#sorry been thinking about Tolkien lately
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J. R. R. Tolkien was a madman
#He invented a language#so he could say he didn’t write the books#he translated them#he made an absolutely massive history book#for his fictional world#he “Translated” the “original” names into close counterparts in modern English based on their meaning#It’s just insane#sorry been thinking about Tolkien lately
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hi i hope this doesnt seem annoying bc i have never requested anything from ppl IDK it makes me anxious 😭 but ur one bed for sp was so cute i adore ur writing !!! do u think u could do it for craigs gang + butters?
one bed! part 2
-- sfw --
part one (main 4 boys)
characters: butters stotch, craig tucker, tweek tweak, tolkien black, jimmy valmer, clyde donovan
a/n: you arent annoying at all dws!! ty for being my first request this is monumental. oh and i wasnt sure if tweek counted as part of craigs gang or not but i adore him so i made one for him. also thank you!!!!!! ;; also jimmy is so underrated i love him so much mwagh
notes: i cant write clyde for shit idk he has no personaluty sorry i love him though; same character dynamic as part 1 (mutual pining, character has a crush on the reader)
— ⛧ b. stotch
complains that it's past his bedtime, but gives in because he wants to spend time with you.
"it's past nine already!"
"well.. yeah. it isn't that late, butters."
"but i always sleep at nine!"
but he'll sit through movies with you anyways because he has a fat crush on you.
except when the end credits start rolling, you look over at butters and he's curled up in a ball, snoring.
you don't have the heart to wake him up, so you quietly shut your laptop and move it off your bed.
he'll probably get in trouble for not coming home at all, but his parents trust you enough. you can probably talk them out of grounding him tomorrow morning.
"butters", you whisper. "leo, you gotta move."
he rolls over, half-asleep and dazed. "huh..?"
"you're staying with me tonight. scoot over."
"o-oh, jeez, okay", he blushes when he feels the warmth of you next to him.
"night, butters."
he's probably praying he doesnt wet the bed he would actually die
murmurs in his sleep and talks about nonsense
drools like a puppy
probably goes mimimimimi like in the cartoons /j
you will wake up with his arm around you. if you move it, he'll find his way back again in his sleep
looks like a baby when he sleeps its so funny you cant help but take photos
— ⛧ c. tucker
you turn around to tell him it's getting late and ask if he needs a ride home
and he's dead asleep. on the floor. textbook over his lap. snoring very softly.
like no wonder it's been so quiet... as you were doing your homework, craig was asleep on your floor.
you felt so bad having to wake him up to move him to your bed
"craig, i'm so sorry. i got distracted, i didn't mean to-"
"it's fine. just let me sleep in the corner. i like your plushies", he yawns.
so he sleeps in the corner against the wall, and you sleep on the outside to make sure he doesn't roll right off the bed.
if you weren't there, he definitely would have bc when you wake up, he's smushed into you.
how can he breathe???
he also violently gnashes his teeth and it's very startling (my brother did that as a kid and i would almost pee myself in fear)
and he'll randomly put his hand somewhere like your face?????? the way he does it is so funny because it always seems like he's wide awake but you look over and he's mouth breathing and sound asleep
yeah he's a mouth breather
it's okay he's a cutie
— ⛧ t. tweak
passes the fuck out from coffee. like CRASHES
"yeah and then i was telling kyle about how- tweek, you okay?"
"tired....... can i go.....mmfjkg"
like at a certain point past 1am he just turns into a dead slug
poor thing
you just send him up to your bedroom and get him a change of clothes so that he doesn't have to sleep in a button-up
except by the time you get up to your room, he's dead asleep.
you don't bother trying to wake him up, since you've never seen him sleep so peacefully.
he's curled up on his side, face buried in your plushies.
you scoot in next to him, so close that you can smell the milky coffee lingering in his hair.
it's kinda nice
in the middle of the night you wake up to a really strange noise.
it's tweek
he's doing this weird clicky thing with his tongue in his mouth in his sleep
like. okay?????? you go back to sleep
and then he flings his whole arm over and WHACKS you hard in the face
"TWEEK??"
"nhg..,"
he just randomly jerks in his sleep, wakes up for a second and falls back asleep
it's very startling
sometimes you have to hold him down with your arms
he loves it
— ⛧ t. black
actually a super chill guy to sleep with
he's enjoyable to have over
you'll both be studying for midterm exams next week, and he yawns
"it's like. ten. do you just wanna spend the night here?"
"is that, uh- is that okay with you?"
"yeah, my room's upstairs. i'll meet you up there in a sec"
he'll text his mom that he's spending the night because he's actually responsible
gets a little embarassed to sleep in your bed
but a win is a win
gets a LOT embarassed when you get in bed with him
falls asleep pretty fast actually
he's a relatively normal sleeper
spends like 30 minutes in the bathroom washing his face and stuff before he goes to bed
"do you have cleanser?"
sleeps like a rock
except for when he randomly talks
like TALKS. clear as day
scares you shitless
"y/n."
'tolkien??? are you up still??"
"why would you do that."
"do what??"
"grape juice"
and then he'd roll over and go back to sleep
does not remember any of his nighttime conversations in the morning
"i said that? are you sure?"
— ⛧ j. valmer
fell asleep on your couch in the middle of a horror movie
to your dismay
because when you turned away from the screen and grab at him in fear, he's SNORING. his ass is SNORING as the clown violently murders the main character.
"jimmy!"
"what?"
you just make a jokingly-angry face at him.
"it's late. can't i ju-just stay h-h-here?"
"well- i mean, sure, but you can't just sleep on the couch, dude. come up to my room, i'll show you."
"re-really?"
grins ear to ear
hes so down bad for you
almost implodes when you lean his crutches against the door and make sure they won't fall
DOES implode when you get in next to him
he smells like dish soap but in a good way
like citrus
you tell him so, and to that he makes a stupid "orange-you happy i'm here" joke
"jimmy, go to sleep."
"f-fine."
makes sure he's got the elastics for his braces in
in the middle of the night he'll whisper your name
"y/n r u still up"
"yeah what"
"i just thought of something really funny"
it gets old so fast but it's okay he's cute
— ⛧ c. donovan
crashes at 8pm after insisting he can pull an all-nighter
refuses to get up unless you drag him by his ankles
and even then he'll lay on the floor like a dead fish
so you just let him stay
meticulously brushes his hair sideways with wet fingers to make sure he doesn't wake up with a bedhead in front of you
he does anyway.
you walk up behind him as he moves his hair "whatcha doin?"
he jumps THREE FEET and whirls around
"nothing!" as if he's hiding a government secret or sum
once you guys r in bed he stops acting all tough and cool and just freaks out
his back will be turned but he's beet red
breathes really loudly when he falls asleep
and sleeps in ATROCIOUS positions
you'll wake up with his foot on your chest and the blanket flipped upside down
someone needs to belt this boy down to the bed or something
he's really a cute sleeper though
sometimes you wake up and see him face-down in a pillow and move him over to make sure he doesn't like. suffocate
and then he wakes up to you on top of him with no context
"....y/n?"
#dude this randomly crashed and i had ti rewrite the tags#south park#south park x reader#south park fluff#fluff#butters#butters stotch#butters x reader#butters stotch x reader#craig tucker#craig x reader#craig tucker x reader#tweek x reader#tweek tweak#tweek tweak x reader#tweek fluff#butters fluff#tolkien black#jimmy valmer#jimmy valmer x reader#clyde donovan#clyde donovan headcanons#south park headcanons#clyde donovan x reader#butters headcanons#kyle broflovski#kenny mccormick#eric cartman
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Tension
Stan x Fem!Reader
(All characters are 18+)
Warning: Toxic relationships, cheating
Prev.
Next.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ✧˖°.
It’s been almost 3 months since you went behind your best friend’s back with her boyfriend. You stopped feeling ashamed of it long ago now you were just annoyed. After all this time, all their break ups, they kept going back to each other and you hated it. You just didn’t understand it both Wendy and Stan would rant to you about how they didn’t like each other anymore but they continued to date, for instance right now.
You were sitting on Wendy’s bed while she ranted about her latest break up with Stan to you and Bebe. Honestly you had spaced out through most of it, it was the same stuff she would say every other time.
“He had been so distant lately and when we broke up all he said was ‘Okay’ seriously okay???” Wendy threw herself back onto her pillow “Honestly don’t understand why you keep going back to him Wends! You know I think Tolkien has a thing for you” Bebe talking brought you back to the real world. “Really? I mean he’s pretty cute…but I don’t know me and Stan just have history together you know?” You roll your eyes, jealousy pumping through your veins “You need to get over him Wendy! You talk so much shit about him only to run back time after time even after you said your relationship lost it’s spark!” You snapped before quickly covering your mouth from shock. You didn’t mean to say anything but clearly you’re mouth acted before your brain did. “Well alright…calm down N/N, although she does have a point Wendy. You shouldn’t keep going back to someone you don’t like anymore even if you do have history” Bebe placed her hand on Wendy’s back as she sighed “You two are right maybe I should end it for good this time” You felt the slightest tinge of guilt as you watched her frown. Guilt, you hadn’t felt that in a while…
“Hey don’t feel sad, you know what? We should go to Clyde’s party tomorrow!” Bebe perked up, she’s always liked a good party or two. “Andddd Tolkien’s gonna be there” she wiggled her brows at Wendy making the ravenette laugh “Really?” “Mmhm and we could totally get you a date there too Y/N” the blond winked at you “Yeah great…” you awkwardly laughed before the sudden buzzing of your phone caught your attention. You quickly grabbed it from across the bed before Bebe could get to it “What is up with you today girl?” You ignored her and look at your notifications.
1 new message from Stanleyyy
“Uh Earth to Y/N” Wendy waves her hand in front of your face. “Oh uh sorry guys I have to go…See you tomorrow!” You quickly run out leaving both girls confused. “Something’s definitely up” Bebe shook her head “I know she’s been acting weird for a while now…” Wendy agreed.
As you walked out of Wendy’s house you reread Stan’s text again and again.
“We need to talk right now”
The anxiety building up in your chest was unbearable. What did he want, oh god did he want to end things?? You’re mind raced as you walked ran to his house.
When you arrived at the Marsh residence you shot Stan a quick message and stood at his door fidgeting with your fingers nervously. You jump when the front door opens “Hey…” Stan stands in front of you “Um…come in” He moves to the side letting you walk in without saying a word. Sure you’d been in his house probably a million times but this time it was different there was….
Tension
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ✧˖°.
Masterlist
#south park x reader#south park fanfiction#south park x y/n#south park x you#stan marsh x you#stan marsh x y/n#stan marsh x reader#stan marsh smut#Shameless SP Series
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Hello there ciders!
Is nice to see that your requests are open again ^^
Me wants angst (hurt/comfort) so 👀
Clyde, Gregory (if ya write for him), Damien, Kenny and Stan when someone literally points them out that they've been ignoring reader for like a week because they were speding all their attention on other friend and that they now are a crying and confused mess in their room (the room of the character that pointed that out).
Ofc you don't have to do it If you don't feel like it! <3
Stay hydrated and don't forget to eat, take breaks est and sleep a good amount of hours ^^
clyde, damien, kenny, and stan unintentionally ignoring reader; platonic hurt/comfort
A/N: HIII!! i havent had a lot of experience writing hurt/comfort but i hope this will suffice. im also not great at writing for clyde but i tried!! the friend character has been hanging out with is not specificed and is referred to as F/N. and thank you!!!
i wanted to write a gregory segment but honestly i think its hard to fully depict his personality as he was only in the movie, so i apologize!! :(
reader is referred to with they/them pronouns
clyde donovan
clyde can be. very..... unaware sometimes. so it probably doesn't click that he hasn't been talking to you until someone hammers it into his brain. when he realizes he feels really stupid and guilty
"clyde! dude, i need to talk to you." tolkien rushes into the living room, where clyde and his friends were playing games on the couch.
clyde gets up and looks at him, as tolkien takes him into the next room. "what's wrong?"
tolkien looks kinda uncomfortable. "it's Y/N. they had a total breakdown in my room. they said something about you, i don't know what to do."
clyde,, doesn't like to hear this. he's actually kinda scared to go in there and see you crying, but the fact that you mentioned him has him kinda curious.
he lightly knocks on the door before creaking it open. "...Y/N?"
he sees you, awkwardly curled up in tolkien's racecar bed, sniffles and hiccups sounding throughout.
he hesitates for a bit, stumped on what to do, before stepping in and shutting the door behind him. he plays with his fingers.
he's incredibly nervous, but he steps closer to you, trying to get a better look at your face. "Y/N?"
you look up, and upon recognizing clyde's face, you sit up and wipe your tears. "o-oh. hey, man. what's- what's up?"
he's really stumped now. what does he say?????
"uh, i was checking if you're alright. did- did something happen?" clyde seems to kick his foot a little, seemingly trying to look at everything in the room but you.
you continue to wipe your face with your sleeve. "um- no, not really. it isn't-" you stop yourself, and an inner conflict is visible on your face. you sigh.
"y'know what, whatever. clyde, why- are- i feel like- like you've been avoiding me." you look away.
it doesn't process at first. "huh? avoiding you?"
you sniffle. "i mean, yeah. you've been, like- not talking to me and stuff and it seems like you're always busy. did i do something?"
"... but we're hanging out right now, right?"
"...... well yeah but it's different.. i mean like, alone. like you keep walking past me in school, and, when i wanted to be your lab partner, you-" you pause and hiccup. "agh, this is stupid, i'm sorry dude."
you can see the gears turning in clyde's head. "so, you think i've been ignoring you on purpose? i haven't... oh." he kinda has a durr moment and realizes the events of the past week.
he grimaces. "oughh, i just realized i've been hanging out with F/N way more lately.. i'm sorry, man. i didn't mean to make you feel left out."
you look at him again, with a little hope in your eyes. "wait.. so, you're not mad at me?"
he shakes his head. "no. i just kinda got busy, sorry for ignoring you. we can be partners for mr. garrisons next project, OK?"
you wipe your cheeks once more and nod. "yeah, OK."
he does a stupid lil grin, one that's strangely encouraging. "c'mon, we gotta get a slice of pizza before the guys eat it all!"
damien thorn
he's erm. very confused as to why it bothers you that much
he tries to be sympathetic though. keyword tries
"oh, dear. damien, i'm so glad you've come! ...what happened between you and Y/N?"
"... ?"
"well, it's just that.. i was talking to them and it seems you've been ignoring them for about a week or so."
"..." he thinks for a moment. "..not on purpose."
pip plays with his hands a bit. "well, i think you should go have a chat with them. they're up in my room."
damien looks at him with an unreadable expression, before making his way up the steps. he stands in front of pip's door, unsure what to do with his hands.
damien opens the door, and you look up from your spot on the bed. "damien, uh, hey, dude.." you quickly wipe your face and look at him.
he stands there for a moment, the both of you feeling the awkwardness kick in fast
"..pip wanted me to talk to you."
"'bout what?"
"about me ignoring you. i didn't do it on purpose." you can tell it strains him to explain himself.
you wipe your cheeks a bit more. "i- i know you didn't, but.. i dunno. i saw you and F/N hanging out and- you seemed really happy."
you have to admit, it's a little strange sharing your feelings of friendship with the son of satan.
".. i'm here now."
"...?"
"i'm here, hanging out with you. would you prefer i left?"
"i- no!" you find yourself speaking louder than intended. "i-i mean, no, i don't."
his head tilts a little. "then what is it that you want?"
you rub your arm, once again feeling like a shrimp in the presence of a shark. "well- maybe we could just, hang out. i dunno. you and me."
damien thinks for a moment, before nodding his head. "very well. we shall go play xbox at your house."
"really?"
"yes. now come, we must leave quickly so pip doesn't ask any questions."
"hah, okay."
in the hallway, right before you walk down the stairs, you hear damien mutter, "i didn't ignore you on purpose."
you chuckle and pat his shoulder. "yeah, buddy. i know."
kenny mccormick
god. he feels so bad about it.
i can see him being kinda confused on why it upset you so much,, but he does get it to an extent and he's just like. damn.
"dude, kenny, have you been ignoring Y/N?"
"mmph? mph!" (what? no!)
"they started crying because they thought you were, you should probably go talk to them in my room."
he opens the door and he's incredibly confused why you were crying next to stan's bed with your knees to your chest.
"mmph, mmph mph?" (dude, what's wrong?) he slowly sits next to you, putting his hand on your shoulder
you sniffle and look away. "can.. can you tell me why you're upset with me?"
".... mmph? mph mmph mmmf mmph mph!" (.... what? i'm not upset with you!) he's really confused now. what ever gave you that idea?
you look at him a bit oddly, wiping a few of your tears. "then.. why were you ignoring me?"
he ponders for a moment, trying to scan through the week that's passed since you two last hung out. to him, it just seems like you two haven't really had time to talk...
and then it hits him that he's been hanging around F/N a lot recently. as a result, you two haven't talked at all. to him, it really wasn't that big of a deal, but he feels bad when he realizes that you thought he didn't want to be around you anymore.
"mm, mmph... mph mmphph, mmph. mmf mmf mmmphph mmph mmf mph mph mmmph mmph... mmf mmph mmmph." (aw, man... i'm sorry, Y/N. i've been hanging around F/N a lot recently and.. i didn't realize.) he seems sheepish, and rubs his arm.
kenny gets up and extends his hand to you to take. "mmf mmph mmph mph mph, mmph? mmph mmmph." (i'm not mad at you, okay? i promise.)
you look at him, still a little weary, but relieved that it was just in your imagination. "yeah.. yeah, okay. thank you, kenny." you take his hand and he pulls you up.
you can't see his smile because of his parka, but you see his cheeks lift and his eyes crinkle, almost as if he's giving you a pep talk through his eyes.
"mmf mmph mmph! mmphh mmph mmf mm mmpph mmmph! "now, come on! stan's mom is making tuna helper!)
stan marsh
"oooof, jeez..." he's like scratching the back of his head and grimacing. like he doesn't know what to say but he feels very guilty
"stan, what's up with you and Y/N?"
"huh? what do you mean?"
"they said you've been avoiding them for like a week, what happened?" kyle crosses his arms.
"avoiding them? i haven't been avoiding them! we hung out like..... last friday..."
"well, whatever happened, it had them pretty upset at my house yesterday. they started crying about it right before we went to bed."
stan is incredibly confused. he knows it's been a bit since you two hung out, but he didn't think it was that serious!
he tries to look for you around school, hoping to maybe find you in the cafeteria or in the hallways, but nothing.
he sighs, entering the bathroom, but perks up once he sees you, washing your hands.
"Y/N! dude, i've been looking for you everywhere!" stan runs up to you, his face showing an emotion somewhere between awkwardness and relief.
you look a little down as you greet him. "hey, stan. what's up?" you dry your hands and face him.
he averts his eyes a little. "um... kyle was talking to me earlier, about how you slept over at his place yesterday? and, about..." he trails off, looking to find the right words.
you realize what he's talking about, and get a little embarrassed. "oh, yeah. i... i wanted to talk to you about it, but i didn't really know how to.."
his voices gets a little softer. "listen, um, i didn't mean to ignore you. F/N and i have been hanging out a lot recently, and, i dunno, i guess i kinda got caught up in it. i'm not mad at you or anything." he fidgets with his hands a little.
you look up a little. "oh, well, that's a relief." you say, with a little chuckle in your voice. "i.. i was kinda worried you didn't wanna be friends anymore.. but i guess i was overreacting."
stan looks at you. "it's fine, dude. you didn't overreact. i'm sorry." he puts his hand on your shoulder and squeezes it a little, giving a small reassuring smile.
you smile back. stan's always had a sort of hard time finding words to comfort people, so it means a lot that he's trying.
he pats your back, before looking nervous. "now, if you'll excuse me, i really have to shit." he runs into the stall, slamming it shut.
you chuckle and leave before the smell hits you.
#south park#south park x reader#sp x reader#platonic sp x reader#platonic x reader#south park fandom#clyde donovan x reader#damien thorn x reader#kenny mccormick x reader#stan marsh x reader#i think damien didnt do it on purpose idk tho#clyde donovan#damien thorn#kenny mccormick#stan marsh#pineappleciders
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Eddie Month Day Sixteen & Seventeen
Prompts: Library/Curious & Tolkien/Intelligent
Eddie shifts in the ratty old armchair in the corner of the library, one leg scrunched up against the back of the chair, the other dangling over the arm and flips the page of his well loved copy of The Fellowship of the Ring. He should probably be studying right now, midterms starting tomorrow and all, instead of reading a book he practically knows by heart. But it finally feels like fall outside after a frankly disrespectfully hot early October, and it’s raining and the library smells like old paper and dust and– he got a little distracted when he saw his favorite chair by the window was open. Told himself he’d just read a chapter or two to kick off this year’s reread, and then he’d focus on studying. He should have known better, honestly. He’s already six chapters in when he realizes he’s no longer alone in his corner.
He glances up to see quite possibly the prettiest man he’s ever seen in his life, perched in the chair across from him, glasses slipped down on his nose as he mouths along to the book he’s reading and takes notes. Eddie hadn’t even heard him sit down. Has no idea how long they’ve been coexisting in their own little worlds. But now that Eddie knows he’s there he can’t focus on the words on his page. Keeps finding himself peeking over the top of his book, enamored by the handsome stranger.
His eyes flick over to him again, this time catching on their eyes, already staring back at him. Eddie quickly averts his eyes, his face flushing with color from being caught staring. He shifts further down in his seat, hiding behind his book but he can feel the guy still looking over at him. He tries to ignore it, rereads the same paragraph at least five times, and is just about to give up and head back to his dorm when he hears the guy clear his throat and glances over again.
Eddie just stares at him as he waves and then holds his hand out in offering.
“Uh–Hi.” He lets his hand drop when Eddie doesn’t make a move to shake it. “I’m Steve. You’re uh– You’re Eddie, right?”
Eddie’s eyes go wide and his mouth pops open in shock as he tries to catch up to the fact that this stunningly beautiful human before him apparently knows his name. Eddie shakes his head, sending his curls flying around him and sets his book down on his stomach.
“Oh–uh. Yeah I’m–Eddie. Eddie. That’s– Hi.” He scrambles to sit up, disentangling himself from the absolute pile he’d managed to arrange himself in and sticks his hand out to Steve, trying to make up for being an absolute idiot when he offered his own.
Steve’s face breaks into a wide smirk and he reaches over to shake Eddie’s hand before leaning back into his own space. “You’re in my English class, I think.”
Eddie tries to rack his brain and remember ever seeing this person before in his life. Because surely he would remember a face like that. But, if he’s being honest, he usually gets to that class late, sneaks into the back row, and promptly falls asleep. He mostly picked it because he knew he’d already read most of the books on the syllabus and figured it’d be an easy A.
Steve huffs out a laugh and shrugs. “Don’t recognize me? I usually sit a row ahead of you.”
Eddie shakes his head again and chuckles. “That class is usually my mid-afternoon nap, man. Sorry.”
Steve smiles and his eyes flick to the book in Eddie’s hand. He points to it, his brows raised. “Don’t remember Tolkien being on the reading list.”
Eddie’s mouth pulls into a cocky grin. “You a fantasy guy?”
Steve shrugs. “Not particularly. One of my friends is a big fan though.”
Eddie hums in response, bouncing the book against his knee. “I read them every year. They’re my favorite.”
Steve’s eyes widen. “I couldn’t even make it through them once. You read them every year?”
Eddie blushes and he shrugs. “I like to read.”
Steve chuckles. “Just…not for class?”
Eddie wags his finger in Steve’s direction, a menacing laugh escaping his lips. “I’ll have you know that a solid B in that class right now.”
Steve laughs and holds his hand up in defense. “My mistake.” Their eyes meet again and Steve clears his throat. “I was uh– about to take a much needed coffee break. You uh– want to join me?”
Eddie’s heart slams into his throat and he fumbles with his book and drops it so he has to lean over the arm of the chair to get it from the floor. “Oh– yeah that– sure. I could go for some coffee.”
Steve is clearly trying not to laugh at him as he stands with a sly smirk on his face and starts putting his things back in his bag. “Great. Maybe you can convince me to give those another shot.” He nods to the book Eddie is shoving into his backpack.
Eddie pulls his backpack onto his shoulder and nods. “Deal.” He makes a sweeping gesture in front of him and bows a little. “After you, good Sir.” Steve snorts out a laugh and rolls his eyes but takes a few steps before looking back over his shoulder, making sure Eddie is following. Eddie follows, feeling like he’s floating in the clouds, beyond grateful that he let himself get absorbed into his favorite world again. Like a little bit of its magic helped lead him to this. Getting coffee with a pretty boy he never would have thought would even look in his direction.
@eddiemonth
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If you don't mind me asking - what do you think Dream's attitude/reaction towards Tolkien's works (including the legendarium!) would be? (I'm asking a lot of Sandman bloggers this, because I'm extremely curious regarding your takes on this.)
oh! hang on i gotta brush up on my tolkien because i haven't actually read any of the books since like. 2011.
i guess my main thought would be about how dream missed like, 95% of his work when he was stuck in his Jar. my understanding (read: google search) is that tolkien was building up the mythology for his stories before 1916 (when dream was captured), but most of it was not finished/published until a while after.
(this became an insane and mostly unrelated rant i am so so sorry)
i think a lot about how much of his own... area of work and power dream missed when he was trapped. the 20th century, generally speaking, was a time of rapid growth in storytelling methods and media more generally. dream missed almost all of radio, particularly radio as it became a medium for stories. radio was invented in the late 1890s but didn't see a proper rise into a storytelling medium, rather than mainly a direct communication one, until around the 30s. so dream missed the creation and growth of the first, i guess you would call it, networked storytelling, and technological storytelling, and what was... probably? the biggest return to an auditory type of storytelling since the original oral tradition, folk tales, great epics etc, for radio at its peak of cultural relevance (at least in the US and probably the ""West"" more generally, alas i can't speak as knowledgeably for other parts of the world, obviously plenty of other parts of the world had radio in the early 20th century and onward, but i don't know much about its use as a fictional storytelling medium versus for news and government broadcasts. something to look into! part of why radio became such a medium in the usa was because of our rampant capitalism and commercialism lol, so less capitalistic places might have approached it differently - here, advertisers wanted to figure out a way to monetize radio better, but obviously people aren't going to just listen to hours of ads, so they packaged them around stories, live music performances, and variety shows. that's where soap operas as a form come from -- they were originally sponsored by soap companies! also serials, though of course books have also been serialized in the past. and sponsored radio programs also birthed the sort of episodic comedies that eventually evolved into the half hour TV comedies we know today)
which also means - as a direct result of missing radio, dream also missed the rise of television as a medium - it grew directly out of radio, even the big networks we know today, CBS, NBC, and ABC were originally radio networks. television has ended up being a huge change in visual storytelling, not only in its inception, but especially in its more recent years - it's probably the only long-form audiovisual storytelling medium, which is something that didn't really exist before. huge shift in storytelling possibilities. he also missed the development of comic books, and the internet, and the resulting increased accessibility of art and storytelling to both artists and art lovers. he missed an absolutely huge, HUGE shift in the democratization of art and the ability to share it. and, once again, the development of totally new methods of storytelling in the form of internet video! not to even mention the accessibility of MUSIC, music recording and sharing was still in its infancy when dream was imprisoned and now you can get, and make, and share pretty much any music imaginable! and the new genres! and the intermediality of everything and the cross-cultural awareness!
this is not even getting into the new ease of photography, or film, which was also relatively new in 1916. imagine going into a coma when there were only silent films, and waking up to everyone and their mother making tiktoks. the last film you saw was one of chaplin's or something and then you come back and see interstellar in imax 3d. i think i'd explode. (dream would love film, too, it's very dreamlike)
dream returning to the waking world in 2022 and immediately having the entirety of tiktok beamed directly into his head:
(another thing i think about a lot but won't get into because i'm already rambling - hob witnessing the entire development of accessible writing from the printing press to fucking social media. insanity. i want to pick his brain on it
what pushed hob over the edge, do you think. what's the one thing he saw written online that briefly made him regret ever getting involved in printing at all and wish everyone was illiterate again. it was not porn, btw, mr. monsterfucker gadling can handle anything, ok. no, it was something much worse...)
anyway. rambling over. this is all to say that i am not a tolkien expert and haven't read much of his stuff anywhere recently - though i was quite obsessed with it in middle/high school - so my main thought is in relation to dream getting cut off from all of these great stories. it must have been like, to put it flippantly, your favorite tv show getting cancelled halfway through after a cliffhanger XD. he has all these stories from great storytellers - tolkien included - storytellers who are building their whole own worlds in his realm, storytellers he's nurturing and supporting in his own way - and gets ripped away from them. and when he returns, they're all gone.
here's hoping someone who knows more about tolkien can give you an answer more specifically relevant to that. that's all i got for now 😂
#never get me started talking about media history. then again i kinda started myself on it this time#thanks for the ask! sorry for the lack of relevant answer lol#dream of the endless#tolkien#hamelin-born#ask#i think dream would actually like tiktok after he got over the sheer volume of existing content lol#like i feel like the endlessness and interconnectedness of the internet is similar to how it already feels in his mind#media history#belatedly thinking AGAIN about all the stuff dream missed like all of the cultural changes? the story genres? the new poetry and new style?#NEW ART MOVEMENTS? THE MOVEMENTS HE MISSED. DREAM MISSED FUCKING SURREALISM THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE IT WAS LITERALLY INSPIRED BY HIM#all the subcultures of story and art creation he missed. i'm gonna lose it actually
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fic writer questions - thanks for the tags, @grey-gazania @curufiin and @thelordofgifs! Sorry that it took so long.
1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 51, though one is a compilation of unrelated short pieces.
2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 89,680
3. What fandoms do you write for? At present just Silm and Lotr, but I'm hoping to participate in Yuletide this year and thinking about The Handmaiden, Hustlers, Swan Lake, and The Wolf Den as potential fandoms to offer
4. What are your top five fics by kudos?
spirited away (outsider pov legolas/gimli)
post mortem (clinical/epistolary post-second kinslaying)
it takes a village (5+1 SoF and celebrimbor)
the straight road (epistolary legolas/gimli)
the stones wept (orpheus and eurydice au legolas/gimli)
It seems like my most popular pieces are L/G or sons of Feanor. And they ARE fun to write about, so I'm not complaining!
5. Do you respond to comments? Yes. But sometimes it takes an embarrasingly long time. Because I suck.
6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? haven (everyone dies) sister sister (everyone dies) if our deed faileth (everyone dies) woe unto worlds end (everyone dies)
Sensing a theme.
7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? coastin' (Elwing gets her pussy ate by her sexy husband and has an orgasm)
8. Do you get hate on fics? Lol I'm not relevant enough for that.
9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Yes lol. I'm not sure what's meant by "what kind", but I've done F/F, M/M, F/M, F/M/M, M/F/F/F/F and a fairly big variety of kinks so like... most kinds?
10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? No, and I'm not a huge reader of them, although I long for a Silm/Succ crossover
12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Yes! The lovely @camille-lachenille translated see it fall, child of war into French. You can read it here.
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No. I write very slowly and erratically, which I don't think would be fair to any potential cowriter.
14. What’s your all time favorite ship? Legolas/Gimli is a long term otp and one couple where I really can't see either side with anyone else (if they want to invite Aragorn or Eomer to join for a night I'm not opposed). Elwing and Earendil is another couple that I feel the same about (and I'm also defensive of them as a couple and genuinely see them as an example of some of Tolkien's most romantic writing). I also really like Celegorm/Orome for being basically perfect for my id.
15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Eeeh. I'm really trying not to officially throw in the towel on any of my wips. It's just taking me a long time...
16. What are your writing strengths? Can I say smut? I think I'm quite good at setting, food, and clothing descriptions too.
17. What are your writing weaknesses? Any plot that's more complicated than "emotion in space" or "dick in hole". Also actually DOING the writing.
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I used to do it much more than I currently do. Now I feel like it breaks the flow of the story.
19. First fandom you wrote for? LOTR.
20. Favourite fic you’ve written? I've said it before but I was really pleased with how one of your girls came out and have reread it a couple of times since publishing. Actually I think I got some writers block after publishing it because I feel like I can't surpass it lol.
This was fun to do! I'm very late to the party so I think most people have been tagged, but if anyone else wants to do it then please go ahead and say I tagged you.
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Could you please write a fic about ler!Clyde tickling lee!Jimmy?
Ah sorry this request was put in before I got on the boat! I had this idea for a while though so I thought I would flesh it out! I like summery aesthetics so I would go for a summer activity :) Also if this fic is a little lacking I apologize, I haven't written in a second so I have to get back into it :)
I hope you enjoy this!
Stop the jokes, Jimmy! (Lee Jimmy/ Ler Clyde)
The boys are spending the weekend camping with PC Principal as a summer activity. When Clyde gets into trouble, Jimmy tries to lighten the mood with some jokes. Clyde finds a way to entertain himself.
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Another log was added to the crackling fire; the embers of flame flying up to reach the dark indigo sky speckled with oncoming stars. The boys sat in a circle around the campfire, listening intently to PC Principal's scary campfire story. Their eyes were wide, not missing a beat. Smores and trash littered the area around the boys; a telling night of the activities they'd been up to that night.
PC Principal held a flashlight under his chin, the shadows on his eyes highlighting him ghoulishly. "-The man had admitted to falling in love with the woman with the green scarf around her neck. But he was too curious about the green scarf. It ate away at him, as he saw she wore it even when she went to bed. He asked her about it, and she said she would let him know when the time is right. One day, he had know what it meant. While the woman slept, the man crept up to her bedside and grabbed hold of the scarves end. He gave it a tug-"
PC Principal put his hand up in a claw for dramatic effect above his head. "-and the scarf flew off the woman's neck, sending her head rolling to the floor! MWAHAHAHA!" PC Principal cackled maniacally for horrifying dramatic effect. All of the boys rolled their eyes at the lame ending, while Butters clutched his knees and trembled.
"Bwaaah! Oh hamburgers, that was scary! I don't know if I can sleep tonight after that one PC Principal! Oh, Jesus!" Butters exclaimed. The boys, Stan, Kyle, Kenny, Eric, Tolkien, Clyde, and Jimmy, collectively rolled their eyes.
"Oh shut up, Butters. That story was lame as shit. Clyde's story was better than that one and I was half asleep." Cartman groaned. PC Principal sat up from his seat and stretched his kinked back.
"Alright everyone, listen up. We're gonna go collect more firewood before we set up camp for the night. Can't be too careful with these temperatures. Everyone, let's go." PC Principal announced. The boys sighed and got up from their seats, Jimmy turning to move as well. Clyde looked around at the moving group hurriedly.
"Oh uh, I'll stay behind with Jimmy PC Principal. It's uh...it's dark already. He could trip over a branch or something on his crutches." Jimmy gave an inquisitive look as PC Prinicpal considered.
"I'll be fine-" Jimmy started, but PC Principal spoke first.
"Good thinking. Someone needs to watch the campfire and our supplies, especially this late at night. You boys keep your head on a swivel, and we'll be back soon." PC Principal and the rest of the boys turned around to make their way into the dark woods.
Clyde snickered to himself as he pulled his Nintendo Switch out from his coat pocket. "Heheh, finally, some alone time." Clyde started up a game of Mario Kart. Jimmy looked over and pointed a finger at the console.
"Hey Clyde, I don't think you're su-supposed to have that," Jimmy commented. Clyde scoffed and started racing the computer characters in Moo Moo Meadows.
"Oh whatever Jimmy, it's not like anyone is gonna find out-"
A hand snatched the Switch from Clyde's hands like a crack of lightning. Clyde whirled behind him to see none other than PC Principal, tucking the Switch in an oversized pocket.
"And I'll be taking that. Head on a swivel, Donovan." PC Principal warned. Clyde gaped and groaned as PC Principal actually disappeared into the woods this time. The boy sighed as he laid his cheek in his palm.
"Goddammit, I try to get some fucking alone time around here. It's bad enough I'm surrounded by dudes as it is-" Clyde started, but Jimmy interrupted him.
"H-Hey, don't be down Cl-Clyde. We can still have a bah- a beuh- a beh- a banging good time with just the two of us." Jimmy reassured, but Clyde wasn't convinced. In fact, he looked even more glum than before.
"I doubt it," Clyde said simply and went back to his wallowing before the crackling fire. Jimmy was quiet for a moment before speaking again.
"Hey, Clyde. Wh-What do you call a hippie's wife?" Jimmy asked. Clyde sighed loudly through his nose while he begrudgingly answered.
"What, Jimmy," Clyde responded.
"M-Mihi-Mehe-M-Mississippi." Jimmy answered with a smile on his face. Clyde gave him a sideways glance and started throwing flecks in the fire to watch it roil and burn.
"N-Not a winner huh? T-Try this one on for size. Wh-What did one DNA say to the other- the other one? ...' D-Do these genes make me look fat'?" Jimmy joked. Clyde let the wind of the forest answer him as he gave Jimmy a blank stare. Jimmy swallowed and put on an award-winning smile.
"Wow, what a terrific audience. Okay, how about this one-" Clyde angrily swept the hair out of his eyes and splayed his hands toward Jimmy.
"God Jimmy just shut up already! No one is into your jokes dude! Just quit trying." Clyde snapped, earning a small flinch from Jimmy. The fire popped in response.
"I just wanted to make you laugh... m-my bad," Jimmy said in a small voice. Clyde looked up at him, the sadness in Jimmy's eyes illuminated by the fire. Dammit. He didn't mean to hurt his feelings.
"Jimmy I-" Clyde started, but Jimmy fidgeted in his crutches.
"J-Just forget it, Clyde. I didn't mean to get your Nin-Ne-Nintendo taken away." Jimmy said solemnly. Clyde felt bad now. He and Jimmy had never been terribly close, but he didn't want to sour any relationship between them like that. Clyde thought for a moment before a small grin showed on his face.
"Hey, Jimmy? Why are squids the funniest animals?" Clyde asked, inching closer to where Jimmy sat on the log by the fire.
"W-Well I'm not sure Clyde, why are they?" Jimmy responded innocently. Clyde set himself up on the seat next to Jimmy and prepped his fingers. Jimmy watched him warily.
"Cause of their ten-tickles!" Clyde answered and shot his hands forward to start scribbling in Jimmy's tummy. Jimmy sputtered and started wriggling immediately to get away from the fingers.
"Cl-Clyhyde! What thehe hehell?!" Jimmy twisted as well as he could with his crutches in the way, the metal pressing against Clyde's leg. Clyde scratched in various places around Jimmy's torso so he wouldn't be stopped so easily.
"You said you wanted to make me laugh Jimmy! So I'm making you laugh instead. I do have to do something to pass the time with no Nintendo, you know." Clyde said nonchalantly, while Jimmy's laughter petered over the sounds of the popping fire and hooting owls of the forest.
"Clyhyde! We cahan't be too lohohoud! Y-Yohou'll-you'll- hah!-" Jimmy tried to speak against the tickles but his stutter got the best of him. His cheeks were dusted pink at the thought of a creature becoming aware of their presence due to his raucous laughter.
Clyde smiled at his friend's attempt to escape the devious tickles. He fluffed his fingers up and down his friend's torso, pinching and wiggling his fingers in different spots to be unpredictable. Jimmy let go of his crutches to start slapping Clyde's hands away, but with the awkward positioning of how they sat, Jimmy was rendered immobile and unable to move away unless he crawled away.
"I'll what Jimmy? What's the matter, can't talk? You were talking plenty earlier." Clyde teased and fluffed his fingers around Jimmy's ears. Jimmy squeaked a manly sound and held his hands up to his ears to cover them. Clyde took advantage of that and squished Jimmy's lower tummy.
"Ahaha! *Hic!* Clyhyde! *Hic!* S-Stohop! *Hic!* I'll st-stohop mahaking johokes!" Jimmy cried, his arms shooting down to protect his stomach. Clyde was quick to scribble and tickle any spots that Jimmy left vulnerable, including getting past his defenses with ease and squishing his ribs.
"You will? I don't know Jimmy, I think you just have too many lame jokes in your system. It might take a lot more convincing to get me to stop." Clyde drawled and dotted his fingers anywhere that Jimmy wasn't quick enough to protect.
"Hehehee! O-Okahahay! I-I swehe- I- hehehee- I swhehe- *Hic!* hahaha!" Jimmy's stutter, hiccups, and laughter worked in tandem to prevent him from swearing off any further jokes. Clyde smirked as his fingers reached up to Jimmy's collarbones. Oh God- bad spot.
"Guess I'm too funny for you to stop laughing, huh Jimmy? Maybe I should be the next school comedian." Clyde wondered aloud, his fingers fluffing and tracing the collarbones under Jimmy's shirt. Jimmy turned into a turtle and tucked his chin into his neck to protect himself.
"Nohoho no no! Clyhyhyde not thehehere! *Hic!* Thahahat's a bahahad spohohot! *Hic!*" Jimmy was caught in between covering his collarbones to stop the tickles, and covering his lower tummy from getting attacked as Clyde switched to either tactic to keep Jimmy scrambled.
"Almost as bad as your jokes? I don't think so, Jim. This is pretty entertaining considering you got my Nintendo taken away. You have a lot to make up for. My Dad paid for that!" Clyde pointed out and used both his hands to scribble on Jimmy's collarbones and his tummy. Jimmy was starting to get tired from his exertion.
"I sahahaid sohorrehehee! *Hic!* *Hic!* I dihihidn't mehehean too!" Jimmy laughed and started pushing Clyde's wrists away.
"Jimmy let go!" Clyde demanded and tried to rip his hands away. Jimmy was still giggling, the residual tickles peppering his skin.
"Nohoho! Yohou'll t-tickle me again!" Jimmy pushed Clyde back on the log, just as their friends and PC Principal emerged from the dark forest.
"Boys! Are you alright? We heard noises from a mile away!" PC Principal dropped the kindling off next to the fire and walked over to the two of them. Jimmy swallowed as Clyde smiled cooly.
"Yeah, it sounded like a deranged cackling witch!" Kyle added. Jimmy's blush deepened at Kyle's comment, while Clyde's joy was elevated.
"Yeah Jimmy, why don't you go ahead and tell them what the noises were?" Clyde teased. Everyone dropped off their kindling and watched Jimmy expectantly.
"...Fuck o-off Clyde. You deserve getting your Nin-Ne-Nintendo taken away."
#south park#south park tickles#lee jimmy#jimmy valmer#ler clyde#clyde donovan#danny writes#tickle fic
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MTIJ | Ch.30 City of Dumbassery, Here I Come
|mtij masterlist|
pairing: levi ackerman x reader
word count: 13k
summary: a girl with a variety of hidden complexes has to live with a french asshole for nine months. easy? on the surface. problematic? definitely. romantic? not too much, or at least they’d make it a point to say so everytime when asked. the end? please, their dynamic isn’t as simple as that.
warnings: nsfw content; mentions of nudity; virginity loss; oral sex (f! receiving); protected sex; explicit sexual content; reader discretion advised
A hundred-dollar question: where do people go to blow off steam when their interns weren’t back back from their vacation yet? First and foremost, never City of Dumbassery as it’s not a place for relaxation. I might’ve been its main population these days, but I fancied myself a rational person capable of making the right choices when needed. Pretend you’re not looking at my romantic history. The right choice, however, wasn’t always right in the heat of the moment, only in perspective, so we begin this scene with me, seated on Erwin Smith’s couch with Hanji Zoe and a cup of coffee.
For more information on the right-est choice I made as of late, keep watching. Or as asshole-me insists on promoting: Come see the prequel to the biggest fuck-up of this girl’s life. I, though oblivious to its imminent eventuation at the point where we start, had a vague notion of what I wanted the next few days to look like. Let’s just say, humourlessly enough, that my wildest dreams came nowhere close to the reality that would take place.
“I’m sorry about last time, (Y/N). I didn’t know about you and Eren.” Hanji’s contrite apology made my smile widen as I lifted the cup of coffee to my lips. Dismissing the fact she brought the topic right back with the intention to make amends, Hanji was a good person and clearly sincere in her ways of regarding me. Kindness was one thing, but this woman’s pure cordiality was admirable.
“It’s not a problem. I could tell it wasn’t your intention to hurt me.” The corner of my mouth twitched in self-reproach at the manipulative bullshit I let slip. Instantly, I corrected: “Not that I was hurt.” If it’d been Annie, she wouldn’t straight-up laughed. Had it been Levi, he would’ve stared at me like I was dumb for thinking him dumb enough to buy it. But this was Hanji and she just smiled reassuringly.
“You can share if you want to. That’s what I’m here for with all my friends,” she offered. It sounded tempting but I couldn’t allow myself that kind of openness yet. Annie was, as always, the only person who knew the full story in all its repulsive glory but if I wanted to preserve
(Levi’s privacy)
my reputation, I couldn’t tell the whole thing here. The whole thing – look at me dodging the serious parts in an attempt to make myself feel better. I couldn’t tell Hanji about my intoxicated attempt to sleep with her friend, who gave dubious if any consent. Sounded appropriately disgusting like this.
“Mike and Erwin seem like they lead pretty decent lives, though.” Redirecting the topic, ignoring everything weird, dismissing all as a dirty scheme meant to humiliate me – a methodical step-by-step guide on how to be a paranoid bitch. It would’ve been my equivalent of the Bible if I weren’t an atheist. Even if I regularly used OMG, if I had to pick a fictional character to believe was real, at least I’d pick one from a book with a legit author – something by King, Thackeray, Hemingway, Tolkien, Orwell or Hawthorne. Following that train of thought, I might as well start worshipping Mickey Mouse – it’d do me more good than the big guy with the beard who loves me but would make me suffer for all eternity for stepping out of line once. I did it a lot.
“It wasn’t always like that. Not to mention Levi was stuck in the gutter a month back.” Hanji’s words snapped me out of my daze. “I know I told you to wait for him, but I don’t trust him, so make sure you keep this conversation a secret,” she warned while leaning forward as if afraid the walls would hear. The suspense, though exaggerated and a bit comical, made me put down my coffee. “So, you know how Petra is mentioned here and there?” I nodded. “She was Levi’s fiancé. She died in a car crash last October.” I knew I should’ve reacted appropriately but I couldn’t force it quickly enough. Hanji noticed. “You don’t look shocked.”
“No, but I am surprised. A lot of things make sense now. I’m sorry for your loss.” I hastened to make a recovery to lessen the doubt along the planes of her face. A pang tugged on my heart. When I considered the alternate reality where Petra hadn’t died, the notion of Levi not arriving for his internship was incomprehensible. He’d be studying hard at home and married. No rings, no chaos, no cheating for me – yes, good, but no company around the house either, no distraction and no comfort.
“You haven’t done anything to apologise for it,” Hanji said. “Anyways. Shorty was in a really bad place the months after. Working himself to the bone, no sleep, no food, no nothing. He just had to be doing something. The one good thing that came out of it was his weekly visits to his mother.” A small pause, a moment of consideration for her and an odd feeling of fascination for me. I was soaking it up like a sponge because I was seeing, at last, his angle. “Maybe it hit him that if death came for Petra, it could come for Kuchel, too. I can’t know for sure. All I know is he exhausted himself to the point he collapsed. Unconscious for three whole days. Isabel told him he’d gotten the internship when he woke up.”
“So he used it as an escape,” I finished. It was a logical conclusion. Hanji nodded. Avoiding pain wasn’t the way but he’d been desperate to get away and the internship had been the perfect opportunity. He’d grabbed his bags, boarded the plane and then… well, had to deal with me. Not a warm welcome by any means. He hadn’t even had the energy to get angry or look like he felt anything. I hadn’t known, hadn’t cared enough to see. It made me uncomfortable to realise it.
“Flew over a whole ocean and kept working,” Hanji proceeded. “He wanted something to distract himself with. When he ran out of work because he did overtime, he started calling home more often. Vague details were all he gave, but I got the feeling he had something else to work on.” Hanji’s words made a lopsided smile kiss my lips. He’d wanted to busy himself with my well-being, but I’d taken it the wrong way, as I often did. Nowadays the matter was often used against him but never by him – wasn’t that funny?
“Becoming the spoiled brat’s babysitter,” I filled in kindly, but Hanji’s disapproving frown meant to reproach along with the eloquent gesture of her crossing her arms. I didn’t regret the way I worded it. Eren, Annie, Mikasa and my mother had often tried to make me rethink my ways, but results were yet to manifest. This story, with me as the shitty protagonist most likely to be insufferable contrary to sympathy-inducing, portrayed reality as I saw it – and reality often neglected character development.
“He never called you either, but he did mention taking care of you had the same effect as working, if not better. I felt he might find himself a friend, so I supported him. I think I made the right choice. You have a lot in common,” Hanji declared. It struck a cord – did we really? Our arguments were fire lashing out at ice – not something that happened with people got along. Levi was hard to anger whereas I had a short fuse – everything was a personal insult. No easier target than a conceited paranoid.
“On the topic of that,” I piped. “How do you forget somebody?” The question was light-hearted. I decided to dismiss the whole story so I could ponder it later. Hanji’s brows furrowed as she smiled sympathetically. She couldn’t imagine the situation well enough. The question was I over Eren? had kept at a safe distance from my mind during my birthday vacation and the beginning of August only to assault it now with pitiless ire.
Things kept coming back when I least needed them. Thoughts of the twinkle in his teal eyes or the crooked smile he always wore before a kiss, the sound of his voice – the softness he’d told me he loved me with the first time, the haunting quiver in it when we were breaking up. I woke up at night with the howl of planes taking off and landing. On some mornings, I woke up, hoping to hear a knock at the door and see his face. Would he be more tan? Would his eyes be the same? Would his hair be styled differently? Would he have grown taller?
But, (Y/N), a voice would say in my head, people don’t grow taller just like that, it’s physically impossible.
Eren can, I’d argue, because Eren is my boyfriend and he can do anything if he puts his mind to it.
But Eren wasn’t my boyfriend and he wasn’t a miracle-maker. I’d sit in bed and argue with myself that Eren would come back, that I wanted the best for him and that wasn’t me, that we were done, but that he’d still come back. He never did. A small desperate part of me still hoped for the door to open – any door. Erwin Smith’s apartment’s front door right now, even. I could almost hear his footsteps going up the stairs. I swore I could. I turned to Hanji, a naïve question – can’t you? – flickering in my orbs. She didn’t catch it.
“I’m not an expert,” she said instead. “But Levi can be of help. His coping mechanisms aren’t the best example to follow, but he has a good head on his shoulders. He just doesn’t listen to it.” She might’ve thought, with how desperate I looked, that I might cry. She didn’t know pride would rather have me rip out of my tear ducts before that happened. I didn’t cry often or in many people’s presence. That wasn’t to say I didn’t like Hanji. But Annie and, unfortunately, Levi were the exceptions here. The latter was a mystery, probably my attempt to play a damsel in distress to ask for attention. Attention and help and fucking, might as well – a kiss. Couldn’t he just kiss me sometimes without me having to be in the middle of a mood?
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t copy those coping mechanisms even if I wanted to. Work, sex and alcohol are never a good mix.” I let out an awkward string of laughter, weirded out by my abrupt disconnection from the conversation and how it turned my thoughts against me. I didn’t miss him that much. Also, he was coming home tomorrow. I had nothing to play the desperate whore for. There was the blondie. That wasn’t jealousy, though. I’d say it was my wish to prove myself better.
“Sex?” Hanji echoed with a conflicted expression.
“Sex with my father’s secretary. I think it was around May. He stormed out after calling her and came back drunk in the middle of the night,” I explained. The brown-haired woman took a second to process the story, then burst out in incredulous laughter. My brows twitched. “What’s so funny?” Was it something else or was I just weird for not thinking my father’s intern and secretary fucking the joke of the century?
“I remember him telling me about that,” she started, voice hinting at a new bout of cackling. “He went to her place for paperwork and she had her boyfriend over. They kept offering him drinks and he agreed to shut them up. Crossed the line at some point. He even got lost on his way back to the house.” I wanted to face-palm using the table and, hopefully, get myself into a coma. Was there a person on this Earth denser than me or was I a phenomenal idiot?
“Oh, God,” I muttered in a wheeze. “I’m so stupid.” Embarrassment and shame painted the tips of my ears bright crimson as I clenched my fists. Hanji patted my shoulder.
“You’re not stupid. I would’ve thought the same if I had no context. Levi would never just have a one-night stand, though. Not the type of person for it. He claims it’s the wrongest way to get over something.” Her brown eyes, previously fixed on me, were now directed at the coffee table. “Might work for you, but he most certainly hates it.” A snort was drawn from her lips as she withdrew her hand from my shoulder. I tried not to think about it, but it was inevitable. Hitch’s party, him refusing, refusing, refusing, because it would be “just like that” and “just like that” was a solution for neither of us.
“I’ll consider it,” I joked. “I was busy up until recently, but maybe university won’t be enough to distract me.” I smiled as Hanji chuckled, patting my back.
“Another boyfriend should do the trick in that case,” she said.
But I don’t want another boyfriend, I wanted to counter. I want your grumpy short friend. The thought froze me up. Asshole-me joined Hanji’s hearty chuckle. Bold of me to think it. Terrible of me to think it. Wrong of me to think it. It was complicated. If romance was not involved here, it was undeniable at this point. I could almost feel it written in capital letters on my forehead.
ATTRACTED TO LEVI ACKERMAN. VERY.
“I’m not ready for the commitment.” Was the only comment to exit my mouth due to the sudden discomfort nestling in the crevice of my ribcage. “I think,” I added awkwardly, reluctant regarding a relationship but very opinionated on the topic of engaging my father’s intern in something inappropriate that would make our relations twice as complicated as they were.
“A friend with benefits then?” Hanji’s mind-reading abilities amazed. I realised it suddenly – that it was natural, this attraction of mine, no matter how humiliating and inconvenient. It wasn’t weird and maybe it wasn’t all that wrong. It was a guy who was three years older than me who lived with me that I considered unreachable. The forbidden fruit, so to say. He was handsome, mysterious and had abs. Natural to be attracted to that. Natural to be attracted to it when I saw it every day and it saw me every day and most times it treated me with passive kindness. So there’d be no harm, I assumed, in initiating something a smidge bigger. What was stopping me? I didn’t have a boyfriend, I wouldn’t feel guilty and I wasn’t insecure because, hey, he’d kissed me last time. Obviously, I wasn’t nasty.
“Update from a virgin to a slut then?” I smirked, a decision born. Hanji’s mouth clamped shut shamefully and I laughed. “I’m kidding, calm down. It was just a joke.” I patted her back. The ring on my finger was cool to the couch and soothing. My resolve, for once, was there. I had a goal. A simple one at that – nothing dangerous. Two words: kiss Levi. I would do it because there was nothing to stop me. I mean, what was the worst that could happen?
…
Imagine an elegant expensive kitchen armed with all kinds of top-quality appliances. Paradise for all little housewives who greet their husbands with a warm meal. I wasn’t that type and the fact I spent four hours cooking more food than a family of six could eat didn’t make me one either. Judging was futile because I took care of that myself during the whole process. Currently, the fruit of my effort sat in front of me – a full three-course meal with different forks to go with the high-class atmosphere. I was far from a successor of Gordon Ramsay, but I outdid myself this time. Why? Last-minute anxiety maybe. Or fear. I needed a distraction because the thought of Eren wouldn’t stop pestering me. Added to that was the fact my father could walk in without Levi. Asshole-me didn’t help.
Bet on the outcome now! A once-in-a-lifetime offer that provides an endless amount of entertainment for the whole family! Fifty bucks says a discount version of William will use the vanishing potion and fly back to France! The other side of the bet? Sorry, I don’t know her. With such a commentator, it was early to skip the food and go straight to consuming my fingernails. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Place your bets right now, your bets need to go in the ballot box, quickly fill out the slips and put them in! Will he go or yes? And what’s the sweat for, princess? Don’t we like watching history repeat itself? I love it. So bet, bet, bet, bet! Come on, faster! If I had a penny for each time your father’s intern left you in the summer, I’d have two pennies. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s hilarious it happened twice!
The jingle of keys pulled the plug on asshole-me’s voice. I’d waited a whole hour now and my head snapped up so fast I heard my neck pop. The front door opened and my heart flinched when my father walked in, dressed in one of those hideous Hawaiian shirts they sold in souvenir shops and flaunting on his nose and cheekbones a really bad case of sunburn. He’d say the sun was harsh in Minnesota. I’d pretend not to hear because believing was impossible. He slipped out of his sandals and I clasped my hands together in excitement.
“Dad, finally! I was starting to think I’d have to reheat everything,” I said. He turned to face the fake exasperation masking the genuine joy I felt at his return. A doubtful smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and my eyes were frantically bouncing from him to the open door. Panic began to well up in my mind. Asshole-me was diligently digging a hole for it, to fit as much as possible.
“A pretty big feast you have there.” Rolland Raven took off the sunglasses he was wearing to eye the food a bit better. I cracked a smile I hoped wouldn’t seem constipated. My thought process was starting to lag due to overload when I heard a faint curse. Next thing, Levi’s pale figure, wearing a ridiculous straw hat. My heart dropped like a stone, plugged the pit of panic and made asshole-me yelp when it nearly crushed her fingers. I felt like stumbling back into my chair and never getting up.
“I guessed you might be hungry after the flight. You don’t have to eat all of it,” I said. It was then a pair of graphite hues shot up to my face. It felt like each muscle in it strained almost to the point of tearing. My father took a seat at the counter while the intern opted to drop off his luggage upstairs and change clothes. I stared after him a second too long while he was climbing the stairs.
“You’ve never waited for me after a business trip before.” (E/c) clashed with (e/c) as my father began picking his food and digging in with more enthusiasm than I’d expected. Levi had mentioned the almightly Raven had complained about the poor quality on the trip compared to what he had at home, but it was still a compliment to witness it manifested.
“I usually have things to do when you’re on business trips, father. This summer I needed a source of entertainment.” I rolled my eyes, letting them scan the interior during the roundabout lie. Lucky enough, they caught the exact moment Levi was leaving his room, tugging down his shirt. A glimpse of fit abdominals. A vague tan line. The food on the counter became a tad bit less appetising.
“Don’t you have Eren Jaeger to help with that?” My father’s question made my attention snap back in place just in time for Levi not to catch me staring. He took a seat at the far end of the counter but I was too preoccupied with a small freak-out fit to dwell on it.
“About that,” I squeaked out with a constipated expression, prompting both men’s attention to turn from half-hearted to wholly undivided. Amazing. I couldn’t have done a better job at it if I’d begun yodelling out of the blue. “Eren broke up with me two months ago.” The key to not sounding like a squeaky toy was to not meet anybody’s gaze. My father was blinking like something had gotten in his eye and Levi’s jaw clenched at the discomfort he was subjected to.
“And I wasn’t notified of that because?” Rolland Raven, among many a quality, was a proud man who, in spite of his profession, could never act quite as predictably as I wished him to. This was no exception because I didn’t have time to open my mouth before he silenced me with a hand in the air. “No, forget I asked. I need to have a serious talk with him. Maybe make him pay back all the dates you’ve handled with interest. We can make a fortune.” The devious plan was voiced in his typical cold-blooded businessman manner. I waved my hands around in discomfort.
“Hold your horses, father. You’re not the one who got dumped. Eren ended the whole thing because he went to study in Germany,” I explained but it wouldn’t satisfy my father, who only glared while putting a fork-full of potatoes in his mouth. Levi tried to become fully invisible. I thought if things got too heated for him, he might make a dash for his room with the dish.
“Unreasonable as can be. If he loved you as much as he had the balls to claim in front of me, he could’ve thought of an alternative that didn’t include breaking your heart. Because of something as insignificant as distance, too.” My father leaned back in his chair with folded arms. He forgot all about food so he could glare at me.
“4898 miles to be exact,” I murmured pitifully. Both men shot me an incredulous look, to which I switched on defence mode. “I did my research. I wasn’t crying the whole time.” Subconsciously copying my father’s position, I reclined in my chair and crossed my arms, glaring like a child prior to giving a sigh and smiling weakly. “I gave it a lot of thought and he did the right thing. So can you be the one to tell mom later?” The last inquiry seemed to surprise him, maybe because it was expected of me to share more with my mother and thus already have her know the super secret information I was handing him.
“I’ll try not to cry as I do.” A nod and a similar weak smile. “You did well not to tell me immediately.” He returned to normal – calculating and sharp, looking for weaknesses and thinking in numbers. Levi’s lack of shock went unnoticed, which I was secretly thankful for. The raven was looking at me playing with the silver band around my finger to soothe my nerves.
“Because you would’ve gone to the airport to kick him to the curb like a good father?” I smirked, a pointed look aimed at the dark-haired businessman, who only snorted in return prior to redirecting his attention back to the food.
“… maybe.” A small pause betraying care, an awkward glance in his intern’s direction conveying mild panic as a result of his feelings showing and a fake clearing of the throat to show discomfiture. He changed the topic immediately. “Have I told you you’ve become a better cook than your mother?” (E/c) clashed with (e/c) and I knew he could see I was holding back laughter by the way the corner of his mouth twitched downwards in displeasure.
“You have now. Congratulations on successfully dodging the topic,” I announced with a complacent grin as he scoffed, ignoring the embarrassment so he could go back to eating. Levi’s gaze was relentless but, once having resolved the current minor conflict, I felt too ashamed to return it. I couldn’t be speaking of Eren, thinking of Levi and acting like a professional whore. It went against my moral code. I wished it was as stable as my pride. Somewhere in my head, asshole-me was drafting an advertisement for the future demise of both.
The following day was unexpectedly laid back in terms of emotions – the process of waking up and going to work was starting to become mechanical. I disliked that I was turning into a nine-to-five zombie, but Melinda’s cross remarks did nothing to hinder my placidity and Adam’s request for a date was, surprisingly, accepted with a pinch of reluctance. It was time for something new, I defended when asshole-me breached the topic of my change of heart. I couldn’t go a whole life without clashing with a man who wasn’t Eren. To forget him, I actually needed to accept that. Because knowing he wouldn’t come back and I didn’t want to get back together was different from realising I couldn’t stay in the comfort zone of being endlessly attached to him and using it as an excuse to never move on.
I felt a smile light up my face the moment I saw Levi in front of the TV with a cup of tea in his hand. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use him to move on – it was the conclusion I drew from the quiet happiness gripping my heart at the sight of him beckoning me over. Everything I’d done had been quite enough. I wouldn’t turn him into a tool as well. So I settled on the couch and we led a half-assed conversation about the movie playing until my parents barged in, beaming and formal. Going for a date at a restaurant – yeah, no, I knew where they were going after. I smiled as we sent them off, and then the ebony-haired intern began choosing the movie we’d be watching and I worked on the snacks downstairs.
Accepted a date, claimed you won’t use him and now you’re pondering the kiss you’ll initiate. You know you’re fucked in the head, correct? Asshole-me piped mockingly, making me huff. I knew I was fucked in the head because she was there. Also, kissing Levi and using Levi were two different things. Different for him how? It’s kissing. It wasn’t. It would be exploring this time – not thinking about being distracted but feeling it for what it was. Jesus, that’s such a weak excuse. I felt she might be face-palming. Seriously, what’s wrong with you? You spent so much time telling your best friend you don’t like him, then you miss Eren, then you “date” Adam, then you grab your friend-zoned intern and decide you’ll be kissing him again – after you established you’re fucking inferior to the blondie who’s clearly hitting on him or clearly intent on doing it too. Can you not follow the timeline?
“Princess, why does Natalie tell me you’ve filled out all the forms related to the company’s income during our vacation?” Levi lowered the phone from his ear. The call had ended a second ago and he was glaring at me doubtfully. I was busy watching the movie – hopefully, excuse enough for scarce to no eye contact. I opened the pack of Doritos I’d dug up from my secret stash in the garage and warily eyed the pale intern’s expression.
“Because the forms were in the office downstairs and I figured they’d get in the way of our movie marathon, asshole. I haven’t messed them up.” My scoff was promptly returned to sender as Levi shoved his phone back in his pocket and clicked his tongue in exasperation. Another three minutes passed before I spoke up: “By the way, I need advice.” The room was dimly lit and the raven’s sharp gaze was on my temple.
“Will you have it in mind when you get back on your bullshit?” The inquiry was flat and doubtful. I tried to nod but it came out looking like a cringe and a shrug. His lips pursed in exhaustion. “Spill,” he ordered coldly, making me pout.
“How do I forget Eren?” Squeaky was the best I could do after becoming tense again. Nervousness was gnawing at the feeble stem of courage I’d managed to grow and my hopes for this to go as smoothly as a chat about the weather were stuck in an elevator on the top floor of a skyscraper. Even overthinking was useless here.
“Easy,” he said. Again, there was that breach of grammar. “Find somebody new. Judging by how much you’re smiling these days, you might as well be done with that.” The suspicious mockery made me snort.
“Don’t you think I might be happy to have you and dad back home?” I asked pointedly.
“No,” he countered with a defiant click of his tongue. What he said next sounded like an extract from a Jorge Bucay book. Something about self-love maybe. “Before you get with Rivers, however, you have to accept that Jaeger is now your ex. He’s part of the past and the past doesn’t hold power over the future if you don’t let it.” I bit back laughter to not offend him.
“Such a poet you are,” I huffed half-heartedly. “And how do I stop loving him?” Seriousness stood perched on my right shoulder, but the Doritos between us kept decreasing and I felt the soothing coolness of the ring on my finger. Our gazes locked and I stared, just because I could, because he was back, because he acted normally. And why wouldn’t he? Our circumstances surely weren’t enough to alter his demeanour.
“You don’t. You never will and you should get used to it.” His answer cut deep and I realised it might’ve confused me but I was too captivated by his eyes to process it. He forced himself to explain: “We never stop loving somebody once we’ve fallen for them. We just fall harder for another person.” It was as romantic as it was businessman-like. A bit too… systematic somehow.
Line up, line up! Asshole-me encouraged. I imagined a big queue in front of an entrance door with a sign bearing my name above it. Number 12, pass through, but beware – number 10 wasn’t careful with his words and number 11 made no effort to change that! The asshole side of me clearly fancied the idea. For all waiting, the Eren Jaeger mural is on the left and the guy on the right is the one you’ll never be! Keep trying but keep this face in mind – Levi Ackerman is hiding in a lot of the corners you’ll visit! He’s an invaluable guest at this establishment! Oh! Is it time for the next one already? Hurry up, number 13! Don’t hold up the queue, who knows how much capacity we have left. And so on until the last victim had walked in. It made my nose scrunch up.
“Does that mean you still haven’t gotten over Petra?” I piped curiously, bright eyes observing closely the intern’s reaction. The movie was no longer as interesting. Everything I could focus on was the furrow between Levi’s brows and the flat unperturbed look in his eyes. He grabbed a Dorito from the pack. I moved my hand away just in time to avoid a clash.
“It means I haven’t fallen in love with the next in line,” he said, reinforcing the notion of a queue. “I’m used to the fact she’d dead. Filling out every report in the world won’t bring her back,” he paused briefly and gulped, “so I go on with my life.” The explanation was simple but relatively quiet, like he was trying to say the words while not exactly aiming to have me hear them. His gaze was staring at the screen ahead as I looked down, trying to come up with a good one-liner to put him out of his discomfort.
“I feel like we’re becoming pensive,” I started with a lopsided smirk, “so let me pull a Reverse Uno card on this mood by saying I’ve reached a milestone in my life.” Licking the Dorito dust off my fingers, I puffed out my chest proudly, making the intern put a hand to his mouth. Maybe he’d bitten back a smile behind it. “I won’t get fined for driving without supervision now. Not to mention, I can have sex.” Waving an index finger in front of his face, I didn’t react when he grabbed it without warning.
“I don’t see what stopped you before,” he stated nonchalantly. I shrugged, concluding I hadn’t exactly shared with him details about my childish vow.
“There was this really religious teacher at school when I was ten – she scarred all her classes by giving them unsolicited Sex Education lectures mixed with Bible verse. Got fired because children complained to their parents, but she did a good one on me before that,” I explained with a smile, yanking my finger from his hold. “Since sex was for sinners – both began with the letter s, she explained to us – and I didn’t want to be a sinner because it meant… well, a bad person, I told myself I’d have sex only after turning eighteen, regardless of the temptation. So I held out. Proud of myself for that.” My complacent smile made him snort. He might’ve glanced at my lips right after.
“I’m sure there’s been a lot of temptation for you, princess,” he drawled in a deep sarcastic voice, moving the empty bag of Doritos away before wiping his fingers with as I processed the retort. I sat still, pouting for a fraction of a second, when it hit me this was my chance. The signal was there – shining in bright green, if I wasn’t color-blind – and it was time for me to grasp the opportunity.
“More than you can imagine, asshole,” I said with a scoff, not parting my eyes from his profile to observe his reaction. We cast aside the fact he could’ve poked fun at me being the furthest thing from a believer, yet such a big aspect of my life had been altered by a religious teacher. The tip of his nose twitched when he snorted in dismissal, not daring to meet my eye all of a sudden.
“The mood has been brightened. What do we do now?” He turned to face me, curious but hesitant, and I felt a surge of courage at the sight of the indecisiveness dawdling about in his grey eyes. The blue specks were calling me – count us, (Y/N), count us – and I concluded this would be the one time I initiated anything between us. It was stressful and scary, but it was Levi, so want overpowered fear, resulting in something we’d have a hard time sorting out our feelings on.
“Watch the movie you so diligently picked for us maybe?” But actions contradicted words because I was leaning in and he could see it. For two whole seconds, there was no movement on his end. Panic was about to make me pull back, pin it to something else, anything else, when his hand lifted, slender fingers gently tucking my hair behind my ear. This was it. It would happen. I was exploring what it’d be like without the guilt of purposefully seeking distraction.
It was slow – the first kiss – his lips barely landing on top of mine so we could taste the water even when we knew it was lukewarm. The movie was like white noise – I could catch fragments of dialogue and the screen illuminated Levi’s profile the few times my lids fluttered open. His hold on the side of my face was gentle, granting permission for me to pull back at any point. I didn’t know what he was thinking. I knew I was barely thinking and it felt nice, for my head to be so blissfully empty. It was all sensations and when he dragged his tongue over my bottom lip, my mouth opened to allow access for further exploration. The kiss deepened and I tried to push closer into him.
“Get on top,” he muttered into my mouth. His right hand dipped to grab my leg. I might’ve flushed bright red, but I still complied, slowly straddling him and letting his hands guide me to where he found it most comfortable. I was terribly aware of what I sat on. It might’ve been terribly aware of me, too.
It was slow and fast at the same time. We weren’t breaking the kiss but some moments of it – like his hand brushing my side and making me cover in goosebumps – were fleeting like blinks while others – like the weird scorching thing in my whole torso – felt endless. It was indescribable to a point, the heat of the moment but the moment was long and the pace was changing slightly the more it went on. It hadn’t been him either. It was him responding to me, because I couldn’t for the life not hold him tightly and subconsciously look for more. We were glued together and his fingers had tentatively pushed up my shirt at the back so they could trail up and down the curve of my spine.
My head was tilted, fingers tangled in his hair and heavy huffs escaping my nostrils. He smelled like lavender and rain and cologne, and my fucking conditioner I’d told him a thousand times to stop using because it was expensive. I didn’t bother scolding him about it now. My desperate want turned the kisses hungrier and there was this point – I might’ve wiggled slightly to find an even closer spot – but he stiffened and grabbed the back of my head, growing twice as persistent and passionate. Weird, using that word about him. It hit me the forbidden part of male anatomy I was seated on top of had risen to attention. It made me wonder if it had happened before and that, in turn, was simultaneously embarrassing and flattering. He was attracted to me, too. Duh. We were literally making out on my bed.
When more began translating as more of everything instead of more of this particular thing, he seemed to sense the shift. His hands guided me off his lap and back on the bed. My head was resting against the pillow and my head was empty, lids fluttering open to drink the sight of him the first time he broke the kiss – pale but handsome, tired but caring, bored but clearly moved by the happening. It was a miracle. I’d been begging for this statue to show me anything in the beginning of his internship. I hadn’t known it could show me this – it looked like a godsend. My heart was going a hundred miles per hour, my breath was unsteady and my body felt hot all over.
It didn’t matter where he kissed – my lips, my neck, my chest, my shoulders – I just wanted him to keep kissing me. Temptation had seldom been this strong and the vow was no longer active, it was fulfilled – an electrifying realisation. I didn’t need to have him stop. What my sinner’s hands did the moment that resolution snapped in place was to grab the hem of his shirt and, with pointed urgent eyes, plead with him to take it off. He hesitated for exactly one second, then complied, like he’d complied with everything else without having me say it. He was kneeling between my legs, arms going over his head so the piece of clothing could be discarded. His chest and abdomen flexed, the biceps, the triceps, all the other names of muscles I’d had to read about but hadn’t memorised. Adonis in the flesh. Fuck me for drooling. Oh.
If I could paint, I’d paint him. If I could sing, I’d write a song. If I had a taser, I’d tase myself out of being so cringe-worthy in admiring the body of a man. But when that body pressed against mine, everything became a bit too hot – literally and metaphorically – so I decided the next step was to cool down by taking off my own clothes. First the shirt, then the pants he helped out with. I almost laughed when they tangled at my ankles and he had to tug them off with an irritated frown. Here it was, having my father’s intern see my bra again. This time I didn’t mind.
“Frills? Seriously?” Well, now I minded.
“Do we have an issue?” I snapped with a pointed look. It didn’t help he was towering over me, sizing up my underwear with eyes that spoke simultaneously of him being amused and him being something else. I wondered if he was still hard. I hadn’t touched there once.
“It’s almost cute,” he mocked flatly. He didn’t reach to take it off – he just leaned down to mollify me with a kiss. It worked. I was carried off into wanting more again. The weight of him on top of me grounded the body and made the soul soar. It was a cringe comparison but whatever, it was true. I realised, right about the time I tugged on the waistband of his sweatpants and his brows flashed in unrestrained surprise, that I was an eighteen-year-old doing exactly what was expected of every single eighteen-year-old on the planet – sneaking a boy into my room while my parents were out.
This here was a boy I trusted and a boy I was halfway convinced was more of a man than a boy, mostly when it came to observing how he casually sat up and removed his sweatpants with precision contrary to clumsiness. My eyes flickered down to his boxers. Still hard alright. There was a rush of excitement and shame all at once when I realised it. A bit too late to stop and pin this a mere heat-of-the-momet make-out session. It was the real deal. Happening. Live. In my room. On a late August evening. Goodness gracious.
It took me a second to process it and he might’ve sensed that I’d grown a bit rigid despite remaining just as active. He didn’t advance the happening, petting my hair and kissing me, and trailing lower, but only as low as he’d gone before, finding the rest a sort of forbidden land. Didn’t even take off the bra with the frills he mocked me for. What a gentleman. He was kissing the curve of my breast and I was wondering how in the fucking hell I’d deserved this.
“We don’t have to,” he warned at some point. “If you don’t want to. Saying no is allowed.” He kissed me and it was intoxicating, but also the last snapped nerve. I arched my back off the bed, elbows bending so my hands could reach for my bra clip. The shoulder straps went loose and Levi paused for a moment to process what the act meant.
“I won’t say it,” I muttered with determination, eyes locked with his. Pride was strong within me even now and, having the wordless consent, he gently took off the bra before paying some attention to newfound territory. It was like being examined in a lab. Again, my boobs weren’t perfect. It was genetics and fate, and whatever else. In being embarrassed about him staring at my chest, I was graced by the thought I hadn’t shaved anywhere. Double embarrassed. Wasn’t it only right that the first time would come with presentability? There go the Raven teachings.
And the word nipple is somewhat lame – I’ve heard it from native and non-native speakers of English both – but there is no other word. So when his tongue rolled around my nipple, I forgot I hadn’t shaved and drew such a sharp breath I almost choked. My chest was heaving and he was thumbing my other nipple. I thought we’d get straight to it and was mistaken. He knew better, it seemed, because a virgin needed the bare minimum of this much and more foreplay to truly relax. It hit me for a fraction that this was actual foreplay while I was staring at the ceiling between trying not to make any sounds. I was like a dead fish, just letting him do things to me. More responsive than a dead fish but awfully inexperienced in any case. It made me feel just a bit guilty. My one saving grace was the fact his erection kept brushing against my leg – and if that was there, then it meant he wasn’t dissatisfied.
It was a black spot for a while because I couldn’t pinpoint between the overwhelming build-up of nice but not nice enough where exactly Levi was kissing or sucking or nipping or touching. Now it would be my thigh, now leaving a hickey on my shoulder, now trailing kisses over my jaw and down my neck, now caressing my side, now trailing a finger down to my navel, now my boob, intermission, the other boob – and the whole time there was that thing in my abdomen, the same one I’d felt with Eren, the hot knot begging for attention.
This was a new person and I hadn’t thought it’d come with a new person, but it was there alongside a brand new dynamic which wasn’t hurried or harsh or overtly passionate like I’d been used to. The pace was decent and steady and passion here didn’t amount to bruises – or at least not explicitly so. The new person made it thrilling, overwhelming. The new person made it a brand new experience. And when the brand new person’s hand gently dipped to touch the part where my legs met, I shivered all over, heart and lady boner flinching at once. Levi, with his obstinacy, refused to ask permission vocally. I still nodded, spreading my legs a bit wider. Slowly, like my panties weren’t in the way, he kissed from my knee to the base of my inner thigh, nipped slightly and made me yelp, and muffled something like a chuckle against the plush of my leg.
I didn’t know what he was thinking. I knew his fingers pressing against the spot where wetness had accumulated made my mouth gape slightly. I craned my neck and closed my eyes. There was embarrassment holding hands with excitement, with pleasure breathing down their necks. Nothing quite mattered. I breathed out like I’d been holding my breath for fourteen minutes when the raven’s fingers gently dragged back and forth against my core and then he might’ve been impatient, because he tugged my underwear out of the way, down my legs, past the knees and the ankles, dropping it with the rest of our clothes and the empty Dorito bag on the floor. It was a whole mess, this thing. I wanted it.
“The house is empty, princess,” he said while leaning down to kiss below my navel.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, almost out of breath in spite of my lungs functioning perfectly. His fingers were ghosting on the side of where I wanted him to touch. His mouth dragged lower. There was the jab of shame about not being shaved again. It hadn’t sent him to his feet and out of the room, so it was probably fine. A man wasn’t afraid to fight the jungle, I’d heard a few times before.
“That you can make noise without being scared,” he responded casually. I snorted and decided inwardly that I wouldn’t be making any noise whatsoever, just to spite him. It did feel good, though, so I doubted I could actually hold back effectively. As though to challenge the unsaid decision, Levi cut the suspense short. When his tongue rested where only one other had before, I came close to whining. My hand shot down to paw at his hair and he hummed against my clit. The vibrations of it made me writhe slightly.
He licked and sucked – nipped twice, which made me yelp both times – and did all sorts of other magic. Added to the title of mind-reader would now be the rank of mage. Then, there was this point when I could feel his fingers prodding at my entrance – a gentle warning of what was to come. First it was one. My mouth gaped and there was a slight flash of something like pain. More like discomfort. Now this was brand new wherever I looked at it from. Remember, my vow had its doors but none had included penetration. Officially the furthest I’d gone with somebody. Goodbye, hymen. You served us well.
He waited. Waited almost a full minute and distracted me with his tongue before I rolled my hips to give him the green light. Slow pumps. It was still uncomfortable, but the friction wasn’t painful. Just uncomfortable and new and I didn’t like change, but when this one found with its finger one particular spot sold off as the Bermuda Triangle for men to find, I might’ve liked this particular change. First, it made me moan. Second, the more he kept reaching that spot – because it was impossible to miss I liked it – the closer I was to coming. There were sloppy sounds and a second finger inserting itself in me, and my voice bouncing off the walls before dropping to the floor in a hush.
I might’ve said his name, actually, I might’ve half-screamed it. The orgasm hit me like a brick dropping straight on my genitals and he kept flicking his tongue slower and slower until I’d ridden it out in full. How considerate. When his fingers came out, there was a spot of blood. My mouth clamped shut in shame. He reached over to clean them with a wet wipe – then he cleaned me, too, because obviously he could see things that were invisible to me. There was slick on his chin and I glared half-heartedly when his eyes twinkled in amusement at me.
“Well, that’s done,” I muttered while he leaned over with the intention to kiss me again. “Wipe your mouth, asshole.” I put a hand to his chest to prevent my own pussy juices from coming in contact with my face. For a clean-freak, he sure didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get them off.
“You don’t want to see how tasty it is?” He was mocking me. I was red and hot all over still, a bit like a deflated balloon being refilled with exasperation contrary to air. No longer a virgin, as far as doctors would care. Still kind of in the middle, considering typical hetero interactions included something more than fingers.
“God, no!” I tried to push at his jaw and he almost chuckled when the pussy juice got on my fingers and I flicked my wrist frantically to get it off.
“It was god, yes a second ago,” he drawled pointedly. I burned bright red under his gaze, naked and not a hymen-bearer and kind of lost as to what came next. I pouted, swatted his shoulder and pretended to be very disgusted when he kissed me, making it open-mouted and sloppy for the sake of spiting me. In truth, it didn’t taste like much. Tasted weird, unlike food and drink. Well, that’s bodily fluids for you.
Remember the right-est choice I made as of late? Here it comes. The kiss guided his fingers down to my clit again and mine – to the band of his boxers. A tug and a snap, and he asked me three whole fucking times if I was sure. Not verbally, of course. It was just the particular way he stopped between each step to make sure, to look at me straight in the eye and have me nod my consent back to him. Like I’d change my mind that fast. God’s sake – if I would’ve said no, I would’ve said it before we’d kissed. But this wasn’t something he would do under normal circumstances – not a matter of alcohol, guilt or duty. It was free will and choice. Mine might’ve been made sometime last month, right around my birthday.
The boxers were gone. I blinked at it. A penis in textbooks, a dick in colloquial speech, a cock in smut books, a member in tame erotica. Length, girth, meat sword, love machine – could go on forever. We sat staring at it like it was an alien and while I was bashful, I was also bad with measurements without the aid of a ruler, hence why I safely concluded that I could stack about four donuts on it and put the zipper on it. There was that thing – precum, was it? – leaking from the tip. In all honesty, no I didn’t want to lick it off. Same went for sperm. In the history of mankind, I’d done the gracious thing and sucked off my boyfriend exactly once – the rest had been handjobs because blowjobs came with terrible pains in the jaw, a cramping of the tongue, a crap salty taste and the awkward detail of looking like an unattractive fish during the act. So, no, I didn’t volunteer to show off how bad I was at it.
“Condoms, shit.” It flew out of my mouth unintentionally. Levi’s face scrunched up. We were both visited by the bitter realisation that going further was not an option anymore, unless he wanted to don on a sock. Then the solution came to me. “Keep it up, I’ll be back in a minute,” I mumbled hurriedly, jumping off the bed and rushing butt-naked out of the room so I could go to my parents’ bedroom. Yeah, no, such was the reality of things. I tried to keep my conscience untainted while rummaging through the wardrobe. The hidden box of condoms in the back by the shoes was the saving grace. I wouldn’t speak of this to a living soul that wasn’t Annie Leonheardt ever.
The moment I returned to the room with the box held proudly over my head, Levi snorted. He laid me on the bed again and the mood returned, which was weird because I’d pinned him the type of experience one moment of interruption and consider it all ruined. Not that I’d thought about him during sex or having sex. I hadn’t. I promise. I was thinking it now, when I was about to have it with him. The kisses eased the natural awkwardness and by the time he was putting it in, I was a desperate mess again. Sweat stuck to skin and my breath got stuck in my throat when he pushed it in. I blanked, gaped like I’d received a headshot and felt him stand still to let me adjust. There was, again, mild discomfort. Fingers couldn’t compare to a dick.
I gave it half a minute and told him to move. The first thrust had me whining into his mouth. It was good. It was good, progressively becoming better and better and better, a surprise arriving with each snap of his hips. My father’s intern having sex with me, my father’s intern, my father’s intern, my intern, my Levi. The first five minutes were full of careful slow strokes to let the awkwardness dissipate and for me to get used to it. I won’t call myself anything but I’ll say I got used to it a bit too fast for comfort. So it went. Losing my virginity to my father’s intern.
“Faster, can you--- a bit faster?” The words were choked out and you’d wonder why I would ask for faster when slow was doing a good job of making my chest heave like I was running a marathon, but it was maddening and addictive.
“I can for you, princess.” It was a rasp against the side of my neck and I was blanking because the voice, paired with the hands, with the scent, with the sensation of being full and empty, then full and empty again was so mind-numbing I could melt on the spot and stay there forever. So slow and careful turned into fast and considerate. There was no harshness in him even when he kneaded my boobs or licked stripes down the length of my throat, no harshness whatsoever when he gripped my thighs or my sides. It was tight, but pleasant, egging me on further.
I bit down on the pillow when he found the spot. I bit his finger, too. I bit his shoulder and I bit my own hand to keep my voice down because how was something on this Earth allowed to be so nice? Fuck. He murmured at me to moan if I felt like it. There was a smug undertone. And when he reached between us to roll circles around my clit, I didn’t moan – I was a banshee impersonator, neck craning, back arching, toes curling, all that jazz. I came with a crash and a bang, and it might’ve been an hour by now, or maybe more, but the neighbourhood was asleep and I was wide awake, trying to wake them up, too.
A five-minute break of kisses served as an intermission to avoid me becoming overstimulated but Levi was still hard and still quite energetic in spite of the fact he’d been fucking me for an overall of thirty minutes without stopping or having his pace hitch. Round two started fast and I had my legs up, knees on the sides of my head. It was hot, seeing him through that kind of frame. Just one bead of sweat on his temple – not sticky all over, unlike me. Why was I the one becoming exhausted anyway? I was being a pillow princess. His eyes were gorgeous and his lips were slightly swollen.
“Please, don’t stop,” I whined at some point. He didn’t seem to have any prospects of stopping anyway, but I couldn’t help it. He huffed, chest heaving with lust and I knew it wasn’t easy to be the one doing all the work, so I mentally gave credit where credit was due. “Oh--- Levi, God!” He seemed like he wanted to laugh and my ring glimmered in the dark against his cheek while I tried to pull him down for a kiss which was simply impossible in our current position. He switched it five minutes later. It was not an understatement to claim I was seeing stars and everything was nice and nothing was awkward and this was the most handsome man with the most stamina on this land.
I lost my voice at some point, or I thought I did because my third orgasm couldn’t make me bite down on the pillow fast enough to muffle the literal holler that left my lungs. His name, by the way. If that hadn’t woken the neighbours, I wasn’t sure anything would. I was recuperating and he was trailing gentle pecks along my neck, still not finished. Was sex always this physically draining? My mind might’ve blanked during the third round and we were in missionary again because I insisted that I be able to kiss him any time I wished to. His hand was holding my wrist captive and the other was massaging my breast and it was all a giant whirlpool of pleasure and heat and fluids – the nasty and the nice in one, but I couldn’t care less about the nasty.
He came with a growl, biting down on my shoulder to muffle something that sounded like my name as his pace hitched and turned sloppy for the first time in what felt like hours. He slumped down on top of me and I was breathing more heavily than him, calmed by the weight. I was blinking at the ceiling and my heart was doing somersaults in my ribcage. He went to shower after a minute of rest, I called him out for being a clean freak and it just so happened that my perception of time wasn’t all too warped because checking my phone made me realise we’d had sex for about three hours, foreplay included. I slipped into the shirt he’d tossed on the floor, wiped myself and very considerately ignored the soreness in my hips while changing the sheets.
To my biggest surprise, he returned to my room in a new pair of boxers with his hair wet. There was no invitation. He joined me on the clean bed and wrapped his arms around me. This might’ve been aftercare. When our gazes locked, I didn’t dare avert my eyes in bashfulness. It was surreal and I wanted to memorise it. Then he asked me again – as voicelessly as the first time and the following ten – and I answered positively by flashing him the biggest smile I could muster. No words were exchanged. Levi rolled his eyes and I tucked myself under his chin, legs tangling with his. I was knocked out cold. I wouldn’t hasten to write this off as a happy ending but I wouldn’t immediately turn it angsty either. I explored. It was nice. I don’t think I regretted it for a second.
Waking up was a surreal experience because it included the added luxury of being bathed in sunlight with a warm arm draped around my midriff and a pale sunlit face inches from mine. A spot of purple in the crook of his neck and a few red crescents on his shoulder. Perhaps one or two leftover scratches on his back. I blinked at the sight incredulously, gradually coming to and realising what this position meant – prompted by last night’s three different ones, too.
It happened! Asshole-me hollered in my head, nearly hysteric, slamming a pan into a bell and making the echo of the toll ring painfully against the confines of my skull. You ruined it all! It was like an automatic switch – suddenly, the neutral was the bad and I had complicated it with my impulsiveness, my stupid hormones. I imagined four months of awkwardness and the wish to have more but being completely incapable of asking for fear it would mean feelings. I pictured a tense atmosphere, uncomfortable interactions, embarrassing thoughts, lame excuses. A friendship built with struggle and just barely reinforced annihilated to smithereens by my dumb ass.
I cringed, removing my hand from Levi’s chest to slap myself across the face for being horrible again – not in using him but in indulging my own selfishness. His eyelids fluttered open before the admonishment transpired and I was staring straight into the melted silver which had the tendency to read my thoughts. The current self-reprimanding cacophony would entertain him.
“… should make you coffee,” he mumbled half-coherently, making me blink wondrously at his hazy composure. This is normal, his eyes whispered, lips pressing nonchalantly to my forehead before he got up, so there’s no need to be so shocked. The trip down the stairs was silent. I had left scratches. More than two.
Currently, we were in the kitchen, sitting around the counter with our mandatory morning drinks. Unsaid words hung from the ceiling like dangling cobwebs. Levi, who’d needed a moment to retrieve his memories in full, was stiff and uncertain, and in spite of that visibly calmer than me. I could feel my face heating up as I thought of what to say. This wasn’t normal, even if both of us upon our respective awakening had pinned it such. It was something we had to discuss but how were we supposed to discuss sex when we sometimes fought over food? Deciding what to do seemed impossible.
“Are we going to talk about the elephant in the room?” The raven, of course, was the one who broke the silence while I was slurping on my coffee, gaze averted and heart beating erratically. “Princess, I’m afraid this is something important,” he said in the face of my silence. His piercing glare was on my temple but I wouldn’t turn, keeping my fingers glued to my cup and my mind grounded in panic. “Need I remind you exactly what happened?” Levi pressed additionally, husky voice raising in audible urgency. I felt completely and utterly naked – dressed in only his shirt and my own underwear.
“We had sex, that’s what happened.” I shrugged, mind preoccupied with the strange feeling eating its way into it. Deep into my stomach, up to my lungs, through the chambers of the heart, in the windpipe – but not painfully. “There’s nothing more to it.” The nonchalant statement didn’t get a warm welcome. That much was to be expected. The attractive intern was frowning, rubbing his temples with a frustrated sigh. I tried not to look at his fingers.
And I’m trying to do just that, asshole-me scoffed pointedly. There’s something different about them when they’ve been inside you last night, yeah? A good type of different. Imagine it. My shoulders tensed as I chased her around in my head with a frying pan. Levi ran a hand through his ebony locks. Wow, is that the sex hair? And I pursed my lips in displeasure, knowing the struggles of the current moment and choosing in spite of them to secretly a wish for a second time. No harm, you know, no harm whatsoever in wanting to fuck your father’s goddamn intern, yeah? No? Can you hear it? Does it sound like a good sentence? Does it?
“Where exactly does your lacking virginity fit into your nothing more to it?” His retort made me cringe, well aware of the virginity ace hidden up his imaginary sleeve. It was a bit harder to argue with him when he was half-naked, letting me see the spots I’d bitten and kissed. The situation: we’d had sex. My side: I had nothing against him being my first because I trusted him and he’d been experienced and careful enough to make it nice. The actual problem: he was my father’s intern.
The abstract part: intimacy often came with, well… intimacy. Casual sex had the advantage of not seeing your partner again afterwards and in our case, we’d had casual sex with somebody we saw daily. Future speculation: tension due to this adventure would brew either discord or twice the ferocity in repeating the adventure. A possible solution: talking about feelings. Additional issue: Levi and I talking about feelings? Not in this day and age. Not in this life either. Telling him he made me feel warm and appreciated? Impossible. Honesty in the face of something embarrassing? Sorry, I don’t know her. She must be really lame.
“Everywhere, because I don’t care for it. It might add complexity to your situation, but it doesn’t play a big role in mine.” Dismissing the whole of it and pinning it on him was wrong. My nonchalance was false. Maybe it was what made him take a deep breath prior to speaking up again, his tea untouched.
“You’re supposed to be freaking out, princess.” His eyes were on mine and asshole-me was screaming: Come on, do it! Just kiss him and make things worse! Go right ahead! I averted my gaze with a snort. He’d used my nickname last night. Added a shade of meaning to it. I tried to get a grip as my rational side reasoned with the situation. This had been a one-time thing – or at least for him. Following that train of thought, wanting more was useless.
“You think I’m not?” It was high-pitched and ludicrous. Memories were surfacing and it was somewhat unpleasant to think they wouldn’t repeat. Levi kissing me in the dark, almost saying my name, clearing the hair from my sweaty forehead, biting my neck as he came, smiling against my lips as I tugged on his hair and tried not to moan, holding me close afterwards, not once saying the wrong thing. “I’m freaking out. You just don’t see it.” My downcast gaze was thoughtful and the air was becoming heavier with something I couldn’t identify. I could feel him staring and it bugged me not to know what he was thinking. “What?” I snapped, refraining from playing with my ring.
“What do you want to do now?” He asked flatly, eyes pinning me in place. “Do you want me to pretend this didn’t happen or do you want us to keep going?” It was ridiculous hearing him say it because, usually, he wouldn’t. I blinked, thinking I’d misheard.
“Keep going as in keep having sex?” I echoed to make sure I’d understood. It might’ve gone out a bit more shocked than expected, which made him sigh.
“I was listing options. In the end, it all comes down to what you want.” The flat voice made me realise I knew what I wanted well enough to have chosen during the conversation with Hanji three days ago or maybe even before I’d had the courage to admit it to myself.
“I don’t know what I want,” I lied with a pointed look, vehement embarrassment clawing up my throat and scratching at the back of it. I could say I wanted to keep going – his offer meant he might be willing – but his response was a fifty-fifty on whether he was sexually frustrated or would rather stick to decorum while living in the same house as the girl he was fucking and her father. I couldn’t turn the question on him because it was mean. I couldn’t call it a mistake because that would be another lie. I was tired of lying when it didn’t go to protect my pride.
“You don’t?” He quirked a thin brow mockingly, feigning the surprise he didn’t feel. “Or you just don’t want to admit your favour the more embarrassing option?” I sat motionless, knowing this wasn’t what I should’ve been doing – considering it. Maybe this was a test he had for me – to see if I’d be dumb or act like a reasonable adult. But (there came that stupid word again) if Hanji had been right, this wasn’t a random hook-up, which meant there might be something and---
Are you seriously considering a relationship with somebody who’s leaving in less than four months? Asshole-me interjected, making me sigh in defeat. Doesn’t fuck randomly, okay, fine, but this is an exception. How in the fucking hell would he grow to like you? You know that’s impossible. Methinks he went along with it because you clearly wanted it. Think about it, he does all sorts of bullshit for you. So what sounds more plausible? Him being himself or him liking you? The former, of course, but I couldn’t admit it. Like I couldn’t admit he was right to say I favoured the more embarrassing option.
“Even if it was like that,” I chose to return the favour and be doubtful, “I’m not inclined to think your morals would let you humour me.” My chin was tipped upwards while Levi shook his head and finally took a sip from his tea. The ghost of a smirk in the corner of his mouth disarmed.
“I have little to nothing against it. But,” (that fucking word again) the firmness of his voice was the only thing keeping my chest from swelling, “it doesn’t sound like an ideal course of action when you’ve almost got yourself a new boyfriend,” he reasoned calmly, somber responsibility lacing his tone.
“It’s not cheating if we’re not official,” I protested instantly, furrowed brows and a pout. He snorted.
“That’s not what I meant, princess.” My lips pursed at the jolt the nickname gave me. “I don’t want sex clouding your judgement. I get Rivers isn’t your boyfriend, but you shouldn’t exclude him as a possibility just because you’ve started thinking you have feelings for me.”
“Besides being a poet, you’ve turned into a psychologist, too,” I exclaimed with a genuinely cheerful chuckle that made him quirk a brow. Something in my throat shrivelled up. “Don’t dwell on my feelings too much, asshole,” I reassured. “I like this because it’s something new, not because I’m head over heels in love with you.” I was still chuckling as he sipped on his tea and fixed me with one of those firm looks that had the ability to bend the knees. The effect was doubled in intensity this morning.
“Make your choice then,” he said boredly, not wishing to be too imperious, seeing as the situation wasn’t taking place in a formal setting where he was the boss and I was the indecisive underling. I might as well have been, with how hot my ears got while I held his gaze, brave and stupid in the face of somebody who read me better than I sometimes read myself.
“I’m not saying it out loud,” I muttered, bashful. The ebony-haired intern watched me struggle before tilting his head to the side with a fake air of oblivion.
“Then I won’t know what you want,” he said innocently, attempting to mock my shyness and what was more – succeeding. I burned bright red, feeling heat creep up my neck and my glare was pointed and uncontrolled. It couldn’t pass as mere annoyance because Levi was hitting a nerve.
“I didn’t see you having a hard time knowing everything I wanted last night, but okay.” There was more spite than sass in the sentence, which only further conveyed my inability to stay nonchalant – something that clearly amused him. “I want us to… keep going. Satisfied?” Crossed arms, downcast gaze and a childish pout. I was the live embodiment of the word petulance and Levi wasn’t done having fun with it.
“Not as satisfied as I clearly left you.” He was smirking and I glared at him, furious and not knowing where the blood would go when there was no space left in my head. I hopped off my chair, turning my back to him and hearing how he moved to stand behind me. A well-meaning hand landed on my shoulder. “It was a joke, princess, there’s no need for the cold shoulder.” His tone was flat and disinterested, but there was a pacifying sliver. He might’ve been trying to make peace but I wouldn’t have it after all the embarrassment he put me through – just to have a good private laugh, too!
“Un-fucking-bearable, that’s what you are,” I hissed, brushing his hand off my shoulder and heading to the staircase in order to escape. He gave chase and set on ignoring the usual code that forbade touchy-touchy when unneeded. The pure and unfiltered imagination one must have in order to picture a shirtless Greek God chasing after a poorly dressed eighteen-year-old spoiled brat was too ambitious a requirement for anybody to fulfil. Turn to mythology for that, but it’s inappropriate there and this one meant well.
“I’ll stop embarrassing you if that’s what you want.” His hands were on my shoulders. He turned me around and I didn’t look at him, much less respond. He could sense I was ashamed. His hands slowly trailed down over my arms to hold my wrists in a grip I could, with effort, free myself from. “Does the mere mention of sex with no context whatsoever embarrass you, princess?” He knew it did, leaning forward with twinkling eyes and a complacent half-smile. “Your face is red.”
“And you’re a fucking genius, congratulations,” I spat with sarcastic disgruntlement. He pulled me forward so that I bumped into his chest. My shoulders jumped in surprise. I didn’t want to look him in the eye but the sight of the marks I’d left on him were no less embarrassing to behold. My heart sped up and I was pouting, flush against him with nowhere to go.
“It speaks,” he whispered by my ear. His hands retraced their steps over my arms and shoulders, gently gliding against the sides of my neck until they held my face. “Does it want to go up to my room?” Blue specks in a pool of melted silver. The question was genuine, in spite of being masked with slight mockery. The adult of us two. I tried to stay mad, but it was impossible. I promised the blue specks I’d count them later and then we were kissing. It was a funny picture – the whole of this situation – ridiculous but somehow not fictional. It was him lifting me off the floor and me wrapping my legs around him. It was him making step after step, steady and careful not to drop me while I snickered into his mouth. It was me being a literal koala and then it was us, hearing the jingle of keys.
“Shit,” I cursed, parting from him with a smack. He let go and I could catch only a glimpse of the panic on his face before I was running up the stairs. I’d barely closed the door behind us when I heard my mother greeting the empty kitchen downstairs. While I breathed out in relief, Levi was already heading to the balcony. It occurred to me that there was a pack of condoms on my nightstand and they were stolen. I’d need to make a trip to the pharmacy and replace the box. Talk about inconvenient. “Careful now,” I piped while the intern was preparing to make the jump, “we don’t want you to fall.” He gave me a half-hearted glare but said nothing.
When he was gone, I plopped down on my bed and grinned incredulously at the ceiling. This “secret sex” thing we were about to dive into wasn’t how I’d imagined the weeks prior to my first year in university, but oh, well. Expect the unexpected and if unable to – just accept it. This officially marked the beginning of my longest stay in City of Dumbassery. It was surprising, however, that I wasn’t alone in there. Twice as surprising that I’d be stuck with my father’s intern. Whom I was having sex with. Amazing. Spectacular. Asshole-me would have my ass for that.
tag list: @unloved-cadillac ; @donaldthrts
#mtij#levi x reader#levi ackerman fanfiction#x reader#levi ackerman imagine#reader insert#levi ackerman x reader#it finally happened#all i'm going to say: i wrote the actual sex scene while editing the rest of the chapter because i was too bashful in the past lol#sure hope it's not worse than the vague three paragraphs of the past#levi is a literal king who preaches consent and safe sex and nobody will change my opinion#also our drama queen is entering a brand new arc of her life#beware: storm incoming
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Hey !! I am looking for some new fics to read so, Please recommend some fics similar to:
Simply Irresistible: [Ron breaks up with hermione a week b4 the wedding and mingles with draco's gf then and then draco comes to the rescue giving her a whole new makeover. I particularly liked the ron bashing, dramione bonding and sweet fluff. It also had dramione Hogwarts bonding.]
Slow grenade: Over the years bonding of dramione, with secretive meet ups. Tooth rotting fluff is what I loved with a bit of action.
Would be preferable if they are on wattpad. Thanks!! I am sorry if I am not clear with my request. (dramione = draco and hermione for short)
Next time send this in as two different asks please:
SI: dramioneasks (tumblr.com)
SG:
my brother’s best friend - mrsren - E, 5 chapters - Hermione’s plan to lose her virginity starts with a list of potential men to get the job done. At the top of an already very short list rests Draco Malfoy, but he’s her brother’s best friend. The pinch: Draco finds the list, and she is woefully unprepared for the fallout.
The Healer’s Guide To Transfiguration - malpal132 - E, one-shot - It happens like this: Hermione is hunched over her desk like some kind of Tolkien goblin, essentially deep-throating three Sambal fish tacos from Del Seoul in a desperate bid to finish a late lunch before her next appointment (she’d rather choke to death than be late) when a light knock on the open door makes her head snap up. “Dr. Granger?” Holy shit. Holy shit. Her previous nonchalance about choking to death vanishes when she sees who’s standing in her door and a piece of fish hunkers down for a long winter in her esophagus. “Are you–shall I perform the Heimlich?” He asks, face familiar and concerned as he moves a step closer. “I don’t think your face should be that shade of purp–” She cuts him off by vomiting into the trash can. Airway finally clear, she gulps a few greedy breaths. Her lungs expand and her face burns, and Hermione genuinely wonders if she’s hallucinating. She’s not prone to fantastical thinking even though she’s well acquainted with the fantastic, but…why else would Draco Malfoy be standing in front of her? Malfoy, on crutches. Malfoy, handing her a tissue? Malfoy, but…not. It’s complicated.
Project Ghost by youhavemyswordandmybow - M, 19 chapters - Granger is the Head Analyst working at the DMLE wondering what the hell is going on with the spike of dark magic - and why an unknown wizard vigilante is running around like Jason flipping Bourne. Malfoy, may or may not be that vigilante - but he’s certainly not telling Granger, with her exceptionally nice arse and cute freckles. As Head Auror, (Hermione’s former and Draco’s current) best friend Harry has answers - and as strained as their friendship is, Hermione is going to get them. *** Beta’d by loads of different people but mainly Peb, MagicalIndigoSunrise and Ardeleanca - with huge thanks to them! And if there are mistakes - masses of apologies. If you like it, gimme some kudos or pls write a comment :) Thanks for reading!
Other Halves by westxnorthwest - E, 37 chapters, Words: 155,362 - Hermione is returning to Hogwarts, this time as a professor of Muggle Studies. It had been four years since the Battle of Hogwarts and she was more than ready to reclaim her life as her own, rather than living under the pressures of being part of the Golden Trio. Her personal life might be somewhat in shambles, but she’s willing to forge her own future and put herself first, for the first time in her life. Little does she know, Draco Malfoy is beginning his tenure as a professor this year too. Her complicated feelings as they pertain to the Malfoy heir resurface as she tries to navigate them, her failing relationship with Ron, and the infancy of her career. *** COMPLETED WORK | Author’s Note: This is, first and foremost, a love story. Mind the tags, but this is not a dark tale, just a few…less sunny moments. You’ll have some fluff, some angst, some (hopefully) really good smut, and, of course, some plot to carry us along. Tags have been updated to reference important themes, even if they only feature briefly, and chapters will contain relevant content warnings. If I’ve missed one, please let me know! This story developed into its own as I wrote and posted.
Baby, Any Time You’re Ready, I’m Waiting by Zeebee3 - E, 11 chapters - “Alright,” said Pansy. “Then we’re still stuck. How do we divide three rooms between three girls and three boys?” “You share with Ginny. Blaise shares with Ron. And then Draco and I can share,” said Hermione easily, scrolling through the phone at the rest of the property images. Pansy’s attention snapped to Draco so fast, he almost jolted at the impact of it. “Oh?” She said with pointed interest. Draco shook his head minutely at her and her brows shot up. She turned back to Hermione. “Why you and Draco, Hermione?” “Well it’s such a lovely house, it’d be a shame to pass it up just because of sleeping arrangements.” She glanced up, perhaps sensing the underlying emphasis in Pansy’s question, and met his eyes. “You don’t mind, do you Draco? Or I could share with Ron if you’d rather be with Blaise?” “Don’t mind a bit.” He sipped his tea, the picture of nonchalance. —— Or where Hermione thinks she and Draco are “just good friends” but he’s secretly in love.
Big Dick Energy by louiseob - E, 9 chapters - After months of successfully keeping Ginny Weasley away from happy hours with her coworkers, Hermione finally relents and allows her to tag along. Unfortunately, her crassest friend wants nothing more than to embarrass Hermione and (hopefully) get her and Draco sodding Malfoy into bed together one and for all.
Fifty Shades of Granger - winterwells - E, 7 chapters - Draco Malfoy finds himself reentering society after having been on house arrest for the past five years. The Wizengamot has *graciously* given him the opportunity to leave the manor provided he gets a job at the Ministry. What could go wrong? Dramione, post-war AU
-Lisa
(PS: yes we know what dramione means....)
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hi! i was wondering if i could get matchup for demon slayer?
i'm 6'0 and have amber eyes, long gold blond curly hair and hourglass figure
i'm positive and upbeat person, i try to see the bright side in most situations
i'm friendly, energetic, confident, responsible, maybe a bit chaotic, cheerful and bubbly
i care about my friends and family a lot, and go out of my way to show it
i enjoy having fun and living life to the fullest
i really like puzzles, riddles and crosswords
i love making people smile
i have morbid, dark sense of humor
sometimes i randomly say a weird obscure fact in the middle of conversation
i can play on violin, cello, piano, guitar, saxophone, harp and drums, i'm currently learning how to play on trumpet
i like poetry and sometimes i write a poem or two, also i'm writing my book
i'm ballet dancer since i was a kid and i love performing
i'm working on my own cartoon
i never quite grew out of the fantasy phase, and i'm still enamored with tales of changelings and witches
i work as illustrator for fantasy books and books for kids
i'm kinda struggling with taking rest, doing nothing, because there is always something to do, something new to learn, etc.
i'm afraid of stagnation
i overuse this kind of emojis→(ㆁωㆁ)
i love: sunflowers, collecting things, colors yellow, maroon, blue and green, astronomy, tea, making and watching movies, photography, forests, making jewelry, cooking, baking, d&d, fantasy books, horrors, playing chess, animals, plants, dollmaking, dancing, gardening, traveling, drawing, painting, knitting, art, history, world mythologies, spirits, fantasy creatures, eldrich beings, folklore, sculpting, works of J.R.R Tolkien, linguistics, death, burial, beliefs about afterlife, learning new things, embroidery, cartoons, music, psychology, writing
sorry if it's too chaotic (꒪꒳꒪)
thank you so much for even reading this! (人 •͈ᴗ•͈)
i hope you have a fantastic day (◍•ᴗ•◍)
Matchup for @pinezki
╰┈➤ Thank you for doing Matchups at Sugutoad
╰┈➤ Muichiro Tokito ‘Even if I die, I won't let you get away with this!’
Ok, so I haven’t been interacting with Demon Slayer lately so my memory is slightly fuzzy
Have you realised how bright a person you are? He has been so alone his whole life, trouble after trouble facing him. Then you come. So bright and happy, blonde curls bouncing up and those amber eyes, reflecting the sun, were an entrance to your beautiful soul that always seems to be making him smile
Your demeanors go so well. His quiet, stoic and logical nature seems to be the exact opposite of your bubbly, upbeat and chaotic nature. He seems to be also making sure the two of you stay out of trouble at all times just to be sure that you don’t charge straight into battle. He knows you're capable of yourself but he always wants to make sure that everything is perfect and safe so neither of you die.
He finds you so graceful. Your fighting style was almost mirroring Mitsuri in a way but the way you gently get rapidly run around and twist like a ballerina is enchanting. You make fighting look like a dance that even him , the youngest hashira, couldn’t achieve.
Whenever you are working on your illustrations and stressed out/ overworking yourself, he brings in a sunflower as a sweet reminder. You remind him of a sunflower in fact. A sunflower is a symbol of faith and devotion, and here you are, working so hard if something you are devoted to entirely. A sunflower also represents radiating brightness and positive energy. And when I tell you to make this boy so happy, you don’t understand. He always seems to be smiling at you, even when you crack a dark joke that he may not understand.
He always makes sure you take rest in between your work periods. You come home from a mission and immediately start doing something? He will immediately drag you to bed and do it yourself. And don’t even try telling him that you are fine, he may be quiet but he is also observant.
You are so tall! He thinks he should be the taller one of the relationship due to being the male but he loves your height. Always telling people ‘that’s my girlfriend’ when they look at you.
#sazh moonboard#demon slayer#demon slayer x reader#kny#kny oc#kimetsu no yaiba#kny x reader#headcanons#sazh matchups#muichiro tokito#kny muichiro#demon slayer muichiro#muichiro x reader#kimetsu muichiro#sorry it’s short#I don’t remember demon slayer all that well and also am really tired#anime matchups#anime matchup#anime x reader#anime match ups#anime match#demon slayer matchup#matchup
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🌻 about me 🌻
I've been here for a while, but I don't think I've ever done this before and I wanted to introduce myself to the newer mutuals & followers so: hello! I'm Clarisse, just another random human on the internet. I love sunshine and pretty things, and my ridiculously long list of hobbies include birdwatching, painting, and crochet.
this blog started out as an attempted art portfolio, but now I mostly post tolkien artwork here! I post rather sporadically because my drawing mood/inspiration has been unpredictable lately. however, I still hope to experiment more with comics & short animations in the future, and of course keep up my drawings as well!
I am a very shy and scatterbrained person & I'm bad at responding to messages sometimes. if I ignore you, I'm sorry and please don't take it personally! I probably just forgot to check my inbox/messages again.
also, since I suddenly got a huge influx of new followers from my Bag End animation, I'd just like to say welcome and thank you for sticking around!
more about my sideblogs + other stuff:
@the-old-fashioned-girl // this is my main blog, where I post & reblog about whatever my current interest is. chances are it's either lotr, narnia, jane austen, or related to history in some way!
@clarisse-doodles // currently just a dump for dc and batfam related things! I post my artwork on here, and hopefully more of my writing + thoughts on comics & writing in the future
instagram: wanderer_clarisse // I post art & photography here and other small glimpses of my daily life
ao3: wanderer_clarisse // I don't write that much, just wanted to put this here to confirm that yes, if you recognized the name, that is indeed I
tags:
#tolkien ballet // artwork by me or others, based on the idea of a tolkien ballet adaptation (ballet is the best possible medium for a beren and luthien adaptation, you can't change my mind)
#clarisse doodles // in which clarisse doodles
#asks // it's self explanatory!
#the silmarillion // silm fanart, mostly elves
#lotr // lotr fanart, mostly hobbits
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I find myself in a really tough situation regarding RoP content. I have a lot of respect for you and what you’ve been doing for the fandom recently, and I’d like some of your advice.
There are two youtubers in particular who I follow. One of them is someone who has done a lot of analysis of various costumes in the show and has redesigned them to be much more believable and less gaudy, over-the-top gold leaf on everything. The other is a person who has also done a bit covering the costumes, but who has mainly produced content defending Tolkien against RoP and discussing what the show would’ve been like if it had been done in a way that actually paid respect to Tolkien’s works.
Both of them are people who very much do not support the show, and I agree with them and I think the content that they’re producing is very interesting, especially given how I’m a costume and cosplay person myself and I love content about that. However, with everything you have said about not interacting with the show- not watching fan content about it, not sharing stuff, etc, I’m almost at a loss about what to do here. On one hand, both channels are on the side of Tolkien and against the show and are definitely discussing just how problematic it is on both the level of the show itself (costumes) and the ideas behind it as a whole (and how it betrays Tolkien), but at the same time, they’re just doing more to talk about it and spread it around and garner interest for it.
It’s very late so I’m probably not phrasing all this in the most coherent way possible but I hope what I’m trying to get at is still coming across. Thank you so much for anything you might have to say on this issue!!
Hi anon, sorry it took me a while to answer this. Thanks for the ask! And you didn't phrase this badly at all. I get where you're coming from. I think there are differing views on this issue, and there are many nuances involved, but it's my personal view that talking about the show is not harmful in and of itself.
I hope that people will refrain from watching the show on Amazon Prime (because even if you're hatewatching, it gives the show views, and also gives Amazon streaming revenue), and that they will refrain from giving Amazon positive promotion (that means anything from retweeting the trailers, to praising the show, to buying the merchandise). But in my opinion simply discussing it, and what's bad about it, is not inadvertently helping Amazon.
Some people argue that "any press is good press", i.e. that even when you criticize Amazon, you're giving them publicity. I disagree with that take. Amazon is terrified of bad press, as evidenced by the fact that they've gone to great lengths to counter it, including creating fake Twitter accounts to make it look like Amazon employees are happy with their jobs, and getting multiple TV stations to air Amazon talking points as news in an effort to muffle criticism of the company's abysmal workplace safety practices during the beginning months of pandemic. These are just a few examples.
Now that The Rings of Power is about to come out, there are a bunch of reviews of the show that someone at Amazon clearly paid for so they would make Amazon look good.
Amazon hates bad press. I say we give it to them!
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hi! while I hate to enable procrastination, I am... kinda doing the same thing and would love to read a dissection of the stabbing scene 👀
also for @that-angry-noldo, @aurorafaann and an anon!! Ty all for indulging me hehe <3 (and sending procrastination solidarity!)
Ok SO. Preface that I figured out the stabbing would occur only after writing part 12 - hence why part 13 foreshadows it very heavily and parts 11-12 more lightly. This is also why I feverishly wrote and published parts 13 and 14 very close together; I was gripped. consumed. I had a VISION. For this reason, the stabbing scene is not actually my best work ever. But! I did put a good amount of thought into it and, a week+ later, I think it holds up.
(This is also a good point to say that I genuinely did not intend to write a really mean cliffhanger and then not update the fic for ages. And I am sorry about that. Frankly, the stabbing felt like an excellent twist and I was worried about how to move the fic on from there without somehow destroying the emotional arc of the last few parts, but I've managed to work it out in the past couple of days which is cause for celebration!)
Anyway, we start out the stabbing scene with Maglor, who has not been having a very fun time lately, just glad to see his big brother again - uncomplicated gladness, for an instant at the end of part 13, but now he slips into his normal mode of feeling Guilty and Inadequate and starts to apologise to Maedhros for losing the Silmaril. But Maedhros is deep in the whole delusional episode situation and reacts oddly to Maglor's apology - which Maglor notices pretty much immediately:
Maglor has made Maedhros his chief study for many years.
He looks at him, now, and understands.
Subtext: Curufin is an Idiot who does not notice thingss but Maglor is a very good brother and we love him <3
Then there is the quiet refrain of Maglor's Rules For Dealing With Maedhros In A State: he is very careful with him, trying not to startle him or contradict him, making sure not to touch him. He is doing everything right! It's just that Maedhros has been spiralling so badly that that isn't enough.
Sidenote, but: I love writing Maedhros and Maglor interactions. I am in the silm fandom to write Maedhros and Maglor interactions. They are my bread and butter. This is the first time the two of them have met since Part 3, the first time they've had a proper conversation since Part 1 (!!), and so in addition to having obvious plot significance I really wanted this scene to depict some of the essential elements of their dynamic as I see it. So: Maglor's guilt, a dollop of mutual caretaking, all that endless complicated love, and! a thing I like to do! Mirrored dialogue!!
OKAY now I get to talk about the dialogue in this scene, which is my favourite part of it.
The boys' last conversation in the silm is one of my favourite pieces of dialogue, like, ever. It has so much tragic weight behind it; and the way their lines build off each other, reflect each other, is just perfection. Maedhros: "Who shall release us?" Maglor: "If none can release us..." To me this sets them up as foils for each other SO perfectly. When I write them I try to incorporate a little of this dynamic - they are both good with words, they like to debate with each other, and they often good-naturedly turn the other's words back on them.
I couldn't do this overtly in the stabbing scene because, frankly, I was in a possessed haze and wasn't thinking that deeply about it. But it did come through a little: "No doubt it amuses you," Maedhros says, and Maglor responds with, "Nothing that hurt you could ever amuse me." (Also, more subtly: "If none of it was real at all--" -> "It was real, Nelyo, I promise.")
More intentionally, Maedhros and Maglor are using very different registers of speech in this scene. Generally in tfs I don't make too much effort to make dialogue sound Tolkien-esque, as I do in my other fic; part of the tfs style is rooted in informality, so that Fingon can make a veiled sex joke to Curufin, and Mablung can casually say "Sure is" in response to a question. Maglor is adhering to this "standard style", so to speak: he uses contractions liberally, splices his commas, and so on. Maedhros, on the other hand, is speaking very formally: no contractions, a slightly more archaic way of constructing sentences: "If he lives" vs the more modern "if he's alive". This is deliberate! They're speaking Quenya in this scene, the language of their childhood, but while Maglor is using casual, familiar tones, Maedhros has reverted to very formal, classical Quenya - the sort that's one step removed from being a language solely of lore. This is what Maedhros spoke in Angband (Sauron is a language enthusiast, after all!) - a conscious effort to demarcate himself the High King of the Noldor, and the son of the world's best linguist. But because he's in such a bad place he is also swinging between registers, dropping in contractions on occasion, stumbling over and repeating his words as he grows more overcome.
I do humbly think Maedhros went OFF with dialogue here actually. "You have overstretched your hand, Sauron. He cannot be both dead and alive. You will have to pick one." and “Well, then, which is it? If he is dead then you are only a wraith wearing his shape. If he lives – and – and none of it was real at all—” and "I do not, I do not want this anymore. It was – it was not so terrible, when I could still pretend – but now – you are only taunting me now, doing this. Let it end." HE'S SO UPSET
Another thing that's impossible to get through in English is the use of formal vs informal second person: unfortunately in modern English, "thou/thee" sounds hopelessly archaic, so I couldn't have Maglor use it without breaking the casual and familiar vibe I was going for with his dialogue. But, in my head, he is thou-ing and thee-ing the whole time, whereas Maedhros is using the crushingly formal "you" instead. A little of this came across, hopefully, through Maglor's repeated use of Maedhros' childhood nickname: he calls him Nelyo in pretty much every sentence he speaks, whereas Maedhros, importantly, does not address Maglor by name even once.
Okay I just spent five paragraphs talking solely about dialogue WHY are you people indulging me like this. Moving on. In terms of actual plot... well, I think how well the scene works depends on how overt you found the foreshadowing in earlier parts. Did anyone predict that Maedhros would attack Maglor? If so, I imagine a lot of the mounting tension in the scene is kind of pointless. If not... the fact that Something Is Wrong is hopefully obvious from the start; the reader knows, unlike Maglor, that Maedhros has been having a terrible time of it. By the time Maglor has failed a couple of times to make any headway in convincing Maedhros, I was intending you to grow steadily more stressed. And
(It's worth noting that, with the exception of the twins, Maglor and Curufin are the two sons of Fëanor who most resemble each other: they have the same colouring, and they're both slighter than their brothers, with the same long skilful fingers.)
(It is not implausible that a shape-shifter, tired of impersonating Curufin, might switch to Maglor's form without too much difficulty.)
This small break from the close, limited Maglor POV that most of the scene is in, to give a quick glimpse of what's going on in Maedhros' head, was intended to Freak The Reader Out. Maedhros has literally just planned to kill the thing impersonating Curufin in Part 13 - if he is now starting to suspect that it's here with him, that killing it is the key to breaking the illusion, shit is getting serious.
Maglor gets out of bed. MAGLOR WHY ARE YOU GETTING OUT OF BED. He is almost afraid of Maedhros. MAGLOR BE MORE AFRAID OF MAEDHROS.
Maedhros says, "It was – it was not so terrible, when I could still pretend – but now – you are only taunting me now, doing this. Let it end." He has spent some time debating whether or not he prefers the illusion to the reality of his captivity - and he wasn't sure - but now that Sauron is mocking him with the image of his dead brother, he has decided enough is enough.
Maglor's bad leg gives out. Before he can fall Maedhros catches him, putting his right arm around Maglor's waist.
This is partially cute. Maedhros still has his big brother instincts, even like this! He isn't going to let Maglor fall!
But alarm bells were intended to be Extremely Ringing here. Maedhros puts his right arm around Maglor. His left hand is still free. His left hand is still free–
And Maglor, who is still just absolutely not realising how much danger he is in, responds to this extremely worrying statement by saying, "Thank you, Nelyo," - was he not LISTENING?? Maglor!!!!
Then, of course, Maedhros stabs Maglor, Maglor's instinctive response is to comfort him (do I need to get back on the "Maglor is an excellent brother" soapbox or can we take that as given), he sings him a lullaby - callbacks to Part 1 and the Carcharoth encounter, Maglor has sacrificed himself for Maedhros more than once in this fic - before just sitting down to die. That was a clear image in my head for a while: Maglor sitting in a pool of blood, singing quietly, Maedhros' head in his lap and the Silmaril in his hand, and then the orc-horns sounding outside for extra cliffhangeriness. In fact this is probably my single favourite image of the fic. I just love them ok.
This is SO LONG and so procrastinatey but also an extremely fun exercise actually!! I am now fired up to go and work on part 15.
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Some The Hobbit thoughts, also posted to Dreamwidth.
I've been rereading The Hobbit's first chapter, and I'm struck by the way Bilbo uses manners and civility to keep the fae at arm's length, and how poorly it works.
"I beg your pardon, I haven't asked for anything!" [said Bilbo]
"Yes, you have! Twice now. My pardon. I give it you. In fact I will go so far as to send you on this adventure. Very amusing for me, very good for you and profitable too, very likely, if you ever get over it."
"Sorry! I don't want any adventures, thank you. Not today. Good morning! But please come to tea - any time you like! Why not tomorrow? Come tomorrow! Good-bye!"
With that the hobbit turned and scuttled inside his round green door, and shut it as quickly as he dared, not to seem rude. Wizards after all are wizards.
"What on earth did I ask him to tea for!" he said to himself, as he went to the pantry. He had only just had break fast, but he thought a cake or two and a drink of something would do him good after his fright. Gandalf in the meantime was still standing outside the door, and laughing long but quietly. After a while he stepped up, and with the spike of his staff scratched a queer sign on the hobbit's beautiful green front-door.
So what he really wants to do is send Gandalf packing but he doesn't dare, wizard's being wizards. Instead, he invites him round to tea the next day, which feels a little like bumping into an old acquaintance and saying you should really get to dinner sometime. Only this ha an actual planned meet up so it's already less effective than our modern variant. It does, though, give him a well-mannered way out of the current way to end this interaction, and sets the stage for what the next one. It will be a tea, there will be Rules and a set end-date.
Only notsomuch. The dwarves arrive when poor Bilbo expects his wizard, and they just keep coming. There's the rude knocking, the odd belongings, the eating all his seed-cake and keeping him running to meet there every request. The only thing that seems to make it worse is when he's grousing about all the work these unexpected guests are causing him, and instead of taking the hint and leaving, they actually help him clean up.
"Confusticate and bebother these dwarves!" he said aloud. "Why don't they come and lend a hand?" Lo and behold! There stood Balin and Dwalin at the door of the kitchen, and Fili and Kili behind them, and before he could say knife they had whisked the trays and a couple of small tables into the parlour and set out everything afresh.
Gandalf sat at the head of the party with the thirteen dwarves all round: and Bilbo sat on a stool at the fireside, nibbling at a biscuit (his appetite was quite taken away), and trying to look as if this was all perfectly ordinary and not in the least an adventure. The dwarves ate and ate, and talked and talked, and time got on. At last they pushed their chairs back, and Bilbo made a move to collect the plates and glasses.
"I suppose you will all stay to supper?" he said in his politest unpressing tones. "Of course!" said Thorin. "And after. We shan't get through the business till late, and we must have some music first. Now to clear up!"
Again, he's clinging to manners to try to make them feel unwelcome, to highlight the imposition, but all he really does is make a space for them to keep on staying. He's actually inviting them in explicitly, both Gandalf and the dwarves, but it's in this way I think anyone playing by the same rule book as him would recognize wasn't a true invitation. That the only polite reply-back was to see they weren't welcome and withdraw.
It does remind me of folk-tales about vampires and other baddies, who must be given verbal permission to enter. I don't think Bilbo could have really done anything to avoid this adventure once Gandalf marked his door, but it's fascinating to me just how clearly Tolkien shows the normal rules of society don't apply, his Baggins side and all the social niceties that shape his reality just are completely ineffective in the face of these strange beings from beyond the blue.
I'm beginning to think it's no small thing Tolkien had him forget to put this event in his diary. As if this wide, dangerous world could ever be diaried in.
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thx @phant0m-l0rd for tagging me! (sorry I didn't do this sooner..!)
what book are you currently reading?
I'm re-reading The Lord of the Rings... but this time in English. I first read it in spanish some years ago and I need to freshen up my memory about it because I really like Tolkien's writing. Also been reading through Lovecraft's Cthulu Mythos in between books!
what's your favorite movie you saw in theaters this year?
without a doubt it was Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse. It was beautifully realized and I had been anxiously waiting for it since the first film came out! It was truly beyond any expectations I could've had, it was insane!
what do you usually wear?
oversized t-shirts, the occasional button up shirt and ripped jeans :P
how tall are you?
I'm pretty short, like 1.65 m i think (or a bit less...?)
what’s your star sign? do you share a birthday with a celebrity or a historical event?
I'm a libra! I share birthday's with Zi:Kill's Tusk :3
do you go by your name or a nickname?
online, nickname always, irl a mix of both i think
did you grow up to become what you wanted to be when you were a child?
I think it's too soon for me to make that call, but surely my younger self didn't foresee me turning out like this :P
are you in a relationship? if not, who is your crush if you have one?
nope, and I don't have a crush either, I'm a loser when it comes to romance..!
what’s something you’re good at vs. something you’re bad at?
I'm good at fixing clothes, I think, and I suck pretty bad at doing my make-up :,)
dogs or cats?
I love both, but If i had to choose one as a pet for myself, I'd go with cats!
if you draw/write, or create in any way, what’s your favourite picture/favourite line/favourite etc. from something you created this year?
I'm very glad to say I'm currently very happy with everything I've painted this year which is surprising for me, but the Ghoul illustration I made is honestly one of my favorites, I had no idea what I was doing in the process but now I'm trying to reproduce it ;_;
what’s something you’d like to create content for?
I've been very proactive in making art for things that interest me lately... but I still want to expand on my Silmarillion designs and maybe even illustrate some scenes from the book!
what’s something you’re currently obsessed with?
besides visual kei in general, I've been playing Ace Attorney and it's VERY fun.
what’s something you were excited about that turned out to be disappointing this year?
I can't think of anything at the moment
what’s a hidden talent of yours?
I guess I can mimic other accents when speaking pretty well..?
are you religious?
nope!
what’s something you wish to have at this moment?
I could really benefit from una torta de milanesa right neow... I'm hungry...
gonna tag... @blanktryptich and @6side9side (u don't need to answer all of this though...!)
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