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hanasnx · 1 year

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❝ how he learned to kiss. ❞

── aotc!anakin skywalker x reader

MINORS DNI 18+ WORD COUNT: 5k SUMMARY: coaxing anakin to spill the story on how he got so good at kissing as a virgin before he even met you, he relays a story of his youth. NOTES: i had to make up a girl name so this character isnt in star wars and her only significance is for the sake of storytelling im so sorry if it offends u. this is still an x reader mainly WARNINGS: everyone aged up, f!reader, slight corruption kink from reader, established relationship, no smut but explicit content— allusion to blowjob, f!c persistence, slight friendship toxicity— being young they’re still navigating vulnerable sexual conversations and dont realize how their actions can impact the other which means there’s a teeny baby amount of angst, allusions to other sexual acts but no actual explicit work, implied smut at the end between reader & anakin

You sighed into the kiss, your arms wrapped lazily around ANAKIN SKYWALKER's neck. He pressed your back further into the counter, his passion shining through in his impatience to access your mouth with his tongue. When you allow it, and he slides his against yours in a pleasing way, you involuntarily whimper. Something about Anakin and his talented mouth never failed to relax you after it riled you up. Your head tilted, deepening the kiss, one of Anakin’s hands moved from your waist to the back of your head, refusing to let you back up so he could explore your mouth fully.

You made a noise, and he clutched you with fervor for a second, slacking to give you air to breathe. When he detached a string of saliva connected your lips, and you panted. The Jedi trailed his mouth down your jaw to your neck in open mouthed kisses. The tingles soothed you, lulling your head as he made out with your favorite spot there, drawing sweet sounds from you.

“Ani, how’d you get to be so good at this?” you purred, eyes falling shut. The back of your head still cradled in his large hand as he lovingly caressed your skin with his lips and tongue, able to feel your pulse.

“Hm?” he hummed against you, vibrating you. It sent chills down your spine, so limp it was a mystery how he was holding you up.

“I love kissing you, you’ve always been good at it,” you replied, breathlessly explaining in between hisses of pleasure when his teeth graze you.

“That’s what you want to talk about right now?” his tone betrayed amusement, his warm breath washing over you as he spoke. He lapped the red marks he left in his wake.

“We haven’t talked about who we’ve been with before, and I know you said you were a virgin when we first… um,”

“Had intercourse,” he finished for you, and it sucked the romance out of it.

“Yes,” you responded in haste, hoping to keep the momentum going. “You were still really good at kissing then, I can only assume you had—“ His hand on your waist had traveled up to palm your breast, at the same time biting into your shoulder. The pain mixed with pleasure made you keen, interrupting your own sentence.

Once more, Anakin ended it for you, “Practice?”

You nod the best you can. As soon as you’d pondered the question, that’s what you could think about, instead of responding to your lover’s advances. Arrested in mid motion, Anakin remains where you leave him when you push off him, and hop up onto the counter. “I wanna hear about the practice you’ve had.” You clasped your hands in your lap, grinning at him. Even sitting up on the counter he was about as tall as you.

Anakin slacked, furrowing his brows as he met your gaze. “Right now?” he confirmed again.

“Yeah, I’m curious,” It was an innocent curiosity, and you could postpone escalating these events until after his story. “C’mon, I wanna know,”

He shifted his weight to one hip, resting his fists against the edge of the counter to cage you in as his eyes searched his surroundings, jogging his own memory.

Now, Anakin wasn’t proud of what he’d done in his past. A sort of gray area to him, and one he rarely reminisced on because of an air of shame. If he’d had it his way, he wouldn’t have kissed anyone at all before you. It was in his nature to desire to save every bit of himself for you, like he did with his virginity. However, you were no guarantee to him, and he’d happened upon you by chance. If only he’d known he’d meet you, he never would’ve strayed from his path of devotion. Faithfulness was an unspoken rule for him, regardless of you and his “friends with benefits” relationship, his commitment to you was unwavering.

“My first kiss came as a surprise,” he said under his breath, like it was a secret. His eyes did not meet yours until he spoke again, “There was a young lady, alone, who’d gotten mixed up with someone in lower Coruscant, if I believe correctly.” You listened intently, hand coming to toy with the ends of your hair to fidget. “I don’t remember exactly how it happened, I only remember scaring her opponent off. I was young, and without Master Kenobi, and had been there merely to pick up some restored scripts when I passed by her. She kissed me as a thank you,” He moistened his lips. “It was hurried— a peck. I didn’t even know her name, I don’t remember what she looked like. It was long before you and I met.” Anakin waited for you to react, to tell him he was wrong for it.

Before you even responded, you couldn’t help but swoon over how cute it must’ve been. You’d met Anakin when he was this tall, gangly, sandy-blond haired boy. Awkward for the most part, an innocence that you didn’t realize was virginity ‘til later. He had that padawan rat-tail you wanted to tug to annoy him. You could only imagine that was the boy that was kissed when he saved the stranger. Only when you were reintroduced to Anakin had he grown his hair out a bit, matured and gave off a powerful aura of intensity. That’s when the two of you had started this journey together.

“That’s nice, right? Did you not want to be kissed?” you questioned, and your nonchalance on the matter made him rethink his ashamed mindset on it. He idled, and your hand came to brush his curls from his face.

“It was fine. Perhaps it was an accident, maybe she aimed for my cheek and I turned. I don’t recall.”

“So you felt neutral about it,” you stated, ensuring that nothing was forced upon him.

“It was a surprise,” he reiterated. “However, the act did instill me with a certain confidence.”

That came as no shock to you, and you broke out into a grin. “Oh, yeah?”

That newfound confidence had gone straight to Anakin’s head. Now aware that he registered as a sexual being to others, he wanted to drag reactions out of them. To be the center of attention, to be the cause of someone else’s awakening, to make someone feel special. Growing up alongside Obi Wan— whose charming nature did more for him than most— meant Anakin could see how his Master received things in response to his flirtatiousness. It was a skill Anakin now desired to learn.

The pure padawan experimented with those around him. At the temple, Anakin had noticed a group of girls (younger than him by only a couple years) staring at him, and he realized this to be an opportunity for him. He smiled good-naturedly, nodded, and offered a minute wave. It caused the girls to shyly look away and giggle amongst themselves, covering their blushing faces. To witness the effect he had on his admirers, was a reaction he became addicted to.

He was not the smoothest by any means, but he found that acting on his impulses went surprisingly well. Being completely virtuous meant he had limits to what he knew to do, but he noted that he was far more successful with positive reactions with underclassmen. He adored the attention. Especially if his reputation grew as someone who knew more than he actually did. How could he believe it was wrong if his master called on the skill so casually in conversation? To flatter was second nature for Obi Wan Kenobi.

And so it was for his padawan searching for what he so desperately craved. Validation.

This personification of a confident, experienced, charming scoundrel was a character Anakin quickly fell into. He clawed at the chance to come off as arrogant and in charge. Like a landslide, Anakin had broken away from the “odd, and coddled boy under the private tutelage of his Master”, spoken about behind his back for being brought to the Jedi Order as an exception and did not attend standard Academy. He felt like he fit in.

Largely, he avoided his own age group but after practicing with the classes under him, he’d moved on to the girls his age in the temple.

There was one in particular, Vella Torpoli, who was his same age. They’d known of each other, worked on certain missions together as fellow peacekeepers and padawans. Her master and his often paired together, and Vella was so invasive as is— she was the perfect candidate.

It began small, a joke here, a glance there. However, she remained convictionless, and Anakin sought to capture her attention in an undivided way. Subtleties would do him no good, especially because he was unskilled in them. During the basic training remotes test, Anakin circled her as she worked, and made his intentions known. “Lookin’ pretty good out there, Torp,” The affectionate nickname was disliked by Vella, but she ignored it.

“Always do, Skywalker,” she replied curtly, spinning her saber behind her back to deflect a shot from a stray remote. Anakin had to admit, she made these sessions look easy.

“You think you could handle a real challenge?” he questioned, stopping to stand outside of the circle and she faced him.

“What? Like you?” she scoffed, and remained on guard against her floating opponents.

“Oh, no,” Anakin bowed his head with a chuckle. Using what he knew of Vella against her, he appealed to her ego. “You couldn’t handle a guy like me, Torp,” He gazed at her through his brows, gauging her reaction. Judging from the way she jutted her chin, tongued the inside of her cheek as she deflected blasts… he’d been successful.

The thought of dragging the young Anakin Skywalker to the broom closet crossed Vella’s mind as she fought off the last of her bots. Wary to celebrate yet, he patiently listened for her response.

“Couldn’t I?”

Anakin couldn’t believe that worked, smiling to himself as Vella pushed him into a supply closet and locked the door from the inside. He let her take the lead, since she was so comfortable in doing so. Fisting her hands in his robes, she tugged him to her, meeting their lips in heated contact.

Vella had a soft spot for Anakin, one that flared up when he finally decided to flirt with her. A solely physical attraction that could now be satisfied since he’d given her an opportunity to.

Anakin didn’t think he’d get this far. To the best of his ability, he matched her passion, but his lips were stiff from inexperience, and didn’t mold to hers in a satisfying way. Gently, his large hands gripped the bare skin of her shoulders between her sleeves and her collar to remove her. The action lit a fire in her, the impatience setting in. “What? What’s wrong?” she asked breathlessly, leaning into him as if to chase him.

“I’ve never done this before.”

Her hazy gaze focused, “What do you mean?”

“I’ve never really… kissed before.” It was dim in this room, but he could see her expression shift.

It caught her off guard, but now that she had kissed him she could see what he meant. Her grip on him loosened, and she stood back on the heels of her feet. “But you seem so…” she started but ended her own protest. Anakin was a guy that talked a big game, but apparently couldn’t back it up. So his reputation of being promiscuous was merely hot air, and Vella had a sneaking suspicion he was the source of it all. It made her scoff with pity. “You know, I could teach you,”

“Would you?” his tone conveyed pleasant surprise and Vella shrugged.

“Sure. I’m not above charity work.”

“Very funny.”

“Alright, come here,” Obediently, Anakin took a step closer, their chests inches away from each other. “Cup my face.” Hands that Vella has always admired, come up. Warm palms set against the corners of her jaw, thumbs stroking her cheek bones. She felt like they could wrap around her entire head if he tried to. She gulped at the thought, his tender grasp was intimate and it short circuited her brain. Almost forgetting she was supposed to teach him, “Lean down,” His nose brushed hers, finding his footing. Tentatively, his plump lips met hers, and as to not overwhelm him she refrained from introducing him to tongue. It was soft, and she tilted her head, sighing in content.

His trepidation did well for him, allowing him to take his time and to gain a feel for it instead of diving in headfirst. Her hands slid up from his chest to his shoulders, wrapping her arms loosely around his neck and pressing their lips further together. After the pleasant tingles of novelty faded, she wanted to take the lead. However, the need to see what he was capable of given the floor outweighed it. When he detached to breathe, he placed a peck against her panting mouth, displaying his impatience. As if to remind himself where she was in the dark, his thumb traced the outline of her bottom lip and he moistened his own lips, returning to hers with fervor. One of his arms wrapped around her waist, arching her into him, desiring her closer.

Vella was a stranger to kissing without deepening it, and it was a refreshing change to know this wasn’t escalating. What may be boring for her though, is all new to Anakin, and it was intriguing to be his personal playground to safely explore his sexuality in something as innocent as kissing for minutes.

When Vella was unable to take it any longer, she cut it short, but promised him they’d be able to continue this another time. Like a sort of kissing class.

Anakin didn’t get any feedback, but he was already over-analyzing his approach. It became an attainable skill, something he could win at. He practiced for his next time. He started checking his teeth in the mirror, and freshening his breath regularly. Kissing the back of his hand to try to emulate what she receives when their lips touch.

His disbelief that she had entertained him had erased, and he dialed up his flirtatious nature with her in order to guarantee himself another kissing lesson sooner than she expected. It had been mere days since their last encounter in the supply closet.

But here she was, back inside that closet, and she got ahead of herself. She pulled him flush against her, caging her between him and the wall. It was no help at all to assuage the fire within her, she needed more from him.

If it was anyone else she was teaching to kiss other than Anakin Skywalker, she’d be put off by how eager he was to learn more. Absorbing every change like a sponge and giving it back to her.

Vella hung on his noise of surprise when her curious tongue peaked out to draw along his bottom lip. He stiffened under her touch, but she persisted. Hesitantly, he parted his lips, as if intimidated by this next step. For the most part, he allowed her to explore his mouth. His muscle was dead in his mouth, hiding in the back of his throat as if afraid to do something wrong. Adorably uncharacteristic of him, Vella smirked against him, and pressed on. Coaxing him to play with her by gentle strokes, his tongue relaxed against hers, and curiously it reached out.

“Mhm,” she encouraged

He learned that when she hummed in approval, it meant he’d done something she liked.

That endowed confidence quickly faded as soon as it’d arrived. As always, Anakin got ahead of himself, poking his tongue through her lips unceremoniously and probing her unsuspecting mouth. Vella pulled back in surprise, separating from him to meet his wide-eyed gaze. “Uh-uh, Skywalker, what the hell was that?”

“Was that not good?” he asked, genuinely.

“Obviously not. Look, there’s a time and place to be forceful, but this isn’t it. You dialed up the heat out of nowhere! We’ve got to build to that but…” as she spoke, she realized his mistake only came from a place of enthusiasm, and she’d have to show him how to be gentle. She sighed. “… just not in this session. Let’s save it for later, yeah? For now, go slow.” Her arms encircling his neck tightened as she moved back in to rejoin him.

Going slow was by far Anakin’s biggest struggle. If it wasn’t hard, fast, and strong, Anakin’s tongue was dead in the water or too tense to be pleasurable. Even as he clumsily ventured into her mouth, he’d want to taste all the wrong things. He’d run his tip across her teeth, try to feel the back of her throat, and if she tried to slide her tongue against his to meld, he’d freeze up. She might as well be sucking on a glass bottle. Not to mention none of the previous acts listed were any sort of pleasurable to her. They were about as enjoyable as teaching Younglings to fence— constantly scolding technique and execution until she was blue in the face.

Vella noticed however, what he lacked in experience and decency, he made up for in passion and in perseverance. Most would probably have been too embarrassed to keep going or to continue kissing sessions at all. Skywalker, as hard headed and foolhardy as ever, pursued his goal relentlessly, tackling the challenge with the same fervor he approached with everything. It was admirable to say the least.

Not only that, but Vella had begun to look forward to their sessions, especially after he’d shown such improvement in tongue kissing.

Once he’d unlocked it, it was something he incorporated faithfully. It added a heat to their sessions, feverishly exploring each other’s mouths until he was pushing her up against the wall, an arm snaking around her to press her to him. The act had her breathless, feeling his rigid muscle underneath his robes. She tilted her head, deepening their access to each other, and emitted a sound of confusion when he broke their contact, planting a chaste kiss on her lips as if he couldn’t wait to restore it after he spoke. “I want you to suck on it.” his plump lips murmured against hers.

Vella’s mind traveled immediately somewhere else, glancing down at where their torsos met. Bewildered as to how he jumped to that conclusion, but somehow not against it— Regardless, it was too soon, and she inhaled to tell him her answer when he beat her to it. “My tongue, I mean,” he added. She was taken aback at her shameful mistake, relieved he didn’t know how softly she would’ve rejected the option of giving him oral, with the promise she’d be open to it in the future.

However, it wasn’t something she’d done before. Unfamiliar with sucking on a tongue, and inexperienced with the sensation of it let alone doing it to someone else.

But there was something adventurous that stirred within her when she was with Anakin, and even though she had no idea where he got that idea, she agreed to it anyway. When they reconnected, she felt his tongue plunge into her mouth, lapping at it, and she latched on like she would his dick. Lips enclosed over it, sucking it gently further into her mouth.

The sound she drew from him was sinful. Low voice caressing her ears, sending chills down her spine. It spurred her on, bobbing her head as if she really were giving him oral, her own tongue toying with the tip of his. His moan made her eyes flutter, surprised at her reaction. Being pressed together so tightly, she didn’t realize she was instinctually wiggling her hips, seeking out friction to satisfy a burn between her legs, caused by Anakin’s sultry noises.

Once he noticed, it snapped him out of it, breaking their kiss, connected by a string of spit as they panted.

“I think we should stop here.” he said.

Vella couldn’t believe that she did that. She and Anakin had known each other forever, grown up alongside one another, and worked together as padawans. She shouldn’t be feeling this way about someone like that.

To work out her frustrations, she spent a lot of time training, working through her yearning for him by beating the sandbag to a pulp. Hearing the girls behind her talk about how Anakin Skywalker had smiled at them today made Vella fight harder. Though, there was some sick satisfaction that she was the one kissing Anakin in a closet the other day and not them. It shouldn’t be so pleasurable to be close to someone so sought after. Ever since he’d grown up in those few months away from Coruscant, spending time in the Outer Rim studying with Master Kenobi. When he had come back, he looked like a completely different person. Sprouted like a tree for one thing, towering over her. A dreamy smile that made her go weak in the knees, his voice lowered. He’d grown into himself, even if he was a little gangly. Vella had always had a thing for skinny guys.

The sandbag swayed to a halt, and she braced on it. It wasn’t like she couldn’t ignore her physical wants, it was nothing to get upset over. Teaching him how to kiss was supposed to be fun, so that's what it all was. Fun. Innocent fun.

However it didn’t feel so innocent when he grabbed her face like he did, cradling her head as he interlocked their lips in something so passionate as a dance. He’d improved his technique in such a short time it weakened Vella’s knees, clutching the front of his robes to keep herself afloat. Their noses brushed as he deepened it, his hand feeling large and heavy when it splayed against the small of her back, kissing their hips together. That pooling heat was back again, and she steeled herself from moving against him to chase such casual sensations.

“You’re so good at this,” Anakin murmured against her lips, and it only worsened her condition. She scraped her nails up the scanty curls at the nape of his neck, earning a graveled, rumbling hum— shivering her. His hold on her was so tender, yet urgent, as if she could break in his hands if he squeezed too hard. Never in her life had she been treated so kindly, and the warmth of her cheeks increased. Her hesitant step back hinted what she wanted, and Anakin obliged, closing in and caging her against the wall. When the movement of her head was too limited to angle up at him, he tilted it to the side for her, trailing feverish open mouthed kisses from her jawline to her neck. As if unable to ignore leaving his signature, he bit into the delicate skin. Involuntarily, she whimpered— At first, it humiliated her, wondering if he’d react shyly the way he did last time. Cut off their session short because his instructor was too into it. To her captivation, impossibly he pinned her further to the wall this time by his hips. It was instinctual, and it gave her the courage to invite him to take things to the next step. While he sucked on her pulse point, periodically running over it with his tongue, Vella opened up her robes a little, allowing her chest to breathe, to expose generous cleavage.

Anakin, consumed in his ministrations, arched her into him by handling her waist, unabated as she spoke his name, “Anakin— Ani,” Her hand ventured further into his hair, pinching it in between her fingers to send tingles down his spine. “You can move down,” Her phrasing a statement as to not betray her most obvious willingness to beg.

He was content where he was, but once he processed her words, he pulled back, looking at her in the dark since his eyes had adjusted to the dim light shining through the crease under the door. His silence solicited her elaboration, and sheepishly she gestured downwards to direct his attention.

Unfortunately, his reaction was difficult to read. She’d hoped he’d attack her with the same avarice, adopt that hungry glint in his eyes as he devoured what she offered him— especially something so sacred. Perhaps she should’ve anticipated his trepidation. All of this was still new to him, and she had moved too fast. Her mouth gaped as she thought of what to say, drawing breath to apologize.

“I don’t want to.” Anakin responded, easily, as if he vaulted no obstacles to make up his virgin mind. Once again, rejection stung. Vella blinked hard, because fabricating an explanation for this was unfathomable after she’d been embarrassed.

She fixed her robes, and wordlessly exited the closet.

Weren’t boys supposed to be eager for this sort of thing? She remembered how sporadic he acted during their first lessons. Shit at it as he was, he soaked up everything like a sponge and thanked her for it. Here she professed more, but he simply “didn’t want to.” Obstinate, impressionless he was scared of it— she’d seen him scared, he wasn’t scared. Did he really not want her?

This incident was not so readily recoverable. Territory she hadn’t traversed was all too unnerving to navigate, and there wasn’t anyone to confide in. Usually, she’d confide in Anakin, but that was not an option.

“Torp,” A recognizable, feathery voice broke through the din of the temple outside this empty training room. Vella kept her back turned, unraveling the wrappings from her knuckles.

“What do you want, Skywalker?”

“You’ve been avoiding me, and I wanted to know if we were still on for tonight.” he sounded so timid, it guilted her.

“Is that what you want?” Her reply proved itself to be in a word… stern.

“Yes, but why have you been avoiding me?”

Vella wished this conversation was over so she could return to her self pitying. She rounded on him, “Do you find me intimidating?” Some might mistake the question for rhetorical, or derisive. But Anakin knew her. There was vulnerability in her narrowed eyes. “Do I disgust you? Did I do something wrong?” Everything she heard about boys felt turned upside down. Was she not desirable?

Anakin was not good at this part of friendship. The emotional conversations never came easy to him despite his gift in reading people. “You didn’t do something wrong. You left before you told me how you felt though, perhaps you shouldn’t be so quick to retreat.” Was that constructive criticism enough to suffice so they could go back to being friends? He was uncomfortable.

Vella swallowed her pride because he was right. “Is there a reason you don’t want to go further with me? Are you scared?”

Anakin answered honestly, shaking his head and flashing a glance at her shoes. “No. I just don’t want to. You told me you’d teach me how to kiss, that’s all I’m interested in doing.”

So kiss they did. Kissing sessions that left Vella hot and bothered and alone. It didn’t make sense to her how Anakin could leave them so cool-headed, as if he hadn’t thrown her for a breakneck loop and called it a day. Where she’d have a wet spot, Anakin would be flaccid. It was frustrating, and the emotion bubbled inside her towards the ends of these sessions because where she’d want to grind, straddle, ask for his helping hand in between her legs, sit directly on his dick— she wasn’t allowed to. In the middle of their latest escapade, Anakin sensed her desperation in how she clung onto him, and kissed him hard. To the point where it’d be harsh if Anakin wasn’t into pain.

“You think these are still a good idea? Can’t help but feel you’re starting to resent me.”

Was Vella imagining things or was this boy grinning against her lips? “Quit it, Skywalker, aren’t you having fun?” she taunted, attempting to veil her feelings for him with quips and carelessness. In that case, Anakin stooped, picking her up by her thighs. Obediently, they locked around his waist and she gazed at him with wide glossy eyes as he merely met that gaze with sultry half lids, placing a chaste kiss against her lips.

“My neck was starting to hurt,” he drawled, knowing that was not a sexy line and she scoldingly patted his shoulder. He snickered.

“Fuck off,” she told him, reconnecting their lips throwing her arms around his neck.

“So… you guys never…” you trailed off, allowing Anakin to put the pieces together himself.

He merely smiled at you dreamily. “Nope. She wanted to, asked me a bunch, but I didn’t like her like that.”

“You don’t have to like each other to fuck.”

“No,” Anakin agreed with a shrug, “but for me I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else but you.” He lifted your conjoined hands, brandishing his lips against your knuckles as he held your gaze. The realization hit you, and your lips stretched.

“No…” You narrowed your eyes. “You mean to tell me you’d met me by then?”

“Towards the tail-end, yeah,” His strong hands found your waist, lifting you off the counter effortlessly to set you back down in front of him, reveling in your starstruck expression. “You were the one that made me realize I was interested in sex at all.” As if to emphasize that point, he met your mouth with his, parting your lips impatiently so he could return to tracing every corner of your mouth with his tongue, intent on finishing what he started before recounting the story.

You had one last question, pulling back from his heartfelt and hardened notions and he sighed. “You know, you paint yourself as quite the hero here.” You patted his chest, “Did Vella give you reports? How did you know everything she was thinking?”

Anakin, hellbent on shutting you up or talking about this while he was inside you, he tossed the answer back at you before scooping you up into his arms. “Well, you asked for an explanation, and I thought you deserved a good story.”

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earthstellar · 1 year

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I love Last Bot Standing so much

because Old Rodimus has so much potential:

-First time he stands up and his back strut makes concerning noises and is sort of sore for no apparent reason/his knee joints give out: oh god oh fuck I'm old oh no OH NO

-First time he realises he doesn't have the energy or motivation to run around with the others: finds that he doesn't mind as much as he thought he would; he lets the others explore and enjoys hearing them messing with each other in the distance

-First time he realises he's forgetting details about long-past missions, lost a few names and places: After worrying there might be something wrong with his processor, he vaguely remembers something Ratchet said a long, long time ago about data decay-- and tries to calm himself with the thought that it's normal, data doesn't last forever-- but he still stays up all night thinking of everyone he never wants to forget, scared he's already forgotten some and can't tell

-First time he notices all the new cracks in his faceplate: He thinks he looks a bit like Kup now, and it makes him happy and sad at the same time

-First time he goes on a scouting mission and has to take a break or he knows he won't make it back alone: no more solo missions? maybe. maybe he never planned on surviving this long, and doesn't know what to do by himself

-First time he struggles to fully boot up from recharge: He realises one day he really won't be getting up again, and with no medics and no maintenance materials, that day may be soon. He survived the war, and all that came after, but nobody can survive time. He's okay with that. He was a Prime, once. He had a good run.

-First time a younger bot calls him old: He can't help but remember when he said the same things to so many old, grumpy bots back in the day. He's a little ruffled by it, surprised, because he still doesn't really think of himself as old. But the kiddos aren't wrong. Inside, it makes him a little happy. Maybe he can do something good for them while he's still around.

-First time he realises he's just not physically able to flame on anymore, due to age or lack of maintenance/fuel or all of the above: He realises he might be losing ability, and it depresses him for a bit until he decides to focus on what he still can do. He can remember an old bot from a while back, who started losing some function. He respected that bot; He kept going as long as he could. Rodimus doesn't want to be too grumpy in his old age. He'll keep on going, too.

-First time he settles down for recharge and gets a moment of actual quiet, the younger bots are all outside together doing a "camping night", the rest are already recharging, and it's just him and the stars for the first time in a long time: He looks out towards the general direction Cybertron is probably in (he's not 100% sure), and briefly, aside from everything else, despite everything, is happy he's lived long enough for closure. The war ended. Society, for a while, was recovering (or trying to). He went on adventures. He saw and did impossible things, with people he genuinely loved.

He has a lot of regrets, but it's over now.

And that's OK. He's cool with that, although he wishes he weren't as sore or tired.

He's had a long, long life. He made a few good calls, now and then, here and there.

And he plans to do whatever Rodimus things he can, right up until there's no more fuel, no more memories, no more time.

#maccadam #mtmte #last bot standing #maccadams #rodimus #idw rodimus #lost light

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decepti-thots · 6 months

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Really enjoy your post about Optimus holding onto skewed views of his relationships. I think a lot about how soon he started calling Megatron a friend when they interacted maybe twice and said interactions weren't exactly pleasant. How he undermined Bee and treated him as just another politician while calling him friend. How we don't really see him have much of a personal or pleasant relationship with Prowl and he calls him friend. There's so much distance between Optimus and the people important to him, and we know he knows that, but he doesn't talk as if that distance is there most of the time. By the end of IDW1 it really felt like he didn't have any friends at all even though a lot of characters would probably say otherwise. The character we see have the most significant legitimate friendship with Optimus (in my opinion) is Senator Shockwave. And even he had ulterior motives.

This is EXCELLENT anon, exactly right IMO. A lot of the Megatron-Optimus stuff in particular I think is a peculiar byproduct of phase two writers (lbr, mostly Roberts) attempting to make IDW Megatron-Optimus into something that more strongly resembles the kind of dramatic narrative that exists in other continuities but realistically just does not make sense in IDW at that point; obviously the easy one to point at is TFP, but actually this also is a situation where Marvel G1 and G1 generally actually does also have that vibe, if you take into consideration the lesser-known prose stories for Marvel especially. And it has this fascinating knock-on effect in IDW of creating the dynamic you're highlighting here, which honestly is much more interesting than if Optimus had had those genuinely close relationships, and which I think Barber is able to kind of work with more deliberately in his later work in the comics. He's constantly trying to create these connections retroactively, to fill a gap because the gap exists in the first place. Hell, at one point in the exRiD/OP stuff he calls Soundwave 'old friend', and like. They are not old friends. But Optimus certainly would have known of Soundwave, and you can see how the narrative would get constructed, out of the need to have some kind of interpersonal continuity he would otherwise totally lack. It's like he so lacks strong interpersonal relationships he substitutes symbolic ones by way of the war, almost. It's all he has after a certain point! Those ideological touchstones, in place of actual connections, some of it self imposed, some of it externally forced on him.

A lot of the real tail-end stuff with Optimus in IDW is about constructed narratives and their power and how they can constrict the people trying to live within them, and I think it fits perfectly with this, honestly. IDW Megatron and Optimus weren't ever actually friends, but they both understand how they could have been, and in their own way they both try and create narratives in their post-war lives that allow them to explore that now they've made themselves into people who cannot properly connect to anyone around them. (I really dislike the LL 'Megatron goes off to the functionist universe' stuff for various reasons, but one thing I actually do think is potentially fascinating is the way it allows him to live out a fantasy of actually knowing Orion, just because it highlights how he never did in the way the audience might assume by default.) And even pre-war, the way Orion lived his life- essentially as someone who did not understand his own complicity in the downfall of things and the structures of corrupt power until it was too late- did not create any long-term interpersonal connections. He can mostly only imagine them. He wants them, but he can't find a way to make them, so he tries to turn those imagined connections into reality just by saying them.

And again, it's definitely accidental, but it's weirdly fitting that the one other character he actually does have any canonical basis for an 'old friend' thing with... leaves. Which is Ratchet. It's weirdly fitting I think that Ratchet, who actually knew him in some intimate capacity pre-war, who is his old friend, is the person who is explicitly like 'no, I can't stay here anymore because there's no room for me' and leaves him, not unkindly, but definitively.

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min-youngis · 2 years

Text

Say My Name - j.jh

Jeong Jaehyun x Reader

Fluff, Suggestive, Angst, Humour; NC-17; 12.1k words

Bodyguard x Princess, Royalty AU

Swearing, Alcohol Mention, Implied Spicy Times, Anxiety Mentions, Medium-to-Fast Burn, Mutual Pining, Sexual Tension, Jealousy Jealousy, Sword Fighting as Foreplay

Four years at sea have trained you to survive on close to nothing, to plant your feet firmly on the deck of a ship without stumbling, to navigate a vessel through the eye of an earth-shattering storm. The eighteen years before that had taught you how to be an able princess, the darling of the kingdom, to observe without being observed, and to wheedle answers from people who did not wish to part with them. Now, with your ascension to the throne nearing, you’re learning the art of statecraft and diplomacy, war room tactics and dirty compromises with smaller rulers. But there are no lessons for what to do when your lifelong bodyguard starts looking a little too interesting.

A/N: surprise bitches, bet you thought you’d seen the last of me. pulled these titles out of my ass. cried a bit at jaehyun’s lil speech at the end.

i'd love to hear feedback, spread the love!

masterlist in my description.

If the fly doesn’t shut up soon, you’re going to scream.

“And you, your Highness? What do you think?”

You abruptly school your expression into one of neutrality. The fly is probably glad to be rid of your glare, anyway. “About?” you venture, trying not to inflect too much cluelessness into your voice. The exasperated look from your father isn’t very promising.

The General, more than used to your wandering attention, makes no outward expression of annoyance at having to repeat himself. “About the campaign. Do you see anything untoward in the agreement?”

At the slight dip of his head, you become cognizant of the rough parchment on the table in front of you. Hurriedly, you take it in your hands and begin to speed read, keenly aware of the eyes of the rest of the state diplomatic heads on you.

“Looks fine,” you acquiesce, not giving it too much of a thought. The war room is in the worst ventilated quarter of the castle, and you can feel the fabric of your inners sticking to the skin of your back with sweat. The fly won’t shut up. You want to get out.

Every day has been like this for the last week, since you returned from your travels. You were given a day to recover from the four years away, to regain your land legs and get reacquainted with the King and Queen, before you were put to work. That had been the agreement. Four years outside the kingdom, to explore and travel and sail to any port in the world with your crew, to experience freedom, before being cloistered back inside the castle you had grown up in to begin your training as the heir to the throne. The sudden adjustment had been difficult enough, dealing with the rigid palace timings and having to follow all the rules again after spending years with only the sea and your own thirst for adventure to guide you, but what had made it all even more unbearable was the incessant meetings with the war council and the diplomatic advisors about state policy. Your father had thought it was important for you to be present for these, to get a feel for what your future would look like. At the moment, it doesn’t feel very fun.

Thankfully, it only takes a few minutes to wrap up the meeting once all the council heads have given their revisions and approval. Slowly, the others filter out of the room, leaving behind you and your father. You make your way to walk out as well, standing up with a nod at the King, when he stops you.

“You know what I’m going to say,” your father states.

The single open window lets in a stream of sunlight that illuminates the greys in his hair, the wrinkles on his face. But his appearance belies a strength that you had grown up in awe of. There’s steel in his eyes, spine ramrod straight in his high-back chair. Impressive, but you wish there was a little less steel to be seen right about now.

You do know what he’s going to say. How are you going to govern the country when you’re the ruler? Why don’t you pay attention in the meetings? How will the council respect you if you spend your time here zoning out?

“Then don’t say it,” you shrug.

He sighs, shoulders dropping just a little bit. It makes you feel just that little bit bad. “Did you listen at all?”

“The agreement is completely unfair,” you declare, sitting back down on your seat opposite him.

“That’s the point, Y/N. There’s always a loser in any compromise.”

“You’re cutting off their trade route to push them to depend on us. That isn’t compromise, that’s cruelty.”

He sternly replies, “We’re building a dam.”

“You’re building an excuse,” you spit out. “You’re shutting off a country half our size from the mainland, forcing them to rely on us for trade, and then you’re going to impose a completely unreasonable tax on them.”

“If they have a problem with it, they’ll get back with an agreeable alternative.”

“They won’t risk angering us, and you know it.”

Silence. Unconsciously, you’ve moved forward in your frustration, and you lean back in your seat, stewing. Your father stares right back at you, equally defiant.

“Why didn’t you mention all this at the meeting?” he asks.

“Your General is a…difficult man to talk to.” A sneer accompanies your words.

“Our General is the reason we have one of the biggest armies in the world.”

“And the most enemies.”

The King only sighs in reply.

Giving up early today, you think.

On receiving no further response, and recognising that you’ve both reached the stalemate that you end up in nearly every day, you make to get up again. This time, you get as far as the door of the war room before you’re stopped.

“I’m increasing the frequency of your sessions with Junmyeon.”

You turn around on your heel, protest hot on your lips, but the warning in your father’s eyes makes you halt. Instead, you lift your neck, stubbornness in your words as you reply, “He can spend as long as he wants teaching me statecraft, but it won’t make a difference to my opinion about your general’s dirty tricks.”

With that, not allowing yourself to be stopped again, you promptly stalk out of the room.

“Fucking hell, it’s almost like I need to protect others from you.”

You hold your position, sword pointed right at the middle of Jaehyun’s neck as you look down at his sprawled frame on the floor, relishing in the satisfaction of your third straight win of the day. Still panting from the round, you grin in response to his comment as you move your sword out of the way, arm extended for your opponent to stand up. He accepts your help, grabbing his own sword that you had knocked out of his grip from the floor as he lets you assist him to his feet.

Wordlessly, the both of you make your way to the benches that line the circular practice courtyard, where your other guard, Hyejin, keeps watch. The argument with your father had left you restless, and like all previous similar instances, you had spent the evening training with the two members of your personal cohort. The balanced weight of the sword in your hand, the adrenaline from the fights and victories, and the exertion from all the physical activity had served to clear your head per usual, leaving behind only a dull soreness in your bones that you appreciate.

Jaehyun and Hyejin have been with you for years – first as friends, only a little older than you, and children of members of the royal guard, when you were young. As the years had passed, time you had spent running around in the palace gardens and aggravating the head cook had slowly turned into them training in the guard, and you preparing for your eventual Queen-ship. On your sixteenth birthday, it was inevitable that they were announced as your official guards. You had missed them in your four years away, but the reassurance they had always provided made an easy reappearance after your return.

“How many straight losses was that? Five?”

Jaehyun scoffs at your goading as he rubs a cloth over his face. He’s only got on the loose, white tunic that’s worn by the guards below their uniforms, and sweaty patches on the fabric make it stick to his toned skin. It makes you savour the effort he’s had to put in to fight you. “Three. And I let you.”

“You keep believing that,” you grin, giving his shoulder a soothing pat before you pull the coat over your own, equally sweaty tunic. “Next, you’ll tell me that you would have beaten me in the next round.”

“I would have actually beaten you in the next round. Just to keep you humble.”

“Humble me, then. Hyejin, do we have time for another round?”

Your other guard doesn’t look at you from her roving gaze on the perimeter walls when she replies. “Not if you’re both going to bathe before dinner.”

A pause.

“Please bathe before dinner.”

Jaehyun makes a big show of disappointment as he slides his sword into the scabbard that he’s attached to his waist, now fully attired in his proper uniform in preparation to go back into the castle. “Guess I’ll just have to teach you a lesson some other time, Your Highness,” he sighs in faux-displeasure.

“Guess so, Jaehyun. Until then, I can be as insufferable as I want,” you smile, beginning to walk towards the palace doors and feeling the reassuring, constant motions of your guards behind you.

Under her breath, Hyejin hums, “Is that not what you’ve been doing so far?”

“I could choose to not bathe.”

“And Her Majesty could choose to dismiss you from the dinner table because you’re masking the smell of the food with your scent.”

You waggle your finger in playful warning at Hyejin behind you as you all reach closer to your room. “Don’t go around giving her any ideas, please. I have no idea what my father has already told her about today, but it can’t be very pleasant.”

Her Majesty, (the Queen, your mother, etcetera), would rather see you suffering and starving in bed right now than next to her on the table, you’re sure and certain.

Her steely glare hasn’t left you since you entered the room, her eyes narrowing at your (freshly cleaned and dressed) frame the moment you had entered. It had prompted Jaehyun to mumble a quiet ‘Ouch,’ under his breath behind you, and you could hear the wince in his voice. Now, after spending nearly an entire meal faced with the full wrath of that glare, you’re inclined to agree with him.

It’s silent in the small dining hall, the one you use when it’s just family, with only the sounds of cutlery clinking. When you finish eating, dabbing the sides of your mouth with the white cloth, you observe your parents. You wonder if you’ll be able to make it out of the room pleading a headache before they’re done with their meals, but for the second time in a day, your smooth getaway is foiled.

“Sit,” your mother calls out, even before you make the smallest move to get up. “Wait.”

Perseverant, you reply in a tired voice, “I’d love to talk, but it’s been such a long day. Maybe tomorrow?” You press a limp hand up to your forehead for extra measure. One of the guards lining the walls lets out a puff of air that sounds like repressed laughter. Your target audience remains unimpressed.

The King remains a quiet onlooker as you and your mother face-off, but you notice the glint of satisfaction in his eyes when you back down. He’s staying for the show. Defeated, you lean behind in your high-back chair in a show of acquiescence. “What would you like to discuss?”

“How have your lessons with Junmyeon been going?”

“Fine.”

She doesn’t respond, quietly waiting for you to elaborate.

You sigh. “Boring. He tells me things I already know, and the things I don’t know are said in such a monotone that I don’t want to know them.”

“Hmm. And how was the meeting today?”

“Same as all the others. The General shows just how crooked his moral compass is, and everybody suitably recalibrates theirs at his every proclamation.”

Silence.

Then, “You do realise that you’re the princess? That you’re next in line to the throne?”

At your confused expression, your mother drops the sternness. “You are the second most important person in that room. What’s stopping you from telling them what you think?”

“They won’t listen, that’s what’s stopping me,” you huff.

“So, make them listen,” your mother insists. “Remind them that you’re their future Queen. You aren’t gallivanting across the globe in your trousers, singing sea shanties while pulling rigs and sleeping in dingy bars with your crew anymore, Y/N. You’re training to be a ruler. When you take over the kingdom, you’re going to need people who respect you, advisors you can trust. Use these meetings to scope them out. Find a way to work with the General. And for heaven’s sake, pay more attention in your lessons.”

You’re stunned into silence. You think your father might begin to break into applause.

Subdued, you mumble, “I- I’ll see what I can do.”

With that, your mother offers a firm nod before turning in her seat. “Now how was your day, darling?”

“Just got a thousand times better,” the King replies with a wide grin on his face.

This time, you aren’t stopped when you excuse yourself from the meal.

The palace walls aren’t really as high as they look. The turrets run deceptively tall when they’re seen from the ground, and the four spires seem as though they touch the sky, but when you’re actually atop the towers, it doesn’t feel that high at all. Your legs dangle over the edge of the second tallest surface in the castle, and despite your guards’ complaints, it’s not that dangerous. Not really, not when you’ve got one of the many watch balconies jutting out just a few feet below you.

The royal family had gone to bed hours ago, but sleep had remained adamantly elusive. Then you remembered the terrace. Giving the guards stationed outside your door the slip, you had made the familiar trek, avoiding the patrolling security, and climbed up the stairs.

There’s a nip in the air, a chill that’s so typical of this time of year, but you relish the bite of the wind against your frame. From this height, you can see beyond the palace gates, out into the expanse of the kingdom’s capital. It’s too late at night to expect the hustle and bustle of regular city life, but the lights in some households remain luminant.

You’re confident that you’ll be able to make it back to your rooms in secrecy when you have to, but for now, you want out. Just some time alone.

“Thought I might find you up here.”

You don’t turn around. Unspeaking, you pat the space next to you in invitation.

Jaehyun takes the proffered seat, his presence and the heat of his body welcome after so long in the cold. Out of the corner of your eye, you see that his hair is tousled, and the only weapon he’s carrying is a long sword tucked into the belt of his tunic that looks rumpled, hurriedly worn.

“How did you know I was gone?”

“The guards heard you climbing out through your balcony. You’re slipping.”

“I’m out of practice,” you combat. The last time you had executed this escape manoeuvre, you had been twenty-four hours away from a voyage with no end destination, and possibly no return, four years ago. “I’m sorry you had to be woken up.”

“I wasn’t asleep.”

“Why not?”

He doesn’t meet your eyes. Then suddenly, it hits you. The messy hair, the haphazard tunic. Is that a bruise near the side of his neck? Immediately, you backtrack. “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry you were- uh, interrupted in your…activities, I didn’t know – “

“It’s alright,” Jaehyun chuckles at your rambling, the sound low and amused, if a bit sheepish. “This is my duty and all that.”

You aren’t fully convinced. Wincing, you ask, “Hopefully, she understood?”

“We aren’t courting or anything. No harm, no foul.”

It shouldn’t be such an awkward conversation. You’ve both known each other for years, personally as friends, and professionally as heir-apparent and guard. You’re both adults. So why do you suddenly feel colder at the knowledge that Jaehyun has a life outside of you? When you had been away, he and Hyejin had been assigned patrol duty; just a few hours every day, giving them more than enough opportunity to explore their lives aside from palace work. And they don’t owe you anything when their shifts are over. What they do with their free time is none of your business.

Maybe Jaehyun notices that you’ve suddenly gone quiet, and when he speaks again, it’s cajoling, curious, and conspicuously a different topic. “Why couldn’t you sleep?”

“It’s weird.” You keep your eyes fixed on the horizon. “I came back thinking I was ready to start training, but I feel so…out of place. The rules, the routine. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to live with a schedule. How to be a next-in-line.”

“You seem to be doing fine, all things considered.”

The small laugh bubbles out of you. “That’s awfully optimistic of you.”

“No, I’m serious!” Jaehyun twists slightly, making you shift your gaze from the dark blue sky to his earnest face as he continues. “In one week, you’ve managed to cause more upheaval in that war room than there’s been in the last year. They aren’t indifferent to you - they’re just trying to get things done quicker now because they know that you’ll make changes when you take over.”

You don’t want to believe it, but you trust his judgement and opinion, and you aren’t keen on starting a debate at the moment. “And the first person to go will be that dratted General.”

“You’ll be fine. It’s been a while, but you’ll get used to the palace again. Only a matter of time.”

You recognise the wisdom in his words, letting out a small sigh. Agreeable silence settles like a blanket over your frames, and the lights from the city keep your blank focus for the next few minutes, until you feel your eyes beginning to droop. Giving Jaehyun’s shoulder a pat, you say after a yawn, “I should get back to bed. And you should get back to…whatever you were doing.”

The discomfort at the thought spikes for a second before you forcibly dull it again, as your guard stands and gives you a hand to help you up. “Would it be too much to ask you to take at least one guard the next time you decide to disappear from your room in the middle of the night?”

“I’m afraid so. It defeats the purpose.”

He doesn’t look surprised at your answer, just slightly disappointed. “Alright, then. But I’m increasing the security in your wing at night. Can’t make it so easy for you to escape.”

You smile at the thought of the challenge, already plotting new routes in your brain. Maybe a disguise? By the time you reach your room, your eyes are threatening to shut fully. Jaehyun escorts you to the door, gives you a polite ‘Try not to do anything else that could jeopardise your safety tonight.’, and waits for you to sleepily nod and shut the door behind you. The sounds of him walking away accompany you on your journey to your own bed, and the thoughts of his destination continue to leave an unwelcome, sour taste in your mouth till you fall asleep.

The General’s tone is mocking when he asks, “What do you think, your Highness?”

“It’s a terrible idea.”

The silence in the wake of your proclamation is so loud, you could hear a pin drop. Maybe it’s a good thing you hadn’t spoken all these days, if only to stun the advisors into listening when you finally do.

The General sits similarly baffled for a second, but he’s the first to break the heavy quiet. Clearing his throat and darting a nervous glance at your father, he asks, “How so, your Highness?”

“If we do that, we come off as brutes.”

“So, we give in to their demands?”

“Then we’ll come off as pushovers.”

He grits his teeth, shooting another look at your father, who only looks on with approval. With great delight, you watch as the General takes a moment to calm himself, and asks in thinly-veiled annoyance, “Then what do you suggest, your Highness?”

You’re having far too much fun pushing his buttons, so you take your time leaning back in your chair, seeming unbothered, like you have all the time in the world. You let the silence stretch, watching as the advisors roll their eyes and let out small huffs of frustration at your antics, and quietly delight at the morphing of appreciation into exasperation on your father’s face. Finally, just when the General opens his mouth again, you cut him off. “Instead of taxes, demand something else. A percentage of profits from any goods transported through our kingdom. A cut of their infantry to handle security and maintenance of the new corridor. Control over a minor port city from their territory, enough to give us a better foothold in global sea trade. You’ll increase their employment and reduce wastage of our resources at the same time.”

Worried glances are exchanged when you finish, but they don’t bother you. You’ve said what you’ve been wanting to say for the last week. On seeing that there’s no reply forthcoming from anybody else, the King claps his hands with an air of finality and commandingly says, “Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us in the next few sessions. We’ll consider each option. Send a rider saying they’ll have our decision within the fortnight.”

You’re the first to get up from the table, and you feel eyes on you. Suspicious eyes, irritated eyes, slightly impressed eyes. At least now, they’re taking notice. You lift your chin up higher, deliberately not sparing them another glance, except for a nod at your father. Jaehyun’s proud expression meets yours before he and Hyejin take their places behind you, escorting you out of the silent war room.

The next few weeks are easier than the first, partly because the council has started listening to you in the meetings after that first day, and partly because you’re slowly getting used to palace life again. You might have had freedom out at sea, but you didn’t have silk covers to crawl into every night and rose-scented bath water to soak in to your heart’s content every day. Your mornings are spent in meetings, drafting new policies and regularly butting heads with the General. In the evenings, you train with your guards. Your years away have made you comfortable with the sword, and every session with Jaehyun leaves both parties sweaty and satisfied. Hyejin has taken it upon herself to improve your archery skills, and her tough-love approach makes your limbs sore and achy, but the burn keeps your head clear, even if you do end up having to moan and groan your way to bed every night.

You’ve been caught by Jaehyun lots of times on the terrace. You refrain from pointing out the details that make you stiffen – the unlaced tunic, the small, purpling bruise on his jaw, the mussed hair, and eyes that are too alert for two in the morning. These meetings all usually go the same way. A few minutes of awkwardness as you apologise for interrupting him and he waves you away, a few more minutes of silence where you both watch the darkened horizon, and then the stories. You’ve told him about the spices you’ve encountered on your travels that make your eyes water with just a whiff, the overgrown island with no inhabitants that you had run aground on, that one stormy night as the ship tossed on tsunami-like waves, making you wonder if you would see the sun again. You tell him about your crew – about Johnny, your first mate, and Yuta and Irene, with their pirate origins. You can’t keep the longing from your voice as you narrate these tales, however much you try. For his part, Jaehyun silently listens as you speak yourself to tiredness, till you’re finally ready to go to bed with the knowledge that you’ll fall asleep this time, and then escorts you to your rooms. In the morning, neither of you make any mention of it.

Four days a week, you sit out of council meetings and head to the library for your statecraft education with Junmyeon. You wish you could say they were going as smoothly as everything else; it’s still difficult to sit in one place and listen to him drone on about history without falling asleep. Once, even Jaehyun had to be shaken awake by a discreetly yawning Hyejin as they both stood guard. Of course, it hadn’t been your fault he had spent the night awake.

“What happened in 1732?”

Junmyeon’s question pulls you out of the hard, perhaps too wild, glare you’ve been directing at one of those blasted flies for the better part of the last hour. You vaguely recollect a mention of the year in question during the session, but your memory stops at that.

“A war,” you hazard.

Probingly, your tutor asks, “Which war?”

“The, uh, Great War of…1732?”

You get an unimpressed huff in response. He sits back in his chair, seeming so defeated that you almost feel bad for him. Almost.

“It was the Final War of Demacia. Nearly half our current trade routes are possible due to the victory, and some of our biggest exports are from the lands we annexed during that period.”

That sounds like something you should have known.

You’re trying to formulate an appropriately chastised response, and you are chastised, when an interruption manifests itself in the form of a throat being cleared.

“That’s enough for today, Junmyeon. Thank you.”

You feel your blood chill at the sound of your mother’s voice. You slowly turn around to see her serenely gliding out from in between bookshelves. As Junmyeon gives a short bow and gathers his books, you try to school your expression into one of passivity and calm. The Queen, in all her regality, refuses to look at you, preferring to let you stew and fidget as you straighten your back. She takes your tutor’s seat, directly opposite your own, calmly leaning back.

“Your father would like to step down as reigning monarch by year’s end.”

“What now?”

“He’ll be announcing his decision during the Annual Winter Ball, two months from now.”

“I’m sorry?”

“He’ll also be announcing your ascent, and the coronation preparations will begin soon.”

“Hold on a second,” you cry out, your increasing agitation at the surprise conversation finally culminating in a panicked shout. “What makes you think I’m ready for this? That the kingdom is ready for this?”

“You have been ready for this since you were born. This is what you have been training for.”

“You saw how terrible I am at history.”

Your mother’s placid expression doesn’t change. In the same, calm tone, she says, “We will look at different forms of teaching. Junmyeon suggested outdoor lessons. Maybe combined with your archery classes.”

Your thoughts are all jumbled, but before you can protest, the Queen holds up a palm - the first sign of assertion in the entire conversation. “What you cannot learn before sitting on the throne, you can learn on the job. Your father and I will be there to guide you.”

Her voice becomes more forceful as she continues, drowning out the beginnings of your misgivings. “It is time for a change of ruler. The kingdom will gain confidence in your leadership only once you begin to take decisions. We will start with weekly rounds of the capital city so they may be re-acquainted with you. After the coronation, a tour of the entire territory under you will be necessary, of course.”

You open your mouth once. Close it. Open and close again. Nothing comes out but a weak sort of whimper.

The Queen’s eyes turn gentle. “You have been training for so many years. Diplomacy comes naturally to you, and loathe as I am to admit this, your years as a ship’s captain have taught you leadership and given you real-world experience of the kingdom outside the castle. You’ve already begun to make your mark on the war council’s decisions. This is but a natural progression. The next step.”

“I’m not ready,” you manage to choke out. The little speech has served to only further your concerns, reminding you of the magnitude of the conversation. “I thought I had a couple of years left.”

“You will be a kind and just ruler, I am sure of it. You just need a little more focus and confidence.”

All you can do is chew your lip in consternation.

“There is also another matter.” A flash of uncertainty crosses your mother’s face, so quick that you think for a moment that you imagined it. “As per custom, a ruler must take a consort within the first year of ascension.”

At this, your face turns stony, nervousness giving way to annoyance. A reaction she must have anticipated, given her hand coming up to pacify once more, before you get a chance to hotly reply. “I am well aware that you have no intention of marrying immediately. I also have full confidence in the fact that you are capable of ruling this kingdom single-handedly. But the job takes a lot, and after a point, a companion will become necessary to keep you grounded. All I’m asking of you is to think it over. Scope out some of the neighbouring kingdoms for eligible suitors. We can organise a ball if needed.”

For the second time in the conversation, you’re left speechless, mouth opening and closing like a fish. You can tell when a discussion has room for disagreement. This one brooks none.

Like she didn’t just drop life-changing news on your lap with all the delicateness of a wild horse, your mother gives you a pat on your arm, stands up, and glides out of the room.

“Big day, huh?”

You chuckle bitterly.

“Understatement of the fucking century,” you bite out.

The kingdom - your kingdom - is darker than usual tonight. A festival at a nearby village took place, meaning the people of the capital were spending the night there. The lack of light from houses means the stars are clearer, twinkling mockingly at your slumped over frame.

Jaehyun doesn’t seem his usual dishevelled self tonight either. All clothes in place, outline of his dagger in his boot. You don’t want to think he might have come to realise how therapeutic you found these tower conversations, and figured that you might have needed a little more company after the revelations of the day, but you know he’s a perceptive man, and that’s probably exactly what happened.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

His voice is a low rumble, gentle and coaxing. You’ve almost always been able to hide nothing from him when he speaks that way.

Over the last few weeks, you’ve come to appreciate his solid presence, whether as a bodyguard during the day or a friend after sunset. He and Hyejin make you feel safe, and keep you company in your largely isolated existence. These facts you always knew. But the night-time adventures have been new. As a bodyguard, Jaehyun is a fighter through and through, always committed to his job to protect you. But these conversations, where he lets you talk yourself to exhaustion every night, decides to stay up with you rather than let you think yourself in circles alone, offers his own opinion on things you need some help with, and reassures you when the day has been particularly rough - these have been revelations. You don’t remember this kind of closeness before you left. You had also never really paid much attention to the warmth of his firm shoulder pressing into yours, or the fiery competition in his eyes when you sparred.

“What’s there to say? I’m not ready to rule, and nobody seems to realise that.”

“What makes you think you’re not ready to rule?”

You make a hassled flurry of motion with your hand, a literally-everything gesture, and a disbelieving look that makes him let out a small laugh. You slouch back down, satisfied that your point has been made.

“Alright,” he slowly continues once the silence has settled into a quiet comfort and you’ve calmed down a bit. “When do you think somebody’s ready to rule?”

Huffing, you begin to list out the very same things that had been running through your head for the last few hours. “When they know the history of the kingdom, maybe? When they can stand to be in the same room as their General. Definitely when they can say they’ve actually lived at the palace for an extended period of time recently.”

“Do you want to know what I, and most of the other guards, think?”

“Do share.”

“That you’re fearless and brave. That you can take the tough decisions that need to be taken, and that you love your kingdom enough to be able to recognise its problems and want to fix them. You think you’re not ready, but I - we - think you always have been.”

He’s leaned towards you a bit now, conviction writ large on his face as he searches your expression for a reply that doesn’t seem to be forthcoming. His hair has grown out a bit, a couple of dark brown strands fluttering near his temples in the gentle midnight breeze. When did he grow so tall?

You need to look away, overwhelmed by his response and the quiet certainty with which he says it.

Clearing your throat, you let the soundless dark settle once more around you after his proclamation. When you feel comfortable, you give voice to your other concern.

“How am I supposed to find somebody and convince them to marry me in a few months?”

You had hoped he had another speech prepared for this one, but the answering silence drags. When you turn to look at him, he’s not facing you. Leaned back on his hands, palms supporting his frame and shoulders bunched up as he lets his legs dangle off the edge, he surveys the city sprawled in front of him. You take in the angles of his face, the slow blink of fluttering eyelashes, as his neck bobs with a swallow. If you weren’t surveying him so closely under the pretext of waiting for an answer, you wouldn’t have noticed the rueful smile that mars his visage, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it expression that immediately morphs into blankness.

“Anybody would be a fool to turn you down, your Highness.”

The next few weeks pass in a flurry of vigorous activity.

Your lessons are upped, and surprisingly more effective when taken outdoors. Junmyeon looks hilariously out of place in the garden, noticeably uncomfortable with the bees and the dirt, but he does his best, and the effort makes you eager to learn. It’s easier to stay awake when you want to witness the next rapidly-masked disgusted expression that crosses his face when a butterfly lands a little too close to his books.

You’ve become markedly better at archery, now dedicating a good portion of your day to practising on moving targets. Sword fighting, despite needing less attention, remains your preferred method of unwinding in the evenings.

Council meetings are easier, you find, now that you know you have the support of the guards standing along the edges of the room. Jaehyun’s words keep coming back to you every time you speak, and they lend a certain confidence to your words that you can certainly do with. Even the General has begun to ask for your opinion in a less mocking tone, and your father’s tacit approval has only become more apparent.

Your nightly rendezvous has come to a standstill. Part of you admits that it’s because your days are so packed that you hardly have any trouble falling asleep anymore, but you can’t ignore the fact that there’s been a tangible shift in the atmosphere between you and Jaehyun. There are no more muffled chuckles when you say something stupid, no more secret glances between meals when you look up from your soup towards the guards. Even sword fighting, while still exhilarating and adrenaline-inducing, has become purely transactional. A spar and then nothing. No goading, no whining. He bows, slides his sword back into his sheath, and you’re princess and guard once more. You feel like an invisible line had been crossed that night, and you flounder to steady your feet on the other side now. If Hyejin notices, she makes no mention of it.

Per the Queen’s plan, you’ve taken to roaming around the city when you can, usually in the late afternoons and near-dusks, when the streets are less crowded. These visits are filled with citizens either peering curiously at you while unobtrusively standing at their doorways, or approaching you with their problems. You make it a point to listen to all of them, even going so far as to get one of the palace librarians to accompany you so they can take down notes. This is one of your favourite parts of the day, you’ve come to realise. Understanding your people’s concerns and thinking of ways to help them.

The only real challenge to your otherwise smoothly operating schedule is the Annual Winter Ball. Every night, you come back to your room to find dozens of extravagant gowns in a multitude of colours and designs, hanging from so many racks that you can barely make your way to your bed. The ones you like are sent to your mother for final approval, and the ones you don’t are carted back to the modiste. They’re all fashionable, full of silk trimmings and lace ties, figure-hugging and made with lovely, soft fabrics. They’re also a pain to go through at the end of the day.

The bigger annoyance that’s present in your room every night is the bundle of portraits of princes and princesses from neighbouring kingdoms, suitors that you’re expected to choose from. To you, most of them look the same - same aristocratic high nose, strong chin, their credentials boasting leadership of successful armies and how close they are to ascending the throne. You try picturing yourself with them, any of them, but the image doesn’t form.

To make things worse, the Queen has taken to accosting you in different parts of the castle. In between her work organising the Ball and your rounds between the numerous tasks that are keeping you busy, she appears from behind pillars and materialises from the bushes. Her presence is always heralded by questions about who is going to be on your arm that evening, whether anybody has caught your eye. You wave her away with excuses of your packed schedule, pretend that you’re so very excited to reach your lessons on time, but her expression is knowing, and you believe it’s only a matter of time before she stops indulging your pathetic attempts at evasion.

It looks like today, your luck has finally run out.

“Are you going to keep watching?” you pant, as you parry a thrust, twisting your sword with a slide of metal against Jaehyun’s as you move it down and away before stepping towards him. For his part, he remains focussed on the fight, sweat dripping from his forehead and neck, tunic sticking to his frame as he mirrors with his own countermove.

From the side, your mother replies, “Will that be a problem?”

Your attention is caught by a lock of Jaehyun’s hair coming free of its set position, flopping over his forehead. It distracts you enough to not notice his subsequent strike, and the next thing you know, your sword is flying out of your grip and the tip of his is pointed steadily at the centre of your neck. You hold his glance for a long second, taking in the pride in his eyes and the quick smirk that vanishes instantly. Chests heaving with harsh pants, you both step away from each other. He gives you a short bow before moving away, closer to Hyejin who’s standing a bit further, to give you and the Queen some privacy.

It was a stupid loss. You have no right to get side tracked by something like that.

You gather your wits about you, knowing you’ll need them for the ensuing conversation. You can recognise the end of the line when you see it. Your mother remains silent until you’ve retrieved your sword and sat down next to her.

“I liked the blue dress, the one with the lace sleeves and silver bodice.”

You nod mutely in reply, acknowledging her approval of your choice. “What do you think about Prince Taeyong?” you counter, preferring to have this conversation done with.

“Second in line to the Cilician throne? A diplomatically strong match. Do you like him?”

“I will take him to the Ball, but I will not name him my husband so soon, after meeting with him once. If he turns out to be disgusting and awful, and chews with his mouth open, I reserve the right to never see him again and to look for a different suitor.”

The Queen lifts her oft-repeated pacifying gesture. “Of course. Nobody is forcing you to wed somebody you do not wish to. I’m glad you've made such a sensible choice. We’ll send out a special invitation at once.”

The third pin pokes you somewhere between your fourth and fifth rib, making you wince and let out a small squeak of surprise. The sewing mistress gives a low apology, but remains focussed on her job of gathering extra fabric from your shift and pinning it in place for alterations. You’re stood in the middle of your room, arms held out as two maids take measurements there and a third flits around your frame, making marks on your corset and humming periodically. The blue dress that’s been decided on hangs next to you in its frame, and occasionally, the head tailor, who’s writing down notes and surveying the preparations, looks between you and the dress. Sunlight streams into the room, illuminating the swathes of fabric strewn across the floor.

For nearly an hour, you’ve stood in this position, mostly patiently letting the tailors do their job. You have enough to keep yourself occupied. The thought of the Ball, just about a week away, where your coronation will be announced. The thought of Prince Taeyong, arriving at the castle in two days, whom you’ll have on your arm when the announcement is made. The thought of Jaehyun, always the thought of Jaehyun, standing on the other side of your door, stoic and stone-faced, never smiling at you anymore.

He’s taken to appearing more and more dishevelled in the mornings. Not once slipping at his job, but showing up bleary-eyed and with more marks around his neck at various stages of bruising. Stories of him frequenting seedy pubs and getting into fistfights reach you occasionally, and you can’t help but worry. But talking to him now is like talking to an enemy kingdom’s visiting embassy. Curt and perfunctorily polite responses, never elaborate and never giving any real information.

In the middle of your melancholy, your unseeing eye catches sight of a flash of a deep, red velvet, rich and grand, at the bottom of the pile on your bed. You don’t remember reviewing it before.

“May I see the red one there, please?”

A servant gently pulls it out, holding it up against her frame so you can see it fall clearly.

The neck is low - just short of too low for propriety - and the gold embroidery runs all over the fabric, highlighting the waist and neckline. Your mother would have a lot to say if you wore that for the Ball. But it can’t hurt to have it altered to your measurements, can it? Surely an opportunity will present itself sometime. Knowing that you’re setting yourself up for another hour in your current position, you give the order to ready the red dress as well.

A sharp knock on the door is the second thing to interrupt your thoughts.

“Your Highness?” comes Jaehyun’s low voice, muffled through the heavy wood.

Unthinking, perhaps uncaring, paying no mind to your current state of undress, you call out, “Come in.”

The tailors continue their work as if nothing has happened, as if a (tall, dashing, handsome) man is not standing in their vicinity while their future Queen is wearing nothing but a thin chemise and trying on different corsets. But you notice. And Jaehyun notices.

For a second, he stays on the threshold, just in the way of a sunbeam, his earlier focussed expression wiped from his face and shock replacing it. His eyes widen, and you revel in the small spike of emotion on his face, the tiniest morsel of animation you’ve managed to extract from him recently. You’re suddenly very aware of the broadness of his shoulders, the way his face is thrown into stark definition by the noon sunlight, soft hair a shade lighter in this position.

“What’s the matter?” you ask, your voice admirably steady.

But if that was admirable, Jaehyun’s subsequent transformation is nothing short of medal-worthy. His back straightens, confident and alert once more, and his visage is a smooth mask of nothing again. “The war council will begin within the hour. They’ve sent a messenger asking if they should wait for your arrival or proceed.”

“Let them start. I should be there momentarily.”

Your bodyguard gives a short, crisp bow, and then he’s spinning on the heel of his foot and walking out, not sparing you another glance, not sparing a thought for the burning you can feel just under the surface of your skin in all the spots his heated gaze had slowed.

Prince Taeyong is textbook. Handsome, kind, and gracious. He sits down only after you have, he listens to your answers attentively, and he’s one of the finest swordsmen of his kingdom. He’s only spent two days at the palace, but you’ve found yourself enjoying your time with him. The two of you had taken a round around the gardens earlier, the first time you could interact freely, and the glimpses you caught of his hidden candour delighted you.

The castle has been steadily filling up over the last few days with visiting royalty and the upper echelons in attendance for the Ball. The North and the West wings are reserved for guests, but meals are taken together in the large dining hall. Every dinner is a gamut of chatter, and the gardens are significantly crowded during the days. With just two days left for the Ball, excitement and anticipation are heavy in the air, and you’ve come across more than a few groups engrossed in animated discussion about their outfits and the rumoured crystal sculpture.

Nobody knows about the big announcement, of course. Your father stepping down while still in good health will come as a surprise to citizens and allies alike, but you don’t have the luxury of that ignorance.

Prince Taeyong may be charming, respectful, and friendly, but he can’t help you with your resurgent sleepless nights. The closer the Ball looms, the less sleep you manage to catch. However far you push yourself in training, however busy you keep yourself during the day, unconsciousness stays out of reach every night.

You had tried the terrace, hoping you could reclaim some semblance of your former friendship with Jaehyun under the cover of dark in a familiar setting, but it had been Hyejin who came to retrieve you. And she was less susceptible to your sob stories than Jaehyun was. With her, it was off to bed and not out of your room again until sunrise.

Jaehyun continues to remain distant, if not a little cold. You had noticed the clenching of his jaw when Taeyong had assisted you out of a patch of wet mud, the tightening of his grip on his sword when you had helped Taeyong up with a hand after a friendly spar. Every morning, you hope you’ll get more than one word answers and curt nods from him, but he remains frustratingly unavailable.

You’re back on the tower tonight, stars once again twinkling at your anxiety. You can feel your eyebrows drawn close together, the creases on your forehead, and the knots on your neck. The vast expanse of the kingdom beneath your feet only serves to heighten the magnitude of what’s about to happen, the population that you’ll be serving and be responsible for. You’re so preoccupied with your worries that you don’t hear the muffled footsteps approaching behind you, even in the stifling quiet of the night.

“Can’t sleep?”

A large hand gently settles in between your shoulder blades to calm you down when you give an alarmed cry, a soft thing of surprise. Jaehyun’s palm burns through your coat, your night robe, your shift. He lets it drop once he realises that you’ve recognised him, and takes a seat next to you.

You’re so stunned at the minute interaction, at the fact that he’s here, sitting next to you like you’re old friends, that you can’t say anything for a second. Suddenly, the only thing you can feel is anger.

“Can I help you with something?” you ask, pulling your back straight, using the haughtiest tone you can.

Jaehyun has the audacity to seem confused, eyebrows knitting together as he turns his head towards you. “I thought you might appreciate the company, your Highness.”

“Oh?” Your voice is a hiss, an excuse for the shout you want to let out instead. “You think you can spend weeks ignoring me, being an absolute asshole to me, treating me as nothing more than your charge, refusing to even look me in the eye, and then waltz here in the middle of the night and expect me to welcome you?” you bite out.

His face becomes stormy, and it electrifies you. Good.

“How would you like me to treat you, your Highness? Am I not your bodyguard? Is it not my duty to treat you like my charge?”

Unconsciously, you lean towards him, meeting him eye to eye, matching his cool annoyance with your own irritation. Weeks of pent up frustration are evident in your voice. “You know what I mean,” you stubbornly reply. “We used to be friends. You used to tell me about your adventures in the city, and I’d tell you about the shit in my head. What the fuck happened?”

“Friends?” he bites out, the word dripping with venom. “You’re the Crown Princess. I’m your bodyguard. Being a friend is not in the job description.”

“Then what are you doing here now?”

Silence.

You’re both facing each other, slid close together enough for your knee to dig into the side of his thigh, and for you to make out all the emotions flitting across his face. Shock, like you’ve slapped him. Rage. Frustration, sadness, all of them come and go in a terrifying sequence until his well-worn blankness is back. That angers you the most. His gaze flickers down to your lips, before he draws back, as if burned. As if you’ve burned him.

He scrambles up, the most inelegant you’ve ever seen him. Before you can get a word in, and you’re not sure what you would have said because you’re slightly panting from the sheer chargedness of the interaction, Jaehyun is on his feet. Something in the way he stands, gingerly, delicately, makes the syllables stop on the tip of your tongue.

His next expression shocks you, completely throwing you off balance. He looks down, meeting your eyes for the first time in so long, and the sheer helplessness on his face knocks the wind out of your body. “I have no idea,” he mumbles in reply to your pointed question.

By the time you’re finished grappling for words, he’s bowed and left the terrace.

“You’re ready.”

“I’m about to vomit.”

“I felt better after vomiting on the day of my coronation.”

A smile tugs at the corner of your mouth, but the momentary lightness is overshadowed by the nerve-wracking anxiety that you’ve been plagued by since you woke up from a restless sleep this morning. The King and Queen sit on either side of you on your bed, the Royal Family indulging in one last private conversation before the festivities of the evening change your life forever. No longer a Princess, but a Queen-to-be. You feel another lurch in your gut at the thought.

Your father continues in a reassuring voice, “The announcement is a small affair. Once everybody has sat down for dinner, I will rise and announce that I am stepping down. Once I name you my successor, you will rise, acknowledge our allies, and say a few words about serving the citizens of this kingdom. Remember - this is only the announcement, a duty on our part to let the people know what is coming in the future.”

You nod, trying to force yourself to calm down.

“You are going to be a Queen. Remember that. Channel that.” Your mother’s tone is firm, confident, and leaves no room for uncertainty. It gets the job done better than the gentle platitudes ever could. Time to act like a Queen.

With a last few encouraging sentences, your parents are out the door, leaving you alone in your room once more, butterflies going wild in your stomach. You face your reflection in the mirror, surveying the results of the last few hours of work by the tailors and servants.

The blue dress hangs off your frame beautifully, regal and soft. You wish you were in your ship, in your breeches and belts, or in your daily dresses that let you be passed off as nothing more than a lower member of the aristocracy; but it’s too late for that now. A glance outside your window, at the rooftops of houses closest to the palace under the dusk sky, reminds you of all the improvements you’ve yet to make to this kingdom. Your kingdom.

Act like a Queen, you remind yourself, trying to inflect some fierceness in your expression.

A knock on the door interrupts your self-soothing. Smoothing down your dress, you call out, “Come in!”

You see his reflection before you see him. Jaehyun isn’t in his regular guard uniform, instead having opted for a grander coat that looks specially tailored for his tall frame. His hair looks a bit neater than usual, as if styled, and there’s no sword in his belt.

As you’ve been surveying him, he looks at you. He’s long given up the infuriating façade of nothingness, and makes no move to mask his emotions as his eyes give you a scan.

For a long moment, the two of you only analyse each other, not a word spoken. But when he does speak, it makes a shiver run down your spine.

“My Queen,” he says, bowing low, lower than he ever has before.

Your throat suddenly feels very dry.

“Not quite yet,” you mumble, once he’s risen and back to standing straight, not looking away from you. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the ceremony? How are you going to protect me without a sword?”

“I’ve taken the evening off, your Highness.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I asked the Captain of the Guard for a leave so I could enjoy the festivities with a…friend.”

The hesitation doesn’t escape your notice. You wish it had, because now, in addition to the roiling in your stomach, you’ve got a heart that’s beating unhealthily fast. “A friend,” you say, your voice dangerously soft.

“A friend,” he repeats, nodding.

You take a moment to compose yourself. “And you are sure this arrangement is just for today? Will I wake up tomorrow morning and find that you’ve handed in your notice so you can go running off to your friend everyday?”

A beat of silence. Jaehyun’s face closes over, and you can see the tell-tale signs of him about to bow and leave. Before he can, before his spine can so much as twitch, you say, loud and commanding, “You have not been dismissed.”

Something ugly twists in his features, his eyes widening imperceptibly as you take a step towards him. “Why are you here, Jaehyun? If the Commander has already granted you permission, why have you come here to tell me of your plans this evening?”

“You know why I’m here, your Highness.”

“Say my name.”

You’ve taken more steps towards him now, close enough that you have to tilt your head up a bit to meet his eyes. That same pleading look from the last night on the terrace crosses his face, respect warring with whatever desire he’s fighting to keep reined in.

“I can’t,” he whispers.

It isn’t enough. It has never been enough.

The bitterness comes crashing into you, and hurt, jealousy, and cruelty are apparent when you coldly declare, “Coward.”

You want him to fight. You want him to shout so you can shout back, and then you want him to storm out of the room. Anything but the blankness, anything but the helplessness. You’re close enough now to make out his slow, laboured breaths, deliberate efforts to keep calm and to not do something reckless. You’re sorely disappointed at the immense strength of his restraint.

The insult is countered with a beseeching, “What would you have me do?”

Your title is pointedly absent.

His fists are clenched at his sides.

“Leave,” you bite out. “You are dismissed. Enjoy your evening and your companion.”

The red dress makes you feel like a Queen. It is fully worth the sharp look you received from your mother when you had entered the Ball after being announced, and it helps you keep your chin up and face set. Not exactly a revenge dress, but you were feeling vindictive. It was an impulse decision, but you carry it so well.

“Your Highness could not be mistaken for anybody less than a Queen tonight.”

You allow a gracious smile to touch your ruby red lips - another last-minute appearance modification. “You are too kind, Prince Taeyong. Again, I apologise for the slight delay. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting for too long?”

“Not at all. Your guests are riveting conversation partners, and there is no dearth of good company in this hall.”

If there wasn’t another, completely infuriating man who has recently taken up permanent residence in your brain-slash-heart, you’d be a little more jealous of the looks your partner has been getting through the evening. He cuts an elegant figure in his fitted suit, highlighting his litheness. The overhanging chandeliers throw the defined lines of his attractive face into further sharpness, and everybody can see his politeness and respect as he interacts with you.

For all you care, any of the aristocracy who have been throwing him sly and appreciative glances can have him. He deserves somebody whose head isn’t currently occupied elsewhere.

Interacting with nobility is exhausting and mind-consuming enough to distract you for a long time. Hyejin and Not-Jaehyun, a temporary replacement, are constantly just a few feet away from you as you make your rounds, your conversations filled with courteous laughter and surface-level discussions of petty territorial disputes. Taeyong stays by your side, per custom, but you try not to lead him on too much. When you eventually have to inform him of your decision to not marry him, you’d rather have a clean, severed tie than draw things out and make them messy. You keep your dances with him limited to two, and as civil as possible.

However hard you try, you can’t stop yourself from subtly scanning the crowd for Jaehyun and his friend. On occasion, you can swear you catch sight of a too-familiar shoulder, or a mop of dark brown hair, but you’re always interrupted by another diplomat that wants an audience. The result means you’re high-strung and on alert throughout the evening, right up until the bell for dinner is sounded and everybody makes their way to the dining hall.

Suddenly, you’ve got much bigger things to be nervous about.

Without paying any real attention, you’re eventually sitting at the head table in between Taeyong and your father, facing the large crowd of guests. Your guests. The bell rings again, signifying an announcement, and suddenly the King is standing, just as planned. You hear your name, ‘my daughter’, ‘lead the kingdom and her people to a glorious future’, all through a haze. There’s some polite clapping, and that’s your cue.

The grace with which you rise is surprising. Your feet are blessedly steady, and your voice seems strong as you begin to speak. Maybe your mother was right. Maybe you are ready. As the words you had planned flow out of you, you receive strength from the crowd, at their rapt attention, at the knowledge that you are here to serve them and that they are here to serve you. Your gaze roves over the audience, words gaining in power and conviction, when you see him.

Jaehyun has never seemed more open than in this moment. His face torn between awe and pride, eyes shining with a fierce loyalty that is reminiscent of the tone he had used when he had addressed you as his Queen. The effect is just as potent the second time, and you have to fight to keep your voice even. In that moment, you know with startling clarity that as you implement all these plans that you’re mentioning, he’s the one you want by your side.

He is noticeably partner-less, only a single person in the midst of other guards who have taken the evening off to enjoy the Ball. The possible explanations run through your head, but you regain your composure, making sure to avoid looking in his direction for the rest of your speech.

When you’re done, you retake your seat, accept Prince Taeyong’s hearty congratulations, exchange short but satisfied nods with your parents, and then promptly take a long draught of the wine in front of you. There’s a weight that’s lifted off your shoulders with the conclusion of the main event of the night, but an unsettling buzz has taken up residence under your skin that’s fighting to be released. On the outside, you’re all smiles and composure, participating in conversations and indulging Taeyong’s friendly interactions, but internally, you’re wound up like a spring, ready to leave and take care of what needs to be taken care of.

When the desert course is finished, and groups of people start to rise, you determine that it’s acceptable for you to leave the proceedings. You direct your attention towards the section of the hall where you had seen Jaehyun, only to find him gone. You feel your palms getting clammy. What if he took your previous hurtful words to heart? What if he really did quit?

“He left by the back way a couple of minutes ago.”

Shocked, you turn towards Taeyong. His eyes are twinkling with amusement, and all of a sudden, you feel like a fool. All this time you thought you were going to be letting him down gently, only to find out now that he’s far smarter than you had given him credit for.

However, appearances must be kept up.

“I’m sure I do not know what you’re referring to, Prince Taeyong.”

Again, with a diplomatic crypticness, he softly replies, “I can assure you, your secret will stay safe with me till the time you choose to reveal it yourself. Now if I may be so bold, I think your young man is getting farther away the longer you remain seated, yes?”

You feel deflated, tired from the day’s happenings and its buildup, tired from running around the castle looking for Jaehyun. All the optimism and hope and determination you had while leaving the Ball has long since evaporated into thin air, leaving behind nothing but a vague sort of emptiness, and a foreboding that you can’t seem to shake off.

You don’t know which prospect is worse - going back to Jaehyun being a stony-faced guard who refuses to otherwise acknowledge you, or Jaehyun leaving your retinue entirely. Would you rather have bad interaction than none at all? Which would hurt more? Maybe you could grow to love Taeyong in time, maybe he’ll accept somebody who’s obviously pining after somebody else. Maybe you’ve well and truly driven him away.

It’s no surprise that sleep doesn’t come easy, and before you know it, you’re flinging your covers off and making the familiar trek up to the tower. The smooth steps under your feet are all you really register, before you’re throwing open the door to the terrace, desperate to be out of the four walls and under the open sky instead.

Only to see that you aren’t alone.

Jaehyun’s broad, slouched back faces you as he sits in his regular place, legs dangling off the sides of the high wall. You don’t have the time to process what you’re feeling before he turns around at the sound of the door creaking shut.

He doesn’t look surprised to see you. With a defeated, rueful smile, he says, just loud enough for you to hear, “I was wondering when you’d come.”

You’ve imagined so many scenarios of this meeting over the last few hours. What you’d say, how you’d say it, how he’d reply, the worst cases of how it could all end - but now that you’re actually facing him, you find yourself blank. You decide to start with what’s easiest.

“I’m sorry,” you say, warily watching as stands up and makes his way over to you. “For everything. I shouldn’t have pressured you, or called you a coward.”

He stops at a respectable distance, not too close but close enough for you to graze his tunic with an outstretched hand if you so desired. “No, you were right. About all of it. I was scared of what I was feeling, and I took it out on you by being an ass. You didn’t deserve that.”

“What were you feeling?”

It’s the closest you’ve gotten to being so direct about this…whatever this is. You know that this time, he won’t run away.

His head tilts. “Have I not been stupidly obvious?”

“I want to hear you say it,” you softly reply, unable to resist the urge to step closer to him, like a magnet. You look up to see his face, see the emotion swirling in his eyes, right before resolve takes over.

“I feel…,” he starts, voice lowering to a whisper, a secret between the two of you, trapped and treasured in the space between your bodies. “I feel like I’ve spent so many years watching you, that somewhere along the way, the watching became wanting. You distract me so much that I’m scared I can’t protect you. That’s why I started distancing myself, trying to do my job without getting sidetracked.”

His voice is low with confession by the end of his words, and it’s so much more than you had ever thought you wanted, but you’re greedy for more, hungering for more explanation, more proof. “What about all your night-time adventures?”

“Distractions from my distraction. I could never stay away for too long. It’s difficult to be by somebody else’s side at night after being in your presence the entire day. Why do you think I’d drop everything just to come up here and be with you?” Closer now, so close that he barely needs to raise his voice above a mumble for you to hear him.

“And did you lie about your companion tonight?”

His gaze falters. A momentary slip from the previous vulnerability into darker territory. His tone takes on a sharper note when he says, “Seeing you with Prince Taeyong, knowing he might one day wed you, share your bed…it bothered me. I wanted to see if I could affect you the same way. It was petty of me.”

You step closer now, feeling more confident about where you stand than you ever have, now fully in his space so your front brushes against his. You know that if you reach out to touch him, it won’t stop with an innocent graze of skin against fabric. But you have to know one last thing.

“Why now?” you breathe out, fighting the urge to tip your chin forward just a couple of centimetres, enough for your lips to meet.

With more of that admirable restraint, he manages to murmur, almost in an undertone, “I couldn’t stand it anymore. Every day is agony. How many ever women I spend my nights with, whoever else I decide to court…it’ll always be you. I can’t stay away. And that dress today…I was afraid I was being presumptuous, that I’d be hung for my audacity, but the last few days…I can’t be the only one who feels this.”

The last phrase ends with a questioning inflection, a mixture of pleading and hope writ large on his face, so very close to yours. It’s only right to put him out of his misery. You do so by making that last move, unable to fight what your body so desperately desires any longer.

Your lips clash with a fury of pent-up tension and lingering resentment of the treatment you’ve both been giving each other for the last few weeks. There have been too many skirted-around confessions, too many naked looks, to take this slow. Those shoulders that you’ve spent so long just watching feel just as solid as you had imagined under your palms, flexing as Jaehyun’s arms wind around your waist, pulling you impossibly closer to his frame.

As if mirroring your frenzy, the wind begins to pick up, making you let out a tiny shiver, even as a small sigh leaves your mouth at the nipping on your neck. Jaehyun pulls away, eyes several shades darker, hair messier than you’ve ever seen it, filling you with a quiet pride. And then, you catch sight of a fading mark on the side of his jaw, only visible from this close. You feel something primal in you. Anger? Jealousy.

“Why don’t you do something about it?” he asks, noticing your pause. He’s challenging you to take the final step, kick off the process of the beginning of the inevitable end of this night - in between the sheets.

You won’t make it that easy.

Your right hand, previously pressed against the side of his firm chest, slowly travels upwards, grazing against the smooth skin of his neck, before you insistently press the pad of your thumb against the offending bruise. Jaehyun hisses, gaze sharpening, his arms tightening around your body reflexively. The eye contact between the two of you is charged when you command, “Say my name.”

For a long minute, there’s no sound but the wind. Neither of you move.

And then he does. Dips his head low, low, until his mouth is right next to your ear, his frame towering over yours and strong arms keeping you in place. His lips brush against the shell of your ear as he whispers your name, voice a low rumble that travels through your spine.

It flicks a switch that you hadn’t known existed before. Suddenly, you can’t possibly be close enough to him to satiate the need that’s rushing through your body, and if his enthusiasm when he opens the terrace door is any indication, he feels it too.

The mad dash back to your room is punctuated by feverish kisses, palms burning as they run over bodies, and painfully long moments of peering around corners to make sure there’s nobody there to witness the depravity. When you finally reach your corridor, the two of you enter your room as dignified as you possibly can, only staying apart long enough for the door to shut behind you. In the next instant, you’re both sharing the same space, the same air, pulling desperate sounds out of each other. The clothes can’t come off fast enough, and you don’t tire of hearing your name drop from his lips.

“Good morning, Hyejin.”

“Your Highness.”

“Good morning, Hyejin.”

“...Jaehyun.”

“Are you surprised?” you ask, genuinely curious, impressed by your guard’s lack of reaction except for a single raised eyebrow at your other guard stepping out of your room with you in the morning.

Hyejin shrugs. “Not particularly. You two haven’t been very…subtle.”

Tiny spots of colour appear on Jaehyun’s cheeks, matching the tiny, fresh bruises that you know are there right below his collar, safely hidden. You can’t help but grin. “I’m sorry for the discomfort that might have caused you.”

“No apology necessary, your Highness. I would be glad of a new partner, one that’s less broody all the time.”

Jaehyun’s jaw drops in offence, making you chuckle as he splutters his protests. Unconsciously, he’s stepped into his regular guarding position, two steps behind you on your right. With a grin, you soothingly pat his arm, dragging him next to you instead.

“There, there,” you say, exchanging amused glances with Hyejin out of the corner of your eye. “Let’s go tell my mother that I’ve found somebody not completely repulsive to stand next to me at the coronation.”

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mah-o-daryaa · 4 months

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HOT TAKE INCOMING...

Aang should've struggled with waterbending.

OK! OK! OK! I get why you're upset, just hear me out first! (Also I'm a teenage girl, not an old man.)

Now, if we remember the whole system with the four elements, fire is the element of power, earth is the element of substance, air is the element of freedom, and water is the element of change. And each Avatar has an element that they struggle with because its principles conflict with their personality.

That's why Aang struggled to earthbend, its mindset of facing conflict head-on contrasted with his avoidance of conflict. Similarly, Korra struggled to airbend because its mindset of avoiding conflict contradicted with her hot-headedness and brash attitude.

However, the problem is that while Korra (realistically) spends the entire first season learning to airbend (but this isn't about her though, this is about Aang), Aang struggles with earthbending for just one episode and then instantly grasps the concept and become really proficient (hey, maybe Toph's just a really good teacher).

This is the problem. The writers wanted Aang to struggle, so they gave them challenges that clashed with Aang's character traits, but then as soon as the episode ends, he's automatically succeeded in the given task. It's really annoying how Bryke especially don't want Aang to learn from his mistakes and grow as a person, because Raava forbid their Pwecious Boi(TM) is ever in the wrong!

Another element he struggled with is firebending, but not so much with the element itself as with the application of firebending. In The Deserter (1x16), Aang is given the opportunity to learn how to firebend under the tutelage of Jeong Jeong, but over time Aang becomes careless until he accidentally burns Katara while playing around. The episode ends with Aang swearing to never firebend again, and he stays true to his word until The Firebending Masters (3x13), when he and Zuko relearn firebending from the titular masters, Ran and Shaw. This episode ends with them learning that fire isn't an element of destruction, but rather one of life, warmth, and light, and thus becoming more confident in their firebending abilities.

Then there's waterbending, which is the only element besides air that Aang did not struggle with (apparently it was because Aang was quickly able to grasp the mindset of water), but he somehow managed to be a better waterbender than Katara? "Hard to believe" is how I'd put it. I really think there's a missed opportunity to have Aang struggle with the element, and here's why.

The world has changed a lot during the hundred years Aang was trapped in the iceberg. As Katara put it best, "Everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked." Aang had just found out that every single one of his people were exterminated by the Fire Nation, and the rest of the world was caught in a brutal war that lasted an entire century. Worse, in The Northern Air Temple (1x17), Aang discovers that a group of refugees have moved into the Northern Air Temple and almost completely renovated the interior for their own needs (this is a really grey area of morality, I personally believe that the Mechanist was wrong for destroying what was already there in the temple, but Aang was acting on borderline supremacist behaviour throughout the episode. Plus the Mechanist and Teo especially were genuinely interested in Air Nomad culture and wanted the best for their community).

That's why I believe that Aang should have had a mini-arc about waterbending throughout Book 1 (like how he did with learning earthbending and later firebending in the later seasons), which would be about realizing that the world has changed so much during the last century. The Gaang still steals the waterbending scroll, but this time around, instead of getting it right first try, Aang would struggle terribly the first few times because he's still in denial that he's the Avatar and truly the last of his kind.

This would be explored at the Northern Air Temple, which would still new development. He'd have a talk with Teo who reminds him of his people, and that they would never leave him, and that they would live on in his heart. (I personally think it was a missed opportunity that Teo didn't become one of the Air Acolytes. He'd do great improving the standard of living by inventing new machines that would be a benefit, not a detriment, to the new Air Nation and to everyone who is part of it. That's for another time, though.)

Then at the North Pole the whole deal with Pakku would still be there, but this time Aang would still lag behind Katara, this time not because of his laziness, but rather because he still doesn't understand the change. Then with a little help from Katara and Yue, Aang would finally understand that the world has changed, nothing will be the same, but he can face this. With a little help from Water Tribe philosophy, Aang would realize during the finale that what makes the Water Tribe strong is their ability to work with adversity, rather than resisting or fleeing, and their strong bonds with family that can hold them through anything. Also can we please please please have more Water Tribe Aang? The Gaang spent most of Book 1: Water in the Earth Kingdom!

And there you have it. My argument for why Aang should have struggled with waterbending. You can agree or disagree (you are, after all, entitled to your own opinion), but please don't be rude about it, and try to consider my perspective too.

#atla #atla meta #atla critical #sort of #not really methinks #just my opinion on it #aang #waterbending #atla book 1 #mone lives

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boltwrites · 1 year

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Tech Headcanons - Spicy

A/N: still feeling very motivated to write for tech! however i was kind of sick today, so i didn’t feel like writing a whole fic or anything. instead, here are some uh, sexual, headcanons that i should definitely write down! expect these for the rest of the batch sometime (hopefully) soon!

By clicking read more you verify that you are at least 18 years old

General

As is tradition: size. As Tech has immense big dick energy, he definitely is packing something above average. Maybe 9 inches thereabouts, and decently thick. He’s got some nice equipment

He’s not experienced. At all. He’s been basically working with no breaks for years. The batch have only just started to relax and look at their lives outside of the war - and that includes Tech. You’re likely his first encounter

That doesn’t mean he’s clueless, though. No matter what kind of relationship you initiate with him - whether it be purely physical, or an actual commitment, the absolute first thing he does is start researching. And he is thorough

It becomes a fixation for him - just investigating and understanding how sex and kink work. He finds it fascinating. He will literally watch or read porn just to see a sex act that he’s never heard of before, to analyze it. It’s a bit strange to watch, but he’s honestly just interested

He refuses to do anything with you until he feels like he fully understands what he’s going to be doing - which means you have to wait. But honestly? It’s worth it

Through his investigation, Tech has picked up on far more than just the basics. He’s definitely got a list somewhere of things he wants to try with you, and most of them are not what one would call vanilla

He’s adventurous, and also surprisingly open. He’s not the kind of dude that thinks he’s going to be competing with any toy you might have - in fact, he’s probably the one bringing them into the bedroom

He’s also pretty versatile, as well. He’s perfectly fine either topping or bottoming, depending on his mood. Generally, he’s more likely to top, but he’s not picky

He definitely talks during sex - and not all of it is dirty. In fact, he’s probably said some accidentally hilarious things while the two of you were getting into it more than once.

Although he talks a lot, he’s not particularly vocal other than that - his moans are low and quiet, but that just seems to make them more special

Tech has incredible stamina and self-control. Mostly the latter - he’s more than willing to use his mouth and hands to absolutely destroy you. He’s also able to hold on for a decent amount of time when fucking you, too. He doesn’t have the best refractory period - it takes him a little while to get it up again after he finishes. He’s more than willing to help you in other ways while he’s recovering, though

If you’re just in a casual physical relationship with Tech, he’s not too interested in cuddling afterwards. If you’re committed, though? He’s very intimate afterwards, drawing patterns on your skin and playing with your hair absentmindedly

Once you open the door to this for Tech, if you two are in a serious relationship, you quickly realize that sex is one of the main ways that he shows affection for you. The fact that he pulls you aside every chance he can isn’t a result of his sex drive (which is pretty low in general), but because he can’t get enough of you, specifically

Top/Dominant Tech

When it comes to foreplay, Tech tends to prefer fingering you. He’s very good with his hands, and he knows it. It takes him basically no time to figure out exactly how to touch you to make you lose your mind

Tech is more than willing to explore different power dynamics with you. If you’re interested, he’s willing to play different roles, so to speak. However, he’s generally a pleasure dom - focused on your own pleasure, making it his personal goal to pull as many orgasm as he can out of you

He does find other dynamics interesting - every now and then he gets a thrill out of telling you what to do, or directing you on how to please him - but that’s not something he wants very often

Once he learns about toys, he absolutely incorporates them into the bedroom. He loves his fucking gadgets

He would most definitely have you wear a bullet vibe and control it throughout the day

That’s not even getting into the fact that he most likely has a whole trunk full of various toys and tools once you two have been fucking for a while. It’s honestly kind of ridiculous

He’s also interested in bondage - he routinely ties you up in new and excited ways, if you’re also interested

He’s not opposed to being rough, even if that’s not usually what he goes for. However, he does put his foot down in one regard - he doesn’t like hitting or hurting you. He’s ok with controlled spanking, and maybe some light choking if you beg him for it - but he really doesn’t like hurting you

He doesn’t have much of a favorite position when it comes to topping - he likes switching things up a lot, but he does particularly like it when you ride him in the cockpit of the Marauder

Bottom/Submissive Tech

Tech doesn’t give up control at all in his day to day life. His squad really leans on his knowledge and skill, while obviously puts a lot of pressure on him. Subbing helps him release all that energy, to finally give up control and let someone else be the expert of his body

He’s the one that brought up bottoming to you first - one of the things he wanted to try. It was surprisingly sweet and intimate to learn with Tech - to help open him up and give him his first ever prostate orgasm, which left him reeling and absolutely asking for more

This also leads to a sizable collection of interestingly textured dildos that Tech now collects, and which you sometimes use on him

When it comes to subbing, Tech needs a very dedicated and detailed dom. He likes scenes to be planned out well ahead of time so that he can mentally prepare, especially since he doesn’t give up control often

He tends to like scenes that also involve sensory deprivation - blindfolds, handcuffs, even earplugs.

When subbing, Tech often goes nonverbal, so blissed out that he couldn’t even speak if he tried to. For that reason, you’ve never really felt the need to gag him when he’s subbing (this did necessitate some creative safe words, though)

He also doesn’t know how to handle praise. He isn’t usually recognized for his contributions, working mostly behind the scenes with little praise. Praising him during sex definitely makes him feel some kind of way

He needs a lot of aftercare after a submissive scene - Tech may act like he doesn’t need that sort of attention, but it’s so hard for him to give up control like that, and he definitely needs a buffer in order to get himself back to normal

#tech x reader #tech x you #the bad batch x you #the bad batch x reader #mine

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darfeld · 6 months

Text

Star Trek Wars

Trying to escape some remnant of the Empire, Luke jump to hyperspace a bit too close from a Black Hole. When he emerge into regular space, his hyperdrive is fried and his computer can't say were he is in the galaxy. In fact, it seems he actually jumped galaxy. With no frame of reference he doesn't know he also traveled through time.

Fortunately, a huge spacecraft soon arrives. Communication between ship take some time to establish, but with the help of R2 (and presumably from the people on the ship working on the problem too), they are able to establish audio contact. The troubles aren't over, however, since they don't speak the same language or any language known to Luke, who regret the absence of 3PO. Finally, the huge space craft decide too invite Luke to fly his X-Wing into the shuttle bay, through means of elaborate shuttle dance. Luke, having little options at the moment and sensing no ill intention from the people of the big ship, accept. With the help of a woman which Luke later learned she was counselor Deanna Troi, Luke's language is analyse by the computer of the space craft named Enterprise. R2's "binary" language is also deciphered and know Luke can hear him speak in basic, which is weird. He suspected his robotic friend had a flourished language but he did know half of it as it turns out. R2 is equally weirded out to hear Luke speak in binary. Picard allow Luke to stay on board as emissary of another culture, and promise to help him get back to his galaxy if the occasion arise. It might take a while. Luke allow the engineer of the Enterprise to have a look at his X-Wing. Geordi is baffled as it is not like anything he has seen before. Even stranger than Borg tech. Luke learn about the federation of planet and is amazed by the post-scarcity society in place on earth. Also by the replicator. He spend a not insignifiant among of time trying to make it replicate blue milk. Data and R2 have long conversations about their experiences as robotic sentient being. Along the way, the Enterprise stubble upon a new civilisation with some fucked up shit going on. Luke want to do something about it. Picard explain to him the prime directive.

Luke is like "You know what, I'm not Starfleet."

Picard is like: "I can't let you go down there wreck havoc, I would violate the prime directive by proxy."

Luke is like: "Yeah well, try and stop me then."

Obviously Luke gets down there, solves the problem of the day. Picard is pissed off. Say if Luke is going to be like this he can't let him stay on the Enterprise. He still commit to help Luke go back to his galaxy if he find something useful while exploring the galaxy. Luke says well if that's how it is, you can leave me to the nearest outpost, because I can't let injustice happen doing nothing, so it will happen again. Luke and R2 are left at the space station DS9. He make friends with Jadzia, Worf (Worf immediately respect him as a warrior), Quarks (he missed having a scumbag in his life), Garak, even Benjamin once they get to know each other a bit better. He has an interesting relationship with Kira. They talk about religion, fighting an empire, being in the resistance, etc... They flirt a bit but nothing come out of it. Partly because Luke learn about the Maquis at some point and decide to go check on them.

In the Maquis he meet Chakotay and join his crew, just before they are sent at in the delta quadrant. It baffle him to learn the voyage home is suppose to be 70 years long. Sadly he doesn't know enough about hyperdrives to help with that. He has a lot of heated discutions about the prime directives with Janeway, and he end up in the bring a few times for disobeying orders, though nothing serious enough Janeway would actually leaves him behind. He plays with the limits often enough though. All in all, even Janeway get a quite nicer experience than normal out of the arrangement, and the Voyager even arrives home in half the time. At home, with the data from Voyager and the reverse engineering done on the X-Wing's hyperdrive by Geordi, a solution is found to send Luke in his galaxy far far away. Luke thanks everyone for the help and the experience, and come back to the new republic with a lot of interesting idea for a new form of government and society, and a stolen replicator.

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onecantsimply · 1 year

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Yandere Noah and Jack Smith x A2 Reader (Maybe Mother Goose Too But-)

Noah may get more considering that I already write for Jack so much Hh- Also... they're going to be a Yandere. I can never steer away from those topics. I have descended to this level-

It embarrasses me of how soon I took to complete this-

Your hair and eyes will be the same as the appearance you would like it to be. Your name will be A2 for a while, but will be changed later on in the fic.

NIER AUTOMATA SPOILERS, AS WELL AS JACK THE RIPPER CASE FILES SPOILERS:

A2 is an Android from Nier Automata, built originally as a YoRHa soldier. She was a prototype of Androids that had led to the original 2B and 9S. A2 has no liking to speaking, and tends to stay silent. Three years prior to the events of NieR:Automata, she was a member of the first YoRHa squadron deployed to Earth as part of the Pearl Harbor Descent during the early years of the 14th Machine War. Her alias at the time was No2 which is parsed in Automata as "Number Two". Now, A2 is a wanted Android that had first been hunted down at the Forest Kingdom by 2B and 9S. Though, due to the unexpected virus that had spread, A2 had been forced to fight against certain Androids that had been infected with it, even having to defend 2B against some of them. Even with that, she had deciphered that she couldn't live, seeing as how she were infected with a logic virus. 2B told A2 to take her blade that had been imbued with her memories before killing her. And so, the Android does so, with 9S seeing 2B collapse to the floor. He succumbs to a mental breakdown, shouting of how he'll kill A2 while running towards her. However, the bridge under him breaks due to "The Tower" growing out of the floor. A2, who is also amidst the area, had collapsed onto some rubble, going unconscious.

And now... when they wake up, they find themself in a new world, with Humans that have no idea of their own future.

• You yourself are simply confused of what the hell just happened. One moment, you were near the destroyed shopping center, and now, you were on an intact building, seeing people... actual people... walking around without a care in the world. It made you... slightly mad. You and your own allies had practically died, some quite literally, to complete a war against Androids and Machines, that still hadn't ended. So if that were the case, why were you still alive? Why were you here? With Humans?

• To your silent confusion, you see a small machine floating around you. It greets you, telling you of how its name is Pod 042. You didn't seem to care, making your way down the building. Though, as you did so, Pod had asked for what your purpose was. You didn't answer. 30 seconds later, Pod asked again. Irritated, you had told him that you wanted to destroy any machines that came across you. Instead of being able to scan the machine signs rather easily, Pod had spoken of how that wasn't available, and for you to pick another purpose.

• You told him that you should simply explore or map out the area. With an "affirmed", Pod had then went silent. Of course, you attempted to ask him where you two were. However, he answered with an "unknown". And with a small scoff, you muttered about how useless this small machine was.

• Though, you had begun to walk around. Your clothes seemed to catch the eyes of others, who had practically giggled or murmured about your appearance. Though, it was never as if you had cared, so you continued on with your day. You passed a cafe, on where a certain silver haired man was enjoying his apple pie. He only got a glance of you, but had stopped, seeing you disappear into the crowd. The man blinked, but had then went back to his Apple pie, enjoying it with a content smile.

• Pod then began to speak of how you needed to refill your fuel filter. You didn't seem to care about that. Though, upon warning that you would have to forcibly shut down if you ran out of fuel, you sighed, telling him to tell you where the nearest part of fuel was. Pod marked the spot, allowing for you to slip in. You had simply grabbed what you needed before someone had called you out. Obviously, seeing as how you were in a world where Humans never existed, you never understood their ways.

• You just flicked some G (Android and Machine currency) over to them before walking towards the entrance of the room. Yet, it seemed as if things had gotten off on the wrong foot. Someone was already trying to kill you. On instinct, you had evaded, punching the male into the wall. Or so you thought. Your hand had punched through the male's stomach, coating your hand in a red, crimson liquid that was some to your own blood. However, the difference was how it had spilled.

• Of course, taking lives wasn't new to you. You had killed countless Androids and Machines that had tried to go after you for any kind of purpose. So, you didn't think much of it, and simply got to slicing as more Humans came at you. However, instead of exploding into flames, they had... stayed lifeless. Slowly, they had all began to exert a certain scent that had you leave the area, covered in blood. Others had gasped, seeing you carrying the fuel out. You had only sent them small glares.

• However, there was a man in black, as well as a seemingly buff male with a scar across his nose. A smaller woman with two swords had watched you walk away. And when they had looked to where you had come from, they had saw that you had murdered pretty much an entire organization on your own. For fuel. Odd- The black haired male couldn't help but smile softly from interest, making a small motion to the pair behind him. They both nodded.

• Now, you were refilled on fuel, being able to wander as you saw fit. However, the blood on you had dried. It grew annoying, so you washed it off. You thought you were finally alone until you heard Pod say something. "Three Humans approaching." You had silently looked back at them with slightly furrowed eyebrows.

• The black haired male seemed to speak of some things, speaking of how bold you were to kill an organization out in the open. You had stayed silent, simply standing there. You were waiting for them to make the first move. Eventually, the male had quieted down. He then looked towards you with a soft smile.

- "... What are you?"

• Your eyebrows faintly furrowed from this question. Yet, you had continued to stay silent, keeping still. Your eyes had scanned all three of them. You knew they were perfectly capable. The one in the middle seemed rather... more odd than the rest.

• Sensing the tension, Pod immediately floated in front of you.

- “Warning: Combat with this unit will result in appropriate consequences. Destruction recommended."

• The male seemed to perk up, asking what Pod was. The small machine had answered of how he was a support unit assigned to you. Seeing as how you weren't going to speak on your own, Pod had decided to speak for you.

- "Unit A2 will attack whenever the first offense is launched. Any attack will be taken as self defense."

• The male in black seemed to chuckle. He the. Started to laugh, the two beside him looking at him slight confusion. You seemed to softly mutter about how weird he was, turning around, since waiting around was completely irrelevant to you. Though, you heard the ringing of a blade only a second later.

• Your own blade immediately connected with the young woman's. She had slightly wide eyes, but had the other male throw a punch at you. Of course, you lunged away from the pair, with Pod firing bullets towards the trio. They had all avoided it, leading to him closing out.

- "Proposal: Wasting fuel from your filter is dangerous. Flee."

• You softly huffed but lunged to the edge. The male seemed to ask of if you needed fuel. That if you came with him, he could supply it in return for some questioning. Pod immediately turned to you.

- "Alliances will be needed in an unknown world, Unit A2."

• You could only scoff, speaking of how you worked better alone. However, Pod floated in front of you, floating forward while saying the same thing. You already had the feeling of how he would keep being awfully pushy about the situation, you had turned to the other male with a sigh, seemingly just ordering him of what he wanted.

• He just wanted information. It's not every day that he sees an Android, after all. It does tend to be the first time, actually. That's when Pod floated in front of him, speaking of how you weren't some lab rat. The male immediately agreed with a chuckle. However, he looked back at you. You were... interesting.

• No care in the world for anyone, no care in the world for how people thought of you, already having a more closed off personality when he knows you were much more kind in the past, so much strength and prowess, and even viewing him, a leader of a dark organization, as irrelevant.

- He thinks of it all as absolutely interesting. Well, at first, anyway.

• Well, the man had spoken and offered how he wanted you to become a background member of his group. The two beside him could only slightly widen their eyes as your own softly narrowed. Whatever you needed would be supplied to you as long as you took orders from him and him alone. Anyone else will have no reign over you unless he says so.

• Pod immediately accepted the offer, much to your irritated shock, and to the man's bliss. He visibly brightened up before you sighed softly. You softly glared at the male after, but followed after him when told.

- "You can't just accept offers like that." You spoke to Pod, who had continued to float beside you. - "Negative. Unit A2 has shown signs of visible problems with communicating. As a support unit, I shall be the substitute." - "You don't need to do that. I can communicate just fine, with or without words." - "Would that mean subtle glares?"

• You immediately sent Pod a glare, proving his point. More so at the three in front of you. The pair beside the male seemed to question the male beside them. However, he never answered them, only sending them a small smile. Did he really know what he was doing? The two never knew.

• Now, you were in a darker building, in which you took a seat in your given spot. It was only soon enough that jobs were given to you already. And yes. You completed all without fail, receiving payment. Noah understood you never did work well with others. But sometimes, he needed to assign you with other members of the group. Whether that be all of them or not.

• Humpty Dumpty... You two didn't give a shit about each other. Simple business partners or partners of Mother Goose assigned by Noah. Nothing else. Though, since Alfred didn't have to worry about friendly fire, he often threw cannon balls towards you and your enemy whenever locked in a clash. However, the same cannot be said for him whenever you throw your blade at his opponent. He has to leap back with what he can to escape being impaled. And that's what has him scold you in silence. You two frequently get in arguments about it. There's something that seems enjoyable about it, however. Well... for Alfred, that is. You still think you don't work well with him.

• Mary Had A Little Lamb... Seeing as how the both of you are swordsmen with different styles of fighting, you still work great together. You know how your blades work, and actually manage to pull off combos together. However, that doesn't mean you two are getting along during those missions. In the beginning, you two just really don't care for each other. Until Mika sees more of your style, and grows curious of it instead of having to focus on the job. She privately asks of what your style was. You don't know about it, since it was regularly implanted into you right when you were built. Oh, right. You're an Android. Not a Human. However... Mika doesn't need to care about that. An acquaintance is an acquaintance to her.

• Twinkle Twinkle Little Star... Lmfao. LMAO. No. Your nature throws him off- You're awfully cold, which is something that's fine with Bogey. He's met plenty of cold people like Alfred and Wake. However... why the hell are you so aggressive-? How are you dashing with that red glint around you-? He has stamina in running, yes. But not as much as you. Why do you set yourself on fire if an opponent seems too strong for you-? (Naturally that means Bogey has to be put to the side while you fuck the opponent up with Berserker Mode.) But still... that brings up more sparring sessions. Bogey seems fine with it, even if you deem it as a waste of time. You both get cuts, with mostly Bogey being the more injured one. If he can't grab a hold of you, that is.

• Cock Robin... Bitch no- You're the one who hates him. He's annoying, and he looks smug as hell. Which is not wrong- That razorwhip of his does wonders, however. He likes to get work done fast, which means the both of you may as well work well together when it comes to fighting enemies. Wake keeps a watch over you while you brutalize most people within the building, making sure that no one else gets close enough to you to get a hit in. While you absolute hate him, he has no care for you whatsoever. Just some allies that got partnered up on a job, but had no connection to each other aside from that. It literally takes so many jobs for you two to do anything other than your jobs. Whether that he simply chilling around for a while or having to speak of something to pass the time.

• Sixpence... Do I have to--? Oh... Uh... You were definitely wierded out over her appearance at first, but still, she had quite a lot of uses when it came to slipping through small spaces.

• Lincolnshire Poacher... No- I don't know enough about him- All I can say is that he most likely got backhanded by you when he tried to put his arm around you. His jaw ached for a full month after, and he didn't really approach you again unless he had to- He's scared of you HH- However, him being a sniper only reminded you of one of your Android friends. So even if he never noticed, you had grown slightly softer with him.

• Noah... The man himself... The irritating man himself... You regard him as nothing more than a weird boss. Nothing else. You're used to a commander that's straightforward, and focused on her goal. However, Noah is different. He's focused on his goal, yes. But he loves small distractions such as plays and hard candy. You viewed plays as boring time passers, where you could simply stand against a tree while it was going on. Occasionally, you saw Noah laughing about something. And, about hard candy... Whenever he offered you some, you declined, speaking of how Androids didn't need to eat. However, Noah wanted you to taste it, just in case if you liked it. It had to get to the point where he had to order you to eat it. And honestly... it wasn't bad. You just didn't let him know about it. He knew anyways though-

• However, when you were on a job of your own, you had ran into a young man with silver hair. He took one gaze at your colors while you were walking past, and chuckled, softly mumbling about how your colors were pleasantly impure. You didn't care for what he was talking about, but the next few seconds were the things you cared for. A single knife being launched at you, in which you caught. However, before you could face him, he was gone. I mean... as long as it means he wouldn't disrupt your assignments.

• Though, you were aware of the eyes on you after that. It was irritating, having to minimalize movement just to make sure he doesn't get everything you have.

• Ah... This man has seen you before... Back when you were simply walking around with that small machine at your side. It still is, shooting people lmfao. Well... at least doing your assignments was good enough. However, you needed to get your stalker off your tail. And so, that's what you did. You smashed a window and hopped out before swinging yourself into an open window. You could hear the man above you chuckle, speaking of how he'd see you and your lovely colors yet again.

• After you were sure he had left, you had went back to your own place. Mail had been placed through your slot, having you look through it. Until you saw you had gotten a letter from Wake to attend a monthly meeting, in which you had been skipping every damn time. You were about to toss it to the side until you saw that Noah had ordered you to. The obvious different handwriting made it slightly annoying, but, an order is an order.

• Attending that meeting seemed like a waste of time, just as you thought. Just simply checking if everyone were still alive, in which they were. You really didn't have any more means of staying until Noah had told you to. You seemed more annoyed at that. However, you stayed in silence. After mostly everyone had left, you walked up to Noah, asking him what he had wanted. After being told that he just wanted to do something with you, you could feel your eyes narrowing from slight irritation. Catching this, Noah couldn't help but chuckle.

- He probably asked if you hated his company. You said yes. Noah simply chuckled from your answer.

• Hm... Maybe he needs to try a little bit more then. Or... you could be hiding that you like his presence? It does take a while for you to get used to things, after all. Literally, since you backhanded Crawl because he put an arm around your shoulders, never did anyone else touch you without your permission after that.

• Still, Noah could tell. He could tell he was starting to get to you. You're speaking more around him, and showing the slightest of concern whenever something goes wrong. Even for other members. You don't know them as much since they have things to do, but the places you go to with them when on jobs is something that cannot be replaced. He had mostly occupied your time when you had come back to get your pay.

• Though, when you had to leave, and go home, you could feel specific eyes on you. It was that weird heterochromatic eyed guy. He had been stalking you for a while until it had become regular. You really thought this man would give up within a few months. No. Not at all. He had continued, having to find you over and over again until you had nowhere to hide. It may have gotten to the point where Noah had started to notice himself. So, he may as well accompany you, yes?

• Even with how you tried to refuse, Noah could see the slightly relieved look in your eyes whenever he had come with you at these specific times. It was about time he had to ask you what was going on. Of course, he did it in silence, letting you answer in your own way. Seeing you eye something behind you, Noah had immediately understood from there. Maybe he could take advantage over this. But... couldn't you take care of this person yourself? Yes. You could. But he never did anything unless it was that knife that was thrown towards you.

• Truly, speaking of it, while Noah had left you in your own apartment, there was someone that would sneak in and simply... watch as you sleep. Pod is deactivated beside you, so you're completely shut down. And that gives him much more time to simply watch you. You yourself... The man knows he has enemies. Perhaps lots from how he has a "simple" interest in you. Especially with the group you're in. It was dangerous to even be around you, and he knew this.

• Which was why Noah coming with you seemed rather irritating for him. Especially with the amount of time it took for him to leave. And that man knew it wouldn't be easy, even if Noah had left. Because there was most likely someone else stalking along to make sure you two were safe. Even if that man knew that the person were most likely not going to show themself, there was nice chance that he could always get them first. And that was precisely what he did.

• It was some sort of male with a sniper. It was Crawl. That man just about knocked him out withe enough force to keep him unconscious for a few hours. Now, with bliss, he had snuck his way into your abode. Oh, how your sleeping, or rather, shut down form was beautiful. You had colors of sorrow and guilt within you, however. Most likely that something happened before he ever met you. However, he didn't like to see it on you. While he couldn't do anything other than gently sit beside you, enjoying you simply for your presence, he could always stay by your side. Always in the shadows, but still within your own.

• That man... He adored you. He really did. Ever since first seeing you wandering around while he ate his apple pie. At first, he never seemed to mind, only regarding you as someone slightly odd. He was right. What would you have to do to get into a dark organization? One where people heavily guard you without your own knowledge the best they can? All because of one leader that has also gained an infatuation for you.

• Of course... That man hated sharing. But... the battle to find out who you'll be with is always something fun. Before, that man has always taken care of any that have tried to get in his way. However, he was having trouble with those that had bothered to stalk you other than him. Those that had accompanied you on your jobs, and those that have made sure you weren't injured to certain extent.

• At first, it seemed easy. You were closed off. You always were, and still are to certain others. But to those that had managed to bond with you in certain ways... and had managed to break down your walls before he could... that man couldn't tolerate any competition. So, later would be the time he would finally meet you again. Of course, you or your small machine would recognize him as a stalker. However, he would like to start off on a new foot. Would that be so bad?

• The man then sees something. A knife. His knife. You... kept it? The man immediately grabs a hold of it, softly smiling faintly as he gently traces a gloved finger down the surface of the gleaming blade. The fact that you kept it... This made the knife special. The man immediately pocketed it after softly shuddering from happiness. You give him the best of emotion, and you don't even know...

• Now, that man had gotten off of your bed, giving you a small kiss to your forehead. For a few seconds, he could see a pure emotion flooding into you. That man could only smile before he leaves, just in time to escape away from Crawl's eyes. That man seemed confused on what had happened until he found himself on the cold floor. He immediately checked in on you. You were still okay, much to his relief. He really didn't want to get backhanded by anyone, especially you. The memory makes him sweatdrop each time.

• And, as the man had planned, he had finally met you in another location. It wasn't useful to hide who he was, considering you remembered him. So, you simply glared at him while he spoke of how he never had any bad intentions for you. Instead, that he wanted to do something with you.

- "Surely, spending time away from your odd leader is valuable to you, yes?" - "Not if I get stuck with another weirdo."

• The man could only softly sigh. However, he introduces himself as Jack. Jack Smith. You knew you had no need to introduce yourself, since he most likely knew your name already. And that he did. He never cared for how odd your name sounded. Nor did he care if anyone was watching. This moment to be with you and actually talk with you is something he's been craving for a while.

• Even if you finally depart after a while, even you talking to him is enough for him to feel complete for a slight bit. Until he aches to talk again, that is. However, he knows fully well that your time is being taken up by Noah, or perhaps other Mother Goose members. It... really seems as if you have no time alone. Well, unless for jobs, that is. Actually, not if people are stalking you. Including Jack, but-

• Well, he'll take any bit of time he has to grasp a small companionship with you. No matter how much Pod annoys him about backing off. Jack has no other desire than to be with you. It's... just been quite the while... since he's ever decided to do something like this with anyone. But this feeling... It had subjugated every nerve within his body. And whenever you're near him, that feeling spreads. It begins to fester. The fact that you actually do agree to spend time with him gives him serotonin.

• Though, in the time divided through your week, Jack only has one day with you before it's split to the other members of Mother Goose. If he wants more time, then it would be better to make his own moves.

• Jack Smith... is annoying in his own right. That man can and will follow you wherever and whenever. It's a wonder of how he hasn't managed to follow you back to Mother Goose's base. He will literally follow you anywhere but there, so that's fine with you. But in the times where he does get to spend his time with you, you always seem annoyed of him. Though, the colors within you had always read as slightly amused. Jack can be annoying, yes. But he's... rather mysterious in his own way as well, leading to your slight interest in him. Additionally to the fact that you simply talking to him seems to make him brighten up immediately. Mans seems like a sort of puppy like that. Not that it's cute to you or anything, hell no, but you find yourself arching an eyebrow at that sometimes.

• With Noah, he found the name of A2 rather... complicated. So, he had your address name changed. Your name is now (Y/n). Of course, you could still be called A2 as you'd like.

- To know that you don't mind the name has Noah smiling softly. What a relief this warmth was. He had actually renamed you to something more casual. All that was left was your clothes. Mika could be in charge of that. So, he had her take you shopping. After all, just a few black cloths over you won't do much.

• So... You didn't feel as if it were necessary to remove the other clothes you had. So, you wore the other one you bought over it. Honestly, it looked nice.

- (Belongs to Satellite-Helen)-

• Well, you got a few more simps now. Tighter schedule. Yikes- The toothpick and the razorwhip man have been added into the roster-

• At least you and Mika kind of match. She enjoyed it more than anything that her older sibling figure could actually look like her when you two have the same type of weapon. Even if you have more weapon adjustion than she does.

• Well, even if you got more simps, it's still ridiculously hard enough to truly get on your good side. And... those two don't exactly try harder to get on your good side other than accompanying you on jobs whenever Noah needs them to. And they can tell. They can tell he knows about their feelings as well.

• Well, it wouldn't matter if they still had literal years to spend with you. They'd get close with you either way. While their lack of almost communication can place them behind certain people, within the years, it literally becomes irrelevant because of how they'll have to keep up with those certain people.

• By now, things are suffocating for you. You've definitely snapped and told some to shut up or leave you alone. They stalked you instead. It's still better than having direct contact, so you simply let it be. Whether that be simply resting around after a job, or simply taking time to do things by yourself.

- They see you resting by an open window of an abandoned building most of the time, simply staring into space until Pod reminds you that you need to go back. Or that someone approaches you, which can either be the stalker, or simply someone else. Usually, it does tend to be the stalker. But if it's someone else, they're very stupid to even approach a random Android sitting by the windowsill. Still... I suppose curiosity killed the cat, because that person wasn't found anywhere the next hour. Not by you either.

• Anyhow, it becomes regular that you simply expect your time to be eaten up by the ones that have an infatuation with you. You don't pay attention to any of the chaos that really goes on in the area. It really comes to the point where you can only settle around Nu. She's the most calm about everything, and doesn't stalk you unless ordered to. Besties.

• Everything seems to be falling apart whenever a specific toothpick had died, however.

- It appears that the gentleman has finally made his move. However, you were never one to know.

• However, that loss put you in a state of slight anger. It was supposed to be a simple bodyguard or butler job, so what the hell happened. Catching on to your irritation, Noah had taken advantage over it. He had smiled, speaking of how he would find the killer, and would allow for you to brutalize him. You knew fully well of how he was glad at how there was one less rival, however.

• You grew more cold and distant then, to literally everyone as well. Well, unless Noah had ordered you to come with him to kill some lower dark organizations. It was simply to find the killer in easier fashion while checking in on your condition. You were slowly growing more distant, intent on finding the guy that had murdered one of your friends. That seemed unacceptable to Noah.

• You weren't tolerating anyone stalking you either. You were always out of view now, keeping out of sight. And thinking about it... you never did hang around your gentleman friend often. Neither did he approach you as of recently. It seemed oddly suspicious, especially with how you knew what he was capable of.

• One day, after massacring a specific dark organization, the leader had spoken of info he had. And it matched specifically to Jack. You seemed to scoff, and immediately left to find him. But naturally, the gentleman was never anywhere to be found. You asked Pod to locate him. He unfortunately couldn't do so, since he had no signal as a machine. Softly cursing, you went to find him on your own.

• How normal. You found him at Alice's Cafe. And he was quite aware of how pissed off you were. He saved his apple pie by keeping his attention on you.

- “Now then… What would you like to talk of, My Dear?”

#record of ragnarok #record of ragnarok x reader #jack the ripper #jack the ripper record of ragnarok #jack the ripper x reader #snv jack the ripper #ror jack the ripper #(Case Files) Noah x Reader #Noah Jack The Ripper Case Files

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johnslittlespoon · 1 month

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can’t stop thinking about the leaving bikerider au now,,,,,, I was thinking about it when I went to bed last night and I swear it was the first thing on my mind when I woke up.

like,,,,,,,,,,,, Buck being caught up in something that may or may not be legal and as soon as the other side of the conflict finds out about John? using him against Gale? the absolute feral need to make sure John is safe vs the feral want to make sure no one ever touches what is his again? and, listen, I can’t imagine Gale would get involved with anything illegal if he has kids or w/e, but. his past catching up with him or smth? I just very much need feral Gale 😔🤡

YOU AND ME BOTH. okay yeah, the deeper plot points like that are definitely something i need to sort out because i really haven't decided yet how deep the biker thing is gonna go. obviously it's hard to base it off of the actual bikeriders movie since it's not out yet, and i'm very much not a car/bike guy LOL so that doesn't help me either.

so i'm still deciding whether i want to actually delve into biker gang stuff since it's really not my forte– i've always very much been a modern au/slice of life writer, so even just adjusting to following mota canon with my other fics has been crazy lmao.

half of me wants to just have gale be a part of a notorious biker group, not so much a gang. maybe some turf wars, a reputation around town, that sort of vibe, but not something that the whole plot is centered around, if you feel me.

i lean towards character/relationship centric writing and like to get in their heads wayyy more than i like to write action or intense scenes; much more of an emotional conflict over physical conflict enjoyer. but then at the same time i do love the classic trope of john being threatened/taken by a rival gang to get to gale, and gale losing his mind over it, and when he gets john back, being so scared of putting him in danger again that there's a whole arc where he pushes him out of his life entirely to keep him safe.

because feral gale is definitely something. half the time john wouldn't even be able to believe he's involved in the things that he is, because his gale is gentle and sweet with no temper to speak of. but then he only needs to see the steely cold look gale shoots someone who crosses him and he's reminded of how intimidating gale is to most people; it's just that john gets to see a side of him others don't.

and that reminder really sinks in again when john is taken by some people who want something from gale, and he watches gale absolutely destroy them in his rage over them hurting him, making damn sure they won't be getting up and walking around for a good long time.

it's an interesting concept to explore, but i'm gonna be so real, i just don't think plotting something elaborate like that out for the fic would hold my interest; my brain is so specific about what makes it tick lol. but i do think gale's past catching up to him would be something a lot more up my alley to tackle in fic, although knowing me it would be something less 'dangerous' and more angsty oops.

i like the idea of him kinda being vague about his past, and john being curious but not wanting to push because it seems to be something that still affects gale deeply, and maybe he finds out by accident, and maybe it's not a big deal, or it causes conflict between them, who knows. only future drafting–sam apparently lolll :-)

#leaving bikeriders au #so much to sort out w the plot tbh and ik i'm gonna have sm fun when i do >:)#but i do generally think it will be a more lax slice of life type of fic focussing on john's pov and how his and gale's dynamic develops #johnslittlespoon asks

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samalong1 · 10 months

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Childhood freinds w Thomas sawyer

Your dad was in the Korean War prison camp with charlie and luckily came out less mentally scarred

So one day when you were nine your family suddenly moved to a small rural village in texas

Of course your dad and Charlie had to caught up and he and Charlie had to catch up so while they drank beers and laughed they placed you and Thomas outside to go "explore"

You didn't hate Thomas but he was so quiet and timid that you two just ended up sitting on the fence

During some visits though you'd walk around together poking stuff with sticks

But soon the Texan summer ended and you were going to the small schoolhouse

Your dad of course told you to be nice and stand up to the Thomas kid

You weren't that good at it though you stuck to yourself while thomas was being picked on in the school yard

But you'd push him on the swing and eat lunch together and helped him with his homework

Though soon your family moved again and you no longer saw him and grew up forgetting about him

You had a normal childhood grew up and now you were a adualt in the back of a van while your freind drove on your way to a concert in texas

Earlier they broke a headlight but since it was rural Texas and the other one worked you thought you would be good

But soon now officer hoyt wanting to play cop with his food happily pulled you over

Regular beating and yelling like in the movie ensued

You were covered in mud your hands tied with rope that hung from a hook in the barn your freind long dead

Hoyt watched you dangling from the barn trying to figure out what to do to ya next before luda mae turns you into stew

He peered at you head tilted you looked familiar but soon he started to laugh smacking his knee "y/n thats you God damn you grew nearly killed ya" he said getting you off the hook and laying you on the mud. You were too exhausted to move as you stared at him sweating and panting from the heat.

"Barely able to stand the heat just like yer dad" he said like you two met in the grocery store or at some BBQ. You were too tired to answer only staring at him "Thomas outta bring ya he's quite lonely" your eyes widened rembering the meek quiet boy you'd spend time with as a kid

Before you could process this hoyt grabbed the back of your shirt and dragged ya

Soon you were being dragged down the stairs hitting the bumps along the way as you used your remaining energy to try and escape wriggling out of his grip but it was useless soon you were outside the basement door and that's where you saw hewitt

He's thrilled to have you back after all the years. He never had any freinds beside you so he was clinging to you

At first he would watch you just sit you down and state at you while he worked

Soon he'd get more freindly with you bringing you food and treats

Of course thomas soon grew attracted to you, you were so nice and didn't find him ugly he'd rub against you like a cat and fondle your body so excited to have his childhood freind back

He'd trat you like you were fragile you left him all those years ago he didn't want to scare you off

Anything you said you liked as a kid in a casual manner he'd bring you

Soon you'd have a collection of stuff like tiny horse toys,flowers,and any pretty clothes

As days passed you were in some weird romantic relationship he'd snuggle you at night and cover your cheek in kisses and protect you from hoyt's outburst

But one day you'd go downstairs and see some commotion out of the barn when you went out your eyes widened

There was ribbons strewn around the bar and enough seating for the family

When you ask what the fuck was going on hoyt just laughed and slapped your back "well thomas ain't into any of that before marriage yer awfully lucky he may not be a looker but he is a gentlemen" he'd laugh shaking you being alot nicer then usual

He'd be so shy dressed all fancy in his old suit that only had a few tears but you didn't have time to dress up before being ushered down the isle

You were officially married and thomas was elated he'd dreamt of this since you were kids peering at you as you walked outside with big ol puppy eyes

You were so nice to him as kids it made his heart melt

When your married he's like a giant puppy dog following you around glaring at any danger and obeying your commands

Yea he listens to everyone else in his family but you and luda mae take priority

Pls cup his face and watch him melt your hands are so soft compared to his tough from the hard work he does

He'll carry you around and protect you from hoyt

#texas chainsaw massacre #thomas hewit #thomas hewitt #thomas hewit x reader

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parcequecestnotreprojeeeet · 11 months

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I see from the comments that a towel story was requested, wasn't it? hahaha I've linked the idea to his upcoming trip and hope you enjoy the story. Your Strawberry

The towel

She had heard him get up and go into the bathroom. He had turned on the shower and now she heard him singing some classic song. It was a very different feeling when the day started with him. Tomorrow she would wake up alone because he would be flying to the other side of the world. She didn't want to think about what it would be like without him. But longing for him was already mingling in her thoughts.

She knew he had slept well when he sang in the shower. Normally she would be up now, making the bed, getting dressed and putting on her war paint, as he liked to call her make-up. But she didn't feel like it. She wanted to stretch the time a little more. She was curious to see if he noticed that she was deviating from her routine and imagined him coming out of the bathroom freshly showered and checking on her.

Would you still be able to see the drops of water that were just running down his chest or would he have already wiped them away? Would his hair stick out in all directions because he had dried it with a towel? Would he emerge naked or with a towel around his hips? Pleasuring herself, she had closed her eyes again and imagined her husband.

"Cherie, are you awake?" her thoughts were interrupted by his soft voice. She opened her eyes expectantly and she felt for herself the dreamy glow they took on. His hair was wet and not quite as messy as she had imagined it to be. On his shoulders she guessed a few drops of water and his chest hair still shone damply. Sighing, her gaze slid lower and clung to his well-toned body. Her gaze followed the trail of his hair, which actually disappeared into a towel he had wrapped around his hips.

"Cherie, what are you doing?" she heard him hoarsely interrupt her exploration. She sat up and locked her gaze with his. "I'm enjoying my husband," she groaned out in an equally hoarse voice. She sensed he was about to crawl back into bed and join her. But she stopped him. "Stay exactly where you are. I'm coming to you," she said in a voice full of longing.

She felt his intense gaze as she pushed back the covers and stood up as smoothly as she could. Her nightgown was comfortable against her skin as she walked around the bed towards him. "You're killing me," he murmured when she was almost in front of him. She brushed her hair out of her face with one hand and looked at him seductively. "Undress me and take me back to bed," she begged softly.

Her words caused his eyes to darken. As her hands slid over his face and shoulders to his chest, his hands brushed aside the straps on her shoulders. She knew he loved those nightgowns that had thin straps and a wide neckline. As soon as the straps fell over her shoulders, the whole nighgown fell. That's why a moment later she was standing naked in front of him.

He gasped before pulling her into his arms and kissing her stormily. But before he could lay her on the bed, she broke away from him, breathing heavily. He looked at her in surprise, but when he felt where her hands were reaching, a grin appeared on his face. He took a step back and she untied the towel he had wrapped around his hips. The sight of him made her sigh and before she could look him in the eye again, she found herself on the bed. He was above her and she saw her longing for her in his eyes.

"We'll remember this when I'm not here, won't we?" he asked wistfully and she nodded. "We will remember every moment," she assured him. Then they stopped talking and gave themselves over to their feelings for each other. When they got up much later, they did it together and enjoyed the day before he left.

Hello sweet sensual 🍓! ❤️

(Wet) Emmanuel with a towel wrapped around his waits is back… and in all its splendour! 😏 It wasn’t only you and Brigitte that imagined the all scene… I did too! And oh my oh my, it that was hot 😏🤤

Making hot memories together to survive the time apart. Great minds 😏

Thank you so much, Strawberry!

#fanfic #strawberry

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arcthebreeder · 1 month

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DMO: Digimon Military Operatives_56.TXT

You thought these guys were done? Well, I did too, we were wrong.

I was getting back home from my Italian class today and I entered my city's most concurred mall, and I tried to get some lunch there, however, as you've probably noticed, thunderstorms have been striking my area lately, and today wasn't the exception. A raging thunderstorm fell this afternoon and it cut the power of the mall, so I was left wandering around a mall only lightened up by the few sun rays that were able to pass through the dark storm clouds and guide the walk of the hundreds of people inside, since this is a DMO tho, you should already know that the military was hanging around this place.

While I was walking through the mall since, I honestly felt fascinated by this kind of scene, I found some soldiers talking with a few businessmen and well dressed women while taking lunch, and, of course, is just a blackout, no one should be freaking out by this, but these people were oddly... Not bothered by it, this would be normal, but since they were so confident using their electronic devices to concrete who knows what transaction, I decided to take a peek, since these guys don't know how to be NOT suspicious.

As I was passing by to gossip about their PC, I saw that Tyutyumon and Damemon were pretty interested in this, so I faked a trip and allowed both of them to connect to one of the phones connected to the PC, with a link opened between them and my Digimon DOCK, I calmly sat near them and waited while Tyutyumon and Damemon were exploring.

Sooner than I thought, the two digimon took an odd path in search of, you guessed it, WHO KNOWS WHAT. Tyutyumon only entered that terminal to search for the cyborg digimon he's so obsessed with, this however, proved to work to our advantage, since when he finally got to the place Tyutyumon was searching for, we realized it was another Digital Armery.

During December last year, I found myself fighting against Ocean Man once again inside one of these. Digital Armories are how I've named Digital Spaces created by my county's army to store data of generic weapons and copies of actual weapons used by digimon, like WarGreymon's Dramon Killers and such, so they can use the data from these weapons to build "The Ultimate Weapon", what I believe to be a Ragna Lordmon they'll use to scare other countries and maybe even iniciante wars.

Once I saw what this place actually was, I allowed Tyutyumon to go crazy and steal how much he wanted to, he, of course, happily wandered around the place recollecting data for god knows what and then, again, happily, ordered Damemon to use the Gun Vulcan to destroy what he didn't wanted, after we got that part done, I passed near the PC again, and picked them up again.

That's where I thought things ended, but sadly, this adventure has more of a bitter ending.

When I was getting out of the mall (without eating anything mind you) another thunderstorm struck, so I had to be around the mall a bit more, and ended up buying a kid's meal since I couldn't afford something else, by that moment, the power came back in a few places, which made me think that probably the few Digimon that lived there could come back and play as they usually do, but... They didn't.

I noticed while I was eating that one of the soldiers was trying to hide the fact that he was storming out, probably thanks to the Armery we quickly destroyed a few minutes ago, a discussion between the soldiers and the Well Dressed People began as soon as they noticed the lack of weapons, I found this a bit funny, but my little chuckle wouldn't last that long, because they quickly solved it by assuming someone stole them, and sent out their Digimon to search for them.

I have no means to know which digimon belonged to who, aside from a Sealsdramon that clearly belonged to a lower rank official that was there to just take care of the PC, the two higher rank officials that were there probably were the ones with Giga Seadramon and Heavy Leomon, not everyone in that desk had a Digimon, none of the two Well Dressed Women appeared to command any digimon, since I only saw four.

That only leaves us with the two businessmen, and since I was already trying to deal with the two Ultimates running at us, but I can say, WITHOUT A DOUBT, that one of those businessmen

Was commanding a Snatchmon.

Just a few minutes of searching were enough for them to find that there were active Digimon around, not only the Digimon that live in the mall, but mine too. As soon as I noticed that they were following us, I stopped the blending show and sent Arcturusmon to deal with Giga Seadramon, Cannondramon to fight Heavy Leomon, Canoweissmon to face Sealsdramon, and MegaloGrowmon to deal with Snatchmon.

Using his drills, Arcturusmon easily dealt with Giga Seadramon's Giga Sea Destroyer, swirling the beams around them and refiring them with minuscule amounts of GRB Factor that made Giga Seadramon flinch and faint without having to use one of Arcturusmon's actual attacks, since that could end up in one of the digimon that live in the mall getting infected, and we don't want that.

Regarding Cannondramon's fight against Heavy Leomon, things went way less smoothly, since both of the digimon fighting were pretty heavy, they mainly shoot long ranged attacks, however, Heavy Leomon took advantage of his Resting Burner's firing to propel itself to Cannondramon, and the only thing Cannondramon was able to do about it was slowing him down with the Grenade Storm. Being a "New-gen" digimon, Heavy Leomon has more advanced skills than Cannondramon, so it got him into a problem when Heavy Leomon got inside Cannondramon's closer range to use the Sonic Excavator, at this range, it would be impossible for Cannondramon to defend himself, however, using the Dyna Cannon to distance himself from Heavy Leomon, he got back a few steps, enough for him to throw a Grenade Storm, with enough precision for more than one of them to fall inside Heavy Leomon's Pile Bunker, so when he tried to close the gap to use the Sonic Excavator again, the vibration created an explosive chain that damaged heavily the Pile Bunker, leaving the digimon out of combat.

Canoweissmon's fight went way smoother than the last two, being a Perfect against an Adult, and the fact that he can fly, made the fight end quick, which let him go over with MegaloGrowmon and help him fight Snatchmon, who has been blocking the Atomic Blasters with his tail, preventing the attack to come out, Snatchmon saw that another perfect got to him, so he decided to try and eat Sealsdramon, however, I summoned Damemon and Tyutyumon to use the Gun Vulcan to avoid this, since eating that Sealsdramon would be both a problem for us, and a horrible move from its part, Snatchmon's desperation however, reached levels that we weren't really expecting.

It grabbed Tyutyumon with its tail, and even tho Damemon tried his best to hurt the tail and force it to stop the attack, Tyutyumon was badly hurt, my guess is that Snatchmon was aiming to make him explode and absorb his data, however, MegaloGrowmon quickly flew there and used the Pendulum Blades to cut the tail, freeing Tyutyumon, who, to badly hurt, could continue with us, Snatchmon, sadly, could go on for a little more too tho, so he aimed at Damemon, and pushed him out of the way with its claws, and ate Sealsdramon.

I quickly got Damemon and everyone else into the backup, and got out of there.

Before I could ask him to do it, Tyutyumon got Damemon into the Tyutyu Lab, and began repairing him. I don't have any means to know if the soldiers got their Digimon back, but something tells me that they did.

The Snatchmon however... I know it's wandering around, whoever is the Tamer, either doesn't care about it, or benefits from it traveling freely around the city, so I'll have to be more careful in that mall from now on, as of now, we've faced three Snatchmon, and I'm pretty sure more are yet to come, but the fact that TWO of them are tied with those Well Dressed People forces me to believe that they're probably part of the military's plan to build Ragna Lordmon... Somehow.

I don't know who these people are, or if they have a separate goal from the Military, but I don't have a way to check on that either, but seeing that they're so close to each other, I'll have to assume that they're somehow related, and thus, share a similar goal.

Damemon is getting repaired at the moment, Tyutyumon, Cannondramon and Kuzuhamon are helping and doing their best efforts to make it feel better, but I'll have to check on them soon and see what I can do to help.

#digimon #blog #blog entry #coding #larp #story #fictional world #digimon vpet #vpet #virtual pet #v pet #dmo #digital monster #digital monsters #leomon #heavy leomon #seadramon #giga Seadramon #chase

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andnowanowl · 4 months

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Since "Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life Under Occupation" is suspiciously not available in the US in the form of an e-book, I purchased a physical copy and wanted to share it here for anyone else also unable to get access.

RIYAM KAFRI ABU LABAN

Chemistry professor, blogger, 36

Born in Amman, Jordan

Interviewed in Ramallah, West Bank

Riyam Kafri Abu Laban was born in Amman, Jordan. Her father was one of thousands of Palestinians not allowed to return to their homes after the Six-Day War of 1967 —marking a second wave of Palestinian refugees after the massive displacement of 1948. Riyam's parents waited for the opportunity to return to the West Bank instead of leaving to pursue lucrative jobs elsewhere. They finally returned to the West Bank in 1980, after years of legal wrangling. On returning to Palestine, they settled near Ramallah.

We interview Riyam in her spacious kitchen in Ramallah. As she talks, she stirs pots, washes dishes, and checks the oven, effortlessly putting together a dinner for six as she tells her life story. We learn that this kind of multi-tasking is normal for her. She is the mother of twins, teaches organic chemistry at Al-Quds University, and she helps to run the university's liberal arts program (designed in conjunction with Bard College). She also writes a blog with a fellow professor, and her posts are sharply observed explorations of daily life in Palestine.

Writing is Riyam's passion, but she came to it later in her career. She received her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and had the opportunity to live a comfortable life in the United States. She chose instead to return to Palestine where she started teaching, and she found her voice as a writer in describing life as a resident of the West Bank. She writes that Palestine is "like a distant land that inhabits the warmest chambers of one's heart, so close yet so unattainable.¹

A DESIRE TO LIVE JUST LIKE ANY OTHER TEENAGER IN THE WORLD

When the war broke out in 1967, my father was an electrical engineering Ph.D. student in Germany. After the war, Israel gave ID cards to Palestinians. The cards were required for them to remain in Palestine, but since my father was abroad at the time they were distributed, he wasn't able to get one. My mom, who hadn't yet met my father, was in the West Bank at the time and was able to get an ID card. A little after dad moved to Jordan. Later, he met my mother while she was traveling through Jordan to visit a relative. My parents were married in November 1977, and then they started working immediately to return to Palestine. At first they thought that since my dad was marrying someone with an ID card, it would be easier for him to apply for one as well. But the Israeli government said that they needed to have a child to prove that the marriage was real. They got pregnant really quickly and I was born nine months later, in Amman, Jordan, in October 1978.²

After I was born, my parents continued their pursuit of an ID card for my father. This time, the Israeli authorities told my mom that she needed to have a boy, because a girl didn't count. Who knows what their reasoning was. My mom had to make the choice to get pregnant as soon as possible again, so that she could try to have a boy and reapply for an ID for my father.

An opportunity came up for my father to help build a new university out of a technical college that was located in Abu Dis.³ So we moved to Palestine in 1979, even though we didn't have an ID for my father yet. We didn't stay long. The faculty named the new university Al-Quds.⁴ Al-Quds is the Arabic name for the city of Jerusalem, and the name drew a lot of attention from the Israeli authorities, who assumed the founders were implying that the city belonged to the Palestinians. Some professors were arrested, and my dad was sent back to Jordan.

The next year, my mother was pregnant with my brother Muhanned, and we tried again to live in the West Bank. My father had found teaching work. This time, we settled near Ramallah.⁵ Finally, my father was able to obtain an ID card not long after my brother was born. Then after he got his ID card, he helped found the engineering school at Birzeit University.⁶ My mother was a teacher, and later a principal, but she took some time off after the birth of Muhanned and later my sister Duna.

I grew up in a politically active family. I also grew up with parents who thought that their children had to leave a mark on society. We were raised to think that we had to live with a sense of purpose. And the main purpose, the underlying goal, was always to serve Palestine in one way or another.

I was sheltered from some of the problems many Palestinians have, but I can't say I grew up completely sheltered, because I was educated about the Israeli occupation. You know, I grew up during the beginning of the First Intifada, so the entire atmosphere was different.⁷ Everyone, from teenagers to adults, was more aware of Palestine, of the political situation, of the prisoners and arrests.⁸ Demonstrations took place right outside our home, since we lived in a central area of Al-Bireh, just outside Ramallah.⁹ One of my earliest clear memories is from the start of the Intifada. I was eight years old, and I spoke to a BBC reporter. I told him, "We're not just throwing rocks, we want our freedom!"

The demonstrations during the First Intifada brought the neighborhood together. At that time, women would knit navy-blue V-neck shirts that they could send to prisoners. So that's how I learned knitting. The prison would only accept that color, and it had to be V-neck, and it had to be plain—we couldn't even use any stitches but the most basic ones. And my mom was part of a women's group that would go into refugee camps to visit prisoners' families, and they would also collect these knitted shirts and send them to prisons.

I don't remember much about my first couple of years at school. Actually, the Israeli military shut down most schools in the area during the First Intifada. Schools might operate for only a few hours a week. So we did distance learning. I was enrolled at the Friends School, and I'd go once every two weeks to drop off my assignments and pick up new ones.¹⁰ The first day of the year, we'd go to pick up our books, get our first assignments, and then immediately go home to start working on them. We were really responsible for our own education. Kids from all around would come to our home, and my mother would teach them. Finally, when I was around twelve, the school reopened. But even then it was only open for half days.

Around the time I became a teenager, the Intifada took on a different emotional quality for me. I wasn't just knitting sweaters anymore I was watching my friends get arrested. I remember the powerful desire to live just like any other teenager around the world, to spend my time listening to music and not having to care about politics. It was suffocating. I say this with a lot of humility, because I didn't even see what it was like to live in a refugee camp. So if I was suffocating in the middle of a city, with a home that had all the amenities that anyone could ask for, I can't imagine what it was like for anyone in the refugee camps. And then I saw this complete switch, with Oslo, around 1993.¹¹

Things started to open up more. We could get to places we couldn't get to before, including Jerusalem, and Haifa, and Jaffa.¹² By the time I graduated from high school in '96, even the topics of conversation with my more the day-to-day concerns with friends were completely different living and work. We didn't need to talk about fighting just to live and struggling just to exist. I could think about things like the New Kids on the Block, pop music. But even as a teen, I never trusted the Oslo Accords. We had peace, but it felt like an illusion, a hologram.

I WAS IN LOVE WITH THE CONCEPT OF A ROAD TRIP

I lived in Ramallah until I was seventeen. Then I graduated from the Friends School, and I received a full-tuition scholarship to Earlham College in the States.¹³ The Friends School had an arrangement where they'd send one or two graduating students to Earlham on full scholarship every year. I'd applied to a few other liberal arts colleges in the States, but I really wanted to get into Earlham, and when I got the scholarship, my family discussed it. It was a little bit of a conflict. It was very tough for dad, particularly. My mother is a very realistic woman, and she felt like her children leaving home was inevitable. But I think for my father it was harder. He viewed the United States as a country that helped Israel. It was a matter of principle that his daughter shouldn't leave this country to study in the U.S. Coming to terms with that was a huge adjustment.

In the end, we decided that I'd go with the idea to become a physician, and that I would return to Palestine after my education. My parents announced, "We'll allow you, our first daughter, to go to the United States on your own, only under the following terms—you will not return with a bachelor's in biology or chemistry, because you could always do that at Birzeit, and you will try to get into medical school." I would finish my education, and then I would come back and work here in Palestine.

All I knew about Earlham was that it was a small school, that I wouldn't have more than thirty or forty students in my classes, which was true. Except for introductory classes, I think most of my classes were like that. I think at seventeen you don't know what to expect out of college, and I soon learned that the school was extremely challenging. I worked really hard. But the social life was far better than I expected. The kindness of people on campus made me feel really cared for in a small setting. And Earlham was very pro-Palestinian. As a Quaker institution, they were very interested in educating Palestinians—they'd been accepting Palestinian students since 1948.

I took biology in the first year, under the assumption that I'd be a pre-med student. But I was broken by the anatomy and physiology course. I just couldn't do it—the smell, the formaldehyde. I worked so hard, and I could barely break a C in the course.

And in the meantime, I was taking organic chemistry, and I was practically sleeping through the course and I was getting an A, you know? And that's when things kind of shifted. I had a great organic chemistry professor, Thomas Ruttledge, who's still my friend and colleague, and I decided to become a chemist. And I thought, "Well, I'll get a Ph.D. instead of an M.D." And I wanted to work in the pharmaceutical industry. That part really enticed me—the idea of creating things.

By the end of my undergrad experience, I felt very much at home at Earlham, and I do think those were the best four years my of entire time in the United States. You know, the one thing that fascinated me the most living in the United States was the ability to drive anywhere. I was in love with the concept of a road trip. I learned driving just to be able to drive out for endless hours, because it was mind-boggling to me that I could cross state lines and be in Tennessee for a couple of hours, and on the same day drive back to Indiana, no problem! That was new to me, and I loved traveling, even after starting my Ph.D. program.

I did my Ph.D. in medicinal organic chemistry at the University of Tennessee, and I focused on computer-based drug design and discovery. I learned to design compounds by modeling enzymes on a computer, which was a very cutting edge approach to medicinal chemistry at the time. I worked with a team that researched anti-HIV compounds and anti-cancer agents.

I briefly considered staying in the U.S. When you're in graduate school and doing research, all you see as important is the science that you're doing. And you don't have a concept or understanding of what life really is, right? Because for a scientist, life exists within the walls of the lab, and the library, and on your computer. And so for a while I really thought that I should stay for a post-doc there. But my parents weren't willing to live through another year of not having their children around. They were really adamant that we should all finish and return as soon as we were done.

Also, I started my Ph.D. program at Tennessee right before September 11, 2001. I remember the day of the attacks, I had to teach a class. As I walked into the classroom, I heard some students whispering about me, "She's Palestinian, they're responsible for this." I couldn't keep silent. I told the whole class that it couldn't have been the Palestinians, and that there was no way I would condone such an act. I told them I came from a violent place, but that all I wanted was for things to be easier for my younger brother and sister. I ended up crying, and a colleague came to the classroom and took over the class for me.

Later I experienced real hostility, even from some faculty, me questions like, "Why are Muslims like this?" I knew then I couldn't stay in the U.S. I couldn't go through life explaining myself to others. It sounds strange, but I thought then that if I had children, I'd rather they who'd askgrow up with the problems of occupation and know who they were than to keep having to explain themselves and their identities to everyone else in their community.

There is a lot that I still love about the U.S. and the South - I still make sweet potato pie every November, around Thanksgiving. But since September 11, I've known there is no way I could be happy living my entire life in the States.

So an opportunity arose in Ramallah at a pharmaceutical company called Pharmacare, and it sounded interesting enough. Also, I thought, If I'm willing to try living in the United States and adjust to its cultural values - the way it works, its social structure, everything—then why not give this chance to Palestine itself?

So after my Ph.D. program I returned to Palestine in January 2007, and I began researching the antioxidant activity of Palestinian plants with Pharmacare. It was part of a project where we were looking for anti-cancer compounds in traditional Palestinian medicinal plants. I worked with herbalists throughout the West Bank. We started the lab from scratch. Up until that point, all pharmaceutical companies in the West Bank were generic drug producers. Our work was the first to invest in innovative research in the region.

THERE'S A RHYTHM IN PALESTINE THAT REALLY GETS UNDER YOUR SKIN

Palestine had changed quite a lot since I had left. I had been away for the entire Second Intifada.¹⁴ I had never seen the wall. That was my first impression of what had changed. I had seen pictures, but to see it cut through terrain I remembered well—honestly, to this day I haven't resolved the feeling I had when I saw it. Passing into the West Bank through Qalandiya, I saw incredible poverty—Qalandiya looks like all the misery of the West Bank, including overcrowding.¹⁵ Then driving into Ramallah, I was amazed to see how things had grown. There were new tall buildings, signs that people were doing okay. The city was jazzy, sort of dressed up. Coming back home, it was as though that illusion of peace, the hologram, had shrunk to a bubble just around my hometown.

Still, being back in Ramallah was a challenge in some ways. Once you go to graduate school abroad, it's an entirely different experience living in Palestine. Believe it or not, the culture shock was easier to get over going to Earlham from Palestine than the culture shock that I faced coming back after almost eleven years of being away.

I can't exactly pinpoint what the reasons are for the difficulty. I think one of them is that I spent eleven years on my own, in a country that's fairly free and accepts anything and everything. And I learned to think for myself, learned to accept people for what they are and who they are, and not judge them for what they think or what they look like or what they believe. And I came back to a country that's fairly systematic. There's a specific, almost rigid, structure in society here that you have to fit into.

I came back here to Palestine, and I had social obligations and family obligations, and I was no longer able to read in my free time. Even the way I dressed had to change. So it was very difficult at the beginning.

But even in those early days back, I felt like Ramallah had a way of making me feel comfortable. And it's not just the city—it's the people. There's a rhythm in Palestine. Every country has its own rhythm, but there's a rhythm in Palestine that really gets under your skin, even with all the difficulty of travel, with all the difficulty of being stuck on the road in traffic. There's something that just gets under your skin, and it's very difficult to leave, once you start to get settled in here. I also finally found old friends, and a lot of my friends were going through the same difficulties. They'd been gone for a while, they were educated outside, whether in France or England or the U.S., and had returned. So we had something in common, and a common language, and that's kind of what's got me slowly coming back into living here.

OUR FIRST CLASS

I worked for Pharmacare for over two years, until around 2010. But there were several reasons why I thought it was not the right place. I was spending my entire time in a lab with only one other person, and I realized more and more that I wanted to work with people. And what does a Ph.D. do with people, other than teach, right? When I was nineteen years old, my adviser Thomas Ruttledge told me that I would end up in teaching, and I thought he just didn't know me. He said that I had it in me.

So in 2010, I applied to Al-Quds University and Birzeit University for teaching positions. Al-Quds had recently developed a partnership with Bard College in the U.S., where Bard would establish a liberal arts degree program within Al-Quds.¹⁶ And Bard thought I was the perfect candidate to teach for them—I was a liberal arts college graduate. I would understand the concepts and the teaching methods of liberal arts education.

Originally, it was a part-time position for a semester, so I only taught one class. After that first semester, Al-Quds and Bard immediately offered me a full-time position. They kind of took me in. They didn't care that I didn't have an extensive publication history or anything like that. It wasn't an old boys' club like Birzeit University.

I became a core faculty member and one of the founding faculty members. We had no program—only thirty students— and I remember running these internal transfer campaigns, where we encouraged students from Al-Quds University to give it a try for one semester. We basically opened it up for everybody, so good students and bad students were applying, and we accepted all of them just to be able to run a program. Then I started building the science program, and now we have the largest and most successful division in the entire college. I have sixty students who are hoping to complete their degree in either biology or chemistry right now. This year, at the end of June 2014, we were able to graduate our second class and my first class of chemistry majors.

I WORE A HEADPIECE THAT'S 200 YEARS OLD AND MADE OF GOLD LIRAS

In the spring of 2009, I met a man named Ahmad through a friend of mine who works with him in the municipal government. We saw each other occasionally for a year and a half, but I wouldn't say we were dating, really. I saw him once or twice, and I think we were both busy with our careers, and so it kind of just took its time.

We would send each other messages every now and then, check on each other. Then it took a more serious turn in the fall of 2010, in September. We started seeing each other among groups of friends so that we could keep it on the down-low, so no one would really catch who was dating whom.

Then in the end of December, we decided that we wanted to be together. He invited me to dinner on December 30 at his family's home. He said that after dinner he'd love to go to my parents' home—he wanted to meet them. From there, things developed really quickly. On Friday morning, New Year's Eve, he called me and he said that his older brother would like to talk to my father and that he'd like to make this official, which is the culturally correct way of doing things. And so they set a date to talk to my parents officially and ask for my hand in marriage.

The night of New Year's Eve, Ahmad surprised me by proposing in front of 360 guests at the Mövenpick Hotel New Year's Eve party.¹⁷ So, by the next morning, the entire city knew that we were engaged.

It was right at the beginning of the second semester for me, so it was a little bit hard to think about getting married during the semester, but semesters at Al-Quds University are never properly planned, because there are strikes, and there are closures and political reasons not to go to school. So we thought about April for a wedding date, and then it didn't work with one of his brothers, whose daughter was expecting a child, and they wanted to be with her when she had the child. We decided that it would have to be pushed till June, but his mother was not willing to see that happen. She felt like she was old, and you never know what happens, and she wanted to be there for the wedding. And so we actually ended up getting married in March 2011, on a very cold, rainy day.

We had a full-on traditional Palestinian wedding. I wore a traditional dress, and I also wore a headpiece that's 200 years old and made of gold liras—Ottoman liras. The wedding party was huge. There were over 700 guests. I should have known that my life would be loud after that. After the big wedding, we had a smaller wedding reception for the family and close friends.

Within less than a year, I went from being single and career-oriented to a wife, a pregnant woman, then a mother of two. I had my twins on November 10, 2011. I came from a small, nuclear family where everybody's educated, and we had a very quiet breakfast every Friday morning, and suddenly I shifted from that into this huge, clan-like family, with a whole lot of brothers and sisters who are all married with children, whose children were having children. Life with my husband's family was loud and lively, and I learned how to cook for forty people—while pregnant. And I found myself completely entrenched in Palestinian life in a way I hadn't been before.

I DISCOVERED THE WRITER IN ME

My husband worked as the mayor of Ramallah's right-hand man. When we married, in a way, I thought I was marrying Ramallah. My friends actually nicknamed me "Lady Ramallah," because I was everywhere, I would go to all the cultural events, always out in the city.

When I finally got to know my husband's family well, I realized that I didn't marry the city, I married Abu Shusha and Zakariyya, which were the two villages that his parents had left in 1948.¹⁸ I suddenly found myself completely entrenched in Palestinian culture that I've only read about the diaspora refugee culture. Now, my kids are descendants of refugees. It's been a total switch for me. And it was more eye-opening to me - there's real suffering in Palestine, there's real heartbreak. And it's a lot more than what people think it is. When I began to see these things, that's when the writing happened.

In July 2010, Bard sent me to the U.S. to do this writing workshop called "Language and Thinking," which is part of our core program for all of our students, and all faculty from all fields are encouraged to teach the course. And that's where I discovered the writer in me. At the Bard workshop, I discovered how much I love human beings and that I like to learn from them. That is when I started to write in earnest. Before long I had started a blog about Palestine called The Big Olive.

I started it with a woman I met at a wedding named Tala. I met Tala exactly two weeks before I went to that writing workshop, so all these things started to come together at the same time. Initially, the blog was supposed to be about Ramallah and about my return to the city, and how the city helped me really adjust. But it became more about growing close to this big Palestinian family of my husband's as well.

Another reason I felt I needed to write about the real Palestine was that I was traveling a lot through the West Bank doing school recruitment. I spent a lot of time traveling to the Abu Dis campus near Jerusalem, visiting Bethlehem, going from checkpoint to checkpoint. The blog became a place where I could examine what it was like to live in this growing, cosmopolitan city—Ramallah—and then going out and observing a culture that you don't see within the city.

Back when I was living in the U.S., I used to get asked about life in Palestine quite a lot by my friends there. I would tell them to imagine that you are commuting from New York City to a small town in New Jersey, which should be an hour drive. But in order to get there, you can't take the regular highway, you have to take all these back roads. And even the back roads aren't all open, and at any point in time, any of the state police might stop you and ask you questions for an hour or more without giving any reason. Suddenly most of your day, most of your work, has been commuting home. It's exhausting. That's what living in Palestine is like, and that's what I wanted to capture in my blog.

I'd always tell my American friends, "You take your freedom to move too much for granted." I remember being stuck in traffic going to JFK after my workshop with Bard in 2010. I was trying toget to the airport to go back to Palestine, and I was really getting antsy. I was with my friend, and I said something like, "Oh my God, I'm going to miss my plane, and I can't understand this traffic." And my friend looked at me and said, "What do you mean you can't understand this traffic? You're the one who lives it every day in Palestine." But that's the thing we take gridlock for granted in Palestine. It's possible to be surprised by terrible traffic in the United States. And so I think that's the difference between traveling here and there.

As Palestinians, we can't take any of our day-to-day plans for granted. I may plan to start my class at eleven o'clock, and on any day I could easily be fifteen minutes late, an hour late, no matter how early I left—for no reason other than a random pop-up checkpoint somewhere between home and school. There may not even be a tense situation or security reason for the pop-up checkpoint. It could be just because.

The stress of getting to work and then back home rules our lives. And now that I have children, I feel it's even further compounded. I have to get to daycare to get my children, and to bring them home so that I can have an hour with them during the day, so then I can put them to bed on time. And that's such a basic human want. That's something that working mothers all over the world have to worry about. But I have to worry about it several times over. Every day I have to figure out how I might improvise if I can't get to daycare to pick up my children on time.

This stress makes you age faster, I think. In certain areas of Palestine, you can cut the tension and serve it up on a platter. And it's because people are not able to be regular human beings, because they're completely controlled by these random obstacles that will stop life from happening.

When I was pregnant, I constantly feared that my water would break in Qalandiya and I'd be stuck. I had twins who were breech sideways, and so there was no room for them to come out. I couldn't have natural birth.knew that. And so, the last time I drove, I was about a week from giving birth. I went as far as making arrangements with a doctor in Bethlehem so that, should my water break, it would be easier to go to Bethlehem and give birth there than drive the few miles to my hospital. So I had a friend, and he agreed that he would have an ambulance on standby in Bethlehem that would come and pick me up at the drop of a hat and would take me right away to the French women's hospital in Bethlehem. He would also make sure that he was in contact with my OB/GYN, who could explain to him on the phone the details of my pregnancy. That's an extreme example, but the truth is that every time I leave the house, I have to have contingency plans. I never know how long it might take to run simple errands.

If you're in much of the U.S., you're pregnant with twins, and you work a few miles away from home and the hospital, you can get to any hospital at any time, no matter when your water breaks, no matter if your twins are breech, or both pointing downward with their heads and ready to be delivered naturally. You have that access. Here, you don't.

The only access from one city to the other is roads, and when those roads are blocked, then life stops. And that's how women end up giving birth at checkpoints. I wrote about giving birth at a checkpoint on my blog, and I was writing about my own fears. It was something that kept coming at me. And even when I was driving, I kept thinking, "What if I get stuck in this crazy traffic, and someone hits me, rear-ends me, and then I lose one of the babies because of the shock?"

For anyone who doesn't know the road Wadi Nar - actually, it's a little better now that the roads are a little bigger - but it's this winding, uphill road between Ramallah and the cities southeast of Jerusalem where trucks of all kinds and sizes and cars of all kinds and sizes are traveling two ways. There are no clear two lanes, and literally, when you are going up, look to your right, you're practically on the edge of a cliff. If your car gets hit, there's nowhere to go except down the valley.

I tell my friends that it's only by the grace of God that I make it from sunrise to sunset every day, and I go to Abu Dis, and I still have the energy to take care of two kids every day. The only way for me to de with this stress is to write. I've gotten such positive responses to the blog from everyone who reads it, but I'm not sure if I'm actually a good writer, or if people just want to be nice to me. And this is where one of my fears exists. It's not a fear, it's maybe that I'm not willing to believe that I'm good at something else other than science.

On the other hand, I found this open-armed place with this community where anything you write is up for discussion, and it's up for editing and up for improvement, and people are willing to read what you write. Because every time you write, you're putting yourself on that paper. And I'm always submitting pieces to an online magazine called This Week in Palestine, or just putting work up on the blog, and thinking, Dear God, please have mercy on me. There's a piece of me within those words. So don't let them batter it because it would break my heart. And so I'm in between, as a writer, I'm still searching for the voice. I don't know what narrative I'm going to take, I don't know what I am trying, I don't even know what story I'm telling.

So I'm still trying to find my voice. I'm not ready to give up science completely and just do writing. And at the same time, I can't just let the science take over, because I'm so extremely happy to finally have that part of me alive again.

THERE IS REAL SUFFERING OUTSIDE OF RAMALLAH

When the Bard program at Al-Quds was just getting started, we didn't have enough students to fill the classes. Besides teaching, I worked as a recruiter and traveled all around the West Bank to meet students. I traveled a lot in Bethlehem and recruited a lot of students from the refugee camps there. I also recruited quite a lot from around Hebron. Those trips were so valuable to me, because they reminded me that there is real suffering outside of Ramallah, beyond the day-to-day obstacles of checkpoints and uncertainty that I faced in moving around the West Bank.

I've seen that suffering touch my students. We recruited quite a lot from the refugee camps, and so I taught many of the young people I was recruiting. I remember one student took an intro organic chemistry class with me I always had to tell him to be quiet so I could get on with the lecture, because he was always asking questions. He was funny, sweet, handsome. One of the leaders in the program. Then in the middle of summer break, he disappeared for two weeks. His parents had no idea where he was—they just found his car abandoned in the street one day. He'd been arrested. And then when he returned to school in the fall, he was a completely changed person. He didn't say a single word all fall semester.

But I think the liberal arts approach here is valuable. The students really take to it—they flourish. We have students reading Greek philosophy, drama. And writing as well. I remember one assignment where students read the "to be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet and recast it from a Palestinian perspective. The students shared their work in class, and the results were chilling and powerful.

I hope my students will have an easier time than my generation has had. I hope they make the Palestinian cause the way they see it and not simply follow leaders whose ideas have expired. And I hope they stay alive. For my children, I hope they find liberation through education, and I hope that they choose the pen and the book before anything else. For myself, I want to continue to write, though my hopes for Palestine feel more and more crushed. I hope to never forget for a moment that whatever peace and prosperity I have in Ramallah is temporary - an illusion.

---

Footnotes

¹ From the appendices -

IN WAITING by Riyam Kafri Abu Laban

The following prose poem was written by Riyam Kafri Abu Laban and is included here to stand in for sentiments expressed to us by nearly every one of our interviewees, whether their narratives were included in this collection or not.

Welcome to the land of waiting. People here are born waiting. Waiting to return to a homeland lost, and, from the looks of it, in the most desperate moments, lost forever.

Waiting to return to a home they still carry a key for in their hand, and a memory of in their heart; an image hidden in the folds of their dreams, and which, sadly, in the most realistic moments they know no longer exists.

In Palestine you wait for Ramadan, just like you wait for a breath of fresh air in a crowded restaurant in New York City. You wait for a permit to travel. You wait for schools to open, for the strike to end, for the checkpoint to be removed, for the accident rubble to be cleared. You wait for the Allenby Bridge to empty, for the doctor to finally come in on time.

In Palestine you wait. You wait for your dreams to come true.

You wait to leave the refugee camp, you wait to leave the village, you wait to arrive in Ramallah, you wait for destiny to embrace you—but she really never does. In fact, at the first stop she slaps you hard in the face and leaves her mark on you, and then you spend a lifetime waiting for that wound to heal. It never does.

In Palestine you wait to graduate, you wait to find a job, you wait for the next job to be better than the first.

In Palestine you wait to get married, then you wait to have children, then you wait for them to grow. Then you wait for them to become doctors—but trust me, they will not.

In Palestine you wait in line endlessly to receive permission to see the Palestine that is yours. And after you finally get a chance to see her, you realize she looks nothing like what your grandparents described, and nothing like the country your mother cries over. You wait to see her, only to realize that she has moved on, and did not wait for you.

In Palestine you wait for the birth of a child anxiously, with the hope she will not be born on a checkpoint.

In Palestine you wait for the hunger strike to end. You wait for sons and daughters to be released from prison—only to be rearrested again, at the next checkpoint while on their way to find a job and start a life.

In Palestine you wait for your paycheck only to have it hijacked by hungry loan payments and red hot gasoline prices.

In Palestine, you wait endlessly in Qalandiya to get home. Keep waiting. This might take hours.

You wait for the summer to end in the hope that winter will bring more peace, and you wait for winter to end in the hope that summer will bring more warmth.

In Palestine you wait for everything and everyone.

In Palestine you wait for the next eruption, the next Intifada, the next incursion, the next war—which always comes.

² Amman, the capital of Jordan, is a city of over 2 million residents.

³ Abu Dis is a city of around 12,000 people just east of Jerusalem and the location of one of Al-Quds University's campuses.

⁴ Al-Quds is a university system with three campuses-one in Jerusalem, one in Abu Dis just outside of Jerusalem, and one in Al-Bireh, adjacent to Ramallah. The system currently serves over 13,000 undergraduates.

⁵ Ramallah is a city of over 30,000 people. It has experienced rapid growth since it was adopted as a de facto administrative capital by the Palestinian Authority following the Oslo Accords. Numerous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and diplomatic outreach offices are also based in the city. Ramallah is located about ten miles northeast of Jerusalem, the city many Palestinians consider Palestine's true capital.

⁶ Birzeit University is a renowned public university located just outside Ramallah. It hosts approximately 8,500 undergraduates.

⁷ The First Intifada was an uprising throughout the West Bank and Gaza against Israeli military occupation. It began in December 1987 and lasted until 1993. Intifada in Arabic means "to shake off."

⁸ Israel carried out the mass arrest of Palestinian citizens during the First Intifada. More than 120,000 Palestinians were arrested or spent time in prison from 1987 to the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.

⁹ Al-Bireh is a city of over 40,000 people just east of Ramallah.

¹⁰ The Friends School of Ramallah is a Quaker-run institution that was opened in 1889, during the time of Ottoman rule.

¹¹ The first Oslo Accords negotiations took place in Norway, the U.S., and France during the summer of 1993. The Accords outlined a plan for the Israeli military to withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank in stages while further negotiations would be carried out regarding Palestinian statehood, security, borders, and Israeli settlements.

¹² Access to Jerusalem was significantly restricted to Palestinians from the West Bank before the Oslo Accords in 1993. Haifa is a city of 270,000 people in northern Israel. Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv in Israel, was home to many Arabs before 1948.

¹³ Earlham College is a Quaker-affiliated liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. It has an enrollment of 1,210 students and has regularly accepted a large cohort of Palestinian students since the signing of the Oslo Accords.

¹⁴ Though a small portion of the barrier wall in the West Bank was constructed as early as 1994, construction of the wall increased rapidly in 2002.

¹⁵ Qalandiya is a refugee camp and city of nearly 30,000 located between Jerusalem and Ramallah. It's also the name of the nearby checkpoint, one of the biggest in the West Bank.

¹⁶ Bard College is a liberal arts college in Dutchess County, New York, on the Hudson River. It serves just over 2,000 undergraduate students. Bard formed an alliance with Al-Quds University in 2009, with the idea of bringing training in liberal arts education to Palestine.

¹⁷ The Mövenpick Hotel in Ramallah is part of a Swiss chain of international luxury hotels. The hotel in Ramallah was opened in the fall of 2010.

¹⁸ Abu Shusha was a Palestinian village of under 1,000 near the city of Ramla that was destroyed in the war of 1948. Zakariyya was a Palestinian village of just over 1,000 north-west of Hebron that was destroyed in the war of 1948.

#palestine speaks #palestinian voices #book excerpt #palestine #strike for palestine #this was the one i was supposed to post yesterday but accidentally skipped a chapter #part 5 of 16

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