#sort of being negotiated in an “unspoken” way?

[lazyflower48]

Dazai and Ranpo: The Two Geniuses of the ADA

The thought about making a post about Dazai and Ranpo's teamwork has been plaguing my mind for a while now, and so I finally found some time and decided to go through with it.

So let's talk about one of my favourite underrated duos for a moment. The two geniuses of the ADA- Dazai and Ranpo. Two people who make a wonderful team and are actually, in my opinion, the backbone of the agency.

What I find interesting is that (though I believe that Dazai respects and admires all members of the ADA) Dazai openly admires Ranpo A LOT. He's always quick to praise Ranpo (basically fanboying over him and it's quite adorable to see Dazai gush over someone like that other than Oda) and in 'Dazai's Entrance Exam' we see him being surprised over the fact that Ranpo's ability is not actually an ability and we see him further praise Ranpo's intellect after finding that out.

Despite the fact that Dazai is a huge mystery, even to the people around him, Ranpo figured out that there was something up with Dazai in just a single glance (in 'Dazai's entrance exam'). And despite knowing that Dazai was probably hiding a sinister past, he didn't press him any further for details (probably in order to respect his privacy or his wish to not disclose his past OR maybe due to the the fact that knowing Dazai, he most likely wouldn't answer truthfully even if questioned about it)

What I also love is that even though both of them are extremely intelligent, their intellect differs in such a way that Ranpo is a master of deduction and Dazai is a master of manipulation (as stated by Kunikida in 'The Daily Routine of the Detective Agency'). However, one thing both of them share in common is that they both felt isolated due to their nature.

They may have limited interactions but their interactions are always my favourite, for instance-

1. Dazai's entrance exam - Dazai's admiration and respect towards Ranpo

2. Season 1 - Murder on D-Street - Dazai showing a good understanding of Ranpo's deduction process and acknowledging that Ranpo caught onto more details than him

3. Season 2 - "Mountains or sea?" " Sea. "

Showing their unspoken communication. They can read each other's minds at this point lol.

4. Season 3 - Ranpo basically acknowledging that Dazai would be a tough opponent to go up against by comparing Fyodor to him (sort of praising his intellect in a way)

5. Season 5 - The Strongest Man in the Agency- Ranpo

Dazai keeping an eye on Fyodor while leaving the rest to Ranpo

Dazai relying on his allies- trusting Ranpo to negotiate with Bram in order to undo the vampire curse.

6. Dead Apple - Ranpo seeing through Dazai's plan beforehand.

7. 55 minutes - Seeing through upcoming events beforehand, one thing Dazai made sure was to inform Ranpo about the whole fiasco on Standard Island in order to save the Agency in the end.

Also, sidenote: I found out that the Dazai and Ranpo duo is named Souheki, which translates to double jade. Now, I'm not sure if this information is fanon or canon (feels more like fanon tbh but I really like it because it's a pretty name)

Anyway, one thing we can say for sure is that as long as the two geniuses of the Agency- Souheki work together, the ADA will most likely remain undefeated cause no one really does it like them

Lastly, just some food for thought. I've always wondered how Dazai would react if he found out that Ranpo met Oda TWICE and the second time he met him was right before Oda went on to his certain death.

Honestly, I would LOVE to see more fleshed out and direct interactions between these two.

#i wish tumblr allowed more than 10 photos in a post cause I wanted to add so many more #cant believe this has been sitting in draft for like 6 months now #the two geniuses of the ADA>>> #bsd #bungou stray dogs #bungo stray dogs #bsd meta #bsd analysis #bsd dazai #bsd ranpo #dazai osamu #osamu dazai #ranpo edogawa #souheki #bsd ramblings #bsd s5

[wickerfemme]

do you have any advice on how to bring up my feeding / stuffing kink to a longish term partner?

As always, I don't know how useful I can be, but I'll chip in my thoughts. Heads-up as well that I'll be speaking with the assumption that you're someone who has sex, your partner is someone with whom you have sex, and that feedism is a sexual thing for you.

I believe that ultimately it's down to being open and communicative about what you find hot; if you're longish-term with your partner, you presumably already know what kind of sex each other like having, and have probably negotiated your different preferences (in small ways, at least: positions, kinds of touch, etc etc) before.

I think I've said this before in response to a similar ask, but despite how feedism transgresses certain social taboos (enjoying yourself, not hating fat bodies) it's also sort of just... very common, once you move past the label? We have "relationship weight"; we had a cultural moment where "thicc" was all the rage; we have cultures of hospitality and feeding others as a sign of love. In my experience of lesbianism, especially, there's this unspoken strain of something very feedist in the way food and eating become involved in love and romance and sex. And all of that is maybe why I can be dismissive of people who make a big deal about being a "closeted" feedist (not to say you're doing that); not only is it kind of corny and, as a gay person, slightly offensive, but it's also like, babe. You may be a food pervert but so are lots of people (even if protestantism and diet culture have us collectively fucked up); get over yourself.

To get back to actually bringing this up with your partner, I think the important thing is less about having this confessional moment about how you participate in a kink with a name and so on, and more about you having a good time with your partner and getting to experience sex and sexual activities you find hot. Because, to my mind at least, it's not important that these are feedist activities; what matters is that eating, being fed, being full, etc are hot and enjoyable. I think if you're someone who inclines toward the feedee role, it's probably easier to integrate this kind of thing into your existing dynamic with your partner (maybe it's just me, but partners love to feed you). Trying to introduce your kink from a feeder perspective will probably require more actual negotiation; you want a consensual and mutually-agreed upon good time.

I feel like I'm rambling at this point and losing focus, so I'm going to stop writing. tl;dr is be open and unapologetic about what you find hot, and that it doesn't need to be this big marriage proposal of a Thing. You really can say "call me a deviant, but I think peaches are erotic and it's kinda hot when someone feeds you. Dinner was so good; look how cute my belly is". It's scary to advocate for the sex you want (frankly, despite this whole post, I'm not great at doing it for myself), but you've likely done so before.

#i get halfway through a response like this and i kind of forget what i've said up til then #so if this is incoherent apologies #Anonymous

[psychicmisfortune]

i'm going to ramble about my rottmnt au and NOBODY CAN STOP ME >:)

so i don't have an au name for it yet because i'm kinda. bad at names BUT

((ITS IMPORTANT TO NOTE THIS IS THE FUTURE AFTER THE MOVIE SO CASEY IS IN IT MIKEY HAS SORT OF COOL MYSTIC THINGS THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR PLOT DETAILS))

the premise; on a mission donnie found a mystic amulet that sorta worked like the cloaking brooch sunita had in some ruins or something and decided he could use it for Something™. he tested it on a few random animals he had lying around and found its purpose and decided to see if it could be improved with Tech™. fast forward, they decided to use raph as their lab rat and it worked exactly how it was supposed to BUT (convenient plot twist explosion) when he took the thing off it didn't reverse the cloaking effect. so now there's a random human. raph is PANICKING because it's A Weird Thing™ and theeeeen leo comes in and sees a very odd looking human panicking while donnie tries to calm him down. this is a bit of a familiar sight and leo tries to negotiate with (still cloaked) raph while donnie tries to explain what happened? so to recap. panicking human looking raph, pissed donnie (thing didn't work how it was supposed to), worried leo, absent everyone else --- after don got the whole situation explained to leo and raph, they go looking for mikey. he's found with casey Doing Things Elsewhere™ and is met with two VERY stressed-looking brothers and a randomass human (?). much cause for concern from casey+mikey!! casey with his now overprotective tendencies readies a weapon and has to be brought down by leo explaining in very rushed terms + such. once EVERYONE (everyone but april. We Do Not Know Where She Is Right Now) knows the situation, don decides to do a bit of testing. turns out that (this is my specifications for how this thing in my au works so im doing hyperspecific things) 1) their ninpo is still *there*, it's just much more difficult to use/tap into 2) their body now works exactly like any human, they're presumably about 15 ((raph is 16,don and leo are 15 and mikey is 14 this is my au my rules)) and 3) its practically irreversible (for the time being before weve talked to draxum). upon hearing that there was an unspoken decision made that they would all put on the cloaking amulet. (except splinter, aint no way in hell he's doin that!! bro is busy)

to recap so it works right in my head -

mystic amulet like a cloaking brooch

don 'fixes' it

gives it to raph

it works right until he takes it off

raph is now stuck looking like a human

leo has to be told what's happening

casey and mikey next

then splinter

everyone knows now

tests make it known it's irreversible + ninpo is there but its difficult to use

unspoken sibling agreement to all put on the amulet so they all have a cloaking effect now

casey agrees to *try* to teach them about how the surface works (sort of, he's still a bit clueless)

shenanigans ensue

if you've made it to the end of this ramble post, put in tags what a good title might be/ideas! /nf (i'm curious to see what the public thinks)

#rottmnt au #my au #about my au

[sleepymarmot]

The Phantom Menace rewatch (liveblog + notes)

Unlike the OT, I’m rewatching the prequel trilogy fully and in order. Let’s see if I regret my decision...

Liveblog:

Wow, this opening crawl is extremely hard to read.

Bear with me as I try to understand the plot in real time. Alright, so Palpatine 1) Orchestrates the blockade as Sidious 2) Sends the Jedi to break the blockade as the Chancellor 3) Pretends he didn’t expect the Jedi, and orders to escalate and invade Naboo, and kill the Jedi Or is the chancellor they’re referring to someone else? Is this a ploy to assassinate these two Jedi specifically for some reason?

Do they have super-speed for this scene only?

The designs are also ugly but in a different way from the OT

“The negotiations were short” lmao

Oh alright, Palpatine is a Senator, and the Chancellor is a different guy. But which one is higher?

I appreciate that the politics are actually confusing, instead of just one bad faction vs one good faction

WHY ARE QUI-GON AND JAR JAR HAVING A SEXY MEET CUTE And Jar Jar immediately says “I love you”. What is happening

Alright by WHY does he speak like this. Is this a dialect of the common language? Is everyone else using a translator machine while Jar Jar actually learned the language so he makes mistakes?

I am so grateful for the subtitles lmao

R2-D2 looks kind of weird. Different sort of plastic? CGI?

Why did the decoy queen send the real queen to clean a droid?

I wonder if the guard captain (? or whatever his job is, the cute black guy) knows which one the queen is.

God she’s SO tiny. Who the hell elected this child?! A child on the throne of a hereditary monarchy makes sense, a child princess too; but a democratically elected head of the state?!

Oh Ani that’s a terrible line lmao This has the energy of baby clothes that say “ladies’ man” etc

Anakin is such a friendly, outgoing child 😭

“Your son was kind enough to offer us shelter :)” flash forward for how the Jedi order and the universe in general repays him...

The C-3P0/R2-D2 meet cute is much better than the anidala one!

“I had a dream I was a Jedi. I came back here and freed all the slaves.” 😭😭😭

“Mom, you say the biggest problem in this universe is nobody helps each other.” 😭

“He was meant to help you.” What the hell is that supposed to mean?

They’re really staking the entire mission on a 9 year old winning a deadly race huh

Omg I’ve forgotten about the immaculate conception lmao. How did the EU explain that one?

“I wanna be the first one to see ‘em all.” Well, that is his name...

Wait is that Warwick Davis in the background

Well that race got mildly interesting only about halfway through.

“Why do I sense we’ve picked up another pathetic life-form?” I think it’s pretty interesting how the two Jedi have a mutual, usually unspoken understanding that they’re above everyone and everything else.

I’m crying again looking at Shmi’s face. She knows they’re leaving her behind because she’s not valuable to anyone but herself and her son. In slavery, alone, with nobody to live for or to help her now. (And what she doesn’t know, but Qui-Gon does, is that he angered her slaveowner before leaving. I bet he’s going to take it out on her.)

“Will I ever see you again?” 😭😭😭

Lmao was this scene meant to mirror ANH? Leia’s planet has been destroyed, and she’s giving Luke a blanket; Padme’s planet is being decimated, and she’s giving Anakin a blanket. Sexism is like poetry, it rhymes...

“Many things will change when we reach the capital, Ani, but my caring for you will remain” What’s that supposed to mean? (This is an endearing scene of friendship and solidarity between two kids used as pawns by the cynical adults... Until the weird romance angle comes in again. The boy is nine, George!!!)

I like the parallel scenes of the two ineffective bureaucracies.

Yoda looks much better than in the OT. Is it CGI? Or a very good puppet with CGI enhancements? There’s so much detail in his eyes and ears, I don’t believe it’s a puppet only!

Did they really greenscreen and CGI the green hills?

Finally a proper fucking sword fight! Which is also accompanied by a rare memorable music theme. Maul’s martial arts style is noticeably different from the others, which is neat. He jumps and twirls like a dancer.

This part of the plot is very immersive because I, like Anakin, have no idea what the point of the space battle is. I’m sure it was explained before but I missed it. Oh so he could disable the autopilot at any time? He just went along with it to see what’s the destination? lmao “Qui-Gon told me to stay in this cockpit, so that's what I’m gonna do.” Well that's a very creative interpretation of his instructions lol Did Ani accidentally infiltrate the enemy base? Good for him! The station falling apart is one of the few good special effects in this movie.

“...grave danger I fear in his training.” *the Imperial march plays*

---

Notes after watching:

Well. 60% the worst movie you’ve ever seen, 20% okay, 10% interesting ideas some of which may or may not upset a fan of the OT, 10% crying your face off because of the dramatic irony.

The most interesting part with perhaps the most far-reaching consequences is the ideology of the film, which is very different from what the viewer could expect after the OT. The film draws a clear parallel between the ongoing fall of the Republic and the impending fall of the Jedi order, brought about by their own internal problems. The Jedi are shown as ineffective at best and actively heartless at worst. Two extremely disadvantaged people help Qui-Gon out of the goodness of their hearts, and in return he exploits them with the pragmatism worthy of a Sith Lord. But the structure of the film still positions the Jedi as “good guys”, giving no meaningful alternative for them. So it’s natural the audience would react like “But the Jedi are heroes! They’re noble and spiritual! What is this bureaucratic nonsense?!” and some of them would proceed to think “Well, the story says they’re heroes, so they’re actually justified in everything. All of these flaws are excusable.” And it’s very unclear what the intended takeaway from all of this was. Was the viewer supposed to leave the theater thinking “Damn, it’s a shame the Jedi are so fucked up. The only one who sees this kid as a person is another child trapped in the adults’ political schemes. So that’s what puts him on the path from being an idealistic, compassionate child to Darth Vader”? Or were the kids still supposed to want to be a Jedi, like they presumably did after the OT? You know what, this actually makes me appreciate the anti-TLJ crowd. They openly say: “I think the way Luke was written in this film was stupid and OOC. It offends me as a fan. This is not my Luke. I refuse to consider this film a part of my personal canon.” Straightforward and honest. So why can’t the (admittedly overlapping faction of) Jedi apologists just say that they don’t like the prequels? That trilogy is widely hated. If you say “I think the prequels were badly written, so I prefer to ignore their existence altogether”, I’m sure many would sympathize. So why not just say that, instead of defending the ways in which the Jedi order and its members were obviously in the wrong?

Both the cinematography and the image quality are strangely worse than the original trilogy. I was watching a 1080p BluRay rip, so the fault wasn’t there. Out of the environments, Coruscant was my favorite. The interiors look very plastic, which makes the scenes filmed on location in some normal palace look out of place.

Jar Jar’s people are a “primitive tribe” caricature, and their speech is nigh incomprehensible. Ani’s slaveowner seems to be an antisemitic caricature. Naboo is a planet of mostly white people and Mediterranean architecture... and fashion borrowing from Asia, mostly Japan; it’s like the costume designed visited a museum recently. (Apparently the Trade Federation guys are a racist stereotype too but I’m not familiar that one.)

Putting the spotlight on the most experienced actor was a good move, at least. In the end, it seems like Qui-Gon is the protagonist of this movie, not anyone who is in other installments.

Jake Lloyd’s acting didn’t bother me at all. Even looking at the documentary — alright, so another kid at the audition (5:32 in the documentary) had a stronger reading of a line that was unsalvageably awful anyway. So what? He seems older, maybe that’s why he’s better; it would be simply a slightly different dynamic if Anakin were not tiny enough to stumble over words. Besides, Natalie Portman was an established teenage actress, and her performance was also flat as hell. Meanwhile, the adults Neeson and McGregor were doing just fine. I think it’s clear where the blame lies here...

I still don’t understand what Palpatine’s scheme was. To get elected chancellor, he needed the queen’s instigation, so was letting her escape the plan from the beginning?

Who is the target audience for this movie? The OT was clearly for children. In this one, the kids would be bored by the politics, and the adults by the juvenile humor.

Ironically, I came out of this thinking the Jedi Council was right. If being a nine year old who misses his mother disqualifies one from their militant religious order, then maybe it would be best for everyone if he could keep living his life without their bullshit.

Anyway the most fun part of this experience was listening to the corresponding episode of A More Civilized Age, which was really healing after some of the bizarre takes on the Jedi I’ve seen on here.

I’m also grateful to them for pointing me towards the making-of documentary. A few short notes about it: watching McGregor’s nice hair being cut into that horrible style was almost physically painful; watching the actors rehearse the lightsaber fights was magical; the footage of the premiere left me with mixed feelings because of the secondhand embarrassment and dread of an impending trainwreck on one side, and the nostalgia of attending fandom film premieres myself in the past.

#star wars #blah blah blah

[literary-nose]

some thoughts on 'the cruel prince'.

though it did not take me long to finish this book, it certainly did take me just about longer than i anticipated. and, frankly? that was because, me, personally, i did not find it particularly enjoyable.

to begin with, one of the main points i found somewhat iffy was the intermingling of the two worlds, particularly so the way it was portrayed. of course, i understand that, seeing as there needs to be some sort of a differentiating manoeuvre, there would be descriptions of the mortal world too. i find it entirely unfit, however, for things such as real life corporations to be named. i really feel like, though some may state that it adds to the realism, it also ruins the atmosphere as a whole, nevermind the fact that we are not in the world of fae anymore. if mentioning an event happening at a store is necessary, that can be done without the name of said store appearing anywhere on the pages.

further, the events of the book were not distributed evenly along all nearly 400 pages of it. on occasion, it felt like certain points of the story carried on endlessly, and when they didn't, everything was developing at the speed of light, ridding said points and events of the slightest bit of logic they had. view me however you like, but i did not find any sense in cardan's suddenly being friendly with jude and everyone else, for example, - and no, i will not accept alcohol as an excuse. on top of that, after spending a few days being nice and polite, once crowned king, he decides that it is high time for him to return to being a jerk. no negotiations or talking it through with jude, nothing. of course, i have not yet read the wicked king, so i have no way of knowing that he will not realise his mistake and back away somewhere in the beginning of it, right? wrong. alternatively - right at the cost of poor marketing skills. what does "will jude's scheme to control cardan go her way" prompt?

speaking of which, i dare not leave unspoken the fact that every attempt of any character development whatsoever to be present failed miserably. not once did i find myself rooting for any of the characters for a reason other than Well, Jude Is The Protagonist, So I Might As Well Be On Her Side. we are instantly thrown into the story, into a foreign world with nearly no background information about the protagonist or the people who surround her. "this is to be disclosed further, as the narrative develops", you may say. to which i respond that the only aspect of it that so much as dares to even graze the issue of background information is the prologue, which speaks of a brutal murder of jude's parents by none other than the actual father of one of her sisters, the one who then adopted all three children, and the one who - guess what! - jude ends up loving, despite having to witness her parents being slaughtered by him at her seven years of age. pardon, but i call on lack of realism - or, at the very least, a missed opportunity to create a story about thrill and revenge, actual one, not just vivienne mocking madoc from somewhere behind the curtains.

lastly (as i do not intend to speak of each of the characters separately; it would take too long), finally setting the rational aspect of my review-thing away, i want to mention the emotions i felt while reading - which would add to my previous point, i would think. said emotions, so to say, were... none. i never felt any intense rage at cardan's antics, i never felt triumphant when jude held him hostage. adrenaline was the only feeling that visited me while reading. you know, the one that's supposed to be tugging at my face and threatening to change my expression into a reaction that would fit the events unfolding? the one that's meant to keep me on edge? yeah, not once was it strong enough to actually accomplish that. in fact, not once was it strong enough for me to even notice its presence before the final 50 pages, if not less.

thus, i conclude, leaving little, though existent possibility for me to read the wicked king, although, upon completing the cruel prince, i do not feel the slightest need to seek the continuation. perhaps the world of holly black is not for me.

(beth crowley's song based on this book is still awesome though. check it out.)

#upon reading i thought #holly black #the cruel prince #Spotify

[littleholmes]

I sometimes think about the fact that, had Oda survived, Dazai definitely would have taken over the Port Mafia before he turned 19 or at least before he turned 20. (This is another long one, a little sad in parts, so bear with me. tw; for brief canon-typical mentions of violence, suic*de, and trauma).

Dazai likely would have taken Mori out indirectly, either by causing members to take him out, or by arranging something and making it look like an accident—maybe a car accident where Dazai survived but the airbags ‘malfunctioned’ like they did with Ango (without the Guild involved), and Mori died but just happened to chat about him taking over one day…etc.

In any case, although Dazai being Port Mafia head by 19 would happen rather quickly and smoothly after that, because no one would question it, and those who did would disappear because Dazai then (and even Dazai now) is pretty damn scary and not one to cross, the organization under Dazai would be a force that would be unlike anything Yokohama’s ever seen. A force that would likely lead to serious issues for the city and, potentially, send Dazai falling even deeper into an unfeeling void so cavernous that it would lead to him taking his life early (and potentially alone instead of as the double s like his namesake) before he’s even 22.

I also sometimes think about how Mori is aware and recognizes that, should Dazai have remained in the org, Mori likely would have been killed years ago, which is partially why he allowed Dazai to even live these last four years and often offers him his position back. (I also sometimes think he wishes at times that Dazai had just taken over and spared him the responsibility, but that’s a big sometimes). I think Mori could have had Dazai killed plenty of times during his hiding and after, but chose not to—one, because he just didn’t want to detonate the bomb that is Dazai and put that target on himself, or any of his executives, because had that happened they all, or at least quite a few of them, would have died.

And two, because, although Mori is a semi-amiable guy in that he’s willing to let his powerful executives go if they want, (he was willing to let Kouyou leave freely if she wanted, and claims Dazai left freely too—and I’m sure Mori raising him up a bit like a semi-son in the org has something to do with it too, but I digress), Dazai is a whole different breed of Port Mafia puppy. He’s the kind that you let go and don’t go after or, if you do go after him, it’s at least not seriously. He’s the kind that is essentially put on an unspoken keep-alive list, and then asked periodically if he’s gotten things out of his system and wants to come back home. He’s also an heir apparent with the level of cruelty and callousness of a true underground leader, who can get anyone to cooperate, who can outdo the interrogators and the various corners of the organization at their own jobs, and remains relatively unmatched. He’s a unique asset, with incredible tactical abilities, and that doesn’t even count his ability (or the fact that it effectively doubles as an off-switch for another super powerful asset who, thanks to him, stands in their arsenal)…

And Mori knows all of this, respects all of this, and Dazai knows that Mori knows all of this and knows he has, and will always have, an upper hand of sorts at the end of day when it comes to negotiations with Mori and the organization.

But mostly, I also think about how, had Oda survived and Dazai became the Organization head, or even if Dazai just simply remained in the organization, the cycle of Port kids who become lethal teens with deep unaddressed trauma and self-loathing that started with him might not have ended with Kyouka. Mori impacted (harmed) Dazai who molded (tormented) Akutagawa who helped shape (wound) Kyouka and, while I tend to think she still possibly would have left or found a way out, Kyouka remaining would have continued this awfulness for whoever came after her when it came time for her to prepare the next orphan kid for life in the Port.

Again I’m rambling, but I’m mid-way through the manga and kept thinking about Oda and what would have happened had he lived, the dynamic with Mori and Dazai, and the cycle that happens with these orphans taken in by the organization, and Dazai’s ability to shift back into his venomous (ex) Port Mafia puppy self semi-seamlessly while in the Agency, and I was considering how good it was for himself, Atsushi, Kyouka, and even Yokohama that he left, but also how bad it could have been had Dazai remained in

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #bungo stray dogs #bsd dazai #dazai osamu #oda sakunosuke #bsd odasaku #bsd meta #i need to read beast after this #ougai mori #bsd mori #bsd akutagawa #bsd analysis #bsd ogai #bsd kouyou #bsd kyouka #bsd chuuya #Osamu dazai #izumi kyouka #ogai mori #akutagawa ryunosuke #chuuya nakahara #dark era dazai #bungo stray thoughts #idk i’m rambling #sakunosuke oda #bsd manga #akutagawa ryuunosuke #mori ogai #bsd port mafia

[a-witch-in-endor]

I was actually wondering how you came up with the development of Zuko and the gangs relationship development, specifically in regards to them working towards a balance between formalized relational norms and negotiating the gray areas inherent in the more unspoken areas of the relationship. I think it's excellently done and I love reading about it, but I don't recall anything similar taking place in Canon and I'm wondering how you settled on this particular execution, if you don't mind sharing.

This is such a fun question - thank you for asking! This got really long, so I'm putting it under a cut.

So in general, I don't plan out the minutiae of interpersonal interactions and developments, because I prefer to put characters together and let their interactions unfold. So I can't tell you that I foresaw the entire road of their relationships. A few times, I thought something else would happen, and the characters just sort of... made their own decisions.

That being said, Zuko's problems with interpersonal relationships ended up the way they are because of how I felt about canon and Mighty Oaks.

Regarding canon: Zuko grows up in a palace with lots of interpersonal interactions with people of varying social status. A small number of these interactions are with children. We see him interact with Azula a lot, naturally, and Azula's friends spend time at the palace. We can assume that he's also in situations with the children of other nobles from time to time. But we never see him really get how to act with other children. Then there's the Agni Kai and banishment. Zuko spends a lot of time with Uncle Iroh, and also interacts with people on his ship. We know he also interacts with people on shore as part of his search for the Avatar. We don't know whether he ever interacts with kids his own age. I'm going to assume these connections are rare and largely pushed on him by Iroh.

How those relationships occur is interesting to me. Zuko spends a lot of time with Iroh, and much of it is expressions of anger and frustration. Iroh is patient with him, seemingly listens and supports, but also is never really open or honest with Zuko. Zuko's crewmates don't seem to know him very well at all. And with strangers, he mostly seems to bully his way through interactions. When he tries to have meaningful relationships, he's really bad at expressing himelf (see: the moments he tries to bond with Uncle Iroh, who knows him better than anyone; his inability to open up to Mai; his repeated failures to interpret Azula; the early days of trying to connect with the Gaang).

Regarding MO: Zuko's interactions as a prince end abruptly when he is 11, and his primary interactions are now with three groups of people: other sages, regular people, and (minorly) the royal family. The sages are not well-equipped for looking after a child, and their customs dictate that Zuko is to be treated as a peer. This is a big shift for Zuko. Some of the sages make an effort to not be too harsh with him (e.g. Kenji doesn't want him to fast until his body is more developed), but they still have high expectations, speak to him as a peer, and don't respond to the needs of a child (e.g. not responding to his emotional distress with, you know, any kind of comfort). Minorly, he also oversees cases, but in those interactions, Zuko is "the adult in charge". When he's at the High Temple, his temper often gets channeled into this. And even more minorly, he occasionally comes across his birth family, who largely treat him with significant emotional distance.

Then Zuko outright expresses his emotions and opinions once and is banished to Crescent Island, where the sages are even more firm with him. His "freedoms", like taking cases he finds interesting or exploring the temple, are restricted. Any outburst of emotion or badly-placed curiosity is met with punishment. He folds a lot of his emotional response within himself and lets it out only in the one acceptable way (optional offerings), or quietly in an unacceptable way (reflecting and reading on What's Wrong With the FN). For three years, he rarely interacts with anybody outside prescribed times. There are days that he doesn't speak with anyone at all. His positive interactions are really just Shyu, who's very careful with him, and counsel letters.

When I applied canon to MO's storyline, it became clear to me that all those cracks in Zuko's ability to express himself and understand people were going to be deeper. And this time, instead of Zuko's emotions clouding everything loudly, they cloud everything quietly. Add this to the fact that Zuko's obsession with honour has now been channeled through his vows and the tradition of the Fire Sages (which is a tradition of religious law), and you've got yourself an autistic kid with a mindset of justice/logic/truth/law, with little to no context for how to interact with other people outside of other sages and people approaching for counsel, who considers himself An Actual Adult, Actually. Meanwhile, Aang grew up in a temple with other kids, and Katara and Sokka have always had one another and a close-knit village to learn social rules from.

In terms of how I decided to write their interactions, well... those were the raw materials I knew I was working with. As I said, I didn't plan for exactly how it would unfold, but it became clear to me early-on that they weren't communicating effectively. But to be honest, I don't think their inability to communicate is really the heart of the problem. I think Zuko is deeply untrusting, because he's been given little to no reason to trust anyone in general. His previous family left, abandoned him, and sold him to the temple; his temple (from his perspective) banished him due to asking too many questions; his new temple is a place of "don't say anything out of line or else". Atop all of that, people keep saying things they don't mean and talking in metaphors, which Zuko just doesn't comprehend (canonically) and finds to be dishonest (in MO). Meanwhile, Aang and the WT kids started trusting each other almost immediately, and they make friends with other people at the drop of a hat. Their eagerness to be friends and trust one another plus Zuko's inherent mistrust and low-to-nonexistent-expectations just keep clashing with one another, which then compounds with the fact that they find communication hazardous.

Wow, this turned into a whole thing. Thanks for letting me ramble, anon. :-)

#while mighty oaks do fall #fire sage zuko

[robininthelabyrinth]

The Quiet Room

- chapter 9/fin -

“Wangji is doing well,” Lan Qiren said, cradling his teacup, allowing it to warm his hands as he breathed in the aroma. He had been sitting in silence for what felt like a shichen, hoping that Lan Xichen would start the conversation, but he had been disappointed.

Again.

Lan Xichen stared down at his hands, head bowed and face a little pale. Lan Qiren remembered when his nephew would greet him every afternoon with a smile – he remembered, too, the way that smile had become less and less real, more and more fake, and no matter how he tried to talk to him, he simply could not get Lan Xichen to tell him why. Lan Qiren had worried that it was the pressures of being the heir, of his expected future role as sect leader, and he’d done his best to bear as much of the weight of that as he could, while he could; he had thought it was the rising tide of the inescapable war, looming on the horizon; he had thought a thousand things. He had wondered if Lan Xichen was lonely, or saddened, or even angry, and he’d tried in each case to do what he could to ease his nephew’s unspoken dissatisfaction and nameless anxieties – but as long as Lan Xichen was unwilling to tell him what was wrong, Lan Qiren could do nothing. Nothing but be there for him, and back then, it had seemed like Lan Xichen had appreciated that, that that had been enough.

Perhaps he should have tried harder.

Perhaps if he had, things might not have…

No, there was no point in thinking like that.

Maintain your own discipline, after all.

In the end, Lan Qiren had been separated from Lan Xichen during much of the war, a necessity dictated by his nephew’s bravery and his own injuries, and then by the needs of the war itself. He had comforted himself in thinking that at least Lan Xichen had Nie Mingjue at his side – Nie Mingjue had been one of the few people who could win a real smile out of Lan Xichen in those later years, when nothing else seemed to work. They had been so charming as children, each one of them enraptured and fascinated by the other, and they had seemed so happy…they had been so happy.

It wasn’t a surprise that Lan Xichen returned from the war different from how he had been before. That was what war did, that maker and breaker of men; if Lan Qiren could have kept his nephews, who he loved like his own sons, from ever having to know battle, he would have done so no matter what the cost, even if the cost was his own life. He couldn’t, though, and afterwards, it felt as if what had been a small distance between them had turned into a chasm.

Perhaps Jin Guangyao had started in on his tricks even as far back as that. It was quite possible – Lan Xichen, normally quite filial, hadn’t bothered informing Lan Qiren of his intention to become sworn brothers with Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao until it had already been announced publicly, and after that, naturally, Lan Qiren had to treat Jin Guangyao with respect lest he be seen as stepping on his nephew’s face.

It was hard to say now, in retrospect, if Lan Qiren had had any inkling of what the man had been like. Lan Qiren would have liked to think that he hadn’t liked him on sight, but everything had been such a mess in those days, and Jin Guangyao so good at playing the part of a gentle and virtuous man, exactly the sort of person to appeal to the heart of a teacher like him – he really couldn’t be sure.

He did know that he’d disliked him later, after what had happened to Lan Wangji. It hadn’t been even Jin Guangyao’s fault, really. Lan Wangji’s punishment had been a harsh one, probably too harsh, breaking Lan Qiren’s heart into a thousand pieces, but it had been what was necessary to appease the anger of the sect while maintaining Lan Wangji’s reputation and freedom, and Lan Qiren had through bitter experience learned to value freedom above all else. Despite having put together the punishment himself after negotiations lasting both day and night, despite sincerely believing that it was the only way forward and there was no way out, watching the punishment be administered had been by far the worst moment of Lan Qiren’s life, and he had had many to compare.

Watching had hurt Lan Xichen as well – watching, and having to consent to it, even if he hadn’t been responsible for coming up with it the way Lan Qiren had. But afterwards, when Lan Qiren had come at once to Lan Wangji’s side, ready to bear whatever condemnation his nephew wished to throw at him – to be forgiven or rejected, to provide answers or to remain distant, whatever Lan Wangji wished – Lan Xichen had instead distanced himself, turning his face away with the thin excuse of sect business to keep him away.

Turning away…towards Jin Guangyao.

Lan Qiren had tried to talk to Lan Xichen about it – to share sorrows and commiserate or help – but every time he did, Jin Guanyao had been there. Even for someone like Lan Qiren, who was set in his ways and not especially skilled at understanding people, it didn’t take long to realize that Jin Guangyao was ever so subtly and politely impeding Lan Qiren’s attempt to connect with his nephew, and that Lan Xichen was endorsing it.

If it hadn’t been for that endorsement, Lan Qiren would have fought his way through – he was as stubborn as any other Lan, and certainly no less than his nephews. But once he understood that this distance, this refusal to compromise or connect or anything, was what Lan Xichen wanted…he had felt that he had no choice but to step back and respect his nephew’s wishes.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have. Perhaps…

There was no point in thinking about it that way.

Be strict with yourself, be easy on others.

Lan Qiren did not hold a grudge over his nephew’s past acts, for he loved him too much to do that. His love for his nephew was unconditional, even if he was genuinely disappointed in the man he had become or the actions he had taken. But simply because he loved him and always would did not mean that he would so easily forgive and forget what had been done – the Lan sect’s rule admonished them to Earn trust, not to take it for granted. The effort of repairing what he had shattered fell on his nephew’s shoulders, and only Lan Xichen could decide what to do next.

Lan Qiren only hoped that now the poison that was Jin Guangyao was gone and the lesson so harshly learned, now that he had time to understand all that he had lost through his own conduct and reflect on himself and his actions, time to mourn all that had happened before, Lan Xichen could at last begin to properly heal – at last begin to finally grow to be content with himself in the way Lan Qiren had always wanted for him.

After what felt like an age, Lan Xichen cleared his throat. “I’m happy to hear that Wangji is well.”

A dull parrot croaking back the words said to it verbatim would have been a better conversationalist.

Lan Qiren did not sigh, though he wanted to.

“He’s started wearing his ribbon again,” he said conversationally, and noted that Lan Xichen’s head lifted in interest despite himself. “While I do not think he will be returning to the Cloud Recesses on a permanent basis any time soon, he has reaffirmed himself as a member of the Lan sect.”

Lan Wangji would follow the rules as he saw fit, thinking seriously as to what they were and what they meant, accepting them voluntarily and whole-heartedly the way he had done before, and he'd teach the two boys he'd taken with him the same – Lan Qiren was pleased by that, at least, even though he suspected that Lan Wangji’s interpretation of the rules would not match up especially well with his own.

It was still better than losing him entirely.

(Lan Qiren had his own conduct to reflect on, too. He’d thought he was doing the right thing, and yet…had he really? Had he acted too rashly, too consumed with his own past horrors to see the different world of the presence? Had he also failed Lan Wangji? What about those two boys, which Lan Wangji had taken away as if he did not trust that they would thrive here? What was the right thing to have done, under such circumstances? What was the right thing to do?)

“Is Wangji happy?” Lan Xichen asked, and it was the most attention he’d paid to anything Lan Qiren had said since they had started this ritual in the days following the unsuccessful attack on the Unclean Realm. “With…with Wei Wuxian, I mean?”

“I think he is, yes.”

Now that had been a disaster of untold proportions.

It had all happened so quickly, and Lan Qiren had not been present; everything he knew about it was only by report. Unsurprisingly, the Jin sect had been in complete chaos after their would-be invasion had been rebuffed and thoroughly defeated, as anyone with any sense should have figured out from the start. After all, the Unclean Realm, shut behind its walls and shields, had been too fearsome a target and too tough a nut to crack even for the Wen sect at the height of its power, and that was before one accounted for Jiang Cheng’s heroic if near-suicidal bravery, dropping everything to rush over to Qinghe with as many disciples as he could spare the second he saw the beacon light up, determined to ensure that no other sect suffered a fate like his own had. It had gotten even worse for the Jin sect once it was discovered that their leadership was now gone, with Jin Guangshan dead at Jiang Cheng’s hand – Lan Qiren hoped for Jiang Cheng’s sake that he’d enjoyed eliminating the odious man that had so sadistically enjoyed threatening him through his nephew, though he genuinely believed Jiang Cheng’s persistent insistence that he hadn’t intended to kill him – and Jin Guangyao’s corpse being produced a few days later without any explanation. Rumors could not seem to decide what had been the likely cause of death, whether it seemed as if he’d died by his own hand or if it had been something more sinister than that. The condition of the body apparently rendered it uncertain…

At any rate, it had been a complete mess. The remaining people in the Jin sect had therefore all rushed home, looking for someone to take over and tell them what to do…

Well, that was the charitable explanation, anyway.

More accurately, after the Jin sect completely lost both face and leadership, the influential members of the sect realized that the only living heirs to the position of sect leader were little Jin Ling, who was still a toddler, and Mo Xuanyu, one of Jin Guangshan’s bastards by some barely noble mortal lady from some remote village, the latter of which had been brought back and recognized as a son of Jin Guangshan’s more as a jibe aimed at undercutting Jin Guangyao than for his own merits, which were thoroughly lacking. Those influential sect members clearly realized that the first person to control those two would control the sect, and had immediately started fighting for the right to do just that.

Unfortunately for everyone, Xue Yang had gotten there first.

Xue Yang was a traitorous dog, a wretched delinquent and later criminal murderer, but Jin Guangshan had defended and sheltered him despite it all. It had been one of the main subjects upon which he had clashed with Nie Mingjue, especially after the incident with the massacre of the Yueyang Chang sect and the intervention of the already famous Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan. Somehow it appeared that Xue Yang had received early word of what had happened, or perhaps he had just been waiting for an opportunity when everyone was gone to make mischief; at any rate, he’d either enticed or intimidated poor Mo Xuanyu into performing a forbidden body-offering ritual that summoned Wei Wuxian back to the world.

Not that they’d known it was Wei Wuxian, at least at first.

Well, Lan Wangji – there as part of the Nie sect’s counter-attacking force, grim-faced and determined not to let the Jin sect weasel out of their wrongdoing this time – had somehow managed to figure it out, and after that rather a lot of other things had happened all at once in very quick succession before Wei Wuxian had been somehow, miraculously accepted back into the cultivation world once again.

There were details in a report somewhere or another, if Lan Qiren wished to look. He hadn’t quite been able to bring himself to do it yet. After all, in the end, Lan Qiren cared about the entire series of events only insofar as his second nephew was happy once again.

“I would even dare to say that he is happy to excess,” he said, his voice a little dry. “It is probably for the best that he is living in the Unclean Realm at the moment, as I suspect the hearts of our Lan sect elders might not be able to tolerate seeing such…profound displays of joy.”

They can’t keep their hands off each other, he meant, feeling deeply long-suffering over the whole unstoppable debacle – his family and their unrestrained hearts, fools every one of them! – and Lan Xichen, despite the depths of his misery, momentarily looked pleased and even amused to hear it.

“Nie Huaisang has announced that he is planning their wedding whether they consent or no,” Lan Qiren said, and watched Lan Xichen’s expression tense. He knew his nephew suspected Nie Huaisang of having somehow contrived to cause Jin Guangyao’s death, and knew, also, that Lan Xichen was torn up inside over it, not knowing how to feel. It was clear enough to Lan Qiren that, on one hand, Lan Xichen mourned the death of the person he had thought was his friend, the illusion Jin Guangyao had projected for him, while on the other, he knew now what Jin Guangyao had really been like, and could not help but be glad that he was gone. And yet still more, Lan Xichen knew, too, that Jin Guangyao’s death had been the only thing preventing his former friend from going to a public trial to suffer for his crimes and his father’s, from facing that level of collective disdain and disgust from the entire cultivation world, which would have been the fate that Jin Guangyao would have hated the most, abhorred even more than death…Lan Xichen couldn’t decide if Nie Huaisang had done what he thought he had done, and he didn’t know if he should hate him for it or thank him for sparing Jin Guangyao that last indignity.

Torn up inside was really too mild a word for it.

“I have faith that Huaisang will do a good job,” Lan Xichen finally said, clearly choosing to soldier on past his discomfort. Lan Qiren nodded in approval. “He’s not as useless as he used to pretend to be.”

“He is still rather useless,” Lan Qiren said, and wanted to sigh. He didn’t know how he’d gotten the reputation for being able to turn trash into gold and a waste into a gentleman, but even less did he understand how that ridiculous reputation of his had managed to survive the fact that Nie Huaisang had been his student three times over and still turned out like that. “Don’t try asking him any questions he doesn’t feel like answering, that’s for sure…but yes, he’s grown up a little, at long last. I’m given to understand that he’s actually started helping out around his sect, doing little things here and there. He’s discovered that he has a small talent for arrays and astronomy and promptly let it go to his head, strutting around like a peacock in springtime.”

As Lan Qiren had hoped, Lan Xichen actually smiled at that image.

A moment later, and the smile faded.

It was only to be expected. After all, Lan Qiren was reporting information about the inner affairs of another sect, and given the still-tense relationship between Lan Wangji and any members of the Lan sect, there was only one person he could have heard it from.

“Shufu,” Lan Xichen said, voice trembling. “How is…how is Chifeng-zun faring?”

Lan Qiren did sigh, this time.

“You don’t get to ask that, you know,” he reminded Lan Xichen gently, and his nephew dropped his head down, staring at the table with his face gone grey again. “But he’s doing – not good, perhaps, but fine. Manageable. As well as can be expected. He’s not happy about being stuck with the Chief Cultivator position that Jin Guangshan invented – I believe he’s proposed that it become a rotating position. It’s unclear if that proposal will be successful, however, given that Sect Leader Jiang nearly threw a fit when he heard of it and realized that it meant that he’d have to take a turn.”

“I can imagine,” Lan Xichen murmured. “He’s already responsible for twice the number of sects, after all.”

“Not quite. Madame Qin has now officially taken charge of matters in Lanling Jin, acting as regent for her nephew – she’s a sweet girl, honest, and with Jiang Cheng there to look out for Jin Ling’s interests, there’s no cause for concern. While they are still in the midst of dividing up everything that had become overly entangled between the two sects, it will not take long before it has been done, and we have four separate Great Sects once more.”

Lan Xichen nodded. He still looked as though he wanted to say something, so Lan Qiren waited patiently, although he knew that there was every chance that Lan Xichen would simply give up once again, sighing and dropping his head to his shoulders, retreating behind a wall of silence that no one could breach.

Today, however, his patience was rewarded.

“Shufu, I know I don’t have the right to ask,” Lan Xichen said abruptly, breaking the long silence. “But tell me anyway. Has Mingjue-xiong found another lover?”

Of course it would be that, Lan Qiren thought, not without sympathy. There was nothing in the world so precious as what you had once held in your hands, treated too lightly, and finally lost through your own negligence.

“He has not,” he said. “I do not believe he has any plans to do so in the near future. But time heals all wounds, and he is a sect leader, with obligations. I would expect to hear happy news sooner or later.”

Lan Xichen exhaled, the sound of it loud in the thick silence of the hanshi. He looked neither rejoicing nor regretful, but almost a little bit relieved – as if merely gathering his courage to ask the question had been a great effort, and that in doing so, he had perhaps so released a little of the poison still stuck in his chest.

Lan Qiren could only hope.

“That is all the news I have from outside,” Lan Qiren concluded. He put his teacup down and stood, intending to leave, but before he could, Lan Xichen reached out and caught his sleeve in his fingers, just the way he had done when he’d been a little child who hadn’t known any better.

Lan Qiren came to a halt, waiting.

“Shufu,” Lan Xichen said. “When Wangji defied the sect, he was punished. I – did what I did, with Jin Guangyao…you said that I would be punished, too. When will that be?”

“Your actions and Wangji’s are not the same, and so too your punishments are by necessity different,” Lan Qiren said. “You will not be sentenced to any strikes with the discipline whip.”

“But…I deserve to be punished.” Lan Xichen’s voice was urgent. “Shouldn’t I be punished?”

Lan Qiren felt tired, and old. Far older than his years.

“Xichen,” he said quietly. “You are the sect leader. Your life belongs to the sect, not yourself, and you will have to live up to that. You are going to have sit across the table from all the rest of them, the sect leaders of Great Sects and small sects both, familiar and less familiar, everyone who knows what you did and who you did it for. You are going to have to do that for the rest of your life. That’s punishment enough.”

Lan Xichen flinched as if Lan Qiren had struck him. It would have been kinder if he had struck him.

“I can’t do that,” he whispered. “Shufu, I can’t.”

“You must.”

“Shufu…” Lan Xichen looked up at him pleadingly. “I want to go into seclusion.”

Lan Qiren shook his head. It was not the first time Lan Xichen had asked for that, but Lan Qiren knew better than most that the quiet of seclusion, just like the forceful peace of the jingshi, their quiet room, was not always the best remedy in every case. There were cases in which the jingshi was too strong a medicine, as it was for people like Nie Mingjue, and cases, too, where it was too weak, unable to actually solve the problem that was before it; the same was true for seclusion.

He did not believe that seclusion was the right remedy here.

To put it bluntly, Lan Xichen’s fault had always been his cowardice, his desire to run away. He had not wanted to tell Nie Mingjue that he was dissatisfied with their relationship or that he wanted more, he had not wanted to confront his own anxieties, he had not wanted to admit fault, he had tried to hide himself away from the world…Jin Guangyao might have encouraged him, but it had been Lan Xichen’s own choice to succumb to those blandishments, to use them as an excuse to do what he’d so selfishly wanted to do anyway.

Maintain your own discipline.

For him, seclusion would be just more hiding. Hiding and hiding, until he was just the shadow of a person, existing rather than living…how could Lan Qiren allow that?

“You cannot,” he said, knowing his words were harsh and the message still harsher, but he hoped in his heart of hearts that the harshness would help, that Lan Xichen would finally find it within himself to rise to the occasion. “You are sect leader. I cannot handle the work of it any longer, and Wangji is no longer here; the only one who can do it is you. It is your burden, your life – no other person can bear it for you.”

Lan Xichen’s eyes were red.

He was still in mourning, still miserable, still despondent, and that was all reasonable, just to be expected. But at the same time, Lan Qiren thought that there had been some progress today: Lan Xichen had held a conversation with him, he had answered questions and asked others. He had inquired as to the things he wanted to know, even though he had known that the answers would hurt him.

Maybe sometime soon, if not tomorrow than some time after, he would go still further.

When he did – when Lan Xichen finally raised his head up high and acknowledged the mistakes he had made, acknowledged and learned from them, swore to himself that he would be a better person going forward and accepted that there was no going back, no making up for what he had done, when he accepted that he might not ever be forgiven and that even if he was there was no getting back what he had lost…

When Lan Xichen finally emerged from his self-induced misery, Lan Qiren would be there to support him.

“You made your choices, Xichen,” he reminded him. “Now you must live with them.”

He left, leaving Lan Xichen sitting in the hanshi behind him as he went, his hands clasped behind his back. Night was falling, and the Cloud Recesses was quiet.

As for whether it was the honest quiet of self-reflection or the insidious quiet of self-deceit…

Well, it was quiet.

#mdzs #lan qiren #lan xichen #my fic #my fics #the quiet room

[yandere-sins]

The Exception

My friend let me try playing Hades on her switch and well... I kinda liked it. Namely, I liked all the characters, so my brain went like “what if they were yandere” and I had an idea for this story that I threw together this morning before working on the Fox Wedding (: The latter isn’t done yet, but this sure is, so who knows, mayhaps some of you will enjoy it! Just tried to answer the question how we could get Thanatos to whisk us away.

Characters: Yandere!Thanatos x Reader Warnings: Yandere, Blood, War, Wounds/Impaling, Major Character Death (???) or well dying, I read into greek history for almost an hour but if I gotten something wrong then so be it

Thanatos had seen enough of the world to know that he didn't want to stay on the surface forever. 

The current battle spreading before him was a mere reason to sigh deeply as he watched bodies fall left and right, their souls soon leaving to a better, or perhaps worse, place. It was mandatory he stayed, but Thanatos was well aware of which side was winning and which was losing. It was his duty and his work to know these things, even though it didn't make the fighting any less futile in his eyes.

Letting his gaze wander over the battlefield, he watched the red splatters on the ground, heard the crushing sounds of iron against iron and the cacophony of fearful and devastating screams. He still couldn't believe Zagreus would want to come to such a place. A place where there was futile fighting and too much light, but perhaps, it was a world that fit the Prince of the Underworld, as he was the same, even if Thanatos only recognized this fact bitterly. 

Finally, the battle was closing in on its end, just like the hundreds of people that found their death because of it. The ones who weren't dead yet slowly but surely started to hesitate and retreat. Even as the personification of death, Thanatos reckoned that a pointless death was scary, even though so many humans chose it over desertion. Their death was inevitable, preordained by Thanatos sisters. Still, he had seen many hold on to the last sparks of hope that they could escape Thanatos' grasp. 

And then, on the other side of the coin, were those that practically would have offered their life to Hades and fought to the end.

You weren't an exception. Yes, your quest and pride were your downfall, and by the gleam in your eyes Thanatos could tell you knew. You knew and recognized that you'd die. However, as if you were spiting him personally, you still continued to fight ahead of everyone else, gaining questioning glances from your comrades and contempt from your enemies, which you pulled to the ground one after another and sending them to hell. 

Many before you had this overzealous compulsion to make that best out of their inevitable demise. Thanatos would admit that yes, most had a good reason for it, like saving their family or fighting for their own life. Others simply lucked out on the gift of pride and ignorance, forcing themselves and occasionally many more lives with them into the deep, dark pits of death. 

What was your reason? Thanatos wondered. 

He still had time before he needed to take action, he could allow himself a short - minuscule, really - different thought than his upcoming work, and you presented yourself so nicely to him as the incarnation of death waited for the end of today's battle. It wasn't often that he had the leisure to let his thoughts wander, so Thanatos intended to use these few seconds, which would fall under the radar, to still his curiosity.

By the looks of it, you weren't an inexperienced fighter. Or perhaps, you were just a farmer judging by your muscles. Surely, you seemed enthusiastic about your task, so were you fighting for something more significant than the glory of your country? Family? A loved one? Thanatos couldn't help but be curious about what your drive was, as he had seen so many reasons, yet they were all the same. Perhaps, yours was new?

Even so, you were graceful as you swung your sword around. What did he know about footwork, but at least, yours seemed to pay off as you weren't dead yet. When one of your foes managed to smack off your helmet, Thanatos believed that was it, but alas, you regained your strength, charging at the very same attacker. 

In a way, fighting was like an elaborate play. The only difference was that neither of the parties knew the other one's move. The person reacting better was the winner. He couldn't find joy in watching wars, but even Thanatos had to admit that it was a joy watching you. Even if you lacked the enthusiasm as the heroic shades that lingered below, like Theseus, had, you fought a fight worth mentioning in the books as well. 

Every move you made, Thanatos could see the calculations in your eyes, that keen shine reflecting in them. The sun seemed to break through the clouds just to reach out to you, making your armor sparkle in its rays. Yes, you were a formidable human, and Thanatos caught himself thinking that it was a shame you were fighting even if you looked so beautifully while doing it. 

Taking another deep breath, he could see the swirls in the air left by it. While the winter wasn't affecting him, no matter how little clothes he wore, Thanatos felt a second of pitiful understanding for everyone who had to fight in those conditions. Undoubtedly, the cold armors, freezing hands and weapons, and frozen ground were another nemesis for every soldier out here. Even if their bodies stayed warm from adrenaline and running, it certainly was another reason many of your human bodies gave out quicker, merely submitting to their fate. It was fair enough for Thanatos. It meant his work was over faster, and judging by you being circled and the other soldiers at your side beginning to see the end coming towards them with long spears and sharp swords, it was all over soon. 

You had fought bravely, that much he could give you. Perhaps you had impressed him enough to put in an unusual good word for you with Hypnos, who'd pass it on to Hades himself, granting you a shot on being put into Elysium. But your fate had long been decided, and as you fell to the ground, the battlefield erupted in victorious screams, announcing your time of death. 

And also, his start of work. 

As the winners retreated one after one, happy whenever they found a friend that survived too, Thanatos passed by them and onto the battlefield instead. Unseen by the human eye, he began his duty of reaping, one soul after the other, as mangled and frustrated over their death as they were, following his orders as he shushed them away. Usually, some pleaded and bargained with him for another shot of life, but even if Thanatos had wanted, there was no way for him to help them. But that day, everyone seemed awfully aware that there was no negotiating nor mercy waiting for them as they looked at his figure, frightened and frustrated. A pointless battle, with meaningless deaths, brought forth the self-pity in them, but this wasn't the first battle Thanatos tended to, so he felt nothing akin to that. It also wasn't his duty to take care of the souls gathered here, as it was Hermes' job to lead to them. 

He had something very different on his agenda. You. 

It was unfortunate for both of you, but when he reached you, you had yet to breathe your last breath. One eye slowly and in pain, opened, the other one damaged from the blow to the head you had received. However, as you looked at him, serene clarity laid in your gaze, and you recognized him, mayhaps by the giant scythe he carried around. Your stare was clear and less afraid than he expected you to be when acknowledging him, but you closed your eyes as a cough overcame you, hot, red blood dripping down your lips. 

"Guess that's it," you croaked, and Thanatos could only stare. Conversing… wasn't his strong suit, and there wasn't exactly a reason to talk to you.

"Are you going to kill me?" you continued, undeterred by his silence, and Thanatos weighed his actions. "No, of course not," he eventually spoke, shaking his head slowly, the hood on his head shifting along to his movement. 

"Ouch, that's cruel. You'll just wait until I die like this?" 

Your words were nothing he hadn't heard before, and he didn't feel offended by them. However, he didn't expect your lips to briefly curl into a smile, adding a jesting notion to what you said. Even that wasn't new, but… it struck a chord inside the usual stoic bringer of death. "I can't end your suffering," Thanatos explained, hoping you'd simply know about the unspoken rule that he couldn't harm you. 

"I think, I get it," you heaved, feeling worse by the minute. "You are just making sure I know I am supposed to die here."

That assumption wasn't wrong, even though there had been more playing into his service than just that. Too many kept trying to escape their fate, and sort of, Thanatos was just checking and cleaning up what would be left. You still had some time before your organs would fail and finally take you to the grave, different from the other souls that were already leaving for their new home. 

"No, you will die here," he retorted firmly. 

"I could," you chuckled, followed by another painful cough. 

"Don't test me, Mortal."

In between deep breaths, you allowed yourself a short laugh. Just like him, you were probably aware that there was nothing worse that could happen to your situation, so his threat was just a way he hoped to shut you up with. In silence, he watched over you, until eventually, your eye opened up again. This time your gaze was searching for him - or something really - but your sight had already begun to cloud. No matter how proud and achieved you are in life, in the face of death, everyone looked the same.

 "I think I did a good job. You know, fighting. Thought that if I already had to do it, I might as well give it my damn best."

More coughing. Thanatos watched the puddle of blood around you grow by the second. The spear inside your body must have been stirring up your insides the more you talked. Thanatos had expected something like this, you, young as you still were, had been led by the belief that doing your best could make up for the fact that you'd die. "But in the end, it was worth nothing, right? We lost after all."

Thanatos could only stare as he wondered what you expected him to say. He came here, knowing your life would end here, so really, the hope you had put into yourself didn't have the same disappointment to him now as it did to you. And yet, as he listened to you, seeing your body battered up with cuts and bruises, for the first time in centuries, he felt something akin to pity for you, and you specifically.

"Why did you fight then?" he asked, perhaps against your expectations. 

"Why? Because they told us too. The King ordered us to fight this battle, and only he could have known how many soldiers our opponent would bring."

"You could have run." Thanatos tried to stay as detached from you as possible, though it didn't quite work, your words taking their influence on him. "Can you?" you retorted before letting out a long sigh. Death was near, literally as well as figuratively. 

"Can you run from your duties? You don't have to do this either, do you?" 

"I do--"

"Really?"

There was no immediate response this time, your question justified, despite your little mortal soul undoubtedly never understanding the burdens on the shoulders of Gods. The world would stop if they all decided to not continue their work and fulfill their duties and expectations. If Thanatos stopped, no one would die anymore, and but the suffering of everything would never disappear too. 

"Dying sucks," you whispered, turning your head away. 

"I reckon," he muttered indifferently. Not like he could talk about it from experience. It must be painful, dreadful, and, depending on the circumstances, frustrating too. Right now, though he couldn't imagine the extent, you must have felt so hopeless and so, so scared. There wasn't much other reason for your banter.

"Thanatos… I always thought it was a pretty name, even if everyone feared it." Regaining his attention after finding himself momentarily lost in thoughts, he looked down at you again, watching as your eyelid closed slowly. "Say what you want, but you can't blame them for fearing death, and alas, me."

"Perhaps if they talked to you, they wouldn't be so afraid."

"Meaning you don't feel so afraid anymore?"

A smile danced over your lips once more, a truly unusual sight for a soul so close to their end, and especially after talking to him. Hypnos often teased Thanatos with being too formal and dutiful to be amusing, and Hades beware, comforting. Though he didn't care for his twin's words, yours did make him feel... happy. 

"Let's go then," you whispered, and Thanatos kneeled down, his hand falling to your wrist, listening to your pulse. Even with the feeling of your heart still desperately pumping blood through your body, only to lose it through your wounds, you didn't utter another word afterwards. You undoubtedly were dying, but perhaps, for now, you were merely unconscious as your lungs didn't stop reaching for air, and your heart used all your strength to function. 

Once more, the sun broke through the clouds, shining down right at you two, bringing Thanatos into the predicament of being blinded as it reflected off your armor. Perhaps he understood it now. Understood how unfair it was that someone like you, innocent and kind, was doomed to die out here. How awful his job on this day was, forcing him to take you to Tartarus and put you before the judgment of the god residing there. 

So what if... he didn't. 

He couldn't heal your wounds, nor make you feel better. But what he could do is battle the fate, earn the scorn of many, but at least, even if he took out the spear from your bloody body, you'd live. You'd live to tell your tale, and who knew, even he could apply some bandages, so maybe you'd recover some. 

It was a risk, and one Thanatos did not like taking, nor found pleasure in executing. But you couldn't refuse to come to this battle, whereas he, perhaps, after all these years, could refuse to do his job once. For your sake, and unbeknownst to him at that time, for his own even more.

His scythe disappeared in favor of Thanatos grabbing for the dreadful spear. Never before had he experience the kind of sound a wound could make from so close, and by the gods, he hoped he never would again. It was just your luck that you were unconscious, or the pain would have perhaps killed you faster than your wounds.

Leaning down, he scooped you up, his hand sullied with your blood and the dirt on the ground. The snow wasn't cold when he touched it, but your body was warm in his arms and still alive. Your threat of fade wasn't cut yet, and he wouldn't do it. With you in his arms, he stepped back, looking into your sleeping face before he retreated from the battlefield with a quiet, "Let's go."

No, the surface wasn't a place Thanatos liked to linger. It was too loud, too wrong, and too bright. But to see your smile, lively and happy, one more time, he didn't need to stay above ground. Where you were going, it was dark and, at times, lonely if you weren't a being born there. But you'd also be safe and alive for as long as you wished to.

And Thanatos would be with you, even if everyone would turn against him and his decision, for all eternity if he must.

#thanatos #thanatos hades #yandere thanatos #yandere!thanatos #hades #hades the game #yandere hades #yandere!hades #yandere #yandere imagines #yandere headcanons #yandere scenarios #yandere fanfiction #yandere writing #yandere oneshot #yandere drabble #yandere x reader #yandere x darling #Yandere TW

[daraoakwise]

Uhura is our Queen! Continuing with episode 2x4, Mirror, Mirror. Another classic episode of Trek, a fantastic alternate-reality “what if?” and a great episode for Uhura.

We open on a planet with Kirk negotiating for mining rights. And hooray, Uhura is on the away team! We don’t see her doing much, but she is the only person holding anything. This is a delicate diplomatic mission. Maybe there are language and translation issues. I love the idea that she is there to make sure that the communication isn’t knotted up by a translation error.

The planetary leaders turn the Federation down, and Kirk accepts this. The away team beams back home, but there is a storm that interferes and they step off the transporter pad into a ship that is not quite their own. Uhura looks down at her suddenly barely-there uniform, her expressions and gestures clearly an unspoken “what the hell?” (And I know we are meant to be appreciating Kirk’s biceps or whatever but … whoa those abs, Nyota. We are looking respectfully.) She steps toward Scotty, the two of them trying rather unsuccessfully to wordlessly work this out.

She and Scotty look at one another, confused and worried as Spock calls up to the bridge to order preparations to destroy the planet. Then, as Spock tortures the transporter officer for his error, Uhura leans into Scott, hiding her face in his shoulder, upset and disturbed at both the torture and the fact that Spock is the one doing it. And if she isn’t actually touching Scotty she is definitely very close. Scotty half-turns toward her and looks down at her in concern.

Which … can we pause for a minute? This is the very next episode after Uhura was mind-wiped and Scotty died trying to save her. We are probably just a few weeks from that event. And I know that 60s TV didn’t follow up on these things, but that doesn’t stop us. There was serious trauma there, and recovery, for them both. The effects have got to still be lingering, even if they both have been getting appropriate mental health treatment; Uhura’s reaction to this violence—she can’t even look at it! is certainly suggestive to me that she is suffering from after-effects from the violence so recently inflicted on her.

And she leans into Scotty. That too is suggestive. At some point, I’m sure they let her see the bridge security footage, which was the first time she really realized the scope of what happened. And I imagine Uhura—equal parts grateful and pissed as hell—grabbed a bemused Scotty, shoved him into an empty storage closet, and shouted at him for being so reckless with his life. And for his part, he told her that dying wasn’t his intention (and besides, he got better) ….but he’d do it again. There is a change in their relationship, starting about here and moving forward into the movies and the almost-something that eventually develops between them in a decade or so. They stand closer. They talk more. I don’t read the two of them of being capable of (or compatible enough for) any sort of exclusive arrangement, but it is possible to read this as the start of an on-and-off, half-wistful, friends-with-benefits thing. At the very least, I see the relationship between these two intensifying considerably. And I think it flows from what happened with Nomad. Not everyone agrees with that, and there certainly isn’t anything written that way until the movies, but since we are picking apart brief scenes and micro-expressions, I choose to see something there.

The away team escapes into the hall, and both Scott and Uhura do an immediate “what the hell, Captain?!?” Kirk shushes them until they can reach sickbay. The four of them walk down the hall, Kirk doing his best to blend in as he is saluted. Once in sickbay they work out that they have arrived in an alternate universe. “Another Captain Kirk, another Doctor McCoy, another ….” Uhura cuts herself off before she can complete her thought; she was about to say another Uhura, and the thought clearly rocks her. Kirk send Scott out to do some sabotage to try to buy them some time on killing the planet below, and sends Uhura up to the bridge to see if there is any wiggle room in their orders from Starfleet. “Yes sir,” she says, her usual confident and competent self, and then suddenly she pauses.

It occurs to her that she is about to be alone against monsters. “Captain, I’m ….” she’s afraid, is the word she doesn’t say. Kirk sees it in her eyes, and reaches for her, his hands on her shoulders, and his confidence grounds her. (In a later episode, where she is also afraid, she’ll tell the Captain that his steady courage takes away her fear.) She always looks so young here. “Uhura, you’re the only one who can do it,” Kirk says gently, and assures her that he will be there soon. She “yes sirs,” and heads out.

She walks into the bridge and …. this isn’t a good place. Her friends are not her friends, and she can feel it. She sits down at her station, and a dangerous, scar-faced Sulu immediately heads over for some sexual harassment.

She slaps his hand away, and Sulu starts toward her in fury. Whatever was about to happen is interrupted by the Captain walking onto the bridge. As with Spock casually torturing a man, seeing Sulu like this is horrible (and Chekov, the would-be murderer in a few scenes.) Kirk swaggers onto the bridge, doing his best to play the brute, and demands communication status. Uhura loudly tells him there is no damage, and then more quietly tells him that their orders are to destroy the planet if the planet doesn’t comply. No wiggle room in the orders. She opens a channel to the planet where Kirk, although sounding like a hard-ass to our ears, offers the planet unprecedented time to reconsider their decision. Kirk tells Uhura to contact Scott and McCoy and send them to his quarters. A look flashes over her face—she wants to be there too. She does NOT want to be alone on the bridge, but it would be deeply strange for her to be there as well. Kirk gently shakes his head at her; she has to stay.

Uhura spends what has to have been an agonizing shift on the bridge until the Captain calls up. Scotty is going to be tapping into power, but Sulu can’t be allowed see it. They need a distraction, and Uhura knows what she need to do.

On Scott’s signal she summons her courage and then flirtatiously walks up to Sulu. He isn’t playing by the rules, she purrs at him; she was supposed to protest and then he was supposed to come back. She has her knife out, toying with it, but it is the smallest bit of protection in this very dangerous situation. Sulu pulls her in, groping her, head between his breasts. If this was a darker show he’d already have his pants unzipped. The heavy implication is that sexual violence is common on this awful ship. Uhura lets his groping continue, her eyes on the security board, until it reads clear, then backhands him hard. “I changed my mind, again,” she says. When Sulu comes for her she threatens him with her knife, and backs off the bridge, ordering a red shirt behind her to take over her station, which he immediately does (and the look on his face suggests he might be of Mirror Uhura’s henchmen.)

Earlier in the episode, back aboard our Enterprise, we saw a very brief glimpse of the Mirror Uhura, behind bars with the Mirror Kirk, Scott, and McCoy, gesturing and shouting at our Spock. Our Uhura here does a very good job at playing at what that woman is probably like, powerful and brutal in her own way. Uhura has looked down at the clothing she has been wearing, more sexually aggressive than any one else that we see. She’s been able to watch how people respond to her for a shift on the bridge. I suspect she knows exactly what that woman is like, the worst of herself. And to have to play that woman—and to do so only weeks after actually losing herself to a mind wipe—is really a worrisome thing. I’m concerned about the nightmares and sleepless nights that have certainly got to follow her after these compounding traumas.

Uhura calls down to Scott, all clear, and heads down to sickbay. But Spock is onto them, and there is a brawl that Uhura absolutely participates in, jumping in to give and take blows from the strong Vulcan. Quickly thinking, she grabs a … lamp? something .. and hands it to the Captain, who smashed it over Spock’s head. She looks on with some concern while McCoy treats the severely injured Spock. They finally make their way down to the transporter room, and the Captain is confronted by the Captain’s, uh, girlfriend, who wants to come. They can’t, and she whips out a phaser, pointing it at Kirk and Scott as if Uhura isn’t standing right behind her. And then Uhura, in a moment that I absolutely adore, jumps the woman and disarms her, taking her phaser and knife. It is glorious.

They finally beam home safely, and Uhura looks around the familiar transporter room, home, in sheer relief.

This is a fantastic episode in general, and a truly great Uhura episode. And then, after two of the best Uhura episodes, we don’t get any Uhura at all in the next two episodes, 2x5 The Apple and 2x6 The Doomsday Machine. And of course this is merely a writing or scheduling issue, but in-universe Uhura has just had one hell of a month. I like to imagine that she requested, and was given, some leave time to take care of her mental health. Because in the future we all know that mental health and health are the same thing, and we make sure to take care of ourselves when we need it.

#uhura #star trek #nyota uhura #star trek original series #spock #kirk #montgomery scott #shades of scott/uhura #uhotty #mirror mirror #uhura rewatch

[fireinmywoods]

Whenever you (gleefully) describe Jim's octopus-like sleeping preferences, we often see Bones complaining about how hard it is to escape when he has to pee. But how often is he getting up to pee in the night? Does he need to get this checked out, or is he really just an old man in body AND spirit?

I actually went back and fact-checked myself on this, wondering what exactly I’ve been communicating about poor Leonard’s urological health! It is indeed established in septenary that Leonard sometimes needs to get up to pee at night and that Jim makes this exceedingly difficult, but the phrasing leaves the frequency of these incidents rather open to interpretation, so allow me to clarify that it was intended to imply that this might happen at most once a night, and not necessarily every night.

In Leonard’s defense (and, frankly, my own), it's not abnormal to sometimes need to get up to pee once during the night, especially if you’re of a certain age and keep yourself well hydrated, and especially if, like Leonard and Jim, you're in the habit of frequently having a drink or two before bed. (Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning it makes you have to pee more, and as a health professional who works on sleep hygiene I feel obligated to advise you that it also disrupts REM sleep and overall negatively impacts your sleep quality and how rested you feel the next day.)

Now, it may not seem like getting up just once per night would be such an onerous task, but consider this:

You drift into a hazy awareness, heavy with lingering sleep, a touch overheated where the back of your neck meets the pillow and in the hundred places your lover's bare skin meets yours. His legs are twined through your own, his leaden arm is belted securely over your middle, his cheek is hot against your shoulder, and all along your side are plastered the slack skin-warm weight of chest and ribs and gently rising belly.

You're comfortable. You shouldn't be, maybe, but this is the least of the paradoxical contradictions you've had cause to reckon with since Jim Kirk came careening into your life, and all things considered you've decided it doesn't especially warrant fretting over. Jim sleeps like a boa constrictor that opted for a mid-meal nap, suffocatingly strong and entirely immovable, and you've never slept better in your life. Chalk it up as yet another mystery of the unfathomable universe.

You do kind of need to empty your bladder, though. It's nothing terribly urgent, but it's there, and you know it'll only grow more pressing by morning, when Jim will be drowsy-sweet and playful, offering and inviting the sort of languorous physical affection you find most difficult to resist. You'll want to laze around with him then, indulging in his idle touches, soaking up the easy intimacy of your bodies wound together, admiring the smoothness of his skin and the arcs of his comet trails as he hums and preens under your hands - and in order to grant your morning self that luxury, your groggy midnight self needs to take the hit and get up to use the head.

It really ought not to be such an ordeal. Unlike some other nights in recent memory, you're not obliged to step away from your campfire into the treacherous dark of a screeching alien jungle, nor to make profoundly awkward conversation with a chatty royal attendant before being admitted into the (God help you) communal relief chamber. Your own private, sanitized bathroom is only steps away, and making use of it will be a matter of less than a minute.

It would be one thing if you could slip unnoticed from the bed, the way you’ve done countless times before with past partners - if you could simply ease Jim down to the mattress and leave him resting peacefully in a heap of pale skin and fluttering eyelashes while you went and took care of business. You might even tuck a pillow into his arms to curl around in your absence, reassure him with a stroke to his lightly furrowed brow that you weren’t going far, and when you returned you'd gather him back against you with a sigh or a snuffle and drop near instantly back into the deep slumber that's still teasing at the edges of your reluctant consciousness.

Yeah, that would be nice. But, of course, nothing where Jim’s involved can ever be that easy.

You begin by levering your numb arm away from Jim's back, wincing at the stinging start of pins and needles, and even as you’re flexing your prickling fingers Jim is already registering his discontent, huddling even more tightly against your side with a low noise of distress, as though you'd thrown off a blanket to expose him to a biting winter chill.

You attempt to shift sideways, hoping against all reason and precedent that you might be able to slide free of Jim's grasp without needing to grapple with him, only to find yourself caged in still more inescapably by Jim's tensing limbs. He makes another sound, complaint and injury, the wounded cry of a man forsaken.

"Jim," you sigh, because at this point it's clear you're not getting away without verbal negotiation. You jiggle your tingling arm and shoulder under him, trying to jostle him into something resembling conscious reasoning. "Wake up."

“Mrmph.” Jim nuzzles your shoulder, obstinate and sweet, frustrating your efforts to muster up some nice productive impatience with him. Lord, how much simpler everyone’s lives would be if this recalcitrant little bastard weren’t so charming in his defiance.

“I gotta take a leak, kid. Loosen up some.”

This does seem to register. Jim grumbles another sulky noise into your shoulder, but his arm retracts slowly and grudgingly back over your belly, and his legs stir against yours in a feeble attempt at disentangling.

You take advantage of his weakened grip and ease yourself out of his clutches, rolling toward the edge of the bed and heaving your legs over to propel yourself into something resembling a seated position, and with your feet now firmly on the cool floor you think to yourself get a move on and now’s your chance and sooner you go sooner you can get back, all too aware that if you hesitate or look back now you’ll be trapped again.

So you get up and go, trudging across the short distance to the head, and when you’ve done your business and shuffled back it’s to find Jim still awake, as he always is, a familiar blurry-edged silhouette in the two percent light. As many times as you play out this scene, your fool heart still pangs a bit at the sight: the faint glint of his eyes seeking you out in the dark, the unspoken plea of his arm outstretched across your side of the bed.

“Budge over,” you say, though there’s plenty of space, because it’s the middle of the goddamn night and that’s no kind of time to allow yourself to feel any type of way about how Jim won’t sleep without you.

Jim draws his arm back some, a perfunctory concession, as much for show as your little pantomime of grievance as you pour your weary bones into bed and find yourself captured once more by the strangling embrace of the man you pray to God never stops reaching for you in the night.

#ask #anon #fireinmywoods fic #mckirk fic #mckirk #otp: bedside manner #mccoy #kirk #star trek #aos #gonna call this #palimpsest verse #while SIEL jim is equally cuddly at night he's passingly established as being a little more chill when leonard has to get up #whereas pverse jim is both obnoxiously clingy and 'always knows when bones is gone' #yes that's right i took this jokey tease of an ask and gave it Feelings #would you expect anything different from me honeslty #q

[monsterywriting]

Zhulgan (orc)

prologue | masterlist

wlw story

nsfw (minors dni)

word count: 10.3k

Despite the short detour being strictly business, you couldn’t help the excitement bubbling up within you at the prospect of getting to visit a market.

You had no money to your name to even enjoy it, and it wasn’t a true market like what you once imagined big city ones would be like - just a few rows of sparsely stocked stalls temporarily set up on the road near Avinca the caravan had passed a while back - but it was still a welcome reprieve from the long stretches of time spent staring out the back of a covered wagon and a chance to see other humans.

Your role was simple: accompany Zhulgan, Alkgan and Vulgud to the market, stand there and make the vendors feel slightly more comfortable to have orc raiders in their midst. The others would handle the rest.

Realistically, with the war affecting everyone, it was doubtful anyone would turn away their coin, but you still held an entire dialogue in your mind, arguing with an imaginary seller acting stubborn, the entire time you walked from the camp.

Indeed, when the four of you entered the market, there were some stares but if anyone had an objection to the orcs’ presence, they didn’t voice it. Still, your group was given a wide berth as you made your way through the aisles.

The others walked with purpose, leaving you to scurry behind them struggling to keep up. Eventually, they stopped at the small group of stalls selling meat. Alkgan motioned for you to follow him as he approached a stall with beef halves run by an old woman.

You hung back slightly, wanting to allow Alkgan to speak. All seemed to be going well, the woman apparently unbothered by an orc patronizing her stall, until Alkgan picked his choices and she gave him a price.

“15 gold for a half carcass?!” You said, louder and more indignantly than you intended, interrupting Alkgan from digging around his pocket for the gold.

“That’s the price,” the woman told you defensively, seemingly only just noticing you standing there for the first time at that moment and eyeing you up and down.

By that point, Zhulgan and Vulgud had wandered over to see what the commotion was. Rather than shrink away from all the eyes turning to you, however, you swallowed your nerves and stood straighter, “We’re traveling from the southern peninsula; we need supplies to make it to the western border.”

“I have to make a living, too, girl,” she huffed, crossing her arms.

You hesitated. You didn’t want to antagonize the woman further by pointing out that the price of meat hadn’t risen half as much a few years back when a drought killed half the herds, but you couldn’t afford to back down when you were already making a scene. This would require a more delicate approach.

“Please, grandmother-” you were taking a risky gambit, relying on the hope that the woman had any sort of maternal instinct for you to appeal to. For extra points, you switched to old Dumirian, crossing your fingers that your actual grandmother’s lessons paid off, “Our village was destroyed by soldiers. We’re a large caravan with many small children who need to eat… we can buy more, so you don’t have to carry too much home this evening, but we also need to buy other supplies for our journey.”

You put on your best pleading look, trying to appear pitiable without laying it on too thick. You hoped she wouldn’t think the orcs were there to be intimidating, but she seemed to ignore them as she stared long and hard at you.

“Fine,” she finally grunted, pointing at you, “For you, child. 40 gold for everything on the table.”

“Thank you,” you gasped, turning to Alkgan and the others to relay the deal you negotiated. It still seemed a steep price for you, growing up in the middle of cattle country, but the cost for each of the four came out to be significantly lower than what Alkgan had been about to pay for just one.

Zhulgan eventually nodded, giving the okay for Alkgan to pay the woman as she and Vulgud lifted the four half-carcasses from the table, one on each shoulder. It was almost two thousand pounds of meat, more than enough to last the caravan until the border. Still, you couldn’t help but wonder if you shouldn’t have butt in, your interactions to let the others handle everything clear - stressed to you before you even left the camp, in fact. You waved goodbye to the old woman, nervously trailing after the orcs, expecting to be reamed out for your impudence.

“Good job,” Zhulgan grunted once you caught up, shifting one of her two halves to glance down at you, her expression unreadable but the praise leaving you beaming with pride.

Getting your literal saviors a discount on some meat hardly seemed equivalent to all they’d done for you thus far, but it was the first time you felt you truly did something worthy of chipping off your debt.

The rest of the trip passed uneventfully. Vulgud haggled more successfully on his own than Alkgan had with a vendor for two steel bars and three iron ingots while you zoned out next to him. Zhulgan had surprisingly put you in charge of buying salts and spices to cure the meat with once you returned to camp. It was nerve-racking to say the least, going up to stalls alone with money that was not your own and the weight of three orc’s stares on your back.

You were drained by the time you returned to camp, doing your best to help Zhulgan and Vulgud keep the children from getting their little tusks into the meat before you could get it to the “kitchen”.

While the meat was being divided up into cuts, you wandered around camp, not having anything in particular to do in that moment as everyone waved you off for already doing your part in preparing dinner and not quite wanting to waste the afternoon with a nap.

As you passed Alkgan’s wagon, he popped his head out and called you over.

“Here,” he said, dropping a small pouch in your hands. At your confusion, he explained, “For the meat today. The difference in gold you got.”

“I can’t take this!” You exclaimed in disbelief, trying to get him to take the pouch back, “I was just doing what I promised!”

Alkgan shrugged, “If I remember correctly, you were told not to do anything. Besides, it’s Zhulgan’s decision, not mine. Also, you should be saving every coin you get for after you cross the orc lands.”

He had a point, but you still felt guilty taking the money. Finally, you gave up on trying to get Alkgan to take it back, tying the strings to your belt and folding your waistband over it. Resolving to return the money to Zhulgan directly later, you walked back to your wagon to wait for dinner to be ready.

“15 gold for this meat?!” Grace had huffed when Alkgan recounted the story later over dinner, displaying an even stronger vexation than what you had at the absurd price, “Gods have mercy this war has emboldened vultures!”

You snorted, hiding your smile with your plate but understanding her chagrin. The Cedars, despite their arboreal surname, were cattle people; Grace would know best the quality of meat you’d been sold, even if it had already been diced and cooked into a stew.

Across the fire, you noticed Zhulgan watching your group laughing together. Just as you were about to return your attention back to a question Rose asked, however, you realized something was amiss.

“Your bead is missing,” you called from across the fire, gesturing towards the right side of your head where the unfurling braid was mirrored on Zhulgan. It was the smallest one that she usually left hanging alone, the rest all tied back together like she usually did.

Zhulgan’s hand instantly flew up to the braid, confirming that the multi-colored bead was indeed gone. She looked around frantically, standing and twisting around to look at the ground behind her. There were murmurs from some of the orcs around the fire, but no one rose to help.

Only the humans leapt up, all of you knowing the pain of losing a piece of jewelry. Most walked around the fire and retraced Zhulgan’s steps back to her wagon. You, Mauve, Winnie and Rose got on your hands and knees and combed the surrounding grass in search of it.

“It must have fallen off in the market,” you told Zhulgan apologetically once you all reconvened by the fire, everyone’s searches turning up fruitless, “You’ll probably just have to get another one.”

Despite your proposition, Zhulgan didn’t look happy, snarling something in orcish and storming back to her wagon. Alkgan merely shook his head when you looked over at him for some explanation, everyone else slowly returning to their previous conversations.

There was obviously something unspoken going on, some significant piece of information that seemed to be common knowledge for the orcs but a mystery to you and the other humans.

“Can’t Zhulgan just wear a different one?” Winnie questioned once everyone was sat back down, the mood slowly picking back up around you.

“No. That bead was given to her,” Alkgan replied, failing to elaborate further.

“Well, can’t you give her a new one?” You pressed, trying to get some explanation for the scene that had just unfolded in front of everyone.

“Our father gave it to her,” Alkgan finally answered after a few moments.

You immediately understood. If the position of chief was inherited for orcs as it was in human leadership, that meant their father was more likely than not gone. You had nothing of sentimental value left from your family but if you had, you likely would have had a similar reaction to losing it, if not worse.

“What if we made a replica? I could go back to the market and ask if anyone makes wooden beads. I could even be the one to give it to her and explain,” you offered, interrupted by the laughter of some of the orcs that had been listening in.

Alkgan bared his teeth at the offenders before looking down at you, “That… isn’t a good idea.”

You sighed, looking down at your plate once again and continuing to eat in silence. While you understood that it wouldn’t be an adequate replacement, the likelihood of the bead being found in the market before the camp moved on was slim to none.

Resolving to look for it yourself - or get a replacement if you couldn’t - you turned in early. You got up before the sun, climbing over the others in your shared wagon and through the camp. On the way, you passed Zhulgan’s wagon. Without thinking, you peeked inside, intent on asking her if she wanted to go with you only to find the wagon was already empty.

By the time you reached the market, vendors were already setting up their stalls. You followed the same path as the previous day, your eyes kept squarely on the ground looking for any sign of the bead in the dirt.

You smiled sheepishly at the old woman from the meat stall when she greeted you, helping her set up when she asked. She spoke at length, mostly telling you about her daughters and grandchildren and complaining about how the vendors were all forced out of the cities because soldiers would take all their hard-earned money.

Once you finished, you took the opportunity to ask if any of the stalls sold painted beads. With the directions she gave you, you quickly wove your way through the stalls to the other side of the market. It was easy enough to find the man she told you of, his stall filled with colorful accessories, mostly leather hair ties and wooden brushes. Asking him if he had beads large enough to put in a braid, you looked through the bowl filled with various wooden beads he held out to you.

You were pressed for time, the sky already brightening as the sun began to rise. The caravan was no doubt beginning to wake up and would soon be finished packing up the camp - but you didn’t want to rush your decision, trying to find something that reminded you of the original bead’s design, even if you couldn’t remember its exact markings.

The closest one you could find to the olive and orange coloring was an oblong bead painted red with alternating blue and green palm fronds on it. You buy it, apologetic as the man is forced to break one of your gold coins to silver and bronze change. When he’s more than a little short, you also buy twelve brushes and leather hair ties, giving him back a silver coin to cover the cost.

By the time you returned to camp, the wagons were already loaded and the children were being herded into their respective rides. You went straight to the wagon you shared with the other humans, deciding to give the bead to Zhulgan in private whenever you eventually saw her next. In the meantime, you handed out your immensely popular gifts, everyone more than happy to finally brush their hair with something infinitely better than their fingers, no one really asking questions about where you got the money.

You felt bad lying about the money you had, but you weren’t planning on keeping it for yourself anyhow. While you agreed with Alkgan that you needed to begin saving money for your life after leaving Dumir, this particular payment didn’t feel rightfully yours. After returning it, you would have to figure out a way to pay back the rest.

Unfortunately, you didn’t see Zhulgan for the rest of the day, the caravan not stopping to set up camp until the next evening, but by then you were too busy watching after the children before dinner to go looking for her.

Zhulgan wanted to avoid the larger cities more likely to have Dumirian soldiers stationed in them, so the caravan shifted course to northwest. The market was the final stop before the caravan moved away from the coast, venturing further inland to avoid the ports.

You immediately missed the cooling ocean air - not just because it reminded you of home, but because the air became humid and even the nights were muggy and miserable.

Rather than squeeze into a wagon all together, everyone in the camp who had to share their sleeping space took to sleeping under the stars with just your pillows. It offered little relief from the heat, even without a blanket, but after a long day of being jostled around on a hard wood floor you would pass out cold every night.

You woke with a start on one such night when someone stepped on your back, your instinct to begin thrashing when you felt hands pressing down on your shoulder until you processed that it was Winnie shushing you.

“What the hell are you doing?” You groused, rubbing the sleep from your eyes and falling back onto your pillow.

“I have to pee,” Winnie answered swiftly.

You pause, letting your hand fall to your side and waiting for your eyes to adjust to the darkness to examine her closely. She shifted from one leg to another, rolling her shoulder and refusing to meet your eyes even in the dark.

“I’ll join you, then.”

“No!” She gasped, her voice rising slightly. Her agitated reaction in response to the offer had been entirely expected, and Winnie realized as well that you had seen right through her ruse, deflating with a sigh, “Fine. I’m meeting Vulgud.”

You blink dumbly, your mouth falling open in a silent ‘oh’. You thought back on the journey thus far, trying to come up with some hint of the two being that close, reading into every instance you saw the two interacting with a new perspective. You couldn’t recall any single moment that stood out, much less indicate that they were involved. You felt guilty, so preoccupied with leaving Dumir and how you would all survive that you hadn’t been paying attention to the others in the present. You wondered what else you had missed.

“Okay,” you finally said, voice high and ears burning as you looked anywhere but directly at Winnie, “Be back before morning and… don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Winnie looked mortified, her face turning a tomato red as she hissed your name. You fell back as soon as she scurried off with an almost inaudible promise to be back well before morning. If it hadn’t been so damned hot - and your weren’t surrounded by other people sound asleep - you would have hidden under a blanket and screamed.

With the embarrassing exchange fresh on your mind, you couldn’t go back to sleep. By chance, you remembered the bead that had until that point lay forgotten in the coin purse. You never did give it to Zhulgan despite there being plenty of opportunities to do so since you bought it. Your hand wiggled its way into your bag, rolling the cool wood in your hand.

Eventually giving up on falling back asleep, you resolved to leave the purse with the bead inside on the edge of Zhulgan’s wagon for her to find in the morning, getting up and picking your way around the others much more carefully than Winnie had.

You proceeded to spend the next ten minutes pacing outside her wagon. Every time you stepped close you would find yourself spinning back around, unable to go through with the drop off, only to make it a few steps before turning around and trying to approach all over again, any resolve you had while still half-asleep sputtering out before you could actually enact your plan. Once you had time to second guess your actions, the entire thing seemed ridiculous. Alkgan’s words echoed in your mind - this was a bad idea.

Your concern was mostly over the bead, rather than the money. The orcs’ ways were still largely a mystery to you, even when you had been living alongside them, particularly what they thought of gifts. There was also the matter of Zhulgan’s reaction would be. You weren’t particularly close to Zhulgan, most of her communication with you through her brother. Now you questioned if it was a good idea to try and replace something so personal with a random bead so far from her home. If she wanted to replace it at all, she was likely waiting until the caravan returned to the orc lands. What if she didn’t even notice the bag and it fell off the wagon, never to be seen again? Then the loss would be all that gold and the bead.

Finally deciding enough was enough while facing away from the wagon, you took a deep breath, steeling yourself to turn around, put the bead on the edge of the wagon and be done with it.

When you did turn, however, you were confronted with a snarling Zhulgan, bleary-eyed and clearly displeased with being woken.

“Uh- I’m sorry I didn’t mean to wake you I was…” you trailed off, struggling to come up with some excuse as to why you were loitering around her wagon in the middle of the night, scrapping the bead idea entirely. While you stammered, Zhulgan’s head disappeared back into the wagon.

You stood there for a moment in disbelief, wondering if she simply decided you weren’t worth talking to and went back to sleep. Just as you were about to turn and leave, her voice called out from inside.

“What are you waiting for? Hurry up and come in.”

You obeyed without hesitation, clambering up the ledge and trying not to appear as curious as you felt being in Zhulgan’s personal space. Orc wagons were all huge; even the single orcs’ wagons had to be large enough to carry all their belongings as well as fit a fully grown orc to sleep comfortably in at night. The chief’s wagon was no exception, trunks stacked and pushed against both sides of the wagon with the center covered in thick pelts - obviously Zhulgan’s bed.

On the far end of the wagon, Zhulgan was sitting down rubbing her forefinger and thumb into her eyelids to clear the crust of sleep, her hair down in loose waves that reached her waist. It was a shock to see the orc chief so at ease - you were so used to seeing the rigid, ever-serious woman riding alongside the caravan, or silently eating dinner. You sometimes caught glimpses of a different Zhulgan with the other orcs, but in front of you and the other humans, she never broke character.

You took only a couple steps inside before sitting at the edge of the outermost pelt, too afraid to venture deeper. When Zhulgan made no attempt to speak first, you decided to break the silence.

“Have you found your bead?”

“You came here in the middle of the night to ask me that?” Zhulgan asked, her eyebrow raised.

You shifted under Zhulgan’s disbelieving stare, eventually resigning yourself to the fact that your true purpose in waking her was infinitely better than wasting Zhulgan’s time asking random questions to beat around the bush.

You took out the purse and the bead, holding both out on your palm, “I went back to the market- I looked for your bead first, of course, but I couldn’t find it… I had to use some of the gold you gave me to get this one but I can’t accept it- I’ll find a way to pay it back but the rest is all there.”

Zhulgan stared down at your hand, her entire body tensing and eyes alert, though she made no move to reach over and take either from you.

“I’m sorry, Alkgan told me the bead was a bad idea-” you began to retract your hand so you could remove the bead but Zhulgan moved faster, taking your wrist in her hand and taking the bead from you.

“It’s fine,” Zhulgan said tersely, her eyes never leaving yours, not even to look at the bead in her hand.

“W-what about the gold?” You stammered, leaning forward to try and place the purse onto Zhulgan’s open palm.

She closed her fist before you could, shaking her head, “it’s yours.”

You opened your mouth to argue, but one stern look from Zhulgan silenced you. You were resolute in your decision to give the gold back, but definitely weren’t brave enough to argue with an orc chief to her face about it, conceding to try again another day.

Once the silence began to stretch into uncomfortable, you cleared your throat, unable to tell if she even liked your other gift, still in her hand on her lap.

“Uhm… I can put it in your hair, if you’d like?” You offered awkwardly, surprised when Zhulgan actually handed you the bead after a long pause, seemingly unwilling to part with it.

You crawled over to her side, waiting patiently as Zhulgan grabbed a small wire hook and hair tie from the top of one of her trunks and handed everything to you. Rising to your knees, you set to work combing your fingers through her hair to detangle it.

As you ran your fingers through one last time with no resistance, Zhulgan’s right hand nestled itself on the back of your knee. You tried not to jump or show any reaction to the sudden contact, realizing too late how intimate your position was, leaning against Zhulgan. There you were, alone in Zhulgan’s wagon, less than a hair’s breadth away from each other when you only intended to drop the gold and bead off.

You were so nervous, you nearly dropped it while trying to run the hook through it, able to catch it against your body before it was lost in the shadows but immediately thrown into another crisis as Zhulgan’s hand rose slightly when you first fumbled, then tightened around your thigh when you secured it again. This time you did jump, knowing Zhulgan could feel your muscles tensing underneath her hand. For once, you were grateful for the humidity, at least having an excuse for your sweaty, flustered appearance.

Once a sizable lock of hair was looped through the hole, it was easy to pull the rest all the way through and move the bead up until it was almost to Zhulgan’s jaw, near where the other one had originally been. You were technically done, but you found yourself unwilling to be the first to move, your fingers still toying with the bead.

“I should go,” you finally whispered, grateful your voice didn’t sound as uncertain as you felt.

Zhulgan turned her head fully to you, her eyes boring right into your own, her lips parting and tongue peeking out for a moment to wet them, “If you’d like.”

You were caught entirely off guard, eyes focused on her mouth before flitting your attention up to her eyes with a delay that would’ve been noticeable even if Zhulgan hadn’t been watching our reaction carefully. You had no idea what to say in response and Zhulgan was being even more tight-lipped than usual while she waited for you to answer.

“Uhh—” you began intelligently, your eyes flying down to your leg as she gave it a reassuring squeeze, making your resolve to leave crumble even further. You were certain you weren’t imagining the sudden atmospheric shift in the wagon, that you weren’t alone in your anticipation for something, anything to happen.

Zhulgan continued to watch you, patiently waiting for you to get a grip. There was no amusement, no teasing - at least, on purpose, you were fairly sure - about how tongue-tied you were, just the constant weight of her eyes on your face and her hand on your thigh. You wished she would remove it, put it on the floor so you would no longer be distracted by it, wanting so badly for her to just move it up past the hem of your nightgown instead of making you say something first.

“I should braid it,” you finally exhaled, your mouth full of sand and hyperaware of every single point of contact between you, “so it will stay in place.” Zhulgan hummed, the meaning behind which you could only guess but she remained still, neither convincing you to stay or pointing out your conflicting statements.

Slowly, your hands returned to her scalp, taking the lock with the bead and sectioning off two more locks of similar enough size. Oh gods you were nervous, under no illusion your shaking hands would even compare to those of an orc, even their children better at making a braid than you by the time they hit adolescence. Still, though you were certain Zhulgan would fix it anyways come morning, you tried your best not to mess up too badly, tucking away the errant tufts while you worked.

Zhulgan’s thumb began to move, making your breath catch in your throat when the pad of her finger brushed circles over your skin, her palm once again settled in the crook of your knee. You stilled, only a few turns into the braid. Hesitantly, once it became clear Zhulgan had no plans to go further at that point, you began to weave the locks together again, your breathing continuing noticeably more labored.

Zhulgan muttered something in orcish under her breath as you finally tied off the end, your eyes fluttering up to meet hers. You had been picking up some orcish slowly but surely over the course of your journey, Alkgan taking the time to teach you when he had time, but you didn’t know much more than a few relevant words and phrases and were also too distracted to catch any more than one in particular: sweet girl.

A common pet name between parent and child within the caravan - as well as for couples, you thought, more importantly. You wet your lips, mirroring her own actions earlier and you catch Zhulgan looking down at them just as you had earlier.

“Please,” you breathed, your voice so low you were certain it had only been said in your own head, yet another unfortunate instance of you getting lost in your own thoughts and forgetting to actually speak. You weren’t even sure what exactly you were asking Zhulgan to do, just certain that you wanted this misery to end.

Zhulgan closed the distance between you, her plush lips enveloping your own in an electrifying kiss. You melted immediately, glad for your hand on her shoulder to keep yourself upright. Her palm travelled upward, leisurely in its pace and aimless in its direction, stopping for a moment midway of what you’d hoped would be its destination to grip the meat of your thigh.

You whined into Zhulgan’s mouth as her rough fingertips brushed against a sensitive spot on your inner thigh, the dull tip of her tusk digging into your cheek as you arched your back into her, your lips never wanting to leave hers.

You eventually have to part for air, both of you panting heavily as you both looked at each other with heavy-lidded eyes.

You wanted to stay longer, but your mind reluctantly reminded you of Winnie’s promise to return before morning and, just outside the wagon, the first rays of morning light were making the camp gray.

“I have to go. They’ll notice I’m gone,” you said, the faintest hint of a whine in your tone as you reluctantly let go of your vice grip on Zhulgan’s shoulder.

After a moment, Zhulgan’s hand slid down the length of your thigh, over the bend of your knee and to the floor by her side, her fingertips brushing against your bare calf and sending one last shiver up your spine. Eventually, you climbed to your feet like a newborn calf.

As soon as you were standing, Zhulgan shifted until she was facing away from you. You felt the urge to say something, but had no idea what - thank her? Apologize? You opened your mouth, then snapped it shut again, leaving the wagon and making the trek back to where the others still lay sleeping.

Laying back down on your thin blanket, now slightly damp with dew, You told yourself you were staying up until Winnie got back, but you were really just running over the events of the night over and over in your mind, analyzing every second of interaction and wondering what could have happened if you stayed.

The thought immediately made you feel guilty the moment it crossed your mind, knowing it was selfish to be seeking personal comfort in your temporary accommodations. You should be planning the next step, figuring out what to do once you crossed the orc lands instead of imagining a night spent in Zhulgan’s arms…

You remained awake well after Winnie returned, the first beams of orange sunlight cutting through the distant mist covering the mountains in the horizon. You couldn’t bring yourself to scold her for staying out later than she promised, you yourself having done the very same thing.

By the time the others began to wake, you were exhausted. You flinched when Mauve leaned over to wake you only to find you already staring up at the sky. The morning passed in a haze. It was your turn to ride in the kids’ wagon while the caravan finally passed Barba. You mostly just let them play with your hair while you were lost in thought, the younger kids more than happy to be allowed to practice their braiding on you.

For years you had assumed your indifference towards the boys of Ozryn could be attributed to the fact that you had known them all your life, unable to find the kids you grew up with as attractive. Even as your friends managed to do just that, your mind was always ready with some rationalization. Never before had you felt as you did with Zhulgan, the butterflies that fluttered in your stomach at the very memory alien to you.

Perhaps it was all a mistake, your mind conflating the debt you owed her with desire, gratitude mistaken for feelings. Nevermind that Alkgan had been the one to help you that day, and the sibling that you have been spending much more time with since then… No, you simply respected Zhulgan, felt indebted to her, wanted to kiss her again—

You cursed under your breath, apologizing aloud as you extracted yourself from the group of kids making braids of varying size and quality in your hair. They merely shrugged, easily transitioning to playing with each other’s hair instead.

You were tying your hair back when the wagon suddenly lurched to a halt, everyone inside tumbling as well. In the process, your hair tie snapped as you jerked your hands apart to find purchase before you could fall out the back of the wagon. You groaned, the combined reaction of your back knocking into the wooden frame and orc kids knocking into you. Another groan left you at the sight of the two pieces of leather still being clutched in your hands.

“Is everyone okay?” You asked, waiting until the chorus of grumbling affirmations died down before crawling out the driver’s end.

Derdig, a young orc only recently having earned the title of warrior, appeared just as confused as you were at the abrupt stop.

“What happened?”

“No idea,” he replied, trying to look over the tops of the wagons, confirming your suspicion. Whatever it was, it must have happened towards the front of the caravan.

“We’re setting camp here!” Augrak called from a few wagons ahead.

There were more than a few annoyed groans across the caravan, no one happy to be stopping so soon. You jumped from the wagon and walked ahead, careful to avoid the wagons veering off the road.

It was soon apparent what the issue was: a wagon leaning heavily to one side in the middle of the road, its back wheel missing. Zhulgan and Vulgud were in deep discussion next to it as you approached.

“Is everything okay?” You asked, doing your best not to look directly at Zhulgan lest you stumble on your words, only to find yourself unable to meet Vulgud’s eyes as you thought of Winnie the night before. You settled on examining the intact wheel still laying on the ground.

“One of the fasteners snapped when it hit a dip,” Vulgud sighed, “It will take me a few hours to make a temporary one and change it… and I might as well check the other wagons while we’re at it.”

“Mauve can help you,” you offered, though it felt somewhat awkward to be doing so in her absence, “It will go faster with two people.”

Vulgud nodded once in thanks, heading off to his own wagon for supplies. It was only after he was gone you realized you should have walked back with him, now standing alone with Zhulgan. To your great surprise, she still wore the exact same braid you made. You wondered if anyone had noticed it before almost immediately concluding it definitely had; all the orcs had braids of some form or another, and Zhulgan’s was so obviously made by an amateur.

You felt embarrassed at the thought of her telling others you had been the one to make it. Zhulgan definitely wasn’t the type to kiss and tell, but you fretting at the possibility that others would find out what the two of you had done afterwards.

“Your hair is still down,” Zhulgan observed.

You flinched, touching the ends of your hair at the reminder of your broken hair tie, having worn it every day since you bought it. Did your hair look that bad? It must have, considering the number of kids that had been braiding it - or, more accurately for some, twisting it together haphazardly until it made knots.

Between the current state of your hair and the braid you made on hers, Zhulgan probably thought you had never even learned to take care of it.

“Oh, yeah… It snapped.”

Zhulgan’s lips parted slightly, seemingly on the verge of saying something when Rose called out to you and Zhulgan, waving her hand for the two of you to come over.

At first, you were relieved to be called away before you could embarrass yourself further. You didn’t make it far, however, until you saw what she had been calling the two of you for.

A small party of soldiers - Dumirian, by their flags - was riding down the road towards the caravan from Barba, their armor glinting in the evening sun.

“Go get the others and wait in the wagon. Don’t be seen,” you told Rose, unable to explain the terror that seemed to fill you at the very sight of the soldiers.

“Take the children with you,” Zhulgan added, Rose nodding and hurrying off.

Perhaps your distrust was unfounded - these were technically your countrymen, after all - but your previous experience with soldiers obviously sowed the seed of doubt within you that was currently sprouting. You wanted to err on the side of caution, if only to keep things simple for the orcs.

“I am General Tarren Aubron,” the leading man introduced himself as they stopped in front of you and Zhulgan, sliding his leg over his horse’s back and stepping down, “Do you require assistance?”

Assuming he was addressing Zhulgan about the broken wagon, you remained silent, your gaze behind the general and on the swords his men carried on this supposedly friendly visit. When the silence stretched on, you looked at the general, your stomach sinking with the realization that he was looking directly at you. You glanced out the corner of your eye to meet Zhulgan’s, more nervous than you probably should have been. It was making you slow. Why would you need help? And why wasn’t Zhulgan speaking?

Recalling that she allowed Alkgan to speak for her when you first met to let you think she didn’t speak common, you took a deep breath and hoped what you were about to do was the thing she was waiting for.

You turned to look Zhulgan directly in the eye, “What do I say?”

She looked down at you for a moment. If she was surprised by you suddenly speaking orcish, she didn’t show it, only subtly nodding for you to speak.

“Chief Zhulgan is in charge of this caravan,” you told Aubron quietly, uncomfortable under the scrutiny of the soldiers and wondering where Alkgan was, “I am traveling with them.”

“What about the other girl we saw? Is she traveling with you as well?”

You inwardly groaned, hoping he didn’t ask to speak to Rose as well.

“Yes.”

You thought that would be the end of it, but the general was seemingly undeterred by your curt responses - or driven to investigate your apparent discomfort further and continue to address you alone.

“If you require an escort within the kingdom, I can spare some of my men with you girls wherever you need,” General Aubron offered, clearly thinking his offer magnanimous as he stressed the word ‘spare’, “Surely you would rather come with us?”

“No thank you,” you said without hesitation and you believed firmly.

The unease you felt from the beginning of your interaction with the soldiers was validated further the more the general persisted in trying to get you alone, taking a step forward every time you took a step back. You wanted nothing more than to snap at the man, already telling him in no uncertain terms that you would not leave the orc caravan with him, but you feared it would only cause more trouble should he take offense.

Unfortunately, General Aubron took your politeness to mean you could be swayed, his overbearing demeanor leaving a sour taste in your mouth.

“Well, we should ask your companion, at least, perhaps she would-”

“She said no,” Zhulgan finally intervened, stepping in front of you once she finally had enough of the circles the conversations was running around.

Aubron’s concerned facade slipped for a moment as his mouth twisted into a scowl as he finally faced Zhulgan for the first time. You shuddered to think what chance you had without the imposing figures of the orc raiders to back up your repeated refutations.

“We are here to protect the people of Dumir. She should come with us, not brutes,” he said, attempting to sidestep Zhulgan with an arm stretched out for you.

You felt your skin crawl, as though his advances were literal grime sticking to you. You wanted nothing more than to run away, slap his hand away from you or whatever you had to to keep him away.

You thought back to the market. If there were soldiers stationed as close as Barba, why would the vendors remain out in the country? When the meat vendor spoke at length about hating soldiers, you had assumed she had been referring to the enemy, but she had never elaborated, so perhaps… You wondered how much longer it would take Vulgud to get the wheel fixed. And where the hell was Alkgan?

Zhulgan growled, the heavy rumbling like thunder you were so used to hearing in jest among orcs now sounding like a true threat. Relief washed over you as the very sound made the general stop dead in his tracks; so much so, that before she could speak, you did, emboldened by Aubron’s sudden fear.

“I have said multiple times now that I won’t go with you,” your voice shook for a moment, but the more you went on, the more confident you grew, “I am crossing the orc lands and you cannot help me with that! Frankly, even if you could, your insistence has ruined any chance you had of me trusting you - and for that matter, why are you stationed here? My home and countless other villages have been razed in the south and yet we’ve not seen a single soldier until now! What have you been doing while people were dying or being taken prisoner? Is that what you call protecting?!”

You were breathing heavily by the time you finished, blood rushing in your ears as your short-lived satisfaction morphed into the grim realization that Aubron was now glaring daggers at you. Guilt consumed you for giving in to your anger - not for Aubron’s sake, but for creating more problems that Zhulgan would have to deal with.

“Think carefully, human,” Zhulgan said, causing your head to immediately snap up to look at her, not realizing that she wasn’t speaking to you until you saw her focus was directed towards Aubron, “We have done you and your king a favor by taking out a foreign platoon, but my warriors want to return home now; I cannot stop them from stomping out any pests that stand in their way.”

Aubron’s nostrils flared in anger, his features contorting even further into pure rage. For a few tense moments, nobody moved. Just as you began to worry his pride would win out and he would challenge the orcs, he turned, barking for his men to turn back to Barba.

As soon as the horses disappeared in a trail of dust, you deflated with relief, relieved of the tension that kept your back straight throughout the entire encounter. You immediately began to take off to check on the others only for Zhulgan to grab your arm.

“I’m sorry,” you apologized immediately, believing Zhulgan was upset with you for blowing up as you had, “I shouldn’t have said those things. It could have made him attack or go get reinforcements but I just- I hated how he was so arrogant and all the soldiers… and when he called you brutes—!”

“Don’t be sorry. I’m not angry with you,” Zhulgan interjected, “He was the one in the wrong. If you hadn’t told him, I would have.”

You nodded, twisting your head around when you heard Mauve and Winnie calling you. Zhulgan let you go just as you began to race over, resisting the urge to break down when everyone else jumped out of the wagon questioning you about what happened.

“Rose wouldn’t tell us anything,” Mauve huffed, worry etching across her features despite her attempt to sound neutral.

“Dumirian soldiers,” you said, too breathless and tired from the unpleasant run-in to adequately explain all the emotions you felt, “They- they were insisting I let them escort us.”

“Why didn’t you agree?” Grace cried out, pushing her way to the front of the group, “They could have taken us somewhere safe - still in Dumir! We wouldn’t have to cross the orc lands!”

“I-” you hesitated, the reasoning for your rejection feeling inadequate now that you were trying to explain it to those that weren’t there. The general had asked if you needed help? Insisted on being of assistance to you? You were doubting yourself, wondering if it was just the armor that made your mind twist innocent intention, “I don’t know how to explain it… I didn’t get a good feeling from the general-”

“Quiet, Grace!” Mauve hissed, rounding on the girl, “We all made this decision a long time ago - it’s safest to get out of Dumir until the war’s over.”

“Please,” Grace retorted, refusing to back down even facing down Mauve, “We haven’t even seen any more enemy soldiers! For all we know, the war’s already as good as over! Or at the very least, not here.”

“Stop it,” Rose said, stepping in between both girls, “If she thought it was safer to go with them, then we would have gone- right?”

All eyes turned back to you. You nodded, trying once again to explain, “they only saw me and Rose. I did turn the general’s offer down immediately - but then he kept insisting. When Zhulgan told him to respect my decision, he got angry. Called the orcs brutes and then tried to follow me when I tried to get away.”

There were some noises of indignation, Grace’s indignation swiftly leaving her and Winnie in particular appeared the most upset. Your hand found hers, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

“He probably didn’t know,” Grace said softly, though it seemed like a weak attempt to convince herself than you or the others.

“No… he was beyond reason. If there wasn’t an entire caravan of orcs behind us, I’m afraid he might not have taken no for an answer. And- at the market- one of the vendors at the market told me about the soldiers - they’re the reason they moved outside the city limits. They aren’t good people.”

“See?” Mauve said, “I knew there had to be a good reason.”

Any further bickering was interrupted by Derdig, informing the group that Vulgud had replaced the wheel and that the caravan would be moving on. You were relieved, wanting to put as much distance as possible between everyone and the soldiers.

When sundown came, the caravan pressed on, not stopping to camp until the next afternoon. To make up for lost time, Derdig had assured the whining children, but you knew the truth. Zhulgan also wanted to get far away from Barba.

Zhulgan had stopped relatively close to a stream, most of the caravan taking the opportunity to do laundry, everyone stripping down to what they were comfortable with and washing their clothes. You were helping make the food, so you weren’t able to go yourself until the sun was hanging low on the horizon. You sat a good ways upstream from the camp, wearing only your nightgown as you scrubbed your undergarments with soap and a vigor you were too embarrassed to display within anyone’s eyeshot, even if it was already dark.

Unfortunately, the necessary movement also made your hair fall into your eyes no matter how often you swept it back. Your only option was to work quickly, your tunic and pants already back at camp hanging.

Your hair had gotten substantially longer; your mother likely would have had you sitting down in the kitchen for a trimming by now. Your brother as well if she could catch him. Those were the moments you missed the most, small things about the present reminding you of the past. When the caravan had stopped near a beach, all the children had leapt at the chance to go swimming; your brother would have definitely been there to hoist them up and toss them into the water, just like he used to do in the large lake near Ozryn in the summers.

Your melancholy manifested itself as frustration, throwing your sock down on the rock you perched yourself on. You bunched your hair with your soapy hands and held it there for a minute, willing it to suddenly stay in place - an attempt to distract yourself from the tears pricking the corners of your eyes.

A twig snapped form across the stream, your name a quiet question. When you looked up, Zhulgan was standing there.

You smiled sheepishly, looking back down so you could discretely wipe your eyes with the material of your sleeve.

“Sorry, my hair was annoying me,” you forced out a laugh, incredibly conscious of how you appeared to the chief.

“I can braid it for you,” Zhulgan quietly said, continuing when you said nothing, “get it out of your way.”

You blinked slowly, not sure if you heard her proposal correctly. You chewed your bottom lip, uncertain if you were reading too much into the offer. Your interactions with the orc chief had been limited since your two groups began traveling together, and yet after a single night the two of you had… you had no idea whether you should take the advance as a proposition to continue what you had started or simply take it at face value.

You found yourself nodding despite not reaching any conclusion, scolding yourself for the giddiness you felt at the prospect of being so close to Zhulgan again as you gathered your clothes and wrung them out one final time before crossing the stream. Zhulgan sat on the ground, procuring multiple hair ties from her pocket. You realized she had come prepared with a small smile you quickly hid as you sat with your back to her.

“Get closer,” she said and you scooted back a few inches, not having the nerve to get as close as you wished even with the knowledge that Zhulgan had sought you out after your brief comment about your broken hair tie.

Instead of taking your hair, Zhulgan’s hands gripped your sides and easily maneuvered you in between her thighs, eliciting an undignified squeak from you. You quickly looked along the stream to confirm no one had wandered from camp. You began to fidget, too engrossed in the proximity to realize you were making it impossible for Zhulgan to grab your hair.

Finally, she placed a hand on your shoulder, her breath fanning over the shell of your ear as she told you to sit still. You froze immediately, not daring to so much as exhale as you waited for Zhulgan to begin.

“Breath,” she said, and though you were facing away, you could have sworn you could hear a smile in her voice.

You exhaled, feeling slightly lightheaded with the rush of air finally entering your lungs. At last, Zhulgan’s hands ran down the length of your hair, working out the tangles from the kids’ earlier attempts from the tips upward.

“Should’ve brought a brush,” she noted, your eyes sliding shut as her nails scraped along your scalp.

You could only hum in response, Zhulgan extracting her fingers once she found a knot and slowly pulling it apart by hand, surprisingly gentler than you expected the warrior to be.

“Thank you, for your help,” you eventually said, “I didn’t get the chance to thank you for protecting me at the time.”

Zhulgan made no reply and you had to resist the urge to lean back into her as her fingers deftly maneuvered the locks she partitioned into a single plait along the top of your head and down towards your neck. It felt good after so long of sleeping on a moving wagon or the ground, especially with the large bruise on your back from the earlier abrupt stop.

Though you couldn’t see the work in progress, you had faith Zhulgan would make it flawlessly, seeing how she did her own hair every morning. Perhaps it was because of her position, but she had by far the most intricate braiding amongst the orcs, which made you curious.

“Can I ask why you left the braid I did?”

Zhulgan tensed, you head snapping back slightly as she tugged your hair in the process, your sleepy, relaxed state doused with ice water.

“Sorry,” she apologized immediately. You waited a moment for her answer, but she simply focused on getting back to your braid. Before you could apologize for the question and give up on getting an answer, she spoke again, “For orcs, to braid someone’s hair is… an important gift. It is not something to be changed lightly.”

You twisted around, shocked, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know! I wouldn’t have offered if I-”

“It’s alright,” Zhulgan said, and from her soft tone, you were inclined to believe her, “I accepted your gift, remember?”

And, after turning your head back around and feeling Zhulgan comb out the partial braid and start over, you realized she was right. Zhulgan would have had no trouble turning you down. However, you now had the question of what exactly was the implication of you braiding her hair - and her returning the favor. “If I had known you would leave it, I would have done a better job…”

Zhulgan laughed. It was not as loud as Alkgan but you still you felt a sense of accomplishment - even if you weren’t trying to be funny with your sincere statement. You smiled, deciding you liked the sound.

“You can redo it after I’m done,” she promised once she composed herself, reworking the braid with experienced fingers. You wished you didn’t have to sit still, wanting nothing more than to look back and decipher her expression - was she serious or still teasing? She had just shared with you how important the act was and yet still wanted you to do it again, now armed with the knowledge that it is important.

When Zhulgan finished tying off the braid, she leaned forward, seemingly checking to make sure it was all in place. However, instead of leaning back once she was finished examining her work, she pressed her lips to the base of your neck where it met your shoulder.

You gasped, feeling Zhulgan’s hand envelop your midriff and pulling you closer until you were surrounded by her. You leaned into her warmth easily, your head falling back onto her shoulder, exposing the column of your throat for Zhulgan to kiss. You turned your head to meet her kiss, whimpering as you felt Zhulgan fist the fabric of your nightgown over your stomach, lifting it above your knees.

“Want me to touch you?” Zhulgan rasped, her voice alone making your muscles clench in anticipation.

“Your braid…” you think you meant it as a question, but it was hard to even remember if you were talking about the braid Zhulgan had made or the braid you did when Zhulgan’s fingers touched your bare belly, not moving any lower.

“I can stop, then,” Zhulgan hummed, beginning to pull away until your hand flew from its perch on her thigh to catch her retreating hand and weaving your fingers with hers. Your significantly smaller digits strained almost uncomfortably to reach, but you still held tight.

“What if someone sees?” You whisper, unable to resist planting another kiss on the upturned edge of Zhulgan’s mouth despite your concern for the camp only a hundred meters away.

“It’s dark,” Zhulgan said, feeling her hand move down your soft belly before her fingers ran along the edge of your curls. The pads of her fingers following the crease of your thigh to bring your leg over her own, brushing up your slit before urging your other leg to follow suit.

Despite the humidity, you could still feel a breeze, making you shudder even before Zhulgan’s middle finger found your exposed bundle of nerves, your toes curling and thighs tensing as your hips pushed themselves into her touch.

“I hated how he spoke too you,” Zhulgan suddenly admitted, her hand dipping lower to brush against your slit and the other pressing on your sternum, “Ignored you when you said no… Wanted to kill him where he stood- shut him up forever.”

You appreciated the sentiment, but the last thing you wanted to think about with Zhulgan’s hand in between your thighs was General Aubron. Still, you allowed Zhulgan to work out her frustration, content to focus on the thick finger teasing your entrance, the blunt tips of her nails sending electricity up your body. Suddenly, it pushed inside you to the base, first cursing then writhing when Zhulgan’s thumb continued to rub rough circles around your clit.

Zhulgan’s hand was obviously larger than yours, but it did little to prepare you for the sheer difference in size, your walls flexing to try and accommodate. It took all you had just to moan her name, Zhulgan’s palm slapping over your mouth before you could cry out once she began to move, the rapid motion of her wrist making slick sounds.

“So tight,” Zhulgan panted into your skin, tusks scraping over your back as she moved to rest her chin on your opposite shoulder, struggling to get another finger inside to join its neighbor, “Sweet girl.”

You wanted to explode, drowning in Zhulgan’s embrace - overwhelmed with the heat and the chance of being caught at any moment, on display for all to see in your current position. Eyes rolling back as a second finger joined in pushing your towards the edge, tipping over it once you felt the stretch of both digits scissoring apart. In an attempt to stabilize yourself as your hips involuntarily spasmed around Zhulgan’s hand, you were vaguely aware of the orc chief babbling words of praise in your ear, a long whine escaping you instead of all the words you wanted to say racing in your mind.

You were too tired to protest being lowered to the ground after your climax, Zhulgan’s temporarily missing warmth almost unbearable for the moment it took her palms to leave your sides to slowly parting your legs once again, her thumbs opening you for the long stripe licked with her tongue. You gasped, your legs instinctively jolting with oversensitivity only for Zhulgan to hold you still, nuzzling your thighs and continuing to eat you out - licking you clean, you realized as you slowly felt the overwhelming feeling subside only to feel the pleasure build back up again.

“I think I messed up the braid already,” you panted once Zhulgan finally sat back up on her haunches, somehow managing to sit up and crawl with your noodle legs onto her lap, your fingers lacing into hers as you brought her hand up to kiss her knuckles.

“Hm. No, I make mine to last, unlike you,” Zhulgan said, and it took you a shocked moment to realize that she had made a joke at your expense. Once your shared laughter subsided, you sat together in a comfortable silence, head tucked comfortable underneath Zhulgan’s chin, feeling the strong heartbeat reverberate in your skull, neither one of you willing to part and return to your separate wagons just yet.

“I can feel you thinking,” Zhulgan’s voice was a rumble in her chest, a reassuring sound if she wasn’t trying to get you to talk.

“So what now?” You finally dared ask, voice low and uncertain, reluctant to bring reality back to shoot you down from your emotional high. It brought a sour taste in your mouth, worry creeping its tendrils into your thoughts.

You can do my braid again… or we can just go to straight to my wagon,” Zhulgan hummed.

“Hilarious,” you sneer, but your attitude only seems to amuse Zhulgan, her entire body shaking with her laughter, forcing you to cling to her until it faded once again, “I meant- in the future. How- what will we…?”

Zhulgan sighed, “I know what you meant.. We both have people we are responsible for. I cannot ask you to forget about your responsibilities just as you cannot ask me to forget mine-”

You nodded, burying your face in her neck.

“-But we have time still to get to the orc lands, and more to cross them, and if you need to earn more coin for wherever you go next… you can stay.”

You felt your eyes moisten ever so slightly. Longer, you know she means, but for the moment, you can pretend.

“I think… I want to go to your wagon,” you whispered, glancing up and meeting Zhulgan’s grin for just a moment before you found yourself being lifted with her as she stood, her strong arms supporting you even as you clung to her.

“Wait, my clothes!” You cried out, wriggling out of her grasp for a moment to grab your forgotten undergarments, feeling her stare as you bent down to gather the articles of clothing.

When you stood back up, Zhulgan was behind you, her hands running along your sides. You closed your eyes, allowing yourself to lean back into her. For the moment, you decided, you would simply enjoy the happiness blossoming in your chest, lose yourself in the moment.

For the first time in a long time, you didn’t feel quite so adrift, tethered by Zhulgan’s arms if only for the moment.

#exophilia #reader insert #monster girlfriend #orc #smut #not sfw

[xshayarsha]

One said [writing] was like walking into a labyrinth, without knowing what monster might be inside; another said it was like groping through a tunnel; another said it was like being in a cave — she could see daylight through the opening, but she herself was in darkness. Another said it was like being under water, in a lake or ocean. Another said it was like being in a completely dark room, feeling her way: she had to rearrange the furniture in the dark, and then when it was all arranged the light would come on. Another said it was like wading through a deep river, at dawn or twilight; another said it was like being in an empty room which was nevertheless filled with unspoken words, with a sort of whispering; another said it was like grappling with an unseen being or entity; another said it was like sitting in an empty theatre before any play or film had started, waiting for the characters to appear.

Margaret Atwood, from Negotiating with the Dead. 

#margaret atwood #negotiating with the dead #between the word and the world

[rachelbethhines]

Vintage Shows to Watch While You Wait for the Next Episode of WandaVision - The 60s

So the 60s is the era that Wandavision pulls most heavily from for it’s inspiration. So much so that one could make the argument that each of the first three episodes are all set in the 1960s. Episode one pulls from the early 60s with multiple Dick Van Dyke refences, episode two is very Bewitched inspired, and episode three is aesthetically very similar to The Brady Bunch which started in ‘69. As such it was hard to narrow down the list for this decade and I had to get creative in some ways. 

1. The Andy Griffith Show (1960 - 1968)

The Andy Griffith Show gets kind of a bad rap now a days for being, supposedly, a conservative’s wet dream. People claiming it as such have apparently never actually seen the series. Oh yes, it’s very much set in white rural 60s America and will occasionally present the obliviously outdated joke, but the story of a widowed sheriff being the only sane man in a small town full of lovable lunatics, who prefers to solve his and others problems with negotiation and hair brained schemes as opposed to violence has far more in common with modern day Steven Universe than whatever genocidal fantasy fake rednecks have in their heads.  

As the gif above shows Andy Griffith was very subtlety progressive for its time. Andy was a stanch pacifist, pro-gun control, treated drug addicts and prisoners with respect, and all the women he would date had careers, ect. and so on. It’s not a satire making any sort of grand political statements but the series had a moral center that was far more left than many realize. 

But if it’s not a satire, then what type of comedy is it? 

The Andy Griffith Show excels in what I like to call, ‘awkward comedy’. See everyone in Mayberry is far too nice to just come out and tell a character they’re making an ass of themselves, so therefore whoever is the idiot punching bag of the episode’s focus must slowly unravel as everyone looks on in helpless pity until said character realizes the folly of their ways and the townsfolk come together to make them feel happy and accepted once more. Wandavision takes this polite idyllic awkwardness and plays it up for horror instead of laughs.  

2. The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961 - 1966)

The creators of Wandavision actually met with Dick Van Dyke himself to pick his brain and learn how sitcoms were made back then. Paul Bentley also took inspiration from Van Dyke in his performance of the sitcom version of Vision, while Olsen stated Mary Tylor Moore had a heavy influence on her character of Wanda. But more than just being a point of homage, The Dick Van Dyke Show was hugely influential in modernizing the family sitcom and breaking a lot of the unspoken traditions and ‘rules’ of the 50s television era. It’s also just really, really funny.  

3.The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962 - 1965) 

Bit of a cheat here. Alfred Hitchcock Presents actually started in 1955 as a half hour anthology show, but in ‘62 the show got a revamp and was extended into a full hour tv series. I knew I wanted The Twilight Zone to be covered in my episode one recap, but ‘The Master of Suspense’ couldn’t be forgotten. While The Twilight Zone reveled in the surreal and supernatural, Alfred Hitchcock pioneered the thriller genre and made real life seem dangerous, horrifying, and other worldly.   

4. Doctor Who (1963 - present day) vs Star Trek (1966 - present day) 

Just like how westerns dominated the air waves during the 50s, science fiction was the center of the cultural zeitgeist of the 60s. From Lost in Space to My Favorite Martian, space aliens and robots were everywhere. So naturally I had to name drop the two sci-fi juggernauts that still air to this today. If you thought that the rivalry between Star Wars and Star Trek was bad then you’ve never seen a chat full of Whovians and Trekkies duking it out over who is the better monster, the Borg or the Cyberman. But which one has the more influence over Wandavision?

Well Star Trek owes it’s existence to sitcoms. As with The Twilight Zone before it, Star Trek was produced by Desilu Productions and it’s co-founder and CEO, Lucille Ball, was the series biggest supporter behind the scenes, lobbying for it when it faced early cancelation. As with all things sitcomy, everything ties back to I Love Lucy in the end. However despite that little backstory, it would seem that the series has very little to do with Wandavision itself beyond being quintessentially American. 

I would argue that Wandavision owes much to Doctor Who though. Arguably more so than any show mentioned in this retrospective. Time travel, alternate realities, trouble in quite suburbia, brainwashing, people coming back from the dead, ect... just about every trope you can find in Wandavision has also appeared in Doctor Who at some point. As a series that can go anywhere and do anything, Doctor Who was a pioneer of marrying genres in new and interesting ways. 

5. Bewitched (1964 - 1972) and I Dream of Jeannie (1965 - 1970)

It’s hard to pick one series over another because they’re essentially the same show. A mortal man falls in love with a magical girl who upends their lives with magic filled hijinks as they try their best not to have their secret discovered by the rest of the world. And both have their fingerprints all over the DNA of Wandavision. 

There’s only two core differences; Samantha and Jeannie have completely different personalities, with Sam being confident and knowledgeable and Jeannie being naïve and oblivious, along with their relationships with their respective men, Sam and Darrin being married and in love at the start of the series and Jeannie chasing after Tony in the beginning in a will they/won’t they affair, finally only getting together in the last season. 

6. The Munsters (1964 - 1966) vs The Adams Family (1964 - 1966)

Fans of these two shows are forever sadden that there never was a crossover between them. Because they’d fit perfectly together. Both shows are about a surreal and macabre family living in American suburbia and disrupting the lives of their neighbors with their otherworldly hijinks. Sound familiar?     

The main difference between the two shows is the way the characters viewed their placement in the world they inhabit. 

The Munsters were always oblivious to the fact that didn’t fit in. They just automatically assumed everyone had the same personal tastes as them. Whenever they encountered anyone who behaved strangely around them they would write that person off as being the odd one rather than questioning themselves. As such the main cast was structured like a stereotypical sitcom family who just happened to be classic movie monsters. 

The Addams were well aware that they were abnormal and they loved it! They lived life with in their own little world and didn’t care what anyone thought of them. As such the characters were far more colorful and quirky as individuals but there was little in the way of refences to other horror franchises beyond just a general love of the twisted and strange. 

7. Green Acres (1965 - 1971) and the Rual-verse (1962 - 1971)

So the MCU is not the first franchise to bring viewers an interconnected universe to the small screen. Far from it, as sitcoms had been doing this for decades, starting with the ‘rualverse’. Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and Green Acres were all produced by the same company and were treated as spinoffs of each other, complete with crossovers and shared characters and sets. 

Of the three, the last show, Green Acres, has the most in common with Wandavision. A well to do businessman and his lovely socialite wife settle down in small town America on a farm in order to get away from the stresses of city life, only to find new stresses in the country. Eva Gabor, herself a natural Hungarian, plays the character of Lisa as Hungarian making her one of the few non-native born Americans on tv screens during the cold war. Despite her posh nature and original protests to the move, Lisa assimilates to the rural life far easier than her husband, Oliver. Who, as the main comedic thread, can’t comprehend his new quirky neighbors’ odd and often illogical behavior.  

8. Hogan’s Heroes (1965 - 1971) and Get Smart (1965 - 1969)

So as comic fans have been quick to point out, it’s looking like both A.I.M. (Hydra) and Sword (Shield) will be players in the story of Wandavision. To commemorate that here’s two shows to represent those opposing sides. Although in truth, neither series has anything else in common with each other but I need to condense things down someway. 

In Hydra’s corner we got Hogan’s Heroes. A show all about taking down Nazis from within. 

I love, love, love, ‘robin hood’ comedies where a group of con artists try week after to week to pull one over the establishment. The Phil Silvers Show, Mchale's Navy, and Top Cat, just to name a few examples are all childhood favorites of mine. However while those shows had a lot of morally ambiguous characters, Hogan’s Heroes has very clear cut good guys and bad guys, cause the bad guys are Nazis and the show relentless makes fun of the third reich as should we all. In fact I was watching Hogan’s Heroes while waiting for the GA run off election results. Fortunately my home state decided to kick out our own brand of Nazis this year. 

For Shield, we got the ultimate spy spoof, Get Smart. Starring, Inspector Gadget himself, Don Adams, as the bumbling Maxwell Smart. Get Smart, is a hilarious send up of Cold War espionage but the real selling point of the show, imho, is Max and his co-worker 99′s relationship. You can cut the sexual tension in the air with a knife all while laughing your ass off. 

9. Batman (1966 - 1968)

First was Superman and then came Batman. Yet while Superman was a serious action show, Batman was a straight up comedy. Showcasing that superheroes could indeed be funny. 

Also shout out for Batman being the only show on this list to have an actual crossover with it’s competitor, The Green Hornet. 

10. Julia (1968 - 1971)

Since episode two features the first appearances of Herb and Monica, let’s highlight the first black led sitcom since the cancelation of Amos ‘n Andy over a decade earlier. The show focuses on single mother and military nurse, Julia, as she tries to live her life without her recently decease husband, who was killed in Vietnam, as she tries to raise their six year old son on her own.  

The series is cute. It’s more of a throw back to earlier family sitcoms where there’s no fantasy and life lessons are the name of the game. It’s the fact that the main character is a single black woman is what made the show so subversive and important at the time. 

Runner Ups

There’s much good stuff in the 60s, so here’s some others that didn’t make the cut but I would recommend anyways. 

Car 54, Where Are You? (1961 - 1963)

I call this the Brooklynn 99 of the 1960s. Bumbling but well meaning Officer Toody longs to do good in the world and help anyone in need, but often screws things up with his ill thought out schemes. He often drags his best friend and partner, the competent but anxiety riddled, Muldoon into his escapades. 

Mr. Ed (1961 - 1966)

The grandfather of the sarcastic talking pet trope. 

The Jetsons (1962 - 1963 and 1985 - 1987)

Hanna-Barbera often took popular sitcoms and just repackaged them as cartoons with a fantasy theme to them. The Jetsons has no singular show that it rips-off but is rather more a grab bag of sitcom tropes that feature, robots, computers, and flying cars. 

The Outer Limits (1963 - 1965) 

The Outer Limits was The Twilight Zone’s biggest competitor in terms of being a sic-fi/horror anthology series. 

Gillian’s Island (1964 - 1967) 

The only comparison to WandaVision I could think of was that this is a sitcom about people being trapped in one place. But by that point I was running out of room on the list. Still it’s one of the funniest shows on here. 

So yeah, this took longer than expected cause there’s a lot, here. Hopefully the 70s will be easier. Which I’ll post on Friday. 

#wandavision #sitcoms #1960s #dick van dyke #bewitched

[sorcerersofnyc]

The Last Thing Left (Zemo x F!Reader) 3/9

If it wasn’t so painfully ironic (and hilarious to watch,) Helmut would find the relationship between Sam and James a little sad.

Ghosts weren’t enough to hold two people together.

While they wait for Torres to locate Donya Madani, Zemo brings Sam and Bucky to the home he once shared with you.

You reunite and he reflects upon his relationship with you (his wife's friend and his friend's wife) and your journey from being people with mutual friends to partners.

Chapter 3: Sam and Bucky try to understand your relationship with Zemo. It isn't complicated, but he remembers a time when things very much were.

Angst, various mentions of death & mourning, Zemo's wife's name is Heike because of comics.  The reader likes waffles (this is a non-negotiable fact)

Note: Main Character is neutral in most regards, but the story was written with my own cultural background in mind. (In other words, I won't say what she looks like but I envision her as being black.)

First Chapter | Previous

***

A fresh breeze filters in through an open window, swaying the room as Helmut’s words take root.

“Partner?” Sam leans forward in curiosity. “You mean like a life partner or a partner in crime?”

“Yes,” is Helmut’s unhelpful reply. He sends you a conspiratorial smile, one you return with a roll of the eyes.

“Helmut and I are engaged in a… civil partnership,” you explain, “for legal reasons.”

“Amongst other things,” he adds.

“Yes, amongst…other things.” A deep honey-like scent wafts into the room from the kitchen as you share a fleeting glance, a private moment despite the scrutiny of James and Sam. You must have put on a pot of tea.

“That should have been in the reports,” James narrows his eyes and examines the room carefully. “Why doesn’t anyone know about you?” Despite his position on the other wall, he angles his body toward Sam, ready to defend against any traps you might spring.

"Well…" you tilt your head in contemplation, "there was a significant delay in the processing of our paperwork. Nothing was documented until after Helmut’s prosecution."

"How much of a delay are we talking about here?" Sam asks, turning his assessing gaze toward Helmut as if to ask, ‘did you do something?’

"Around—what was it, Helmut? A year and a half?"

"18 months," he agrees. “Our paperwork seemed to have gotten misplaced. It's so difficult to find reliable lawyers these days.”

Sam didn’t seem to believe him.

"I'm his spouse on all official records,” You cut in before either of the two to speak, “but I'm sure you understand why privacy is important to me.” When he testified to his crimes, he made it clear that he had no accomplices and the investigation proved the same. The lawyer ‘misplaced’ the paperwork long enough for public interest in his case to die.

You didn’t need that sort of public scrutiny.

Sam seems to agree.

“We would never compromise your safety,” He assures you. He has his own family, people he loves with targets on their backs. He thinks of them as he addresses you.

The teapot whistles in the background.

“Thank you.” You smile and excuse yourself from the room. “The tea is ready.”

Helmut wants to pull you back to him, but he settles on meeting your gaze as you make a hasty retreat through the archway.

You’re gone all but a few seconds before James begins to speak.

"OK Zemo,” He says, his voice low and threatening, “it's about time you tell us what's going on—your partner? Really?"

"I’ve no reason to lie, James—but perhaps you’re not used to honesty,"

“Not from you," James lurches forward like a beast seeking prey. He glares down at Helmut, a mere arm's length from Helmut’s chair.

Helmut doesn't doubt Jame's violent intent, but he isn't particularly afraid. He settles back in his chair, moves his hands along the length of the arms, and brushes a thumb across the cool metal of the gun strapped beneath.

"Simmer down, Buck.” Sam lifts his hands. “This is weird enough as it is.”

James hesitates but relaxes his defensive stance.

"She doesn't seem to like me and Sam," James continues, reclaiming his position on the wall. “I don’t plan on waking up with a knife in my back.”

“She would never do such a thing, it's far too messy." Unbothered by their altercation, Helmut rises from his chair. He moves toward the bay window and liberates a copy of  Arsène Lupin, gentleman-cambrioleur , from the floating shelf.

Before James can say whatever it is he wants to say,  Sam intervenes once again.

“What I think he means is, 'how do we know we can trust her?'”

"You won't come to harm under her care, you have my word."

His word.

James scoffs at the mere suggestion. Trust isn't something that exists between them and it never would.

But the air is so thick with tension and he can hear the unspoken words that linger in the air: ‘What about your late wife?’

So Helmut flips through the book absentmindedly, stopping at a dog-eared page.

“My companion,” he begins to explain, “she was my wife's dearest friend.” He glances up from the pages of the book to meet Sam’s gaze. “She lost her husband when your friends made Sokovia into a battleground so I found it prudent to ensure her wellbeing.”

They're quiet—finally—and Helmut finds their discomfort pleasing.

Turning his attention back to the book, he reads a line you underlined.

'Quel dommage que je ne sois pas un honnête homme!' What a pity that I am not an honest man!'

“Would you like some honeybush tea?” Your voice cuts through the silence a few moments later. You stop at the threshold and gaze back warily gaze wary.

“I expected Helmut to be alone, but I have other drinks too.”

“The Tea is fine, thank you.” He sets down your beloved book and walks across the room to meet you. Ever so gently, Helmut coaxes the tray from your hand and sets it down on the center table.

“I made lunch as well... si comes ese tipo de cosas .” You mutter, leaving the room once again.

Helmut pours himself a cup before gesturing toward the tray.

"Please, you are guests; have a seat, enjoy some tea." Grabbing the book with one hand, Helmut returns to his favorite chair.

James doesn’t move an inch but Sam takes the seat near the window. His body sinks into the fabric with a sigh.

“Hopefully Torres finds Donya soon. I don’t want to impose for too long.”

“She really is a lovely hostess.” Helmut takes a seat and returns the book. “I intend to enjoy her hospitality while I can.”

***

At first, living with you was easy; Helmut stayed out of your way, he spent his time conducting research and it was quiet.

But the walls were thin and noise echoed through the open vents—He could hear you crying late at night.

He wanted to help, but he had no temporary comforts to offer. The only thing he had was his anger and his plan. You’d rest easier with the Avengers buried in the ash heap, he told himself. That day, when you hugged him, he felt as though you encroached on something, something that would break if he failed to tread lightly.

When you looked as though you wanted to talk or share a fond memory, he mentioned something about the old-fashioned décor and suggested that you change something. He bought you books from the shops he passed on the streets, jars of pigment, and blocks of clay.

He observed you, found what you liked, and got them for you.

“Thank you,” you’d say with a smile, and that was more than enough for him.

He didn’t expect you to return the favor.

But then you’d do things like make him breakfast (always with black coffee and a side of bacon, his favorite.) You’d buy pillows in the same specific shade of burgundy to accent the walls. You’d leave the paper on the kitchen island and kept a jar of honey with the tea.

And he hated you for that, for doing the things Heike would do, for sharing her habits, humor, and sensibilities.

‘Good morning, Helmut,' you would say in the morning, 'Would you like to visit the market with me?’ or, ‘Helmut, you can’t survive off coffee, aren't you hungry?’

He’d refuse you every time.

It was difficult, disappointing you,  but the thought of enjoying a pleasant breakfast, or taking a stroll through the market hurt even more.

He could still feel their bodies buried beneath his feet.

So he opted for uncomfortable silence, and unsteady peace, the ghosts of your loved ones a wall between you.

*

Weeks went by and he continued his research. It took a while, but Helmut could see the steps of a plan unfolding in his mind.

He wouldn’t be the one to send the Avengers to their graves, he’d make them kill each other—and for that, he would need the Winter Soldier, James Buchanan Barnes.

So one day, after reading and rereading the S.H.I.E.L.D.  files he managed to decrypt, he told you he was going on a trip.

“There’s business that I need to attend to.”

“You’re leaving?” You looked up from the clay you were molding. It hadn’t yet taken form, just a sad lump of grey. “For how long?”

“Not long.” He promised, “I’ll be back soon.”

But he returned two weeks later.

Exhausted, Helmut had just taken off his shoes when you walked upstairs to meet him, red power on your hands.

“Helmut! Where were you?” You demanded before you took notice of your tone, the accusation present in your voice. You amended your words quickly.  “I was worried... I missed you while you were gone.”

“My apologies,” was his unsatisfactory reply, his back still turned.

When he finally turned to look in your direction, you wore a troubled look upon your face, and the look reminded him of Heike.

It was the worry of a soldier's wife, of someone waiting by the door to greet an unknown future.

“I’m sorry,” he offered, genuinely this time, and placed a hand on your shoulder.

For a moment that you would reject him. He was certain you considered doing just that, but when you didn’t move or knock away his touch, a strange sense of relief filled him.

You sighed.

"When you've gotten settled, come down for dinner.” It was an order, he realized, not a request.

"Of course." An amused smile tugged at his cheeks.

"Where did you go?" You asked, lingering by the door as he set down his bag. He wasn’t dressed for business in his drab gray jacket and worn shoes.

“I visited an auction house out east."

“An auction house?” You tilted your head and assessed his clothing again. “To bid?”

“Not exactly."

Not at all, really.

He tracked down information about an auction where fanatics were gathered to bid on HYDRA paraphernalia. He hoped to find the book that once belonged to the Winter Soldier's handler, but it wasn't didn’t exist amongst the garbage he found there.

The trip hadn't been a complete waste, however. He managed to rid the world of a few dozen agents and others who would support their cause—but he wouldn’t tell you that.

"What I hoped to find wasn't there.” He settled on saying.

“It took you weeks to do that?”

“I needed to visit Berlin as well. My family collected many cars over the generations. I’ll take you to see them one day if you like.”

Helmut had no plans to get you involved in his plan to end the Avengers,  he couldn't. But he remained true to his word and joined you for dinner that night.

He helped you set the table and you ate paprikash (which, he assumed, you made for his benefit more than your own.)

"Ozenik suggested I make it," you explained. "It was never my favorite but it was fun to make."

"You did a good job."

"Thanks...I thought was time to try something new."

He agreed.

You ate dinner together the next night too, and the next, and the next night after that.

Helmut grew to enjoy the time you spent together—it was a pleasant change of pace.

Even so, he had his ‘business’ to attend to. He would still have to leave.

Sometimes he would go for hours, sometimes he’d be gone for days, and sometimes entire weeks would go by and Helmut wouldn't call or even text you.

And you were frustrated.

Once he returned home to find you painting angry red lines across what might have been an abstract swirl of blue and gray.

One evening discovered you rearranged the dining room completely.

Then one day, during dinner, you attempted to bridge the gap between you once again.

"I received a message last night," You began, "a reminder that I purchased tickets to see a play last year.” It was summer, but the season had been unusually rainy, confining you inside for most of the week. “I’d have to travel to see it but it might be fun. Would you like to see it with me?”

"I'll be gone again soon," Helmut told you. “My apologies.”

You frowned.

"I haven't even told you the date. How do you know you’ll be busy?"

"I have plenty of work to keep me busy through the end of the year." His reply hung in the air for what felt like an eternity. He didn’t even bother to look up as he continued. "If you need to travel, I'll speak with Oeznik about arranging that for you."

You looked down at your plate, sighed, and set down your utensils.

"It's fine." You told him, but it wasn't. You were angry at his rejection, at his nonchalance.

"You know...you don't need to force yourself to be here with me, Helmut." You stared directly across the table at him, meeting his gaze. "We don't have to stay together if you don't want to. I have my benefits from the veterans association now so...if there's somewhere else you'd rather be-"

"There isn't." Helmut looked at you, his eyes dark piercing. "How could you think that?"

“How could I not when I never know if you're going off to the market or leaving for weeks?” A dangerous edge crept into your voice and you didn’t bother to amend it. “What sort of 'business' are you conducting? You won't even tell me."

"You don't need to worry," he tried to assure you, but his weak appeal only seemed to make you angrier.

And that anger, your anger,  frustrated him to no end.

Who were you to question what he did with his time?

Heike always understood when he was gone for longer than expected. When he returned, she greeted him with joy and relief, not accusation and scorn.

But you...he didn't know what he expected from you.

You weren’t his wife, you weren’t involved romantically. You weren't even friends, not really.

So really, what tethered him to this place?

What he planned to do was dangerous; he might not even survive. He fulfilled his promise to see after your well-being, did everything he said he'd do, and yet...and yet…

You sighed, huffed really, and gathered your plates quickly.

“I’m trying, I’m really trying but I’m tired, Helmut,” you told him. “You go and move us to this...this ritzy tourist city and what am I supposed to do? Find friends with similar life experiences? I can’t even sleep through the night and you...you just...” You take a breath as you turn away, leaving with your half-eaten plate.

“I don't... I don't fit in here.” You confess resignation carried in your voice. “I don’t think you understand that and I don’t think we’re good for each other either. ” You decided. “We’re too different. I appreciate you trying to help me, I do, but… but maybe I should leave.”

***

Thanks for reading! You’ve come so far and soon you will be rewarded. Next chapter we’ll see the steps Helmut took to amend your relationship. And in the present timeline, we get to see something super cute (something that involves hand-holding, perhaps?)

Feedback is very much appreciated. Please tell me what you think!

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#zemo #helmut zemo #baron zemo #zemo x reader #baron zemo x reader #I know I'm the one who designed this story to be a slow burn #and yet #I'm really looking forward to sharing the next chapter

[ponnearponfarponwhereveryouare]

negotiations of home

Pairing: TOS!McSpirk

Summary: Spock takes the time to examine his thoughts (and feelings) towards the Enterprise's captain and chief medical officer. He decides the most logical course of action is to address his findings.

Rating: G | Word Count: 1862 | also on ao3

Spock had long since learned not to say thoughts tied to emotion. Such ruminations had to be examined critically and in such a time and location so as to not interfere with his work. Only in this way could he put logic first, by making a habit of it. He was not sure if this was the process other Vulcans applied, but it was the one that worked best for him.

He knew he was successful when he was able to apply this method around members of his family; with positive emotions and negative. Only in absolute private he might tell his mother he loved her, tell his sister he missed her, or tell his brother that they were still, always, family.

It was best not to think about the emotions that came up involving his father. Or the feelings around the fact that his family was two and a half parts human and two and a half parts Vulcan. Of not being a whole.

Those walls had begun to slip, of late. And that was because he was faced with emotions that were not tangled up in his Vulcan upbringing. Feelings that included a sense of being held together, a chance at healing his two halves.

Which brought him to the matter at hand.

"You're you, Spock!" Leonard snapped, though the anger was not directed at Spock himself. The doctor was pacing about Jim's quarters, while Spock sat at the Captain's desk observing him. "You're not broken! All you have to do in this life is be honest with yourself."

Spock raised a brow. "Is this a time for the old anecdote, physician heal thyself?"

Leonard managed to scowl deeper. "Damn it, man, at least I'm trying. Talking about these sorts of things with someone you trust and care about is important."

"Is that not what I am attempting to do?" Spock asked. Before Jim had been called away to deal with a potential issue among the Enterprise's current guests, Spock had gathered both Jim and Leonard together with the purpose of working through a line of thought that had followed him around for the past 30 days.

Leonard deflated a bit, rubbing his hands together in a nervous manner. Spock attempted not to stare, as the emotions that evoked were ones he had not yet begun to speak of.

"Do not worry, Leonard, I will not continue until Jim has returned," Spock said in a tone he hoped would be reassuring.

"How am I supposed to do that, with you calling us by our names?" Leonard protested, now tossing his hands up in the air.

"It is a personal matter, so it would be illogical to use your professional titles."

"And that's why I'm nervous! Last time you had a personal matter that you had to involve me and Jim in, you were dying or your father was dying." Leonard didn't return to pacing, instead, he crossed the room and kneeled beside Spock. His blue eyes were wide and filled with concern.

"My apologies. I did not mean to raise alarm," Spock said, reaching out towards Leonard. He wasn't sure what he'd do, but he needed such dramatics to end. It brought an uncomfortable warmth that was tempting to lean into. To drown in. “Please, stand.” Spock stopped himself before he actually could touch Leonard’s elbows.

Leonard seemed to take a long enough time pondering this request as to border on his usual teasing. He finally stood, pressing a hand against Spock’s knee as he did. He settled then into Jim’s other chair so that they were now directly across from each other. “So you’re not dying.”

“Not that I am aware of. Though as my doctor, I believe you are to give me such status updates.”

This returned Leonard to a... huffier state. “I’d be able to do that if you didn’t lie to me.”

“Vulcan’s do not lie,” Spock reminded him.

“Oh really? Then it seems like I’ll need a copy of whatever definition you’re using for the word.”

Jim returned to catch that last exchange. “Gentlemen. I see I haven’t missed anything.” He was smiling, coming to lean against the partition that divided his quarters.

Spock found himself calmed by Jim’s presence. “The Andorian ambassador is settled?”

“Yes, Scotty was able to change the climate control settings for her quarters to something comfortable,” Jim said, as he looked from Spock to Leonard and back. “Where were we?”

“Spock was telling us something that is a “personal matter",” Leonard provided. “I’ve got him to promise no one is dying.”

“Statistically in the breadth of the universe and even just among life as we know it, at this moment-”

“Shut it!” Leonard’s tone was supposed to be sharp, but it was too rounded by his own laughter.

“Very well,” Spock turned towards Leonard, both eyebrows raised, and remained silent.

“Jim, look what he’s doing now!” Leonard complained, leaning closer towards Spock, as close as he could get with the desk between them.

Jim’s laughter filled the silence, and he crossed the room to sit on the corner of his desk. “Spock, Bones, come now.” His face was in that easy grin of his, the one Spock associated with times when all was well. “Spock, what did you want to talk to us about?”

Yes, the mission at hand. One that he had set for himself because, given the nature of their work and luck, it seemed best to share his thoughts sooner than later. Spock had planned the words he would say carefully, trying to predict what response he might get. He would not call himself nervous, as that emotion tended to be one of the most illogical.

“Yeah Spock, sorry,” Leonard smiled kindly, leaning back again. His foot nudged Spock’s under the table in what must have been encouragement. Leonard rarely apologized for their mutual antagonization of the other, another sign he was taking this seriously.

“It has come to my attention that I hold you both in strong regard.” Spock thought that was as good a place to start as any, even as his practiced words seemed to fall away. He should have written them down... But that would have no doubt brought Leonard’s amusement and possibly ire. “I also know, while it is not the practice on Vulcan, for many cultures it is customary to let those you care about know of your regard towards them.”

Both Leonard and Jim were silent, which was not one of the responses Spock had anticipated. It was Leonard who finally spoke and said, “Are you sure you’re not dying? Because you just admitted to having an emotion. Several, in fact.”

“Indeed. It was our last away mission that brought me to further examine my feelings towards both Jim and yourself.” Spock had been the one, after 27.8 frantic hours, to find and rescue the captain and chief medical officer. Between coordinating the rescue effort, Spock found his thoughts consumed with things he wished to tell them both. “I... care for you both. My existence is greatly improved by your presence in it.”

He hoped that they could understand all he was not able to say. ‘Don’t leave me, I need you, I missed you, I-’

“Spock,” Jim’s voice was soft, and when Spock looked up at him, so was his expression. “I feel the same.” He then looked towards Leonard, and Spock followed his gaze.

Leonard looked between them both, and his blinking grew more rapid. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough. “Damnit, I don’t know what I’d do if I lost either of you. You’ve both managed to pick up my pieces and put them back together. I can’t remember the last time I felt complete.”

Of course, Leonard, who was better with emotions than either Spock or Jim, would put the words to it: that there existed between them something that exceeded a friendship bond. They had become family. Partners. A tension settled then, the question -

“What do we do?” Jim voiced it. “It’s not as if we can stop going on dangerous missions. That’s not the life we signed up for.”

“I know neither of you could be happy sitting by,” Leonard agreed. “You’re explorers to your cores. And someone who asks you to change your very nature isn’t worth keeping.”

Keep. Spock turned the word over in his mind. “It seems that what is in our power to change is the parameters of our relationship.”

Jim let out a breath that sounded like ‘yes.’

“If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, that’d be against regulation.” Leonard pointed at Spock. “Would you be okay with that?”

“Affirmative.” Spock had to focus to keep his tone even. This was not one of the outcomes he had let himself ponder. His desire for it would have become overwhelming.

“What about the ol’ needs of the many over the few?” Leonard said, and Spock knew he wasn’t arguing because he was against the possibility now hanging heavy in the room, more tangible than it had ever been before because it had been named. Leonard was making sure Spock was sure; that he was comfortable.

“You are both professionals, whom I trust not to let the personal adversely interfere with the running of the ship.” It was an easier answer than he thought. “I even theorize that such a change in our relationship could improve personal performance.”

“Now that is a theory that I want to test.” Jim moved to stand, so he could face them both fully. His smile was back and wider than Spock could recall seeing it. “I’d like to very much.”

Leonard was smiling now as well. “Why am I surprised that this has been the weirdest way I’ve ever been asked out?”

“Come on Bones, for science,” Jim’s eyes twinkled, and he reached out to catch one of Leonard’s hands. “But more importantly, for... love.”

Spock watched the way their fingers fit together, and almost missed that Jim had spoken the final unspoken word. He looked back towards their expressions, before standing himself and coming closer, to stand between them both.

“Of course I will,” Leonard said. “Spock?”

“Affirmative,” Spock said again, and added, while carefully watching Leonard’s expression. “It should prove fascinating.” Before Leonard could offer a retort to that, Spock held out his index and middle finger to him. A gesture he knew the good doctor had picked up the significance of.

Leonard’s eyes went wide once more, but he didn’t hesitate before reciprocating the gesture. Once he had, Spock felt a wave of affection he could not pinpoint as his own emotion or Leonard’s. Spock then offered the same to Jim, who looked like he had been given a gift to rival his captaincy of the Enterprise.

When Jim’s finger’s met Spock’s, the three of them stood visibly connected in a way Spock knew their lives had already long been. This, then, was proof that he would not lose them. At least, not without making sure they knew what they meant to him.

It spoke of a new beginning, a new adventure, shared between the three of them.

#mcspirk #spock #leonard mccoy #james kirk #jim kirk #bones mccoy #this is very fluffy #it is also a getting together fic #the first star trek fic i have written in YEARS bless a decade old hyperfixation to break writers block #star trek the original series #tos #star trek TOS #a talks #my fic