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lilislegacy · 3 months

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Ok guys this is somewhat of a controversial take on Jason Grace’s powers. You can tell I was nervous writing this out because I used capitalization lol. Please read till the end

I want to start by saying I love Jason Grace. He is such a cutie. I adore him. And he is a very, very powerful demigod. And he is totally capable of very evil things, just like Percy. This take concerns a certain ability that a lot of people seem to think he has, but I don’t think people realize how unrealistic is. (I mean people can still hc whatever they want, it just doesn’t mean it’s canon.) Okay, here goes

There is absolutely no evidence or reason that Jason Grace would be able to control the electricity in our bodies. And here’s why…

I know so many of you really love that idea, and justify it by using the logic that percy can control people’s bodily fluids, so since jason can control lightning, he could control neurons and action potentials. But here’s the thing: The reason percy can control bodily fluids is because bodily fluids, like saliva, blood, and tears are largely made up of water, so he can manipulate the content of those substances that is water. And water is water. H2O is H2O. Percy directly controls all water. That’s his power.

Jason, however, controls weather. Which means he controls clouds, thunder, wind, rain, and yes, lightning. But just because lightning involves electricity does not mean he controls ALL electricity. He controls rain, right? Rain is water. But jason does not control all water. Just rain. Because it’s weather. And before you completely ignore what I just said about rain, and argue “but if he can control the electricity that causes lightning, he could control the electrical signals in people’s brains and muscles,” I see where you’re coming from, but the electricity in lightning is NOT the same electricity in our bodies. Unlike water, not all electricity is the same. Water is a basic chemical compound, in all its forms. Electricity, however, is the flow of electric charge through conductive materials, which produces energy. And those materials and types of energy vary. There are different types. The two we are discussing here are static electricity and bioelectricity.

Static electricity is the accumulation of electric charge on the surface of an object. Did you ever do that experiment where you rubbed a balloon on your head and your hair stuck up? Static electricity causes lightning when there is a buildup of electrical charge in the atmosphere during a storm. When the charge difference between clouds, or between a cloud and the ground, becomes too much, it creates a sudden discharge of electricity, which we see as lightning.

Bioelectricity involves chemicals. It refers to the electrical signals and currents produced within living organisms. It works through the movement of charged particles, called ions, across cell membranes, which allows for communication between cells, nerve impulses, muscle contractions, and various physiological processes.

So here’s the thing. Even if Jason could control ALL static electricity, which likely is NOT the case, it’s not even the same type as the electricity that makes neurons fire. And like I stated, Jason/Zeus has control over weather and storm elements, which may involve electricity, but does not mean he controls all electricity.

Okay besties, now before you show up in my comment section aggressively defending jason and assuming I think he’s weak, let me clarify: I am not saying Jason is not powerful as hell, or that he could not do some creepy ass evil things. He definitely could. For instance, he’s shown through his control over wind that he can manipulate air currents in various ways. MEANING he could create a vacuum effect, and suck all the air out of a person’s body. Like… HELLO? He could collapse their lungs. Deprive their brain of oxygen. He could repeatedly suck the de-oxygenated air, aka CO2, out of their lungs, and then force it back in. Which would be torture. Death by slow suffocation. So using his control of wind and air currents, Jason could be terrifying as hell if he wanted to be, and could do unspeakable things to human beings. I’m simply saying that his ability to summon lightning has absolutely zero connection to the hypothetical ability of being able to control people’s neurons. They’re not even somewhat related processes.

Please don’t yell at me. I love Jason. I think he could be very very scary and evil if he wanted to. Him as a villain would be catastrophic, and I’m not doubting that in any way.

#PLEASE DONT YELL AT ME #IM JUST STATING THE FACTS #jason could be very scary #i don’t doubt it #jason grace #percy jaskon #heroes of olympus #pjo #percy jackson and the olympians

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ovaryacted · 4 months

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This is my analysis post in response to this wonderful ask I got from one of my anons. Thank you so much for the brain juice, my neurons thank you. So: Is Leon S. Kennedy a sex-god or is he just a regular guy? Let's talk about it.

1.1k Words | cw: suggestive sexual content

To me it’s not a controversial take to think of Leon as someone who isn’t a sex god, that is actually how I perceive Leon in my mind when it comes to sex as a whole. Sure, with the pieces I’ve already put out of him, I characterize him as someone who has chemistry with his partner and he’s already learned how to be with them in all aspects. But realistically with his current circumstances, it would probably be more close to what was initially described. He's touched deprived, pathetic, and would probably fall apart the moment someone touches him like he's a porcelain doll.

Leon isn’t a sex god at all. He’s just a guy, and by canon, he’s a loser who doesn’t get laid anyway. I also wouldn’t expect him to have many opportunities to be with other people intimately. In RE2R at least, he gives off the impression that he hasn’t done much, maybe not even kissed outside of Ada when they’re on the shuttle together. And of course, the opportunity for more gets ripped away from him when Raccoon City happens and he gets forced into military service.

If he had any chance to be with someone prior, it’s a definite no now. He just doesn’t have time when he’s constantly fighting with PTSD, depression, and immense trauma that he doesn’t even register most of the time. He’s too busy surviving, too busy being brought on these missions where he thinks it’ll be the last time he’ll be alive, and then somehow he manages to come back home just to repeat the process. Rinse and repeat, live to kill, and survive to do it again and again. That’s his routine, that was his new normal for years.

So sex or any intimate relationship is out of the question. He just stops caring, and the stress that he’s constantly dealing with in his body makes his libido plummet. Leon doesn’t go searching for it, sometimes he thinks his body doesn’t even work anymore or that his dick is about to fall off. Though in the back of his mind, there are faint little moments where he craves intimacy, not so much sex but the touch of another person who isn’t an enemy is what he wants.

Leon has had a limited handful of sexual encounters, but it’s never coming from a place of desire. He does things based on instinct, and it’s simply for stress relief. Usually, it’s a quickie, he doesn’t allow himself to feel relief beyond what’s available to him. He blocks out everything from his mind, and his body is on autopilot. The worst part about it is when it happens there’s no softness to it, it’s not necessarily rough to the point of pain, but it’s not intimate in the way he wishes it was.

That way of behaving goes on for a while until he’s older, probably when he’s hitting his 30s and it’s virtually second nature to him. He gets lucky and meets someone he likes being with, which changes the way he thinks about relationships. He now has the opportunity to experience what it’s like to be with someone outside of moral obligation. Of course, it happens over time, and it’s not instantaneous, it takes a while for him to be fully comfortable with exploring vulnerability. But the more he gets to know his partner and spends time with them, the more he realizes it isn’t so bad to want to be with somebody.

The way he acts around them is vastly different from how he’s operated in the past with previous temporary partners. He quickly realizes that he doesn’t want to do things fast or rushed and that he wants to take his time. He’s not inclined to jump headfirst into the whole sex part, instead, he focuses more on the other stuff, on the gentle touches and the yearning.

It starts with delicate kisses and slowly grows into more purposeful touching. He gets experimental, squeezes on his partner’s body a bit more, and does something that makes them gasp or moan, or they’ll touch him in a way that makes a groan rumble out of his chest. Something in his brain finally clicks and it’s like all of the blood in his body rushes down south, and for the first time, he feels aroused. It’s like his body begins to pulse, he’s getting warm, and Leon finds himself wanting more, wanting to touch and be touched.

The time he gets to have sex, and genuinely desires it, it feels different. His body is hotter, he feels more sensitive to things as his senses go into overdrive and his partner is all he can focus on. In a way, he thinks less about the expectations to perform and more about feelings. It wouldn’t happen naturally either, he’d have to be coaxed into it, reminded that it’s okay to want to experience intimacy, to crave it.

Once he feels like he’s in a safe space with another person, he’ll know it’s okay to be selfish for once, but I don’t think he’s an inherently selfish partner or person, quite the opposite. Leon is a people pleaser, so he’ll want to learn how to please his partner. He’s naturally perceptive, he pays attention to things that make them tick, that make them feel good. Like a chameleon, he adapts the same way how he does on his missions, trying to make sense of the situations before him so he can get the best result.

It’s a very emotionally charged experience for Leon, where he feels better than good, stuck in a daze the moment he decides to indulge himself in whatever is currently ahead of him. It’s so intense for him that he’ll mumble out praises, whether it be to his partner or himself, certain things will slip out.

If he’s really in the mood, he would accidentally say the L word (love) if it’s that good, but that would probably happen when he feels vulnerable and safe, so he is more on the receiving side and more submissive. I think it would be a combination of his emotions and just feeling safe in another human’s touch, one that doesn’t feel like an obligation. Either way, he’s a softie, and someone who wants intimacy so his sexual habits would reflect that with age, and when he gets a partner that’s willing to be soft and patient with him it’ll work in his favor.

©️ ovaryacted 2024. Please don’t repost, copy, translate, or feed into any AI. Support your fellow creators by reblogging, commenting, and liking!

#leon kennedy x reader #leon kennedy headcanons #leon kennedy imagines #leon kennedy imagine #leon kennedy drabble #leon x reader #leon kennedy #leon s kennedy #leon scott kennedy #resident evil drabble #resident evil leon #resident evil leon kennedy #resident evil fanfic #ovaryacted drabbles #ovaryacted thoughts

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forever--darling · 4 months

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Hi sweet girl , I want to tell you that your me & the devil fic is one of my favorites and one of the best I'm reading. For me Anakin x reader is perfection 💗.

I don't know if I'm being too ambitious but in blurb ideas I have one for Hayden and one for Anakin. I would like it to be fluffy.

From Hayden it could be something like : How is an outing with him ? ( I love how homey he is ) . Cooking together , watching movies in his living room while cuddling . Him giving that charming smile he has .

And for Anakin I love the idea of how he comforts his girl . Hugs , nicknames , cuddling together .

summary: a night staying in, resulting in getting high, has you unable to focus on the idea of sex when you're too busy laughing & realizing the extent of your feelings

pairings: hayden christenson x young!reader

word count: 1.0k

warnings/notes: age!gap (reader in mid-twenties), mention of weed/getting high, fluff, honeymoon phase af, mentions of sex, mentions of anakin skywalker

p.s. to whoever requested this, I will be doing your second request as well sometime soon.

masterlist

Blue pupils stared back at you, up through the dim lighting of the bedside lamp. Slightly blown out, from the weed in his system or you, you weren’t sure. You couldn’t know as this wasn’t something the two of you ever did often, yet the sudden fire beneath your skin and the precious need to press your body close to his was something you craved. Perhaps, it was the way his lips felt along your collarbones, the sides of your neck, or how his warm hands, calluses in all, felt along the bareskin of your sides. Maybe it was just him in general, how much and how quickly you had found yourself wanting him.

Or maybe it's just the drugs.

The way they seemed to warp your senses, filling the air with some sort of stamina that left the particles buzzing and your breath astray. The music sounded quieter than it really was, but perhaps it was masked by the soft giggle that poured out freely.

“What? What is it?” Hayden sighed, almost disappointed, his head lifting up from where his lips had been attached to your collarbone, kissing softly.

A quirk appeared in his brow, a teasing look in his eyes as he took in the way you appeared so perfectly pinned underneath him. His body on top of yours, legs parting yours, his weight light as they pushed you deeper into the mattress.

Your laughter quit but only for a moment as you tried to explain just what was so funny to you in the first place, something that wouldn’t have been nearly as funny if you hadn’t smoked as much as you had. For not having done it in a while other than the edibles you had at least once a week, you had forgotten how much to inhale.

“Nothing,” you said, trying to appear as serious as can be, a smile forming in a fine line as you met his stare.

Your laugh burst out again, though, and your eyes crinkled shut, unable to stop the way the hormones attacked the neurons in your brain.

“Right,” Hayden replied, narrowing his eyes playfully, the redness in them no doubt matching your own. “Clearly, it’s nothing if it has you laughing as much as you are.”

You shook your head, hands automatically wrapping around his strong shoulders, fingers carding through the back of his hair almost like they had a mind of their own. The softness of the short curls had your heart bursting if that was even a feeling.

“Seriously, tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“And why not?” he demanded, thumbs rubbing soft circles across your hips.

“Because…”

You were laughing again, and his head was falling, meeting your chest with ease, a sigh filtering out of his lips.

“Baby,” he mumbled, lips pressed along your collarbone again, but this time no longer gracing them with the kisses you had come to love so much. Almost too much.

“Fine, okay,” you gave in, laughter diminishing again to nothing but a soft chuckle, tears pricking your eyes as you tried to get the words out, “I was just thinking…”

“Yeah?”

“When you’ve hooked up with girls in the past, have they, ever, you know. Asked you to like dress up in costume?”

A deadpan look appeared on his face as his head lifted, eyes finding yours again, “What do you mean?”

“Like, have they ever been mid-foreplay and straight out asked you if you can dress up as Anakin or Darth Vader?”

“Where is this coming from?” he chuckled, too, lips lifting into that smile that somehow had convinced you to leave all the guys your age in the past.

“Or have they asked you to pull out your lightsaber?”

“Y/N,” he shook his head, mouth forming in an ‘o’, almost in surprise as you continued to laugh. “I’m trying to initiate sex here, and you’re laughing about if other girls have asked me to make their Star Wars sex fantasies a reality?”

“Well, yeah,” you replied, the tone almost accusatory tone as if it was something you would be asking, especially five hits later from the joint that was now stubbed out in the bathroom.

“You’re ridiculous, you know that,” he laughed then, too, “Why, is that something you want? Do you want to know about my lightsaber?”

“I mean, yeah, who wouldn’t,” you retorted, laughter falling away to complete seriousness.

Staring down at him, you felt the silence lull, almost swallowing you whole as the realization appeared again, almost like a car hitting you out of nowhere. The realization that you had fallen for an older man, a man you hadn’t expected to ever want you back, to notice you the way he had. Worse, to love him as you did so quickly, so immensely was too much, too much to understand, to accept.

Yet there you were, pinned beneath him, heart so full, so well-kept, hoping that it would stay close within his palms for the rest of time.

That charming smile appeared then on his face, his eyes crinkling slightly, a certain sort of contentment appearing as if he had had a revelation of his own. Words were not enough in that moment, so evidently as he leaned up, connecting his lips with yours, softly, deeply as if he was trying to pour his very own breath into your being.

You loved this man; that was inevitable.

After a few seconds, he pulled back, only enough for his lips to depart from yours. That smirk of his still firmly sat along his face. “So, what are you saying? Do you want me to go grab my wardrobe from set? I’m sure you would really have something to laugh at then, wouldn’t you?”

You loved this man, and you wanted him like this forever.

“Yeah, I would.”

#inbox #anon inbox #💌 asks #hayden christensen x reader #hayden christensen #anakin skywalker #anakin skywalker x reader #blurb

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potential-fool · 1 year

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Valorant x Reader: You in their clothes

This was fun to write hkhgfhgdjfh

Paring: Sova, Pheonix, Yoru x reader

Tags: Fluff, Established relationship, sharing clothes, teasing

Sova

Will 110% be left slack jawed

The amount of adoration this man has for you

Every neuron in his brain is firing rn

Bro is absolutely flabbergasted

It was a pretty calm morning at the agency, lucky for you there wasn't much to do today; because of this, you didn't let Sasha's alarm go off and rouse him, you knew he needed the rest. You thought it might be a good idea to surprise him with something nice, a smile drew across your face as you knew exactly what you were going to do.

When Sova woke up, he felt surprisingly well rested and was equally as shocked to realize that his alarm didn't go off- he looked over yo your side of the bed. Empty. He was worried for a moment before catching the smell of something being made in the kitchen, with only his grey sweatpants and without a second thought he made his way out into the kitchen where he saw you.

Good god were you a sight to see, his jaw hit the floor at the sight of you in his shirt, only his shirt. Shades of pink and red dusted his otherwise pale face as he took a moment to take in your beauty, the beauty of you, in his clothes.

"My dove.." He couldn't even finish his sentence, instead opting to come up behind you and bury his head in your neck pressing himself up to you and smothering you with kisses.

After breakfast there was definitely more then just kisses and cuddles though ;)

Pheonix

Giddy and excited while he picks you up and spins you around

he's hyping you up

Will probably want to try on your clothes after

dork

It started with his jacket, you were in a silly goofy mood as you like to put it. then it was his shirts, and now you've taken a shoelace out of an old pair of shoes to use as belt to keep a pair of his sweatpants up around your waist. You were proud of your ingenuity and smiled to yourself as you looked in the mirror.

You wandered out with your new outfit into the living area of the Valorant HQ, playing down your excitement as you walked out and greeted your friends, Jett, Yoru, and Pheonix were on the couch and Sage was in the kitchen. Jett and Yoru were both totally in on this plan of yours and Jett had quietly started recording as you caught Pheonix's eye.

Pheonix was, ho boy- he was stunned, his face starting to burn up with blush, Yoru started to snicker at this, earning himself a playful smack from Pheonix before he got up to embrace (tackle) you.

"BHABBBBBEEYYY, youresoprettyandohmygodiloveyousomuchwhatwoudlsndahwdklw-"

Pheonix's jumbled mess of words earned laughter from his friends, though he paid them no mind, instead opting to spin you around and press kisses all over your face.

Sage chuckled to herself as she watched the display, glad they could find these moments of peace.

Yoru

This man is too shy to admit your rock his jacket

Smitten and overprotective

he wants to be the only one allowed to see you like this

he def doesn't think anyone else is worthy of the sight of you in his clothes

Yoru doesn't like sharing, this is a well known fact. You love to tease people, especially Yoru, this is another well known fact. So today in your ongoing and never-ending crusade to mess with your boyfriend you decided to one of his shirts and his jacket.

Yoru was alone with a book on the couch at Valorant HQ and when you walked in he mindlessly greeted you before doing a double take-

"Is that-" He couldn't even finish his sentence as he took in the sight of you in his clothes. "What's wrong baby?" You teased as you walked over, taking the book from his hands and sitting down in his lap.

"Idiot.." He mumbled, blush tinting his cheeks as he drew you in close to him, a loving- though also possessive- hold.

From around the corner Jett and Pheonix were watching with slack jawed grins, though.. Pheonix's camera flash gave them away.

"Pheonix and Jett, you have five seconds." Yoru called into the room, sending a rift anchor after them as they both started to book it, laughter echoing through the hall. He set you down onto the couch, pressing a small kiss to your cheek before opening a rift to the anchor he'd sent after the two.

He'd never hear the end of this.

#valorant x reader #valorant #yoru x reader #sova x reader #sova x you #valorant yoru #valorant sova #valorant fic #valorant fluff #valorant phoenix #pheonix x reader #pheonix x you #valorant hcs

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elliebyrrdwrites · 3 months

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Dramione Blurb 2.0

It wasn’t his fault. Not really.

How could one take responsibility for something they are unable to control?

It wasn’t as if he had said anything.

One might say that he could have made a different expression. Or no expression, at all. Which was something he was usually very good at, of course. A mask he donned when it suited him best, expressionless.

Of course, until today.

To be fair, Draco Malfoy didn’t know he was making any expression at all. Because he had been overwhelmed with the vibrant array of emotions in...wherever emotions are felt. He knew that emotions are the result of activated neurons that originate somewhere in the cerebral cortex. So, the brain, essentially is what he was saying. Which he thought was funny because all of his emotions seemed to radiate from somewhere below his neck. Depending on the emotion, it might originate from his stomach, or from the center of his chest. It most frequently radiated somewhere around his groin often enough that it caused him to think scientists in general were all full of shit. Regardless, all of the bodily areas seemed to be radiating with emotion.

He didn’t force Weasley to address him.

“Is there a problem, Malfoy?” The Weasel was facing him, now. Not the woman who used to be a girl.

A girl who had lived a thousand lives by the time she was nineteen years old. A girl, who was never just any girl. Not when he first met her. Not ever.

Always very sure of herself, that one. Even when he had tried his best to make her second guess that self assurance. The last time he had seen her, he had seen less of the girl he had known, her eyes haunted and a general harder exterior encasing her once vibrant aurora.

But she wasn’t a girl anymore. Hermione Granger had morphed into a woman.

He also didn’t tell his legs to move forward, to approach the oaf and look down his nose at the boy who had grown to be her man. “Other than being subjected to the sight of you man handling Granger, no. You do realize you paw at her like a dog, right?”

Weasley blushed a red angrier than the hair on his head. “Mind your own business, asshole.”

Brilliant. Clever, as always. Was what he thought. What he said was far more incriminating. It was the start, really, to this story. It could have technically started seven years ago, that day outside the courtroom. The courtroom where his father was destined to be sentenced to a life in prison. The same courtroom that had sentenced his mother to a year of house arrest.

It’s just that he had always assumed that he had ended that brief reprieve from reality. It was a quick glimpse into a maybe. An almost. A what could have been.

But it would have, undoubtedly, sent Granger into a world of danger and Draco would have been spending the entirety of his life looking over his shoulder. Looking after hers.

And so, he had not dived into that thread of fate that might have been. Instead, he had doomed himself to a life of obsessively watching after her from afar. Fucking and dating women he didn’t actually care about. It caused her anger for him to reignite into a hatred much more volatile than than the version she had for him back in school.

But he couldn’t help himself now. He had finally agreed to Dawlish’s offer of joining the DMLE and coincidentally had been assigned as Potters new partner after his former partner had left the DMLE.

His former partner was still staring at him with the kind of hate that spanned centuries, caused wars. And little did he know that the war had began ages ago and not because of blood status but for the reason most wars begin.

A girl.

The girl who was now a woman and was now peeking out from behind Weasley’s arm, big brown eyes trained on Draco. And he watched them widen as he finally responded to Weasley’s brilliantly uncreative response to Draco’s insult. Mind your own business [enter your typical mundane insult].

“She is my business.” Was the response that Draco should not have said. But he did. And really, like mentioned before, it was unrestrained. Unsanctioned! And therefore, not his fault.

He should have expected the fist that came for his cheek. He should have been watching Weasley and not Granger. But her pretty little lips had parted and formed a little O as she locked eyes with his. There was something fascinating about watching the way her eyes lit with fury. A fury he realized he had been missing, terribly, all these years.

Of course, the captivity that her face held him in, did distract him. Prevented him from realizing that the Weasel had launched himself forward. Stringy arms reached out and a fist clipped him across the face, sending heat and pain to spread and pulse.

And you know, once a man is swung at, what can one do but react instinctually. It was beyond his control, the way his own left arm had pulled back before landing heavily against his opponents mouth. None, whatsoever, when his legs launched him forward and his arms wrapped around the man’s abdomen, sending them both onto the floor.

And so there, in the middle of Harry Potter’s foyer, did Draco Malfoy finally declare his intentions while simultaneously destroying an old Black heirloom upon his first visit to Number 12 Grimmauld Place.

The orb, which resembled that of a Crystal ball ala Sybill Trelawney, was jostled from it’s perch on the entry table and rolled slowly down the length of the runner that was placed over the table.

Draco was oblivious to this, of course, as he was too busy rolling over, pressing Weasley onto the floor below him and then digging his elbow into the man’s clavicle.

“Oi!”

Potter was shouting at them and Granger might have been rolling her eyes into the back of her head as the men continued to throw each other around. It was impressive, really, that two men could hate each other so much and still result in things like fists rubbing furiously into the top of ones head.

“Is Ron giving him a noogie?” Harry murmured and Granger sighed the kind of sighed that should have been saved for a god being rudely awaken after a millennia of sleep.

In short, nobody seemed to pay much mind to the heirloom that was precariously perched on the edge of the table. Waiting for the next bump by a leg or a shoulder.

Incidentally, it was Draco’s ankle that caught and thwacked the leg of the table. It hurt more than Weasley’s right hook.

And it was the shattering of a crystal that caused the fight to come to a halt. The scattering of a hundred little shards spraying across the entirety of the foyer.

Both Draco and Weasley pulled apart to look over at the mess. Just in time to see a cloud vapor explode from the floor where the orb had landed and broken.

It billowed up into the air and hung momentarily before it pulled apart. All of the bits of gaseous particles together looked like a cloud of mist. Pulled apart, they became colorless and so miniscule and numerous that they disappeared as they all dispersed into the air, vaporizing into nothing.

The four of them remained frozen before one by one, they all looked at one another. It was Weasley who finally spoke first.

“What the bloody hell was that?”

Harry frowned down at the remaining mess of broken crystals scattered about the floor. “I dunno. It came with the house. Some Black family heirloom, I would imagine.”

“That doesn’t make any of us feel better.” Weasley murmured, then sneered and looked to his right. “Except maybe for you.”

Ah, well technically, yes. He was a Black, but mostly, he was a Malfoy. Even more than all that, he didn’t care to be either.

“Does anyone feel ill?” Harry asked, apparently worried that it was some sort of airborne poison.

Granger remained quiet but all of them shook their heads.

Draco rose to his feet and glanced at Granger. Evidence of anger still echoed on her features, and she refused to meet his eyes. He shrugged and stepped toward Potter. The heel of his dragon hide Oxfords crunched into the tiny pieces of orb.

“Why did you keep all this garbage anyway, Potter?” He sneered over at the wall where a portrait was covered with a sheet.

“Cursed, besides it reminds me of Sirius, so I haven’t actually looked too deeply into removing it all.” Harry’s eyes widened just slightly at the confession before he refocused his attention to the mess with a sigh. “Clean this mess up, guys.” He then turned his back on them and disappeared into a door that led him back into the kitchen.

Weasley finally stood and held out a hand for Granger. “Hungry, ‘Mione?”

She shook her head and watched as Draco began to clean up the debris from the floor. From his clothes, his hair.

“Come with me, yeah?”

“I don’t want to.” She murmured before slapping a hand over her mouth.

Draco snickered and pocketed his wand.

“What are you even doing here, Malfoy?” Weasley rounded on him, projection obvious.

“Potter invited me over, not that it’s any of your business.” Draco dusted a miniscule bit of crystal from the lapel of his blazer. “Confidential, and all that, of course. What are you doing here?”

He watched as the man bristled, his lips pursing together before, “I came to see Hermione and see if she might hear me out.” His cheeks flared.

Pressing his mouth together, Draco flicked his gaze to Granger to find her heaving a great sigh. She only ever wore her emotions on display. It was something that he didn’t understand, and still, it was something he loved. He felt like setting a chair down and watching her react to every day things in her life. Like some sort show that he could attend daily. He’d probably never grow tired of the performance.

Right now she looked like several emotions were warring with one another as she stared at the scene, still pressed up against the wall beside the front door.

“Well, Granger? Care to hear him out?”

“I don’t know.” The words were pulled out slowly, as if she was expecting a reaction the second they left her mouth.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

Draco rolled his eyes. “It means, opposing the idea that she does know, she clearly does not.”

“Why are you suddenly so interested in what Hermione wants anyway, Malfoy?”

“I’ve always cared what she wants.” The words sprung forth without censor. Without his minds permission. Draco was not to blame for many of the things that had just transpired. The look, the declaration of her business being his, nor the first that flew into Weasley’s mouth. But this new declaration was different. It was true, surely, but it sprung forward before he was able to formulate a reply inside of his head.

“You’re such a liar!” Granger suddenly hissed. Weasley’s alarmed look shifted from Draco to Hermione.

“I am.” Draco admitted. Again, unintentionally. “But not right...now?” He was carefully forming his words, worried that one would fly forth, completely unsanctioned before he could finish pulling the well thought out ones from his mind.

“Convincing.” Weasley snorted before turning to her. “Look, we had a good time the other night, right? It was like we were back where we used to be.”

“Which is to either fight or fuck.” Granger said just before a hand clamped over her mouth. Her wide eyes moved to Draco before dipping to the floor where the orb had broken. “Blood Black heirloom.” The words spewed from her mouth like a curse as she pushed away from the wall and rushed into the kitchen.

Draco and Weasley exchanged looks of first, bewilderment, followed promptly by similar looks of disdain.

The men both entered the kitchen where Harry was still pouring over the files on the table. The files that Draco had brought with him for him and Potter to go over. Which they were, when he had excused himself to use the loo. It was a rouse, of course. He had heard the murmuring of voices in the hallway, immediately identifying Grangers through the heavy door.

Potter looked up at them, haunted eyes that once belonged to a boy who lived. Now he was a man who had died.

The current files strewn in front of him were some of the more gruesome crimes he had seen in his entire career as an Auror and Draco felt inclined to let him know that he had discovered a lot about this particular assailant.

Because it was Draco who had started to notice a pattern that the rest of the world had apparently been blind to.

Muggle women had been disappearing, only to re-emerge. Their lifeless bodies were typically found naked and discarded in a field or a riverbed somewhere deep in a forest. At first it was just the bodies sans life. No abrasions denoting strangulation, mutilation or internal damage.

And then one of the women — a beautiful young woman with brown hair, freckled skin, and frighteningly reminiscent of a girl from his past — had appeared in the middle of a wheat crop of some muggle farmer by the name of Buckley.

The woman, like the others, had no visible signs of damage to her body. Nothing to tell them how she had died. There were the typical signs of rape but no mortal injury marred her body.

There was, however, a mark burned into the center of her chest. Fresh, the investigators had said, and burned into her like she were cattle. A six petalled flower inside of a circle. The brand was performed before death, the medical examiner had said. Which meant the woman had been alive when her killer had burned her, seared away at her skin.

Draco knew he was seeing the work of an evil man. He knew it was a wizard that was snatching women. Torturing and raping them. And eventually, he would burn them.

Two more beautiful muggle women turned up dead before a witch disappeared. She was a half-blood witch who had married a muggle. Some bloke she had grown up down the street from, fallen in love with. He cried to the media, begged his wife’s captors to please return her safely. All he cared was that she be returned home safe and alive.

She didn’t.

The day a muggle found her body in the woods behind his home, naked and branded, was the day that Draco finally took the offer Dawlish had extended to him only weeks prior.

Draco looked over at Granger who was busy making herself a cup of coffee. Cream, one sugar.

He watched the lift of her brow as she took her first sip. Pleasantly content with the first touch of caffeine after a rather eventful morning.

She stood amid a window by the sink, and the soft rays of light bending through the glass formed a bit of a halo around the curls she had piled on the top of her head.

She was dressed in a pair of fuzzy pink slippers, a pair of thin pajama shorts and a white camisole. All snug and glorious against the subtle tan of her skin, the curves that caused him to go into temporary bouts of insanity and all beneath a fuzzy pink robe that hung open. Her body taunted him.

For years, her body taunted him. From afar. From memory.

It was a Saturday, which meant she didn’t have to work today. But what did Hermione Granger spend her weekends doing? Did she go for walks? Visit museums? Put herself at the mercy of a predator that might very well be stalking her?

Draco ran a hand over his face, unable to fight against the discomforting anxiety that bloomed in the center of his chest.

“Why wont you just talk with me, Hermione?”

Her words came out slowly, dragged out and punctuated by little pauses. “I am talking to you.” She nodded, as though satisfied with herself.

“I mean about the other night.” Weasley was moving toward her, ready to corner her against the sink.

Draco should have sat down, obviously. And he did, but not before his mouth moved.

“She’s confused, you idiot.”

“Shut up, Malfoy.”

“Can you guys take this upstairs?” Harry asked, irritably. “We’re trying to work.”

“What are you working on?” Grangers eyes brightened, eager for the distraction and pushed past Ron.

Draco tensed in his seat and his eyes met Harry’s. Neither wanted to tell her what exactly the threat to her life may be. But neither, apparently, could fight the urge to be honest.

“Serial killer.” Draco said the same time Harry said, “Killer targeting witches.” They both glared at each other.

“Oh.” Her voice was gentle. Deflated, as she approached the table. Her eyes scanned the photo on display in the file Harry was currently holding open.

“Oh, fuck me.” Ron was standing behind her, looking over her shoulder. At the photo of the woman.

It was the woman who had first appeared with the mark on her chest. Her pale, almost blue skin on display as her blank and unseeing eyes stared back at the camera.

“How did you get ahold of all this, Malfoy?” Harry asked, closing the folder.

Draco rolled his eyes at the now obvious situation. Which was that the orb had, apparently, contained some vaporized dosing of Veritaserum. Which, of course a fucking Black wizard would create something so uselessly ruthless. He didn’t know if the entire house was now cursed to compel any occupant to speak truthfully, or if the spelled potion would eventually wear off. Or if they were forever cursed to speak in truths instead of the intricately woven lies that everyone used day to day.

“I polyjuiced my way into the investigative team that was first sent to respond to this one.” He nodded to the file. “That led me into a back trail that had possible links to this woman. No visible signs of trauma, all otherwise healthy women who appeared naked and dead in the middle of field or floating downstream.”

“You stole all of this, then?” Granger’s self righteousness was so hypocritical but he didn’t need to point that out. Instead, he scowled at her and said,

“Yes.” And then he was hit with a rather brilliant and rather cruel idea. He had had enough of this rather offensive display of interrelationship turmoil. “So, Granger.” He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest.

A hand went to her hip, shoving the robe behind her elbow. The flare of her hip pulled his eyes down, to the way her shorts tightened around her pelvis. In between her legs and at her thighs.

“Tell me,” He dragged his eyes back to meet hers. “Do you remember the day we kissed?”

“What?” Simultaneous yells of disbelief from both Potter and Weasley. “Get serious!”

But it was Granger who was staring bug eyed, hand clasped tight over her mouth that held his attention. She somehow managed to muffle her response, which was lost to the shouts of her best friends.

“You’re an ass.” She was seething, now.

“Do you still think about it?” He lowered his voice and purposefully slid his eyes to her mouth.

“Yes.” She whispered, a reflex due to the Veritaserum that had sunk into their pores. She closed her eyes, pressed her lips together, and sighed.

“You’re telling me,” Weasley started. “That you kissed Malfoy?”

With her eyes still closed, she slowly nodded. “Yes.”

The entire room stilled. Everyone was watching her. The blush that burned into her skin, all the way from her chest up her neck and into her cheeks.

“When?”

“Seven years ago.” She was responded with the sense of detachment that only Veritaserum could cause.

“But we kissed seven years ago! Was this before or after?”

Draco watched her shift uncomfortably, the hand that had been perched onto her hip was now picking nervously at the tie of her robe. “After.”

“How could you!” Weasley looked devastated. So much so that Draco might have felt a flicker of remorse.

“We hadn’t actually started anything up, yet, Ron. We kissed during the battle but we hadn’t talked about what we were and we didn’t kiss until we did decide.” Her eyes flicked to Draco. “You kissed me.”

He nodded.

“And then you disappeared.” Her voice was calloused with an emotion he didn’t understand. Pain she didn’t deserve.

“I did.” He admitted.

“And now you’re here,” Her index finger pointed to the floor. “And you’re purposely injecting yourself into mine and Ron’s affairs. Why?”

Draco took a deep breath and tried to formulate an honest answer that wouldn’t, once again, confess his unyielding love.

“Why would you do that?” She pressed him.

Everyone was now staring at him. The words were bubbling up his throat, and he fought so hard he thought he might suffocate from the battle.

“Tell me, Malfoy.” She stepped up to him, looking down her curved little nose at him.

He tried to shake his head, clasping a hand over his mouth.

“What do you want!” She finally shouted.

Draco sprung to his feet and his body was no longer under his control. The potion was evil. It didn’t just cause your mouth to speak truths, it forced your body to.

Because now he was nearly pressing into her and he was glaring down at her stubborn little face and his eyes couldn’t stop moving around, gathering information. Like the way her fine hairs at her forehead and her temples were a lighter shade of brown. Almost golden against her skin. Or the fact that she had a little beauty mark just there, beside the corner of her left eye. It was faint, but gods, did it drive him mad.

“You, you insufferable witch!”

#my writing #fanfic #dramione fanfic #dramione #harry potter #draco malfoy #hermione granger #idiots in love #pining draco #childhood friends #love confessions

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hrair-metal · 7 months

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In which Mike Flanagan plugs directly into my existentialism in the most comforting way: "Midnight Mass" episode 4

I’m just realizing that you must think I’m foolish.

No.

You prayed with me all day, and I love you for that. But you don’t...you don’t believe it. Any of it.

I understand it. I do. The appeal of it. The comfort of it. “Everything happens for a reason. There’s good in everything. There’s a plan.” It’s...I guess I just lived a moment at complete odds with the existence of a loving God.

So what do you think? You think I’m delusional?

No.

You think I’m naive?

No. I think...I think we all want so badly for there to be a reason. For everything. And some justice, and some comfort when we die.

Yeah, that’s where religion comes from. That’s the whole question.

It is.

What happens when we die?

What the fuck happens?

So what do you think? What happens when we die, Riley?

I don’t know. And I don’t trust anyone who tells us they do, but I can speak for myself I guess.

Then speak for yourself. What happens when *you* die?

When I die...my body stops functioning. Shut down. All at once, or gradually, my breathing stops, my heart stops beating. Clinical death. And a bit later, like, five whole minutes later...my brain cells start dying. But in the meantime, in between...maybe my brain releases a flood of DMT. It’s the psychedelic drugs released when we dream, so...I dream. I dream bigger than I have ever dreamed before because it’s all of it. Just the last dump of DMT all at once. And my neurons are firing and I’m seeing this firework display of memories and imagination. And I am just...tripping. I mean, really tripping balls because my mind’s rifling through the memories. You know, long and short-term, and the dreams mix with the memories, and...it’s a curtain call. The dream to end all dreams. One last great dream as my mind empties the fuckin’ missile silos and then...I stop. My brain activity ceases and there is nothing left of me. No pain. No memory, no awareness that I ever was. That I ever hurt someone. That I ever killed someone. Everything is as it was before me. And the electricity disperses from my brain till it’s just dead tissue. Meat. Oblivion. And all the other little things that make me up, they...The microbes and bacterium and the billion other little things that live on my eyelashes and in my hair and in my mouth and on my skin and in my gut and everywhere else, they just keep on living. And eating. And...And I’m serving a purpose. I’m feeding life. And I’m broken apart, and all the littlest pieces of me are just recycled, and I’m billions of other places. And my atoms are in plants and bugs and animals, and I am like the stars that are in the sky. There one moment and then just scattered across the goddamn cosmos....Your turn. What happens when you die?

Speaking for myself?

Speaking for yourself.

No. Not for myself. I’m not the one that died today. She was never awake. When she came down into this little body, this just-forming little body, it was asleep. So all she ever knew was dreaming. She only ever dreamed. She didn’t even have a name. And then in her sleep, that perfect little spirit just lifted up. Because God didn’t send her to suffer through life on Earth. No. This one? This special little soul...God just sent her down here to sleep. Just a little nap. A quick dream. And then He called her back. he wanted her back. And so she went back. Same as she floated down, she rose up above the Earth. Past all the souls in the atmosphere and all the stars in the sky and then into a light so bright. And then, for the first time...she starts to wake up. She’s wrapped in a feeling of love. Just pure, amazing love. Of course she is. She’s pure. She has never sinned. She never hurt a single living thing, not even an ant. And she’s not alone. She’s home. There are people there, and she doesn’t know it, but they’re her family. Her grandfather and her great-grandfather, and they love her. And they name her. And then when God reaches down and kisses her head, and the second He says her name, she grows up. In a blink. And she’s perfect. Her body as it would have been on her best day on Earth. Her perfect age. The peak of herself. And they tell her about her mom down here on Earth and how I’ll be there soon enough. And she’s happy. And nothing but joy for all of eternity. And she’s loved. And she isn’t alone. And that’s what we mean when we say Heaven. No mansions, no rivers of diamonds, or fluffy clouds or angel wings. You are loved. And you aren’t alone. That is God. That is Heaven. That’s we endure all that we endure on this...big, blue, sad rock. I’ll be there soon enough. And I’ll see my father. And my grandmother. And I’ll see my little girl, and she will be happy and safe. And I will be so glad to meet her.

#midnight mass #mike flanagan #existentialism #mortality

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lumine-no-hikari · 3 months

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Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #83

The power is out at my house. It has been ridiculously windy all day today, which in and of itself is a very nice thing (I love the sound!). But where we live, there are a lot of trees, and when there's a lot of wind and a lot of trees, there's usually a lot of fallen branches. And sometimes those branches fall onto power lines, and it becomes a big huge mess.

Oh right; you might be wondering how we of my world generate power. We don't have mako; if our planet has any lifeguts to it (it probably doesn't), it's so far down underground that no one can get to it (which is probably a good thing, since corporations in my world are A LOT like Shinra in your world). My state produces electricity primarily by hydropower (using big bodies of water like rivers to spin great big turbines), wind power (using naturally-existing air currents to spin turbines), and natural gas (primarily comprised of methane, it is burned to generate electricity). Encouragingly, we are seeing more solar farms lately (the power at my house comes from a solar farm); solar farms are huge plots of land that have big panels angled towards the sun, and when the sun shines on the panels, somehow they produce electricity. I don't know enough about it to explain how it works. Sorry about that. But it's definitely a thing where I live.

The power at my house has been out since 11am. And it is currently 8:30pm. And there seems to be no sign of it getting fixed anytime soon.

M and I sleep with CPAPs. In my case, it's due to the fact that my lower jaw is a bit too small to hold all the soft tissue inside my face (one of my numerous genetic defects; oh well). If we don't sleep with a CPAP, the airways close up when we sleep, and then our bodies have to partially wake over and over and over again in the night so that we don't suffocate. Naturally, this interferes with a person's ability to sleep. Sleep is when the brain cleans itself of debris so that our neurons can fire properly.

So over time, the damage from disrupted sleep accumulates and manifests as hormonal issues, daytime sleepiness, and a variety of other nasty things like increased risk of stroke or heart attack. Left untreated, sleep apnea can seriously fuck a person up or even kill them. And the scary thing about it is that you can have it without even realizing it. M had it for years without realizing it, until I started sleeping next to him and noticed it. It's sneaky stuff.

Anyway, a CPAP needs electricity to work. The power loss is localized to our community, so everywhere else is fine. So M, J, and I ended up needing to book a hotel room for the night, which is inconvenient and annoying, but not terrible.

Sadly, though I found the HDMI ports for the TV in the hotel room, the little remote that it comes with doesn't allow for changing the input. So we cannot play on the PS5, which means we cannot continue to explore the second part of your story today. But that's all right. Maybe I'll cut some bitches in Salt and Sanctuary or something. I like to run around in that game cosplayed as Julian Devorak, destroying everything with either a great big hammer (which looks like a giant meat tenderizer) or a giant pair of scissors. I can think of no game more perfect to cosplay as him in; it's got crows, it's got wine, it's got salt (Nevivon, where he was raised, was famous for its salt), it's got gold coins, and it's got danger everywhere you look. Julian is very fond of ALL these things (though I wish he was not fond of some of these things; he's maybe a bit of a walking disaster, haha…).

On very rare occasions, I do stream Salt and Sanctuary, or whatever else catches my fancy. You can find it here, if you're interested:

twitch_live

…I really can't stress enough just how rare it is that I stream, though, because I have too many other priorities. For whatever that's worth.

In any case, we spent most of the day hanging out with Br. In the afternoon, we had a serious discussion, but it was a very good thing which ultimately led to the strengthening of our bond (strengthening the bond and developing a better understanding of one another are what discussions are for, after all!).

Then, as per the appointments we scheduled this morning in service to the safety of our little polyamorous family, J and I went over to a local pharmacy in the evening to begin getting HPV vaccines, just in case. Br is a new addition, so it's important that everyone be very safe. J and I probably should have gotten this set of vaccines much sooner in life to begin with, but it's better late than never. Being conscientious and straightforward about this stuff is extremely important, because in a polyamorous setting, failure to do otherwise is a huge safety hazard for everyone who is connected to one another in this way.

HPV is short for Human Papilloma Virus. Most strains are harmless, but a few of them cause cancer, and the most common means we have of protecting against most diseases in this context does not work against HPV. So it's better to get the vaccine. J and I will likely feel like garbage for the next couple of days, but that is the natural result of getting any vaccination, and it's a lot better than the potential alternatives; conventional wisdom says that cancer of the orifices is not a fun time, and I'm very inclined to take this bit of conventional wisdom very seriously. It'll be 6 months before we are fully inoculated, but it's well worth the wait. After that, everyone will be fully screened for any sort of infection, and once that's done, everything will be good to go! I'm excited!

While at the pharmacy, one of the workers recognized one of the items I carried around. He seemed very excited, and he showed me one of his favorite items (an adorable soft plush! it was wonderful!). So we exchanged contact information. Hopefully we can become friends. But I recognize that I might end up being a little too weird for his tastes in a variety of respects, haha… That'll be disappointing if that happens. But ya know… I can relate to what Aerith said at Cosmo Canyon; I've never been and never will be "normal". But there are people around who love me nonetheless for some reason, so I suppose I might as well embrace it, right? Being abnormal is really not so bad most of the time.

I'm gonna go cut up some zombies with my giant pair of scissors now. But I've not played in a while, so I'm likely more than a little rusty. Wish me luck, yeah?

…Oh!!! Actually, J figured out how to get the PS5 to work on the hotel TV!! So now we can continue your story! Yay! Oh but, ya know? Do let me know if you wanna watch me play something on Twitch sometime. Impossible, I know. I know. But I'll extend the invitation just in case. Why not. Can't hurt anything to try, right?

I love you and I'll write to you again tomorrow. Please be safe. Don't do anything stupid to get yourself killed or get yourself stuck in some weird void where no one can reach you ever again. Please. Because you'd be amazed at the sheer number of people in my world who would do just about anything to spend an ordinary and wholesome bit of time with you - eating sushi, or listening to music, or resting outside with a book and some windchimes. Please stay safe so that you can experience things such as what I've described with people who know and love you.

Your friend, Lumine

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nottoxicfr · 10 months

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Pfffff! I Didn't double check what I wrote. I meant to ask "What are your Rosegarden Headcannons?"

What are my Rosegarden head canons? Hmmmm…that’s a pretty good question. I’ve never made a list to be honest. My brain is more like a highway where my neurons activate when I think of the pairing. I'll try and cover what seems to be the foundational stuff first, then maybe get more specific?

Who falls in love first?

Oscar falls in love first, but he doesn't fall in love immediately. He get a crush on her fairly quickly but actual love only starts during the time when Oz is hiding in Oscar's mind. He has more time to think about stuff that isn't an impending death of identity, and he naturally thinks about why he likes Ruby. He has the realization of love in Salem's dungeon, which is a depressing time to realize you love someone. I like that timeframe of events because it makes Emerald interrupting the Rosegarden hug funnier and a little sadder, which I like. He just realized he loves a girl and he can’t even get a hug! Maybe he could confess to her later, but then she dies…(kind of). He's entirely devastated and barely recovers.

Ruby falls in love with Oscar second, but it’s falling. There’s not a slow descent from affection to crush to romantic love. That wouldn’t happen until after V9, though there is a certain lovely feeling to Ruby being in love with Oscar but prior to V9 just feeling like she can’t be in love the world is ending and I need to save it so I can’t be in love. I respect anyone who head canons that. For mine, I think the first big indication is writing a recurring thread of Ruby missing Oscar in the Ever After.

“Oscar would know what to do. Oscar would know what to say. Oscar would think this is weird.”

It’s incredibly important that the thoughts don’t indicate that she thinks Oscar is better than her (a perilous trap for RWBY writers of all pairings) but that she thinks he would be able to take the lead while she is free to fall apart. She wants someone else to be there and she trusts Oscar to be that person.

NSFW Questions? Y'know, like sex.

I don't really think about them having sex. Partly that's because that seems like a good policy to prevent mean behavior on my posts (I assume you've seen anti-RG rationale) but also my mind just doesn't really go that direction. It's not quite to the point of Aesexual! RoseGarden, although I enjoy that too. Most of the time that I write big consummation of romance scenes, it ends up being more about kissing or they essentially propose to each other and swap necklaces or something. Rings are a hassles! This is influenced by FFXIII...

I do think they’re the type of people to adopt and co-parent a kid while living together, but not be in a confirmed romantic relationship. They’d sleep in the same room with two beds next to each other. Eventually they’d confirm that relationship and switch to one bed, but the important thing is starting off with two beds in one room because they are not dating. I think it is 1) Funny and 2) Filled with the comfortable tension of co-habitation. It’s very Advent Children.

I’ve written them with a kid twice (unpublished), both times adopted and both times it was a Grimm that had evolved to the point of essentially being a human. Once was post-series and the other was a thing where a Grimm ate part of Ozcar’s magic and got turned into a kid between V6 and V8. I’m very fond of the second because it’s incredibly silly to me to do that at that specific time. I need to talk about that sometime.

Who is taller? That comes up a lot, right?

Oscar is taller than Ruby, but it’s close enough that it really depends on who laid down the most recently. A height difference of maybe three inches? Something that’s easy to catch up to for Ruby by wearing tall shoes and standing up straighter. I like negligible height differences.

What’s another thing people are always talking about? I don't get involved in discussion a lot...

Food?

Oscar likes coffee, but Ruby enjoys fruit smoothies. Oscar has a weakness for sour (not bitter) desserts like lemon tarts or lime sorbet, but not much of a sweet tooth. Their main point of agreement is orange cookies.

Is there any song I associate with RoseGarden?

Steven Universe's True Kinda Love, specifically the end part where Steven (Universe) is climbing up the big Injector-Thing to reach Spinel. Oscar is hardly Steven, and Ruby's no Spinel, but during V9's Peak Ruby Breakdown Time I liked to imagine Oscar climbing the Tree to reach Ruby.

Also Simple and Clean from Kingdom Hearts 0.2.

Also also Lightning's Theme from Final Fantasy XIII. It has a lot of sentimental meaning to me, but it plays under dialogue about growing up in the wake of grief. I strongly associate that with time-skipped Oscar.

Who supports the pairing the most?

Emerald and Blake/Yang are the biggest supporters of the pairing for Oscar and Ruby respectively.

I think we've discussed Emerald and Oscar as a duo before, but I'll say again that my long term hope is that Emerald and Oscar become close pals. I like to write angst and the EO duo, so I write Emerald as being aware of Oscar's plentiful sadness and also his determination to live.

On the other hand, I think Blake likes Rosegarden because she's a suppressed romantic and also because she thinks they're a good couple conceptually. She wants them to get their happy ending!

Yang supports the couple mostly because she wants Ruby to be with someone who has open arms, meaning Oscar doesn't hesitate to give Ruby his time or affection. He's also very good at detecting when she needs his attention/affection/time (mostly because he asks).

My ideal HC ending?

Oscar decides to go on a road trip at the end of the series and Ruby goes with him. His idea stems from the feeling that Oz was very familiar with Remnant’s past, but Oz has passed on now. Both Ozma and Oscar loved the world, but Ozma is gone now. There’s only one person of their duo to live in the world they love, and Oscar wants to see Remnant as it is now, and he wants to live to see the future. He wants to live!

Ruby goes with him for several reasons. She wants to see Remnant. She wants to be a hero. She doesn’t want to be the hero. She thinks she can probably do that on a smaller scale and still help the world. She thinks Oscar's likely to disappear from her world if she lets him slip away.

Together, they also share a formidable feeling that they’ve completed the major plot of their lives. They feel lost without a major goal in their world, and everyone else they know is settling into their lives in their new roles, so Ruby and Oscar bond together to take care of each other. In the short term, Ruby’s goal is to keep Oscar alive. Oscar’s goal is to teach Ruby how to drive.

In the long term, I like to imagine Ruby as a courier with a bike that she can use to zoom across continent and Oscar as…something? His day job would be like an innkeeper or a librarian, a job which stays in one place. He takes the calls for the Rose Courier Service. However, people also call for him a lot. They need help or advice or wisdom, so he isn't actually all that stationary. They both have adventure, but they also both have a place to return to.

I really like angst and AUs so I have a lot of head canons about that stuff. I tried to limit the above to what seemed most relevant. Below, I'll will do some more AU-esque head canons.

Favorite Time-Skip head canon?

I have a recurring image of Oscar walking in the desert walking past scenes of Oz's life and then being confronted by the "ghost" of Ruby standing in front of him. Sometimes he stops and sometimes he keeps moving, but it always does something.

Emerald is Oscar's most frequent friend during the time-skip, and she's the only one who knows the depth of Oscar's feelings for Ruby. After Ruby comes back, Emerald pushes Oscar into hugging her at some point.

Ruby is strongly caught off guard by Oscar running around trying to keep everyone coordinated, or by how well he's doing. For the entirety of the time-skip, they've been trying to prepare for Salem trying to destroy Vacuo. Ruby thinks Oscar takes to leadership strongly, but he is not doing very well.

One person Oscar never talks to about Ruby or his feelings is Qrow. Things go from peaceful to bitter and back again really quickly between them, and Oscar is certain being in love with one of his dead nieces wouldn't help. Qrow would just be sad about it though.

Oz is quiet more often now. There's a space between them, but Oscar is more dedicated to protecting the world than ever before so he thinks that's part of the reason. The actual reason is that Oz wants Oscar to live on his own while he can be Oscar. They're very fused together still.

If any of this interests you, please ask away! I have a lot more timeskip stuff to talk about.

Is there a head canon prompt I enjoy?

I really like writing the faux Dojo Scene 2. The Dojo Scene being Oscar asking Ruby how she deals with everything (you already know this). The Dojo Scene 2 is the much anticipated reversal, but I like writing it where Oscar dodges her questions. He's not sure how to feel around a resurrected Ruby Rose, much less answer her questions about how he is handling everything.

Favorite AUs (I just wanted to list this one)

My personal favorite is the FFXIII AU I have where Oscar is a l'Cie (meaning someone given a mission by a god to complete or turn into a monster, given access to magic and such) and Ruby (a third year at Signal) has to escort him across Remnant to awaken sleeping gods. I intend to publish this one on AO3 later on! Generally though, I really like Time Travel AUs, with Lost Parallax being a favorite of mine.

I'm very passionate about fanfiction, and that makes me a bit of an airhead when I talk about this. I'm also kind of bad at answering questions. I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I hope you feel free to ask anything ever. I love answering!!

I also submitted an ask to Chaikachi about headcanon reactions to scars, but I was so nervous about it that I made it anonymous. If you see it, that's me!

#rwby rosegarden #rosegarden rwby #rosegarden #asks

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oldbutnotyetwise · 9 months

Text

Unexpected Gifts

I have said this before and it bears repeating here, every good thing that happens has some bad attached to it, and every bad thing that happens has some good attached.

As I am writing this I have crossed the one year anniversary since my diagnosis of ALS was confirmed at Sunnybrook Hospital. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, a rare neurological disease that affects motor neurons in the brain or spinal cord that affect voluntary muscle movement. Think of it like when you go to sleep, except in my case parts of my body are going to sleep never to wake again. I’ve lost the use of my legs, I’m losing the use of my left hand, and my ability to speak is being impaired. Eventually the muscles that allow me to breath and swallow will stop working. In some cases ALS also results in frontal lobe dementia, so your two options are having a healthy mind trapped inside a non-working body, or dementia where you still are trapped inside of a non-functioning body while you have no understanding of what is going on, or the burden you are placing on your caretakers.

So about now you should be saying, how can there be anything positive about having ALS? What good can possibly come from this Death Sentence? Well let’s ponder that question and see what we can come up with.

When given a terminal diagnosis I had a rather drastic shift on my perception of time. Prior to the diagnosis, I didn’t give time much thought, foolishly I thought that my time was almost like grains of sand on a large beach, almost endless. Once I received my diagnosis suddenly time became like the water in a canteen, something not to be wasted or used foolishly. So you are wondering why is this a good thing, well it is because I have been taught the lesson of Mindfulness. When you have lots of something it is hard not to take it for granted. When you have something that is limited and quickly running out then you appreciate it a lot more. You suddenly realize what an amazing gift time is. You suddenly have the wisdom not to waste your time on foolish things. You don’t waste your time on bad books, bad movies or with people you don’t want to spend time with. If you want to do something and you can, than you do, no longer putting things off for some day in the future because now you know that someday may not come. I wish that I had learned this lesson about the value of time much earlier in my life, but am grateful that I did learn it eventually and in turn have worked much harder at enjoying what remaining time that I have left.

Living in Canada, or in this case Ontario I have a government run Health Plan. On top of this I also have a benefit plan from my workplace until I am 65. I will spare you numerous sad stories of people in other provinces, or in the U.S. who were waiting for approval for the ALS drugs and after two years of waiting they finally get the letter advising they had been approved,,,,the day before they enter a Hospice. People who live in remote areas of provinces where they are hours and hours away from the nearest ALS Clinic, or even any medical assistance. We are now living just over an hour from the ALS Clinic at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, generally accepted to probably be the best one in Canada. I never really understood what a gift the pubic health care system was prior to this, but I do recognize how lucky I am in comparison to so many others.

I would guess that my ALS medications probably cost somewhere between 200 and 300 thousand dollars a year. My benefit plan is presently paying for my drugs, can you imagine not having coverage for drugs that could possibly help you? Where you have to decide between selling or mortgaging your home and draining your bank accounts to buy your medications or choosing to go without. Where medical decisions are based on dollar amounts instead of what is best for you? I am grateful for the gift of a benefit plan that allows me to take these expensive drugs in the hope that they are helping me.

I have met so many amazing people in the medical field since the first day I attended Sunnybrook. The entire team at Sunnybrook who compassionately care for their hundreds of patients, knowing that everyone they are caring for will eventually lose their fight, ALS remains undefeated. As well the nurses, ALS Society, and Community Care Team who all make this horrible disease a little more tolerable. I am grateful for the gift of all the caring people who work hard to look after me in such a kind, caring and compassionate way.

A disease such as ALS is expensive. The amount of medical or assistive equipment can be prohibitive, says the guy waiting for his $32,000 electric wheelchair. The items we have around the house are a collection of things people have given or loaned us, we have purchased new or used, or that we have been reimbursed for through my benefit plan. There is something called the ALS Loan Cupboard where people donate used medical equipment, let’s be honest, probably after their loved one dies. I presently have a walker, electric lift chair and an electric hospital bed all loaned to me from the loan cupboard. The list of medical equipment I require is constantly growing and already my life would be unbearable without it, so I am grateful for the gift of all this equipment that I have access to that helps me make it through my days.

I will wholeheartedly acknowledge that I find myself surrounded by the best possible friends. These are friends that take time out of their very busy lives to visit, or call, or email or set up video calls. Somehow the whole world is going on at an extremely hectic pace while my life is coasting to a stop. Most of the world continues on riding the merry go round of life, but a few people realize something important is going on and they are here for me. Together we exchange old memories, share embraces, shed a few tears and just generally stand by each other. When you are travelling a dark scary path and suddenly you find a trusted friend at your side you will notice your path becomes a lot less dark and scary. I am grateful for the gift of dear, treasured friends.

I have my dear sweet wife Robin here by my side from sun up to sun down working so very hard to look after me. I don’t think anyone else has someone as amazing as her, and some people are forced to go through this nightmare alone, which I can’t even begin to imagine how impossibly hard that would be. I am grateful for the gift of my loving wife Robin.

In Canada there is Medical Assistance In Dying, also known as MAID. If you have a terminal illness, you can fill out a form, meet with a Physician who should agree with your decision and sign off on the form. Then a minimum of three months later you meet with a second doctor go through the process again at which time you can select a day you want to end your life. You can change your date or back out at any time, and yes if you are wondering it is a surreal experience going through this process. I have friends travelling the same path as I am in the United States who would have to travel to another state to end their lives, as if this process isn’t difficult enough they have to travel to a strange place hundreds of miles away from their home and friends to end their suffering. I am grateful for the gift of living somewhere that I am treated as kindly as a beloved pet who is allowed to leave this world when their struggle to live becomes too much for them. Leaving this world in a kind compassionate manner, surrounded by loved ones, finally able to rest after fighting the good fight.

So I encourage you to always remember, every good thing that happens has bad attached, and very bad thing has good attached. So next time something bad happens to you I encourage you to look for the good. Yes you may have to look hard, yes it may be hard to find but I assure you it is there. Then once you find those good things I encourage you to focus on them rather than the bad things, I think that will help make your journey a bit easier.

#als #unexpected gifts #gratitude

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circular-bircular · 2 months

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the science post reminds me of the ways my system first presented itself visibly!

we used to be in a past lives/kin space and got *really* into it, even though we aren't religious. it was our brain trying to make sense of the fact that we were mostly developing fictives, and it offered a way for us to develop without the dissociation stressors of realizing there's *other people*. just tricked ourselves into thinking we had "past life shifts". then had a big denial phase and trashed it and the dissociation barriers got really, really bad for a very long time.

I think there's something to these spaces/belief systems that can help developing systems. but there's also that danger in falling out of them, because it set us back a *ton* for even realizing we had DID. beliefs that don't make sense and don't have to are nice until they're not anymore. I wish we could still do that, but I'm starting to a little with little things - like tarot. (that tarot post made my brain do a good old Neuron Activation, lol.) don't think there's anything magical about it, but my deck is. weirdly accurate. like almost disturbingly so.

letting your brain do its brain things is extremely hard.

(Sorry for the long wait on this post)

I'm not positive which science post this is referencing, but lord knows I have seen a LOT of systems mention they started out in kin spaces. Which, makes a lot of sense.

I think there's just... so much value, being able to look at an experience and go, "There is the potential for good and bad things from this," particularly when systemhood is so different for everyone who experiences it. For me, kin spaces would absolutely have fucked me up, even though I have very few introjects -- but I also know that, for others, maybe those spaces are perfect.

It's the same thing about the various communities -- pro-endo, anti-endo, inclusive, exclusive, etc -- they all have pros and cons. They're all good and bad in their own right.

I think it boils down to, all spaces are neutral. You get what you get from them.

And yeah... Brain things are fucking difficult. Kudos to you for working through shit <3

#asks #anon #syscourse #vessel on a calming sea

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ovaryacted · 2 months

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I got one for yea. Anon off because I’m a degen and if I’m going to be sacrilegious, may as well show my whole ass

Leon was raised Catholic. This is canon. Now, he ain’t religious. We know this. But let’s just say he loves an s/o who’s Catholic.

To sum this up rq, us Catholics go through lent. So for 40 days after Ash Wednesday we give up one thing (or do more charity work) for those 40 days. We can have what we gave up after Easter.

Now. With that out of the way, time for me to get excommunicated.

Let’s just say Leon is curious about catholic traditions. He may not go to church but if his s/o gets the ashes on their forehead, he may as well join ‘em.

Now lent begins. And his s/o wants to give us orgasms. Not theirs. His.

For 40 days Leon is edged. At first he thinks he can handle it. It’s a challenge for him. He’s game. He gets edged once, on day 1. Edged 2 times on day 2 etc etc.

But by day like, 10, he’s cracking. He’s being brought to the edge so much and so often he’s damn near desperate. Day 20 he’s sobbing, begging to cum.

Day 30 he’s promising to go to church more he’ll convert back to Catholicism. He’ll get baptized again, just let him cum.

Day 40, on Easter, the most holy day for us Catholics, his s/o finally lets him cum. I think his brain literally shuts down from how powerful his orgasm is. Like neurons full on fizzle out processing the pure pleasure and ecstasy. I’d even bet he orgasms twice from how intense it all is.

He’s trembling, shaking, practically screaming from how good feels. He probably passes out. Leon only realizes he had completely blacked out when his s/o is stroking his cheek and praising him.

It takes a good bit of aftercare for him to return to the world but once he’s back, he’s already counting the days until lent again.

Aight Catholic Church it’s been fun. I’ll see you all in hell lmao.

I think it's kind of funny that I unintentionally saved my response to this for Easter weekend LMAO. But even though I personally am not religious, I think the idea of lent or having to give something up is an interesting one and I applaud people who do that. That being said, Leon voluntarily giving up the ability to have an orgasm because he loves his partner and wants to respect and support their faith would turn him into a reborn catholic.

This is on another level of No Nut November, military-grade abstinence that is slowly killing him over 40 days and 40 nights. He thinks he can handle it when it's first suggested, he's gone without feeling pleasure for years, and he'll make it.

He's wrong, so very wrong. In reality, he gets humbled very quickly, and after the first few edging attempts he thinks it isn't so bad until it feels like his dick is about to fall off from being on edge constantly. His body pulses, rigid as hell, he's antsy and is constantly bouncing his leg when he sits, and now has a hard time sleeping. It'll get so bad that he'll propose not being near his partner for a while because just being in the same room with them makes him hard, and the fact that he can't do anything about that kills him.

But after Leon survives the Lent period and finally gets what he wants, he almost regrets agreeing to it in the first place. The orgasms he experiences after 40 days are intense and overwhelming, and the way he has an out-of-body experience really makes him think that a God does exist. In the back of his mind, he's just thanking this Godly figure for allowing him to live this long to experience something like this. Perhaps he does black out from it all, I think he would, but it would probably change the way he thinks about everything in his life at that moment.

#ovaryacted asks #leon scott kennedy #leon kennedy #resident evil #leon s kennedy

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spaceorphan18 · 3 months

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My apologies if you answered some of these before, feel free to ignore them!

What do you think of the Fox X-Men movies? I love the OG trilogy (particularly 1 and 3), as well as DoFP, but I'm kind of ambivalent on the rest.

Given that you apparently watched the 90s animated series of X-Men, have you also watched the Spider-Man series? I'd be curious what you might have thought about it.

Have you read recent X-Men comics? Do you have Opinions™ on the franchise, comics-wise?

I realize that your blog is Glee-focused, but seeing that you're a X-Men fan activated neurons in my brain I didn't quite know existed.

Also, have a nice day! 💛 You're a highlight of my Tumblr visits.

The only reason I'm glee-focused is because that's what you guys usually come to talk to me about. But dear, I'll chat about anything if you give me a platform, lol <3

I have mixed feelings about the live action films. There are some good and some bad across the board. I think they were revolutionary as they (with the original Spider-Man trio) kicked off Marvel comics in a great way. But they haven't aged all that well. I adore Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen and think they were brilliantly cast. And outside of, maybe, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, I think they could have done so much better by all the rest of the characters.

(oof - don't get me started on Rogue, though no hate towards Anna Paquin)

Of the later ones - I think Days of Future Past is a solidly good film, but the rest of them are kind of garbage. The X-Men definitely deserve some good live action films, and I'm hoping the MCU can go back on the upswing before they're introduced there.

I'm sorry, I haven't watched the Spider-Man animated series, so I can't give any opinions on that. :(

I have read nearly a good chunk of X-Men comics, everything in the main canon of Uncanny and mainline books, as well as (nearly) everything Rogue has been in. I'm a little behind on current comics -- as I usually wait until they're in trade or on Marvel Unlimited before I read them. However, I'm a little over the Krakoa ear, and am looking forward to it being done and moving onto the next thing.

I have a ton of opinions on the comics, lol -- was there something specific you'd like to chat about? It's a very broad subject. Overall, there are definitely things I love and definitely things I don't love as would be the case for any story that's been going on since the 60s. :)

Please drop more lines! I'd love to chat about anything Marvel related :D

#that's how s.o. sees it #xmen #marvel

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katzenschlafs · 6 months

Text

I Am Done Fighting My Depression

And I know that sounds like a declaration of giving in, that I'm going to just lie in bed til it all blows over, or maybe kill myself.

But that's not at all what I mean.

I mean: I'm done with the metaphor of "fighting." I'm done with the false binary that I'm either fighting or giving in. I'm done taking up arms against my own mind and body. I'm done trying to use violence and force to bring myself into alignment with what "should" be.

Last Thursday, my therapist and I talked about my diagnoses explicitly, something I have almost never gotten to do in therapy. I am still meeting criteria for Major Depressive Disorder. Almost every criterion, in fact. This was, somehow, a surprise to me. So surprising I started dissociating, and then cried the rest of the therapy session and a while after.

This morning, I struggled to get out of bed. It took me two and a half hours to convince myself, and it was bladder pressure more than mental pressure that finally convinced me. I fought my way out of bed. I fought my way into making breakfast. I fought my way into going for a walk in the last of the fading sunlight. I tried to fight my way into doing something with a friend, and by that point, the fight was too much, and the depression won, and I'm sitting here typing instead of seeing a movie with someone I care about.

But something interesting has been happening in the background all day.

The realization that fighting is exhausting. That at this point, the fight against the depression accounts for more of my exhaustion than the depression itself.

A few lines of Andrea Gibson poetry have been echoing in my head for hours:

Truce is a word made of velvet. Truce is a word made of velvet. Wear it everywhere you go.

It's the very end of a poem about chronic illness, called "How to Be Sick." And regardless of whether a given illness is usually classified as physical or mental, our culture treats all illness as an enemy to be fought and conquered. But the illness lives in our bodies and minds. When we fight an illness, so often we find that we are fighting only ourselves.

My depression is not a foreign entity slamming a battering ram into the fortress of my soul. My depression is my neurons, my hormones, my brain chemicals, my internal systems trying to find a way to survive a world that isn't built for me. My depression is made up of pieces that also make up who I am. To fight it is to fight myself.

I'm so tired of fighting myself.

My depression and the rest of me want the same thing: to survive and thrive. To protect me from harm. To enjoy my life. To carve out a little corner of the world where it's a little easier to be a human being.

It's just that my depression is running that program on software that doesn't match the world I live in. That mismatch is what makes it an illness.

I can try to fight it. I can try to hijack or hack it. I can try to live with it. I can try to let it run the show.

Or I can start to take care of it. Like it's just another member of my inner family system, another inner child or inner young adult who is doing their best with the tools they have.

This isn't my idea, really. It comes from a Thich Nhat Hanh essay about anger. He says he smiles to his anger and says "I will take good care of you."

I'm still figuring out how to take care of my emotions and my inner selves. I'm learning.

And I think taking care of my depression involves a lot of the same actions that I was already doing, just with a very different mindset. I used to go for a walk to fight my depression. I used to make breakfast to fight my depression. I used to spend time with friends to fight my depression (and because I genuinely want to see my friends, and "fuck you depression for making me feel like staying home").

I think I can still go for a walk and make breakfast and see friends. But I can't do those things with a sword in my hand anymore. I'm going to go for a walk to take care of my depression. If my depression says the world is stacked against me, I can say "sure, but the world can't stop me from taking care of us with a little exercise." If my depression says there's no point to doing the dishes, I can say "yes, there will be more dishes tomorrow, but we'll both feel a little better if we clean up a bit today."

I guess it's just compassionate reparenting. Apparently that's what I keep coming back around to.

It's hard to compassionately reparent an inner self you refuse to acknowledge or treat as real. It's hard to compassionately reparent an inner self that you are constantly "fighting" and trying to "overcome."

Compassionate reparenting is hard enough as it is. I don't want to make it even harder on myself.

My depression is not my enemy. It's a part of me that deserves love and care and compassion. The goal is not to make it go away. The goal is to transform it into something new. By loving it as it is. And by not having expectations about what it might become once it's been loved long enough and well enough to become whatever it was originally meant to be.

#cw suicide mention #depression #inner family systems #essay #reparenting #metaphor #illness #if i ever write a beauty and the beast retelling it's gonna be about this

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late-to-the-magnus-archives · 1 year

Text

Mini-Muffins: a Malevolent Fanfic

Three tiny treats to whet your appetite.

POKE: John's plan to save Arthur's life begins with... push-ups?

PRESENCE: Hastur is fine. He doesn't need anything. This is about John and finally becoming whole (it isn't.)

PROMISE: Is it the calm before the storm? Maybe - but that doesn't mean they're not allowed to enjoy it.

AO3

(Takes place in the Surrogate series after Reflection.)

POKE

“Play with me, Uncle Arthur!”

It turned out play with me meant run around in some field for a while, until Arthur is gasping like a dying man, bent double to lean on his thighs, and Faroe is still bouncing around as fresh as a daisy.

Arthur does his best.

Then he sleeps through dinner, through the night, and well past breakfast the next morning.

Arthur suspects that John and Hastur communicated while he slept. There aren’t many other possibilities for why this is suddenly happening.

“Pushups, I think,” Hastur says out of absolutely nowhere.

Arthur stares in his direction over the piano. “What?”

Agreed.

It’s like they’re continuing a conversation already begun. “What?” says Arthur again.

“Five?” suggests Hastur.

John scoffs. “Fifty.”

“I want him able to feed himself after, John.”

Fuck you. He could do five hundred if he had to. You don’t know Arthur!

“What is going on?” says Arthur, who doesn’t want to do any.

“I know he could, John,” says Hastur with that pomposity barely disguised as patience. “But he could not do anything after.”

John huffs. Twenty-five.

“That will do. For now.”

Right, he’s not part of this. Arthur ignores them both and resumes playing the piano.

Then Hastur picks him up, stretches him out like a cloth he intends to wring, and places him on the floor.

Arthur tries to scramble up.

Hastur pushes him back down, heavy tentacle between his shoulders.

Arthur freezes, panting, like a rabbit.

Arthur.

“Wh-what?”

Push-ups. Twenty-five. Now.

Now he’s frozen out of confusion.

Hastur chortles, a terrible sound. “You guessed correctly. Panicked.”

Don’t be an ass. Arthur, the faster you do this, the faster it’s done.

“What is happening right now?” Arthur says to the floor.

“You refuse?” says Hastur in the smooth voice, the dangerous one he pulls out when he’s about to hurt someone.

Arthur, just do it.

The hesitation is a beautiful thing, not that Arthur realizes. He lies there, breathing too hard, and finally, slowly, does one push-up as.

“Very good. Twenty-four more.”

“I don’t understand,” Arthur whispers.

Arthur. Do it.

Arthur tightens his lips into a line and obeys.

After, Arthur is just a little shaky. After, Hastur just leaves. Poof.

“John,” says Arthur, sitting back at the piano. “What the hell was that?”

The beginning of your new regimen.

“My new what?”

Arthur… when I said you weighed eighty pounds sopping wet back on the train to New York, I wasn’t making that observation as a goal to maintain. You may actually only be eighty pounds right now.

“You want me to put on weight?”i

I want you well. So we’ve worked out a plan.

“A plan?”

Hastur’s made a… an extended study of human physiognomy. I understand the human mind, but my grasp of your body isn’t even as broad as yours, and yours is pretty bad.

Arthur rubs his face. “So you’re putting me in boot camp.”

I’m putting you in “you want to fucking be there when Faroe grows up” camp.

Arthur inhales. “That isn’t fair.”

Yeah. It is. Work on your piece. We’re jogging later.

“You’re telling me I’m living in the worlds of fucking gods and they can’t just fix whatever you think is wrong.”

John sounds grouchy. He could—but without you actually building the… he said… non-genetic inheritance restraint of… something about neuron pathways…

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Look. The point was he could just fix it, but you’d relapse almost immediately. We have to build up your body and brain so it’ll last.

“And you trust this?”

A pause. Arthur, he’s trying to woo me right now. He knows damned well that if he hurts you, he has no chance.

And another pause. “So you’re saying he has a chance at… wooing you.”

The third pause is the worst. I can’t help wanting to be whole. I know you don’t understand. Humans don’t… fracture the way we do. Even when you break, you’re one person. I won’t do it, Arthur. But yes. I want to.

Arthur swallows. His expression is grim, as if he’s already saying goodbye, and John can’t handle it, so he pushes on, tone falsely bright. The silver lining is it means I can use this new project of his to get you help that you actually need. I’m taking advantage, Arthur.

“Just after a free dinner, in other words,” Arthur mutters.

What?

“Never mind. All right. You want this. Not him. You.”

Me. I do. I want you well. I want… fuck. John takes a breath and speaks quickly. I-will-never-forgive-her-for-breaking-you-but-you-love-her-and-she-wants-to-play-with-you-and-this-will-make-you-both-happy.

Arthur takes John’s hand. He exhales. “I think this is a waste of time.”

Arthur—

“Because I think I’m a waste of time. But we both know that, and we both know you disagree.”

I do disagree, says John, sounding hurt.

Arthur’s expression is resigned. “I’ll do it for you.”

Thank you.

He can jog for forty-two seconds before he has to stop, gasping.

It’s a start.

“John, I don’t care about any of this,” says Arthur between painful gasps.

John’s left hand touches his cheek. I do.

“For you, John.”

It seems making him get up from the piano every half hour for a walk is barely the start. On day three of this nonsense, Arthur sits down to find his breakfast has changed.

Before you is a wooden board, rich dark wood that sets off the—

Arthur interrupts. “Just tell me what it is.”

Slices of many kinds of fruit, slices of fish, two boiled eggs, and sort of nutty-looking bread.”

That doesn’t sound bad. “What does Faroe have?”

Sweet porridge with honey.

“Why is mine different?”

“Because, Arthur,” Hastur says, “you are neither a three-year-old girl, nor are you healthy. You will eat all of this. It has been laced with spells to encourage your healing.”

“All of it?” Arthur snorts. “Not sure I can.”

“Uncle Arthur,” says Faroe, firmly. “You have to eat it because then you can train with me.”

“What?”

“I have decided, given your physical condition, that training with a little girl might be… a bit beyond you? But perhaps a good place to start,” rumbles Hastur like some kind of big cat.

“You have got to be pulling my leg,” Arthur mutters, rubbing his face.

“Please, Uncle Arthur?” says Faroe, drawing it out.

Arthur sighs. “You had to rope her into it.”

“Yes,” says Hastur.

Of course we did, says John.

Free dinner, Arthur reminds himself, choosing to believe John’s claim. “All right.”

Dis is a fucking taskmaster and Arthur hates her guts.

“Come on, composer, you can do better than that,” says the sadist, who is brought to the edge of laughter by making him fail at things.

“Come on, Uncle Arthur! I’m beating you!” Faroe cries from far above, where she evidently scampered up her own rope like some kind of weasel.

Arthur, meanwhile, dangles about two feet from the ground, shaking.

It’s okay, Arthur.

It’s personal now. “No! I can do this!”

And you have. More than once. But we’re not actually running for our lives right now, so it’s okay.

There is no reason Dis should be able to hear John. Hastur’s wards are impenetrable. Still: Dis smiles.

John really doesn’t like that smile.

“Well, that’s an idea,” she says.

“What?” says Arthur.

She can’t hear me, John says as if to assure himself.

“Let’s try something else,” says Dis. “Come back down, both of you.”

Arthur drops like a stone, misjudges, and stumbles.

Dis stabilizes him, hands on his shoulders. “You all right there?”

“Fine.” Arthur is not fine, and his hands hurt, and his shoulders are killing him, and he’s moderately startled at how strong she is. Her voice is coming from below his shoulder-blades. She’s small.

Faroe’s little boots clop as she lands. “We’re training buddies!”

“We sure are,” gasps Arthur.

“Right. You are clearly in need of emergency effort,” says Dis mildly. “To catch you up to Faroe, we’re going to do the capillaries routine.”

“The… the what?” says Arthur.

“Separate pathways, growing larger and more complex, until you merge into a single artery,” says Dis.

“Oh,” says Arthur, who is beginning to wonder if everyone in this place knows more about his own body than he does. Probably, he thinks, given the horrible things they do to human bodies around here.

“Faroe? Go do your stretches. We’re practicing archery while walking today.”

“Okay!” Off she goes.

“As for you,” says Dis, “we’re starting with cardiovascular.”

“What?”

She means running. That’s what she means.

And she is merciless about it. “Faster!”

“Can’t,” he gasps, flagging, feet already dragging.

She pokes him in the back with something very sharp.

“Fuck!”

“My instructions were not to kill you,” Dis says. “Anything else, though? Healable is fair game.” Poke.

“Ow!”

Fuck, what? They were what?

“Are you serious?” Arthur cries.

“Oh, yeah,” says Dis, and whatever she’s using breaks skin.

Arthur cries out. He really hates being stabbed. He panics.

“Now we’re talking!” she says at the exact same distance behind him, and gets her hands on his arms, correcting the angle they pump. “Like this! Good! Tighten your core—the center of your body—to protect your lower back! Good!”

The next poke digs in.

And though he’s already breathing like a broken locomotive, somehow, Arthur speeds up.

Arthur. Shower.

Arthur grunts. He wants to just… lie down, but he knows John is right. His clothing sticks to him; he’s as wet as though he took a dip in a pond.

Which, Dis warned him, is coming—swimming is going to be part of this nightmare.

“She’s an animal,” says Arthur, trembling with effort to strip before stepping into the shower. It’s not the first time he’s felt bad for whoever cleans his clothes, but this sodden, salty mess makes him want to apologize.

She’s fucking handsy, is what she is, John gripes.

“Is my back… fucked up?” says Arthur, who knows John can see it thanks to all the mirrors.

No. He sounds suspicious.

“Must be magic. I know she broke the skin.”

That bitch!

“It’s fine, John. Obviously.”

John devolves into a R'lyehian rant that Arthur doesn’t really want translated, and is too tired to engage with, anyway.

John is still going when Arthur falls asleep.

----

NOTES

I feel you, Arthur. Dang, I need to work out.

PRESENCE

Hastur cannot sleep.

Not that he sleeps, per se, but he rests; or he should.

He can’t.

It’s been two weeks since he could, and he doesn’t want to know why.

But he does know why.)

It is absolutely the Piece’s fault.

(It’s not the Piece’s fault.)

Something about this fucking dual mark has made it impossible for Hastur to push aside the… extra feelings.

The needs.

They aren’t real. The time he’s spent manhandling Arthur for John’s sake has exacerbated the confusion. That’s all.

Hastur hovers above his palace, looking at the stars.

Peace. It should be peace. It is peace. It is calm. It is…

Incomplete.

Because he doesn’t have John, he tells himself. (And that is a lie.)

Because he isn’t whole, he tells himself. (Though that is a different pain.)

Damn John.

Damn Arthur.

Damn (he won’t quite think Damn Shub-Niggurath, who put him in this position, because that could have… an outcome) everybody.

Hastur does the deific equivalent of tossing and turning for twenty-seven days before he finally gives in.

They’re talking when he comes to Arthur’s room.

She touches you all the time!

“She’s my trainer. She has to. Apparently, I have the posture of… what did she say? ‘A bear that’s been dead for a month and washed up somewhere down the river.’”

John growls. And she insults you.

“May I remind you that this whole project is your idea?” says Arthur. “Though I suppose I could just quit.”

Ha. As if Hastur would let him.

Don’t you fucking dare. Also, Hastur won’t let you.

Correct.

“Hastur can fuck himself.”

What an opening! “I would rather not,” says Hastur, materializing with circumstance if not pomp.

Fuck! John cries, which is very amusing.

“Shit!” Arthur shouts, sitting straight up. “What the… what do you want?”

Oh… oh, there it is. Defiance.

It’s been growing slowly over the months since marking. Arthur doesn’t realize that he is finding his way back into infuriating at a pace Hastur does not appreciate.

But John likes it, so for now, Hastur has to let it slide.

This is for John. This is all for John. “I have come to check on you,” he says smoothly, applying that low and smooth voice. “You should be sleeping.”

“You know, I’d have a better chance of doing that if everyone left me alone,” Arthur mutters.

“So willful.” And Hastur rumbles his approval.

(Which is a lie.)

(For John.)

(This is to manipulate John.)

Your chosen trainer has made him sore, accuses John.

“Soreness is expected.” Hastur approaches. “It will pass.”

“I don’t understand the insistence on this,” Arthur mutters.

“You don’t have to.”

Arthur, I’ve explained it.

“He’s merely complaining, John. Let him get it out of his system.” Closer. He can feel the disturbance of Arthur’s breath, hear the steady pound of his heart, feel the sluice of blood in his veins.

The way the air just around Arthur’s skin benefits from his warmth.

(For John. Keep it together.)

Arthur sighs. “Have you decided on a theme for her fourth birthday yet?”

“Yes. She has requested dragons.”

Arthur laughs. “Nibbles will cast a kitten.”

Hastur feels his warmth. “Nibbles will, by Faroe’s request, be given a place of honor at the table. If that is not enough to satisfy the beast, she can throw her own party.”

(So close.)

(For John.)

(And this close, this near, Hastur feels… better. Damn it all.)

Arthur sighs and rolls his shoulders. His clothing fits differently these days, though he doesn’t know it; it’s begun to stretch at the shoulders, to taper toward his waist. “Could you please go away? I want to sleep.”

“Not yet. John… I feel your discontent.” It’s a wonderful excuse. Hastur is now close enough that his forward tentacles rest beneath the bed.

John gasps as though he’s been caught doing something. What? I’m fine!

Hastur sighs heavily. “Will you still not ask for what you need?”

Arthur goes still. “What? What’s happening?”

John is quiet.

So Hastur picks Arthur up.

“Fuck!” Arthur struggles for a moment, panicking. “Don’t! Don’t do it!”

“Calm. I will not sway you tonight. Be calm. This is for John.”

I—

“Lean into it, John. Feel it through me. You can do this.”

John puffs.

“What?” says Arthur. “Do what?”

Silence.

“John!” says Arthur.

Oh, John whispers.

“There we go.”

“There we go, what? What?”

“He almost feels what it is to hold you. Relax, Arthur. I am taking care of my other half’s needs. You are incidental. Calm down.”

Arthur scowls—but the insult works.

Hastur figured out a while ago that if Arthur thinks he doesn’t matter, is not the central focus, then Arthur doesn’t care. A very convenient bit of psychological damage.

And Hastur…

(Can rest.)

Holds him. Does nothing more.

I feel it, John whispers.

(Can rest.)

(Damn the mark.)

I… how long are… are you going to….

“Shhhh.”

Because Arthur has fallen asleep. Hastur has swayed him enough times that though Arthur fears it, he automatically associates being held with John's attention—and that brings his own peace. Ah, the human subconscious is an amazing playground.

“Just a while longer, then I really need to get back to business. It is ridiculous, having to pause all my activities for you.”

And it so clearly costs John to say it, costs him to think it, but he forces it out: Thank you. He… he’s not… is he falling for Dis?

Hastur has to fight hard not to laugh at him. “No, he isn’t. Why would you think that?”

She touches him all the time!

“And?”

And…

“And you can’t.”

Silence.

“John. There’s a solution for this.”

Never. I said I never would.

“Of course. Then you’ll have to accept this substitute. It’s the most I can give you.”

Silence again.

Hastur’s fine with that. The goal has been achieved.

And if he choose to stand there in the human’s room, holding the stupid human, until the sky just turns pink, well, what of it? John needs it.

This is for John.

This is winning.

When Hastur leaves, John will feel the loss of that contact (however indirect) even more keenly.

This is good.

Hastur tells himself that, all through the next day, and by dinnertime, he even believes it’s true.

-----

NOTES

No, YOU feel better holding Arthur Lester!

“Is someone playing a prank?” Arthur mutters after the night’s performance. He swings his arms in front of his chest and back, and his scowl in the mirrors is contemplative.

What?

“They wrecked it,” he mutters. “It hasn’t fit right for a while, but it was a problem tonight. They shrunk it, or something. It keeps pulling across my back. I can’t play like this.”

What, your uniform?

“John, I’m telling you. It’s the wrong size, or something.”

John considers. Studies the way it stretches across Arthur’s shoulders, the way it lies across his chest, drapes his hips, folds on the floor. Funny you should say that. It actually looks like it fits you now.

“Well, it doesn’t,” Arthur grouses.

“Uncle Arthur!” Faroe comes running in, Nibbles at her heels.

“There’s my darling.” Arthur picks her up and swings her around, smiling at her squeal before putting her down again. “Did you like it?”

“Yes! Oh—can I have more of those strings for my birthday?”

“Which ones, darling?”

“The… crooth?”

“The crwth. Absolutely.”

“I want to learn to play it.”

“I’m sure you will.”

Faroe delivers this request with her hands in Arthur’s dancing in a circle as he turns with her - and both their breath is steady. “Nibbles says she likes the oboe.”

Arthur crouches to be on her level. “Does she, now?”

“She does.”

Arthur laughs a little. “Sure. The oboe and the crwth. I can make that work.”

“I can write songs, too, you know.”

“I look forward to hearing them.”

Her scowl is imperious. “They’re not ready!”

“When they’re ready.”

“Faroe!” Hastur calls from the hall.

Faroe wrinkles her nose. Then she grins, kisses his cheek, and runs back out the door.

Arthur sighs happily and stands.

Well, says John. You squatted.

“What?”

For a while there.

“She’s short, John.”

You also picked her up.

“She’s light, John.”

John lets it go. He can see in the mirrors how much better Arthur is doing, see him filling out, see his color returning.

See that he is not breathless all the time—in fact, has not been now for about a month except when exercising.

John still doesn’t like Dis, but he has to admit the captain knows what she’s doing.

Arthur is back to swinging his arms. “I need this fixed. It makes it hard to cross my hands.”

Well, you’re the one who wrote the need for it.

“I’d rather not be limited by something as stupid as a shirt.”

John is glad that Arthur’s current challenge is clothing.

Hastur was right.

He was right about everything.

John misses being whole.

Arthur is undressing, humming a little, starting his bedtime routine. Out in the hall, the laughter of monsters rolls by; beings pleased with how sociable Hastur’s grown of late, all these galas, delighting and confusing and enticing one and all.

Human musicians are all the rage now, apparently. Arthur’s started a trend. There have been quite the spate of kidnappings.

John understands. There’s just… something about humans. He could never say what, but… something.

“Do you think we’re in danger?” says Arthur.

What?

“I’m… I feel…” Arthur takes a deep breath, stepping into the shower. “Less… bad. These days. You know?”

You look less bad. But it was more than that.

Arthur was being defiant.

Arthur argued now, at least a couple of times a week, for at least a few seconds.

Arthur was healing, and John is terrified what that could mean. Would Hastur break him again? Was Kayne going to act out?

It seemed too good. Too… easy.

I get what you’re saying, says John. And I don’t know. But I hope not.

“Me, too. This… this isn’t… too bad. Right now.” He considers. “That’s probably not a good thing. Getting used to captivity. To slavery. To… to all of this.”

To health? To safety? To your daughter flourishing? To finally being well?

Arthur sighs. “But at what cost?”

Entertainment, apparently.

“I’m not sure how entertaining we’re being right now.”

Maybe some people like a warm, soft storyline for a while.

“You know,” says Arthur, rinsing off. “There is a market for that kind of thing, but I somehow doubt it’s Kayne’s cup of tea.”

Maybe this is what he gets for involving Shub-Niggurath.

“I don’t understand.”

The Great Mother. I mean… she’s terrifying, but we all know she’s long found humans interesting, and at least regarding her horrible offspring, she’s known to be… kind. She doesn’t hate your species, or want them wiped out.

“Really? I sort of assumed all of them saw us as… ants. Or food.”

Not all. A hesitation. I don’t.

Arthur pauses, mid-toweling.

I am the King in Yellow, Arthur. Part of him. I am what I am.

“I know.”

They are both quiet.

“He’s still inviting you to join him.”

I… I won’t.

Arthur climbs into bed.

John doubts he knows how differently he lies down now. It’s neither the limp, miserable flop of a dead fish, nor the tense, horrible anguish of a poisoned shrimp. He lies down as if he has no pain anymore, or at least, it’s been reduced below his threshold.

Weird, that Arthur speaks as if he’d followed that train of thought. “You’re still hurting,” he says. “More than I am, these days.”

Yes.

“What would it mean, if you joined him?”

Arthur doesn't know that John can see his face—see the conflict there, the pain, the attempt at cheer. For John. Arthur is trying to be ready for the worst—if that's what John truly needs.

That doesn't feel great. Arthur, I’m not having this conversation.

“But what if it was good? What if you… I don’t know. Took his place, or something?”

Arthur.

“Maybe you wouldn’t even lose yourself. What if you both lived in there, the way you live in me?”

Arthur.

“What if we got lucky, and he was absorbed, leaving you in control of this whole place?”

John sighs. I said I’m not talking about it.

“Fine.” Arthur closes his eyes. “I’d rather keep you, anyway. I just… I don’t want you hurting. Goodnight, John.” And he takes John’s hand.

John holds it, the one point of tactile contact has with this man.

He is in pain.

He misses being whole.

And he tries very hard not to think what if.

#malevolent #surrogate series #malevolent pod #malevolent fic #john malevolent #arthur lester #kiy malevolent #hastur malevolent

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