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melodygatesauthor · 1 year

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The Fractured Moon - Part 1

Yandere! Marc Spector - Jake Lockley - Steven Grant X f!Reader

PLEASE READ TAGS/DISCLAIMERS/WARNINGS BEFORE READING THIS FIC. THERE ARE DARK THEMES!

Moodboard - Series Masterlist - AO3 Link

Summary:

Marc Spector always knew he wasn't right in the head. Jake and Steven were a perfect example of that. He'd managed to figure that part of his life out though, learning how to live with his alters in a way that left everyone happy, including Khonshu.

That all changed when Steven spotted you during a tour at the museum. There was no explanation for the way his heart stopped in his chest, or the way he knew he had to have you, but they all felt it, and it left their minds fractured beyond repair.

Disclaimer:

I created this fic for the sole purpose of exploring the yandere thing as a fanfiction "kink" in a safe way and in a safe space. I in no way would want this to happen to myself or someone else. This fic is not a reflection of my moral beliefs. - Further, this fic is not an accurate representation of people with DID (dissociative identity disorder). These men happen to have DID and I'm putting them in a situation where they would have an unhealthy obsession with the reader character.

Tags/Warnings:

NSFW, Stalking, non-con, somnophilia, rape, mentions of murder, drugged sex, kidnapping, manipulation, dacryphilia, voyeurism, threats of physical harm, copious amounts of sex, copious amounts of unprotected sex, blood, unrealistic refractory period, biting, slapping, hitting, reader is smol, choking. This is a Dead Dove Do Not Eat situation.

Word Count: 13.7k (I...I was inspired)

Spanish Terms:

Estoy de acuerdo = I agree

hijo de puta = motherfucker

Quiero tocar = I want to touch

buena niña = good girl

Steven was the first one to notice you, standing by the sarcophagus the museum had on display. He could see you through the archway that separated the museum floor and the giftshop. There was no explaining what it was that captivated him. It could’ve been the way your eyes lit up so full of excitement while the tour guide spoke; it also could’ve been the way your smile seemed to make the entire world come to a screeching halt; regardless, something about you took his breath away and left him clutching his chest behind the gift shop counter. Donna snapped at him, and for once, he didn’t care. He’d just found his reason for living…his purpose…it was you.

It started with a simple conversation. He walked up behind you while you were listening to the tour guide and put a daring hand on your back. You spun around to face him, eyes full of confusion, unsure as to why someone would just walk up to you and touch you like that. You were wearing something low-cut, Steven’s eyes quickly took inventory of your appearance. So much more beautiful than he had the capacity to fully grasp.

You felt a moment of discomfort under his traveling gaze. He was looking at you with his mouth partially open, lips quirked in a sideways smirk while his eyes crawled over every inch of you. You stepped back and pulled your blazer over yourself, feeling a little uncomfortable with the way he was staring.

“Can I help you?” You asked, trying not to sound too rude. It was possible he was just awkward and bad at talking to people.

Now that Steven had your attention, he wasn’t sure what to say. Did he just randomly ask you on a date? No, surely you’d think that was insane. Did he tell you how beautiful you were? No, that might be creepy.

“Just tell her you’re sorry pendejo, you’re creeping her out.” Jake muttered from within Steven’s mind.

“S-sorry, thought you were someone else.” He said to you, taking a step back.

“Oh, it’s okay.” You gave him a courteous smile before returning to the tour.

You thought about that interaction for a few minutes while the tour guide droned on, wondering who he’d mistaken you for, and why he would’ve looked at her like that.

“Something’s not right, Steven,” Marc said from the headspace while Steven stood there, hand still pressed to his sternum.

“Si, something about her is so…”

“Tantalizing.”

The other two agreed in unison. Steven sauntered back to the gift shop, trying to go about his business, but no matter what, he couldn’t stop thinking about you. He was in a daze, going through the motions of his job, but not mentally present. Donna approached, and he didn’t even notice her right away. She had to say his name a minimum of three times to get his attention.

He looked up at her, aggravated by her seemingly incessant need to make him feel like a nuisance. She was smacking her jaw together while chewing her gum.

“Stevie, we’re out of the hippo plushies, I’m gonna need you to go downstairs and bring a case up here.”

Steven didn’t want to miss the chance of seeing you, he had to see you again. Surely your tour would be ending soon. If he wasn’t in the gift shop when it ended, he might not see you. He couldn’t take that risk.

“The plushies can wait. I’ve got something more pressing to worry about right now.” He protested, looking out toward the museum entry to see if he could spot you among the other patrons.

“Oh yeah, like what? You’ve got something better to do than your job? While you’re at work?” She said, continuing to chew her gum obnoxiously between her teeth.

“Fine,” Steven conceded, knowing that he didn’t really have a good reason to stand there and wait for you, not one that he could give his boss anyway.

Steven walked out to the entry hall, where you would be walking by to get to the giftshop once your tour concluded. He stopped before turning down the hall toward the stock closets. He spotted you, coming toward him with your group and felt his breath catch suddenly. He thought he might collapse.

As you walked toward the gift shop, you saw the man again, and noticed he was staring once more. You furrowed your brow at him while you passed before averting your gaze awkwardly. He was looking at you so…so…it was like you were the only thing in existence. It made every nerve ending in your body stand up, screaming at you to leave, but you didn’t. You didn’t want to seem weird. Plus, you were in a public space. There was nothing to be afraid of…right?

Donna was shouting Steven’s name incorrectly, pulling him out of his trance. She tapped his shoulder roughly. Steven gulped down a breath of air and within a split second, it wasn’t Steven anymore.

“Shut it, puta, I quit.” Jake said walking out of the museum doors.

“Jake, we can’t just quit my job, how are we gonna…”

“Your job isn’t necessary, compadre.”

It was true, as much as Steven hated to admit when Jake was right. His job was a good way for them, as Moon Knight, to keep themselves under cover. No one would suspect a timidly mannered man that worked as a gift shop clerk to be an avatar for the Egyptian moon god.

Jake blinked in the harsh sunlight, looking to see where you could’ve gone. Since it was a nice day out, you were probably walking, which meant you would be easier to find.

“Let me out, I can find her,” Marc said.

And find you he did. He followed you after seeing a glimpse of your blazer blowing in the wind as you turned a corner down the street. He tried not to get too excited, careful not to break into a jog or a run after you. Marc had to find a balance between getting too close, thus alerting you to their presence, and being too far away that he might lose you altogether. He followed you a few blocks when he watched you walk into the library.

“She…she likes to read,” Steven observed.

Marc could feel how excited Steven was by that prospect alone. You had something in common with one of them. There was potential there. Maybe this would go better than they thought. He stopped before going inside though, feeling unsure about what it was they were actually doing there. He’d seen how uncomfortable his alter made you when he first spoke to you during your tour.

“Marc, what are you doing? Go inside, now.” He’d never heard Steven sound so demanding, or dark, and something about it compelled Marc to move forward.

He walked into the library and nodded awkwardly at the librarian. Marc didn’t know where you were yet, and he still wasn’t sure what he would do once he did find you. He couldn’t very well walk over and strike up a conversation with you. You’d notice the out of place American accent immediately and think they were crazy. He started idly walking, staying behind shelves in case they did find you. He didn’t want you to notice their presence.

When he finally found you, Marc’s guilty conscience caught up to him. You were so cute, grabbing a book off the shelf in the aisle across the way before walking to sit down in one of the big bean chairs. You smiled as you opened the book. The cover read, La Belle et la Bête. An unmistakable smirk snuck over Marc’s lips at the sight of you.

Someone walked by the aisle, cutting off his gaze and forcing him to shake his head from the fog you’d unknowingly placed him under. What in the hell were they doing? Marc wasn’t a psycho stalker, neither were the other two, and yet they’d followed you all the way there, and they stood watching you. That wasn’t like them at all. They were the good guys. They were the guys that stopped creeps like that.

Marc walked down the aisle and exited the library as quickly as he could.

“Where are you goin’?” Steven asked, almost frantically as Marc started his way down the street.

“We aren’t crazy, we aren’t going to stalk this poor girl.” He said, as they walked away. It didn’t stop him from thinking about you though.

----

When they reached their apartment, a dark and dingy place that was mostly occupied by Steven, they were all flustered from the events of the day. Marc was still fronting, but his alters were muttering wildly in his head. Jake was going on in Spanish about how beautiful you were, and Steven was in full agreement. Marc was still trying to understand this new feeling, the urge he had that he’d never felt before. He felt this huge need, like if he never saw your face again, he might just die.

“We have to go back, we have to see her,” Steven said, excitement brewing in his tone. If he had control of the body, Marc imagined he would be pacing and hyperventilating. “Never seen anyone like that, so gorgeous, so…so damn pretty. Wasn’t she so pretty Marc?”

“We just need to calm down.” Marc said, breathing heavily himself and leaned himself against the couch tiredly. “Maybe if we just sleep it off we can-”

“Did you see the way she looked at us, Marc? I think she likes us.” Steven said. “The way she smiled…”

“She wasn’t into us, we startled her.” Marc protested. “You creeped her out.”

“Did not. She smiled at me, I bet if we had asked her out she woulda said yes.”

“Did you notice how soft her skin looked?” Jake asked, and there was silence, as though all three of them were recalling your appearance. “We don’t need to talk to her, but what I wouldn’t do just to look at her again.”

Marc’s thoughts consumed him. He remembered seeing your lips while you sat there in the library, for that brief moment. You did look so beautiful. Your eyes lit up at whatever was on your page, not noticing the man who was watching you intently while he just tried to figure out a way to actually approach you.

Your lips looked so soft, and he couldn’t help imagining them against his. He wanted to devour you in the best way. No one had ever made Marc feel so shaken, he could normally keep himself together. His cock was nagging incessantly against the zipper of his pants, begging for stimulation. He shifted, trying to ignore it, but what he wanted to ignore, the other two wanted him to deal with.

“If you’re not going to do anything about it, amigo, let Steven or me take care of it. I’d love to spend the night thinking about our little princesa.”

Marc grumbled, but gave in to his more primal urges and pulled his pants and underwear down around his thighs. When he looked down at his cock, he was ashamed that it was already leaking just from thinking about you so much. Not to mention that he was so fucking hard. He shifted himself, leaning back a little, grabbing it firmly in his caged fingers. Marc pooled some spit in his mouth and dropped it over the head, letting the saliva trickle down his thick shaft. All he could picture was you, so sweet and innocent while you got into your book. A heavy sigh left him while he brought his hand up in an even stroke.

“She was so pretty, wasn’t she Marc?” Steven urged, “I’ll need a turn with the body when you’re done, yeah?”

“Quiet, Steven.” Marc said firmly.

“Sorry, can’t help myself. I just keep thinkin’ about how good her breasts looked, pushed together like that…I just wanna feel them, hold them in my hands. I bet she has pretty little nipples, too, don’t you?”

Marc groaned at the thought of having one of your tits in his mouth. He assumed that you had cute little nipples, and he imagined that you would gasp when he sucked on each one. He then thought about how sweet your little cries would be while he took hold of your body and thrust into you. You had such a nice voice, you’d probably make the best noises.

“I bet she has a tight little cunt,” Jake sounded rough. Marc knew he only had a little time before his alter took over to satisfy his own needs.

“Bet you’re right.” Marc said, not bothering to attempt pushing them out anymore. They were fueling his thoughts of you.

“Oh, I’d love to feel it, bet it’s all wet.” Steven sighed heavily.

“F-fuck.” Marc started jerking faster, but he didn’t get to finish.

Jake couldn’t stand it anymore, the thoughts of you brought him out into the open, forcing Marc into the headspace where he would remain for the evening, begrudgingly. Deep down though, Marc still felt riddled with guilt, so didn’t protest much to his alter taking over. Jake bit his bottom lip, adjusting his position to one he liked better, a looser grip, and shoulders more relaxed. He worked faster than Marc, at first anyway, letting out a sharp exhale while he jerked himself. There wasn’t enough slick beneath his fingers, so he globbed more spit down his length.

“See, I think Jake’s onto something. I wonder if she’d like us taking her slow, or if she’d like us to take her fast, real fast.”

“She wouldn’t like any of it Steven, we’re not…doing any of that.” Marc’s guilt for thinking about you so much was becoming more apparent, but he still couldn’t stop himself. “She would look good though, wouldn’t she?”

“Gotta know what she feels like, gotta know how tight…mm” Jake put his arm up on the back of the couch and leaned back, spreading his legs wider. “Little princesa.”

Jake slowed down, moving along the length of his shaft and enjoying the way it pulsated beneath his fingers. He knew if he ever got the chance to show you how it felt, you’d like it, too. Just when he couldn’t stand it, so close to spilling hot white ropes all over Steven’s shirt, he stopped, bringing his hand to the couch cushion and letting it rest there.

His cock bobbed, having been so close to climax. Jake was panting heavily, sweat started beading on his brow. His cock was aching, so swollen it might burst. He looked down at it, watching the way his precum beaded at the slit, piling so much that it trickled over the side. Steven was practically screaming from the headspace to be let out so he could finish them off.

“Be patient, Steven,” Jake said as a warning, waiting a little longer before wrapping his fingers back around his thick cock.

He churned his hips upward into his palm, letting out a soft exhale at the feeling. His mind kept going back to how tight and wet he hoped your pussy was; how soft he hoped it was. It wasn’t like Jake to give into obsession like this, but something about you had flipped a switch in their minds, fracturing the line between order and chaos. He imagined himself fucking you until you screamed his name. He thought about how good you would look so cock drunk you could hardly open your eyes.

“I keep thinkin’, she was smilin’. I think she’d like anything we did to her.” Steven said, furthering the delusion in his mind that you were as into them as they were you.

“Like…like what?” Jake grunted, increasing his pace and encouraging Steven to keep muttering the filthy thoughts in his mind.

“Oh anything, I think she’d love if we kissed her, told her how pretty she is, filled her with everything we’ve got.”

“Yeah she would, she’d like that…hmm…”

Just as he was there, with his abdomen tightened in preparation for his release, Jake let go of his cock once again, letting it sit there, twitching as it was denied further friction. He let out a sigh of longing, but he knew waiting would make it all the more explosive. It didn’t matter though, the other alter was chomping at the bit, and couldn’t wait any longer.

Steven came out to the feeling of painful throbbing between his legs, desperate for more attention. He gathered another huge glob of spit together and dropped it down over his length. He moaned deeply the moment he started moving his palm over the slick and veiny surface. He was anything but quiet, whimpering and whining while he got to work. It felt so good, and thinking about the way your slick cunt would feel if…when he finally got the chance to have it just pushed him so much closer.

“We’ve got to feel it, we’ve got to…oh shit.” Steven bit his bottom lip so hard he thought it might bleed.

“Estoy de acuerdo.” Jake muttered, “I want to taste.”

Marc was staying silent now. Steven presumed he was feeling the guilt of this obsession that was brewing, but Steven couldn’t care less, he was so enraptured by you. He grabbed the couch tightly, squeezing the cushion with all his strength. He was stroking himself fast, thinking about how wet you would be if only they had the chance to show you how good they could make you feel.

“That’s it, Steven, bet she’d like to feel us filling her up. Who do you think she’ll like best?”

It wasn’t lost on Marc that Jake and Steven were speaking as though they were actually going to have you some day. Steven couldn’t take it anymore, he felt his climax build, pooling in his groin and then shooting in hot spurts against his patterned button-down. He was groaning deeply, bucking upward even after the last shot, just loving the feeling of emptying himself to the thought of you. They all were loving the thought of emptying themselves into you…

----

It was their hope, Marc’s especially, that their obsession had been curbed with the evening of self-love, but it hadn’t. Over the next few weeks, they each found themselves going from casually walking by places they hoped they might find you, to full on following you from one destination to the next. On Fridays, you could be found in the library, on the beanbag chair, reading a book that you would take home for the week. Steven thought it was cute what a fast reader you were.

Marc would see you at work sometimes on the other days of the week. That was how they learned that you were a waitress at a local diner. You probably didn’t even realize that you handed Marc coffee, and that he eerily resembled the guy from the museum some time ago. They’d considered asking you out on a few occasions, but they kept reverting back to the one problem they faced…the fear of rejection. What if you said no? They’d be forced to take drastic measures, and they didn’t want to scare you away. They couldn’t imagine anything worse.

Jake would watch you in the night. Most nights, after you were finished with work, you would go home to your little first floor apartment in the crappy part of town; but on the weekends, he’d see you go out with your friends, laughing and drinking. One weekend was different though, you changed your routine, he saw you out with someone else.

There was a man, roughly their age, and they all felt an immediate cold feeling wash over the body. You were sitting with him in a nice restaurant. You were wearing something pretty, a tight little red dress that hugged your curves beautifully. It was clear you’d styled your hair specifically for this outing, and your makeup was done in a way that they hadn’t seen before. You liked this guy. Jake’s hands clenched into balled fists at his sides.

“Who’s that man?” Steven asked, aggravation apparent in his tone. “Don’t like the way he’s lookin’ at her mate.”

“Looks like she’s on a date,” Marc said, feeling a mixture of pain and relief. Maybe this was how they moved on.

Jake tsked, shaking his head slowly, “hijo de puta.”

“You don’t think he’s gonna…that he’s gonna touch her, do you?” Steven sounded worried, like if the man touched you, you might disintegrate into thin air.

“Not a chance,” Jake said in a gruff tone.

They watched quietly, save for Steven who whined through the majority of your date. He was so worried about the man tainting you, as he put it. And if Jake was being honest, he agreed. The thought of someone else burying their filthy disgusting cock in your perfect little cunt made them all enraged. They were relieved when the man brought you home and then left without even coming close to doing what they’d feared. They each appreciated what a good girl you were.

You’d never hear from that man again, and you’d always think it was because he ghosted you, when in reality it was much darker than that. Despite Marc’s protests, Jake couldn’t stand by and let someone else touch you. The thought of it had driven him to near madness. You were their little princess, not someone else’s to do with as they wished.

“I don’t think this is what Khonshu intended we use the suit for,” Steven said, despite being in agreement that the man needed to go somehow.

Jake snapped back, “that fucking bird needs us, he doesn’t care what we use the suit for.”

On a night not long after that, Jake found himself smirking while standing outside of your window, watching you while you readied yourself for bed. Your skin looked ridiculously soft. He wondered for a moment if you knew you were being watched. Surely you must’ve, it was apparent in the way you removed your bra and turned toward the window. Why else would you have left your curtain open like that? If you didn’t want to be seen, you would’ve closed your blinds, right?

Steven burst out to the front when that happened, seeing your erected nipples on display made him feral. He did all he could to not open your window right there and take you where you stood. Some drool dribbled down his chin and he wiped it quickly on the sleeve of Jake’s jacket.

“Oh come on, pendejo, that’s disgusting.”

Steven ignored him. His eyes burned when he didn’t blink, not wanting to miss even a millisecond of time with you. In just moments, you were covering your blinds, and they weren’t able to see anything else. They still stood there, hoping that you would give them just one last peek before they left for the night, but they’d be left disappointed.

The next morning, Marc knew you were at work, having passed by the diner on his way to your apartment. He had a plan…a thought to hopefully end this insanity once and for all.

“Marc, what are you thinkin’?” Steven asked cautiously as Marc shimmied open your window.

“You’ll like it…trust me.” He grunted, pulling the window open completely so they could slide through.

Marc still felt guilty for all the things they did; watching you, following you, jerking their cock to you almost every single night since they’d first seen you, but he knew there was no stopping it. He couldn’t get you out of his head, in the same way he couldn’t get Jake and Steven out. You were as much a necessity to him as the air he breathed.

“Maybe if we just…get ourselves a little something, we can stop this nonsense. Maybe just a little taste will be enough.” He hoped that they could find some way to move on from the mess, and everyone could get back to their normal lives.

The bedroom of your apartment was cluttered, but not dirty. They appreciated beyond words that you’d left what Marc had in mind right on the floor for them. A nice, silky pair of black panties just laying there. He leaned down, grabbing the thin fabric in his hands. He was tempted to press them to his face right then and there, but knew that doing so would lead to a longer visit than intended. He wouldn’t be able to resist the lingering ache that came with it. Even thinking about it at that moment made him start to feel a need growing inside his jeans.

“Look, there’s her hamper,” Steven pointed out the basket in the corner of the room, “maybe we could grab two more pairs, one for each of us.”

“No, we don’t want her to notice.” Marc protested, slipping back out the window without a trace, save for the missing pair of panties he hoped you’d never notice.

----

It was later that night, after they’d spent the day with you, watching you work and seeing to it that you went to bed, that Marc was in his own bed with your panties in one hand, and his cock in the other. He’d stripped down naked the moment he got home, eager to finally get a look at their prize. They were soft, beautiful, and just knowing you’d had them touching the most delicate part of your body made his cock ache with need.

“Smell it, Marc, what’s it smell like?”

Marc obeyed his alter’s request, already being curious himself, and brought the part that had been closest to your cunt up to his nose. He inhaled deeply while making an upward stroke. He shuddered on his exhale. You smelled…delicious. It was too good to be real. You smelled indescribable.

“Marc, please let me out, let me try,” Steven started from the headspace. He was the neediest of the three, and Marc knew he had to work quickly to make sure he got this time for himself.

Marc ignored both of his alters now, wanting to revel in the silence of his thoughts, imagining that he was burying his face in your delicious pussy lips instead of just inhaling the remnants of it on your panties. He felt his cock throb, just imagining how your core would feel on his tongue if he shoved it in there. Your walls would contract a little while he slurped your sweet juices.

He tossed his head back, biting his bottom lip while he ran his palm over his precum slick shaft. You had such an effect on them, he’d never leaked that much before. He worried that thinking about you was starting to make him feel insane. Then he thought…what if he actually got to touch you?

Marc would have to continue those thoughts from the headspace, because Jake couldn’t take it anymore. Marc protested briefly, fighting to keep control, but the smell of your pussy was too intoxicating to his alter, and Jake needed to have it first hand. He dragged the crotch of the panties up his nostril with a deep sniff and then he nearly collapsed. The scent was unbearably arousing.

“Jake, please let me have the body, please. I need it,” Steven said. “Give it to me now.”

Steven’s thoughts had taken a darker turn since the first time he’d seen you, but Jake was too enraptured at that moment to bother listening to him. He switched the silky undergarment to his dominant hand and wrapped it around his cock. Just touching it to his body sent an unbearable tingling through each nerve ending. Jake had never whined like that, it surprised even him. The same thing that touched your cunt, was now touching his cock. It was the closest they had been to feeling you like that.

“You’re gonna ruin it before I can get a shot,” Steven was getting even more antsy, “please bruv, I need it.”

Jake didn’t give a shit if he ruined the panties. In fact, he fully intended to coat your silky underwear in his hot sticky cum. He had no intention of handing the body to Steven. The other alter could sit in the headspace and suffer for all he cared. Just the thought alone was driving Jake mad. He wanted to make sure he could give it his all, so he waited, like before, pausing just before his release.

He sat there for a moment, breathing heavily through his nostrils, allowing his cock to settle before starting again. He was still hearing Steven shouting, nearly breaking down the walls that separated them. Steven had never been so eager to front, and Jake had to admit it was a struggle to keep him at bay. This wasn’t typical Steven behavior, but you’d changed their dynamic ever since you came into their lives.

Jake was painfully hard again. Precum was trickling over the sides and sticking to the satin fabric. Jake stroked the cloth over himself slowly, sucking in a breath and wrinkling the sheets in his fist. It was slick now, sliding easier. He wondered what you’d done in those panties.

Did you touch yourself? Of course you did. You had to have. He imagined you, arching your back with your fingers plunged deep inside of yourself, squelching your arousal around your digits with every deep drag. You were probably masterful with your hands, knowing exactly how to fuck yourself in a way that made you a panting mess while you came all over your little hands.

“Fuck…mm-princesa…” he was close, so close. “Right there…gonna…ah…”

“Oh, God,” Steven said, taking a deep breath now that he finally had control. He finally felt the sensation of your panties against his cock in full. His entire body rattled the bed frame. “So sweet, oh my…”

Steven clutched the undergarments in both of his shaky hands and brought them to his nostrils, depositing some of his own precum on his lips. He took a deep breath. He wasn’t even worried about grabbing his cock yet, he was so focused on inhaling every bit of you that he could get. It felt like the times Marc drank too much, intoxicating, and leaving Steven’s eyes unable to open beyond halfway.

“So good, never smelled-anything-oh fu-.” Steven’s body quivered. His chest was heaving, each exhale accompanied with a high-pitched whine, “s-so fuckin’…mm-oh.”

Steven thrust his hips hungrily. He stuck out his tongue and dragged it over the crotch of the panties, right where your hole would’ve gone. He whimpered and moaned, feeling his cock pulsate harshly, bobbing against his abdomen. He was coming, covering himself in his hot spend and filling the room with his heavy groans. Steven continued churning his hips upward into nothing, like he was fucking the air.

By the time he came down from his orgasm, the body was spent, tired, and unable to continue after that. Steven fell asleep with your silky black panties on his face.

----

Marc was relieved at first when he thought his solution worked. There was no need to keep stalking you when they had such a perfect piece of you in hand. It was a good solution, until he started losing time again. Marc didn’t realize at first that one of his alters was using the body to take pictures of you while you undressed, showered, and slept. He found the pictures, a couple weeks after they’d stolen your panties, printed out and stuffed in a box under the bed.

“You weren’t supposed to see those,” Steven muttered from the headspace. “Those were just a little thing for Jake and me. Put them back.”

“You guys, what the hell?” Marc’s brow remained furrowed, but his heart rate betrayed him as he shuffled from one photo to the next. “We aren’t supposed to be doing this. This was all supposed to…stop.”

You were simply fucking breathtaking though.

Marc shut his mouth after his breathing turned ragged and suddenly felt so foolish. He stuffed the pictures back in the box and slid it under the bed. He went to the bathroom and got into the shower, desperate to wash away the filthy thoughts coursing through his mind. Jake must’ve been the one to take the pictures, being sneaky as he was. Surely he’d done it behind Marc’s back so he wouldn’t have to hear the scolding.

Marc was right. Jake had gone to your apartment two weeks after they got their first souvenir, after they’d sufficiently caked it in so many layers of cum that it had lost your scent, to get more. When he got there, and snapped the first picture, he wondered to himself why they hadn’t snagged any photos of you before. Surely a picture or two would help them curb this growing desire, right?

Twenty-seven. Jake Lockley took twenty-seven photos of you.

He hid them in the shoebox under the bed, in hopes that he and Steven could enjoy them and keep it from Marc. It wasn’t that he wanted to keep them from Marc, but Jake knew that when he found out, he wouldn’t be happy. He knew what Marc was trying to do, get back to some sense of normalcy for the three of them, and while Jake commended him on his valiant efforts, he couldn’t shake the urges inside.

Marc was still trying to convince himself that they could come back from how far they’d gone. He was letting the hot water run down over his body and trying to tell himself that despite following you for weeks, stealing your underwear, taking pictures of you naked, and killing your date, they could move on, and pretend none of it had happened. No matter how hard he tried though, he kept thinking about you, all the times they’d watched you, and now he had photos.

He could stare at you whenever he wanted; your perfect body, lips, and eyes, all of it was right there for him to look at. He should’ve been scolding his alters for using the body to get them, but he was so enamored by those little treasures they’d gathered now that he was almost grateful they’d done it. He was painfully erect by the time he got out of the shower, resisting every urge to relieve himself to thoughts of you, but he didn’t have the willpower. When it came to you, he never did.

“Marc, you stay away from the one of her lips, that one’s mine,” Steven said firmly.

Marc was too ashamed to even admit to the voices in his head that he was about to jerk off to pictures of you, but he suspected that they knew full well what he intended to do. For once, they were quiet, each waiting to have their turn. Marc used lotion this time, desperate to feel the slick glide of his fingers over his length. He wanted to stroke himself and imagine it was you, soft and wet.

He chose three photos in particular. One of you standing in front of your window, arching your back in profile view. Your perfect breasts had him whining while he dragged over his cock, relishing in the delicious sensation. He knew it probably paled in comparison to how you really felt, but this was as close as he was ever going to get.

The other photo was one of your legs. They must’ve been so close to you to get that picture. Your blankets were off of your body, hanging lazily over the side of the bed. You had worn just underwear and a shirt to sleep. Was that what you normally wore? He hoped so. Your skin looked so soft, so perfect. There was a small peek of your asscheeks sticking out under the hem of the panties. Marc could only think about how badly he wanted to touch you. He let out a choked whine at the thought.

The final image he’d chosen was one of you just out of the shower. He started wondering if you knew you were being watched. Why else would you stand in front of your window like that…

That’s when Marc realized that wasn’t a photo taken from outside…it was taken from inside your apartment. A chill ran over his spine, Jake had been inside your apartment while you were awake, likely tucked away in your closet.

“You guys…” He paused his movements, “you were in her apartment while she was awake?”

“Had to get the perfect angle, pendejo, enjoy it or give up the body so one of us can take over,” Jake said harshly.

No way Marc was letting that happen. He needed that sweet release. All too often Jake or Steven would come in at the last second and take it from him. He felt his cock twitching against his abdomen, demanding his attention. Marc looked down at it, precum leaking over the sides. The lotion left white streaks all over the shaft.

He started his smooth motion again, sliding vigorously over the veiny surface. Oh you were so pretty. So perfect in the way you posed for them. Marc tried to tell himself that what they were doing was wrong, but your expressions and posture confused him, almost like you wanted to be seen; like you wanted them to want you, to take those pictures of you. Whether it was true or not, it was working.

They wanted you, more than anything.

Marc had the pictures spread over the top of the dresser. He grabbed the edge of the stained wood while he continued working on himself, filling the apartment with squelching wet noises. He lurched forward when the heat pooled in his abdomen, gasping a sharp breath while he felt his cock stiffen in his smooth palm. In a mad rush, he grabbed some tissues out of the box on the dresser and spilled into them with a flurry of deep groans.

Jake followed suit, once their short refractory period ran its course, grabbing his images of choice to chase his own release. He loved looking at you too, every curve of your body spoke to his deepest desires. He wanted to feel your skin grow hot from his gloved hand, striking you in an effort to make you more pliant. Your rear could take it, so round and soft, he could imagine the feeling of it under his firm grip.

When Jake was finished his turn, Steven came out like an animal in heat, scrambling with shaky hands for a picture they took of your lips. You’d been sound asleep when they took that photo. He didn’t want to admit it, but Steven did all he could not to thrust himself down your throat while you slept. He was sure you would’ve liked it, the way they tasted, but he also thought it may be a little too bold. If they were going to have some time with you, he was going to have to be more clever than that.

Steven’s precum was lubricating enough for him to run his cock along the glossy sheen of the photo, right against your lips. He imagined how it would feel, seeing them, stretched out around his girth. He thought even more about how good it would feel to have your throat contract when you gagged on his length. It took no time at all for him to turn into a mess of crying moans while coating the photo in his spend.

----

“S’not enough Marc, we need more,” Steven muttered while they stood outside of your apartment window once again.

You’d just gone to bed, this time leaving your blinds open like you did on occasion when the nights were warm. The soft rise and fall of your chest could be seen even at a distance. Marc felt his brow begin to sweat in anticipation. He didn’t want to do what Jake and Steven had done to get those pictures, sneak into your apartment with you inside, but he’d started to think that maybe if they achieved that delicious release in such close proximity to your body, they could move on. There was still a small part of him that believed they could move on, despite everything they’d done.

“This is so fucked up,” Marc said, taking a step closer to your window.

“Need me to do it?” Jake asked, itching to get out.

“Stop, I can do it…I just…” Marc growled, feeling the frustration of conflict inside his mind.

He paused, gulping and staring at you while you slept. His feet were frozen before finally he…

Marc blacked out, and hours later he was in their own house with a balled up and sticky pair of your panties in his hand, unable to recall what had happened. Marc hadn’t been to the house in a long time. Usually they stayed in Steven’s apartment. It was so close to his job, before he’d quit, and even closer to the crimes and villains that they had put off fighting since finding you.

Steven would remember how the night was spent though, he’d remember it for the rest of his life.

He had snuck in through your window with Jake’s encouraging words, and found himself standing at your bedside. They’d learned your sleeping patterns so well by then, knowing exactly when you were fast asleep based on the way you breathed. Steven wiped some excess saliva that had dribbled down his chin. Since it was warm that night you’d worn a tanktop and shorts to bed. He could see the roundness of your asscheeks peeking out from the hem of your bottoms.

“Quiero tocar,” Jake said in a dark tone from inside the headspace.

“We can’t touch…not yet,” Steven said in a low whisper.

He fumbled with his belt, careful not to let it clank too loudly as he undid it and then worked on his zipper. You shifted a little, but he knew you were still dreaming. He wondered if you were dreaming about him, or one of the other two. He still remembered how you looked at them that day at the museum, and he still felt like something in your eyes spelled love to him.

Putting the excess spit that had once again accumulated in his mouth to good use, Steven dropped a glob down onto his cock. You continued breathing quietly, your sweet little voice falling over his ears like honey. He wanted you, he wanted you so bad. He could be quick, he knew he could, sliding into the bed with you, fucking you while you slept. If they were careful, surely you wouldn’t wake, right? Or, even better, you might wake up and find that you enjoyed it just as much as they did.

“I wanna fuck her.” Steven whispered suddenly, surprising even himself with the crass statement.

“Can’t risk it Steven, just leave her a little present on her legs compadre.”

“Yeah, yeah on her legs. Aces.” He agreed, excited by the prospect of their cum being on you.

He had to stroke fairly slow, trying not to fill your apartment with the loud wet slaps of him jerking off to your sleeping form. He focused on the apex of your thighs, right where he knew your tight little pussy was hiding. He imagined how wet you would be if only you let him have you. You’d be a mess, soaking and dripping down the sides of his cock.

“She’s such a pretty little princesa; bet that cunt is like heaven, I’d love a little taste.” Jake was getting more and more restless as Steven approached his climax.

“Jake, please, let me…”

He couldn’t resist, needing to feel the high that came with shooting spurts of cum all over the backs of your thighs. Jake came to the front, just in time to feel that mind-numbing euphoria that Steven worked so hard to achieve. He tried to make it up to Steven by bringing home a fresh and silky souvenir, the same one that Marc fronted with now in his hands, after Steven got to them first of course.

When you woke up in the morning, you would be puzzled trying to figure out what the sticky substance was on your bedding and thighs, but you wouldn’t ever know for sure.

----

“I told you, Jake, I’m not okay with this. We can’t do it. This is wrong!” Marc was shouting from the headspace.

“Shut the fuck up, pendejo. We’ve tried it your way, now we do it my way.” Jake pried open your window slowly. “Sick of not being able to think straight.”

“Jake please, please, please let me out. Please.” Steven begged.

Jake was trying to keep Steven at bay, but he knew the other alter was going to get himself to the front one way or another.

“At least let me get us inside, then you can have the body.” Jake stopped before climbing indoors, “if you fuck this up for us…”

“Don’t worry bruv, m’not going to mess it up, promise.” Steven assured him.

Jake was inside within seconds, and the moment his feet touched the ground, Steven forced his way to the front. He was more than ready to finally show you the love they’d kept pent up all that time. He quickly, and silently, toed off Jake’s shoes, and pulled off the gloves too. If Jake wanted those, he could put them back on later. It was going to be a long night, and they intended to stay a while.

He took off the jacket as well and placed it on the floor. Steven loosened up the tie, allowing the fabric to hang lazily around his neck. You were so sound asleep, breathing deeply while you dreamt. Steven’s cock was already leaking a small spot into the seam of Jake’s pants in anticipation of feeling your pussy walls surrounding his cock. He took them off quickly, stepping out of them silently.

You turned in your sleep, but your eyes stayed closed. You were so pretty, so precious just laying there without a clue. Steven clutched his chest, finding it difficult to breathe properly. Despite the nearly painful ache of his erection, he took a moment just to revel in your beauty, taking in the breathtaking way the sheets hugged your curves. Your lips were pursed, brow furrowed while you dreamt.

So fucking pretty, he thought.

“Steven, if you’re gonna do it, then just get it over with,” Marc said in a grumble. While the original was deeply bothered by their actions, he knew stopping him was impossible.

Steven walked around to the other side of the bed, and grabbed the sheet. Cautiously, he got under the covers, careful not to shift the weight too much and startle you. If he alerted you too soon, it would all be over. Steven was, once again, grateful you were such a heavy sleeper. It had proven to be helpful for them each time they’d needed to traverse your apartment in the night.

He hooked a finger in the waist of your shorts and dragged them down to your thigh. There was a small shift in your body, but your breathing remained the same, steady pace. Your skin was softer than he’d imagined. Just the light drag of his finger over the surface made his body spark with excitement. He felt himself salivating. Steven wanted nothing more than to lick and kiss your exposed shoulder, but he held back for now.

Steven brought a mess of spit down to slick his cock. He bit his lip while he ran his fingers over the length of it. The thought that he was about to finally feel you from the inside almost made him want to scream. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this alive. He brought an arm to hover over your side carefully, and started sneaking the other under your head. He was ready to move quickly if you resisted, though he hoped you wouldn’t; he hoped that you would wake and realize how good Steven was fucking you and that you’d lean into it a little.

As Steven’s large hand closed over your lips, and his other arm caged your body against his, squeezing tightly, you stirred awake.

“Sh sh sh, love. Shhh.” He urged, holding on tight as your little body squirmed against his chest.

You immediately started to whimper, fighting and breathing heavily, trying desperately to break free, but Steven was too strong. You screamed uselessly into his fingers. You wiggled your rear against him, feeling the jab of his cock against you. It was hard to believe this was happening, this couldn’t be real. Someone had snuck into your apartment and was about to-

Steven pushed his cock between your thighs, rutting hungrily until he found your entrance. He stopped there, feeling the wet slick of your heat coating his throbbing girth.

“You ready, love? Been waiting for this a long time, been waiting to feel you.” His voice was low against your ear.

You shook your head as best as you could and tried screaming again, but no one would hear you. The feeling of his cock against your folds alone was enough to drive him crazy. The fact that you were so wet let Steven know just how eager you were for this too, you just didn’t realize it yet.

“Oh God, love, you feel so good already.” He felt your warm tears hitting his fingers. “Yeah, I’m excited too, just one…second…”

He let out a deep groaning sigh as he stretched you out, gliding his cock into your tight cunt.

“Oh that’s it, love, oh this is better than I dreamed. Can’t wait to finally fill you up darling, you’re going to like it so much. Gonna-you’re gonna-ohh-want to give you all of it.” He was pumping in and out of you slowly, struggling to form a coherent sentence in the process.

To say it felt good to him was an understatement. Steven’s hips stuttered as he pushed full to the hilt once more. He felt your walls flutter around him. He knew you liked it, too. He wondered why they hadn’t done it sooner.

“Oh my…shit…” He thrusted, splitting your hole wide over and over. “Those pretty little sounds you make, been think–oh fuck…been thinkin’ ‘bout them. Never thought they’d sound so-”

It hurt, being stretched out like that, never having felt anyone that big before. You were so afraid, unable to move your arms. The more you shifted against him, the harder he squeezed. It got to a point where you worried he might crush you if you continued. His lips pressed against your neck in sloppy wet kisses, and he kept groaning about how much he loved you in your ear.

“Feel you gettin’ so wet.” He let out a sharp exhale, “knew you’d like me darling, knew you’d be good f’me.”

Steven kissed your shoulder, nipping at the skin and savoring the way it tasted on his tongue. You were delicious in every sense of the word. He could feel you stop fighting him, and he took that as a sign of compliance, of submission. Steven knew deep down that you’d liked them, he knew it.

“Won’t hurt much longer, not once you’re used t’me. God you’re so pretty, feel so good. Can’t believe I’m finally touching you.” He started thrusting his hips harder, dragging the head along your walls. “Thank you love, thank you for being such a good girl f’me.”

You were hiccuping from sobbing so hard. Your cries only encouraged Steven though, he thought you sounded so sweet like that, so innocent and precious. When you felt the unmistakable wave taking over your body, the one that contradicted your emotional feelings, you gasped, pressing your spine against his chest. It felt good, so good that you thought you might cry harder should he stop.

“Doesn’t that feel good, love? You’re squeezing me so tight I…oh shit…not gonna last much longer if you keep that up, yeah?” Steven felt your walls contracting over him harder now, telling him you must be close. “Are you going to let yourself go for me?”

Steven’s movements were relentless. Your bed scraped against the floor a little as he fucked even harder. He started thinking about how much he wanted to keep you, have you around to pleasure himself with any time he started to feel the need. Surely you’d like that too, of course you’d love when Steven made you feel good…right? He would always make sure you got your release too, every time, so long as he could help it.

“I’m gonna make sure you feel good darling, want you to feel good.” He was getting close, pulling your body closer as his orgasm approached, “and you know when I’m done, Jake is gonna come in here and mark you up, yeah? Make sure you remember that you’re ours now.”

You panicked, realizing what that meant…he had a friend there too, also intent on taking you for himself. Your breathing became short, and you squirmed again. Steven’s cock thrust into you harder when you did.

“Sh, sh, love, shh, stop.” He didn’t want to hurt you. In fact, Steven wouldn’t hurt you, but he couldn’t speak for Jake. “I don’t want you to get hurt, yeah? Better stop that now.”

You let yourself fall limp, accepting your fate finally as his assault on your cunt continued. You really were wet now, pussy squelching every time the man rutted into you, hips pressing flush against your rear. Steven felt himself overwhelmed with pleasure as his orgasm approached.

He was talking so fast, "I'm not going to pull out love, want to make sure I show you how much I love you. Wanna get you nice and full of me–so full. Would you like that?” He groaned into your shoulder, “yeah, ‘course you would. Oh here we go–here we go love–ahhh!” His hips stopped suddenly, pressed up against your body while his cock pulsated hot ropes inside of you. “Thankyou--thankyou--thankyou love, oh God thank you.”

You couldn’t stop the wave that came over you, pooling heat in your center and forcing your body to tremble against him.

“That’s it love, can feel you coming, too. Oh you’re squeezing me so hard.”

You couldn’t believe you’d started coming so violently at the hands of your assailant, despite your best efforts not to. You couldn’t help the physical response your body had to him though. He made you so wet, made your body spark with need. He felt so good, he was so intent on making sure you felt something too.

The switch happened without your realizing, and suddenly Jake lay there while his cock grew soft inside of you. Steven was sated, finished with you for the time being. He knew that he had to get you into a different position, or you’d try to run. Being crafty as he was, Jake planned for that, and brought something along to keep you silent. A cloth doused in chloroform, pulled from his breast pocket, sure to keep you pliant. He covered your face in the cloth, and you tried to struggle again, but this time fell limp against your will.

It was an hour before you woke up again. Jake was standing in front of you. He had his arms crossed over his chest, shirt open with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and gloves on. He was naked otherwise though. Your eyes seemed to sparkle as they opened slowly, meeting his hooded gaze. You tried to move, but your hands were tied to your bedpost. You opened your mouth to yell, but the man in front of you held up a finger.

“Here’s how this is going to go princesa...” He spoke just above a whisper.

Jake had a gun he’d placed on your dresser. He picked it up and cocked it in his hand. Of course it wasn’t loaded, he would never hurt you, but he needed you to behave. He smirked at the little hiccup you made at the sound of his weapon readying for fire. You noticed now, the distinct difference in his accent, this was someone else. The guy from before really did bring a friend with him.

“P-please I–”

“Sh.” Jake put a gloved finger to his lips once more. “I’m going to let you suck my cock sweetheart, and I know you’re going to do a great job. As long as you’re a good little girl for me, I won’t hurt you too bad when I’m done, alright? Maybe I’ll even let you come.”

“Why are you–why are you…” You sobbed, unable to speak the words on the tip of your tongue.

“Come on, no more talking,” He said in a low tone, “remember, if you’re good to me, I’ll be good to you, bebita.” Jake’s cock was leaking at the head, dripping onto the floor as he approached you. “If you want to misbehave, I’ll have to get rough, and I don’t wanna do that to you.”

You were so small, a petite little thing. You looked at his cock wide-eyed, fearing you wouldn’t be able to fit the whole thing in your mouth. It was big, thick and long. You gulped harshly, feeling terror wash over you even more. He’d said he didn’t want to hurt you, but what exactly did that mean? You were sure you didn’t want to find out.

Seeing you struggle to stretch your lips over his thick cock brought him more pleasure than he imagined it would. He couldn’t even get it all the way in your throat, but he didn’t need to, it felt so good without needing to go deeper. Your tongue splayed against the underside of his length made him thrust forward from the sensation, gagging you in the process. Your teeth grazed the shaft.

“Ay!” The cold barrel of the gun pressed against your temple forcing a gasping sob from you, “watch it, cariño.”

You did your best to get your lips over your teeth, even if only a little. Jake’s free hand rested on the back of your neck while he forced himself deeper. The feeling of your throat contracting over his cock made his head fall back. He groaned, voice sounding wrecked and feral with each plunge further into your throat.

It hurt, the way his girth threatened to stretch open your esophagus beyond its threshold. You whined, willing your lips to keep your mouth smooth for him, but you felt them struggling. For the second time, you touched his cock with your teeth, and for a second time, he winced and pressed his gun against your head even harder.

“Oh, I really don’t want to hurt you sweetheart, but I will.” His tone was dark and threatening.

“You better not hurt her Jake.” Steven said from the headspace.

You were a sobbing mess, so much that you pulled your head back off his thick and throbbing shaft. Saliva connected his cock to your glossy lips, and forced a sneer over his face. He knelt down on both knees, leaning in to meet your eye.

“Oh, princesa, you’re not very good at following directions, are you?” His smirk never faded, as though he were taunting you.

If you weren’t so cute with your swollen, glistening lips, and tear stained cheeks, he might feel less merciful. He was ready to see you come undone, after so much time spent waiting, only admiring you from a distance. Jake wanted to fuck you so hard your throat was bleeding from the shrill screams escaping your mouth.

“Don’t worry, we’ll teach you…another time.”

He grabbed your hip in his left hand and shifted your ass to rest between his thighs. The gun was still in his other hand, pressing against your waist, leaving an indent in your flesh. He could see how clearly afraid you were. Nothing looked more attractive to him than you being absolutely terrified of what he might do to you.

“Fight me, and you know what will happen, princesa. Don’t make me out to be the bad guy when all I’ve asked is for you to behave. Can you be good for me now?” He lined the head of his cock up with your entrance. “Hm?”

You nodded, “y-yes.”

You were too afraid to say no.

He thrust into you, and once again, the same body was fucking you open. Jake nearly fell forward, feeling you for the first time. It was like his cock was coated in smooth, silky velvet. This wasn’t the first time he’d been with a woman, but this was better than anything he’d ever felt before, because it was you.

“Fuck, princesa, you’re so tight.” He grunted through gritted teeth as he pulled back and then thrust forward again. He moved the gun to your chin, pressing it against your jaw harshly, “I want you to tell me how sorry you are for not following my very-simple-instructions.”

“Oh! No, please!” You rattled the bed, struggling against the silken tie Jake had used to bind your hands. “Please, no!”

Jake lost concentration when your cunt fluttered around him. It was almost as though you were enjoying his threats. He fucked into you harder, groaning out a slur of feral moans. He brought the barrel of the weapon down your abdomen and touched it over your clit. A sharp gasp escaped you at the icy sensation. You whimpered, feeling even more fresh tears trickling over your cheeks.

“I wanna hear you tell me how–fuck–how sorry you are, now!” His brows were knitted together tightly, eyes dark and forceful.

An unmistakable, and to you shameful, moan left your lips. The way he moved the metal barrel against your cunt sparked pleasure through your core. He heard it, clear as day. He knew he’d break you, one way or another. There was still a long way to go before you were fully theirs, but this was a good first lesson. You were already starting to learn that he was capable of giving you what you needed, if only you did what he asked.

“S-sorry! I’m sor–oh god–so sorry!” You squeezed your eyes shut, “please don’t kill me, I’m sorry please.”

“Mm, buena niña.” He cooed, voice sounding wrecked with his growing arousal.

He reveled in the way your walls squeezed over him when he swirled the gun around your clit. He let out a snicker, lips curling at the sides. You felt your arms becoming sore from the pressure of the tie around your wrists, but the ache was dulled by the pleasure traveling all over your body.

“I want you to look at me, and say, ‘I’m sorry Jake,’ now.”

He looked down and spit harshly on the gun, letting the saliva trickle down over your clit, allowing the weapon to slide around it easier. Seeing you squirm under the feeling of his gun while it teased that swollen little nub made his cock throb inside of you. When he looked back up at you, you were looking back. He loved to see your bottom lip quivering while you tried to talk but fell short of the words.

“Come on, I know you can do it for me.” He urged gently.

You were ashamed to find yourself a stuttering mess trying to talk to him, not out of fear or for being upset, but because you felt so fucking good. Your mind was screaming, telling you to fight, to do anything other than lay there and take it, but your body was doing quite the opposite.

He knew the effect he was having on you. Jake could see the way your eyes fought not to roll back into your skull while pleasure overcame you; He could see the way your lips stammered over themselves trying to get the words he demanded out; Most of all, he felt the way the soft walls of your pussy moved in waves over his cock, reacting every time he slid the barrel of his gun over your clit.

“I-I…”

You didn’t want to say it, you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

“Go on princesa…you don’t want me to pull this trigger now, do you?”

“I’m s-so sorry J-Jake!” You managed to choke out.

His cock unmistakably twitched inside of you at the sound of hearing you say those words.

“Mm, now was that so hard? You sound so good, bebita. I knew you could behave yourself for me.” He churned forward faster, the hand on your hip was nearly bruising. “Now you’re going to relax, and you’re gonna come for me, si? No fighting back now…”

“Please let me go!” You sobbed more, filling your apartment with more desperate cries.

Unfortunately for you, the sound of your whimpers only seemed to encourage him further. Jake looked down. Beneath the gun he could see the way your pussy looked splitting over his girth. It was so slick and puffy from the way he and Steven had fucked and resized you.

“I’m almost done sweetheart, and when I’m done, Marc is gonna come in and you’re gonna be a good girl for him too, right?”

No, not another one, you thought.

Out of fear that he might threaten you again though if you didn’t comply, you nodded. As you felt your orgasm threatening to wash over you, out of your control, you felt shame mix like a poisonous cocktail with the pleasure. You turned your head away, tucking it into your arm, trying to hide your humiliation.

Jake wasn’t going to have that though. He wanted to look at your beautiful face while he made your mind go numb and body tense around him. He wanted to see you as you became so fucked out you could hardly keep your body upright anymore. You were seconds from unraveling at his hand, and he wasn’t going to miss a single expression on your pretty face.

“Come on, princesa, don’t hide that from me now, gotta see how precious you look when I make you come undone.” He cooed, changing the way he rotated the barrel over you ever so slightly. “You know the stakes.”

You bit your bottom lip to stop it from shaking as you turned your head back to meet his gaze. His eyes were so dark, brows so tightly stuck together. He looked down to watch your hole swallow him again and again before turning back up to see your eyes.

It was happening to you again, you were coming over the cock of your second assailant that night. You did as you were told, keeping your eyes on his while you bit your lip a little too hard and clenched your walls around him. His lids dropped and his brows relaxed just before you felt the searing hot spurts of his spend filling you to the brim.

He fucked you through it, pushing it all into you, mixing it with what still remained of Steven inside you. Once he felt he was fully finished, having stretched and fucked you to his satisfaction, he pulled out. You felt empty, finally, but your cunt was gaping, letting his cum dribble out onto the hardwood floor beneath you.

“Now princesa…I want you to say ‘thank you, Jake’.” He wiped the glossy spit that had accumulated on his lips.

“T-thank you, J-Jake.” You sniffled, and closed your legs together as he sat back from you.

“You’re learning so well already. My smart bebita.” He looked genuinely proud of you, a spark lit in your gut against your will. You ignored it. “Marc is going to be here soon, and when he comes in, heh, he’s going to spoil you rotten. Just always remember that I’ve got my eye on you. Don’t turn into a little brat, okay?”

You nodded in understanding.

“Good.” He tossed the gun aside, forcing you to flinch. “I’m never going to do anything to really hurt you princesa, okay?”

You gulped and nodded, “yes.”

“Okay, just need you to sleep for a while, I’ll see you again soon.” He pressed his lips into a hard line while he wrapped his gloved hands around your petite throat.

“N-no what…!”

You squirmed while he choked you, feeling the desperation in your body while you struggled to get air in your lungs. Jake’s hands were so big around your delicate throat. Steven and Marc both were hollering at him to go easy on you, but they both knew that Jake knew what he was doing. That didn’t stop Marc from taking over and letting go of you immediately. You had already fainted, but that was ok, he needed time to get himself prepared to have you himself.

----

When your eyes finally fluttered open again, you were shocked to see the same man from before staring back at you. You were sure he’d mentioned a third person coming in to have their way with you, but here he was, still staring back.

“You’re awake, good.” Marc said, brows drawn together tightly with concern.

“I thought…I thought there was someone–s-someone else.” You were still fatigued from tears, and speaking was proving to be difficult.

“That was my…” He didn’t want to tell you about his condition just yet, “brother.”

You were sucking your bottom lip in with your sobbing. You turned your head into your arm which hurt beyond belief. Having your shoulders in that position for an extended period of time had proved excruciating.

Marc couldn’t believe they’d come this far. Steven and Jake had both had their turn, and now it was his, but he intended to do things a little differently. He wasn’t going to take from you, not yet anyway, but he was going to give you something. Marc wanted to make you love him, from deep within yourself, to make you feel the same way about him that he felt for you.

He knelt down at your side, you instinctively pulled your knees up to your chest, looking at him pleadingly. Your eyes darted behind him. The gun the other man had used was shining in the moonlight. You closed your eyes tightly, sending a couple of stray tears shooting down your cheeks. Marc reached over and swiped a tear away with his thumb, letting his hand rest on your face softly.

“If you’re good for me, I’ll be able to help you, okay baby?” He looked into your eyes with nothing but love and adoration.

You didn’t understand why they were doing this still, but something about this one made you feel more safe than the other two. You didn’t say a word, you didn’t even nod, you just wanted to be alone now, you felt so tired, so weak.

Marc thought he could see you soften, so he leaned in, pressing his lips to yours, but you didn’t return the gesture. He put his lips together tightly as he pulled back, resting his forehead on yours. He was trying so hard not to feel frustrated. It was going to take time to get you to understand what an asset he was going to be for you. Marc brushed your cheek as he looked between your glistening eyes.

“I can’t help you if you don’t behave.” He spoke firmly.

Marc could tell you still weren’t going to return his affections, but knew you’d learn with time. He thought that maybe if he could make you softer, more pliant in his hands, you might come around. His hand left your face, brushing over the soft skin of your neck - to which you winced from Jake’s earlier assault - tracing down your breasts and peaked nipple, and finally resting over the tightly closed apex of your thighs. You squeezed your legs together even more.

“Come on honey, let me in.” He said just over a whisper.

“P-please don’t.” You begged, hiccuping again as more sobs forced their way through you.

“I just want to find a way to make you feel good, will you let me do that? Please?”

You were prolonging the inevitable. He was going to find his way to your cunt whether you let him or not, so you decided to slowly open your legs. A sigh of relief escaped his lips, and an unmistakable grin crept over his face. You were opening up for him, letting him bring his fingers down to rest between your lips. A small breath of arousal slipped out of you.

“How’s that?” He had a mildly arrogant tone. “That feel good?”

You groaned despite yourself, hating that they’d all managed to find a way to make you feel so fucking good. You felt nothing but shame for the way you arched up into his touch. The pads on his fingers spread out, splitting your slick folds. He touched your entrance, forcing a pained wince from you.

“Oh no baby, I’m sorry, they really stretched you out, didn’t they? Don’t worry, I’ll give your little hole a break alright?” Marc reached his free hand up to cup your cheek and keep your forehead on his. “I know you’ll make it up to me.”

Your clit was coated in your juices and theirs, making it easy for him to slide his digits in small, rhythmic circles over it. He could tell from the way you were squirming that he was doing it right. Your sobs stopped and instead you were just moaning quietly now. Your eyes closed, but he wanted to see them.

“Open your eyes for me, baby.”

You kept them closed tight.

“Please don’t make me beg, I need you to listen to what I tell you. I can give you what you need, and I can protect you, but I need you to be good for me, please.” He leaned in and tried kissing you again, but once more you denied him. “Come on, let me kiss you, don’t fight me.”

You were shocked at the juxtaposition between his demeanor and his brother’s. He was so gentle in the way he touched you, like his only goal was to make you feel good, as if his own pleasure was secondary to yours.

And for Marc it was. He knew that if all three of them were rough with you, they'd never get you to feel the same way about them as they did about you.

“Tell me how that feels baby, come on, use your words for me.”

“It f-feels-” You groaned deeply, angling your hips upward into his touch. “No, I don’t want this.” You shook your head, tucking your face into your arm opposite his face.

"Don't make this more difficult, I can make your time with us like a dream if you just give in to me." He continued to hope you would loosen a little, let yourself feel how he touched you. “Let me try something, okay?”

Marc kissed your cheek, slowly brushed his lips down your tender neck, left another on your collarbone, before cupping the swell of your breast and bringing your nipple to his mouth. His lips pursed around it. A small shudder quaked through your body, letting him know that what he did was working.

He couldn’t handle the ache any longer between his own legs. His cock was leaking profusely, and he needed to satisfy his own urges. He was going to keep his word though, he had no intention of penetrating you that night. Marc was able to brush his length along the soft skin of your thigh, making it slick with his precum and allowing it to slide easier.

He moaned over your nipple before flicking it with his tongue. You were churning your hips upward in rhythm with the repetitive swirl of his fingers. Marc couldn’t begin to express with words the way it made him feel to know you were using him to please yourself. He couldn’t have asked for a better outcome after their actions that night.

“Now tell me how it feels, please baby, tell me how well I take care of you.”

Marc didn’t stop dragging his cock over your leg, moaning incessantly while he did. You were crying again, feeling nothing but shame and fatigue while your third orgasm of the night approached. You didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of telling him how good he felt, but he wasn’t going to stop asking.

Marc looked up at you, brows raised and drawn together, pleading for you to tell him how he made you feel. Why was this one so different than the other two? The first one was so hungry, desperate and needy. The second was plain cruel. This one was so focused on you, wanting nothing more than to make sure you were okay; it was more confusing than anything.

“Let me go, please.” You begged, “p-please.”

“Can’t do that, don’t ask me that again, baby. I wish I could, but we’ve come too far now.” Marc brought himself back up to you, his hard cock rested against your abdomen now. It felt so heavy. “That’s why I’m trying to meet you halfway. I’ll take good care of you, but you have to be good for me, too.”

His face was close to yours again. You felt him churning against you, sliding his cock against your waist faster as his climax closed in. You could tell by the way it got harder, and swelled against you that he was desperately close. For the third time that night, you were close too, his fingers worked against you, forcing soft gasps from your lips.

“I’m gonna come for you honey, gonna cover you in it. You gonna cover me, too? Soak my hand in your-f-fuck.”

You felt something pool in your stomach, while he touched you. You couldn’t tell him that he made you feel good, but you could show him in the way he wanted. The thought of kissing him was repulsive, but if he was going to be your sole protector, then you needed to give him what he asked for. He was being so kind now, but you feared for what he might do if you didn’t give him his way.

You leaned in and slotted your mouth over his. Marc couldn’t believe you were actually kissing him. He could hear the other two muttering around in the headspace excitedly. Your lips were soft, delicious, and Marc wanted more. He slipped his tongue over your bottom lip before entangling it with yours in your mouth. His fingers worked faster, flicking over your clit while you were feeding him desperate cries.

He could tell immediately when you were coming because your entire body arched toward him, as though you wanted him to devour you whole. Your moans of deep pleasure were enough to inspire his own orgasm. His hips bucked forward harshly, rubbing over your skin while he coated your stomach and tits in his cum. He groaned with every thrust, and his body trembled when he slowed, eventually stilling altogether. His lips broke apart from yours with a soft smack. Marc’s eyes were deep and hooded while he looked into yours.

“Thank you for being so good for me, baby.” He pecked your forehead softly.

Marc knew they needed to knock you out again, and so he got up and started looking for the towel. The chloroform laced cloth would still work just fine. He would talk to Jake later about leaving such harsh bruises on you needlessly when he had the chance.

“What’s going to happen now?” You asked with a choked whimper, looking up at Marc.

“We’re going to take you home.” Marc said, kneeling down with the towel in hand. “Just take a deep breath, you’ll be alright, I promise.”

The last thing you saw before everything went black was his dark eyes on yours.

----

You felt your eyes burn with the sun piercing through your window. You took in a deep breath through your nostrils trying desperately to open them, wondering if everything that had happened last night was just a dream. It felt like you were in bed, warm blankets pulled up to your chin. Finally, your eyes came into focus and you took in your surroundings.

You sat up fast, realizing immediately that you weren’t home at all. In fact, you had no idea where you were. The room you found yourself in was clean with stark white walls and bedding, but the bars on the windows let you know that it wasn’t as nice as it first appeared. The door on the far end of the room buzzed before you heard an electronic latch open it.

He walked in, one of the three men who had had their way with you the night before. He gave you a soft and toothy grin. He put a hand up to greet you, he didn’t look as though he dared to come near the bed.

“Hi there, we haven’t met properly.” You noticed now that he looked nervous, though you couldn’t imagine why, he clearly had all the power in that moment. “I’m Steven. I thought I should introduce m’self. Figured since…well…since I came in behind you and all, you hadn’t really seen me yet.”

Except you had seen his face before. You’d seen it two other times that night. Once on Jake, and once more with the one named Marc. So this one was Steven. You’d been kidnapped by three brothers.

“Where am I?” You asked timidly, realizing that your throat still ached from the choking and stretching you’d endured earlier.

He walked toward you slowly. Already, you could see the nagging press of his cock against the seam of his pants. He looked at you like he was ready to devour you the moment he got his hands on you. Steven bit his lip.

“Darling…you’re home.”

----

Next Part (Coming Soon)

----

Thank you for the request @burnincrown!

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aesthetic-bbyg · 4 months

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might I request 🫣

an Usopp x ditsy y/n where the reader is.. 𝑎ℎ𝑒𝑚, busty, to say the least, and always clings to him (sort of like how Nami does), albeit unaware that the behavior seems to always fluster him

And maybe they end up paired together when everyone splits up to fight someone or whatever, and Uso pulls them aside to hide, obviously, but in a bit of tight spot?

you can edit this however you like, thank you for reading!!

A DAMSAL IN DISTRESS - USOPP

usopp x ditzy,fem!reader

IN WHICH you can’t help but cling onto Usopp, he’s just so cute.

nattie speaks!: AHHHHH I’m so sorry for the wait, I felt so bad that this took way longer then expected so some parts were a bit rushed and a bit shitty🫣🫣. Also, I gave the reader this power, basically like a banshee, she screams and it’s a weapon. It’s only included in a small portion bc I wanted to stay close to what the anon requested!!

USOPP WASNT SURE IF HIS BAD habit of lying constantly was currently a blessing or a curse. You took interest in him after he’d rambled on about escaping the large beast of the sea, the Kraken. Since then you’ve been—he didn’t want to be rude and say obsessive, so..clingy. He’d somehow managed to capture you’re attention with his false stories. You nodded dumbly with big eyes as he dramatized yet another tale, waving his hands around like a maniac while you just giggled.

“Uh-huh, what after?” You leaned closer across the table curiously, your cheek falling to rest on the palm of your hand.

“Then, I took my sword and I sliced his ass from head to toe.” Usopp smirked triumphantly, sucking in a deep breath and releasing as he fell back against the chair. “And that’s the story of how I defeated the monster of the Blue Lagoon.”

“No way!” You gasped, eyes wide with such content, completely unaware of how close your tits were to spilling out of your top. Truth be told, Usopp had dragged out the story as long as possible to see the moment a nipple peaked out. He swallowed before he chuckled, eyes flickering between your bright smile and bouncing breast. “You’re so brave, Uso.” You stood from your seat, walking over to give him a peck on the cheek. “How ‘bout I go get food for my brave Captain, hmm?”

Usopp never nodded his head so quick, both out of being very hungry and because he needed a breather. You had made him so ridiculously flustered, he nearly forgotten to take in air with how close you were. The moment you footsteps faded to enter the kitchen he let out a large sigh. His senses struggling to regulate, all he could think about was you. The sticky gloss that clung to his skin, the sweet scent you left behind, the echo of your giggles in his mind.

He needed to get a grip before he literally exploded. The next few days to Arlong Park would be hell if he couldn’t learn to control himself when around you. But he just couldn’t figure out how it was possible to do that when you pranced around in such low cut shirts and tight bottoms. He didn’t have much time to think about it before you were back, holding two servings of food. You placed it on the large crate that laid between the two of you.

“What did Sanji make?” Usopp questioned, mustering up to the most normal smile he could give.

“Some sort of pasta, dunno, wasn’t really attention.” You shrugged casually, handing him a shimmering silver fork. The two of you fell into a comfortable silence, you went unaware of the stolen glances Usopp took of you. He paid far too much attention to your features, especially your most prominent one..but he wouldn’t ever admit that.

You were close to opening your mouth and breaking the silence before Zoro came up, plopping a whiny Buggy between your plates.

“Usopps turn, I’m done.” The swordsman muttered annoyingly, walking away without another word.

“Hey—what!” Usopp shouted back to Zoro, his calls being ignored as the the blue-haired clown chuckled.

“Hiya, pal, nice to see you!” The clown exclaimed with an overly happy tone. “Tell me, have, have you boned pretty babe over here or wh—“

Usopp clamped his hand over the clown mouth, embarrassingly looking over at you, your eyes held an innocent confusion as you stood. “I’ll go ahead and take these to the kitchen, be back!”

Usopp nodded with a smile, waiting for you to be out of ear shot before uncovering Buggy’s mouth. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“Shut up.” Usopp mumbled with a flushed face, hiding it by fiddling with his slingshot.

“Oh, c’mon, she’s totally into you and it super fuckin’ obvious in case you couldn’t already see.” The clown commented, “And, hey, I’m not one to give relationship in advice here but you should bone her—“

“Can you stop saying that.” The man snapped quietly as he noticed you approaching. You didn’t sit down, instead placed a soft hand on his shoulder.

“It’s getting dark, Uso, ya wanna head in?” You asked softly, eyes glowing curiously in the moonlight. You shared a space with Nami, but ever since she left you’d didn’t liked sleeping in that empty bed. Instead, you slept next to Usopp every night.

It came as a surprise at first. The midnight sky had caused a dark hue to blanket over the ship. The moon hidden behind indigo clouds, only a few strings of light guided you down to the boy’s chambers. You’d pushed Usopps door open, thankful that it didn’t creak loudly, and slowly entered. You footsteps patting against the hardwood floor, hands out in front of you to navigate the darkness until you felt a soft cushion. You peeled back the blanket and climbed in, without a care in the world except for finding some warmth.

Usopp had felt the bed shift, covers shuffling without him moving which is what caused him to fully awake. He panicked at first, not moving an inch as the person beside him got comfortable. It was until he felt you soft hands caress up his bicep, bare legs entangling with his own, then a sweet sigh that tickled his neck. After a few moments he heard nothing, just your deep breaths as he laid there, completely clueless on what to do. Should he hold you? But that would wake you again wouldn’t it? He chose to go to sleep and see what the next morning held.

And if Usopp wasn’t flustered enough already the next day he was practically dead. Your position had switched in the middle of the night, and so did his. Ass against his hips, his arm draped over your waist, and you back against his firm chest. He wasn’t sure how you two needed in this position but every morning now was like this.

Usopp determined that the best way to continue this routine was if Buggy’s head was shoved into a empty barrel and left there for the night.

“You better bone her if your leaving here—“ The clown angrily shouted before his voice was muffled by the lid sliding over the open top. Usopp let out a sigh, walking over to the sleeping quarters below deck where you’d already gone to get changed for bed.

Your head quirked up at the sound of his approaching footsteps, smiling softly at the sight of him. “We’re nearly there, Uso. It’s best that you get some sleep for the rest of the journey.”

Usopp nodded in agreement, removing his shirt like he always did before bed and climbing into the covers. You shouldn’t be so excited as you are each time you cuddle close to him. It shouldn’t be so rewarded to feel him so close to you as you drift to sleep. Usopp was suppose to be your fellow crew member and nothing more. Yet there was an undeniable feeling that made you cling to him. It made you giddy.

Unbeknownst to you, these feelings struck Usopp tenfold.

“LAND HO!” USOPP EXCLAIMED, ARM raising to point to a spec of land from afar. You lifted your head, squinting to see the bundled up islands from you spot. As you got closer it looked like nothing almost, and when the boat docked it was even worse. The small village looked abandoned, old homes falling apart and grey in color. Most of the plants around were dead, drained of their natural color. One home was even raised above the grown, ripped from the floor and left to rot mid air.

This is when things started to blur together. One moment, you watch in fear, clinging onto Usopps arms. He’s a brave warrior, you thought, surely he’d protect you against the strange atmosphere that this place brought. But the next you were sprinting into the woods, just behind Usopp as a fish man with strangely large lips chased after you.

It was a fight you had no idea on how to win. They were fishman, some of the strongest beings of the world, and here you were running away from one. Even worse, the fish with the huge lips was able to spit out fire with just a sip of his hard drink. There was more than enough evidence to prove that you were screwed.

The boy in front of you turned around, quickly tugging your arm and pulling close, ducked down, rolling to hide behind a fallen tree. You fell atop of Usopp, panting heavily as fishman’s spits barley flew over your head. All went quiet, weirdly quiet but you didn’t dare even blink loudly.

“Hey.” Usopp whispered as you lifted your head from his chest. “Ya think you can scream for me, pretty girl?” You swallowed thickly, nodding, the pure terror of the approaching footsteps muting your voice. “Then wait for my signal, ‘kay.”

Usopp shuffled from under, making it more comfortable for the both, well, mostly you. Being within such a close proximity of your soft skin made him nervous, no amount of comfort was able to calm his nerves. But he ignored the squeezable skin that pressed against his chest, ignored that your core that was hovering just above his dick, ignored the grip on his bicep. He looked at you, waiting for the right moment to give you the sign so the fishman went down once and for all.

You were terrified, that was for sure, but you mustered up some courage to pull the plan off. You felt a tap on your hand, causing to rise up and stare directly at the fishman. But before he could open fire you let out a ear piercing shriek. A wail so loud it launched the fish man backwards. Far enough so he was too distracted in getting up and gaining back his senses to realize that Usopp was sneaking in.

You watched, wide eyed as the fishman sat up, bottle still tightly in his clutch. Usopp loaded in his new invention into his slingshot and directly hit the alcohol. A loud explosion followed, smoke clearing to reveal a motionless fishman.

You laughed in a relief, standing up and slowly approaching the scene.

Usopp shouts in excitement, proudly chuckling at the sight of the smoking body laid motionless on the ground. “Yeah! Take that! The Great Captain Usopp fells yet another notorious villain!” He swallows back his heavy breaths, glancing around. “And..no one’s around to see it.”

“I saw it, Uso!” You squealed, wrapping your arms around him with a giggle. The sheer force of your excitement gave you enough strength to drag him down into your chest. His whole face making contact with your tits while you rambled in content. “Just as brave as you tell in your stories! Gosh, I can’t wait tell everyone how you saved me.” You pull his head up, planting kisses along his cheeks.

The boy puffed his chest out pridefully, smirking despite the blush that littered his cheeks. “What can I say, a great Captain like me never fails to save a damsel in distress.” He hooked an arm around your waist, gazing down at you.

“A reward is much needed after this.” You Pat his chest, smiling softly with such a innocent yet antagonizing look. Without another word, you’d pulled away, waking back in the direction Arlong park.

Usopp stared at your fading figure with furrowed brows. “A reward?”

OMG THIS TOOK WAY TO LONG BUT I WAS LITERALLY GOING BACK ND FORTH W THIS FIC BC I FELT LIKE IT WAS SOO BAD. But I need to release smth so this is it!! I really hoped this lived up to the request, ik i added some of my own elements but ignore that🫣

(sucks dick coquettely)

#one piece #one piece live action #one piece show #straw hats #usopp x reader #usopp #jacob romero gibson #Jacob Romero #agent 00 lookin ahh #but he’s so fiiiine #i’m actually losing it #I need him #he needs me #HIS BICEPS BRO #LIKE I WANT TO LICK THEM #UGHHH #send help #one piece imagine #captain usopp

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headspace-hotel · 1 year

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a friend of mine said that the environment would be better if everyone lived in cities and basically left the rest of the natural world alone... i felt like there was something wrong with that argument but i really dont know enough about it to have a real point against it. i might be biased though cause i love being around nature and want to be able to live rural without killing the environment? idk im just wondering if she's right and how to live in a way that isnt negatively impacting the world

love your blog btw, it's been the thing that's helped me understand ecology for once

the idea that humans Are Bad for the ecosystem—not that particular activities or practices have particular negative effects, that just humans existing harms the environment—is in fact the worst idea ever

I mean, first of all, where does your friend think food comes from?

"Food" is one of the problems. It's one of a lot of problems. Some other problems include "all other natural resources besides food" and "human rights."

It's not just your friend, this kind of thing has been suggested in varying ways by self identified "leftists" a bunch of times, and I genuinely hope they're mostly random laypeople who can't really be expected to know more than they can learn from being terminally addicted to Twitter, because otherwise I will call them "dumber than a sack of hammers" in those exact words.

No offense to your friend. Your friend is a laypeople. And sadly, non-experts end up with ass-backwards ideas about how conserving the environment works, because of all this commonplace nonsense about humans being a cancer upon the planet. I'm not angry about those people, just sad.

But my serious answer is—The world's most intact and best managed ecosystems are found on land owned and managed by Indigenous people, who do what with the land?

LIVE ON IT.

And these groups of people learned to manage and care for the land how?

BY LIVING ON IT.

Conventional (white, Western) intuition holds that human management of an ecosystem should reduce biodiversity, but what science shows—I mean what study and observation and data and more study and more observation and more data shows—is that indigenous land management practices can do better than Nature can on her own.

I mean, for one thing, if you don't live in a place, you don't observe it every day. You don't see how the ecosystem and its inhabitants change over time. You can't learn about it, and therefore you don't know about it.

Disconnection from nature is ignorance about nature and ultimately apathy towards nature, and that's the worst and most disrespectful thing we can do.

And like I hope it's clear that even in the imaginary scenario where everyone lives in a city, even if this was possible (it's not), the city dwellers who are separate from nature are living a silly little lie. You're part of the ecosystem. Don't like it? Go become a rock in space.

The electrical signals moving through your brain right now are rays of sunlight that were soaked up by a plant that grew in dirt. Do you know fruit? Do you enjoy fruit? I enjoy fruit, I'm drinking a smoothie right now! That fruit y'all love so much was pollinated by a bug.

A bug did that for you! Because you're family! Because you're part of this world, because you belong to this intricate and ancient community of living things that need each other, that were shaped by evolution to need each other, and nature cannot abandon you.

But more on the cynical side of things, even if you don't know where the hell a berry grows or how, someone has to grow and harvest and ship that berry to you, someone who has to live somewhere, and you should care who is doing it and how they're being treated and paid, and ultimately you should want for them the same things you want for you.

Urban life is just rural life with extra steps my friend.

Like, @ all the "put everybody in cities" crowd, what is the plan here? Fancy ass indoor aquaponics systems notwithstanding, we're not technologically at a point where we can just, like, build giant multi-story factory buildings where we grow food under special lamps, and even being at that point wouldn't make it a good idea. With all the hype about solar power, you'd think people would look at plants (have been using solar power just fine for like a billion years) and think, "Neat how those things can just make food when you stick 'em in the sunshine."

I'm sorry, I'm never going to be psyched about technological innovations that are like "We took a plant and put it inside."

There is so much I could say here. The brainrot in the wake of "cottagecore" discourse where a bunch of well meaning white people got convinced that farming was racist. The idea that rural people are somehow more complicit in colonialism than urban people, and that rural land is, I don't know, landier than urban land, and the correct and moral thing to do if you live on stolen land is to....what? Live on land that has a protective layer of concrete in between it and your racist feet?

Land ownership is a whole fucked up beast, but you're not cultivating a non-exploitative relationship with land by living in a city. There's just extra steps in between you and the land.

"Homesteading" as seen on cottagecore boards on Pinterest has a lot of white supremacist wet dream mixed in, but listen: It is not only okay, but GOOD, to want to live in close relationship with the land, with the food you eat, with the trees and plants that fill your lungs when you inhale. It's IMPORTANT. It's VITAL.

What has to change is that this relationship can't be based on ownership and dominance. Ecosystem is community and that ain't it.

My ancestors were colonizers, the land I live on right now was violently stolen, the ecosystem that once was very carefully managed so that it flourished with life was ravaged, and I don't even know the names of most of the life-forms that ought to be here. What now?

You belong to the ecosystem that takes care of you. You can't wash your hands of this and run away.

I feel like I'm getting off topic, but it's very much on topic actually. What I hope for the future is that we would stop entertaining the silly little lies that imagine we can just...opt out of participation in something that is underneath our every footstep and in our every breath. It would make us feel pure, but it wouldn't be real.

I do think that forcing people off the land that is their home is bad, in general. I don't think those people have to be indigenous for this to be bad—and successfully claiming otherwise is a bit of conundrum, since as far as I know, the political and social phenomenon of indigenous identity has a lot to do with the being forced off your land thing.

Obviously people like me don't have the same deeply central cultural relationship to the land, but the "we should all just go live in cities and leave nature to itself" proposal implies that such relationships are unnecessary or even bad.

I've said this before but I find it weird when environmentalists accommodate indigenous ways of life in their visions of the ideal future as like...a special exception granted because it's like, the nice thing to do for a historically marginalized and violently oppressed group. Not because there is value or merit in those ways of life. Like "Oh I guess indigenous people should be allowed to hunt because it's part of their culture" ????? And it's part of their culture because...why?

Maybe because it's a sustainable way of doing things and has been for millennia???

Like don't listen to me, look at the research, indigenous folks participating in ecosystems and managing them worldwide know what they're doing and the rest of the world should be looking to them as examples. Key word here is participating, because you can't competently manage an ecosystem with your head all the way up your ass with the idea that you're somehow not part of it.

Humans aren't a cancer upon the planet. It's capitalism and colonialism. It's the practice of seeing the world as a disposable resource to be exploited.

Humans lived in the place I called home for 15,000 years. Within the past 200 years, almost every forest was razed to the ground, and almost every large animal extirpated or damn near to it.

"Humans" did that! These humans are so terrible!

But I have to remember.

There are descriptions of this place from before that, and they describe a lush, teeming heaven-like paradise that the adjectives provided by English trembled to capture, so perfect and bountiful that the observers assumed this land was never tainted by Adam's sin.

Humans did that, too.

#ecology

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nocturnesmoon · 5 months

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Your Mooneyes

Word count: 4.2k Tags: 2nd person POV, gender neutral reader, Smoking, hints at addictions and substance abuse, indirect talk of death, hints at self-isolation and other destructive behaviour, hurt/comfort, bittersweet A/N: This is very self-indulgent. Also, if anyone notices the small cyperpunk2077 reference I put in there, Hi, I love you, let's be friends. - You thought you could finally have some peace up here on the rooftop, a place where it was just you, the smoke, and the moon. Then he came along, and for some reason you don't mind it -

Smoke filled you from a heavy breath, it entered your lungs and swirled the nicotine into your system. Only when you felt that familiar buzzing, your shoulders relaxing just a little, did you let go of the smoke and air. It mixed with the winter air around you, tainting its sweetness and churning with the bitterness of the frost.

The taste in your mouth turned sour, putting a dirty gland over already yellowed teeth. You didn't usually smoke, truthfully you didn't. Though it had still become a ritual for you, the only reason you bought the stupidly expensive brand that wasn't even good. It wasn't the worst of your vices, there were way more effective ways of destroying oneself. It was however one you would never part with even if your life depended on it.

You didn't particularly like the taste or the sensation it gave you, it was bitter and made you cough, it did much more bad than good. Yet you still found yourself lighting a cigarette, every year on this very night, as well as the nights leading up to it. When the snow would be covering the grounds of the forest outside the base, and when everyone had either gone home or were celebrating inside with their fellow brothers in arms.

Up here on the rooftop where nobody went on nights like this was your moment of peace. You found comfort in the moon and its light of solitude. Its cold gaze was like an old friend greeting you once again, your only true guidance in the creeping darkness of not only your mind. It was your solace in the bitterness of the merry Christmas spirit.

You didn't fault the people around you for taking part of the festivities, you didn't pay them much mind. Usually you kept to yourself, even more so during this season. Despite Soap's adamant attitude at including, you everywhere, along with Gaz's attempts at pulling you along after your small protests. You adored them and their efforts, yet they simply didn't understand how you could possibly be so gloomy this time of year. It was a time for friends and family, for baked goods and cheery spirits.

Perhaps that's why you disliked the season so much. It was a mix of many things, but Christmas reminded you of darker pasts. Not to mention it was a stressful time to be in, the frost outside was cold and harsh, and if you hear one more repetitive Christmas song, you might actually pull your gun on someone.

You didn't want to hate it if you were being honest with yourself. You wanted that connection the people beneath your feet had. You wanted that sense of family, that sense of comfort and safety. To be protected within a tightknit network of people who know each other inside and out. You didn't have that anymore, and you no longer sought it out. It was presented to you on different occasions, but the innate fear that it would all be for nothing, again, was too much.

The soft click of the rooftop door opening pulled you out of your own head, your head turning instinctively to check out the new threat that had moved into the vicinity of your solitude. You find yourself surprised to see the soldier with the skull mask, the rough and harsh Lieutenant that the recruits made up ghost stories about, your Lieutenant, your LT Ghost.

He seemed just as surprised to see you out here, his body tensing up as your eyes locked. Your pupils darted over him, scanning his body language and the twitch of his hand on the door handle. He was looking ready to just about bail as soon as he saw you, perhaps he had hoped for the emptiness of the rooftop that had called to you in the first place.

And just as quick as you saw the tense hesitance, it disappeared into the thin night air. Instead, something in him shifted and with heavy steps he made his way towards you. The determination in his form almost took the breath from your lungs, having you force back a cough from the resisting smoke.

In the time you've known him you've done your best to get a mental profile on his psyche. You had been able to prod and dig into Soap and Gaz easily enough, their openness making them easy reads. Your captain was a bit more difficult, be it his years of experience and stoicism, or the fact you didn't see him as much as the rest you didn't know just yet. Though at the end of the day you still knew where you stood, you knew what kind of people they were, you knew their tells and how they would respond to situations. It was your job to know in a sense.

Now your Lieutenant was a completely different story to the rest of your squad. You prided yourself in your ability to read others, it was a useful skill in interrogation and other means. A skill that unwillingly carried over into your every aspect of your life, finding yourself analyzing and dissecting every person you met just for fun if anything else. However, Ghost had been your greatest challenge yet.

Maybe it was wrong to think of it like that. He wasn't a challenge for you to complete, you wouldn't get a reward for your work on him, nobody would even know if you did it right. But he was so enticing in a way you couldn't comprehend. His mask was one thing, it hid most of his facial features, and his dark style of clothing made him blend into the even darker surroundings.

If Soap was an open book to you, then Ghost was locked up with a steel lock and the key was thrown into the sea.

It was only when he reached your space on the rooftop, that you looked away from him again. The cigarette hanging loosely between your pointer and middle finger. You brought it to your lips, watching him from your peripheral. Despite having deliberately decided to come over, he still put distance between the two of you. Out of respect or out of his adverse nature to touch was unclear.

There wasn't much acknowledgement between the two of you, but you allowed him to stay, for now. There had always been a silent understanding between you both, you may not have him figured out but there was mutual respect. A sign of trust between you from the countless times he had saved your ass for a bad decision, and the few times where you had saved his.

Ghost had been in the taskforce a lot longer than you had, and his reluctance at your entrance had been tough. It took you a long time before you could safely say you had earned his trust. He had respected you as one respected another professional, but his dramatic indifference at your presence had been discouraging compared to that of his other coworkers. Yet over time you had been able to remedy that.

"Since when do you smoke?" His gravelly voice disrupted the comforting silence, and you fought the urge to roll your eyes. He didn't know about your habits, at least not the ones that only presented themselves at certain times of the year. It was the most surprised at the fact he was still here on base, and not off somewhere celebrating Christmas with anyone.

You expelled the smoke you were holding in your lungs, scooting it downwards as you leaned more forward against the railing. "They taste like shit and make my head spin," you said with your gaze returning briefly to the moon above, "But once I start something I don't quit."

His response was more of a quiet rumble from his chest, a noise followed by the slight nodding of his head. "From one addict to another, I sympathize" He responded and held out a hand towards you, "Bum a smoke?" You looked down at his hand, once of the rare times he didn't wear his gloves and allowed the world to see a little of his skin.

Your metal cigarette case was softly cradled in one hand, the custom-made piece that held the few cigarettes you smoked every year. Your thumb ran over the small crystals that were probably fake, they covered over the entire thing, and reflected light on its surroundings when it was just right. Wordlessly you clicked it open, sliding one of them out and placing it neatly in his hand, making sure to not accidentally touch him in the process.

You weren't totally sure why you avoided touch so much when it came to him, he never recoiled from it when someone did come in contact. Though he very rarely initiated it himself, and normally he always positioned himself so it would be the least likely thing to happen in most scenarios.

"Thought you went home," Your voice was quiet in the night, glancing up at him and looking into those brown eyes. You found yourself allured by them; they were the eyes of a person who had seen so much. "Most of the others did," you add quickly, flicking the ash off the cigarette and bringing it to your lips for another drag.

Ghost shifted the weight on his legs, his hand coming up to tug up his balaclava, so it rested just above his nose. You took in the sight, the scar over his lip, the slight stubble on his jaw, the way his lips moved when he was about to speak. You stopped yourself from analyzing further, it took a direction you didn't know whether you were mentally prepared to address.

"Just finished my last report for the night," he brought the cigarette to his lips, and your body sprung into motion. You fished out your lighter from your pocket, turning your body to the side so you were facing him more directly. He leaned, accommodating so you could light it up for him. His eyes caught yours, and you held the eye contact, trying to ignore the way your cheeks warmed.

It reminded you of occasional lingering moments the two of you shared. The times when you would do paperwork together in silence, how he would sometimes rise to hover over you and help you where it was needed. You were perfectly capable of doing it yourself, but you let him, for the mere reason that you liked the attention he gave you. You felt safe with him, in a different way than you did with the others.

His gaze held yours until his cigarette was lit, he breathed in heavily closing his eyes as he relished in the calming feeling. He leaned his back against the railing, letting the smoke out into a small cloud above. "You smoke a strange brand," he said and cringed from the flavor that touched his tastebuds. He pulled back and looked down at the cigarette as if it had insulted him personally.

A smile tugged your lips, you could feel the start of a laugh bubble in your throat, but you decided to repress it. "They're not really mine" you admitted, dropping the hand that was holding your own cigarette, to your side. They belonged to you now, the cigarettes, the case, the habit, but it was never really yours.

Your eyes snapped to the slight movement in his mask, above his eye, indicating a raised brow. Either contemplating his own confusion or curiosity. You figured he probably found you weird, though he had never said it aloud. "Who's it then" he didn't sound too interested, not that you could blame him for it. The man had a lot of mysteries to deal with in his job alone, he didn't need the extra vagueness.

"Was my Ma's" you answer him, turning back to the railing so you could lean your arms on it. You had started this little ritual years ago, it helped take the focus off of the painful memories that surrounded you and clouded you during the season. Intent on not bringing focus towards it again, you change the subject, "You're not gonna head home and celebrate?"

There's another moment of silence between you both, and for a second you wonder if he's even going to grace you with an answer. "No," his answer was short and curt, "I don't typically celebrate." It made sense to you, not everyone celebrated or made a big out of Christmas, but you thought he would still have someone waiting at home. A family, some friends, maybe a partner.

"Don't got anyone waiting at home?" You settle for asking him directly, unable to hold your curiosity at bay. You felt unbelievably intrusive even asking, you knew how private he was, even though he answered a lot of Soap's questions he avoided the ones that dug too deep.

He lets out a small cloud of smoke through an audible sigh, his head turning towards you to look at you. For the first time you felt slightly self-conscious beneath his piercing gaze, the analyzing nature you used yourself was now turned on you. "Do you?" he asked, avoiding the question like he always did, in his very own way of turning it against you.

You blew out the air through your nose in low amusement. You weren't sure if he had always done this, but he had definitely toned it up when it came to you. Taking from your own example, you were starting to think he was being insufferable on purpose just to make you laugh. "I'm still here," you say and take a long drag from your cigarette, "What do you think."

You heard the rumbling sound of his hum in answer, it came right from his chest, and it made you wonder what it would be like hearing it when you were pressed close. "Johnny practically invited everyone over for the holidays, you could've said yes," his body turned around, mimicking the way you were leaning forwardly against the railing. His gaze looked up towards the moon as well.

It was oddly comfortable out here with him, you had expected to be tense, annoyed that he disrupted your quiet alone time. Though you found yourself now enjoying the time, hoping he would stay for a while longer.

You thought back to a few days ago when Soap had left the base to travel back home to Scotland. He was celebrating with his family as per usual, every few holidays he would invite the team over, insisting that you were all family at this point anyway. Aswell with the fact that his own family absolutely wouldn't mind more people either.

Sometimes Gaz or the captain said yes, insisting themselves that his family was delightful company and very welcoming. You didn't doubt them, but you had yet to say yes to the offer yourself. Most holidays you made your own plans, and Christmas was different, not one you usually allowed yourself to spend with others. This time around both Gaz and Price had refused as well, having their own people at home that they were celebrating with. Ghost hadn't ever agreed either, despite Soap's pestering he hadn't budged yet.

"Why didn't you?" you countered him, using his own insufferable way of avoiding questions with questions. You had always expected that Ghost would go with Soap unless he had his own plans at home. But he had never even met Soap's family, a fact that had surprised you when you first learned. They always had such chemistry together, the banter they shot back and forth in the field as well as the off time they occasionally spent together in whatever way that made sense. They seemed like good friends to you.

The sigh he let out indicated he didn't exactly appreciate the countered question, though the little crinkle at the corner of his eyes did make it seem like he was smiling at least a little under the mask. It made your own smile show itself and tug at your lips. "I don't think I'm ready to meet 15 different versions of MacTavish," he admitted.

This time around you snorted audibly, it made his eyes snap to you, the crinkle in his eyes getting bigger as he looked at you like you were the most adorable thing in the world. "Does he really have that many family members?" You asked highly amused and just a little bit horrified at the possibility.

The chuckle you heard from him was different, one you didn't get to hear like this all that often. Normally his laugh would consist of quiet breathy chuckling, not the audible one he let you hear right now. It almost managed to make you forget why you were out here alone in the first place. It was a nice feeling, making you feel just a little less alone.

"No idea" he shook his head through his chuckle, "But I'm not risking it just yet." You couldn't fault him for that, the possibility of meeting a lot of new people all with the same energy as Soap might be overwhelming at first. Normally it wouldn't strike you as the type of crowd Ghost would surround himself with, not that you think he'd surround himself in any type of crowd willingly.

You felt his shoulder bump against yours, intentionally, and it made you freeze up out of shock. You look him in the eye with confusion but instantly start mentally berating yourself for your reaction of surprise when you see his own uncertain look. As if he was already regretting making the contact, he cleared his throat, "So, why are you really out here?"

You didn't answer, you didn't know if you wanted to. Were you and Ghost even that close? Would he be weirded out by all this? You knew a lot of things about him, but then again did you even really know him. "My Ma used to say that people reside in the stars" you speak quietly, gazing up at the twinkling stars in the midnight sky.

"That when we pass over to the next plane of existence, we leave remnants of our souls in the stars we cross, that way you leave something behind to guide the next generation," it was something she had told you about over and over again. How so many of your family members were looking down at you, that the shooting stars, and the twinkling lights where their way of communicating. You don't know if you believe it but.... "I feel closer to her out here."

You couldn't see his expressions, or what his reaction was to your words, too focused on watching the stars like they were the most interesting thing in the world. In truth you were scared, maybe he would laugh, or tell you off, scoff and mock you. He didn't.

"Do you think she was right?" You were surprised when you heard Ghost's voice inquiring interest. Was he just being nice for the courtesy? No that wasn't Ghost, he didn't dance around subjects he always said he didn't have time for that. He was asking genuinely.

"Maybe," you say a little taken aback, you had spent months mulling over the question yourself. Did you believe the same or were you just clinging onto the remnants of her in you. "I want her to be," you admit to him in a whisper. You could remember all the times you had looked up at the stars and looked for a sign, a twinkle or movement, anything from her.

A silence fell over you both as you looked up towards the stars, getting absorbed in their beauty and their places next to the illuminating moon. You wondered if he had lost people too, that it could be why he was so closed off, why he refused to let you in too deep no matter how much you prodded at his walls of steel defense.

He made a noise you couldn't discern, something between a hum and a sigh. "I hope so," he sounded hopeful, and disheartened all at once. It was confusing to witness without the needed context behind his emotions. His eyes were focused on a specific clutch of stars, allowing you to look up at him unnoticed. "I think it'd be nice," he whispered quietly, matching your own tone of voice.

Maybe he hoped that whoever he had lost was up there too, maybe he was looking for a sign as well. Maybe he was just like you were, or maybe you were completely delusional. For a moment you allowed yourself to fall for the fantasy, the thought that maybe the two of you weren't all that different. Broken souls and scarred hearts, just waiting for someone to see them for what they are.

When he moved his head to look at you in turn, meeting your eyes with a feeling you didn't know what was. You fought the flinching urge to look away from his gaze, feeling like you were intruding on feelings you weren't allowed to see. Your long-forgotten cigarette almost falling out of your hand when he spoke, "She'd be proud of you, if she could see you now." Your eyes widening just a fraction and your mouth slightly agape in your own confusion.

His gaze was dissecting, almost uncomfortable as he pierced through your own defenses like they were pudding. How he did it you had no idea, techniques running through your head, but you dismissed them, there was nothing malicious about this, just pure emotion. "I hope so," you cringed at the choked-up note in your voice.

Ghost let out a huff, something akin to a silent laugh with the nod of his head. His eyes softened and it almost tore your bleeding heart right out of your chest. You had never known yourself to be this easily picked apart at the seams. A skill you didn't know he possessed, as if he had been observing you for a long time and just now revealed just how easy you could be. Your brain was quick to make it out to something negative, but deep down in your heart you knew Ghost wasn't like that.

"I'm proud of you."

The words froze you over, your cigarette falling from your rigid hand as your own emotions pooled in your eyes. You didn't know whether you wanted to be angry with him or thankful for this newfound ability of his. Maybe you weren't as well walled up as you thought, and apart of you didn't mind it. His eyes kept you in a trance, "Ghost..." your vocals were barely there.

"Call me Simon," He turned to you fully, his presence had never been so inviting, "For tonight at least." The amusement in his voice was clear to you, his grin barely concealed behind that skull mask of his. It only made your confusion greater, your brain processing too many things at once as you comprehended what had just changed in the relationship with him.

"What?" you blinked dumbfounded; you had heard him clearly enough, but the spiking overload was rendering you momentarily confused. A thing he seemed to pick up on, quicker than you had expected him to.

"C'mon, it's getting cold out here," his threw his cigarette to the ground, stomping it out with his foot and double checked yours too. Then his hand grazed yours with caution, this time you didn't recoil or flinch away. You let him slide his hand over yours, holding and gently tugging you along to the stairs that led down from the roof. Out of the safe place you had created and into a new one in his presence.

You stumbled after him, your brain catching up to the fact that you were now leaving. You weren't used to being overloaded so quickly; he did things to you that you had no explanation for. "Wait- Where are we going?" you didn't know what he had intended, but this wasn't the way back into base, the door on the roof would've been the easier choice if that was the case.

He chuckled; the sound muffled behind his mask as well as the fact you were still walking a step behind him. "I'm not leaving you out here alone," he glanced at you from the corner of his eye, the feeling making your cheeks heat up again, "I know a pub, they're alright at holidays, you'll love it." He reassured you as if he knew it for a fact, that he was so certain you wouldn't dislike it. You wanted to argue, protest that you weren't in the mood. But the way he looked at you rendered you quiet, the urge to trust him being great, the urge to be fine with the fact that maybe he did know you.

He saw you the way you saw others, he read you as easily as you would read anyone else. In all your years spent analyzing people and their behavior so you could accommodate them, you had forgotten how much you needed someone to do that for you. You needed someone to see you.

And he saw you.

All of you.

#simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x you #simon riley x gn!reader #simon ghost riley x gn!reader #reader insert #x reader #gn reader #NoctMoon Fics #simon ghost riley x you #simon riley x gn reader #simon ghost riley x gn reader #first time fic

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partoftheband04 · 7 months

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Making the bed

Summary: You've been in your head for quite some time about yours and Matty's relationship. Your thoughts finally surface as everything comes crumbling down around you.

Warnings: swearing, some angst (happy ending tho), mentions of alcohol.

‐‐-------------------

You’re in the club again.

That seemed to be all you, Matty and your friends ever did for fun recently. You say ‘friends’, but really, they’re just his. Your friends by association, but you know that if anything were to ever go wrong between you and him that they would always choose his side.

Phrasing it like that sounds childish, you always berated yourself for even thinking that the grown adults around you would ever think like that, another sign of the age difference between you and the rest of them. Sure, you were old enough, it wasn’t anything big enough to cause a commotion (especially with his celebrity), but it always made you feel like such an outsider.

They spend most of their times laughing about inside jokes that you weren’t there soon enough to be a part of, you’re not old enough to understand, not cool enough to get the reference. And it’s endearing. Especially to him. They all tease you as you try to chuckle along with them and desperately claw at the context of their stories for explanations.

That’s the main thing you always felt was missing. An explanation.

You didn’t understand why Matty, or even his friends for that matter, could possibly want you around. You seemingly had nothing in common except your careers in the music industry. Sure, nights in bed with him made everything feel right. So close that you didn’t need anything in common because you might as well have been the same person.

When you were alone it wasn’t so bad. He would ask about your life, your job, your feelings and he clearly did care. He would sometimes take you on trips away where it was just the two of you for a weekend in some romantic country, granted it was usually as an apology for some small error he had made within your relationship: another onstage kiss, too many missed phone calls, leaked paparazzi photos.

But the issue with Matty was he was barely ever alone. Constantly surrounded by people, namely his bandmates, and it was just never the same. It’s not as if he treated you badly when you were around others, he couldn’t have been nicer to you in truth, but something was always off, and you couldn’t quite place it. It felt like you always came second to everyone else that he associated himself with.

So now you were back in another club and things just couldn’t get any worse. You were completely out of your depth as Matty and the band celebrated their latest sold-out show with copious amounts of people that you had never even heard of. He didn’t bother to introduce you to them, didn’t even take your hand as he approached every individual person separately, he just left you stranded at the bar.

Which is perhaps the reason why you’d been sat there alone drinking your sorrows away all night instead of trying to start a conversation with someone. You never started conversations; that was Matty’s thing.

Nursing your vodka red bull in one hand as you hopelessly scrolled social media with your phone in the other, you felt a firm hand on your shoulder.

“You okay?” George asks, although its abundantly clear that you are not.

“Yeah, of course”, you stutter. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

He looks at you quizzically, as if he can’t understand why you wouldn’t let him help you, wouldn’t let him be someone that you can talk to.

George had always been kind to you, the whole band had but he had taken a special liking to you and usually tried to include you in conversation more than the others.

“You know you can talk to me, right? We are friends after all.”

You scoff under your breath at this, not intending for him to hear it but he does anyway.

“What? You don’t think we’re friends?” He sounds genuinely hurt.

You look up from your glass at this, slightly shocked that the thought of the two of you not being friends would be something that upsets him. “You’re not my friend George. You’re Matty’s. You’re just forced to spend time with me by association.” You say all of it matter of factly, as if there’s no room for argument or any other possibilities.

Now it’s his turn to look shocked. “That’s what you actually think?”

As you stare back into your glass in favour of a reply, George’s face shifts to one of concern, worried that you’ve been thinking this the whole time you and Matty have been together. Your quietness starts to make more sense, as does the many times you’ve chosen to stay home rather than go out with them, and George feels truly awful that he’s let it go on for as long as it has.

Just as he’s about to speak, Matty’s boisterous laughter somehow manages to echo through the entire club and both you and George turn to stare. He’s clearly in his element, everyone around him is laughing along to his jokes, most of them people you usually hang out with on your rare nights out, and yet only George has even thought to come and check on you.

Reality hits you like a bus as you mumble an apology to George and rush to the outside smoking air, desperate for a cigarette, and yet as you reach into your pocket you realise that even the cigarettes are his.

You had everything you wanted: a loving boyfriend, a thriving career, a huge circle of friends. You finally had it all and yet none of it was truly yours.

You think that thought is the final breaking point, the last sign that you needed to call it quits on your relationship.

The door quietly opens behind you and despite the many people in the club, you already know that it’s Matty.

“What’s wrong?” he asks bluntly, simply.

You don’t say anything, just muffle your sobs behind the back of your hand and as much as you try to push the thought away, you feel like a child getting consoled by their teacher.

All you can do is shake your head, trying to convey that you’re fine without speaking, not trusting your voice to stay strong. He clearly doesn’t buy it though, placing a hand on your shaking thigh as a form of comfort.

“George told me what you said,” he states, once again getting straight to the point.

You sight, knowing it was coming because the two of them share everything, but you were really hoping you weren’t going to have to have this conversation tonight.

“I’m just drunk Matty, I didn’t know what I was saying,” you try to deter the conversation, blaming your words on your inebriation.

He just laughs at that. “You may be younger than me, but I know you can hold your drink just fine. What you said has nothing to do with how much you’ve drank.”

You visibly cringe at another mention of your age but attempt to brush it off. He knows you too well, he knows when you’re lying and when you’re hiding something from him, but you’d kept this going for so long that you’d thought it wouldn’t get to this point.

“I just feel like an outsider Matty,” you finally voice your thoughts to him after all these months. “Every single time we go anywhere I feel like you should be with anyone else.”

His hand of your thing squeezes a bit firmer, and he looks directly into your eyes as he tells you, “I don’t want anyone else.”

You shake your head in denial, not knowing what else to say because he just isn’t understanding, he’s never had to feel the way you feel.

“No,” he states. “You’re doing this to yourself. You’re getting it in your head that we don’t want you around, that I don’t want you around, but you know that couldn’t be more wrong. I love you. So, so much, and you’re pushing all the people that care about you away. You’re pushing me away.”

The emotions finally begin to take over his face and you think that you can detect fear, he’s scared of you leaving.

“Matty…” you draw sadly, breaths coming out shaky.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed. I see how quiet you get around everyone and I know it’s not because you don’t like them because you always look happy when you first see them but as time goes on you just crawl into yourself and stop letting people in. I can physically see when you start to have those doubting thoughts and it kills me because I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

“You’re not doing anything wrong Matty!” your voice has started to raise, along with his, as you struggle to communicate how you feel.

“Bullshit! If I’m not doing anything wrong, then how the fuck am I supposed to fix it?”

“You can’t fix it Matty,” you say, and he cuts you off quickly before you can continue.

“Don’t say that” he tells you, standing up and pointing at you. “Don’t say that because I don’t like where it’s going.”

“I don’t like who I am anymore Matty,” you mutter. “I don’t recognise myself, and it’s nothing you’ve done. I- I can’t explain it, I don’t even understand it myself but-“

He sits back down, grabbing onto both of your arms, not aggressively, almost trying to shake some sense into you.

“Look, why don’t we just go home, and we can talk about it there, okay?”

“But your party-“

“I don’t give a fuck about a sold-out show when you’re about to break up with me. I’ll call us a taxi.”

Before you know it, he’s walking you both through the club towards the exit but George stops you just as you’re about to leave.

“I don’t know what you two just spoke about, but whatever happens, me and the boys are all here for you, okay? Not just Matty, you too.”

You don’t know how to respond to that as Matty is still trying to pull you from the club, all you can do is smile and nod with watery eyes as you continue to get dragged through the sea of people.

The taxi ride back to Matty’s house is silent, he stares out the window, but he never once lets up his grip on your leg. You know he’s angry that you’ve held all of this in for so long without giving him chance to change anything but he’s still trying to provide you with the comfort that you need.

You truly do love him; your life just feels so out of control that everything is spiralling into something that you never imagined it would be.

“I love you,” he tells you as soon as you’re both in the house and the door is shut behind you. He says it with such conviction and yet you can’t help but feel that he doesn’t mean it.

You know that’s not true though. Deep down you know he loves you; he’s been saying it for so long now how could he not, but your mind seems to be determined to sabotage every good thing in your life right now for no reason whatsoever.

“I know,” you say truthfully, after some deliberation. “I love you too, I really do Matty-“

“Then why are you ruining it? Why are you trying so hard to get out of something that you know is good?”

All you can do is laugh quietly under your breath, not at what he’s said, but at yourself. You know he’s right, and as you sink into the sofa with your head in your hands quietly sobbing, you start to realise what is happening.

You’re self-destructing again, that much is clear, but you just don’t know how to stop it.

He sits down beside you, a hand gently rubbing your back to soothe you as you cry.

“Hey, it’s okay.” He speaks. “We can take some time, figure out where all of this has come from. I know you say I can’t fix it, but if you’ve really been feeling this way for so long then there’s definitely things that I can change.”

You hate how emotionally mature he has become since you started dating, another thing that makes you feel younger, however you can’t help but feel grateful for that maturity in this moment, knowing that it may have very well saved your relationship.

“I’m sorry,” you gasp through tears, truly feeling awful for what you’ve put him through tonight. “I ruined your celebrations for the show and-“

“I really don’t care about the show when you’re sat here crying on my sofa. Contrary to what your mind may have been telling you recently, you’re my top priority. Always.”

He leaves a kiss on your head as you curl up closer to his chest, desperate for the attention that you had felt was somewhat lacking over the last few weeks.

He carries you up to bed, both of you knowing that it’s no good to have this conversation when youre both still drunk and emotionally drained. He makes the bed for you as he lays you down, pulling the sheets over your body as he climbs in next to you, pulling your body closer to his until your head is resting on his chest.

In the warmth of the bedsheets, you can’t help but feel immense relief that you had listened to him, but also that he had listened to your concerns, and you were both going to try harder. You really did have everything you wanted, and it was everything you imagined, you just had to stop pushing him away.

#matty healy fic #the 1975 #matty healy x you #george daniel #matty healy

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athanasius-symposium-of-writings · 3 months

Text

The Bird And The Man

Chapter Six

Rated: Explicit | Warnings: none (for now)

Ao3

Chapter Five | Chapter Seven

Would you be considered selfish if you want Nightmare— Orpheus— All to yourself? Like in the way of keeping a moment in time forever stilled so no one can disturb either of you. Maybe it is selfish but you learned being selfish is not always a bad thing, especially when paradise is taken easily by reality.

The relationship between Nightmare and yourself was never… Public. To say it is because you did not want the other survivors or hunters to know about this star-crossed romance is not true. You are a private person, a lot of things about you are on a ‘need to know’ basis or if you are asked you might be given an answer. Given the life you lived had not granted you many friends, social gatherings, or privacy given you lived in a boarding house; you kept everything to yourself.

Including him in any way possible you wanted him for yourself.

Nightmare makes a grunting sound, the beak of his mask nudging your face to look up at him.

“I know your eyes are up there, but let me look at you, please?” Just a little longer, you need to savor this winter romantic moment just a little longer.

He makes his beak touch your lips.

“We might not be able to wipe all the lipstick marks on your mask.”

“Wanted.” Oh, the way he purrs that out makes you very aware of how much you want to put your mark on him, a claim naturally felt toward someone you love. At least, that is what you read in romance novels. “More.” You bury your face in his chest, hands gripping the fabric of his winter coat. His hands wander, careful not because of the outfit, but because he fears hurting you.

“Orpheus.” Breathy, your arms wrap around his arm as his quill-less hand grips your ass.

“(Name)!” You recognize Emma's voice quickly from the fog of desire. Nightmare moves quickly to turn around and hide you in his coat. “Oh, hi, Nightmare.” He grunts at her cheerful voice. “Have you seen (Name)?”

“No.” He does not turn his head, he just looks up at the tree, “Leave.” You rub his throat knowing he should not be talking this much.

“Okay.” You know she is probably pouting, “If you see them please tell them the party is starting soon.”

She waits a second before walking off, only when there is total silence does he release you.

“I will make you tea.”

He makes a chirping sound before a grumble sound from his throat follows, you figure he hates sounding like a bird. Ironic given you learned Orpheus loves birds, it was in his autobiography.

“Cute!” Smiling then sighing, “Are you coming?”

He shakes his head, he never shows up at these events. Never felt right given he would see himself interacting with other survivors.

“I understand.” Big parties are not as grand as books or movies make it out to be, “Would you like me to stay with you?”

The name Nightingale is traced on your palm, his mask tilted down as sees you sigh again. He points out that this is an event the Lady of the Manor has invited everyone to participate. His knuckle affectionately rubs your cheek. You smile at him.

“I will stay only as long as needed!”

Enjoy yourself. He means that too.

The music is soothing, and pleasant as few of the survivors and hunters are dancing on the ballroom floor.

As you were told before by Emma, these are few times of peace any of them get. It can be awkward but they all move past it for their sanity.

The cute couple is of course Psychologist and Patient, Ada and Emil, they always have matching costumes.

You currently are sitting with Demi, Tracy, and Patricia. Well, Patricia got asked by Kevin to dance with him just now so now it is only the three of you.

“I never expected this to actually be nice.”

“The first time it wasn't,” Demi informs you, “There was a fight.” Slipping her glass of champagne.

“Norton?” Figuring he is the most likely given Fool’s Gold.

“Oh, it was between Andrew and Undead.”

Unexpected yet it reminds you how much about the others you do not know much about. Together but apart, everyone has their reasons for being here. Including you, though you feel getting a patron is not worth this.

“Hypnos,”

You look up, stopping the idle chatter to see Orpheus standing beside you. “Good evening, Orpheus.” The other two say their greetings but his eyes are on you.

“Good evening,” Polite, he looks nice in the black suit, “Might I steal you for a dance?” Offering his hand.

“I uh oh,” You stumble on words, “If you don't mind being stepped on.”

The way he laughs is charming, “Fret not,” His hand is surprisingly soft, “Just follow my lead.” Guiding you to the dancing area.

The ladies giggling at the sight of you being stolen away.

Orpheus guides you to a spot on the ballroom floor less crowded, his hand on your waist and the other still holding your hand.

“One step forward, two steps back.” He tells you not to rush to have you twirling around like Mary and Joseph are. You look down at your feet fearful of stepping on him. Slow and steady, your cheeks burn as you smile while getting the hang of this.

You have no idea how charming you look to the Novelist, he notices your lipstick is faded.

“Ready for more?”

“Yes!” Eager to learn more.

When you were young, maybe in your late teenage years, you always wondered if you would ever meet the great Orpheus.

There were so many questions, you wished he would take you in as his understudy… Hoped he would praise you for your stories. Pipe dreams, the dreams of going from rag to riches with the help of someone you admire. It is strange being this close now to him, not only in dancing with this Orpheus but both of them.

It is like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide, both are the same man.

Several dances with Orpheus and the conversations about, well, anything has you buzzing!

“Something on your mind?” He speaks once one conversation ends and goes onto another topic, “You keep glancing over at the clock.”

“Oh,” Nervous laughing, “Sorry, I made a promise to meet someone later.”

“Nightmare,” There is a note of dislike as he says the name, makes sense all he sees is the monster. A deep dip and you look up at the man. He is a handsome man, one you would and are charmed by, he is someone you admired for most of your life. “It's eleven right now.”

The subject changed and was not brought up again, must be a touchy subject especially given how saw you with his other self.

“Hypons,” His hand catching yours before you go to leave after you saw Lady Nightingale leave the party, “You should be careful.”

You turn to him and smile, “Of course.” His hand drops from yours and you ask him, “Do hate him?”

“Hate? No, I do envy him.” A sly smile as he adjusts his gloves, “Enjoy the rest of your evening.” A small bow.

“Thank you for the dance, Orpheus.” You are not sure why he would envy Nightmare but you are too caught up in keeping your word to think about what he means.

#orpheus x you #idv orpheus x you #orpheus x reader #nightmare x reader #idv nightmare #nightmare x you #identity v x you #identity v x reader #identity v #idv reader insert #idv orpheus #idv novelist #idv x reader #reader insert

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jammatown919 · 11 months

Text

Acquiring Taste

This one's for an anonymous requestor who asked for a fic where Ruby has Penny try a bunch of different types of food in her new human body.

Penny's first meal was, objectively, nothing special. She hadn't even anticipated it much, being far too preoccupied with the issue of settling Atlas's many refugees among people that, not unjustifiably, did not want to house their old enemies, and trying to help her friends get Professor Theodore up to speed on the situation with Salem, including Penny's newfound Maidenhood.

By the time anyone had a moment to think about themselves at all, their only thought was where they could find the nearest bed in which to collapse. Those beds, which Professor Theodore graciously offered up, could be found in their new dorms, where they had been promised they could stay for as long as they were in Vacuo. There was even an offer to allow them to attend Shade as students if they so desired, as he felt that General Ironwood had been unfair in pushing people so young into the adult position of official Huntsman or Huntress, but that would be dealt with later.

For now, everyone could sleep, and sleep they did, Penny in the same bed as Ruby for lack of space for five people in Team RWBY's dorm.

It wasn't until very late the next morning, when Penny was stirring to the sounds of her new roommates moving around, that she realized her stomach hurt. Badly.

With a groan, Penny rolled onto her side with one hand gripping her middle, desperately trying to pinpoint the source of that awful cramping. She wasn't hurt. She hadn't been feeling anything like this yesterday. Was this a human thing?

"Uh, Penny?" Ruby asked hesitantly, sitting up in bed beside Penny. They were remarkably close, given that the bed was intended for one person, and Penny realized belatedly that her motion had thrown her free arm over Ruby's lap. "Are you okay?"

"My stomach," Penny replied quietly. "It feels like... like something is squeezing it."

"I think you might be hungry," was Ruby's immediate response, and suddenly it all made sense.

The human body required food on a regular basis. Penny had been inhabiting a human body for... at least fifteen hours at this point. Of course she needed to eat something.

"C'mon," Ruby said, nudging her. "I think the others are getting ready to go look for the cafeteria. Let's get dressed and then we can see about getting you your first meal."

Penny's head popped up from the pillow in excitement. That was right, wasn't it? Her very first meal! She was going to get to enjoy food like she'd seen all her friends do so many times. She could figure out her own unique preferences and nurture her new body in a way she'd never thought possible.

Soon, Penny was up and full of as much energy as could be managed by someone whose body was desperate for calories. None of them had gotten any new clothes yet besides a standard set of pajamas, so yesterday's outfit would have to do for everyone, but it seemed no one was particularly bothered. Maybe they were as eager to get something to eat as she was.

It didn't take long to find the cafeteria, with a helpful nudge in right direction by Yatsuhashi of Team CFVY. Penny quite liked that boy, for all the two conversations she'd had with him. He seemed very sweet!

Many unfamiliar scents greeted Penny and her friends as they walked into the cafeteria together, and Penny wasn't quite sure what to make of them. They didn't smell bad, necessarily, just very strong. Atlesian food didn't have very strong aromas outside of wines and cheeses that Penny seldom ever saw, so it was just new to her.

But that was fine. She liked new and exciting things.

It wasn't until she got up to where the food was laid out to be taken by students that she began to worry. She knew, intellectually, what most of it was, but there were a great many uncertainties with every dish.

The fried worms and beetles were easy enough to recognize, but the look of them made Penny dread their texture. There was something that held a vague resemblance to a crab cake she'd seen her father eat a few times, but she wasn't entirely sure what meat had been used. There was a type of fruit as well, which should have been the safe option, but all this overthinking was getting Penny worried about whether she had any allergies that might do her in if she made the wrong choice.

"You okay?" Ruby asked, leaning in close so as not to alert the others that anything might be wrong. She always did that, and Penny appreciated it more than she could say. It was always easier to talk about things that were bothering her when only one person's attention was on her as opposed to the entire group.

"I think I'm just... a bit overwhelmed," Penny admitted. "I don't know what to choose."

"That's alright," Ruby replied kindly. "Honestly, I'm pretty sure most of us don't know what we're looking at here. I've never had Vacuan food before. Why don't we just go for the simple options for now?"

She gestured beyond the fruit to a bunch of flat discs that, mercifully, seemed to just be bread. Penny could handle bread, couldn't she? Unless she was allergic to gluten. But she couldn't just starve herself for fear that she might be allergic to literally anything.

Trying to reassure herself with the fact that this would make that awful feeling in her stomach go away, Penny collected a metal tray, a plate, and a few pieces of flatbread. Ruby did the same, including a few pieces of fruit on her tray, and the two of them went to find somewhere to sit while their friends chose more adventurous meals.

They found a comfortable spot in a quiet corner, with a fair bit of space between them and most of the rest of the students. Penny's stomach growled loudly as they settled in, and Ruby gave her an encouraging smile.

"Let's try it together," she suggested, lifting a piece of flatbread to her mouth. Penny did the same, finding that this particular scent was actually much less overstimulating and absolutely mouthwatering.

They took their first bites in unison, and Penny just about cried. It was so good, with a soft, slightly oily texture and a mild flavor accented by some kind of light spice or herb or something that she didn't recognize.

Ruby glanced at her, as if to ask how she liked it, only to start giggling as Penny shoved the rest of the disc into her mouth all at once, preemptively answering her question.

"Do you want to try this one too?" Ruby picked up a small piece off the fruit she had taken and held it out to Penny. "This one I know. It's breadfruit. Tastes like potatoes."

"I don't know what potatoes taste like," Penny replied after she had swallowed her mouthful. "Why do they call breadfruit if it tastes like potatoes?"

"Some people say it smells like bread," Ruby replied, glancing between Penny and the offered morsel to emphasize that she wanted Penny to take it.

Penny accepted it and held it up to her nose to test that theory. It didn't smell much like the bread she'd just eaten, but the fruit also wasn't seasoned the same way.

Noticing her apprehension, Ruby took another piece of fruit and popped it into her mouth, giving Penny a thumbs up.

"It's really good," she said encouragingly. "And you'll have more energy later if you eat more than just bread."

Well... Penny supposed that was true. The human body required a balance of different nutrients, only some of which could be found in bread. The fruit would go a long way, and maybe she could try for some protein around lunchtime.

Penny took a deep breath and popped the fruit into her mouth just as Ruby had done, chewing slowly. It took a few moments for her to decide if she liked it, but she got there, and she did like it. Not as much as the bread, but that was okay. Her first food preference!

"Good?" Ruby asked. Penny nodded, and Ruby's response was to take half of her fruit and put it on Penny's tray.

"Ruby, that's yours," Penny insisted. "You need to eat too."

"It's okay. I can get more," Ruby replied. "I want to make sure you have enough."

Penny found her face suddenly growing a bit warmer than usual, but not in a bad way. She liked that Ruby was looking out for her. She wasn't used to being taken care of when her father wasn't around, and she found that it was quite nice.

"Thank you." Penny smiled brightly at her friend, who returned the gesture. The two of them began to eat in silence as the rest of their friends found them and settled down nearby.

Penny quietly enjoyed her food, cherishing the experience. Objectively, it wasn't an exciting meal; just an uninteresting, mild-flavored combination of bread and fruit. But to Penny, this was one of the most important experiences of her life.

Her first time actively sharing a meal with people she cared about. The first of many, many more.

-----

The first few weeks at Shade had gone by quite well for Ruby. She was a student again, with a mountain of pressure and responsibility taken off her shoulders for the time being, and she'd actually managed to get herself a girlfriend as of last week.

Even before asking Penny out, Ruby had quickly discovered upon sharing meals with her that sharing food was one of her love languages. She loved slipping little morsels from her plate onto Penny's, watching the girl's eyes light up with excitement whenever she ate something delicious.

Unfortunately, it didn't always work out the way Ruby hoped. Though Penny loved trying new foods, she wasn't always the most adventurous when it came to things with stronger flavors or particularly potent scents. Sometimes Ruby would slip her something a little spicy or a bit too heavily seasoned and watch it go uneaten in favor of milder things.

Not that Ruby judged her for any of that. She understood that, for someone who had literally never eaten up until a few weeks ago, each new food that was familiar and generic to her was a whole new and potentially overwhelming sensory experience. Penny was right for taking it slow.

And besides, some people just had blander palates than others. Hell, Ruby was still a picky eater in some regards. There was nothing wrong with Penny just preferring her safe foods.

Though, given all of this information, it did throw Ruby for a bit of a loop when Penny suddenly expressed interest in trying something much worse than most of the things she'd politely declined from Ruby before now.

It was a bag of sour candies that Ruby had gotten from Nora the day before, a mix of different flavors with various levels of sourness. Ruby loved them, and had happily settled on her bed to eat far more of them than her stomach would appreciate, but she didn't think they were quite Penny's speed.

It wasn't particularly weird when Penny came back to the dorm and began to eye the bag. The curiosity was standard.

"What's that?" she asked, crossing the room to sit down on the bed beside her girlfriend.

"It's candy," Ruby replied with her mouth full. Penny didn't seem to mind.

"Can I try one?" Penny requested, leaning a bit closer to peer into the bag. That was the weird part.

In most cases, Ruby would have been more than happy to help Penny's taste buds branch out, but she didn't think this one was going to end well.

"It's not sweet candy. They're really sour," she warned. "It's kind of an acquired taste."

"But how can I acquire the taste if I never try it?" Penny asked. A fair point, honestly. "I think I'm ready to start being more adventurous with food. I want to know what sour tastes like."

Ruby, though still convinced that Penny wasn't going to like the candy, opted not to argue. It wasn't her place to decide Penny's preferences for her. If she wanted to see for herself, then that was her decision to make.

She dug around in the bag for a red candy, which she thought was the least sour, and held it out to Penny. The other girl took it gratefully and popped it into her mouth with absolutely no hesitation.

The look on her face was that of someone discovering what pain tasted like. To her credit, she didn't spit it out or say anything negative, but it incredibly obvious to Ruby that she did not like it.

"Is it awful?" Ruby asked, smiling sympathetically. Penny nodded. "Do you want to spit it out?"

Penny shook her head, her jaw still working the red orb around in her mouth.

"You don't have to finish it if you don't like it."

"I took it from you," Penny said around the piece of candy. Her voice was thick with saliva and full of regret. "It would be rude to waste it."

"You didn't steal it or anything, I gave it to you, and I won't be offended if you can't finish it," Ruby promised. "You don't finish stuff I give you all the time."

"But I asked for this," Penny insisted. "I need to accept the consequences of my actions."

"Oh, baby, you don't need to punish yourself for trying something and not liking it. People do it all the time. It's normal."

If it was anything else, Ruby might have let Penny try to finish it, but these candies were designed to be consumed over the course of at least several minutes. They were too hard to chew and too large to swallow outright, so the only option was to suck on them, which, for someone who couldn't handle the sourness, might actually constitute legitimate torture.

Unfortunately, Penny was determined to see this through.

Ruby sighed and crossed the room to pick up the small wastebasket in the corner, then brought it over to Penny and held it out to her.

"Penny, please spit it out."

"I can finish it."

"Penny, there are tears in your eyes, please just spit it out."

It took another minute of coaxing and promising that there was nothing wrong with not swallowing something that physically hurt for Penny to finally spit the candy, along with a few red gobs of saliva, into the wastebasket.

"Is that better?" Ruby asked gently, to which Penny nodded miserably. "Do you want some water?"

After another nod, Ruby ducked into the bathroom to fill a small cup with water from the sink. She gave Penny the cup, then sat down to gently card a few fingers through her hair while she downed it.

"I don't think I like sour things," Penny said at last, wiping a bit of water from her lips.

"Lots of people don't," Ruby replied. "And it's totally okay to not like everything you try, or to spit something out if you need to. There's no 'I have to accept the consequences of my actions' with this stuff. It's good to experiment with food, and there's nothing to be ashamed of if it doesn't work out."

Penny hummed in the affirmative, but she said nothing and was still pulling a face like she was uncomfortable.

"Everything okay?"

"I can still taste it," Penny replied, apparently incredibly disappointed by this fact. "The water helped, but... eugh."

Ruby bit her lip to keep herself from chuckling. Not that was funny, but she'd just never heard Penny make that sound before, and she had to admit it was pretty cute.

"Well, it's about lunchtime anyway," she said. "Let's head to the cafeteria and grab something to get that taste out of your mouth."

This seemed to cheer Penny up, and soon the bag of candy was stashed under their bed to be hidden from Yang and the two of them were walking hand-in-hand toward the cafeteria.

"Hey," Ruby began as the two of the walked, "you still want to keep experimenting, right?"

"I do," Penny replied, glancing over with a small smile. "Don't worry. This experience has not deterred me. In fact, I think it was valuable in its own way. Now I know to avoid all things sour, so I can focus on other types of food."

"That's good!" Ruby returned Penny's smile with one of her own. The information was valuable to her, too, if she wanted to keep indulging in her need to share food to express affection. "So, if I slipped something new onto your plate at lunch, do you think you'd be okay trying it? Something salty?"

"Well... I like salt in moderation," Penny said thoughtfully. "Is it the lizard jerky you had yesterday?"

"You got me." Ruby let out a chuckle. Lizard jerky may seem out there, but she'd been curious, and it had paid off. In fact, she liked it better than beef. "I promise it's good."

"Another thing I learned from the sour candy is that you and I have different preferences," Penny replied with an affectionate nudge. "But I know how you love to share, so I promise to try a bite."

"You're sure? You don't have to."

"I want to," Penny insisted. "If only to be able to rule it out completely. I should be thorough in my research."

Ruby's smile widened a bit.

"That's my girl."

-----

Penny took a break from major food experimentation after the lizard jerky; not because she didn't like it, but because she was satisfied that she enjoyed salty foods completely and wanted to keep discovering foods within that area of flavor before moving on to a new one. Fine by Ruby, even if it meant she had to share more than a morsel of her jerky these days.

The next big flavor experiment was a little over a week later, when some members of Team CFVY had asked them out on a double date to a local restaurant. Well... double and a half, apparently, since it seemed Velvet had two hands and was not afraid to utilize them.

Ruby and Penny sat across from Coco, Velvet, and Yatsuhashi in that order, in an old booth that was comfortable for the pair but seemed a squeeze for the trio. They didn't seem to mind in spite of Yastu's size, and it appeared Velvet even enjoyed being sandwiched between her partners. Ruby made an executive decision not to read into that one.

After some time with the menu, only two types of food were ordered to the table. Gecko cake for Ruby and Velvet, and spicy fried scorpion for Coco, Yatsuhashi, and Penny.

That last one had Ruby wondering if she'd heard right. Penny had ordered fried scorpion on their first date, but she was pretty sure it had been out of social anxiety rather than an actual desire to have it, and neither of them had stuck around to eat it. And this was spicy fried scorpion, which Penny couldn't have missed because she said exactly that when talking to the waitress.

Apparently, Penny felt ready to graduate from salty to spicy. Ruby said nothing, not wanting to act like she thought she knew Penny's tastes better than Penny herself, but she had a feeling not starting small with spice might backfire. She hoped the gecko cake was big enough to share, just in case.

The five of them talked pleasantly amongst themselves while they waited for their food, and when it arrived, Penny showed no apprehension. In fact, she even looked excited to try it.

Good for her, Ruby thought, even though she would never dream of touching the thing on Penny's plate. It was an odd thing for sure, but if Penny was getting over her food anxiety and thought she would like it, then power to her.

Figuring out how to eat it was just the tiniest bit awkward. Penny, always one to eat neatly, had tried to go in with a knife and fork, but the hard body of the scorpion made that far more trouble than it was really worth. For her second attempt, she mimicked Yatsuhashi and Coco, lifting the entire thing with her hands and just taking a bite out of it.

Instant tears.

"Woah, you okay?" Yatsu was the first to speak, ever the caring older brother type. Nobody seemed quite convinced when Penny nodded, given that she was frantically wiping at her eyes.

"Penny, we talked about this," Ruby reminded her gently. "You don't have to finish it."

It took a few minutes for Penny to respond as she struggled to chew and swallow the bite she'd taken. After she'd finished that and downed half her glass of water, she said in a strained voice, "I like it."

"Seriously?" Coco asked. "You look destroyed."

That was an accurate statement if Ruby had ever heard one. Penny's face was flushed, and she was still crying and breathing heavily as if trying to cool her mouth down.

"I like it," she repeated.

"Doesn't it... hurt?" Velvet inquired. Ruby gathered that she didn't have much of a spice tolerance either.

"Yes," Penny replied, taking another sip of water. "But it's good. It's like... sour is bad pain and spicy is good pain."

Ruby supposed that made sense, given that she found sour to be "good pain" and was no stranger to spicy dishes either. Still, she was concerned about the tears continuing to pour down Penny's face.

"Do you want to maybe start smaller?" she asked. "We could share mine for now and try to make something ourselves later so we can control the spice."

"I like this," Penny insisted, and that was going to have to be the end of it. As much as she worried, Ruby didn't want to act like Penny's babysitter or tell her what she should and shouldn't eat. If she really liked the scorpion, Ruby had no right to try to stop her.

"Just don't overdo it, okay? You can have my water if you need it."

Penny nodded and took another bite of her scorpion, either unaware of or simply not caring about the bewildered looks she was getting from across the table. After a minute, everyone went back to their own meals and the pleasant conversation, though Penny didn't participate quite as much due to her presumably burning mouth.

By the time the meal was over, Penny had finished most of her scorpion and five glasses of water, which their waitress seemed to quietly judge her for before Ruby shot the mother of all glares in her direction. They paid, stuck around to chat for a couple more minutes, and then finally made their way out of the restaurant in a tight clump of happy, chattering, joking individuals.

"Did you enjoy your gecko cake, Ruby?" Penny asked as the five of them made their way leisurely back up to Shade's campus.

"I did," Ruby replied.

"Maybe I'll try that next time," Penny mused happily. "But the scorpion was very, very good. I almost can't believe I was so apprehensive the first time."

"I have to admit, I was a little surprised you liked that," Ruby said. "With how much you hated the sour stuff, I didn't think spicy would be up your alley."

"Spicy is nothing like sour," Penny replied, a bit disdainfully, like sour as a concept was little more than dirt to her. Adorable, honestly, and kind of funny. "I can't wait to build up my spice tolerance so I can try even more."

"Well," Ruby said, a bit shyly and hyperaware of the fact that this attempt at a pickup line was both corny and stupid, "I've got a little something to tide you over until then."

She leaned in, and Penny stared blankly at her for a moment before realizing what she wanted and meeting her in the middle for a kiss. Ruby recoiled as soon as their lips touched, because Penny's mouth might as well have been on fire.

"Oh, my GODS," she shouted, dramatically fanning her tongue. "What did they put on that scorpion?!"

"Some kind of Vacuan spice, I assume," Penny replied, placing a hand on her shoulder and giving the others a thumbs up when they turned to check that Ruby was okay.

Ruby had thought she knew spicy. Her dad cooked with all kinds of spices and hot oils, which she'd been eating since she could chew food. But, as she was coming to realize, Vacuo spicy was on a completely different level. How had Penny eaten that scorpion?

"Do you need some water?" Penny asked sympathetically.

"I'm okay," Ruby said. The spice was intense, but she'd only gotten a fleeting taste of it. Penny was the one who should still be chugging cold water. "But I am very impressed."

Penny smiled a bit at that as the group began moving again, talking absently about how they should do this again soon or possibly extending the double date to a movie night in Team CFVY's dorm. Ruby was silently making a plan to swipe some breadfruit from the cafeteria before it closed for the night. Penny might be fine now, but it would be good to have something milder on hand to soothe her stomach in case the spice turned out to not agree with her. Plus, movie snacks were always a good idea, even if they'd just had dinner.

Ruby glanced down at her hand as she felt Penny take it in hers, gently squeezing. She smiled, glad for the opportunity to do things like this. The threat of Salem reappearing was always in the back of her mind, and they were still very much working on preparing for that, but for now, at least there was time for breaks. For dinners and handholding and movie nights. And Ruby was very, very excited to spend the rest of tonight cuddled up with Penny, splitting a piece of breadfruit, and enjoying their peace together.

------

A month and a half of relative peace in Vacuo was starting to get to everyone. Sure, there were issues, particularly with housing Atlesian refugees in a nation that hated them, but Salem and her minions had yet to show themselves again, and the knowledge that they were just lurking was putting the group on edge.

But there was only so much to be done to prepare for the inevitable return before they all ran themselves ragged. They needed breaks, opportunities to unwind. That was where Vacuo's night market came in.

It was Yang's idea, one with which Penny could wholeheartedly agree. Exploring the night market with all of her friends sounded absolutely wonderful, and it was. Especially when they came across a stand selling candied breadfruit.

The starchy fruit had become one of her favorite staples of the Vacuan diet, and she hadn't gotten to try anything especially sweet yet, so she was incredibly excited for this. That excitement was only tempered when Nora began handing out the kabob-like sticks she and Jaune had retrieved for everyone and realized that the balls of fruit were a sticky, caramel-y mess.

Not that it didn't look appetizing, but... she wasn't particularly looking forward to getting that mess all over her hands. She supposed she could just bite into it, but she was supposed to be sharing with Ruby, so that didn't feel quite right.

"Everything okay?" Ruby asked, taking notice of the way Penny was eyeing the stick in her hands.

"Did they give us napkins, by any chance?"

The two of them looked around at the rest of their friends, splitting into pairs to share their breadfruit. Blake and Yang, Ren and Nora, Weiss and Oscar. Jaune had a whole one to himself, which was fair, since he'd paid for everyone. No one had any napkins, though.

"Do we really need them?" Ruby inquired.

"I guess not," Penny replied. She supposed she could take off her gloves to avoid dirtying them and then just... deal with the stickiness on her hands. "This just seems messy, and there's nowhere to wash our hands after."

"I might have a solution for that," Ruby said with a smile. She gestured back toward her sister, who, in a rather adorable romantic gesture, was breaking off pieces of the breadfruit and popping them into Blake's mouth. "I don't mind getting my hands dirty."

Penny felt a certain warmth in her face and hoped her blush wasn't especially noticeable in the limited light. She and Ruby weren't exactly strangers to public displays of affection, and they shared food often, but Ruby had never directly fed her before. Blake and Yang looked cute, though, and if they were doing it with no apprehension, it couldn't be that weird.

Slowly, unsure if she was doing it right or whether she looked silly, Penny opened her mouth and waited. Ruby tore off a piece of the fruit and placed it on Penny's tongue, at which point Penny almost audibly gasped at the explosion of flavor. She closed her mouth, chewing slowly as she took in the salty notes mixed in with a sweetness she'd never experienced before.

This. This was her absolute favorite Vacuan food. Nothing could ever possibly taste better than this, she was sure.

"That good, huh?" Ruby asked through a string of cute little chuckles. "You've practically got stars in your eyes."

"Mhm!" Penny nodded enthusiastically before swallowing. "Try it!"

Ruby obliged, breaking off a similarly sized piece to put into her own mouth.

"Pretty good," she agreed. "But if you're so excited about this, just wait until you try ice cream for the first time."

"I don't think they have that here," Penny replied. Vacuo seemed like the least likely place on Remnant to find ice cream, given the lack of dairy farms and limited methods of keeping things frozen.

"Probably not, but as soon as we get out of here, the first date I'm taking you on is to a nice little ice cream parlor," Ruby promised. "You can pick out whatever you want, my treat."

Penny thought that sounded nice; she'd seen all kind of ice cream shops in Atlas, from trucks to little stores to fancy parlors, and had often wondered what it would be like to sample their products. For now, though, she was quite satisfied with the breadfruit, and much less embarrassed the second time to open her mouth in a silent request for more.

Ruby seemed happy to oblige her, and soon enough they were nearly done with their treat without Penny having to get a speck on her gloves.

"Thank you, Ruby," she said when neither of their mouths were full.

"What for?" Ruby asked.

"You've been a great help these past weeks," Penny replied. "Adjusting to a new body and it's needs has been overwhelming, to say the least, but you've helped to make it more manageable. Especially where eating is concerned."

"Aw, Penny," Ruby said, a bit shyly. It was hard to tell in the lighting of the market and without her enhanced eyesight, but Penny thought she could detect a hint of a blush. "I'm sure you would've figured it out on your own. But I'm glad I made it so you didn't have to."

"Me too," Penny went on happily. "Without you, I may not have ever tried some of my current favorite foods. Breadfruit and lizard jerky, for example."

"You're a really big fan of breadfruit, huh?" Ruby remarked with a grin.

"I am." If she was honest, Penny would probably eat breadfruit in any conceivable form, provided no sour flavors were added to it. "It's just so good! And versatile!"

"I guess it is pretty good," Ruby said as she removed what was left from the stick and broke it in half, offering the bigger piece to Penny.

Penny smiled and opened her mouth to receive it, only mildly appalled when Ruby just put the stick in her pocket when it became apparent there weren't any garbage bins around. That pocket was going to be so, so sticky. But at least Penny didn't have to feel it.

With the clean hand that hadn't been used to tear apart the messy breadfruit, Ruby reached out for Penny and linked their fingers.

"Wanna check out the rest of the market?" she asked. "I don't think the others will mind if we split off for a bit. Some time alone might be nice."

"I could never say no to time alone with you," Penny replied fondly. Ruby grinned at her and gave her a little tug to start walking, venturing deeper into the market. Yang caught Penny's eye as they went and waved at her with a knowing look, and all Penny could do was sheepishly wave back.

Penny wandered through the market hand-in-hand with Ruby, full and happy and excited for whatever interesting thing they would find next. Tonight was a good night, one she would surely remember well and affectionately. It was important to cherish this time, given that any good night could be their last for the foreseeable future. Or ever.

But Penny wouldn't worry about that now. It was difficult, but she would push that thought away and be present in the moment so she could enjoy the time she had with Ruby and everyone else. If this time was all she might have, she would make the absolute most of it. She would enjoy every last bit of what she had until the day came to defend it once again.

Every second, savored like a good meal.

----------

If you enjoyed this fic, please consider reblogging! A reblog generally means much more to creators than a like.

I also now have a Kofi. As of right now it basically functions as a tip jar; 1000% optional but I would be so incredibly grateful to anyone who donates.

#penny polendina #ruby rose #nuts and dolts #nuts n dolts #nuts & dolts #rwby #I am so sorry if there are typos I had too much of a headache to proofread over 5k words but I really wanted to get this posted today

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thegirlking · 11 months

Text

The reality of leaving a toxic family and why I’ll always sympathize with Bruno’s decision.

Just finished my third rewatch of Encanto (mostly because I hadn’t watched it with Bulgarian dub but anyway), and it reminded me once again why I relate to Bruno’s character so much.

Because I have very real, personal experience with distancing myself from a dysfunctional family and a toxic parent in particular, so his situation hits a little too close to home.

So, here’s a few thoughts on Bruno’s situation and why it actually mirrors plenty of real people’s experience (including mine).

Let’s get one thing out first: the movie itself does not really frame his decision as leaving a toxic family situation, but rather as a kind of sacrifice he had to do to protect Mirabel from the prophecy – but that’s a very surface reading of it. In reality, no child should need any “protection” from their literal family and there’s something very wrong with that family if that’s the case. The fact Bruno felt he couldn’t trust his own mother with the prophecy, the fact he was certain everyone will assume the worst of it and feared the consequences it could have for Mirabel, is a massive red flag that he was in some kind of toxic situation.

And no, I don’t mean that he was openly mistreated by anyone – let me elaborate.

Love, toxicity and more – are you “abused enough” to justify making such an extreme decision?

In general, there is still a lot of stigma about leaving your family – the intensity of that stigma greatly varies by culture, of course. But there’s a certain idea of what’s an acceptable situation that requires cutting contact, usually when we talk about pretty extreme cases of abuse (and even then some people can be unsympathetic about it).

When we talk about a purely dysfunctional family, rather than a flat out abusive one, things get a lot more complicated. You could very well feel you don’t have it “bad enough”. You might convince yourself that you are being too sensitive for being hurt, that you are being selfish for wanting to leave. They are your family and they love you after all. Right?

Unfortunately, love and toxic behavior are not something mutually exclusive. That’s something people in general still struggle to understand and it’s a very harmful misconception. It’s very common excuse people make for their behavior, especially in case of familial relationships, that they can’t possibly be toxic to someone if they love them. It’s also something that prevents people from recognizing that they are in a toxic situation.

In Bruno’s case, even though we don’t have a full detailed context and backstory about his life before leaving, I tend to assume he wasn’t viciously abused by his mother or flat out mistreated by anyone else. See, I’m not one of those people who demonize Alma or the Madrigal family in general – of course they aren’t some kind of monsters and they love each other despite everything, I’m sure they actually loved Bruno. But as I said, love can coexist with toxicity.

Ultimately, my point is - the fact Bruno was loved and not flat out abused by his family also doesn’t mean the situation can’t be toxic and harmful to his mental health. There are very serious red flags (both within the actual movie canon and additional information from the creators) that his situation was indeed bad. It’s clear he had already been isolating himself from the family for a while, that things were like that for years and nothing ever improved. This kind of environment is definitely unhealthy enough to cause someone to walk away.

Leaving isn’t easy and it isn’t pretty – people are going to be hurt

Now, let’s address one common argument about why what Bruno did was wrong – he left suddenly without any explanation, without as much as a note, and that was a seriously hurtful thing to do, especially for his sisters.

I don’t disagree with this sentiment at all. Of course, the way he handled things was far from ideal and the family is also allowed to be hurt by it. And still, I don’t exactly condemn him for it. What he did may not be the "right" way to handle things, but it’s very realistic.

Leaving a dysfunctional family isn’t some kind of a wholesome affair where they pat you on the back and throw you a farewell party. A lot of people will prefer to cut off contact over time without properly talking things out, usually because they fear the backlash, don’t want to see the hurt reactions, and don’t want to hear the harsh words that would inevitably be exchanged. Having a direct confrontation with a toxic family about cutting ties with them can become very rough and even escalate a toxic situation into something far worse.

Going back to Encanto - curiously, we have an actual proof that things could have gotten very ugly if Bruno tried to confront Alma before leaving – you know that cut scene from the early development of the movie? The one called “Chores”, where we get to hear about the tense exchange Alma had with Bruno (named Oscar back then) before he left and what they said to each other? Sure, this exchange is very far from canon, but it does show what could have potentially went down.

Furthermore – does the hurt you cause by leaving erase the hurt caused to you?

Continuing from my last point. The family was undoubtedly hurt by Bruno’s decision to leave. That would still have been the case even if he handled things better.

Of course, when there’s still love present in the family, despite the toxicity, the family is not going to want you gone and would be naturally hurt by such a decision.

That’s exactly why it’s so difficult to make the decision - because you don’t want to hurt those people you actually still love. That’s why when you actually make the decision you might feel enormous guilt and shame about it. You might feel selfish, cruel and ungrateful. You might begin to question your own reality and your whole past experience. And you can definitely see that guilt in Bruno too, especially during his reunion with the family in the end – his nervous body language and rush to apologize (without expecting the same in return) speaks volumes and is frankly a little sad to watch.

The family's hurt is valid and justified, I'm not denying it - that also doesn't mean Bruno was somehow the bad guy who selfishly and heartlessly abandoned them. And it certainly doean't mean the hurt he caused them erases his own hurt and trauma. While such extreme criticism of his actions is thankfully uncommon, I do see some discussions that go into such direction and it rubs me the wrong way, because it feeds into the stigma about walking away from your family and it's just insensitive and potentially hurtful to real people's experience and trauma.

So, in conclusion, here’s the very harsh truth. Sometimes you need to prioritize yourself and your own well-being. Life is not a Disney movie after all and sometimes toxic relationships can’t be properly repaired, not even with your own parents. And the fact you are going to hurt someone by leaving does not mean the hurt they caused you (intentionally or not) no longer matters.

#bruno madrigal #encanto #encanto meta #encanto thoughts #my meta #long post #/abuse mention #I don't know if people are still interested in Encanto discourse in 2023 #but I just feel strongly about all of this

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mariana-oconnor · 5 months

Text

The Three Gables pt 2

A little late, because life and Christmas are just... it's a lot.

Last time we had a lady who wanted to sell her house and someone who really wanted to buy it and everything in it. Including the remaining possessions of her dead son. Who had died of pneumonia? I think, but also been involved with some sort of woman his mother did not approve of.

And a servant was fired after everyone was kind of terrible to her, even if she was spying for some bad guys.

And there was a lot of racism, which I expect will increase.

Anyway

"Now, Watson, this is a case for Langdale Pike, and I am going to see him now."

Ah, it's another randomly referenced character that it sounds like we should know and yet we do not. Unless I have forgotten him. I don't think I've forgotten him.

Langdale Pike was his human book of reference upon all matters of social scandal. This strange, languid creature spent his waking hours in the bow window of a St. James's Street club and was the receiving-station as well as the transmitter for all the gossip of the metropolis. He made, it was said, a four-figure income by the paragraphs which he contributed every week to the garbage papers which cater to an inquisitive public.

OMG, he's the paparazzi!

Well, the Edwardian equivalent of it.

Holmes, I thought better of you than this. You're really feeding this guy information. Ugh.

'Please come out at once. Client's house burgled in the night. Police in possession. — Sutro.' Holmes whistled. “The drama has come to a crisis, and quicker than I had expected."

Really? You must have known you sped up their timetable a little. They knew you'd gone to see the place and they were worried enough about you they tried to warn you off. It makes sense that seeing you there would move up their plans.

“Well, they don't seem to have got much. Mrs. Maberley was chloroformed and the house was— Ah! here is the lady herself.”

She was chloroformed and it's just an ordinary burglary? I hate to see what you call an odd burglary.

Just going to skip over the extra racism.

“Well, I don't think there is anything of value missing. I am sure there was nothing in my son's trunks.”

You hadn't even looked in them and Holmes told you that he thought there was something in them. Why are you so confident in this, lady?

"It is in my son's handwriting.” “Which means that it is not of much use,” said the inspector. “Now if it had been in the burglar's—” “Exactly,” said Holmes. “What rugged common sense!"

Please allow me to use my Holmes-English dictionary. I'll just check... yeah... Mmhm.

“I never pass anything, however trifling,” said he with some pomposity. “That is my advice to you, Mr. Holmes."

Oh, oh no. Oh poor boy. You are being set up for the biggest of falls. You have no genre savvy. I'm sorry. This will hurt.

“Seems to be the end of some queer novel, so far as I can see.”

Please, tell me more.

“Why should they go to my son's things?” asked Mrs. Maberley.

Clearly they wanted the manuscript of his magnum opus of homoerotic literature, Mrs Maberley. I can see no other possible reason.

And honestly, relatable.

"Man must live for something. If it is not for your embrace, my lady, then it shall surely be for your undoing and my complete revenge.”

🔥VENGEANCE!🔥

So it's not a homoerotic bodice ripper, at all. It's a tell-all memoir.

"I hear that she is about to marry the young Duke of Lomond, who might almost be her son."

Refreshing to see an older woman-younger man romance portrayed for once. Usually it's the older man preying on the sweet young ingenue. This time the sexual predator is the woman. Although... honestly, nothing that's been said so far makes me think she's doing anything but having a good time.

“Not at home means not at home to you,” said the footman.

RUDE!

The lady had come, I felt, to that time of life when even the proudest beauty finds the half light more welcome.

Also rude!

Come on, Watson. You're not exactly young yourself at this point. And you're still apparently marrying people left right and centre. Do you hide in the shadows?

Pah.

...two wonderful Spanish eyes which looked murder at us both.

I know what he means by this, but also I am imagining her irises being the Spanish flag.

Beautiful.

“I need not explain, madame. I have too much respect for your intelligence to do so—though I confess that intelligence has been surprisingly at fault of late.”

Holmes is in such a bitchy mood in this one. He's just insulting everyone as much as he can. I kind of love it.

"I feel that I may be frank with you, Mr. Holmes. You have the feelings of a gentleman. How quick a woman's instinct is to find it out. I will treat you as a friend.”

Wow...the bullshit is strong with this one.

“No doubt it was foolish of me to threaten a brave man like yourself.”

You should totally stroke his bicep and ask if he works out. That's clearly where this is heading. Lolol!

“No, no, you would not. You are a gentleman. It is a woman's secret.”

Wow. Just... wow. Weaponising femininity indeed.

✨ Gaslight. ✨ Gatekeep. ✨ Girlboss. ✨

So roguish and exquisite did she look as she stood before us with a challenging smile that I felt of all Holmes's criminals this was the one whom he would find it hardest to face. However, he was immune from sentiment.

That's because unlike you, he is not ruled by his horny brain, Watson. Please, take some deep breaths, drink a glass of cold water and come back when you've calmed down. You were literally just saying you thought she was too old to stand in proper lighting, my dude. Down boy!

"Because I had given he seemed to think that I still must give, and to him only. It was intolerable."

OK, fine. I'm on her side now. She's still the most ridiculous person ever, but this is a valid and correct point. Douglas needed to take no as an answer.

Barney and the boys drove him away, and were, I admit, a little rough in doing so.

I'm torn. On the one hand, Douglas needed to understand that just because his sense of entitlement told him she owed him something, he really didn't. On the other hand, don't hire people to beat people up. Maybe just hire bodyguards to keep turning him away and save the beating for if he escalates?

I feel like everyone sucks in this story.

This... this is the same story from Charles Augustus Milverton except the female character is rich and has agency. And yet we're supposed to not side with the people who stole back the blackmail material that would ruin her? Because she's promiscuous?

Yeah, she's kind of terrible, but her crime was getting people to beat him up. The theft seems fair, honestly.

“Very good. I think you will sign me a check for that, and I will see that it comes to Mrs. Maberley. You owe her a little change of air."

Yeah, she was chloroformed and it's possible that the beating led to her son's death. She definitely deserves something for all of this.

"Have a care! You can't play with edged tools forever without cutting those dainty hands.”

Weird line to end on, but okay. Basically 'fuck around and find out' in Holmes speak, I guess.

But yeah, this is just a different version of Charles Augustus Milverton and A Scandal in Bohemia only this time the lady is the bad guy. And she actually has done some horrible things. But if she'd come to you and said 'Mr Holmes, I had an ill advised dalliance with a young man and I need the evidence before it ruins my upcoming wedding!' Holmes might have done the burglary himself.

Well, probably not if he found out about her having Douglas beaten up.

But it's a weird change of perspective.

#Letters from Watson #The Three Gables #Sherlock Holmes #long post

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xotomesimpx · 2 years

Text

The Day His Eyes Changed Pt2: 1-A's Reaction to Shigaraki Being Your Brother

A/N: Check back to the first part of this a little before hand to get an idea of what is going on.

╚═══════════════════════════════════════╝

After your gutting confession everyone and everything stood still. The air in the room went cold until the rom broke into chater and banter. People asking questions while others just trying to console you as you cried still.

Izuku

He looked at you in disbelief for a few moment's. "There is no way one of the top villains in Japan right now is related to you.How is that even possible?" His thoughts were racing a mile a minute trying to find the right words to say.

"Should I comfort them? Or should I try asking them more questions, but everyone is already doing that? All this time they had connections to him of all people?" All the talking and panicking was getting loud too loud for concentrating.

He seemed a little more calm after bakugo and Iida settled everyone down.

He was also glad none of the teachers were around yet to check on them. "This is my chance to practice my interrogation skills! Wait but this is serious-"

After everyone settled down Iida, Izuku, Todoroki were selected to interogate you since they seemed like the best options.

Izuku just hopes you are still with the good guys. He understands there are times where good people have to know or deal with bad people.

The three sat down and told everyone to play it casual for a while. Just in case a teacher stopped by. They sat you down in the common area so that way. If something did go down everyone can be ready for the worst. You felt like everyone was looking at you like a criminal and you hated it. The first to speak was Iida "Alright I have gather notes and paper to record anything during this interrogation. So we can properly report this to authorities as needed." The four of you sat down and the first questions was asked. "Y/n how long have you known about shigaraki being your brother? And are you both biologically related?"

You nodded briefly until someone scurried over. "i knew this would come in handy." Denki said snagging your arm and putting sticky wires to your arm and head. "Denki don't interupt the s-" Denki cheered "Lie detector! i ordered this thing a month ago for truth or dare. Might as well test it out now." Iida bunched the bridge of his nose "As crazy as you are Denki this would be useful." Everone nearby hummed in agreement and the Lie Detector was turned on. And Iida repeated the questions. "This time to make our findings more clear with this device just answer yes, no, or taking your time speaking."

You sighed and relaxed "I knew Shigaraki as a kid... And no we are not blood related."

Iida

A part of him was terrified not of you per say but the thought of what you could have done. What if you were some traitor or something?

His nerves were getting to him but he kept his calm for the interrogation.

But then again a part of him saw that you were a genuine hero. Someone such as yourself can not be a villain related to such scum known as Shigaraki Tomura. And he was determined to to prove your innocence.

His brother taught him justice means and how things like this usually work out. And in your case he saw potential to unlock it. Make everyone in this dorm feel safe again, including you.

Iida felt the presence of his brother practically here. He is not superstitious but the the feeling was there. Justice and truth will. be. served!

The next question came up "Those were both truth's, next question. Are you in anyway connected to the league of Villains?"

You shook your head "Never...Once that young boy left me I never heard from him or his father. The day he left me his eyes changed...everything about him did."

The whole room of course was secretly listening in. It was sending chills through your spine.

Todoroki

Todoroki understood a little where you are coming from. People can change over night even the ones you know and love. For him it is not about questioning you. But rather making sure you are safe. And of course if everyone else here is safe.

Also bad family part of this situation. His family is not the greatest out there. So hearing this kind of puts him at ease knowing he is not the only one fighting or dealing with family struggles.

Honestly is just there to be a second set of ears. He is a good listener and good at memory. If he did have anything to say he would say "Yeah these father figures today don't know anything."

Same as Izuku, he knows that sometimes good people have to relate or deal with bad people. He wishes to tell you this in hopes to make things a little better. Hell his own brother is a villain too.

Momo came over hoping to soothe everyone nerve's "Tea?! Anyone want some tea?" He slightly jumped coming out of his trance and went blank. Before Momo went around passing cups of tea around.

Then a cup got to him and he looked down into the drink. "...What has this world become to?"

Iida looked over the last few questions. "Now that we have our main questions out of the way. We will build on these questions." You nodded as you listened. "As of right now everything you are saying is true, correct?" Iida asked and you gave another nod "Yes." Everyone would glance at the machine to see the results for every question. "And another truth... Izuku will now take over asking questions." Iida stood up and left the room to do who knows what?

Izuku looked down at the paper in front of him. "Earlier you brought up the day Shigaraki left you. You said "Everything about him changed?" Can you be more specific on that?"

You hummed "Me and other kids along with Tenko stuck together. Me and him in particular were like glue." There was a pause as you let the machine process. "But then a point hit were he stopped playing with us as he used to. Saying "My father needs me to train." Or "My father can not know we are playing together." I hated that man..." You let out a sigh as Izuku took down the information. The silence became even louder when the front door to the dorms opened.

"Mr Aizawa!" Ochako gave a raspy whisper just enough for your table to hear. Everyone got into position to try and hide or cover everything. But of course in the moment Izuku caved and accidentally sent a few papers flying. Scrambling to pick them up he sighed in relief thinking had all of them.

"You forgot this one..." Aizawa stood there as everyone went silent.

⋘ 𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎... ⋙

A/n: A part of me wants to leave it here but I know some of y'all might want some more reactions other than the ones here. Which I will get to in a possible part three tomorrow. And I will just write it as a typical bullet point headcannons instead.

#mha x reader #mha x reader angst #mha angst #izuku midoryia #izuku x y/n #iida x y/n #tenya iida #mha todoroki #todoroki shouto #todoroki x reader #anime fanfic #bnha fanfiction

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oddberryshortcake · 2 months

Note

WHAT DO YOU THINK Lilia and Silver’s conversation will be like at the end of this Chapter? After things calm down?

(cause they Have to have a talk, twst pls 😭 these boys are overdue a conversation)

IT CAN GO A LOT OF DIFFERENT WAYS!!

First things first, I don’t think Lilia had any intention of telling Silver anything about his past.

Lilia lies a decent amount to people he cares about and he has some pretty justified reasons to (even if they are a detriment to himself and others, such as never telling Malleus that his magic and life were significantly depleted via hatching him because he didn’t want Malleus to feel guilty and the senate shamed him for it)

Silver’s bio parents have been dead for over 400 years. The people who knew him back then are all gone, the kingdom he was once a prince to has been erased by history.

There’s no easy way to tell your son, who is physically and mentally only 17 years old, that he was actually put under a 400+ year old spell to keep him asleep as his home decayed around him.

How do you even explain that to a kid? And let’s not forget Silver’s bio dad killing Malleus’s mom, which is something that is also a secret to Malleus.

I’m sure Lilia figured that since so much time had passed, that there’d be no way Silver would ever figure it out. Lilia could give him his bio parent’s ring and talk about them distantly, not as someone who knew and interacted with them, but as someone who could simply just confirm that they loved Silver and wanted the best for him.

Liliia promises to talk to Silver about everything, because now he has no choice but to. But that assuring smile he had, I think, is both a calm under fire sort of vibe but also, I think he witnessed Silver overcoming his complex feelings over his origins and remembers how Silver fought to live with his reassurance.

His biggest fear might’ve been Silver hating himself for his lineage, and he did for a moment. But Silver overcame that and Lilia has the chance to finally be truthful with him and probably express all the complicated things he felt- like his contemplation over killing Silver, the fact the Knight saved Lilia and the egg, that he adopted Silver to see if he could love a human and he could.

Now here’s a crazy possibility, what if twst throws the biggest curveball ever and wipes Silver’s memory of everything that happened (He established in 7.3 that he has trouble remembering his dreams, this includes his signature spell which he can only access while dreaming)

Would Lilia still tell Silver the truth?

Who knows.

It would suck if they reverse development but there’s always a possibility. Maybe Lilia would try to continue on as nothing happened and then decide (maybe at Malleus and Sebek’s insistence) that he does need to talk to Silver about these things.

I keep getting vibes that something bad might happen even after the overblot is over with. That’s also me being very attached to the 1959 Sleeping Beauty movie (and Maleficent 2014!) where, despite everything, Aurora is always cursed one way or another.

Best case scenario- We get an absolute banger of a monologue from Lilia and a follow up conversation, a nice little wrap up to the question Lilia asked himself years ago. Can he love a human? Yes he can! Also Malleus is his son too, and the senate can stay tf away from him lol And the found family is found once more. (I hope this one happens)

Worst case scenario- Silver (or everyone) forgets everything and we simply wipe this under the rug. Or, it could be glossed over with no solid wrap ups like poor Scarabia :(

One question that still remains that hasn’t been wrapped up yet is the exact reason why Silver is falling asleep so frequently when the spell he was under has seemingly been broken for years. I hope the game will address that so we can see is it Silver’s lack of self-love? Was the spell never fully broken? Will it ever completely break? What would Lilia and Silver’s relationship be like when this blessing turned curse isn’t hanging over them

If 7.7 doesn’t get back on a plot development track I’ll cry

#twst spoilers #twst #twst thoughts #Sorry this came out as more of a tangent I'm spacing out in a lecture lol

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sophieinwonderland · 4 months

Text

An Autopsy of the Syscourse Brackets

Oh, hey! I saved this draft back in April! I figured with a round two coming, I might as post it now!

...

It was about a month ago when the Syscourse Brackets were announced (Future Sophie here: It's obviously been way more than a month now), hoping to bring about a new era of intercommunity connection. It... didn't do that, shockingly. So, let's talk about where it went wrong, and what someone could learn from their mistakes.

Have actual brackets and communicate: Part of the confusion that occurred later was a result of nobody really knowing what going on at any given point. Having actual brackets you can look at is a big part of what makes brackets fun. You can look at the brackets and predict who will be facing who in the next round. These syscourse "brackets" lacked that, which led to confusion, and just a worse feeling overall. Real brackets also assures that the brackets after the initial matchup are fixed and isn't just the creator choosing the matchups each round. And, I mean, I'm pretty sure they did change the brackets as I doubt a 3-way poll was how they intended to end them. And there was some weirdness where they demanded @/traumascumathena write an essay to be included in round 2 which I would normally brush off as a joke between friends but that essay wasn't written and they weren't put into the next round, so... yeah...🤷‍♀️

Do a better job reaching out to both communities: In the end, there was a sea of anti-endos, only a few pro-endos, only one actual endogenic system, and zero mixed origin systems represented in the brackets. Even if not intentional, this gives the appearance of bias.

If your goal is making a safe space, do a better job of that too: Publicly attacking your participants and accusing them of spreading misinformation after already accepting them isn't helping create a safe space or communication between the communities. Especially when combined with the fact that, as mentioned in the last point, the only person you attack this way is the only endogenic systems in your brackets.

These are real people and consent is integral: Two different systems sent confessions to the syscourse confessions blog stating that they didn't want to be included in the brackets. Being included was harmful to both of these systems. Congratulations for the ones who were okay with their inclusion, but not everyone was. And I would like to remind people that this popularity contest did include some systems who were minors. Reaching out to confirm that they were comfortable with this should have been a top priority. At best, this was negligence and they never considered that people might not want to be entered into this popularity contest against their will. At worst, they were too lazy or just knew their brackets would be smaller if people were given the opportunity to not be included. None of these possibilities are very good.

People should feel safe criticizing the brackets: I think the initial framing of the brackets as a fun game to heal syscourse was itself harmful. For myself, I didn't want to criticize the brackets up until the callout post because I felt like doing so might harm the community. But we also see this in the blogs who were included in the brackets against their will. They turned to the confessions blog and didn't make these posts on their actual blogs because they didn't feel safe doing so. And this, to me, is a huge problem. People shouldn't feel unsafe in communicating displeasure towards being involuntarily included in a popularity contest.

Don't. Just don't: If you made it this far, you might be thinking that you can fix their mistakes and still salvage the concept. But none of this addresses the central problem. You can't heal a divide by pitting people against each other in a popularity contest. This was always a bad idea. It never was going to be a friendly competition between people who hate each other. The cheating that happened during the brackets was a direct result of this hostile environment. The results of the brackets made somebody so depressed that their partner felt like they needed to make over 50 accounts to cheer them up. And while I certainly don't condone cheating, I truly feel like this is a situation where we need to hate the game, not the player. Because the brackets themselves created the environment that harmed the system in question to this extent.

The brackets were a terrible idea that were executed even worse with arbitrary made-up rules, attacks against participants, and it wasn't even a real bracket.

For those who do want to make actual brackets, it's not hard to find generators to make it super easy. I found a generator with just a quick Google. Imagine how satisfying the brackets could have been if they looked more like this from the beginning:

Future Sophie:

That's the end of the draft I made in April.

Overall, I feel the original syscourse brackets, despite being billed as something to unite syscoursers, were a poorly handled mess that only served to create more drama.

The nature of the brackets as a popularity contest between real people who hate each other meant that being a drama generator was always all they were going to amount to. But the poor handling of it made that so much worse than it could have been

#syscourse #pro endo #pro endogenic #sysblr #multiplicity

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un-named-thing · 2 years

Text

Someone (you know who you are) asked me to do a full story of the little short I did where eddie came back to life so here it is. This will be like a onshot but I might do like a full story on wattpad if I can be bothered. So enjoy I guess

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

'Alive and happy again' eddie munson x male!reader

Summary: after Eddie's death you move away but since some of your relatives live in Hawkins you have to go and visit, (the little short I did will be included in this, some things will be changed tho)

Cw: metion of death, blood, biting, (if I missed any please tell me) fluff and angst

Your pov

That day was one of the worst days of your life. The day you lost a friend that you loved so damn much. You loved eddie, and no one but you knew. You wanted to tell eddie so bad but you never did and now it was too late, now you'd never get the chance to tell him.

It was hard to stay in Hawkins. You started to have nightmares and overall just couldn't sleep. But it wasn't like the others where doing amazing either. You rarely talked to them now. Most of the time they where running around helping where they could and so where you.

But in the end acoulpe weeks after eddie's death you and your family packed up and moved. It was to much of a pain to stay in Hawkins. Besides it started to look and feel like a ghost town. You didn't move far but far enough so the memories of what you witnessed wouldn't haunt you. It was hard to leave everyone behind but what other choice did you have. To stay and remember what happened, to remember what a coward you where to never tell eddie how you felt.

Dammit if you knew he wouldn't make it out you would have spilled your heart out to eddie right then and there.

It was hard to sit in that car. Driving in silence with only the occasional cars driving past. You didn't even get to say goodbye to your friends but you guessed it was better that way.

Eddie's pov

Eddie shot up looking down at himself to only see a ripped shirt and some scars. No open wounds or blood. It was like that pain he felt just minutes before had faded or never even happend. He felt weird. He almost felt like his skin wasn't his and he felt this hunger. A hunger that couldn't be satisfied with normal food. It almost burned. He had to stop this hunger. But he also had to get out off here. Here being the upside down. But was that even possible?

The answer was yes. It was possible. He was now sat infront of the people that thought they beat vecna. Well almost all of them. Max was nowhere to be seen and so was robin as the same for m/n. Everyone told him max was in the hospital and robin spent all of her time helping around. But in general most of the group wasn't there. But when eddie asked about m/n they couldn't give him and answer. No one knew where he went. It's was like he just vanished. One day they saw him and then the other poof, he's gone.

Eddie was heart broken and now it was his time to have constant sleepless night. I mean literally he didn't sleep, he didn't even feel tired. Well physically at least.

Don't get it wrong tho, eddie was over the moon to be alive and to have what he called 'superpowers' now. He was so glad all his friends and his uncle where okay but every time he felt happy his mind would drift back to m/n. His dear friend and the guy he was head over heels for.

He couldn't even go out and look for you. Everyone that was left in Hawkins thought eddie was still missing or dead. But still that didn't stop eddie going out as night and looking. It was really easy to look around at night since it seems that one of his 'powers' was that he could see in the dark. That was one of the perks but there where non perks. The hunger was getting to damn bad to ignore. It was almost impossible, and if its even possible it got worse every time m/n came to his mind.

The only way he found he could keep it at bay was eating meat. Not like cooked meat but raw meat. He hated it but if that ment stopping the burn in the back of his throat so be it. But that didn't mean the hunger wasn't there.

Big time skip (still Eddie's pov kinda)

It was months later now. Hawkins was quiet now and the families that did stay struggled. Eddie was presumed dead. And only the gang and his uncle knew he was alive. M/n was presumed to be dead by the gang aswell which broke everyone's hearts.

Life was hard in Hawkins now. Harder than before. The giant portals where always gaurded and getting over them was a pain in the ass. It was hard to get life to flow in Hawkins again. Everyone Normally stayed home. But some went back to their jobs and some (but barely any) kids went back to school.

The gangs visits to see eddie where becoming more and more rare and since his uncle went back to work he was alone 99% of the time. He hated it. He hated the damn silence, it made his thoughts wander which was something he hated even more.

His thoughts would normally wonder of and you would come to mind. He didn't belive that you where dead he just didn't want to. He tried to think of a way he could prove to the others that you where still alive. That you weren't dead and your body was simply missing. And then it clicked.

You had living relatives in Hawkins. If anyone knew where you were it would be them. His eyes lit up with the realisation that there was still a possible chance that you where alive that you could still be okay. He shot up out of his bed but stopped himself. What I'd someone saw him? Hawkins isn't exactly the kindest town. The rumour of him, eddie munson being alive would spread like wild fire. He took a step back from the door and bolted back into his room searching for anything that could cover him.

He tied his hair up and pulled up his hood to hide his face and wore the baggiest pants he would find and took of his rings and anything that could get him easily recognised. After checking everything he bolted out the door not even bothering to lock it. He ran like hell to you aunties house. He's been there once or twice so he knew where abouts it would be.

He ran almost the whole way if he doesn't count the amount of times he stopped. When he got to the house his heart skipped a beat. It was you and your parents except you looked uncomfortable and like you didn't want to be here.

Eddie stopped right in the middle of the road which caught your attention. You didn't recognise him at first but when his hood slid down revealing him, eddie munson (kinda??) Alive and well you almost fell from what it looked like.

Eddie ran to you and jumped into your arms. He squeezed you tightly crying into your shoulder. When all of a sudden his hunger went crazy. A smell. A smell that could only be described as godly. It was coming from you. He tried to ignore it and just be happy that you where alive but the hunger over powered and emotion he was feeling at that moment.

Your pov

He was alive. I couldn't belive it. I thought having to come back here was going to be hell. My life was going good and I almost forgot about Hawkins. But when my parents told me we had to go back for a little family 'get together' my world almost crumbled. But all that sadness was long gone cause now I had the love of my life in my arms, crying into my shoulder. I was so happy almost at tears myself when I felt something. A bite.

Eddie was biting me. No, not just biting me but drinking my blood. I could feel it. My legs where becoming week and eddie had to hold me by the waist to make sure I didn't fall. I was in shock. I didn't speak and didn't move. I just kinda let him drink from me.

The moment he stopped I snaped out of it and gave him a 'wtf look' but when I saw his face he looked like he just solved the worlds hardest problem. He looked up at me with a grin that faded as soon as he saw my expression. He gulped before taking a step back.

He proceeds to explain how the last few months where uter hell for him and that he did indead died but in some way shape or form he didn't but now he was always hungry and turns out his hungrer was for blood.

After explaining he looked up at you agian to which he found your expression has softened. You pulled him into a hug and chuckled "wow it looks like you've been throught hell and back eddie" you said pulling away and smiling at him. "Ya it felt like it... I missed you m/n" he said moving his hand to your face.

You paused. This was it this was the chance and you where gonna fucking take it. "Eddie I wanted to tell you this for so damn long, and if I knew you wouldn't make it I would have told you already" as you said that Eddie's expression changed and he look abit more serious. You look a deep breath.

"I love you eddie, more than a friend, more than anything". Eddie's expression changed and a blushed creeped on his face. Before you could say another thing he kissed you. A soft and gentle kiss. You pushed him away blushing like crazy. "Eddie dammit we're outside!" Eddie grind and looked around "I don't see anyone" he pecked your lips again before traping you in another hug.

"I love you too m/n I have for a while" after you heard those words you couldn't help but smile and tighten the hug. You finally did start crying. Both hugging each other you cried in peaceful silence. The mystery was finally solved. Both of you where alive and you both found each other again.

#stranger things #eddie munson #eddie munson headcanons #eddie munson x reader #gay #x male reader #queer #eddie munson x male reader #eddie munson x you #❤️vampire eddie❤️

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jaigeye · 1 year

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everyone is forgetting that saw gerrera was taught by anakin and obiwan (white) lol

i do take some issue with sw writers plopping characters of color into villain/antagonist/not working with the ‘heroes’ role and the fans making incredibly racist memes, i just wanted to point out the fact that he was already on the edge of being a radical and anakin’s presence and training shoved him over the edge along with the death of steela. as a nonwhite person who has seen their own friends radicalized in Very similar ways, i dont think there’s anything necessarily wrong with how he’s being portrayed. i think he’s a good mirror of real life circumstances. the problem inherently lies with the fans, although again as i said it has disappointed me that fascinating, complex characters who are also poc or poc coded (barriss, saw, Reva, for some examples) are mishandled by sw writers and fans.

I think you're misunderstanding me here. Sure, it's a good point that yes, Anakin and Obi-Wan played a role in his life, but I don't think TCW is even a significant enough piece of media to base judgment of his character off if; Rogue One is where he really began to take shape as the character he is, not just a one-off arc character that was quickly forgotten. The nature of the clone wars anthology style is that unfortunately most characters motivations and actions are molded or influenced by the main trio, so I don't know if that argument holds up, although it is an interesting one I hadn't thought about.

My argument is not that characters of color cannot or should not ever be villains... Yet I would strongly disagree with categorizing him as an antagonist. Even in Rogue One he felt like a sort of indelicate attempt to show the political complexities of the Rebellion. That is both where my praise and issues with his writing begin.

Isolated, he himself is a very nuanced and interesting character. Placed in a space with the other Rebel leaders, however, it quickly becomes frustratingly clear that the only Black leader of great significance in the plot, on the same level of narrative importance as Mon Mothma, is a politically radical and aggressive Black man, plagued by delusions of victimhood/paranoia. This is as some might say, not cool. Imagine a sheet of paper with all the rebels and imperials on it. Who are the aggressive, intense characters who are ruthless? (Outside of Andor, because although flawed I feel they did a better job,) that list would include Saw Gerrera, Reva, and Moff Gideon. The good, harmless Black characters? Finn. Jannah, with a few minutes of screentime. Maybe Lando, but he too is always sidelined and we don't get a really good look at his motivations or character. Who else? There are others, but none with enough plot significance to really make up for this imbalance. Plus, a lot of those characters die.

If he were one among many Black Rebel leaders of varying political mindsets, I think my personal gripes with his writing could be resolved more. (However, Black fans opinion here would matter more than mine.)

The basic thing is that Star Wars writers do not know or care about your friends. They don't seem particularly tapped into the political realities of young radicalized minorities right now. We have to be more serious and objective here than this.

Their points of reference were most likely Che Guevara and Malcolm X, so on and so forth. i could handle that under certain circumstances. Andor did a pretty great job portraying him. The Rogue One book did a good job. Then the animations get their hands on him and, as is kind of inherent to the nature of kids shows, they have to pick someone to make the bad or scary decisions to show kid viewers that actually, changing the world through any means possible is a bad thing, and that you should usually use your words, be polite, and not be aggressive or demanding like these ~scary~ people performing direct action. Why did TBB and Rebels choose to take the one Rebel Black guy and make him try to win by putting children&other marginalized people at risk and using explosives and shit? in a real life context, when we focus on the motivations of the writers and not the content of the character, it gets concerning. It is not all, but many of the writers. It is not all, but I'd say most of the fans. The problem is a pretty big one. When u write him in such a way that people r blaming him for character's deaths and accusing him of parental abuse, the writers did something wrong too, not just the fans

Saw Gerrera is one of my all time favorite characters in star wars, because I think he's fascinating and full of potential. But it's really important to be objective about the inequalities in writing here, and pay attention to the way the very few Black characters in a narrative are portrayed.

#saw gerrera #antiblackness #racism

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demetriandelibinaryboyfriends · 9 months

Text

@ckfemslashnetwork

COBRA KAI SAPPHIC SUMMER WEEK 1 GOLDEN

***

HEY YALL

So uh. Remember that 10-minute All Too Well YasMoon fic that I’ve been teasing for well over a year now ???

WELL

LO AND BEHOLD!!! A few months ago, I started writing more than just lil ficlets and started creating this bad boy in FULL!!! So for cksapphicsummer, I’m posting a proper preview because a) fall color is a big thing here and it kinda accidentally fits the “Golden” prompt perfectly and b) god. I’m so proud of this funky little snippet. I’ve had so much fun working on this angstfic and I HAD to share my progress with someone. Writing the out-of-order slow burn of Moon becoming a simp who’s in way over her head has been fantastic tbh.

Also she only gets a mention here, but I had WAY too much fun creating Rosalie, Yasmine’s older (and to most everyone’s mind much cooler) influencer sister. Actually might end up including her in unrelated YasMoon fics too, because god, am I a sucker for sibling character foils :O Also it’s not fair that only Sam gets to have a sibling!!! Like give the other kids siblings!!!

…ironically, despite how spoiled she seems to be, Yasmine is one of the few Cobra Kai kids who doesn’t give off huge Only Child vibes XD Like idk. Idk. So much of Her Whole Deal strikes me as Bratty Overcompensating Younger Sister behavior XD

@karatecaulfield BIG pspsps, here’s a preview from A Big Fic coming up!!!

Preview under the cut!!! Enjoy :3

CW for some pretty crude language, and a character shouting a slur basically for shock value. But it’s one that applies to said character, so…I guess it’s reclaiming?

***

“You can travel the world But nothing comes close to the golden coast”

They were belting the lyrics as Yasmine swerved down mountain roads, rounding bends at what couldn’t possibly be a safe speed. It was times like these she thought she was invincible—away from the suffocating smog, under an endless blue sky, surrounded by fresh mountain air, free from the rest of the world’s expectations. Moon couldn’t tame her if she tried.

“Once you party with us, you’ll be falling in love…”

Moon glanced at Yasmine, and the words melted in her mouth. She burst out laughing.

Yasmine was never that unperturbed. She was all confidence and composure and power, holding onto her throne with tooth and manicured nail. Now she was just a silly, dancing teenager, shimmying back and forth and rocking her head from side to side like some kind of puzzled bird. One arm flailing about like the tube men outside of car dealerships while the other drifted on and off the steering wheel to lazily make turns.

She was grinning like she left all her inhibitions in LA.

“California girls, we’re unforgettable Daisy dukes, bikinis on top Sunkist skin so hot we’ll melt your popsicle”

Yasmine affectionately jabbed Moon’s tanned arm. Moon took a moment to be grateful the very ever-present spray-tan responsible was probably also hiding her blush.

“California girls, we’re undeniable Fine, fresh, fierce, we’ve got it on lock West Coast represent, now put your hands up!”

Yasmine did exactly that, whooping for several seconds. Moon worried they were going to hit the guardrail.

West Valley High’s queen bee self-corrected at the last possible moment, just like always. She grabbed the wheel and they made the turn.

There was something so exhilarating about her when she was like this. When she wasn’t projecting an image that didn’t match what was inside. Her voice was off-key and her movements were the opposite of graceful and every bit of control she usually gripped onto with iron strength flew out the window and into the alpine air.

And somehow, it felt like it used to when Moon finally came home after a long, shitty day of middle school, surrounded by stuck-up classmates and scornful, apathetic teachers. It felt like relief.

The song ended, and an ad came on from that annoying kick-the-competition auto dealer guy. As Yasmine complained for the seventh time about her parents not getting Spotify Premium, Moon looked out the window.

The road to Big Bear had more fall color than she’d ever seen. Only 20 miles outside of LA, and it was a whole different world—cherry reds and fiery oranges and sunset golds mixed into the deep green of impossibly tall pine trees.

It was all so foreign to her, always immersed in year-round flowers and greenery and subtropics. It seemed like something out of a Sunday morning dream, or a good shrooms trip. Strange—unnatural, perhaps—but tranquil all the same.

The aspen trees quaked in a sudden breeze. Several golden leaves peeled off their branches, glinting blindingly in the sunlight as they drifted to the ground.

Moon couldn’t quite explain it, but something felt just right. The energy…it was somehow perfectly aligned, all the stars and moons and planets in position for her to be driving off on a wilderness adventure with Yasmine Pyne.

The universe itself was humming in concord, like everything else that came before and after revolved around that moment.

Like it was the beginning of something too immense to see.

“What’re you gawking at?” Yasmine’s voice had a teasing snicker in it. “Have you never been to the mountains before?”

Moon shrugged. “Not since I was little. We only ever drove up here in the summer, though.”

“God, you should see your face.” There was a note of derision in Yasmine’s voice, but Moon barely noticed. “You look like you popped an E tablet or something.”

“Sorry, it’s just…” Moon smiled, shaking her head. “The trees are so beautiful. They’re reminding me of the healing crystals I still need to buy.”

“Um, what? Where is the connection there?”

Moon turned. The bridge of Yasmine’s nose was scrunched against her eyebrows, the way it always did when she was completely perplexed.

“The colors, Yas.” Moon couldn’t help but laugh. “The leaves look like citrine. Or…” Her gaze strayed back out the window. “Empowering jasper. Or harmonizing tiger’s eye. Or vitality ruby. There’s so many hues!”

“You are so weird, girl.”

Yasmine laughed, but there was no disdain in it this time. It was an affectionate kind of amused—amusement at Moon’s expense, perhaps, but with an underlying fondness that caught her off-guard.

Moon looked at the autumn trees zipping by, fiery shades gleaming almost as brightly as gemstones in the alpine sun. She started to shift them in her mind, imagining clusters of leaves as giant, glimmering jewels instead. A whole forest of ruby and citrine and jasper and tiger’s eye and topaz and carnelian, polished stones budding from the ends of delicate white branches. A beautiful, serene place, quiet and peaceful. A place of healing. No sound save birdsong and babbling creeks.

She wondered how much more vivid the image would be with caps.

“I’d actually love to trip out here,” she admitted. “It’d be like…the most spiritual thing ever. I feel like there’s a certain kind of ‘oneness with the universe’ around these trees, you know?”

“What, and then wander off the side of a cliff because you’ve convinced yourself you can fly? No thanks.”

Moon sniggered. Yasmine couldn’t sugarcoat something if she tried.

She didn’t pull punches when it came to teasing out the worst-case scenario and she never hesitated when deciding that’s what would inevitably happen.

A wooden sign post flitted past. Moon pressed her palm into the window glass, eyes widening.

A trailhead.

“Let’s go for a hike!”

The words spouted from Moon before she could stop them. She blinked, wholly unsure where the sudden determination came from.

Yasmine spluttered, uncharacteristically lost for words.

“Please,” Moon added plaintively. “Just a short one?”

“Why?” Yasmine demanded, finally finding her voice.

Moon bit her lip, staring at the dashboard.

“I’ve never been.”

“You’ve never been hiking in Big Bear.”

Yasmine scoffed, punctuating the statement with a smack to the steering wheel.

“Nope.” Moon chuckled nervously, hoping this wasn’t something Yasmine decided was worthy of giving her shit about.

Her friend only snorted in disbelief. “You haven’t been hiking up here,” she said again. “Aren’t your parents like…tree-hugging mega-hippies or something? Seems like they’d be all about that meditative outdoorsy shit.”

Moon laughed, shaking her head. “Well, they’re more like…smoke-a-bunch-of-stuff-in-a-sweat-lodge-and-see-the-entire-pagan-pantheon kind of hippies. Not really the one-with-nature kind of hippies.”

“But you are, huh?”

Yasmine raised her eyebrows, and Moon’s cheeks grew hot.

“I don’t know. I guess so. Nature calms me down when I’m stressed. Helps unblock my root chakra when it gets a little clogged.”

They passed a particularly beautiful grove of red maple trees, and Moon sucked in her breath.

“If we could just…stop and take a little walk somewhere…”

“Mooooon.” Yasmine dragged her name into a whine. “I’m wearing designer boots. If I get too much dirt on them, my mom will skin me alive and use my eviscerated corpse to make another pair.”

“Oh my god.” Moon snickered. “Don’t be so dramatic. Your mom is nice! She’s not going to flip out over a little dust.”

“You don’t know her,” Yasmine grumbled.

“I’ll take the blame if she gets mad. Promise.” Moon gave her friend her most pleading look. “I’ll say…I don’t know. I got you really high and we ran around in the dirt or something. But mountain trails aren’t usually that dirty! At least I don’t think.”

Yasmine whimpered, glancing from the car clock out the window and back again.

At the next trailhead, Yasmine slammed the brakes. Moon yelped, lurching forward as the range rover screeched to a stop in a pullover surrounded by soaring pines and gold-tinged scrub bushes.

“Oh, fuck it. Rosalie’s not expecting us until 4 anyways.”

Moon smiled at her lap. She got the feeling Yasmine could have fought her harder.

***

“Tell me a secret.”

“What?” Moon’s sandals dug into the trail, grinding her to a halt.

“Tell me a secret.” Yasmine turned, hair backlit by mountain sunshine. “Come on. If you’re going to insist we trek out into the middle of buttfuck nowhere, you’d better have some juicy gossip for where absolutely no one can hear us.”

She leaped onto a nearby boulder with surprising grace, boots deftly clinging to the gaps in a way that suggested she hadn’t always been as averse to physical exertion as she was now.

“DICK AND BALLS!” Moon was completely unprepared for her friend to cup her mouth and shout at the top of her lungs. “MOTHERFUCKING COCKSUCKING SHITHEADS! GODDAMN PUSSY-EATING DYKES! I’LL PISS IN YOUR MOUTH!”

The forest only answered Yasmine’s abundance of profanity with wind, songbird calls, and one or two annoyed crows. Not another human soul to be heard.

“See?” Yasmine turned, her grin conniving. “No one’s going to hear any of this shit besides us. You can literally say anything you want out here. It’d be a waste not to spill some tea.”

She spread her arms, and for a moment, she looked like a bird. An elegant, dainty little yellow warbler, about to take flight or break into song.

“No one can fuck with us out here!” she crowed. For a moment, Moon felt almost as free as her.

Moon laughed, shaking her head. She hadn’t known what to expect from the blonde girl in the yellow designer sundress, making snide comments in her math class, but these unrestrained dramatics were definitely not it.

“So come on, then.” Yasmine scaled down the rock as easily as she’d climbed it. “Tell me something scandalous, Moon.”

Moon frowned, quickening her pace to catch up. “Why?”

“Because. Maybe I want to get to know the girl I’m hauling up into the mountains to see my sister, huh?”

“We don’t need deep, dark secrets for that, do we?”

“Not technically, but I’m bored of all the other shit.” Yasmine groaned. “‘Where’d you go to middle school, did you grow up here, do you have any brothers or sisters,’ blah blah blah. We covered all the small talk crap when we ditched for brunch. I want something more interesting.”

Moon’s cheeks grow hot. “I don’t know if I’m hiding anything that interesting.”

“Oh, bullshit.” Yasmine turned, gray-green eyes boring into Moon. The blonde started walking backwards just in front of her friend, maintaining very intense and very judgmental eye contact the entire time. “Everyone’s got a little dirt on them, Moon. You just have to scrape it up.”

Feeling a sudden rush of bravery (perhaps the empowering jasper-colored leaves were to blame), Moon crossed her arms and returned Yasmine’s smirk. “And why should I give you my dirt?”

“Because.” Those stormy irises had a cunning gleam in them. “What’s a few secrets between best friends?”

“Best friends!” Moon laughed in surprise. “We barely know each other. And I’m your—well, I mean.” She found herself stumbling over her words. “What about everyone else at the table? Your middle school crew?”

“Oh, well.” Yasmine rolled her eyes dismissively. “Jenna, Harper, Aubrey—they’re all fake as fuck. Dumb sluts are using me to get a taste of what it’s like at the top. I know the knives come out whenever my back’s turned.” Her lips curled into a sneer. “It’s whatever, honestly. I’d just as soon get rid of them as soon as they stop making us look good. But you…”

For the first time in a while, the scornful look dropped completely.

“You’re different, Moon. You’re…real. Not basic and boring like every other bitch that follows me around.”

If Moon’s cheeks weren’t on fire before, they certainly were now.

“You really mean that?”

“Yeah, duh. I wouldn’t take you out here if you weren’t worlds better than all the other losers at our trash-ass school. Now…”

The genuine look that briefly shone through morphed into a smirk. Mood wondered if she’d imagined it.

Yasmine leaned forward, smirk widening. Without warning she grabbed both of Moon’s hands, tangling their fingers together as she continued to effortlessly saunter backwards. “Tell me a secret, Moon.”

“I…”

Moon could feel what was hovering just behind her lips. The words threatening to tangle with the mountain air and wash over Yasmine like a cold breeze, causing her hands to jerk away and her face to twist in that oh-so-familiar disgust.

I’m not normal.

It was something in the way that all through elementary school—and all through the turbulent tides of middle school, too—her eyes weren’t only drawn by soccer players showing off at recess, or the track stars who could run more gym class laps than anyone. Boys who dripped confidence like sweat and gleamed like fresh-minted coins, the names inside the hearts every girl doodled.

Just as often she found herself drawn to the ballet dancers and the child beauty pageant winners and the sirenlike voices of the girls in choir. Often as not, her mind was on billowing hair and purple nails and the scent of fruit shampoo as much as the testosterone and cologne of the ever-boisterous boys.

And it was a fascination that went beyond friendship. Moon knew that much.

She was able to join in with the other girls, gushing about the guys they liked and making bets on who would ask who to the next dance. But there was always half of it left unsaid.

She’d never told a soul. Not her easygoing parents. Not her middle school gang. No one. It was an anomaly that belonged to her and her alone.

And Moon wasn’t about to drive away her newest friend, in all her power and mystique and sheer magnetic energy.

Yasmine must’ve seen the gears turning behind her eyes. She groaned, yanking especially hard on Moon’s hands with an exaggerated eyeroll.

“Oh, fine. I’ll go first if you’re not gonna spill.”

Moon raised her eyebrows. “That was an option?”

Yasmine scoffed. “I mean, if you’re just going to stand there looking constipated…”

Moon couldn’t find a response.

Which probably made her look even more constipated.

“I don’t actually wake up like this.” Yasmine grinned mischievously, giving those flawless yellow locks of hers a graceful flip. “And it’s not Maybelline, either. I have to wake up at 5 fucking o’clock every morning to straighten this bitch. But better that than go to school looking like a fucking hobo.”

Moon laughed.

“So you don’t wake up with perfect hair? That’s not very scandalous.” Yasmine gasped, sounding half offended. “It is if you’re someone with my rep!”

“Well, if it’s that important to you…” Moon sniggered. “I won’t tell anyone. But for what it’s worth, I think the other kids would be impressed you put so much time into looking perfect.”

“Oh, no way. They need to think it’s like…an inherent part of my personality that I’m flawless and untouchable. Otherwise they might start getting ideas about replacing me if they style their hair for long enough.”

She had to laugh again.

“I don’t think you need to worry. The entire school knows they could never hold a torch to you.”

For a moment, uncertainty flickered through those stormcloud eyes.

Like the fear of being dethroned was greater than Yasmine let on.

“Damn right,” she said, smug expression returning. She tugged Moon’s hands again, bringing the girls close enough that Moon could smell traces of the strawberry-and-nutella crepes she had for breakfast.

“Your turn,” she purred.

“Um…”

Moon paused, pushing thoughts of her unspoken strangeness away. Yasmine didn’t need to know that.

“I’m worried that people think I’m kind of stupid,” she said instead.

Yasmine looked genuinely thrown off for a moment.

“What do you mean?”

Her expression turned…not serious exactly, but more thoughtful and curious than Moon was used to. None of its usual smugness.

“My friends from middle school, they—they all went to these private Ivy League prep schools. I, uh…I think some of their parents bribed their way in, but some of them were genuinely just that smart. Either way, my parents weren’t willing to pull strings to get me in. They’re really, um…‘go with the flow’ in a way that they, like, don’t like to exert a lot of effort on anything they don’t need to. Which includes keeping me with my friends, I guess.”

Moon took a breath, almost hoping Yasmine would interrupt.

Yasmine didn’t. Only waited with uncharacteristic patience for her to finish.

“I told them at 8th grade continuation I didn’t make it into Harvard-Westlake. They, um…they looked at me like I was some kind of reject. And they started talking about all the things they were gonna do in high school.” Moon winced at the memory. “Kelsey was gonna learn Latin. Rachel was gonna get into Hollywood. Tess was gonna figure out how to become like…some political diplomat or something. And I guess it was just like…we’d been together through the thick and thin of everything, and suddenly I was some dumb bimbo who wasn’t even worthy of licking the dirt they stepped on. And after that night, I never heard from any of them again.”

Yasmine’s only response was a curled lip. “Ew.”

Moon’s stomach sank. “You think I’m also…?”

Yasmine’s scowl deepened. “No, your stupid friends. They sound like a load of self-righteous bitches.” She scoffed. “Girl, you’re well-rid of them. You stuck around and they’d try to make you into a fucking lame loser nerd just like them. Who the fuck uses Latin in their day-to-day existence, anyways?!”

Moon found herself laughing.

“Yeah, I guess Kelsey was always kind of prissy that way.”

“Half the shit they teach in high school doesn’t matter in the real world, anyways.” Yasmine rolled her eyes. “And yeah, even at prep schools, too. Take all the acting classes and political science you want, but if you don’t know someone important in the industry, you’re not getting shit. The world runs on nepotism, so…your old bitches are going to get fucked over so bad.”

Something about Yasmine’s overconfident scorn soothed her. No one who spoke that surely could be wrong…right?

Moon chuckled. “Is it bad that I kind of hope they do?”

“Nah. Would serve the dumb fucks right.” Yasmine’s smirk returned—bigger than any she’d worn all afternoon. “I should be thanking them, really. They ditched by far the coolest person in their group, and now I get you all to myself.”

Moon only hoped Yasmine didn’t see how red her own cheeks were turning.

“For the record, though…”

Yasmine seemed to search her face, expression suddenly unreadable.

“I don’t think you’re stupid. I mean…not that it matters anyways, because pretty people get jobs more than smart people do, but being good at the crap they teach in school doesn’t mean anything. Being able to read people, knowing who you can open up to and who’s a damn snake, figuring out how to talk people into giving you what you want…that’s what matters. And you’ve got more intuition than anyone I’ve met in a long time.”

Well, if having intuition was what mattered…

Moon only hoped she was reading Yasmine right.

***

Some random author’s notes, in no particular order:

Love that Yasmine is canonically a terrible driver. Like she accidentally kick-started the entire plot because her dumb ass was texting and driving and rammed right tf into Johnny Lawrence’s car. I have every reason to believe she’s this bad of a driver in every situation 💛 Absolute trash queen 👑

Writing S1 Yasmine is so much fun because she’s SO unapologetically shitty, like. You can have her say the most deranged shit and it’s completely in character??? Delightfully challenging to figure out how fucking anyone could fall inconsolably head-over-heels for her, especially someone as naturally good-natured as Moon!!! Like she was simping—I know it in my soul—but how the FUCK did that happen???

Also no I absolutely do not count Demetri’s “feelings” as falling inconsolably head-over-heels for her—mans was faking being straight to get Miguel not to abandon him and then felt he had to Commit To The Bit. I WILL die on this hill btw.

On a related note, though!!! I’ve probably watched the S1 Yasmine scenes DOZENS of times for this fic (not a single fucking one without her girlfriend btw), and after a while you start to pick up on some like…unexpected softness you didn’t notice before? Like she seems genuinely pleased Sam is enjoying throwing her party! She plays wingwoman and sets Sam up with Kyler! (Granted, there could have been ulterior motives here—namely distracting Sam so she doesn’t notice That Gay Shit going on between her two new best friends—but the act in of itself didn’t seem malicious.) She’s a tad overprotective of Moon when she believes Sam has been talking crap, and tells Sam to get the hell out of Moon’s car!!! She genuinely looks hurt when Moon chooses Hawk and Co. over her!!! Like it’s few and far between, but she definitely seems to care about her friends on some level, even at her worst. With that in mind, it’s a lot easier to write Moon getting smitten with her!

Adding onto this—rewatching the S1 Yasmine clips, it’s kind of striking how often she refers to herself and Moon as a unit, especially during the 1x05 car scene with Sam. “Kyler told us what you said.” “You think you’re better than us.” “We know what went down.” She says “Moon, let’s go” when about to ditch the beach party instead of just storming off because of course she’s not leaving without Moon (who she chose to stay with over going with Kyler btw!). She doesn’t even consider it a possibility until Moon outright says it. Not only is this a cool parallel to a thing S1 Demetri also does (I.e. frequently uses “we” to speak for both him and Eli from a place of misguided-ish overprotectiveness and the confidence that “I know what’s best for both of us as a unit”), but this is something a lot of long-term couples I know irl tend to do!!! When I talk about movies with my roommate, he tends to say “we (I.e. him and his fiancé) did/didn’t like it.” When my married friend thanked me for catsitting, he said “we really appreciate it.” Point being that even at her absolute worst, Yasmine is never actually just thinking about herself—she’s thinking about herself and Moon, right up until Moon chooses to ditch her! Anyways yeah these girls were a Thing sorry. If they have a tendency that immediately calls to mind my married and engaged friends, that’s. A little gay???

Also worth noting that Yasmine only really breaks from Moon in 1x09, and then as SOON as she appears again in S3, she’s once again glued to Moon’s hip. Girl literally cannot stay away from Moon akfssrfuhbi

But all that aside!!! S1 Yasmine genuinely sucks so bad. Like GIRL. You fat-shamed a girl for no fucking reason. You verbally eviscerated an ugly sweater kid just minding his business and probably jump-started his Evil Journey tbh. You slut-shamed your ex-friend all over the internet after she almost got sexually assaulted. You cut off your closest friend and fuck buddy because she dared to ask you to stop being horrid. What in the actual hell is wrong with you. I am horrified and fascinated. I want to study Yasmine like a bug.

And I am, via this fic!!! God, am I having a blast with it. Fully intend to continue delving into why she’s the actual fucking worst and giving her the nuance the showrunners never bothered with 💛

I spent like 3 hours researching “prep schools” in the San Fernando Valley, and watched a whole-ass tour video for Harvard-Westlake to determine what Moon’s shitty (or shittier) ex-friends went off to study that made her feel inadequate. Please be proud of me for doing a deep dive into this weird niche topic to make my weird niche pairing fic feel authentic XD

Deadass role-playing as an Uber-wealthy Encino parent looking for a good, respectable high school for their spoiled 8th grader was. An incredibly bizarre experience. I do not want kids, I could not afford them even if I did, and I do not have anything anywhere close to a rich suburban husband to discuss a kid’s school options with. I guess this is the essence of trying to explore lived experiences that will never belong to you???

I legitimately do think Moon is smarter than she comes off as (Demetri wouldn’t fuck with her otherwise!) and is somewhat insecure about being seen as “dumb” because she’s bubbly, hyperfemme, conflict-averse, and in touch with her spirituality. I don’t think she likes admitting this, though—she doesn’t like “burdening” others with her own demons!

Considering Yasmine’s “natural” hairstyle in S3 appears to be more wavy, girl probably spent an ungodly amount of time and effort straightening her hair in season 1. Like yeah, she was mean at, but can you blame her??? Bitch was probably running on like 4 hours of sleep a night!

Jenna, Harper, and Aubrey are some of the extras at the Rich Girls Table! I’ve mentioned in other posts, but I’ve always kind of wondered about them, and What Their Deal Was that they’re only sometimes worthy of hanging out with Yasmine XD Git hyped to see more of them in this and other planned YasMoon fics!!!

Continuing to love looking into crystals/spirituality/incense/other kinds of Wiccan-adjacent things I think Moon would be into! As a woman of science, I’m not sure if I buy into that, but I do think it’s genuinely fascinating and fun to explore and research! There’s a lot of pretty cool and interesting belief systems out there to explore when you go in without obsessing over whether something’s 100% true or false and whatnot.

Yes, Californians really do get that hyped about seasons. I would know—I moved there after growing up in the Midwest, and seeing Californians get hyped about seeing snow or massive amounts of fall foliage for the first time is just about the most pure thing ever ;_____; But it’s definitely not out of the question for Moon to get that pumped about fall color aksssdtchh

I kind of love the idea of Moon always knowing she was bisexual, but not building the confidence to proudly tell it to the world until Piper helped her to 💗💜💙

Bitches be holding other bitches’ hands on an isolated hiking trail and think that’s a Straight and Normal thing to do. Like come on. We all know what you are, Yasmine.

Can’t give y’all an exact posting estimate for the whole fic, but I’m not giving up on it anytime soon (having WAY too much fun with this angst to do that!!!) and will try to get the rest of it done as soon as I can!!! Hoping ideally by sometime this coming winter :3

#cksapphicsummer #yasmoon #yasmine x moon #moon x yasmine #yasmine cobra kai #moon cobra kai #fanfic #fanfiction #cobra kai #cobra kai season 1 #(this takes place prior to S1 btw--around the beginning of the girls' freshman year before they were friends with Sam!)#femslash #wlw #lesbian #sapphic

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