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bokettochild · 1 day ago

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Do you have some hcs for Legend? I'd love to hear your thoughts on him :)

So, so many of them!

he's far-sighted! Due to a lot of adventuring and focusing on the far away stuff, he's actually trained his eyes to always be focused on far away things, and so now he struggles to see things clearly close up. he has specticals for it (Impa took him to get some when they were in Labrynna together) but he rarely remembers to wear them, and doesn't like to out on the road to begin with, as he's worried they'll break. he tends to forget he's wearing them when at his house though, so Ravio's really the only one who sees him wear them more than he sees him without them.

he's totally a bit of a history nerd, because I said so. It was more just stories when he was little, but between frequently interacting with ancient artifacts and architecture, as well as time traveling himself, Legend's become somewhat fascinated with history. he likes having all the answers (as most Links do) but for him, that includes knowing where things came from, why they were made, and so on

he's also a horse girl, much like Twilight and Warriors, but doesn't travel with a mount because it's less convenient. While having a mount in a Zelda game DOES make avoiding foes much easier, it also gets frustrating when you have to go find them again after doing however many things (point in case, my BotW horses are scattered to the four winds All The Time). Legend, who frequently is getting up and dropped in random places, doesn't like that this would leave any of his mounts alone in the middle of nowhere and thus doesn't take his own horse many places as a result. Said horse is Puini (OoA manga) and is currently housed either at the castle or with his grandparents (OoS manga). He dotes on her exceedingly, and being around Epona now reminds him of her a lot. Being as she's a literal war horse though (trained for battle with a knight) he has an inkling she would't quite like the mares of the rest of his brothers and leaves her out of the conversation when they bring up mounts

he's the OPPOSITE of someone with claustephobia! I have this fic I'm writing in my head right now where the boys finish their adventure just to get collectively dropped at Lon Lon with no way home, and have to adapt to "normal" life. A chapter of said fic (if I write it) would likely focus on the fact that Legend literally grew up in dungeons, like, his games have the most dungeons of all the Zelda games, as well as some of the biggest focus on dungeons, and as a result, they likely feel more familiar to him than the open world (and oddly safer, since they're predictable and follow Rules that the outside world doesn't have). I like to think that small, narrow, dark places would actually be soothing for him, to the point that, in the theoretical fic, it freaks the rest out when they find out he keeps purposefully climbing into dried up wells for some space when he's homesick. Maybe it's the inner bunny instincts, maybe it's a pre-existing trait that influenced the magic that made him a bunny to begin with, but Legend tends to burrow, and feels safest when he's in smaller, darker places.

He loves puzzles. I think it was Squido who said that we should let the boys enjoy their adventures, no? Let them look back fondly and smile at some things? For Legend, I think the thing he loved most about adventures with the problem solving, and puzzles are the best sorts of problems because you're guaranteed that there IS an answer. So, for someone who grew up doing puzzles most of his life (dungeons), they're a familiar thing for him and a challenge for him to face without actually endangering himself. he likes mind puzzles and logic puzzles mainly, but picture puzzles are fun too for him

Apple snob. He knows all the apple types, probably bred two of his own apple breeds somewhere in his life, and he has opinions on all of them

Nature boy. Not like Wild and Hyrule who like to get lost in it, no, Legend just likes existing in nature. He grew up on Orchard Hill, so gardening and husbandry are something he was raised to before the hero shtick, and he finds a certain sort of peace in gardening/plants. Also, he travels a lot, so he spends a lot of time by himself out of doors. Granted, that's also where a lot of the bad stuff happens to him, but the good outweighs the bad and I think he genuinely would love to go hiking or do nature walk sorts of things if adventure didn't scoop him up every time he left the house

Really big dancer. Mostly because of Din, partially because of Marin, and Cadence definitely had an influence too. Unfortunately, his mental metronome is set to the music pulse of Octavio's magic so he sort of just...can't keep a beat well without a lot of time to adjust. Once he's got it though he's killer

He can play a lot of instruments, but I really like the idea that the violin is his favorite. yes, he's got that precious ocarina from the dream world, and he learned to play one of those first, but like the idea that Uncle Aflon or maybe one of his friends was a violinist, and Legend just got dead set as a kid on that particular instrument. It's also a very diverse and emotional instrument, which grants him a lot of freedom of expression he'd usually not allow himself

He didn't speak his first word until he was four. Uncle Aflon kind of accepted early on that he might be mute, but as it happened, he just didn't feel the need to use words to communicate, since what he wanted was either always evident or could be figured out without him having to speak much. I think he was likely either mostly silent as a child, using mainly sign or other nonverbal communications, but if you want to make it angsty, I also like to say that it could be because his throat got messed up by an illness he had when he was very small so talking was painful for him. I HC that that changed after he traveled to Labrynna, because the memaid's curse didn't just give him a tail, but also effected/altered his voice, making speech easier for him but also making it to where he can actually cham people with his voice if he's not careful (which perhaps contributed to him becoming a harsher spoken person because then the charm is less likely to slip through on accident if he's being a jerk)

Continuing the speech HCs, I think Legend's tendency towards speech is impacted heavily by wo he's around. if it's anyone he met prior to Labrynna, or in Labrynna, he defaults to mostly sign, whereas if he met them after, he tends to usually use spoken words

Legend' far more expressive and open with sign language, as tone is very important and easier to navigate for him. In essence, it is his first language and the one he's most comfortable with

That said, with people he's truly comfortable with, legend's just straight up non-verbal. he doesn't feel the need to speak and usually just uses facial expressions and exaggerated motions to express himself. Being able to shut down the speech center of his brain for a bit is a huge relief and since those he knows well know how to read him just fine like that, it doesn't make much of a difference either way

As y'all know, I champion the Fable and Legend are siblings HC, though I know it's neither cannon, nor likely to be cannon in LU (pretty sure JoJo confirmed it's not true). Still, I really really like the twins thing!

On the note of being twins! You know how sometimes, with twins, one comes out stronger than the other? Yeah, that was Fable. Legend's actually the smaller/weaker twin, though not by much. he was a very sickly baby though. Oddly enough though, despite being physically weaker than his sister, he actually got the stronger of the magic between the two of them! It might even be possible that the strength of his magic might have been the reason his body is weaker; because housing that much power can put a significant strain on a body. Either way, Fable and he joke about it frequently, saying that as he's got stronger Holy magic, he should have been the princess, and since she's physically stronger, she should be the one with the sword. He doesn't mean it though, and is only playing along. Fable kinda sorta really does mean it though)

It's less focused on by the fandom as a whole, but in case you didn't know: Legend is more than just a polyglot! In his games alone, we see that he can hear and understand not only most trees (not just guardian trees like the Deku and Maku trees, but the normal ones around Kakariko too), but also animals, spirits, and literally forces of nature! Heck, the literal SEASONS coo about how adorable he is when you meet them in OoS! That said, I think he learned pretty early on that this isn't normal. Uncle started getting really worried when he saw and heard Legend speaking to what seemed to be thin air on multiple occasions, so he learned to just not answer unless there aren't other humans/hylians around

Continuing the previous one, this does mean that Legend has to frequently resist asking for directions from various passing by birds and animals, and instead just bites his tongue and lets Twilight go off scouting because explaining that he can hear voices no one else can hear is just....ot the best of ideas

Despite the rest of the heroes' being under the impression that Legend was an only child, he actually has Middle Child energy. this is because he grew up with Fable, Ralph, the Oracles, and Ghanti bossing him around/messing with him, but he also helps look after his neighbor Gully, who I fully believe he loves the same way that Wind loves Aryll.

While I have Gully on the mind, I think Smith and his wife have mentally adopted Legend and all but see him as their eldest, since Bertha (Smith's wife), also had a hand in helping Aflon, newly appointed caretaker to an infant he knows nothing about minding, with learning about babies. Legend however, dense as he is, still fully believes they just put up with him for their actual son's sake, since Gully clearly adores him so much

This shows up a lot in my fics, but I like the idea that Legend loves the stars. Like, tehy're the same, always there, no matter where you go. he's traveled a lot and been tossed into random locations where everything is different, yet whenever he looks up, there the stars are, the same as always, just from a different angle. I think Uncle Aflon taught him the various constellations when he was small, and maybe when Legend was lonely in his adventures he started talking to them like they could hear them (and heck, if the seasons can hold a conversation, then why couldn't the stars?). Also, you know the thing about how if you're deep enough underground and you look up through a hole you can see the sky? Yeah, he's more used to night skies and stars than sunlight

Despite being a traveler, he's actually got a palish complexion for his skin tone, since he spends most of his time underground. He's also a bit sensitive to sunlight all around and gets a headache fairly quickly when he's out in it. He hates noon time and would rather be sleeping than awake when the suns at its zenith

I've seen this one around a bit, but I really love the idea that legend enjoys wearing his uncle's old clothes around the house when he's between adventures. he probably keeps Uncle's pipe tobacco and other things stored with the clothes so they still smell like him even after all these years

He's entirely unaware of the fact that being on regular speaking terms with the Golden Goddesses, the Fates, the Seasons, the freaking Triforce, and most royalty is uncommon for a hero. He's aware most people don't do it, but it's sort of jarring for him when he realizes that the other heroes' dealings are limited to mostly mortals, and lowly ones at that, and that when they do speak of the goddesses, it's usually with some sort of reverence. Meanwhile Legend will and has insulted Din to her face for picking on him about his height, gossips with Farore whenever they run into each other, and the only one he kinda treats with reservation/respect is Nayru because they sort of faught each other that one time and while it wasn't her faught, it still makes things a bit awkward at times

He tends to chew on things when he's restless/agitated. He's not even aware he's doing it half the time, and has chewed his sleeves, hair, and various tools at different times. The Chain have designated bowls (Sky got bored) and his has very clear signs of gnawing around the edges. Same with any wooden spoons he's given (although, being as Uncle raised him with manners, Legend does carry his own silverware at all times, and thus rarely needs to borrow from others (it's a medieval manners thing))

Unlike the stereotype of men when they're sick, Legend actually gets really quiet when he's sick. Hyrule's the same way and it's mostly to draw the least attention to themselves when they're not in fighting condition. Usually though, he tends to take the 'sleep through it' approach, which is really a very poor choice, but as far as he's concerned, it's worked until now so he's not changing it

I think Legend's a very physical person, someone who likes to be able to touch and feel various things, and generally enjoys the idea of physical affection, but in reality balks at it because it usually catches him off guard. That said, he do be touching all the stuff and animals.

Gets weird about dodongos. he knows that the majority of them are threats, but there's always a part of him that wonders if some of them are like Dimitri, and it can be tricky for him to fight them at times

The early Zelda games are sort of wack honestly, but the fact that he's technically a telepath gets brushed aside way too much, y'know? Like, Legend regularly has conversations with Zelda and Sahasralah from miles away, IN HIS HEAD, and only uses certain stones to strengthen that connection, not forge it to begin with! Now, he might just be receptive to telepathy, maybe it's a twin thing (I have a WIP about that) but I think it'd be really funny if he's just sitting on that little skill and never brings it up because linking up (lol) thoughts with someone can be very overwhelming when your brain is already moving a thousand miles a minute, and trying to process thoughts and feelings that aren't his own gives him a migraine. So he just.... doesn't. Unless Zelda reaches out first or he needs to tell her something important.

He's terrible about self care and remembering his own needs, but will, can, and does scold others for doing the same. He doesn't even care that he's a huge hypocrite, not much anyway

Magpie. Boy loves his shiny things. Like, he doesn't technically need everything he has, and he knows most of it will never be used, but if it's pretty he keeps it anyway

I feel like Legend'a also got a bit of food insecurity. When he was a kid, freshly thrust into his first adventure and with the kingdom turned against him, he didn't actually know how to find his own food and ended up going hungry a LOT during that first adventure (which might have stunted his growth a bit). Since then, he's made a point to not only educate himself on what's safe to eat and what's not, but he also taught himself how to preserve and prepare long lasting foods, which he keeps a huge stockpile of. He also doesn't trust any food he hasn't watched be prepared unless it's made by someone he trusts, and even then sometimes his anxiety/paranoia gets the better of him. There were a few neighbors who tried slipping something in the meals they gave him under the pretense of taking pity, when in reality they planned to turn him over to the knights, so he's always cautious now

He's actually less wary and guarded outside of Hyrule than he is inside of it. Lorule is an exception because it's a version of Hyrule, but any other country is used to a very different version of him because Legend isn't always suspecting foul play in other kingdoms who have nothing to gain from his death.

He cannot handle blood well. Yeah, he's a hero, yeah, he fights a lot, and yes, he's frequently injured in battle or dungeons, but watching his Uncle bleed to death left him with a kind of hemophobia and he tends to have mini panic attacks/breakdowns when exposed to large amounts of blood. He hates it, but can't control it, and hasn't found a way to overcome it at all

After spending a long time at sea after Koholint, trying to find his way home, Legend actually really dislikes the taste of fish. He had to rely on his mer form a lot getting home, and fish has been ruined forever because it was his only choice for food, and eating it raw (mer) did make him sick a few times (he's still hylian at his core) so now he tends to get queasy when eating fish, just on reflex

He's a dead ringer for his late mother, to the point where people who knew her sometimes double take

I know Warriors is supposed to be the pretty one, but considering Legend's canonically had forces of nature comment on how pretty he is (I think it was Summer specifically, but it could have been one of the other Seasons), I think he's got a type of beauty that, at the least, appeals to the supernatural/magical beings. He's unaware of this though, although he'll always say Fable is one of the most beautiful people in the world, all while unawares of the fact that they're nearly identical looks-ways

He likes to doodle. Drawing more so, but e enjoys both depending on what mood he's in

Logically and artistically minded. Numbers bother him though (something Ravio, who is the reverse, definitely abuses)

He's one of those people who genuinely will be happy if you get him a candle. He's got everything anyone could need, but something that smells nice, offers minimal light, and he;s always running out of? Oh he loves them. He's very picky about what scents he'll accent though because his nose is very sensitive

He cracks his knuckles and rolls his shoulders a lot when he's bored/tense/stressed- basically all the time LOL

he uses sewing/stitchwork as a way to try and relax himself after a long day. it works half the time. the other half his thread gets tangled and he gets very worked up LOL

Secretly admired Sky's skills in embroidery, but doesn't have the patience to practice anything complicated

he loves to teach people things, but constantly assumes people won't listen, so he tends to break things down to bare basics rather than going into the nitty gritty like he enjoys.

Such a big sweet tooth

Genuinely hates the feeling of fur. Twilight's pelt bothers him, not just because the guy who turns into a wolf is literally wearing a wolf's skin, but also because the feeling of fur, treated or no, displeases him most of the time. He only likes fur when it's on something alive and moving, and even then, he's picky about it

Has a extreme fear of dogs. It's both from being chased by the soldiers' dogs, but also various dog-like things in the Dark World. Wolfie used to make him very uncomfortable before he realized it was Twilight

Fall boy. The other seasons would be offended if they knew he had a favorite, but I think his little apple farming, leaf crunching, bright color enjoying self would just adore the fall.

he LOVES the rain. His arthritis acts up something awful when it rains, but when it's not too bad he enjoys being out in the rain. That said, he HATES thunderstorms, less because of being struck by lightning (LA) and more because of the storm the night that his Uncle died

He's actually not fond of heights. He doesn't panic, but he's used to being very low, or even below the ground, so being very high above it unsettles him.

He tends to sleep curled up, he's not sure why, he just does

He's got VERY sensitive ears, both to touch and sound

Buck teeth <3

Also, freckles. He doesn't spend much time in the sun, but he does tend to freckle when he has. It also brings out some natural highlights in his hair, but he's not aware of that because it's not happened since he was small

Tends to sound like he's talking down to everyone, but in reality he's just never sure what all most people know about any given subject

Has such a soft spot for kids

He's a god-father to Bippin and Blossom's kid, and he adores that little munchkin, bordering on spoiling them.

Imma end it there because it's late and I need to be up early, but I hope this satisfied your curiosity a bit!

Thanks for the ask! I appreciate the chance to talk about all these ideas!

#asks and answers #linked universe #linkeduniverse #lu legend #ketto's brainfarts

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fru1t4fr0gs · 2 days ago

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You and Me - Chapter 7

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Avenger!Reader

Summary: You enter the HYDRA bunker. Reunions are had. Revelations are made. Things go very poorly very quickly.

Warnings: 18+ Minors DNI: Violence, Blood, Swearing, Reader gets injured, Protective!Bucky, Angst (but with a happy ending), Reader is Tony Stark's biological kid (still a fully grown adult though, the timelines work because we say they work), no use of y/n, Please let me know if I forgot anything!

Author’s Note: We've reached the end of the CACW timeline! Don't worry, it's just the end of Part 1. I'm planning on running with this fic through TFATWS - maybe into Thunderbolts, who knows? Thank you guys for your feedback and love for this fic! As always, any comments are super appreciated!

The door creaks, filling the corridor with the sound of bending metal and snapping hinges, and Bucky is quick to push you behind him before he raises his gun towards the threat. You want to make some kind of comment about having your own gun, but you decide that now isn’t the time to push buttons.

But you don’t feel the hum. You don’t feel the prickling feeling of something wrong. For a moment, you think the serum might not be working, like maybe your body has adapted to it and built up some kind of tolerance, and then-

“You seem a little defensive.” Tony Stark says, and your stomach flips with emotion. You peer over Bucky’s shoulder, words catching in your throat as he approaches. You’re not often one to be rendered speechless. Today is just chock-full of new experiences.

“At ease, soldier. I’m not here for you.” He says to Bucky, eyes quickly landing on you. You see his gaze soften, just a bit, and you have to force yourself to stay where you are.

He believes you. And finally, fucking finally, he’s on your side.

“Can you tell the Manchurian Candidate here to put the gun down?” He asks you, and you almost laugh with a strange mixture of fondness and relief. What a fucked up scene this is. What a truly ridiculous, fucked up scene. But then again, what about your life over the past few years, your relationships with these people, hasn’t been a little fucked up?

“C’mon, Bucky. Friend, not foe.” You rest your hand on Bucky’s arm, guiding the gun down. He hesitates, but lets you.

“Protective, is he?” Tony asks dryly, and you think you just might hear the smallest twinge of approval in his voice. Well hey, there’s a start. And that start, as much as you don’t want it to, makes your heart soar.

“Just a little.”

“Y’know, sometimes I wish I could ground you.”

“You’re a few years late for that. But I think trying to arrest me was pretty close.”

You think, for a moment, that Tony almost smiles.

“Does he always stare like that?”

It’s your turn to smile, then. “You have no idea.”

He shrugs, still holding his usual air of nonchalance. “Well, when this is all over you can have him over for dinner. I’m sure Pepper’s gonna love him.”

You know he’s joking, but you still almost cringe at the thought of the third degree he would face if put in the same room as Pepper Potts. Still, the mental image is kind of…nice. Like if this situation were just a little less insane, if everything wasn’t buried in so much chaos, you could actually bring Bucky home to your strange new version of a family. It would be awkward, yes. Very much so, considering everything. But maybe…

Maybe he’ll crack a smile, and hold your hand. Maybe he’ll make a joke, and Tony will laugh. He’ll bring flowers in that old-timey way he has, nervous and unsure how to introduce himself properly. Pepper will like the gesture, give him a little more leeway, and by the end of the night everything might just feel a little bit…normal. Nice. Like you’re not trying to save the world for once, but just..people.

Right now, without punches or insults being thrown, it almost feels like a possibility.

“What’s a Pepper?” Bucky asks you quietly as you all begin to make your way down the hall.

It’s hard to tamp down the laugh that bubbles up in your chest.

All feeling of relief is sucked from your body as you walk into the chamber. And there it is. The prickling under your skin. The sense of impending danger.

The supersoldiers are all dead.

Zemo killed them all.

His voice echoes over the speaker and when the light to the chamber clicks on, you know immediately that Steve’s shield isn’t going to penetrate it, but the clang still reverberates hopelessly through the room like the final note in a song.

You barely hear his words as he speaks to Steve. Your nerves are burning. Your mind is racing. You see the screen. The date on it. Why does that date seem so familiar?

“Something’s wrong.” You say quietly.

“Yeah, I think we’re past that.” Tony answers, but Bucky understands. He knows what the serum did to you better than anyone else, and you can feel him become impossibly more alert as he steps in front of you again, a wall blocking you from any potential threat.

And then his eyes fall on the screen, and he freezes.

“Buck?” You ask, trepidation lacing your tone. Tony sees it too, and frustration prickles at you because you still don’t know what it means and you’ve always hated not knowing things and-

“This, I admit I did not expect.” You hear Zemo’s voice like a toxin in your veins, the smugness in his tone making your fingers twitch with the urge to rip through the metal wall and connect your fist with his face. “The Winter Soldier. The death machine, finding something to care about. Someone to love him.” He’s looking at you, now, but you don’t give an inch. You glare back with fire in your eyes, fists clenched at your sides. There’s too much static in the air. Too much of the feeling that something is about to change. Something is about to go wrong. Very wrong.

“How does it feel, Winter Soldier, to know what’s coming?”

Bucky is looking at you. He looks afraid. Too afraid.

“What a sad irony that the unfeeling creature of HYDRA will lose everything, as well.”

The video begins to play, and the scattered puzzle pieces fall into place.

You never met your biological grandparents. Of course you didn’t. But you knew of them. You’ve heard stories. You knew about the crash that killed them.

Bucky’s eyes are blank as he approaches your injured grandfather. Howard Stark recognizes him. The confused ��Sergeant Barnes?” sounds tinny over the old speaker in a way that makes you feel sick.

The metal arm, the one that has held you so gently, so delicately, so many times, slams into his face on the camera, killing him quickly. Efficiently. Mindlessly.

Your body turns to ice as you hear your grandmother’s weak voice call your grandfather’s name. You can’t peel your eyes from the screen as that metal hand wraps around her throat.

The video stops, and you’re not looking at the screen anymore. You’re looking at Bucky.

Shock is a strange thing. It’s cold. Still. It locks your limbs into place and squeezes your throat shut. It makes you feel wide awake and half asleep at the same time, mind empty but still humming with new information that you can’t put to good use.

It wasn’t Bucky. You know that. And it’s not just logic that locks that information into your racing thoughts. It’s instinct. It’s your soul intertwined with his, understanding the horrors he went through and the actions he couldn’t help. Couldn’t stop.

But it was still his face on the screen. His hands that committed the act. You never knew those people, but they made you. In so many ways, they were a part of you. And you just watched the love of your life snuff them out like ants beneath his boot.

Whatever look must be on your face is killing him. You can see it in his eyes. He looks like his heart is being ripped from his chest. Like no amount of HYDRA’s torture could ever compare to this.

It’s so fucked up that your first instinct is to go to him, to hold him. Your legs remain locked in place, however. You don’t move.

And then everything explodes.

The fighting begins, and you’re still frozen. You watch as Bucky looks towards the firing guns, begins to run towards you like he’s preparing to shield you from any stray fire, and then he’s knocked out of the way.

Suddenly, in what feels like the blink of an eye, Tony has Bucky pinned to a wall thirty feet above your head. You feel like you’re in a waking nightmare. Some kind of sick paralysis. You hear the sounds of metal crunching against skin. Hear the weak call of “Howard?” In your ears.

“Stop.” The word is quiet. Hoarse as it leaves your throat. You don’t know why you say it, the useless whispered plea.

“It wasn’t him!” Steve shouts, and you don’t know who he’s talking to, but the three words seem to finally break you from the ice.

It wasn’t him.

So many months. So many nightmares. So many whispered confessions in the dark of that apartment in Bucharest, his arms holding you in the beginning like he wouldn’t blame you if you broke free and ran out the door. And later, when you never did, holding you like you were the one thing keeping him tethered to this earth.

HYDRA would have done the same thing to you. Planned to. Would have, if you hadn’t broken out. And somehow, impossibly, you found the only person who was unlucky enough to understand it all even better than you.

Strangely enough, your mind wanders back to that night on the roof. At the first time you heard him laugh, low and quiet like he had forgotten how.

“I didn’t know you made that noise.”

“I haven’t in a long time.”

In another blink, you’re in the dingy kitchen of the apartment, looking into blue eyes that held so much vulnerability you didn’t know how you could possibly have ever seen him as anything more than just Bucky. How he could ever have been considered a weapon.

“You’re not trying to fix me.”

“You’re not broken.”

Tony reaches back, preparing to deliver a killing blow.

A small device locks onto his arm, briefly short circuiting the cannon and causing his suit to drop from the air. Bucky falls with him. When Tony looks up. You can’t see his face behind his mask, but you can sense the betrayal as his eyes fall on the little gun in your hands, the one you shot the device from.

Bucky looks at you. Tony looks at you. And the building begins to crumble.

Bucky moves first, knocking you out of the way before a large piece of metal falls where you were standing. He shields you from the impact as you fall to the concrete, but your injuries still shriek in protest.

A shot knocks him off of you, sends him rolling away, and he’s back on his feet in an instant in preparation to come grab you again. To get you both to safety.

“Go!” You shout, and he hesitates like he would rather die than leave you here. But you can’t go with him. You can’t weigh him down. He wont make it, and you probably won’t survive the crossfire.

He looks tortured when he realizes this, looking desperately to Steve. If the other super soldier weren’t here, you know he would stay. He would die trying to protect you. But you see the plea in his eyes, the unshakable trust that you’ll be safer with Captain America than with him. And he runs.

They’re too high up. You can’t see them. You can’t climb fast enough. You can’t do anything but watch as Tony tries to kill the man you love with a furious efficiency you’ve never seen before. He knocks the metal door shut, sends Bucky flying back down, and you can’t even find it in yourself to scream.

You search your belt for something - anything - to help. You come up empty. For the first time, you wish HYDRA had just finished that fucking serum. You feel useless.

And then they’re falling, and you’re so busy trying to watch what’s happening that you don’t see the piece of metal crashing down beside you. You don’t even feel the hum of warning. It hits your leg, hard, and you trip for the first time since you got the serum, stumbling too hard to move out of the way before another piece of debris collides with your side.

The pain is blinding. So much so that you don’t even realize you’ve been knocked down until you’re tumbling into the snow. Your healing injuries light your body on fire, new ones joining them as you collide with concrete and debris over and over until you’re finally landing somewhere near Steve.

Your body screams in agony, and you curl in on yourself. You hear Bucky shout your name through the ringing in your ears, and then he’s there, fighting again.

His hand digs into Tony’s chest, and a broken scream leaves your throat. It distracts him, just long enough, and you scream again as a shot fires.

He falls. His metal arm is gone.

You barely register what’s happening next, pain of all kinds ripping through you as you wheeze and try to blink through tears. Bucky, half conscious where he’s fallen, reaches for you.

Tony knocks Steve down, and begins making his way to Bucky again.

“Stop.” You choke, and you taste blood. “Stop.” His arm raises, gun aimed right at Bucky’s head. Your voice is raw, but loud and desperate as you cry out with the last of your strength. “Dad, stop!”

You don’t call him that. In fact, you’ve gone out of your way to not call him that. Despite the amount of times you know he’s wished, whether he’ll even admit it to himself, that you would.

He stops. Just for a moment. Just to look at you. A thousand emotions fill his eyes. Shock. Pain. Betrayal. You feel sick. He sees you on the ground, injured and bleeding, for what seems like the first time. The vengeance in his eyes fades. Guilt joins the betrayal. But the anger is still there, churning beneath the surface like a sickness.

Captain America knocks him down. You watch, vision blackening at the edges.

Tony Stark looks at you. You look at him. Something between the two of you, some bond you’ve built and nurtured so slowly, so carefully over the last few years, breaks.

Steve helps Bucky up. Bucky reaches for you. He tries to lift you with his one remaining arm, but you make a noise between a groan and a whimper at the unsteady movement. You feel like you’ve been hit by a train. Judging by the horrified look on Bucky’s bruised face, you look like it too.

You thought he was overprotective before. You have a feeling it’s gonna get a lot worse after this.

He looks helpless and pained as Steve lifts you, gently, and begins to carry you. Bucky limps alongside the two of you, eyes never leaving your face.

You hear Tony behind you. Hurt. Angry. Telling him he doesn’t deserve the shield.

Steve drops it. He doesn’t look back.

A few hours on the quinjet, and you no longer feel like you’re seconds away from death. Bucky’s already much farther along in the healing process than you, but you’re getting there. Slowly. Your body is stitching itself together at twice the rate of a normal human, and you’ve never been more grateful for the stupid serum.

“Point for superpowers.” You murmur. He looks at you, confused. You shake your head and lean more heavily into his side.

You’ll have to talk. A lot. About recent revelations, about everything else that happened back there, about where to go next. But no matter what, you know you love him. You know you’re not going anywhere. And neither is he. He knows it, too.

“You and me?” He murmurs quietly, like the words are a secret, pressing his lips against your temple.

You squeeze his hand, turning to look up at him, and offer a smile that holds all the love in your heart.

“You and me.”

Previous Chapter

Taglist: @vicmc624, @saucysasha2035, @iyskgd, @intothesoul

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katiekatdragon27 · 2 days ago

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Hi hey it's me again. I uh... I actually wanted to start properly fleshing out my swap AU outside of Scampi/Gash/Ribbon smooching if that was ok with the council.

"Welcome to the Vallysprings Science and History Museum! Here you will learn about the wonders of the world: the past, the present, and the possible future! With aid from our staff and one-of-a-kind toons who love to teach, you are almost guaranteed to have a fun time, regardless of the season."

These are the designs of the main characters. I did not want to make it tooooo obvious who they're swapped with. However, some of them were difficult to design because some of their personalities are lowkey kinda similar on a surface level. But eh, observe, adapt, overcome I guess.

All their character cards are below:

Shelby Saurian is our lead character! In Vallysprings, she focuses on history, both in archeology and paleontology, although she does lean more into animals, specifically dinosaurs. She is relatively soft-spoken compared to her fellow mains, but her excitable attitude when comfortable is a huge reason as to why people are drawn to her. She still struggles with reading rooms though. She is also burdened with the knowledge of her original place in the show and the drafts that went with them but is unable to share with anyone.

Zee Protozype a broken television and best friends with Shelby! They would be an unstoppable genius if she wasn't so tired all the time. Before the opening of Valleyspings, they got into an accident that broke her face and gave them water damage, leading to her slower-than-normal processing power and slight hum. As a result, they were rebuilt from her original role to be monitor of the sensory sensitive rooms around the museum. Their calm aura, constant white noise, and willingness to lend an ear is the main appeal of them to guests, but most end up taking short naps when in her proximity.

Aclipse Sunstone is a performer, scientist, and teacher who is part of the main gang! He is like those super passionate scientists, like the Bill Nye show, or Neil deGrasse Tyson, or that really cool TikTok Russian physics professor. His passion for chemistry and physics often comes out as live performances, since the lab is "too quiet" in their eyes. With the showmanship of a theater kid and only slightly dangerous performances, he is sure to rock your socks off with some explosive fun for the whole family. He loves to encourage others to explore their world too, handing out take-home experiments for everyone who attends his shows.

Sprig Sapling is the slightly forgetful, culinary driven, dad friend of the group. With a passion for the culinary arts and other people's culture as a whole, he is the go-to toon for a snack or meal after a long day of having fun in Vallysprings. You cannot find a happier Sprig outside of the kitchen unless he's in the park grilling. He is also one of the toons who likes to interact with parents more than the kids, often taking culinary suggestions and being very open to new ways of cooking during his demonstrations. But don't ask him to bake though, he's really bad at baking.

Pipestone Flowiful Jr. is the sharp-edged geode rock dog that Dudd adopted. Very bulky, very grumbly, and kind of lazy, he is often seen just wandering around Vallysprings looking for a place to nap. When he does ineveitably interact with kids, he is actually quite gentle and kind. In a way he acts like a walking daycare, helping lost kids find their parents when they get lost. As a result, he tends to be a favorite among younger kids despite his dangerous build. His plushies tend to sell out the fastest and he has to wear a sign, so people know not to feed him.

Dudd Flowiful is a forget-me-not flower whose admiration for his friends knows no bounds. He loves biology but specifies in botany and flora in general, as the florist he is. He assists in the kitchen on occasion by sharing the freshly grown crop from the Vallysprings' community garden. He also helps teach in the biology section of the museum and does discussions about fungi and plants. Although he tends to be seen as a joke and intentionally ignored, he does his best to stay positive and optimistic through it all. However, deep down he knows that this is not the way things were meant to be and holds great resentment for the toon who replaced him.

Bramble Ordamen is the partially high-strung mom friend and leader of the Christmas toons. When November rolls around, she is the first one to greet the public and welcome the Christmas spirit with open arms. Her seasonal workshops she hosts always have to do with woodworking or wilderness survival. She loves to showcase her talents in making toys, the speeds she wraps gifts, and how resourceful she can be when the going gets tough. Although she can be overbearing at times and tends to throw herself into danger to keep others safe, she does hold slight resentment for the managers who lock her and her friends up when February inevitably comes.

Basketta Weaver is the affectionate and fairly picked leader of the Easter toons. She remembers being picked personally to be in charge of her little band of spring toons, both for her love of the springtime and her general likeability to everyone. She is fast, fun, and friendly, and she always smells like hyacinths. She is very confident in herself, but she is also confident in her ability to help. She also loves to help others regardless of the task, oftentimes forgetting to take breaks and rest for herself. This insistence to help causes people to believe she's bored and clingy, but in reality, she just wants to prove to others that she deserves to be the main.

They are all kinda dealing with demons and some sort of Deja vu. I'm too tired to elaborate more lol

Anyways, enjoy these and have a lovely night :)

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coffeeandoranges1 · 4 months ago

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feel like i'm going to spend this whole administration/potentially the rest of my life straddling the line between psychosis and normalthink.

like yeah if I get too deep into psychosis, i can't react to the changing circumstances calmly or with any sort of skill. but if i get too deep into normalthink again i lose the ability to read the tea leaves and understand what's coming.

the reason there's so little resistance in the US so far is because most people are too normal to understand what's actually happening. their personal paradigms and worldviews are too small and circumscribed around their daily life to understand what's possible. they have brought a knife to a gun fight. they don't know how to think like a conspiracy theorist. they are not capable of imagining what rich fucks who are faced with the prospect of global collapse are capable of doing.

#personal #though there are some normals who are adapting #I see people on reddit on like r/yarvinconspiracy or r/somethingiswrong2024 who are like 'i feel like i'm going crazy'#you are. welcome to crazytown. you must live here now if you want to know what's happening. because the media will not tell you.

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headfullof-ideas · 6 months ago

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More Nate Incorrect Quotes. I think I’m gonna do some of Ant and Kari next, and then I have to draft up some for Anita. Kind of want to give a better feel of the characters to anyone interested in them before I drop their adult reference sheets, and then their kids reference sheets

#Nate is a relatively NORMAL person compared to the Nektons #he is very unprepared for their chaos. though he takes it all in stride #(learns sea monsters exist and the fairytale Lemuria is real and so is magic to an extent and his girlfriend is kind of a princess)#Nate: coolcoolcoolcoolcool what do you want for dinner?#he is very quick to just adjust to some random thing. very quick to adapt to change #(Kari on the other hand tends to have minor or major crash outs over whatever weird thing she just learned about)#(fortunately for Ant who’s the one who breaks all the Lemuria related news to her)#(she keeps a lot of it confined to herself instead of actually lashing out at someone else)#the deep 2015 #the deep cartoon #fontaine nekton #the deep oc #ant nekton #antaeus nekton #incorrect quotes

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7frogsspeaks · 3 months ago

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If you've never worked in a big corporate office you are missing out on half of Severance

Everyone seems to be talking about the setting of this show like it's a big mystery we're waiting on answers for, and I keep having to remind myself that this is the Unemployed Website because every single aspect of the severed floor is a direct parody of corporate office work. Some of it is pretty obvious to anyone (being a totally different person at work than you are at home, excessive surveillance, etc), but unless you've worked in one of these places there's a ton you're probably missing.

So, for those of you who (luckily) lack corporate office experience, here is a non-exhaustive list of real phenomenon Severence is referencing:

- Having absolutely no clue where anything is other than your department. A large corporate office truly feels like working in a brightly-lit, featureless labyrinth. You get lost so easily, and the number of turns and hallways in the opening scene is not that much more extreme than how I had to get to my department (which was over a 5-minute walk from the main entrance). It's common to draw new employees a map.

- Cult-like worship and constant quoting of the company's founder/founding family and core operating principles. Long-time employees will genuinely treat it like religious doctrine. It's scary.

- The relationship between departments. The different cultures, outrageous rumors, distrust, compete lack of understanding of who they are, how many of them there are, where they work, what they do, and generally treating them like a foreign country is barely even a parody. It's just really like that. Going to another department and seeing their equipment and work area (and being stared at by a bunch of people who don't expect a stranger to be there) might as well be walking into a room that's a hill with intimidating goat farmers.

- Other people's jobs being utterly incomprehensible. The department that had a room behind a wall next to mine apparently used it for filling backpacks with weights until the straps broke. Another department had someone whose job was to shine different lights onto pieces of fabric and record the color difference. One of my positions was measuring various pants 20 different ways and then taking notes while a specific person tried them on. Apparently a guy somewhere occasionally got paid to make watercolors of birds. Some people did finance. You get the idea.

- Only ever hearing from upper management (who are treated like a group of fickle, wrathful gods) through a nervous secretary and never hearing their voices/seeing their faces. You might know their names.

- Weird, uncomfortable, often ritualesque events that are treated like a big deal. The company I worked for, for example, would announce the employees of the year by having a committee of people with noisemakers and silly hats parade around the buildings until they got to the person's desk, and then take their photo to hang on the wall. People were not warned beforehand, it was a ~surprise~. This happened daily at random times for over a week each year, and long-standing employees got really into it.

- People genuinely fighting over all those meaningless, patronizing rewards like pizza parties, fancy pens, etc. Having an "employee of the month" mug, for example, is treated as an enviable status symbol. Presumably this is why corporations think this stuff will also work in the service industry (it doesn't because service workers are normal).

- Ridiculous conspiracy theories about the building, management, coworkers, or company history, peddled like gossip.

- New employees having a rough adjustment period where it feels like you're adapting to an alternate universe. Office culture is nothing like real life though it's closer if you live in white suburbia and have an HOA, so during most people's first time working in one they bump up against a lot of unspoken rules, weird taboos, and general culture shock. Most of this involves navigating strictly-enforced social hierarchies, verbal adherence to company ideals, and using only specific types of communication, and being chastised when you mess up. It 100% feels like being indoctrinated into a cult.

- Not understanding the purpose of the work you're doing, and only receiving vague answers, that it's "important", and that there's a big exciting deadline. No single department has access to the big picture for how everyone's jobs fit together to accomplish something, you'd have to work in all of them or in upper management to figure it out. The inner machinations and goals of the company are generally treated like a mysterious secret.

- Never seeing the sky. Window offices are a prized commodity since the buildings are so big, so unless you're a high-up manager or the company has gone to great lengths to add access to widows (most don't because it's really expensive) you likely won't see daylight until you leave, even if you travel around the building during the day.

And for the Lifetime Unemployment crowd, some more general job phenomenon:

- So. Many. Acronyms. And being expected to say them all with a straight face, even if they sound really silly.

- Coworkers effectively ceasing to exist the moment they leave the company, with zero explanation given for why they're suddenly gone unless there's a retirement party.

- Management giving ridiculously nit-picky feedback as a form of hazing/power play, especially to marginalized people.

- Upper management making sudden, drastic changes to your job expectations, physical workplace, or management structure with zero notice and penalizing you if you can't adapt immediately.

- The entire vibe of your job being dictated by who your manager is.

- Your coworkers acting like what happens at work is their entire life, and treating their home lives as something extra they do on the side.

- Having no clue who your coworkers are outside of work, and that information being largely treated as taboo.

- Being effectively locked in a sealed space with zero access to the outside world for the entirety of your workday, and being told that that's not weird or a problem– it's a benefit that helps you focus on your job.

Basically: There's no big mystery to the structure and culture of Lumon/the severed floor. Most of it is never going to get a canon "explanation" because the target audience already has one. It's all a parody.

EDIT: Reblogged with more office-specific ones and some photo evidence

#and yes I know that some of these are noticeable by people who haven't worked in an office or at all!#but not inherently you'd have to have second/third hand experience with offices or job culture and not everyone does #and not everyone is from the US #the company history/mission statements/etc WILL be in a bound book that you may receive a personal copy of by the way #severance #long post #lumon industries #severance lumon #office culture #workplace culture

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cheriecoke · 2 years ago

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.𖥔 ݁ ˖ HOME COOKED MEAL — nanami kento

you bring itadori home for dinner & he gets to see a different side to kento

contents. aka you dig up some teenage photos of nanami, fem!reader, husband nanami, fluff, yuuji being your adopted son, i haven't watched the new ep (& i won't) but there is enough nanami angst so i am here to fix that — 1.7k

when you got ready to leave the school, your jacket on and bag tugged over your shoulder, you passed yuuji itadori in the halls, his expression suspiciously similar to a kicked puppy.

yuuji perked up a bit as you walked by, offering you a small smile and a wave. and though you considered heading on home for the night, eager to see your husband, you slowed, hesitant to leave the poor kid all alone.

“everything okay, yuuji?” you asked, frowning as he rested his elbows on his knees, studying a stain on the floor of the school.

“hm?” the teenager glanced up, eyes bright and wide. his sweet smile was back on his face, so innocent and kind. for someone who had been through so much already, he was more caring than many people that you’d met in your life. “oh, everything’s fine. everyone’s just out on missions, so i feel a little…” he pulled up one shoulder in a shrug. “useless.”

you knew it must have been hard for him, being a student that wasn’t quite like the others, having to train a little differently, adapt differently. but yuuji took it in stride, and he handled it better than any normal person would.

with a nod, you secured your bag around your other shoulder, shifting your feet. “it’s just going to be you here tonight, then?”

he hummed, sticking his hands in his pockets as he leaned back against the wall. “i think so. some of the others might be around, but they’re resting up.”

“oh.” though you were certain yuuji had no qualms about spending an evening on his own, the thought of it made you feel like you were leaving a kitten out in the rain. almost pitiful.

yuuji waved before you could say another word, smiling, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “have a good night! i’ll see you tomorrow.”

the car ride was spent listening to yuuji tell you story after story, the boy opening up to you in a way that he hadn’t quite related to any of the other sorcerers, even gojo.

you smiled to yourself, enjoying his stories as you wondered how to tell kento that you were bringing your student home for dinner.

there was still a bridge to cross between them, and though you knew they both liked the other more than they let on, kento hadn’t quite connected to the boy like he wanted to.

you hoped that by inviting him over, yuuji would see that kento, truly, wasn’t as intense as he let on. he was sweet, caring, and he did have a sense of humor… even if gojo didn’t really believe that.

you led yuuji into the house, and stopped him when you heard the sound of kento in the kitchen. his mission had ended earlier than yours, and he’d offered to cook tonight; there would be more than enough food for the three of you.

“i’ll be right back,” you said, tapping yuuji on the shoulder. “let me go tell kento you’re here.”

you’d considered letting your husband know before you arrived, but you hadn’t wanted him to protest. kento would try to make a fuss of having a guest over, even if it was only yuuji, and he certainly didn’t care about formalities.

your heart skipped when you reached kento, his back turned, finishing up the meal that was steaming on the stove. even just standing in the threshold of the kitchen, you were overwhelmed with all of your love for him.

but it didn’t take much… it never had. you’d always been sickeningly in love with nanami kento.

your footsteps were soft as you snuck up behind him. “kento,” you said, just above a whisper, snaking your arms around his waist. you kissed the muscles between his shoulder blades, listening to the steady thrum of blood pumping through his body.

“hi, sweetheart.” he’d heard you approach, and he turned, eyes softening when he glanced at you over his shoulder. “everything okay at the school?”

you nodded, squeezing him tighter. even though you’d seen him just a few hours prior, it felt like a long time—time apart when you were battling curses always dragged as you worried for each other’s safety. “did your mission go okay?” you asked.

he took your hands from around his waist, bringing them to his lips softly. “everything went fine. dinner’s almost ready so—” then, he noticed your guilty expression, one that you were clearly horrible at hiding. “is something wrong?”

you smiled innocently. “no! i just… brought a guest.”

kento’s eyebrows raised, his smiling falling quickly. “well, you could’ve told me before.” he sighed, shaking his head as he turned around to face you.

“sorry, i thought i’d surprise you.”

kento’s lips drew into a thinner line. “honey, please tell me gojo satoru is not in my house right now. he’s not welcome here anymore, because the last time he almost destroyed our fucki—” kento glanced up, his words falling away as he glanced over your shoulder. “itadori. hello. i didn’t realize you were there.”

you turned, releasing kento as yuuji gawked back at you. he’d caught in such a loving embrace with kento. yuuji’s normally stoic teacher was in the middle of swearing, blonde hair tumbling over his forehead. kento had replaced his suit with casual wear, and his contacts had been taken out. in place of them were wire-rimmed glasses.

“nanamin!” yuuji gasped. “you look so different.”

“yes, well, i apologize for my apperance.” kento sighed, looking at you from the corner of his eye. “i wasn’t aware we were having guests.”

“one guest. its just yuuji,” you said, poking him in the middle of the chest as his professional tone returned, so easily taking over. “i don’t think he cares what you’re wearing.”

“no, i don’t!” yuuji backtracked, eyes wide as he shuffled forward. “no, you look cool, you don’t look so…”

kento raised his eyebrows, amused, even if yuuji couldn’t detect the humor in his expression. “so what?”

the boy’s cheeks turned pink, embarrassed as he rubbed the back of his neck. “um—”

“you don’t look like you’ve got a stick up your ass.” you said, voicing yuuji’s obvious thoughts as you kissed kento on the cheek with a short laugh. of course, it was only to embarrass him further in front of his student.

kento feigned a scowl, but didn’t push you away, his gaze firmly planted on yuuji. “that’s because i try to keep my relationships at work strictly professional.”

“really?” yuuji grinned, stuffing his hands back in his pockets, his posture relaxing as he grew more comfortable in your home. “not very professional to marry someone you work with, is it?”

you laughed loudly, already caring so deeply for the boy that you’d known for such a short period of time.

“that was certainly an accident,” kento muttered, but his fingers lingered on your spine, tracing each of the bones. “i’ll have you know we were not working together when we got together.”

“really?” yuuji’s curiosity spiked. “how long have you been together, then?”

you thought back to when you were teenagers, when kento had a haircut that he had since regretted, and smiled mischievously. reaching into your pocket, you pulled out your phone and scrolled through old photos, back from when you were just kids, the images grainy and of much lower quality than the ones from your recent vacation.

“hey, don’t show him those!” kento protested. he reached for your phone, but you scrambled under his arm, stretching your hand out to give yuuji the device. “itadori, don’t—” kento’s voice held a hint of panic, his cheeks hot with embarrassment as he grabbed you around the waist, trying to stop you from giving yuuji the phone.

but it was already in yuuji’s hands, and you laughed loudly, knowing that while you looked a little more awkward than you did now, your appearance had changed near as drastically as kento’s.

yuuji squinted his eyes at a sixteen year old nanami, blond hair long enough to reach his eyes, dressed in an all black ensemble, an earbud in one ear. kento was hardly smiling, but you beamed next to him in the photo, dressed more childishly than you were now, but just as pretty. the image from when you still fumbled around each other, unsure how to admit that you were both in love.

a roar of laughter left yuuji as kento’s expression fell, and he released you, snapping the phone out of itadori’s palm. “that’s you, nanamin? no way. how did you…” yuuji glanced between you, squinting his eyes. “well, i guess looking at you now it makes sense.”

“i know,” you agreed, covering your smiles with your palms. “we looked a little silly together back then. i saw the potential in him, but satoru certainly loved to make fun of us, didn’t he, ken?”

“i have absolutely no desire to relive those days.”

yuuji laughed. “you were just like fushiguro, i bet!”

“scarily similar,” you agreed, as kento rolled his eyes beside you, putting your phone in his pocket to keep you from scavenging any older photos to share with the kid. “and he still loves to listen to—”

“don’t finish that sentence or i’ll save this dinner all for myself.”

yuuji eyes flew up to his hairline, but you just snorted, knowing that kento’s threats were about as scary as a puppy.

“he’s still sensitive about it,” you whispered to yuuji. “gojo and his friends made fun of him all the time.”

“oh really. just me?” kento retorted under his breath.

“you must have been pretty popular, then!” yuuji grinned. “if you were friends with gojo. he said all the girls in school loved him!”

kento made an irritated sound, stirring the spoon roughly against the pot. “well, satoru is the last person you should listen to. he has an ego bigger than the sun. and my wife is leading you astray. she was not similar to satoru, she was painfully shy, and it took weeks for either of us to talk to each other.” kento took the pan off the stove, peering over his shoulder at you. “and she is very lucky i love her too much to dig up any embarrassing stories of her.”

“well, stories about me aren’t that interesting anyway.” you laughed, pointedly turning your back to kento. “yuuji, the good news is, i’ve got some more photos in kento in the old photo books. let’s go see them!”

#i hope this shows up in the tags bc i’ve been fighting with tumblr ugh #kento nanami x reader #jjk x reader #nanami fluff #nanami kento x reader #nanami kento x you #nanami kento x y/n #kento nanami x you #nanami x reader #jjk x fem!reader #jujutsu kaisen fluff #jujutsu kaisen x you #jujutsu kaisen x reader #xoxo rylie 💌 ୧⋆ ˚｡⋆#la bibliothèque des vampires ♱˚.⋆

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b1asho · 7 months ago

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While it's on the mind, here's my wings of fire designs too. Not as much of a brainrot but still fun. Bad take or am I cooking with some of them? Let me know in the comments. Here's some (too many) notes:

I really liked the original designs when I first read these books, but I wanted to try my hand at uhh changing them a little. Mainly making them more distinct from each other (even if this irreversibly breaks canon XD)

-Sandwings live in a mixed savannah and desert habitat and have bodies adapted for resource scarcity, effective hunting, and heat dispersion. They have large ears to help cool off and listen for stuff. They can fly, but pretty weakly in comparison to some others, mainly using flight to navigate their large territories , get onto cliffs, and scan for prey. They typically climb up somewhere and then jump off. They are built like felines, and use a solo stalk and rushdown hunting approach coupled with a sting instakill. They live in family groups, with a ‘queen’ title going to the alpha female 💪 and everyone else hunting and living together. They are immune to their own venom, which acts very similarly to a scorpion’s but in a massive dose, causing numbness, breathing difficulties seizures, and eventually death. It takes time for them to make more once they’ve expended the dose, so they rarely use it outside of hunting or life/death situations (though the prospect of being stung is very scary to everyone else, and they will instinctively raise their tail when startled or threatened)

-Skywings live in high mountainous and forested areas, with some living in the lowlands. They are powerful flyers and very acrobatic due to their tail, though this comes at the expense of their agility on land and the strength of their non wing arms. They have long legs with powerful talons for grasping prey midair or snatching them from off the ground. They hunt and live alone unless they have a partner. Communities are made up of a loose group of related individuals who rarely collect in one place at once(queendom structure are a more recent and ‘unnatural’ thing for them, but very useful for organizing military efforts and empire building). They stay aloft for long periods of time and usually only land on their cliff homes. They need a sprint or a takeoff point to get flying, though. Unlike every other tribe, they have a noticeable difference between male and female (being a nose horn and red face for males.) males are prized for these features, and having a pretty husband is seen as an attractive trait for a queen.

-Seawings live along the coast. They normally only venture out of the water for trade and other resources, since they can get everything else they need underwater. Their large neck houses gills protected by thick pads that will close when on land, while their lungs are in their mid chest. Primarily adapted to swimming, they have very strong tails and webbed fingers and toes. They will also use their wings to steer and paddle, as well as manipulate things their other arms can’t reach. They will hunt in packs, corralling fish and other animals into a kill zone. They are very clumsy on land and in the air with their short limbs and weak wings. Their bioluminescent spots can be flashed for communication, and compared to the other tribes they have pretty poor vocal ability (due to the gills in their neck getting in the way) and will supplement with other spot/sign signals. Every individual has unique spots, though their glowing ones come in consistent numbers, sizes, patterns, and places on their body so they can use them for common language across their group. However, Different groups from different parts of the ocean have different numbers of spots in different areas, making cross communication via only spots difficult. Their whiskers help navigate in close or dark areas, and are seen as a status symbol.

-Mudwings live in warmer areas, specifically marshes and other wetlands (though sometimes in some forested areas too). Their thick armor helps protect them from other mudwings/competition, while also acting as an insulator that allows them to easily venture a wider range than other tribes from warm climates. Physically, they are the strongest and bulkiest. They typically use the element of surprise and their overwhelming size and strength to take down large prey. However, unlike other tribes they tend to eat more plants too due to their large size (all of them are technically omnivores, but meat makes up the dominant part of their diet because of their energy needs and their ancestors). They are also the poorest flyers out of the bunch, having sacrificed that for size and strength, though they can do short bursts similar to a chicken to get to hard to reach areas or to surprise attack prey faster than them, they’re similar to hippos and are adapted to living in the water too, using powerful webbed arms to propel themselves and dig through the mud, and their large lung capacity to stay submerged and hidden for long periods. Their nostrils, ears, and eyes are located near the top of their head, which also gives more room for Tusks. They use these to root around occasionally defend themselves. Tusk maintenance and appearance is very important to them. They live in large groups of families in the same area and have more communal social standards than other tribes.

-Rainwings live in tropical areas and have a very small habitat range. This has caused them to look and act very different than most tribes, leading to poor perception of them. They use their long claws, strong grasping fingers, and prehensile tail to climb around, and are pretty much arboreal. They have wings meant for quick takeoffs and flight in dense areas, and are pretty agile and swift. They and aren’t that great at sustained flight or dealing with high altitudes and winds though . Their frill is delicate and used for emoting (probably originally for mating purposes) Their skin is packed with chromatophores that they can use to match their surroundings, and they have loose ridges in their skin that they can raise to enhance the effect. Their skin is constantly changing color due to their brain activity, though they have set patterns/colors for emotions and communication. They can also choose to focus on organizing their skin patterns to get coordinated colors and patterns, since normally it’s pretty disorganized. They eat a lot more plants due to their environment and due to social standards, but arent herbivores. They have the ability to spit acid out of hollow retractable fangs, and use precise shots of this coupled with their camouflage ability to get prey. They can also spray it at higher velocities for defense and offense, though this expends their supply much quicker. They don’t recognize a queen in their communities and are fairly disorganized into different cooperative groups.

-Nightwings are the result of a group that split off onto an island, though the volcanic activity on their original island escalated to the point where they had to emigrate. They are great fliers, using their wings and tail extensions to travel great distances to track prey and ambush from above. When on land, they aren’t particularly fast or strong, and instead are built for persistence. Their hunting tactic involves getting an initial bite onto prey, then waiting for it to succumb to infection. Their spines, horns, muscles, and talons are mainly for defending their kill from other Nightwings rather than hunting it in the first place. As a result of this competition, they aren’t naturally very social like other tribes, They are mainly nocturnal.

-Icewings live in the colder tundras and snowy forest environments. They are pack hunters, using their speed and persistence to take down prey, similar to wolves. Their long overlapping scales help them trap heat and survive in the cold, and while the guy i drew here is pretty skinny they also store fat much more readily than other tribes. Their bowed wings are mainly used to swoop in in prey, and like falcons they often take steep dives to grapple it. Their antlers only grow in at a certain time in the year, but royalty will wear embellished artificial ones in the meantime.

#my two vasly different dragon media interests #the httyd book dragons are also intelligent but unlike the wof ones i never imagine them wearing clothes and theyre never referenced #using tools or really wearing jewlery or building things they live in packs like animals but many of them can carry on a convo with a human #comparatively id say that the main difference is that the wof have a distinct grouping and relationship between the types of dragon while #in the httyd books those guys are just Everywhere and Everything #and also Humans are a major part of httyd while theyre just kinda weird little creatures in wof #wof art #wings of fire #wof #drawing

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thegracefullion · 1 year ago

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10 Generations. 10 Different Heroines. 1 Legacy. Welcome to the Literary Heroine Legacy Challenge! I’ve been itching for a good legacy to revive my love for the Sims 4, and I haven’t found one so I wrote one myself. I was inspired after reading Emma— the family dynamics, drama, and romance were everything I ever wanted in a Sims challenge. So I modernized the stories and adapted them to fit this game. Special shoutout to Designergirl81, who I met through MissLollypopSims’ Discord! The generations of Anne of Avonlea and Dorothy were their brainchildren. 💗 I designed each generation to reference a famous literary heroine. This is a very story-oriented challenge but feel free to bend, tweak, and change as much as you can! Sims Challenges aren’t meant to limit your fun. 😉 TL;DR: Play your own way while letting these rules guide your storytelling! The official tag of the challenge is #TheLiteraryHeroineChallengeTS4. Have fun! Check out the rules here or keep reading!

Basic Rules

Play on any life span you want but I recommend playing on Normal life span.

You are encouraged to play with female heirs. Of course, this is optional!

You are discouraged from using money cheats. Some generations have stories that are related to their social class— so try to stay true to the story as much as you can.

You can live wherever you want unless the generation states otherwise.

Feel free to customize each generation’s race and sexual orientation

Unless specifically stated, each generation has to finish their aspiration and career.

Even if most of these books are classics, I wrote this with a more modern take on it. You don’t need any mods or CC to fit the eras’ aesthetics— but if you want to, you totally can!

⭐ means there’s a recommended mod for this!

☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Generation 1: Elizabeth Bennett 📚 Do not consider me now as an elegant female, intending to play you, but as a rational creature, speaking the truth from her heart. 📚

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that all Sims 4 challenges must start with an heir. In this case, that’s you, which is surprising because everyone else in your life has decided that you are plain, especially when compared to your other two sisters. Lately though, you start to sense that you’ve been getting more attention from your neighbors. One particular Sim hasn’t been able to leave you and your family alone… and you don’t like them at all, not one bit. Well… maybe just a bit.

Aspiration: Successful Lineage

Traits: Family Oriented, Hot-Headed, Bookworm OR choose/roll for the last trait

Career: Journalist

→ Master the Writing skill. → Live in a rundown family home passed down by your parents with two sisters until you are married. → Have a negative relationship with a neighbor. → Reject a proposal from your work boyfriend. → Build a relationship with your neighbor after you reject the proposal of your ex. → Have a scandal involving one of your sisters that your neighbor supports you through. → Fall in love and marry this neighbor then move in with him. → Have two children.

☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Generation 2: Emma Woodhouse 💗 It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble. 💗

Growing up, you were always the sheltered one. Your father was very protective of you, and therefore never let you out of his sight. Of course, that didn’t stop you from becoming well-loved by the entire town. You were known for throwing the best dinner parties and befriending everyone your father and mother knew. Needless to say, this got to your head a bit. You weren’t arrogant, you were confident. In everyone’s eyes, you could do no wrong. Well, everyone except your childhood best friend— who was never afraid to call you out for being a bit clueless at times.

Aspiration: Neighborhood Confidante OR Party Animal

Traits: Self-Assured, High Maintenance, Music-Lover OR choose/roll for the last trait

Career: Romance Consultant or Lawyer

→ Master the Charisma and Piano skills. → Host at least 5 gold-star dinners. → Have a childhood best friend who’s a bit older than you. For example: When you’re 17 (end of teenage years), they’re already 20 (start of young adult years). * → You can’t have good friends who are your age until your childhood best friend ages up into a young adult. → Make a new friend that you treat like a “project” until you two fall out. Choose if you two will reconcile in the future. → Profess your love to your childhood best friend during a heated argument. → Marry your best friend and live with your mother and father in your childhood home until your parents die. Have one child. *It goes without saying to only get with your childhood best friend when the two sims are both young adults 🙂 No super uncomfortable age gaps, please.

☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Generation 3: Scarlett O’Hara ✨ “Tomorrow, I’ll think of some way to get him back.” ✨ All your life, you grew up spoiled. Your mother and father were so in love, and you almost expected to have a story as romantic and easy as theirs. However, when your high school flame elopes quickly with someone else right after graduation, you start to spiral. No longer able to get things your way, you begin to self-sabotage and jump from relationship to relationship. Deep down you know you should stop and smarten up but frankly, my dear, you don’t give a damn.

Aspiration: Soulmate— you fail this

Traits: Materialistic, Genius, Jealous OR choose/roll for the last trait

Career: None until your divorce then become a Manual Laborer + Barista

⭐ Recommended Mods: Healthcare Redux Mod, Extreme Violence Mod

→ Don’t master any skill. → Have a high school flame who elopes with someone else. → Elope immediately with someone else. Have them die tragically.* → Marry another person quickly who you have bad compatibility with. Get negative romance with them right before they pass.* → Marry a third time. Have them catch you in a compromising moment with your high school flame, which leads to a divorce that leaves you with nothing. → End up working two part time jobs to keep your household running. → Have 4 kids with your 3 husbands (you can cheat for twins, if you want). *You decide how they die. I recommended having mods like the Healthcare Redux and Extreme Violence in your game for realistic roleplay reasons— but if he gets tragically eaten by a Cowplant that works too! 🙂

☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Generation 4: Jo March 🧾 “When the first soreness was over, she could laugh at her poor little book, yet believe in it still, and feel herself the wiser and stronger for the buffeting she had received.” 🧾 Growing up was not easy for you. Your childhood was incredibly unpredictable with your mother jumping from relationship-to-relationship. And when things started to stabilize emotionally, you ended up in poverty. Luckily, you had your siblings to cling to, and a passion for writing that’s unmatched. You wrote a ton of things across different genres, except for romance which you didn’t quite understand. In fact, everyone always expected you to be a little woman, not rough or wild, but you knew in your heart that’s not what you were destined to become.

Aspiration: Best-Selling Author

Traits: Creative, Unflirty, and Ambitious OR choose/roll for the last trait

Career: Author

⭐ Recommended Mods: Writing Career Overhaul, SNB Banking

→ Master the Writing and Logic skills. → Be best friends with all of your siblings. → Start selling short stories as a teenager to help pay the bills. → Get a best friend in high school who professes their love to you during graduation. Turn them down. Optional: Have them marry one of your other siblings. → Move away to the city to focus on your writing. Always send 30% of your income to your mother until she dies. → Due to a tragedy in the family, adopt a child of one of your siblings.* → Win a Starlight Accolade for one of your novels. → Never marry but live a fulfilling life. *They are to be the next heir to preserve the bloodline. You can adopt more if you want.

☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Generation 5: Anne Shirley 📖 “I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.” 📖 You were adopted by your aunt and lived a happy childhood. Despite being surrounded by family drama, you never let it dampen your spirit. You struggled with social cues and caused mayhem wherever you went— of course, that never stopped you from making your voice heard. You were, afterall, raised by someone who was never afraid to make a point. However, unlike your aunt, you always longed for romance. You always imagined big declarations of passion— but perhaps it’s time to learn that love creeps to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways.

Aspiration: Academic OR Soulmate

Traits: Romantic, Socially Awkward, and Loyal OR choose/roll for the last trait

Career: Education Career

⭐ Recommended Mod: Education Overhaul

→ Master the Research and Debate skill. → Have a childhood enemy that you become best friends with in high school. → Go to University and study Language and Literature. → Fall out with your best friend while in University. → Start dating someone you meet in University but break up right after graduation. → Get a job in the Education Career and write on the side. → Reconnect with your former best friend and realize you love them. → Get married to your best friend. → Retire from the Education career and become a freelance writer in your twilight years.

☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Generation 6: Nancy Drew 🔍 “I don't promise to forget the mystery, but I know I'll have a marvelous time.” 🔍 Every bedtime, your mother read you stories that she and your grandmother wrote. Among all of those, it’s your grandmother’s mysteries that impacted you the most. There was something so thrilling about being a heroic, fearless woman who helped others out. Because of this, you gained a bunch of friends who loved you very deeply. With their support, you grew up as a well-known detective who can solve any case. It was a fun life, but you eventually settled down in Henford-On-Bagley to have a family of your own.

Aspiration: Friend of the World

Traits: Generous, Nosy, and Outgoing OR choose/roll for the last trait

Career: Detective OR ⭐ Zerbu’s Simvestigations Mod

→ Master the fitness skill. → Be close friends with both your parents. → Have 2 best friends who are either your roommates (Discover University) or live in the same apartment complex as you (For Rent) for your entire YA life. → Get engaged to someone you meet on-the-job. → Before marrying your fiance, go on a trip to Selvadorada with your 2 best friends and explore the Jungle Temples. → Settle down in Henford-On-Bagley and have a farm life of your own. → Never move away once you settle in Henford-On-Bagley.

☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Generation 7: Dorothy Gale 🐶 “If we walk far enough, we shall sometime come to someplace.” 🐶 Growing up you knew that there was more to the world than what was outside your own backdoor. Afterall, your mother was a famous detective— if she went on her own adventures, why can’t you?

With her and your father’s support, you spend your young adult life traveling. You made some great friends along the way (and even some loves), but eventually you start to wonder if there is no place like home.

Aspiration: Local Aspirations— complete at least two

Beach Life

Mt. Komorebi Sightseer

Fount of Tomarani Knowledge

Traits: Adventurous, Dog Lover, and Loves Outdoors OR choose/roll for the last trait

Career: Any Freelance Career

⭐ Recommended Mods: SimNation Travel, Home Region

→ Have a dog that goes everywhere with you. → Live in 3 or more worlds during your Young Adult life. → Make 3 best friends that each teach you a valuable life lesson. → After making your three best friends, use reward points to add the following traits: Brave, Savant, and Incredibly Friendly. → As an adult, realize you miss your family and return home. → Have a long distance relationship with the father of your children.

☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Generation 8: Wendy Darling 🌟 “She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. ” 🌟 You grew up waiting. First, for your father’s seasonal visits… which eventually stops when you become a teenager. Next, for the opportunity to leave Henford-on-Bagley to pursue your dreams of becoming an actress. And finally, for your first love, a man who refused to propose to you, no matter how long you waited for him to. Eventually you grew tired waiting and decided to grow up. You married a sensible man, had a child, and gave up your dreams of becoming an actress. Still, you held on to the dreams of your first love and end up reconnecting in a night of passion that leaves you pregnant with his child. Realizing that he’ll never grow up, you decide to dedicate your life to your family and husband.

Aspiration: Master Actor/Actress - you fail this or the⭐ Housewife Aspiration (after you marry)

Traits: Perfectionist, Proper, and Cheerful OR choose/roll for the last trait

Career: Actor/Actress

→ Master the Parenting skill. → Have a distant family dynamic with your father who never lives with you. → Join the drama club and meet your first love. Optional: He has the childish trait. → Give your first love all of your major romantic milestones. → Lose touch with your first love when you move to Del Sol Valley. → Marry a man you’d consider as sensible. Have one child with him. → Have a one time secret affair that results in another child. → Dedicate your life to your children afterwards.

☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Generation 9: Alice Liddell 🐰 “It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.” 🐰

There were times you felt like you never truly belonged anywhere. While everyone at home lived and abided by your parents’ rules, your head was always in the clouds. Sensibilities and propriety were never in your vocabulary, much to the disdain of your father and the rest of your siblings. Still, you were a free spirit that could never be controlled. After moving out as a young adult, you fell in love with cooking and mixology. You also met a group of misfits who were as different as you. Every Sunday, you’d host special “tea” parties with them, that broadened your worldview and made you realize that the world gets curiouser and curiouser with each passing day.

Aspiration: Master Mixologist or Master Chef

Traits: Clumsy, Foodie, and Childish OR choose/roll for the last trait

Career: Culinary Career

⭐ Recommended Mods: Basemental, Grannies Cookbook, Open Love Life

→ Master the Cooking and Mixology Skills. → Have a juice/nectar hobby on the side. → Have a club with people who have weird or eccentric traits.* → Fall in love with someone with the Erratic Trait. → Host “tea” parties every Sunday in your own home. ⭐ Optional: Use the Basemental Mods and have your Sims get high on dope/drunk on alcohol during the tea parties. → Dye your hair a different, brighter color. → Live in a quirky and colorful house. → Befriend a rabbit who you talk to constantly. Name them The Mad Hatter. → ⭐ Optional: Be in a polyamorous relationship with Romantic Boundaries OR the Open Love Life Mod → Have two children. *You decide what weird and eccentric means.

☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Generation 10: Countess Ellen Olenska 🎨 “The real loneliness is living among all these people who only ask one to pretend.” 🎨

You appreciated your mother’s lifestyle. You saw the world for what it could become, and not what everyone wanted it to be. However, you worried about your younger sister. You saw her innocence and wanted to protect it. When you turned into a young adult, you moved away and took your sister with you to start anew. However, life was not always easy. Straight out of teenhood, you married someone from a different city and had a tumultuous relationship with him. You separate with him and continue to care for your sister. You’re able to provide for her through your paintings, which also brought you a lot of fame. When she grew up into a Young Adult, she formed an attachment with a man that… intrigued you. She married him. This kept him in your life, but made it difficult for you to ignore your feelings. One night, you find yourself alone together, and you must make a choice: stay with him and break your sister's heart, or leave forever to give them peace. You have a price to pay either way— we can't behave like people in novels without consequence, can we?

Aspiration: Painter Extraordinaire

Traits: Gloomy, Art Lover, and Family Oriented OR choose/roll for the last trait

Career: Critic

⭐ Recommended Mods: RPO, Wonderful Whims, Custom Relationship Bits, Soulmates

→ Master the Painting Skill. → Become a Level 3 Celebrity with your paintings. → Marry someone who isn’t your soulmate straight out of high school. Have a negative relationship with him before separating. ⭐ Optional: Only temporarily separate with him using the RPO Mod. → Be best friends with your sister. → Become soulmates with the partner of your sister without consummating the relationship. → When you’re an adult, invite your sister’s partner over, and make a choice— woohoo together and break your sister's heart, or end the emotional affair. → If you woohoo together - Tell your sister the next day and become enemies. Name your child after them. → If you end the emotional affair - Move away from your love and get back together with your ex-husband. Die without having your own children.

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fuckyeahgoodomens · 1 year ago

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SFX Magazine Issue 372 - Designing Good Omens ❤ 😊

PRODUCTION DESIGNER MICHAEL RALPH REVEALS HOW THE SHOW’S CENTREPIECE SET, WHICKBER STREET, WAS GIVEN A DEVILISHLY CLEVER UPGRADE FOR THE SECOND SEASON

WORDS: DAVE GOLDER

Invisible Columns And Thin Walls “The new studio is Pyramid Studios in Bathgate – it used to be a furniture warehouse. And unfortunately – or fortunately, because I accept these things as not challenges but gifts – right down the middle of that studio are a series of upright columns. But you’ll never spot them on screen. I had to build them in and integrate them into the walls and still get the streets between them. And it worked.

“There’s all sorts of cheeky design values to those sets. Normally a set like this is double-skin. In other words, you do an interior wall and an exterior wall, with an airspace in between. But really, the only time a viewer notices that there’s that width is at the doors and the windows. So I cheated all that. I ended up with single walls everywhere. So the exterior wall is the interior wall, just painted. All I did was make the sash windows and entrances wider to give it some depth as you walked in.”

GOOD OMENS HAD A CHANGE of location for its second season, but hopefully you didn’t notice. Because Whickber Street in Soho upped sticks from an airfield in Hertfordshire to a furniture warehouse in Bathgate, Edinburgh. It’s the kind of nonsensical geographical shenanigans that could only make sense in the crazy world of film and TV, and production designer Michael Ralph was the man in charge of rebuilding and expanding the show’s vast central set. “I wish we could have built more in season one than we did,” says Ralph, whose previous work has included Primeval and Dickensian. “We built the ground floor of everything and the facades of all the shops. But we didn’t build anything higher than that, because we were out on an airfield in a very, very difficult terrain and weather conditions, so we really couldn’t go much higher. Visual effects created the upper levels.”

But with season two the set has gone to a whole other level… literally. “What happened was that the rest of the street became integrated into the series’s storyline,” explains Ralph. “So we needed a record shop, we needed a coffee shop that actually had an inside, we needed a magic shop, we needed the pub. To introduce those meant we had to change the street with a layout that works from a storylines point of view. In other words, things like someone standing at the counter in the record shop had to be able to eyeball somebody standing at the counter in the coffee shop. They had to be able to eyeball Aziraphale sitting in his office in the window of the bookshop. But the rest of it was a pleasure to do inside, because we could expand it and I could go up two storeys.”

For most of the set, which is around 80 metres long and 60 metres wide, the two storeys only applied to the shop frontages, but in the case of Aziraphale’s bookshop, it allowed Ralph to build the mezzanine level for real this time. According to Ralph it became one of the cast and crews’ favourite places to hang out during down time.

But while AZ Fell & Co has grown in height, it actually has a slightly smaller footprint because of the logistics of adapting it to the new studio.

“Everybody swore to me that no one would notice,” says Ralph wryly. “I walked onto it and instinctively knew there was a difference immediately, and they hated me for that. I have this innate sense about spatial awareness and an eye like a spirit level.

“It’s not a lot, though – I think we’ve lost maybe two and a half feet on the front wall internally. I think that there’s a couple of other smaller areas, but only I’d notice. So I can be really annoying to my guys, but only on those levels. Not on any other. They actually quite like me…”

Populating The Bookshop “The props in the new bookshop set were a flawless reproduction from the set decorator Bronwyn Franklin [who is also Ralph’s wife]. It was really the worst-case scenario after season one. She works off the concept art that I produce, but what she does is she adds so much more to the character of the set. She doesn’t buy anything she doesn’t love, or doesn’t fit the character.

“But the things she put a lot of work into finding for season one, they were pretty much one-offs. When we burnt the set down in the sixth episode, we lost a lot of props, many of which had been spotted and appreciated by the fans. So Bronwyn had to discover a new set decorating technique: forensic buying.

“She found it all – duplicates and replicas. It took ages. In that respect, the Covid delay was very helpful for Bron. There’s 7,000 books in there and there’s not one fake book. That’s mainly because… it’s a weird thing to say, but we wanted it to smell and feel like a bookshop to everybody that was in it, all the time.

“It affects everybody subliminally; it affects everybody’s performance – actors and crew – it raises the bar 15 to 20%. And the detail, you know… We love a lot of detail.”

(look at the description under this, they called him 'Azi' hehehehe :D <3)

Aziraphale’s Inspirational Correspondence “There’s not one single scrap of paper on Aziraphale’s desk that isn’t written specifically for Aziraphale. Every single piece is not just fodder that’s been shoved there, it has a purpose; it’s a letter of thanks, or an enquiry about a book or something.

“Michael Sheen is so submerged in his character he would get lost sitting at his own desk, reading his own correspondence between takes. I believe wholeheartedly that if you put that much care into every single piece of detail, on that desk and in that room, that everybody feels it, including the crew, and then they give that set the same respect it deserves.

“They also lift their game because they believe that they’re doing something of so much care and value. Really, it’s a domino effect of passion and care for what you’re producing.”

Alternative Music “My daughter Mickey is lead graphic designer [two of Ralph’s sons worked on the series too, one as a concept artist, the other in props]. They’re the ones that produced all of that handwritten work on the desk. She’s the one that took on the record shop and made up 80 band names so that we didn’t have to get copyright clearance from real bands. Then she produced records and sleeves that spanned 50, 60 years of their recordings, and all of the graphics on the walls.

“I remember Michael and Neil [Gaiman] getting lost following one band’s history on the wall, looking at their posters and albums desperately trying to find out whether they survived that emo period.”

It’s A Kind Of Magic One of the new shops in Whickber Street for season two was Will Goldstone’s Magic Shop, which is full of as many Easter eggs as off-the-shelf conjuring tricks, including a Matt Smith Doctor Who-style fez and a toy orang-utan that’s a nod to Discworld’s The Librarian. Ralph says that while the series is full of references to Gaiman, Pratchett and Doctor Who, Michael Sheen never complained about a lack of Masters Of Sex in-jokes. “He’d be the last person to make that sort of comment!”

Ralph also reveals that the magic shop counter was another one of his wife’s purchases, bought at a Glasgow reclamation yard.

The Anansi Boys Connection Ralph reveals that Good Omens season two used the state-of-the-art special effects tech Volume (famous for its use in The Mandalorian to create virtual backdrops) for just one sequence, but he will be using it extensively elsewhere on another Gaiman TV series being made for Prime Video.

“We used Volume on the opening sequence to create the creation of the universe. I was designing Anansi Boys in duality with this project, which seems an outrageously suicidal thing to do. But it was fantastic and Anansi Boys was all on Volume. So I designed for Volume on one show and not Volume on the other. The complexities and the psychology of both is different.”

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soaps-mohawk · 1 year ago

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Cherry Red, Crimson Blood

Chapter 20: The New Normal

Summary: Your pack settles into a routine as you learn to adapt to the shifting relationships between all of you.

Pairings: Poly 141 x reader, Price x Gaz

Word Count:

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, p in v sex, unprotected sex, threesome, BDSM elements, dry humping, language, Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics, Alternate Universe, a/b/o typical classism and sexism, angst, PTSD, flashbacks, nightmares, smoking, Gaz being the prettiest boy alive.

A/N: Not much to say about this one. Hope it's worth a two week wait...

MASTERLIST | <- Previous | Next ->

A yelp leaves your lips as your feet leave the ground, your body hitting the floor rather ungracefully. You roll from the force of the impact, stopping flat on your back. You stare up at the ceiling, trying to catch the breath that was forced from your lungs from your impact with the floor.

“You left yourself too open again.”

“Well how was I supposed to know which way you were moving?” You say, slowly pushing yourself back up to sit as you catch your breath.

“You can’t, that’s why you have to keep yourself guarded at all times. Anyone you’re fighting will do worse than that as soon as your guard is down.”

You stare at Simon’s shoes as he stops a foot away from you. The laces are pulled to the exact same tension on both sides, double knotted to avoid them coming undone and becoming a tripping hazard. Even the way his crew socks are pulled up over the legs of his sweatpants speaks volumes of how on guard he is. Always ready for a fight, always ready so that nothing can get in his way and put him at risk.

He lets out a quiet sigh as he drops down into a squat in front of you. “How have you been sleeping?”

Your gaze finally leaves his shoes, trailing up his legs to his arms where they rest on his knees. You follow the lines of his tattoos until you reach where his shirt sleeve covers the rest. You work your way up until you reach his mask-covered face, finally meeting his brown eyes. There's a softness to them now you've never noticed before, something you might not have taken notice of now had you not become brave enough to look that deep.

“Better,” You clear your throat, dropping your gaze to the mat. “But still not great.”

This morning had started with you shaking in Johnny's hold, his arms wrapped tightly around you as he whispered soft reassurances in your ear. The nightmares haven't gone away since your confession, nor have they even really lessened, but at least now you aren’t suffering alone when they wake you from your sleep. At least now your pack knows how to best comfort you when your mind insists on silently torturing you.

You still haven’t slept alone since they returned, nor have you spent any great length of time in your room. There’s still a lingering feeling of someone watching, of something staring at you from inside the walls. You’ve checked while they were at training for any cameras you might have missed, but you’ve come up empty handed. Maybe it was just the knowledge that your safe space had been invaded causing that paranoid itching in the back of your mind to linger. None of the guys have complained about you staying with them at night, though perhaps you have your confession about your nightmares to thank for that.

“The nightmares?” Ghost asks, snapping you from your thoughts.

You nod. “Yeah.”

The risk of them finding out about your nightmares has made you less afraid to sleep, but still the fear of what horrible scene your mind will come up with keeps you awake. You pull your knees to your chest, making yourself small as you sit in front of him. He’s just so big, so broad and bulky, truly the ideal specimen of a perfect alpha. He’s the kind of alpha your fellow omegas at the institute would whisper about. Some big, strong protector who would provide for them and keep them safe and satisfied.

If only they could see you now.

Despite the shift in your relationship with Simon, things haven’t changed much. He’s still the quiet, looming figure behind you, posing a silent threat to anyone who might think about approaching you. He still places a hand on your back to steer you, still stands closer behind you than he used to, still looks at you with a softer look in his eyes than you’ve ever seen before. Sometimes you’re tempted to push that boundary first, to lean in and rest your head on his broad chest, feel the muscle under his shirt again. You want to press up against his back while he sleeps and let his warmth seep into your bones. Sometimes when you’re alone and your thoughts begin to run rampant, you think about how you have nothing to fear because Simon would rip the face off anyone who tried anything.

Of course, he has to be here in order to do that.

You won’t have to be alone again. John had promised you that much. He’d fight harder to make sure you’re not alone again. Not, at least, for a while if it can be avoided.

“You’re thinking too much again.” Simon says, pulling you from your thoughts for a second time.

You stare at him, suddenly realizing he’s moved closer to you. You’re not sure when he did, too caught up in your own thoughts to be aware of your surroundings. It’s dangerous, your ability to sink into your mind and get lost there. You know it and they know it. Yet you can’t help it. It’s safer in your head, easier to exist in a place where you’re in control, where you can predict what’s going to happen next.

Simon’s hand wraps around your ankle, tugging you closer to him. You fall flat on your back on the mat, body sliding partially under his. He looms over you, settling his weight across your thighs as his hands come to rest on either side of your head. Your eyes are wide as you stare up at him, your heart pounding in your chest, as it usually does when you’re in this position.

“Now, what do you do when someone pins you?” He asks, the sharpness back in his gaze as he stares down at you.

Lay here and don’t move, or at least that’s what you want to do currently. He’s just so big and warm, and the way he makes you feel so small under him has your head spinning. How you wish he’d press his body into yours, let you feel him completely. The scents in the air begin to thicken as you find your head tilting back on instinct, baring your throat to him in submission.

His hand closes around your chin, forcing your gaze back on his. “Focus.” He says, projecting his scent more to try and cover yours. It goes straight to your head, your gaze sharpening just slightly as you stare up at him. The scent of alpha around you has your mind racing in several different directions. You know you should be afraid, but it’s Simon. You know him, you trust him. He’d never hurt you intentionally, but he’s still an alpha.

The strong musky scent has something in the back of your head prickling, your instincts teetering on the edge of safety and danger. You know the alpha over you, but what if it was someone else? That was the point of all of this, right? You won’t be fighting off Simon or John. It will be someone unfamiliar, someone who wants to hurt you.

Simon’s fingers leave your chin, trailing down your neck. Your pulse thrums faster as his fingers near the base of your throat. The scent of alpha is strong in your nose. How easily he could slip his hand around the back of your neck and squeeze, rendering you brainless and under his control.

Your mind goes blank and you move without even thinking. Your fist slams into his side right where he’d taught you to hit. He buckles at the sudden attack and you use his moment of surprise and disorientation to free one of your legs and drive your knee right into his stomach. You push him off of you, scrambling back a couple feet before your mind begins to clear. Simon lays on the mat, almost wheezing as he tries to get the air back into his lungs.

You flounder there for a moment, watching the giant alpha you had just incapacitated. You don’t know where that came from or how you’d managed it. No, that’s not totally true. You know where the fear had come from, but you also know Simon would never do something like that to you.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” You say, shifting onto your knees in case Simon retaliates, in case he gets angry at you for attacking him. “I don’t know what just happened.”

“The hell are you apologizing for?” He coughs out, pushing himself onto his side. “That was bloody brilliant.”

You blink in surprise, taken aback by his response. “What?”

“That’s what you were supposed to do.” He says, pushing himself the rest of the way up onto his knees. “I asked what you should do if you’re pinned, and you did it.”

You continue to stare at him, not quite sure how to process the sort-of praise from him. He had asked you what you should do if you were pinned, and you had done what you were supposed to do. It hadn’t quite been for the right reasons, but you did do something correctly. You managed to incapacitate him enough to get out from underneath him, and without him going easy on you.

Maybe the training is working after all.

“Do that in a fight, you might just give yourself enough time to run.” He says, pushing himself up to stand. “Good job.”

You continue to stare at him as he passes you, heading to the bench where your belongings sit. You’re still kneeling there on the mat in surprise. You hadn’t expected such genuine praise from him. But why not? He’s doing this to train you, to teach you how to defend yourself against anyone who might want to hurt you. Anyone who’s stupid enough to try something when they’re not here to defend and protect you.

Something that’s already happened.

You’ve finally managed to defend yourself, to apply the things he’s spent weeks teaching you successfully. Why shouldn’t he be proud of you for that?

You’re still getting used to this new side of him, this accepting side, the softness that he’s showing you in his own way. It’s what you wanted, what you’ve been trying to achieve for weeks now, and now that you have it...you’re not quite sure what to do with it. Where does the boundary lie? What if you push too far? Will things go back to the way they were before? Will he shut you out completely?

Hands slip under your arms, lifting you to your feet. You turn, your head tilting back to stare up at Simon. He’s wearing that emotionless mask on his face, or at least that’s what you picture as you stare up at his eyes. It’s the look he carries the most, giving away nothing and effectively hiding what he’s feeling. You wish you could see his face. You’ve tried to draw up images of what he might look like, what he hides under the mask. He can’t be ugly, at least not totally. Johnny had reassured you of that much, but you wish for just a glimpse more than his chin and his lips when he eats.

“You’re thinking too much again.” He says, taking half a step back from you.

“Sorry.” You blink, trying to pull yourself from the depths of your mind once again.

“Come on. Let’s get breakfast.” He says, tilting his head towards the door.

You follow him from the gym, his steps markedly slower compared to how he used to walk. Gone are the days of almost having to run to keep up with him. You could almost swear he takes smaller steps too, instead of his normal long, purposeful strides. It’s almost as if he’s out for a stroll instead of being forced into the task of escorting you to breakfast.

His hand finds your back again as you enter the mess, guiding you through the tables to the line to get food. His palm is warm where it’s pressed against the middle of your back, his fingers splayed, pressing just slightly into your skin through your shirt as an alpha soldier passes just slightly too close to you.

He still won’t fill your tray for you, but you can respect that. It’s a big step, and only done if there’s interest in courting or caretaking. You don’t expect that level of intimacy from him, certainly not right now. Perhaps never.

He’s not your alpha.

He guides you to the table where the others are sitting, and you take your normal spot between John and Kyle. They both shift just slightly closer to you almost subconsciously. Everything is almost a subconscious action now. Simon’s guiding hand on your back, your alpha moving closer to you, the betas keeping you between them whenever you’re with them. It’s a good sign, or at least you think it is. It feels right, a sort of easy flow that has developed between the five of you. One you don’t have to think very hard about.

“How did trainin’ go?” Johnny asks between shoveling bites of eggs into his mouth.

“Fine.” You shrug. “Simon threw me across the mat.”

All eyes at the table turn to him despite your nonchalant tone. It wasn’t the first time it’s ever happened, and you’re sure it won’t be the last.

“She took me down herself afterwards.” Simon says, not bothering to look up from his porridge.

Now all eyes at the table are on you. Your cheeks warm and you slowly start to make yourself smaller under their gazes.

“Had her pinned and she disarmed me enough to get free.” Simon continues, his gaze lifting so he’s staring at you too.

“Christ, what I would pay tae see that.” Johnny says, grinning widely at you.

“So training is paying off then.” John says, patting your back gently.

“Guess so.” You shrug, still feeling a bit bashful under the attention. “Not sure how useful I’d be in a real fight still.”

“Well, your first defense is trying to escape. Running is always the priority, remember?” John says.

You nod. Right. Run first. Like you should have opened the window and ran when that beta knocked on your door. Like you should have run when you noticed your door was open. Like you should have run when someone tried to get into your room.

How disappointed they’d be if they knew how you failed to follow even the most basic instructions. What would have happened if you hadn’t noticed the cameras? Would whoever tried to get into your room that night still have tried to enter? What if the door had been unlocked? What if they had gotten in? What would you have done, then? Try to disarm them enough to run to Dr. Keller?

That is what you were supposed to do.

Instead you had been stupid and froze in your fear and let it all happen, and now you can’t even tell them. It’s too late, it’s been too long. They’d be too upset if you confessed now instead of if you’d done it right when they returned.

You have to bury it now and hope it stays that way for the rest of time.

John is the one that walks you back to the barracks after breakfast. You don’t remember the last time he walked you to a meal or back from it. Usually he was too busy doing his job, or setting up things, or whatever else it is he does. Walking you back to the barracks was far too menial a task for how busy he is.

You hold his hand as you walk, close enough that his arm brushes your side with every step. You don’t let go of his hand even when he walks you to your door, keeping your fingers laced as you turn to look up at him.

“You gonna be alright on your own?” He asks, staring down at you with a soft look in his eyes.

No. You’re almost tempted to say it, to throw your arms around him and confess, to beg him to keep you close, to stay, to take you with him. Anything so you won’t have to be alone ever again.

You swallow the lump in your throat as you nod. “Yeah.”

For a moment, just a moment you think he doesn't believe you. There’s a second of hesitation, a cold chill running down your spine as your anxiety spikes. What if he knows you’re lying? What if he’s testing how long you’ll keep up the charade? How long you’ll try to keep them in the dark about what happened. He knows something is wrong. He can tell.

Your back meets your door as he crowds you in, releasing your hand so he can press both into the wood on either side of you. Something warm stirs in your stomach as you stare up at him, feeling very small as he looms over you.

He lets out a low rumble in his chest as he leans down. For a moment you’re expecting a kiss, but he moves to the side at the last moment, nudging your chin so it’s tilted up, bearing your throat to him. “What’s got you so worked up, huh?” He murmurs against your neck, his beard prickling the sensitive skin. “Have we been neglecting you for too long?”

Saying yes wouldn’t be a lie. They haven’t really sought you out in that way since their return. The most you’ve gotten in the last almost two weeks was when Johnny slipped his hand into your sleep shorts, and you returned the favor. John and Kyle hadn’t really even tried to initiate anything, treating you more like you’d shatter into a million pieces if they touched you too much.

Maybe a good fuck would solve some of your issues.

It would at least help you forget for a while.

A quiet moan leaves your lips as John sucks on your mark, the imprint of his teeth scarred into your skin. The mark that claims you as his, bonded to him for the rest of your life.

Lust and desire burns hot in your veins and you find yourself cupping his face, tugging him away from your neck so you can kiss him. He lets out a growl against your lips as you kiss him like you want to devour him, your hands sliding to his shoulders to tug him closer to you. His hands drop from the door to rest on your hips, pulling you flush against him. You can feel him, his cock hardening through his cargo pants.

You’d let him take you right here, right now, right in the hallway. You don’t care that anyone could walk in at any moment, anyone would be able to see you. It feels almost like it would cleanse the barracks, free you from the fear in your mind. Allowing yourself to be so vulnerable out in the open could wipe away the worry that there’s someone around every corner, someone watching you.

Getting railed by your alpha against the very door that separated you from the room that now held your worst nightmares might just fix you.

But, just like everything else that’s happened recently, you don’t get that chance.

John’s watch begins to beep in your ear, causing him to pull away from you. You let out a quiet whine as you’re forced apart, suddenly feeling chilled from the loss of warmth against you.

John lets out a quiet sigh, leaning his forehead against yours. “I have to go.”

You wish he didn’t. You’re half tempted to beg him to stay, to fuck his job, his duties. You want him to stay, to give all his attention to you, just for a few hours. You want him to erase the fear and the anxiety and fix you.

“We’ll continue this later.” There’s a promise to his tone that he’s not done with you, a guarantee that you will get to continue this once the day is over, when he can go back to being your alpha instead of a captain. He leans in, kissing you once more. “Be a good girl for me, yeah?”

You nod, watching him walk out of the barracks, the door closing softly behind him. You lean against your door for a few moments longer before letting out a breath. There’s still warmth swirling in your stomach, your underwear sticking to your damp folds. An idea pops into your head. You don’t want to go into your room, you don’t want to be in there alone right now.

Instead you head for Price’s room, unbuttoning your pants as you close the door behind you. You strip out of your pants before you climb onto the bed, making yourself comfortable. You’re going to give him a little present, a little something in revenge for leaving you high and dry, a little something to help him look forward to tonight.

Screaming. It’s all you can hear. It makes your ears ring and your head throb. Hands cling to you, nails biting into your skin. Something’s pulling on you, trying to rip you away. You’re stuck in a brutal tug of war. It hurts, but no one can hear you over the screaming. Tears are sliding down your cheeks, blazing a trail along your skin. You shouldn’t be crying, you shouldn’t be upset.

He hates it when you cry.

Alphas don’t cry.

You’re not an alpha.

You’ve committed the worst sin in his eyes, denying him the perfect pack. You’re a stain on his perfect ledger, a mistake that never should have happened.

He’s going to make sure you’re wiped from memory, from history, just as he wants.

“You can’t take her from me!” Your mother’s voice is frantic, her nails biting into your arm as she tries to pull you back into the safety of your arms.

“She’s no daughter of mine.” Your father’s fingers dig painfully into your other arm, trying to pull you away from your mother, away from your life. He’s going to throw you out like you’re nothing more than trash.

The screaming gets louder as you’re yanked from your mother’s hold, and you’re not sure if it’s her screams or your own piercing your ears.

“We have to ensure the success of this program.” The voice has changed. It’s not the cruel hands of your father holding you anymore. “It’s imperative to the future of militaries around the world.”

“No!” You scream, kicking, fighting, lashing out, but the hands won’t let go. They’re like a vice around you, like a constrictor slowly getting tighter and tighter.

“All you have to do is be a good omega,” A hand slips around the back of your neck, your skin burning from the touch. The warning is screaming in your head, louder than the screams of protest spilling from your lips. “And do exactly as you’re told.”

The fingers dig into your neck, your mind flashing for a second before it goes blank.

“No!”

You move before you’re even fully awake, sitting up straight in bed. Your hands close around the back of your neck as you curl into yourself, taking a defensive, protective position. You can still feel the cold hand on your skin, the fingers biting into the sensitive spots on your neck. You’re crying, tears and snot dripping down your face as you press it against your knees.

“No!” Another terrified cry leaves your lips as hands meet your skin, not cold or clammy, but warm and gentle. Your half asleep brain is stuck in your nightmare and can't rationalize the difference, not while you're perceiving everything as a threat.

“Easy, easy.” A voice says, speaking quietly, calmly. You recognize that voice. It’s not one from your dreams. Arms slowly wind around you, pulling you against a warm chest. “I’ve got you. It was just a dream.”

Your breaths are rapid and shaky as you slowly begin to come back to your senses. It was just a dream. You’re awake now. You know that voice.

“Alpha?” You whimper, desperately seeking the confirmation that it’s really him, that you’re really awake and free from your nightmare.

“I’m here.” He says, clutching you tightly against his chest. “Need you to breathe for me.” He pushes your head against his chest so you can feel his breaths.

You’re still crying, your breaths catching in your chest almost painfully as you attempt to follow your alpha’s deep, steady breaths. His arms are still tight around you, pinning you against his chest. His beard tickles your forehead as he leans his chin against your head. He’s projecting his scent, the smell of earth and petrichor mixed with the musk of alpha seeping into your brain.

“Good girl.” He praises you as you begin to relax, your joins unlocking from their stiffened positions, your muscles slowly loosening from how contracted they had been in your defensive position. You could have slipped into distress easily in that position, the level of fear higher than you’ve felt in a long time.

He loosens his hold on you just slightly as you begin to unravel yourself as you calm down. Your hands are still clamped around the back of your neck, your fingers trembling from how stiffly they’re held against your most vulnerable spot.

“Keep relaxing.” He says quietly, his lips brushing your hairline. “I’ve got you.”

He continues to speak to you quietly, letting you work yourself out of your tense, defensive position. You slowly begin to slide your hands away from your neck as your mind begins to clear and you realize there’s no threat to you, nothing waiting just outside your line of vision to attack. Your alpha has you, you’re safe with him, well protected.

The tears continue to fall, however, as you think back on your nightmare. It had felt so real, maybe because in a way it had been real. You had been pulled from your mother, from your home to the institute, then from the institute to the CIA, from the CIA to here and straight into General Shepherd's lap.

“Promise me,” You gasp out, your voice hoarse from crying. “Tell me you’ll never scruff me.”

“Never.” He says, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “I promise I’ll never scruff you.”

You press your face into his chest, breathing out a quiet sigh of relief. He could always go back on his word, he could change his mind, decide you needed to be scruffed. You know it’s foolish, having those kinds of thoughts. He’s never once gone back on his word, never once proved himself untrustworthy to you.

“I need to know if you've ever been scruffed before.” He asks, the authority slipping into his voice.

A frown pulls at your brows. You can’t remember if you’ve ever been scruffed before. Was it possible you had, but had been made to forget? Everything you’ve learned about scruffing says you would know, even if you don’t remember what happened after. It’s a very distinct feeling returning to your mind afterwards. It’s just something you’d know.

“No? I-I don’t think so?” You say. “At least I can’t remember, but I think it’s one of those things that you would know if it happened.”

“I’ve seen it happen, and I’ve seen the aftermath. You would know if it had ever happened to you.”

His words bring a shred of relief to your worried mind. You don’t want to know, you don’t want to ask how he knows, why he knows. It’s not likely he would have been able to tell you anyway. Just another secret, just another thing kept in the dark. You knew from early on they’d have their secrets, things they wouldn’t ever be able to tell you. You just never expected to have one of your own.

You curl up closer against his chest, pushing the thoughts and the guilt hanging over your head away in favor of soaking up the calming presence of your alpha. For a moment, just a moment, you can imagine everything will be alright. What’s in the past will stay there and nothing will come back to haunt you. You can just move on, and pretend like nothing happened.

You know it’s not true, but for just a moment, you can pretend that it is.

He hates it.

He hates the way he feels.

The subtle change to his heart rate, the way his insides feel like they’re fluttering, twisting. The disappointment eating him when his existence is ignored entirely in favor of those who were brave enough to open up, to allow you in.

Why is he disappointed? He’s done nothing but brush you off, keep you desperately at arms length despite your attempts to wiggle in through the slowly widening cracks in his resolve. Cracks that were formed by your very insertion into their lives. They were happy, they were fine. Then you came along and fucked everything up.

The worst part?

He likes it.

He wanted to hate you. For so long he fought that desire in him to be near an omega again, to be close enough to smell your sickeningly sweet scent. He tried to hate you, tried to ignore you, push you away from the walls he’s spent decades building up. Walls that threatened to crumble thanks to your very existence.

He’s not sure when the change happened. It was gradual, a shift in his hatred that became fascination that quickly morphed into something more. Something forbidden. Maybe it was when you submitted to him during training, or maybe it was after your first time with Johnny when his beta had looked far too pleased, and shared the intimate details of what you had done to him far too easily. Johnny’s need to yap had won out and his beta’s words had caused a stirring in his stomach he hasn’t felt in a long time.

A stirring he’d been able to ignore for so long.

For a moment, just a moment there had been fleeting curiosity. Would you try to take control with him? What if he let you do it? How long could you keep it up before you tired out and your true nature took over?

He stuffed those thoughts into the far recesses of his mind, refusing to allow them forward. He’s not getting soft, he’s not going to allow you any closer to his already cracking walls.

He tells himself that, at least until they leave. Until he sees the effect you have on his pack. The ripples in the bonds, the changes that happen almost as soon as the ramp of the plane shuts, separating you from them for the first time since your arrival.

He’s a good soldier. He can pretend nothing’s wrong, force the feelings into the back of his mind better than anyone. At least, that’s what he tells himself.

It had hurt when you ignored him on your return, throwing yourself into Price’s arms desperately and clinging to him like he might disappear. The betas had sandwiched you between them, letting you cling to them desperately as you trembled and cried. It was pathetic, but not quite as pathetic as the bitterness and the sting of disappointment in his chest.

He tried not to let himself feel it, tried to bury himself in his paperwork, tried to keep the feelings at bay, at least until Johnny had knocked on his door, mattress in tow telling him to get a blanket and head for Price’s room.

It was Kyle’s idea. Had to be. Kyle is the most nurturing of the four of them, and judging by the state of you, he must have done it because he thought it would help.

By the time he grew the balls to enter the makeshift nest, the betas had already sandwiched you between them, your form almost smothered completely under Johnny. Price had laid himself out on Kyle’s other side, and the space for him was made up of mostly Johnny’s mattress. It had to have been a deliberate move, meant for his own comfort. Sweet Johnny and his beta senses. He probably didn’t even realize what he’d done. It had just happened naturally.

It’s at Johnny’s pestering insistence that he climbs into the nest finally, laying stiffly on the mattress behind his beta. It’s been a long time since he’s been in a nest. He doesn't sleep, not much anyway, but neither does Price. Both of them are too awake, too aware, too alert. The betas sleep peacefully and so do you, probably the most sleep you’ve gotten since your heat.

The warmth in the room gets unbearable fast, the blankets quickly kicked to the end of the mattresses, along with his own sweatshirt. It’s like a sauna, and for a moment he considers opening the window, but he’s too afraid to move, too afraid to disturb the nest.

It’s when Johnny gets up to go to the bathroom that you finally move, the first time in hours. You roll into the space he had vacated, lips slightly parted as you breathe in and out easily. Johnny, the bastard, takes your empty spot, trapping you between them. He turns his back to you in hopes you stay as still as you had before, which works for a while. At least, until he feels something press up against his back. He goes still, every muscle tensing as you bury your face between his shoulder blades. He should turn over, push you away. He should nudge you back towards Johnny, let you seek out his warmth instead. Yet, he can’t bring himself to move.

He shouldn’t like it. He can’t. He can’t allow you in, he can’t let you past his rapidly crumbling walls. Yet, he does like it. He wants to feel you pressed against him, he wants to see that hidden part of you that had brought his beta to his knees so easily.

He’s supposed to be keeping his distance, and yet, here you are, forcing your way in again. It almost feels like a silent apology for yesterday, your subconscious picking up on his disappointment, and so now it’s offering him this moment in hopes he’ll forgive you.

It’s working.

A quiet breath leaves your lips as you listen to the steady beating beneath your ear. The scent of coconut and saltwater floats in the air, taking your mind far away, back to a different time when things were simpler. Kyle’s calloused fingers trail across your arm, drawing absentminded patterns across your skin. You press your face against his warm skin, your hand splaying across his stomach. You can feel the ridges of his muscles, the way they flex with every breath.

“What’s on your mind?” He asks, his lips brushing your forehead as he speaks.

“Just thinking about when we used to go to the beach when I was younger. Back when my dad was stationed in North Carolina for a few months.”

“You like the beach?” He asks.

You nod. “Yeah. There’s just something calming about it. I don’t mind the sand and I like the sound of the waves hitting the shore.”

“We could go to the beach.” He says, making you tilt your head up just slightly. “When the weather’s nicer, closer to summer. Take a few days off, go on a vacation.”

“You could do that?” You ask, pushing yourself up on your elbow so you can see him fully.

He smiles at you, his hand dropping to your back. “We do get to go on leave every so often, barring nothing urgent happens while we’re away. I’ll talk to Price about it. We can start making some plans, if you want.”

You stare down at him, the softness in his gaze, the slight upward tilt of his lips. He might as well have just promised you the world with how he’s looking at you. Tears burn at the back of your eyes as you stare at him. You don’t deserve it, you don’t deserve such kindness, such care after lying to them. You can trust Kyle. He’d be the least angry, at least towards you, if you confessed right now. It would be so easy, but you’re not sure you could stand watching the love and happiness fade from his eyes as you confessed to your stupidity, your deception.

“What is it?” He asks, his brows furrowing. Of course he’d pick up on the shift of your emotions, the sudden anxiety twisting in your stomach. “We don’t have to go to the beach. We could do something else, or nothing at all.”

“It’s not that.” You say, swallowing the lump in your throat. “I just...I don’t deserve you. All of you. You’re too good to me.”

“Oh, love, that’s not true.” He says, gently cupping your cheek. “I think it’s quite the opposite, actually. You’re too good for us. The things we’ve seen, the things we’ve done. We’re not good people, and yet we were blessed with an absolute angel.”

Tears gather in your eyes for a different reason now. You certainly don’t feel like an angel. You’re too broken and you’ve lied and made stupid mistakes. “I’m hardly an angel.”

“Well, in comparison to us, you are.” He gently presses against your back, drawing you closer to his face. “Our angel, our sweet little omega.”

A shiver runs down your spine from the way your status sounds from his lips. His hand slides to the back of your head, pulling you down so your forehead is pressed against his. You can feel his breath on your lips, your tongue darting out to wet your own in anticipation.

He tastes like mint toothpaste, his tongue immediately pushing past the seam of your lips. His kiss steals your breath away, his hand tangling in your hair to keep you in place as he licks into your mouth. Your hand settles on his chest for balance, feeling his heart racing under your palm.

You shift over him, throwing a leg across his hips as you settle against his chest. His hand releases your hair, tracing a line down your spine to your hips. The shirt of his you had changed into before crawling into bed with him has ridden up, revealing the lacy panties you're sporting underneath. He groans against your lips as his fingers trace over the lace before slipping underneath, tugging them lightly.

You pull away from his lips, staring down at him. “I’m gonna need more pairs of these at this rate.”

“We’ll have to take a trip and pick up more.” He grins, snapping the waistband against your skin.

You bite your lip, pressing yourself up so you’re sitting over his hips. You can feel the growing bulge beneath his shorts as you begin to grind against him. He’s gone commando, your clit catching on his head through the thin fabric. Your hands press into his stomach, feeling the muscles contract as your scent thickens in the air. His hands close around your hips, guiding you as you grind against him. His eyes are hooded as he stares up at you, his teeth sinking into his lower lip.

You stare down into those big brown eyes, getting lost in the depth of them. If you could melt yourself into him, seep under his skin and become one with him, you would. He might be the most beautiful person you’ve ever laid eyes on. He might as well be sculpted from marble, or pulled right from a piece of artwork.

You shift so you’re leaning forward, your clit dragging against his stomach as you continue moving your hips. You grasp his chin, fingers digging into his cheeks. “You’re so fucking pretty, it’s not fair.”

He chuckles, giving you a dazzling, perfect smile. “Thank you, love.” He wraps his arms around you, pushing himself up to sit so you drop into his lap. “But I’m nothing compared to you right now.”

He keeps you grinding against his lap, his hands squeezing your ass as you soak the front of his shorts with every drag of your hips. Your head falls back as you moan, the friction against your clit quickly pushing you towards an orgasm.

“Haven’t even touched you yet and got you all worked up. You could cum just like this, couldn’t you?” He nips playfully at your lips, sliding his hand down further to press against your lace covered pussy.

You let out a whine, releasing your hold around his shoulders long enough to tug off your shirt. He curses quietly as your skin is revealed to him, his hands trailing up your back.

“Fucking hell, love.” He groans, pushing his hips up into you.

“Kyle,” You moan his name, wrapping your arms around his neck. “Need you.”

He curses again, wrapping his arms around your waist for leverage as he flips you over onto your back. He sits up on his knees, trailing his hands down your sides until he reaches the waistband of your panties, trailing his fingers across the lace for a moment.

“You alright?” He asks, checking in with you.

You nod, lifting your feet so they press against his chest. “You gonna take them off already?”

He grins, sliding his fingers under the waistband of your underwear, pulling them down your legs before tossing them to the floor. He parts your thighs to give himself room as he pulls off his own shorts, his cock springing free from the confining fabric. Your mouth waters as you stare at it, your teeth sinking into your lip in anticipation.

“Fuck,” He breathes as he pushes your thighs further apart, dark eyes glued to your glistening folds.

He slides his hands down your thighs, his thumb ghosting over your clit. Your hips jerk in response, pushing up against his hand. He chuckles, repeating the motion, watching the way your lips part in a moan.

“Always so sensitive.” He smirks, pressing his thumb into the bundle of nerves. “Even after Price fucked you senseless a couple nights ago.”

Your face warms at his words, your stomach fluttering excitedly. Of course they had heard you. You’ve long given up on trying to hide what goes on behind their closed doors. They all know, they already knew from the first night you spent with John.

He had been rather rough that night, fucking you into the mattress so hard the headboard had scraped some of the prison grey paint off the walls. You had asked for it, though, both of you needing the raw, carnal release it had given you.

“Yeah, we all heard that.” Kyle continues, slowly circling your clit with his thumb as he speaks. “Sounded like a couple of animals in there. If you hadn’t been screaming his name over and over, we might have been worried he’d mauled you to death. Simon and I had to keep Johnny occupied so he wasn’t tempted to join you.”

Your pussy flutters at the thought of the three of them together, riled up by you and John. You can almost picture it, Johnny in Simon’s lap, bouncing on his cock while Kyle sucks him off from the front. Or did Johnny submit to both and suck Kyle’s cock while Simon took him from behind? Or was Simon more of a giver and sucked him off while Kyle fucked him? Or did Simon take both of them after making them both suck his cock?

The endless stream of thoughts has your pussy clenching, slick dribbling out of you as your legs start to shake. It’s almost too much with the pressure against your clit, your body heating from the fire ignited in your veins.

“Liked that, didn’t you?” Kyle smirks, removing his hand from your clit to lean down over you. “Maybe next time we’ll squeeze you in right in the middle. Would you like that?”

You nearly cum from his words alone, your hands grasping at his shoulders. “Fuck, Kyle! I need you inside me right now.”

“So impatient.” He tsks, leaning forward to bite at your lips. “Such a needy little omega.”

“Please!” You almost sob, lifting your hips to press against his. “I need you.”

He shushes you, pressing a soft kiss against your lips before sitting back up onto his knees. He shifts slightly closer to you, propping your legs up over his thighs. His hand fists his cock, pumping the hard length a couple times before he drags the head through your folds. You whine impatiently, trying to lift your hips to grind against him but he presses a hand into your stomach, pinning you against the bed.

“Patience.” He scolds you, sending a shiver down your spine.

He drags his head through your folds a couple more times before he finally presses into you, stretching you open. You go lax on the bed, relaxing around him as he rocks his hips into you, sinking in deeper with every movement.

You reach for him as he sinks completely into you, pulling him down so he’s hovering over you. He presses his lips to yours, kissing you softly as you wrap your arms around his neck, pulling him as close as you can. His arms slip around your back as he begins grinding against you, his thrusts shallow and soft. It’s so very different from how John had taken you just a couple days ago. Kyle has always been softer, gentler, more passionate than rough and eager.

You moan softly against his lips, your legs wrapping around his waist to keep him locked against you. You want to get closer to him, but you’re not sure you can get closer than you already are. Bodies pressed together, his cock inside you, lips pressed to yours as he holds you. There’s a prickling under your skin, an urge to devour him, to keep him here forever. He snaps his hips into you harder, his lips trailing down to your throat, sucking at the sensitive skin. You tilt your head to the side, your eyes widening as a gasp leaves your lips. Your fingers dig into Kyle’s side, his head snapping to the side, sensing the disturbance in the room.

“Don’t stop on my account.” John leans against the closed door, a cigar in his hand.

You’re not sure how long he’s been there, how he got in without either of you noticing. Kyle especially, since he was usually so in tune with his surroundings. Pride flashes through you at the thought of him being so lost in you, he can’t focus on anything else. The scent of tobacco washes over you as John takes a long drag from his cigar. He must not have been there long, or maybe you’ve just been so caught up in Kyle’s scent you hadn’t noticed.

Kyle is frozen above you as John pushes off the door, approaching the bed slowly. Kyle shifts above you so he can hold John’s gaze as he stops at the edge of the bed. Excitement swirls in your stomach as you stare up at him in anticipation of what he’s going to do. His hand lifts, dragging down Kyle’s back to his ass.

John delivers a harsh slap to his cheek, Kyle’s hips snapping into yours in response as a moan leaves his lips. “Did I tell you to stop, soldier?”

“No, sir.” Kyle grunts out, starting to rock his hips into yours again.

You watch the change happen almost immediately, the natural shift between them. Kyle’s not in charge anymore, quickly handing over control to John despite the fact he’s the one inside of you. It’s a subtle submission, yet you can sense the changes in them both.

John massages Kyle’s ass for a moment before shifting so he’s closer to you. You stare up at him, lips parted as you whimper quietly. “There’s my pretty girl.” He praises you as he leans down, brushing his thumb over your lips before pushing it into your mouth. You close your lips around his thumb, sucking on it. “Such a good girl, isn’t she?”

“Yes, sir.” Kyle grunts, continuing to thrust into you harder than he had been before.

John takes another drag from his cigar as you moan around his thumb, your hands gripping the sheets as Kyle continues to thrust into you, the head of his cock dragging across that spot inside you from the angle he’s at. Moans slip from Kyle’s lips as you clench around him, his own hands digging into the sheets. Sweat has beaded across his forehead, a droplet sliding down his cheek to his neck, leaving a trail as it slowly drips down his chest. Drool slips out of your mouth around John’s thumb. You want to lick the sweat from his chest. You want to taste him.

John slips his thumb from your lips, dragging it across your chin, smearing saliva all over your skin. “Look at her.” He says, moving so he’s looking over Kyle’s shoulder. “Drooling already and you haven’t even made her cum yet, have you?” His hand slips around the back of Kyle’s neck, his fingers digging into the sensitive skin. “You gonna make her cum like a good boy?”

Kyle lets out a moan, his pace stuttering just slightly. “Yes, sir.” He grits out, picking up the pace as he slams into that spot inside you with every movement.

John takes a step back, continuing to smoke as he watches the two of you. It’s almost too much between Kyle fucking you and John watching. There’s a coil tightening in your stomach, the pleasure intensifying more and more. A fire has started under your skin, your eyes glued to John’s as Kyle pushes you closer and closer to the peak.

You hold John’s gaze as you cum, your back arching in pleasure. Kyle doesn’t stop, continuing to thrust into you as he chases his own high.

John waits until your moans have died down before he moves, stubbing out his cigar on Kyle’s nightstand before he grasps Kyle by the hips, stopping his movements. “Switch places with our girl.” He murmurs into Kyle’s ear, Kyle taking a second to breathe before he wraps his arms around you, flipping you back around so you’re on top again as John kicks off his shoes.

Your hands press into Kyle’s stomach to hold yourself steady, your legs still shaking from your orgasm. John climbs on the bed behind you, his clothed chest pressing against your bare, sweat slicked back.

“Gonna be a good girl and make him cum?” John says quietly, pressing a kiss to your shoulder.

A shiver runs down your spine as you nod, starting to rock your hips just slightly. John’s hands settle on your waist, helping you move as you begin to bounce on Kyle’s cock. Kyle’s eyes are wide as he watches you and his alpha, John pressing kisses across your shoulders and neck as he helps you fuck his beta. Kyle’s hands grip your thighs, fingers indenting the skin as he holds on for dear life.

“That’s it.” John praises you, shifting your body forward just slightly so Kyle’s cock drags across that spot inside you with your every movement. You clench around him, your thighs tightening around his hips.

“Fuck...” Kyle moans, his own hips bucking up into yours.

“Gonna make him cum?” John asks, his hands abandoning your hips. One snakes around your stomach to rub your clit while the other slips behind you to squeeze Kyle's balls.

Kyle lets out a loud moan, his hips snapping up against yours as your walls clamp tightly around him. You can feel the warm ropes of his release spurting inside you, increasing the pressure as you cum a second time on his cock.

John works you both through your orgasms, your entire body shaking by the time he releases you, pushing you forward against Kyle's chest. You lay there, your cheek pressed against his sweaty skin, ass in the air right in John's face. He watches as Kyle's seed begins to seep out of you, forced out by the aftershocks of your orgasm. He drags his fingers through your folds, gathering Kyle's cum before pushing it back into you. You moan softly from the stretch of his fingers against your sensitive walls, pushing your hips back against his hand.

“Don't want to waste any of that.” John says, nipping at the globe of your ass cheek. “You know Kyle likes to clean you up himself.”

You let out a quiet moan, your pussy fluttering around John’s fingers. You’re about to be in for a very long night.

NEXT ->

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cutehoons02 · 4 months ago

Text

Puppy Love: The Hybrid's Heart

*pairing: Golden retriever puppy hybrid Jake x human popular bratty Girl

*trope: oppositive attraction

*synopsis: What if you were to do a project on the economic boom that brought hybrids into the human world in terms of love and sex with Jake a golden retriever hybrid who at first glance looks like a puppy but slowly becomes obsessed with you, and you with your shameless insolence propose to write an essay on the overselling of sexual protections against hybrids? This idea of yours might be brilliant academically but on the plane between your relationship with the hybrid Jake could bring some spicy consequences

*tags: a lot of fluffy and fun, a lot of tension, Jake is a shy fake boy, the protagonist is quite bratty and spoiled but also has a tender side, teasing, territorial animal instinct and possession, kisses, sexual tension, masturbation (f.receives) unprotected sex (don’t horny ppl) fingering, knot filling, pet names (baby,princess) (puppy,jakey)

7.6k (🐕)

(English is not my native language,)

The world was no longer just for humans.

Since hybrids became an integral part of society, each sector had to adapt to their presence. Medicine, law, food, and education; the world has now normalized the presence of hybrids, who coexist with humans in every aspect of society. Some are still considered "tools" for certain purposes, but others, like Jake, want to prove that they are more than what they were created for. At school or university, hybrids have mixed classes with humans, but there is still some prejudice against them. Some see them as merely trained life companions, others as true peers, instead, you were extremely skeptical, saw them as beings too perfect to be true, always kind, always smiling... which you suspect but your friends always told you to charge one or to feel the thrill of being filled by one of them but you in a sense also hated the male human gender; Going with a hybrid would have been even worse and you firmly believed that the hybrids had repressed instincts and that all their sweetness was just a mask to hide their true primordial nature of possessing someone.

In the human world, there were various forms of hybrids the most common ones were those of dogs with then the sub-species and the same thing was for cats, then there were rabbits, hamsters, and then birds but if you thought that there were only these species you were mistaken. There were hybrid wolves which were the rarest especially if they were Alphas, foxes, deer, bears, snakes, and so on.

The auditorium was full of students, and the hum of whispers filled the air while the professor was busy with the projector. The door snapped open, and a figure came in steadily without the least embarrassment of delay.

Jake barely looked up from his notebook and saw you dressed in tight jeans that tied your legs and a sweater that slipped on your shoulders.

He had never spoken to you but knew you by hearsay in the halls of the university that you were one of the most popular girls, but he noticed you immediately. Not so much for your appearance - even though it was clear that you were aware of pleasure - but for the way you moved: confident, almost cocky, as if you challenged anyone to tell you something.

Your eyes set on the only empty place next to him and with a theatrical sigh, you approached and stopped right there in front of him.

"Do you mind if I sit here?" you asked in a slightly sarcastic tone.

Jake looked at you for a moment, then tilted his head. An involuntary gesture, almost canine, that betrayed his hybrid nature, and felt his tail bursting more than it should.

«Not too much,» he replied, with a relaxed smile.

You raised an eyebrow, then dropped down on the chair with a studious ease and pulled out the notebook slowly, as if you were doing the professor a favor by attending the class.

Jake looked at you again, out of the corner of his eye and that’s when he heard it.

Your perfume, my lord. Sweet, with a vanilla note... but also something fresh, almost pungent. It was rare that a smell hit him like this, the hybrids had a developed sense of smell, sure, but after years among humans he got used to ignoring certain things but this... was too good.

Too persistent.

He barely shook his head, trying to ignore him, but at that moment you spoke again.

"I’ve never seen a hybrid in an advanced course," you commented, crossing your legs under the bench and Jake barely smiled.

«And I have never seen a girl arrive late with so much confidence and boldness»

You smiled amused because you knew how the hybrids could always be perfect in everything, never late, always right at every deadline was a thing that united their species.

"It’s a natural talent that in just a few years!" you said as you flicked through the pages of your notes.

«It must be difficult to perfect, in the human world there are clocks for this, alarms, and reminders but maybe you don’t know that.» He said looking at you with a suspicious smile that made you get on your nerves

"Oh, yes, it takes years of practice, in my house as you may have deduced there are no alarms or maybe I’m just too careless."

Jake chuckled. You liked to tease, this was obvious but not aggressive... it seemed more like a game for you.

"Anyway," you said, getting a little too close for Jake’s taste "Mine wasn’t a joke. I have never seen a hybrid in such a course. I thought they would give you more... practical courses."

Jake stopped tapping his fingers on the bench and turned slightly toward you.

«Practical?» he said intrigued by your question and felt his ears curl up with curiosity.

You smiled, just tilting your head to look at him carefully and he was really beautiful: he had black hair slightly fluffy, his ears were golden and deduced that he was a hybrid of a Golden retriever, wore a black shirt where you could see he had nice muscles and a black leather jacket, of the ripped jeans where you could see his toned legs and the only contrast was his slightly long tail that since you were sitting next to him did not stop moving and was extremely adorable but there was also a darker side: an intensity in his eyes that you had noticed immediately, a smile with perfect teeth that seemed more clever than it should be.

"Yeah. You know, things like obeying, being affectionate, devoted..." Jake laughed softly, his elbow resting on the back of the chair. «If by "practical" you mean that, then I suppose so.» But you shook your head, snapping your tongue.

"No, I mean other things." Jake looked at you with a shadow of curiosity in his eyes.

«What other things?»

You didn’t hesitate for a second to speak and Jake understood that you were extremely cheeky and had no hair on your tongue.

"Obsessing about people. Being territorial. Being perverted from morning to night. And, of course, to breed in mass, I have a friend who has a hybrid at home and is extremely territorial with her, I would never be able to take home a hybrid if then in your nature you become so obsessed and territorial with us» Jake’s smile froze for a moment and for the first time since he had met you, he was speechless.

You had said it too naturally, with too much confidence, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, and for a second, Jake felt the heat rise. He was not angry, no but... he felt strange.

He knew well that there were still people who thought so, who saw the hybrids only as beings programmed to satisfy the humans and to satisfy themselves but to hear it in his face, with that almost contemptuous lightness, struck him more than he would have wanted to admit.

He passed his tongue on his teeth, then cleared his throat.

«... And tell me,» he said with a smile that he was trying to mask the irritation. «Do you want me to do these things?»

You burst out laughing, god also he had seriously the taste of humor at the stars and no doubt knew how to tease you and always had the ready answer, maybe his master had trained him well for life as a hybrid mixed with that human being.

"Are you serious?" Jake just stared at you, waiting for your answer and you shook your head, crossing your arms with a haughty little smile.

"No, not even in my worst nightmare would I sleep with a hybrid."

Jake looked away for a second.

Okay, that sentence... had more effect than expected.

Not that he was interested in that way - he said - but the way you had said it, with that absolute confidence, had left him a small, annoying scratch in his pride and passed a hand through his hair, then came back to look at you with an ironic smile.

«Ah, well...» he said, lowering his voice. «I’m sorry to break your heart, but even in my worst nightmares I wouldn’t dream of jumping on you.»

You laughed again, but this time his eyes shone with satisfaction and Jake stared at you for a moment, then barely shook his head, returning to focus on the professor but your scent kept invading his senses and was damn good.

The teacher clapped his hands a couple of times to get the class’s attention.

— Well, guys. For future lessons, I want you to work in pairs with those next to you. You will have to write a short essay on the economic and social boom that occurred after the integration of hybrids in our society, especially in the sentimental sector and... - paused, putting his glasses on his nose, - sexual.

In the courtroom, there was a murmur mixed with some suffocated laughter. Someone turned to look at his sidekick with funny or embarrassed expressions.

Jake ran his hand through his hair, letting go a slight sigh. Fantastic and his new sidekick snorted and laughed.

"Well, I guess you won’t get rid of me that easily then," you said. Jake turned to you, finding you with a clever smirk on your lips. There was something mischievous in your tone as if you were enjoying every second of that situation.

What about him? He wasn’t sure how to feel. On the one hand, the idea of spending more time with you meant dealing with your cheeky attitude and sharp tongue.

On the other hand... your perfume, it was absurd, sweet, and pungent, insinuated itself in his senses in a way that he could not ignore.

"That might be a problem," he thought, his tongue in his teeth.

You meanwhile stretch out your hand, with an almost bored expression, as if you were simply doing your social duty.

"My name is Y/n." Jake looked down at your hand for a moment, then did the same.

«Jake,» he said in a low voice smiling at you, and as soon as your hands touched, both of you felt a slight electric shock. You withdrew your hand after a second, barely clenching your fingers, as if you were unsure of what she had just felt. Jake, on the other hand, stood still, his face as relaxed as ever... but something inside of him had lit up.

He had felt the shock more intensely than he should. Like a shiver along the back, an impulse that had made his hair on the arms and clenched his jaw, trying to ignore it.

It was nothing, could not be anything.

Yet, as you turned to take your notebook and start working, he stood still for a moment too long, his eyes still fixed on his hand, as if trying to figure out what the hell had happened.

Jake nervously drummed his fingers on the table, trying to ignore the annoyance that twisted in his stomach every time you came into the library or private rooms to continue with the work your economics professor had assigned.

There were days that you worked together and, if possible, he found you more and more unbearable; you arrived late every time, as if it was your natural right and sincerely thought you did it on purpose to see him annoyed by you. And not a few minutes, once you had waited 40 minutes under the bus shelter and it was raining and when you arrived you looked at him as if you had before you not a human and animal half but a puppy left alone. Although to be honest, today ten minutes seemed almost a miracle, and then the way you dressed... always those little skirts that seemed to come out of an anime for under 18 years old, always those soft sweaters where you let see your skin smooth and perfect that slipped on your shoulders, and the loose hair that framed your face with almost irritating ease.

And your perfume, damn it, your perfume. Every day it seemed to get more intense, more enveloping, as if she wanted to drag him inside without anything he could do about it.

Jake strove to look away while you sat beside him with the usual carelessness, pulling out your notes with exasperating slowness but then saw you take something out of your bag.

A small box and he felt his breath stop for a moment, Jake recognized it instantly.

Anti-hybrid contraceptives. In pill format for girls. In condom format for boys. He felt the blood go to his head instantly, and a burst of heat rose on his cheeks before he could even control himself. Instinctively, he also felt his tail flutter hard, too hard and forced himself to stop it, clearing his throat in a desperate attempt to mask his reaction.

You noticed immediately and, of course, you made you laugh.

"Oh? What’s this face, Jake? You’re a little too reactive to be such a smart hybrid, aren’t you?"

Jake put his hand on his neck, trying to ignore the way his body was reacting against his will.

«It’s nothing,» he mumbled, trying to appear indifferent but you did not let yourself be fooled and you leaned at the table with a mischievous smirk, making the box swing between your fingers.

"Ah-ah, I wouldn’t say. You lit up like a light bulb. What, you’ve never seen one before?"

Jake stared at you. «I know what it is,» he said, trying to keep her cool. «I just didn’t expect you to take it out so... naturally.»

You laugh again and open the box, taking out a pill and swirling it between your fingers.

"Oh, honey, I always have an escort with me. You know, just to be safe. You never know, with all these hybrids around, so obsessed, territorial, and..." you got a little closer, looking at him provocatively, "perverts from morning to night."

Jake clenched his jaw and thought you were a damn problem and the worst part was that you knew exactly how much you were causing it.

You laughed and slipped the pill back into its wrapper.

"I guess your master didn’t explain to you what it means to be ironic, I’ve never taken one of these pills in my life sincerely; I just wanted to make fun of you a little bit," you said, putting the box on the table. " We can talk about it in our essay."

Jake raised an eyebrow and did not understand what I wanted to say sincerely.

«Contraceptives?» he said in a low voice as his cheeks warmed.

"Sure." You leaned on the back of the chair, fiddling with the box. "Come on, think of the gigantic market that has been created since hybrids entered our lives. The anti-hybrid condoms and these pills are very popular. Sometimes they’re even sold out in whole cities. It’s a multimillion-dollar business and thank God they are used to protect us from diseases and becoming mothers too soon!"

Jake nodded slowly, acknowledging that the argument made sense.

«It’s true. We could also talk about the condoms that we hybrids can use to release our seed and knot inside.»

You smiled and clapped Jake’s hands and sensitive ears rose with speed as he heard you slap them and smile.

"Perfect. So let’s try to put down our ideas and see that they are not as bad as you thought!" You gave him a slight elbow in the side and he nodded slightly feeling for a few seconds your skin in contact with his.

You worked, exchanging ideas and writing the first few paragraphs. As much as he found you annoying, Jake had to admit that you were brilliant had a lot of ideas for the head, and knew how to connect concepts, and how to make the essay interesting.

But he... he had a problem.

Since that little box appeared on the table, his body seemed to activate without his permission.

His golden tail did not stop moving, slamming against the leg of the chair. His ears were always on alert, picking up every sound or movement. And then... the heat on his cheeks. He needed to run his hand through his hair, to fix the collar of the sweatshirt as if he could find some relief.

It was a disaster and every time you talked to him you noticed that there was something strange about him and after two hours of notes thrown down in the computer you tore yourself into the chair and cleared your throat and watched him for a moment, narrowing your eyes.

Jake was... beautiful. Too beautiful. The kind of beauty that made hybrids seem even more dangerous than they already were. His face was sculpted but soft in the right places, and when he smiled he had that vaguely mischievous air that made the weak college girls knee-deep, and now, as he stirred, it was even more obvious that his body was reacting strangely.

You bit the inside of your cheek, then, with your usual insolence, you asked:

"Jake... have you ever laid a litter?" He suddenly froze and his eyes opened wide, surprised and passed the drink that he was drinking and you gently shook your hand on his back to make him recover

«What?!» said slightly incredulous of having heard that phrase coming out of your mouth that you couldn’t keep quiet for more than two minutes and you laughed amused.

"You understand very well. Have you ever had a litter?" Jake was speechless for a second, then burst out laughing, incredulous at the blatant question

«No!» and you stared at him, shocked.

"No? What’s not?!"

Jake crossed his arms, shaking his head with a funny smile.

«What surprises you so much? I can not inseminate and tie puppies from morning to night» he told you in a funny way

"You’re a hybrid!" you exclaimed. "I thought it was... boh, part of your instinct. Like, that’s what you were made for, right?"

Jake raised an eyebrow, this timeless amused.

«Wow. Is that how you see it?» said Jake in a somewhat sad and annoyed way, and you shrugged your shoulders, not breaking up.

"I see reality, Jake." He looked at you for a long moment, then shook his head with a half smile.

«Not all hybrids are obsessed with reproduction, you know?»

"No, but most do."

«I don’t,» he replied firmly

"Really?" you said curious

"Y/n. Sooner or later I would like to have a family of either single hybrids or half hybrids but for now, I want to make a career as you are doing, I would like to graduate and then find a job that satisfies me, and who knows also a companion to be with and not only to breed puppies!»

You looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion, Jake was really a good guy and you could see that he tried every day to be respected and not fall into the traps of humans and then you bowed your head and smiled again.

"Well, then you’re an anomaly but I like this more "human" side of you that you want to make a career and live a normal life. We are bombarded with stories of hybrids that mate just for pleasure!"

Jake chuckled, returning to writing.

«Or maybe I just have high standards of life and love» he said looking at you and smiling.

"Ah yes?" you said curious

«Yes, Y/n. Go back to studying» You stared at him for a few seconds, then you just laughed, shaking your head.

That afternoon you were writing on the computer all the different types of contraceptive pills for hybrids and read there was a lot for any knot that filled you with animal and you were curious but also a little shocked and wanted to ask too much Jake if he had ever filled some. Nobody at school talked openly about what it meant to be with them in a physical sense. It was a taboo subject in sex education classes, yet, in the real world, everyone talked about it.

Many of your friends had fun with the hybrids at least once, and they all said the same thing.

"It is amazing."

"Being filled with them is an absurd feeling."

"The knot... is the best thing you can feel."

But you were always skeptical, you couldn’t stand certain humans, let alone hybrids. They were stronger, more instinctive, more... Unpredictable yet, sitting next to Jake, curiosity tickled you.

He was so beautiful that it hurt to the eyes, and yet it all seemed almost... Embarrassed when you provoked him you slightly turn towards him, resting your chin on the hand.

"Jake..." He didn’t take his eyes off the notebook, but his ears moved slightly.

«Mh? What other uncomfortable question will you ask me today?» he said laughing.

"Have you ever knotted anyone?" Jake instantly stuck his fingers on the paper, and his tail, which had been moving slowly until then, suddenly twitched and turned to you, and for the first time, he saw something he’d never seen in your eyes before.

Embarrassment, serious, genuine embarrassment.

«What?!» he asked, almost as if he had not heard well.

"You heard me very well, don’t be shy with me. Have you ever knotted anyone?" Jake felt the heat rise to his head in a flash. He ran his hand through his hair, as he always did when he felt nervous and looked away.

«I..» He shook his head and you flashed your eyes.

"Oh, come on!" you exclaimed with an incredulous laugh. "You’re a liar. You’re too good-looking to have never been with anyone."

Jake gnawed his cheek inside and heard his tail churning for your appreciation of him, he didn’t like where he was going to end that conversation, not with you so close, not with that perfume that invaded his lungs and clouded his thoughts.

«It happened only once,» he finally admitted, with a lower tone. You stared at him carefully, grasping the tension in his body, the way he seemed to... restrain himself.

"So? How was it? Did you like it?" Jake put his hand over his neck, undecided whether or not to answer, and finally sighed.

«No.» You stopped laughing and looked at him, confused.

"What do you mean?" you said in a low voice and Jake looked down slightly.

«It was not... an act of pleasure.» he paused, clenching his hands. «They used me only to make me lose my virginity, both hybrid and animal.»

You felt something gripping your stomach and you didn’t expect it, not from him.

You had always mocked him, convinced that he was like all the other hybrids, that he was just another boy too handsome and too sure of himself but now, seeing him like this... You wanted to say something, to fill the gap that had been created between you.

You approached him cautiously, looking at him with a mixture of hesitation and displeasure. You had never seen him so... Vulnerable and without thinking too much, you reached out your hand and gently caressed his golden ears. Jake froze for a second, surprised by the contact, then unintentionally relaxed. It was as if his body reacted by itself as if your gesture had a calming effect on him. His tail, which until then had been agitating nervously, stopped.

"Sorry," you whispered, in a tone you had never used with him before and Jake shrugged, looking away.

«You can even stop pretending to be sorry,» he said, with a half-bitter smile. «I know very well that you don’t care about me. You just like to tease me.»

You looked at him for a long moment, then shook your head.

"No. I won’t make fun of you any more about these things. And I won’t ask you any more personal questions." Jake turned to you with a cheeky smirk, his usual cocky attitude coming back to life.

«Oh? Then it’s my turn to ask personal questions?»

You raised an eyebrow. "Depends on the question."

Jake leaned against the table with a relaxed look, then looked you straight in the eye.

«Have you ever been with a boy?» Did you get stuck for a moment Jake tilted his head slightly. «I mean, did you lose your virginity?» And at that moment you realized he had asked you the exact same question. And you were bad with him and looked slightly down, then nodded slowly.

"Yes. I had... a kind of boyfriend" Jake stood in silence, waiting for him to continue and you were fiddling with the pen between your fingers as if you were unsure what to say.

"But I didn’t enjoy sex with him so much, maybe because I didn’t love him or to be honest I never loved anyone" Jake heard a slight growl forming in his throat, Almost imperceptible when he heard that you were not in love with that boy and that you did not like the sexual act.

«Did he hurt you?» Asked in a low voice and you felt that there was something in his tone that made you shudder, it wasn’t just curiosity, it was protection, it was territoriality and Jake felt the urgency grow inside of him uncontrollably. A primordial need to protect you from having you for yourself.

You looked into his eyes and shook your head.

"No, it didn’t hurt" but you saw that Jake wasn’t the same anymore, you were furious with yourself, you had used too heavy words with Jake, and now he was looking at you with a hidden wound and without thinking,

You grabbed it by the collar of the sweatshirt and pulled it to you, the lips that collided with hers in a kiss full of emotion and repressed anger.

God, what were you doing?

Jake stood motionless for a moment, surprised, but his animal instinct overwhelmed him soon after. His hands slid on your hips, holding them firmly as he lifted you with ease and seated you on the table. Her kiss answered yours with a mix of sweetness and pure possession, the lips that devoured yours with growing hunger.

«Y/n...» he murmured against your mouth between one kiss and another, the warm breath that touched your skin. «You are a little pest. Always teasing me, eh?»

Smile at his lips, nibbling on his lower lip before answering. " And you’re a golden retriever always too loyal... but maybe you have a wild side after all."

Jake growled quietly, amused and provoked by his words. «Oh, Y/n... you don’t even know what trouble you’re in.»

His hands went up your thighs, making you feel the warmth of his touch even through your clothes and you stroked his ears, knowing exactly how sensitive he was at that point. A shiver passed through Jake, who closed his eyes for a moment, panting softly.

«Damnation, Y/n...» he whispered with a crooked smile. «If you continue like this, I will not answer for my actions.»

You slowly recline, sinking your fingers in his hair. "What if that’s exactly what I want?"

When you left, Jake’s tail couldn’t stop. He felt so good, but at the same time excited, and whispered to you: «You are driving me crazy from the first day.» you smiled maliciously and tried to kiss him on the neck. When Jake heard you lightly sucking his skin near the ear, he groaned softly but immediately broke away from you.

«We can’t continue,» he said in a roaring voice and you looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "Why not?"

Jake sighed, lowering his voice. «Why would I stop. I’d fill you with my knot several times,Y/n. Your perfume makes me go crazy. And I know you’re still reluctant about hybrids... If I gave you to me, everything would change between us.»

His look was serious, intense. «For me, it’s not a game, and I know it’s not for you either. You act like a cheeky little girl, but I know that you have respect for me and the other hybrids. First, you have to figure out if you really like me or if I’m just a hobby. When you find the answer, you’ll tell me. But until you know, I can’t take any chances. I want to be just one person. I don’t want to get hurt again.» And with these words, he gave you a little kiss on the forehead and made you stand up from the table.

In those weeks of study, you were still a cheeky and popular girl with Jake you loved to tease him but at the same time understand him. You had first seen him in his animal form as a golden retriever and he was beautiful and playful with you, Jake had made you meet Sunghoon a friend of his hybrid snow fox, and Jungwon a hybrid Bengal cat. At first, you were strange and anxious about this thing but over time you had made friends with them and well Jake every day that passed could not stop touching you.

You kissed a little too much even though you weren’t engaged. He explained everything about him and the sexual part of the knot and slowly you realized that he was really starting to like you and becoming more and more important to you.

The research you and Jake had done on the economic boom of hybrids using anti-hybrid contraceptives was a success. The professor even complimented you. But that victory also had a downside: you didn’t have Jake as your work partner anymore. You noticed it, he seemed a bit down in morale, even if he never admitted it openly.

Fortunately, you both studied economics, so over the next few months you would have had more classes together.

The students of the course had organized a party and you were there with your friends, dressed in a dress perhaps a little too succinct for Jake’s standards. He looked at you with that territorial gaze, every interaction you had with some human being, especially male, seemed to make him tremble with irritation. He knew you were popular, but not that much. He noticed how some guys looked at you all night and, at one point, he got fed up.

With his tail wagging slightly and his ears raised, he approached you with a grin.

«Baby», he said, tilting his head with fake innocence, «are you aware of how many glances you attract with that little dress?»

You gave him a mischievous smile, sipping your drink. "Oh? Are you worried about me, puppy?"

Jake snorted, getting even closer. «Worried? No. Tired of seeing all these idiots staring at you as if you were a succulent meal? Absolutely yes.»

You laugh and enjoy his jealousy. "What’s the problem? It’s not my fault I’m pretty."

He clenched his jaw slightly, then leaned towards you, his voice getting lower. You know, you could be a little more discreet. Don’t you mind being looked at like that?»

You came even closer, your lips a few centimeters from hers. "And you don’t mind?"

Jake looked at you for a moment, then his hand touched your side with an almost imperceptible but possessive gesture. «It depends. If you want all those guys to know that you’re out of reach, I can make it clear to them.»

You raised an eyebrow, nibbling your lip. "Oh? How would you do that?"

Jake smiled, tilting his head. «Do you really want to find out, Y/n? Because I don’t know if you’ll like being claimed in front of everyone.»

Your heart skipped a beat, but you kept the cheek.

"Maybe you should try it, then. Let’s see if you have the courage."

Jake laughed softly, his eyes shone with a dangerous light. «You’re playing with fire, baby. And you know it.»

You smiled, caressing his ear distractedly, making the poor hybrid shudder. "And then burn me, Jake."

Late at night, the music was still pulsing in the disco and everyone was dancing. You were having fun too, but Jake, tired of the whole situation, came up to you with a look full of tension. «I can’t take it anymore," he murmured in a low, hoarse voice.»

You smiled maliciously and, caressing his soft golden retriever ears, mocked him. " Oh, does the little golden retriever have to sleep?"

Jake growled softly, approaching you with a predatory look. «I’m not tired of sleep,» he hissed, his eyes fixed on you. «I can’t stand to see you dancing with those idiots anymore. I want you so much, Y/n. You’re driving me crazy.»

Without thinking too much, you took his hand and together left the disco, walking quickly towards your university room. The journey was quiet, charged with electricity, and as you closed the door behind you, Jake did not waste time. His hands squeezed you firmly as his lips pressed against yours in a possessive but sweet kiss, laden with desire held back for too long. His tongue explored his mouth with greed, while one of his hands crept into your hair, squeezing it lightly to hold you close.

It was only for a moment, the breathless breath. «I want you, Y/n. I want to make you mine.»

You looked at him with bright eyes, your heart beating like crazy. Annuisti, but Jake was not satisfied. He touched your face with his nose, his warm breath on your skin. «No, I want to hear your beautiful voice tell me. Tell me you love me. Tell me you want to be mine... that you want my knot to fill you.»

You shivered at the sound of those words, feeling the heat enveloping you more and more. He looked at you with devastating intensity, waiting for your answer.

"I want to be yours, Jake." When Jake heard these words coming out of your mouth slightly pushed you onto the bed and without thinking began to smell you and then give you small kisses on your neck mixed with small pacifiers and light bites to claim you that made you crazy and moan his name, You began to rub yourself in its length covered by his jeans and at the same time caressing his hair and his ears and felt it more and more excited and the same thing happened to you.

There was something almost intoxicating in having him over you, his wide body looming over yours, his dark brown eyes with heavy eyelids peering at you as if he wanted to devour you completely and to have you all to himself, continued his kiss trail along your body, Stopping only when you pulled the top over your head, leaving you with only your underwear and saw his cheeks warm up when he took off your breast-rest and began to tease with one hand your right breast and the other began to suck your bud; It was a beautiful feeling and while he sucked you and left some trail of saliva you pinched him slightly and stuck your back to the feeling of his hands in your breast and his tongue that was doing a dangerous game just to tease you and make you go away the head.

«Fuck, you’re so sexy but at the same time sensitive to my touch». Jake panted as his hand touched your breast, the nipple creaking against the cold feeling of his tongue making you groan. You were so sensitive, the feeling sent you a jolt, gasping as Jake smiled at your skin and thought if you were so sensitive with only his tongue in your buds, he couldn’t wait to see you go crazy while he’d innocence you to him and push himself inside of you.

His other hand slid between your legs, touching the wet stain that had formed on your underwear as you pushed into his hand with a moan.

«Fuck, you’re soaked for me, baby». Groaning to the feeling of your excitement covering his fingers, the lips meeting yours once again in a hungry kiss, Jake detached himself from your lips, quickly lifting his shirt off his body as he threw it somewhere in the room, The sound of his belt unbuckling hit you right to the heart.

You watched him in just his boxers and he was definitely beautiful, his hair was messy, his cheeks were red, his body had beautiful abdominal ridges and you licked your lips when you saw his V-line go down to the stuffing of its length.

"I want you so much." Whining.

Jake smiled as he hovered over you again, his hands meeting your full boob again and the other hand traveling to your inner thigh, snapping his finger under the hem of your panties, caressing your clitoris, and ripping a jolt.

"Jake..." you panicked, hands clenching on his shoulders as the pleasure slowly invaded you. He smiled, bowing down to kiss your neck with warm and moist lips. «Calm down, baby...» he whispered in a tone full of possessive sweetness. «I have to prepare you well. I too can’t wait to fill you up, but I want you to be ready.»

You could feel the redness rising up your neck as her touch made you shiver, your thighs trembling with desire.

"Please..." you said in a low voice as you heard him take off your wet panties

«Please, what?» His thumb caressed your clitoris, the sudden friction made you groan, and Jake moved away slightly, his lips brushing your lobe as he murmured. The heat that accumulated in your stomach overwhelmed you as you felt that with one finger he was tickling your clitoris and with another had filled your pussy pulsing around him, You felt that it was pumping and at the same time, it was teasing your clitoris and pinching it just to make you arch your back and beg you to have it inside of you.

God, where was the shy boy who would be embarrassed if you teased him?

"Fuck me, please Jake, I need you" As you came in his fingers he lifted up slightly and your hands fell down, finding their warm and pulsating length between his delicate fingers.

Jake moans softly to the touch, his breath accelerated as his fingers sank deeper into its wet center. «Damn it, baby... You’re so perfect...» he mumbled against your skin, nibbling at her ear lobe.

You barely moved, the hands exploring him with curiosity and need, while your body was tending more and more under his caresses. "Jake... I can’t wait any longer..." You whispered with a supple tone and lowered his boxer shorts and saw his lengthy erected and full of slime liquid and you couldn’t wait to be tied to him and feel it inside you.

"Fuck." You whisper, wondering how beautiful his cock was, which was clinging around your hands and you pumped it slightly and Jake looked at you softly as he put it on top of you. «God, you’re so fucking beautiful.»

You both groan simultaneously at the feeling of his cock touching your clitoris and moving again, aligning with your entrance.

«Ready?» he asked, with a roaring and stinging voice and with a tail that was rumbling for joy and anude, biting his lip.

"Use your words, princess.» he flicked his toe along your folds

"Yes! Yes, please. Fuck me."

He shoved his cock tip into the heat, rubbing it provocatively against your folds and Jake groaned as he pushed his length inside you, your body twitching at that feeling.

It was hot. Big. Deep. The knot was filling you in a way that you would never have imagined; now you understood why human girls were crazy about hybrids. It wasn’t just pleasure-it was the feeling of being held, tied, branded. There was no escape, and yet you didn’t want to run away. Every movement of Jake made you shiver, his knot pulsed inside you, and the mixture of pain and pleasure sent you crazy.

Jake’s dark eyes devoured you, full of desire, with a visceral lust that made him almost savage. The hybrid instinct in him roared, calling you, asking to brand you, to bind her to himself permanently.

When he finally pushed himself inside you, a deep growl escaped from his lips. The feeling was overwhelming, perfect.

"Jake..." your voice trembled, and your eyes were bright as the knot pressed inside you. "It’s so... intense."

He stopped for a moment, inhaling your scent, that sweet aroma mixed with sweat that was driving him crazy.

«Shh, baby... » he leaned over you, the tongue that touched your neck, tasting you. «My knot is trying to tie you to me.»

He pushed deeper and you held your breath as he felt the knot swell, and expand inside you. The mixture of pleasure and that subtle burning made you shiver.

"Jake... the knot..." anxiously, the nails slid down his back, scratching him slightly. "It’s too much... it’s driving me crazy."

He kissed you with force, suffocating his groans in your mouth, the tongue that explored yours with a primitive, possessive hunger.

«You’re almost there." His breath was warm against your skin, his ears flattened for pleasure. «Your body is adapting to me... do you feel it? You are perfect for receiving me.»

It moved again, and the pressure within you increased. You trembled when the knot swelled further, locking it inside you, and preventing it from coming out.

"God..." whispers, clenching at him. "You’re driving me crazy."

Jake smiled at your skin, the tail moving slowly behind him like a satisfied predator.

«Fuck you, baby feel how it grows inside of you.» With each push, you felt the knot getting bigger and bigger and the pleasure penetrated you completely as you felt Jake always pushing himself inside of you and at the same time tickling your clitoris to make you come.

«You know what it means, don’t you?» His voice was low, seductive, almost hypnotic. «It means that my body is trying to tie you to me. He’s trying to... put my puppies inside you.» Your eyes pounded, the heart pounding in your chest. He touched your cheek with his lips, then dropped down the neck, leaving little bites everywhere, imprinting his mark on you.

«I know you’re taking the anti-hybrid contraceptives, baby.» His smile was almost smug. «But sooner or later my knot will fill you in the way it should.»

A shiver passed through you. Those words should have frightened you, but instead, they lit something inside of you, something deep and primordial; you felt the rush of chills and adrenaline take you in the blow and came and after two more pushes Jake filled you completely with his knot and his sperm came out of you and he licked you while you felt that it was still hard and him with those puppy eyes but mixed to territoriality and perversion you looked and nodded slightly as you felt that he sank his cock inside you again, Jake sank his face into the hollow of your neck breathing in your sweet and intoxicating scent while his knot still pulsed inside her. He felt you tremble, your body still shaken by the waves of pleasure that had swept you both away.

«You are so perfect for me... feel how your body is holding me back? As if it didn’t want to let me out...» He said in a hoarse voice, kissing your jaw softly

"I feel it, Jake... God, I feel so full..." you said with a sigh of pleasure

Jake moved slowly inside of you, feeling the pressure wrap him even more, the swollen knot that was still glued to you.

«And you will always be. Always full of me. Of my knot... and my seed.» he said whispering in your ear, with a satisfied smile.

You visibly shudder at his words, a mixture of excitement and total surrender in your dark eyes.

"Yes... yes... I want to be all yours... filled by you..."

Jake kissed you ardently, slowly sinking again «Good, baby. Tell me how much you like it.»

You were anxiously, clinging even more to him. "Jake... you make me feel so good... it’s too beautiful... I still feel the knot throbbing inside of me..."

Jake laughed softly at your lips «Because my body knows that you are mine. I will never have enough of you.»

He moved again, this time more deeply, and moaned, feeling the heat spread everywhere.

Jake with a satisfied sigh, caressed your face sweetly as he looked into your eyes «Do you want some more, baby?»

Bite your lip, clenching your legs around his hips with a mischievous smile: "Yes... yes, Jake... I want more."

Jake growled softly, with a satisfied smile as he kissed you passionately. «Then let me fill you up again. Cause I’m not done with you.»

When Jake broke away from you after you came, he helped you gently clean himself by caressing your face. «Did I hurt you?» He asked with a thread of concern in his voice as he saw you still shaken.

You laughed, shaking your head. "No, you were incredible... just a little intense!"

Jake hugged you, like a real puppy looking for affection, and kissed your head with sweetness. «You’re perfect for me,» I murmured, clenching myself. «You drive me crazy every time... and I think I’m starting to love you."

You looked at him surprised, your heart beating faster in your chest. " I have never loved anyone... but when I am with you I feel something strong," you admitted, looking down.

Jake smiled and, jokingly, whispered: «I can’t wait to hear it for real.»

You chuckled and replied with a fake bored tone: "Yes, maybe in a couple of years."

He burst out laughing and, without warning, began to tickle you, making you laugh and trying to shake off his loving hands. The room was full of laughter, and complicit looks, something that was growing between you, stronger and stronger.

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batchilla · 8 months ago

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False Accusations (You know I KNOW right? Chapter Two)

Let me first say thank you for all the kind reception part one received. It was … a surprise, and a welcome one.

Also, a massive thank you to @sunnie-angel for beta reading. If you haven’t read their work… Do yourself a favor and check out their masterlist!

This Chapter takes place over a few days in two mini stories., and I would appreciate being told if at any point this causes confusion. Currently how I’ve done it is as tilted segments. Content warning: this chapter has themes of sexual harassment in the workplace up to the point of groping (from an OC), and corruption. Proceed with caution. Be safe.

The morning after. You are going to murder your partner, Grayson. Perhaps with a gun. Maybe your own two hands. Or maybe you just need coffee.

It's probably the coffee thing. Coffee, then you’ll decide if you're going to kill him and how. As you sit at your table, surrounded by notes you’d made at 4am, the urge to throttle Grayson slowly subsides. You hadn’t slept a wink. You’d had a weird night. But if you were going to do this, help him find this killer… you’d need a plan for if it all goes to hell. A diversion. A plan so that if you’re made, maybe the killer will think you’re on the wrong track. A dummy investigation. But simultaneously one that you won’t overthink, so that you can devote your time and brainpower to the truth. Luckily for you, you have the perfect person to pretend to accuse. After all, your partner, Grayson, is an incredibly weird guy. 8:55 am finds you walking into the station sipping your third coffee of the morning, only to find Grayson sat at his desk. Shirt pressed, tie perfect, hair shampoo commercial glamourous yet slightly messy. The urge to murder your partner returns, just a little. How dare he be so… normal? So unaffected? How dare this man fight crime by night, and be smiling at you as he is now, chipper and bright and perfect, before 9am? The nerve. Maybe you could hit him with a patrol car and claim it was an accident. “Morning detective… Long night?”

Oh.. This fucker. Your partner, Grayson, is the most annoying man alive. You hate how badly you have to fight the urge to grin at the sheer audacity.

She looks exhausted, the poor thing. Dick remembered the feeling, but at some point he’d adapted to running on less sleep than was by any means reasonable. He hoped she wouldn’t need to. That this would be over in a few weeks and she’d be back to getting a full eight hours. “Morning Detective… Long night?” She glares at him like he’s caused personal offence. He raises an eyebrow at her to prompt a response. Inside though, he panics. Had he done something wrong? Could she suspect? No. no of course not. But whatever she said next would surely be important. It was a test of sorts. What would she say she’d spent the night doing? Would she betray his alter ego? Could she sell the lie if she didn’t? “Just had a night in, had a little too much to drink,” she shrugs, opening her bag and removing a notebook. Casual, calm, partially true and nearly impossible to disprove short of a blood test or breathalyser, and even then there was deniability. Dick nods, and looks back down to his computer to hide the grin that splits his face in half. He knows he can’t dwell on it, knows he can’t act on it, but it’s completely unfair that she was that smooth. That helpful. She’d agreed to help him - as Nightwing - instantly. Her words about how Blud owed him a debt had played in his mind on loop for the rest of his patrol. He knew what it felt like to fly. To flip through the air at dizzying heights, gravity a mere afterthought. It was cruel, frankly, that he’d found someone who made him feel even better than that, only for her to be someone he couldn’t be with out of principle and professionalism. It wasn’t that he objected to her as a partner - short of his family, she was possibly the best he’d ever met. Frankly, if she was transferred to Gotham, the bat signal would be turned on far less frequently. And he didn’t object to rules about dating fellow officers, especially one’s partner. Objectively it made sense. But it didn’t change the fact that her smile was the best part of his day. That on the rare times she laughed he could swear he heard an angel just straight up quit its position in the heavenly chorus out of pure envy. That when she’d said she’d help he’d wanted nothing more than to grab her face and kiss her till she was breathless. But he can’t. Or at least Dick Grayson can’t. A new voice breaks him from his spiralling thoughts. “Detective Grayson.” The man standing behind his partner's desk has a hand on the back of her seat, preventing her from swivelling around.

“We haven’t met yet, I’m Sergeant James McElroy. Seems you spent most of my first day back stuck on a stakeout.” “Pleasure.” he responds, with all the charm he’s learnt to use at galas and parties, forcing down the venom incurred by the way his partner had seemed to lose a gallon of blood at the sound of his voice, and the way she had seemed not to breath since the name was spoken.

He's not touching you. Of course not. He knows better than to do anything so blatant. It's how he’d gotten away with it for so long last time. He doesn’t touch you, or say the things he was so clearly thinking. He would masterfully walk the line between making you feel unsafe, alone, and naked, while never crossing over into anything actionable. Till one day he had. It had been in a crowded lift where he’d used the crush as an excuse to grab and to feel, whispering something vile in your ear.

He’d figured he’d gotten away with it when you tried to tell your captain and he’d asked if you had a witness. You’d thought he’d gotten away with it too. Till a uniformed officer, Janet Rodwell, had stepped up to have your back. You should have known, really. For the second time in 24 hours you feel like a fool. But while the first time it had been accompanied with a dizzying realisation of love, this time the realisation is dark and chilling to your core. You’d thought you’d won, that it was over. But he’s back and he’s not touching you, but you feel the ghost of his hands all over. You can’t win. He’d been sent away and you thought you were safe again, but he’s back and he’s a sergeant now. Because Bludhaven, as it is, rewards men like him. You can’t bring yourself to look over your shoulder at him, so you look straight ahead, across your desk and to your partner’s adjoining one.

It's not Dick Grayson’s eyes you meet though. They aren’t cheerful, carefree and beautiful. Well, they are beautiful. But they are angry, intelligent, and fierce. You meet Nightwings gaze, and you feel the claws around your lungs relax, even if they do not recede.

His partner did not rattle easily. Did not panic unnecessarily.

Pinned down by the Penguin’s smugglers, he’d thought their goose had been cooked unless he could work at his true capacity, so he had shot out the lights and gotten to work. He’d taken out nine, but been unable to find the tenth, until he’d heard the struggle.

She’d taken him down blind, without drawing her gun. When he’d asked her why she hadn’t, she’d told him she’d lost sight of him in the chaos, and was unwilling to risk it. He wished he hadn’t shot the light out so he could have seen it.

Still, he had been oblivious. It had hit him like a batarang to the face last night, in that moment where she agreed without hesitation to help him find a serial killer. He’d known she was beautiful, and brilliant. That he had a crush.

He’d realised last night he was in far, far deeper trouble than that. So, if she was frightened and upset by the presence of this man, then Dick would take his looming over her as a serious threat. He trusted her gut. “You haven’t introduced yourself to my partner, Detective—-” He’s cut off with a dismissive wave that boils his blood. “Oh we’ve met. In fact, she was my partner first. Until the misunderstanding.” There are many ways to snap someone out of a panic. He’s seen sheer rage do it many times. As it does now. “There was no misunderstanding,” she says, her voice firm, her teeth gritted. “Well. I want you to know-” he moves from directly behind her, to her side, leaning down over her, invading her space. Dick wanted to hit him. “I understand that what I did could have been seen as invasive, and you may have felt that I overstepped. I have completed a course, as demanded by HR, and will attempt not to cause you to feel that I have been inappropriate again.”

She takes a deep breath. He can practically hear her count in his head. He stands, moving around the desk to stand beside her, not quite a barrier but a comforting presence, or at least he hoped. “Well. Whatever occurred, we have work to be getting on with, if you don’t mind.” It takes a great deal of the restraint his training has given not to add the words ‘you bastard’, or something far more creative. “But of course. Detective. Detective.”

Your hands shake as you sit back down in your seat. Your partner, Grayson, returns to his own, his gaze - Richard’s gaze, never leaving your face, crumpled in concern. “I don’t want to overstep… but are you alright? What … did he do?” “I…” you want to tell him, in part. Or maybe you don’t, and you want him to know without having to go through the ordeal of rehashing it all. Maybe by consulting whatever ‘oracle’ he used as nightwing. But you can’t right now. So you don’t. “I… need some air.” Your partner just gives you a comforting smile, a nod, and lets you leave without question. Wingding in the window

It's five days later, on his patrol, when he notices it. The wingding left in her window. He stops on the roof of the building adjacent to her. As far as city roofs go, this one’s relatively nice. Someone’s placed some potted plants around, in an eclectic attempt at a rooftop garden. Some of these pots contain small pebbles as cover for the soil from the wind. Grinning to himself, he takes a handful.

Was this a good idea? No.

Was it deceptive? Well, no more than anything else he did as Nightwing… well, maybe a little more.

But it hurt, holding her at arm's length, when a part of his soul he tried to ignore yearned to be as close as she would allow. He knows it’s not good. He knows it’s a violation of the utter trust she seems to hold in Nightwing. Really, it would only make things even more messy for his chances as Dick. But he wants to make her smile. Blush, even. He knows she finds him attractive, and in both contexts, but he wants more than that. Over the last week he’s realised just how much he wants to have with her, and it terrifies him.

If it was simple lust he could deal with it. But it wasn’t, and so here he was, about to attempt the cheesiest move known to hallmark films, just to see if it would make her laugh at him again.

He’d managed to be professional while surrounded by highly capable, badass women in skintight clothes for most of his life. He’d had crushes before and gotten over them. He wanted everything with her. And that was not something he knew how to handle, given the mess of their situation. Dick shakes his head, snapping himself out of his doom spiral. He had a detective to meet, and a serial killer to find.

Bap. Bap. Bap. You look up from your book. You’d been getting ready for sleep, wearing your cosy pyjamas, curled up in bed with a book and a hot chocolate. You go still, listening. Bap. Bap. A pause. Then, the rap of knuckles on glass. “I ran out of rocks”

You know that voice. “With you in a moment.” You pull on a dressing gown, and take a moment to curse the fact that your slippers are rabbits before pulling the curtains aside. Nightwing is crouched on your windowsill. You lift it, stepping back as he enters through the window with all the grace of a cat. You know that you shouldn’t be embarrassed to be in your pyjamas, it's late, you had no means of knowing when he’d arrive. But he looked divine in that suit. An adonis. And you're in your old bathrobe and bunny slippers. Truely, you must have done terrible things in a past life. “Nice footwear.” Nightwing says with a smirk. Curse him. Curse his cheekbones and the way his lips look so damn inviting. “You picked up what, five rocks?” you sass right back. Nightwing makes a noise you suspect was supposed to be a scoff, but is more of a squeak. “Do you see a lot of pocket space on this?”

“Fair.” you say, leading him out of your bedroom and into your living room. He sits on your couch, one leg spread wide, the other’s ankle resting on its thigh, as you open a drawer on your coffee table and produce your masterpiece. Nearly five metres of red string. Names, photos, dates, all studded with pins so pressed so tightly in they haven’t a prayer of accidental removal. You prop it up on the coffee table.

Maybe your friends were right. Maybe you did need to touch grass. A line of thought for later. You look at Nightwing, who’s no longer relaxed and laying back on your sofa like he owned the place.

Its years of maintaining a poker face in interrogations and more recently, dealing with his shenanigans that prevents you from grinning.

He's as pale as you’ve ever managed to see him, and leaning forward now, elbow on knee and chin in hand. “Well, this is… impressive.” He sounded like he’d inhaled helium. “Shall we start with Sergeant McElroy?” you offer, smiling your best ‘there’s nothing wrong’ smile, enjoying making him squirm. “You seem to have … a significant amount of evidence against Detective Richard Grerson?” You fight the urge to roll your eyes as you take a ruler, poking your picture of him between the eyes. You hadn’t planned to do him first, you’d hoped to discuss evidence that would actually lead somewhere.

This was still going to be fun though. You take a deep breath, and pause for a suitable level of dramatic effect, and begin your game.

“Detective Richard Grayson. He’s my partner. He’s an excellent detective, and a good man. You might have heard of the charity he founded.” Nightwing makes a noncommittal humming noise. “But is it all too good to be true?” you ask, moving to your first notecard. “Exhibit one. He asked about the file. On its own, innocuous. But then, exhibits two through four. He’s prone to frequent disappearances on cases. He often knows a little too much about the criminal underside of Blud. Things that I have triple checked are not in any police database.”

You run a hand through your hair. “He’s a highly trained combatant. I once saw him take down nine men armed with guns, in the dark. They don’t teach that at the police academy.” “No? No.” Nightwing says, clearing his throat. “I mean yes. That is… suspicious.” “Incredibly. Which brings me to exhibit five. Now I’m no behavioural analyst or shrink. But I know my basics. Childhood trauma and instability can have… lingering impacts. I… don’t feel the need to dredge up his past, but I did look into it… and it’s grim. He was then taken in by Bruce Wayne. His relationship to his father, whatever it is, is something he’s even tighter lipped about then… everything else honestly. It’s not on the board because it’s circumstantial at best… but he has this skill of being able to hold long conversations and yet you come away not having learnt anything deeper about him.”

He was pretty sure he’d been nodding for a good thirty seconds at this point.

It would be funny if it didn’t hurt so much.

The worst part was that it was all well reasoned. Practical. He had done everything she accused him of. She had just drawn a far more down to earth conclusion, that he was a corrupt cop, rather than Nightwing.

It made sense. Too much sense. How could he shut this down without seeming invested in his own innocence?

That isn’t what causes his lungs to burn though. No. The root of that was that even if he’d forced himself to maintain a professional - if friendly - distance from her, he would have hoped that she trusted him.

But in this moment, looking at the evidence, looking at her holding that ruler to his photo’s face like a judge's gavel ready to condemn… he knows. He knows that she will never look at Dick the way she does as Nightwing, happy to see him, believing in his mission, ready to help as soon as he’d asked. Even if he clears himself of this crime, she would surely suspect him of others.

He’d known it, at least on one level, ever since he’d first met her. He knows it now all the deeper, and he wants to scream. Dick Grayson will never get to tell her how truly wonderful she is.

How highly he regards her.

How she is one of the reasons he keeps fighting for Bludhaven.

Dick Grayson will never get to tell her that he loves her.

But… perhaps Nightwing could have something. Because if she was his north star, then the way he’d felt when she agreed to help him had been like being engulfed by a supernova.

If she was water, then seeing her cosy and ready for bed and smiling as she let him in through the window had been an oasis in the Sahara.

If music was the food of love, her attempts not to laugh and stifled giggles over his peeps popcorn had been a symphony orchestra.

But he’d never have her as himself. Not at all. Nightwing though? She at least found him attractive. Aligned with his ideology. No, he’d never feel that warmth of 10,000 stars directed at the real him.

No, he’d never be able to be quenched by her life saving presence.

No, he’d never feel her laughter shaking his bones as if in a musical crescendo.

But even the dimmest and most distant star gave off some light.

Even the last drop in an empty water skin was better than nothing.

Even the memory of a melody could be sweet. True, he would only ever have scraps of her affection. True, he could flirt, and perhaps go even further… but he’d never truly be with her.

But who was a starving man to deny scraps of sustenance? He’d take what he could have and try to ignore the lingering hunger.

“Perhaps we should discuss… another suspect?” he prompts, realising how long he’s been silent. How long she had been too, watching him with a strange, concerned look.

She nods, and moves on to their Captain.

Dick is almost relieved when some ten minutes later Oracle calls in a robbery downtown. “Well - sorry Sherlock.” He takes a picture of her board for further study. “I’ll be around next week to continue this discussion, and look over this in my own time till then. Duty calls.” “Be safe,” She says softly, as he’s halfway through the window He looks over his shoulder. “As you wish.”

Chapter Three Taglist: @jasontoddproblems

@sunnie-angel

@stormz369

@love-theangel-blog

@torchbearerkyle

@interwebseriesfan24

@love-theangel-blog

@alwaysnervouswitchprince

@underlinekasis

@tiredsleepyandreading

@soradragon Banner credit is to @strangergraphics

If you would request to be added to my taglist, please reblog the fic. Honestly please just reblog it anyway? I worked hard on this. Nothing more demotivating than a fic getting only likes. If you want part three, reblog part two.

#dick grayson #dick grayson x reader #dick x reader #nightwing x reader #nightwing x you #you know I KNOW right #dc x reader #dc x you #detective reader

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gay-dorito-dust · 5 months ago

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Jason who’d make sure you ate and drink throughout the day but does it in the most nonchalant way, as though he had been doing it for ages, whether it’d be a greasy bag of junk food or something he made from scratch, all he’s going to leave you is with the stern command of ‘eat.’

He’s making sure you’re not skipping any important meals, and if you were then he was more likely to scold you while making you something to eat and drink. He’s confusing but he’s caring at the same time and had a unique way of showing it as you’d find from Roy.

‘He just wants you to be okay, he’s just rough with how he shows it but he means well.’ He’d say to you and from then on you’d watch as Jason’s eyes went from stern to concerned and how his posture completely changed into one that was eager to help you before it was too late, almost as though he was on a timer.

Even his stiff pats on your shoulder were oddly comforting and sweet coming from a man who didn’t think he was that hopeful and bright young man anymore, but he was, he very much was but he was just drastically altered to adapt to his new life.

Dick who will sit by you in silence when you least expect it, almost as though he knew you’d needed some comfort but not the talking aspect of it.

He’d stay close enough where you could feel his warmth, but keep a distance so you didn’t feel as though you were being suffocated by his presence.

He’s more then willing to listen to you speak about what you’ve been finding hard as of late and let you air out all your frustrations, not once offer any advice unless you asked for it and when you do it’s the most meaningful piece of advice you’ve ever been given. He’s been though a lot himself so he’s more then equipped to help you and would even offer you to a friendly spar to get the access aggression out.

Damian who’d secretly have a sketchbook dedicated to you that is filled to the brim with you doing the most mundane things possible, but he highlights you in such a way that it almost seemed as though he was romanticising your actions.

He never shows you it, not until you voice how you didn’t feel valued or loved or appreciated in the slightest and suddenly he’s expecting the most normal thing in his entire life; embarrassment incase you’d find him weird for having so many sketches of you.

He smiles when you smile and finds himself wanting to be more open with his emotions but only if it’s with you.

Bruce who’d always tends to your every injury himself, even if it was a tiny paper cut he’s treating it as though your finger was hanging on by a thread.

He’s had his fair share of injuries but they’re often more severe then the ones you get, but he treats them with the same level of seriousness, that you couldn’t help but smile at his furrowed brows as he tended to the small bruise on your upper arm.

He’s tender and calloused hands worked swiftly to preach you up and he would even give your plastered wound a healing kiss, claiming it would help speed up the healing process. He was sweet and doting with you and your minor injuries that he’s covering the corners of every countertop and table within your vicinity, and or helping you up from under things incase you’d hit your head.

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getitoutofmymindwrites · 5 days ago

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Something constant. | joel miller x f!reader, 9.1k

Summary: You are Tommy’s best friend, Joel’s constant complication- the one woman he can’t touch without breaking. But when years of tension finally snap, Joel has no choice but to face what he’s been running from: the fact that you’ve always been his, whether he deserves you or not.

Warnings: 18+ MDNI, ANGST (like- I'm putting them through it like my life depends on it)(it does.), SMUT, reader is 5 yrs younger than Tommy, so that leaves a 10 yrs age gap with our man, emotional and physical abuse, toxic dynamics: mentions of abusive family but nothing descriptive or graphic, mentions of abusive boyfriends and unhealthy relationships in general but nothing descriptive or graphic, substance use: mentions of gambling and intense sexual content: grinding, nipple play, fingering, cum eating, unprotected PIV, dom!Joel. Please be aware and read responsibly.

A/N: Well, well, well- what do we have here? It’s been almost a year since I last posted anything of mine. This is not some breakthrough, or something you haven’t read before. For some reason, I decided to forgo dividers and use titles instead. Where did that come from? Lord knows. The writing and rhythm feel a bit different, especially in the beginning- don’t ask me to explain, I’m not a trained professional. I also think I used dashes more than I ever have before, maybe I'm addicted, who knows. (They made sense, ok?) Anyway, I don’t know why I’m rambling; I don’t even know if you still remember me, but hey-(oh look, another dash!) I'm still here and I’ve missed you guys!

P.S.: Oh- oh and please don’t forget, as always, I hate summaries!

Dividers by @cafekitsune

They say you only get what you think you deserve in this life.

They must be gravely wrong then, because you don’t think you deserve Joel Miller. Not for one second. And yet, somehow.. here you are.

But let’s take things from the beginning.

The past.

You and Tommy met when you were young. Well, he was young. You were young..er. Which, by default, made Joel the old..er brother.

You and Tommy became fast, inseparable friends. You were both drawn to mischief and that made you almost instantly thick as thieves. He’s always been like a brother to you. You spent summers at the Millers’, crashed there during rough times.

You didn’t have a stable home life. You learned from a young age to adapt.

Actually, you learned a handful of helpful things: how to read faces, microexpressions, words unsaid and gestures unmade. When to activate your sympathetic or parasympathetic systems. When to freeze. When to hide. When to run. Especially where to run.

The destination was always the same, the Millers’ house. Tommy and by extension Joel, became your lifeline.

The one person you could never read to save your life though, was Joel Miller.

Joel, always wiser, quieter, intense. You called him “sir” jokingly. He called you “kid.” Typical.

He wasn’t warm, but he was reliable. Always picking Tommy up from trouble. Always fixing things. Always there.

You admired him before you even understood why. He never faltered. Never drifted.

As you grew up, that admiration turned into something deeper. But beyond that, all you could ever figure out was that he didn’t like you all that much. You guessed you were used to that. You’d had your whole life training for it.

The hidden love.

You never said anything. Joel treated you like a kid.

Even as you matured, he stayed distant, protective, but formal.

You kept it to yourself, how you felt about him and tried to date others. No one ever measured up. Of course they didn’t. They didn’t even give you the bare minimum.

But even when they did -rarely- your heart was singing only for Joel.

What a stupid fixation, you thought.

To crave the safe. To long for the normal. To love the constant.

But he provided. So you did.

Truth be told, you’ve never shared much with Joel. He was always orbiting your friendship with Tommy, anyway. He was the big brother. He was always around, mostly to keep an eye on Tommy, if you had to guess. So, inevitably, he ended up getting to know parts of your life, of you.

Like right now, when you wish more than anything that he never knew you at all.

You see, you’re in a bad relationship. You don’t tell Joel as much. You never would.

But Tommy knows.

And if Tommy knows, Joel does too.

Because Joel is observant. He always watches. He always has.

Like you said, to keep Tommy straight. Wasn’t his fault if you were always around. So it wasn’t that hard to figure you out. To notice things.

Like you, clinging to people who give crumbs of affection, because you grew up without real support.

Like you, staying with your boyfriend after he apologizes, crying, believing it meant change.

The sleepover.

Tommy lets you crash at Joel’s place. You don't even need to ask; it’s practically a given. He thinks it’s casual, just like always.

You feel safe there, even with Joel being standoffish. He never kicked you out, though. His door was always open when you needed it and that meant something. It had to, right?

But when you settle into the familiar room and mattress, you have a confession to make. You admit to Tommy that you forgave your boyfriend because “he cried and I thought maybe he deserved another chance.”

“Jesus..” Tommy sighs, his brows pinched in frustration. Not at you but at the lucky bastard who’s havin’ it easy.

He doesn’t know what else to say to make you see; you are enough. Enough to stand on your own. You don’t need anyone else to feel whole. Complete. Relevant. Seen.

But who is he to talk? He’s always carryin’ his own demons, makin’ his own same mistakes; always havin’ Joel anchor him to reality, like you’re havin’ him.

Tommy sits on the bed next to you, searching your eyes. “What are you not tellin’ me?”, his voice soft and caring like a knuckle brushing against a cheek.

Goddamn Miller brothers and their ability to read you like an open book.

You avoid his gaze, looking anywhere but him.

He calls your name now, sternly. Serious. Patience was never really his strong suit, but then again, you already knew that. “Done playin’ games, darlin’.”

Tommy pinches your chin, forces your eyes on his. “Spit it out.” He speaks like he’s scolding you, but his thumb brushes gently over your knuckles.

You start stammering, the words to admit your level of failure elude you, like smoke curling in the air. You pick at a loose thread on the blanket. Your knee bounces once, then twice. You suck in a breath like it’ll help you speak. It doesn’t.

“I- I-” you exhale loudly. You rehearse the sentence in your head but it comes out wrong every time. Too much. Too small. Too pathetic. You hate that it’s even real. “I think he spent all of my savings on gambling.”

Silence.

It hangs there, thick and heavy, filling the room like smoke. You don’t dare look at him. You regret saying it already. It feels too real now, like speaking it out loud makes it official.

Tommy doesn’t respond right away.

You half-expect him to curse, maybe yell. You’ve seen that version of him. Loud, angry, Miller.

But when he finally moves, it’s quiet. Gentle.

He rubs a hand down his face, exhales slowly, the kind of breath that says I don’t know how to fix this, but I want to.

Then, softer than you were ready for- “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Your eyes stay glued to the worn edge of the blanket you’re gripping. “I dunno.” Your voice is small. Pathetic. “Guess I didn’t wanna see it.”

He leans forward, elbows on knees, staring at the floor for a moment before glancing your way. “You gonna tell Joel?”

That makes your head snap up. “What? No- no. I don’t want him to know. He’ll just-”

You stop. You don’t even know what exactly you’re afraid of. Joel being disappointed? Joel being right? Joel looking at you like you’re one of those strays he has to keep out of the yard?

Tommy narrows his eyes just a bit. “He ain’t like that, you know.”

You shake your head. “You don’t know how he looks at me.”

Tommy gives a little snort. Amused. Tired. “Pretty sure you don’t know how he looks at you.”

Your breath catches. And now you have to look away.

He sees it. Of course he does. Goddamn Miller brothers.

Tommy doesn’t press. He just shifts closer on the mattress, hand resting lightly on your shoulder. No pressure. Just there.

“You’re not stayin’ with him anymore,” he says. “We’ll figure the rest out later.”

That “we” shouldn’t hit you in the chest the way it does.

But it does.

You nod once, quietly. You don’t say thank you. Not because you’re not grateful, but because you’ve learned that some kindnesses are too big for words.

Joel’s Judgment.

Sunlight’s starting to crawl into the kitchen. Joel’s already up, nursing his coffee, sleeves pushed up, working a stubborn hinge loose on the cabinet door.

Always fixing what breaks, never what’s breaking him.

He’s got that tired, focused look, the one he wears when there’s too much on his mind and nowhere to put it.

Tommy walks in after a while, hair still a mess, rubbing sleep from his eyes. You’re not around, maybe still in the spare room, maybe hiding from the weight of everything.

Joel doesn’t ask, not directly. He never does. But he eyes the hallway, then glances at Tommy.

“Everything alright with her?”, he asks almost indifferent while still working on the cabinet door.

Tommy runs a hand over his face. Hesitates. Then shrugs.

“She always ends up with assholes, doesn’t she?” Joel mutters under his breath.

Not angry. Not cold. Just.. detached. Like he’s trying to put you in a box he can label and keep at a safe distance.

Tommy’s halfway to the coffee pot when he freezes.

His voice comes out sharper than intended.

“Jesus, Joel.”

Joel looks up, brows raised. “What?”

Tommy slams the pot down harder than necessary. “She thought she could trust him. He cried, said he’d change, you know how that goes.”

Joel watches him now, more alert. “What’re you talkin’ about?”

Tommy exhales through his nose, pacing once. Shit. Then- too late to take it back- “..The bastard drained her savings. All of it. Gambling.”

Silence.

Joel blinks once. Sets the screwdriver down slow, deliberate. Like he actively accepts he’s capable of murder right at this moment.

“You serious?”

Tommy just nods, jaw tight.

Joel doesn’t say anything at first. His face hardens, not with judgment, but with something else. Something Tommy has seen too many times before. That cold, calculating kind of quiet. Like when a storm’s just out of sight but already coming.

He glances back toward the hallway.

And for the first time in a long time, Joel Miller looks like he might actually break something.

The confrontation.

“Is she really that stupid?”

Joel’s voice cuts through the air, low, gritted, sharp like broken glass.

You weren’t even trying to eavesdrop. Just happened to walk toward the kitchen, bare feet soft on old floorboards, the kind that creak at the worst moments.

But now you’re at the doorframe.

And you’ve heard it.

They both freeze when they see you.

Tommy’s mouth parts like he might say something -anything- but Joel gets there first. He takes a step forward, guilt blooming all over his face.

"Wait-", time fractures; each fraction of a second splitting into aching pieces, stretching into eternity, as he struggles to find the right words. "That’s not-"

You flinch back. Not from fear, from instinct. Like touching him would burn.

Your eyes are glassy, breath stuck somewhere between your chest and throat.

You tried so fucking hard. For years.

To believe he didn’t despise you. That it was just the way he was, guarded, quiet, rough around the edges. Maybe, just maybe, under all that brooding, he gave a damn. Not enough to love you, but enough to keep you torturing yourself. Hoping.

You clung to scraps. Glances. The open door. The silence that wasn’t quite rejection.

But now- now you have your answer.

He reaches out and you step further back, hand half-raised like a warning.

“Don’t.”

Your voice cracks.

“You’re cruel, Joel.” His name tastes foreign, like something you were never meant to say out loud. Not in this kind of sentence. Not aimed at you.

He flinches.

“You have no idea what it’s like to be alone and still try to believe people can be good. That they’ll change. That you matter enough for someone to try.”

You laugh bitterly. Short, sharp.

“I used to think that was my strength, it gave me hope, nurtured my heart.”

You shrug, mouth twisting.

“Now I just feel stupid.”

Joel opens his mouth and this time his voice is soft. A crack in the armor.

“Sweetheart-”

It halts you.

Like something forgotten and fragile just cracked open in your chest.

He’s never called you that. Never reached for softness when it came to you. You were always kid, background noise, someone tolerated.

But this- this name, heavy with something almost gentle- it lingers.

Uninvited warmth in the middle of a wound. A wrong word at the worst possible moment.

And just like that, you falter.

Your footing slips, like the floor forgot how to hold you. You hate that it gets to you. You hate that part of you still wants it to mean something.

You snap.

“No.”

You shake your head, fast, like you're trying to physically push the word away.

“No, Joel. You made what you think of me very clear.”

You take another step back, voice trembling but strong.

“You sorry you said it or just sorry I was there to hear it?”

He looks like he’s on the verge of breaking. But you don’t let him. A quiet kind of peace settles over you- cold, final. It’s all done now. Sealed. Clear. Maybe hope was never meant for you. Maybe it ruined more than it ever gave.

“I’m sorry. Sorry for having a heart. For seeing the good in people. For thinking maybe, just maybe, I could believe in something better.”

A beat. “For thinking you’d ever see me as something more than a burden.”

Then the final twist- “But hey- I guess if anyone knows what it’s like to be an asshole, it’s you.”

Silence.

You turn around.

And this time, when you walk away, you don’t look back.

The void.

The door doesn’t slam. He almost wishes it did, something loud, something final, something that could match the sting in his chest.

But no.

It’s the quiet that kills him.

He stays there, frozen. One foot half-forward like he still thinks maybe he can catch you.

Maybe call you back.

Maybe undo it.

Too late.

Tommy doesn’t speak. He’s seen this side of Joel before, the kind that hits hard and then stands in the wreckage, not knowing how to fix what’s left.

Joel drags a hand down his face, slow. Tired.

He feels like he just handed a loaded gun to someone he swore he’d protect and it went off in his own damn hands.

He sinks down onto the edge of the kitchen chair, his elbows digging his knees. Staring at nothing. Staring at the space you occupied moments ago.

“Didn’t mean it like that,” he mutters defeated. “Not like that.”

But there’s no one there to hear it.

The room stays still.

Tommy leans against the doorframe. Crosses his arms. Watches his brother fall apart without making a sound about it.

He wants to say I warned you.

Wants to say You crossed a line you can’t uncross.

But what good would it do now?

Joel doesn’t need a lecture.

He needs a time machine.

Tommy sighs, low, deep; rubs the back of his neck.

“You love her,” he says simply. Not a question. “You just don’t think you deserve her.”

Joel doesn’t look up. Doesn’t argue.

Tommy nods to himself, jaw tight.

“Then I hope to God you figure out what you do deserve, before she’s too far gone to look back.”

He pushes off the frame and walks out, boots heavy on the floorboards, leaving Joel alone with the quiet and what he’s done.

The conversation.

Tommy stepped out onto the back porch with two beers. Joel was already out there, sitting in silence, the lamp behind him casting long shadows across the wooden floorboards. He didn’t say anything when Tommy handed him one.

They sat for a while.

“She didn’t mean to hear it, y’know,” Tommy said eventually. “Was just.. bad timing.”

Joel didn’t react. Took a sip. His expression remained flat.

“Maybe it’s better she did,” he muttered, eyes fixed on his thumb as it peeled the label off the bottle- then drifting back up again, straight into nothingness.

Tommy bent forward slightly, fingers laced together. “Jesus, Joel. What the hell’s goin’ on with you?”

Joel’s eyes stayed lost in the dark. “She’s the kind of woman who believes in second chances. Believes people can be better. Damn, she forgives the unforgivable like it’s just another Tuesday.”

“Yeah,” Tommy said softly, almost in awe. “I know.”

“But me?” Joel’s fingers tightened slightly around the neck of the bottle. “I’ve run out of people to prove wrong. And if she ever looked at me the way I look at her.. God help me, I’d take it. I’d take it and I’d never let go. Which is exactly why I can’t.”

Tommy went quiet for a moment.

“You really think you’re that far gone?”

Joel gave a hard smile. “You see the man I am now. But she didn’t see who I had to be. Who I chose to be. I’ve done things, Tommy. Not the kind that sends you to jail- the kind you do when you look out for your own. I walked away from people who needed me. I picked you over them. And I’d do it again, but that don’t mean it didn’t mark me.”

“You did what you had to do,” Tommy said sharply. “For me. For us.”

“That don’t make it right.”

“Doesn’t make it wrong either.”

Joel’s voice softened, almost a whisper. “She thinks people can change. I know they don’t, not really. And I ain’t gonna be the one to prove her wrong.”

Tommy studied his brother for a long beat. “You ever think maybe she sees who you are now ‘cause that’s who you are?”

“She’s not like us, Tommy,” Joel said flatly. “She’s strong, but not cold. Got this light to her that-”, he stopped, sighed. “I ain’t got no business even standin’ near.”

“Bullshit.” Tommy said. “You love her.”

“And that’s the goddamn problem,” Joel snapped. “I need her. And if I let myself need somethin’ that good and I lose it..”, his face shifted, darkening into something grim and unyielding, “-Lord have mercy on anyone standin’ in my way.. I don’t think I’d come back from that.”

Tommy leaned back in his chair, head tilted up toward the sky.

“She’s not gonna break you, Joel. She’s already holdin’ your pieces together. You just too scared to admit it.”

Joel took another sip as silence settled over them once again. There was something fragile in his voice now.

“I have a brother, you know,” he said with a dry quip. “He trusts me with everythin’. Even her. I can’t give him a reason not to.”

Tommy laughed bitterly. “I think he’d be more pissed if you kept hurtin’ her just to protect him.”

Joel stared off into the night, beer forgotten in his hand. Another beat of quiet. His resolve was cracking slightly. Not entirely. Not enough. Not yet.

Then, barely above a whisper-

“A man like me don’t get to want things like her.”

The explotion.

It’s been weeks.

No word from Joel.

Tommy checks in from time to time, but he doesn’t say his brother’s name. Not once.

And you don’t ask.

You tell yourself you don’t care. That the silence doesn’t ache.

Then one afternoon, Tommy texts you:

"Swing by Joel’s place. Left some stuff for you in the garage. I’ll be back in 10."

You don’t think twice. You go. You assume Joel’s at work. He always is.

But when you step inside, the air is too quiet. Tommy’s truck is gone. And then you hear a key turning in the front door.

Joel walks in.

You both stop in your tracks. He blinks, like he’s not sure if you’re real. Your heartbeat drums in your ears. You mumble something about Tommy. He nods; says nothing at first. Just sets his keys down on the table.

He glances at you. There’s a hesitation, like something’s been living in his throat for too long and he’s finally decided to let it out.

"Tommy said you.. broke things off."

You nod stiffly, eyes dropping to your feet, like they could carry you away from him. Like they ever would.

He shifts his weight, almost uncomfortable. His voice is low, a little rough, when he dares-

"That guy ever lay a hand on you?"

Your jaw tightens.

Not this again. Not from him. Not when he’s the one who shattered you last.

"Not everyone’s lucky enough to have Joel Miller in their corner." you bite out before you can stop yourself.

His brows twitch and you don’t wait for him to respond. The words keep spilling now, bitter, broken, sharp.

"I don’t let people touch me or talk to me like that. Not anymore."

Your eyes flash, not with anger, with hurt.

"But you? I made an exception for you. God knows why."

He flinches. Not dramatically. Just a subtle shift in his jaw, his breath caught wrong.

Like it’s only now hitting him that being let in -truly in- came with weight. That he held something fragile in his hands and dropped it anyway.

And you?

You hate that your voice breaks on the next part.

"You were the only one I thought I didn’t have to protect myself from."

He takes a step forward. Slow. Careful. Like he’s approaching something wounded and wild.

You don’t move- not back, not forward. Just watching him, tight-lipped and trembling like you’re holding yourself together with spit and thread.

"Don’t," you say, low and hollow.

He stops. Hands hovering like he might reach for you and thinks better of it. Again.

"Kid-"

You flinch at the nickname. Just slightly, but enough. He notices. Of course he does.

That damn observant look of his. It used to make you feel seen. Now it just makes you feel exposed. Like he sees the ache he put there and doesn’t know how to address it.

He doesn’t know what to fix first.

The way he spoke to you?

The way he looked at you after?

The way he didn’t come after you when you left?

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Tries again.

"That day, I didn’t mean-"

You cut him off, voice like stone, "You never mean to. That’s the whole problem."

The silence after is raw.

He doesn’t step closer. He doesn’t step back. He just stays there, suspended in regret.

Like, he finally understands the difference between being in someone’s corner and being someone they can truly rely on.

The tension is suffocating. It coils in your lungs like smoke, thick and hot and inescapable.

Joel says nothing. Quiet again. Resigned. His eyes fix somewhere over your shoulder, or maybe nowhere at all. You can’t tell.

He won’t even look at you. You were always a ghost to him, weightless. Unseen.

A haunting he never asked for.

A slight inconvenience, someone he tolerated for Tommy's sake. Never close enough to matter. Never far enough to ignore.

And that tells you everything.

You’re not getting an explanation. Not now. Not ever.

Whatever that moment was, the truth he nearly let slip, the rawness behind his voice, it’s already retreating back into the dark.

You feel it, the distance returning, sharp and cold, like the final click of a door locking from the inside.

Of course. Of course he’d leave you standing there with nothing. Of course he’d choose silence again.

Because that’s what he does. That’s what he’s always done.

And suddenly your chest feels too tight, your throat dry, like your body’s trying to brace for impact but the crash never comes.

So you nod. Once. Slow.

You turn to leave and he doesn’t stop you.

But as you move past him, something inside you screams enough. And before you can stop yourself-

“Why do you hate me so much?” you ask, your voice cracking before you mean it to. You weren’t even going to say anything, but the way he always looks at you, jaw clenched, arms crossed, that permanent scowl — it’s been eating at you for years.

Joel’s response is a gruff, confused, “What?”

“Every time I’m around, you act like I’ve done something wrong. Like you can’t stand the sight of me. I just- what did I ever do to you, Joel?”

His face shifts. Something flickers in his eyes- not anger. Something else. But it’s gone before you can name it.

“You didn’t do nothin’.” he says quietly.

“Then why? Why are you always so angry with me?”

He won’t look at you. Something between a huff and a laugh escapes his mouth, like he’s mocking you. Silence stretches. But you keep going, your voice sharper now, almost shaking.

“Is it because I’m not your business? Because I was always just Tommy’s dumb little friend hanging around? Or is it just fun for you; pushing me away over and over until I finally take the hint?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.” he snaps, his voice cold and defensive, eyes glittering with barely-contained rage.

“Then say it!” you bite out, bitter and breathless. “Whatever it is you’ve been holding back for years; say it. Tell me what the hell I ever did to make you look at me like I’m something you need to keep your distance from.”

You’re flushed now. Heart pounding. He still won’t look at you. So you take a step forward.

“Is it because I’m too young? Because I’m soft? Because I forgive people who don’t deserve it?”

Now, finally, Joel looks at you. Maybe he thinks this is meant for him. Maybe he knows he’s one of those who don’t deserve it- forgiveness. Your forgiveness. And something inside him snaps.

“It’s because I can’t afford to look at you the way I want to.” he says low, furious.

You blink. Whatever you were expecting, it wasn’t that.

“It’s because every time you walk into a goddamn room, I feel like I can breathe for the first time in days. And that shouldn’t be your burden.”

“Joel..” you whisper, barely audible.

He goes on, more raw now.

“You think I’m angry with you? I’m angry with myself. For wantin’ something I got no right to want. For feelin’ like maybe -maybe- there’s a version of me that could be good enough for you. But there ain’t.”

He laughs once, bitter, shaking his head.

“I push you away because if I didn’t, I’d never stop reachin’ for you. And you deserve better than a man who can’t let himself want good things without breakin’ ‘em.”

Silence. His jaw tightens. His fists clench at his sides.

“I would’ve given you everything, Joel.” you say, voice trembling. “You didn’t even have to ask.”

He looks at you like you’ve lost your mind. Like you just said something cruel. His face twists- not in anger, but disbelief. Something almost panicked beneath the surface.

“You don’t mean that,” he says, quiet, almost pleading.

“What?” you ask, startled.

“You think you do, but you don’t. You’ve always looked at me like I’m some fixed thing. Like I’m solid. Steady. That ain’t love, sweetheart. That’s just safety.”

You blink, like he’s slapped you. And he keeps going, like he has to kill the feeling before it grows roots.

“You don’t want me. You want the idea of me. What I was to Tommy. What I never was to you.”

“If I ever let you close enough to see what’s really here,” Joel gestures vaguely- to his chest, his heart, whatever broken thing still beats inside him, “you’d realize you don’t love me. You just mistook the feelin’. And I can’t be the reason you lose that part of yourself.”

But you’re steady now. Hurt, but unwavering.

“Don’t you dare tell me what I feel.”

Joel stiffens. But you don’t stop.

“You think I saw you as safe? You? With that goddamn storm behind your eyes? With the way you look at the world like it already failed you?”

You step closer. You don’t shout; you just slice.

“I’ve spent years trying to figure out why the worst parts of you still felt like home. Why every time you pushed me away, I wanted to stay. Why I kept waiting for one -just one- moment of softness from you like it might be enough to last me a lifetime.”

You laugh, bitterly, like he did earlier.

“You think I made you into something better than you are? No, Joel. I saw all of it. Every wall. Every silence. Every time you looked right through me like it would be easier if I just disappeared.”

You swallow hard. Your voice cracks, just once.

“And I loved you anyway.”

Silence. He stares at you- stunned. Maybe horrified. Maybe something else. You’d say he almost looks scared of you; if you didn’t know any better.

You continue, quieter. “You don’t get to tell me I mistook the feeling. You just didn’t want to believe anyone could see the truth and stay.”

And then you push again, sharp, your voice shaking with rage and pain as you step forward.

“So, I ask you again, Joel, because you’ve failed to answer me, how dare you tell me what I feel?”

He exhales, tired, low. “I’m tryin’ to protect you-”

“No,” you cut him off. “You’re protecting yourself. Because it’s easier to believe I’m just confused than to admit someone could really love you for who you are. Even with all the shit you carry.”

He flinches. You see it. And it only hurts more.

“I do love you.” you tell him. “I love the man who sits in silence and makes sure everyone else eats first. The man who takes the blame even when it isn’t his. The man who looks at me like he’s drowning but won’t reach out.”

You’re toe to toe now. Your voice drops.

“You think that’s not real? You think I don’t know the difference between comfort and love after everything I’ve survived?”

Your next words come softer, almost breaking.

“You’re not some ghost I projected things onto, Joel. I see you. And I still want you.”

You’re standing so close you can feel the heat of him, the weight of his breath on your face and for a second, you think maybe- maybe this is the moment he’ll finally stop holding back. You reach out, slow, your fingertips brushing the side of his jaw, tentative, trembling with everything you can’t say.

“Joel..” you whisper.

But the second your hand touches him, he flinches- just slightly. Like a breath he wasn’t ready for. Like instinct. But it’s enough. You freeze, your hand falling, your face crumbling. The air goes out of you all at once.

“Right. I- got it,” you say, pulling back, your voice thin and wrecked.

You turn quickly. You don’t want him to see your face, the way it crumples, the way your shoulders shake.

He doesn’t move at first- he’s frozen, like the breath has been punched out of him. But then-

“Wait. Wait- no. No, don’t- don’t do that,” Joel blurts out, panicked.

You keep walking. He follows.

“Don’t you dare think that was about you,” he says, more urgent now.

You stop at the door but don’t turn around. His voice is shaking. You’ve never heard him like this.

“You think I flinched ‘cause I didn’t want you to touch me?”

Your fists clench at your sides. Your heart pounds on your chest; you’re sure he can hear it.

“I don’t know what to think anymore,” you admit quietly, trying to hide your broken voice.

Joel crosses the distance between you before you can move again. His hand catches your wrist- gentle but firm, turning you to look at him. His voice is low, rough, but soft in a way you’ve never heard before.

“I flinched because it felt like everything I’ve been tryin’ not to feel for years just broke wide open.”

You finally look at him. His eyes are dark, wet, desperate.

“Because the second you touched me, I wanted to fall into it. Into you. And I’ve spent so long convincing myself I don’t get to have that.”

His hand slides to your cheek- slowly, like he’s asking for permission with every inch.

This time, he touches you. His thumb brushes your jaw, reverent. Like he’s memorizing the shape of you in case he loses the right to ever do this again.

“You scare the hell outta me,” Joel breathes, “because you look at me like I’m someone worth lettin’ in. And I ain’t. I know I ain’t. But-”, he leans in, his forehead resting against yours, his voice shaking, “-just this once. Let me pretend I am.”

You don’t move. You don’t speak. You just breathe -ragged, shallow- afraid that if you say anything, the spell will break and he’ll pull away again.

But part of you still doesn’t trust it.

Not fully. Not yet.

“Joel..” your voice comes soft, almost broken. “Please don’t do this if you’re gonna disappear tomorrow.”

He doesn’t answer, and you can see the war raging inside him; you can almost taste it. The doubt. And that silence? It kills you.

So you turn. Ready to leave, to protect what’s left of you.

But he moves, fast.

He doesn’t grab you, just steps into your path, like it’s instinct. For a moment, he considers pressing his palm to the door to stop you. But after everything you’ve been through, he knows better. Even now, even here, he remembers.

“Don’t go,” Joel says, low and aching. One hand half-raised like he’s scared of touching you, scared of what it’ll mean if you let him.

“Why?” you ask, sharp, trembling. “So you can push me away all over again tomorrow?”

He flinches, but he doesn’t look away. He looks at you like he’s falling apart, eyes dark and wide, as if just saying this next part might break him completely.

And then-

“Because if you walk out that door thinkin’ I don’t love you, I won’t survive it.”

The realization.

Your breath catches.

His words settle like thunder under your skin. You look at him -really look- and for the first time, there’s no mask. No guarded distance. Just raw, shattered truth.

He takes a slow step closer, like he’s giving you time to run.

"You still wanna walk away?" Joel’s voice is hoarse.

You don’t answer. You can’t.

Joel’s thumb brushes your cheek, his hand warm and steady now, no longer holding back. His forehead rests against yours, and when he speaks, it’s like a promise that’s already been broken.

"Tell me to stop. If you do, I swear I will."

But you don’t. You can’t. Not when he’s looking at you like this. Like you’re something he needs to survive.

"Don’t," you breathe.

That’s all it takes. The dam breaks. He exhales like he’s been holding his breath for years and then his mouth is on yours, hungry, devastated, like he’s sorry and aching and starved all at once.

His lips are rough but his hands are gentle, like he’s trying to memorize the feel of you. The kiss starts slow, reverent and builds, deepens. His hands cradle your face, your waist, pulling you closer like he can’t get enough. Your fingers knot in his shirt, dragging him down, pressing into him.

You gasp into his mouth, and he groans like it’s a sound he didn’t mean to let out. He presses you back against the wall, not rough, not aggressive, but desperate.

"Been wantin’ this for so long.." he murmurs into your mouth.

Your hips shift and he feels it- the press of you against him. His hands fall to your waist, dragging you tighter against him, grinding into you like he needs the friction, needs proof this is real.

You arch into him, needy, breathless. He presses into you, the thick line of his thigh between yours, the heat of his body unbearable. Every little grind is slow, controlled, but filled with hunger.

"You don’t even know what you’re doin’ to me…" Joel’s voice is hoarse, dark and full of disbelief.

You whimper at the sound of it. He rests his forehead against your neck, breathing hard, hips rolling into yours.

"Then show me," you whisper, soft and ruined.

He kisses you again, deeper this time; his tongue slipping past your lips, tangling with yours in a slow, deliberate rhythm. You think you’d float away, lost in a dream, if the coarse scruff of his beard wasn’t there, grounding you, prickling the skin around your lips.

His hand slides under your shirt, just skin and warmth and a shiver down your spine. But then he pulls back, just a little, breathing hard.

"If we keep goin’, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop."

"Then don’t."

Your lips part from his, breaths mingling in the heavy air. Joel’s hands don’t rush; they trace the lines of your body through your clothes, deliberate and sure, like he’s committing every inch of you to memory.

His fingers slip under the hem of your shirt, ghosting over your ribs, fingertips grazing your skin lightly before returning to the fabric. One hand cups your waist, pulling you flush against his hard thigh- the heat there like a magnet.

You shift your hips slowly, grinding against him, feeling the solid muscle beneath the fabric, the tension building with every tiny movement.

"So needy already.. what happens when I really touch you?" His voice is low and rough.

You whimper, pressing closer, needing more contact.

"Feels good, baby? Keep grindin’ just like that."

His hands slide to the front of your shirt, palms cradling your soft breasts, thumbs sweeping lightly over your nipples through the thin fabric. He feels them stiffen instantly beneath his palms, the reaction so visceral it sends a jolt through him, something raw, almost primal, uncoiling in his chest. His fingers pinch and roll them with just enough pressure to make your back arch, to draw a broken gasp from your lips.

He watches you writhe, mesmerized by the way you react to every twist of his fingers, the way you shiver and press into his hands like you need more- need him.

Your hands find his wrists, holding him close, desperate for more.

His thumbs drag slowly again over the sensitive peaks, his mouth watering at the thought of that taut skin against his tongue and he swears under his breath, voice thick.

"Joel- please.." you breathe.

He chuckles darkly, his lips brushing against your jaw. His brain is deep in a haze of desire and need; he's not in control anymore. Maybe he never was- maybe he was always waiting for you to undo him.

His thigh tightens beneath you, holding you steady as you grind harder, matching his rhythm without words. His fingers tease, flick, and pinch lightly, coaxing every sigh and tremble from you.

"You feel that? That’s mine. You're gonna come for me, right here, just like this. Show me you’re mine."

You arch into him, breath hitching, heart pounding as the friction and his teasing combine into a storm inside you. His hands roam with growing confidence, undeterred by your soft moans and shudders. You can feel the heat pooling low in your belly, spreading fast and he’s right there- steady and sure beneath you, grounding you even as your senses spiral.

The world narrows to the feel of him, the sound of your ragged breaths and the tight coil of pleasure winding up inside you.

Your breaths come faster, your chest rising and falling as Joel’s fingers trace tight circles over your nipples, every pass sending sparks of heat through you, even though he still hasn’t touched you directly. Your hips grind harder, trembling as the tension coils tighter and tighter.

You cry out softly against his pouty lips, your body shuddering against his thigh. The warmth pools low and spreads, waves crashing through you and he swallows every little whimper and moan like a man parched. Your fingers clutch his shirt, digging in as the pleasure ripples and crashes, leaving you breathless and undone.

"God.." Joel whispers, voice almost breaking.

He watches you fall apart- skin flushed, eyes half-lidded, lips parted and something inside him twists.

The love scene.

His hands freeze for a moment, not wanting to disturb you but desperate to hold onto you. He leans closer, forehead resting against yours, breath warm and steady. Joel watches -intense, silent- his gaze fixed on how your body unravels under his touch, how every shiver and sigh seems to pull at something deep inside him.

His hand stills, hovering just above your skin, afraid to break the fragile spell but desperate to hold onto this moment. His jaw tightens, eyes dark with a storm of emotions he won’t speak aloud- need, protectiveness, and something rawer he’s terrified to admit.

He wants to say something, anything, to stop the rush of feelings, to keep things safe and simple. But the words catch in his throat.

Instead, he simply presses his forehead against yours, breath warm and uneven, trying to steady himself. His body tenses beneath you, a silent war raging inside him; he’s drawn to you like never before, but his mind is screaming that this could burn everything to ashes.

Your breath stays uneven, chest pressed to his, foreheads touching like you’re both holding on to something that would vanish the moment you let go.

"Joel, look at me."

He hesitates. You can feel it- the tremble in his hands, the slight shift in his stance, like his whole body’s braced for you to disappear.

"I’m lookin’."

"I’m still here."

And you are -flushed, shaking, pupils blown wide- but still tethered to him, anchored in this fragile space between fear and want. You watch the fight flicker in his eyes. The way his jaw clenches. The way his hands, warm and steady a moment ago, are now flexing like he’s trying not to grab hold too tight.

"You shouldn’t be."

"Don’t."

He closes his eyes, just for a second. Like that word, like your voice, cuts deeper than it should.

"I don’t know how to do this without hurtin’ you."

"I’m already hurt, Joel. But not by what we just did. By you thinking I can’t decide for myself what I want."

That hits him. You see it. The flinch. The ache. The guilt sinking its claws in.

But you don’t stop. You can’t.

"You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be safe. I just need you to be real."

He looks at you like he’s drowning again. Like you’re offering him something he’s too afraid to take. But his hand rises anyway -slow, hesitant- and brushes your cheek again, thumb catching a tear you didn’t know had slipped down.

"I don’t wanna lose this. Lose you. But I don’t know if I can be the kind of man you hold onto."

"Then let me decide that."

You take his hand. Place it against your chest. Let him feel the way your heart hammers beneath your ribs.

"I already am. Can't you feel it?"

One breath. Then another. Joel exhales slowly, like something inside him just gave up the fight. And what’s left is raw and exposed and his.

He kisses you again, slower this time. Less desperation, more reverence. Like a man memorizing his last breath. And this time, he doesn't pull away.

The kiss deepens again, but there’s no trembling now. No flinching. Just heat. Just his hands moving with purpose, sliding beneath your clothes, skin on skin, rough palms and calloused fingers learning you like he’s starved for the taste.

You gasp as he lifts your shirt, tugging it over your head and tossing it aside. His eyes drag down your body like a slow burn, reverent, almost disbelieving.

"Jesus Christ.."

He cups your breasts, thumbs brushing around your nipples, already raw and swollen from his earlier attention, watching the way your back arches into him like instinct. His mouth follows next, hot and open against your tender skin, teeth grazing your stiffened peaks with aching slowness.

Your cunt is pulsing painfully in anticipation, your panties soaked and surely ruining the thick denim of his jeans. All you seem to be able to do is beg for him one more time.

"Joel- please.. I can't-"

He growls -actually growls- the sound scraping low from his chest, like he’s been waiting years to hear that. His hands roam lower, finding the button of your shorts, undoing them slowly, deliberately, giving you just enough time to stop him, but you won’t. You can’t.

Your hands are just as greedy, tugging at his shirt, desperate to feel him, to know him the way he’s never let anyone close enough to know. When you finally get it off him, it’s almost too much. All of him -broad and solid and burning under your palms.

"Tell me if you want me to stop."

"I want you to fuck me, Joel."

A pause. A beat. Like the words steal the air from his lungs.

Then he moves.

Your back hits the wall again -gently, but firm- and his body follows, pressing against yours, one hand slipping into your panties, fingers sliding through slick heat with an almost broken sound.

"You’re so fuckin’ wet.." he breathes against that sensitive spot right beneath your ear and you can feel his hard cock grinding for relief against your hip.

You cry out as two thick fingers slide into you, curling just right, slow and deep. Your soft walls flutter around his digits, welcoming the intrusion. His other hand grabs your thigh, hitching it up around his waist. He’s grinding into you now, rutting slow, the thick line of his cock still trapped behind denim- but you can feel it. Every inch of it, hard and pulsing through his jeans.

The slick, obscene squelch of his fingers pumping in and out of your soaked cunt only makes you ache more, arousal spilling down his wrist. You’re so fucking close to snapping, to breaking apart if he doesn’t fuck you right now.

“God, Joel- need you inside me-”

"I know, baby. I know. I got you."

He pulls his hand back, wet with you and brings it to his mouth, sucking his fingers clean with a groan that makes your knees buckle. Then he tugs your shorts down, sliding them off you and undoes his jeans, shoving them low enough to free himself and—

Fuck.

He’s thick. Long. Heavy in his hand as he strokes himself once, twice, eyes fixed on you like you’re the only thing keeping him standing.

Heat spreads across your skin and you’re acutely aware of how vulnerable you are and how completely ready your body is for him. You lean forward, gently brushing his hand away and replacing it with your own. He hisses at the contact. The head of his shaft pulses against your palm, and your fingers curl around him, unable to stop yourself from feeling how rock-hard he is.

"I’ll go slow. Just.. hold onto me.", his voice is low and thick with need. Your heart lurches at the raw sincerity in his tone and you press your body closer, arms instinctively wrapping tightly around his neck.

He lifts you effortlessly, one leg hooking around his hip and pulling you flush against him. With one impatient tug, his fingers sweep your panties to the side, and cool air skims over your heated skin.

The slick tip of him nudges at your entrance, and a sharp gasp escapes you as you feel him teasing you through your wetness.

He sinks into you with one slow, steady thrust and you arch back, teeth gritting to keep the first cry from escaping. A fierce burn flares deep inside as the first inch slides in, and you instinctively dig your nails into his shoulders.

He groans, bending to press his lips against your ear, and exhales your name as he pauses. Inch by inch, he pushes deeper, every fraction of an inch driving wild pleasure through you. Warmth and fullness bloom between your bodies and a long, trembling sigh escapes as your muscles flutter around him, completely filled, leaving you both panting and still.

"That’s it. That’s it, sweetheart, takin’ me so good.."

He stays there, buried deep inside you, forehead resting on your shoulder, both of you trembling, both of you lost.

Then he starts to move.

Slow. Deep. Unrelenting.

The song of your bodies meeting- skin against skin, the slick, filthy rhythm of it- fills the room. Your moans spill into his mouth as he kisses you again, tongue tangled with yours, every thrust more desperate, more real than anything either of you has ever known.

"Wanted this.. fuck, wanted you for so long-" he mumbles and you don't know if he's talking to you or to himself.

"Don’t stop. Please- don’t stop-"

He doesn’t. He can’t.

He’s fucking you like he means it, like this is the first and last time he’ll ever get to love someone like this- with everything in him, without apology, without restraint. His hips snap into you with purpose, rhythm deep and relentless, like he’s trying to bury himself in you, like he’s trying to leave part of himself behind.

You can feel the tremble in his arms where they hold you steady, the sweat slicking between your bodies, the way his breath stutters every time you clench around him.

Your name spills from his lips like prayer- wrecked, reverent, desperate. He dips his head into the crook of your neck, mouth open against your skin, teeth dragging over your pulse point like he needs to anchor himself before he loses it completely.

"You feel so fuckin’ good," he groans, voice raw. "Shit- don’t know how I ever lived without this."

Your nails dig into his back, trying to pull him closer, trying to keep him right there- inside you, on you, with you. You meet every thrust with your own, chasing that edge together, breathing each other in like oxygen.

Your drooling cunt chokes his dick with every pulse, soaking him all the way down to the base, slick spilling down his balls and ruining his jeans. The sounds of skin slapping skin make you both feral with lust. Your breasts bounce with every hard thrust, your nipples dragging against the coarse hairs on his toned chest, slick and flushed from the effort.

His hand snakes from the small of your back to the base of your neck, wrapping firm- grounding, claiming. You feel your walls flutter instantly under his grip.

“Not yet,” he breathes- simple, sharp, possessive- against your pleasure-parted lips. Like he knows your body better than you do. Like he knows you'll obey.

“Not till I say. You hear me?” His breath is hot against your lips. “You come when I take it from you.”

Everything in you screams to hold on, to never let go of this feeling- this heat, this fucking need. It’s too much and still not enough. Your vision swims with unshed tears, pleasure cresting into pain, into surrender.

His other hand grabs your thigh, spreads you wider and he drives in deeper, his cock hitting so deep it knocks the breath from your lungs.

“I need to hear it.” he snarls, forehead pressing to yours, eyes wild. “Say it. Say you’re mine.”

Your jaw falls open on a gasp, but no sound comes. You can’t. You can barely breathe. He fucks into you harder, his grip tightening.

“Say it, baby. Say it or I stop. Say who this pussy belongs to.”

Your eyes fill with tears- overstimulated, overwhelmed but your voice still breaks through.

“You- Joel, fuck- you- I’m yours- please- don’t stop-”

He groans, deep and guttural, like that was all he needed to unravel.

“That’s right. You’ve always been. Even when I couldn’t have you. Even when I told myself I shouldn’t touch you.”

He drags his mouth over your jaw, your neck, breathing you in like a man starved.

“I’m gonna ruin you for anyone else. I want you so fucked out and full’a me, no one else ever stands a fuckin’ chance.”

It’s too much- the pressure, the stretch, the heat, him. You try to hold back, to obey, but your walls flutter dangerously around him and he feels it.

“Now.” he growls, voice tearing through the air like a command from God. “Come for me.”

And when you finally fall apart around him- walls pulsing, thighs trembling, stars bursting behind your eyes- you gasp his name like it’s the only word you know, clinging to him like you’ll never let go.

“Mine. Fuckin’ mine.” he growls before he follows you with a broken moan, hips stuttering, his whole body seizing as he spills into you, holding you so tight it’s almost bruising. His face is buried in your neck, breath ragged, heartbeat thundering against your chest like it’s trying to match yours.

Like maybe, for a moment, they’re the same.

The aftermath.

He doesn’t move for a long time. Still buried inside you, still trembling- not from release, but from everything after.

His arms are locked around you, your chests pressed together, heartbeats still thundering in unison. You feel the sweat cooling on his back, his breath uneven against your neck. But it’s not the aftermath of sex that makes him shake.

It’s you.

The fact that he finally has you and the sick, gut-deep fear that he might still lose you.

His hand slides up your spine slowly, until it cups the back of your head. He kisses your hair. Your temple. The curve of your jaw.

“You okay?”

His voice is hoarse- too soft for a man like him and yet it holds the weight of a warning. Like he’s asking if you regret it. If he should start bracing for impact.

You nod, whispering his name into his chest.

His jaw tightens, and you feel it- the wildness under the surface, the animal in him that’s never known gentleness without loss. He kisses you- slow at first, then harder, like he needs to claim the truth on your lips.

“You’re mine now,” he mutters, almost to himself. His hand slides down to your thigh, gripping it, pressing you closer, even though you’re already one body.

“You got no idea what that means, do you?” he murmurs against your mouth. “No fuckin’ clue what I’d do for you.”

You look at him -really look- and suddenly you do.

Because this isn’t about sex. It’s about Joel and how, for once in his life, he wants something enough to stay. To fight. To keep.

He brushes his nose against yours. A soft, strange thing from such a hard man.

“You’re not just mine,” he says, barely audible. “I’m yours too, if you still want me.”

He knows he’s done for. He can’t go back- not after this.

The choice is yours now.

It always was. It always will be.

You lift your head, eyes glassy, lips trembling.

“I always did.”

“Then I got you. I swear to God, I got you.”

And for the first time, you believe it.

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