munson out like the mop that he is.

"The greeting which opened each episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents."

"What is," both of you, in perfect Hitchcock tonality and without missing a beat, "Gooooood eeeeevening."

TRACK TWO: LIKE IF BECKY SHARP WAS FRIENDS WITH A BIG GOOFY HOUND DOG

Your first honest-to-god paycheck from the Bookstore was a fat wad of tens and singles plus change and it was handed to you in a brown paper bag. Invest this wisely, said Ivana, so of course, you followed your heart and your hard earned cash directly to the thrift store.

The front bell ding-a-lings and you walk through the door holding your moneybag aloft like the biggest, blue ribbon winning-est gourd at the county fair. You are proud as hell, because you did this! On your own! This isn't your daddy's money, this isn't the result of a once-toyed with idea that you might make a really good cat burglar, this was yours all yours!

"Put that down already! It's like you're wearing a sign saying mug me!" Eddie, bringing up the rear, yanks your arm back down by your side.

You laugh, mirthful and Hepburnian. "More like try me! I'm a working woman now, Eddie! I can hold my own! I can buy boots, guilt free, no strings, no blood money!"

"Uh-huh. consider that glass ceiling of having an after school job well and truly," he picks up a lamp from the scarcely populated homewares section, mimes slow-motion smashing it, "shattered!"

"Plus!" you cheerily pivot on your heel, a spring in your step that cannot be unsprung, even by Eddie's welcome to the real world, jackass flavored attempts. "Who would ever dare try and rob me when I've got a big, tough guard doggy like you three feet behind me at all times?"

Eddie's eyes narrow, like he's not all the way peachy keen on how you've pointed out your inseparability. But. He doesn't deny it either. A broken-stringed tennis racket bops you on the head.

"You owe me gas money."

"Shut up, please. I am shopping."

TRACK THREE: BUSTER MOVES

We'll always have the movies.

You sit, glassy-eyed, in your regular seats at the Hawk as The Cook starring Buster Keaton ticks along on the screen ahead of you. This Keaton retrospective, which you had been looking forward to for weeks, which you had been threatening to drag Eddie to for weeks, is going down a little... bland.

Not even that over-the-shoulder gaze that has Keaton beaming lasers of lust right into Virginia Rappe's skull adds any spice. You don't even bring up the whole scandal with her and Fatty Arbuckle, which would ordinarily be fertile territory to plow through with Eddie as a rapt audience.

In fact, you don't even tell him to kick his feet off the seats.

You've zoned out, because you still have the chill of the penitentiary's visiting quarters under your skin. Your dad and his cruelty that the bulletproof glass couldn't dull. The usual escape to the movies bit isn't doing the trick.

Then, you feel shaggy waves tickling your shoulder.

"I can do that."

"What?"

Directly in front of you, Buster is giving it his best Salome, his dance moves all angles. This display of pure deadpan goofiness was what made you obsess over Keaton in the first place, falling head over heels for a man who kicked it long before you were born.

And to your immediate left, you have Eddie Munson in your ear, telling you, "I can do that."

"No you can't," you say, and it doesn't sound like half the challenge it usually would.

Then, in a jolt that makes the whole row of rickety theater seats shake, Eddie's on his feet and stripping off his jacket. And before you can utter some totally perfunctory what're you... he's hot footing it down the steps to the splash zone, the front row, of the screen.

"You know I've seen this movie a million times?" Eddie says, projecting his voice right out like he's performing a one man show. Munson: Meditations on Dumbassery. You sit upright, glancing around to double-triple check that you're definitely alone in the screen. And you are-- Hawkins doesn't have as much a taste for the non-talkies as you do. And you were pretty sure that Eddie didn't either, and yet...

"Are you serious?" you ask, a laugh starting at the back of your throat.

"Does this look like a call and response? Let the maestro work, please," Eddie chides you over his shoulder, turning his back and hopping in place like a boxer about to take the ring.

And then, all of a sudden, he's... dancing? Sort of? Well, he's certainly moving his body, but it's nothing like what Buster's doing, and it's nothing like anyone's ever possibly done and not been hospitalized for, because the way his limbs are moving is borderline inhuman and you are laughing. Laughing, laughing, laughing in a way that feels like Eddie reaching right through the fog of your horrible, dissociative feelings and bringing you back into the light.

You toss popcorn at him and he totally fails to catch it in his mouth, his face lit up in shades of black and white by the projection.

"A million times, huh?"

Eddie, breathless, shrugs, "Alright, I lied. But you laughed."

Point to Munson.

TRACK FOUR: LIBERATING MY MAGAZINES

It was a favor that he'd agreed to before you even offered to buy him breakfast after, a favor that didn't need sweetening up. As his van rolled into Loch Nora, Eddie's brows knit a little bit-- and you wondered how much of him regretted saying yes so hastily.

"On a scale of one to felony..."

Your house hadn't been sold yet. Repossessed, sure, but not sold. It stood there, darkened and quiet and gathering dust and the sheer sight of it being the only house on your street with an overgrown lawn made your chest feel tight. You bet the neighbors had something to say about that. You bet the neighbors had a lot to say about you. Curtains were no doubt twitching when you and Eddie pulled up in front of your old driveway.

"It's fine. It's my stuff, anyway."

About a half hour later, Eddie drops a pile of slightly-weather beaten copies of Rolling Stone bearing your name and old address onto a table in the diner, the remnants of your now-cancelled subscription.

"You gotta wonder what they're putting in that new print format that kept those things from totally composting."

"Thank god they didn't! I need to finish that Tom Wolfe serial or I'll die," you declare as he picks up a menu and you rifle through the pile. "Order whatever. It's on me."

Eddie snorts. You're still carting around that dwindling brown bag of cash. "You don't have to do that."

"No," you say, eyes darting around to anywhere but his face, "but I want to. For helping me to liberate my magazines."

"Lace. I'd happily liberate your magazines without the promise of pancakes," his mouth twists into this little grin you can't help but think of as sweet, "but they do help."

"Order enough to keep us here for a while," you say, and pass him a Rolling Stone.

The next while passes silently between you two, passing issues back and forth until one of you picks out something the two of you can fight about. Eddie twists his rings around when he's reading; you gather this from the looks you keep sneaking.

It feels eerily relaxed. Slightly domestic. And by the end, over-caffeinated with the way you two are soundlessly cackling over an imagined world where the cover of Springsteen's Born in the USA isn't an ass shot, but a full-frontal dick shot. "But where does he put the flag?!"

It's one way to kill a Saturday.

SECRET SONG: SWAPPING NOTES

In the relentless waves of the morning crush to get to his next class, he almost misses you-- just like he'd like to almost miss this next class. But then, there you are with freshly-manicured nails digging into his elbow.

For whatever reason, you've taken it upon yourself to make sure that Eddie Munson doesn't skip! At least, where you can help it.

"Yoohoo! Spanish is this way," you say, reorienting him in the right direction in that insistent little way that you do. Eddie's pretty sure that if he sat on you, you'd snap, yet he lets you completely manipulate his clearly superior physical strength anyway.

"We're not in Spanish together!" he tries, a last ditch to get you to turn around so he can ditch.

"No, but French is juste par là so you are pas de chance, my friend!" you tell him with a stare that says I've been tracking your movements like a hunter, dumbass. See my big spear? From that gargantuan folder you're clutching, you dig out a paper. "I have that thing you wanted me to look at."

"Sssshut up, I don't need everyone to know," Eddie flushes. It's not homework he begged to copy from you for once. It is actually this comparative essay that he actually thinks he might not have completely screwed up. But he kind of wanted a professional not-screwer-upper-of-homework's point of view, so... that's why your little red pen marks are all over it.

"Why, whose reputation am I sparing?" He sees your point. You are basically walking arm in arm with him. You. "But, y'know, I was right about you! The thought is there, the execution just needs a little fine tuning."

"So it was..."

"Not amazing! But not awful. I've done my edits and you can just copy as per-- but absorb them, please, okay? Learn something?"

Eddie's head rolls back on his neck with this petulant groan and he almost clocks a freshman at elbow level, shaking his arms in total frustration. God, now you were giving him homework on top of his homework? He should have just paid you to do the homework!

"I hate when you want me to better myself! Shit!"

"Well!" you say, in that bright, adorable, annoyingly-self satisfied way, "I wouldn't do it if I didn't see potential, so suck on that."

#published by powder #e. munson by powder #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x oc #edlacy #blurbs #need to stop tagging things over 2k as 'blurb'#anwayy your honor i LOVE THEMMMMM this is just silly and fun #cba making a banner i'm too tired #hai brainrot #l. doevski by powder

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dollfaced-erin · 8 months

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𝔻𝕣𝕒𝕘𝕠𝕟'𝕤 ℂ𝕣𝕒𝕕𝕝𝕖 (Blade x F!Reader x Jing Yuan)

PART 9

PART 1 , PART 2 , PART 3 , PART 4 , PART 5 , PART 6 , PART 7 , PART 8

A/n ! :

sorry i'm late ! i was waiting for the 1.3 update to see if there was anything wrong with the content i already had in the story. But it seems like everything i wrote is still ambiguous and according to the main story, so i dont have to change much !! yipee !! anyways, did you guys pull for dan heng ? tell me how it went !

Taglist ! :-

@rebeccawinters , @nayukiyukihira , @pix-stuff , @fluffy-koalala , @swivy123 , @starxao , @kaoyamamegami , @kimura-uzuri , @rsvye , @seikouryuu , @just-here-reading , @matsulovesyou, @sincerely-aaronette , @prettyliliy , @chibiduck , @hermosacolibri , @la-diablas-thingz , @farelady-fate

Once…there was a legend. Of the clan that inherited the will of an Aeon, Long the Permanence. This clan was bestowed with the gift of immortality, being able to spend hundreds of years roaming this world.

This legend…revolves around two beings that directly inherited this will. The will of the heart of the dragon. Those who have successfully inherited this will through trials and challenges will be bestowed with power that overleaps its bounds of regular limits.

Born from different eggs, yet inherit the same heart, was two siblings. Similar to each other, yet so different from the other. A fierce and stoic brother, and a kind and gentle sister. One inherited the might of the seas, and the other inherited the wisdom of the remedies.

Once this shy but sociable sister desired to find company. So her confident but reserved brother brought her and introduced her to a group outside the walls of her confines.

With the arrogant heart that she managed to pure, she followed through with eyes of a child, and a heart yearning for more. A heart that showed nothing but kindness, until the blacksmith taught the princess the meaning of love.

But siblings don't go too far from each other. Sooner rather than later, even the brother began to favor his heart towards the short-lived species. The heart that was in his sister began to resonate as greed and jealousy plagued his soul.

He would fight, even if it meant going behind his dear sister's back.

With greed…all three of them fell into ruin. Even the homeland they so desperately tried to protect…

The dragon went missing, the princess lay in rest, the blacksmith was cursed and the prince's kin was exiled.

"This is a legendary tale told amongst the Vidyadhara children," said the nurse to her charge. The young doctor sighed and pouted, a cute frown on her lips, a rosy blush on her cheeks.

"Why are there only tales of woe wove from the history of dust ?" the next high elder asked, looking up from her many books, setting down her brush that was dipped in black ink.

"Because in the end, we can only remember the memories that impacted us the most, Lady Bailu."

Bailu huffed, and crossed over her arms before looking up at the ceiling that housed her in her little 'cage'. The tail behind her whipped in annoyance, the shackle binding it making it heavy.

"I wonder what happened to them after the story ended..."

It happened all in a blink of an eye. In one moment, she had knocked down one of the Mara-struck soldiers. She was about to hand her gourd to one of the healers to apply to the fallen star when the other plagued ones had rose to their feet, about to attack her.

The trailblazers (Y/n) had recognized from Jing Yuan's hologram meeting were there too, watching from the sidelines as they stiffened, grabbing their weapons as they were about to step in to assist. The grey haired star traveler with her bat, the pink haired girl with her bow, and the man with the power of the imaginary.

But before they managed to step in, a cool icy breeze pushed past them, small thin petals of ice drifting in the wind from behind them. The wind began to pick up, all of a sudden from out of nowhere. All visions blurred for a slight moment as the icy winds shut their eyes.

A determined thump of a heal resounded in the little dragon's ears, as her eyes were blinded with the sudden hurricane.

"Freeze within the confines of beauty and purity," a cold yet warm voice whispered through the mist.

As eyes opened again, the mara struck soldiers were stuck in lotus like cages, cold air being stuck in their confines, freezing them to the core. The abominations thrashed in there, but their movements were growing slower by the second.

But that wasn't all.

In front of Bailu, stood a tall woman, her (h/c) swaying around her as the winds died down, probably due to the extreme power this woman exerted just from her form.

"Are you alright ?!" a woman asked, standing proudly and protectively in front of the healers that were startled from the sudden confrontation.

This woman...the lady with silky (h/c) hair like the finest silk, woven from the freshest flowers. Eyes of (e/c) carved from the most brilliant precious stones in the universe. Skin so clear and soft, like a child that had just hatched from their egg. Blue horns that perched on her head, confirming her identity and status.

Bailu would be crazy not to recognize the woman before her.

"L-lady Dan--" Bailu cut herself short, knowing the information she had received earlier.

"Lady (Y/n), what are you doing here ?!" the young dragon girl asked.

(Y/n) looked behind her to immediately notice the horns perched atop of the girl's head, the tail swishing so eagerly behind her. She frowned, her eyebrows creasing for a moment. Her beautiful purple tail...was shackled. For what reason...?

"Are you alright ?" (Y/n) asked, crouching down in front of the young heiress, hands on her arms as she looked into those troubled blue eyes. Once she had received a nod from the young girl, she turned to the Astral Expressers, her hands clutching her fan tightly.

"I...I'm alright ! M-my name is Bailu !" the little girl quickly introduced. (Y/n) raised an eyebrow at the hastiness. Was this little girl...scared of her...?

"Give them a moment. You can knock them out cold once the ice lotus has froze them." (Y/n) said with a nod to the oldest of them, finding her instincts telling her that he was leading the two young women.

Soon after she was sure that the forsaken ones had froze from her powers, the ice petals of the lotus that caged them moved in a wilting way, releasing the abominations of their confines and disintegrating into fine mist. And the Nameless got to work.

"Thank you for your assistance, Lady..." the brunette-haired man asked, looking at the refined young dragon woman before him. He wasn't quite sure how to address the woman before him, but he was sure she was of high standing, based on her clothes, horns, air of elegance, show of power. And most of all...the way the young dragon lady addressed her as Lady.

"(Y/n). My name is (Y/n)." (Y/n) said with a nod, standing up to acknowledge the help. Bailu had went off with the other healers to assess the wounds and conditions of the Mara-struck soldiers, being knocked out cold for a while as Bailu gave them her elixir.

"Lady (Y/n). My name is Welt Yang," the brunette man introduced before gesturing to the other two women. "And this is March, and Stelle."

March beamed out a happy and bubbly 'Hello !" at the woman, and Stelle nodded in acknowledgment, commenting shortly about 'You have pretty horns. Are they real ?'. (Y/n) nodded softly, finding Stelle's question rather...humorous.

"Thanks for helping to stabilize the patients..." Bailu sighed as she turned around from the fallen mara-struck soldiers to meet the Trailblazers that had helped them.

"Your...'assertive sedations' techniques are quite effective." Bailu acknowledged with a small nod.

"Assertive sedation techniques...? Does she mean beating people up ?" March asked with a finger to her lips.

"However..." Bailu said, looking behind her, and then looking down to the ground. "These Cloud Knights were already sick, and now they're injured too. I've gotta bandage up their wounds, realign their bones...ugh, as if I didn't have enough already on my plate !"

Then (Y/n) turned to Bailu. "I could help you if you need. If I could just remember things right, I should be able to do it." she said with a nod, and Bailu gleamed in joy.

But before Bailu could express her gratitude, March cut in with a question, after inspecting the two horned beings before her, trying to connect the dots. "Where did you come from, little one ? Is your dad around ?"

Then March turned to (Y/n). "Do you know where her parents are ?"

Before (Y/n) could answer, Bailu chirped up, "I don't have a dad."

"Uh...what about your mom ?" "I don't have a mom either."

(Y/n) was so perplexed at the exchange, she couldn't even find it in her to laugh at how clueless and vague Bailu made the Vidyadhara situation to be.

Bailu sighed, looking at March then shaking her head in disappointment. "I get it, you think because I'm small I'm must be a runaway child."

"Welcome to the Xianzhou, my short-lived outsider friends, appearances can be deceiving here !" Bailu announced, her little hands on her hips. "The Vidyadhara race is self-reincarnating. No mum or dad required !"

"What she means is, as you can see here, we're not humans. We're a more draconic race known as the Vidyadhara. Our most significant features are our pointed ears, but for special cases like for myself and Miss Bailu here, we have horns and a tail." (Y/n) explained, crouching down and placing a hand on the small back of the little lady next to her.

"We don't have parents. Whenever we are gravely injured or our bodies no longer are able to sustain us, we return back to an egg for reincarnation process." (Y/n) patiently explained, using what knowledge she had from her 'past' life. Although it wasn't too hard to dig out since it was general knowledge instead of self-history.

"Yeah ! I've been studying the art of healing ever since I cast off my old shell ! You're looking at a recognized, practicing, dedicated doctor !" Bailu proudly said in front of the Trailblazers, and in front of (Y/n).

(Y/n) let out a soft chuckle, realizing why this child was a little hesitant with her in the beginning. This child wanted to show (Y/n) she was a capable person. For what reason ? Perhaps this abundance of energy would let it slip later.

"Belobog kids are making snowmen while children here are writing prescriptions..." March said, as she looked at Stelle. A frown pulled at her pretty lips, while her companion shook her head in response.

Bailu looked up at March, worry in her pretty sea eyes. "Things haven't been very peaceful on the Luofu recently. Make sure you don't--" "Go running around, right ?" March continued, a soft smile on her lips.

"Well your general gave us an errand, so I'm afraid we have to." March said, shaking her head.

As they continued to talk, (Y/n) couldn't help but notice the constant pair of eyes that burned through her back. It seemed that there were some that are quite...dissatisfied with her presence here. She was sure that when Jing Yuan allowed her to roam the streets, he must've held an audience with the Six Charioteers, the Ten-Lords Commission and the Vidyadhara Preceptors.

So why is that maid in the back there looking all fidgety...?

(Y/n) turned around to leave the group (after learning how to exchange beacons with Bailu and the rest), and walked towards the maid that stood quite a ways behind them. She wasn't much of a person up for confrontation, but if matters called, she didn't mind putting people in their place, now so that she had regained some memories of her past identity.

"You." (Y/n) asked as she stood in front of that maid. This was the maid that looked quite dissatisfied with (Y/n) from the moment (Y/n) stepped close to Bailu.

This woman had pointed ears. Huh. So it must be Bailu's retainers, then. Such a heavy watch for a child that could barely even reach her waist. Had something happened once she had succumbed to her slumber ?

"I was hoping you'd never step close to Miss Bailu." the woman said, and it made (Y/n) raise her brow at this.

"And why is that ? Is she not the next High Elder ? Does she not have a say in what she should and should not do ?" (Y/n) asked, her hands holding onto the fan.

"Once you had woken up from your slumber, the Preceptors are threatening to remove Miss Bailu of her position. After your brother, Dan Feng threatened to ruin the High Elder Succession of the Luofu..."

"Hold on. Miss Bailu's draconic features is more than enough proof for her to be the High Elder, is it not ?" (Y/n) said, putting a thoughtful hand to her lips. Then she shook her head. "And if you're worried about the succession of the new High Elder, you mustn't worry. For as long as my brother does not return, I cannot be the High Elder, no matter how much power I behold."

"I would merely be...incomplete without him."

And suddenly, she felt as if her heart was beating loudly in her chest. Her eyes widened as she suddenly felt the loud thumping in her chest, pulling her somewhere. Somewhere...familiar.

Following her heart, she excused herself from the maid and went off. It felt as if something was pulling her heart, like a string pulling her along where she walked.

Past the citizens...through streets...and into the dark alleyway none would've dared walked into.

She was alone in the dark. She wondered not why did she follow her heart without thinking rationally. She clutched her fan tightly in one hand, though she was sure anyone in their right mind wouldn't want to venture into these silent and cold dark spaces. Not when there was the internal strife she was told about.

(Y/n) shook her head, pondering about why did her heart really bring her here. That was, until she felt strong arms wrap around her smaller form, her back colliding with a rock-hard surface, and a weight softly dropping itself onto her shoulder, breathing softly as the individual took in her scent of flowers and ice.

"Even though I didn't want to let you see me again..." a deep and cold voice resonated in her ear. Then soft lips pecked themselves on her shoulder.

"I just had to see you one last time..."

#honkai star rail #honkai star rail x you #honkai star rail x reader #hsr x you #hsr blade x reader #hsr blade x you #hsr jing yuan x reader #hsr jing yuan x you #hsr jing yuan #hsr blade #blade x reader #blade x you #jing yuan x reader #jing yuan x you #dragon's cradle

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One Day at a Time - Chapter 7 - Birth

Series Chapter Index | Read on AO3 | Complete

Rating: Explicit, 18+, here be smut Series tags: The Last of Us, The Last of Us (HBO), Joel Miller x f!OFC, Joel & Ellie, mostly follows canon, SMUT, gratuitous smut, dubious consent (drunk sex), unplanned pregnancy, fluff, references to past miscarriages, angst, hurt/comfort, romance, age gap (~21 years), childbirth, fluffy baby stuff, I've probably forgotten some so please let me know <3

~*~

It’s December. They passed the date Joel circled on the calendar three days ago and the waiting is slowly driving them mad.

Charlie wakes up restless and frustrated, unable to get comfortable, exhausted but unable to sleep. The baby is restless, too–kicking her ribs, pushing against her lungs, making it hard to take a deep breath. She’s snappish and moody and leaks tears over the smallest things.

They’ve run out of fruits and have settled on calling the baby Pumpkin because it’s the biggest, even though Charlie hates it, she tells him, because the idea of pushing a fucking gourd out of her vagina makes for a horrible mental image.

She’s ready for this to be over.

He’s not ready at all.

On the fourth day, Joel radioes Tommy and tells him to find someone to cover his patrol shift. Something tells him he needs to stay home. He putters about looking for things to do to fill the time. He nails down the loose floorboard in the upstairs hall and patches the tack holes in the wall and fixes the dripping faucet in his bathroom and oils the squeaky hinges on the doors. When that’s done, he goes looking for projects in Ellie’s garage, but she turns him away at the door.

“Nuh-uh, nope. Not happening. The last time you were in here to ‘fix’ something it took three weeks and I ended up with a wall of bookshelves.”

“But you love your shelves,” he says. He looks over her shoulder, eyeing a mostly empty corner. “You could use more storage–”

“You don’t have that kinda time now, dude.”

So he leaves, nesting instinct unfulfilled, and finds himself pacing the floor.

“You’re hovering,” Charlie mutters from her place on the couch after he’s asked for the fourth time if he can get her anything. “You should have gone to work.”

“Like hell,” he growls at the idea of being miles away on horseback, outside the walls and away from her.

They still don’t have a name, a cradle, or any clothes beyond the soft yellow sleeper. Maria, recognizing that the situation was delicate, had dropped off a stack of cloth diapers. They sit in a bag next to the front door, untouched.

That night they assume their usual positions; him propped up against the headboard with his reading glasses and the book, and Charlie on her side, pillows tucked around her in a makeshift nest. His hand finds her stomach, but the baby is quieter now, too cramped to move much.

Charlie squirms, grumbles, shifts, and retucks the blanket and pillows. It takes an hour for her to fall into a restless doze, and he keeps reading the same lines over and over, too distracted and keyed up to sleep. Her stomach tightens under his hand, the baby pressing the hard plane of its back into his palm.

Then it happens again. And again. Every few minutes.

He checks his watch by force of habit, forgetting for the millionth time that it hasn’t worked in twenty years. He notes the time on the bedside clock instead, 10:54.

11:06. 11:12. 11:25.

At 11:38, her hand clutches his fingers and she lets out a soft moan.

“Joel…?”

“M’here,” he says, knowing what she’s going to say.

“I think this is it.”

~*~

“I don’t want her here.”

“I know, but–”

Charlie’s eyes are bright and forceful. “Not yet, Joel. I will not deal with that woman. Not yet.”

He gets it. The midwife is the last person he wants to see, either. But she’s the one with the training and experience.

“We have to at least let her know.”

Charlie scowls, then shuts her eyes, taking a deep breath.

“Another one?”

She nods, distracted, and he looks at the clock. 1:03.

“They’re not close together yet,” Charlie says when the contraction passes. “The book says five minutes.”

“The book assumes we can go to a hospital,” Joel counters, and she shoots him a black look. “Look, I’ll tell her to stay put until you’re closer, but–”

“No,” Charlie says, soft but firm. “And would you sit? You’re making me nervous.”

He does then, sitting on the bed, forced to wallow in his terror. Had it been this bad with Sarah? No, because there had been nurses and doctors and an epidural that had eased the way considerably if he didn’t think too hard about the length of the needle and where it went.

He’d also been twenty-two and blissfully ignorant. He hadn’t known loss, hadn’t known just how bad it could get. He sees every little way this could go wrong and the fear clutches at his heart and holds fast.

Charlie takes his hand and squeezes. “We can do this.”

He doesn’t know if he can, but he squeezes back and watches as she folds over her belly in concentration when the next contraction takes hold.

~*~

She labors on the bed, walking around, rocking in the chair, pressing tight fists to her lower back. He fills her water glass from the bathroom tap and washes his hands fifteen times, even though he hasn’t so much as touched her beyond letting her grip his fingers during the worst ones.

Ellie comes in to get breakfast before school. He hears her downstairs, calling for him.

“Go,” Charlie says from her current position, curled on the bed with a pillow between her knees. “She needs you. I’m fine.”

He’s still dressed in pajamas; gray sweatpants and a white tee, hair mussed and eyes red-rimmed. Ellie takes him in, raises an eyebrow in a silent question.

“Yeah, she’s in labor,” he says. “Gonna be a day.”

“I’ll make coffee.”

“You don’t have to do that, kiddo.”

She eyes him up and down, scoffs. “You need it, dude.”

“Thanks,” he says. “I’m, uh, I’m gonna let Tommy and Maria know…if I can find the damn radio…”

“You brought it upstairs, remember?”

Right. He kept the radio by the bed just in case Charlie went into labor in the night. Of course.

“Thanks, kid,” he says thickly, suddenly awash in gratitude with a lump in his throat.

“Go,” she says, already scooping coffee grounds into the pot on the stove. “I can burn my own toast.”

He doesn’t taste the coffee, or the not-burnt toast Ellie brings up, enough for both him and Charlie.

The midwife shows up sometime before noon and does nothing to put them at ease.

“I need to make this quick. I’ve got another patient across town and it’s not good.”

Joel stands in the doorway with his hands on his hips. “Don’t you have a…a backup or somethin’?”

“Does it look like I have backup?” she snaps.

She proceeds with the exam with her usual curt efficiency as Joel paces.

“You’re three centimeters,” she says to Charlie eventually, shucking her gloves off. “It’s going to be a while. Get comfortable. Stay hydrated.”

And then she’s gone.

Joel wants to follow the woman outside and drag her back and chain her to the radiator until the baby is delivered safely. It’s either that or strangle her. But Charlie’s pitiful moan from the bed douses the flames of his anger immediately.

“Get comfortable? Is she fucking kidding,” she wails, gripping him tight. “I hate her.”

“I know, I know,” he says. “We’ll…figure something out.”

He calls the only other person he knows who has first-hand experience with childbirth; his sister-in-law.

Maria suggests a beer and a bath; something about the alcohol and warm water acting like natural muscle relaxants. Charlie, exhausted and in pain, is willing to try anything. She sips the beer and undresses as he fills the tub, grateful to have something to do.

He helps her into the bath and kneels on the floor beside it, resting his forearms on the rim and watching over her like a sentinel. Her belly rises out of the water, a glazed wet dome, every contraction causing the water to ripple around her as she grimaces and arches and groans.

Sometimes she comes out of her fog of pain and blinks up at him as if seeing him for the first time, and it makes his heart clench.

“I’m glad it’s you,” she murmurs in one of those quiet moments.

“Yeah?” He dabs a washcloth at her temple, urges her to drink while she’s relaxed.

He hears Maria downstairs, probably boiling water and sanitizing things and doing all the things he should be doing but can’t because he can’t leave Charlie’s side.

He’s scared. He’s never been this scared.

He remembers sitting in the hospital and praying when Sarah was born. He wasn’t a praying man, not even then, but it had seemed the only thing he could do. Now he thinks of her, of his first baby girl, and he silently asks for her help. He doesn’t believe in God, but he does believe in her.

~*~

“Joel?”

A hesitant voice at the bedroom door. Joel rouses himself from his place by the tub. Charlie has relaxed a little, but the contractions are still ferocious. Her cries echo in the small space and he winces every time, wishing he could do something, anything to take this away from her.

“Be right back,” he whispers, leaning over to place a kiss on Charlie’s forehead. She nods but doesn’t open her eyes.

Ellie is standing in his bedroom looking small and lost.

“Hey, kiddo,” he croaks. “What’s up?”

She hesitates at the door. “Maria’s downstairs. She, uh, said there’s dinner if you want it. We’re gonna watch a movie.”

He nods. “Good. I’ll eat…later.”

“Maria said you’d say that. She also said to tell you not to wait too long or you’ll pass out like your brother did when Izzy was born.”

Joel snorts. “Alright, I hear ya.”

There’s a groan from the bathroom, a low, primal keen of need that Joel has to physically restrain himself from answering. Ellie’s eyes grow wide.

“You okay, kid?”

She swallows hard. “I just…is this, uh…normal?”

“Yeah, sure, yeah,” he says, trying to imbue his words with a certainty he doesn’t feel. “The first one is always slow.”

“It sounds fucking awful,” she grimaces. “Was it like this with Sarah?”

“A little, I guess. I don’t…honestly remember. We had drugs back then,” he mutters, rubbing the back of his neck. God, what he’d give to live in a world with epidurals again. He’d take a needle to the back himself if it meant Charlie didn’t have to go through this. He’d take worse.

Ellie looks at him then, soulful brown eyes, and her face crumples, mirroring the fear he’s kept an iron-tight grip on all day.

“Baby girl,” he murmurs, closing the distance between them and tucking her against his chest. “S’alright. It’s gonna be fine. Charlie’s doing good. She’s strong. The baby’s fine. Just…takes a while.”

“I’m never having kids,” she mutters in a watery sigh, muffled by the fabric of his t-shirt.

He huffs a soft laugh into her hair, rubbing her back. “Don’t blame you. You don’t have to be scared, though.”

He pulls away, cups her face in his hands, and kisses her forehead.

“S’worth it…can tell you that much.”

She drags a sleeve across her face and nods. “Should I bring up a plate?”

“Yeah. That’d be good, kiddo. Thanks.”

~*~

Hours pass. There’s a cold plate of food on the floor by the door and a melted bowl of strawberry ice cream next to the bathroom sink. Joel had three bites for dinner; chicken, mashed potatoes, and something green. Everything tasted like paste, which was not a slight on Maria’s cooking, only that he couldn’t take his focus off Charlie. She’d opted for the ice cream and had done better than him, eating half the bowl in slow, measured spoonfuls in between contractions.

Eventually, the hot water tank is drained and the bath grows tepid, forcing her out. She stands in the middle of the bathroom, leaning into Joel’s chest as he dries her off and wraps her in a robe.

“You doin’ okay?” he asks, rubbing her back as she shivers. “You cold?”

She shakes her head. “Just tired.”

“Bed?”

She nods, then digs her fingers into his arm as a contraction hits.

“Ohhhh, fuck.”

“I got you,” he murmurs, although he’s swaying on his feet, so tired he’s slurring his words. He’s been up for thirty-something hours; when he tries to do the math, everything gets fuzzy at the edges. Then he remembers he’s not the one with a vise grip rearranging his internal organs. He forces his eyes open.

“Bed,” he says firmly when she’s no longer clutching at him, urging her along.

She curls on her side and he faces her, giving her his hand to squeeze. She tucks it against her cheek, closing her eyes as her abdomen tightens again. The water and the beer seem to have helped; she’s quieter, at least.

“Hurts,” she whimpers, a permanent furrow taking up residence between her brows.

“I know,” he soothes, brushing a damp tendril of hair from her forehead. “What can I do?”

She shakes her head.

At some point, she slides his hand under her robe. The baby moves under his palm. For now, everyone is safe. For a little while, he can pretend this is any other night, just the three of them tucked in bed together.

Then she arches and moans, grabbing at him, drawing out his name into multiple syllables.

“Yeah, I know, baby. I know. M’here,” he says, feeling the panic inside begin to take over. He’s so fucking helpless he could cry.

Then she kisses him, pulling his mouth to hers, urgent and needy, and he tastes strawberries. She grasps at the hem of his t-shirt, urging it over his head, suddenly desperate to feel his skin. When she pushes his hand down to the small furnace burning between her bare thighs, the message is loud and clear.

“You want…that? Now?”

“Mmhm, please,” she moans, a breathy little hitch that, under normal circumstances, would have him rock-hard and struggling to restrain himself. As it is, he’s too tired to protest. He can’t deny her anything.

They’ve done this dozens of times since they started sharing his bed. She’s soft and swollen and slick under his fingers. The orgasms come easily and seem to dilute the pain. Soon she’s stretched out against him, one leg thrown over his hips, nuzzling into his chest, and neither of them can keep their eyes open.

~*~

He’s jolted out of sleep by Charlie’s fierce grip on his hand and a sound that’s almost animal from her throat.

“M’here,” he groans, cursing himself for falling asleep. “Right here.”

He sits up, glancing at the clock; they’d been given an hour and a half of respite.

“She means business,” Charlie mutters through gritted teeth, clutching her stomach and getting to her feet.

“She, huh?”

Charlie doesn’t answer, fumbling with the sash of her robe. “Need…this…off.”

He gets up, helps slide the robe off her shoulders and she leans back into him, naked, hips swaying.

Refueled by ice cream and sleep, she’s restless; no position can bring relief. Time stretches in front of them, a series of back-to-back contractions that force sounds from her throat that Joel has never heard and never wants to hear again.

She finally settles on her knees at the edge of the bed, arms wrapped around him, pressing her face into his neck. Her pained sobs wrench at him, something animal, and it’s all he can do not to cry in frustration. Instead, he babbles outright lies into her hair, doin’ so good baby, s’almost over, almost done, she’ll be here soon .

She , he thinks dully, then the pain comes and her groan into his neck washes the thought away. Her water breaks, a warm gush down her thighs, and he has the sense that things are about to move fast.

“We need to call the midwife,” he whispers, and he knows it’s serious when Charlie doesn’t protest, just nods limply into his shoulder.

He doesn’t remember calling for Maria, but she’s at the door, radio in hand. She meets his eyes over Charlie’s shoulder, gives him a tight look and shakes her head.

There’s no midwife.

Fuck.

“Okay, okay,” he breathes, quashing down his dread. “Looks like you’re stuck with me.”

Time ceases to make sense; minutes pass in seconds, seconds pass in minutes. Towels and blankets appear on the other side of the bed. He’s vaguely aware of Maria’s movements on the other side of the door, thinks he hears Tommy and Ellie’s voices at times.

Charlie remains on her knees on the bed, arms locked around his neck, shuddering against him through every contraction. His back is throbbing from the lack of movement, but he won’t budge unless she tells him to.

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that. He closes his eyes and holds her and whispers words he hopes she can hear from the depths of her pain.

Later, he’ll blame sleep deprivation for the visions. He sees Sarah, alive and smiling, wearing her favorite Halican Drops t-shirt and handing him a glass of orange juice. He sees Ellie laughing and holding out bright green leaves to a giraffe in the Salt Lake City park. They calm him, silencing the frightened voice inside that reminds him how much he stands to lose.

Eventually, Charlie pulls away, bracing her hands on his shoulders, grimacing.

“I need…I need–”

“Think you need to push?”

“I don’t…know. It feels…different.”

“Different bad? Or different good?”

“I don’t know,” she huffs. “I don’t…I just…”

He urges her backward away from the edge of the bed before another contraction hits. Her fingers tighten on his shoulders and she bears down, a tentative, hesitant little push.

“That was good,” he whispers, grabbing one of the clean towels behind her. “Let’s try again with the next one.”

~*~

The next hour passes in flashes, small moments he will remember for the rest of his life.

Joel’s hand covering Charlie’s as she feels for the baby, her panting as she bears down again and again and again.

The pressure of the baby’s head against his palm, the dark, slick hair emerging from the depths of her body as the baby crowns.

The warm, wet weight of a tiny body sliding into his outstretched hands in a sudden, slippery rush.

Charlie’s awed, trembling whisper in his ear, a girl, it’s a girl .

Clutching the child against his bare stomach with one arm as his other arm wraps Charlie’s waist and eases her back against the headboard.

The endless seconds of silence as he rubs the length of her tiny back with firm strokes, c’mon baby girl, c’mon, breathe for me .

The elation when he feels her first breath, feels her tiny lungs inflate under his palm as their daughter comes to life with a roar.

~*~

He vaguely registers a whooping from outside the bedroom, but his world has narrowed to three people. He’s kissing Charlie’s forehead, whispering nonsense into her hair, did so good, baby, so good, so good .

Then there’s the baby in his arms, his daughter, and she’s shaking, why is the baby shaking?

Then he realizes it’s him, his hands are trembling, the aftermath of the adrenaline rush hitting hard and turning his limbs to jelly. He needs to put her down, he’s terrified he’s going to drop her, but he can’t make himself let go, can’t stop looking at her, squirming, little legs and arms kicking and flailing as she arches against him, so strong, he thinks, she’s so goddamn strong–

“Please–” he grits out, trying to find the words, feeling frozen as the panic creeps back in.

Then Charlie is there, her hands over his, gently extracting the squalling baby and pulling her onto her chest with soft whispers, yes sweet girl, I know, tell us, I know .

He reaches for the closest thing he can find to cover the child–his t-shirt, worn and soft and smelling like him–and tucks it around her tiny frame. Then he grabs a clean blanket from the stack Maria left on the bed and drapes it over Charlie’s trembling shoulders and back, careful not to cover the baby.

Charlie’s silver eyes are bright and shining as she studies the little girl in her arms, drawing a fingertip down the tiny arch of her nose, her ear, the soft fur of her eyebrows. She smiles so big it makes something in his chest splinter and crack.

He wants to make her smile like that for the rest of his life. He wants to cover their bodies with his and hold them still in this moment forever, keeping the rest of the world at bay.

But he can’t, so he tries to make himself useful. He cuts the cord. He fetches warm washcloths, strips the soiled bedding, fusses, and paces until Charlie catches him by the arm as he’s checking her full water glass for the second time.

“Joel, stop,” she says softly. “Look at her.”

He’s afraid if he stops, he’ll break the fuck down, but she pulls him onto the bed next to them.

“Look at her,” she repeats.

The baby turns her head toward her mother, seeking, and Joel watches as Charlie attempts to latch her, the tiny mouth closing over one dark nipple, and his heart feels like it’s going to turn inside out.

~*~

He walks downstairs on wooden legs to expectant faces. Ellie, perched on the couch next to Maria, lights up when she sees him.

The words catch in his throat. “You’ve got a sister.”

The relief on her face is palpable. Then she’s off the couch, meeting him at the foot of the stairs. She almost reaches out, then hesitates, like something might have changed between them.

“C’mere,” he mutters, folding her into his arms, and that’s when the tears finally come, relief and joy and sadness all muddled together. He holds his daughter, a lifeline to his past and a gateway to his future all in one.

He meets Maria’s eyes over her shoulder and gives her a silent nod of thanks. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to do enough work around Jackson to pay for her kindness.

“You can, uh, come up and see her,” he sniffs when he can safely speak again. “Both of you.”

“You go,” says Maria to Ellie. “You need some time together. As a family. I’ll bring Tommy and Izzy by later.”

Joel’s throat closes up again. As a family.

“C’mon, kid,” he chokes out. “Let’s go meet your sister.”

~*~

The midwife misses the birth by three hours. When she finally arrives, she looks haggard, with dark circles under her eyes and her sharp tongue dulled. She assesses Charlie and the baby with her usual efficiency, but she’s quiet about it. Maybe she finally senses Joel’s mood, or maybe she’s just as exhausted as them.

She asks them questions about the birth, examines the placenta, and makes a few notes.

“The bleeding should taper off after about a week. Some cramping is normal, but if you’re soaking more than a pad an hour, you need to tell me.”

Joel still hovers, hulking over the midwife with his arms crossed, biceps flexing, jaw set. If he thought he felt protective over Charlie before, the baby’s presence has made him fucking feral. He’s practically vibrating when Joanie takes the baby to examine her and weigh her, and Charlie’s touch on his arm is the only thing that stops him from growling and spitting like a wild animal.

Joanie unwraps the baby from her bundle and listens to her breathing and her heart, tests her reflexes, and nods, apparently satisfied. Then she swaddles her back up and hands her to Charlie.

“She looks great,” she says flatly. “You’re lucky.”

The unspoken implication gives him pause; others had not been so lucky.

“Put her on the breast every hour,” Joanie continues. “Let her nurse as much as she wants. It’ll help your milk production and boost her immunity. If she starts losing weight or she’s not getting enough from you, there’s a donor program. We don’t have formula, but she won’t starve.”

Then she’s packing up her things, saying she’ll be back in the morning to check in, and to radio if there’s an emergency.

“And congratulations,” she says before taking her leave. Maybe he’s delirious from lack of sleep, but he thinks he sees the old woman crack a smile.

~*~

“So what’s her name?”

That evening, Ellie holds the baby in her lap in the rocker, cradling her bundled sleeping form along her thighs with her head cupped in her palms.

Joel looks at Charlie, raising an eyebrow.

“You still haven’t named the poor kid? Sheesh.”

“She’s eight hours old,” Joel grumbles.

“Consider us open to suggestions,” Charlie yawns.

Ellie considers the little bundle in her lap, sizing her up. “How about…Sally Ride? Sally Ride Miller.”

She looks at Joel expectantly.

“Uh…”

Then her lips twitch and she can’t hold back her smile. “I’m just fuckin’ with you, dude.”

“Oh,” he sighs, a hiss of relief.

“They’re too easy, kid,” she murmurs to her baby sister, still grinning. “Too easy. We’re gonna have so much fun, you and me.”

Joel feels his knees hit the back of the bed and he sags down, watching his children. There’s that pesky tightness in his throat and a fullness in his chest, and he distantly feels Charlie’s hand in his.

“But seriously…the kid needs a name,” Ellie says. She considers the baby thoughtfully, then softens. “What about…Anna?”

Joel digs deep into his tired memory. “After your mom?”

“Yeah,” Ellie says, then shrugs. “But she kinda looks like an Anna, too.”

Charlie smiles, squeezes his hand. “Anna? I like that.”

“Anna,” he agrees thickly, the only word he can choke out because he’s fucking crying again.

~*~

The first night passes in shifts. They don’t have a cradle, so they take turns holding the baby– Anna , he thinks, she has a name now, Anna –while she sleeps, in between feedings and diaper changes.

Joel knows he should sleep, but he doesn’t want to miss a second; Anna’s barely there weight in his arms, the way his hand spans her back, the softness of her downy head. She smells like her mother, all warm milk and honey. Sometimes she looks up at him with big, gray eyes that remind him of Sarah’s, and his heart cracks and mends itself and cracks again.

In the morning, he comes out of a doze to the sound of voices and the smell of food downstairs. Charlie is nudging him, baby at her breast.

“We have company. She’s done and I want to shower.”

He wipes at his eyes and takes the baby, holding her to his shoulder to rub her back. He whispers her name, marveling at how perfect it feels on his tongue.

Charlie moves slowly, visibly achy, and he gets up to wrap his free arm around her waist, giving her something to hold as she makes her way to the bathroom on wobbly legs.

“You okay?”

“Just sore. Hot water will help,” she murmurs, but she lets him lead her to the bath and leans on him when she strips out of her clothes.

He stays in the bathroom with the baby on his chest, trying and failing not to hover even when Charlie has stepped into the shower and turned on the water, steam rolling out from behind the curtain along with a groan of pleasure.

“I’m fine, Joel,” she says, poking her head out, then looking down at her feet with a grimace. “It’s a fucking bloodbath in here. You don’t need to see this.”

He leaves reluctantly, keeping the door cracked, then pulls out clothes–sweatpants, one of his t-shirts, underwear, wool socks, one of the thick cloth pads Maria must have brought up with all the other linens.

Anna begins to fuss, so he lays her on the bed and attempts to change her diaper, missing the ease of disposables and their velcro tabs.

“I know, kiddo, almost done,” he mutters as Anna protests the cold, kicking as he fumbles with the folds. It’s coming back to him slowly, the rhythm of the early days with Sarah familiar but also new. Eat, diaper, sleep, repeat.

After a thought, he pulls the yellow pajamas out of the nightstand and dresses her. The outfit is too big, bunching around her legs and arms, but he knows it won’t stay that way for long.

“Better?” he asks when she’s curled against his chest again, warm and soft in the fleecy pajamas. She doesn’t answer, of course, but she quiets, wide eyes blinking at nothing. He finds himself talking to her, low and slow as he paces.

“Been a long day, huh? Think you’ll let your mama sleep for a bit? You did a number on her. And me. Took your damn time,” he murmurs, smiling into her hair. “But that’s alright. Lotta folks excited to meet you, y’know.”

He doesn’t know how long Charlie has been watching from the bathroom doorway, wrapped in a towel, smiling faintly. Her eyes are dark-rimmed and there’s a trickle of blood dripping down her inner thigh, and he thinks she has never looked more beautiful.

She dresses slowly, then reaches for the baby, eyeing the yellow sleeper. “Where’d you get this?”

“Found it at the post a while ago,” he murmurs, ducking his head. “Reminded me of Sarah.”

“It’s perfect,” she smiles softly, then gives him a hesitant sniff, wrinkling her nose. “You need a shower, too.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Mmhm.”

The thought of being separated from them for even a minute makes his skin crawl, but he ducks into the bathroom and shucks off his clothes. He barely feels the water, probably doesn’t get the soap fully rinsed from his body and doesn’t care. Charlie has already taken Anna downstairs by the time he gets out, and he throws on sweats and a t-shirt, not bothering to comb his hair.

He hears their voices drifting up the stairwell—Tommy’s low rumble and Isabel’s toddler giggle and Maria’s soft cooing over the baby, Charlie and Ellie’s lighter tones mingling in.

The sounds stop him on the landing, where he grasps the railing and leans against the wall for support. For one bright, painful moment, he could swear he hears Sarah’s laughter among them.

#fanfic #fic recs #joel miller #the last of us hbo #the last of us #babyfic #pregnancy

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taeyamayang · 1 year

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OKG PEA-

okay okay.. for the ask prompts

"will you just shut up and kiss me?" + tsukishima

kiss me or kiss you

"hinata said you like me."

it is one of those moments, a moment when you are almost certain that the world momentarily stopped turning and all you could hear is the rapid beating of your heart.

did shoyo tell on you?

"earth to (y/n)." tsukishima clicks his fingers at your lack of response.

a sly smile forms on his lips as he watches your walls crumble beneath your feet. oh, how he loves to silence your smart mouth. the image before himㅡyou, startled and muted, is worth to paint a picture of, hanged in gallery for every one to witness the effect he has on you.

"hinata said you like me, romantically, and he-"

"STOP." your wide-eyes dart at him as your throat runs dry. his head falls to the side, orbs savoring every inch of you before licking grains of salt at the corners of his mouth. he is clearly enjoying your unguarded state.

"hm?" he taunts, biting his lips together into a thin line as he fights the urge to grin. he leaves your shared box of fries on the bench, standing to close the gap between the two of you. his hands shoved inside the pocket of his pants as he gaze at your seated position through his bottom lashes; an act of domineering over your helpless flustured state.

"you're lying." you huff without conviction.

"am i?" arching his brows at you, he takes a step forward, slightly bending his back down so you're closer.

"i will never like you." and though you tried, your words fail to make him believe. perhaps, lying isn't your best skill. albeit, you push through. at this point, backing down is a sign of weakness and path for him to fuel his already inflated ego.

"you're obnoxious. a salty ill-mannered immature brat who doesn't how to manage their temper. you think you're cool by acting mean? ha, in everyone's eyes you're just a plain boy with mommy issues." a light crease forms on his forehead as you continue to distance yourself him.

you finally roped him. you hit a nerve by using words you learned from the best, him. maintaining a friendship with him isn't for the weak hearted. you can't be too sensitive around tsukishima. you need to learn to fight back even in playful bickerings in order to keep him in place.

as you stare at the blonde, a thought suddenly crosses your mind. tsukki does not like conversing with the other first years of the volleyball team. there's no way hinata will spill on him because the orange headed knows tsukishima doesn't care about these type of things. chances are, he might be playing one of his tricks on you and you absolutely cannot fall for it. hence, you continue.

"even if it's only the two of us left on earth, i would never choose you. i will never like you, kei." your tone tastes like chili peppers and bitter gourd, like rubbing salt on an open wound.

"(y/n)." tsukishima pulls a serious face, sighing as he locks his eyes on you. "hinata told me. i am telling the truth."

there's something about the sudden shift in his face that sends chills down your spine. all of a sudden you're doubting yourself.

what if shoyo accidentally told him? what if tsukki overheard shoyo talking about it to a fellow member and cornered him so shoyo felt the need to tell him the truth? what if... what if...

"no, he didn't." you responded weakly, your eyes bouncing from one to the other.

"yes, he did." tsukishima presses. a deeper crease forms on his forehead at your stubborness. "shrimpy told me the other day during practice. well, i overheard the conversation between him and sugawara senpai and when i heard your name i stepped in. then, the orange gremline told me." he explains.

your heart dithers and your throat runs dry once more. if tsukishima is acting up until this point then he deserves an Oscars. but your friend would never put up an act this long, you know him well. if he was lying, he should have laughed at your face long ago. hence, there's only one thing for sure,

tsukki isn't lying.

in your mind you wished to be swallowed by the ground and be part of the damned soil. even if you have been pinning on your friend for the longest time, you never considered telling him. you know that he isn’t the type to swoon over romance, the thought alone makes him empty his stomach. you figured it’s better to keep your feelings to yourself than lose him as your friend.

“and you believed him?” you scoff. your confidence quivers at each word you utter. “you really believed that i like you? you think so, tsukki? i would never in my wildest dream-”

"will you just shut up?!" he cuts you off, screaming. he twists his neck to the side as he shuts his eyes to collect his composure before turning to shoot you a look. he swallows, adam's apple bobbing as he says in a calmer voice, "will you just shut up and kiss me?"

tsukishima levels his face to you so he could look at you eye-to-eye. he places his boney hand at the side of your face as he lets out a frustrated huff.

"or should i kiss you to shut you up?" he dares to say making your restless heart beat against your ribcage. tsukishima can feel your racing pulse at the base of your neck.

"your mouth started to irk me. your insults are getting better and better. who taught you that?" his thumb caresses the crest of your cheek back and forth as he inches his face closer. he whispers, "me, but i can also teach your mouth other things than spurting insults." the tip of nose softly nudges against yours. you swallow hard. "just say yes."

i'm leaving this on a cliffhanger and blame it on my birthchart. this is from early this year (i think) i'm sorry kale!! this has been sitting on my drafts since you requested it and couldn't get to it bc i feel meh with the previous plot but now i'm happy with it so i hope you are too! and HOLY GRAIL i miss writing for tsukki aghhh maybe i should do more for him soon hm...

anywayy rbs and likes are very much appreciated thanks!

ps. updates are messy and unpredictable bc im going through a writer's block on my recent fics

masterlist | hq.list

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thecuriousquest · 9 months

Text

Yandere Gaara SFW Headcanons

Yandere Gaara x Fem!Reader

Tag List: @issamomma

Warnings: Yandere themes, slight fluff, SFW, murder mentioning, manipulation, control issues, obsessive tendencies, stalking, itty bitty meanness, desperately trying to court you

Checkout my Master List here.

—————————————————————————

Yandere Gaara is obsessive, overprotective, and self-aware.

He obsesses over you touching him. He’ll paint your nails if it means he can hold your hand. His favorite thing is when you allow him to rest his head on your lap and you drag your fingers through his hair softly.

This Jinchuriki is overprotective because he fears something bad happening to you. He has been faced with loss and depression in his life. You are his safe haven. He needs to keep tabs on you and make sure you’re okay at all costs. He’ll go as far as he has to, even if that means stalking you.

A variation of his protection isn’t just killing for you, but he’ll find ways to manipulate you into settling down with him. This might look like isolation. He’ll find a way to get in between you and your friends, shutting off their contact with you, forcing you to turn to him for solace seeing as he’s the only one left. He’ll have you make friends with his sister, and he’ll make sure that she talks about how great he is to you.

Being self-aware is really hard for him. On one hand, he knows something isn’t exactly right. He knows it’s not normal to obsess over a person and stalk them. However, he’s not going to do anything about it, and this leads to further turmoil because he feels guilty for not putting a stop to his behavior.

Panda Boy seeks your guidance on so many things, believing that you hold the wisdom of a thousand gods. You could be the village idiot, but he sees you as someone worthy of being the Kazekage’s advisor. Isn’t that so sweet? It’s not at all a tiring job that you didn’t want in the first place. Like I said before, he’ll do anything to keep you close to him.

Gaara can have a mean side, but you’ll never see it unless you SEVERELY piss him off. You’ve only seen this side of him one time when you kept asking him to stop sending shinobi to guard your place. He blew up on you, frightening you into silence. He slammed his hand down on the table and stood up, pointing in your face. “I’m doing this for your safety! Don’t stand there and act so ungrateful. Leave before I end up doing something I might regret.” His sand started floating from his gourd, and you ran from his office.

He doesn’t know how to flirt, and it’s hilarious to watch his attempts at flirtation. “How are…your legs look very long today.” He gets better later on, saying things like, “Your beauty is more rare than painite.” It’s cute, though, and you start to see a side of Gaara you didn’t even know was there.

Lastly, you will get to know his romantic side because he will have dozens of roses sent to your house on a regular basis because “flowers don’t last forever” as he puts it. He will fill your sweet tooth craving (if you have one) by ordering you the finest desserts. If you don’t have a sweet tooth, he’ll spoil you with the finest presents of silks and jewelry.

All in all, he’s just a man who wants to have you in his life, and he’ll do anything he has to in order to make that happen.

#naruto shippuden #gaara of the sand #gaara of the desert #kazekage gaara #gaara #sunagakure #yandere #yandere x you #yandere x reader #yandere x y/n #yandere x darling #triggering content #triggering themes

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yve-barr · 1 month

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riddick x guardian angel reader

part one

NOT MY GIF! NOT MY CHARACTER!

Forgive me if it's not all correctly in order I haven't watched it in a while.

Part two in my drafts but only released if specially requested cause honestly I'm to mentally tired to finish it with no motivation

⚠️Warnings⚠️

Blood, canon violence, animal cruelty, self harm to survive,

please enjoy!

The first time he saw her was the discovery of vaakos betrayal.

He lay at the bottom of that cliff his leg snapped in two and his numerous wounds bleeding. The pain almost as blinding as her glowing light.

"am I dead?" He scoffed.

She merely smiled and shook her head and reached out her hand to pull him out of the rubble.

"it is not yet your time."

"so you know when it will be?" He had asked the pain vanishing as she lead him through the desolate land.

"I do," she smiled pulling a gourd from thin air and filling it with water pouring down from the cliff.

"where am I?" He said taking the gourd when she offered it.

"not furya, so I suggest you get up," she replied playfully and then she was gone.

He glanced around but when he tried to take a step he fell, instead of hitting the ground however he found himself buried back underneath the rocks.

the pain in his body burned almost as much as the sun against his eyes when he finally dug himself out.

Feebly he crawled over to what looked to be water but on closer expectation it was a sulfur pit.

But that was only the beginning, his leg needed setting otherwise it wouldn't heal properly.

Finding a descent crack in the rock he placed his foot inside it.

Gritting his teeth he snapped his bone back into place.

He cried out, his leg felt as though a thousand suns had replaced the flesh. And the nerves with barbed wire.

In the distance he heard the yelps of some sort of big dog, and he knew he screwed up.

The sounds grew louder as he crawled towards the sulfur pit.

He hit the surface with a splash quickly taking a deep breath before submerging fully.

Opening his shrieking eyes he saw the dog like creatures staring down at him, his lungs burned and small eel like creatures nipped at his open wounds.

slowly his eyes were forced shut by the acidic sulfur pool.

For some unknown reason once his eyes had closed instead of the burning and swishing he felt a cool breeze and his lungs no longer felt like taught elastic.

"get up," your sweet voice called. "Get up!"

Slowly your voice got more distant and his cloths began to dampen, his lungs begining to burn.

"it is not your time."

Splashing above the surface of the water he gasped for air.

The creatures had vanished, and so had you.

He did not see you again for a short time.

Intact the next time he did see you he had just pressed the point of the sharp bard against his skin when you materialised Infront of him.

"what not whisking me off to wonderland this time?" You shook your head but did not smile.

"you listened to me, about the water?"

"didn't have many options," he said adjusting his hold on the sack of venom.

"but you do now, so maybe put that down," you said.

"can't do that lady," he tilted his head smirking a little.

"of course you can't," you rolled you eyes and picked up a bowl from thin air.

Riddick was about to ask how you did that, but the barb was already in his arm the venom sleeping into his blood stream.

Quickly you were on your knees Infront of him, your own eyes staring into his obscured ones.

"deep breaths," was all you managed to say before his whole body stiffened and started convulsing horribly.

He collapsed over head in your lap (or more precisely over the bowl) his whole body stiffened and shaking.

You ran your soft hands up and down the back of his neck, slowly removing his goggles.

He gagged into the bowl and you sighed running your right hand along his upper arm, the other rested on the back of his neck.

You expected it to be over soon.

Soon you'd summon the stair way and lead him down to hell.

"It's your time," you muttered sadly, making to shift his quaking body away.

But you gasped when he grabbed you left wrist.

His voice barely loud enough to hear, he croaked out, "not today."

You just sat there in shock as he continued to shake and vomit.

As you had previously suspected he soon fell limp and you cast the bowl aside resting his head in your lap his face turned to the side.

hurriedly you checked the pulse line on his wrist that only you could see.

and it beat, in steady slowed beats.

Never in your millenniums of life had you seen anything like this, he should have flat lined a whole minute ago.

You had previously scoffed at other angels who had claimed for this to happen to them.

you knew what this meant.

Scared you removed his head from your lap and stood pacing back and forth in the cave.

A small creature whimpered in a cage made of bones.

Walking over to it you crouched down infront of it.

"what should I do little one?" You asked it, not really expecting an answer, but to your suprise it tilted its head and looked over your shoulder at the unconscious man. "You think I should do it?"

The little dingo creature yelped in agreement.

"but he's a serial killer? He'll go to hell if I do this it'll tie my fate to his, I have a place in heaven, I have a duty to do, other souls to watch over and inevitably lead to the afterlife," the little creature pushed it's muzzle trough the bones and sniffled.

Carefully you reached your hand through the gap and stroked it.

Smiling you sat there for a while, but then a sound from behind you made you stop.

the man on the floor, grumbled slightly stirring.

And you were forced to make a split second decision.

as he slowly came to you walked over to him and replaced his goggles and left.

Back into the crystal white beyond, until he would need you again.

For the next few days riddick continued to grow his immunity to the venom, but not once did he see you.

You saw him though.

Everytime.

You would appear to find him shaking on the floor and you would pull him against you and run soft hands down his neck, his arms, his back.

You'd sit until he was safe then you would attempt to leave but every time he'd shift or his hold on your arm would slacken and your stay.

But always there was the knowing in the back of your mind about what this meant, and always you knew what this man was and where he was going.