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miclipse · 2 months

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˚ ༘ ೀ⋆｡˚ YOUR ROMAN EMPIRE.

characters: isagi yoichi, bachira meguru, kunigami rensuke, itoshi rin, michael kaiser (separate).

sypnosis: things he did that you often think about.

word count: 5.3k (~1.0k each)

cw: afab! reader, sfw, established relationships, nicknames used (baby, gorgeous, meine liebe, good girl, pretty girl), pre-wildcard! kunigami, mentions of period (rin's), kaiser being a smug bastard & also soft.

note: first time writing for the blue lock boys <3 comments appreciated!

ᯓ★ isagi yoichi ᝰ.ᐟ

“does it still hurt alot, baby?”

isagi, who was kneeled in front of you as you sat on the couch, continued pressing the ice pack against your swollen ankle.

his other hand was supporting the heel of your foot as he gently rotated it in circular motions to help ease the pain in the muscles.

your boyfriend lifted his head up to take a look at your expression, worried that the pain of your sprained ankle might be too unbearable for you if he didn't handle it carefully enough.

“a little… but it's getting better…” you mumbled out softly, feeling increasingly guilty the longer you watched isagi kneel in front of you and tend to what you could only call the consequences of your own actions.

“we have a treadmill at home for a reason. why'd you insist on taking a run outside when the ground was still all slippery and wet?” isagi's voice was soft and gentle, soothing the guilt in your heart slightly.

you thought isagi would've gotten mad at you, but he was still as loving and worried for you as ever despite all of this being your own fault.

it had rained earlier this morning, which isagi had already warned you about via text since he was away for his usual soccer practice.

but stubborn little you insisted that the rain would not interfere with your routine evening jog. you figured the damp floors would have dried up by the time you stepped out of the house.

oh, how very wrong you were.

in your defence, majority of the jog went smoothly. the problem only arose when you were about to make the final turn back to the familiar stretch of road that would lead back to your and isagi's shared apartment.

for some reason while you were turning the corner, your foot slipped. as an attempt to catch yourself before you fell face first into the cold hard concrete, your ankle twisted and ended up in an uncomfortable position.

you had to bite your tongue to hold yourself back from screaming due to the sudden sharp and piercing pain coming from your ankle.

when you finally managed to limp your way back to your front porch, you figured you could simply just eat some painkillers and sleep off the pain before your boyfriend got back from training.

but to your absolute horror and misfortune, the moment you opened the front door, you caught sight of your beloved boyfriend walking out from the kitchen with a cup of water in his hand.

the moment isagi saw you limping back through the front door in your sports attire, he immediately placed his cup on the kitchen island and rushed to your side to support you as he brought you to the couch to sit down.

“yeah, well… i thought the ground would've mostly dried up by the time i went out for my jog.” you gave isagi a sheepish and apologetic smile.

“well too bad, you thought wrong. and now look who's the one with a sprained ankle, hmm?” isagi continued to tease you with a soft chuckle, finally removing the ice pack from your inflamed ankle and placing the melted bag of gel down on the carpet.

“so? think you can stand up and walk on your own now?” isagi asked, lightly tracing circles on the bottom of your foot, leaving behind a ticklish sensation that got your foot to twitch and squirm in response.

seeing how your foot was flinching away from isagi's gentle touches, he merely smirked in amusement.

“not really, no.” you laughed, happy to keep things light-hearted despite the fact that you probably wouldn't be able to walk without support for the next few days.

but fret not. isagi was here to be your knight in shining armour, like how he always had been ever since you both started dating.

“do i need to push you around in a wheelchair like those elderly couples?” isagi joked, scooting himself closer to the side of the couch to get closer to you whilst he was still squatting down on the ground.

“well yeah, obviously. you don't expect me to roll around on the floor, do you?” you playfully rolled your eyes at your boyfriend's antics, watching as he reached out to grasp your hand in his.

his thumb traced small, comforting circles on the back of your hand, making you sigh out in satisfaction at how lucky you were to have isagi yoichi as your boyfriend.

a smile graced his lips. not the kind of smile he had whenever he scored a goal, or the kind of smile he gave to his teammates and friends. it was a smile that was solely reserved only for you.

isagi reached his other hand out to caress your cheek, lightly pinching it as a way to show his absolute affection and devotion towards you.

“don't worry. i’ll be the one to push your wheelchair. be it right now, or 60 years down the road.”

you never knew the words that left his lips would take you back to the days where you were falling head over heels for isagi yoichi all over again, but it did.

it had been months since you last felt your heart beat so rapidly against your chest and that queasy feeling of butterflies in your tummy.

those words may seem simple at first glance, but when you analyze it beneath the surface level, it held so much more meaning.

isagi was making a vow to you, promising to stay by your side through thick and thin. even when your youth was nothing but a distant memory, he would still choose you.

he wanted to spend his entire life with you, even if it meant he would have to be pushing your wheelchair around when you were all old and wrinkly.

those words were isagi's true feelings for you,

and they have never left your mind ever since the day he said them to you. not that isagi would ever give you a chance to forget about them in the first place.

ᯓ★ bachira meguru ᝰ.ᐟ

“i’ve cut up some fruit!”

your boyfriend’s lively voice from the kitchen reached your ears as you sat in the living room couch, busily typing away on your laptop.

you resisted the urge to turn away from your laptop screen to reply to your boyfriend, instead choosing to continue typing away on your essay that was due today.

seeing as you did not reply, bachira held the bowl of fruits in his hand as he made his way towards you, who was so diligently working on your assignments.

“do you want some?” the happy boy leaned his face right in front of yours with a cheeky grin, knowing that his actions would get a reaction out of you, who had been ignoring him the past few hours or so.

and rightfully so— you knew better than anyone that if you were to shower bachira with even an ounce of affection, you would never be able to direct your focus back on the task at hand.

“mmm… i’ll eat it later. you can munch on some first.” you suggested absentmindedly, gently using your hand to push bachira’s face away out of your view so that you could focus on the half finished word document displayed on your laptop screen.

well, that did not work according to bachira’s plan.

seeing how you had been paying all your attention on your laptop for the past few hours made bachira a little (very) attention-starved. dating him was equivalent to having a golden retriever as a pet; both of them were very high maintenance beings.

bachira pouted at your dismissive attitude right now, but he understood that you really needed to finish this assignment before the clock struck midnight.

however, as unfortunate as it sounded, today was also one of the rare days where bachira’s training ended early and he was able to spend some proper quality time with you.

bachira let out a dissatisfied hum, the pout still on his lips as he contemplated what to do in order to achieve the goal of the day.

which was to gain your attention.

he looked back down into the fruit bowl he had prepared for the both of you to share, and it did not take long for the pout of his to turn into a mischievous smirk.

it took you a few moments longer than usual to realise bachira had fallen awfully silent. normally, he would not even give you an ounce of quiet, rambling on and on about anything and everything he could talk about to fill in the silence. yet you hadn’t heard him say anything after you told him to eat first.

it was your fault for not figuring out soon enough that whenever bachira fell silent, he was plotting something in his head.

because before you could even save the progress of your half-written essay to turn and look at your boyfriend, a piece of watermelon poked into a metal fork entered your line of sight, successfully enticing you.

blinking in surprise, you instinctively turned your head to look at the culprit with a raised eyebrow.

“meguru-”

“say ‘ahh’!” bachira knew you all too well, and so he cut you off before you could question what he was trying to do. “you do your report, and i feed you. how does that sound, gorgeous?” bachira added, nearing the fork of watermelon closer to your lips.

he gave you no chance to decline his offer, if you could even count it as that.

“...ahh…” eventually giving in to your boyfriend, you slowly parted your lips and took the watermelon in between your teeth, chewing down on the juicy fruit.

“how is it? does it taste sweet?” bachira asked with a wide and bright smile, wiping the watermelon juice that splattered on the corner of your mouth with the pad of his thumb.

you tried to hide how fast your heart was beating at the simple gesture. but seeing as how bachira started grinning from ear to ear, it didn't take a genius to know that he already noticed your rosy red cheeks.

“tastes yummy.” you remarked with a soft chuckle, turning your attention back to your laptop and typing away on your report. you were trying your best to ignore the loud thumping in your chest.

normally, bachira would have been more clingy and persistent about you paying attention to him, but today he acknowledged that this report was very important to you and played a huge part in your final grade.

thus, he chose to obediently sit by your side for moral support and feed you fruit as you worked away on finishing up your essay.

“mmm, you’re right, it is yummy!” your boyfriend agreed, popping a slice of watermelon in his mouth and chewing down on it. he kept this up, feeding you a piece of fruit and gently wiping away the juice on the corner of your lips with the pad of his thumb before he fed himself a piece of fruit.

after a few minutes, it had finally come down to the very last slice of apple. bachira poked the apple with the metal fork, obviously planning to give you the last fruit in the bowl.

however, bachira’s mind was ever-functioning, and he managed to come up with yet another cheeky plan to surprise you.

“mind looking over for a second, gorgeous?” he called out to you with an innocent smile, waiting for you to stumble into his little trap.

“hmm? hold on.” you quickly typed out the last few words to finish up the sentence in your paragraph before finally turning to look at your boyfriend.

“yeah–?”

in a blink of an eye, bachira placed one end of the apple on your lips before placing the other end of the apple on his lips.

“what is this? the pocky challenge but with apples?” you joked, deciding to play along with bachira’s antics this time. you had ignored him for long enough, he deserved to get some affection from you. especially since he had been doing nothing but quietly sitting by your side and feeding you fruits.

“it’s a reward for working so hard.” bachira then took a big bite of the apple from his end. you followed suit until there was only a tiny chunk separating both your lips from each other.

“may i?” his whisper sounded almost pleading— he had restrained himself from clinging onto you as you worked on your assignment. but now that you were finally giving him your full attention, the boy was yearning for more.

“you may.” you reassured with a slight nod of your head, encouraging bachira to make the final move.

in which he did, biting down the last chunk of the apple before pressing his lips against yours.

it felt wonderful to have your lips moulded against his after being deprived from his affections for so long due to focusing on your essay. you chucked your laptop to the side of the couch, your arms snaking around his waist to make the kiss last longer.

perhaps a small break wouldn’t hurt...

ᯓ★ kunigami rensuke ᝰ.ᐟ

“oooh, what's going on there?”

the curiosity in you was building up when you noticed a crowd gathering just a distance away from the pathway kunigami and yourself were walking on.

as you pointed your index finger towards the crowd, kunigami turned his head to look in that direction before giving your hand a gentle squeeze.

“wanna go check it out?” he offered with a soft smile on his lips. you both had nothing important going on right now anyways. the two of you were just walking around the streets aimlessly and doing some window shopping to pass some time before you both would head for dinner.

“yeah!”

the way you chirped out happily in response, your eyes sparkling with excitement made kunigami's heart tighten with a certain fondness he couldn't exactly put into words.

before kunigami knew it, you were dragging him towards the crowd of people to see what all the commotion was about.

when the two of you were close enough, kunigami easily saw past the sea of crowd and his eyes eventually landed on a stage that was being setup with speakers and instruments, along with what seemed to be an amateur band preparing to perform.

“seems like it's a band performance. you interested to watch?” kunigami asked you. he had to raise his voice a little to beat the crowd’s volume, his eyes trailing back to look down at you.

oh.

your boyfriend was met with the sight of you standing on your tippy toes doing little subtle hops on the spot, trying to move your neck around to glance past the back of everyone’s heads, but unfortunately to no avail. you two were considered to be rather far back in the crowd, and everyone had a height advantage against you too.

sometimes kunigami would forget how short you were, or rather how tall he was as compared to you. things that he could easily do such as watching a performance at the back of a crowd was deemed as a challenge for his tiny and petite girlfriend.

kunigami was having an internal conflict with his inner voice on whether he should just push through the crowd so the both of you could make it to the very front of the stage (but also proceed to have a bunch of people glare at the two of you throughout the whole performance).

kunigami was the number one fan of everything being fair and square. and as much as he found the situation unfair for you, he also understood that it would be unfair to literally everyone else if he just rudely pushed through the crowd to get to the very front solely for your sake.

it wasn’t that kunigami would not do anything for you, he would give up anything and everything for you. but in situations like these where the universe was giving him a test on whether he should side with his morals or your happiness, he found himself stuck in the middle.

eventually, you turned to look up at your boyfriend, your soft lips jutting out to form a pout.

“rensuke, i can't see.” that sweet voice of yours would've sent kunigami into a deep trance if he was a weak-willed man.

the man pursed his lips together, desperately digging his brain for any ideas on how to ensure you got to see the performance without making the rest of the audience mad.

then, it was like something clicked in his head. like as if a tiny mouse living in his noggin just attached the two correct wires together and allowed kunigami’s brain to come up with the perfect solution that will make you happy and stick to his morals of ensuring everything was fair and square.

moving his hand down to ruffle your hair affectionately, kunigami then proceeded to crouch down in front of you, his back now facing towards you.

the action made you stunned into place, staring at kunigami’s toned back in disbelief and confusion. “rensuke?” you called out, prompting him to provide some sort of explanation for his action.

“i’ll piggyback you. that way, you'll be able to see the performance, right?” kunigami asked, trying his very hardest to sound as calm as he could. he would die if you saw through just how flustered he was feeling at the moment.

kunigami was often deemed as a scary delinquent due to his built figure in addition to his height being a whopping 6’2, but only a rare few properly understood that he was nothing but a life-sized teddy bear.

and you were the only one that would ever get this special treatment from him.

when kunigami felt your plush thighs press against his neck and shoulders, he grabbed onto your lower calves to ensure you were steady on his back before he slowly stood up to his full height again.

“can you see the stage?” kunigami asked you with a small smile on his face. he could feel many pairs of eyes looking towards the two of you, but he couldn't blame them. he was the only one among the crowd that was carrying a girl on his shoulders.

although you were not used to the stares accompanied by a couple of girls gushing over how cute your boyfriend was to be openly carrying his girlfriend on his shoulders, you were filled with a sense of pride when hearing people whisper about what a good boyfriend kunigami was.

“i can see the world.” you joked, but you sounded amazed by the view. it was your first time getting such a clear view of everything you desired like it was a piece of cake.

“is this how it feels to view the world through your eyes, rensuke?” a soft giggle slipped through those soft lips of yours as you hugged your legs tighter around his neck to ensure that you would not fall off (but also making sure not to accidentally suffocate him in the process too).

“perhaps. but i wish you could see what i see whenever i look at you.” kunigami responded with a playful grin.

your heart skipped a beat at his words, suddenly feeling all giddy and floaty on the inside.

oh, how lucky you were to call this man yours.

ᯓ★ itoshi rin ᝰ.ᐟ

the familiar sound of the front door being opened was accompanied by your boyfriend's monotonous voice.

the words that escaped his mouth seemed habitual and subconscious, and you wouldn't doubt that he would still say the same exact thing even if you weren't around to receive his greeting.

“i'm home.”

you immediately sat up from the couch with a smile, turning to glance at your boyfriend so that you could return his greeting.

“welcome home, rin!” your enthusiastic response was something rin could never dream of getting tired of. no matter how many times this scene unfolded in front of him, it never failed to warm that stone-cold heart of his.

it just seemed to fulfill that hidden desire of his to finally feel loved and be appreciated by someone.

but of course, he would rather take this little secret of his down to the grave with him than ever letting you know about it.

“thanks.” rin responded, trying to seem nonchalant about your response. he had barely given a reaction to it for the past year, so why should he now?

“oh, what's that? did someone give you a gift for winning your game today?” rin used the back of his foot to gently kick the door shut behind him as you spoke, pointing at the basket in his hands out of curiosity.

“no, i bought these.” rin rolled his eyes at you. what made you think he would be accepting gifts from anyone other than his girlfriend? he wasn't that much of a sucker for attention from other girls.

before you could follow up with a second question on what was in the basket that looked to be stuffed to the brim with items, rin walked towards you and shoved the basket right in your face.

looking at rin with a raised eyebrow, you held the basket with both your hands and took a look in it, wondering what could rin possibly have bought for the basket to be looking so full yet barely having any weight to it.

inside, there were tampons and pads arranged neatly on the left side of the basket. it was plenty to last you for the next three to four months or so. and the right side was stuffed to the brim with chocolates and sweets that you remembered mentioning to rin about them being your favourite.

and if that wasn't jaw dropping enough, there was also a cute little teddy bear in the basket, staring right back at you with its cute little beady eyes and a cartoon smile.

“you're going to attract flies into your mouth. close up.” rin commented, scoffing in amusement at your reaction to his small gesture. he crossed his arms over his chest, trying his best to remain as indifferent as he could.

but if you took a closer look at him, you would realise that the tips of his ears held a faint red hue to them.

“but rin… what's this for? my period isn't even here yet.” you looked up at him with your stupidly wide eyes that could compare to a puppy's. seriously, sometimes rin wondered how you looked more like a dog than a human.

“yeah, but it's in two days, is it not?” that was a rhetorical question.

it wasn't that rin was genuinely asking whether your period was coming in two days, he knew. he was just telling you in a way that would make him feel like he held the upper hand against you, especially when it came to your own body.

he just wanted to challenge you to prove him wrong, as he always did. his confidence was always sky high— but rightfully so (in his opinion).

you blinked in surprise, grabbing your phone and unlocking it to check your period tracker. you had been losing track of time due to how busy you were that you hadn't even realised that rin was right. your period was coming in two days.

“how'd you know that?” you asked him back, seeming shocked that rin bothered to remember your monthly shark week. you were convinced he barely cared about dates that were not as important to him like anniversaries and your birthday.

“you think you're the only one with a period tracker app? i have it too.” rin answered, sounding as calm and nonchalant as he always did.

come on, it wouldn't hurt for him to show even an ounce of emotion. it was already so painfully obvious how much he loved and cared for you, it wouldn't bring any harm to be nice to you every now and then, would it?

“you're such a creep.” you tried to tease him in a serious tone, biting back the smile that threatened to show on your face. you were trying to get him to show his rare soft side.

but rin was one step ahead of you. he knew you better than the back of his hand, and he didn't hesitate to tease you back.

“i’ll take it as you don't want my gift then. might as well give it to another girl who'll appreciate it more than this ungrateful brat.” as if to entice even more of a reaction out of you, rin slowly edged his hand closer to the basket, threatening to take it away from you.

“what?! no! don't you dare!” you gasped, immediately hugging the basket protectively like it was your newborn baby.

that was exactly the reaction rin wanted out of you.

his cold facade was unable to further resist your cuteness and started to crumbled as a faint smirk ghosted his lips.

his hand that was once edging towards your basket (technically his, since he was the one that paid for everything) moved towards the top of your head to ruffle your hair.

silence filled the room, and you looked up at rin patiently with an anticipating smile on your face, waiting for him to finally say the words he had been holding back all this while.

“ i... i love you.” he eventually whispered out with a defeated sigh, leaning down and planting a soft kiss on your forehead. “don't ever forget that, ‘kay?”

rin knew he was bad at expressing his emotions. but he wanted to make sure to remind you from time to time that his feelings for you would never change. not now, not ever.

ᯓ★ michael kaiser ᝰ.ᐟ

“come.” kaiser patted his lap, a coy smirk on his lips as his sapphire eyes observed your figure standing by the bedroom door, not moving despite his command. “hurry up meine liebe, i don't have all day.”

those words were what finally made you obediently walk towards where kaiser was seated at; the chair just by the vanity table you both shared.

he rested his hand on the vanity table, rhythmically drumming his index finger on the surface of the table as his eyes remained fixated on you.

kaiser was a bold individual, and it was something you both hated and loved simultaneously.

he never tried to hide the fact how his eyes were always lingering on your body, staring at you like you were the next prey he wanted to devour.

even now, he watched intensely as your hips swayed from side to side while you walked across the bedroom to make your way towards him.

it was almost like you were strutting into the lion's den, volunteering to be his next meal.

and even as you finally lowered your hips and straddled his lap, kaiser didn't look away from you for even a second, the smirk on his face only growing more smug and cocky.

“you’re so cute, i can't tell if you're doing this on purpose to seduce me or not.” kaiser couldn't help but tease you, noting how your cheeks were rosy and the way you were trying to avoid his intense stare.

“quit it, mihya. didn't you say you were in a hurry?” you rolled your eyes at your boyfriend's antics. it left you all weak and flustered, and you knew that kaiser took pleasure in seeing how he had the upper hand against you everytime.

you were nothing but a little mouse the lion planned to toy with for amusement before he eventually wolfed you down in his stomach.

“the emperor chooses his next move.” kaiser pointed his index finger at your cheek, slowly inching closer before gently giving you a little poke. “not you.”

despite his words, kaiser moved his hand away from your face to stop messing with you as he was not lying about being short of time.

his hand felt around the vanity table, before coming into contact with just the object he needed.

using his free arm to wrap around your waist to keep you steady in his lap, kaiser brought the eyeliner pen to his lips, using his teeth to bite the cover off before securing it on the back of the pen.

“be a good girl and sit still for me, hmm? i don't have time to redo it if you make me mess up.” typical of kaiser to push the blame onto you if he messed up. he was an egoist, thus his mistakes were never his. it was always someone else's.

he kept his hand steady as he moved the eyeliner closer to your face. once the tip of the red tinted pen was close enough to your skin, you closed your eyes so that kaiser could have an easier time applying it on you.

“you're so adorable for wanting to match with me, you know that meine liebe?” kaiser chuckled, using short and gentle strokes to draw the eyeliner onto your eyelids, just like how he would to himself every morning before he started his day. “you'll look gorgeous once i’m done with you, i promise.”

the room fell into a comfortable after kaiser's reassurance, as kaiser decided to direct his full focus on helping you apply the eyeliner. he didn't want to risk messing up.

afterall, he wouldn't have time to help you redraw it due to him having to rush to practice right after this.

you could feel goosebumps surfacing on your skin when you felt kaiser's hot breath hit your cheek. no doubt that he was intentionally leaning in closer to you just so he could get a reaction out of you, as he always did.

you could picture it in your head: his head tilted in an angle, his eyes squinted in concentration while gently drawing on your eyelids. it felt so comforting that you felt like you could fall asleep on his lap, but you resisted the urge to do so.

the sensation of kaiser stroking the eyeliner against your eyelids stopped, before the sound of him popping the cap back on the pen was heard.

“open your eyes, pretty girl. we're all done.” kaiser placed the eyeliner back in the drawer, his other arm still securely keeping you on his lap by holding your waist.

when you opened your eyes, kaiser's face was just inches away from yours. your eyes widened slightly at how close he was to you, trying to remain your composure.

the cocky smirk on his lips proved that he did this on purpose to entice a reaction out of you. before you could resist, your boyfriend leaned in, planting a soft kiss on your lips.

“take a look in the mirror, liebe. don't you just look so beautiful?” kaiser whispered huskily in your ear, gently grasping your chin between his thumb and index finger and guiding your face to turn towards the mirror on the vanity table.

you took a closer look at the reflection in front of you. you, sitting intimately on kaiser's lap whilst he had an arm slung around your waist and the both of you having matching red eyeliners. it looked…

“perfect.” you whispered it out loud without realising.

“oh? what was that?” kaiser leaned his ear closer to your mouth, taunting you to speak up so that he could hear you say it again, but louder.

“i said it looks perfect.” you replied without hesitation, and kaiser seemed satisfied by your obedience today. it was always a nice sight whenever you played along with his annoying and teasing nature.

“and you're perfect for me, liebe.” your boyfriend moved his hand to cup your cheek, the pad of his thumb caressing the fat of it. “you don't understand how grateful i am to have you by my side.”

and you could just about say the same thing about him.

2K notes · View notes

angelsnkisses · 10 months

Text

Study Break - Dalton Lambert x fem!reader <3

💟 nsfw - mdni 💟

A/N: there's not nearly enough stuff on here for dalton, so of course, i had to assist! i mean, the movie is still pretty new.. so that's probably why but whatevs :).

warnings: softdom!dalton, sub!fem!reader, oral (fem receiving), unprotected sex, creampie

Quiet, slow music hummed in your ears, flowing through your headphones as you tapped your pen against your lower lip. You stared down at your nearly blank journal page, brows furrowed and mouth turned in a scowl. You couldn't think of anything, not one idea for your paper, and it was bugging the hell out of you. You groaned after a hot minute of practically boring holes into the paper with your gaze, yanking out your headphones and laying your head on the desk.

"The universe is against me, I know it," you huffed, whiny and defeated. Dalton, who had been sketching and watching you work for the better part of two hours, looked up from his own book. He chuckled, but still smiled apologetically, getting up off the bed and walking over to stand beside you. He looked down at your paper, one of his hands rubbing your back with a gentle touch. "No it isn't, you've never done anything to the universe," he argued lightheartedly, crouching down next to the chair and tapping your back gently. You didn't respond, still wallowing in your own little vat of self pity.

"Hey, come on. You're gonna figure it out," he reassured, reading what you had so far before turning to you. He couldn't see your face, but he knew you probably had on that frustrated pout of yours, the one he secretly loved so much. You peeked down at him, sighing when you saw his face. Those eyes always pulled you in, took your mind off whatever it was you were even upset about it the first place. You rotated the chair to face him, leaning down and putting your hands on the sides of his face.

He was so sweet, so supportive despite you being just a little dramatic about your project. It wasn't due for a week, and your partner was doing half of it anyways. Your tense expression relaxed as you brushed his hair out of his face, cracking a small smile. "You're right, you're right. I'm being ridiculous, aren't I?" you asked, earning a little laugh. He shook his head in your hold, resting his hands on your knees and leaning up.

"Not ridiculous, you just worry too much," he teased, gaze flicking between your eyes and lips. You frowned a bit, still messing with his hair as you felt your face heat up. He was right, you did worry quite a bit. About your classes, him, work.. you couldn't help it. You moved your hand to cover his mouth when you saw him start to lean in, pushing his head away with a playful scoff.

"Better watch yourself, Lambert. I still gotta focus," you said, trying to sound annoyed. Really, you just sounded amused.. which you were. He groaned against your palm, his hand darting up to grab your wrist. He kept your hand against his face, turning it a bit and pressing a small kiss to the skin. "I'll help you de-stress," he said, his words a whisper between his kisses. He trailed the kisses up your arm, listening to your hesitant sigh.

"My roommate will be back soon," you reminded him, trying to ignore how good his lips felt. It was hard to say no to him, but your poor roommate had been traumatized enough times. She had already caught you twice, once being on her birthday. She always insisted it was fine and she should've knocked, but you always insisted it was your fault, and she shouldn't have to knock to get into her own dorm. Still, you really needed to start shooting them a warning text..

"I'll be quick. I swear," he vowed, his gaze longing and fervent. You couldn't help but get deja vu everytime you saw him between your legs, always remembering the first time he'd ever settled himself down there. That was over a year ago, when he was far more inexperienced and you had to teach him what you liked, etc. Now, he knows exactly how to get you to cum on his tongue over and over, and it's one of his favorite things to do. He watched you get lost in thought, that familiar look in your eyes telling him you were starting to give in.

"Yeah, that's it," he mumbled, his free hand squeezing your knee. He pushed lightly against it, trying to get you to open up your legs for him with encouraging hands. Your stomach did backflips when you saw how worked up he was getting, heat pooling between your thighs. Biting down on your lower lip and peeking at the small alarm clock on your desk, you hesitated, glancing between him and the paper.

"Just for a little while, then I'll let you work," he promised, thumbs rubbing anxious circles on your skin. You gaged his pleading gaze, warmth spreading over your skin where he touched you. You looked down at his hands, biting back a quiet noise. You always forgot how big they were, how long the fingers stretched.. you didn't stop him when they hooked into the waistband of both your shorts and underwear.

"Lift your hips for me," he murmured, the subtle dominance in his voice making your knees weak. You did as he said, heart pounding as you watched him peel them off your legs with ease. You slowly started to spread your legs apart once the fabric was discarded, feeling even more vulnerable when he inhaled sharply at the sight. Just the thought of him touching you more was enough to get you soaked, arousal glistening for him to see. You watched his eyes light up, legs shifting underneath him so he was on his knees as his hands gripped your thighs. He tugged you closer to the edge of the chair, a seemingly pleased hum emitting from his throat.

"Knew you'd like it," was the last thing he muttered before pushing his face forward, pressing his tongue flat out to lick a slow, greedy strip up your dripping cunt. The suddenness made you gasp, the warmth pulling a mewl from you as one of your hands laced into his hair. His name rolled off your tongue when he pressed a kiss to your clit, his lips soft and welcoming. Dalton peered up at you through dark lashes, one hand releasing your thigh. You squirmed under his stare, about to whine for more when he started gently sucking your clit between his lips. The moan you produced was intoxicating, filling his ears and egging him on.

You were too caught up in the feeling of his mouth to notice his hand moving just below his chin, index finger prodding at your sopping hole and catching you off guard. He was quick to smack one of your thighs upon them tightening around his head, a wordless warning that left your skin stinging. You pushed your legs back open shakily, fingers tightening as you pulled at his hair. The action instantly enticed a heavy moan, vibrating through your swollen clit and making you buck your hips involuntarily. The deep, muffled chuckle he released against you was unreasonably sexy, reminding you how desperate you were already acting for him.

You were about to apologize quietly, when his finger abruptly moved into the comfort of your warm walls, pumping slowly and clearing any considerations of speaking. Instead, you leaned against the back of the chair, breathing shallow and quick. "Dalton," you whimpered, the closeness making your whole body ignite with need. You were sure he could feel you practically throbbing against his lips, even more so when his middle finger joined the index. You almost felt guilty pulling at his pretty hair, the brown strands soft and silky between your fingers. You loosened them, carding through his hair instead in an attempt to taciturnly make up for the rough grip.

His fingers picked up speed when he felt you clench around them subtly, unable to help the proud feeling he was consumed with. He loved that despite his unruly life, nothing could affect his ability to make you feel good. Nothing could stop him from loving and caring for you, and that was good enough for him. He tried not to get all sappy, focusing on your trembling figure instead. He ignored the painfully hard bulge in his jeans, craving your release almost as much as you were. He longed to feel your slick coat his fingers, his movements picking up a bit. When his fingers started to curl, you just about lost it, heels digging into the ground as you tried to stabilize yourself.

"Mmh, don't stop," you begged, knowing damn well it wouldn't be the first time he took away your orgasm at the last minute. He had no ulterior motives tonight, however. He just kept up what he was doing, darkened eyes staying on you nearly the whole time. His cock ached at the sight of your face contorting in pleasure, that familiar little 'o' forming on your face as you cried out. His lips twitched up when you came undone on his face, his eyes rolling back just a bit as your familiar taste invaded his tongue. The majority collected on his fingers as he licked and tortured your overstimulated clit, your orgasm slowly beginning to subside as he helped you ride it out.

He pulled his fingers out, pulling back and inspecting them. He grinned at the sight of the sticky, pale substance, catching your tired eyes before pushing them past his lips. He groaned softly around the digits, sucking them completely clean. It wasn't enough, his greed getting the best of him as he leaned back in. You borderline yelped when he started sloppily lapping up the leftover arousal soaking your cunt, your eyes brimming with tears as his nose rutted against your clit.

"W-wait.." you begged softly, your legs twitching everytime he bumped into the sensitive spot. He pulled away when he was satisfied, shifting himself onto his feet and standing up. He leaned down to put his hands on the arms of your chair, caging you in with a sweet, yet heated gaze. You couldn't help but shudder when he got a bit closer, your body buzzing as you caught your breath. He tilted his head, closing the space between you and pressing his lips to yours. You involuntarily moaned against him, hands grabbing at his shirt and tugging him closer. Your eyes blinked shut when you tasted yourself on him, cheeks burning with the realization.

Dalton was starting to get needy himself, kissing you with affectionate, hungry lips. You made a surprised little noise when he slipped his tongue into your mouth, the kind of noise that made him yearn for you like no other. He felt a little guilty, especially since he'd promised you to be quick, but god, he couldn't stop thinking about how good you felt around him, how perfectly he filled you.. it was driving him insane.

"I wanna feel you," he practically moaned against your lips, his voice pleading and breathless. The blunt words made you wet all over again, a borderline inaudible sound leaving you as you forced yourself to shake your head. He broke the kiss, trailing smaller ones to your jaw. One of his hands moved to the side of your neck, holding you still so he could start nipping at the soft skin. Your pulse thrummed against his palm quickly, which he allowed to flatter him just a little.

"C'mon, she won't come home," he murmured, as if he could read your mind and tell exactly what was making you anxious. He wasn't actually sure when she'd be back.. but he didn't mention that part. He was about 70% sure he had enough time, and that was good enough for him. He waited while you pondered it, his lips pressing into the space where your jaw met your neck. You groaned, mentally cursing yourself before lacing your fingers back into his hair. He hummed at his little victory, hands beginning to wander your figure.

You knew you shouldn't, it was unfair to your roommate.. and the neighboring dorms that could probably hear you if they listened hard enough. You just couldn't help yourself, you rarely could around him. Your hands were shaking slightly in his hair when he lifted you off the now wet chair, crossing the small room to get back to your bed. He pushed his sketchbook off the comforter and onto the floor, setting you down on the mattress before standing. You felt exposed, reaching down and trying to shove your shirt over your bare bottom half while he stood over you.

The way he chuckled had your arousal leaking onto the bed beneath you, his hands moving to start undoing his belt. He watched you, taking his sweet time, tilting his head just a bit when you whined beneath him. "Don't be embarrassed, I've seen it all before," he reminded you, as if you had somehow forgotten how he was practically making out with your pussy not 5 minutes earlier. Your face got hot all over again, thighs clenching together at the sound of his voice. You always got so desperate after your first release, craving more of that syrupy sweet pleasure that only he could provide.

The way he was affecting you didn't go unnoticed by him, his teeth flashing in a grin as he tugged the belt from the waistband of his jeans. He began undoing the button and zip with one hand, the other gesturing toward your half naked body. "You're gonna keep that on for me, hm?" he mumbled, his eyes swimming with lust as they raked over every inch of your form. The shirt was his, otherwise it would have been on the floor in seconds. His favorite thing in the world was fucking you while you wore his clothes, and he did it every chance he got (which was a lot, since you were almost always in one of his shirts or jackets).

You nodded shyly in response to his question, not trusting your voice. You bit down on your tongue when he started tugging his jeans down, eyes greedily lingering on the front of his black boxers. He felt his cheeks heat up just a little at your attention, tilting his head down and pretending to mess with the hem so you wouldn't see his reddened cheeks. You watched his hands carefully, rubbing your thighs together when he continued to take his time.

"Please, I need you so bad," you whimpered, catching his attention. You didn't usually say stuff like that, claiming it sounded silly coming from you. The simple sentence sent a throb through his already aching abdomen, his hands pushing down the fabric without any more hesitation. You could have cum just from the sight, abdomen tensing with need. "Yeah? Need me to make you feel good?" he cooed, cocky now that he'd gotten the reaction out of you. He didn't wait for your answer, climbing over you and putting his big hands on your thighs. He tugged you closer, pushing your legs open with his eyes pinned down. He could have wept at the sight of you all wet for him again, making a small mess on your sheets and covering your inner thighs with the shiny, translucent slick.

"You're so pretty," he half-moaned, one of his hands leaving your thighs. The compliment had you reaching up, hands roaming his chest needily. He gave no warning before he dragged his index up your slit, collecting some of the liquid desire on his fingertip and slipping it past his lips. Your whole body warmed at the sight, butterflies fluttering around in your stomach. You watched him lean down more, positioning himself between your legs and lining his swollen, eager tip up with your dripping hole. His eyes flickered up to yours when you gasped quietly, the hand on your thigh slipping up to grasp your hip soothingly.

"You ready?" he asked, his tip already wet from nuzzling into your folds. You whispered a deprived, desperate 'yes,' so clearly craving him. He pressed a kiss to your forehead, trying to somewhat distract you with the gesture while he started to push himself inside your tight, wet heat. You both gasped in unison, yours shakier than his due to the stinging stretch between your legs. He kissed all over your face, mumbling quiet apologies as you winced and huffed with every inch he gave you. No matter how many times you did this, he always had to start slow with you. The initial stretch was always the hardest part, but after that, it was typically smooth sailing.

By the time he had bottomed out, you were already pretty much used to it, lips catching his as soon as you were given the chance. You whimpered when he started pulling back again, the drag of him along your walls stirring up pleasure in your abdomen. You could hear him groan into your mouth, hand slipping under your shirt as he moved. He palmed at your right tit, squeezing the soft mound of flesh gently. His slightly rough hands were warm and comforting, touching you just right as his hips started moving at a steady, slow pace.

The moan you produced was heavenly, louder than before as pleasure trickled across your body. Dalton found himself disappointed that he didn't get to truly appreciate the sounds you were making, breaking the sloppy kiss so he could hear you properly. His pace was gradually increasing, his own quiet moans giving you all sorts of funny feelings in your belly. He leaned up a little more so he could look down at what he was doing, groaning at the sight. You peeked down, too, biting your lower lip when you realized how wet you were getting him. His dick was partially covered in a creamy white, making a wet, almost squelching sound with every thrust. You released an embarrassed whine, the lewd sounds making you feel ten times more exposed.

Dalton didn't share your feelings of embarrassment at all. In fact, he was going fucking nuts about the fact that he could literally hear how soaked he made you. His thrusts started to get harder, the sound of skin on skin mixing in with your whiny moans as he continued watching himself fuck you. The way his big cock disappeared, reappeared, disappeared, reappeared over and over was fucking hypnotizing. The only thing that could tear his gaze away was the sound of you gasping, hands dropping down to grip the sheets as your back arched up a bit.

"Oh, right there," you pleaded, eyes fluttering shut as your head fell back into the pillows. Dalton quickly realized what he was doing to you, a proud little smile on his face as he chuckled breathily. "Mmh, feels good, huh?" he cooed, knowing you couldn't answer as his hips pushed against you to deliver a particularly hard thrust. Your legs started to tremble, a loud, desperate cry escaping your lungs when he started intentionally pushing against that perfect spot over and over. Your toes curled, legs wrapping loosely around his waist as you tried to get him closer, deeper. Something must of been in the air today, because you couldn't remember the last time you were this frantic for him.

You were wrapped around him just right, snug and warm and wet. He felt his tip kiss your cervix, shushing you softly when you whimpered and squirmed under him, not knowing what to do with yourself. His libidinous sounds encouraged you, the noise coaxing you closer and closer to your second release. One of your hands moved from the sheets, trying to pry his from your hip so you could interlock your fingers. He noticed right away, releasing his bruising grip and taking your hand, pushing it against the bed as he fucked you harder.

"Dalton, 'm gonna cum," you managed to warn softly, a choked whine following quickly after. He hummed, an adoring smile pulling at his lips as he gazed at you. He didn't take his eyes off you once, just rubbing an encouraging thumb across the back of the hand he held. "That's it, cum on my dick," he purred, the filthy words catching you off guard. Your legs tightened around his waist when you felt it all wash over you, shaking and crying as he fucked you through it. You heard a raspy 'fuck' over the roaring in your ears, a whimper sneaking it's way into your boyfriend's moans as he felt his own orgasm snap. He pushed himself as deep as he could manage, head falling on your shoulder as he filled you up with warm, thick cum. It was mind numbing, your pussy still twitching and fluttering around him as his thrusts continued. You were overstimulated, but you wanted to let him ride it out.

"Atta girl," he mumbled, his thrusts slowing to a stop as he panted heavily. He pressed a sweet, gentle kiss to your shoulder before he pulled back, blue eyes meeting yours. His heart swelled when you gave him those loving, hooded eyes, unable to stop himself from smiling subtly. His hair stuck to his forehead, face flushed and chest heaving with his deep breaths. You couldn't help but stare, the hand that wasn't in his shakily reaching for his face. You brushed the damp hair from his face as best as you could, tired and lovesick in your peaceful afterglow. He pushed his cheek into your palm, sighing contently through his breaths.

After a few moments of the two of you catching your breath, he leaned down, pressing his lips to yours once more. This kiss was different than the other ones, gentle and caring instead of sloppy and desperate. Taking his opportunity, he slipped himself out of you, the sudden emptiness eliciting a gentle moan from you. He whined dramatically when you broke the kiss, your teeth flashing as you grinned, amused. You looked over his shoulder at your alarm while he started kissing your neck, craving aftercare just as much as you were. Sadly, it was already 9, and your roommate rarely stayed out very long after that. You mentally cursed your predicament, giving Dalton apologetic eyes. "She's probably on her way now," you mumbled, and he knew exactly what you were talking about. He groaned against your neck, clearly disappointed, but still pulled away. He thought about it for a second, before scoffing when he realized how obvious the solution was.

"Oh wait- duh, I live here too. We can walk over to my dorm," he recalled, making you laugh; a genuine, almost musical sound that had Dalton folding for you all over again. He pressed one more kiss to your forehead before gently pulling your legs off his waist and standing. "What about Chris?" you asked, wincing softly as you sat up. The space between your legs ached, and when you moved, you could feel cum start to leak out of you. It made you blush, remembering just how exposed you were. You watched Dalton pull on his boxers as he shrugged. "She's with a friend tonight," he responded, like it was common knowledge.

"You're telling me I risked my roommate getting an eyeful of us.. you know, when we could have been in your empty, risk-free dorm?" you gasped, mocking betrayal. He laughed at that, throaty and low as he lifted his hands in defeat. He grinned sheepishly, walking over to the desk chair where this whole situation began. "Yeah, maybe," he admitted, earning a playful eye roll from you (you would never admit it, but part of you loved the risk). He picked up your shorts and underwear, walking over and offering them to you.

"Here, we'll get you all cleaned up when we get there. I have some clean clothes you can wear," he promised, pressing a sweet kiss to your temple before turning to hunt down the rest of his clothes..

A/N: this is.. something. i never know how to end fics, that's why its always so abrupt 😭. anyways, i finally finished this one! i wanna write another one with a gn!reader :). work and classes have kept me so busy, but i'm gonna try to post a bit more frequently 🫶 hope you enjoyed <3! (not proofread yet)

#ty simpkins #dalton lambert #dalton lambert smut #dalton lambert x reader #insidious #insidious: the red door #insidious the red door #i love him so bad #angelsnkisses #mdni

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eco-lite · 11 months

Text

I’m once again returning to do god’s work by bringing you delightful moments from Spock’s World by Diane Duane.

[Text ID: “Spock was bent over [the Science Station], making some adjustment. ‘Readout now,’ he said, straightening and looking over his shoulder at the large, shaggy-fringed rock that was sitting in the center seat. Some of those glittering fringes stroked the open circuitry of the communicator controls in the seat’s arm. ‘Point nine nine three,’ said a scratchy voice from the voder box mounted on the rock’s back. ‘A nice triple sine.’ ‘Nice?’ said Spock. Jim raised an eyebrow: you could have used Spock’s tone of voice to dry out a martini.” End ID]

There’s a Horta crewman on the Enterprise now and they’re great!

[Text ID: “Still working on her doctoral thesis, Jim thought. Uhura was busy working on improving universal translator theory, mostly by taking the old theory to pieces and putting it back together in shapes that were causing a terrible furor in academic circles on various planets. Jim vividly remembered one night quite a long time ago when he had asked Uhura exactly how she was going about this. She had told him, for almost an hour without stopping, and in delighted and exuberant detail, until his head was spinning with phoneme approximations and six-sigma evaluations and the syntactic fade and genderbend and recontextualization and linguistic structural design and the physics of the human dextrocerebral bridge. The session had left Jim shaking his head, thoroughly disabused of the idea (and ashamed of how long he had held it) that Uhura was simply a sort of highly trained switchboard operator.” End ID]

Uhura continues to be a total badass and is amazing at what she does.

[Text ID: Chatroom title in all caps: “COMMON ROOM OPINION, INFORMED AND NON- RANTING AND RAVING PERMITTED NAMES NOT NECESSARY” Regular text: “It was one of the places he came to find out what his crew was thinking. Messages did not have to be attributed to a name or terminal, but they could not be private. The office of the common room system operator rotated through the crew, offered to various members on the strength of their psych profiles in areas like calm reaction to stress and anger. The common room syops tended to be closemouthed and dependable, the kind of person that others refer to as ‘a rock.’ (Once it had actually been Naraht, to the amusement of just about everyone.) Here tempers could flare, awful jokes be told safely, suspicions be aired, rumors be shot down. The common room was sometimes a peaceful place, sometimes a powderkeg. Jim never ignored it.” End ID]

The Enterprise has a dumpster fire chat room that has just as much shitposting and vitriol as twitter.

[Text ID: “Jim bowed over her free hand. ‘It’s been too long,’ he said. ‘It’s good to be back,’ Amanda said. ‘And in the middle of a party as well.’ She looked a little wry. ‘A little entertainment will be pleasant before the deluge.’ Sarek’s eyes flicked to Kirk, a considering look. ‘My wife speaks figuratively,’ he said, ‘in the tradition of her people. Deluges are not common on Vulcan.’ ‘My husband speaks circumspectly,’ Amanda said, just as dryly, ‘in the tradition of his.’” End ID]

Amanda and Sarek are as charming as ever.

[Text ID: “Jim was mildly surprised to see that to his other rank tags and decorations, McCoy had added a small, understated IDIC. ‘If I didn’t know you better,’ he said, ‘I’d think you were going native. When did you get that?’ ‘Today in the gift shop, when you were looking at the snowball paperweights with Mount Seleya in them. Tackiest things I ever saw.’ ‘Yes,’ Spock said; ‘they were imported from Earth.’ ‘You be quiet. We can’t let these people leave the Federation, Jim. At least not until they teach us how to make tasteful souvenirs.’” End ID]

Just this.

[Text ID: “There was Sreil, the burly, brown-haired biologist from the Academy, and T’Madh, a little bright-eyed woman of great age and curiosity, a computer programmer; and her son Savesh, who when asked what he did, said, ‘I am a farmer,’ with a sort of secret satisfaction that hinted he thought his job better than any of the more technical ones that the people around him held. Jim had to smile; the thought of a Vulcan farmer was slightly funny, even though there naturally had to be some. But the image of a Vulcan in coveralls, chewing on a stalk of hay, kept coming up and having to be repressed.” End ID]

I love Savesh the Vulcan farmer!

[Text ID: “’Jim,’ he said, ‘the best translation of nehau would be an old word: “vibes.” The feeling-in-your-bones that something gives you. It’s highly subjective.’ ‘Right. Go on, Savesh.’ ‘Well, Captain, I have heard numerous Vulcans say that losing the Federation and the Earth people would be no particular loss, because they had bad nehau, and that could not fail to affect us sooner or later.. But I must tell you that I find your nehau not objectionable at all; pleasant, even.’ End ID]

Vulcan wanting to leave the Federation because the ~vibes~ are off.

[Text ID: “His grasp of dialect and idiom as amazing for anybody, off-planet or on. He once reduced the President of the United States—then a ceremonial post, but one much loved by the people who lived within the old borders—to tears of laughter at a state dinner, by delivering a learned dissertation on computer data storage technology in a flawless Texan accent. The lady was later heard to propose an amendment to the Constitution to allow off-worlders to hold high public office, so that she could have him for her running mate in the next election.” End ID]

I would give anything to hear Sarek do a perfect Texas accent.

[Text ID: “—but when Amanda became annoyed over what she perceived as his smugness about being right, her eyes would flash and she would become splendidly insulting, usually in bizarre Anglish idiom that Sarek found as refreshing as it was annoying. She caused him to laugh out loud for the first time in many years when she told him, after a disagreement over the translation of the word for war, that he should only grow headfirst in the ground like a turnip. Later that month, when he was right about something again and made the mistake of not immediately down-playing it, she issued him with a formal malediction, wishing that the curse of Mary Malone and her nine blind orphan children might pursue him so far over the hills and the seas that God Almighty couldn’t find him with a radio telescope. Sarek laughed so hard at that that he entirely lost his breath, and Amanda panicked and started to give him cardiopulmonary resuscitation, which was useless, because his heart was somewhere other than the spot on which she was pounding. It took him nearly an hour to recover: he kept laughing. He had never been cursed like that before, not even by union leaders, and it was very refreshing.” End ID]

This dynamic is perfect, no notes.

[Text ID: “The next night they sat in the Rec Deck again, in the middle of a large impromptu party that was going on around them by way of celebration. The sense of relief in the ship was palpable. A group of about a hundred crewfolk, mostly human, had surrounded Spock earlier in the evening and sung ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow,’ accompanied by twenty crewmen on kazoos. Sarek had been given champagne.” End ID]

I really hope the TOS Enterprise has crew performances like on Next Gen. This kazoo band needs to be heard! Also, I can perfectly picture Spock’s annoyed-but-tolerant expression as he resigns himself to the kazoo serenade.

Thank you @dianeduane for making me laugh!

#star trek #star trek tos #spock’s world #diane duane #star trek books #star trek novels #spock #jim kirk #leonard mccoy #sarek #amanda grayson

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marleyybluu · 1 year

Text

Doubts

Pedro Pascal x fem!reader

WC: 1.4k

Another quick one

Warnings: just cute fluffiness, Pedro being a soon-to-be dad, pregnancy

lol this is such a fucking cute pic omg

"Hi YN, how are you?" One of the cast members greeted, you pushed out a smile despite the tiredness you felt all over. A bulging belly was all you were, you had two months left and you were ready for them to come and go, you loved most of your pregnancy— it was a beautiful experience for the most part. The little moments where you'd feel her feet kicking you, when she'd rotate to make herself comfortable, it was a slap in the head to realize you were growing an actual person inside of you.

"I'm great, how are you?" You conversed. "Doing good, how is baby Pascal?" You beamed every time someone referred to her as such, it was a gentle reminder that you chose the best partner to make another human with. "She is doing good, we brought some food for dad. Is he on his lunch yet?"

She nodded. "He should be in the makeup room with Bella."

"Thanks."

Today you decided to surprise Pedro on the set of the new series 'The Last of Us.' You had told a bit of a fib this morning telling him you wouldn't be able to visit due to a doctor's appointment you had around his lunch break. Well, it wasn't a total lie you did have an appointment but it was in the morning way before his lunch, so you bought some food and drove out to the set. You were hoping he'd be excited as you were. You made your way down the hall to the makeup room, saying hi to a few people who you were fond of, you were finally approaching the room when she heard Bella, his co-star, mention your name.

"So are you excited to have a baby? Will you guys let me know when she gets here?"

You quietly chuckled, Bella was a sweetheart and honestly the way their personality was set up you would think Pedro and yourself had created them. When you told them the news about the baby they couldn't stop smiling, texting you the next day that they could barely feel their cheeks and their reaction to being asked to be your child's Godsibling really set it in stone for you. The three of you spent a lot of time together, you loved how they and Pedro got along so you figuratively adopted them as your own.

"Yeah I'm excited, maybe a bit worried, but excited nonetheless."

You frowned. Worried about what?

"Worried about what?" Bella asked, taking the words right out of your mouth. Pedro shrugged. "You're great with kids though."

He nodded. "But it's different when it's your own, you have to be a great example of what she should be, a role model and what if I'm not the best example?"

You placed your hand on your stomach out of habit, why did he never say this to you before? You had told him your doubts about becoming a mother and he reassured you every time, surely you'd do the same for him. You straightened yourself up and knocked on the door frame peeking your head from behind the wall. "Hellooo."

"YN!" Bella exclaimed, they sprinted out of their seat leaving Pedro in the dust, and they carefully engulfed you in a loving embrace. "How's it going, honey?"

"Good, just shooting and talking to the old man here."

You looked up at Pedro who had a sheepish smile on his face, you bent your lips in attempting to hide your own grin but you couldn't help it, every time you saw him it poured a bit more joy into your soul. Bella's eye ran between you and Pedro and they grimaced. "I will leave you two to be gross, bye baby." They planted a kiss on your tummy and another on your cheek before leaving you and Pedro alone. You reached out hoping to receive a hug which he gladly delivered. He nuzzled his nose into your neck and planted a small kiss on the side. "Hi, mama."

"Hi baby, you okay?"

"Better now that you guys are here." He never left out his unborn child, often referring to you as two people now. You two pulled apart, you lifted up the brown bag containing your meals and gently shook it. "Was hoping we could have lunch together."

Pedro's eyes sparkled with love at the way you said that. "Always. No drinks though?" You closed your eyes in immediate defeat, you knew your hand felt empty but you didn't know what was missing. "They're in the car, sorry, mommy brain." He playfully pouted laying his palm out and asking for the keys. "No, it's cool I'll get them." You reassured.

"YN." That tone was stern, he barely wanted you holding that lunch bag let alone waddling back to the car for drinks, you kissed your teeth and handed over the car keys. "Meet me in my trailer?"

You agreed and watched him vanish. You took your sweet time navigating back out of the hallway and maneuvered around the set until you arrived at Pedro's trailer outside, thank goodness Alberta's weather was tolerable today, it wasn't too cold but half the time you couldn't tell anyway. The constant hot flashes had you boiling in your own sauna for one minute and freezing your ass off when it died down. You made your way inside, you huffed completely exhausted from your little trip, after catching your breath you sat down on the couch and placed the bag on the table.

As you took the contents out the door swung open revealing Pedro holding the tray with your drinks and a little bag in his hand. "Thank you." You took the tray out of his hands and placed it on the table, you nodded toward the bag. "What's that?"

"They had red velvet cupcakes at the snack table and I know that's been one of your cravings lately, so I... snatched an unopened container..."

You shook your head. There really wasn't anything he wouldn't do for you. You thanked him and placed the treat next to your food. The cushion next to you sank as he sat down, you could feel his gaze on you but tried your best to avoid it. He raised his hand and proper his finger under your chin to turn your head towards him. "I knew you were coming."

"Shut up no you didn't."

He gave you a quick kiss on the lips, you whined wanting a longer one. "Yes, I did." He replied. "How was the appointment? Everything's good?"

You nodded. "She still has ten fingers, ten toes and a big head."

He frowned. "Don't talk about my baby like that." You laughed kissing his head as an apology. The two of you finally dug into your meals, talking about what was new even though you didn't have many updates. Pedro talked about how the show was going and how much he was enjoying filming. You were proud of him, his career had really skyrocketed recently and though it kept him busy you were happy to hold down the fort for him.

After you finished eating you made yourself extra comfortable on the sofa, leaning against the armrest with your legs laid out on the cushions. Pedro chuckled at how exhausted you were, it was cute, it couldn't be easy carrying around a boulder all day. He assisted in removing your crocs and letting you rest but not before crawling between your legs and gently relaxing his head beside your belly. You absentmindedly ran your hands through his hair and rested it on the back of his head.

Slumber was near and you tried so hard to fight it but judging by how quiet you'd become, it wasn't hard for Pedro to tell you were dozing off. He planted a light kiss on your stomach with a gentle poke at your belly button which earned a kick from the baby. "Yeah, I know you're in there." You smiled at their communication. "I'm ready for her to be out here." You mumbled sleepily. "Me too."

"I chose the best person in the world to create life with, you are going to be an amazing father Pedrito. You spoil her and she's not even here yet, you've shown her so much love that at this point I am just carrying her for you and you only."

He looked up at you figuring you overheard his conversation with Bella. "I don't think baby Pascal would've chosen us for no reason."

The reassurance gave him a bit of a boost, slowly melting away whatever doubts he had earlier today. "I love you." He cooed. "I love you too, baby."

He rubbed your belly and nuzzled his nose on the side. "And I love you, mi corazoncito."

If you're new here (hi how are ya) I have this thing where I like to write my boys as fathers so expect a lot more of this. Especially with Pedro because... I mean, it's him. also I heard Bella Ramsey is non-binary, correct me if I'm wrong though i don't mind if you liked this fic, feel free to like this fic. Comments and reblogs are appreciated. I will be going back to the regularly scheduled program of the main 3, but we'll circle back to Papi Pedro soon dw😏 peace and love

tags: @skyesthebomb

#pedro pascal fluff #pedro pascal #fem!reader #Pedro x fem!reader #marleywrites #marleysfanfictions #Pedro pascal x reader #flirty #pregnancy

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venus-is-thinking · 9 months

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DRDT Handwriting Analysis

Hello everyone! I decided to take a look at the canonical handwriting of the various characters in DRDT. We've actually seen a good number of handwritings and it definitely seems like they are specifically written differently, so it's a fun new dimension of the characters we can look at. I've done my best to compile all of them in this post, but please let me know if I've missed any!

I'll be going in order of when we first see them, starting with:

Arei Nageishi!

Arei is our first handwriting reveal, which we know because she wrote the arm wrestling contest board in Chapter 1, Episode 2! She seems to write in all caps and has a slightly curvy style.

Min Jeung!

Whoops, murder time. Min's handwriting is seen on the "OUT OF ORDER" sign. We don't know it's hers when we first see it, but in the trial, it's revealed that she must have written it.

As far as I remember, we don't have another sample of her handwriting, which is unfortunate, given that I believe this is probably not what her real handwriting looks like. She's clearly printing in very straight lines; it's probably meant to look official. If it looked handwritten, it would lower the credibility of the out of order sign.

I also tried to see if you could tell what any handwriting looked like from the papers on the table in the Bonus Episode she's in, but I didn't manage to pick anything out that was actually legible. So, I guess we don't really know what Min's handwriting would normally look like.

Xander Matthews!

Xander wrote "Charles Cuevas' Motive" on this DVD, but a lot of it got smudged off when he planted it in the CD reader (god I hope I got it right I'm sorry Charles I'm trying to remember which is which).

He seems to use all caps. It's also not the neatest, given that the two Cs run into each other despite being on different lines.

Notably, there is a more filled-out version.

However, the red text isn't written by Xander himself, because he's dead at the time. As best I can figure, this is Teruko writing in an impression of Xander's handwriting. The image of the CD appears as Teruko says, "Hm, are you talking about this?" implying she's the one carrying it, and the rest of the writing is filled in when she says so. It might seem like it would be Rose, given that she's the one who figures out what it's supposed to say, but Rose instructs someone else to rotate it, so it can be assumed Rose isn't holding it. Teruko is the one to take the DVD out of the player at the end of investigation, so I'd really assume it's her.

...HOWEVER!

We actually have a specific example of Teruko replicating Xander's handwriting! She smudges it during investigation and re-writes it on. It seems to me like the creator went back to the original version of the CD in the trial (the little ink blot at the left of the O matches better with the first of the two images here, imo). I doubt there was much internal consistency given to how Teruko writes Xander's handwriting when trying to replicate it on this CD, but...

Teruko Tawaki!

Teruko's handwriting is bad-bad. It's very shaky and she struggles with letters. The O and C (as she thinks she's writing) that she replicates back on the CD have some more of the shakiness that this handwriting has, which implies to me that the creator knew at the point of the Chapter 1 murder that Teruko's handwriting wasn't smooth. The replication of Xander's handwriting in red back in Xander's section looks smoother than I think Teruko's would, which might be points towards someone else having written it. No clue who, though.

Notably for Teruko, I honestly wonder if she's meant to have dysgraphia? I don't know a ton about it, but it's a learning disability that makes it much harder for people with the condition to handwrite clearly. Just an interesting sidenote, if anyone with dysgraphia knows more/if this is wrong to say in some way, please let me know!

Charles Cuevas!

Back on track, I skipped ahead with Teruko to put hers next to Xander's. We don't technically have confirmation that this is Charles' handwriting, but it's very very heavily implied. It's written in cursive, which Whit says Charles writes in in the Chapter 2 trial.

This also implies that Whit has seen Charles' handwriting, which could add more to imply that this is his, but considering Charles has evidently seen Whit's (more in a sec), I don't think that means much.

Plus, as a fun note, Charles' custom weapon is the only one that isn't listed on the above handwriting sample. This is the biggest factor in me believing that it's Charles'. (Plus, I think Whit says something about getting it from a friend? I'm not reopening the episode sorry gang)

Whit Young?

Wait, where's the handwriting?

Well, as far as I remember, we haven't actually seen Whit's handwriting. We know from Charles that he dots his Is with hearts, but that's all we got. Sorry gang.

Eden Tobisa!

Eden literally gave us a handwriting sample. Thanks!

It's pretty cute! She has a curvier handwriting style with some irregular spacing, which I think gives it nice charm and character.

The Chapter 2 Killer??? (or accomplice)

Idk man! It seems like it has to relate to someone who's at least somewhat guilty in this whole thing, right?

I've written briefly about why I believe this is Levi's handwriting on @1moreff-creator's Levi accomplice theory post, but that would totally work for the popular theory that he's the killer, too. Either way, it's a handwriting sample.

Bonus!

NO WIFI! WHY LIVE :(

I have no idea who wrote this. From what I can tell, it might've been here when the cast got there...? The weird thing is that it changes.

Shoutout to @accirax for remembering that the white board changed, because I did NOT notice/remember. However, that begs the question...

WHO THE HELL WROTE THIS???

It's very possibly Veronika, as she's the one who's noted to, like, know and remember what Monokuma looks like. If so, that means we have a Veronika handwriting sample, yay! I really don't know who else would be drawing Monokumas. Maybe the mastermind...?

And that's all! Clearly there's no point to this post and I can wrap this-

Haha. You didn't think I actually made a post that doesn't have a theory to it, did you?

This has all been building up to me trying to figure out who the hell wrote this note. Because, I originally believed it made the most sense if it was a note that Xander wrote to himself, but accirax pointed out that we've seen Xander's handwriting, and it looks different. Then, I started noticing that we've been receiving various handwritings. Like, a LOT of handwritings.

I think that it's plenty likely that we're going to receive EVERYONE'S handwriting at some point throughout this series. Notably, all characters who have died thus far (Xander, Min, Arei, Chapter 2 Killer Even Though We Don't Know Who They Are) have already shown us their handwriting. This is probably because we're going to figure out who wrote this note at some point.

Does that mean everyone whose handwriting we've already seen thus far is safe? Maybe! I've gone through and talked about Xander, Arei, Eden, Charles and Teruko's with confidence. From what we know of Min's and Whit's, it doesn't seem like it's theirs, but I'd believe for either of them that it could be theirs if the devs wanted to pull a fast one on us (Whit could just... not write with hearts on the Is for this one. Min was replicating printed text).

I guess that means I'm saying that the most likely authors of the "Kill Teruko Tawaki" note are Mai Akasaki Ace, Rose, Hu, Arturo, Veronika, J or Nico, with Min, Whit and Levi also being possibilities that I just don't believe as strongly. I do want to note that, if Rose IS the one who wrote it, she could also easily be replicating someone else's handwriting. Ultimate Art Forger moment.

Conclusion

I compiled this image of all the handwriting I talked about with the purple being known handwriting and the gray being unknown.

I think it's really cool that the dev put time into giving each of the characters unique handwriting, and I think it's definitely a piece of evidence to keep in mind when theorizing about masterminds and killers and such.

Hopefully this was a fun read! I look forward to possibly figuring out the handwritings of literally every other character someday.

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h-emera · 10 months

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5th try at writing the guide on custom pet paint mode brushes, if tumblr manages to mess this one up i will have a fit

16/10/2023 Edited: Updated to add better hash ID generating practices.

Things you'll need:

Sims 4 Studio

GIMP

Notepad

Guide:

Tools that we will be using:

We'll begin by creating a new, empty package.

Save it somewhere convenient and easy to access.

Once you've saved the package, you'll be met with this screen:

From here, we'll go to Tools > Game File Cruiser

We'll be working with Pet Coat Brush files and DST Image, but for now we'll only select Pet Coat Brush file, so that it's easier for us.

I've selected the first brush file and I've highlighted the piece of data we'll need to use.

We'll have to use the Game File Cruiser search function, but first, press "Add to current package". When you've gotten the hang of this, you can explore the pre-existing brush files and decide which one you'd prefer to use as your base, all are different and correspond to different brushes/stamps in-game.

Once you've clicked on "add to current package" your package editor should look like this:

Now we'll copy the Image1 ID and go back to Game File Cruiser, select DST Image from the file type list and enter the ID into the search bar:

Now, click "Add to current package" and now the package file you're working on will look like this:

Before we move further, we need to generate new instance ID's, we'll need 3 of them.

Go to Tools > Hash Generator

Edited 16/10/2023: When generating your hash ID's, please use your creator name ie.: "[YourCreatorName/Blogname]TutorialCustomFurCoat1", this will give you a more unique hash code than hoping to be as descriptive as possible when generating the hashes (in this case instance ID's).

Thanks to Mizore Yukii for this advice, from Creator's Musings.

In the "text" field, enter whatever text you want, I just go with the item name/description + a number, to indicate which ID it is.

We'll need 3 of FNV64 hash codes.

These are the 3 ID's that I've generated:

514EF7FCFA080185

514EF7FCFA080186

514EF7FCFA080187

We'll use the first code for the Pet Coat Brush file, the second code for Image1 (Brush file) and the third for Image2 (Brush icon file).

Your Pet Coat Brush file should look like this now, with the updated ID's.

Moving forward, we'll be changing the ID for the DST Image1 (Brush in-game) -

Now that you've done this, you need to right click on DST Images > Duplicate, you'll be prompted with this window:

In this window, you'll use the last hash code you generated for the Image2 new ID (in-game icon).

Now! It'll all look like this:

To edit the brush we'll be seeing in-game, we'll now have to edit the image, begin by exporting the image available in DST Image.

Once that's done, open it up in whatever editing software you want to use, I'll be using GIMP, because it has built in DDS exporter, I recommend you do the same, however if not interested in doing so, make sure your program can export DDS images in L8 format, if not, edit in preferred software and use GIMP to export as DDS.

Once you've made your brush, you'll want to do as follows:

IMPORTANT

It MUST be exported in the format L8, it will appear broken in-game otherwise.

Then, import your custom made brush into S4S package editor:

Do the same for the icon:

You've got the easiest part down, now, comes the part with testing how well the brush works and behaves in-game.

The responsibility of this falls onto the values you may have seen in Pet Coat Brush file -

These are the values responsible for how the brush works in-game.

I'll be upfront right now, I can't get the rotation value to work, I'm not sure if I'm doing something incorrectly, but if I figure it out, I'll add to the guide eventually. I haven't had time to test this further, but as far as I've been able to test it, it works like a charm.

These are the value meanings -

Sorry for how lazy this is presented, as once I figured out the basic meaning, I moved forward.

B1 is responsible for sorting on whether your brush is considered a Brush or a Stamp. 0 & 2 - Brush, 1 & 3 Stamp EDITED 24/10/2023: 0 is non-rotating brush, 2 is a rotating brush!

For F1, I do NOT recommend using 0 or 5, when I tested these values in-game, they were extremely laggy when attempting to paint. 1 - Smooth Painting, 2 - Spaced Apart Slightly, Overlap, 3 - Spaced One After Another, Some Overlap, 4 - Spaced One After Another, No Overlap

F2 changes the size of the brush in-game, meaning how small it can be, I believe. 0 - 1px smallest size brush, scaling up changes how small the brush can get.

F3 I suspect is brush rotation, but I could not make it work on any of the brushes I tried making, so I'm not 100 sure. This is one of the brushes you'll have to look at values for in the existing in-game brush files, as I could not get this to work for myself.

F4 is the maximum the size of the brush will become. Maximum size the brush can get, I've tested it from 0 to 5, 5 is quite large, so I recommend that, but go for smaller as well.

F5 I'm not entirely sure, however during my testing, I found that this changes where exactly the brush appears in both stamps and brush tabs in-game. There may be more to it, however, I could not figure it out. The values I tested for this were 0, 1 and 2, this affected where the item appeared - 0 - First Row, First Item, 1, First Row, 2nd Item, 2 - 2nd Row, First Item, I've seen that these can go quite high, ie the base file I used being 44, so keep that in mind while changing this setting. For my personal brushes I use 0.

I recommend comparing existing brush files to the one you're looking to edit.

I believe this is it. If there are any questions, I'll try to answer as best as I can. If anyone wants to add anything to this, please do so, I'll be elated to update and credit you for the information shared.

This all came to be because I could not find a guide, but fortunately for me, I'm too good at figuring things out and even though I didn't quite understand how the Game File Cruiser worked a few days ago, I've consumed so much information it hurts my brain.

Forgot to add: Finished product

Because I didn't edit the Pet Coat Brush file I was working on, I've made a stamp, I recommend messing around for a while though and finding what you prefer. The values themselves are pretty easy and forgiving to edit.

So account for that, you'll definitely want to edit the values responsible for the brush working correctly. If you have any questions, please let me know, I tried to make this as clear as possible, and I know this is probably over the top for a guide, but I'm the kind of person who needs every small direction, to even know what I'm doing, when I'm following a guide.

UPDATED AGAIN, I FORGOT TO ADD THE ACTUAL VALUES I FOUND.

#The Sims 4 Guide #The Sims 4 Horse Ranch #The Sims 4 Custom Brushes #The Sims 4 CC guide #TS4 CC Guide #TS4 Horse Ranch #TS4 Horses #The Sims 4 Horses #Sims 4 Horses #Sims 4 #Sims 4 Horse Ranch #The Sims 4 Tutorial #Sorry if this isn't a great guide #i tried really had and nearly had an aneurysm because tumblr deleted my previous attempts like 4 times

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austinsastrology8991 · 11 months

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> Issues I have with you/occult / world < *long post* do not read if you don't want to waste your time < a subjective analysis of Astrology, numerology, manifestation, and a subtle exposé of my life

I got issues... but more importantly i got issues with you. I do a lot of research n i hate being told what to do/ and the occult gotta habit of telling me who tf i am.

and Im better at telling myself who tf I am.

THIs is who i am. <^> stop googly eyin me; foo

This is a fkn mess of a post > try your best to read; it was meant to be a story but im incapable > I just want you to have headache (me after reading this shit 20 times or whatever it is) i;m tired. now go away. or read. or die in a hole. all the same to me. astrology is a subjective subject. IDGAF how many books youve read or how many people you speak too; we are literally looking at a planet in space and are saying shit liek " oh im dat type of pretty (venus), im dominant over here (mars), and thats why my life sux (saturn) " meanwhile, the planet still just rotating and we like acting like we apart of its orbit. Its objectively a subjective subject... > its objective only in your natal chart - where the planets are etc.... but interpretations > subjective Sidenote- Im obsessed with astrology.... because my life sucks. and i need to like feel productive somehow - stfu i know this isnt productive, but tell me what you doing? don't act all jiminy cricket on me, when your soundtrack is that of a cricket beginning of rant Also: the mythology and practise of intepretating planets and asteroids, and well the complicated drama that is greek/roman mythology. while there is plenty of overlap, the sheer concept of 2 different intepretations created upon from, 2 seperate cultures, creates different texts and slight differences inherent within each story. this initself creates a subjective intepretation of aforementioned stories > not to mention other cultures who likely put their own narrative of these mythos > it allows us to also intepret it in our own way > it is all just imagination at the end of the day. Whilst the themes are uncannily similar, the form is always different, and thats why I like to intepret it in my own way, and i recommend you do tooo (Alike everything in this subject) ; however we need some clear rules, and guidelines, to make this subject actually palatable, but i fear this community would rather keep it confusing so we can treasure the secrets of the occult on our own. and to that I do understsnd, however, anyone reading tumblr astrology, I believe to already be taking that leap into the occult and should be granted at least some introductory access. and here is (1) problem

Astrology signs are the how, and the houses are the where, > yet you all describe 2nd house a whole lot like tuarus, 10th house lot like capricorn. I mean Ik its similar but yall acting like its different yet your intepretations aint all dat different from each other..... but if the how for you is the where for me, then how tf is it so hard for me to see the differences?… if there is such a startling difference like yall always claim.. to me the themes are so fkn similar whereby > i think its the same > degree, house, sign; same shit diff smell

This however made 4 years ago me, very insecure.:.. 😢I couldn’t figure out the difference and I felt dumb 🤧 but That was 4 years ago - I was noob…. made me realize things like: we got an attitude problem today - we youngins always apologizing, trying to make others comfortable about our bullshit (Anxiety skill issue), yet the old fucks are hella comfortable telling us what to do (authority skill issue), like bro. you dont even know me, and im supposed to bow to you, just so your gonna bread crumb me with some bs self professed 'useful' advice??? if you talked to each other youd realize you all have the same advice... and you too old to keep up with my problems, so stop acting like you know.....

and so like uh, its not bold of me to say that; if your a legit astrologer you know you can just read people. yes everyone has free will, and other explanations to undermine the importance of astrology, but we know whats going on > try me > *sales pitch noise*<

Tumblr astrology is good but not proffesional, just: posts about random asteroids, random observations, random sexytime, and the occasional ‘official’ astrologers bread crumbing us to incentivize us to pay for a reading…. Now I got nothing better to do with my life (nor do you clearly) so we all on here fucking around> but I made da sacrifice > I spent real money

And these 'readings' > dog shit I tell ya > oh don’t worry none of them were from tumblr people. But people in my city and they knew less than what I knew (from reading your tumblr shits)

So it turns out you guys lowkey experts - we done a million random astrology observations - and if your a lurker, you lowkey know more than some pros; and da concept of analyzing people in your life with astrology has made you a *drum roll* > an average astrologer. your not average, if the experts are only 20% better than you (lets say). so with this in mind your not that far off their expertise.. oh you cant measure it? tell me what i dont know < (tell me more) IM HUNGRY, MORE POSTS, MY FEED IS FUCKInG HUNGRY

Now however wasting my money > pissed me off… but its a blessing, becasuse i became >.....> not depressed!!! Finally I got my energy back >>> legs go...

So I learned to read astrology. I just kept reading these websites and interpreting them and well.. I think they overcomplicate a lot of things, and they say it like a report card, when obviously you and I are multiple planets, aspects, houses, degrees, house lords, persona charts, midpoints, asteroids, not to mention composite, synastry, transits solar return , and all da other fkn ones that I cannot be bothered mentioning. Yet there’s a whole fucking essay about one aspect… like bro you couldn’t make a summary? and im supposed to read each of my other aspects? (ofc i did) but like this is just trying to make me spend money (too much reading) and well Im a greedy little fuck so imma drain your resources and not give you a dime >t > SWIPER NO SWIPING <

and i hate watching people trynna act like they know shit yet eat their own words n adjectives like you aint a professional; you just labeled yourself one > wheres your doctorate at bitch? Had enough shitty readings to not trust another 'tarot reader', but its cool the 'psychologists' aint did much better > thank you mother for the birth of my existence but shi dis place a fkn willy wonkin fsctory - and its foul - most places that try to help you that is.... ' you need to be able to receive help' bitch stfu yall underestimsting my problems and overestimating your ability to make me feel better; BITCH I STFG you dont know shiiiiitiittttttttttt > and yall look happy dont you > "dont trust a bartender who dont drink bitch" - KanYe. Numeroloy 'master numbers' > So many sites only use master numbers from 11 > 22 > 33... but wheres the 44? the 55? the 66?????? dont tell me yall didnt realize that every 'master number' still reverts back to each number (9). > 11 =2, 22 = 4, 33=6, 55 = 1, 66 = 3, 77=5..... bro god stsyed outta this mess clearly..... and its always the ones that be inventing new gods that fuck everything too 🤫 furthermore annoyances of numerofuckology - because they reduce the number back down.. .e.g. you have life path 89 > which is simplified to 17 > then to 8.... why not use 89? why we dissin 9 ????? let alone the complete number??? why not intepret both numbers together???? yall just wanna do 1 because your simple with it. and 9 getting left out fr... and yall always celebrating how special 9 is yet he always left out (magic of math - adding 9 - always reverts back to original) honestly - sometiems its so obvious why yall became numerologists sometimes...... Dont even get me started on ANGEL NUMBERS i could neva stfu

i mean yall still trying to test how true it all is, but if you throw a fish at a pisces they gonna go all googly eye on you. tell a scorpio that you intimidated and now your their favourite informant... read their life path number, and you know what they wanna be doing with their life.... i mean it really is a key, and yall locks are looser than you think... watch yo back.. i wouldnt trust someone who can help me (what do they even want), let alone get help from someone who is useless; why would you? dont act like you dont have trust issues, its like our way of relating to each other at this point. your good at sex if you have.... what about the other person? i mean if you masterbate to yoself maybe.... but if a composite chart / synastry have say - chiron eros? pluto saturn? mars dejanira.... how much are you gonna be fucking yourself when you fucked a dirty fucka..... rip virginity - and rip yo self esteem - dangerous game to value your sex appeal as much as you do...... or maybe your living a fantasy on the internet, and that is healthier, but thoughts are manifestations.... oh shit what da fuck have i manifested oh shitttttttttt IM BEING SUCKED IN A VORTEX OF MY OWN SHIT, SOMONE CALL A MANIFESTOR AGHJH AGJJGH please dont be offended, i do like this community; im just a devils advocate... sometimes 👹

you guys put too muhc importance on manifeststion, and i mean if you think its facts, look at what the people around you are manifesting.... OH thats why you isolate so much. so your manifesting loneliness.... oh you try to help people, so your just a trash can for a rubish person.... you see what i mean, manifestation aint so clear cut as you seem to believe. I believe in it, but Im so used to receiving crap, I learned to enjoy eating shit (we all did) and what is "one mans trash is another mans soap" - fight club Oh and Pluto my favourite - every curse a blessing and every blessing a curse.... stop complaining > he gave you the sauce and the only way to show you was to make you cry > lil bitch > pluto profile pic winking at you rn natal > persona > midpoint > composite > synastry > transit > return charts this is the offical order governed by me- so much more imporatnt to understand yourself over what the world got installed / what your partner doing - work on yo insecurities rather than be worried about something you have no control ova

hmmm thats all the issues i have for now.... just look at me as the boy who cried wolf. they aint a wolf here yet; but they gonna be, and im warning yall > why people dont get it...its because there are too many contradictions > but i fully believe, ive had so many spiritual experiences where if i denied them, id be drinking alcohol and pretending i aint a alcoholic. and i do love yall, but sometimes your an eye roll 29th post requires. 29 degree typa energy - YOlo MOfo

#astrology blog #astrology #astro community #numerology

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vodkacheesefries · 21 days

Text

Thought it would be fun to do an intro post for each of the three households I'll be rotating through in my historic sims file. Also told my buddy @schitzophrenicrainbows I would make one of these. It'll also help me keep things organized as I play the challenge since I'm committing details to writing.

Up first and beneath the cut, we have a little history dump and our Gladiators.

Gladiators initially started out as poorer people and slaves who were inscribed to fight and train in the gladiator schools, Ludus Magnus. Over time as people began to see the fame and honor that could be won in the arena, though it was more rare, people did start to voluntarily join these gladiator schools.

Due to the popularity of gladiator fights, and how pricey it got to train and house them, not every single gladiator fight was to the death for its contestants. (For the purpose of Finn's story/challenge rules, his fights will be.)

There's debate whether the infamous "thumbs down" actually meant the opponent HAD to die or not. It could have just meant they were disgraced and couldn't compete anymore, but I can't find definitive answers one way or the other, and the opinions I found on this often contradicted each other. (I could probably text my sister with three degrees all about ancient to medieval Italian/Roman history, but how do I explain to her I need to know for my Sims game lmaooo) All that said, gladiators often didn't live past their mid-twenties given the hazards of the job.

Gladiators were also sex symbols (do yourself a favor and look up ancient Roman graffiti. Humans are the same now as they were then lmao). Idk how much that'll play into my game but Finn does have to find a partner and have kids so the legacy continues but we'll get there when we get there.

Rana

Rana is the gladiator who has been at the Ludus Magna the longest. Her traits: Creative, Self Assured, Loyal.

She came from a wealthy merchant family, but the family business didn't interest her much. She left home when she was young to find herself and ended up finding the arena. She picked up sword fighting quickly and proved her aptitude for not only fighting, but teaching others to fight as well. These days she only competes occasionally, as she has proven herself invaluable in creating more gladiators.

She's hitting a point where the losses of her pupils, and more importantly friends, are starting to weigh on her. She likely isn't going to just be allowed to retire, though, so she has to figure something else out.

Apollo

Apollo named himself after a Greek God because he thinks he's hilarious. (This is debatable if you ask anyone who has spoken with him for more than five minutes.) He ended up at the Ludus Magnus due to his sense of humor; turns out a Senator doesn't like it when you make jokes about their philosophical ideas, even if they are stupid.

He doesn't enjoy the gladiator lifestyle much if he's being honest, and is counting down the days until his "voluntary" contract with the school is over so he can use what money he's won and travel the world like he's always wanted to. His self absorption is part him being young, and part it being a front for the fear he has of not living out his dreams and he wears it like a protective front. His friends know better, though.

(He also thinks Spartacus is cute, but he's certain Spartacus is going to stay a gladiator till he dies and that doesn't work with what he wants in the long run.)

His traits are: Loves the Outdoors, Self Absorbed, and Outgoing.

Spartacus

Disclaimer: I did not make Spartacus lmao. I was hitting create-a-sim burnout so I hit up the gallery to find someone else's Roman themed sim. Although I did make some minor changes to his wardrobe, added scars and swapped out a couple of his traits, which are: Athletic, Proper, Loner. I ended up keeping his name because while it's on the nose for a gladiator, it fits.

Spartacus is a former member of the Roman Legionnaires. He was released from his service due to an injury he sustained abroad. Once he had healed, he found civilian life to be difficult to adjust to, so he signed a contract with the Ludus Magnus. He's here for a good time, not a long time.

But lately, he's been spending more time with Apollo, and he's starting to change his mind. But surely someone as handsome as Apollo wouldn't be interested in someone who'd rather spend his time meditating than socializing at a party...

Finn

Finn's traits are: Athletic, Loyal, Ambitious

Finn knew the risks he was taking when he killed Antonius, but he doesn't regret it. He's now plotting his escape, and if his new found friends can survive, he'll bring them with him if they like. He really just wants to get back to Britain to what's left of his family and help them take back what is rightfully theirs and drive the Romans out.

By challenge rules, he has 10 fights to get through first. I also have to receive a silver medal or higher on at least 50 events, and I'll probably use his fights to accomplish at least 10 of those. (I've done six so far).

Will probably go over Laelius' household next along with the parts of the challenge they'll be completing, followed by his daughter's. Who I don't think I've posted so far.

#i am very normal about the sims #the roman empire is currently my roman empire #ts4 history challenge

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ishgard · 3 months

Text

Tag ppl you want to get to know better

Tagged by @myreia - thank you!!!

LAST SONG: so I meant to go to my history to figure out what it was but forgot and by the time I did it changed so uh, haha 'Hozier - 'Francesca'

CURRENTLY WATCHING: Sousou no Frieren, Dungeon Meshi

THREE SHIPS: Ohboyokay let's see. Obviously I have a ton, but three.

Mana & Belial: These two are everything to me. This is me and the besties pandemic ship, we started text RPing with them while I was up north in 2019 and then everything spiraled. They were originally GBF characters but they've jumped to so many different universes and become full blown OCs by this point. They're enemies-to-lovers, they're 'I'll find you in every life time', they're unapologetically horny, they give me so much joy and happiness I could vomit rainbows.

Ahru & Deryk: This is probably pretty obvious if you've been following me at all. Ahru has a lot of ships I could ramble about for an age but this is the one I'm rotating in my brain 24/7 these days. I love how they fit together, I love how they get to experience the world all fresh and new, free of their burdens, together. aughghghg anyway. (Holds up boombox blasting 'Francesca' by Hozier)

Ahru & Arshadaya: This is like, my sleeper ship. Like Thanahru it's kinda present in every Ahru verse, but more. They're platonic, they're romantic, they're inextricably linked in ways that should be concerning and even questionable but it works for them. Arsh wanted to meld with Ahru's soul ('to save Nyx') before he inevitably accepted her as herself instead of 'Azem's Shard' and swore that same loyalty and devotion to her that he did Nyx. To the extent that when she got chopped up by the Servants of Light he sacrificed a good portion of himself to restore her, only adding to the 'inextricably linked in concerning questionable ways'. As a result he's in like a magical coma that could last gods knows how long but he maintains a link with Ahru continuing to protect and watch over her even now. They've basically fused into one being but he sleeps on the sidelines because her happiness and continued existence is the most important thing to him. :''')

FAVORITE COLOR: Light Pinks, Red

CURRENTLY CONSUMING: Just had a brownie 😌

FIRST SHIP: Geez... I mean probably Sailor Moon/Tuxedo Mask. Hilariously I feel like I've been a self-shipper + ocxfandom shipper from a young age because I remember my little saiyan oc I shipped with Trunks way back when. 🤣

PLACE OF BIRTH: USA

CURRENT LOCATION: Nope. 😘 (Seconded)

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single

LAST MOVIE: Geez I can't remember... I honestly have such a hard time watching movies. I watched a few parts of 'When Harry Met Sally' when mom had it on T.V. a few days ago???

CURRENTLY WORKING ON:

I Will Share Your Road - Ahru x Deryk screens set about their journey around Eorzea post-Myths of the Realm

The Road Ahead - tentative name for a fic of the same scenario above. Mostly a lot of all over the place drabbles at the moment.

Miqomarch X'D I'm trying to get ahead a bit for when I'm away on vacation.

[name pending] original work about faeries and shit, inspired by the Elfhame series by Holly Black. Has been put grievously on the back burner because of XIV brainworms.

Tagging: @icehearts, @eorzeanflowers, @uldahstreetrat, @twelveswood (i know you but i'm tagging you anyway teehee) - no pressure though and if you've already done it please ignore me 😂

#thank you again for tagging me! :D #lays on floor like a starfish thinking about ship things now

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herrlindemann · 2 years

Photo

WOM - September 1997

Interview with Till for WOM. The scans and article were shared by @rammsteinhistory on their Instagram page.

Till Lindemann's slightly irritated expression speaks volumes: Interviews are not one of the Rammstein frontman's favorite pastimes. The former European runner-up swimming champion and single father would probably prefer to swim laps in the outdoor pool or take care of his daughter. The former basket-weaver complains that he is asked about his texts so often that he runs out of vocabulary, and he is often misquoted. The " flambéed man" (STERN) still had to answer our employee Henning Richter's questions.

Did you feel you had a special responsibility when you started the new album?

More excitement than responsibility, because the pressure of expectations was very high, the sales figures speak for themselves. Reaching or exceeding this level will be difficult.

Under what conditions was the album created? And what makes it different from its predecessor?

We didn't have any arguments at all, it was relatively harmonious, which is unusual, since we usually have tough fights. Everyone tries to assert their position. Through the stress and hate of the first few albums, we had a foundation of experience and warmth that made things run more smoothly. The recordings were made in Malta, where the climate is fantastic. What I wanted to free myself from is gone, it's in the first record. Now I'm looking underneath, now there's something thinner, more filigree and more emotional. That applies equally to the lyrics and the music: today I go more into the finer points.

STERN has described your texts as « ghastly tales »...

German texts are usually pretty flat. I wanted to do better, which on the one hand was successful, but on the other hand naturally provoked questions. I usually get the music for a new song on a four-track tape from my colleagues and listen to it very loud at home. Either I follow my first impression, or I have to listen to it 20 times in a row, then it becomes very difficult.

So the music creates aggressive images in you?

Yes. However, the new songs like "Sehnsucht" are a bit softer, this is about wanderlust and not about violence. With "Seemann" on the first album, something very sad came to my mind, and with the music of "Weißes Fleisch " I immediately thought that it was someone who is mentally ill and is attacking a minor.

Do you actually understand the accusations that you were politically on the right?

We didn't expect it and didn't get it at first. In the meantime the pressure has become so strong that we have to start dealing with it. But we don't want to apologize either, because none of us knows what for. You try to understand it, but you can't. That's why you can't comment on it. Someone should just tell me where he sees the political right in our country. It's always just scratching the surface because they want to pee on our legs. All I can say is let the facts speak for themselves, for example our band chronicle: We've been on tour with the Ramones, with Project Pitchfork and Clawfinger. We are played in heavy rotation on VIVA, we have a good relationship with Die Ärzte, these things speak for themselves.

How would you classify yourself politically?

Actually, I'm completely apolitical. I find it incredible that they want to ban me from talking about child abuse. I have a daughter who is potentially at risk. It happens left and right, that's a fact, everyone knows it. But many don't want to talk about it.

Of course, one can argue about the form in which you do this. Anyone who goes public has to live with criticism.

That's right.

Are your lyrics and your martial demeanor also a late protest against the authoritarian GDR system?

Not necessarily a protest, but now it's pouring out. None of us took to the streets energetically at the time. But that remains subconscious. Now you can do anything and say things like “I want to fuck” or “I hate you” and it even plays on the radio. On the other hand, it seems a bit like it used to be, only with the difference that they can't pick you up anymore.

In the magazine PRINZ you were described as a « social-democratic version of the Böhse Onkelz ».

I don't want to comment on either the first or the second word.

Why did you actually adopt your jagged stage choreography and these pithy Teutonic gestures? And who had the idea to make your stage show so pyromaniacs?

I wanted to avoid idling on stage. Others dance or hold on to the mic stand — that doesn't go with our music because it's very static. I always stood in front of the microphone like an idiot and thought I was incredibly shitty. Then came two fountains, then four, then one effect after the other, which has now become a bit of an addiction. Music for the ears and the pyros for the eyes, for me that's the parsley on the chop. Of course you have to be careful not to turn it into a circus. If I roll my eyes or bang my head with the mic, it’s a support of what I'm trying to convey right now. When I use such gestures or shoot an effect, I just feel good about it.

Skins and Nazis also come to your concerts. Are these the wrong fans for you?

In any case. I've just never seen any. In a hall where more than with 1,000 people hanging out, there will always be rights. I'm sure they're also running around at Die Ärzte, Toten Hosen, Ramones and Bad Religion. You can't do anything about it. With us, they are only welcomed and recognized immediately by the media. If we knew how, we wouldn't let them into our concerts. But how are you going to recognize them? For example, our tour manager has the task of coming onto the stage immediately when fascists show the Hitler salute. Then I stop the concert and wait for these people to be removed.

Did your huge record sales actually make you rich?

It's different than before, but what is rich? We are a GbR (“corporation under civil law”), the money that flows is powdered into the next show. The autumn tour will be even bigger and have even more effects. Our show is incredibly expensive. We don't want to be a flash in the pan. If you saw the last Metallica show, then you know there's no end. Look at the movies, there is «Terminator 1» and «Terminator 2», the effects can become more and more numerous and violent. Like the 100 meter freestyle swim. They used to be happy if they got under a minute, now it's 50 seconds.

#Rammstein #Till Lindemann #interview #translation #1997 #*

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readyforthegarden · 1 year

Note

I’m the one who asked what it would be like to be freshly dating josh, and I wanted to share some of my daydreams on rotation since you fed me so well 🥲

- it’s a hectic work week for you and so you haven’t really been able to see him, he does not like this whatsoever. He knows you work better when you’re in the zone and alone, so he offers his library up for you to use (the one from the video). He sets you up a space near an outlet, makes a playlist of soft background jazz, buys your favorite candle and places them around the room. He brings you food in throughout, but knows if he lingers he will be a distraction - he just likes knowing you’re there. At the end of the day he comes in and helps you find a stopping point, pulls you out to a warm meal and scratches your back while you decompress on the couch. He’s just so happy you’re around in any way he can get you.

- first meeting him: you’re running behind meeting your friends out on a weeknight, she knows you’re into the guys and warns you ahead of time that him, Jake, and jita ended up meshing with your group while playing pool. You’re hyping yourself up pulling in, figuring out how to go about introducing yourself etc. you walk in and as your walking closer you see josh kind of stand up straighter. You greet your friends and start to hug and introduce yourself to them - josh last. Throughout the night you end up having conversations with him here and there but it’s time to go home. You go to close your tab, there’s nothing there. ‘Last name Kiszka kept covering you all night! No worries’. You decided to leave your number with her and if she can give it to him when he closes out, which she did. You walk back over, say your goodbyes, and he quietly says ‘it was so nice meeting you, hopefully we see each other soon’…. You get a text the next morning.

- sundays with him!!! Sleepy boy, groggy voice, bed head, radiating warmth under the covers. You had a long night and slept in a bit, so you were both pretty lethargic. First things first was coffee so you both kept the jammies on and hop in the Jeep. He’s singing you ‘Suzanne’ by Leonard Cohen while you’re drawing little flowers on the back of his hand which rests on your thigh. Your favorite thing ever is looking over while he’s ordering at Starbucks and seeing how kind and happy he was to talk to the person- you’ve got a good one. You get back home and immediately pile on the couch and while his is massive, you curl up into a ball. You rub his mala beads between your fingers as he scratched the inside of your arm. Giving recaps of the night before, drinking the chais, scrolling on your TikTok. You fall asleep again and again throughout the day

Side notes for daydreaming Lmao:

- he’s such a soft lover. Yes he’s talkative, wild, a little hectic, but with you he’s so gentle and thoughtful.

- he for sure would practice braiding your hair while you watch movies so he gets more touch in

- I know this has been said on here before, but I think he does love thicker women - he finds it so goddess like

- he’s a great listener. You could mention wanting to try a cafes avocado toast, the next day he casually walks in with it. He never makes it a big deal, but he’s an act of service guy too

- for car rides with you he’ll admit he knows *some* pop Songs. You mean to tell me he doesn’t know the lyrics to good as hell by Lizzo??? His hand tapping his thigh, head bopping, pointing at you to sing the next part

- he just smile and gazes at you. He’s so thankful he’s crossed paths with you, he gets it now, things are clicking, he feels supported intimately and vulnerably from someone close to him

OOOhhhhh i bet you thought i forgot!! 🧚‍♀️, my dear!!

The first one, Josh is so sweet and I truly believe he'd be like that, but also between snack and drink refreshes (he's bringing in that brita, making sure you're hydrated and focused) he's finding reasons to pass by the doorway, just to get a few more glimpses of you throughout the day. You finally turn around on his tenth trip and give him a look, and he just smiles bashfully, carrying his third cup of tea this afternoon as he scurries away, leaving you to work.

the second one - are you kidding me?!?!!?! what a meet-cute 🥺 he would pull some slick shit like that, covering your tab the whole night and subtly flirting with you. he shakes your hand as you say goodbye, letting his hand linger in yours a few seconds longer than someone who was just being nice would. his text the next morning would be quick and to the point, maybe about going to a farmers market and he's definitely going to buy you flowers if there's a flower stall.

i have nothing to add to the third one it's amazing and i want it so so so so so badly please give me sunday snuggles with josh omg and the starbucks why did i picture him hat josh smiling and chatting with the baristas and now i wanna sooooobb!!!!

ALL OF THE SIDE NOTES WERE PERFECT!!!! WAHHHH!!!!

#my asks #soft gvf thoughts #josh kiszka #greta van fleet

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linessareads · 3 months

Text

The Boy from Clearwater: Book 1 by Yu Pei-Yun and Zhou Jian-Xin (illustrator) (translated by Lin King)

Review:

The Boy from Clearwater (published by Levine Querido in November 2023) is a YA graphic biography written by historian Yu Pei-Yun and illustrated by Zhou Jian-Xin. It is a poignant Odessey about the life of Tsai Kun-lin, a (real-life) young man arrested during the White Terror for his association with a political book club. Beginning with Kun-lin's childhood, readers experience tender childhood moments of sneaking sugar cane along with the confusion and chaos surrounding the Japanese and Chinese occupations of Taiwan.

Overall, this is a solid graphic novel with a lot of educational value. The years of Kun-lin's life are intersected with notes regarding the many political shifts and thought movements occurring during his childhood and early adulthood.

I loved how the translators differentiated the different languages being used through the color of the text--it added a deeper emotional element to the whole thing, especially in chapters where the characters who grew up in a Japan-occupied Taiwan struggled to communicate with their older peers. I was particularly touched by how this element related to Kun-lin's father and the difficulties he endures in the "background" of the novel. Throughout, Kun-lin's once-rebel father expresses subdued sadness about the desecration of Hoklo Taiwanese and its connections to traditional Taiwanese culture (there is a particularly thoughtful scene in which he checks in on Kun-lin's studying, speaking Hoklo, before shifting to Chinese after Kun-lin expresses the need to meet Chinese standards). I reread the book just to take notes to see how the different languages weaved in and out of each other and the larger meaning in that tapestry.

It would be impossible not to highlight the work of Zhou Jian-Xin, the graphic novel's illustrator. The hand-penciled artwork was both refreshing and gut-wrenching in its unflinching portrayal of Kun-Lin's struggles and the beauty of Taiwan. I appreciated the combination of hand-drawn and print techniques the artist utilized, especially in the application of heavy, dark linocut prints to depict Green Island. Zhou Jian-Xin's portfolio can be found here: Jian-Xin Zhou – Literarische Agentur (mertinwitt-litag.de)

I did find myself wishing that the novel contained more insight into Tsai Kun-lin and the people around him. While we get hints of who they were as people and their struggles, the biography invests more time in summarizing events than investing in personal portrayals of its figures. The real Tsai Kun-lin became a human rights activist after his imprisonment and was very vocal about his political opinions. It seemed like a loss to not explore the development of his passion for human rights and politics during such a politically tumultuous time in Taiwan's history--particularly when The Boy from Clearwater explores his time in prison after he was wrongly arrested for his supposed political affiliations. Tsai Kun-Lin was largely portrayed as apolitical, which doesn't necessarily seem accurate to his real-life pursuits. However, this may have been influenced by the current stress on the Taiwanese people.

This would be an excellent graphic novel to introduce teenagers to the complex history of Taiwan and the suffering native Taiwanese people endured during the rotating occupations of the 19th and 20th centuries. With the continued turmoil in Taiwan, this novel couldn't have come out at a better time.

The second tome of The Boy from Clearwater is set to release in May 2024.

More information: Tsai Kun-lin:

Human rights activist Tsai Kun-lin dies at the age of 93 - Taipei Times

Encrypted apps and false names: new Taiwan book club takes no chances | Taiwan | The Guardian

Tsai exonerates White Terror victims - Taipei Times (the translation of this article appears to contain some errors)

For those interested in more media concerned with the White Terror/its impacts:

ELEGY OF SWEET POTATOES by Tehpen Tsai: A heavily-reality-based novel focused on the story of Tehpen Tsai, a young man detained by the Kuomintang regime during the White Terror. This novel explores the idea of "thought crimes", punishment, and trauma.

TRANSITIONS IN TAIWAN: STORIES OF THE WHITE TERROR edited by Ian Rowen: A collection of non-fiction and fiction works by many of Taiwan's most celebrated authors focusing on the events of the White Terror and their impact on Taiwanese culture and life.

THE MAN WHO COULDN'T LEAVE: A VR short film directed by Singing Chen that depicts the life of a political prisoner on Green Island during the White Terror. (Trailer can be found here: The Man Who Couldn’t Leave (2022) | IDFA Archive)

DETENTION: A Taiwanese psychological horror game created by Red Candle Games. This story explores the White Terror, Taiwanese religion, and the multi-generational impact of colonization and violence.

#bookreview #bookish #book reccs #book recommendations #graphic novel #linessareads #theboyfromclearwater

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stealthnoodle · 1 year

Note

Genuine question, how do you improve your fanfiction writing skills? I got a new special interest recently and I want to write about it. I haven't worked on anything in a decade and it feels like my skills have regressed. I miss writing fanfiction (especially femslash) so much and I want to get back into it.

There are probably as many different approaches to this are there are people who write, but here's what works for me!

One thing I do think is universally true is that the only way to get better is to keep putting words down, even if you're frustrated by the quality of them. (And it is so frustrating to come back to writing after a long break and feel like you've forgotten how to string words together. I have been there! It's the worst!) So Step One, I think, is to figure out what you need to do to make it easier to brain dump. Skip over scenes you're not in the mood to write. Use placeholders like "[Witty reply]" or "[does something to show she's angry]" if you get stuck. Don't worry about using too many adverbs or repeating yourself.

If you're someone who struggles with anxiety when you sit down to write (hi, it's me), take steps to relax yourself so that your brain's filter won't get in the way too much. Maybe you put on some motivating music. Maybe you exercise your way into some endorphins first. Maybe you're me and you've mastered getting high enough to chill out without chilling out so hard you end up staring at the ceiling for an hour. "Write drunk, edit sober" doesn't have to be literal advice, but I like the spirit of it.

Once you've got a bunch of words to work with, pat yourself on the back! Maybe later you can revise your brain dump into something you want to show other people. Maybe you hate it and just want to do an autopsy to understand why. Either way, you've done something valuable just by getting those words out. Go through them and make notes, even if your notes are as vague as "This character's voice sounds a little off" or "This scene doesn't fit here." I like to highlight chunks of text I feel especially iffy about in green. And on the flip side, even the biggest mess is probably going to have something you like enough to repurpose somewhere else. I write in Scrivener, and all of my projects have a "Bits and Scraps" file for this purpose. 10/10, would recommend.

Speaking of which, "Kill your darlings" is terrible advice. Stash your darlings away for later. I have written a truly ridiculous number of words that never ended up turning into a story I could be satisfied with, and being able to reframe my thinking from "Ugh, what a waste of effort" to "Wow, that was a lot of great practice, and now I've got a document full of turns of phrase and jokes and plot points I can recycle" has made a huge difference for me.

My other tip is to spend time deconstructing other people's writing in your brain to understand why it works. Some people don't enjoy doing this when they're reading for fun, and they're probably better off trying this on a reread; I am the kind of weirdo who will stop in delight when I come across something I find effective and rotate it in my mind like a 3-D Tetris block. (As a messy bitch who loves writing out of sequence, I'm always on the lookout for especially smooth pacing and transitions that I can try to emulate.) When you read fics with characterizations that you like, try comparing the characters' speech and actions to their canon selves and see if you can trace how the author extrapolated from them; when you read fics with characterizations you don't like, see if you can articulate to yourself why they feel off to you.

Hopefully at least some of that wall of text is helpful, lol. Good luck, anon! I am rooting for you to make the girls kiss!

#writing #and most of all: write what you want to read!#write self-indulgent stories and post them so other people can indulge too #that's the joy of fanfiction #bonus tip: sex scenes and fight scenes are fundamentally the same kind of scene and if you can write one you can write the other!#i was going to say the biggest difference is how likely the participants are to be having a good time but that's VERY character-dependent

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todayimgonnaplay · 6 months

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Today I'm Gonna Play: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

This was my most anticipated game of the year as I've been wanting to see another cel-shaded style game taking after Jet Set Radio, and I finally got my hands on it! Probably its biggest selling point, the presentation sends nostalgic waves of what made Jet Set Radio stand out. The same cel-shaded, blocky and exaggerated proportions with that hip-hop influence was done very well. One thing it does better than JSR (naturally) is that it controls so much better, it's responsive and swift, not feeling like I have to wrestle with my controller like with the PC port of JSR. The graffiti system is also another improvement. Although the classic rotate the joysticks in directions is just as fun, BRC really feels like you're spraying in a ultra flashy fashion. Each graffiti had its own code, so you either have the chance to memorize your favourite pieces, or just surprise yourself by taking random directions which is what I did. However, there were many instances where I often unintentionally would make the same graffiti, which is the drawback of this system. The plot is also somewhat interesting, with a more ''mature'' outtake due to slight blood and violence references. I got a sense of a bigger plot that could've potentially unfolded if the game was longer.

However, I did have issues with some aspects. One letdown is the game's failure to properly explain its mechanics. I often struggled with what I was supposed to do, and when I did figure it out, the game would tell me WAY too late. Some examples are using skateboards on fire hydrants (never explained at all) for platforming purposes, or providing tips in the middle of a timed event rather than before. The latter being an issue is due to how the tips are presented, which is using a telephone that you need to press a button to bring up (like Grand Theft Auto 4 or 5), and then have to navigate about 2-3 times to get to the messages section, and then press the down button again to read the entire text. I was also looking forward to the character designs, as I went in mostly blind with only knowing the protagonist's design. But only one other character stood out to me. There's amazing use of shapes, but the characters lack in colour, often blending with the environment which also doesn't seem to take in much liberties in being more colourful. I should put a disclaimer that I haven't finished JSR, so this could be one of the moments where the game is really faithful to its inspiration, and I respect that.

The music is good, but not groundbreakingly catchy. There is one song that I particularly disliked as I found it quite grating. Thankfully that was at the beginning, the rest was groovy or chill!

Regardless, this is such a passionate game that I'm glad to experience, and I look forward to what else Team Reptile can come up with. I'm also looking forward to the recently revealed upcoming JSR title!

youtube

#Youtube #bomb rush cyberfunk #brc #game review #game analysis

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qzwrites · 9 months

Text

Blackmail Boyfriend DVD Commentary Edition

This was fun! But it's a pain in the ass to figure out how to format something like this! Many of the places I looked used colored text or italics for their commentary and I hated that and thought it was inaccessible! So I have set my commentary off and also indented it. Let me know how that reads.

It was convenient to share a hotel room with the only teammate who knew Aidan was trans. It was unfortunate that said teammate was blackmailing Aidan into having sex with him, but Aidan did really need the help keeping their other roommate from noticing anything amiss about Aidan. Aidan figured at least with Trey in the room, Richard wouldn’t do anything.

He should have known Richard better by now.

I talked about this in the original author's notes but this sure is a scenario that occurs all over manga both vanilla and hentai. In high school I read a romance manga about a girl cross-dressing to go to an all-boys school to be nearer to her favorite soccer player and ending up roommates with him, and I have also read comics where it's like "Surprise! The new ace player is Actually A Girl!" which leads to, at best, dubiously consensual sex (whether or not the author seems aware this is dubious is, itself, dubious). Once I had rotated this concept in my mind enough times, I thought it would be not terribly difficult but definitely interesting to start from this extremely dire transactional relationship and end up in an actual romance, especially if, as was usually the case in these "secret cross-dresser" manga, it was about teenagers. So I had the backstory for Aidan and Richard worked out first, but I thought the part where Aidan realized Richard actually liked him was more interesting, which is why I start here.

Aidan was almost asleep when he felt Richard shift behind him. That didn’t alarm him on its own, but then Richard’s hand was on Aidan’s hip.

There were lots of things to dislike about Richard blackmailing Aidan into sex, and one of them was the way Aidan’s stupid pussy did not dislike it. Unlike the way flicking the bean only ever made Aidan uncomfortably aware of his dysphoria, getting pounded somehow wasn’t triggering at all. To add insult to injury, it was way easier to come from. Even though Richard was a transphobic, misogynistic asshole, Aidan’s stupid pussy lit up the second Richard touched him.

I actually hate the word "pussy" but I also think euphemisms and circumlocutions indicate a different type of trans dude. Since I didn't want to write about someone dealing with too much dysphoria on top of the blackmail situation (because how the fuck are you going to come around on someone who is constantly triggering dysphoria? No matter how good the sex is or how nice Richard is, it would just be an overall more negative experience) I thought straightforward but not clinical terms would be best. Also IDK man, I'm also trans, and for whatever reason I find it a lot easier to write a guy talking about his pussy than a girl doing the same. Boypussy is fine, I guess. I also started this story not long after I finished Exciting New Levels of Heresy, in which I managed to avoid using any clear words for Nic's junk literally at all. That wasn't me trying to be coy, I just found it difficult to accept the idea of Nic thinking about zeir body in any of those terms. In the extras set further in the future, ze uses the word "cunt", but freshly-deflowered Nic was just too embarrassed about having and enjoying sex to say something like that. Whereas I kind of wanted Aidan to feel like...you know, a teenage boy. "Pussy" feels like a very teenage boy way to refer to it.

Aidan tried to squirm away from Richard, but Richard just followed him to the edge of the bed, until Aidan had nowhere to go. Aidan hissed, “Trey’s right there!”

“So be quiet,” Richard murmured, sliding his fingers under the waistband of Aidan’s shorts. He pulled Aidan back against him. Aidan wasn’t surprised to feel he was already hard. Sometimes it felt like Richard could go from flaccid to throbbing instantly.

After weeks of taking advantage of Aidan, Richard knew Aidan’s body and how to manage his dysphoria as well as Aidan did. He only used his hand down the front of Aidan’s underwear to shove it down and out of the way. Once he had his cock nestled between Aidan’s labia, he reached up Aidan’s shirt to play with his tits.

Aidan had to bite his knuckles to muffle the sounds he wanted to make. Between Richard’s cock sliding against his pussy and Richard’s fingers pinching his nipples, he was wet enough to take it in no time at all.

Aidan resented how much he enjoyed fucking Richard. Richard misgendered him when they were alone, even if it had been a while since he did so, and he had immediately demanded to fuck him when he found out Aidan “was a girl”. But having to avoid sexual situations that would out him did approximately fuck-all to calm Aidan’s raging teenage hormones, while Richard’s stupid dick actually let Aidan blow off some steam and be less sexually frustrated. It was easier to concentrate on his schoolwork, he had less trouble falling asleep at night, he even played better since Richard started fucking him. It was monumentally unfair. Fucking someone to keep them from outing you should not be so enjoyable.

Richard stopped bothering with condoms after he found out Aidan was on birth control, which Aidan knew was irresponsible but couldn’t bring himself to seriously protest. He told himself it was because fighting Richard on it might lead to Richard outing him, but it was at least half because of how good it felt to not have to stop when Aidan was wet enough for Richard’s cock to just slip right into him, as it did now.

I know I'm not the only person who did stupid things I knew were stupid even as I did them when I was a teenager purely because I was horny. Aidan probably could have found a way out of this situation, even if it would have been tricky to avoid being outed, but he didn't try very hard.

Aidan turned to press his face into the pillow to stop his groan. Richard tugged him away from the edge of the bed, then pushed Aidan down on his stomach and rolled on top of him. Aidan reached down to shove his shorts off one leg, so he could spread his legs that much wider. Richard’s breathing grew harsh and ragged as he humped Aidan like a badly-trained dog.

The lamp between the beds clicked on. Aidan froze. So did Richard, although his cock twitched a bit inside Aidan like it was less on board with this interruption. Trey’s voice said, “What the hell are you guys doing over th–oh my god, are you fucking?”

I tried to push this piece back into being more cartoony, the way some of my older art is, and I'm of two minds about how it turned out. I did have a lot of fun doing the lighting! And Richard's expression cracks me up. Information Aidan does not have available that the reader is getting from this illustration, I guess.

Aidan’s heart raced. He was pressed against the mattress with Richard on top of him, the blanket was still mostly over them. Trey couldn’t see Aidan’s breasts or his lack of dick. It was entirely possible Richard was fucking him in the ass. That’s what Trey would assume.

Except when Richard walked in on Aidan initially, he was adamant that he wasn’t gay, even as he demanded to fuck another guy, because he refused to acknowledge the fact that Aidan was a guy. He could very well out Aidan to avoid letting Trey think he was gay. Fuck fuck fuck.

Richard turned his head to face Trey, but didn’t otherwise move, staying draped over Aidan’s back. “Ugh,” Richard said, “I thought you were asleep.”

“I was, but the sound of what I thought was one of you jerking it woke me up,” Trey said. “Are you two seriously doing it?”

“Trying to,” Richard said. He still didn’t move from on top of Aidan. It was embarrassing as hell, but Aidan had to admit it kept Trey from seeing much of Aidan’s body.

“Dude,” Trey said. He sounded more offended than disgusted, thank god. “With me in the room?”

I have no idea what the differences may be between spending the night in a hotel with a sports team versus a drama club or Academic Decathlon team, but I assumed they couldn't be too different. I don't think anyone ever had sex in the hotel rooms on any of my trips for competitions, but it didn't seem like it would be too hard to arrange if one was so inclined. The main problem, of course, is that they usually put us three or four to a room. But, having Trey in the room to address that and add some risk and excitement to the sex also allowed me to make Richard and Aidan talk about things. And it meant I had an easy set-up for Aidan getting walked in on and outed again, which let me contrast Richard's initial reaction to his new reaction, which forced them to talk some more. It did mean another character to keep track of, but at least I didn't have to get too in the weeds with him. (Shakes fist at all the boys in Childhood Friends, especially you, Paul)

“I thought you were asleep,” Richard said defensively. “We don’t usually have a bed.”

“Can you choose one or the other?” Aidan demanded, face hot. If Richard wasn’t going to be a cowardly asshole and out him, then he really didn’t want to prolong this situation. “Either talk to Trey or fuck me.”

“Uh, I hate to break it to you,” Trey said, “but I don’t think I’m going to be able to fall back asleep.”

Aidan groaned and pressed his face back into the pillow.

Richard shrugged. “I don’t care if you watch,” he said.

“Richard,” Aidan yelped, very nearly making a terrible mistake and bucking him off.

“Oh, calm down,” Richard said. He rolled his hips, leisurely. The felt good enough that Aidan relaxed against his own will. He might also have moaned a little.

“Jesus Christ,” Trey said. His voice broke on the last syllable. He cleared his throat. “Look, I don’t mind if y’all are gay or whatever, but I’m not.”

Aidan tensed back up again. Richard, confusingly, rubbed Aidan’s arm soothingly, on the side Trey couldn’t see. Richard said, “Fine, turn the light off then. I just want to finish.”

“You’re a freak,” Trey said. “Um, Aidan?”

Aidan had to pull his face out of the pillow to answer. “Honestly at this point I don’t care, I want to finish too.”

Richard put his mouth against Aidan’s ear to murmur, “Of course you do, slut.” He rolled his hips again, still slowly enough that it was torturous. His breath was hot on the side of Aidan’s head. “Slutty little faggot.”

Being called a slur should not have made Aidan shudder and clench around Richard’s cock, but it was the first time since Richard first saw Aidan naked that he’d said anything to acknowledge Aidan was a queer guy and not a straight girl. Aidan moaned before he could help it.

Important to establish that, despite being a crude and physically needy guy, Richard was not in fact continuing to misgender Aidan. It takes a special kind of guy to make calling the POV character a faggot an improvement, but it didn't feel like much of a stretch that Aidan would be into it. He is, after all, the kind of person who is unbothered enough by being coerced into sex to not try that hard to get out of it. Him being kind of into it makes that seem more explicable.

“God,” Trey said, and the light clicked off.

“Thanks, man,” Richard said, and started humping Aidan again.

“I hate you,” Aidan said. Richard only grunted and bit Aidan’s neck.

Aidan had a much harder time keeping quiet now that he knew Trey was already awake. Yeah, it was embarrassing that Trey was hearing all the moaning Aidan was doing, not to mention the extremely audible slapping of Richard’s hips against Aidan’s ass, but…he already knew. And with the light off again, the chance he’d notice Aidan was trans was effectively zero.

After a few minutes, Trey made a noise in the other bed. He said, “It does not make me gay to jerk off to this, okay?”

Aidan laughed, which made the muscles in his pussy do something that made Richard groan. “Sure,” Aidan said.

“I’m listening to people have sex,” Trey said. He was out of breath. Fuck, he was actually jerking off listening to Richard and Aidan go at it. “It’s a normal physical reaction.”

I did find myself thinking a lot about a time in my college dorm where I was laying awake with insomnia hearing a weird noise like "what the hell is my roommate dong over there" and didn't realize until years later that she was masturbating. I spent all year waiting until she went to the practice room with her violin! Honestly!!!

Aidan laughed again, and so did Richard. “Yeah,” Richard said, “nothing but normal physical reactions in here tonight.”

Thankfully, after that he settled back down to fucking Aidan. Apart from labored breathing and rhythmic slapping sounds, Trey was quiet as well. With the light off but no worry about waking Trey up, Aidan felt comfortable enough to push himself up on his knees. Richard murmured into Aidan’s ear, “God, you’re such a slut.” Still, he adjusted the angle he was thrusting into Aidan so his next stroke slammed into Aidan’s g-spot. Aidan cried out. Then he was coming, and Richard was still slamming into him, and Aidan was still coming. God, it was fucked up that Richard knew his body so well.

Richard must have come at some point in there, because by the time Aidan was cognizant of anything other than his own overwhelming orgasm, Richard was pulling out of him with some extremely wet squelchy sounds.

Aidan collapsed onto the mattress to get his breathing under control. Now that he was the one listening to someone in the other bed get off, he had to admit Trey had a point. He’d just come, after all, and he wasn’t into Trey, but his pussy still had trouble calming down while he could hear Trey panting and jerking off.

Richard tugged on the hem of Aidan’s shirt. “Roll over,” he mumbled.

“Why?” Aidan asked, but did it. He was a little surprised when Richard leaned over and kissed him. It was hot and sloppy, and he got a bit of Aidan’s nose at first. Richard had really only kissed him the first time they had sex. Considering how short Richard’s fuse was, and how humiliatingly easy Aidan was, Richard didn’t usually bother with much foreplay. He grabbed Aidan’s left boob through his shirt. Aidan groaned. This was not helping him be less horny.

“Knock it off,” Aidan tried to say, but Richard wouldn’t stop kissing him enough for it to be understandable. Richard pushed Aidan’s shirt up and pinched his nipple. “Ah!”

Without Trey in the room, they absolutely would have gone for another round here.

“God, are you still going?” Trey asked. The sound of him stroking his dick did not pause as he spoke. That was definitely not helping Aidan be less horny.

“Well, now we’re listening to someone jerk off,” Richard said. “It’s a natural physical reaction.”

Trey started to laugh, gasped, and Aidan was willing to bet that weird breath he took meant he came. That was embarrassing for him, but also pretty funny.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Aidan said, squirming out of Richard’s grasp. At least with the light still off, Aidan didn’t have to worry about the fact that his unbound breasts were clearly visible under his shirt, especially with one of his nipples all hard from being manhandled. He didn’t much like pulling his underwear and shorts up when he could feel Richard’s come oozing out of him, but even with the light off Aidan didn’t feel comfortable walking around the foot of the bed to the bathroom naked from the waist down.

Once the bathroom door was shut, Aidan turned the light on. His hair was a mess and his boobs were indeed visible in this shirt, but Richard hadn’t left any marks on his neck. He peed, and then spent a not-insignificant amount of time wiping up the mess. He knew dicks were only supposed to ejaculate a teaspoon or some small amount like that, but he would swear Richard came more than that. Although Aidan supposed it was kind of hard to tell apart what came out of his body versus Richard’s. God knew he got pretty damn wet when Richard started pawing at him.

I don't know that Aidan is even thinking about this consciously at this point, but vagina owners please pee after PIV sex! Our urethras are too short to not clean out whatever may have gotten in there during sex! Save yourself the UTI! Also I did establish earlier that they weren't bothering with condoms, which was purely so I didn't have to figure out how to get a condom into this scene without waking up Trey or disrupting the pacing, but also makes the clean-up extra necessary.

He turned the light off before he left the bathroom, then waited until he could see well enough to be sure the light in the main room was still off before he opened the door. He made it back to the bed and under the covers without incident.

“Swear to god,” Trey said from the other bed, “if you assholes don’t go to sleep now, I’m telling Coach.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Richard said. He rolled over and put his arm around Aidan’s waist. Aidan tensed, but all Richard did was snuggle into Aidan’s back. Aidan wished he knew what the hell was going on in Richard’s head, but he was too tired to think about it for long before he fell asleep.

Richard is totally in love with Aidan and Aidan is just like "wtf has he always been cuddly?" The answer is yes, actually, but it's pretty hard to get in those post-coital cuddles when you're having quickies in the locker room.

Being stealth at school wasn’t as hard as Aidan had worried it would be. Enough guys changed for gym in the bathroom stalls because they were shy that it wasn’t that notable that Aidan did it too. It was slightly more conspicuous in the locker room for practice, but most of the soccer team didn’t pay too much attention to him at first, and then they liked him enough because he was a good player to not give him shit about it.

So maybe he’d gotten a little complacent about changing in the locker room. He was on birth control that stopped his periods now, so he didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing pad wings or tampon strings or whatever, and he wasn’t about to bleed through his underwear. More than once he’d actually gotten down to his binder with someone else in the room, without them noticing, because no one was paying attention to him change. So one day after practice, when he was really sweaty and muddy and everyone else had already left, Aidan thought, as long as everyone else was gone, he might as well take a shower.

Literally I don't understand why teen media acts like everyone is fine with changing in front of everyone. This was not the case anywhere I went. Maybe sports teams were more generally blase about it, the way most of the drama kids were, but even after four years of changing in front of each other for shows, there were some people who always changed in the bathroom. I never once used a shower at school until I lived in a dorm, though. Although again: theatre kid instead of sports kid.

He’d almost gotten away with it, even when Richard came back in to get something he’d forgotten in his locker. The showers weren’t easy to peek into from the path in and out of the locker room. Richard called out, “Who’s still in here?”

If he hadn’t responded, Richard definitely would have come to check it out, so Aidan shouted, “It’s Aidan!”

Richard laughed, because he’d been one of the other guys who fell in the mud. “Alright, see you tomorrow,” he called back, and Aidan relaxed.

Too soon, as it turned out, because a minute later Richard was at the doorway to the shower, saying, “Hang on, you never even change in front of us, let’s see what you’re so shy about, anyway.”

Gee, Richard, why are you so curious about seeing Aidan naked?

None of the showers were really set up to provide enough privacy to keep Aidan from being partially exposed. He yelped and spun around to put his back to Richard, but Richard had already gotten an eyeful.

“Holy shit,” Richard said, “you’re a girl?”

He didn’t pay any attention at all to Aidan’s protest that he was not, in fact, a girl. His very thoughtful rebuttal was to gesture at Aidan’s body and say, “Boobs, vagina.” It was annoying enough that his suggestion he could keep his mouth shut if Aidan let Richard fuck him was almost a relief.

I think not writing this out as a full scene makes it stronger. Aidan's extremely judgy narration cracks me up. And it didn't feel like it needed it; the fact that it happened at all is what's important for this story, and I've already gotten the requisite S2B2 sex scene out of the way.

By then, Aidan was done showering. He tried to wrap himself in a towel and go to his locker to get dressed, but Richard grabbed him, pushed him up against the outside wall of the showers, and kissed him. He’d already been hard, and that made Aidan kind of dizzy even if it was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of Aidan’s gender.

“What, now?” Aidan asked, breathlessly, like Richard’s dick hadn’t made that clear.

“Why, you got somewhere else to be?” Richard asked, and didn’t wait for an answer before kissing Aidan again.

Aidan lost his virginity on a damp towel spread out on the floor of the locker room. He didn’t come, but it was a near thing. Aidan swore to himself he wouldn’t get off on it the next time he let Richard fuck him, which turned out to be comically over-confident.

Aidan woke up the morning after having sex in front of a teammate with Richard pressed up against his side, his hand up Aidan’s shirt. He was grabbing Aidan’s boob in his sleep. Aidan didn’t know what he’d expected. It was under the blanket, at least. Aidan nudged Richard off of him, then lifted his head to see if Trey was awake. Trey was on his side facing away from them, so Aidan couldn’t tell. It would be too conspicuous to try and wriggle into his binder under the blanket, so Aidan reached for his phone to check the time.

He was just messing around on his phone, aimlessly scrolling social media, when Trey got up from his bed and walked to the bathroom. Aidan immediately dropped his phone to grab his binder. He wrenched his shirt off, pulled his binder on, and was rewarded with the bottom edge of his binder rolling up and digging in painfully, the way it always did he when he tried to put it on too fast. Aidan kicked Richard under the blankets, while he struggled to pull his binder down.

Aidan heard Richard groan, then felt the bed shift as he moved around. Then Richard said, “Oh, shit, where’s Trey?”

“Bathroom,” Aidan said. “But I think he’s only peeing. Give me a hand.”

“Yeah,” Richard said. He grabbed the back of Aidan’s binder and pulled. He reached up with his other hand to straighten out the hem without Aidan having to ask. Since he always wanted access to Aidan’s boobs when they were having sex, he’d helped Aidan in and out of his binder enough times to be decent at it. It was one of the weird ways he was considerate even though he’d blackmailed Aidan into this.

While Aidan adjusted the way his boobs were laying in the front of his binder, Richard grabbed Aidan’s discarded shirt and turned it right side out. He held it out so all Aidan had to do was put his arms and head through it. While Aidan did that, he heard the toilet flush. Richard murmured, “You good?”

I think it says something about Richard (and his relationship with Aidan) that, even though Aidan doesn't realize Richard likes him, he still doesn't hesitate to demand assistance with his binder. They've been doing this long enough that Richard has clearly established that he's going to help Aidan stay closeted, despite theoretically holding the threat of outing him over his head. I don't know if anyone else even noticed this, but Richard going above and beyond by prepping the shirt for Aidan to get into is him doing a really good job of helping Aidan get dressed. I don't mention it in the story, but Richard doesn't have any younger siblings or anything; his experience dressing someone else is all Aidan. He's trying so hard to be boyfriend material without saying anything about it. Idiot.

Aidan yanked the shirt down and flopped back onto the bed. “Yeah,” he said.

“Good,” Richard said. He also laid back down, pulling the blanket up over their chests. He yawned. “What time is it?”

“Eight-thirty,” Aidan told him.

Richard groaned. “That’s too early to be up on a Saturday,” he said, and rolled over to press his face into Aidan’s shoulder.

“Stop that,” Aidan said, shrugging him off. He heard the bathroom door open, and then the sink ran. He was as prepared to face Trey as he was ever going to be. He would have felt more secure with another layer of clothes on, but he’d known he wouldn’t have time to get completely dressed, and it would be weird to get partially dressed and then stay in bed. Aidan wasn’t going to be able to fall back asleep, but he didn’t completely disagree with Richard that it was too early to be up. And there wasn’t much he could do in the hotel room if Richard or Trey went back to sleep.

“Are you guys up?” Trey asked from around the corner.

“Yeah,” Aidan said. Richard groaned and pulled the blanket over his head.

“So,” Trey said, coming around the corner and heading for the bed he’d slept in. “Usually I wouldn’t want to be nosy, but I feel like I earned it.” He sat down on the edge of the bed facing them and leaning back on his hands. He was still in the t-shirt and plaid boxers he’d slept in. “Are you guys gay?”

At least that was a question with a simple answer. “Only in the umbrella sense,” Aidan said. “I’m bi.”

Richard flipped the blanket down off his face. “If being into Aidan counts,” he said, “then I guess I am too.”

Aidan looked sidelong at him. That was a pretty clever way to sound like he was saying something he wasn’t. The thing about Richard was that he was inconsistent about the gender thing. He’d been adamant he wasn’t gay and it wasn’t gay for him to fuck Aidan, but he never slipped up in front of other people. That wasn’t Aidan’s typical experience with people who didn’t believe or understand that he was trans. When they had sex, Richard worked around Aidan’s discomfort with having his clit touched. Aidan genuinely couldn’t tell how much Richard was being considerate versus just humoring Aidan in order to have continued access to Aidan’s body.

And now it sounded like he was fine with Trey thinking he was bi, even though he’d been vehement at first that he wasn’t gay.

Richard saw Aidan looking. “What?” he asked. He was blushing. He was blushing?

It was early, and Trey already knew they had sex. Aidan said bluntly, “I kind of figured I was just a convenient hole to stick your dick in.”

Richard shrugged. “I feel like you’d be less irresistible if you were.”

That made Aidan blush. He always thought Richard was just horny, not that he found Aidan especially attractive. That…put some things in a different light.

“For pete’s sake,” Trey said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t make me listen to you two have sex and a relationship discussion.”

“It’s too early to be talking about this shit anyway,” Aidan said. He sat up. “Breakfast is in the lobby, right?”

It was an obvious change of subject, but they both let him get away with it. Aidan steadfastly ignored the way he was still blushing and got up to get dressed.

Richard was in the middle of an argument with Jake about some video game when Aidan and Trey finished eating breakfast, so Aidan and Trey walked back through the hotel to their room to get ready for the day without him.

“Hey,” Aidan said, when the door to the room was closed behind them, “sorry about last night. I did try to tell him no ’cause you were here, but, uh. Not very hard, I guess.”

Trey sighed. “I mean, it sucked to get woken up like that, but it’s not like I’ve never done something stupid because a girl put her hand down my pants, so. Don’t worry about it.” He sat down on the foot of his bed and kicked off the shoes he’d worn to breakfast. He went on, “I mean, we’ve all walked past that nook behind the band room and pretended we didn’t see whoever was making out back there.”

Based on a real nook behind the band room at my high school. Literally on the path to the only bathrooms in the building, and we all collectively went I Do Not See It

That was an extremely generous word for some of what went on in the nook behind the band room. Aidan had never walked past anyone outright fucking back there, but it went a lot further than kissing. “Well, still,” Aidan said. “It was rude to do that to you. But thanks for being nice about it.”

“You know, thinking about it,” Trey said, “I did notice Richard was being nicer to you lately.”

“Ah,” Aidan said. He hadn’t been sure he wasn’t imagining that. Before Richard called him irresistible, Aidan thought any niceness he wasn’t imagining was due to misplaced sexism. Now he didn’t know what to think. To Trey, he said, “Yeah, I guess so.”

Trey yawned. “Hey,” he said, “do you mind if I try to take a nap before we have to go?”

“Nah, go ahead,” Aidan said. “Want me to wake you up?”

“I’ll set an alarm,” Trey said. He kicked off his shoes. Aidan didn’t bother, but he made sure to pull the covers up so his shoes didn’t get in the sheets or anything. Trey climbed into bed, messed with his phone for a minute, then closed his eyes. Aidan grabbed the book he was supposed to finish this weekend out of his backpack. After a second, he realized he should text Richard to be quiet when he came back to the room, did that, then went back to reading.

They were playing two games today, so Coach told them to pace themselves. He looked right at Richard when he said, “Don’t push yourselves too hard. We’re trying to build stamina, not let you hurt yourselves.” Richard attempted to look innocent. Coach didn’t fall for it any more than Aidan did.

This got all the way to the S2B2 editorial team without anyone pointing out that I had never named the fucking sport they were playing. It was always soccer in my head, but I sure didn't have that in the initial drafts!

The first game was good. The other team, who they hadn’t played before, had clearly gotten a similar talk from their coach. It was a chill, fun game that felt more cooperative than competitive. It was nice, although Aidan would get bored if every game felt that way.

It made Richard noticeably restless. For a second in the locker room after the game, Aidan thought Richard was going to follow him into the bathroom when he went to change. He didn’t, though, and Aidan took a moment to be thankful he was trans and no one could tell if he was turned on through his clothes. They’d literally just done it last night, why was Aidan already soaking his shorts at the thought of Richard following him into the bathroom? Stupid hormones.

The cafeteria wasn’t staffed, but the coaches had ordered catering and set it up in there. Aidan expected the catering was better than the cafeteria food anyway, so he wasn’t going to complain. He grabbed some sandwiches and a bag of chips, then went over to the water fountain to fill up his water bottle.

When Aidan got to the set of tables the rest of the team had claimed, Jake was laughing at Richard. “Man, you need to lighten up,” Jake said. “Forget superstition, maybe you should get laid before games, work off some of that energy.”

“He did,” Trey said. “It obviously didn’t help.”

Aidan froze in his seat. He was sure Richard did too.

Jake looked from Trey to Richard, then, inevitably, at Aidan.

Trey said, “Oh, dammit, was that–supposed to be secret?”

A story about being repeatedly outed, RIP Aidan

The table roared as everyone who’d heard them demanded details. Aidan didn’t know if he was surprised or offended at how quickly everyone determined Richard had sex with him, and not Trey, before either of them even said anything. Aidan didn’t bother to fight his blush. He only ignored it and unwrapped his sandwich.

“I thought you hated Aidan,” Mark said to Richard.

Before Richard could respond, Joseph said, “Come on, that was obviously his immature little way of flirting.” Aidan had come to a similar conclusion himself, given how quickly Richard jumped to “have sex with me” when he decided Aidan was a girl. He had to have been attracted to Aidan on some level before that, and “finding out” Aidan was a girl let him acknowledge it.

So this isn't a thing I've only seen in one place, but the example that jumps to my mind is Eurotrip; the main character finds out his German penpal is not a dude, as he assumed, but actually a girl, and immediately is like "oh I'm in love with her she's the one". Hey? Hey dude? That's fucking gay. Richard even admits it later, that finding out Aidan "was a girl" let him realize his feelings for Aidan were a crush. Like, I don't know how "latent bisexuality" isn't the only possible answer for this very rapid conclusion. If the only thing that's keeping you from fucking your dude friends is thinking they're dudes, but as soon as you have any reason to think that's not true you're like "okay take off your clothes"...that's actually pretty gay, dude. (This also happens a lot in gender-bender hentai manga. Hey guys? Your dude friend having tits now should not immediately lead to you fucking him and feeling totally secure in your heterosexuality, actually. That's a fucking wild reaction to this situation.) ("Ani it's just a porn premise" WELL SO IS THIS BUT I PUT SOME THOUGHT INTO THE EXECUTION AT LEAST)

“I just thought we’re not that close, I didn’t hear about it,” Trey said. He looked wretched enough that Aidan felt bad for him.

“Don’t worry about it,” Richard yelled, to be heard over the din. “It’s not like we told you not to tell anyone.”

“Is this recent?” someone asked.

“Are you dating?” someone else asked, teasingly.

“No,” Aidan said firmly, in unison with Richard.

“You can’t say you’re friends with benefits,” Mark said. “You’re not friends.”

“Why aren’t you dating?” Joseph asked. He was closer to Richard, but he looked down the table in a way that made it clear he was including Aidan in his question.

Aidan looked at Richard, who stared back at him. Richard was wide-eyed, but the look on his face didn’t tell Aidan anything about how he wanted to handle this. Of course this was when everyone else would shut up enough to listen. Nosy bastards. Finally, Aidan said, “I don’t want to have this conversation in front of other people.”

“Yeah,” Richard said at once, “me neither.” He looked around the table. “It’s none of y’all’s business.”

They do not have this conversation in public because I didn't want to write this conversation with so many other people involved. I can write a big group meal talk, but it's hard, and honestly I don't think it would have been worth it in this case!

“God, I’m sorry,” Trey said, looking from Richard to Aidan. “I didn’t realize.”

“It’s fine,” Richard said.

It was annoying, but Aidan hadn’t heard any homophobia, just nosiness and some I-told-you-so’s. It was far and away the better outing he’d had at this school. “It��s okay, Trey,” Aidan said. He smiled, and hoped it didn’t look as forced as it was. “It’s not your fault nothing in the world can chill Richard out.”

Aidan told himself he didn’t feel bad, redirecting the teasing back to Richard alone. Richard rolled his eyes, but he let Jake resume giving him grief, so Aidan turned his attention to his lunch.

There were an uneven number of teams, so their team had a break after lunch, before their second game. They went to watch the other games that were happening. Aidan hoped he’d fall off the radar of the rest of the team, but he wasn’t that lucky.

Mark climbed over the bleachers to sit down next to Aidan twenty minutes into the game. “Hey,” he said quietly, “are you really hooking up with Richard?”

“I guess,” Aidan said. He didn’t know what else he could say. At least Richard had been just as firm at lunch about the fact they weren’t dating as Aidan had; that could have been awkward. Well, more awkward.

“And you’re…okay? With that?” Mark asked. “I mean, he was such a dick when you joined the team. No pun intended.”

Aidan shrugged. “I assumed Joey was right, and that was his messed-up attempt at flirting. Or dealing with his feelings, anyway,” he said. He wasn’t sure it counted as flirting if you didn’t know why you were doing it. He added, “I don’t think he’s ever been into another guy before.”

I mean, if one of your friends who was kind of bullying a guy suddenly turned out to be having sex with that guy, it seems reasonable to be concerned that something unsavory is going on there. And there is! Or at least there was! So here we see Aidan being offered an out for the first of, like, three times in this story. But he is now invested enough in also protecting Richard, as well as continuing to get laid, that he isn't even conflicted or concerned about taking it without simultaneously outing himself. It doesn't even occur to him! Mostly he just doesn't want to be talking to his teammates about this.

“I guess that makes sense,” Mark said. He scratched his scruffy goatee. “But I don’t know, man, my sisters always say you shouldn’t reward guys who do stuff like that. It’s kind of a red flag, isn’t it?”

Great, he thought Aidan was some kind of foolish damsel. Aidan guessed that was technically better than people knowing he was trans and treating him like a delusional girl. Not by much, though. He said, “I don’t know about Richard, but this is one reason I didn’t want to tell people. It’s complicated. And personal.”

“No, I know,” Mark said, holding up his hands. “You’re a big boy, you can make your own decisions. I just thought, I dunno, someone should check on you. We’ve all known Richard longer than you, I didn’t want you to be, you know, forgotten about.”

Aidan didn’t know what to say to that. “Thanks?” Aidan said.

Mark sighed. “I should have told Trey to do this,” he said.

Aidan laughed. “Trey wasn’t worried,” he said. “I bet he would’ve told you not to worry, too. Not to be vulgar or anything, but there is a reason I’m hooking up with him.”

“Oh,” Mark said. He made a face. “Really?” he asked after a moment. “I mean, you’re right, I don’t think Richard’s ever been into another guy before, and it doesn’t seem like that would lend itself to being good at gay sex.”

Aidan shrugged, still smiling. “I was honestly shocked,” he said. “But it’s really good.”

“Damn, okay,” Mark said. Aidan glanced at him, and saw he was blushing. About time someone else was embarrassed about this. “I guess that answers that.”

In the locker room before their second game, as Aidan walked over to the bathroom stalls, Jake said, “Ah, now we know why Aidan changes in the bathroom. To avoid inflaming Richard’s lust!” Most of the team burst into laughter.

Well, Aidan thought, face hot enough it felt like it might burst into flames, at least this was all sending them off track. No one would guess he was trans if they assumed it was all about Richard, the way he’d hassled Aidan at first, and now not being naked around the guy he was hooking up with when they weren’t having sex.

“Yeah, yeah,” Richard said loudly. “Very funny. I have some self-control, you know.”

“Not according to Trey!” Jake said, and set off another round of laughter. Great, so Aidan could assume everyone knew they’d had sex while Trey was in the room. The guys had probably already started texting other people from school about it. Not only were people going to know Aidan was sleeping with Richard, they’d know he didn’t have enough self-control to override his libido.

He did still prefer that to people knowing he was trans. At least Aidan being horny for Richard was something it made sense to treat him differently for.

The second game was rougher than the first one. This team was not taking it easy. Aidan wound up in the dirt more than once, although he didn’t get injured. Richard was in his element. While Aidan was on the sidelines, trying to catch his breath and hydrate after Coach subbed him out, he found it difficult not to watch him.

Former soccer player had to look up the rules of soccer for this story. Shameful. (It has been like...literally twenty years. It's not actually shameful, it's just annoying because dammit I still had an eidetic memory when I played soccer why can't I find that information in my brain it has to be there somewhere)

Jake elbowed Aidan. “Keep your mind on the game, perv,” he said.

“Shut up,” Aidan said reflexively, but he could feel himself turning red again. “Like you haven’t told us all a thousand times how hard it is not to pop a boner when you go to Crystal’s games.”

“Mm,” Jake said, nodding. “It is hot when people are good at things. Still, embarrassing to be into Richard.”

“If you guys don’t stop saying stuff like that, I’m going to tell you exactly what I enjoy about Richard,” Aidan said. If he chose his words carefully enough, he wouldn’t even be lying. “And I doubt he’d mind me bragging about his dick.”

Jake groaned. “He would not,” he agreed. “Okay, message received, I’ll shut up now.”

“Thank you,” Aidan said, as primly as he could. Jake laughed.

They lost the game, but only by a single point. Considering the other team had at one point managed a four point lead, they felt pretty good about that. After they showered and changed, there was a goofy little closing ceremony, but it was short. Not short enough that Aidan wasn’t ruing and lamenting his extremely sweaty binder. Being able to take a shower before this would be nice.

Except he didn’t know if he’d even be on the soccer team if he was out. Or be allowed to use the showers, if he was. It didn’t usually bother him this much, but two games’ worth of sweat made his binder unspeakably itchy.

Write what you know sometimes means writing about how fucking itchy binders are. Starting T made it so much more urgent for me to get top surgery because being extra-sweaty while binding is a nightmare.

Finally back in their hotel room, Aidan immediately started gathering his things for a shower. The bathroom here locked, and even if it was a pain getting back into a binder not fully dry–and if he was locked in the bathroom with his clothes, he never got totally dry–he had a clean one to change into, and he wouldn’t have to worry about Trey or anyone else seeing him.

“Hey,” Trey said, “I really am sorry about, like. Outing you both, I guess.”

“It’s fine,” Aidan said. He was dithering about if he could get out his clean binder while Trey was right here without him noticing. He didn’t keep his binders in the main pocket of the suitcase, since that was so easy to look into if someone walked by. Was that paranoid? Probably. But as much as binders didn’t look a lot like bras, they also didn’t really look like something a cis boy would have in their luggage. It might invite questions or investigation.

Richard flopped backward onto the bed, jostling Aidan’s suitcase. “I should have asked you not to say something,” he said. “It’s not your fault.”

“I mean,” Aidan said, “I don’t care if people know I’m bi. Honestly, everyone seems more shocked anyone would fuck you.”

“No one is shocked someone would fuck me,” Richard said, frowning. “They’re shocked you would fuck me.”

“Well, by the end of the day he was threatening to tell everyone all about the apparent wonders of your dick,” Trey said, “so at least the whole team understands my pain now.”

Aidan laughed. “Sorry,” he said.

Trey waved him off. “Anyway, I thought I’d clear out until dinner,” he said. “If you wanted to have sex without an audience for once.”

“Uh, thanks?” Aidan said. “But I’m going to enjoy a nice, private shower. Get all this damn dirt off.”

“Also valid,” Trey said. “Have fun.”

He left, the door clicking locked behind him. Aidan yanked off his shirt and threw it to the ground, then grabbed his binder and yanked that off, too. “Fucking hell,” Aidan said, scratching his chest. “That was too long in one binder.”

“Hey, you want me to get your back?” Richard asked.

On the one hand, that felt really intimate and kind of weird to let Richard do, but on the other hand, Aidan could not reach the itchiest parts of his back on his own. He shoved his suitcase to the foot of the bed and sat down with his back to Richard. “Please,” he said.

The mattress shifted as Richard moved over to sit behind Aidan. “My mom always asked my dad to scratch her back after workouts,” he said. “She said her sports bra was way worse than her regular bras for making her back itchy.” He ran the nails of both hands down either side of Aidan’s spine. Totally unable to help himself, Aidan moaned.

I spent my childhood scratching my mom and sister's backs after they took off their bras. Such an important part of being good friends to someone with boobs that require support, IMO. Also just like...the intimacy of this is so not sexual. Especially since Aidan is sweaty and feels gross right now. Although maybe that's my bias as someone who mostly did this for family members before I got married.

“More on the shoulder blades,” Aidan suggested.

Richard moved his hands up. “So, uh, sorry I didn’t tell Trey not to tell anyone,” he said.

“Hm?” It took Aidan a second to process that, lost as he was in the euphoria of having his itches relieved. “Oh. No, it’s okay. Like I said, I don’t care if people know I’m bi. And I mean, you heard them in the locker room, now they think I don’t change or shower with everyone because of you. That’s great for me. Not…as great for you, maybe.”

Richard was quiet for a minute. He moved his scratching down to the red mark the bottom of Aidan’s binder left, where it dug in. Eventually, Richard said, “It’s fine. Kind of weird, but whatever. It is strange to hear you’re giving out rave reviews of my dick, though.”

Aidan blushed even though Richard couldn’t see him. “You can’t be surprised by that,” he said. “Unless you think I’ve been faking it this whole time.”

Richard laughed. “No,” he admitted. He moved back up to Aidan’s shoulders. “I actually started wondering if some of the girls I was with before were faking. You know, in comparison.”

Aidan snorted. “Probably rude to assume,” he said. “I mean, if they said they liked it, I’d believe them.” Although he guessed it was possible some of them had been faking. Aidan would say this for having sex with someone just to get them to do what he wanted: he’d had no incentive to stroke Richard’s ego about how good he was making Aidan feel, which could very well have made Richard try harder. He hadn’t not tried to make it good for Aidan, at least.

“I guess,” Richard said. “Again, I don’t think any of them went around bragging about it.”

“It seemed like the best way to get a bunch of straight guys to stop asking questions about us,” Aidan said. “I don’t even have to lie.” He sighed, and stood up. “Thanks,” he said.

“No problem,” Richard said. He was looking up at Aidan with a weird expression on his face. Aidan wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe it had been a mistake to let Richard scratch his back after everything else that had happened today.

Aidan unzipped the pocket of his suitcase he had his clean binder in, then paused. He looked up at Richard. “You’re not going to be coming in and out of the room, right?” he asked.

“No,” Richard said, looking puzzled. “I was just going to sit here and watch stuff on my phone.”

Aidan nodded. “Then I’m going to leave my clothes out here,” he said. “I mean, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”

Richard grinned at him. “Yeah,” he said. He stopped leering and nodded his head at the bathroom. “I hate how moist my clothes get when I take them into hotel bathrooms. Even when they’re not wet, they’re, like, clammy.”

Richard is trying so hard to be Normal, I cannot deal with it

“Right?”

The water pressure in the hotel shower was crap, but the water heater was in no danger of running out of hot water. And again, this point could not be stressed enough: it was private. Aidan didn’t have to worry anyone would see him. Even on the other side of the door, there was only Richard, who already knew about him. Aidan had a long, adequate-to-satisfactory shower. He got out of the shower, wrapped a towel around his waist and draped another one over his head, then brushed his teeth and moisturized. Hotel bathrooms never had decent bathmats, either. And the towels just got completely wet right away if you tried to use them as bathmats. No wonder their clothes always felt wet.

Hotel bathrooms never have decent bathmats. This must be some kind of law.

Aidan dried his hair and tossed that towel over the door of the shower stall. He went out into the room with just the towel around his waist. Richard looked up and let out a low whistle.

“Fuck off,” Aidan said, rolling his eyes. He put on clean underwear, then the jeans he’d worn to and from the school where they’d played. Those were clean enough, although he was planning to put on a fresh shirt. He thought his torso still wasn’t dry enough to try putting on his binder, so he rubbed himself down with the towel again.

“I don’t want to prove everyone right,” Richard drawled, “but I have to admit watching this isn’t not turning me on.”

Aidan rolled his eyes again. “Yeah, there’s nothing sexier than me desperately trying to dry my back,” he said.

“It makes your boobs jiggle,” Richard said, which Aidan had to admit was true.

The door opened. Aidan jumped and completely lost hold of the towel. He snatched up his binder and held it in front of his chest, like that was going to do anything now. Richard leapt to his feet on the other side of the bed, which was about as useful.

Trey slammed the door behind him and leaned on it, as though someone was going to follow him in. His eyes were so wide they looked like they’d pop right out of his head. “You’re a girl?” he exclaimed, in the exact incredulous tone Richard had shouted those words in.

“Don’t be stupid,” Richard snapped, “of course he’s not a girl!”

Despite himself, Aidan laughed. “What the fuck,” he said. “Since when do you believe that?”

Richard flushed and opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted when Trey said from the door, “Oh, are you one of those, uh, people who was born in the wrong body?”

Aidan grimaced. He kind of hated that phrasing, because Aidan mostly liked his body. Even the parts of it that other people thought made him a girl were fine, on their own. Binding was more annoying than having boobs, honestly, but people wouldn’t treat him like a guy if he didn’t do it. But that was also still the main narrative cis people heard, and the only one they really seemed to understand. If Trey didn’t remember the word transgender, he reached for the definition he had in his head. Aidan said, “Yeah, I’m trans.”

I try not to soapbox too much when I'm writing, but it's so hard to know what people will or won't know about trans people, even writing for a primarily queer audience. This is definitely happening after I was in high school, because Richard talks about watching something on his phone, which was only barely possible when I graduated. I think this part also establishes, if less definitely, that it must be happening closer to its 2023 publication date than the 2005-2009 period I was in high school. Obviously I don't know if anyone at my high school was trans and stealth, but I do know the openly trans kids were generally the ones who either couldn't be closeted or had way too much dysphoria to stand it. Aidan doesn't have that much physical dysphoria (or at least has figured out how to manage it by the time the story happens) but he clearly has enough social dysphoria to lead him to being stealth. I figure he got lucky, relatively speaking, with boobs that bind flat enough to pass and a figure that doesn't immediately scream "my endocrine system was estrogen-dominant during a crucial period of physical development", but I did also make sure to establish really early on that he's on period-halting birth control and his physical dysphoria causes sexual problems for him. I try not to give every character just the exact relationship to their body and dysphoria that I or my wife have, because while that is obviously easier for me to write, I don't want to contribute to any ideas about there being a right or normal way to be trans. Aidan has different dysphoria than me even though I'm drawing a lot on my own experiences as someone who was assigned female at birth but was never entirely comfortable with it. It doesn't come up in this story, although I might write a little extra about it, but Aidan is not on testosterone during the story. I would have to do research about how exactly it works, but I'm in the USA, and I wrote this from the assumption it's set in the USA, so in the back of my head was the idea that Aidan's parents' insurance won't cover transition stuff before he's 18. I guess it's possible they also wouldn't cover it before he was 16, and he didn't want to draw attention to himself by starting second puberty in the middle of everyone else's first puberty. Richard absolutely thinks Aidan is on testosterone, because he's like "well this is what trans guys do and Aidan passes, therefore". Aidan is going to roast him about how stupid that is when Richard knows damn well that Aidan does not have to shave his face. The other stuff is in comparison, so Richard gets a pass on, eg, Aidan having a smaller clit and a higher voice, but facial hair growth is usually a pretty early development in testosterone puberty and Richard should have noticed that Aidan literally never has any stubble.

Unfortunately, at the same time, Richard snapped at Trey, “Don’t be insensitive, that’s an outdated way of talking about it.”

Growing up, I didn't know about my dad's lesbian best friend, I just knew he made lots of gay jokes. I'm pretty sure I learned the word dyke from my dad throwing it around in what I'm sure he thought was a jocular manner that was fine because Denise said it. But when my wife came out to him, he did a hard 180 on her (he had previously stopped liking her the instant it became clear we were dating) and sent her an excessively girly gift as...a coming out present? I guess? (Except he was a boomer and it was 2014, so he sent her a My Little Pony t-shirt. He tried, is my point.) Anyway I'm sure that's where my soft spot for people being aggressively progressive about things they themselves have been shitty about comes from. Sometimes it's hard to understand that context changes how things are received, especially if they're not the kind of person who thinks too much about the actual meaning of their words. I do think it also makes a nice change from the, like, soft progressivism. How soapboxy can it be when the guy snapping about misgendering is also cussing and rude the whole time? Anyway anyway: Richard clearly did a lot of research if he got in deep enough to see people talking about the "trapped in the wrong body" narrative being problematic and outdated. And still, he did not tell Aidan this. A fool.

“Are you kidding me?” Aidan demanded. “You’re telling someone not to be insensitive? You decided I was a girl the second you saw me naked, too! And then argued with me about it!” With one hand, he gestured at the door, which Trey was still leaning against like it or he would fall over otherwise. “At least Trey didn’t demand to fuck me!”

“Dude,” Trey said, and frowned at Richard, “what the hell.”

“Shut up, you did the same thing,” Richard said. He was blushing again.

“Screw you, no I did not,” Trey said. “Even if Aidan was a girl I wouldn’t demand sex with her! Who does that?”

“Okay, yeah, I guess that was fucked up,” Richard said.

“You guess?” Aidan and Trey both asked.

Richard threw his hands in the air. “Okay, it was definitely fucked up, but it worked out okay!” He pointed at Trey. “And you’re not gonna tell anyone about Aidan, right? You can tell this is a fucking secret, I hope.”

“Of course I won’t tell anyone,” Trey said, frowning. “What do you mean, it worked out okay? Aidan,” Trey said, looking at him, suddenly alarmed, “if you want to tell Coach or someone that Richard was, like, taking advantage of you, I’ll back you up.”

Trey belatedly realizing this situation is sus and panicking that he shouldn't have taken it in stride.

“If I was going to do that, it would be better to talk about it not in front of him,” Aidan pointed out. “But I’m not–it’s fine.”

Trey looked skeptical. “If you say so,” he said.

Aidan grabbed his binder from where he’d dropped it when he was yelling at Richard. “I mean, I think we…have some stuff to talk about,” he said. “But you don’t need to be here for that.” He started the process of pulling his binder back on.

“Yeah, why did you come back early anyway?” Richard asked.

Trey blinked and looked around the room. “Oh,” he said. “I left my wallet here. I was going to give Mark money for pizza.”

“Oh, do you think I can get in on that?” Aidan asked. He yanked on the bottom of his binder to get it down where it was most comfortable.

“Sure,” Trey said. He was not looking at Aidan in a way that felt unfortunately pointed, but Aidan guessed that was better than staring. “I mean, if he hasn’t already ordered.”

“It’s only been a few minutes, I’m sure it’s fine,” Aidan said. He turned around to dig his wallet out of his backpack. He heard Trey cross the room to go through his stuff as well. Richard sat back down on the edge of the bed, where he’d been when Trey opened the door.

When Aidan walked around the bed to meet Trey and give him the cash, Trey glanced over at Richard. He asked Aidan quietly, “You sure you’ll be okay if I leave you alone?”

Aidan made an effort not to roll his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. He understood where Trey was coming from, but it was…Aidan didn’t know what it was, but it had been a long time since he didn’t feel safe around Richard. Richard never had hurt him, or even threatened him directly. Aidan apparently had no clue what was going on in Richard’s head, but he was less worried about being alone with him than ever. Maybe that was foolish. But nothing had changed for him since he reassured Mark earlier that day.

When Trey was gone, Aidan turned to Richard, who was still sitting on the edge of the bed. “Okay, first of all,” Aidan said, “since when do you actually believe I’m a guy?”

Richard blushed and looked away. “Since like…the second week we were doing it,” he said. “I got curious and looked up some of the stuff you said online, and…yeah.”

“What the hell,” Aidan said. Thinking back, Aidan guessed it was true Richard hadn’t said nearly as much gendered bullshit after the first few times. Aidan had still been expecting it for weeks afterward, and been on edge about it the whole time, but Richard hadn’t actually called Aidan a girl again. Of course, he also hadn’t said anything to imply he understood Aidan was a guy until last night, when he called Aidan a faggot. Aidan asked, “Why didn’t you say something? Jesus, Richard, half the reason I didn’t want to fuck you is because I thought you thought I was a girl!”

“I thought if you knew I believed you, you wouldn’t let me keep having sex with you,” Richard said, his shoulders up around his ears.

Aidan stared at him. At least it looked like Richard knew he’d messed up. Aidan shook his head and asked, “Why would you believing me when I said I wasn’t a girl change the fact that I didn’t want other people to know? I agreed to have sex with you so you’d keep your mouth shut.”

“I don’t know!” Richard exclaimed. “I wasn’t thinking straight, I just knew I’d somehow managed to get you to–” He snapped his mouth closed on whatever he had been about to say. He started again. “I worried if I said anything,” he said, “you’d realize this was stupid.”

He didn't want to say he'd somehow managed to get Aidan to fuck him, because that sounds bad. Because it was bad!

Aidan rolled his eyes. He walked back to his side of the bed and pulled his clean shirt on. “I already knew it was stupid,” he said. “But it’s slightly less stupid if you’re not thinking I’m a girl the whole time.”

“That’s not true,” Richard said. He looked over his shoulder at Aidan and laughed. “Aidan, it’s so stupid. I’m so stupid.”

“Well, yeah,” Aidan said, adjusting his shirt. “But, you know, on the bright side, you’re a good lay.”

Ani Mosity stories: yes your personality is atrocious, but you're good in bed, so it's kind of a wash tbh

Richard laughed again, sounding a little manic. He dropped his head and put his face in his hands. “Okay,” he said. “Can I–can we start over?”

“What?” Aidan asked.

“Ugh, no,” Richard muttered, “I’m doing this all wrong. At least I can’t get it worse this time, I guess.” He sat up and turned to look at Aidan. He was blushing again. “I already had a crush on you,” he said. “That’s why I was such an asshole all the time. I didn’t–I didn’t realize that’s what it was until that time in the locker room. And then I thought you were a girl and I realized I had a crush on you, except then you weren’t a girl but I couldn’t convince myself I didn’t have that crush on you. And the whole time you were letting me fuck you and it seemed like, you know, you didn’t hate it. So I decided if I didn’t say anything it was fine, because, like…at least you’d keep having sex with me.”

After a moment, Aidan said, “Wow. No, you’re right, that’s very stupid.”

“I know,” Richard moaned. “I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath. “I won’t tell anyone if you want to stop. I mean, I won’t tell anyone no matter what. That you’re transgender. I don’t know if it makes sense to not tell anyone we’re not hooking up anymore. And, well.” He waved at the outer wall of the hotel room, indicating the walkway. “I don’t think I’m gonna convince anyone we weren’t hooking up.”

Aidan let out a deep breath. “Thank god,” he said.

Richard looked over at him as he sat down on the bed next to Richard. “Huh?”

“Trey was worried just now because it would be really stupid to keep fucking someone who was blackmailing me,” Aidan said. “But if you’re not blackmailing me anymore, then it’s way less stupid to keep fucking you.”

Richard frowned, confused but hopeful. “You don’t want to stop?”

“I mean, we just established I enjoy sex with you enough to use it as a weapon against nosy people,” Aidan said. “So I guess the question is, do you want to just keep hooking up, or do you want to go out with me?”

Richard’s mouth fell open. “You would date me? After all this?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Aidan said, “it’s totally about the sex for me. But even when you were blackmailing me, you were, like. Less shitty than you could have been. You know, helping me in and out of my binder and stuff. So why not? You already said you like me.”

“I do,” Richard said. “Fuck, Aidan,” he said, turning to face him and grabbing Aidan’s hands, “I’ll be the best boyfriend you’ve ever had. I swear I’ll be less of a stupid asshole.”

“You’ll be the only boyfriend I’ve ever had,” Aidan said. He could feel himself blushing again. He was used to Richard being handsy and kind of smug about it. He wasn’t used to Richard being earnest. Even at practice, Richard was usually more snarky than sincere. It was disarming, as well as cute.

“Really?” Richard asked. He looked pleased.

“I mean, I had a girlfriend in middle school, if middle school dating even counts,” Aidan said. They hadn’t done more than kiss. Aidan hadn’t been out then–hadn’t really known he was trans beyond vague discomfort with the idea of being a “young woman”–but Melissa talked a lot about how hot butches and cross-dressers were. That had been Aidan’s introduction to the idea that people could play with gender for reasons other than sex. He and Melissa went to a dance once in matching dress shirts and ties.

- The idea of middle school wlw attending a dance in matching suits is very cute. I bet Melissa is also not cishet!

“I feel like if my middle school girlfriend ever found out I said it didn’t, she’d appear out of nowhere and wring my neck,” Richard said. He leaned over, taking one of his hands off Aidan’s and putting it on his jaw. It was surreal, to have Richard kiss him gently like this. Even when he’d thought Aidan was a girl, he had been too horned up to bother being gentle.

Richard's middle school relationship was tsundere-for-tsundere.

It made Aidan perversely turned on. Or maybe he was just used to only having sex with Richard. Either way, he pulled away, then swung his leg over Richard’s lap to straddle him. He stooped down to kiss Richard again.

A little while later, Aidan pulled back just enough to ask, “How long do you think we have before Trey gets back?”

Of course, that was when the lock beeped, and the door scraped open. Aidan slumped in Richard’s lap. Richard murmured, “Not long.”

“Oh, great,” Trey said, closing the door behind him. “So talking about things just made you horny again.”

“It is our god-given right as teenagers to be horny all the time,” Aidan said, craning his neck to see Trey.

“What are you, some kind of homophobe?” Richard asked. “I’m not allowed to make out with my own boyfriend?” Yeah, Aidan already found the hypocrisy endearing instead of obnoxious. Was he that easily swayed by good sex or did he just have bad taste?

“Good lord, this trip has been a nightmare,” Trey said. He walked over to his bed and grabbed his hoodie off of it. “Joey wanted to do a movie night after the pizza got here, so I can give you two hours alone, and if you have sex while I’m in the room after that I’m going to smother you with your pillows.”

“Sounds fair,” Richard said.

“You are a lion among men,” Aidan said to Trey over his shoulder. “A diamond in the rough.”

“You sound like you’re drunk,” Trey said, rolling his eyes. “Is the sex that good?” He shook his head. “Don’t answer that. Just keep it in your pants until the pizza gets here.”

“Thank you!” Aidan climbed out of Richard’s lap, because he didn’t trust either of them if he stayed there. He looked at Richard from beside him. “You should eat dinner before that, then.”

“Yeah,” Richard said, looking back at Aidan. He started blushing again, and Aidan couldn’t imagine why. Then Richard asked, “Will you walk with me?”

“This might actually be worse than hearing you have sex,” Trey muttered.

Aidan laughed. “This is at least partially your fault,” he said, leaning over to grab his shoes.

“You must know that makes it worse,” Trey said.

“Sucks to suck,” Richard said. Yeah, Aidan probably needed to resign himself to the idea he had bad taste.

Still, once they both had their shoes and jackets on, Aidan followed Richard out of the hotel room. Richard hesitated a moment, then reached out for Aidan’s hand. Aidan took it, and they walked through the hotel and down the street to the Taco Bell, holding hands the whole way.

Teen romance can be complicated, and teen romance can be holding hands while you walk to a fast food joint. This was not a story I had trouble ending! It happened sooner than I expected, as you may be able to tell by the fact that it is under 10k words, but I feel good about the tight time-frame everything happens in. We don't need to see the months of having weird transactional sex, we just need to see the effects of it, with both boys being comfortable with each other, and Richard clearly being more into Aidan than Aidan realizes. Once someone else knows about it and starts asking questions, there's no reason to draw it out.

#blackmail boyfriend #fic dvd commentary

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