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THIS IS HOW MEAT LOVES MEAT

[cali]

sorry bro i lost focus and forgot where u begin and i end i hope nothing gay happened

[wordfather]

me: hey so how far does your 'all-seeing' sight extend?

the many eyed creature in my basement: ARE YOU ASKING BECAUSE YOU TRIPPED ON YOUR OWN SHOELACES IN THE FOYER AND FELL ON YOUR FACE?

me: oh... so you saw that... :(

the many eyed creature (trying to be nice): ................ NO.

[andessence]

"Don't! Don't!" Edmund rebuffs between breathless sobs. He is grabbing at Beatrice's arms, tearing them off of himself, swatting them away, trying not to feel the way the ache in his skin lessens where he's touched. He screams like a child, just because he can, just because the ragged, raw feeling it leaves in his throat feels more right than the soothing touch of his other half.

Every thought that stabs through his mind comes once, twice through Beatrice feeling it in him, a third time through him feeling it in Beatrice feeling it in him. The plaintive cry of each — 'Theo!' 'Home!' — keeps buzzing, screeching through in rounds like the feedback from a microphone pressed against the amplifier, and weaving through all that noise is the question: do you regret?

What doesn't he regret in this moment? That's the shorter list.

"No, maybe you could've..." he groans out again, because if feeling better is wrong, he needs to keep digging the words that hurt further and further between his ribs. "It should have been him. He should be here. He should be here," the words dissolve into a low moan as he presses the heels of his hands into his stinging eyes.

When he and Beatrice converse, it is always in half-silences; Edmund speaks and the Voice whispers in his head. It could try to speak now that it has the vessel, but it refuses to learn, and Edmund has never understood why. Until now. Now the mind-numbing pain is too great to form words, and speech, the frivolity Edmund has so desperately clung to because it keeps things between them separate, external, human, slips away. His thoughts sound just like Beatrice's.

I don't want to do this without him, he says without saying. I don't want to be where he's not.

Edmund has thought of dying before, as a poetic testament to his love, as a motivation to do something with the time he has, as a rejection of the god that lets the best die young and curses him to keep going in spite of it. But now, for the first time, Edmund thinks of dying as a choice, and the only one that makes sense. He should have died with Theo. He should have died tasting the poison of a succubus' kiss. He should have been dying every day the Voice nested inside him, rotting his mind away until he was the same husk that he'd seen the Demigods become, but the Voice had never done it, and neither knows why. Edmund should be dead. A new question leeches through both of them. How do I do it? How do I let you?

[threadmund]

nothing should surprise beatrice with edmund. his soul and the voice’s existence should be woven like clasped fingers. she knows his heartbeat as a human might know a song, and she would not recognize a secret from a surface level thought as she lay nestled between the threads of his being. but somehow, she is surprised when edmund  rips her away, and to hear his shattering howl as if being broken apart.

oh, edmund is so loud. his agony is ugly crawling all over it’s disgusting humanness, and his hideous and icy regret. all of edmund is screaming. beatrice does not flinch at the pain of it, but instead the noise, the lack of systematicness. edmund is a jumble of needy flesh and uneven brain chemicals and it is spilling out all over beatrice. it has been stained by unclean heartbreak and the stains are sinking deeper. 

tangibly, when edmund asks beatrice how to let it kill him, beatrice feels relief. the relief echoes through edmund. because it knows exactly what to do to fix edmund so cleanly and give him exactly what it knows he wants. he would not have asked if he didn’t.

‘I can’t do that for you,’ it answers. ‘but I can do something similar.’ 

beatrice searches with the hands she hates so much, thin fingers with too-long nails finding purchase on edmund’s rabbit-thumping heart. 

‘Rest well.’

the empty vessel with the brown eyes edmund always stares at becomes a puppet with sliced strings. it falls into edmund, and edmund slumps forward similarly. 

it only lasts a moment though, just enough for her to collect her bearings. she opens edmund’s eyes. she fills his lungs. she shoves off the empty vessel. black nails reach for his still-wet cheeks and swipe away the moisture. makeup comes off on his fingers. 

she listens. it is quiet.

[pusluktalaratlasi]

roberto santo - "wing of desire".

[agathah]

heyy :))

[soulprompts]

REASONS TO CUP A FACE. ( A PROMPT LIST. )

with the help of some very talented and amazing friends, i present to you an unexpected, very spontaneous meme list based on the beautiful art of cupping someone's face! there's a mix of romantic and platonic here, and even a few that defy the boundaries of normal relationship dynamics! i hope you enjoy! as always; DO NOT ADD TO THIS LIST NOR CLAIM IT AS YOUR OWN!

[KISS]: sender cups the receivers face in their hands before drawing them closer for a kiss.

[CHECK]: after an unexpectedly violent situation, sender frantically rushes to check if the receiver is okay, cupping their face to look closer.

[CLEAN]: sender affectionately wipes a smudge of sauce from the corner of the receiver's mouth, cupping their face in the process.

[LIFT]: sender gently cups the receiver's face and lifts their chin so the receiver is looking up at them.

[COMFORT]: sender cups a distressed receiver's face in their hands and steadies them by resting their foreheads together.

[ATTENTION]: during an important conversation, the sender takes the receiver's face in their hands and firmly directs their focus on them.

[MAKE-UP]: while applying make-up on the receiver's face, the sender cups their face in order to keep them still.

[PRIDE]: after the receiver succeeds in a remarkable achievement, the sender cups their face and tilts their foreheads together to express how proud they are of them.

[WHISPER]: in order to have a private, hushed conversation with the receiver, the sender cups their face and draws them close to make sure they can be heard.

[HAIR]: in the process of pushing the receiver's hair back from their face, the sender lets their hand rest against the receiver's cheek a moment longer.

[GROUND]: during a moment of intense emotional stress, the sender gently takes the receiver's face in their hands to ground them until they're calmer again.

[WONDER]: unable to comprehend how incredible the receiver is, the sender decides to simply cup their face in their hands and marvel at them instead.

[LAST LOOK]: before going into a situation that may result in their death, the sender takes a moment to cup the unaware receiver's face in their hand, just to take a final look of admiration at them before they go.

[SACRIFICE]: the sender cups the receiver's face tenderly to distract them, right before shoving them out of the way (to safety) and facing an attack alone in order to buy the receiver enough time to escape.

[BELIEF]: in a moment where the receiver is lacking in self-confidence, the sender cups their face tenderly and professes their faith in the receiver's abilities.

[DISBELIEF]: after the receiver has done something completely unexpected (and reckless) the stunned sender cups their face in their hands while trying to get them to explain why the hell they did it.

[BETRAYAL]: trying to keep the receiver calm before the big reveal, the sender cups their face gently to keep them steady, and then reveals that they're the villain.

[WOUND]: after the receiver has been wounded, the sender tries to keep them calm and conscious by cupping their face in their hands and talking to them to keep them focused.

[INJURY]: after having been badly wounded themselves, the sender tries to reassure the frantic receiver by cupping their face and comforting them.

[RAMSAY]: after the receiver commits a culinary crime, the sender presses two slices of bread against either side of their face, cupping their face to hold the bread in place, and calls them an idiot sandwich.

[ofallingstar]

Anne of Green Gables: Road to Green Gables (2010)

[seraphinesaintclair]

Charles Baudelaire, “Lament Of An Icarus”

[huariqueje]

Carnation and Bee     -   Peter Birkhaeuser , 1946.

Swiss ,  1911 - 1976

Oil on canvas ,  52 x 69 cm,

[reedraws]

When I look in the mirror, I don't recognise myself anymore...

Thank you @grinningstan for letting me go so overboard with your commission. Edmund is a delight, and I would actually die for heartbolds.

❃❀✿ Commissions / Ko-Fi / Store✿❀❃

[droptheguillotineplease]

Held. (v.1)

[loneliestgirl15]

I like listening to ppl talk so i can see whats normal and whats not normal

[agronzky]

⠀⠀⠀𝐔𝐍𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐋 𝐔𝐍𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐇 (𝐇𝐎𝐙𝐈𝐄𝐑) 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒. ♡

"At last, when all of the world is asleep you take in the blackness of air"

"Your reflection can't offer a word to the bliss of not knowin' yourself"

"No closer could I be to God or why he would do what he's done"

"Darlin', it finds a way to live in you"

"I wanna fade away with you"

"Want to be when you fall on me like night, every time"

"I don't need to know where we begin and end"

"Remember once I told you about how before I heard it from your mouth"

"Some part of me must have died the first time that you called me, baby"

"Whatever keeps you around, it keeps you around"

"Are there limits to any emptiness?"

"Do you think I'd give up?"

"How could you think, darlin', I'd scare so easily?"

"What good would it be on the far side of things?"

"Heaven is not fit to house a love like you and I"

"I feel lighter than I have in so much time"

"If anything could fall at all, it's the world that falls away from me"

"If you need to, darling, lean your weight to me"

"I wanna feel the edges start to burn"

"There's money to be made, whatever's still to come"

"Let me see the heat get to you"

"We had nowhere to go and every desire for going there"

"We knew what our love was worth"

"You were steerin' my heart like a wheel in your hands"

"You only feel it when it's lost"

"How can somethin' be so much heavier but so much less than what it seems"

"Quietly, it slips through your fingers, love"

"If there was anyone to ever get through this life with their heart still intact, they didn't do it right"

"We didn't get it right but, love, we did our best"

"I havе never known a silence like the one fallen here"

"There are some things that no one teaches you, love"

"And I wish I could say that the river of my arms have found the ocean"

"You may never know your fortune"

"So far from home to have a stranger call you darling"

"I wish I was the sunlight just sitting on The Mississippi"

"I don't wanna be anything but I would do anything just to run away"

"I wanna be the shadow when my bright future's behind me"

"Go look another way"

"I will not be great, but I'm grateful to get through"

"The memory hurts but does me no harm"

"I remember the view, streetlights in the dark blue, the moment I knew I'd no choice but to love you"

"All my love and terror balanced there between those eyes"

"You know the distance never made a difference to me"

"So I thought you were like an angel to me"

"You know I'm good on my own"

"Do you know I could break beneath the weight?"

"And there are some people, love, who are better unknown"

"Could this be how every day begins?"

"And I am never going back again"

"I lived my whole life before the first light"

[andessence]

Stupid to have asked, as if ancient arcane wisdom were just a shirt you couldn't find in your size and desperately asked a clerk to check out back for. There is no more out back. There are no better answers he can trade this one for, and he knows it before the final blow even comes, but the words that ring out refutal in his head wipe out the last foolish part of Edmund that could hope against sense.

His hand pressed against the vessel's chest balls into a fist in the fabric of its shirt, and his head bows as the tears overtake them both. Gone. Gone forever. And the emptiness of that truth echoing across two minds, as one weak human was never meant to feel it. One shaking inhale is the precursor to the first of many long, desolate sobs. "It's not fair! It's not fair! No, it's— I looked into his eyes, and I— I told him I wouldn't save him then because I'd do it someday, myself. Beatrice, I told him..." Edmund feels like he could vomit, and might have if he hadn't spent all day in the grip of this fixation, researching, hunting through everything he's learned, preparing and dashing the components of spell after spell that still wasn't going to be enough. He hasn't eaten today, comes a dim realization, ignored immediately. "I told him I wouldn't because I had to SAVE YOU."

He leans into Beatrice, moaning, and feels a comfort at the touch which in this moment can only disgust him. He doesn't want to feel better if this is true. He should be miserable, if misery is the only thing he'll have left of Theo, and to drown it out in the relief that comes in Beatrice's arms feels like a second betrayal. It feels like the selfishness everyone's always hated in him, saving himself at the cost of everyone else. That's what he did to Theo's spirit, isn't it? He held his hand and stroked his face and he said underneath his bright words of promise, 'No, my power's more important than your life. No, I just don't love you as much as I love me.' Horrible. He's a monster.

He reels back and away, turning his back and letting himself crumple bit by bit, doubling over, then crouching on his heels, and finally sinking to the floor. "He should have been the one to get you. At least he was a good person. He could have done so much more." It's the kind of irrational, self-hating what-if that he could only have concocted in this pit of despair; Theo died months before the Voice had been severed from the Web. It was never even a possibility. But the thought is so exquisitely excruciating, the perfect tool of torment to throw himself on. Theo deserved power. He would have asked better questions, made better allies, helped more people... "You s- saved me once, when I should've died. Maybe if he'd had you, you could've..."

[threadmund]

it does have sympathy for edmund’s desire to wield what he does not fully understand but is yet so wonderous and vast in the hope it would bring him home. it would even without tears dripping profusely down its chin.

it splays its fingers to run through edmund’s dark hair in a soothing manner. its hands are steady. it combs all the way through, then does it again, focusing on the specifics of the movement as best it can. if effort alone could draw edmund to a solution, or even to the slim likelihood of one, then he would seize that chance with both hands and throw himself away to chase it. perhaps it is lucky then that the answer is so unquestionable. you cannot uproot a law of their universe. you cannot make an exception. maybe now this raw and open wound can have a chance to cauterize.  

I know.

beatrice experiences every hideous emotion. every bright flare of injustice, the riotous waves of unimaginable sorrow, but what is most familiar are the pangs of hunger for a home that no longer exists. it can appreciate edmund’s wails. it’s as if the essence of their existence has torn open and is bleeding profusely. if it did not know better, it might have worried this pain would be enough to kill them both.  

It was an impossible situation on purpose, and you didn’t understand that you couldn’t save him. It’s only natural you would believe that you could.

unsaid, but not unfelt is the question forming as to whether edmund regrets his decision. it will feel it if he does. edmund’s phrasing was almost accusatory, like what he really meant to say is ‘beatrice, I gave up my home for you because I thought you could help me get it back later, and I could have them both. but that isn’t true and now I regret not letting you die. I liked my other home better.’ and it doesn’t know how it could blame him.

it is just beginning to reach over his shoulders and smooth out the clothes on his bowed back when edmund sinks to the floor. it sinks with him, without want to be any other way. it tries to return edmund into its arms.

It’s more likely I would have driven him mad and it would not have been like you’re imagining. Regardless, it didn’t happen that way.

[andessence]

He's not sure how to feel about the defense "human's show their care with their mouths." It gives Edmund the vague impression Bee doesn't even want to kiss him, but just considers it a social grace. On the other hand, his mind latches like a vice onto the kernel of 'They care about me!' with a joy that's a little embarrassing. Yes, he always knows they care, in the self-interested sense that you have to care about someone whose fate is bound to your own. But the closer to something human that that sentiment gets, the more it squeezes at his heart.

He leans up, propping himself on his elbows, and tries to project an energy that soothes, that stop's Bee's withdrawal into stiff-backed distance. He can feel their indignation, the flares of sense memory of hands under his shirt and entwining limbs...

"No, I did not expect tongue, Beatrice. Yeah, sometimes people kiss. For some kinds of care. But that's, like, special. You feel me acting weird because that's— it's romance." His slight fumbling for words settles around the heavy word romance. The poetic sense in him stirs. He beats it back with a stick because he does not need to find the most beautiful words to string together like pearls for them, crafted too obviously of his own feelings. He needs to find the straight talk to demarcate a behavioral norm. "Hey, I know what you meant. I can feel it," He says, and reaches for Beatrice's hand. "It's just a nuance you missed. That's okay. But you shouldn't kiss me unless you want to start touching in a very specific way. Because I'm a stupid, messy, little human and it makes my feelings get all ... That's not the point. Just, okay, rule is: kissing on the mouth is for people who are in love. We play fast and loose with physical touch because us two're different, but this one feels out of bounds. There are other things that are out of bounds, we've just never accidentally run into them before." (No, they haven't accidentally run into any, because Edmund has been very intentionally restraining himself from thinking about or acting on any of them. He just never thought they would be the one to slip.) "You feel me?"

[threadmund]

oh.

so the miscommunication lies in nuance. a simplistic grey area. it wants to stick its human hands in and desperately feel the edges veiled in murkiness so it understands. beatrice is a being meant to understand everything. incomplete knowledge is an affliction that must be remedied, a symptom of its ugly corruption. it used to be so vast and anywhere it reached there was understanding, complete and whole, waiting to love it. now it does not understand nuance.  

it does not contain the desire to hide anything about its own messy emotions, and it would not be able to if it tried. beatrice is upset. not at edmund, but at being confused. these shapes are so much simpler than the infinite arcana it whispers like a song, but it has never seen them before, and it does not know how to name them.

if it were more human it might expand its lungs with a long breath then let it out very slowly. it doesn’t, so instead there is a moment in which it does not communicate. it takes its time to answer. it looks at the hand edmund is holding— its own, beatrice’s. a loud construct of meat and sinew and bones and blossoms of nerve-endings all sewn together in a complex orchestra to house what is imperfect. if human have the language to describe what it is feeling, then it lacks the diction.  

ok, kissing is out of bounds because that’s romantic-exclusive. what other things are out of bounds? and explain what romance is and how it is different from what we are.

[andessence]

Contact — the places where they meet don't buzz with the awareness of a foreign other's touch, but they calm a hungry, unnatural absence. When Beatrice's skin brushes Edmund's, it soothes the strain of their split into two bodies. The strain is necessary, Edmund has to remind himself every time Bee's hand on him makes him sigh out relief. They need to be reminded they aren't the same being, aren't one consciousness, even with souls so irretrievably bound to one another. The vessel he animates for Bee is the right tool for that job, maintaining their sanity, even if the distance it puts between them is maddening in its own way. Both of them feel that pull, one to the other: come together, closer, closer. They feel it, and they acquiesce in casual, comfortable ways. Edmund, however, faces a unique challenge in their circumstances...

He shouldn't have given the Voice such a hot vessel. That was the first mistake. Well, no, the first mistake was allowing his feelings for the disembodied spirit of magic and entropy to slip into something wholly too human. The second mistake was the hot vessel. Because fantasizing about a thing you can't ever have and that has no human sense of self to transgress on is free and hurts no one. But fantasizing about the creature that is belatedly developing that sense of self and now has a body you can accidentally cross lines with.... and one that is also your patron.... Now that can get complicated real fast.

He'd felt so hopelessly, embarrassingly sure that he'd be the one to fuck it up and step across that line. Nothing could shock him more, then, on a lazy evening slipping into night, alertness slipping into slumber, but to feel Bee's weight shifted on his chest, hair brushed from his face, and its lips meeting his. He starts fully awake, swept up in a tumult of contradictory feelings; the soothed ache of that 'closer', the thrill of want where none is suspected, the panic of the fractured certainty that Beatrice doesn't have those desires. A started little noise turns to a hum of confused approval in his throat. His voice comes a little shakier than he hoped it would. "Hey, uh—? Hey, no, what are you doing?"

[threadmund]

beatrice realizes the error in translation the moment their lips touch their other half’s, and uncomfortable emotions flare like damaged nerve endings. the bright colors of confusion and surprise pierce their joined minds. this is not what bee had expected to elicit. it was supposed to be a natural and comfortable extension of their already existing affections. it was a hand inside another hand. it was edmund resting in its lap.  

bee pulls back, equally confused, albeit indignant at the rejection.

no? obviously, I’m kissing you. humans show their care with their mouths. why are you acting weird? did you expect the tongue or teeth instead?

it is frustrated by this lack of smooth understanding. why can it lay atop edmund, stick its hands under his shirt and warm them against his stomach, hold any part of him, but not touch his lips? there is the possibility it had failed to taste edmund with the tongue and teeth and this was a poor mimic of a kiss. but it has seen edmund use only the lips before, a less passionate version of the same gesture, so why is this wrong?  

it withdraws, pulling back skinny limbs and folds them neatly, sitting up straight-spined and feels itself making an expression. there is tension woven through the brow.

for a being so hungry for attention and affection, it confounds the voice that edmund chooses now to be picky. then asks the voice what it is doing. annoying.

[geryone]

Dogged, Stacy Gnall