#someone call me stupid and tell me to set more alerts for things like that pls

[wanderinginksplot]

Sev + "I'm going to give you five seconds to take that back."

Sev x gn!reader (no use of 'y/n' and no pronouns). Flirty (ish).

Word Count: 2,400

Warnings: discussions of medical concerns, references to missions, stimulant misuse, grandstanding, ill-planned bets, semi-flirtatious wrestling.

---

It had all started when you tried to talk your most recent set of charges into being more healthy. 

Delta Squad had been a source of constant frustration for you since you were assigned to be their medic. Normally, commando squads weren’t overly concerned about having a medic on-board. However, Delta had a close call on a previous mission. One commando, Sev, had been in especially bad shape. 

Some time in a bacta tank had fixed the worst of their injuries, but there were certain limits they shouldn’t push if they wanted to avoid a repeat. Sev needed to be particularly careful, since he had suffered damage to his ribs and many of the organs within them - including his heart. 

Which was why you had been irretrievably furious when you found him downing a packet of stims. 

“Are you trying to die?” you had demanded. “Because I know you’re not stupid, and those are the only possible reasons you would be using stims with damage to your heart. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that I have a mission to complete and I don’t have eight hours to sleep before we get there.”

Honestly, you could have expected that kind of answer, but the nonchalant tone Sev had used was what pushed you over the edge. 

“And when they wear off? You know, since you took them three hours before we even break atmosphere?” You had shaken your head, clenching your jaw so tightly that the muscles ached. “If you had bothered to talk to me, I would have advised you to sleep for that time, then take half a stim pack when we arrive.”

“I don’t need some vorpan baar'ur telling me what to do,” he had spat. “As long as I can do my job, the GAR doesn’t worry about the little things. Including my health or my life.”

You didn’t understand the Mando’a, obviously, but that didn’t stop you from rolling your eyes at the drama of his caustic words. 

“Apparently, having someone tell you what to do is exactly what you needI” you had countered. “Do you know what kind of shape you’ll be in after another dose of stims? Even I would be able to beat you in a wrestling match! Some use you’ll be to your brothers then.”

It was a bit too far, and you felt bad as silence fell in the small ship. You had worked with enough troopers to know that they prided themselves on loyalty to their brothers above all else. In your defense, though, you recognized the signs of someone who wouldn’t be talked out of their nihilism. By meeting him head-on using the parameters of life as he saw it, you had hoped to shake him out of his stubbornness. 

It was only bad luck that it hadn’t worked. Sev’s expression had darkened and you prepared yourself for a threat or a cutting insult, but Scorch had laughed, breaking the tension.

“Sounds like a good, old-fashioned bet,” he had said, chuckling in a way that could only be described as ‘gleeful’. 

Sev had scoffed and walked away without another word, but your luck ran out.

Delta Squad had gotten a call from General Jusik, alerting them that the leader of the Separatist-controlled planet had opted for a peace talk. As a gesture of good faith, the GAR was withdrawing the commando squads who had been set to invade.

“We’ve been redirected,” Boss announced when Jusik disconnected the call. The sergeant stepped out of the small cockpit where he had been navigating with Fixer. “We’re to touch down on a Republic-friendly planet in the next system and settle in. We’ll be backup if things go south, so stay ready to go. Get some sleep if you can.”

“Those of us who didn’t already take a packet of stims,” you had muttered when Sev went back to cleaning his blaster instead of heading for the bunks. 

Unfortunately, your sarcasm would prove to be your undoing. Scorch perked up at your quiet admonishment, visibly brightening. “Hey, didn’t you say you could beat Sev in hand-to-hand when he’s using stims?”

“Yes,” you confirmed, holding eye contact with Scorch, but trying to watch Sev in your peripheral vision.

“I’m going to give you five seconds to take that back,” Sev growled. When you looked over, you saw that he very much was not focusing on his blaster anymore. 

“I don’t think I will.” The way you lifted your chin was nothing short of antagonistic, but you were angry. Clarity of thought while angry had never been your forte. Despite that, you clocked the gray undertones in Sev’s face and the way his fingers were trembling slightly. “In fact, I think I could beat you now, whether or not you take another dose.” 

“You’re on,” Sev told you, a challenge thick in his tone. 

“Wait-” How you hadn’t seen this coming, you weren’t sure, but your stomach was sinking. “I didn’t mean I actually want to wrestle you. I’m just telling you, as a medical professional, that-”

“Hey, you already said you would,” Scorch reminded you. “Too late to go back on it now.”

“Knock it off, Six-Two. It isn’t too late for anything,” Fixer told him, turning around in the cockpit to face you all. Before you could thank him, he continued as he eyed you directly. “It’s actually a choice: wrestle Oh-Seven or admit that stims aren’t that bad.”

“They are that bad, though,” you insisted. 

“If you’re going to wrestle on my ship, do it in the cargo bay,” Boss said over his shoulder. “I don’t want to explain broken equipment to the GAR.”

“This isn’t enough of a challenge to break anything,” Sev decreed. He watched you as he set aside his blaster and stood. “Cargo bay. Five minutes.”

It was overdramatic to specify a time and place on such a small ship, but it still made the pit of your stomach tighten. You took care to offer him an unimpressed face and a simple nod. 

"This is gonna be fun!" Scorch said excitedly. 

You strongly disagreed, but that wasn’t going to help. It was far too late for that. So you stifled your misgivings and made your way to the back of the ship. 

Sev had stripped off his armor by the time you got there. That hadn’t been a concern, but you wondered if it should have been. There was nothing at all you could do against plastoid armor. However, much as you loathed to admit it even to yourself… you were almost as disadvantaged anyway. The sight of Sev’s muscles swelling and bulging under the tightness of his body glove was enough to make the ship feel like it was lurching through the galaxy. 

You were wearing comfortable clothes, having refused to change into your lightly armored medic’s gear until you were closer to your eventual destination. You were comfortable and didn’t have to strip off any clothing, but that was almost a pity. It was starting to feel distinctly warm aboard the small ship…

“Ready?” Sev asked. 

You nodded, resigned to being decimated by the fully-trained commando. He didn’t attack immediately, choosing to watch you instead. You circled warily, already closer than you liked. The cargo bay of the ship was reasonably big and, as promised, you weren’t going to break anything. That should keep Boss happy, but there still wasn’t a vast amount of space. 

So you and Sev circled around, watching each other. You were focused on his chest: all of the hand-to-hand training the GAR had offered told you that motion was typically forecasted in the torso, so that was the best place to watch if you wanted to avoid being surprised. 

When you occasionally snuck a glance at Sev, he was watching your face rather than your torso. At first, you wondered if you should be doing the same with him, but then you started to feel flustered rather than wary at the weight of his eyes. 

That was when he pounced. 

You managed to avoid the first lunge, but you weren’t expecting him to recover his balance as quickly as he did. In half a moment, Sev was upright once more and diving at you. 

A strong arm hooked around your waist and you were falling, cushioned from the ground by Sev’s body, but the impact still knocked the air from your lungs. Sev flipped you over and you made your move, rolling quickly out from under him before he had time to close the distance between you. 

You got to your feet - or, you started to. Sev’s hand closed around your ankle and pulled. It wasn’t enough to put you back on the floor, but it was enough to bring you heavily to your hands and knees. Since you were already in the proper position, you kicked out with your foot and felt a surge of victory when your heel connected. 

And then you were horrified, turning around as you gave a loud gasp. “Sev! Are you okay? I’m so sorry-”

There was a small smudge of dirt on his forehead from your boot, but Sev’s grin flashed bright. “I’m fine. Keep going.”

And then he grabbed both of your ankles, pulling hard enough that your knees went out from under you and you landed on your stomach with a soft, “Oof!”

Sudden heat at your back warned that Sev was getting ready to pin you, so you rolled again. He seemed to expect the movement then, dropping onto you in mid-turn from your side to your back. 

With a sudden, surging need to keep your freedom, you pulled back a fist. Your goal was Sev’s recently injured ribs, but you came to your senses before the blow came too close to landing. You were a medic, and every bit of training you had received covered how to prevent injuries, not cause them. 

Sev didn’t know that, however, and he winced sharply. He curled into himself in an effort to protect his ribs - a motion that only put more pressure on them. The flash of pain across his face would have made you stop even if you hadn’t already decided to do so. 

“Are you-?”

Before you could ask if he was hurt, he had reached down, snagged your wrists, and pressed them against the cold metal of the floor. You were pinned. 

You were on your back with a commando pressing you into the floor, but you both… stopped. Your breathing was heavy and - with more than a little surprise - you noticed that Sev’s was, too. Of course, his ribs probably still hurt and you would have to check him for a boot-borne head injury, but you couldn’t help but wonder if he was feeling anything other than pain.

You definitely were. 

The chilly bite of the floor at your back faded into the distance as you and Sev studied each other from closer than you had ever been. Sev always looked vaguely angry, but you had wondered if that was his natural expression. That seemed to be true: if you didn’t know him as well as you did, you would have taken his expression to be one of irritation and disdain. But there was softness in it, too. That was what left you feeling like you couldn’t get a full breath. 

“Well, Sev, I’d say you won,” Boss remarked dryly. 

The comment pulled you back into the moment and you realized that Boss, Fixer, and Scorch were all observing the scene. It felt vaguely ridiculous then, wondering what it would be like to kiss the man who currently had you pinned to the dirty floor. But as Sev released his grip and stood, you missed the warmth of him like it was something tangible.

To your surprise, though, Sev held a hand out to you in a silent offer to help you stand. You took it and he lifted you easily. The silence was thick. 

You cleared your throat. “Well, I guess I was wrong. One stim pack isn’t enough for me to win a wrestling match. I still think-”

“Save it,” Sev ordered and you froze. No matter what you thought had changed between you, it wasn’t enough to save you from his sharp tongue. But when he spoke again, Sev’s voice was far more gentle. “It was closer than I thought it would be. Another few minutes and I would have probably lost. I’ll lay off the stims.”

“Aww, no rematch?” Scorch complained. 

Fixer made a sharply derisive noise and left for the cockpit. “I’ll pilot us to the staging planet.”

“All of you, get some rest,” Boss ordered before he left as well. 

Scorch lingered a moment, glancing between you and Sev. You were still standing close together, the tension palpable between you. Unlike most of your interactions, that tension was not actively hostile. 

You were torn between wanting Scorch to leave so you and Sev could talk about what had just happened, and wanting him to stay so you didn’t have to. Slowly, like he was watching something interesting unfold before his eyes, Scorch turned and retreated to his bunk. Since the bunks were in the section just ahead of the cargo bay, Scorch was still in hearing range, but a sense of privacy settled thickly around you and Sev. 

When you finally gathered the courage to look over, Sev was watching you. Neither of you spoke, and your mind raced in an effort to find the right words. 

Your lips parted, though you didn’t have the slightest idea what you planned on saying. Fortunately, Sev spoke before you could say some muddled assortment of words that might mean nothing… or too much. 

“We should sleep while we can,” he told you. After a moment, he added with a wry grin, “Some medic told me I need actual rest, not just stim packs.”

It was more familiar ground, and you relaxed enough to jibe, “What disappointing news.”

“Yeah,” Sev agreed. “But the delivery made it a little better.”

You could only shake your head as you followed him to the bunks.

---

Author's Note - I love Sev wayyyyy too much! I have written more fics for him than for any other member of Delta Squad. That being said, I'm going to focus on Scorch and Boss next since I haven't done much for them. If you have any great ideas for either one that you'd like to throw my way, feel free to comment, ask, or message!

Thanks for reading! You can find other works on my masterlist. As of a few days ago, I discontinued my taglist. You can find just fics on my side-blog, @wanderinginksplot-writes. (As soon as I work through my drafts on this blog, all fics will be posted there first and cross-posted here later.)

#star wars #star wars fanfiction #star wars republic commando #star wars legends #delta squad #republic commando #repcomm #delta squad sev #sev x reader #sev x you #reader insert #reader #gn!reader

[shroomiewrites]

If your love burns, dear, set me ablaze || Simon Riley x Reader

Simon "Ghost" Riley x Reader || 2.5k words || SFW ||

Warnings/tags: Gender neutral reader, hurt/comfort, mentions of animal gore, non-canon backstory, fluff, sprinkle of angst.

Song recommendation: Indigo Night | Tamino

Synopsis: “They asked "do you love her to death?” I said “speak of her over my grave and watch how she brings me to life.” | Mahmoud Darwish

It took Simon Riley 17 days to touch you. 

Not touch in an intimate, sexual way. Touch as in a graze, a brush of the fingertips. Touch as in an even accidental bump or gentle meet of shoulder blades when you sit too close to someone in the train. Touch as in the way his knuckles feathered your hand when he handed you your drink on a night out with friends a few weeks and meetings of your friendly circle after you first met.

It had been surprising to you how a man like him even had any friends in the first place and even more that said friends also happened to be friends of yours, but Manchester could be small and funny like that, you thought. He made a strong first impression on you, never introduced himself, in fact, he almost never talked, not loud enough at least. Not in the way that people who want to be heard spoke, it was always a rather fatigued mutter, voice brittled and seemingly unbothered and unamused by everything around him. His eyes always felt sharp and alert but also… never there. He existed in a plane of his own, haunting conversations and people he didn’t seem to enjoy, like a ghost.

Ghost.

That’s what they called him, he told you one of the first few times you tried some small talk, embarrassment flooded your cheeks as you laughed before realizing that. Oh God. He's not joking. He didn’t seem affected by it, but then again, he never seemed affected by anything at all. Not the way your friends always talked a bit too much, laughed a little too loud, got a tad too drunk and touched him way too much. He never complained tho, no one could even tell he was bothered by it unless they noticed the slight twitch of his eyes in annoyance as they slapped his shoulder, howling at something he didn’t find remotely funny. You found yourself amused by watching him, like experiencing first hand a cat in the middle of a bunch of golden retrievers. He seemed to notice the way you stared at him for a little too long for it to be just a coincidence. But he never said anything, amused by it too.

Simon, he said his name was one time. You realized how no one ever spoke his name. You thought maybe it pissed him off, but no, not many things pissed him off. He was a surprisingly easy person to be around, not easily ticked off by the stupid jokes or the chaotic antics of your fellow companions. He was a bit skittish and straightforward when he did speak, an acid tint to his sarcastic jokes and monotone timbre. It was actually charming. To your own twisted mind at least. He was also a great listener, another charm of his you noted. He heard you talk for minutes to hours on end, without ever making you feel like you were rambling too much or boring him to death, eyes focused on yours throughout the entirety of whatever gossip or story you felt like he should hear. He secretly enjoyed it a bit too much. Looking forward to your next encounters so he could hear a follow up of something stupid that was happening to someone’s cousin, just to hear your dramatic pauses and mocking interpretations of someone’s voice. He made sure to keep tabs on the names and events, because you always started with a ‘Do you remember-” and he relished the little gleam in your eyes when he repeated back what you told him when you last saw each other with astounding accuracy. 

On the good days, he’d gift you a story of his own. A little tale of his time in the military, sometimes about an operation or mission that he got assigned. Never too many details, just the gist and a little highlight, and you didn’t pry, feeling grateful enough that he felt comfortable to share anything at all. That, and the mysterious aura of his person actually suited the if-I-told-you-I’d-have-to-kill-you way he shared his own experiences with you. You collected them like pieces of the puzzle that made up Simon Riley, celebrating mentally when two distinct strands of information he gave you allowed you to pierce together a slightly fuller picture of who he was, what he liked and what he didn’t. 

He started going back to Manchester often after you two met. He didn’t have much else to go, frankly. His job was his life and when he wasn’t deployed, he felt quite lost in his own head, like it was unknown terrain that he didn’t have coordinates for or a clear strategy. His social life was an even bigger mess, a battlefield is easier to navigate than everyday life. When he was on duty people were blue or red, with him or against. But things got confusing once he didn’t wear a vest anymore and suddenly they were yellow, green, purple… The easy way out? Never strive for more than company. It’s what his body needed, the bare minimum of human connection required for the average person to somewhat function. At least that’s what he told himself. 

His friends – your friends – were people he could tolerate being around and that on rare occasions got a chuckle out of him. But they didn’t mind the mask or that he pretty much only spoke when spoken to. People tend to be a lot easier on those who underperform to their standards, not trying to steal away their spotlight. So he made a social life out of it, walking the noisy streets of his city and drinking bourbon in whatever bar the people he hung out with dragged him into. 

Until you.

You see, when Simon was a kid he found a cat once. Bone thin and wounded. It took a liking to him, to his bruised little hands and puppy eyes that watched the things around him curious and woefully. He found a semblance of comfort in petting the cat, letting it sit on his lap as it purred gently, basking in his warmth. He fed it for a while, gave it food and water as much as he could, given his own difficult circumstances. He watched it regain its strength ever-so-slightly, but even then, he never took it in. Never considered it a friend. Never even gave it a name. It was just a stray cat and he had time and patience, despite the world constantly giving him reasons not to have. Some time later he noticed the food and water were left untouched. Insects crawled on the makeshift bowl he had made out of discarded paper plates and empty tins. He didn’t go after it. Wasn’t his, never was. A few days later he found it on the street near the curb, mashed into the concrete, thick marks of wheels on top of it’s small body, crushed it to death, probably. A weird pang in his chest made him stumble back, the foul smell of rotting flesh filling his nostrils and no matter how long he washed his face after it never left his nose completely, constantly mocking him with the inevitable fate of every living being in existence had to face – the putrid reality of death. The sight before him that day ingrained itself into his young brain, creating roots around his mind and making sure he never forgot it. He couldn’t understand why it hurt that much, why things had to be that way and if he could have done things differently.

It was only years later, after a lot more experience and pain in his life that he finally understood the lesson he was taught that day. That you never start something you’re not ready to finish. He lived by that, built his career on it, his reputation. An operation with his name on it meant an operation carried out, clean, no loose ends. He guaranteed it. The mantra was easy to apply, easy to repeat, gave him comfort and helped him pick his battles right. Never bite more than he could chew, keep his feet on the ground. He repeated it everyday and it helped him improve, strive for more. Not that he was a perfectionist, no. He saw himself as more of a… highly dedicated individual. Committed to the results and the results alone.

He knew something was wrong with him when his mind wandered off to you in the middle of a briefing, or when he laid down in base, staring at the ceiling of his room. He thought about what you were probably doing, if you had any more stories to tell him. He found himself anxious to tell you stories. As he snipped down enemies and dropped down to knife others, a fleeting thought of “I have to tell her about this” made him stop dead in his tracks and physically shake off the alarm sirens that rang in his mind. Everything about you made his brain scream danger. Made him want to run away and close off. And yet, he found himself going back to Manchester, to you. Every. Single. Time.

When his gaze darted down to your reddish lips as you laughed at something he said, while he walked you home after a night out with your friends, and his hands softly brushed a strand of your hair out of your face, breath hitching as you melted into his touch, pressing your cheek further into his palm as you looked at him, fuck, so yearningly he nearly passed out, when you raised your small hands to his cheeks, a surgical black mask covering the bottom half of his face, and you batted your eyelashes at him in permission and he didn’t stop you as you pulled it to his nose and brought his lips to him in a kiss so tender and careful he felt sinless for a moment, that’s when he knew he was beyond the point of no return. 

You attached yourself to his life so seamlessly, so readily, he nearly missed it. He felt like you had always been there. In the early mornings when he woke up from nightmares or plagued by insomnia and he just watched you sleep soundly next to him, not a single wrinkle on your heavenly face as your dreams probably never ended up with you dead. In the afternoon when you danced around the house in only one of his t-shirts, practically a dress to you, and sang loudly, a big smile on your face when you noticed him watching you lovingly from the doorframe, pulling him to your living room as you urged him to join you, laughing at how he pretended to be annoyed at your antics, but he could barely hide the grin that filled his expression whenever you giggled around him, the sound being enough to wash away any worry out of his system and put him at ease. Simon felt his heart burst in euphoria whenever you as much as glanced at him, each touch lighting a fire in him that made him believe in a God just so he could pray for more of you. 

When Simon told you about the cat you cried. Sobbed into his shoulder until you felt dizzy. Not because of the cat itself, although that got into your feelings, but because he’d made a lesson out of it. Punished himself so deeply about something out of his control, had convinced himself so hard that it was his fault, couldn’t stand the guilt that ate him away from losing something that was precious to him when he was far too young to understand what it meant. It physically made your heart ache. The way he shaped his life around it, building walls upon walls until nothing could get in and he couldn’t get out, because it’s easy to avoid the fear of loss when you make it so you don’t have anything to lose. But he failed to realize that it also meant nothing to live for. How he made his life’s purpose to never fail again, beating himself up everytime it inevitably happened. 

His motto hadn't come from a place of efficiency, of a duty well carried. It came from hurt. From the desperation of having so much love to give and nothing to put it into. But he didn’t realize it. Not until you showed him. Not until he saw how you wore your heart on your sleeve, how you poured yourself into every single thing that you did. How everytime you kissed him you had starstruck eyes and a light scarlet tint to your cheeks. How when you made toast you took the time to rotate the pieces of bread slightly in the toaster so the grill marks would make a checkered pattern, simply because it brought you joy. How you always chose to buy the mugs that were chipped or slightly broken, because you said you’d be upset if no one wanted you just because you were slightly imperfect.

God, how far off were you.

To Simon you were perfect. From the tip of your toes to the last strand of hair on your head, to the brightest of your smiles and ugliest of cries when you had to bid him goodbye for another few months. He thought of you every single day, every second possible. He knew that if he lost you, it’d crush him. Irreparably so. Would tear him into pieces until he was just a shell of a man. And yet, he stayed. Dug his grave deeper with every kiss, every hug, every intimate moment you shared together as he felt you clench around him and could swear that he was in paradise. Because it was worth it. He learned that his previous mantra was slightly off, and fixed it into a new one. 

You don’t start things you wouldn’t risk yourself for. 

So he went out and did his job, because protecting people, his teammates, was worth the risk. And he went back to you, tired and sore, but he let you jump on him and squeeze him tightly, let you remove his mask with your delicate fingers, a sigh of relief escaping your lips every time before you got on your tippy toes to press your mouth into his. And he reveled in it. He let you see his face, his body, his soul. He let you see everything of him, the good and the bad. Ask whatever you want to know, take everything from him. He’d rip his heart right out his chest if you begged him once. Because he loved you. Painstakingly, deeply, with enough force to move mountains and start wars, and enough care to sweep the debris and tend to the wounded. Because, by God, loving you was worth the risk. 

For your anniversary you got him a cat. It was the first time you saw him weep. Truly weep. Tears staining his face as his bloodshot eyes rained down on to the carpet, broken whimpers falling from his trembling lips as he sunk to the ground in front of the brightly colored open box. You thought he didn’t want it, that maybe it was too much, too soon. But he assured you it was okay. That it was worth the risk. 

He named her after you.

A/N: This story has been stuck in my head for a few days now, as I often find myself lost in my thoughts, imagining how a man like Simon might love. Frankly, I like to think it'd be like this. Too deeply for his own good, but, personally, I think that's the best way.

Constructive criticism and feedback are always more than welcome! I hope you enjoyed reading~

#cod mw2 #simon ghost riley x you #simon riley x reader #ghost x reader #ghost x you #simon riley x you #simon ghost riley x reader #hurt/comfort #fanfic #fluff #angst

[queenimmadolla]

Alright, before I start posting any more smut, let me go ahead and teach you guys how to shit on, oops—i meant change your community labels provisions and give you some 411 on them:

COMMUNITY LABELS

So, if you’re on tumblr—over the age of 18 (or not, I’m not gonna be one of the many liars on this website and say I wasn’t devouring smut about bands i looked up to when i was younger than 18, but you will not be interacting with me if you’re tryna read what I write and you’re not 18 years or older) and you Iike to read fanfiction or you like to browse through art, odds are you’re missing out on a lot. See, last fall, maybe end of summer, tumblr introduced these “flagging” guidelines they call Community Labels. If what you write or draw meets the “requirements” (spoiler alert, even if they meet none of the requirements, tumblr will still flag it as Mature should someone recommend it be labeled for their dumbass petty reasons) for Mature Content, they give you the option to flag it so it no longer appears on the dashboards or searches to anyone who does not have their Community Labels setting on to show it. What tumblr does not tell you, is that BY DEFAULT, those settings that would allow you to see that content should you wish to are automatically off, unless you’ve gone in and changed them.

See, at first i thought maybe this was a good thing. It wasn’t too hard to give my account permission to see the Mature Content tumblr would flag, but that was until I realized this was just another way for tumblr to censor things without making it outwardly known.

When I changed my settings, I was able to do so on the tumblr app. This was available when the Community Labels first rolled out. Then, when people started to actually change their settings, tumblr made it desktop exclusive—or at least hard as hell because I have not been able to find those settings on the app since. Tumblr also picks and chooses what works/posts to flag and essentially hide (because again, if you don’t have your settings set to show Mature Content, you are not seeing a lot of content and it will be rarely interacted with). Tumblr often goes against their community guidelines and the guidelines they set forth for what falls under ‘Mature Content’, several of my works in particular that are not at all Mature have been flagged. I was given a reason by tumblr support that even though it didn’t meet any of the criteria for mature content, it still needed the mature content label. No, you read that right. Mind you, I’ve tested the flagging, I created another tumblr account, wrote some dirty ass smut, flagged it from that other account, and tumblr decided that post did not meet the criteria for Mature Content even though I described c*m eating. And it gives literally anyone the power to censor your work, be it mature content or not, since Tumblr mislabels posts because they don’t actually review it and they don’t care. While I can’t help you remove these labels, not even tumblr support will help you do that, I can show as many tumblr users as possible how to still view and interact with this content. And a little reassurance, once you have your settings changed, YOU will be able to CHOOSE whether or not YOU want to view a post that has been flagged (labeled) as mature, as you’ll have the option to show it or hide it from your feed. So if you don’t want to see something, you don’t have to, rather than not getting a say at all. Here’s how to fix your settings on desktop:

STEP ONE: GO TO SETTINGS

STEP TWO: Once in your settings, scroll down past ‘Content you see’

STEP THREE: Locate ‘Community labels’ and ensure all of the bubbles under ‘Show’ are selected.

You see the little ‘Hide’ selection at the bottom? Yours will be on, so turn that stupid bitch off with as much aggression as you can because it’s not only evil and hiding mature content, but a shit ton of harmless stuff as well. The amount of times I will scroll through my search and see something stupid fluffy and cute flagged as mature is RIDICULOUS.

So, yeah, fuck that and fuck tumblr for removing these settings from the app to make sure people can’t access it easily and if you didn’t know how to stick it to tumblr by changing your settings, now you know. Congrats and go read/look at whatever you want!

#pls change your settings #it’s literally screwing you over #and pls signal boost #adding reader tags bc most of my audience doesn’t know about this feature or how to change the settings #Eddie Munson x reader #Steve Harrington x Reader #Pedro pascal x reader #multifandom #community labels

[eggsbenedictinurmom]

Recently I had a thought.

I love the Minecraft Warden, my overhated baby. And I love Wally, my most likely traumatized baby. And so, by all known laws of my brain, they are now required to fuse like gems from Steven Universe.

Ok so hear me out rq. Welcome Home used to be a normal kid's show, right? Everything's probably the same as the start of the OG timeline, really. The puppets also interact with the Playfellow Workshop employees MFN-style, as in: nobody fucking cares about the fact their sentient there and it's treated like it's completely normal.

But then, an accident happened in 1974. Pretty vague about what actually happened, because nobody ever documented it (or rather, the documentation never left the workshop, so nobody knew about it), but the only apparent thing is that there was death involved. A LOT of death. Like, almost the entire team of the Playfellow Workshop died, probably.

The immense soul power of the murdered managed to crack into the puppet world thanks to Home, who in this case is sorta headcannoned(?) to be a gateway between the two worlds. They fused with the void (the thing many people call "So Below") under it, creating a hivemind of sorts, y'know, like sculk from Minecraft, and immediately grew all over Home. it also ripped the fabric of the universe causing the world of minecraft to merge with the neighborhood but pretend not to know that so that you can act surprised later-

The sculk only has one goal: protect Home so that nothing can pass through into the muppets x minecraft crossover world, because we all know that if the millionaires find out about a dimension that stretches into infinity and where you can literally duplicate resources, they're gonna colonize the everloving disc 5 fuck-ment out of it, and that's obviously bad.

But Home wasn't a good enough host. It needed a more mobile catalyst to ensure the world's safety. And since Wally was sticking to Home like slime to my mother's beloved silver blanket thanks to his empathy for it, the sculk "decided" to infect him, unintentionally breaking the structure of his eyes and permanently blinding him in the process.

Wally, however, was not worried about this. With his naive nature, he simply saw the sculk as a new neighbor, albeit a bit peculiar one. This made him very cooperative, which, I gotta agree, was a great "choice" for the sculk in the end, as he, too, wanted to protect Home after what happened.

Through time, the sculk managed to crack through Home into the human world workshop, setting up something in the sort of shriekers to alert it of oncoming danger to Home. But it had no interest in leaving the vicinity of the building, of course, so it still stays inside, the people outside being completely unaware of what's going on in the workshop and simply taking it as abandoned and occasionally making creepypastas about it on the internet. Some stupid teenagers sometimes go inside thanks to a dare and obviously end up dying, which kinds sucks, but hey, they sorta deserve it.

You see what I'm getting at? Insanely OP creature, protecting a maybe-portal with the help of the tortured souls of the dead??

Reference picture that I'll probably remake + some fun facties:

(If a single person "exploits" the fact most of his clothes are torn off him on despite the fact he's a literal semi-corpse puppet that is only strung together by the power of the undead and gets constantly sunk in and out of a state of disassemblence I will gulp down a comically large canister of gasoline in one go on a tiktok stream while my friend makes dangitgrandpa cosplay poses in the background every time someone gives me a rose)

I will 100% make the rest of the neighbors other Minecraft mobs btw if you couldn't tell

#will probably improve on the lore later so don't mind it's semi-baked state #welcome home au #wally darling #wh au #wally darling au #my art <3 #i am so damn proud of barnaby's nickname like you just know i giggled like a little lady when i thought of it for the first time #wh x mc au

[scaryscarecrows]

Salvation for the Weary

Dove’s been sitting on the toilet for about half an hour, waiting for the guy she’s got handcuffed in her shower to wake up.

It might be a while. She’d cold-cocked him pretty good once the door was locked behind them, and, uh...well…

She did put ice on the lump. After she’d stripped him and handcuffed him in the shower, but there is ice on the lump.

This whole thing is...it’s surreal, is what it is. She’s alert , hyper-aware of her breathing and that of the man’s, a little hung up on how uncomfortable the cold toilet lid is, and a bit, just a bit, sick to her stomach. She’s not sure if it’s nerves or just…

This man has information that she wants. He works for Lex, lower-level, it’s true, but he works for Lex and more importantly, he can tell her about the men who killed Jay. She wants those ones. And he’s going to give them to her.

When ten more minutes pass without a twitch, she reaches over and turns the water onto straight cold. Maybe it works, maybe it’s timing, but he comes to life with a strangled squawk.

“Wh-where--”

Oh, brother.

“It doesn’t matter.”

He doesn’t like that; his eyes narrow and he spits, voice dripping with hate, “You bitch .”

She’s been called worse in kinder situations, which means she can muster up a sunny smile when she leans forward and says, “Maybe. But this bitch knocked you out, so…” She shrugs. “I just want to talk.”

She does not just want to talk. She wants to scream, to rip him limb from limb and cut his tongue out to shove down his throat, followed by a finger or four, and just watch him choke.

But she’s not going to do that.

Probably.

“Fuck you, let me go--”

She jabs her stun gun into his groin, just above his dick, and hits the button.

He doesn’t scream, not really. There’s an aborted noise , but overall he just flops and jerks like a fish until she withdraws.

“That was the least painful thing I can do to you,” she tells him, doing her best to channel Penguin’s cold, disinterested-yet-pissed tone. “You’re going to tell me what I want to know, and you’re going to tell me now.”

He’s silent, breathing through clenched teeth. Dove sets the stun gun in the sink, where he can’t reach it, and picks up her still-bloody pipe.

“If you don’t,” she continues, “I start cutting bits off. Do we understand each other?”

He spits at her. Misses, but still. The sentiment is there.

“When I get outta here, you’re gonna be so fucking sorry,” he snarls. “I’m gonna kill everyone you ever so much as looked at and then I’m gonna fu--”

The pipe breaks his nose with a sickening crack! Knocks out two teeth, too; they skitter down the drain. Oops. Nothing a little Drano can’t handle, surely.

“Your boss,” she says, and she can’t stop her voice from shaking, “had my son tortured for two goddamn days before having him killed. There is nothing you can do to me, but there’s a lot I can do to you.”

He spits again. This time blood and a piece of tooth hits the edge of the shower. Dove puts the pipe aside, picks up her X-Acto knife, and gets up. He’s as trussed up as she could manage, but he can still kick at her. And bite, but...bites are easy to dodge.

She settles next to his head, uncaps the X-Acto, and presses the blade against the soft skin under his left eye. Said eye widens and lowers so that he’s nearly cross-eyed trying to see it. Good.

“I want Gregory Miller,” she says. “And you’re going to tell me how I can do that.”

Gregory Miller is one of the few cops that, as far as anyone knows, can’t be bribed with the promise of a free lay or a Favor. He goes to work, gets takeout on the way home. That’s it. She’s not stupid enough to get him in his house, but if there’s any sort of blackmail material...or, well, anything else. But she wants him, because he’s a midlevel: low enough that he won’t really be missed, but high enough to know, maybe, who had Jay. Or at least know someone who does.

“Screw you--” She presses the blade down a little more. A pinprick of blood appears and grows, trickling down like a tear. “Okay, okay! I’ll talk!”

“Never doubted you for a second,” she soothes, withdraws the knife so it’s just resting against the skin. “Miller. How do I get him.”

He takes a few deep breaths, clearly under the impression that she’s a patient woman. She’s about to dig the X-Acto in again, maybe take that eye out, when he blurts out, “He makes a little extra money selling drugs. Like. You gotta. Gotta go to him, he doesn’t come to you, he’s got an exclusive list--I-I can getcha on it! I can hook you up!”

Interesting.

Dove withdraws the knife and puts the cap back on. Safety first, after all. He sighs, clearly starting to feel better about his situation.

Sometimes, men are really fucking dumb. Then again, this guy wasn’t too bright to start with. All it took to get him here was a throaty, ‘hey there, big boy’, a wink, and a slow saunter out of the bar. He’d come running like a dog.

“I’ll get myself on it, thanks,” she says, twisting around to set the knife in the sink. “But I appreciate your cooperation. Really.”

“What are you doing.”

Dumb as a box of rocks.

“I can’t have you blabbing,” she says, because come on , he didn’t really think he was going to walk away, did he?

Come now, come now, you don’t have to be so dumb, now.

“I told you what you wanted!”

“Yup.”

“You crazy bitch--”

Dove has a gun. She knows how to use it. But guns are noisy. A switchblade jammed into a man’s neck, however, is not.

There’s a reason Penguin likes knives. 

She’ll take care of this in the morning. Or start to, anyway, start breaking him down and getting him out of here. She’s got some spring cleaning to do, or...something. Lotta trash to take out.

She flicks off the light and leaves the bathroom. Her heart’s beating too fast and she can’t quite catch her breath.

This isn’t the first time she’s seen a man die. It’s not even the first time she’s killed one. But. It’s just.

This won’t bring Jason back. She knows it won’t. But she’d...it almost…

It feels like it should. She did her bit, now he has to come home.

She sinks to her knees, sobbing. He’s not coming home, no matter what she does, and it’s so fucking cold at night--

Okay. Okay. Come on. Come on, get up. Get some. Some tea, maybe, yeah, tea, and calm down. Just try to calm down. It’s over for tonight.

It’s over for tonight.

THE END

#garage tapes 'verse #older fic #dove marquis #jason todd (mentioned) #dove works for penguin y'know #just because she's nice about it doesn't mean she's a saint

[willel]

Why is twitter so toxic? I think you wrote something about it some time ago, that on tumblr, for instance, there’s no immediate incentive to write a hit post and then to come up with the most outrageous claims that create "engagement"? Or because it’s not really about direct conversation made of short messages when everyone wants to "win" the argument, but favors calm analysis instead. Anyway, I just can’t go there anymore right now, too much hate and stupidity, I’m glad there’s still blogs like you and a few others to enjoy some ST escapism.

Twitter's short form context was pretty great when it came out years ago. "Tweets" were generally someone putting random thoughts out in the aether or a quick notification or an alert to check out news on this site or that site. I feel like it wasn't meant for what it is today, for people to be interacting with each other in a meaningful way. Like, what are you gonna talk about in 100 characters or less? That's why you'll sometimes see old tweets of celebrities floating around of the most random nonsensical statements with no context. That's what twitter was as its core.

Now combine that with people starting to use twitter for more than just random thoughts that popped into peoples head. It started to be used for political activism (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) and fandom activities.

We all know how bad politics fandom can get on long form sites like tumblr and reddit. Imagine how much worse it is when you cut away all context and nuance to fit in a tweet.

Imo, it set twitter on a downward spiral. Doesn't matter how much they increase the character limit, the culture now is tweet fast. React fast. Argue fast. If you lose, resort to other means. Anything to win. Anything to get your tweets more attention that the other person.

It's like a game. I'm sure that plays into the desire to be "famous" that a lot of social media enjoyers crave.

I'm not saying tumblr is much better, but I feel the culture here is more like "take your time" or "time doesn't matter, old stuff is good". Tumblr does have an issue with people not reblogging content, causing good posts and content to go unnoticed given there is no real algorithm here, which is sad. But for the most part, ain't nobody here trying to get famous. Everything is talking and creating stuff for the sake of it.

Most of the time even the people arguing here are arguing about stuff that happens off site or they stay in their corners and tag correctly. (if you don't tag correctly and start fights on purpose, I immediately assume you must be from twitter)

People who have been here on my blog for a while are probably thinking "Tch, what do you know about fandom conflict?" and let me tell you, in my youth I participated in a ship war. It was just one,but still. I didn't resort to name calling or doxing people though, that's for sure. I wrote essays and essays in response to people, defended my ship, made stuff for my ship (which I still do), the whole shebang. It was all here on tumblr and deviantart. I do have a twitter for that fandom but I don't use it for any drama. I can say the drama on twitter is MUCH WORSE than anything I experienced on tumblr.

That is the ST fandom on twitter in a nutshell. No one can mind their own business. They're constantly spying on each other, posting using common search terms of the people they don't like and then acting surprised when the people they don't like respond to them. It's all like a game. Every blue moon when I go there to see if there's WillEl things, inevitably I will see shippers using it to fight against each other or crap on Will or El.

Once a week it's the same suspects saying the same things over and over again. Finding something pointless to be mad about. Sending angry anon messages. Never actually sitting down to enjoy the ships/relationships they claim to be a fandom of. Cannot mind their business and always have something negative to say. Denying what is literally in the show because they personally don't like it. Literally the worst kind of people to have in your fandom. (I associate that kind of behavior with like.... Riverdale drama or something. Sorry if you're a Riverdale fan. Lol)

In conclusion, yeah. I think twitter is that way because the short form context has breed a culture of "win or lose". Mixed with a little bit of celebrity idolization and a desperate desire for people to interact with you even if it's negative.

#ask #Anonymous

[goddamngreta]

Hometown Blues - Chapter Two

Summary: When a family tragedy comes knocking, Lily and her three brothers pile into their childhood home for the summer. Now as summer is ending, only Jake and Lily will stay behind to pick up the pieces at home.

Word Count: 1,364

Warnings: Complex Family Dynamic, Mentions of Death / Dying, Angst

A/N: Okay, sorry this chapter took awhile. I am working on setting up a taglist sign up but for now just message me if you'd like to be on it :)

She felt dumb doing it, crying. She knew it had been coming all summer, but she still felt incredibly stupid while it was happening. She also knew it was only a matter of time before her paper thin walls alerted her brothers to what was happening. 

Since she had gotten the infamous call she had felt like balling but the tears had never come. Jake had been the one to call her, so she immediately knew something was wrong. Jake never called. Texted, sure. Called, never. 

Lily had been sitting in the library hours deep into studying for the bar exam when her phone rang. She ignored it, whatever someone needed could wait she thought. She had to pass the bar. When her phone didn’t stop vibrating in her bag she phished it out, silently standing to take the call outside the library. When she saw Jake’s contact photo plastered across her screen it took everything within her not to answer the call on the silent floor of the library. 

“I’ll call you back in a sec… leaving the library” She texted back, fumbling her way past a cohort of students. 

“K”

The last time Jake had called her had been in high school when he wrecked the car that the four of them had shared. He was going to be late picking her up from dance practice, he said. The car was also missing a mirror he’d informed her. The phone call lasted under a minute. Maybe he’d crashed his car out in Denver, though Lily wasn’t sure why he wouldn’t just call Josh. 

That was the thing about Jake and Josh for the most part they were completely insular. It had never really bugged Lily; she understood that they had a special bond, a way of coexisting that she couldn’t understand, but it made times like this awkward. Lily knew nothing good would come of this conversation. 

Josh always made Jake deliver the bad news to Sam and Lily. That’s how it had always been. 

Stepping outside into the sun Lily took a breath. Maybe he was just checking in. After all Lily had spent the night prior venting to Sam about how horrible bar studying was going, maybe word had gotten back to him. Checking in was a brotherly thing to do. 

Finding a bench Lily sat down and redialed. Might as well get whatever this is over with. 

“Um hey…. Sorry I was in the library.” She said when Jake picked up on the first ring.

“Yeah that’s what you said.” He sounded stiff Lily thought, but then again they hadn’t talked in a while. Maybe she was just over analyzing the situation in her head. She hadn’t been sleeping well lately. 

“Yeah…” Lily didn’t know what to say as she dug for her sunglasses in her backpack. 

“Have you talked to mom yet?”

“Yet?” Lily asked. She had talked to her mom a few days ago but it was too late by the time she had finished ranting to Sam last night to give her mom a call. 

“Yeah. Did she call?” Jake responded still sounding rigid, like he was reading from cue cards. 

“No. Why? What’s up?” Lily had been dreading this. Whatever this was she wanted Jake to spit it out. 

“Is it too late for you to defer the bar exam?” He questioned. 

“Um… I mean I don’t know. That’s not my plan. Did Sam text you? I was being dramatic when I Facetimed him last night. I don’t want to push this off any longer. That would just stress me out even more, which I don’t think is even possible right now.” 

“I think you need to defer.” Lily could tell he was biting his tongue, holding something back. 

“I told you I’m fine! Sam was being dramatic I’m sure. I swear he’s more stressed for me, which I totally appreciate but like I’m fine I just needed to vent.” Lily rushed out. She really needed to get back inside to study and not have a weird conversation with her older brother. 

“Listen, you need to defer the bar and come home. I don’t know what you and Sam talked about last night or whatever I haven’t called him yet. I haven’t even called Josh yet. Shit, Lil” 

Lily blinked, sucking in a breath. 

“What do you need to call them about and why would I need to come home?” She didn’t want the answer. 

The line went silent, only Jake’s breath satisfying her concerns that he hadn’t hung up. 

“Dad called.” He finally started, his words slow and pinched, “Mom wasn’t feeling so good so they went to the doctor. They had to run some tests because they couldn’t figure out why she was in pain.” 

In that moment Lily knew. It didn’t matter what Jake would tell her next, her life would be forever changed. 

“This morning the scans came back. It’s …. um …. well dad didn’t want me to tell you because you're studying but I figured no way Sam would keep the secret from you. I haven’t told him yet but I just know he’ll ask if you know … plus no way you’d forgive us” He blubbered. 

“It’s uh… It’s cancer. Terminal.” 

Lily sucked in a breath. The trees in front of her started to spin. She said nothing. 

“I don’t really know much else besides the fact that I think we need to go home. Uh…. I think Josh and I will drive back, I haven’t talked to Josh yet. He’s at work and I wanted to sort this out first. We can stop and pick you up on the way. Sam’s going to have to fly. Um …. is his semester done? It’s done, yeah? I…. I’ll call him or you can I mean whatever I just think um yeah I think Josh will agree we’ll leave tomorrow we can get you by Wednesday……”

Lily was half listening. She didn’t know what to say or how to process it. She needed to pack, that’s all she could think about. She hadn’t done laundry in a week, she’d been so busy studying for the bar and now that was over done and gone. She would file the paperwork to formally defer her application that night. 

A harsh knock on her childhood bedroom door jolted her back to reality. Sam stood hands in pockets staring at his feet. 

Sam, the person she had to tell over the phone that he needed to get on a plane and soon. He had been understandably confused, wanting to know exactly what Jake had said.

“I don’t know, Sam. I really don’t know.” Was all she had to offer him. 

And now he stood on her doorway months later, a thing he had done hundreds of times in their youth. Big brown doe eyes staring back at her. 

“I don’t think I’m cooler than you.” He said, eyes darting back to his feet. 

“God Sam yes you do but it doesn’t even matter.” Lily said rolling her watery eyes as he shifted his weight from side to side, something he did when he was uncomfortable. Lily didn’t care, he had come into her room. If he didn’t want to talk he need to come over. 

“You have always thought you were cooler than everyone, that’s fine.” She continued. 

Sam looked wounded but Lily didn’t care she was so stupidly mad. Life wasn’t fair and she was so stinking mad about it. Sam would head back to New York in a few short day to finish the last year of his grad program and Lily would be left here with their dying mother. Where was the justice in that? 

She had made Sam upset she could tell. She could almost always tell what he was feeling. She just let him stare at her from her doorway as she started to sob again. As her shoulders began to shake she let her head fall into her hands, not caring to finish out the conversation. 

She could hear Sam shuffle over to her bed before easing down next to her. The pair didn’t exchange another word. 

#greta van fic #greta van fleet #jake kiska fic #jake kiszka #sam kiszka #angst #fanfic #ao3 fanfic #josh kiszka #josh gvf #jake gvf #danny gvf #sam gvf #gvf

[a-flux-uchiha]

Poisoned Smiles and a Silver Tongue

Gen, really mostly just Artemis/Sheik, but Impa shows up a bit. Artemis is tired of trying to negotiate with a stupid noble and decides to get some mischief onboard to convince him to stop delaying the negotiations.

Artemis groaned as she dropped into her favorite chair in her sitting room. The negotiations with Labrynna were still going on, and it had been four days. Usually these sorts of negotiations took two days at most. Four days, and all because the blasted noble they sent to accompany the poor diplomat was refusing anything except the ridiculous terms he’d gotten into his head that Labrynna deserved. Everyone else in the room, including the poor diplomat he was accompanying knew those were absolutely stupid terms, but he was adamant, and it was delaying the negotiations. 

Artemis’ gaze fell across the bodysuit laying innocuously across the backs of one of her chairs, returned after Kiara had washed it earlier. Maybe it was time to try a more…hands on approach to diplomacy. 

Nothing illegal obviously, but Sheik was technically employed by Artemis herself, so it wasn’t exactly odd to see Sheik loitering around the castle, and well, Sheik could always just…happen to be in the same place as that noble several times in a row and working with his weapons. 

“Hey Kiara,” Artemis called, figuring her maid wasn’t going to be that far away. 

“Yes, Queen?” Kiara asked politely, stepping out of the shadows. She was getting very good at that. 

“Turn anyone who comes here looking for me away. Say I’m doing paperwork and can’t be interrupted or something. I’m going out.” 

Kiara smiled, understanding the implications. “Of course Queen. You’ll be busy for several hours catching up on the paperwork delayed by the negotiations.” 

“Thank you. I’ll alert you when I’m back.” 

“May the shadows keep you hidden,” Kiara replied, a traditional Sheikah wish of good luck. 

Artemis simply inclined her head in response, standing up and already beginning the process of unlacing her gown. Kiara would handle it all. She was Artemis’ handmaid for several reasons. Only one of the reasons was that she was being trained by Impa, which meant Artemis could trust her. 

Sheik was ready within ten minutes, and at least two minutes of that was just hiding all of his knives. Sheik had gone by feminine pronouns for a while, mostly during the war, but after a couple incidents of someone calling him by masculine pronouns, he decided he liked that better and fully switched. Artemis was female, yes, but Sheik was not. 

He snuck out of the Queen’s quarters, only actually appearing to most people’s eyes pretty far away. It wouldn’t do for there to be some awkward rumors about how he had been seen coming from the Queen’s rooms. If the Queen was rumored to be having a fling with her personal assassin Sheik was going to die of embarrassment. He could not have a fling with himself, that would be literally impossible. 

If someone accused him of having a fling with himself he was going to reveal his secret identity as Artemis out of embarrassment and then Impa would kill him. 

So, first order of business, identify where the noble was right now. Pretty easy to find out, he just had to ask a few of the servants if they knew where he was. 

Turned out the noble in question was busy berating one of the servants he’d ordered to bring him food because she hadn’t known exactly what he wanted. Notably, he had neglected to tell her what he had wanted. It was like he thought she was a mind reader or something. 

Well, jokes on him. Sheik strolled out of the shadows conspicuously within the noble’s line of sight, and set about doing a knife trick. They knew several fun tricks with knives, and all of them were good for intimidating nobles without saying a single thing. 

The noble clearly saw him, as he quickly shut up and stopped berating the poor servant girl, who quickly scurried away when his attention was distracted. 

Sheik made deliberate eye contact with the noble, flipping the knife up. It almost hung in the air for a second, then fell. He caught it, then slipped it into his sleeve with a sleight of hand trick. Sheik wouldn’t need to say anything at all, just show up a few times, play with knives a bit, and leave. 

A few servants with laundry bustled out of nowhere, coming between Sheik and the noble, which was his indication to disappear. Which he did, straight up into the rafters. The castle was always built with rafters specifically for Sheikah to use. So few people bothered to look up, and even when they did, the rafters were generally wide enough a Sheikah could stand on one and be fully invisible to everyone below unless they were at a very specific angle. 

Sheik could see the noble looking around frantically before slowly leaving, looking around like he was expecting Sheik to jump out of the shadows to attack him. 

Sheik wouldn’t do that. Not to him, that’d probably just make Labrynna mad. Intimidating him by calmly walking by while doing a knife trick or two though, that was on the table because it wasn’t technically illegal. There was nothing illegal about performing knife tricks, and there was nothing illegal about walking around the castle. 

Technically direct intimidation was illegal, or at least heavily frowned upon in diplomatic circles, but Sheik wasn’t doing that, he was just walking and playing with his knives. It wasn’t his fault if the guy took it as a threat. He didn’t mean it like that. 

Well. 

No one could prove that he did, in fact, mean it like that. 

This was totally diplomacy. It wasn’t any more underhand than stuff that sometimes went down at the actual negotiation table. Totally diplomacy. 

So Sheik continued his little game, any time the man stopped to berate a servant for doing nothing to him, or a guard for fooling around with her weapon, Sheik would drop down, stroll out of the shadows playing with a knife, make dramatic eye contact, then disappear. 

As the game went on the man became visibly haunted, jumping at shadows and shuddering any time any gleam of metal caught his eye. Sheik drew great amusement from it, occasionally dropping down and just appearing among the servants. Not even playing with his knives, just walking with the servants for a bit before disappearing again. 

The man eventually went back to the rooms for the Labrynnian guests, which meant the game was over sadly. 

Sheik didn’t actually go back to his rooms for a while though, just hanging around the castle and randomly helping servants. He helped one lady carry laundry, then helped her fold it for a while. He helped one of the cooks by running back and forth between the storage a few dozen times to contribute to the canning process currently going on, moving completed jars to the storage areas underground and bringing empty jars back up. 

It was refreshing to just run around the castle and do random chores, using his body in ways he didn’t usually, either when sitting around doing paperwork or dealing with her advisors, or when doing battle training. 

Plus it was nice to just connect with his people, made sure he remembered that they were people with lives and thoughts and feelings. Plus he could get random dirt on people. That was always funny. No one thought twice about giving the latest gossip to Sheik, who showed up randomly to help with chores, even if he was technically the Queen’s personal assassin. He never used it, but it was funny to know anyway. 

Conspicuously, the next day the noble caved quickly to the terms Artemis and the diplomat had laid out and stopped protesting. Impa was giving Artemis suspicious looks, which frankly were warranted, but still, rude. 

That wrapped up before lunch, thank the golden goddesses, so Artemis headed down to the kitchens to collect lunch for herself, Impa falling into step next to her. 

“He caved awfully fast,” Impa remarked, and Artemis couldn’t stop a smug smile from spreading across her face. “And you look awfully smug. What did Sheik do?”

“Nothing illegal,” Artemis replied innocently. It was true, Sheik had done nothing illegal. 

Impa sighed. “And nothing that will be traced back to you?” 

“I’m not some amateur, you taught me well.” 

“Perhaps too well,” Impa sighed, but she probably didn’t mean that. There was no such thing as teaching someone too well. 

#Artemis #Impa #Hyrule warriors #technically #Intimidation is totally diplomacy #dont ask about artemis' gender #i dont know and neither does she

[orionangeline]

So y'know how I made a terrible painting for my granmas birthday a few months ago and hated the entire process thoroughly bc I have terrible planning and time management?

Yeah I did it again

Before you get impressed I didn't do the background myself

#my skills are rusty af and people are making too big a deal about me just to be spiteful about it I swear #they KNOW I don't take compliments well its very mean lol #also you can't see it bc of the low photo quality but there are so many mistakes #also I got told I look like a player from the eighties bc I was ok look I let someone from the eighties cut my hair ok what do you expect #like. should I be insulted or? at least I look like I get laid but? i don't wanna? ok I get it my hair is getting shaggy and it's naturally #naturally a lil poofy ok shut up #right back to my point i painted the damn alice in like. the hour before my aunt's birthday breakfast #while everyone thought I was still sleeping #someone call me stupid and tell me to set more alerts for things like that pls #my art #my art sucks #also skin tone is a DIFFICULT color to mix

[gaysimpsstuff]

Accidental Turn-Ons; Hawks x Dom! Reader

Genre: angst to fluff to smut

Type: Oneshot

Summary: Hawks returns home from a mission, clearly exhausted, and you take the time to give him a little massage! However, it doesn’t quite have the effects you expected.

Word Count: 3.5K

Warnings: minor dub-con (Y/n doesn't know that what they're doing is sexual for Hawks), stress, minor injuries, Keigo's adorable bird tendencies, sexual innuendo, dom y/n, wing play, feather play, nicknames, edging, dacryphilia, handjobs, aftercare

Other: Yo this might actually be my best smut yet

Inspiration: This was actually inspired by my own piece of work, MHA Characters + Their Biggest Kinks where I spoke about Hawks’ wing and back kink and how it relates to his avian traits.

Taglist: @smolchildfangirl @mandalorian-baby-bird @waffleareniceandfluffy @catcherisvibin @thesubtlewhore @popcatx0

You paced the living room, glancing between the TV and the door. The news station had cut away from the fight five minutes ago, which meant your boyfriend was either in the hospital getting treated for any injuries he might have sustained, dealing with fans, dealing with paperwork, or on his way home.

Your phone buzzed and you raced to grab it off the couch, fearing an incoming call from the hospital, or a news alert about the well-being of the man you loved.

You bit the inside of your cheek as you realized it was just an email from work, not even marked important. You tossed your phone back onto the couch with a groan.

Wasted build-up. Your mind grumbled

Your eyes flicked back to the TV, watching as the reporter rambled on about yet another stupid thing America had going on as you waited for something, anything to happen. Right when you were getting ready to pick your phone back up from the couch cushions when you heard a light tap tap tappity tap against the thick glass of the sliding glass door that led to your balcony.

You dashed across the living room, accidentally knocking a chair over as you raced to reach the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. You'd recognize his special knock any day, even if he changed it all the time whenever he forgot it. You always had patience with him, you knew he had too many things on his mind with Hero Work to always remember a random knock.

You grabbed the handle, yanking the door open with a wide grin, finally laying eyes on your bird boy. He had a hand stuffed in his pocket, the other rubbing at the back of his neck.

"Hey, Y/n. So sorry I'm late, been flying all day so naturally I'm a little sore. No excuse for missing movie night but-"

"I'm just so glad you're here!" You exclaimed, taking his cheeks in your hands and rubbing at his cheekbones. "I'm so sorry you're hurting, come inside I'll get a heating pack, or a cooling pack, maybe some lotion and I could give you a massage." You babbled, tugging him inside.

"A massage and some cuddles sound great," he sighed, eyes tired. You never liked the fact that Keigo was a hero. He worked too hard, too much, and for so long. He was still young, he should be appreciating life and spending time on himself and with his lover and not with the commission. "Oh I uh, I found this for you."

He took one of your hands off his face, taking his other hand out of his pocket and pressing something cold and smooth into your palm. You opened your fingers, a soft smile growing on your face at the sight of a smooth pretty white rock with grey and black speckles.

"Oh, Kei, this is beautiful. I love it~" you pressed a kiss to Keigo's cheek, loving the way he trilled. He was always so excited to pick up random items he found pretty or interesting, and he'd always give them right to you. It was truly adorable, you loved his gifts. His wings fluttered in happiness for a moment before he winced slightly in pain, happiness vanished in a reminder of his stress from the day.

"Ouch, okay, sitting down time," he muttered, stumbling past you to flop down on the couch. You grabbed the lotion from the kitchen counter (you kept it there for whenever he came home with sore muscles). You set the stone down on the coffee table, tapping it twice in a small show of affection before sitting next to Keigo.

"Shirt off Birdie," you said, squirting some lotion into your palm before rubbing them together.

"Hey, at least buy me a drink first," he chuckled, tugging his jacket off and peeling off his tight hero shirt. You sighed, deciding not to comment on his tacky flirting, knowing you'd been dating for almost a year now.

He turned his back to you, crossing his legs. He folded his wings, lowering them to give you access to his shoulders and shoulder blades. You pressed your fingers against one of his shoulders, finding a large knot almost immediately. You heard him hiss, and your frown increased.

"I know it hurts but it will hurt a lot less when I'm finished," you told him, pressing a gentle kiss to the nape of his neck. The hair there rose against your skin, a shiver shooting down his spine. You blinked, confused at his reaction. Maybe it was uncomfortable for him. You resolved not to kiss there again.

You continued to rub against his tightened muscles, listening to his soft hisses and groans. You pulled away after about six minutes, picking up the lotion bottle and squirted some more into your palms.

"Hey, when you finish with mm~ when you finish with that shoulder could you do around my wing joints? Down my spine, y'know?"

"Are there muscles there?" you asked, most people didn't have muscles down their spines, usually it was just the ridges of said bones.

"Yeah, I do," he explained quickly. You nodded pressing into his knot, slowly working down when it eased up. You moved your fingers downwards, feeling his shoulder blades and spine before reaching his wings joints. He shuddered, similar to when you kissed his neck, but a little larger. You hummed, pressing your fingers down and finding another knot, right where his skin turned to bright red feathers.

"Oh, yeah, yeah right there that's perfect." You glanced back up at him, confused, he didn't usually speak when you massaged him, he'd also never asked for a massage so close to his wings, he was usually very cautious about having his wings touched. Maybe he'd just gotten tired of dealing with wing pains by himself, it was probably a lot different from other knots.

"I'm so sorry you have to deal with this," you cooed. "You really deserve a break, it's not healthy to work this hard all the time."

"I know, Little Feather, but it's nng- n-not my fault. The citizens need me." he panted. You sighed, moving your other hand to work out both wings' knots at the same time.

Keigo's head flopped forward, and his hand flew up to slap over his mouth, holding back a soft whine. You lifted an eyebrow in suspicion, there were only a few times when you heard him make noises like that.

Slowly, you pressed your fingers down closer to the underside, right over a few of his downy feathers.

"Oh fuck~" he hissed.

"Okay, that's it." you lifted your hands away from them, holding them in the air. "What the hell's going on with you?" His head whipped around so fast you were surprised it was still attached to his neck. His golden eyes widened, pupils blowing out, nearly completely covering the honey iris.

"W-what?" he exclaimed, feathers puffing up.

"I'm sorry if I seem mad, I'm not, I'm just- very confused. You're literally moaning. I am giving you a massage and you're moaning. Explain."

His cheeks dusted over in pink, and his eyes fell down to his lap.

"Okay uh- fuck I- this was not how I planned on telling you, erm- I promise I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable-"

"Keigo, it's alright, I'm not uncomfortable, just confused. Take a breath darling,"

"Okay, okay, okay." he took a deep breath. "My wings and back are... sensitive, like- in a sexual way. It's why I never let you touch them, I didn't want you to get uncomfortable with that."

"Oh Keigo, you should have just told me, it's perfectly alright, you know I love you, and I love your bird traits. I'm not uncomfortable with this." you smiled sweetly, pressing a hand to his cheek.

"You're- you're not?" he glanced back up at you, golden eyes filled with hope.

"Not in the slightest. To be honest, I don't see why anyone would be uncomfortable with it. It's just another erogenous zone, like someone's neck, ears, or nipples would be. And lots of people keep those bits on display."

"Thanks," he murmured, rubbing his nose against yours. "That does make me feel better, but uh- there's something else.." he trailed off, nervous.

"Your obvious boner? I was gonna leave you to take care of that yourself, but I'll gladly do it for you if you'd like."

"Oh uh-" his cheeks brightened as if attempting to match the tone of his wings. "I would very much like that," he admitted, offering you a slightly nervous smile.

"Anytime, Birdie~" you stood up, hands landing on either side of his waist as you pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead. "But I would very much like to experiment with those wings of yours, see what we can do with them. Just how far can we go?" You smirked at him, tongue darting out to moisturize your lips. Keigo let out a soft breath, shifting against the couch to make room for the tent in his pants.

"I- I have thought about using them before- my feathers can move fast, so they can act as a vibrator if I focus, but I could never use it on myself. I know I'd get distracted, then the feather would stop moving, then I'd have to start all over again. I'd basically just be edging myself all night. I know I'd just give up and jerk off."

"I can work with that~" you pressed your lips against his, surprising him. He whined into the kiss, hands flying up to fist your shirt.

Unfair. He thought, he already had his shirt off, and he knew he'd be naked in just a few minutes, but you hadn't taken anything off yet. Knowing you, you would stay clothed just to tease him. The most you would do was lift your shirt a little to show him your stomach before quickly covering it again. That was what you usually did when you dommed. At least for the foreplay.

You pressed the tip of your tongue against his lips, pushing past his defensive barrier of shiny white teeth, perfect for the press, and you licked along the top of his mouth. His whole body shuddered against yours, his hips jerking upwards.

You grabbed his thigh with one hand, squeezing. A warning, he knew, against bucking up again, against disobeying. He tasted your saliva, feeling it pool onto his tongue. His eyes finally drooped closed, enjoying the taste of leftover's from last night's dinner on your tongue.

He whined against the back of your mouth, feeling you move your other hand up towards his back. He already knew what you were going to do. Without pulling away from the kiss, you plucked a feather about the size of his hand from his wings, running a finger down the stem, brushing it against the little red bristles. Soft against your finger, yet forcing Keigo's restrained cock to grow even harder than he ever thought possible.

You slowly pulled back from the kiss, taking his lower lip hostage between your teeth, tugging it as far as it could go before finally releasing it. You felt Keigo's hot breaths fanning out across your face, and your grin only grew. You loved breaking him apart, the strong, well-put-together Hawks was an act only for the cameras, only you could ever know the real him, the horny, whiny, needy baby he truly was.

"Look at you, falling apart already? I've barely done shit to you."

"Fuck- that's just 'cause it's you~" he purred

"Flattery won't get you anywhere, doll." Your shit-eating smirk only grew, and Keigo could feel himself melting into the couch cushions. "C'mon, take 'em off, you're a big boy, I'm sure you can do it yourself."

He nodded, hands flying away from your shirt and grappling with his belt buckle faster than you could say 'Hawks.' He tossed his belt behind the couch, not caring if it hit anything, and quickly shimmied out of his pants and underwear, letting them pool around his ankles. His cock slapped against his stomach, six inches and throbbing.

Looks like his prediction was correct. He was naked. You were not. You didn't look like you were planning on undressing anytime soon, which left Keigo feeling slightly disappointed. However, any negative emotions vanished the second you ran his bright red feather down his nose, over his lips, then under his chin. He knew immediately you were trying to lift his face with the feather, despite the single feather not being strong enough by itself, not unless it was under his control. But he was not in control, you were, and fuck it if that wasn't the best part.

"Good boy~" you praised him, sliding a hand up his bare thigh, brushing it carelessly close to his dick. He bit his lip, eyes flicking between your hand and your eyes.

"Please, please touch me," he whispered, slightly embarrassed by the situation. It had been a long while since you'd last had sex, and an even longer while since you had been the dom. He'd all but forgotten how to properly beg. You could tell.

"Come on, doll, I know you can ask me nicely, or at least better than that." He groaned, hands gripping your hips and attempting to tug you into his lap, a plan formulating in his head that ended in an amazing thighjob. But his plans never worked, not at least with you involved. No, you were too stubborn, one of the many things he loved about you. But not really in this precise situation.

"Nah ah ah~ hands off the merchandise." Your hand squeezed his thigh again, twice this time. That was all he needed to let go. He found purchase in a nearby pillow, moving it behind him and tugging on the little dangly bits on the corners. He forgot what they were called but he was ninety-five percent sure it started with a 'D' or something.

"Fuck, please, I need it, you know I need it, I-I've been nothing but good all day, please touch me, please~" He whined, eyebrows furrowing. That plus his reddened cheeks made just the cutest face. You couldn't wait to make his eyes go crooked and for him to drool.

"That's it, good boy~" You ran the tip of the feather up his cock, circling the tip. He shivered in response, biting back a loud moan. "Come on, don't make me mad, vibrate yourself with your feather~" you cooed, teasing tone making his stomach churn in the best way possible.

He bit his lip, looking down at the feather slowly circling the tip of his dick. It had already nudged his foreskin downwards, leaving the red skin fully exposed. He took a deep breath, trying to block out your presence, and how hard he was, just focusing on the single red feather, twirling around in loops.

He felt it twitch against his skin, before finally starting to shake, then at last it was vibrating. He twitched it away from his dick, slightly nervous about how it might feel. You sighed, pressing it directly onto the little hole at the tip.

"Ghhh- oh fuckkkkk~" he moaned, pressing his head against the couch cushions. It felt better than he ever possibly could have imagined. Feeling the feather on his dick, his dick against his feather, it was double the pleasure. He whined loudly when the vibrations suddenly stopped. "Nooooo I want it, bring it back, please," he begged, looking up at you with wide eyes.

"Doll I didn't even do anything. You lost focus. You gotta try a little harder." you said, tapping the feather against him again. Pre-cum stuck to it, making red glisten with a little bit of white. He cursed at the sight (and feeling) of his own pre on his feather.

Soon enough, it started to buzz again. And you put it back on him. This time, you traced it up and down his base, running it over the tip again. One of his hands flew up to his mouth, knuckles pressing against his lips. His hips bucked up against the vibrating feather.

"Ooooohhhhhh fuckfuckfuckfuck so goooood~" he moaned loudly. Again, the buzzing stopped without warning. "Nooo fuck no! I need it please fuck!" He looked like he was on the verge of tears- no way it was really that good. You'd have to ask him to use his feathers on you sometime.

"I know baby, I know," you ran your fingers through his hair, tugging lightly. His breath hitched, golden eyes filling with tears of pleasure. "But you gotta focus to get it done, okay?" he nodded, wiping his tears, but he only managed to spread the warm, salty liquid over his face, making him appear even more debauched.

How cute

You wrapped your hand around his dick when it started to vibrate again, the feather curled up between your palm and his dick. Slowly, you began to jerk him off, feeling the feather vibrate faster than you'd felt any toy vibrate, and his dick throbbing and pulsing against you left you feeling like you just might cum in your pants.

"FUCK!" he shouted, back arching off the couch. One of his legs flew upwards, toes curling around the air. He was shaking at this point, looking like he was just on the verge of cumming. "Oh, Godddd fuckkkmeeeee~" he wailed, tears overflowing and falling down his flushed cheeks.

"No god's gonna fuck you, darling, only I will because you belong to me. Isn't that right?" You pulled on his hair and his moans grew louder, the vibrations intensifying, which you thought was impossible at the rate it had been buzzing against your skin and his.

"Youuuuu fuck- I- I belong to youuuu~" he moaned, hiccuping a little.

"Fuck, you're so fucking cute like this, so adorable when you fall apart beneath me, gonna break soon?" He sniffed loudly, nodding. His moan broke out into a disappointed wail when the vibrations stopped again. He tried to get it to move but it just wasn't going to. You opened your palm, revealing the feather, the stem bent awkwardly. Hawks sighed, sadness filling his eyes.

"I was just 'bout to cum too..." he whimpered.

"Oh, you'll still cum. We don't need anything else between us anymore~" you tossed the feather aside before spitting into your palm, beginning to jerk him off again. It certainly didn't feel nearly as good as it did with the feather, but at this point, he was so close he just couldn't give two fucks about how good it felt, just that it would get him where he needs.

"Oh yes yes yes fuck yes more more- gonna cum gonna cum ooooh fuck baby you're gonna make me cum!" He cried out, bucking up into your hand, sobbing as pre ran down the sides of his dick and onto your fingers.

You pulled him to you by his hair, loving the loud moan he let out from the pain. You pressed your lips right up against his ear.

"Then fucking cum, my baby boy~" you purred seductively. Moments later, his whole body spasmed, legs shaking violently and wings flaring outwards. He wailed, screaming as he finally came into your hand, white ribbons landing on his legs, stomach, and even a little on the couch. Subconsciously, he knew he'd have to clean that up later, but he was not about to worry about that right now.

"Godamn! If that wasn't the hottest thing I've ever seen!" you exclaimed, truly in awe at just how good his orgasm looked. He had gone limp, flopped back against the couch, and panting. You pulled your hand away from his dick, licking away the bits of cum from your skin before sitting down next to him, tugging his body closer to you.

"Unf, that was the best damn orgasm of my life," he murmured, voice a little hoarse.

"Looked like it, you alright darling? Can I get you anything? Water, blankets, bath?" You worried a little, hoping you didn't completely brain-fuck him.

"Jus' some cuddles." his head flopped down on your shoulder, eyes fluttering shut as he yawned.

"Hey birdie, don't fall asleep on me," you chuckled. "We still gotta get you all cleaned up and put in bed."

"Not... a problem..." he whispered, breath tickling your skin as he nodded off.

"Heh, that's a problem," you smiled affectionately. He deserved his rest. You resolved to stay still for a little while, then clean him up as gently as you could before carrying him to bed. He wasn't that heavy, after all. "I love you, my darling Keigo~" you whispered, resting your head on top of his and closing your eyes.

Maybe the mess could be cleaned tomorrow, you were also very tired.

#keigo takami #mha takami keigo #keigo x y/n #takami keigo #mha hawks #bottom hawks #hawks fluff #hawks smut #hawks x gender neutral reader #hawks x trans reader #sub hawks #hawks x reader #bnha x male reader #bnha x male reader smut #male reader smut #male reader #hawks x male reader #bnha x trans reader #trans reader #poc reader #dom reader #gender neutral fanfic #gender neutral reader #gender neutral insert #gn reader

[impaladolan]

crush concept: grayson has the biggest crush on y/n. she comes to visit him when he’s got the flu and he tries to play it off likes he’s not sick 🤒

Blurb Alert! - Grayson Dolan

; being sick has been my entire personality for the past two weeks, and i am sorry lol

Under The Weather:

"No, really, I'm fine Y/N." Grayson groggily protested over the phone, adding a horrid cough on the end.

"You don't have much of a choice Grayson. I'm coming over there whether you want me to or not." Y/N fought back, shuffling aground to grab her keys and wallet.

"I don't want you to get sick too, I'll be fine." He half-heartedly objected, a warmed smile coming across his face.

"I'll be there in half an hour!" Y/N ended the phone call and hurried her way around the house, specifically searching for remedies that would cure Grayson's sickness.

Y/N and Grayson were long time friends. The first time the met was when Y/N was on the side of a road with a flat, and Grayson pulled over to help her change it. He liked her laugh and she enjoyed their conversations, so they kept in touch.

Once a week, they'd play board games with a couple other friends or go out for a nice dinner. The two were close but they shared nothing more, nothing less.

Though, Grayson felt another way..

She was the epitome of a women that he could spend the rest of his life with. She was down for anything, wanted adventure, had a laugh like the angels, loved kids, and so much more.

Yet Grayson never made an advance towards her and he hadn’t planned on doing so for a while. He felt that his heart needed a break from all the chaos he’s put it through in the past year. He couldn’t trust himself to not slip up or ruin a perfectly good friendship. He tired himself of rushing into things, but in his heart he knew there would never be anyone else.

Y/N was over in less than twenty minutes. She didn’t live very far away and had made a quick stop to the grocery store for some ingredients. She knocked at the door and waited until Grayson let her in with a woozy grin and a quilt wrapped around his shoulders.

“You don’t have to do all this, Y/N. I’m completely fine, just a stupid head cold.” He moved to the side and let her walk through, knowing that she’d never take no for an answer.

“Sounds a bit worse to me.” She started to unload the few grocery bags onto the counter, fishing around his kitchen for pots and pans. Once she found one, she went right to work pouring a broth into the pan and letting it heat up on the stove.

“Want some help?” He let his blanket fall to the ground walking around the island to be by her side.

“I want you to take some of this medicine and lay down. You look like you’ve got a headache.” Y/N slipped a package of cold-relief pills from a bag and broke him off a square.

Grayson relaxed his brows, noticing that he really did have a thundering headache and he wanted to sit down. But he also wanted to be around Y/N and thank her for her courtesy. She seemed so maternal and eager to help someone in need, it made his heart throb and his cheeks warm up.

He listened to her words, downing the two little pills with a sip of water and sprawling across the sofa so he could watch what she was doing.

Y/N was simply just warming up a broth and making hot honey tea, like her mother always did for her when she was sick and bedridden as a child.

She poured both the liquids into two separate mugs and grabbed a sleeve of crackers, setting them down on the coffee table beside him.

“Drink a little of both and see if it helps.” She waited for him to sit up before handing him the mug full of broth first, and a couple crackers.

“Thank you.” He said before taking a cautious sip. He let it slide down his throat smoothly before a tasteful sigh escaped his lips. It soothed the soreness of his throat and helped his runny nose open a bit.

It made Y/N smile to see his face soften from the warmth. The longer she looked, she could tell he had the shivers. His legs were jittery and his hands clamped around the mug tightly.

“I’ll be right back.” She went over to the pile of blankets he left on the floor earlier and grabbed a few others from a closet down the hallway. She had five blankets before she made it back to Grayson and she layered each one of them over him.

“Warm now?” She laughed as he wiggled his feet from underneath, handing her the empty mug. She set it down and gave him the honey tea and the rest of the crackers.

“Much much warmer. I really can’t thank you enough, Y/N.” He gazed upon her, wishing she weren’t just a friend, but merely his lover. He’d give her a kiss on the cheek and the biggest hug in the world if he could.

Only if he could…

#sweet anon #thank you for the asks! #grayson #dt #dolan twins #grayson dolan #grayson x reader #grayson dolan fanfic #blurb alert! #grayson imagine

[mamoonde]

baby fever - an mdzs modern cultivation au

The thing about being the brother to the cultivation world’s primary expert in talismans is that Jiang Cheng has seen more than enough bizarre and frankly horrifying things that can result from having the right radicals lined on paper.

Wei Ying had been a nightmare to grow up with, even more so, when he had officially gotten his own workshop. Jiang Cheng has been victim to one too many of his pranks and experiments to know to be wary about unfamiliar arrays and talismans – especially unfinished ones.

So when he’d gotten the case, he’d enlisted Wei Ying’s help. Some would argue that having the pioneer of modern talismans and arrays at his beck and call is the bigger perk to having him as a brother. Those people have never suffered from having a pig’s nose for three days due to an experimental talisman, so their arguments are invalid.

The senior disciples he’s enlisted for the case have already set up the usual safety wards around the immediate area when his brother arrives. He knows because despite the lack of fanfare, Wei Ying is loud. And despite having moved out from the main clan residences, he’s always been quite the enabler towards the younger Jiang disciples.

“If all of you are done slacking off now, we do have work to do here.” Jiang Cheng says when they’ve finally finished their usual antics. Too much, and the younger ones will think he’s gone soft, and he can’t have that as heir to the Jiang Sect and lead of this team.

“Just admit you missed me too, Jiang Cheng.” Wei Ying slings an arm around his shoulders, which Jiang Cheng is quick to shake off.

“Quit messing around. Can’t you act more like a professional?” Jiang Cheng grouses, moving past the safety wards. “Don’t tell me you act like this in front of your apprentices.”

“Aww, don’t be jealous, Chengcheng – you’ll always be my favorite.”

“Who the fuck’s jealous?” He pretends he doesn’t see the teasing grins his brother and the older disciples exchange. “And I told you to stop calling me that!”

“Fine, fine, whatever you say, didi.” Wei Ying waves a flippant hand, traipsing into the half-destroyed shack of their case with hardly any protective gear. “So, what are we dealing with this time?”

“You didn’t read the briefing pack I sent, did you.”

“Of course I did!” He definitely did not. “Just humor me, won’t you?”

Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes.

It’s a shame only Jiang Sect disciples are around to see the so-called Yiling Patriarch goofing around on a nighthunt like this. He wonders if they’d still revere him so much if they saw the way he conducts himself on nighthunts, with little regard for protocols. Really, it’s a wonder anyone takes Wei Ying seriously enough to attend his lectures enough to sign up to be his apprentice.

“It’s more the usual – a bunch of stupid teenagers keep using this place for their petty dares and gimmicks. Then someone’s kid never came home, alerted the police. The teenagers then pointed them here.”

Here, being a ramshackle storehouse on the outskirts of the city. Doesn’t help that with the area being one of the less developed ones, even the mundane police force barely patrol the area. It’s close enough for kids to frequent it, and far enough away that they could use it for trouble and get away with it.

“The building was meant to be a part of a larger complex, but when the other district flourished, they just decided to cut their losses and stop the project halfway.”

Beside it is what remains of the complex – a three-story building with half its skeleton exposed like a bizarre human anatomy model. Exposed to the elements, it has deteriorated so much that nature has begun reclaiming the space – weeds pushing through the cracks and moss covering the walls like some shoddy paint job.

“Well, all things considered, it’s not too bad, actually.” Wei Ying hums, like he’s honest to god considering a prime piece of real estate. “Any chance there might be some neighbors around we could ask?”

“There were.” He points to the corner of the building, covered with graffiti and reeking of human waste. “Probably fled when the police came looking, though.”

Wei Ying ‘tsk’s in annoyance. Jiang Cheng grimaces, knowing if even his brother thinks that’s a dead lead, then those witnesses would really be too difficult to track down.

Hopefully, they wouldn’t need to.

“Through here,” Jiang Cheng motions towards the rusted sidedoor of the storehouse.

Wei Ying scratches the bridge of his nose. “So how’d they figure calling us for help?”

Jiang Cheng sends out a few light talismans to each corner of the room. “They found this.”

This, being a wreck of a table, strings of various talisman paper written in blood hanging from the ceiling and a conspicuous amount of blood and gore in the middle of an unfamiliar array.

“Well, well; looks like someone had a bit of a workshop going on in here.” Wei Ying lets out a whistle, eyes already sparking with interest. “Can’t believe this was enough to get the police running to us, though.”

Jiang Cheng snorts. “Oh, believe me, they tried. But I’ve got one of ours keeping tabs on them.”

“Oh? Taking cues from our dear Nie-xiong, eh?”

“It’s useful advice, okay!”

Wei Ying snickers. God, he’s not gonna let this go, is he?

Jiang Cheng clears his throat. “I’d rather not have another Yi City, that’s all.”

This, at least, gets Wei Ying to grimace in shared misery. Yi City had been a nightmare and a half for everyone involved.

Jiang Cheng throws Wei Ying a spare pair of warded gloves right as he reaches out to touch the possibly still active markings on the table. Idiot.

He yelps when they smack him in the face, and Jiang Cheng fights to keep the smirk off his face.

“At least wear some gloves,” he says. “I’d rather not be hounded by your vengeful boyfriend if you turn into a toad.”

“How mean,” Wei Ying pouts even as he puts them on. “I wasn’t even going to touch them directly – and besides, this one's not active, anyway.”

“You don’t know that.” Jiang Cheng snaps.

Wei Ying raises a challenging brow, and Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes.

“Okay, fine. But at least act like you have more than an ounce of self-preservation!”

“Oh relax, Jiang Cheng. I do know what I’m doing.”

Jiang Cheng crosses his arms.

“So? They seem to have known whatever the fuck they were doing.” Jiang Cheng only recognizes half of the radicals on the array, and have never seen them used this way.

“Quite the opposite, actually.” Wei Ying hums. “There’s no rhyme or reason to the stuff they have here. It’s looking more like they somehow managed to steal a bag of standard talismans, did a bang up job of translating and reverse-engineering them, and thought that made them clever enough to start making their own.”

Jiang Cheng snorts. “Sounds like someone I know.” Wei Ying had pretty much started out the same - except he did have some proper guidance and supervision so his fuck-ups were a lot less lethal and only a bit more annoying.

Wei Ying sticks out his tongue at him, then takes out a blank piece of paper, pressing it onto a part of the array on the table. It sizzles and the smell of something burning fills the room. When Wei Ying lifts it, multiple arrays have been singed onto it. “Ah, perfect – it works!”

Jiang Cheng pinches the bridge of his nose. “Please tell me you didn’t just use your experimental talisman on valuable undocumented evidence.”

“But I didn’t! It’s perfectly intact.” Wei Ying pats the table. “Besides, it’s not like you didn’t already have everything documented – I know how ornery you get about your procedures.”

“You know, this is why the Council hounds you about your research methodologies.”

“My methodologies are perfectly fine, thank you; it’s those old coots who’re prissy about tradition.” Wei Ying crouches down to the bigger array on the floor, careful to break the outer line before sticking another piece of paper to it. “If I stuck to all their red tape, I would’ve never gotten half the results I have!”

Ugh. Wei Ying better be grateful it’s only seasoned Jiang disciples in the area. Anyone else would've ratted him out to the Council, who'd probably suspend him again. But as much as he hates directly saying it to his face, his brother does know what he’s doing.

So Jiang Cheng hangs back and keeps an eye out for any other intruders or lingering trouble while Wei Ying gathers and dismantles all of the arrays and talismans in the room. He and the other disciples have already done an initial sweep, but it’s been hours. A lot of things can still go wrong in a nighthunt, especially ones tossed to them by the police.

Of course his brother keeps yammering away the whole time. Muttering about whatever the heck he’s deciphering from the papers, but mostly about his two apprentices, their nephew, and unfortunately, his boyfriend. Eyeurgh.

And normally, he’d pretend he’s not listening to any of his drivel, except Wei Ying takes on a weird tone, which means he’s bothered by something, which means that stupidly high and mighty Hanguang-jun of his must have done something, enough that his brother’s consciously talking around whatever the fuck’s bothering him than just spitting it out, which means he has to intervene before his brother does something stupid.

Well, more stupid than usual.

Because loathe as he may be to admit it, the exalted (eyeroll) second young master of the Lan Sect really is... good, to and for his brother.

And it wouldn't be the first time he has to talk his brother out of his self-destructive habits.

Jiang Cheng sighs. At least he’ll have something new to report to a-jie.

“Okay, from what I can see, they were either trying to transform into a child, or hoping to revive the dead.” Wei Ying rubs the tip of his nose.

Jiang Cheng stares. What. What?

“But, you know, with the logic of someone drunk and half-blind, so I wouldn’t worry too much. This one on the floor still has some juice in it though, so, careful not to step on it.” Wei Ying grins cheekily. “Unless of course you wanna turn into a kid or revive a dead pet - my bet’s on de-aging, which, if it works, might help you get rid of some of your frown lines.”

Jiang Cheng takes a deep breath and counts backwards from 10, just like his therapist taught him.

“If the authorities get wind of the fact that some crazy occultist is murdering kids, and using our arrays and talismans, then we definitely have reason to worry - especially you, pioneer of modern arrays and talismans!”

Of course, Wei Ying simply rolls his eyes at this, flipping through the bloodstained papers on the floor, like he’s got nothing to lose. Jiang Cheng wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he gets some sense of self-preservation.

Wouldn’t be the first time, in any case.

“It wouldn’t be any different from a psychopathic murderer putting their victims’ dead bodies into a blender. In the first place, neither the blender nor this particular array were inherently made for killing. Could they blame the manufacturers who had nothing to do with the misuse of their creations?”

“You say that like it’s never stopped idiots from doing it before.”

Wei Ying shrugs.

“Well, they could, but it wouldn’t stick in court. Besides,” he pauses, an odd look settling over his face. “Neither the blender nor the array caused their deaths.”

Jiang Cheng frowns, moving closer even as a sense of dread builds in his guts. In his hands is a rudimentary version of a spiritual attraction flag - not unlike one of the first designs his brother ever made that had never made it to publication.

Wei Ying had scrapped it because it lacked the finesse the latter ones have now, and they didn’t dispel easily. Which posed a problem if the strokes are enough to summon high grade demons. Like the one in his hands. That had probably been a reverse-engineered talisman by an untrained occultist.

“I’m not sure our exceptionally lucky occultist is still here, either.”

Jiang Cheng catches the look his brother shoots him, forefinger tapping at his nose. He closes his eyes and with a quick search, finds it, too.

So, it’s like that, huh?

With a slow breath, Jiang Cheng sends a frisson of energy through his ring, until Zidian uncoils down his wrist. With a flick, he snaps Zidian up at the rafters, where something crouches in the shadows. Zidian wraps around them quickly and Jiang Cheng pulls.

If their occultist were still human, they would’ve landed and stayed there, possibly with a dislocated shoulder or a broken hip. This creep lands between him and Wei Ying with a bone shattering crash, yowling like a feral cat writhing as resentful energy pours from it.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t get a clearer view before a tail - a tail?! - plows into him, flinging him into a rotted wooden shelf. It gives beneath him and only years of training and experience helps him get out unscathed.

Well, fuck. That’s a freakishly strong mo.

“Jiang Cheng!”

Jiang Cheng opens his eyes just in time to see the mo make a lunge for him.

He ducks underneath, snapping at it with an electric jolt from Zidian to buy him more time. The demon crashes head-first into the wall.

“You okay?” Wei Ying says, talismans out in one hand, Suibian in his other.

“I’m fine.” Jiang Cheng reverts Zidian back. It won’t be of much help until they get the thing out in the open. “You better have gotten most of your shit, ‘cause it doesn’t look like this place will last for much longer.”

The storehouse groans and creaks around them.

“Eh, it can’t be helped. It’s that active array I’m worried about. Best we get away so we don’t accidentally land on it.”

Ahead, the mo rises from beneath the rubble.

Wei Ying lowers his stance into the deceptively open one – the one that used to fool him when they were kids still training.

“That makes this easier, then.”

.

.

.

Spoiler alert: it both does and doesn't.

Somewhere between disabling the spirit lure and batting away all the demons it gathers, it begins to rain cats and dogs, visibility going from annoyingly subpar to fucking abysmal.

So of course it's then that one of the demons slips free, long tail catching Jiang Cheng in the gut, hurling him back into the rubble of the shack, right by the blasted array they've managed to dance around the whole night.

And of fucking course, his stupid brother is reckless enough to shove him away, but stupid enough to get caught in it himself.

He sees a flash of a talisman, red strings binding the demon, Xia Baolin, one of his faster disciples, cutting off its head with one sweep. He hears the yelp of his brother and feels the rush of potent transformative energy just beneath the racket.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Jiang Cheng scrambles to get up, the disciples' yells drowned out by his own internal fuck fuck fuck you better be alive you bastard!

“Wei Wuxian! Answer me, dammit!”

“I'm okay!” A child?

Jiang Cheng trips over a loose plywood and stares.

part 2 | part 3

#mdzs #modern cultivation au #yunmeng bros #wangxian later #twin prides of yunmeng #deaged wwx #xianxian is three #mamoonde fics #baby fever mdzs au

[furiousgoldfish]

Tactics of narcissistic abuse

Love Bombing & Mirroring are tactics to gain your favour. These will come from a narcissist you’re just getting to know and they’re trying to convince you they’re your perfect partner, soulmate, best friend, ideal lover. Love bombing is showering you with over-the-top affection and support, they’re likely to see what works best on you, then give you just that. They’ll convince you that you’re special and make you feel special, whether it’s with attention, gifts, promises, love phrases, or making you look and feel very good in front of other people. If they can spin this as fate or destiny, they will. You have one lucky coincidence? It’s destiny that you met. They’ll create the image of ‘it’s us against the world’ and convince you that they’re all you need to never be alone, unappreciated or unhappy again. They will say phrases like 'We were born to be together’ or 'You’re the only one who understands’ and make you feel like you’re in a romance film.  Mirroring is the way to convince you that they are just like you, your perfect match. They do this by pretending they want the same things as you. All of your opinions will be shared, your desires will be their desires too, however you want to live, that’s now their ideal life too. If you want children, so do they, if you want to live in a cottage, so do they.

These will be repeated until you feel like you finally got something perfect from life, you commit to them and trust them completely. You will become lenient with your boundaries and disregard minor red flags, because hey, you finally found love, or someone like yourself who makes your life better. These are crucial to keep you around for a long time; the illusion of happiness and perfect companionship you always wanted will keep you holding onto them in hope that things could once again, be this perfect for you. You will not want to let go of them even after the love bombing and mirroring is long gone. Love bombing and mirroring are not indicative of how they’re planning to treat you once you’re committed to them; as soon as they feel you are ready to fight for a life with them, roles will change and you will have to endure escalating abuse from this person, endlessly.

Scapegoats and people badly damaged by trauma will often not get the full love bombing or mirroring, narcissists will be able to win our devotion by acts of basic decency, small thoughtfulness and acting tolerant of our trauma symptoms, this will feel like everything to us, and once we decide this is a good, special person who makes us feel safe and we’d do anything for them, they’ll turn and exploit us endlessly.

Only way to spot this on time is: there will be a little voice of suspicion in your head going ’Isn’t this actually a little too perfect to be real? A little too convenient and ideal?’ and you will not want to listen to that voice. You should listen to it. It’s your instinct, trying to tell you something is off. I won’t blame you if you don’t. Most people won’t just walk away from their ideal partner because things seem 'too perfect’. But, get suspicious at least. Alert to red flags.

Enablers and Flying Monkeys

Narcissists can’t abuse if they’re on their own; they will work hard to build a reputation and charm people who they can later use for purposes of enabling, triangulating, controlling, scapegoating and smear campaigns. Enablers, or Flying Monkeys, are people who are either admiring the narcissists, want to be in narcissists good favour, are trauma bond and scared of the narcissists, are emotionally manipulated or simply too cowardly to point out that the narcissists is wrong and cruel. Most people will fall under the influence and want to be on narcissists side because it’s easier, tempting, feels safer, and doesn’t require much thinking. Narcissist will sometimes emotionally manipulate people to go do their dirty work; they will cry about how they miss their runaway children so flying monkeys would harass and judge children for running away, they will invent stories of abuse and insanity of their spouse so people would shame and judge the spouse who the narcissist is abusing. They create environment in which they can keep abusing and other people will jump to defend, justify, victim-blame and further confuse the victim. “They had a hard life”, “They’re your mother/father/uncle, you have to forgive them” or “He’s not that bad” are the phrases you’ll hear from enablers and flying monkeys. The term “Flying Monkey” is taken from the Wizard of Oz, because the Wicked Witch owned an army of brainless flying monkeys who would do her bidding – much how narcissists do with their enablers.

What enablers are doing is absolutely wrong. They should not be ready to defend abuse, or excuse and justify it, or believe and act on smear campaigns, not for any reason. They are hurting and isolating the victim, and regardless of how much they suck up to the narcissist, they will eventually become the targets too. Victims are right to cut out enablers just how they’re right to cut out abusers. You do not have to suffer for their cowardice or stupidity.

Triangulation is a form of abuse where narcissist brings another person into the relationship in order to bypass your boundary. For instance, you refuse to speak to the narcissist, so they send your family members, friends, or their friends, to talk to you about how much you’re hurting the narcissist and how cruel and unfair you’re being. Or, you’re trying to set a boundary in your marriage, and suddenly a friend or a relative comes talking to you about how unreasonable it is to set such awful boundary and to think of your spouse’s feelings and how bad they have it. Narcissist may try to use you for triangulation too, for example, they might tell you 'Go tell your sister she should do xyz and she’s making a mistake, she’ll listen to you’. It’s implied you agree with the narcissist, and that both of you are doing it for the sister’s good, when it’s more likely the narcissist is trying to force this person to do something they’re deeply set against and would only serve the narcissist. Narcissists will use their children to triangulate a marriage, they will often 'gang up’ other family members on their spouse, or one of the children. If you’re the victim, you’ll find yourself cornered, isolated, and in doubt whether you’re doing the right thing, trying to establish a boundary. Narcissists will also often show affection, compassion or even love to a third person simply to make you jealous and worried that something is wrong with you since you don’t get the same treatment. It’s what creates an illusion that the entire world is agreeing with the narcissist and no matter what you do, you look unreasonable for fighting them.

Narcissists will sometimes invent completely boogus scenarios and try to terrify people into doing their bidding and believing they’re right. As if the world will fall if narcissists don’t get what they want.

Society at large will often enable abusers; you can call out abuse and be rendered a 'killjoy’ because people prefer to enjoy cruelty together with the narcissist than to oppose them. Narcissists are capable of rousing a whole gang of people to turn against the victim and to aid in their abuse; this is scapegoating.

Gaslighting is a form of abuse where the abuser attacks your sense of reality. They will usually do this to obscure and deny acts of abuse. “I never said that” “That didn’t happen” “That’s not how I remember it” “You imagined it” or “You’re crazy, I would never do that!” are common gaslighting phrases abusers use for events that absolutely happened, and they absolutely remember. It’s even more powerful if they get other people to agree that you’re insane for remembering a past event of abuse. They can sometimes try to convince you that something didn’t occur while it’s still happening. This renders your intention of calling out abuse impossible; you’re now debating whether the event even happened and your sanity is questioned.

The point of this is to drive you into insanity; prolonged gaslighting will make you doubt your own memories and senses, and you will no longer be secure in your own point of view or version of reality. You will not be able to fight abuse, because you will get stuck on wondering if it’s even real, or if you’re making it up. Narcissist wants not only to abuse you, but to control your perception of it, reaction of it, and to disable you from telling anyone and being taken seriously. Smear campaign and gaslighting ensures that everyone thinks you’re lying to make problems, even you.

You can attempt to block gaslighting with phrases like 'That was not my experience’ 'I know the truth and I am not debating it with you’ ’ Don’t tell me what happened, I was there’ or ridiculing them for thinking it would work, but sometimes abuse will escalate if you refuse to play along, so be very careful with them.

Baiting, Projection and Scapegoating

Baiting is the way narcissist finds out which triggers will work on you. Types of baits are: Scaremongering, Accusations, False Claims, Guilt-tripping, Victim-playing, False Hope, or Intrigue. They will use these to elicit either fear&anxiety, or guilt&responsibility. You are likely to get pulled in and respond emotionally to these, and thus the narcissist will discover which one of these is most triggering and they can use it to either control you, or to affirm that they can still get you riled up, scared, guilty – they feed on being able to provoke these, it makes them feel powerful. They can later use the same trigger to push you into guilt and fear if you try to resist their control. If they continue doing this to you for a long time, you are likely to develop self-doubt and anxiety about your own persona. Way to counter this is to grey rock them.

Projection is a primitive defense-mechanism, where a person feels uncomfortable with their behaviour or thinking, so they accuse someone else of it to deflect the bad feelings from themselves. This can feel the same as baiting, but narcissists do it without realizing they’re giving you the information about what they’re actually feeling and doing. For instance, a narcissist will accuse you of being self-absorbed after they start feeling uncomfortable with how self-absorbed they are, they will start to call you selfish when it comes to their mind how selfish they are. They will accuse you of the exact shit they’ve been doing whether it’s lying, manipulating, faking for attention, cheating, exploiting, lacking compassion, stealing. These claims will feel like they’re coming out of nowhere at first, but eventually you will wonder if you’re really like that, and accept their projection on yourself, believing to really be as bad, or worse than they are. Even though they’ve done 100% of these things, while you have done none of it. This can also be countered by being aware what is going on and grey-rocking them. Deflecting the blame back to them will not work because they’ll either deflect it back, or throw a tantrum and insult you.

Scapegoating is the most vicious abuse narcissist can inflict on their victims and is designed to completely break a person’s spirit while creating power out of terror. Scapegoating doesn’t only serve to terrify and control the victim; it shows everyone what the narcissist is capable of, causing them to go very far to avoid becoming the next scapegoat. This creates enablers, flying monkeys and other benefits for narcissist to enjoy, while the scapegoat is isolated, not believed, and often shunned by the community to show loyalty to the narcissist.

Scapegoat will be blamed for every narcissists flaw, accused of provocation and creating trouble, shamed for their likes and interests, humiliated for their appearance or needs, their work will be rendered worthless and any pain and injury will be treated as if the scapegoat deserved it, or wanted it. Nothing is out of bounds to criticize or belittle in the scapegoat; flying monkeys will do it too, to either affirm themselves with the narcissist, or because they too crave power by stepping on someone defenseless. If a narcissistic parent decides to scapegoat a child, the other parent might stop caring for the child, and agree that the child deserves only to be neglected and shunned. The illusion narcissists create, of entire society agreeing that a person is irredeemable, deserving only of pain and ridicule, has turned people to suicide.

Scapegoat absorbs all of the narcissist’s malice, cruelty, sadism, baiting, projection, guilt and tantrums, so other people in the environment can get some relief and can use the scapegoat as their shield. You can be chosen to be a scapegoat for challenging the narcissist and standing up to them, for refusing to scapegoat someone else, for seeing thru them and showing any potential for undermining their authority, if narcissist is jealous of you, if narcissist feels threatened by your intellect, compassion and emotional depth they lack. And often, you’ll just be chosen because they’re in position of power and you’re unprotected. If you’re their child, a lonely classmate, employee with no high reputation or lots of friends, a minority, different in the way of sexuality or behaviour, anything that is easily used to sway a group of people against you. Narcissists will make sure to spread a smear campaign filled with lies against you, so that nobody would align with you, or believe you if you try to counter their word.

This type of treatment is beyond anything a human being could deserve, and devastating for the victim’s self esteem and sense of reality. After surviving a scapegoating situation, people might not want to find themselves in any social setting anymore. They might start believing themselves to be unlovable and defective. There is usually no way to counter it or fight your way out, unless there’s a higher authority who could side with you, or there’s a way to physically remove yourself from this environment.

Grey Rock, Hoovering and No Contact

Grey rock is a way to counter baiting and projection; narcissists learn and thrive on our emotional responses, it gives them a thrill to be able to send us into rage, terror, disbelief, shock or panic. Grey rocking means you give zero emotional response, and thus prove yourself very boring and a bad source of narcissistic supply. So, regardless of what egregious threat, accusation, claim or insult they make, you just reply with 'mhmm’ and look completely disinterested. You reply with one-word sentences, say 'sure’ or 'yup’ if they accuse you of something or try to fearmonger, answer questions with 'maybe’ or 'I don’t know’, agree with whatever bs they’re pulling out of their ass without caring, refuse to get pulled in or baited, give them no significance in the conversation until they leave. It is very hard to do, because they will up their game and even fly into rage to get a response, if they feel entitled to it. In some cases they might resort to violence. Often, they’ll keep changing the tactics until something works, and if nothing does, they’ll feel dejected and go find another source of supply. If they feel like they can’t get to you, this undermines their imagined power over you.

No contact is the only way to truly win against a narcissist; if they can’t reach you, they can’t manipulate or hurt you. This means no responding to messages, no letting them know where you live, blocking them on every service, and in most situations, even the enablers have to be no contact, because the narcissist is likely to send them into triangulation and use them to get to you. If you’re unable to go no-contact with a narcissist, a lot of people opt for 'low contact’, which means you only hear from them once a year, or once every 6 months, insufficient for them to gain control over you, and you grey-rock them all the way, and never share any personal info that might be used against you. Hoovering is something a narcissist will do to you after you’ve left them. They might leave you alone for a long time, then suddenly send a message saying they miss you, or they’re thinking about you and wishing you could do xyz together. They might also influence another person to tell you 'x misses you, they wish to see you again, they’re doing bad without you’. This is done to remind you of the 'good times’ and an attempt to draw you back in, as you’re supposed to have forgotten all the abuse already and be ready to take them back. It might come as outrageous expectation or denial of everything bad that happened – that’s because it is. All you have to do is grey-rock this, not respond, and enjoy in knowledge that even if you can’t ensure revenge, you can take yourself away from them, and they will never have you back.

Sources: Baiting, Scapegoating, LoveBombing, Gaslighting(video), Projection(video), Triangulation, Mirroring(video),  FlyingMonkeys (video), Hoovering, Grey Rock

#narcissistic abuse #scapegoating #psychological abuse #narcissistic parents #emotional abuse #gaslighting #love bombing #mirroring #baiting #projection #triangulation #flying monkeys #enablers #this took 3 days to write wow #did you notice tumblr beta has a character limit??? #i had to turn it off to be able to post this #i don't want a character limit on tumblr #let people read

[sserpente]

A/N: That Hyundai ad hit different. *chuckles*

Words: 3097 Warnings: kidnapping, hostage

New York smelled pretty bad, come to think of it. You had almost forgotten the hustle and bustle of this huge city that never slept and if there was one thing you had not been missing at all after spending a few months in Morocco for work, it was the constant traffic jams.

It was hot, unbearably so. You’d been a sweating mess ever since your cab driver had picked you up at the airport and the fact that the air conditioning in the cab was broken didn’t exactly help with that. Your thighs stuck to the leather of the backseat, your forehead glistening and your make-up… well, it used to be make-up.

The cab driver seemed nice, at least and since the long snake made entirely of cars had not moved for at least an hour now, he had offered to park on the side of the road and get you both a bottle of water. Ironically, you were only a few yards away from Stark Tower.

Perhaps you shouldn’t complain about the traffic jam. Half of the city was a mess after the atrocious battle you had been fortunate enough only to have witnessed on the news on the plane. You could only hope that your tiny studio flat was still intact and quite frankly, it was short of a miracle that a cab service had actually agreed on picking you up so shortly after an almost-war—not to mention that the plane had actually landed.

You sighed, brushing a strand of hair sticking to your cheek out of your face. You were unbelievably tired—even more so knowing that you had dodged a catastrophe that would go down in history all thanks to work. Your eyes fell shut and you leaned against the car window when suddenly, the driver’s door was all but yanked open and someone who certainly did not resemble your cab driver, started the car and clutched at the steering wheel as if his life depended on it.

Your lips parted. Shackles and a muzzle, along with a blue glowing cube landed on the passenger seat with a loud clatter, followed by an annoyed groan. It was him. The man who had attempted to take over the entire planet only moments ago, he was here in this car and he was currently kidnapping you with it.

A scream escaped your lips, a mixture of shock and fear spreading in your body and fuelling the rising amount of adrenaline. It was only then the God of Mischief glanced at the rear-view mirror and spotted you there panicking—but by then, he had already stirred the car back on the road, straight towards the traffic jam.

“You… you are… Let me out! Let me out at once!” You screeched, the heat around you—along with your miserable appearance—all but forgotten. Loki rolled his eyes. Great. Another mortal.

“I am not stopping this car,” was all he said. Your eyes widened in utter shock.

“Then don’t! Fuck!” Danger was radiating off of this man like heat from an active volcano; so if necessary, you would jump out of the moving car as well. Biting your lower lip and wondering if you should go through with this risky stunt at the speed he was going, the wheels squeaking over the asphalt with every abrupt turn he took, or if that would be a suicide mission. It was probably the latter, and when you reached for the handle of the back door, it took the God of Mischief only a mere second to lock it, trapping you inside.

“Let me out! Let me out!”

“You’ll kill yourself.” Loki spat. You did not miss the patronising tone in his voice—stupid. He believed you stupid.

“And if I stay in here with you I won’t?” You retorted hysterically. And it was justified, really—for when your gaze drifted back to the road ahead of you, you could see him racing straight towards a long line of cars waiting for the traffic to clear up.

“Watch out! The other cars, watch out! Oh my God…” You screamed, squeezing your eyes shut and covering your face with your arms but the imminent crash never came. When you opened your eyes again, Loki had all but moved through the other cars as if by magic. God, what was this, Harry Potter?

With your heart in your mouth, you brought your trembling hands to your thighs and pressed down on them in a desperate attempt to fight off the panic attack rising within you like the forthcoming eruption of a volcano.

But even when you reached the suburbs, ironically moved closer to your home, and the car finally slowed down to a reasonable speed, making you wonder how a god from another realm knew how to drive a car in the first place, your dread kept growing steadily. What would happen once Loki decided he had reached his destination? What would he do with you? Would you end up as another casualty? You’d know where he was, after all, and only God knew how he had managed to escape after the Avengers reported his capture—not to mention that he was in the possession of that mysterious blue cube you were certain bore even more chaos and destruction in the wrong hands.

“I take it this vehicle is supposed to be a means of transport in exchange for payment?” He suddenly said.

“What?” You gaped at him, swallowing. “Yes! I mean, yes, it’s a taxi. That’s… I was…”

“Where do you live?”

“Excuse me? What, are you going to drop me off and expect me to tip you?”

Loki smirked. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why but he did like your feistiness. “I need a place to hide.”

“What… no! No! I am not giving shelter to a criminal!” You snarled, swallowing your fear of him—and then you made the mistake of peeking at the navigation system the taxi driver had set up next to the steering wheel, with your address on bright display to show Loki exactly where he’d have to go.

The God of Mischief tilted his head. “You don’t have much choice in the matter, my dear.”

You took a deep shaky breath, digging your nails into the backseat. If your lower lip was trembling, you didn’t notice. “P-please… please just let me go. I promise I won’t tell anyone where you are or where you went. Please.”

“I am not going to kill you if that is what you are worried about.” He replied after a long pause. When you said nothing, too stunned and scared to come up with another snarky comment, silence spread in the car like wildfire.

Hugging your knees to your chest, you closed your eyes, hoping that this was a bad joke, a terrible nightmare and any moment now, you would wake up safely on the plane, yet to land in half-destroyed New York City—but the end of slumber never came. You were wide awake; even more so when, after what felt like hours, Loki finally stopped the car. Of course, you had not noticed him observing you repeatedly through the rear-view mirror, almost as if to check if you were still alive.

Your eyes met and then, finally, he unlocked the doors. Only now, you did not move an inch. You had no idea what to expect if you stepped out of this car.

Naturally, Loki disagreed with your cautious decision. He yanked the car door open when he saw you frozen in place, grabbing your upper arm so fast you didn’t even have a chance to react, and all of a sudden, seeing the entrance door of the apartment building you lived in did not at all look as appealing as it had at the airport anymore.

His grip around your arm was firm but when you whined in pain, the God of Mischief actually softened it—if only a little, barely noticeable.

“Unlock the door, my dear, will you?” He inquired, smiling sweetly at you. Right beneath the surface, you could hear that there would be dire consequences if you failed to comply.

Surely at this point, he could hear your rapid heartbeat. Shaking, you fumbled for the keys in your bag until they were jingling in your palms all the while Loki watched you like a hawk. You had dismissed calling the police on your phone in the car already—for now.

Fuck, you had been kidnapped. You were about to be held hostage in your own flat, or… or… was he just going to enter and kick you out? Had he been lying about not killing you? Would he fling a dagger at you any moment now like you had seen him do on TV?

Loki followed you when you approached the door and unlocked it clumsily. One floor up and to the left. For just a brief moment, you wondered what would happen if you started screaming bloody murder, alerting your neighbours but even when you opened your mouth to attempt it, not a single sound would escape your lips.

Even a little further out and farther away from the centre of New York City, rent prices were horrendous. Your salary was not bad but your apartment was no more than a small studio equipped with a humble kitchen, a separate bathroom with a tiny shower and lastly, your double bed in the centre of the room, posing as your sofa during the day.

Loki looked around unimpressed when he entered. “Well… it will do.”

“N-now what?” You choked out.

Loki raised his eyebrows, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Pretend I’m not even here.”

Right—because that was going to be so easy. He sighed and rolled his eyes when you only stared at him in horror.

“You don’t trust me, do you?”

“W-would you? You tried to subjugate our planet like ten minutes ago!”

“And for good reason too. This realm is lawless, your people slaughter each other day in and out and you feel threatened by me? I would have given you a new purpose.”

He had a point… but… “And what is that so-called purpose? Slavery?” Loki’s expression darkened, making you flinch back.

“S-sorry… I’ll… I’ll be i-in the bathroom taking a shower. Please just… I mean… whatever.” Would he stop you? Hesitating, you made your way to the bathroom, waiting for him to yank you back, press you against the wall and threaten you? Threaten you with what, exactly? Could you trust that he wouldn’t kill you? Loki felt like a ticking time bomb in your flat.

But a painful yank never came and when you locked the bathroom door behind you, you exhaled. Inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled, trying to process the fact you had a war criminal in your home.

Once you had gathered enough energy to do what you had come to the bathroom for and, an hour later, returned to the main room, Loki was sitting on your bed cross-legged, the Tesseract right before him, glowing away.

“I roamed your ‘kitchen’”, he said without glancing up to meet your eyes, “Do you have anything edible at all?”

“I was away for a whole month.” You argued. “I haven’t done any shopping yet because I was kidnapped by a space Viking.”

Loki smirked. Amused, he finally looked up. “Well, perhaps I should take you back to Asgard with me then. I could use a diligent little servant.”

Your reaction did not disappoint him. Chuckling to himself, he slid off the bed more elegantly than you could ever muster, the Tesseract disappearing into nothingness.

“What I am trying to say is that even gods need to eat and I am, quite frankly, starving.”

“That sounds like a you-problem.” You grumbled. And then, as if on cue, your stomach growled. Damn it.

“Fine. I’ll order some pizza.”

-

Loki had all but watched you like a hawk upon calling the local pizza place. Everything inside of you had screamed to let them know about your predicament, to beg them to call the police and send them to you instead of the pizza.

But as soon as the food was delivered, the mood in your apartment changed so rapidly it left you wondering if the only reason for Loki’s world domination attempt had been his hunger. The man devoured a family-sized pizza in but what felt like two minutes and, upon realising you were done with yours, leaving three pieces in the box, he devoured those as well. And never before had you seen someone eat pizza so gracefully.

It didn’t exactly make it feel like you had been kidnapped anymore. Perhaps… perhaps he hadn’t been lying about not wanting to kill you after all. Perhaps he wasn’t as evil as you… no, stop. He had literally just tried to take over the planet!

“What are you pondering on, little mortal?”

You shivered, the nickname affecting you in a way it truly shouldn’t, especially after he had lost his armour and magically exchanged it for more casual clothes—they still looked like they were from a different time period altogether but it wasn’t nearly as intimidating as before.

“W-why did you really do it?” You found yourself asking. It was a risk—but you were feeling braver now that your stomach was full even though part of you was surprised you had managed to eat at all.

“What?”

“Why did you really try to take over the planet? Did you… do you really want to enslave us all?”

“A lack of freedom does not equal slavery. It offers protection from failure and bad choices.” He said. You frowned.

“You truly believe that?”

“You fight wars over opinions, religions and race among your own species. Your choices are suffocating the whole of Midgard. I would have changed that.”

“You can’t be serious.”

You looked down, reaching for the sweet treat that had come with your pizza to stop your fingers from trembling.

“What is that?”

“Oh, uh… those are marshmallows. This pizza place always packs them with your order, don’t ask me why.”

“What’s that?” He repeated, frowning at the plastic wrapper.

“It’s candy…”

“Well, it doesn’t look very natural.”

Woah. How had this conversation just gone from “humans should not have freedom of choice” to “marshmallows look unhealthy”?

“They’re… I mean they’re not. They’re made of pure sugar and artificial flavouring.”

“Then why do you eat them?”

“Because… because they taste good?”

Loki gave you a taunting look. See? It said. This is what I meant.

But when you opened the package and handed it to him, he took one out nonetheless. It looked tiny between his long fingers—as tiny as you must have looked next to him.

You gulped when it disappeared between his lips. When you reached out to take the package back, he snatched it away from you.

“They are quite delicious, actually.” Your jaw dropped when he popped them all into his mouth at once, winking at you. Not quite sure how to react to this, you averted your gaze, taking a feigned interest in your digital alarm clock on the nightstand instead.

It was only 5 PM but you were positively ready to pass out. Where would you even sleep tonight? Where would he sleep? Would he even sleep?

“You are tired.” He suddenly stated as if on cue. He couldn’t read your mind… right? He did have that weird cube of his, after all.

“Well, yeah… I got kidnapped, experienced a live remake of ‘Fast and Furious’ and I have a criminal in my flat.”

“I only understood half of what you just said but I can ensure you that I will not harm you when you sleep.” There it was again, that frown that almost made it look like he was offended. As if the very circumstance of him hurting an innocent for no reason other than malice insulted him.

“So by all means, retire to bed.” He went on, gesturing to the bed and eventually, standing up to make space for you. The pizza boxes disappeared in but a green shimmer of light and you watched Loki, albeit still suspicious, heading over to the small kitchen table. To be quite frank, it was the last thing you remembered.

-

Loki was gone, no trace of him left. It was as if he had never even been here. It was already past noon—the exhaustion from your flight as well as the racy car drive and last but not least, your shining time as a hostage had worn you out to the point you didn’t even remember falling asleep anymore.

You only realised now that it was your doorbell that had woken you up. Jumping out of bed and moaning when your vision turned black for a moment, you headed over to your speaker and pressed the button. Perhaps it was Loki. Perhaps he had locked himself out but then again… would he not be able to magic himself back in? Why had he insisted on you unlocking the door yesterday in the first place? You shook your head.

“Hello?”

“Hi. This is Henry, I’ve got your delivery.” A boyish voice responded.

“W-what delivery? I didn’t order anything.”

“You did, ma’am, would you come open the door, please?”

You sighed. “Fine, I’ll be down in a second.”

You had fallen asleep in your clothes from last night, so one quick glance in the mirror was all you had before you headed back down and opened the main entrance door.

The delivery boy was holding both your suitcase and a jumbo-size package of marshmallows in his hands. Big marshmallows—the bonfire kind, to be precise.

“Who…” But you knew. You knew the moment you made the connection and knew the moment you looked straight into Henry’s eyes and noticed them glowing unnaturally blue when he handed the items to you.

It had not been a dream then. Loki had really been here. You had been eating pizza with the God of Mischief and now… the gesture was almost sweet. Was that his way of saying thank you? For what? You hadn’t exactly done much except for trembling in fear.

“He instructed me to tell you that you will meet again soon.” Henry announced and then, before you even had a chance to respond, he turned on his heel, hopped back into the delivery van parked in front of the building and left. You only realised now that the Hyundai taxi was gone too.

#loki #loki imagine #loki x you #loki x reader #loki laufeyson #loki laufeyson imagine #loki laufeyson x you #loki laufeyson x reader #loki odinson #loki odinson imagine #loki odinson x you #loki odinson x reader #the avengers #the avengers imagine #thor #thor imagine #marvel #marvel imagine #mcu #mcu imagine #tom hiddleston

[sunflowerdaisybee]

Sun, my pal. We're gonna need more nephew-of-schlatt reader soon. (Or not, it's completely up to you)

Maybe where mini schlatt sneaks in and finds his way onto schlatt's computer while he's out (maybe he memorizes his password after being over a number of times) and just streams. And it's perfectly chaotic. And he'll be bragging about crazy things like outrunning the cops, or jumping off a high cliff into a lake. Then when he's discovered, Schlatt is just disappointed, but kinda impressed. Like I said, completely up to you. Either way, I hope you have an amazing day. :]

(P.S., could I be Nervous anon?)

Yes you can be Nervous Anon, also sorry it took so long to get to this, I do love the Uncle Schlatt thingy we got going on here, I’d be delighted if anyone came back with more <3

Summary: Mini Schlatt shenanigans

Pairing: P!Schlatt X Reader

Pronouns: He/him

[A/n]: Requests are closed, please check back later <3

“Ok, I’ve seen him do this enough times to figure it out. Just gotta press this and then this! And we’re live!” You cackled as you watched viewers flooding in, the chat spamming their confusion.

“For any of you who don’t know, I’m his nephew. And so we’re clear, the ‘he’ I’m talking about is Schlatt.” You grinned at the comments, some talking about how this was happening and most talking about how they thought they recognized you.

“Oh and don’t worry. He’s not home so he has no idea I’m on his computer right now.” You didn’t think everything through though as you failed to take into account your uncle’s friends. A few of them tuned into the stream, all alerting their friend to what was happening.

You were in the middle of telling one of your amazing stories when your uncle had come home. He was out grocery shopping and figured he’d deal with you when he got home. There was only so much damage you could do.

“And so I punched him in the gut, laughing as he fell on his ass.”

“You wish that’s what happened. You ran away like a coward.”

“Uncle! Hey! When did you get home?”

“Five minutes ago, debated putting groceries away before coming over here but when I heard you lying to stream I had to come check.”

“I was not lying! You’re lying!”

“Yeah whatever, now end the stream and come help me put shit away. Don’t make me call your mother.” Schlatt walked off, he was simultaneously impressed and disappointed in you. It was only a matter of time till you did something like this. The fact that you managed to memorize all his passwords, and remember exactly how to set everything up was impressive. Also now he had someone to help put groceries away.

Taglist: @joyfullymulti @rokkyy @stupid-dummyfroppers @minty-ghast

#mcyt x reader #mcyt x y/n #mcyt x you #mcyt x male reader #dsmp x you #dsmp x reader #dsmp x Y/N #dsmp x male reader #dream smp x reader #dream smp x y/n #dream smp x you #dream smp x male reader #p!schlatt x reader #p!schlatt x male reader #p!schlatt x you #p!schlatt x y/n #x reader #x male reader #x kid reader #x reader platonic #x male reader platonic #x kid reader platonic

[levi-txliesiin]

the aftermath of 'i love you.'

this is the sequel to my fic how kaz would react to 'i love you.' which was basically all angst. spoiler alert: this is all angst, too.

pairing: kaz brekker/reader but not exactly (??) cause they've broken up so uh

rating: teen

word count: 1.5k (rounded up)

summary: what happened after you said 'i love you,' to kaz

tags: gender neutral!reader, angst, unhappy ending

warnings: swearing, self-deprecating thoughts, and i think that's it? but pls lmk if anything else is needed

read on ao3

a/n: the writing quality of this really went 📉📈📉 but in my defense i wrote most of this while my brother watched tommy innit videos at full volume so ofc i was distracted.

and fyi muzzen is not an oc, he's one of the minor minor characters in soc!

once again, feedback and reblogs are appreciated! hope you enjoy reading <3

Kaz's pov

He watched you from the other side of the room as you blatantly flirted with Muzzen. He had his glass of kvas (Jesper had begged for the club to order the ravkan mead for weeks) in a death grip. You ran your fingers through your hair, and smiled at something Muzzen had said. He tugged lightly on the collar of your jacket, making you laugh softly. Kaz's heart tightened, jealousy settling in his chest.

You looked happy, even as you conversed with the brainless bodyguard who probably couldn't count up to ten. Kaz hadn't been able to make you happy like that. But you had loved him anyway, and he had 'fucked you over', as you'd put it.

I love you.

You're a coward, Brekker.

Kaz let out something in between a sigh and a frustrated grunt. He drained the rest of his drink in one go, and set the glass down more violently than he'd intended. His scowl deepened, if that were even possible, when he sensex Inej slide into the seat next to him. He waited for her to speak, because he sure as hell wasn't going to initiate the conversation. What was there to say? You and him were over. And it was all his fault. 

"Kaz," Inej said. Her tone of voice was gentle - too gentle. He didn't want to be pitied, for fuck's sake. 

"What is it, Inej?" he snapped. 

"Tell me what happened between you and Y/n."

"Nothing to tell." He shrugged. 

Annoyance flickered over her face. "I care about you both, you know," she said. "I don't like seeing you two like this."

He gave her a withering look, if only to disguise the ugly feeling that flared up within him at her words. 

Don't care about me.

Don't love me.

You can't.

Kaz bit the inside of his cheek and hung his head. He studiously ignored Inej for a solid minute. At some point, he noticed that you and Muzzen had abandoned your corner table, most likely to go suck each other's faces off. The thought sent jolts of jealousy through his heart. 

"For Saint's sake- did she break your heart? Is that it?" she demanded, apparently having had enough of his silence.

He 'tsked' in annoyance, standing up abruptly. He snatched up his cane. "Maybe I broke hers," he muttered before walking off. He didn't want to answer questions today. Or ever.

Inej didn't follow him, and he was thankful for that. He trudged up the stairway, the rickety steps creaking under his weight. Emotions swirled within him, brewing up a storm. It was just a matter of time before he exploded, because as much as he hated to admit it, he was still human. Especially when it came to you. 

You had been one of the first people to see his humanity, and the last thing he wanted was to become another monster in your life.

But then again, maybe it was too late.

Suddenly, he bumped into someone. He hissed, flinching backwards. "Watch it-," his next words died on his tongue when he looked up, and came face to face with you. For a few, painfully awkward moments, the two of you held eye contact. Your face was stony, but your e/c eyes betrayed some kind of emotion that Kaz couldn't be bothered to decipher right now.

"Sorry, Brekker," you apologised. Your tone was flat. "C'mon, Muzzen," you gestured for him to follow you back down with a jerk of your head.

His hand twitched at his side as you left, almost as if his body yearned for your presence. Your shoulders nearly touched - missing each other by less than a centimetre. He couldn't decide if that was a good or bad thing. 

Letting out another sharp breath, Kaz resumed the walk back to his room. His footsteps grew quicker and more urgent. Your name echoed in his mind, as well as the three words that had haunted him for days now. 

Y/n. Y/n. Y/n.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

He slammed the door behind him when he finally reached his quarters. His cane fell to the floor, although his gloves stayed on. He stumbled into the cramped bathroom, bracing two hands against the rusty sink. He twisted the tap open, ignoring the squeak of the old mechanism that would have otherwise annoyed him. A gentle stream of water flowed from the tap head, and he splashed some on his face. 

No, he thought stubbornly, I am not going to break down because of Y/n.

The despair that rattled inside of him said otherwise.

f only he had reacted better when you'd told him you loved him. If only he hadn't yelled at you and called you all those horrible things that weren't true about you in the slightest. You weren't selfish at all. You were the exact opposite. You were kind, and thoughtful, and understanding - so, so understanding of him and his endless baggage. And he had- he had ruined it all, because of his own cowardice.

You're a coward, Brekker.

I know, he thought, not for the first time. I'm sorry. 

· · ─── ·𖥸· ─── · ·

Your pov

"I- I'm sorry, Muzzen, but I think I'm gonna turn in for the night," you said to the bodyguard, smiling sheepishly. "I've got a bit of a headache."

"It's alright," he said, giving a half-hearted smile back. It was clear he didn't believe you. You didn't know if that was because your acting skills weren't as up to par as you thought, or because the bodyguard was smarter than you made him out to be.

You all but ran up the stairs, nearly sagging in relief as the door closed behind you. You suddenly couldn't stand the feeling of the fabric of your coat on your skin and shrugged it off; Kaz had bought it for you, because of course the reminder of him lingered everywhere you went.

Your room wasn't anywhere near big, but it was a good way away from Kaz's, and for the first time, you were grateful for that. You couldn't deal with him at the moment.

Wait, no, that came out wrong. It wasn't him specifically that you couldn't deal with, it was the bad memories (or, rather, memory, as there was one key shitshow that had ruimed everything) that came with him.

Oh, Saints, why, why, why had you told him you loved him? Things had been going so well! And then you- you fucked it up. Yes, you had blatantly blamed this on Kaz the day of the argument, but deep down, you knew you were the one at fault. 

Your heart ached every time you thought of him. You missed Kaz. So, so much. It hadn't escaped you how he had been eyeing you and Muzzen earlier in the evening. You could only hope that he was staring out of jealousy, and not devising some foolproof plan to get rid of you.

What would it take for Kaz to forgive you? Or had you fucked things up beyond repair? 

"Shit," you whispered, leaning your head against the wall. Tears burned at the corners of your eyes. "Shit." You didn't know what exactly was 'shit'. Maybe the decision you came to moments later.

I'm going to apologise to him," you said to your empty room. "I will."

With a sniffle, you cracked open your door and slipped back outside. You had left your coat in a pile on the floor, making you vulnerable to the cold that pierced the empty areas of the Crow Club. Your feet carried you to Kaz's room naturally. You barely had to think about where you were going. Instead, you thought of Kaz himself. 

Kaz. Your fallen angel, you used to call him in your mind. You couldn't express how sorry you were. You didn't even know what you were sorry for. Loving him? Loving him, and saying it aloud? Loving him, and saying it aloud, because you were so sure he felt the same way? 

You had been being selfish. Kaz said so himself. Selfish and stupid. Of course Kaz didn't love you.

At last, you were in front of his door. You raised a fist to knock. Opened your mouth to call out. Except you did none of those. You just stood there, tears welling up in your eyes once again, a familiar pang of sadness in your chest. 

He wouldn't want to see you. How could he? This was your fault, wasn't it? It was your selfishness, and your wishful thinking that had gotten you two into this position. You missed him, but you wouldn't go as far as to think he missed you, too. If you attempted to apologise… would it really be for him? 

You wouldn't be selfish. Not again.

"I'm sorry," you whispered. 

You turned around, and walked away. 

#vig's writing #uservignette #kaz brekker x reader #kaz x reader #kaz brekker #grishaverse #shadow and bone #six of crows fic #six of crows fanfic #six of crows #soc fanfic #grishaverse fandom #grishaverse fanfiction #grishaverse fic #grishaverse imagine #six of crows imagine #six of crows x reader #six of crows x you #kaz brekker x you #kaz x y/n #kaz x you