#silkenspeaks

But you can't get much closer than ending a long errand list for a struggling town by delivering a baby. Arcade hands a healthy baby girl to smiling parents, who then insist the entire gang simply must attend the baby shower (after they all get their own showers, of course).

It's obviously code for "come to the barn and drink and eat and be merry because we can't afford to give you all the caps we had hoped" but that's just fine. Fine because the food is hot, the drinks are cold, and Darling's swung around just about everyone on the sawdust dance floor that will let him.

Fine because Kane has left his armor behind for the moment, and eats without a care for the safety of his friends. Nearby, Veronica has persuaded both Sally (the border collie) and Sally (the bartender) into kisses, and everything is for once, fine.

Better than fine.

Arcade doesn't know the song. But after the first chorus he thinks he has it down, and lets Darling pull him out of his chair with little more than a grumble. He goes with two simple conditions: that Darling promise hand-over-heart to be easy on him, and that he let Arcade wear The Hat.

He doesn't know what it means, and no one tells him.

Darling just grins, hoping his blush passes for the drink in his belly, and the warmth in his heart when Arcade grins back.

To say goodbye to Mirage In The Desert as I edit it, coming up on two almost three years since I posted it, I'll post a favorite quote from each chapter. She was my first fanfic in ten years, and the whole reason I started writing again <3 My toxic love

Chapter 1:

It's typical for power armor users to make their own modifications. The Tesla armor left behind for Arcade Gannon was always intended to be his and, during the battle of Navarro, his father reported for duty in his own, a set Arcade had assumed was lost forever.

So when one of Aguta's soldiers greets them in a familiar X-01, the pattern of scratches undeniable, the welding he recognized because his father was also left handed—he can't believe it.

But he has to, because there's a compartment inside the chest, beneath a detached weld that he knew would reveal a space just wide enough for a photograph.

"It's you! But with a beard! Is that your father?" Clover says over his shoulder, peering at the polaroid of his father in the armor, holding a little Arcade that shields his eyes in the bright California sun.

In the crates of storage from the destroyed base, Arcade finds more remnants from his childhood, but the only thing he deems worth keeping are his father's glasses.

And as he rubs his tired eyes, he slips them on and sees his father staring back at him in the broken window pane. A man who devoted his life to the wrong side of history and yet his most obvious legacies were the soldiers he left behind that were willing to raise his only son, and his son who denied him. Arcade knows he'll never understand his father, motivations or otherwise, but that doesn't mean he has to question himself or carry the corpse either. In an aging warehouse in northern California, Arcade finally buries his father.

Switching with Crocodile, first letting him take you bc he needs to take the edge off, he needs to come inside you first so he can feel comfortable passing the reigns to you

And bc it churns his insides knowing that when you’re fucking him later, legs over your shoulders—the extra wetness between you isn’t just from where his hole is slippery and stretched open, it’s where his release is slowly dripping down your leg as you get ready to give him the same treatment

I just woke up, get these lights on, LET'S GO

I love this question, I have a degree in environmental science and ecology which means I spent most of my time in chemistry classes and the rest of the time avoiding responsibility in zoology and evolution (which means I can't have a favorite but here's one of)

Ailurus fulgens, commonly the Red panda, or lesser panda, though they are NOT lesser, they are so unique and adorable

Beautiful, perfect, wouldn't change a thing

Phylogenically, they've been moved around a lot but now live in their own family with a whole bunch of extinct species that also didn't fit, though it's pretty widely accepted they're tangentially similar to raccoons, ferrets, and skunks

Abnormally low rate of mutation and yet extreme genetic diversity between individuals, mild temperament and variable intelligence, they would be PERFECT for domestication but I'm holding up this flagpole with like three other people so maybe one day </33

Behold their loveliness <333