I should probably make one of them pinned posts for this hiccup kink blog
Here at the top, have some links:
All my writing on this blog.
All of my kink writing on this blog.
All of the one (or two) offs.
My longer hic stories, Poly-techhic, and the stories in the Hagiverse (low-mid fantasy hiccup stuff).
My Ao3. Not everything there is posted here and vice-versa, but there is crossover (lol).
Having said all that, hi, I'm Eli the trans guy and this is my hiccup fetish blog. Here I will be watching, reblogging, and occasionally posting my own writing about hiccups. Said writing will almost all be about girls who like other girls and hiccups, but I'm not opposed to writing about guys or people outside the binary, I just don't tend to do so without prompting.
No interactions from minors, since this whole blog is pretty fuckin' explicit, or at least won't shy away from explicit stuff.
Anyway, under the cut is what we like here (will be edited as needed).
Main Thing: Hiccups!
Hiccups are my fetish. They're central to my experience of sex. So that's what everything around here is gonna be centered on.
Side things: Kinks!
I have a lot of things I like, both related and unrelated to hiccups, so you might see these around. I try to tag extra kinks as I use them. Will be edited and updated as needed.
Actual Sex — Yes I consider this a kink for me: something I like and nice to have, but not always wanted or required.
Bellies — Body focus will be heavily on these. And on a related note,
Stomach noises
Burping — Occasionally fun to have mixed in with/connected to hiccups.
Embarrassment — Oooooh yeah. Pairs very well with my main thing.
Teasing — See above. Not sure this is specific enough though.
Tickling — Hiccups from laughter are so good.
Stuffing — Fun way to cause hiccups.
Inflation — As above, but sillier.
Vore — As above but more absurd. Haven't written much of this yet, but it's definitely possible.
Weight gain? — I'm a little hesitant to put this under kinks, it's more of a theme I guess? Of fat characters having anxiety about their weight and the characters who love them telling them that's stupid? But I wasn't sure where else to note it.
Voyeurism/exhibitionism — I'm including public kink stuff under this.
Various BDSM stuff — My characters may fall into more dominant/submissive roles, tie each other up, and at some point may wind up with an injury or two due to sexy-type stuff.
Furries — I'm just as happy writing furry characters as I am writing human ones.
I'm theoretically open to requests, but extremely bad at writing about things that my muse doesn't pull me into, so I absolutely don't promise responding to them with much, though I may try to do at least a drabble. On a related note, I have very irregular bursts of creative energy and inspiration and not a lot of control over where I put that, so for the most part you'll get what I write when I've written it, and I can't promise any regularity or predictability.
I have written a small hiccup kink thing that there may be more of in the future about my current hyperfixation, so if you want polyamorous lesbian pop stars, feel free to read (though I recommend watching the movie first.)(sadly no canon lesbianism there but a boy can dream.) (Very much chemistry though). Anyway.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
It's time for another unhinged fanfic choice based on the actor I'm currently obsessed with! Description of the story/characters under the cut.
Content: Brief discussion of a dangerously understaffed mental health facility.
You, Me, and the Apöcalypse was a...dramedy series, I guess? Following the announcement that a massive comet will hit the Earth in about a month, mild-mannered bank manager Jamie decides to use the time he has left to search for his wife Läyla, who's been missing for 7 years. It's a complicated quest, involving the revelation that he was adopted and has a twin brother he never knew about.
At this point in the story, a group of international scientists is collaborating on "Operation Saviour" to try and prevent the comet strike, but there are no guarantees. Jamie's just found his birth mother, and he hopes she can lead him to his brother Aríel, who will in turn lead him to Läyla.
Here are our characters:
Dave - Jamie's best friend, who's accompanying him on his search. Although Jamie thinks he's irresponsible and doesn't take things seriously, Dave is also empathetic, optimistic, and fiercely loyal.
Jamie - Tightly wound, set in his ways. Since Läyla disappeared, he's kept his life small, contained, and predictable, so going on a quest to find his missing wife is an enormous change for him.
Mary - Jamie's birth mother. She'd been living in a dilapidated mental health facility (most of the staff stopped coming in after hearing about the comet,) and Jamie and Dave decided to take her with them.
All those apocalypse movies out there, and Jamie was pretty sure not one of them captured the sense of sitting in traffic at the end of the world.
Dave would probably say he shouldn’t complain. After all, at least they had a van this time. True, they’d nicked it from a mental hospital and Jamie had had to drag an unconscious Dave across the car park after he’d been sedated (technically at Jamie’s hand but, Jamie maintained, not his fault.) But the trip down to London had to be better than the trip up to Scotland, because even Dave had struggled to put a positive spin on six days of hitchhiking.
So, van = good. Gridlock? Not so much. Since the announcement about Operation Saviour, things had calmed down a bit, and the government had stepped in to sort out the petrol situation. But the roads were still mad, because there were still loads of people who’d not dutifully trotted back to their nine-to-fives after the announcement—Jamie among them. After all, suppose Saviour didn’t work and the comet still hit? You’d feel like a right tit if you wasted your last days on Earth sitting in an office.
But Jamie wasn’t just chasing thrills and living like no tomorrow. He was on a mission. Läyla was out there somewhere, and with every day that ticked by, Jamie held tighter to the hope that he’d find her.
He had to find her. In case it was the end.
Which was why the traffic was especially bloody annoying. There ought to be a system: dedicated lanes for people on missions while the thrill-chasers made do with whatever was left.
Unfortunately, nobody had set that up, so gridlock it was. Half an hour ago, Dave had hopped out of the van and went on foot to the petrol station up ahead, filling up their cans and grabbing them something to eat. It was bound to save time over pulling off the road into the station and then trying to merge back in.
Jamie could see the petrol station getting close now. It was silly to view it as a sort of trail marker—not like it was a milestone at all. All it would mean was picking up Dave with petrol and food.
But Jamie held onto it, because what else was there? He had to believe that every meter they crept forward was a meter that would bring him closer to Läyla, somehow.
Dave was outside the station, walking along the edge of the curb. Good thing Jamie had thought to tie their two petrol cans to the ends of his belt and sling them round Dave’s neck, otherwise he probably would’ve gotten distracted and set them down somewhere, and somebody would’ve stolen them. But there were the petrol cans hanging over his shoulder, and a plastic bag swung from one of his hands as he held them out for balance. If Dave had bought any sodas, Jamie made a mental note not to let him open them in the van—they were sure to explode.
Jamie tapped on the horn. Once, then twice. No reaction from Dave. Very reluctantly, Jamie tapped out “Shave and a Haircut.”
That did the trick. Dave turned Jamie’s way and caught sight of the van. Grinning, he shouted what looked to Jamie like, “Two bits!!”
Dave sauntered the last 50 meters or so to meet the van, opening his door and walking alongside as he set down his bag and heaved the petrol cans into the back.
“Mate, it was great to get out and stretch my legs!” he enthused. “Did me a world of good. If you ever need to walk for a bit, I can take over driving, and you can just walk next to the van on the side of the road.”
Not likely. Dave was, to put it generously, an inattentive driver. The thought of him behind the wheel in bumper-to-bumper traffic was a headache waiting to happen. Besides, Jamie had stretched his legs plenty during the aforementioned six days of hitchhiking. “I’m good, thanks,” he replied. “Now would you get back in? Shut the door!”
Dave hopped into the van, nearly sitting on their lunch as he pulled the door shut behind him. “The food of travelers!” he announced. “Sausage rolls and crisps.” Setting Jamie’s food on his lap and handing him a bottle of water, he glanced over his shoulder at Mary. “Any, you know, stirring?”
Jamie caught a glimpse of his sleeping birth mum in the rearview mirror and felt a flutter of nerves in his stomach. “No.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” Dave remarked, taking a bite of his sausage roll. “The drugs they’ve got ‘em on back there knocked me out flat, and I got just the one dose. She’s been getting that every day for god-knows-how-long. Probably take time to work it all out of her system.”
“Yeah,” Jamie mumbled in reply. He wasn’t ready to think too hard about Mary yet.
“Tell you what, though,” Dave went on. “Like, okay, we only got one word out of her at the hospital. But maybe that’s just ‘cause they kept her drugged up to her eyeballs. Once she’s more alert, she might be able to tell us more about Aríel!”
Jamie definitely wasn’t ready to think about that. It was hard enough to take it all in as it was: the woman who’d left him in a car park as a baby, who’d kept Aríel and abandoned him, snoring in the backseat of the van. The idea of Mary up and about, lucid and talking? Talking to him? Jamie wasn’t nearly ready for that.
Dave took a swig of his own water, then tore open his packet of crisps. He’d polished off his sausage roll in under two minutes, while Jamie had barely started his. Dave popped a couple crisps in his mouth, washed them down with another drink of water, and plunged his hand back in the packet for more.
“*huck!*” Chewing hastily, Dave swallowed a few more crisps, then hiccupped again. “*herk!*”
“You always eat too fast,” Jamie observed. Dave shrugged, jerking with another hiccup. “Hold your breath.”
“Naw, that’s all-*HIC-ulp!*-all right,” Dave replied. “I think-*herk!*-I’ll just le-EA-ve them be.”
“Right,” Jamie said in a dubious tone. “Why?”
Dave ate a couple more crisps.”I was th-*hic-kk!**thinking about this j-*hup!*-just the other d-- day, actually,” he explained.
“About hiccups,” Jamie said. He raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“Well, not a-*HIC-ulk!*-about hiccups specif-*hic!*-cally,” Dave clarified. He finished the rest of his crisps and wiped his hands on his trousers. “But just-*holk!*-generally, I was th-- thinking. *hic-rrk!*” You know how p-*heek!*-people put a lot of st-*hulk!*-stock in firsts? First k-*hic!*-kiss, first job, fi-*herk!*-rst drink, and so-*HIC-ulp!*-and so on?”
“Yeah,” Jamie replied, frowning. He had no idea where Dave was going with this.
“Well, *huck!* I thought wh-*hup!*-what about lasts?” He settled back in his seat, playing with the necklace he wore with his housekey on it. “Everyb-*hulk!*-body’s got a last-*herk!*-kiss, last job, last dr-*hic!*-drink too. Harder to take-*HIC-ulk!*-note of, since most-*hulp!*-people don’t know wh-*hic-rrk!*-which one their last i-- is gonna be. *huck!* But with th-*hup!*-the comet—barri-*hic!*-ing Saviour, I m-*heek!*-mean—it gives you a-*hulp!*-better idea o-*huck!*-of the timeframe.”
“Right, okay,” Jamie said. “Still not seeing what that has to do with you having hiccups.”
“‘Cause then I-*HIC-ulk!*-I thought, it’s n-- not just the big mo-*holk!*-ments,” Dave told him. “There’s-*hulp!*-a last time for-*herk!*-for everything. *huck!* Last time you g-*holk!*-go for a swi-*hic!*-swim. Last time-*hic-kk!*-you have a stone in yo-*hulp!*-your shoe. Last-*hup!*-time you eat c-*hulk!*-cake.”
“Last time you get the hiccups,” Jamie realized.
Dave gave him a bright smile. “Exactl-*heek!*”
“And that’s something special, is it?” Jamie pressed. “Noteworthy, something to savor?”
“Why n-- not?” Dave said, shrugging. “When you g-*hulp!*-get down to it, *HIC-ulk!* that’s what life i-*hic!*-is, yeah? A series of-*huck!*-moments, big and small a-*huck!*-alike. Might as well appre-*heek!*-ciate them.”
“What is there to ‘appreciate’ about hiccups?” Jamie asked.
“That’s wh-*huck!*-what I get to find ou-OU-t,” Dave replied happily.
Jame sighed. Dave had a point, even if that point meant annoying Jamie when they stuck in a van together. Snores behind him, hiccups to his left: lucky him.
“Fine,” he conceded. “Enjoy your bloody hiccups.”
With a grin, Dave told him, “Will d-*hup!*-do.”
“But if it turns out these aren’t your last ones, this is officially your go,” Jamie said. “If you get the hiccups again in the next 25 days, you’re holding your breath.”
“Yeah, ok-*hic-kk!*-okay,” David said.
As he hiccupped—to his heart’s content, apparently—Dave did his usual van stuff, just with less talking. He played with the air vents, he peered out the window (not that the scenery varied much when you were driving at a crawl,) and he pulled his shirt cuffs over his hands. There was a short stretch where Jamie didn’t hear any hiccups and thought they might have stopped, but when he glanced over at Dave, his head was still jerking back.
“Well?” Jamie asked after a few minutes. “Thoughts, findings?”
“They make a-*huck!*-a lot of different-*hulp!*-noises,” David replied. “More than I’d ever-*herk!*-noticed befo-- before. Like, it’s n-*HIC-ulk!*-not just a ‘hic’ s-*hup!*-sound. If I try, I-*holk!*-can keep them pr-*hic-rrk!*-pretty quiet, but some of-*hulp!*-of them come out quiet witho-OU-t me even trying. *HIC-ulp!*”
He massaged his chest a little with his thumb. “I f-*heek!*-eel them mostly here-*herk!*”, his hand moved a bit lower, more to his sternum, “and-*hic-kk!*-here. They also m-*holk!*-make my head rock-*huck!*-back and my shoulder-- shoulders jump. Oh, and some-*hup!*-times when I talk, the hiccup sor-*holk!*-sort of sounds like th-*huck!*-the word it h-*hic!*-hits on. Like, it almos-*HIC-ulk!*-replaces the syl-- syllable or whatev-*herk!*-r.”
Dave’s face lit up. “Ha! *hulp!* That was one j-*huck!*-just there, did you hear-*hic-rrk!*-it?”
“Er, sure,” Jamie said, although he couldn’t hear anything special. “Glad you’re having fun, I guess.”
“Eh, *hulp!* I dunno about f-*hup!*-fun,” Dave told him. “Just inter-RES-sting is all. I mea-*heek!*-n, I’ve gotten h-*hic!*-hiccups, what, dozen-- dozens of times in-*huck!*-my life? Maybe a-*hulk!*-a hundred or more, *HIC-ulp!* I dunno. But I’ve never-*herk!*-really paid atten-*holk!*-tion to them before. I-*hic!*-it’s kind of n-*heek!*-neat, realizin-*hic-rrk!*-all the little th-- things you’ve never no-*holk!*-noticed.”
“Huh,” Jamie murmured, and he found that he didn’t really have a comeback. What’s more, he wasn’t sure he wanted to have a comeback.
Their chat died away, and as they continued on their agonizingly slow drive, Jamie started paying attention to Dave’s hiccups too. He was right—there were a lot more than just “hic” sounds, and Jamie began to hear the difference between whether Dave had his mouth closed or not.
So when Dave said, “I think they’ve gone,” Jamie nodded in confirmation. He’d not heard any hiccups for a minute or two, and when he’d peeked over at Dave to see if he was just keeping them quiet, Jamie hadn’t noticed any head jerks.
“Yeah.” Jamie glanced at Dave. “Will you miss them?” he joked.
Dave put on a fake laugh. “Go on, think it’s dumb,” he replied. “I know more about what my life was like than I did this morning, so I think it’s cool.”
They were quiet for a moment, then Dave added, “Seventeen minutes, thereabouts.”
“What?” Jamie threw him another glance. “You timed them?”
Dave shrugged. “Looked at the clock when they started. I thought, might as well.” One of his hands sank into his hair. “That’s not so long, is it, seventeen minutes? I wonder how they rated.”
Jamie frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure it’s not the longest I’ve ever had the hiccups,” Dave told him. “Not the shortest, either. But how’d they compare in general? Was that on the short side for me? On the long end? Perfectly average? I don’t know.”
“Hmmm.” As Jamie pondered this, he thought there was something almost wistful about it. “It feels like we should have a moment of silence or something,” he noted. “‘Here lie Dave’s hiccups.’”
“Naw, that’s just life, isn’t it?” Dave replied. “Like I said, a series of moments. Each one goes by, and then it’s gone. If you try and, I dunno, eulogize them all, you’ll get so bogged down with commemorating that you’ll forget to actually live.”
Was that what Jamie had done for the last seven years, forgot to live because he was too busy commemorating his missing wife? Was he doing it now, spending what might be his last days chasing down Läyla instead of the thousands of other things he could be doing? Not much time to focus or hiccups or cake or stones in your shoe when you were on a mission.
“...Last time stuck in traffic?” Jamie mused.
Dave laughed. “I like the optimism, Jamie, but I wouldn’t bet on it,” he said. “Traffic’s probably just gonna be bad from here on out. Talk to me on Comet Day, and we’ll see about crossing that one off the list then.”
“Just our luck, if the comet wipes us all out, we’ll still be queueing at the pearly gates,” James retorted.
“Yeah, maybe,” Dave agreed. He twisted his housekey necklace between his fingers.
Not for the first time, it occurred to Jamie that, for a layabout who played video games at all hours of the day, Dave coped weirdly well with the thought of the world ending. While others panicked and hoarded and clogged up the motorways, Dave was just along for the ride. Jamie thought maybe he could do with a bit more of that in his life, however long he had left of it.
For your consideration:
Someone gets a serious case of the hiccups. Big and loud and, importantly, gulpy. So with each hiccup, they involuntarily swallow a mouthful of air. Hic-gulp, hic-gulp, hic-gulp, over and over, their belly just getting bigger and bigger.
Eventually they manage to chase their hiccups away with some water. But "some" ends up being a lot, and their stomach winds up even rounder, sloshy and gurgly and filled to the absolute brim.
With the help of someone who likes them a whole lot, the character starts getting burped, belly being rubbed and having all of the air pressed out of them in big, wet, gurgly belches that, once they start, they just can't stop. Or at least, they can't until their burps abruptly get smaller, even though they're still pretty bloated, and they realize a pocket of air is somehow trapped inside of them. It takes rubbing, poking, massaging, cajoling, but eventually, that pocket manages to climb up their tummy, through their esophagus, then explode out of their throat and mouth as the loudest burp anyone involved's ever heard. A belch that leaves them gasping and panting for air, whining from the sheer force of it, and flopped back on their chair in exhaustion. A few more rubs get one last, tiny *urp* out of them.
But that *urp* brings a *hip!* after it. Then a *hic!* *Hic!* *HIGGOLP!* and it's all starting over again.
God damn dude, you’re killing it with these!! if you don’t already, you should definitely write some stuff, they’re for sure to pop off!!! I’m always a sucker for people flopping over after a very big burp lol
Sorry for the re-reblog, but it just occurred to me that I should say, "Yeah, I do write stuff!" It's mostly hiccups, so burp enjoyers bear that in mind, but burps come up not infrequently. I only tagged the most burpy ones, those with a specific focus on it along with hiccups, but if you just search the word, you should happen upon the most relevant ones.
Actually, you know what? I went back and tagged the stuff I feel like is relevant with burps and/or burp kink, and if you search just the word, there's probably some more where they're just tangential. It also includes some good shit by not-me people who may be more burp-based. Love you all, similar-kink-havers.
Over and over, a person and their partner, regular as a metronome. Call and response, call and response, in a playful, building pattern of four. The person can't do anything to stop it. And their partner knows it. But they still check, still tease three times, then hit them with the gentle demand. It doesn't really matter though. They hiccup either way.
Laila works on a solution, to more than one issue.
This is the end of "Practice/Experiments." Thanks for reading!
“Are you st-*hic!*-still okay?” Tariq asked.
Laila almost nodded, then remembered they couldn’t see her. “Yeah,” she replied. “Besides, if I wasn’t, you’d be able to hear it.”
“Well, I d-*holk!*-don’t know!” Tariq exclaimed. Her next words were garbled through a mouthful of rice. “Maybe you’re k-*heek!*-keeping them quiet--”
“And why would I do that?” Laila asked, chuckling fondly.
“So I don’t f-*hmmk!*-feel bad that i-*HIC-ulk!*-it didn’t work,” Tariq told her.
Raising her eyebrows, Laila asked, “You think I’d be that nice?”
“Of course you wo-OU-ld be!” Tariq insisted.
Laila laughed. “Pretty sure you’re the only person who would think that.”
“Then may-*HIC-olk!*-maybe I just know y-*hoop!*-you better,” Tariq pointed out.
“Maybe,” Laila conceded with a soft smile.
Tonight, Laila was eating outside the room, sitting with her back to the door. Tariq was inside, and it sounded like they were fairly close—either way, Laila could easily hear him, so they could still talk. And so far, it seemed to be holding steady.
“If I had the hiccups and was keeping them quiet, you’d hear the halt in my words,” Laila noted.
“Oh, right-*hulk!*” Tariq mused.
Letting out a small sigh, Laila chewed on her lip. “But we should test if it really works,” she said.
“Do you want m-*heek!*-me to annoy you?” Tariq asked.
If the door wasn’t enough separation to counteract Tariq’s magic and Laila wound up with the hiccups, it’d be from nervousness, not annoyance.
Laila took a deep breath. She set her bowl on the floor and hugged her knees. “I’ve been thinking,” she began, “about…wishes.”
“Reall-*HIC-ulk!*-really?” Tariq cried, and it sounded like he jumped to their feet. “My w-*hic!*-wish is your-*herk!*-command! What-*HUCK!*-do you want t-*hmmp!*-to wish fo-- or?”
“Whoa, slow down!” Laila instructed. “Take it easy.”
“Ok-*hok!*-kay,” Tariq replied, but Laila could still picture them bouncing on their heels. Tariq’s hiccups seemed to be coming faster now—probably the excitement making them worse.
“I’m not wishing for anything right this second,” Laila explained. “I just wanted to run something by you, an idea for my third wish.”
“Yeah, wh-*hulk!*-what is i-*HIC-olk!*-it?” Tariq asked eagerly.
“R-right,” Laila said. She looked down and cleared her throat. “What would you think if I used my first two wishes for stuff I want a-and then used the last one…to free you?”
For a long moment, Laila couldn’t hear anything through the door but Tariq’s hiccups. “Tariq?” she prompted.
“Y-*hoop!*-you don’t have-*HIC-uck!*-to do tha-- at,” Tariq finally said.
“But I want to,” Laila assured him. “I don’t want you to be stuck in the lamp again for god-knows-how-long, and I don’t want you to be at the mercy of some asshole ever again.”
More quiet, except for the “*herk!*...*HIC-ulk!*...*HOLK!*”
Laila frowned. “Say something,” she urged.
“It…*HIC-uck!* It wouldn't b-*HEEK!*-be like y-*hoop!*-you thi-*hic!*-nk,” Tariq told her.
“What do you mean?” Laila asked. “It wouldn’t work?”
“Onl-- ly sort o-*hup!*-of,” Tariq replied. “I-*hmmk!*-I mean, *HIC-olk!* you could seve-*herk!*-sever my t-*hulk!*-tie to the-*HULK!*-lamp, b-*huck!*-but I-I wou-*hok!*-wouldn’t-*HIC-uck!*-be-*heek!*”
Their hiccups were much worse now, but Tariq didn’t sound excited anymore. She sounded…apprehensive. Maybe even sad.
Dammit, Laila had messed up this whole conversation. Although she wished the door wasn’t between them, she didn’t want to mess up the experiment too. So she’d made Tariq unhappy, and she couldn’t even squeeze their hand or put her arm around him.
“You wouldn’t be what?” Laila asked. “Not a genie anymore? You’d be, like, human?” She hadn’t thought about that. Tariq was over 3500 years old. If he became mortal, the time they had left would probably feel like a blink to them.
“N-*holk!*-no,” Tariq said. “*HIC-ulk!* I wouldn-*hmmp!*-wouldn’t be. *HERK!* I w-*hulk!*-wouldn’t b-*heek!*-be anyth-*hic!*-thing.”
Laila was vaguely aware of her mouth falling open. “Y-you mean you’d die?”
“It-HIC-olk!*-it’s not r-*hip!*-really dyin-- dying,” Tariq clarified. “*huck!* It-*hmmk!*-wouldn’t hur-*herk!*-hurt. *HULK!*...*HIC-uck!* Ooh…” Hearing the wince in their voice, Laila wondered if their hiccups were getting painful.
“I w-*HMMK-mmp!*-would just st-*hok!*-stop,” Tariq went on. “Sn-*HUCK!*-snuffed ou-- out, *HIC-olk!* like a-*hup!*-a candl-*hulk!*”
For a second, all Laila could do was bury her face in her knees. But she reminded herself not to let her stupid feelings outweigh Tariq’s, not when those feelings were about him.
“Tariq, th…that’s horrible,” Laila said. “So if I tried to free you, y-you just cease to exist?”
“Y-*holk!*-yeah,” Tariq admitted. “Ge-*heek!*-genies grant w-*HIC!*-wishes, *HIC-ulk!* so if w-*hmmk!*-we can’t do th-*huck!*-that, we d-*hok!*-don’t get t-*hoop!*-to be any-*HIC-olk!*-anymore.”
It almost felt too big to fathom, too much for Laila to take in. “Who the fuck decided that?” she demanded. “Can we complain? How many other genies do you know? Maybe if we get a bunch of you together, we could—w-we…”
They could what? Stage a protest of the heavens? Strongarm whatever celestial force created this horrific rule and make them change their mind? Even as she was saying it, it felt so dumb that Laila’s words just dried up.
“It’s-*HIC-uck!*-oka--” Tariq assured her. “Don’t-*HULK!*-don’t be sa-*hmmp!*-sad.”
The state of Tariq’s hiccups told Laila it wasn’t the least bit okay. But if a genie with so much magic was powerless to break her chains, what could a measly little human do?
You’ll think of something, Tariq had told her. You’re good at that.
And Laila had, hadn’t she? Sitting on opposite sides of the door did work to keep Tariq’s hiccups from spreading, otherwise she definitely would’ve gotten the hiccups over this conversation.
So if she could find a solution for that, why not this?
“G-give me a minute,” Laila said. “Try and cure your hiccups.”
“All-*holk!*-right,” Tariq replied, and Laila heard him bounding across the room.
Unsurprisingly, these hiccups proved tricky to cure—not to mention, Tariq was used to having an assist from Laila on some of their methods, holding her cup while she drank from the wrong side or standing on their head.
All told, it was probably closer to fifteen minutes before there was quiet on the other side of the door. “Okay, they’re gone,” Tariq announced, rushing back over toward Laila. “And you never got them! Having the door between us worked! I like that better than you sitting with your back to me and ignoring me, because this way we can still talk. I knew you could do it! You’re amaz—”
And that was as far as Tariq got, because then Laila opened the door and pulled them into a tight hug. “Oh,” Tariq said, sounding a little confused but content. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Laila said back. She blinked back a few tears.
When she broke the hug, Laila continued, “So here’s what I’m thinking. What if I just make two wishes?”
With a frown, Tariq chewed on his thumbnail. “But you get three.”
“I know,” Laila replied. “If I only use two, though, I’ll still be your master. And I wouldn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to do. We could just be…you and me.”
“You and me…” Tariq echoed in a thoughtful murmur.
“For as long as you want,” Laila clarified hastily. “Not making you do anything you don’t want to do includes staying. I…” Looking down, she threaded her fingers together. “Okay, let me back up a little. I would make a third wish, but only when you’re ready for me to do it. If you want to leave, or if I’m getting too old, o-or if there was someone else you wanted to be your master. I’d make my third wish, then I’d give the lamp straight over to somebody you chose, or if you didn’t have anyone in mind, I’d give it to someone I know would be good to you.”
Slowly, Laila raised her head to look at Tariq. “But you can stay with me as long as you want,” she said. “I know it’s not perfect—it’s what I could come up with for now, the most freedom I can give you. If we figure out something else, a real way around that awful candle-snuffing thing, then we can do that. Obviously.”
Now it was Tariq’s turn to throw her arms around Laila. “I love you so much,” they said, speaking the words in a way that made Laila feel every inch of them.
Finally letting herself smile a little, Laila hugged the genie back. Although her throat felt tight with emotion, she managed to reply, “...Love you too.”
Sita is forced to admit that her brother was right--she hates that.
Content: Embarrassment about hiccups. Intense shyness. Nonsexual nudity (bathing.)
Sita regarded the tub in front of her with apprehension. She’d asked her handmaiden Noor to draw a bath for her that day after lunch. Noor only worked half a day on Thursdays, so this was the last thing she’d done before leaving for her afternoon off. “I’ll find Amira before I go, tell her to come up in an hour and empty the tub for you,” she told Sita.
“Oh, there’s no need,” Sita had assured her. “I’ve kept you long enough already. You go on. I’ll tell Amira myself.”
With a respectful dip of her head, Noor had said, “Thanks, princess,” giving Sita’s hands an affectionate squeeze on her way out the door.
With no one coming to empty the tub, Sita had left the water to cool down for a few hours, then snuck a block of ice from the kitchens to let it get properly cold.
She wasn’t about to experiment with hearth peppers like Aasif. But the sudden jolt of getting into cold water on a hot day? Sita knew from past experience that that always gave her the hiccups.
After Aasif needled her about it, Sita had spent the rest of the day trying to steadfastly ignore the issue. Even if there was nothing they could do to prevent Tariq’s curse from taking effect—and she had to admit, however begrudgingly, that it wouldn’t be kind to refrain from serving food when Laila and Tariq came to the palace—she wanted to believe she could keep herself from catching his hiccups if she was just diligent and careful enough.
Aasif was right, though (Sita wasn’t looking forward to having to admit that.) No plan could ever be entirely foolproof, and eventually, she was bound to slip up. Sita considered the fact that Tariq was Aasif’s paramour, not hers, so really, when you thought about it, why couldn’t she just spend time with Laila while Aasif spent time with Tariq? If they were going to eat, there was no rule that said they all had to eat together.
But that wouldn’t be kind either. Tariq seemed like a lovely person, so Sita didn’t want to be unkind to them. And even more than that, it was clear that Tariq and Laila meant the world to each other. Surely anyone who met them would be able to see that.
“Do y-*hmmp!*-you ever-*herk!*-get the f-*hup!*--*ulk!*-the feeling-*hmmk!*-they’re keeping s-*huck!*-something from u-- us?” Aasif had asked earlier that day, during his daily hiccup “practice.”
Sita had nodded softly. “I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about them,” she admitted. “Do you think they might be in some kind of trouble?”
“I’m n-*ulk!*-not sur-*herk!*” Aasif had replied with a shrug. “I can’t de-CI-ide if I w-*hup!*-want to ask-*hmmk!*-Tariq abou-*hup!*-out it.”
“You’d have better luck with it than I would,” Sita had observed. “You can finesse things so much better than I can, and—” she glanced down, picking at her nails, “—and Tariq’s much likelier to open up than Laila.”
Sita liked Laila, a lot, but she couldn’t shake the notion that the smart, capable, stunning young woman was holding some major part of herself back. What was it? What did she not want to share with Sita?
But now, standing in front of the tub, Sita could admit that she sometimes held back as well. She retreated into her shyness, because withdrawing felt safer than being awkward or putting her anxieties on display for someone to see.
Sita wasn’t as confident as Laila, she knew that. She could only dream of carrying herself the way Laila did. Still, she wanted to be a good hostess for Tariq, and she wanted to show Laila that her friend was welcome in the palace, that Sita didn’t shy away from the effects of their curse—even if she really did, a little.
And unfortunately, that meant Aasif was right: Sita needed to practice.
The water ought to be good and cold by now. Sita had even spent a few minutes outside on her balcony, letting the sun beat down on her to heighten the contrast in temperature. With a hasty air that suggested she knew she’d back out if she didn’t do it right this minute, Sita undressed and plunged herself into the tub.
“Ohhhhhh!” she cried as the sudden shock of the cold water hit her body. The sweat from the day’s heat was still on her face, but she could feel the goosebumps raising along her skin.
And with that…“*hic-uck!*”
The hiccup sounded loud in her empty bedroom, and the water rippled a little as Sita’s body jerked with it. When a second “*hic-mmp!*” hit her, Sita instinctively snapped her mouth shut, pressing her lips tightly together.
Although she was shivering from the cold, Sita resisted the urge to climb out the tub. She needed to make sure she really had them first. “*hmmk!*” She thought she probably did—Sita rarely hiccupped unless she actually had th-“*hmmk-mmp!*”-the hiccups—but she didn’t want to get out of the water too quickly and realize it had been-“*hic!*”-a waste.
“*hmmk-mmp!*...*hmmk-mmk!*...*heek!*”
As that louder hiccup snuck out of her, Sita covered her mouth and quickly jerked with another muffled “*hmmk-mmp!*” All right, that was good enough for her.
It was getting hard for Sita to keep her mouth closed when her teeth were beginning to chatter. So as she rose from the tub, a “*hip!*” and a “*hic-mmk!*” escaped her. And even though she was alone and they weren’t that loud, Sita felt her face flushing, despite her continued shivers.
“*hic-uck!*” The strong hiccup came right as she was lifting her leg out of the tub—Sita nearly lost her balance and fell back in. They might not have been very loud, but there was quite a bit of force between them. Her chest bounced with each one, and her soft stomach popped out and back in.
Sita knew the day was hot enough that she’d warm up quickly outside of the tub, but for the moment, her dress seemed too thin for her chattering teeth and goosebumpy arms. After grabbing a towel and giving it a cursory run over her body, she slipped into bed and pulled the blankets for her head, still undressed.
For a minute, she just lay there, naked and hiccupping and feeling silly. What was she doing? Sita had far less experience with dating than her brother did, and most of that had been arranged by her parents. She’d never done something as absurd as intentionally giving herself the hiccups for the sake of an attractive woman or man.
It suddenly struck Sita that she might like Laila even more than she thought.
“*hic-uck!*” Giving a soft whine, Sita stuffed the corner of her blanket in her mouth. All right, it was silly, she knew that, and she was making it even more so by hiding in her bed when no one was even here. Deciding that she was sufficiently warmed up now, she (reluctantly) poked her head out under the blanket.
Her hiccups really were quite hard, strong “*hmmk-mmps!*” and “*heeks!*” A bad case, Sita thought. Once she’d made a good effort to get accustomed to them, she hoped she’d be able to get rid of them—she knew Aasif had sometimes overdone it with his attempts and wound up with more stubborn hiccups than he’d bargained for.
Still reluctant but telling herself she was being ridiculous, Sita got out of bed and walked across the room to the chair where she’d discarded her dress and undergarments. All the while, she kept on hiccupping, feeling the jiggle of her breasts and the pooch of her stomach. With a hard “*hic-mmp!*”, Sita picked up her dress. A “*hip!*” hit her as she was pulling it back on, shortly followed by a “*hmmk-mmk!*”
Internally, Sita was urging herself to grab the pitcher of water she’d set out on the desk in readiness. Although she was alone, she couldn’t stop picturing someone bursting into the room. (Okay, Aasif was very right—if she was going to manage having the hiccups in front of Laila without having to hide her face, Sita needed a lot of practice.)
But she pushed through the urge, forced herself not to jump immediately to curing herself. “*hic-uck!*” Clearing her throat, Sita rubbed the backs of her fingers across her lips, then tried to distract herself from the hiccups by meticulously putting on all the jewelry she’d left off before getting in the tub.
It sort of helped. Sita didn’t focus so much on the “*mmps!*” and “*hic-mmks!*” while she was selecting her rings and rhythmically sliding bracelets onto her wrists, although she thought it best not to risk earrings while she was hiccupping. There was something almost soothing in the routine of it, in the cool touch of the metal on her hands and forearms. She’d have to keep that in mind. If she wound up getting the hiccups while she was with Laila, she could remove her jewelry and put it back on to keep her from feeling too anxious.
“*huck!*” Sita lay a hand across her bouncing chest. “*hic-mmk!*”
A loud knock at the door startled her, though evidently not enough to cure her hiccups. “*hmmk-mmp!*” Sita covered her mouth with both hands.
“Sita, are you in there?” Aasif called from the other side of the door.
Sita squeezed her eyes closed for a moment as her body rocked with stifled hiccups. This wasn’t far off from the exact scenario she’d been dreading, but at least it was the one person who would understand. That made it slightly less awful.
“Hello?” Aasif said. “Mother was wondering if you wanted to join me for the council meeting next week. She thought it’d be good practice for you.”
Ugh. Sita was lucky that, as the oldest, Aasif was expected to be the one to inherit their mother’s throne someday. There was talk that Sita might become some sort of advisor for him, so their mother made regular offers for her to take part in the same types of royal training Aasif received. Sita liked reading maps or learning more about Iqara’s history with the neighboring kingdoms, but a council meeting? The thought made her shudder—far too many people, all talking over one another and all insisting that they were right.
After her next muffled “*hmmk-mmk!*”, Sita replied, “No thank you!”
Aasif laughed, and Sita heard him opening the door. “I told her you wouldn’t go for it,” he remarked, “but she seemed to think I could convince y—”
Stepping into the room, he cut himself off as he took in the sight of Sita, at her vanity table with her hands clamped over her mouth. “Looks like my advice is worth something after all,” he observed. “Mother will be so pleased.”
“Don’t tell h-*hic-mmp!*-her about this!” Sita urged. Her cheeks were flushing, she could feel it—she pressed her hands to them.
“Oh, come on, I’m just teasing you,” Aasif assured her. “It’s no fun when you actually get worried over it.”
“*heek!*” Bringing her fingers to her lips, Sita looked away from her brother. “I-I don’t kn-*hic-mmk!*-how you could stand those awfu-*huckl*-awful ones you got from th-*hmmk-mmp!*-the hearth peppers at first,” she admitted. “*hic-uck!* Ugh.” She made a face. “These-*hip!*-are plenty bad enough f-- for me, and they’re not ne-*heek-mmp!*-nearly as loud or as-*hmmk-mmk!*-as fast as yours w-*hmmp!*-were.”
“Plus your mouth isn’t on fire,” Aasif pointed out. He sauntered over to Sita and rested his elbow on the back of her chair.
As she groaned through another hiccup, Sita covered her face. “How long have you had them?” Aasif asked.
“About fif-*hmmk!*-fifteen minutes,” Sita replied, both her words and her hiccups muffled behind her hands.
“I’d say that’s a solid length for your first attempt,” Aasif noted. “Water?” Nodding, Sita took one hand away from her face to gesture toward the pitcher on her desk.
While Aasif crossed to the desk and filled her goblet, Sita slowly lowered her other hand, resting both in her lap. “Look on the bright side,” Aasif went on. “Laila will be very impressed.”
Sita’s eyes widened as he brought her the water. “D-*hic-uck!*-don’t tell her ei-*hmmk-mmp!*-either!” she protested. “Or Tari-*heek!*-Tariq.”
Aasif shook his head with a slight tsk. “You’re too easy,” he scolded, pressing the goblet into her hands. “Now drink.”
Sita raised the goblet to her lips, and she realized, in his own unserious way, Aasif had a point. She was definitely never going to tell Laila about this, but Sita had accomplished something today. Even if it was ridiculous, that didn’t change the fact that it had been really difficult for her. She almost felt proud of herself for getting through it.
If she was through it…. Sita drank the last few swallows of water, then waited, clutching onto the goblet. Finally, she breathed a sigh of relief. “I think they’re gone.”
“Well done,” Aasif said with a chuckle. “Who knows? After this, attending a council meeting might feel like a breeze!”
Rolling her eyes at him, Sita answered, “Don’t count on it.”
Aasif thinks he's starting to get the hang of this--sort of.
Content: Discomfort from spicy food. Embarrassment about hiccups.
Sita made it clear that she thought Aasif was acting crazy, but over the next several days, he kept experimenting with hearth peppers, and after the first couple tries, he was getting the hang of it.
“All right, here goes,” Aasif announced to Sita, who watched with an expression somewhere between concern and amusement. She had both milk and water at the ready for him.
He cut a sliver off the hearth pepper that was just big enough. At Sita’s suggestion, Aasif had taken to wrapping his small bites of pepper in a scrap of flatbread, to help dampen the heat a little as he swallowed it. “It’s almost like taking medicine,” he observed.
“Strange medicine, that gives you hiccups,” Sita replied.
“If it works, it works,” Aasif told her. He gulped down the bread-wrapped bit of pepper. It bypassed the spice on his tongue, but it hit him halfway down, the heat blooming in his chest. “Ooh!” he winced. Tapping his chest with his fist, his first “*herk!*” came quickly.
“Milk?” Sita suggested. Aasif nodded, making an uncomfortable face, and she pushed a goblet toward him.
Aasif took a few thirsty gulps of milk and was rewarded, not just with a slight lessening of the heat, but with a “*hmmp!*--*ulk!*” He drank another big swallow. “*hup!*”
They’d learned that it was much “safer,” as it were, to take a tiny bite of hearth pepper that was just enough to start hiccupping. From there, Aasif could just generally coax them into a full case by drinking untidily, large swallows that gulped down a bit of air along with the water or milk.
He’d tried that on its own a few times, hoping he might be able to cut out the hearth pepper altogether. But no matter how inattentively Aasif drank, he couldn’t manage to get hiccups that way. If he had the hearth pepper to start him off, though, he found he could rely on milk or water to help the rest along.
Either way, it was much better than trying to gauge the perfectly-sized bite of pepper to give him a good case of the hiccups. It turned out there was a really fine line between enough to hiccup a little and enough to hiccup far too much. And when Aasif was hiccupping too hard or fast to drink at all, the heat in his throat, chest, and stomach could feel unbearable.
By the time he’d drunk the full goblet of milk, Aasif had given himself a case that was pretty close to what his natural hiccups felt like. “All ri-- right, that’s-*hup!*-done it-*hmmp!*” he told Sita.
“Tariq will be so impressed,” she teased.
“Hey, *hmmk!* I’m wor-*herk!*-king on solu-*hup!*-solutions,” Aasif countered. “I don’t-*ulk!*-see what you’re-*hmmp!*-doing abou-*huck!*-about it.”
“I’m stopping you from burning holes in your stomach,” Sita noted.
“Eh, *hup!* fair poin-- nt,” Aasif conceded. He poured himself some more milk, sipping it slowly this time to cool his throat.
“Personally, I think you’re too quick to resign yourself to this,” Sita said. “There are other alternatives.”
“You h-*herk!*-heard Tari-*hmmk!*-iq,” Aasif replied. “They-*huck!*-don’t want t-*hmmp!*-to go to D-*ulk!*-Dina with i-- it.”
“You could try harder to convince them,” Sita retorted.
Aasif shook his head. “He w-*hup!*-was scared,” he insisted. “*hmmk!*--*herk!* I don’t kn-*huck!*-know what sor-*herk!*-sort of hi-IST-tory they have w-*hup!*-with sorcer-*herk!*-ers, but I d-- don’t want to p-*ulk!*-push him.”
Sita sighed, frowning. “I know they’ve already been cursed,” she admitted, “but it’s foolish to be afraid of it. Magic is just a tool—like any other, it can be used for good or bad.”
At a “*HUCK!*” that was louder than he’d expected, Aasif cleared his throat self-consciously, brushing his knuckles across his mouth. “Sorce-- sorcerers-*herk!*-are off th-*hup!*-the table,” he insisted.
“We could just not eat,” Sita pointed out. “That seems to be when Tariq’s curse is most likely to get set off.” With a bemused smile, she added, “The way he eats, I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“B-*huck!*-but that’s exa-ACT-tly why we c-*huck!*-can’t depri-- ive him,” Aasif argued. With a self-deprecating smile, he noted, “I’m pr-*hmmk!*-pretty sure they li-*ulk!*-like food mor-*herk!*-than they like-*hup!*-me.” Letting out another hard “*herk!*”, he shook his head. “We j-*huck!*-just have t-*hmmp!*-to get used-*hup!*-to it.”
“Well, no one can say you’re not devoted,” Sita observed. “If you tell Tariq about this, I’m sure they’ll appreciate everything you’ve done to adjust to his curse.”
“I’m sur-*herk!*-sure she w-*huck!*-would,” Aasif agreed. He mused on Tariq’s enthusiasm, which was nearly as contagious as their hiccups.
“Well the-*hmmp!*-then, how ab-*ulk!*-bout you?” Aasif asked his sister. “You mi-- ight want to co-*huck!*-consider-*herk!*-prepari-- ing your-*hup!*-self too.”
Sita raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. “Because it looks like so much fun when you do it?”
“I’m s-*hmmk!*-serious, *huck!* Sita,” Aasif told her. “I kn-*ulk!*-know you. You get-*hup!*-even mor-*herk!*-embarra-ASS-ed about them-*huck!*-than I d-- do. *herk!*--*hup!* What do y-*hmmp!*-you plan o-*huck!*-on doing th-*hup!*-the next time-*hmmk!*-you get the hi-ICC-cups in front o-*huck!*-of Laila?”
“I plan on not doing that, actually,” Sita informed him.
Aasif frowned. “I t-*ulk!*-I told you—”
“Yes, I heard you,” Sita replied. “No help from Dina, no taking the very rational step of simply not serving food when they come over. We’ll need to deal with Tariq’s curse, I understand that. But just because they get the hiccups doesn’t mean I have to.”
Crossing his arms as he jerked with an “*ulk!*”, Aasif asked, “And how d-*hup!*-do you th-*hmmk!*-think you’ll ma-AN-age that?”
“Once Tariq has the hiccups, I just need to be careful,” Sita explained. She started counting off on her fingers. “No eating or drinking, no talking too quickly, no laughing, no letting myself get too excited.”
Aasif laughed, bringing on a strong “*ulk!**herk!*--*HUP!*” that he felt in his chest. As he made a face and rubbed it, Sita gave him a what did I tell you? expression. Aasif took a few seconds to breathe slowly, making sure his hiccups had calmed back down before he said, “Well, th-*hmmk!*-that sounds like f-*hup!*-fun. No w-*huck!*-wonder Laila-*ulk!*-likes you.”
I just don’t want to take any chances,” Sita told him.
“Look, *hup!* Sita,” Aasif replied, “it’s-*huck!*-a very impr-*herk!*-impressive-*hmmk!*-list. It might eve-*hup!*-even work for-*herk!*-you most o-*huck!*-of the time. *hmmk!*--*herk!* But you know wh-*hup!*-what it can’t do-- oo? *ulk!* Work all-*huck!*-the time. Soone-*herk!*-er or later, *hmmp!* one of your safe-*hup!*-guards will fa-*ulk!*-fall through, *herk!* and you’ll ge-*hmmk!*-get the hiccups. What ar-*herk!*-are you going t-- to do the-*hmmp!*-then?”
“I won’t,” Sita insisted, although Aasif knew what it sounded like when uncertainty crept into his sister’s voice.
Aasif leaned over to pat Sita on the shoulder. “Think a-*huck!*-about it--” he advised. Rising to his feet, he forced a small smile. “All-*ulk!*-right, I-*hup!*-I’m going,” he said. “Wish m-*hmmp!*-me luck.”
“Good luck,” Sita replied.
Yesterday was the first time Aasif had braved leaving his room with the hiccups, although he hadn’t been too brave about it. He couldn’t bring himself to let his lips part, instead muffling them as best he could. He walked around for about ten minutes, but while he passed by numerous servants, he doubted any of them had even noticed his hiccups.
This time, Aasif was determined to push himself further. It was one thing to get more accustomed to having the hiccups, but it wouldn’t do him much good if he still chafed at having them around other people.
Stepping out into the hall, Aasif brushed his knuckles self-consciously across his mouth. Instinctively, he muffled his first few hiccups. No, that won’t do, he told himself. Come on now—don’t be a coward.
Breathing as evenly as he could between his hiccups, Aasif forced himself to relax his jaw. While he didn’t go so far as to open his mouth, he wasn’t clamping it so tightly, and his hiccups, though still muffled, were audible. “*hmmp!*...*hmmp!*...*llk!*--*hmmk!*”
Aasif breathed slowly through his nose. He could do this.
Hiccupping every few seconds, Aasif began to walk down the hall. Although he knew they were still relatively quiet, he couldn’t stop imagining that they were echoing off the walls.
When he saw Jamilah coming around the corner, Aasif had to fight the urge to clamp his mouth again. She was carrying a bundle of laundry, and as she saw him approaching, she stepped aside, backing against the wall to let him pass.
“Good day, my prince,” she said softly with a duck of her head.
Ugh, damnit, Aasif couldn’t get himself to speak. As a “*hmmk!*” made his head snap back, he managed a friendly smile and a nod of acknowledgement. “*hmmp!*”
Raising his head again, Aasif saw an uncertain look on Jamilah’s face. “Is…is everything all right, your highness?” she asked.
It took all of Aasif’s effort not to grimace. After he’d jerked with his next “*hmmp!*”, he hastily replied, “Yes.”
Jamilah frowned. “...A-are you sure?”
Again waiting for a hiccup to pass, Aasif told her, “Yes, I’m fine-*ulk!*” He couldn’t hold back the grimace this time.
Aasif reminded himself that this was what he wanted. He needed to practice talking to someone when he had the hiccups, ideally without wishing the ground would open up and swallow him.
So, with a sigh, Aasif managed to say, “I’m a-*hmmp!*-all right, *hmmk!* really. It’s j-*hup!*-just these damn-*hmmp!*-damned hiccu-UP-ps.” He looked away, clearing his throat.
When Aasif risked another glance at Jamilah, he found the servant standing with her eyes lowered respectfully to the ground. “Would you like me to fetch you some water, your highness?” she asked in a timid voice.
“No, tha-*hmmp!*--*hup!* That’s all right,” Aasif replied. “*hmmk!* Thank y-- you, though-*ulk!*” Wincing, he added, “Excus-*hmmp!*-me.”
“Not at all,” Jamilah assured him. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
Aasif took a breath. “They’re rathe-*herk!*-stubborn, *hmmp!* I’m afrai-*mmp!*-afraid,” he said. As far as he knew, that wasn’t true, but it was much simpler than saying he wasn’t trying to get rid of them.
“Really?” Jamilah looked up at him. “Should I fetch the physician? Or perhaps the sorceress has a remedy for—”
“N-- no, please,” Aasif rushed to reply. “You-*huck!*-don’t need t-*hmmp!*-to trouble your-*herk!*-self about it. *hmmk!*” He mustered up what he hoped was less of a wince and more of an encouraging smile. “They’re a-*ulk!*-a little annoy-*mmp!*-annoying, *hup!* that’s all. I-*hmmk!*-I’m sur-*herk!*-they’ll go a-*huck!*-away soon enou-- enough.”
“If you’re sure…” Jamilah murmured hesitantly.
Aasif nodded. “Ver-*hmmp!*-very sure,” he promised her. “*huck!*--*hmmp!* Don’t let m-*ulk!*-me keep you, *hmmk!* really.”
Jamilah bowed her head again. “Of course, my prince,” she said. “I hope your, um…your affliction passes quickly.”
Although it was small, Aasif’s smile this time was genuine. “Thank-*hmmk!*-you,” he said. “G- good day.”
“Good day,” Jamilah echoed. She continued on down the hall.
For a minute, Aasif stood watching her go. Once Jamilah disappeared around another corner, he let out a long sigh that was interrupted by a “*HERK!*”
He clapped a hand over his mouth—he couldn’t help it.
Deciding he’d given himself enough practice for today, Aasif made his way back to his bedroom and the water that Sita had left waiting for him.
Me: Okay, I've gotten permission to juke around my writer's block, so what shall I do? Get back to the story I've started with the cute hiccuping polyamorous girls?
Me: Wait, what am I doing? What am I—what is this—AAAARGH! THE MUSE TAKES ME!
*Rapidly starts typing hiccup porn about a random failwoman and the eldritch horror she's in a situationship with*
I genuinely had a lot of trouble figuring out how to tag this thing, so don't be afraid to skip or bail if it isn't working for you.
<Melody. What are those noises you're making?>
Melody sighed as she closed the door to her apartment behind her, though she was interrupted by an airy *huk!* that made her cough. Her usually pale face was flushed red even though it was perfectly temperate out. She shook the rain off of her barely functional umbrella and put up her coat, her stringy brown hair drenched enough to force down its usual frizz. "Learner. *HMK* Not one to mince wo–*huk*–words, are you?"
<Never, although you seem to be at the moment.> A voice that wasn't a voice hummed inside Melody's skull in a way that would set most people's teeth on edge. At this point, Melody was used to it. She stifled another sigh and more jerky noises. Frankly though, she shouldn't have been complaining. As far as roommates went, Learner certainly could have been worse. Sure, it was a little clingy and didn't have a great understanding of boundaries, but it kept to its own space, it never made messes, and its mere presence made the property values go down enough that her rent had decreased rapidly and significantly.
And as far as beings unknown and unknowable by all mankind went, Learner was probably one of the best she could have gotten.
What exactly the fuck the creature that now inhabited Melody's apartment was was unclear. It had failed to communicate that to her in any way she could understand, and after enough frustration, the two of them gave up on trying. For now, Learner was whatever the hell a poorly drawn pentagram, drunkenly slurred Latin chanting, and a PDF of the Necronomicon summoned, and that was enough for practical purposes. It was trapped in Melody's bedroom, resulting in her being exiled to her own couch for the past few months, but Learner only seemed mildly annoyed by this inconvenience as long as Melody told it about the goings-on of the human world. True to the name it had given itself when she asked for one, Learner was endlessly curious about the plane that it had been summoned to, asking all sorts of probing questions, many of which Melody was absolutely incapable of answering. She'd given it a phone with which to google things, and that seemed to help, but she made absolutely certain to turn on parental controls first. The last thing she could imagine anyone needing was an eldritch horror radicalized on 4chan. Still, sometimes she found it best to answer questions directly, even when she didn't want to. And right now she really didn't want to. "I ha–*uk* have the hiccups, Le–*urk*–earner."
<The hiccups...> Its "voice" tickled Melody's brain in a way she had become shockingly accustomed to. There was a pause that usually meant Learner was using its phone for something, and after about the right amount of time, it hummed through her synapses. <I see. A "spasm". You creatures have so little control of your bodies.>
"Says the th–*ingk* currently trapped in a slu–*hup* slumlord ap---partment in bumf–*UK* nowhere."
Learner sent a wave of mild irritation through her mind, and Melody chuckled between her hiccups. Her human brain grasped at whatever it could to conceptualize the way that Learner communicated, and she'd come to interpret this gesture from it as the equivalent of blowing a raspberry at her. <Unimportant details. Whataboutism.>
"I regr---gret teaching you that word and *huk* concept."
<And you as a species don't even know what causes you to develop such a response? Absolutely fascinating. I can't imagine groping around so sightlessly with regard to my own form.>
"Well I ca–*UK* can't imagine any circu–*hum*–stance where I want to hear yo–*HOUP* use the word 'gro–*OHP*–ing'. *HMK* Fuck..." Melody rubbed her chest. "Talking's mak–*UK* making them wo–*HURK*–orse."
<Perhaps you should avail yourself of one of these many unconfirmed remedies.>
"The last time I 'av–*HUP* availed myself' of we–*HEEK* weird folk bullshit I *HUK-up* nnf, ended up with a non-eucl–*UCK*–euclidian bedroom."
<Surely you don't anticipate accidentally summoning something from the muscles in your torso.>
"Learner, I ha–*UK* have no idea wha–*HUP*–at to expect anymore these---days. Mmf. *HMK-mmh*."
<Ah. You seem to be in "a mood".> Well, that was one way to put it. <I suppose a request to examine your physiology would be ill-received.> Melody's face went bright red, and she knew from the bubbles of surprise that rose up in her brain that Learner had noticed that. <...or would it? You seem to be displaying some arousal, Melody.>
Why why why had Melody thought it was a good idea to actually give the being from another dimension the sex talk when it asked how humans were made? Ever since it had been just as...innocently curious about sex and sexuality as it was about everything else. It didn't help that, while Learner was physically trapped in the bedroom, its perceptions did go beyond it, something that Melody only found out after she'd given up and masturbated on her couch more than once when she realized that this situation was a long-term issue. It didn't seem offended or taken aback by that, but it had taken Melody a while to give up again and accept that jerking off in front of an eldritch voyeur was a part of her life now. She had hoped, probably in vain, that she would never have to explain what she was actually jerking off to though. And while Learner obeyed the ironclad rule she'd set about not looking at her phone or intentionally reading her mind, it was a perceptive whatever-the-fuck-it-was, and it seemed now that she was on the wrong end of that attention to detail.
<I understand that some of these symptoms can also be caused by fear. But I don't believe the flushed face or dilated pupils are typical of that. And I did become quite acquainted with your fear response in the first few days after we met.> Melody could feel Learner's presence radiating out from her bedroom door, inquisitive intangible tendrils of thought and sensation licking at her skin from behind as she pointlessly faced away from it. <Is your arousal related to this, Melody? These hiccups?>
Now this was one of the problems with her roommate. It did use language to communicate somewhat, but more often Melody's head was filled with concepts as it spoke. And right now, when it talked about hiccups, her mind filled with more than just the onomatopoeic word, but the physical sensation of hiccuping; the sound and the visual stimuli, the jolt in her stomach, the jerk of her head, the...the embarrassed flush on her face. "Would there e–*HEEK* even be a point to den–*UK* denying it? *HICCOLP!* oof!"
<No. But my googling didn't mention they caused arousal.>
"They don't. *mmk.* Not for most pe–*heep* people."
She felt Learner thinking, her own brain providing her with an image of pursed lips and gears turning. <I am studying an outlier. An abnormal human being.>
"Hey, if you m---manage to find and stu–*HUK* study a normal human be–*HEEK*–ing, I'll be fucking am---mazed, pal."
It sighed all around her with the sensation of wind that wasn't air, yet with strangely familiar emotions. Not emotions Melody had a word for, but emotions she knew. <What I wouldn't give for an increase in sample size. But still. I'm more than happy to make do with what I have.> The fact that this abomination had both learned how to and begun flirting with Melody was something she still hadn't fully come to grips with. <Would you care to share your thoughts about my potentially examining you?>
"No, not pa–*URK* particu–*HOOP*–guh! ...*HMNK!* P-particularly." After taking in a few gulps of air, Melody grumbled. "But I'm ab–*up* about to strip out of the–*HEEK* these wet clothes an–*eep*–way, so might as we–*CUP!* well let you get a l---look in."
<Thank you.> Melody could feel Learner's smile in her soul, which was not nearly as nice as it sounded, but it still pleased her at least a little to make it happy. <How shall I prepare the room?>
"Honestl–*eep*, just don't try to ma–*UCK* make it look like my r–*hmp* my room would norm---mally. That's cre–*HEEP*–pier than whatev–*urk* you usually do."
<Noted.>
Even though Melody was going that way on purpose and wasn't particularly afraid of what she would find, getting close to her room always felt like swimming upstream. Her body seemed to recoil in some subtle way, and it made her heart beat faster the closer she got. Even if she was accustomed to it, she still reacted, and she hoped that this didn't end up scaring her hiccups away. Once she got to the door, though, the pull reversed, and as soon as she opened it, the darkness within swallowed her. Melody just barely heard the door close, and then there was nothing. There was no ground beneath her feet. There was no light in her eyes. There was barely any sound in her ears. There was nothing but her wet clothes clinging to her and the hiccups shaking her.
...and the vague feeling of a presence all around, licking and lapping at her body.
She should have been paying more attention to that. Any normal person would. But instead, Melody was focused on her hiccups. She could only just barely hear the sounds she was making, and there was something intensifying about that. She couldn't know how loud she was being, or who outside of this liminal space might hear her. And without any other point of reference, without any other physical force acting on her body, Melody felt wracked by each hiccup, even though they hadn't gotten any stronger. They pulsed through her stomach and shook her whole form, and she felt trapped with nothing but them. Nothing but her hiccups.
...and her wet clothes. They were ruining everything. Melody immediately started stripping, kicking off her shoes and socks as fast as she could and letting them fall or vanish or whatever it was they would do, just so long as they disappeared. Everything around her seemed to shudder, and Melody could feel her cheeks reddening as her mind recognized the motions of Learner's laughter. <How eager.>
Melody's face was on fire, and she grumbled under her breath. "This was y–*urk* your idea in the fi–*HIRK*–irst place." She didn't stop disrobing, though, clinging jeans and button-up shirt fading helpfully away once they were off of her body. It didn't take long at all before she was in nothing but the rainwater that had penetrated all the way down into her skin. And even that felt like it was being taken from her, drunk in by infinite invisible lips that set her nerves on edge. Goosebumps formed all over, but swirling stripes of warmth stretched their way onto her body, and she was barely consciously aware of where they were before they seemed to shift again.
But now she'd gotten what she wanted. All that physically existed to her was her hiccups. No ground. No air. No gravity. No sound. No light. Just the relentless spasming of her stomach jolting her body.
Outside of what physically existed, though, she was very much not alone. She could feel Learner's focus on her, her body almost recognizing its "touch" before her nerves seemed to forget it had ever been there. Still, she was able to cling to the ghosts of sensation and tell what it was examining. And right now, its focus seemed to be on...her calves? "Uh...hey. *HMK!*" Melody didn't hear her own voice. It wasn't quite loud enough to penetrate the deafening silence.
...so how loud must she have been hiccuping to still be able to catch hints of their vibrations through the vacuum she was in?
Melody pushed that thought out of her mind, though she didn't do so quickly enough to stop her cheeks from burning. Learner laughed around her again, and that didn't help. <Hello, Melody.> Her brain shuddered as its voice activated something that flooded her body with anxious, buzzing energy.
"Yeah yeah, hi. *HNK!*" There was no point in trying to be casual, but Melody felt compelled to do it anyway. "But hey, *HMK* my hiccups are u–*HUP* up here, stupid. *HIK-OLK* Fuck...!"
<I know. But you so rarely fully disrobe while you're inside of me.>
Never mind her cheeks, Melody's whole body caught fire at that. "Ha haaaaa–*UCK*–a-aaah, how about we nev–*URK* phrase it like that ev–*HURK* again, please?"
<As you wish.> Learner only seemed to get more and more amused, and Melody's body moved, one of her legs straightening out in front of her. She couldn't quite tell if she'd moved of her own volition or if Learner had moved her, and while she was here, she wasn't sure there was even much of a difference. <I'm going to enjoy my chance at observation, though. Over every deceased cell of your outermost layer and with every delicate thread of keratin.>
"Wow. Leg hai–*urk*–air. Sexy. *HMK*"
<You act so put out, but then you become impatient. My Melody. Full of contradictions.> Its condescending amusement made her try to kick at the nothing that was all around her, and the entirety of her perception seemed to roil and spin with its laughter, leaving her dizzy and breathless. <But I am the one imposing. So what am I to deny such a reasonable request?>
The sense of observation pulled up over Melody's thighs, passing almost teasingly around her pubic hair, then settling on her spasming stomach, which she instinctively tried to cover with her arms. It didn't work. There was still the feeling of a thousand eyes all right on her belly and an infinite number of impossibly light touches exploring its every inch. She "*HIUK!*" hiccuped and felt the inverse of resistance; a focus and energy that pushed against her, but only seemed to amplify her movement rather than at all stifling it. Another "*HIC-CULP!*" left her groaning, and she struggled not to giggle at her skin forgetting and remembering the sensation of being tickled again and again and again every split second.
<How strong.> The not-touch felt like it breathed against her belly, a puff of air ice cold and burning hot all at once, lasting for a second or two before fading as if it was never there. <Muscle and sinew, electric nerves, all of this miraculously living meat with strength enough to move and breathe and think...and yet you've no control.> The unpresssure formed against Melody's body again, firmer this time, and even though she knew nothing was physically there, there was a sense of something solid that her stomach expanded and rammed against over and over as her hiccups picked up speed. <A slapdash form, randomly assembled by desperate mutation, advanced enough to create new biomes and stretch beyond its world, but still forgetting that it's not a fish. That's one of the theories of why you hiccup, Melody. Did you know that?> She did, but Melody didn't have nearly the strength to respond. Learner seemed to understand that because it just continued. <Something ancient within you, older than the shape of the earth, can't stop trying to gasp and gulp for life-sustaining water. Perhaps that's why water cures it. You trick yourself into thinking that you're safely back in the sea. And you have to play these tricks, don't you? Because without them, you don't even have the illusion of control.>
"I-I'm sorr–*EEK!* are we talking about hic–*HUPS* or doing some phil–*HOK* philosophical breakdown *UP*–o-of the human cond–*HIP*–dition?"
More intangible, world-shaking laughter. <That's a trick too. If you can mock the situation, you have power over it. But you don't even have power over your own body. How...pathetic.> "Pathetic" was the only word that Melody's brain could interpret that thought as, but along with it came a sensation of affection, near adoration that sent a shiver up her spine. <Hiccup.> Melody's body spasmed in response and she let out a whine. <Hiccup.> She obeyed again and she buried her face in her hands, existence shaking harder still around her. <Hiccup hiccup hiccup.> Three quick spasms practically tripped over each other to escape her, and her case got even faster, her belly jolting out at almost twice the speed it was before. <You can't help but listen.>
Pokes and prods, pointed sensations of being examined popped all over Melody's body, disappearing and reappearing, finding every weak point and seeming to possibly focus more on those, though they were all over her. She curled up into a ball to try and hide, but it just made her hiccups seem even stronger with how each one made her whole body rock. And there was no gravity to still her, no air to resist her movements, nothing to stop her, just hiccup hiccup hiccup.
<Do you really think that you can hide from me? Melody.> There was a sternness in Learner's whispers. <Let me see you. Let me look at you. Let me listen.> Each demand felt like it got softer, yet her brain and body wanted more and more to comply. Her muscles felt weaker and weaker, the shape she'd curled into slowly releasing. <Melody. Let me feel your hiccups.> A tiny noise that felt impossibly huge forced itself out of her throat between hiccups, and Melody's body stopped loosening and sprang out of the ball it was in all at once, arms and legs spread out, jolting chest and stomach open to everything. <Yes. Like that. Now.> A not-pressure was against her chin, pulling it downward, in so much as a "down" even existed inside of this. <Open.> Her lips fell apart and her hiccups were completely unrepressed, just barely audible and unimaginably loud all at once. <Open.> The muscles in her body tried to tense and relax at the same time, and the latter ended up winning, her legs spreading further and a sense of attention at her very core between them. Melody whined, not that she could hear it, and her hiccups quickly cut it off anyway. Her whole brain buzzed and tingled as she heard Learner's voice one more time.
<Open.>
Melody's body felt like it was pulling apart at the center, unfolding, spreading itself wider and wider, one layer then another splitting open and peeling back to let every movement inside of her be seen. She became incredibly aware of herself, of the spasming of her diaphragm, the snapping shut of her glottis, the sloshing of her stomach, the expansion of her lungs, the movements of every part of this system making her hiccup again and again and again. Impossible for her to control. Impossible for her to stop. All she could do was watch and feel herself hiccup over and over and over.
<Your form is so complex.> Melody wasn't sure whether she was moving herself or Learner was moving her, but either way, one arm folded in so her fingers could ghost against the place that her skin still was but somehow wasn't at the same time. She touched her throat and felt its softness, but also the firm ridges of her larynx, which bobbed as she swallowed, then flinched when she hiccuped. They traveled along the triangle that sucked in whenever she stifled, then down over her slightly sore chest, trails of goosebumps raising along the skin that she seemed to be reaching past and feeling the muscle, the bone, the body underneath. <Trillions of tiny lives all clinging to one another inside every bit of you. And yet you act surprised when your miraculous cohesion is challenged for even a second.> Her hand had come to rest just where her chest became her stomach, seeming to phase inside so that she could directly feel the harsh, overpowering spasms of her diaphragm right at their source, the strength that was inside of her but completely out of her control. <Can you blame me for my curiosity? My astonishment? My...interest?> Those infinite touches lit up all over her again, not just on her surface this time, but inside of her as well, horribly and pleasurably aware of every single motion, overwhelmed by sensation. <Melody...> Learner's voice vibrated through her, resonating inside of her bones as it whispered her name. <I want to learn everything about you.>
"Ah—*HUK!*" Melody couldn't even get a word out before her body overtook her again. This was what she'd been afraid of. Losing control. Letting something so...other into her without knowing what could possibly happen. And it was scary. It was terrifying. Everything in her seemed to be screaming against it.
But somehow it was desperate for it too.
She felt the sort of hunger that made her nauseous, the sort of thirst that water just couldn't quench, breathlessness that rejected the thought of air...though that was less metaphorical than the others. Shaking, Melody opened her throat, letting herself gulp down breaths between hiccups that must have been earsplitting to sound as loud as they did through all of the nothing surrounding her, and her whole body trembled with the thought of being heard, of being seen.
<I know you don't remember our first meeting very well. Do you remember when you asked if I was a god?> Learner was laughing again. Its presence was constant now, inescapable, settling into an intangible weight that pressed into the whole of her body, comfortingly trapping her with herself as it started to flow into every void inside of her. <I told you the truth: that I wasn't. And you said "Good. Because I'm not going to worship you."> Melody couldn't help it. She laughed at that, hyper-aware of how her belly and chest moved in Learner's grasp, and how her body struggled to express itself between her hiccups. She didn't remember that, but it sounded like something she'd say. <And I've never expected you to. Not for a second. Why would you?> Trailing tendrils found her wet lips, her soaked thighs, and her most sensitive spots. Learner was all around her, all inside of her now, filling her out, feeling her lose control. Melody curled up again, but this time she wasn't trying to hide. She just wanted to feel the way her hiccups moved her as much as possible. <Melody. I'm the one who wants to worship you.>
Melody's whole body lit on fire. But she didn't feel burnt at all. Instead, she finally let her hiccups swallow everything they wanted to. She let Learner open her body, let it creep into the spaces of her mind, let it worship her however it pleased. Apparently it pleased her, because everything rang and hummed inside of Melody and she lost control one last time.
When she next opened her eyes, Melody felt something she hadn't felt in months: the sheets of her own bed. She heard her voice, not hiccuping anymore, but crying out softly with every breath, and she realized that her hand was between her thighs, fingers drenched. With her other hand, Melody wiped a mixture of sweat and tears from her cheeks and looked around. In the dull light through the window, her room looked exactly how it always did. "...Learner? I thought I told you specifically not to do this."
<I'm not.> Learner hummed, and Melody surprised herself with how relieved she was to "hear" its "voice". <I'm simply resting. That was tiring for me as well as for you.>
Melody half laughed. "You can get tired?"
<Wouldn't you if someone allowed you to finally experience their every nerve and synapse? To finally know every single cell of their body?>
A few more not-quite-laughs came out of her, and Melody surprised herself by hiccuping between them. She was shocked to realize that even this soft laughter had been enough to set her off again, albeit with just a gentle case. "Don't ma---make it weird, dude. *mmk*."
<Ah, of course. We wouldn't want to make your summoning of a—> another sensation that Melody hadn't felt in months and literally didn't have words to describe scraped its way through her skull. <—at all weird, now would we?>
Melody groaned and rubbed her temples. "Please d---don't try to say whatev–*urk* the fuck you are again." A wordless feeling of contrition washed over her brain and soothed her. "...but hey, *hmk* look at you. Fi---figuring out how to be a sn–*hnk* snarky little bitch. You re---really are a fast Learner."
<I hope so, Melody.> A comfortable, heavy tiredness was pushing her further into her bed, and she just barely heard Learner's soft voice as she drifted off. <Because I've only just begun my study of you.
Just for funzies (and self-gratification, if we're being honest), I may start reblogging some of my older stuff from time to time. Mostly just random shit and one offs that I half-forget that I've written.
heya, hope here! idk if you’ve mentioned this before but i was wondering what the polytechhic girls’ majors are!
Oh man, good question. I hope I write more with them at some point. For Kiran and Maya, I don't know off the top of my head. I'd assume with Maya that she doesn't know either. Olivia is "majoring in undecided," so she's taking a random assortment of classes to learn a lot of stuff and figure out what she wants to do.
Having not been near a college for over a decade and not knowing how to describe it well, though, Susanna is definitely doing some sort of music degree, and Kiran is probably doing something to do with computers.
I am sitting back in horror, watching myself make a TADC fan character specifically for the purpose of tormenting another person's fan character.
I can't promise that this will actually result in me writing anything substantial, but it's definitely happening.
Her name is Kali, she's entirely made out of shards of stained glass, and she has a flashlight that she can shine through it to create different effects on whatever/whoever it shines on depending on the color of the glass.
The fun part is where she would potentially shine said flashlight through @writingforfishes' Bran, with probably blog-relevant results on whoever the light should fall upon. The problem is that she's a huge asshole, and I'm gonna have to deal with that fact before we actually get anywhere.
Unrelated to writing about Bran, I don't know if I'll ever do more with Kali, but the way I made her was sort of similar to a bunch of horoscopes I made for pokemon types once upon a time...I swear that makes sense. Specifically, she would absolutely be an ice type.
"Ice types are as jagged and fragile as they appear. They don't put up pretenses about their delicacy, facing the world almost as if daring it to break them. Unsurprisingly, this often leaves them broken. However, ice types are sharp, and anything that harms them will find itself scarred in the process. They're also quite skilled at putting the pieces back together when the dust has settled. They have to be."
You may all thank (or partially blame, I guess) @writingforfishes for this. Their character Bran is fun and adorable, and the Circus variant and accompanying fic inspired me (somewhat to my chagrin) to make my own OC for the universe, at least in part simply to torment him. Having said that, it takes a while for the hiccups in this fic to start, and you can thank (and blame) my OC Kali for that.
Spoilers for Episode 9, Remember.
TW: Bullying, I guess? Mentions of death.
Kinks: Hiccups, embarrassment, inflation at the end, cartoony shenanigans throughout. Also a little burping at the end.
"Are you kidding? That fucking rules! Fuck old me, sucks to be her out there!"
Bran wasn't sure there was a "correct" response to winding up in similar circumstances to those he'd wound up in (being a scan of the brain of the living Bran out in reality while he stayed here turned into a literal squeaky toy), but when he heard that from their newest member, he was pretty sure that there was a wrong one now.
Maybe it shouldn't have been surprising to Bran that he was a bit scared of her. After all, he was a rubbery balloon filled with water, and she was made entirely out of broken glass. That was what the new girl was: a usually humanoid, constantly shifting swarm of shards of stained glass. Unlike Bran, when Ca!ne tried to call her by her "real" name, she immediately cut him off, declaring herself Kali. Bran had asked if she meant like "Kaleidoscope." She'd said "Sure!" in a way that felt weirdly threatening.
In the weeks since then, Kali had thrown herself into what remained of Ca!ne's most violent adventures, frequently seeing the cartoony physics of the world pulverize her into dust and coming back cackling with laughter. The only part of her that stayed consistently solid was the flashlight she always carried around. She had manifested with it, similar to G@ngle and her masks, and it didn't take long with some experimentation for her to figure out how it worked. Besides just functioning as a typical flashlight (which she refused to use as such in many of the horror scenarios), when she would bring single colors of her glass together and shine the light through them, it would influence the world or people it shone on. Green could be disgust, nausea, or envy; red was usually anger or lighting things on fire; blue was sadness and sometimes drowning; yellow was anxiety, fear, and, despite the lack of need for anyone to do this, could cause people to pee their pants; Orange also lit things on fire; and she'd never gotten around to using purple, at least that Bran could see.
It felt worth noting that absolutely none of her experiments had resulted in making anyone feel happy.
People were especially unhappy when R@gatha, P0mni, K1nger, G@ngle, Ca!ne, and Bran dragged themselves back from an "adventure" Kali had put together. Said "adventure" was them being in an inflatable dinghy which Kali immediately punctured before making herself a pair of glass wings and flying off into the sunset, leaving them all to eventually drag themselves back into the circus from out of the ocean, sopping wet and covered with kelp, algae and worse. "You know what?" Ca!ne said, a piece of seaweed stuck between his bottom front teeth. "I'm beginning to understand why you all really didn't like my adventures back in the day! That was terrible!"
"Damn, that bad?" Z0oble said, looking up from where they were reading a surely legally downloaded book from the void.
"My comedy mask got eaten by a shark," G@ngle said weakly, slowly untangling a jellyfish from the coils of her ribbon.
"Well, I've...certainly had better oceanic adventures," R@gatha said, twisting up one of her arms to start squeezing the water out of it. P0mni just groaned. Honestly, Bran had probably had the most decent time out of all of them since he was about as waterproof as anyone here could get. He was a little worried about all the salt water warping K1nger, if anything. But it hadn't exactly been fun.
"Awww, you've had better? But oceanography is my passion!" P0mni lifted her face from the puddle she'd splatted into and glared up at Kali, who fluttered back in on her glass wings. A set of jagged white shards made a big smile on the circle of glass that currently passed for her face.
"You realize that blue whales don't actually have sharp teeth like that, right?" K1nger asked.
The blank holes of her eyes blinked. "There are whales that aren't blue?" A few seconds of stunned silence passed. "Ah, whatever. I had fun at least. Gonna head to my room and cook up some more adventures! Ta-ta for now!" Her whole body collapsed into a pile of broken glass with her flashlight on top of it before reforming into a whirlwind and spinning away back to the living quarters.
For a long moment, everyone just dripped. Z0oble put their book down and turned to face them all. "Okay, sorry, you're gonna have to deal with not getting this conversation Bran, but someone's gotta say it: We've got a new Jax here. What the fuck are we gonna do about that?"
The energy in the room immediately twisted even less pleasantly. After a moment, Ca!ne snapped his fingers and towels landed on top of everyone. "Well, she hasn't been quite as mean to me as Jax was. Yet." G@ngle said, finally freeing the jellyfish and gently pushing it back through the portal.
"No, but she...yeah. She's a lot like Jax," P0mni said, shaking her hat out. "And that's really worrying." Bran couldn't help but awkwardly back up as he toweled himself. He knew enough about Jax to know that this was in no way good or complimentary, but little more than that.
"Um, not entirely though." R@gatha was the next to speak up, starting by toweling off her hair. "Jax wasn't really like Jax either at first. Not like most of you knew him. I don't know how much you or Ca!ne remember, K1nger, but he was a lot more introverted at first. Calmer. Less...less cruel." She huffed softly. "He didn't really become the person you three knew until after Ribbit abstracted. So I have no idea what Kali being like that right off the bat means. I'm not sure if it's better or worse."
"Well, we could think about what we know about her so far and see if there's anything obvious that would make her easier to deal with," K1nger said.
Bran awkwardly pressed his hands together, spinning one thumb around the other. "I feel like I really can't add anything to this conversation, so I'm going to just try and talk to her?" He had no idea why he said that, but it did seem at least nicer than talking about her, particularly with regard to a person who was kind of already dead and that he didn't know? It was complicated.
"Uh, knock yourself out I guess. Good luck, man," Z0oble shrugged. Bran nodded, then began hopping back towards the individual rooms.
Once he was in the back, it didn't take long for Bran to hear loud metal music blasting from behind Kali's door. That had become something he was used to, and thankfully the soundproofing between the different rooms was nearly perfect. The rooms and the hallway, though, not so much. Bran took a deep breath, sighed, then knocked on Kali's door. Maybe unsurprisingly, that didn't work. He knocked again, then a third time, and still got absolutely nothing. Knocking loudly on doors was harder than it used to be with his squishy fists. Not for the first time, Bran sort of wished he'd been able to meet this Jax person, not just in the general way you'd always wish that about someone who was (sort of) dead, but because Jax apparently always had keys to just about every room in the circus.
Although, now that he thought of it, was this door actually locked? Bran grabbed the knob and twisted it, avoiding eye contact with the grinning glass face on the sign. To his shock, the knob turned and the door squeaked open. However, it didn't go far before it hit something. Looking in, Bran was confused to see some sort of baffled wall barely far enough in to let the door open. He was trying to sort out how on earth he'd possibly get further in when the reverberation of the thumping, screaming music through the water inside of him reminded him what his body was actually like here.
...it also made him feel kind of hiccupy, but as distracting as that was, it really wasn't the important thing right now. Instead of thinking about that, Bran squashed himself as best he could, squeezing through the thinly opened door. It didn't hurt, but it certainly wasn't pleasant. Even so, squeezing the water through the squish in the middle from one part of his body to the other, Bran managed to squirm his way into the shockingly tiny space between the door and whatever these walls were. Right next to the walls, he saw a boombox sitting just behind the door, apparently the source of the actively abrasive metal music that screamed out at all hours. This seemed like a pretty obvious tell, but Bran decided that if he was already in here, he'd given up on trying to be sneaky (which he wasn't really doing anyway, since he was trying to have a conversation here). With a small sigh and a moment to brace himself, Bran reached down and turned off the metal music. He closed his eyes and let himself enjoy a moment or two of blissful silence.
The blissful silence continued way longer than a moment, though. Bran reopened his eyes, then glanced back and forth. There was no Kali in sight, just the wall, the door, and the tiny trapezoid of space between them, too little for Bran to even properly close the door. After a moment of thought, he reached out and pushed at the wall, and was surprised to find that it collapsed, the baffles folding up as it moved along rollers in the ceiling and the floor. And when he'd pushed it at least partially out of the way, he poked his head between it and the wall and finally saw into the room proper.
The first thing that shocked him was the break in the blissful silence. Instead of screeching metal music, he heard something he wasn't sure quite how to describe. Some sort of weirdly classical piano type thing? The second thing he noticed was the lights being reflected all over the room from the disco ball on the ceiling. Then the pole set up in the middle of the room. Then the giant mirror taking up the entirety of one of the walls, rails attached to it like a ballet studio maybe? Then all of the shining little motes of digital dust floating through the air. After all of that, he finally noticed Kali moving across the nearly empty floor, swaying to the music, her shards very close to humanoid even as they shifted around, casting colors and light all over when she twirled. Proper five-fingered hands formed from tiny crystals of glass at the end of her arms, stretching out high above her head before what passed for her back bent, whole body bowing as a shockingly accurate set of knees bent as well, letting her form a perfect arch with both "palms" flat on the wooden floor before she flipped over them, upside down to right side up in a single fluid motion. She then seemed to stagger, and Bran almost thought she would fall, but when she wound up back against the pole, he realized that the movement was completely intentional. Her motions still feeling perfectly matched to the music, her glass arms clung more tightly to the pole than human skin would need to. Even so, her feet left the ground, allowing her to rise up before twisting her carefully constructed legs around the pole. It then started to slowly turn, her "eyes" closed as she released her hands, moving her arms as though she was swimming through the air. And this was the point where Bran fully realized that he really didn't need to be seeing this.
Resisting the urge to awkwardly clear his throat, Bran started trying to quietly back away. However, his hand slipped and landed on the boombox, his fused finger pressing the play and fast-forward buttons both at once and sending out a brand-new blast of metal right next to his body. Worse, the sound waves rattled and sloshed all the water inside him, and the next thing he knew, a "HU'UCK!" had gulped out of his mouth, bouncing his body into the air. The flailing that had him doing meant he smacked the baffled walls too, pushing them even more out of the way and leaving him right in the sight line of Kali, who had stopped the pole's turning when her glass knuckles dragged over the floor. Her empty eyes stared at him before blinking, and Bran chuckled weakly, another "HUP" interrupting his laugh. "Eh...HUKGUP! Hi Kal–HLK'LLP Kali. HNGLP!–Uh! Uh, 'scuse me. HLMK"
"...sup." Kali crumbled off of the pole, then slithered over the floor up to Bran, forming again right in front of him while she reached back and shoved the door shut. Kali always seemed willing to stretch her glass out far enough to be able to loom over whoever she was currently tormenting, but she didn't have to do it much with Bran. "Whatcha doing here, squish? Get lost? Mistake the sign on my room for you somehow?"
"Um–HMP," Bran did clear his throat awkwardly this time. "Well, I kn–HNG'LP knocked on your do–HURK–or, but...HUH'UMGK!"
Kali stared flatly down at him. "You know we got doorbells, right?"
"HUN'GLP!" Bran had, in fact, not thought to use the doorbell next to every door. "Right. HURK! Oops."
"Yeah. Oops." Kali reached over and pulled her flashlight out of seemingly nowhere, turning it on and shoving it under Bran's chin when a hiccup bounced his head up, shining the bright light through it. Having his head glowing did very weird things to Bran's vision, not that it was easy to get a good idea of how it had changed when he was bouncing over and over and Kali was deliberately filling just about all of his field of view. "So tell me, squish," she said, her grin widening past the confines of the "face" she'd built. "What'd you wanna get out of lil' ol' me?"
"UCK Believe it or HUM'K not, I'm jus–HUCK'L just trying HURK to have a co–HOK'LK! c-conver–HLK–sa..." Bran trailed off into another hiccup when he realized that Kali wasn't looking at him anymore. Instead, the glass around her "eyes" had shifted enough that he could tell she was looking above him. He tried to tilt his head up too, but all he got was a brief glimpse of the dust motes up above him before the light refracted away from the way that he moved. When he let his chin fall again, though, he was more than a little concerned to see Kali grinning even wider. "...tion? HUNGK!"
"Oh that is so fucking funny," Kali mumbled. Before Bran could ask her what she was talking about, though, she'd grabbed him by his bear ears and whirled out of the door, dragging him behind the tornado of glass she became. "Get over here, squish!" she yelled, as if Bran had much of a choice with how he was being hauled. Thankfully for his ears, it wasn't long before they stopped, though Bran was surprised that Kali shoved him between her and the couches on which the rest of the Circus members had congregated. Before any of them could say anything, Kali started talking again, and Bran could hear the huge grin in her voice. "Hey, patches! Check this shit out!"
R@gatha looked at both of them along with all of the others, and Bran couldn't help but feel exposed. He didn't like attention on him when it was completely out of his control, and right now Kali was the one pulling all the strings. Besides that, he had no idea what she was actually going to do. A moment later, though, he saw a purple spotlight fall on R@gatha, and looking down he realized that it was shining through his bouncing belly. "Kali, what are you trying to–heep!" R@gatha's cloth hands flew up to cover her mouth, her non-button eye widening. "HEEK-kuh! A-ah! Excu–heek–uuse me? heek-cup!"
Bran wondered if his current form could blush. He couldn't exactly focus on what his cheeks were doing, though, as he stared at R@gatha jolting back with hiccups and heard Kali cackling behind him. "You sound even more like a squeaky toy than this guy does!" She gave the side of his stomach a smack, sending jiggles all through Bran's body.
"Hey! HURK! Watch it, I ne–HNGK need all the wa–HULK water in there!" Bran tried to swat at Kali's hand, not entirely sure what he was feeling from having been slapped like that.
Before he could fully metabolize that, though, Kali moved behind him, the purple spotlight shifting off of R@gatha and onto P0mni. "HUK-guh!" P0mni's tiny body bounced on the couch and she covered her mouth too, though her face then shifted to glare over Bran's head at Kali. "HIGGULK! Kali!"
Kali swirled around Bran, the spotlight falling on K1nger, G@ngle, Z0oble, and Ca!ne before she finally pulled off of him and shattered away, cackling more as P0mni got up and chased her out of the circus. That left Bran and the rest of the players hiccuping in her wake. "Uh...HULK sorry about HNK'LK this?" Bran said. His brain (or the programming thereof) was struggling to reboot now that he was absolutely surrounded by hiccuping people.
Z0oble sighed and growled through their hiccups, rubbing the place where their nose wasn't. "It's n–nnk–not your fault, Br---Bran. Hnk"
"This is HIGGULP absolutely terri–GULP–fying!" Ca!ne said, his theatrical voice just making his hiccups sound even louder. "To think that yo–HOUK–ou humans just HUGGULP go around losing HIYULP control of your HIGGUP bodily functions HIYUP for fun!"
K1nger scratched the top of his head between hiccups "I think hnk Kali might be gi–hip–ving you an inaccurate hkglk view of what humans hmk enjoy."
Ca!ne clacked his teeth to blink. "Kali? HIYULK!"
G@ngle didn't say anything, just making embarrassed noises as she hid her mask in Z0oble's shoulder. The hiccups seemed to have the most impact on her, the spring of her body expanding and compressing with each of them, though she seemed to be keeping them completely silent. Z0oble sighed and patted her back. "You don–nnk don't need to be hmk embarrassed." Even as they said that, their limbs were noticeably spasming, attempting to straighten out for a moment after each hiccup before contracting back into the shape they'd put them in. "I'm more wo–hrk worried what'll ha–hup–mmf." Despite what they'd said, Z0oble did look down with embarrassment at hiccuping out loud, coughing before they continued. "—what'll happen if mmk she finds some tr–hrk translucent part o–hkk of someone else."
"L-let's no–HEEP!–nnh!" Apart from K1nger, who would just hop slightly with each spasm, R@gatha's body reacted the least. In fact, it being made out of cloth seemed to make her physical reactions more muted than even a normal human's would be, the motion diffusing and disappearing quickly. Even so, like Kali had pointed out, they were very high-pitched, and she seemed almost as embarrassed about them as G@ngle. "L-let's not g–HEEK–g-get too far ah–HIYUP–head of ourselves he–eep!–ere. It's ju–heek–kuh! j-just a case of–hiuk of the hiccups hip after all. HEEK-kuh! I'm sure that heep some of the nor–hrmk-llp!–n-normal cures should wo–hirk! just fine!" She sounded far less assured than she clearly intended to sound, but if anyone was going to call her out on that, they didn't get a chance before she took a deep breath and held it, eyes tightly shut and one hand pinched over her triangular nose. Even as her hair started defying gravity and standing up straight, though, her hiccups didn't stop, and keeping them in did seem to make the physical impact more prominent. After an amount of time that was still worrying, even knowing that they didn't have to breathe, R@gatha let the air burst out of her and gasped with an extended "HEEEEK!" that left her flushed and covering her mouth. "That alw–heep–w-ways worked on me hiup before."
"Well, it's not as i–hffk if we need ox–hyk–ygen here," K1nger said, finger to what passed for a chin. "We don't even have hik lungs, much less a d–hmk–diaphragm."
"M-maybe it's b---based on cartoon logic?" G@ngle peeked up from where her face was hidden. "That's how thi–hip–mmmh," she squirmed a bit uncomfortably, and Z0oble patted her back again. "How things us---ually work around here."
"Well, Bran's us–hlk–ually go away on hnk their own, right?" Z0oble glanced at him.
Bran abruptly realized he was on the spot and forced his head into a social mode, "Uh, mo–HULK–ostly, yeah."
"Are there an–hik–ny cures that ha–hfk–ve consistently worked hrk for you here?"
K1nger's innocently asked question made Bran feel like he'd just been put under a microscope. "Uh!"
"I KNOW! HIYUK!" Bran's life was saved by Ca!ne hopping up and thrusting his finger into the air. "The void HURK should be in its a–HUCK–ctive state HIURK right now! I–HILK–'ll see what inf–HORK–formation that it ho–OCK–olds for us!" He vanished with an audible pop, the remaining people left hiccuping together for just a bit too long to be comfortable. Right as someone was about to restart the conversation, though, Ca!ne reappeared, giant teeth noisily chattering around his eyes. "Iiiiii have come to an executive decision that the void shall not be consulted on this matter!"
"Well–hlk, looks like sca–hrk–ring still works, at hnk least for this hgk guy," Z0oble said with a small snort. "What, did y–hnk–you get hit w–hlk–guh, with a scream–hmk–mer video?"
"No! No, I simply found out...details. Regarding the anatomy of humans in the Macroverse." Ca!ne squirmed uncomfortably, twiddling his fingers. "That I was not aware of heretofore."
"Was it heek about hiccup cures?" R@gatha said, failing to disguise how much she wanted one. Rather than answering, Ca!ne started babbling, his hands flying all over and pointing in all directions as multiple words seemed to be trying to come out of his mouth at once before he abruptly shut up as if he'd finished his sentence. "...what? Heep"
"WELL, it's just the sort of thing that I've never felt any particular need to go into—"
"Wait, is this hmnk a sex thing? hrk" A thin set of eyebrows materialized above Z0oble just so they could arch them. "Are you st–hlk still terrified o–hkk of sex?"
Ca!ne started babbling again, and Bran couldn't decide whether he was relieved or not when he heard the sound of shattering glass rapidly approaching them. He decided he very much wasn't when said glass formed up behind him again, the light shining through his gut directly onto a panting P0mni. Her hiccups rapidly worsened under the purple light until she was sent bouncing and careening through the circus. "Hah! Catch me like that, pinball P0mni!" Kali yelled, and at this point, Bran decided that even he'd reached his capacity for hiccup-based shenanigans. He turned around and swiped the flashlight right out of Kali's "hands", then flexed and stretched one of his short little arms, the bicep swelling with swirling, glittery water and becoming big enough for him to put the light behind and shine it through. Kali's eyeholes widened in realization just a bit too late. "Oh shit–HILK!" With her first noisy hiccup, her whole glass body shook, all of its shards clinking and clattering off of one another.
Despite himself, Bran couldn't help smirking. "Oops. Looks li–HINGK–ike you caught HU'UCK the hiccu–HULK–ups too, Kali. H'URK!"
"HIUK! Daaah! HA-ULK!" Kali swiped her flashlight back, though with her rattling body she seemed to have some trouble controlling it. Even so, she formed her own "bicep" of sorts, a circle of red glass as part of one of her arms, and shined the light right through it on Bran. "Get or–HURK–orbed, idiot! HI-UCK!"
Bran flinched away from the red light, expecting to be set on fire, but instead he just felt himself heating up. It was a bit too late for him to hop far when he realized that said heat was starting to make the liquid inside of him bubble, and Kali was quicker than him, managing to keep the red light on him for long enough that Bran's whole rubbery form started to stretch as the water boiled and expanded inside of him. He felt his hiccups getting higher pitched and ending up interspersed with burps, arms thickening and losing what little dexterity he had as his already round body got rounder. Before it could get too far out of control, though, Bran saw P0mni out of the corner of his eye, managing to grab onto a piece of the circus' internal structure to halt her momentum, then using her next hiccup to launch herself at high speed, crashing through Kali and sending bits of her scattered absolutely everywhere. The glass rapidly reformed into a pile, but even so, said pile was quick to collect her flashlight and leave, hiccuping all the while as it rushed out of the room.
"P0mni–HEEP, are you okay? HEEK!" R@gatha ran up to P0mni, grabbing her and managing to keep her in one place on the ground.
"Yea–HILK–eah, I'm f–HEELK–fine, Ra–HUK–gatha. HNK-GLK!" P0mni managed to struggle out. She turned to Bran, grabbing what there was of his arm and using it to right him as best she could, though the fact that both of them were rapidly jolting with hiccups didn't make it easy. "Are y–HOUK–ou okay?"
Bran opened his mouth to try and answer, but he didn't get out much besides "HNK!HLK!HURK!HULK!HIOOOOORP!HURK-HIGGULP-HUP! BWAOOOOR-UP!" Turned into a hiccuping, belching orb, Bran couldn't help but be embarrassed.
"Yeah, that–hnk that's what I thought hlk he'd say," Z0oble said. They got up and moved over, G@ngle joining them and fully unhiding her face. Z0oble started patting Bran on the back while G@ngle reached up and helped keep him more stably right side up. "Don't wor–hrk–orry, Bran."
G@ngle nodded, her tragedy mask smiling softly. "Yeah. We'll ta–hik!" Now that she was out of Z0oble's arms, her tiny little hiccup was enough to shake G@ngle's whole body, ribbon elongating and then bouncing back to its normal height like a spring. She made a weak, embarrassed noise, but even so, put the small smile back on her face. "We'll take c---care of you until hik! y-you're better."
Despite how embarrassed he was, Bran wasn't really in a position to argue, and he couldn't pretend that being cared for by his friends at the circus while he slowly recovered from Kali violently inflating him wasn't nice. It was very nice. The fact that they patted his back, helped rub his stomach, and didn't seem to think anything of it? And that they were all hiccuping too, their cases petering out in different amounts of time or with the application of tea or cocoa gotten for them by Ca!ne? Yeah. Bran was at least a little bit in heaven about it. So he supposed he did have something to thank Kali for.
He was still definitely going to stay out of that flashlight, though.
I am sitting back in horror, watching myself make a TADC fan character specifically for the purpose of tormenting another person's fan character.
I can't promise that this will actually result in me writing anything substantial, but it's definitely happening.
Her name is Kali, she's entirely made out of shards of stained glass, and she has a flashlight that she can shine through it to create different effects on whatever/whoever it shines on depending on the color of the glass.
The fun part is where she would potentially shine said flashlight through @writingforfishes' Bran, with probably blog-relevant results on whoever the light should fall upon. The problem is that she's a huge asshole, and I'm gonna have to deal with that fact before we actually get anywhere.
