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#but it’s making me fucking bonkers to think about how firmly the story shifts out of flint’s hands after his speech about the empire.
katsofmeer · 1 year
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that the biggest high seas bastard got a happy ending in this tragedy + all that is baked into that contradiction. the unreal/real nature of it truly matters less and less than the fact that, as narrator in that moment that we the audience sees it, silver gives flint his happy ending. real/unreal. that IS real. silver says it, and it is so - we get to watch the catharsis and relief and reunion. it’s not about if it happened it’s about silver needing that to be the final image for flint: a happy ending to a tragedy.
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bettsfic · 4 years
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do you know anything about like, the development of the purity rhetoric that now seems to be ubiquitous in fandom and how it got there? i used to be on tumblr in like, 2014 and only recently came back to fandom and i remember everyone being generally kind of cool with things like incest ships and morally grey characters (speaking specifically re the frozen fandom and elsa/anna here lmao) whereas now it seems like the conversation about those things has drastically shifted and i am..puzzled by it
this is what i imagine that experience was like for you:
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according to fanlore, purity culture started in the homestuck fandom which. based on what i know of homestuck, that tracks. however i’ve never been in homestuck so i’m not sure what that transformation was like. all i know is my personal experience with the disk horse. afaik there’s no cohesive timeline of events across fandom, and i lack the time and resources to be able to make one myself. if anyone knows of one, or wants to make one, please let me know.
i do know that purity culture is a movement started by very young teenagers, who were maybe 13-15 in 2014 and are now 18-20. they were 8-10 when ao3 was founded, and therefore seem to have a limited knowledge of fan history, censorship, and critical thinking. i’m hoping that since they’re now entering college, they’ll get some insight and broader social awareness, and this movement will finally die out in the next few years. 
on any other platform, at any other time, their toxic rhetoric would not have gained traction. but here and now, on tunglr dot com where anyone can gain a platform, where mob mentality thrives and inciting an anonymous dogpile is as easy as hitting Post, where the brokenness of this place makes it difficult to control the content you’re exposed to -- it’s the perfect storm. we live in an age of hopelessness. young people grow up with social media as an extension of their identities, tethered to devices that hold all the information in the world. i think it’s fair for them to be afraid of their futures, and i can understand the desire to control the online spaces where they have the most agency, where their voices are the loudest. 
that may explain why, but not how. as in, where did they pick up this mentality at all? @freedom-of-fanfic (whose work is a necessity in understanding the disk horse) connected anti-shipping to TERF rhetoric. i’ve linked the fanlore page because it has all of the links and some of the responses. i honestly do believe that the language surrounding purity culture has its ugly roots in TERFdom. at its core, purity culture -- the policing of female and queer sexuality -- is misogyny. 
when i started writing destiel circa 2014, fandom was as you described. wincest was a juggernaut on par with destiel. teen wolf was full of underage and noncon. a/b/o was on the rise. it seemed like fandom was a genre without restraint -- anything you wrote, if it found the right audience, would be celebrated unabashedly. people who have been following me for a long time know that i was addicted to adderall at the time and pounding out all sorts of manic nonsense. i remember living on the validation of comments (and at the time, there were lots of comments. not so much anymore, but that’s another story). i got critical comments only rarely, and they were the type that i admired -- readers without judgment thinking through the story, reacting to it earnestly. i made some of my best friends because they left long, critical comments on my work. sometimes they didn’t like it, sometimes they did, but ultimately, they were engaged, and that’s what counted.
i remember my first policing-type comment, i think at the start of all the purity nonsense. it was a destiel fic, and someone very angrily told me i should tag my bottom!cas because it was triggering. i’ve thought about that comment a lot over the years. top/bottom discourse is nothing new, but to say that bottom castiel is triggering? that was ridiculous. but then i realized -- there was a writer in fandom at the time i won’t name, who was known for being extremely sensitive (for bottom!cas especially, which they found triggering), and their very dedicated following offered fic that was safe for their fave to read. i have nothing against this person at all. they were not part of the purity discourse, they were up front about their sensitive nature, and as far as i knew (i believe i met them at a con once?) they were very kind. 
but that commenter had been clearly influenced by this person and believed that a specific fictional character receiving anal sex from another specific fictional character was actual, real triggering content, and it was my obligation as a writer to tag for it. which i did, because i felt bad, and i was baffled by that request. at the time, i wanted more than anything to be liked, and conformed wherever i could. if i got such a request now, i would ignore it because it was rudely written and honestly kind of bonkers. i’d happily add a tag for something i may have missed, or even something i’d never considered before, but there’s no reason a person can’t make that request politely. 
this situation isn’t about purity discourse proper (the commenter didn’t tell me not to write the fic, and it had nothing to do with morality), but it’s the earliest example i can think of where the process of policing had occurred: a person of influence on tumblr affected their follower’s thinking, and that follower felt entitled to command another writer to conform to that ideology.
i could be completely wrong about making these connections. maybe that commenter truly believed bottom!cas was a legitimate widespread trauma. they did not say the fic was triggering to them, but that it might be to some other people, in the same way purity police say “think of the CHILDREN” when in fact they don’t give a fuck about children at all. 
after destiel i moved to stucky, which was, at the time, a juggernaut ship where anyone could write anything. this was also the time when the term “cinnamon roll” became incredibly popular, circa 2015. it was a fun and seemingly innocuous meme, but it positioned the ideas of “purity” and “wholesomeness” in sharp relief, and cemented these ideas by beginning to give it a distinct vocabulary. “trash” was pitched as its opposite. stucky is where i first came into contact with “antis.” in destiel, there had been ship wars, sure, but it was of a different flavor than antis. destiel vs wincest wasn’t about morality in 2014. it was about everything but.
in stucky in 2015, however, the disk horse was running rampant. the MCU had a sub-section of fandom called HTP (hydra trash party) in which steve and/or bucky have dubious or nonconsensual relations with various or many members of hydra. this is the first time i remember being aware of morality becoming a cornerstone of shipping. HTP was loathed by purity police. by the time i wrote a stucky bdsm au, i’d accumulated multiple nasty anons, rude comments from entitled readers, and other nonsense that all said the same thing: your filth is not welcome here in our space of purity. go away.
but the release of the force awakens is what really turned the tide. TFA offered three major ships: stormpilot (as it was called at the time, now finnpoe), reylo, and kylux. the fandom that developed around the sequels was firmly divided. franzeska wrote an amazing meta about this phenomenon which gives some insight into the seeds of purity policing. in short, stormpilot should have been the primary pairing of the sequels, but instead many of the badwrong writers from other fandoms (and HTP specifically, which was how i entered the fandom) flocked to the blank slate of kylux. 
it took a long time for the ship to gain traction. a friend told me that kylux had started with angry star wars racists who hated that there was diversity in the sequel trilogy. and i told them no, i was there, there were twelve of us and a cornchip, and all we cared about was the dirty/darkly comedic potential of these two ridiculous villain characters in one of the biggest franchises of all time. it wasn’t that complicated. i don’t mean to dismiss the discussion of race in fandom; i think it’s important to acknowledge that racism, as franzeska describes far better than i can, plays a huge part in fandom, particularly in star wars, and it’s an important and ongoing discussion to be having, especially given what kelly marie tran has gone through, and how it affected (presumably) rose tico’s extremely limited presence in TROS.
the early fics of kylux weren’t particularly taboo. they were post-TFA hurt/comfort mostly, then slowly the bdsm and power dynamics crept in. those of us who wanted to get away from purity discourse had finally found a new home. for a while. 2016 was the golden era of kylux. we were all very happy.
i remember talking to a friend about how there were certain things i couldn’t write in certain ships. being from ye olden days of fandom, she was appalled by this idea, and told me i could write anything for any ship i wanted, wasn’t that was the whole point of transformative works? and i agreed! but i tried to explain, if you post badwrong for a fandom of purity police, you’re going to, at best, get dogpiled in your comments/inbox. at worse they will find you, call your employer, and try to ruin your life. people will tell you to kill yourself. they’ll report your tumblr and try to get your blog shut down. there are real-life, harrowing consequences to writing taboo fic, and many who write fic as a hobby don’t have the emotional energy to field these risks.
around this time, discord became popular, which offered a private space for badwrong writers to congregate. i had started grad school and didn’t have much time to write fic. metoo was happening. tromp got elected. kylux was slowly turning mainstream so a lot of us turned our attention to gradence in fantastic beasts. some went on to hannibal and other fandoms that hadn’t yet caught the attention of purity police (but it was, as it is now, just a matter of time). kylux, i feel, was specifically decimated by a single fan creator, who was like a police chief. they would get wind of someone writing underage or noncon and write a call-out post about them, and that writer/artist would get pitchforked. a few times, my comments or posts got screencapped, and posts were written urging people to stop reading my works because of how heinously immoral i was. this happened to several of my friends too. 
the great tumblr tittyban of 2017 happened, which only added fuel to the fire and further legitimized the purity movement. i shifted hesitantly to the 100 fandom, which seemed small in comparison to supernatural, marvel, and star wars. i thought it was a chill place. i was wrong; it was just as toxic as other fandoms. but i also didn’t care anymore, and i appreciated that i was mostly left alone. more importantly, i found a lot of support from other people who were as tired of the purity as i was, and @the100kinkmeme was reborn. 
the state of things is pretty abysmal. there are some really amazing writers out there writing under multiple sock accounts, keeping their fandom identities shattered so as not to call attention to themselves. as much as i understand why writers do that, and i respect that decision, i also think it’s sad. it deprives readers the chance to read that author’s other works. it limits the sense of community and our ability to make friends. it fractures the future of the genre.
what’s most important to acknowledge is that none of this is happening solely in fandom. i went to a writers’ conference where 2 of 3 panels were about the history of moral policing and censorship in art. it is worth noting that of the 40-ish visiting writers on faculty, only one (1) was a woman of color (jaimaica kincaid). naturally, older rich white people who have spent their life in the arts are all about death of the author, separation of art and artist. they’re on the total opposite side of purity police, and they won’t acknowledge at all that racism and sexism are a problem in the creative world. they don’t have any nuance on the discussion, or modern perspectives in light of metoo or popular culture. 
this went on longer than i anticipated. i neglected to mention YFIP (your fave is problematic) an old blog that started the idea of call-out culture by pulling receipts on celebrities, and how call-out culture led to cancel culture, which also aided in the purity disk horse. i think a lot can be said about how some of this stuff is genuinely good (metoo and holding men accountable for their bullshit) while also being profoundly toxic (punishing criminals via mob mentality, ruining their careers and livelihoods through social media, rather than giving them their due process in court. i understand it -- the judicial system is built by the hands of the very predators we seek to condemn, but still. the jury of the internet is never a fair trial). 
if you want to read more, my tag is tsatp (the sacred and the profane). i’m sure i’ve left out a lot, but i can only speak to my experience. i think it would be good if people would share their experience dealing with purity policing, too, so we might get a cohesive timeline in place. feel free to reblog and add your story.
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luobingmeis · 4 years
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also it's def bc i just finished the finale for the 2nd time but my brain is basically chanting "amnesty" on repeat so im just going to throw out thoughts i have so i can sleep soon akdksjdjd
minerva and juno become best friends after a night when both of them were working a super late shift and they just ended up talking for hours. they talked abt minerva's culture on Five and how it compared to growing up on Earth and juno heard minerva's battle stories (some valiant, some regretful) and minerva learned all about how juno got into the forestry service, and the two of them just really click
also i firmly believe that, on her planet, minerva is funny as hell, it's just 1) learning Earth humor and 2) realizing that, while on Earth she is seen as exuberant and loud, most people on minerva's planet were just that energetic
minerva tho did (and still does) have her own flare and charm tho
damn most of these are gonna be minerva centric
her and duck adopt a cat named fig newton im pretty sure ive done this one before
minerva and leo are also best friends and leo will teasingly hold that over duck's head bc, while duck missed out on almost 30 years, leo's known minerva for probably 40, maybe 50? at his core, tho, leo is really happy for the two of them
aubrey can actually understand dr harris bonkers phd's rabbit chatter. for a while, everyone thought she was making shit up on the spot for the goofs, but it was dani who realized "wait holy shit they're actually talking"
dr harris bonkers phd does eventually learn human words except in the "picks up on language after hearing the same phrases a lot" way, with some notable mentions being "hi honey!" and "hey what the fuck!"
duck, aubrey, and thacker, whenever they're all on earth together, always get lunch together to hang out. they then either go to the cryptonomica (even thacker bc, even if he never met ned, he still has respect for him and really feels like he wouldve liked the guy) or amnesty lodge
mama tries to keep it on the down low but, when she knows thacker is coming back to earth, she keeps a little personal countdown bc she misses her best friend a lot
hollis, keith, and jake are all best friends again and jake is the #1 holleith supporter
hollis and aubrey become best friends and hollis takes her out on their motorcycle and they absolutely get the whole "now listen here, bring her back in one piece or else" talk from mama
while travelling together, the quell becomes even more curious abt thacker's life and, kinda like a juno-esque situation, she's really inspired by him
that one is basically canon but it makes me too emotional to not mention
aubrey is unsurprisingly really into halloween and dani, even tho it's not a sylvan holiday, celebrates it with her and they come back to earth to carve pumpkins and decorate with the folks left at amnesty lodge
also some domestic headcanons i have just bc i love domesticity: aubrey and dani adopt sylvan twins and their sylvan forms are what we would picture merfolk like? like with the more webbed ears/hands and gills and sharp teeth but also arms and legs (with fins on them). it also seems implied that duck and minerva have kids but im still putting thought into their domestic sphere bc i dont bs domesticity
kirby, aubrey, dani, hollis, jake, and keith all become a fun little group
fun little group B is duck, minerva, dr drake, leo, and juno. basically chosen club +1 bc they all love juno
mama and thacker are on their own and also roam everywhere bc they're just like that
kirby runs the cryptonomica with almost as much flare as ned, and ned's walking stick nearly never leaves his hand
barclay and stern both buy each other tacky bigfoot merch thinking that it would be a funny joke to pull for candlenights and now they just have matching bigfoot tshirts
barclay also cooks a ton of packed meals for thacker, aubrey, and duck to take back to their new homes
now with the rift in the inner sanctum, everyone tries to get together for family dinners once a month bc they all miss and love each other and want to catch up as much as they all can
(they always end up visiting more than once a month tho)
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magagerie · 6 years
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A Con Gone Wrong
“How did you meet him?”
The long black nails stopped their trek through auburn locks. Julian made a small groan at their ceasing and looked up to the small apprentice beneath him. Wally’s talons stilled on his head where it lay against her chest. Her kohl lined eyes lay fixed on the scratchy sheets just besides Julian’s knee where they laid in Mazelinka’s home. She’d slipped out of the palace for the day, the drovel of court hurting her eyes with how much she rolled them at the pompous officials around her.
“Who?” her voice vibrated against Julian’s cheek, the rising and falling of her breath lulling the man into comfort. “Asra?”
“Mhm.” Julian rubbed his face into her satin blouse before flicking his gaze back to her face.
“Oh.” She nodded nonchalantly into the distance, lavender blinking the gangly man into focus with a smile. The gold hoop on the center of her lip caught in the faint candlelight with her grin, the deep blue they were painted today complimenting her brown complexion.
“Well that’s an awfully long story.” Wally teased, her finger going back to smooth through his hair.
“I’m not going anywhere.” A smirked flashed across his face before it fell once more. “Are you?”
She regarded him impassively, a wide smile soon breaking across the magician’s face. “Not unless you’re coming with me.” Her arched brows waggled down at Julian, a strand of hair falling from her powder blue mohawk.
“Then tell me a story, Cadwallader.” Julian encouraged with a proper grin, his neck stretching to look at her.
“Okay, okay.” Wally maneuvered into the pillows further, “Get off me first, my toes are fucking cold.” They wiggled for emphasis.
He huffed a laugh and granted her request. Julian rolled off the small woman with a faint wobble, his long legs nearly falling off the bed with the motion. His large hand trailed down her thigh as he left her long enough for Wally to shove her feet under the cotton blanket covering the bed. He made sure to keep his palm over the light lavender slacks obscuring parts of her leg, Julian too aware of the large expanses of skin still left bare to his wandering eye.
“Alright, come here.” The apprentice waved the fugitive doctor closer once she was properly settled. Wally did nothing to hide the smirk that settled on her face from his staring, seemed to preen under it even.
Julian raised his eyebrows at Wally (definitely without a blush beginning to color his face) and followed suit, laying on his side and placing his head on her bare shoulder, “You wouldn’t be so cold if you wore more clothes.” He poked the wide cutout on her thigh, the tawny skin soft under his touch.
“You wear too many clothes!” Wally countered, sticking her tongue out. The pair piercings at the tip winked as they made their way back into her mouth, after which a wrinkled nose met him instead. “I can’t understand how you’ve lived in Vesuvia for ages and still think that 5 layers of clothes are necessary.”
“I only wear three.”
“Still too many. You look much better in none, dear.” Wally’s long fingernails dug into Julian’s hair once more and tugged at the strands for emphasis. A moan slipped from Julian’s lips before he could stop it.
“You’re-” Julian’s face turned upward with the pulling of Wally’s grip. His tongue flicked out over his dry lips, eyes glazing over momentarily. A flush painted most of his face before he swallowed and tried again, “you’re changing the subject.”
“Nope!” Wally grinned down and dark blue lipstick branded itself on his temple, “I’m just teasing you.” she spoke into his skin.
“Wally,” Julian had to fight the whine bubbling to the surface, “please don’t.”
“Fine,” she leaned away from him, smirk still firmly in place, “You’re no fun.”
A beat of silence.
“So you wanted to know how I met Asra?” she finally began, sounding like she’d forgotten his original question.
Julian nodded.
“Alright, so~” she drew out the ‘o’ for a few seconds, attention grabbed instead by the wax dripping down the candle. She stayed transfixed, the slow bead moving down to the wooden table beneath and stilling as it cooled. With a shake of her head, Wally realized she’d still been holding out the vowel and a blink later, her mouth closed.
“So I met him in the marketplace, or was it by the old plague wards? I don’t know, but either way it was in a back alley! I had my shitty little table set up, a bunch of rings on my hands to cover the green marks they left behind from the day before. Do you know how easy it is the make cheap ass rings look expensive? Even without magic! You just shine them up right and make sure the paint doesn’t flake in noticeable places and you’re good to go! Honestly, if you wanted me to spiff up your-”
“Wally.”
“What?”
“You’re getting off topic.”
“Oh fuck.” A flush crept over Cadwallader’s freckled cheeks, the subtle red dusting over her nose as a pout pursed her lips, “Where was I?”
“Literally at the beginning.”
“Shit.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, time to get serious. Just punch me if I derail again, okay?”
“I-”
“Thanks for agreeing! So, as I was saying, I met him in some random back alley at my divination stand. I had the usual shit up that you see at a fortune teller’s table, right? Like the cards and crystal ball and everything. Well this fucker just walked up and his clothes look travelled. Like exotic silks and embroidered shit and just seemed like he had money to burn, and who was I to deny him the pleasure of giving me money? So I called him over with my best smile and batted my eyes dramatically cause it’d worked on all the other bastards before him, and I was all like ‘for 4 gold pieces I’ll read your palm and tell you your dead girlfriend’s name’ or some shit and guess what? He bought it!”
Wally was using her hands at this point, back bent over Julian’s head where it had slid down to her hip as she gestured into the air, obviously enjoying her story as much as Julian enjoyed hearing it. “This poor sap came up to my booth and gave me his money and bought into my stupid, vague reading. It was all ‘she died tragically before her time’ and ‘you’ve gone to great lengths to preserve her memory, but fret not, she’ll always be close to you. Closer than you may think.’ and all that other mumbo jumbo that crackpots usually give you like shitty fortune cookies. Do you know what those are? My father use to get them all the time from his homeland, just these plain ass cookies that didn’t even have sugar- barely any vanilla!- and the outer edge had runes scrawled into it like a stamp just giving you something stupid like ‘your future is bright but only if you keep your gaze on the sun’. But like, which sun? And why would you do that anyway, you’ll lose your eyes if you look too long, even babies know that! What kind of dumbass-”
“Wally.”
She stopped, blinked, looked down at him.
“I told you to punch me.”
“Maybe next time.” The Doctor smiled at her fondly before waving a hand into the air, “Please, continue.”
Wally blew a raspberry at him. “I gave him his reading, took his money, and watched his smile with a ‘what the fuck’ expression. It was like he knew I was full of shit but humored me anyway. There wasn’t pity in his eyes, but it felt like it so it made me mad. I swindled 15 more coins from him by giving two 3 card spreads and a ball gaze. Hey shut up, don’t laugh, I haven’t actually seen his balls, I’m sure you know more about them than I do, Ilya. What, are you mad now? Don’t poke the bear if you don’t want it to shove your dirty laundry in your face, boy.”
“He eventually left and I did too. There was a few more customers after him, but they were are simpletons. They didn’t weird me out as much as he had. His final remark was ‘I look forward to my next reading, Cadwallader’ and it was bonkers cause that was before I gave my name to clients. Usually I’d just draw them in and then run as soon as I got their money so they couldn’t find me once they realized I was full of shit. But, Asra was different. He didn’t give me his name either, but I knew it. And that was fucking weird. I barely remember my mother’s name… Actually, I don’t remember her name, but I knew his? The fuck is up with that? But that’s how it was. It rattled me, but not enough to stop conning chumps. That was the only way I was living at that point!”
“It was about two weeks after that that I saw him again.” Wally’s voice shifted, more distant in her memories than it had been. Julian looked at her through his eyelashes, good eye finding her face blank, the magician too lost in thought to notice his staring.
“What happened then?” his voice barely broke a whisper.
“Well at first I didn’t think much of it! I’m use to seeing people dicking around in the square, it didn’t feel anything special. Until he made eye contact.” The scam artist shivered at the memory. “It was fuckin’ terrifying, Julian. Like, if I could describe to you just how close I was to shitting my pants in that moment, I would. It was like,” A pause. “if Count Lucio’s goat painting showed up and offered to give me a blowjob at 2:37 in the morning. In front of his wife. It was bananas. Well, not to say I wouldn’t enjoy a blowjob at that time, but what about the repercussions? I don’t wanna get caught fucking a dead noble! Which would I get hung for: being a homewrecker or a necrophiliac? That’s just too close for comfort man, I’d rather keep the freaky shit in the privacy of my own slice of Hell, not in the common for the world to see. Having my bits out in public is something I’m willing to try once but that’s not how, I’d much pre-”
A love tap knocked Wally on the side of her cheek, stopping her in her tracks. Her mouth hung open mid sentence briefly before her tongue flicked out to wet her lips and she closed them.
“Sorry.” she looked sheepishly at the man at her side.
“Why were you scared?”
“I’ve never-” She stopped of her own volition this time, eyebrows knit together as she tried to pick her words, “I’m not- I’m not use to people seeing me like that. Like they know me. People usually just glance over me or stare because of my dashing good looks,” a smug smile crept across Wally’s lips before she could stop it, “but his stare just got me. It knew me. Honestly, the only time I’ve ever seen that look, it was followed by a curse and a fist in my direction so I booked it. I only grabbed my decks and just hauled ass down the alleys until I thought I was a good distance away.”
Laughter cut through beside her and the magician stopped, “What?” she asked.
Julian’s grin softened and he glanced back up at his living cushion, “The image of you running. As you couldn’t have ran off with your whole stand.”
“Hey, it’s a lot bulkier than you are! Do you know how hard it would be run with a table?”
He laughed harder, a tear pricking at his good eye.
Wally’s hands extended as she mimed its size, “It was this big, Julian! I can’t throw it over my shoulder like I can you! It wasn’t as noodly, the shape it was was the shape it was going to be, no bending allowed. Now I could have maybe ran with it over my head and tried to pole vault over a wall with it. Gods, that would have been fucking hilarious. Just running from the law and all of the sudden boing! out of that bitch like those rubber balls kids chuck at walls to see how far it’ll bounce back. But I wouldn’t bounce back, I’d bounce away into the night like a fucking lemur.” A pause. “Fuck, I did it again. You’re no help at all Julian.”
“Hey now-”
“No, this one is entirely your fault and you can’t tell me otherwise. You’re the one who interrupted. And you wanted to hear this story in the first place.”
“I’m sorry.” His tone of voice said this was only half true.
“Shit, where was I? Right!” Wally’s manicured finger went in the air as she remembered. “So I booked it, right? And I finally got far enough where I felt safe and took a breather. I’m use to running through the streets and all. With what I do, especially when people realize that I’m full of shit most of the time, they tend to want their money back. Or to leave me another gift in a black eye. Either way, they keep my calves in great shape, as you can tell-” A toned leg popped out from beneath the blanket.
“I can, they’re very nice.”
“Thank you.” Wally nodded proudly. “So I’d gotten a fair distance away. But like a weed, he just popped up outta nowhere at the end of the alleyway! I didn’t even have enough time to pull out Susan!” Her arm flung out towards the small stack of cards sitting alone on the dresser. It was a deck Julian had never seen before, different than the set Asra had used to read him in their past. There were fewer in this one, only 40 cards, and the images depicted on their faces were unlike any he’d ever encountered.
In their short time together, Julian had only asked once to get a reading from Wally.
Her response?
‘Even you don’t hate yourself enough to want that.’
“He was just on me! And I tried to be like ‘oh hello, stranger, can I help you on this fine day?’ but we both knew that was bullshit. As I sat there, waiting for the retribution that the gods had promised me ever since I used Susan to change that first legal document, I felt no fear. For it was to be, a just ass whooping. And plus, you’ve seen my biceps, I’m good. They were even more impressive 2 years ago. But he didn’t want to strangle me for telling him his dog that died seven years ago was the reason he could never find the socks he was clearly wearing that day. Nah, that was when he offered to teach me proper magic. And it was fucking wild, man!”
She looked back at Julian, eyes wide, “I know I’ve said that a lot during this tale, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I was so confused by it I was tempted to flick him in the forehead to prove he was real, and was really close to doing it too! And then Faust popped out, and she reminded me of a slightly less cool Lysander, and I was gone. My contract was binding, my shit was moved in, and that was all she wrote. My tale of ‘holy shit that story is just wild enough to get me to this wild moment in my life’ is over and now you know more bullshit about me than you probably wanted.”
Julian was quiet. “I can’t believe it.”
“It’s the truth, man.” Wally shrugged, jostling the man resting on her shoulder.
“I can’t believe you almost cursed Asra.” There was a beat and Julian started laughing, the whole bed shaking with him.
“Hey, he woulda deserved it.” The smile that found its way on Wally’s face soon broke into her own giggles. She flung her head back into the pillows and wiggled down into the mattress so she and Julian were eye level.
“You’re not wrong.” The laughter didn’t leave his voice when he replied and regarded her fondly. Julian’s light eye found hers and a sigh left his lungs.
“You’ll find I rarely am.” Wally smiled before quickly stealing a kiss from his still parted lips.
Julian blinked as an impish grin spread across Wally’s face. The slight smudging of her lipstick caught his notice when she pulled back. “What was that for?”
“You’re attractive and I have no impulse control.” She said flatly before stealing another one.
This time, Julian’s arms snaked around the small magician’s back before she could pull away, his larger frame dwarfing hers as he deepened the kiss. A giggle bubbled up Wally’s throat and she reciprocated, eager to feel more of him across her skin. A lavender clad leg lazily slid up Julian’s as she slotted herself into his empty spacing, filling her senses with nothing but his touch and taste as she claimed him with her own. Nails and teeth and soft groans filled the air the further the past got from their minds. It all fell away until the only thing left was Wally’s fingers pressed into Julian’s hips and the touch of his lips against her ribs. But it still wasn’t enough.
She wouldn’t be sated until he was a mess beneath her, drunk off her touch and begging like he did best.
ao3
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