#creaking-skull

[pastelroyce]

would love to hear about royce and captain rosario after reading the fic you shared recently! what's their relationship like??

Hi! First of all thank you for taking the time to read my little ficlet 🙂 anyone seeing this who hasn't read it can find it here! Second, I'm sorry this took so long to get to. 😅

Tito originally came to me as the answer to why Roy and Kaidan never hook up while on the SR-1. The two were very attracted to one another to the point where Kaidan brings it up. And Roy absolutely wants to jump his bones but has to make a real effort to hold himself back.

And it's all because he slept with his captain when he was Lieutenant and it (almost) ruined his own life and definitely ruined the captain's. Something Roy would be devastated over if he ever brought that onto Kaidan.

Okay anyway

So Roy and Tito meet when Roy is assigned to the SSV Jakarta as a Lieutenant. This is pretty in between being recruited and the events of the first game so Roy doesn't have a ton of experience and hasn't taken his place in the Alliance very seriously at this point. Naturally it means that Tito's hardass nature doesn't phase Roy at all, and just kinda brushes him off and doesn't let Tito intimidate him. Which of course pisses Tito off immensely and would often rope Roy up with some kind of crap job or whatever. Only Roy would do those really well, along with his actual job and got on the good side of everybody on the Jakarta.

And being Roy, he's an insufferable flirt the entire time. It's lust at first sight for him.

As they continue on their tour and work alongside each other more (both on ground and on board) Tito sort of cools it with his initial antagonism yet continues to keep Roy at arms length. Roy on the other hand doesn't take the hint and keeps being himself.

Everything comes to a head when Roy accompanies Tito and a few others on a ground mission to bust a smuggling ring deep in the cave of an ice planet. In the skirmish the pirates detonate a small explosive as a last resort and cave in Tito and Roy. The rest of the crew, on the other side and therefore able to get out, leave and get help. It's pretty deep in the cave though so it takes a while and comms can't really get through until someone actually gets out of the cave.

Which leaves Roy and Tito alone in an enclosed environment. A very cold closed environment.

It goes okay at first, they're managing just fine but...it sure takes a while. Eventually the cold is too much and they decide they need to start conserving as much heat as possible, so they take their armor off and huddle together as tightly as possible. All very professional...except for Roy getting way too turned on having Tito essentially spoon him. And he's not good at hiding it. So it turns into some over the clothes rutting action.

Cut to like, maybe a week later and the two have just sort of been avoiding the subject. Well more like Tito has completely stonewalled Roy while Roy is grappling with the fact that that happened and he wants it to happen again. One night Roy invites himself into Tito's quarters and just lays it out for him. "Hey about what happened that time? Yeah, I can't stop thinking about it and if I can't have you again I will literally explode!" He's saying all this with the notion in the back of his head that Tito will drop him off at the next space port and leave him there.

Only Tito admits that he's been thinking about it too, and part of why he's been a hard ass on Roy has specifically to try and avoid this. Welp. Roy is pushy, insistent that they can keep it a secret if they play their cards right.

The night ends with Roy's face pressed against the shitty bunk while Tito hits it from the back. Y'know, like you do.

And they are pretty good at keeping the affair under wraps, mostly flirting while on the ship and saving most physical intimacy for any time they have shore leave. One instance has the Jakarta crew in Rio for a few days renting out some space. Tito books a little bungalow a bit away from the others and though technically Roy shares one with some other officers he's hardly in it. For the most part the two stay at Tito's and can't keep their hands off of each other. At one point, by the end of shore leave, they have a little thought independent of one another that...something long term like this would be really nice. Neither one of them says anything.

Things continue as they are and slowly their relationship becomes more than physical. In isolation it's not a terrible thing but in cases where you're a captain faced with a hostage scenario where you can only save one of your crew (dooming the other) and you choose the one you've been sleeping with...well...

Events of Akuze happen shortly thereafter, followed by Roy's offer into the ICT program. Roy isn't in a good headspace to accept the offer but eventually relents to Tito's insistence, so after he recovers he ships back out to Rio.

Sometime during Roy's time in Rio someone reports Tito for favoritism and possible fraternization with a junior officer, and Roy of fraternization with a senior officer. The two discuss what action to take, as the charges will leave both dishonorably discharged and Roy will be pulled out of the ICT program.

Tito decides to take the full blame so Roy can continue his career. Something Roy is very much against. Tito, being really fucking stubborn, doesn't take no and tells Roy it's for the best. When Tito is discharged it also ended the relationship.

Roy tries to play it off, tries to focus on his training instead of being sort of dumped. There's a point where Roy gets Tito's new contact info and shoots him a message, only to receive nothing in return. It's the final nail in the coffin so Roy moves on, going back to his ways of sleeping with other people in the program (like Kai Leng) and whoever would take him on shore leave.

As for what Tito does after all this...I don't know and I think it's better that way. He does get pulled into emergency service when the reapers attack Earth and the two do end up running into each other in London. It's...really awkward actually. Tito's been doing god knows what while Roy has gone through The Horrors. You know.

But it is nice to see each other again at any rate.

...And other than that I don't have a lot of info on Tito but I do want to expand on him more in the future!

[vlwv]

omg i just saw you're playing wind waker! what do you think so far? :)c hope the dao playthrough has been a blast! wishing you an easy recovery too 🫶

thank you jay ❤️❤️ i am having so much fun with wind waker!! i really miss classic zelda games and getting to play a new (to me) zelda game is SUCH a treat :'')

[nuwanders]

would love to see a snip from The Waiting Door :)c

HEHE... your wish is my command :3c

“And the boy’s memory? Any signs of loss, or confusion?” “His tutors say that his concentration has suffered… he does not pick things up the way he once did, or retain content from one lesson to the next. But… otherwise, no. As far as I can tell, his memory is unaffected.” “Hm. Well, a lapse in concentration is only natural, if the quality of his rest has been impacted to such a degree…” It is dark in Elder Sarathram’s office, but the darkness feels at home here; as though it has occupied this room for a long, long time, and is not about to be usurped by some fleeting shafts of sun. It is the warm kind of darkness, the sort one finds in the shadows of a flickering hearth. Mathyas’ eyes are fighting to stay open. He gazes at Elder Sarathram, trying to blink away the blur, but the priest’s hazy form appears to be sitting behind smudged glass. His voice is a steady drone… it swells, then recedes… outside, through the crack of the open window, the city buzzes distantly, buoyed by the arrival of spring. How odd, that the mewing of seagulls and the ringing of ship-bells should evoke such a lethargy— not when the silence of his bedchamber has become so deafeningly loud. Mathyas turns to his mother where she sits upright in her chair. He thinks idly of leaning into her side, of resting his head against her shoulder. But his own chair is some distance away, and he does not feel at liberty to move it. 

[sidneysussex]

welcome to dadwc! sending you "I can't seem to understand you" for Tarquin and/or Ashur :)

I never write anything about these two quickly, so this is… novel. I feel like I’m learning so much from @dadrunkwriting already. Thank you for the prompt!

It’s all new at headquarters. There are people coming in and out that Tarquin doesn’t know, supplies being delivered that they’d never have been able to get on their own, a dirty great mirror thing in the back that goes straight to the Fade (or sort of, and Tarquin is still trying to work out who thought that was a good idea, a magic door straight into the back garden of the gods who started all this in the first place). It’s all new and Tarquin doesn’t like any of it and he’s not exactly keeping his feelings a secret.

Mae asks him if he’s all right and he tells her he’s fine. (His feelings about her haven’t changed; he still thinks she’s fucking fantastic and also more than a little bit terrifying.)

Dorian asks him if he’s all right and he tells him to fuck off. It’s Dorian. It’s allowed.

Ashur asks him if he’s all right and it’s the very last straw.

“What d’you think is all right about this?” he asks. “Blight and—and gods and dragons and—how does it even work, anyway? Are they gods, too, the dragons? Are they our gods? What the fuck are everyone’s gods doing all over Minrathous? Where’s the blighted Maker, then?”

Ashur waits until he’s certain Tarquin is finished (which is impressive; Tarquin isn’t even sure he’s finished) and then says, “You’re right. I shouldn’t have asked.”

It doesn’t help, because there’s no reason he shouldn’t have asked. Tarquin’s just—he doesn’t even know. Angry. Maybe. Not at Ashur. But it’s stupid to be angry at a dragon and even stupider to be angry at a god, so he’s got nowhere else to point it but at Ashur.

“Yeah,” he says, “but it’s your job, innit? Make sure we’re all okay or, or at peace or whatever it is. We’ve all got jobs to do.”

“I don’t expect anyone to be at peace with what’s happening,” says Ashur. “I just… want to know if I can help.”

“Well, you can’t,” says Tarquin. And that’s unfair, too, because Ashur probably could help if Tarquin wanted him to. He’s never been good at that kind of thing, though—wanting help, asking for help, taking help when it’s offered. People help themselves; that’s how it works. And when they can’t, the Shadow Dragons help them. Tarquin doesn’t need help. There’s nothing to need help with. It’s the people out in the streets who need help—the people they’re supposed to be protecting. From dragons. And gods. Somehow.

“You ever think,” he says to Ashur, “that we’d be a lot better off if someone had knocked some sense into a few of those magisters before they went and stuck their grubby hands all over the Golden City?”

The look he gets back from Ashur is not what he’s expecting. It’s a little confused (and that happens often enough), a little contemplative (which happens less often), maybe a little fond (and Tarquin isn’t thinking about that, not right now).

There’s a thoughtful hum and the corners of Ashur’s eyes crinkle up, just a bit. You’d have to have been watching to see it—only Tarquin has been. He always is.

“Fuck off,” he says, because it seems like the thing to say. It often does, with Ashur.

Normally, Ashur tolerates it (at best; at worst, he radiates disapproval and Tarquin’s shoulders tense as he pretends he hasn’t noticed because it’s the only thing he knows how to do when it happens). Today, there’s a soft huff—almost a laugh, but not quite.

“You know,” Ashur says quietly, “I just can’t seem to understand you.”

“What’s to understand?” asks Tarquin, wielding the question like a polearm, keeping them safely distanced. “I work, I come here, I hit things. What else is there to know?”

Ashur says, “I don’t believe that.”

And that makes Tarquin angry all over again, because what would Ashur know, anyway? He can believe what he likes.

“Yeah, well,” says Tarquin, turning to the stack of notes and maps Ashur has piled up on the table between them. This is safe ground. They can talk about hideouts and strike zones and raids all afternoon and they won’t—almost certainly won’t—tread onto the strange, shaky areas between them where nothing’s exactly what Tarquin expects, or Ashur, for that matter. “We’ve got work to do.”

Ashur nods and comes around to Tarquin’s side of the table to get a better look at the maps. Their shoulders brush as he leans in and Tarquin doesn’t think about it, doesn’t think about understanding and not understanding, doesn’t think about anything except what they’re supposed to be doing right now.

There’ll be time for that later, maybe. Whatever it is; whatever it means. After the gods and the dragons and the war and the blight, after everything, if they’re lucky, there’ll be time.

[oopsallmabari]

would love to know your thoughts on jelani’s breakup 👀 what’s going on there??

AAAAAAAAAA ok thank you for the question. outside of universe, this is prompted slightly by me going 'oh but there are So Many mage hawke/fenris relationships (no shade!!!! i do still like it!!!!) and i kept seeing bits of merrill romance that started breaking my brain in the best way. BUT! in-universe. man i think jelani and fenris are in some ways good for each other while they're together and do fall for each other rather quickly, but also they are two people who have Gone Through Shit in a way that doesn't always mesh. obviously, jelani understands fenris' 'what does magic touch that it doesn't spoil' comment and doesn't exactly resent him for it, but the callous-ness of the statement CUTS when it happens also because jelani's own feelings about her magic are quite troubled. her magic put such a huge weight on her shoulders in terms of living up to malcolms expectations, of keeping bethany (and carver+leandra) safe, of being skilled enough to avoid detection. her magic ability and the unfair expectation she puts on herself (and that malcolm put on her) to protect the family at any cost are inextricably knotted together. her protectiveness and (unintentional) self-importance and smothering nearly destroys her relationship with carver and is certainly part of what brings him to the templars. so yes, her magic ruins things, of course it does, but in accepting that as truth it also destroys her own self image.

fenris also knows, i think, that he hurt her feelings, but he can't take it back and has every reason to feel like that. i imagine that he also gets glimpses of lani struggling with who she is and for worse, incorporates that into his own worldview about magic--if this is causing her so much suffering, isn't that just more reason to believe that magic is a tool that hurts and corrupts even those who are well-intentioned? i think combine this with jelani not knowing how to love in a way that does not involve her clawing for connection (it's her first Real relationship), that she does not know /how/ to not be protective, and needing to be in a relationship where she feels absolutely, unequivocally wanted, there's further incompatibility. so when she is deeply vulnerable and intimate with fenris and it's Too Much and he pulls away afterwards, it fuuuuucks her up (even though he clearly is still interested)! and she does not know how to communicate that with him, she (unhealthily) goes back into My Feelings Don't Matter This Was Always Going To Happen. and the hard thing about this is, again, fenris is a dude who is also traumatized so it's not as simple as One Person Is Wrong here, it's just...complicated.

so they don't talk, and don't talk (see post here i made ages ago about the overall shittiness of act 2 for lani), and they do go out on missions together as needed but it's very business b/c neither of them are good at closing the gap. and then leandra dies (see posts here here ) and merrill tells fenris that either one of them has a real conversation or it may as well be over. fenris gives jelani some space to grieve (he thinks it is the right thing but i think this is where fenris loses any chance of continuing the relationship) and then tries to go talk, but at that point lani's done with it. she cares about him but recognizes that they can't really make a relationship work and if they want to attempt to keep being friends, any idea of it has to end then and there.

this post is going on way way way too long so i won't talk about merrill+lani yet (also bc i need to see more of the merrill romance progression) but the general idea there is that they've been close since they met, merrill is much more assured in her own magic and what it means to her, and that merrill is very good at seeing through lani's defense mechanisms when she's hurting (and IS the one to go to comfort her post-all that remains, which makes a difference in how jelani feels). i think they're diff people in a way that makes the other better/more assured, whereas fenris+jelani are similar in ways that throw the other person off-balance.

[lavampira]

so hard 2 pick just a few ocs.. sending you 🗡️ for kai, 🪶 for malena, and 🧭 for jiyu :)

oc headcanons

wahhh ty friend !!

🗡️ ㅤwhat is a scar that they have but never talk about?

kai has a few small scars from the time that he was enthralled by the emperor, which already is a time that he doesn’t like to talk about with anyone, but knowing that his hands committed violence against his will and has the marks to show for it haunts him.

🪶 ㅤhow do they laugh?

malena is most prone to a snort that turns into a smirk, crossed arms, and shake of her head, but when she really gets laughing and can’t contain it, it’s a loud, unabashed HA HA with her head thrown back, maybe even knocking into the person beside her with a playful nudge.

(that one oc kiss art you did of tony kissing her cheek is literally how I envision her joyous, really laughing expression)

🧭 ㅤwhere would they go if they could disappear tomorrow?

jiyu would want to return to the reisen temple to visit the four lords again, see how they fare since she’d last seen them. maybe take tsubame to all her favorite sights in the ruby sea. and maybe, if they were brave, they’d want to see their old village again, too.

[ghostwise]

OC Kiss Week doodle for @creaking-skull of our tieflings, Loveday and Zirahuén💀🖤🥀

[timothylawrence]

the rana/wyll jester art is SO GORGEOUS i can't stop thinking about them.. :)c what do you think their act would be, when they went undercover?

THANK YOU!!!!! my bestie fil is so talented i was so amazed when i saw it *~*!!!!!

and ahhh!!!! honestly this is a really funny question because on one hand, it would take SOOOOOO much convincing to get Rana to dress up... even a tiepsny bit. She's the biggest grump in general but I knowww the idea of dressing up as something comedic with Wyll.... can anyone say no to that idea... !!!

the reality here is i chose jester outfits cus i think the outfits are SAUR CUTE... but also the idea is so funny. Rana is a deadpan girl with no real sense of humor and Wyll is a natural comedic guy... the idea of the two of them trying to entertain.... He'd have the perfect act and then you have the embodiment of the standing emoji beside him with the weakest, cringiest smile ever. She’s missing every cue on the planet. Someone from the crowd is calling for her head. Wyll's definitely telling a joke to cover up her cringey-ness.

but hey there’s a dance floor and what better way to cover up your lovers lack of sense of humor than to give her a twirl and a kith… 🥹

can we have some attention to their softness… ahh!!!