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hajimesh · 4 years

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MONSTER

+ pairing. demon!oikawa / fem reader

+ genre. smut

+ word c. 2,209 words

+ warnings. alcohol, dom/sub, oral, praise kink, creampie

+ author n. happy halloween !! i hope everyone is having/had an amazing day 🧡

your mother often warned you about the dangers of halloween parties. she’d tell you not to trust anyone, especially those with a mask until you could see their real face. there’s a tale she always told you about:

a young woman meets a mysterious, masked man on a halloween night…

the party’s in full swing, everyone holds the distinctive red solo cup as their bodies dance to the beat. your eyes trail over the place and they're met with a drunk frankenstein grinding his hips on a witch—a sight you weren't expecting.

“you made it!”

a hand lands on your shoulder and spins you away from the weird scene.

your classmate—the one who invited you to the party—gives you a side hug and when she finally releases you, she studies your costume.

“slutty 60’s girl? i dig it.”

“shut up.”

granted, you know the costume is quite revealing. a baby blue sundress that barely reaches your mid-thigh, paired with kitten heels and the distinctive sixties makeup that would make lana del rey proud.

another classmate joins you and they start rambling about an assignment you have no interest in, not for now at least. excusing yourself, you leave to go get a drink.

there’s a variety of bottles sitting on top of the dining table but before you can pick your poison, an unknown voice gets your attention.

“there’s a secret stash in the kitchen,” a man with a demon costume stands next to you, his eyes narrowing as he scans the bottles with a disgusted look. “and with way better quality drinks.”

sharp-looking horns contrast against his brown hair, a white shirt with the first buttons undone and black dress pants make him look straight out of a hollywood film. he could give young brad pitt a run for his money.

“i don’t think the owner would appreciate a stranger in their kitchen,” you manage to answer back, pushing your flustered state aside.

“oh, he’ll survive,” he waves it off, dazzling you with a handsome smile. “he’s smashed already.”

with a tilt of his head, he points at another guy with dark, messy hair and a matching costume, lying on the couch. you can tell the guy's fighting to keep his eyes open.

“come with me.”

he doesn’t give you a chance to reply, already walking ahead of you, so your only option is to trail behind him. he makes his way around the people easily, a few girls winking at him and boys patting him on the back which are all answered by him with a friendly smile.

once you make it to the kitchen, you notice the noise of the party has reduced considerably.

he hands you a beer—opened right before your eyes—and you give him an appreciative nod. “thanks.”

“oikawa tooru,” his charming smile is back for a second before it switches to a smirk. “you can call me master, though.”

shaking your head, you laugh at the joke and take a sip of your drink.

...he lures her to leave with him…

“on your knees.”

without thinking twice, you do as he says, ignoring the discomfort that comes with it.

two hours and a couple of drinks later, all of your inhibitions were gone and you wanted nothing more than to have oikawa fuck your brains out. lucky for you, he was hoping you’d allow him to do exactly that.

and he was very pleased when you agreed to go somewhere more private.

“what an obedient little thing,” he coos and you feel yourself getting wetter at the praise. “i want you to suck me as if your life depended on it, okay?” he says, smirking at how unaware you are of the meaning behind his words.

“yes.”

“yes, what?” he raises an eyebrow and you’re confused for a moment before you remember the words he said earlier.

gulping, you answer him with the most submissive tone you can muster. “yes, master.”

oikawa nods and takes his cock out of his pants, slapping the head on your cheek twice—your cue to open up your mouth. he quickly places it inside, your lips wrapping around the tip and giving it a harsh suck.

“mhm, you’ve been craving this all night. right, sweetheart?” his hand grips the back of your head, setting a comfortable pace for you.

“yes, i needed your cock,” you say after releasing him from your mouth, but a harsh tug on your hair acts as a reminder to be careful with your words. “master.”

“you’re such a cute, little whore. choking on your master’s cock,” his words are like an aphrodisiac, encouraging you to take him deeper. “fuck– i can feel your throat contracting around me.”

a mewl leaves your mouth but it’s muffled by the gurgling sounds of your throat being fucked by oikawa’s long cock. a mixture of your saliva and his pre-cum drips from the corners of your mouth, and oikawa swears has never seen something so divine yet so lascivious.

...he shows his true form…

“you'll ride my face until cum drips out of you.”

your body shudders at the thought of his mouth on your most sensitive place. as he places himself down on the bed, you indulge a bit in your fantasy, wondering how his lips will feel, his tongue lapping at—

“are you making your master wait?” he snaps, a hint of irritation radiating out of him.

“n-no,” you’re about to climb up on the bed when the pointy horns catch your attention. “uhm… could you take those off, please?”

“hm? oh,” his fingers wrap around the horns, a playful look taking over his features. “i don’t think that’ll be possible.”

you notice his dark eyes flashing with a red gleam but it’s gone before you can blink again. blaming it on the alcohol, you ignore it and move until you’re straddling his face, your pussy right above his mouth.

“c’mere, baby. let me ravish you.”

his arms wrap around your thighs, pulling you down to his mouth and you shudder when his breath hits your pussy.

oikawa doesn’t give you time to adjust to the feeling, going straight to slurping like a starved man. his lips latch on you while his tongue laps up your juices, drinking them with a greediness he’s never experienced before.

your soft moans echo in the room as his nose rubs against you, inhaling your scent and sending him to a different state of bliss. it’s as if he could get high by your scent alone.

“master,” you breathe out, your hands going to his hair—gripping it—while you rub your pussy on his face.

he hums, the vibrations making your pleasure heighten considerably. opening his mouth, he lets his tongue wander until it pokes right on your slit, he feels your legs tremble and the harsh grip on his hair tells him you’re on the brink of your orgasm. his tongue glides in and out until he’s practically fucking you with it, his nose rubbing on your swollen clit.

“fuck, fuck, fuck,” your hips grind against his face, not caring if he’s even able to breathe and only focusing on your release. “m’gonna cum, i’m gonna–” and with a loud cry, your orgasm ripples through your body, the familiar warmth taking over your senses.

your hips stop moving, but oikawa keeps lapping up at your pussy, savoring the creamy juices coming out of it.

“s-stop, too sensitive.”

oikawa takes a deep breath one last time and finally lets go of you, your body falling limply on the bed right away. he relishes the sight of you sprawled out, still riding off your high while he pumps himself a couple of times.

“are you ready for me, baby? i can’t wait any longer, i need to feel your sweet little pussy around my cock,” his tone is soft yet demanding.

if he had to be honest with himself, he is getting needy. and he has the flushed tip of his cock, wanting nothing else but your cunt to milk him dry, as proof of it.

“yes, master. please, fuck me.”

and that’s all he needs to place himself on top of you. you open your legs for him, your pussy in full display, and ready to take him in.

he rubs his length between your folds a couple of times, teasing you both, but once he starts sinking in he can’t help but close his eyes.

“shit,” your warmth sends his mind into a state of bliss, your tight hole stretching and creaming all over him. “baby girl, you feel divine.”

oikawa would’ve laughed at the irony if he wasn’t feeling overwhelmed by the sensation. he has known hell all of his life and he doesn’t remember it ever being this delicious.

you must be his piece of heaven.

once he’s all in, he exhales and opens his eyes to look down at you. your face is contorted in ecstasy, your mind turning into mush at how good it feels to have him pulsing inside of you.

oikawa starts a languid pace, one hand groping your tit and tweaking the nipple between his fingers while he drives his cock in and out of you. he can’t remember the last time he had a pussy so tight, so exquisite, and desperate for him that it's making him feel so close to shooting his load inside of you.

“master,” your tiny voice takes him out of his daydream. “faster, please?”

he hooks your leg over his shoulder, driving his cock even deeper making his balls smack against your ass. his eyes trail down to where you two are connected, watching his cock ram into your abused cunt relentlessly.

“so needy for me, huh? don’t worry, baby. i’ll fuck another orgasm out of you.”

your walls flutter around him, his words going straight to your pussy and making it clamp around his cock. you can feel it pulsating inside of you, the head reaching so deep it rubs on both your sweet spot and your cervix.

“i’m close,” your hand goes to his forearm, trying to get a grip on something, anything, that can keep you from passing out.

he collects a bit of your arousal with his finger and then starts circling your clit with it. “you can cum, baby. i want to see you gushing all over my cock.”

the constant feeling of his dick stretching you plus his touch on your clit, end up sending you to your second orgasm. your walls spasm around his cock, the snug grip making him see stars.

with one last thrust, he finally cums. his cock pumps three long spurts inside of your cunt and his hips involuntarily jerk forward when it keeps tightening around him. after a minute, he kisses your leg that’s still draped over his shoulder and pulls out.

you’re about to close your legs when his firm grip on your thigh stops you.

“not yet, let me see.”

your pussy clenches around nothing when his predatory stare lands between your legs, his eyes focused on the way his cum starts oozing out of your hole.

the last few moments feel like a haze. his voice seems far, sweet nothings coming out of his mouth, and the last thing you feel is his finger gliding over your slit before you pass out.

...by the next morning, she realizes how close to death she was.

“miss, miss. wake up.”

you fight to open your eyes—which takes you around a minute since they feel unusually heavy—and when you finally do, you see a man, not older than sixty, staring at you in concern.

“man, this always happens.”

you hear him murmur but you pay no mind. scanning your surroundings, it finally dawns on you that you’re not in your home. in fact, you’re in the last place you would’ve expected: the cemetery.

the sun is barely up, the atmosphere looking a bit somber and the crisp air making the hairs on your arms stand up.

“why am i here?” you turn to the old man—who must be the night shift guard—with panic rapidly flooding your heart. “what’s going on!?”

“did you meet a man last night?”

your heart rate spikes up at the odd question.

the guard sighs, visibly finding the situation tiring. “immortal creatures and spirits wander between us during halloween nights, you should be more careful.”

flashbacks of last night run through your mind. there wasn’t anything suspicious about oikawa, right? but then you remember how he never took off his horns and his pupils turning red every once in a while.

“every year, girls—boys, sometimes—appear here the morning after. most of them run with just a case of amnesia but there are others who don’t make it.”

you gulp, fear taking over your body as you realize how you let something—because apparently the man you met last night wasn’t human—have their way with you.

“i-i have to go.”

you basically run out of there, feeling as if someone is watching you but there’s no one else—apart from the guard.

there’s an odd sense of hurt in your chest, your heart sinking to the pits of your stomach, and you don’t know if it’s out of fear or because of the thought of oikawa doing this, every year, with someone else.

#oikawa smut #oikawa x reader smut #haikyuu smut #haikyuu x reader smut #oikawa x reader #oikawa x you #oikawa tooru #tw.alcohol

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sepublic · 3 years

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Sense and Insensitivity foreshadows Eda and Lilith

If you think about it; Sense and Insensitivity is like foreshadowing for Eda and Lilith’s relationship, especially how its beginning is shown in Young Blood, Old Souls before currently having culminated there!

In a lot of ways, King and Luz have a kind of sibling relationship… And Luz is that more confident kid who can make friends and is magically talented, while King feels left behind. Like Lilith, deep down he’s jealous of Luz’s success, so he justifies and convinces himself that it’s okay to screw her over just this once, because Luz can handle one small loss when she’s already got a bunch of wins under her belt… And King, he just wants this ONE good victory to feel good at!

King makes it big with a dude who has a real eye for talent, can scope out skilled people and make good use of them. A person who prefers to be in the background and let his more glamorous employees of seemingly humbler and thus relatable beginnings take the attention, all that stuff; Their servants who made an unwitting contract with the employer act as celebrities that inspire others to give it a try, adding to the ever-growing source of people to take advantage of… Even as those who outlive their purpose are done away, turned into basically helpless objects/trophies; Talking cubes in one scenario, and statues in the other. King makes it big… but with Luz’s help, which he doesn’t realize until later; Just as Lilith only got into the Emperor’s Coven because Eda willingly forfeited.

Because, by the end of the day… Eda and Luz just want to be with the person they care about, to have fun with them! They don’t care about winning really… So of course, King/Lilith take the position. They take the claim and credit, the fame… And they leave behind the other. Not that they don’t TRY to invite them over, they do care a lot for them- But Eda and Luz remember how they were abandoned and tossed aside. King and Lilith get defensive- Fine, be that way, I don’t need you! But Eda and Luz still care… And of course, King and Lilith mess things up when their loved one shows up regardless, because they have something they really need.

King and Lilith think they can make it on their own, that they don’t NEED the other… But it turns out they do, and so does their employer; Belos needs Eda’s portal, Piniet needs Luz’s input to make a good Ruler’s Reach sequel. King and Lilith realize they need the other, and they try coming back to get their help, Lilith asks Eda to join the Emperor’s Coven, King tries to be all buddy-buddy… But alas, they’re too condescending of Eda and Luz, with Lilith looking down on Eda as a ‘degenerate’, and King hypocritically mocking Luz’s ideas. They lose the help they need, and King and Lilith are desperate, at their wit’s end…

But their employer notices! THEY decide to take matters into their own hands… Piniet personally kidnaps Luz, and Belos imposes a deadline on Lilith with threat of execution, while also helping her kidnap Luz. Piniet and Belos both seem fond of deadlines with harsh, literally objectifying consequences, it seems. It ends with Luz and King in a magical cage, just like Eda and Lilith… The employer wants the two to hand over what HE wants, lest they die;

And, Luz herself in both scenarios contributes a lot… And it’s a third party that comes to save the day; Luz is the third party to Eda and Lilith, Tiny Nose to Luz and King. This third party provides the employer with something even more important that they want, and the employer is so satisfied that they’re fine with letting the others go, ignoring them because they don’t need them anymore… And so the duo makes their hasty escape while the villain is pre-occupied, having gotten what they wanted; And then they reconcile…

How fitting is it, then, that while Sense and Insensitivity happens, in the background, its B-plot is all about the advancement of Eda and Lilith’s relationship, with Lilith even bringing up Belos and his ‘offer’ to her sister, of how she NEEDS Eda, in a sense… Alluding to the deadline and expectations she has, which she comes up with an excuse to procrastinate upon to Steve.

#the owl house #the owl house luz #luz noceda #the owl house king #the owl house eda #edalyn clawthorne #the owl house lilith #lilith clawthorne #the owl house belos #emperor belos #the owl house piniet #foreshadowing #meta

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queen-scribbles · 3 years

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The Long-Burning Torch

For the @shepherds-of-haven Shepherds Summer event, the Ryn/Red muses latched onto 20′s Detective AU and would not let go. I’ve gone so deep down this rabbit hole there’s gonna be chapters, but the first piece works as a standalone. (title might change along the way, again bc chapters)

----

There were, in Xaeryn’s experience, two types of people who made use of her services. Both were driven by desperation, both tended to hit her doorstep late in the day. There were the belligerent ones, incensed they had to stoop to hiring her, a Mage, to solve their problem. From them she had to pull the pertinent facts of their case one begrudging sentences at a time. And there were the frantic ones, who had exhausted every other route and she was their last chance. Details poured so freely from them she had to pick through it to find what was actually relevant to the case.

The young man standing before her now, at the start of her day, appeared to fit neither of those groups. He’d knocked and entered without awaiting an invitation, seeming unperturbed by the eyebrow she arched at his arrival.

“May I help you?” Xaeryn asked, leaning forward to rest folded hands on her desk.

He shifted to fold his own hands over the head of a walking stick she’d wager he didn’t actually need and smiled dryly. “If your reputation is anything to go by, Miss Shrike, I certainly expect so.”

She gestured to the chairs in front of the desk. “Let’s find out, Mr...?”

“Riel Syndran,” he said, passing her a business card as he took the offered seat.

The card was hardly necessary, and Xaeryn set it on the desk with only a passing glance. “You run Whitestone Couriers, don’t you?”

There was the faintest twitch on the left side of his jaw. “The company is a guild venture.”

“And I wouldn’t be much of a snooper if I couldn’t figure out who truly ran a company as vital to the city of Haven as Whitestone Couriers, Mr. Syndran.”

He gave her a sharp smile. “Very good. I knew coming to you first was the right call, Miss Shrike.”

“Flattered as I am by your confidence” --and she was; she was typically the last resort, being first was something of a novelty-- “why don’t you tell me what or who you need found, and we can discover if said confidence is warranted.”

“I’m certain it is,” Syndran said, his gaze briefly dropping to the Shrike Investigations placard on the edge of her desk. “But you are correct. To business.”

And business, as he explained it, ran thus: Whitestone Couriers had been contracted to transport a collection of artefacts, originally from all parts of Blest, from their previous temporary home at the Conte-by-the-Sea museum to Haven’s Hall of History and Culture.

”How well-known was your being contracted?” Xaeryn interjected.

“It was something of a secret,” Syndran replied, flicking invisible dust off his sleeve. “Some of the pieces are quite valuable, so it was largely in hopes of avoiding theft.”

Hopes that had proven vain. They’d had an uneventful journey--blessed with good weather, even--made it through city customs upon arriving at Haven (checked everything after making it through and found nothing amiss), and proceeded to the museum. Upon unpacking the artefacts, however, it was discovered one was missing.

(Of course.)

The missing piece--an obsidian and bronze pendent thought to belong to a ruler in the Jalis desert pre-Autarchy--had limited monetary value, especially compared to some of the other items in the collection. (Those, of course, had been more closely watched.) Its worth was largely historical and religious.

“Enchantments?”

“None so far as we know.”

“I’ll look into it for you,” Xaeryn said with a nod. She loved mind-twisters like this. “I’ll need to talk to your people, as well as the museum staff, so it would be helpful if you let them know I’m coming. Otherwise my kind” --a twitch of her fingers set energy dancing above them briefly-- “aren’t usually given the time of day.”

“Of course. I shall do so.” Syndran stood and bowed. “I thank you for taking my case, Miss Shrike, and look forward to your success.”

“Two things, Mr. Syndran,” she spoke up as he turned toward the door. She waited until he paused and looked back to continue. “I will, of course, endeavor to find this relic on my own, but should I require an expert’s... knowledge of its history, say, is outside help acceptable?”

His nose wrinkled briefly. “If you must. But as few others as possible, and only those you trust to keep it in strictest confidence.”

“Understood.”

“And the second thing, Miss Shrike?”

She smiled. “One third estimated payment is due upfront.”

“Oh, obviously.” He returned the smile and pulled out his checkbook.

----

She made some good progress between that afternoon and the next day. Interviews with the caravan guards and those responsible for the artefact collection gave insight to their procedures--which were indeed top-notch; it was impressive someone had managed to find a weakness--and how long the pieces were out of their sight coming through city customs.

“Don’t see why that matters,” the pink-haired courier who’d been in charge of the caravan commented. “We checked them all when we got through; made sure everything was still there. Standard procedure.”

“When you say you checked, is this a thorough examination or just a glance to make sure it’s still there?” Xaeryn asked, glancing at the notepad balanced on her knee.

“There’s no fine-tooth comb involved,” came the somewhat tart and harried reply, “but we do look to confirm it’s there and undamaged so nothing undeserved can later be blamed on us. The company has a sterling reputation for a reason, Miss Shrike, and the guild would very much like to keep it that way.”

“Hence your boss coming to me instead of the police.” Xaeryn tapped her pen against her chin and skimmed over her notes. “I think I have everything I need, Miss Aerin. Thank you for your time.”

Aerin gave a sharp nod. “Of course. Anything to get this cleared up and the artefact found as quickly as possible.” She flicked a worried glance toward the notebook as Xaeryn slipped it in her handbag. “How much did you write down? A lot of our procedures are trade secrets; if someone should see...”

Xaeryn laughed and withdrew the notepad again, flipping it open to show the other woman the symbols that filled the pages. “Never fear, your secrets are safe with me. An added bonus of my own shorthand; no one else can read my notes.”

“Smart.” A brief hesitation. “No one? You’re sure?”

“Well, perhaps the friend who helped develop it initially, but I’ve tweaked it since then.” She flipped the pad closed and stowed it in her bag. “I think it would take a little work even for him. We worked it out to take faster notes in class, but taking faster notes also come in handy in my line of work.”

Aerin relaxed and nodded again. “I’m sure it does. Thank you for the reassurance, Miss Shrike.”

“Of course. Have a good day.”

“You as well.”

With the last of the days’ intended interviews behind her, Xaeryn headed back to her office. Now to review what she’d learned from all the sources together. She was confident she had plenty to give herself at least a couple leads worth pursuing, even if there wasn’t enough for a scry.

---

It took a day and a half of running herself off her feet for Xaeryn to burn through the leads she’d found without much to show for it. She’d been unable to track down the specific guard who checked that portion of the shipment, but his supervisor assured her such an important collection would have been treated with utmost care, seeming miffed at the insinuation otherwise. None of the drivers or other courier employees had noticed anything unusual once they passed through customs, no interruptions or suspicious folks in the streets.

Even scrying had fizzled out without so much as a vague semblance of where it might be.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Xaeryn dug her fingers into her short hair and glowered at the photographs of the pendent Mr. Syndran had given her. It was so small. So easily concealed. And so simple it would hardly draw attention unless you knew what it was.

She’d been forced to grudgingly admit her minimal progress to Mr. Syndran when he called for an update and it had her in a foul mood. This sort of baloney was not how she kept the lights on. It was time for a new tack.

If she couldn’t (yet) trace where the pendent vanished from, perhaps it would work better to learn more about it; figure where it might be going and get a solid enough knowledge of it she could successfully scry its location. Who would want it badly enough for the hassle of stealing from Whitestone Couriers to be worth their while? Looking into the pendent’s history and provenance seemed the next logical course. Just because Mr. Syndran had told her it was on loan to the collection from the “proper” owners did not mean said owners had told him everything, or indeed, that they’d told the truth. She needed an expert and knew just where to find one.

It had been long enough since her time at Solhadur Academy Xaeryn actually had to look up the telephone number before calling. As she listened to the line ringing, she wondered absently how much of a gentle scolding Headmaster Tevanti would give her for her first contact in more than a decade being to ask for something rather than merely catching up. She’d always been the type not to bother people unless she had to. That was, after all, what she preferred. And her self-reliance had carried her through quite a bit. But she was aware most people would differ from her on that point; Tevanti especially was fond of jawing, so he would surely have words for her long silence.

She let it go to ten rings before giving up. Revelation came with a glance at the clock; it was late enough there was likely no one around to answer. No matter. She could drive out tomorrow. The Academy was in Capra, that wasn’t terribly far. (Not for business, anyway.) Headmaster Tevanti wouldn’t mind one of his favorite students dropping in for an hour or so to discuss a relic from one of his favorite historical periods. She’d even engage in small talk, if he wanted.

Xaeryn smiled to herself and locked both the photographs and her notepad in one of the desk drawers. If that was her plan for tomorrow, she should turn in early, make sure she was well-rested. Time for a trip down memory lane.

---

The morning was uneventful, aside from the troublesome discovery she’d left her office unlocked all night. She was normally more attentive than that, even being on a higher floor. But nothing was disturbed or missing, so Xaeryn shrugged it off and got on with her day.

If she selected her wardrobe with a more critical eye than usual, well, she wanted to look professional. Headmaster Tevanti had been a wonderful mentor, and she wanted to show how far his encouragements about using her bright mind and sharp eye had carried her.

(She wondered, briefly, as she pulled on the royal blue skirt and its matching blouse, accented in deep golden-yellow, if she would see any other familiar faces. But she shook off the warmth of the thought; they’d all scattered to the winds after graduation. Getting to see Tevanti would be enough.)

Satisfied with her ensemble, and needing to fill some time before she left, Xaeryn sat at her desk with her notepad and transcribed everything she knew about the missing pendent(not much), along with questions to ask. She picked out the best of the photographs from Mr. Syndran, just in case, and sighed as she looked at the clock. She’d still be a tad early for it to be polite, especially just dropping in out of the blue, if she left now.

So I’ll drive at a leisurely pace, she argued to herself. Take my time. Allowing a buffer in case there’s trouble along the way is only wise. God in heaven, she wished she could figure why she had worse jitters about this than some dates she’d gone on. “Oh, this is ridiculous,” she muttered to the empty office.

She locked the remaining photographs back in her desk, slipped the chosen one and her notepad in her handbag. After a moment’s internal debate, she slipped one of her stiletto knives down in her boot as well. Solhadur was far from dangerous, but it was prudent to have some measure of protection when traveling alone. She grabbed a hat on her way out the door--which she made certain to lock this time--and had it securely on her head by the time she reached the car.

----

Despite her efforts to make it a leisurely drive out to Capra, and weather that was perfect for that goal, Xaeryn still found herself standing in the entrance hall of Solhadur Academy at an earlier hour than would usually be considered polite for impromptu business meetings. She debated walking the grounds for a while, revisiting some memories from her time here, but decided simply apologizing for her early arrival was the better course of action.

With a final steadying breath and running one hand down her blouse and skirt to chase away wrinkles, Xaeryn headed for the reception desk. She smiled at the young woman behind it. “Good morning.”

The receptionist blinked, seeming mildly taken aback by how far up she had to look to meet her visitor’s eyes. “Morning, miss. Office hours don’t start until ten-”

“Oh, I’m not a student here,” Xaeryn said with a laugh. “At least, not anymore. And I do apologize for the early appearance, the drive out went much faster than anticipated.”

A brow twitched at that. “And what is it that brings you to Solhadur, miss...?”

“I’m doing research on a selection of artefacts and haven’t been able to turn up much on one.” It was barely a lie; she had read a bit on the other exhibition pieces, even if the pendent was the only one she needed to go deeper. “It’s from a period I know is of particular interest to the headmaster, so I was hoping to speak to him for a while, see if he could help.”

The receptionist pursed her lips. “Former student, you say?”

Xaeryn nodded. “If he’s busy first thing, I don’t mind waiting.”

““No, actually, being early is smart,” the receptionist said with a light laugh. “His hours are more full at the later end of things. This would be the best opportunity if you want some of his time.” She glanced over Xaeryn once more, then nodded. “You can go up. Third door--”

“On the left. I remember,” Xaeryn finished. “Thank you.”

“You might actually beat him there,” the receptionist laughed. “He isn’t always punctual.”

“I remember that, too,” Xaeryn returned with a grin. “Like I said, I don’t mind waiting. It’ll be good to see him again, few more minutes won’t hurt.” She toyed with one of her earrings as she headed up the stairs, steps lingering and heavy with nostalgia.

It was almost exactly as she remembered. A few portraits replaced or rearranged, new photographs from after she left. New name placards outside the doors she passed. The headmaster’s office door was closed, and a light inquiring rap of her knuckles brought no response.

Looks like she was right, Xaeryn thought with a smile, leaning against the chair outside the office to wait. Her gaze drifted to the high ceiling, following the details of familiar carvings to the scenes painted on the ceiling itself. Slightly faded from what she remembered, but that was to be expected after a decade--

“Xaeryn?!” The voice, still familiar even after years apart, sounded like he’d seen a ghost.

Her heart lurched in her chest and she’d spun around before the impulse to do so had even fully registered, his name tumbling from her lips unprompted in return. “Red?!”

He crossed the remaining distance between them in just a few strides(God, he’d gotten taller, how was that even possible?), barely remembered to set the books he carried on the chair before wrapping her in a hug.

Xaeryn didn’t even flinch, and only just managed to keep her grip on her handbag as she hugged him back. He still smelled of old books and ink and sunshine and she smiled at the memories it stirred.

Liefred Antiqua, her seatmate in any classes they shared and best friend regardless of how many they didn’t for the entirely of her time at Solhadur. Friendly, charming, and just as fond of books as he was people. (The nights they’d spent pressed shoulder to shoulder reading in the library were still among her favorite memories.) Between his warm nature and classic good looks, he’d had half the student body swooning after him, and yet despite the sharp contrast to Xaeryn’s more reserved and self-reliant bent, they’d still spent most of their time together. Their friendship was the strongest of the few she’d formed at Solhadur, and Xaeryn valued it immensely.

(Too much to risk on anything like admitting when the sight of his smile sent something that was definitely not friendship fluttering in her chest. It was just a crush, it would go away.)

( And then it didn’t.)

They’d both had plans to travel after graduation, and she couldn’t count on all her fingers combined the number of times she’d almost suggested they do it together. But in this one thing, she never could quite summon the nerve. And before she knew it, her departure date had arrived and they were hugging farewell, and come with me wouldn’t unstick from her throat. After a few months’ silence stretched between them--both traveling and unsure where the other might be, obviously--she’d resigned herself to their paths never crossing again, much as the thought hurt.

And yet here he was.

All the memories flew through her mind in the few seconds their hug lasted, and had a lump starting in her throat by the time they parted.

“Wonderful as it is to see you,” Red began as he stepped back to reclaim his books and run a glance over her, “what are you doing here?”

Xaeryn cleared her throat as she returned the apprising glance with one of her own. He still looked practically the same. A few inches taller, shoulders a bit more broad, and an attempt had been made to tame his bright red hair. It had only achieved partial success, and combined with the warm glint in his green eyes, he still was the same Red she knew. (The same Red she’d been more than a little in love with, even if she’d never dared the risk of admitting it.)

“I’m doing research,” she said, reaching up to tug the back brim of her hat as she glanced at the office door. “Into some artefacts. I wanted to ask Headmaster Tevanti about one in particular that’s being difficult.”

Red grimaced and fumbled his books. “Did you not hear, Xaer?” His voice went soft on the nickname, despite them being alone. Voices did carry in these halls, as they very well knew. “Tevanti died.”

She blinked, shock and sorrow curling in her chest. “Wh- How? When?”

“Not long after you left, actually,” he said, raking his free hand through his hair and tousling it out of respectability. “You know he’d been having problems with his heart. It gave out a few months after you left.” His brow furrowed. “I’m surprised you weren’t told when you set an appointment.”

“I didn’t so much set an appointment as show up looking to talk,” Xaeryn admitted with a soft, wry snort. “And I did simply say the headmaster when speaking to the receptionist.” She cocked her head. “Who would that be, now?”

Red smiled sheepishly, half-bit his lower lip. “Me, actually.” He shifted the books to one arm and opened the office door. Slightly nonplussed by two such major revelations in a row, Xaeryn was silent as she followed him in.

“I thought you wanted to travel,” was the first thought to pop in her head and then out her mouth as she looked around the office. It was spacious, lined with jam-packed bookshelves(He must be in heaven), and in a state of... corralled disarray that was so very Red it made her smile despite the news about Tevanti.

“I did,” Red replied, setting the books on his desk. “And I got to, at least a bit.” He tucked a handful of papers inside an open tome occupying one of the chairs, flipped the book closed, and set it on a side table so he could offer her a seat. “I’d already left when he passed, so Professor Rumi and some others kept things going until I got back.” Rather than sit in the chair behind the desk, he shuffled a small stack of books onto the floor and sat in the one next to Xaeryn’s as he continued. “He’d... wanted me as his successor, Xaeryn.”

“That makes sense.” The words were out before she could weigh them, spurred by the disbelief in his hesitation. “You’re brilliant, charming, and have a history with the school.” Her face warmed in the wake of being so candid, and Xaeryn glanced over at the large painting of Tevanti that hung on the wall between two bookshelves. He knew what he was doing. “You’re a logical choice.”

Red laughed warmly. “High praise from the smartest student in our class.”

“But far from the most charming,” she countered with a wry smile.

The warmth of his gaze didn’t abate. “I’ve always appreciated your-”

“Bluntness?”

“Straight-forwardness,” Red substituted, and was smiling when she looked his way. “An ability to cut to the heart of the subject is an invaluable skill.”

Xaeryn gave a faint shake of her head. “As is your kindness. But speaking of the heart of the matter...”

“Ah, right. You came here for a reason.” He pushed his unbuttoned shirtsleeves up toward his elbows. “I can’t promise to know as much as Tevanti would have, but I’ll certainly do my best to help.”

“Actually...” She snapped open her handbag to pull out the photograph and her notepad. “You’ve done a lot of research on pre-Autarchy history, so you might be able to help more than you think.” She set the photograph on the desk and Red cocked his head to look at it.

“Solimer’s torch...” he murmured, turning the photograph for a better look as his gaze gained that focus of a niche interest being whetted. (Which, for Red, meant she was about to hear everything he knew about the pendent’s history in too much detail to called a summary, and Xaeryn found herself leaning forward slightly in anticipation.) He glanced up at her. “Isn’t this one of the pieces in that exhibit about to open in Haven?”

She nodded. “That’s why I’m researching it.” She bit her lip but barely hesitated on the gamble of her next words. ‘Those you trust’, Mr. Syndran had said, and there was no one she trusted more than Liefred Antiqua. “It was stolen, and I was hired to find.”

His head came up, derailed from the growing ramble on the pendent’s history. “Oh?”

“I’m a detective,” Xaeryn said, playing with one of her earrings. She laughed softly. “Scrying does give a considerable leg up to finding things. Or people. But that only works when--”

“You know enough about them,” Red nodded. “So this visit is for business, rather than personal.”

“Mostly, yes,” she conceded, resting one hand on his knee. I didn’t know you’d be here. “But I was more than willing to chat with Tevanti” --there was a pang in her chest--”which most definitely extends to you as well, Headmaster Antiqua.”

His neck and ears went faintly pink as he laughed. “Surely we don’t need to be quite so formal, Detective Shrike?”

“Just ‘Miss’,” she returned with a laugh of her own, withdrawing her hand to instead fiddle with her notepad. “I work for myself, not the cops.” There might’ve been a little pride in her voice at the words, but it was well-earned.

“I thought you wanted to travel,” Red said, turning her own remark back on her.

“And travel I did,” Xaeryn said lightly. “For quite a while, even. But a girl does need a job eventually, and I’ve always loved a good mystery.”

“Or even a bad one,” he teased. “All kidding aside, Miss Shrike, I’m sure you’re a brilliant investigator.”

She smiled, chuckling at the playful glint in his eye even as her ears warmed at the praise. “Thank you. And on that note, what can you tell me about the pendent?”

“Right, right. You’re here on business.” Amusement lingered in Red’s eyes even as he turned back to the photograph. His sleeves started to slide and he shoved them back up again. Xaeryn very deliberately kept her focus on the photograph, not his arms--or hands--as he tapped one finger at the center of the obsidian pendent. “This was a protection... charm, I suppose you’d call it, worn by the head of the Solimer tribe ages ago. Literal ages. Without refreshing my memory, all I can tell you is they were one of the few tribes whose wanderings regularly took them through the heart of the Jalis desert, and yet they always fared better on those journeys than the other tribes, which was credited to this pendent.”

“So it is magical?” Xaeryn leaned closer to look over the piece again, not that a photograph could do it full justice. This was a familiar position; the two of them bent over a shared project, and she hadn’t realized how much she missed it until that moment.

“Possibly?” Red shifted and his shoulder bumped hers. “ The story goes that on their first attempt to journey through, they saw a light, like a torch, keeping pace with them. It only showed up at night, and seemed far enough away from their caravan the chief felt it was too dangerous to let anyone go after it to see what it was. Their wariness at its presence, however, kept them vigilant enough they were able to see and fend off any wild animals that came after them, and it did nothing except travel their same path, so they let it be.

“A couple weeks into their journey, as their supplies were starting to run low, the chieftain’s wife was out hunting and strayed far enough in search of food that the sun started setting while she was out. As the skies grew dim she could see the Torch, much larger than they usually did from the caravan, though it was floating away. Seized by good old-fashioned curiosity” --he paused to wink at her and Xaeryn bit back a smile-- “she followed the light rather than work her way back to camp. She kept after it long enough night had nearly fallen when it crested a ridge and disappeared. She hastened after it, and when she made it over the ridge, found herself standing by a waterspring the likes of which they’d never seen. When she looked around for the light she’d followed, there was no sign of it, save a black rock that lay at her feet. There were no other rocks anywhere nearby, so she decided this must be what had caused the torch-like light her tribe had seen.

“She carried it with her when she returned to the tribe with news of water, and the Solimer took it as a sign of the gods’ favor. The chieftain had it bound in bronze” --he traced a finger along the lines of the coiled setting-- “to be worn as a way to hold that favor. It was passed from leader to leader and from all accounts they had far better luck surviving the desert than the other tribes for a long time.”

“Was that not likely just them knowing better how to handle themselves? If they traveled those portions of the desert more frequently, of course they were better prepared.”

“Maybe.” Red shrugged. “We have no firsthand written records from any of these tribes, just legends and history relayed orally. And a lot of the second-hand ones were... lost when the Autarchy came to power. From the way the stories run, after generation of favor from the pendent, it was lost when the Solimer were defeated in a skirmish over resources with another tribe. Their next several trips went so poorly it cost over half their number, and they wound up assimilated into other tribes within the next couple decades just to survive.”

“Sad,” Xaeryn murmured, though she wondered if the pendent’s loss had become a self-fulfilling prophecy if they believed in it that strongly. “And what happened to the pendent after that?”

“That’s all I know off the top of my head,” Red said sheepishly as he sat back, running a hand through his hair. “Anything more I’d have to research. To refresh my memory.”

“Oh, that’s all? Tsk, tsk, Liefred, you’re slipping,” she teased, then snorted a wry chuckle. “Of course, it’s more than I had.” She showed him the scant lines on a single page of her small notepad.

Red smiled at the sight of the shorthand and let the playful ribbing slide as he ran a finger over the page. “You tweaked it.”

“A bit, to make it jive better with detective work.” Xaeryn tucked the pad back in her handbag. She’d been so caught up listening to him talk she’d not taken a single note. “I’m certain you could work it out with a little time.”

“Oh, time-” Red’s gaze flew to the clock at the same moment there was a knock and muffled “Headmaster?” at the door. “Damn. Forgot I have a meeting.” He smiled sheepishly and rubbed the back of his neck. “Tribulations of being in charge. Just a minute!” he called toward the door, then, to Xaeryn, “I can look into this more in my free time, if you’d like.”

What free time? she almost asked, looking at the stacks of books and papers everywhere. But she swallowed that in favor of, “That would be lovely, thank you so much.”

“Any specific information you need?” Red asked as they stood.

“Anything you can find is welcome, but specifically.... What happened to the pendent after the Solimer lost it, who would have claim of ownership, if ownership is contested... anything like that. I want to find it, but part of that may very well lie in figuring out who would have most reason to steal it in the first place.” Xaeryn pulled out a business card and handed it to him. “So I don’t wind up nagging you,” she laughed. “You can call when you find something. The telephone’s in my office, but I live adjacent, so I’ll always hear it.”

Red nodded and slipped the card in his pocket. “I’ll try not to take too long.”

“Much appreciated. Also...” She grimaced slightly. “This is something of a secret; the Couriers don’t want it being common knowledge.”

“Understandable,” he said as they started toward the door. “Oh, don’t you need this?” He reached back for the photograph and held it out to her.

“Yes, thanks.” Xaeryn smiled and tried not to let the flutter in her chest when their fingers brushed as she took it gain purchase. She slipped the photograph back in her handbag as Red opened the door. Given the student waiting in the hall, she was the picture of professionalism--aside from the twinkle in her eye--as she nodded farewell. “Thank you for your time, Headmaster.”

Several things flashed through Red’s eyes, the brief desire to strangle her, a loud burst of laughter, an eyeroll, but he settled on a warm smile, wide enough his dimples just started to show. “Happy to help, Miss Shrike.”

She was still fighting a grin as she turned to descend the stairs, heart practically singing with warmth. Of all the lovely surprises... Regardless of whether she succeeded or failed, this case was already among the most worthwhile she’d ever taken, simply for bringing him back into her life.

#queens fic #shoh #shepherds summer 2021 #xaeryn shrike #red antiqua #ryn/red #i really got find them a ship tag #if you think their canon pining is good HOO BOY JUST WAIT #flamingelmo.gif #tlbt

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here4theheartbreak · 4 years

Text

A Calculated Risk (VHope)

⭒ AO3 Link Here!

⭒ Relationships: Hoseok x Taehyung ⭒ Genre: fluff, strangers to lovers ⭒ Final Rating: General Audiences ⭒ Word Count (Chapter): ~5.1k

⭒ Tags: fluff, getting together, strangers to lovers, anxious Hoseok, art student Taehyung, pre-slash

⭒ Summary: When Hoseok sees the crying young man on the plane next to him, he wonders if the calculated certainty of his life is really worth the loneliness.

⭒ A/N: This fic was written for our lovely sunshine Hoseok’s birthday!

Hoseok was good at staying out of trouble. He kept his head down, his nose out of business that wasn’t his, and his hands clean. It was how he’d gotten to become the youngest sales manager in his company. At twenty-six, it was unheard of to be such a powerful figure in the industry. Yet there he was, flying to a variety of countries, meeting with powerful men and women, convincing them to sign up, make contracts, do business. He liked his job okay. He did it well, he was charming, and he enjoyed being the face of a business that did good things for the world. But a part of Hoseok felt like there was something missing. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Rather… He knew what it was, but he didn’t want to know. He was lonely as hell. Random one night stands in a variety of hotel rooms that started to all look alike across the continents, a series of failed relationships with every gender and sex – most of them summing up to a singular thing. You’re too nice. There was never any excitement in Hoseok’s life, and he liked it that way. Excitement, the unknown, these were variables that did not turn out guaranteed positive results. And that’s what Hoseok’s life was built on. Taking risks was not in his vocabulary.

So, when Hoseok found himself seated next to the stunning young man with dark eyes and big ears on the way home from Canada, despite that fact that he desperately wanted to say something… He remained quiet. And he intended to remain quiet the entire way back to Korea. It was for the best. This man looked like a risk taker. Someone that Hoseok could never make happy.

Hoseok let his eyes slip shut, tapping out a rhythm on his arm rest. They’d been in the air for about an hour, and the young man had been staring at his phone the whole time. Easy then, to avoid contact, he figured.

He heard a sniffle, and grimaced; hopefully the boy wasn’t sick. He couldn’t afford to catch cold. He’d need to pick up some vitamin c just in case. Another sniffle, and a shaky sigh. Hoseok scowled. He cracked one eye and peeked over.

The young man was still looking at his phone, his blondish hair hanging down. But in the part of his exposed face, Hoseok could see tear tracks; he’d been crying. He was crying.

Hoseok shut his eyes again, his mouth forming a fine line.

‘Stay out of it, Hobi. Not your problem. Stranger on a plane. Stranger danger. Avoid risk. Crying handsome boy is a risk.’

“Are you okay?” The words were out of Hoseok’s mouth before he was even aware of asking

The boy looked over, sniffled, and nodded. His chin began to quiver and he shook his head no, but quickly yanked his hood up over his face, pulling his knees to his chest.

“I’ll be more quiet,” he whispered. His voice was low and rumbly, immediately sending chills of the good variety down Hosoek’s spine.

“No, I—That wasn’t it. You just look sad. Can I help?”

The boy shook his head no. “Just a breakup.”

Hoseok winced. “I’ve been through a lot of those,” he whispered, nodding. “I know you’ve probably heard it a lot from friends, but it does get easier.”

“I know. I’m sure it will. I just can’t believe I was so stupid… Coming all the way across the world to see him and he just—” He broke off. “Sorry.”

“No, continue.”

‘What are you doing, Hoseok. This is a risk. Risks are unnecessary in your life. Stop it.’ “It helps to vent sometimes. And we have plenty of hours.”

The boy nodded and chuckled weakly, swallowing hard. “He—We met online. And we hit it off and he promised… He promised me so much. So I saved up for years while we dated.. To come to Canada. To meet him and he just… One weekend and he dumped me.”

“Did he say why?”

“He found someone else. Someone who lives there. Turns out he’s been dating him for about six months… Didn’t tell me.”

“Oh God, what an asshole,” Hoseok muttered, his face twisting up in anger. “That’s fucking low, if you don’t mind me saying. Sure, breakups happen, but to be cheating, and to not tell you before…”

“He said he only wanted me to come so he could try to get a threesome in before we broke up. Figured I’d be happy to get his dick in real life once.” The boy gasped then and closed his mouth fast enough that his teeth clicked. “Oh God, I’m so sorry – that was way too much information.”

Hoseok chuckled. “A bit, but it’s okay. You didn’t sleep with the jackass did you?”

“God no, I’m not wasting my time. He can sleep with his creepy little affair on his own.”

“Good on you.” Hoseok hesitated before sticking his hand out. “My name’s Jung Hoseok.”

“Kim Taehyung. Are you from Korea?”

“Mhm, I live in Seoul. I was in Canada on business.”

“Really? What do you do?”

“I work for a company that helps supply hospitals with different equipment. We have contracts with a lot of countries. I go and sorta try to sell them the products, make sure they’re happy with what we’re doing, contracts, deals, all boring stuff.”

“But you get to travel? All over?”

Hoseok nodded. “Pretty much. It’s one of the perks of the job. Busy, but it’s nice to be on the move. What about you? You look pretty young.”

“Says you. All that stuff, sounds like you should be forty.”

Hoseok chuckled. “I should be. I’m lucky to have this position so young. I’m twenty-six.”

“I’m twenty-four. I just finished college. Art school. So… I’m unemployed.” Taehyung shrugged, looking down at his lap. “My friend says the coffee shop he’s working at is hiring, so I’ll check that out when I get back to Seoul.”

“What kind of art do you do?” Hoseok asked.

“All kinds, mostly drawing and photography. Uh…” Taehyung turned and grabbed his carry on. He pulled out a large black binder and held it up for a second. “You probably—Is this weird?” He asked.

“What?”

“I’m a stranger to you. You don’t really care about this. Or me…”

“I saw a handsome guy crying next to me. And, in talking to him… He stopped the tears. I care.” Hoseok held out his hand, letting Taehyung hand him the binder. He went through it page by page, blown away by the talent he saw encased in thin plastic sheets. The young man had an eye for detail, and for beauty. His photography in particular was absolutely stunning. Everything from piles of rocks to buildings to people, both posed and candid. His drawn art was unique and abstract, making Hoseok turn the book this way and that to really take in everything that was going on.

While he looked, he could feel Taehyung watching him, and could nearly sense the anxiety rolling off him. He cared what a stranger sitting next to him on a plane thought… It was sweet, and sad.

He finally closed the book and handed it back. “You’re only twenty-four?” He asked.

Taehyung nodded, chewing his bottom lip. “That work is stunning for your age, Taehyung. You’re really going to go a long way. I encourage you to look at companies you might not consider originally. Bigger tech companies and others that may not delve into the arts. They’re always looking for designers and photographers, and I bet your portfolio would really impress some of them. It’s probably not what you want to do long term, but a contract with a powerful company could really get you moving in the right direction. At least get you some funding if you wanted to do your own business or something similar.”

As Hoseok spoke, he could see Taehyung’s smile growing. It warmed his heart. Taehyung’s phone buzzed on his lap and he looked down, the smile that Hoseok had just put there drooping.

“The dickhead boyfriend, huh?”

“Ex-boyfriend,” Taehyung emphasized, and Hoseok nodded. “He’s trying to make up with me.”

“And what do you want?”

“Him to go the fuck away. Forever. He broke my heart, he’s not allowed to do this.”

“Then ignore it.” Hoseok shrugged. “Turn off the phone. Let me buy you a drink.”

“Wh—What?”

Hoseok motioned to the stewardess that was making her way down the aisle. “Let’s keep your mind off the jerk, at least until you land. I’ll buy you a drink and we can watch some movies together.”

Taehyung smiled again, his eyes seeming to be searching Hoseok’s face for something. Hoseok motioned to the waitress, handing over his card. “I’ll have a beer, if you have any, and then whatever my friend here wants.”

She nodded. Taehyung smiled shyly. “Uh, I—I’ll take uh… Something sweet?” She nodded.

“I could make you a pineapple rum, if you’d like, it’s pretty sweet.”

Taehyung nodded as well. “I like pineapple.” She handed Hoseok his bottle and his card back after popping the cap off, as well as a cup to pour it in if he wanted. She set to work mixing Taehyung’s drink and passed it to him as well before continuing down the aisle. Hoseok reached out and tapped the screen in front of Taehyung.

“What genre gets your mind off idiot boys? Whatever you want.”

“Uh—I don’t know. I don’t watch movies that much, I guess…”

“Hm.” Hoseok flipped through the screen. “Not romance… Not drama. Tragedy. We could do comedy? Uh.. Action. Uh…”

“That one,” Taehyung pointed at an image of a cover. Hoseok hesitated. “That’s horror.”

Taehyung nodded.

“You like horror, eh?” He clicked it, trying not to sound as panicked as he felt. Good to know he figured – more proof this insane… Whatever the hell he was trying to do… Wouldn’t work. Those who liked horror took risks. And risks—

“I hate horror,” Taehyung said.

“So why watch it?”

“Because it’s scary and I hate it. It’ll keep my attention so I won’t be thinking about him.”

Hoseok hesitated, thinking for a moment. He had to admit, it was pretty sound reasoning. He nodded.

“Do you have headphones?”

Taehyung pulled out a handful of wire from his bag and nodded. Hoseok waved over the stewardess. “Do you have a jack splitter?” He asked. She nodded and dug around for a moment, handing one over to him.

“Thank you.”

They got set up with the splitter and Taehyung pulled down the window shield. Hoseok lifted the arm rest so they could sit a little closer, sharing the same small screen as the movie began. Hoseok hated horror so much. Within twenty minutes he was gripping the other armrest, his leg bouncing nervously. Taehyung had moved almost direction against his side and was gripping his other arm tightly, his eyes wide as he stared at the screen.

Each jump scare Hosoek and Taehyung would both jump, sharing a nervous glance and a giggle afterward.

Hoseok reached up at one point, taking Taehyung’s hand and twining their fingers. When Taehyung blinked at him, he smiled. “Easier to squeeze if you get scared. Less likely to scream.”

Taehyung grinned that bright grin again and nodded, looking back at the movie.

They made it through the rest of it, jumping and squeezing each other’s hands. Hoseok finished his drink and was tempted to order another, but figured sobriety would be an easier state to tackle scary movies in. When it finished, Taehyung reached out, finding the sequel and grinning at Hoseok.

“Another?”

Hoseok hesitated, but nodded. That smile… It was something else entirely. The way his heart picked up a few beats when Taehyung rested his head on his shoulder again, twining their fingers on the seat between them. The waitress came by and smiled softly. “Can I get you two anything?” She asked.

“We’re okay, I think. Taehyung?”

“I’m good. Thank you,” Taehyung smiled up at her and she nodded. The two turned their attention back to the film.

Six hours and three sequels later, Hoseok heard a soft snore. He shifted as gently as he could to see, smiling a bit when he realized Taehyung had fallen asleep on his shoulder. His heart still did that little pitter-patter. This was a problem. How could he let himself fall for a guy he’d just met? A guy who was willing to fly across the world to meet a stranger? A young, handsome guy who probably took risks like Hoseok changed socks and thought that going out without properly re-lacing his shoes every morning was totally acceptable. As Hoseok sat in silence, no longer needing to focus in order to potentially distract Taehyung as needed, his mood soured.

What was so wrong with him that people wanted nothing to do with him? He was safe, sure. And he was peculiar… But he wasn’t a bad man, he thought. Just because he didn’t take risks didn’t mean he was no fun. Or wasn’t a good person to be around. But time and time again that was the message. Not good enough. Not fun enough. Not exciting enough.

And this – this foolish idea that had begun formulating in his head, the fantasy that maybe this young man would be willing to give him a chance – it was frivolous at best. It was an unnecessary risk. The statistics, if Hoseok were to crunch them, were sure to show that the chances of Taehyung saying yes were low enough, staying with him beyond one date even lower, and staying with him long term statistically insignificant. So he was best just getting it out of his head now, before it sat and festered like a wound.

The film ended, as the others had, with a “dead” monster and a jump scare to leave it open, and Hoseok was too unhappy to even startle. He tugged the earbuds out and turned off the screen, sinking down a little to try and rest. And – despite his bitter mood as he drifted off to sleep – he couldn’t help but notice just how nice Taehyung felt on his shoulder.

Hoseok awoke with a good, hard stretch, blinking up at the roof of the plane. “Rest well?” Taehyung’s voice was soft and deep, and Hoseok felt goosebumps rise to his skin.

“I did. Did you?” He asked.

Taehyung nodded, leaning his head on the back of the seat. He shifted over and pulled his legs up into the seat so he was facing Hoseok directly. “Do you have a partner at home?”

“A what?”

“You know… Boyfriend or girlfriend.”

Hoseok shook his head. “Just me on my own. I work too much for dating.”

“Not true, necessarily,” Taehyung argued.

Hoseok half smiled. “That, and all my exes have told me I’m too boring.” He reached out and tapped the screen; fifteen minutes until they were set to land.

“Boring?”

“I don’t like unnecessary risk,” Hoseok explained. “I don’t like being surprised and I prefer to plan things so that they will – in as much statistical assurance as they can – go in the right direction.”

“I don’t see that as such a bad thing.”

Hoseok laughed. “You’d be one of the few. Most leave because I’m just too safe.”

“Sometimes people… Some people… Need safe,” Taehyung argued. He rested his chin on his knees. “I need safe.”

“You’re quite wounded,” Hoseok agreed, wondering if he was reading between the lines in the way Taehyung meant – or if it was wishful thinking.

The two sat in a comfortable silence as the plane descended. At least Hoseok figured it was comfortable. He was anxious, as he tended to be in social situations where he wasn’t sure what the other party was thinking. But Taehyung seemed relaxed, sitting next to him, flipping through his phone. Hoseok wondered if he was reading messages from the ex, or someone new. Did people move on so fast? He didn’t know. Usually other people asked him out, and he calculated the risk based on how well he knew them – not the other way around.

The two got off the plane and headed to the luggage carousel together, not purposely, but also not purposely straying from one another’s side either. As they waited, Taehyung looked over.

“ Am I right in thinking you’re gay?” He asked abruptly.

Hoseok blinked, hesitated… Then nodded. “You are.”

“And single. And a sweet guy who helped a crying stranger on the plane.”

“Wouldn’t you have?”

“I don’t know,” Taehyung admitted, shrugging. He snagged his suitcase from the belt. “Let me give you my phone number.”

Hoseok took his own bag. “Why?”

“So we can go out on a date.”

Hoseok smiled sadly. “Taehyung…”

Taehyung’s smile drooped a little. “Oh. I misread.”

Hoseok shook his head. “Yes and no. You are a handsome young man, and I do find you interesting and fun to listen to. But we don’t know each other. And because of that, I can’t calculate the risk of going out with you.”

“So why not get to know each other? That’s what the point of dating is.”

“True. And I could, except even only knowing you for this short time… I can say with relative confidence that you would have minimal interest in me beyond a date or two.”

“And why is that?” Taehyung asked.

“I’m not your type.”

“Shouldn’t I decide that?” Taehyung chuckled. “You’re cute, nice, independent.”

“And utterly boring. While you’re the type that watches horror movies to feel better, and flies across oceans to meet a stranger in the hopes of finding true love. I could never take such risks. Or any risks, really. That’s why I’m not good for you.”

“Yeah, well look how good taking risks did me.”

“This time, maybe. But that’s the thing about risks. They can end badly. I don’t like that. I don’t like things ending badly.”

Taehyung sighed softly. His head drooped a little but he nodded. “I wish that wasn’t your answer, but I appreciate you being honest.”

Hoseok smiled weakly. “Look, Taehyung. You’re young, you’re handsome as hell, you’re talented. You’ll find a person to treat you right. That’s a good match for you.”

“I hope he’s like you, honestly.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know enough to know you’re smart and thoughtful. I hope he’s the type of person who’d help a crying stranger on a plane.” Taehyung reached out and grabbed Hoseok’s wrist. He gave it a gentle squeeze. “Risks are scary, but the only way to truly be happy sometimes, is to take them. Just remember that. You took one today and you changed my whole mood – Possibly my whole week. Risks don’t always end badly, but you’ll never know unless you take them.” He let him go and sighed, pulling the handle up on his bag. “Have a good life, Hoseok. Maybe I’ll see you around one of these days.”

“Same to you, Taehyung. Keep your chin up.” Hoseok watched Taehyung walk off before heading off himself. Strangely, as he rode the bus back to his apartment (he’d calculated that the bus was far safer at this hour as opposed to a taxi), he felt… Not so sure about his decision with Taehyung.

He’d weighed his options, and saying yes to Taehyung had seemed like the riskier option. And risk equaled bad news. That motto had always worked for Hoseok. So why did it feel so bad?

As the days passed, turned into weeks, Hoseok thought less of Taehyung. He sometimes wondered where he was, what he was doing, if he found a good job or a nice boyfriend. If he ever thought of the strange, kind stranger on the plane who turned him down in the airport. Doubtful, Hoseok figured. He wasn’t memorable enough.

Whenever he did think of Taehyung, a small, painful knot formed in his stomach. The internet had said it was probably cancer, as those sites are apt to do, but his best friend, a med student, had ruled it as simply regret. Impossible, really, Hoseok didn’t have regrets. That was the great thing about calculating risks. He was confident in his choices and therefore had no need for regrets. Except this one, maybe.

Two and a half months after Taehyung and Hoseok had departed the airport, Hoseok was having a bad day.

He’d woken up late – something he never did. He’d been forced to take a bus because it was safer than a taxi at the hour he’d be on the road, but it also made him an hour late. On the way to his office, briefcase and coffee in hand, he’d tripped – having tied his shoelace haphazardly – and spilled his coffee down his front in an attempt to prevent himself from face planting into the wall. Which meant a trip to the nearby mall – this time walking distance – to get a replacement shirt, seeing as he had a presentation… That he was three minutes and fourteen seconds late to.

After the fiasco of the presentation, Hoseok sat outside for a few minutes during his lunch, attempting to re-gather his bearings and finish his day strong. It was working too. He felt calmer, he felt like the rest of the day would be great. Just a quick pop over to one of the quick eateries to grab a bite before his lunch hour was finished. He flipped his wrist to check the time, scowling when nothing but tanned skin peeked out of his shirtsleeve. Right. He’d forgotten to put on his watch in his rush this morning. No problem, the world was technologically advanced for a reason. He opened his briefcase and pushed some papers around, hunting for his phone. It was tucked away in the pocket. And absolutely dead when Hoseok tried the power button.

He huffed and snapped his briefcase shut.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” he called to a middle-aged woman walking across the sidewalk in front of him. He bowed politely. “Sorry to bother you, but do you have the time? My phone is dead.”

“Oh, of course. It’s one forty-three.”

Hoseok’s eyes bulged. He scrambled to his feet, startling the woman.

“Sorry!” He cried, bowing again. “Late back to work. Thank you so much.”

He rushed off toward the office once more, feeling even more frazzled than when he’d left for lunch. How had he sat there for a full hour and fifteen minutes nearly? He never lost track of time like that. His days were simply too busy.

Hoseok berated himself as he turned into his office building. How had his day turned out so badly? He hadn’t done anything different the night before. There was no change in diet or weather or season or schedule to throw him off. So what the hell was going on?

Hoseok was so up in his head that he failed to see the young man turning the corner as he did. The two collided, and Hoseok went down, skidding on his butt as his briefcase, not shut firmly from his earlier panic, opened and scattered papers across the hall. The man in front of him swore then gasped as he fell as well.

Hoseok looked at him, his eyes bulging. “Taehyung?!” He spluttered.

Taehyung gasped, yanking his headphones from his ears. His hair was shorter, a little neater to his head, and he was wearing a nice dress shirt and slacks. He had a black binder under his arm. “Hoseok!”

He scrambled to his feet, setting the binder down and going to help Hoseok gather the papers.

“How have you been?”

“Good, what are you doing here?” Hoseok asked, piling them back in his briefcase.

“I’ve got a job interview. I mean I had one. For my art. This place is looking for a new marketing team member and I thought my photography and art might be good. Plus, I’ve improved my computer art skills too. What about you? Why are you here?”

“I work here,” Hoseok said, standing up straight and brushing himself off.

“No way, what a crazy coincidence,” Taehyung said, grinning. “They really liked my stuff.”

“We’re in desperate need of some fresh blood in that department,” Hoseok agreed. He hesitated, his heart doing a strange little stutter step now that they stood so close to one another.

“How have you been?” He asked after a second.

Taehyung smiled a little distantly. “I’m okay. I got over the breakup. Took some time, but I’ve moved on.”

“Yeah? Found a new partner?” What a strange feeling, Hoseok thought. That clench in my chest. I hope it’s not heart trouble…

“No, still single.”

Ah, it’s released now, probably just a fluke from my crazy day.

“I see,” Hoseok replied lamely.

“And you? Found someone perfectly safe?”

“Not really looking,” Hoseok admitted. “I mean, not opposed, but… I tend not to ask people. Ah…” He shrugged awkwardly. “When do you find out if you get the job?”

“They’ll call me later this week.”

“Ah, good. Well. Maybe I’ll see more of you around then. Must be going now…” He hesitated once more before moving past Taehyung toward the stairs. Taehyung grabbed his wrist, stopping him.

“Hoseok… The airport. When you refused me…”

Hoseok swallowed hard, lowering his gaze.

“I’m glad you did. I needed time to recover mentally from the breakup and get myself back together.”

“Good. I’m glad. You’ll be all the better for it.”

“But,” Taehyung pressed, still not letting his wrist go. “But I haven’t stopped thinking about you. And my interest in you hasn’t faded.”

“Taehyung…”

“I don’t want danger right now, Hoseok. I want you to know that. I want calm. I want peace and relaxation and a steady, firm ground. Someone to support me, that I can support just as much. Someone who isn’t going to go wild, and would rather stay inside playing a board game or snuggle on the couch with a good action movie than go run a marathon. Just so you know.” Taehyung let him go, his face pinching for a moment.

Hoseok hesitated, not sure how to respond. His hesitation must have told Taehyung something though, because Taehyung tugged a pen out of his pocket. He walked over to the entrance desk, thankfully unmanned for lunch, and snagged a sticky note from it. He scrawled on it and slapped it into Hoseok’s palm.

“It’s a risk. I know that. But think about it. I’m free this week… Pretty much all week.”

Hoseok nodded, taking the paper. “I will. Be safe… The cars…”

“I will. Enjoy work.” Taehyung put his earbuds back into his ears and grabbed his portfolio before he headed out the door.

Hoseok watched him go before looking at the sticky note in his hand. Taehyung’s number was written on it, along with his name. Hoseok’s chest clenched again, and his stomach knotted up in that little twist. So maybe he did like Taehyung. He sighed and tucked the number into his pocket before hurrying up the stairs to try and get some work done before he ended up staying late.

Unfortunately, the events of lunch did not lend themselves well to an atmosphere of hard work and focus. Hoseok’s mind kept drifting. To Taehyung, to the number in his pocket, to what he’d said. He wanted safe. He described exactly the type of man that Hoseok was. Safe, boring in the eyes of so many, and said that was his ideal. Was he being honest? There was no reason for him to lie, really, Hoseok figured. So why not be honest. Would it change? Maybe. Probably, if he was being honest with himself. Most of the time humans did change. But was that such a bad thing?

Of course it’s a bad thing. Change is uncalculated… Change is a risk.

“Shut up,” Hoseok whispered to himself. He scooped up his desk phone and dug Taehyung’s number out of his pocket.

Taehyung picked up on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Is this Taehyung?”

“Hoseok? Yeah it’s me.”

“I’m free tomorrow night. I thought I’d be free tonight but… I seem to be quite distracted and will likely not be leaving the office in time for dinner.”

“Tomorrow night,” Taehyung repeated. Hoseok could hear what he thought was a smile in his voice. “Dare I suggest… I could pick you up something for dinner. If you wanted. Since I know where you work.��

Hoseok hesitated. What if he was late tomorrow because of it? What if he couldn’t sleep? What if he said something silly to Taehyung because he was tired? “I—”

“Too big of a risk?” Taehyung offered.

“Yes. I’m sorry. Was this a mistake? I’m so strange.”

Taehyung’s laugh was bright, and Hoseok’s heart skipped a few beats. “You’re not weird. You are. But I like it. Tomorrow night is fine, but please remember to eat tonight, okay? Even if it’s something quick. You’re going to feel worse if you don’t.”

“You are likely correct.”

“Is this a cell phone?”

“No, office… My cell phone is dead.”

“Well, when it charges, why don’t you text me. You can pick a place, I’m not really all that picky about food except I don’t like super spicy things. We can decide the best way to meet up and the details then, or tomorrow morning and afternoon. Does that work?”

“That sounds good. Very planned… Thank you for being patient and understanding.”

“I want this to work out, Hoseok.”

Hoseok hesitated. “I’d say… It’s a calculated risk.”

“How are the rewards?” Taehyung asked, a grin in his tone. “Do they greatly outweigh the risks?”

Hoseok smiled a little to himself. “No. Frankly, they are… Probably pretty balanced. But with great risk comes great reward, or whatever the daredevils say, right? This reward seems too good to pass up.”

“And what reward is that?” Taehyung teased.

“Oh, one of a kind. A beautiful boy. Even better, one that is okay with me being weird and boring.”

“Sounds like a good reward.”

“I agree. So… I’ll text you when I get off work and charge my phone, okay?”

“I’ll keep an eye out for it.”

“Goodnight.” Hoseok hung up, staring at his phone for a moment after he did. What a risk. That was a huge risk, who was he kidding?

He turned back to his computer, working on spreadsheets while going through a mental list of good restaurants for a first date. It was a risk, no denying that. But sometimes, every now and then, the reward is worth the risk.

#vhope #thebtswritersclub #bangtanarmynet #btsguild #networkbangtan #bangtanxm #fluff #taeseok #taehyung x hoseok

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oftenderweapons · 4 years

Text

The Magic Touch - maknae line

Pairing: maknae line member x reader

Wordcount: 1.3-1.5k words

Genre: smut, fluff, (Jimin’s and Jungkook’s are a bit angsty)

Rating: 18+

Hello there everyone! One day later, here I am, I’ll repeat my general considerations.

I was very conflicted about posting, especially since I realised some of you might be focusing your energies on the BLM movement -- at the same time I thought that, as a writer, one of my priorities is to offer a momentary getaway from real life, especially since many countries are still affected by quarantine and lockdown, and many of us might need to get away from all the stress in the meantime.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m pretty busy with exams and studying but I really wanted to post this because last week, on May 28th, we celebrated International Masturbation Day! So, as you can see, the theme is masturbation.

I think that the general message here is that you don’t have to be single to masturbate, and that masturbation and couple life are not mutually exclusive.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: There is some swearing. Also, THIS IS QUITE DESCRIPTIVE (sometimes even too descriptive for my own good) with some possibly rough language, pretty much any kind of masturbation, mostly mutual, but also individual, of course this thing is filled with exhibitionism and voyeurism, unprotected foreplay and spit play, mentions of unprotected sex (GUYS, PLAY IT SAFE, CONDOMS, DENTAL DAMS, GET TESTED REGULARLY!!!!), use of restraints and sex toys, namely one vibrator and one dildo. Mentions of cheating (it’s just JK being insecure, his gf loves him like crazy), apparently the key to unlock Jimin’s part was to switch (haha! in literature we call this foreshadowing) his and Taehyung’s prompts. Lately I’ve been thinking about dommy Jimin and damn, I had to share: he’s merciless and a tease, enjoy. Taehyung loves watching his gf, no news. JK is a young bunny and he couldn’t understand much what was happening, he was Jungshook through most of it but he appreciates.

Sceneries about 1300-1500 words each.

Enjoy!

Here you can find the hyung line

And you can find my masterlist here

Jimin

How much more could it go on like this?

Would he really tease you for the rest of the night?

“Stop it. Please, just get it done.”

“Not tonight baby.”

He moved his hand away from your thighs once more. He had been edging for almost an hour now. Tonight he was merciless. He had trapped your nipples in his favourite clamps and was currently pulling at the string connecting them, his other hand pressing against your sex.

“You want me to stop?”

“Please, just want to cum.”

“Are you aroused?”

You nodded desperately. Tonight he was being a huge switch, going from dom to sub every two minutes.

On the sofa he had initially curled up in front of you, letting you be the big spoon as he rested his head on your bicep. Then he had pinned your hands and moved your shirt aside to suck you nipples, his hard on pressing against your crotch. Then he had pulled you on top of him, acting as if he wanted to suffocate between your tits.

And now you were below him, mouth wide as he finally took off his shirt, the head of his erection pressing against the waistband of his underwear. Would he let you touch him?

“Sit there. I want you to watch me. If you touch yourself I’ll stop.”

You nodded sharply after he took off his underwear. “Have you missed me?”

“Yes, I have baby.”

“All of me?”

“I missed you on top of me. Inside me.” You licked your lips as you saw the first drop of pre-cum appear on his glans.

“Are you wishing you could lick it?” He teased with a smirk.

Another nod, this time eager and convinced.

“Aren’t you always hungry for me, my queen.” He collected it with his palm, offering it before your lips. You lapped at it. “Wet my hand for me, love?”

You obeyed silently.

His hand ran down his torso while his wet one grabbed the middle of his sex and slid downwards, contracting around the base.

“How can I help you?” You asked.

“Just look at me. I love it when you watch me. You give me so much attention. Make me feel so beautiful.”

“You love it baby, don’t you?” You smiled wildly.

He nodded, his lower lip plum as he bit it. He was too handsome for his own good: kneeling at the feet of the bed, his left hand kneading the base of his neck, his erection half hidden by his hand.

“Will you let me touch you?” You asked, praying every god that he would not deny you.

He giggled playfully. “Of course not.”

You couldn’t hold back your disappointment, pouting like a babygirl.

“Don’t be a brat, princess. You know that the moment you touch me, you’ll want to put your mouth on me, and the moment you put your mouth on me you’ll want me inside your pretty, wet pussy.” He teased with a smug grin. “Wait for it like a big girl.”

Still you clenched your jaw and tried to get closer to him. “Don’t you love me? Don’t you love the way I touch you?” Maybe you could hit his switch. Maybe you could make him your pliant little boy and climb him and use him to fuck your brains out.

“Wait.” He said, his voice stern.

“I know you want me to touch you.” You tried to persuade him with a saccharine voice. “You love my hands on you.” You sat on your knees and started getting closer to him, slowly, one inch at a time. “You always cum when I stroke you. You love my delicate touch, my warm, slipper fingers, you love it when I press on you there... ”

You were face to face now.

“Don’t.” He ordered you.

“Or?” You cheshire grin and your fingertip on his knee were immediately interrupted by his body smashing against yours, dragging you back to the headboard.

“One can’t even get off in peace in this house. Dammit.”

“You know I’ve been trying to get off too, right? The feeling’s mutual.” His body was snug against yours, his erection pressing on your hip.

“Quit the attitude. Now.” He was almost scary.

“Then fuck me.” You replied snarkily.

“Fine, you had it coming. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” With his body pinning yours he reached for his bedside table, rummaging until he found a pair of black furry handcuffs.

“Give me your wrists or it will get worse.”

“Try me, sweet thing.” Since the ball was rolling, might as well play.

He chuckled darkly. “Oh, I will.” He grabbed your wrists, joining them on top of your head and cuffing them together, looping the chain around a bar of the bed. Sometimes you thought he had that bed specifically for this purpose. Even though it was usually him being cuffed to bed.

“Well, well. look who can’t touch me now.” He teased. He rummaged in the drawer again, emerging with a small silk case. “I told you I would ruin you. But you didn’t believe me. Guess I’ll have to deliver.” He extracted a small vibe. You knew it too well. Usually you would restrain him and let him watch as you wore the vibe and let it overstimulate you, orgasm after orgasm. You biggest source of joy was being turned against you.

“Now will you apologize for your smartmouth and keep quiet while I get myself off?” He asked.

You did not reply, looking at him with hostility.

“Fine.” He forced your knees apart and put the cherry-shaped vibe in his mouth. Extracting it, he switched it on and pressed it against your clitoris. Your reaction was immediate. “Let’s see if you still misbehave now.” He pushed it inside and instantly your eyes blew open, your lips parting in an high pitched moan.

“Oh my god. Jimin, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I swear I’ll be good.” You didn’t last one minute before you started begging. But he was completely insensitive to your pleas, once more comfortably sitting on the balls of his feet, this time he placed himself at our feet, between your spread legs.

“Not so bold now, are we ____?” He provoked, his hands reaching slowly for his hard on, enjoying how stressed out you looked below him.

“I’m so sorry.” You were so close to sobbing.

“Saying sorry is not enough baby. You passed your limit tonight. Take your punishment like a big girl.” He started touching himself with ease, not fretting over it, tugging at the upper half and observing you writhe in front of him. His confidence and arrogance got you upset even more: he was there, all triumphant and smug while you were making a mess of yourself with your body juices. Your cries and pleas were whiny and childlike.

“Can’t you keep quiet, princess, I’m trying to focus here.”

“Please,” you begged once more.

He collected some of his precum on his fingers and then forced them in your mouth.

“Now keep quiet.” He cocked his head. “Don’t you wanna cum?” He baited.

You nodded frantically, sucking his fingers.

“Then silence.”

And silence was, the toy only edging you more and more, since it was set on the lowest level and you were sadly unable to orgasm without contact on your clit. Though you knew that if you were lucky enough to resist until he got inside you, his pubis rubbing against your sensitive bud, you would be seeing stars straight away.

But you weren't silent because of his orders, but rather because of the sweet moans and whimpers coming from his throat. He had edged himself too, meeting your eyes every now and then and blushing when you smiled at him softly, interrupting only when your brow furrowed and you needed to concentrate on the feeling between your legs.

Now he seemed finally ready to orgasm, his face completely relaxed and focused as a long, sweet exhale fell from his mouth, making you shiver.

“I’m cumming baby.” He said in his small voice.

“Want you all over me.” You replied, inviting him to mark you.

His eyebrows knitted together, he pouted, nodding, then you saw his sculpted torso undulate and his hips snap towards you, making him crumble on top of you, spilling over your breasts and stomach in a messy puddle.

It took him over half a minute to recover, and by now you felt so tender and on edge that even his lashes fluttering over your breasts made you get wetter -- you were surprised you could get any wetter than this.

He opened his eyes, his voice soft as a cloud when he said: “I want you to use me for your pleasure, my queen.” And he switched, once again.

Taehyung

“Head or foot?”

“I get the foot.” He answered.

“Nice. Very polite of you.”

“I can see better when you take the head. I can kneel but you need to prop yourself up.”

“Thank you, Tae.”

“You’re welcome, my love.” He wrapped a hand around your waist, leading you to the bedroom.

“Would you want some music?”

“Do you?”

“Not really.” He started undoing his shirt. You removed your jacket, freeing all the small motherpearl buttons of your blouse. You were standing right in front of each other. Shame was something you had removed from your relationship almost a year ago. If it had ever existed.

You talked about everything, saw everything of each other. Every dimple, mole, scar, valley and plane, curve and angle of your bodies had been explored patiently and devotedly. Looking at each other like this was a form of worship rather than erotism.

“Is it too cold?” You asked, looking at the thermostat. Tae was rather sensitive to changes of temperature.

“It’s nice. But maybe I’ll change my mind once I’m naked.” He took his pants off, his feet softly padding on the marble floor, nearing the enormous bed. All that space was a waste, you always slept latched together, one on top of the other. You could probably fit in a baby bed.

“No underwear today?” You asked, removing the small vintage star-shaped pendant he had gifted you.

“I showered at BigHit, then realised I had forgotten my boxers but I thought it wasn’t worth it wearing the sweaty ones. I was getting home anyways.”

You smiled and removed your pencil skirt. “Stockings on or off?”

He pondered. “Off.” Pause. “No, on.”

You giggled and mirrored his boxy grin. “Okay, on. Coming,” you teased, taking off your panties. “Wait. Panties, bra?”

“Pantied off, bra on.” He ordered.

“Fine.” You trotted to the head of the bed and climbed, his eyes trailing over our legs and the curve of our bum.

“I love your curves, princess.”

“I love your face.” You complimented back.

“I love your thighs, soft and buttery.” He said, shaking his hair out of the way, kissing you left ankle.

“I love your hands, strong and naughty.”

“Where do you want my hands?” He asked you, waiting for your instruction.

“On yourself. Rake your hands on your lower belly, on your pelvis. You can touch anywhere but your cock.”

“Like this?” He showed you.

“Yes, but slower.”

By now you were leaning with your back against the pillows, your legs wide for him, to look, to sniff, anything but touch.

He obeyed. “Tell me.”

“Keep going. I want to see your cock come to life.”

“I love it when you use that word.” His smile was already more subdued, his stare dreamy and light.

“I like using it. I like how raw it feels. It matches the way you fuck me.”

“About fucking you, wet your right pointer and middle finger.” You complied eagerly, strings of saliva connecting your tongue and digits. “Now use them to spread your labia.”

You reached for your sex, slowly, without a care in the world. You showed him your wetness, the pink of your tender skin.

“Keep teasing your outer labia. Don’t touch your clit.” He said.

“You can grab the base. Squeeze it.” You told him in return. He complied with a small groan. “That’s it. Keep squeezing. Slowly. Feel it pulse.”

Taehyung’s eyes were closing, but he fought the need just to look at you. “One finger in. Only one.” He urged you.

You licked your lips and felt the thick sense of wetness hosted in your cunt. “I’m so wet.”

“Can I taste?” He questioned. You offered him your finger. “Delicious, as always. We should keep eating fruit.”

“Maybe it truly is the ananas.” You commented, cupping your breast with your spare hand. He hadn't asked you to but he wouldn’t hold you back. Not tonight.

“Long live the ananas.” He muttered. You laughed.

Sex with Taehyung was made like this. Sharing. Laughing. And him wrecking you like you were his very personal fucktoy. Not to your distaste, you might add. Being treated like a diva from the Sixties, worshipped like a goddess. It was like being one of those actresses from old time erotica. Turned into muse, lover, girlfriend, sidekick, saint, sinner… He could morph you into anything, mould you into his perfect match, every single time. Wearing masks, costumes, accessories, being half a deity and half a whore. He was your director, liberating you of all the boundaries of society, carrying you across those moral borders that were so heavy on you. Sex with Taehyung was metaphysical.

“Did it work on you too?” You asked curiously.

“You tell me.” He squeezed his shaft and offered you a drop of his precum.

You licked it clean. “Mh mh.” You moaned enthusiastically.

“Ananas at noon every friday, so we get dirty on the weekend,” he considered, “Strawberries on saturday and watermelon on sunday so I can pop that cherry and smack that peach.”

You laughed genuinely at that, your heart melting at the adoring look in his eyes. He was in a good mood today. You were grateful. “Curl your hand in a fist. Use it like my cunt,” you suggested him.

He nodded. “Like this?”

“Yeah. Like that.” You were still massaging your slit with one finger, now fully covered in your juices. “Don’t get carried away, I’m waiting for you.”

He looked at you confusedly, then, as if waking from a trance: “Two fingers, still no clit.”

You licked your lips provokingly, then looked at his face from under your lashes. “This way?” Spreading your fingers once inside, showing him that you were getting stretched and ready for his girth.

“You know how to do it, my love.” Your eyes were glued to the motion of his hands, his shaft penetrating one as he reached the base with the other. That was his favourite way of touching himself. It was the first thing you had learnt about him in bed, roughly two months after your first date. You were making out and you started palming him through his jeans, wanting to see how he looked when possessed by bliss. And he had taught you. A few days after that, he had asked you to lay in bed and touch yourself for him, show him how you worked, what you liked.

So when he started using his large left hand on his shaft and his more precise right palm on the tip, circling around it, using the digit of his middle finger to tease his slit and frenulum, you knew he was read to go for the killing blow, arousing you visually with how his body moved this close to orgasming, and giving you the final command.

“Touch your clit, two fingers in circular motions.” You started.

“Faster.” He ordered you. You accelerated.

“Faster.” Again. “Spread your knees wider, let me see.” He spurred. “That pretty cunt needs to be seen. It’s too pretty to remain hidden.” He slowed down with his right hand. “Sway those hips like I was fucking you, princess.”

“Tae, so close.”

“Use your kegels. I need to see you clench.” That was your final undoing. You started rubbing furiously against your hand, thighs falling wide apart, much to Taehyung’s enjoyment.

Your eyes were still close, stars falling against your eyelids, burning white lines in that black sky, when you felt Taehyung’s weight on you. “Let me cum inside.”

You nodded, letting him wrap one arm under your waist, the other under your neck. That was all you needed to know he would fuck you rough, violent, a matter of minutes and he would reach his high and take you with him.

Hips snapping furiously, his arms holding you still and impaling you on his cock, he whispered: “Touch yourself”. Your second orgasm hit you hard as he finally got his first, groaning loudly without a care of who could hear, mouth needy and wet at your neck, and then at your own mouth, kissing you forcefully.

He was still completely paralysed a few minutes later, abandoned on your clothed breast as you absentmindedly caressed his hair. His gravelly voice rose suddenly. “I love many, many things of you, but you above them all.”

Jungkook

The smacking coming from the shower is what really gave you off.

The lewd sound made Jungkook go from confused, to curious to jealous and angry. Could it be…?

How could you? Why do this to him? Hurting him this much? Couldn’t you just tell him you wanted to break up?

As he reached the master bedroom, he noticed that the only clothes abandoned around were yours. And even though the sound of the smacking from the bathroom suggested other, he could hear only your moans. The door was ajar, the sound of the water echoing in the room.

“Googie.” Were you calling his name? Really?

He delicately pushed the door, enough to catch your reflection in the mirror. Yes, you were alone, but fear was still constricting his gut. He needed you to comfort him.

A little timidly, he showed his presence on the threshold and called your name.

His view was clear now, and he could finally figure out the whole puzzle. Your backside was pressed against the wall, one of your hands resting between your thighs, your fingers hidden among your folds, something of a bright hot pink colour just barely showing there.

“You’re home early.”

“Yeah.” His gaze still fixed between your legs, eyelids blinking frequently and quickly, his mouth twisted in surprise and puzzlement.

“Do you need the shower?”

“What are you doing?” He asked, head cocked to the side.

Was he playing coy? “Can’t you tell?” You moved your hand suggestively, letting the pink silicone slip out of you. Jungkook’s eyes went wide. “Want me to show you?” You were still chasing your first high, your nerve endings going haywire with stimulation.

“Need me there?”

“Depends. What do you want to do?”

“Let me just watch from up close. Then we’ll see...” He was already taking off his clothes. He really just needed you close. Something to comfort him after the scare he gave himself thinking you were in here with someone else.

“Come, then.” The moment he dropped his boxers you zeroed in on his half hard length, how his hand went immediately there as he kept his eyes on you, his timid side completely overpowered by his lust for you. You loved the effect you have on him. He joined you in the shower, not sure about what to do.

“Tell me what to do,” you asked him.

“Act like I wasn’t here,” he requested. “What would you do if I weren’t here?”

You smirked, fingers naturally coming to your clit, your left hand fumbling a little to reinsert the dildo inside you. When the head went past your entrance you let out a heavy moan.

His eyes went wide, his own sex quivering a little, now reaching its full length and touching against his belly button.

“I’m already so close.” You whispered, eyes half closed.

“How long have you been like this.”

“Maybe ten minutes, don’t really know.” You shut your eyes as the silicone stimulated an especially tender spot.

“You look glorious.” He said. You smiled, another moan parting from your lips. “Keep going. You’re close.” Your fingers now circling furiously on your clit, you heard the loud smacking of your ass against the tiles pick up again.

When you saw him start stroking himself, one hand pressing himself from above, one from below, his fingers laced so to apply pressure along all the shaft, you felt something snap inside you. Your eyes were hungry for him, the sight of him crumbling. He groaned as you reached for your breast, fingers tweaking the nipple.

He felt so close himself. It wasn’t surprising at all, considering it had been a while since you last had sex - period and all of that - so the moment he saw your body grow looser and messier, a high pitched whine escaping your lips as your fingers lest their rhythm, he knew he was done. Your orgasm triggered his, face scrunched in pleasure, one hand desperately going for the wall behind you to prop himself up. “Baby, yes.” He cried when your hands touched his back, snaking behind him. You felt his cum on your belly, slowly being washed away by the water.

“I need you so bad,” you whispered in his ear.

“Stay still.” He said, caressing your hair back as he abandoned his spot on your shoulder. One hand stroking from your neck, to your breast to your belly as he kneeled. The moment he realised that his semen was on you, and now trapped on his fingers, he looked at it questioningly, then he looked up at you, bambi eyes blown wide and begging as he put his stained finger on your lips. You opened your mouth for him and licked it clean.

“Such a good girl. Will you let me taste you now?”

You nodded eagerly. “Please.” That’s all it took for him to place his mouth on you, your knee bent and thrown over his shoulder. His hand kept massaging your breast, comforting the heaviness you felt there. His other arm enveloped around your waist, fingers searching for the toy attached to the wall, pressing around its suction cup to free it. You didn’t hear it pop and when you felt the tip pressing once more against you, you opened your eyes.

Jungkook, tongue pressed and rolling against your clit, eyes closed as if he were fully tasting you, enjoying every drop of you. He substituted his mouth with his thumb. “Do you want me to keep going?” He asked.

You nodded.

“Use your words.”

“Keep going.”

He immediately pushed the toy in, letting it settle while your moans echoed in the shower. Eyes fixed on you, he let his mouth lean against your pubis once more, tongue darting out to meet your essence. His free hand dipped down to grab his dick, teasing it with small motions.

“Googie, it feels so good.”

You knew it wouldn’t take you long. Especially considered that your second orgasm was always so easy, usually a few minutes away from your first. He loved eating you out on your second because you were always so pliant and relaxed, while you first was always more complicated and always risked turning in a bilaterally stressful experience.

Touching himself one handed was slightly uncomfortable, but considering that he had you on his tongue and he could take advantage of the gorgeous vision of your chest inflating and deflating with you heavy breathing made quite the trick, his sex throbbing with need, his neck and face pressing you against the wall, so that you couldn’t escape his ministration, your writhing only causing you to roll from his mouth to the dildo without any chance of reprieve.

Suddenly grabbing his hair you felt your second high hit you, your standing leg shaking so bad you thought you would fall. Jungkook completely lost touch with reality as you started riding his face, your calf on his back only drawing him closer, trapping him. He felt his own release approach as your high diminished, letting go of the base of the toy only to use both his hands on himself.

When your vision finally focused again you were met with the sight of his head rolled back, his jaw clenched and the beautiful length of his cock slightly inflating, veins showing, as he finally came in his hand. You felt him groan against your stomach after his torso leaned forward, looking for your support.

When he opened his eyes, slowly, he grinned at you soft and wild, kissing your belly button and carefully removing the dildo from inside you.

“We should do this more often.”

You chuckled. You hoped you would.

#bangtan sonyeondan #bts imagine #bts headcanons #bts scenario #bts maknae line #jimin imagine #taehyung imagine #jungkook imagine #jimin scenario #taehyung scenario #jungkook scenario #jimin x reader #teahyung x reader #jungkook x reader

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starlene · 4 years

Text

The night before Henry Jekyll's wedding to Emma Carew, John Utterson has to make a very difficult decision.

Wedding preparations

For as long as he could remember, John Utterson had dreaded Henry Jekyll’s wedding day.

It was late and John’s thoughts circled around the ceremony tomorrow. His shoes were polished, his suit brushed, his tie ironed, his hands shaking. Only one thing left to prepare anymore.

Or two, keeping in mind that he was supposed to be giving a speech at the dinner tomorrow. He hadn’t put any thought into that. If, by some miracle, the wedding day proceeded without incident all the way to that point, he could certainly improvise something about the bride looking radiant and the groom unbearably dashing and commendably non-murderous, so please have a nice rest of your life together, have my blessing to make plenty of babies and see you in hell.

At the moment, John was more concerned about the details of his outfit.

It was a ridiculous thing, really. John’s uncle had given it to him on his 21st birthday. Just the sort of gift you’d expect from Uncle Abraham, honestly, ceremoniously handed to him with a solemn speech about the importance of a young man arming himself against the forces of evil. As far as John was concerned, it was better to avoid places where you’d expect to encounter forces of evil altogether, so for years, the sword cane had stayed hidden in the back of his wardrobe.

This time though, he couldn’t really avoid facing the evil. And before morning came, he would have to make his choice: should he take the weapon with him to Henry’s wedding?

It was a true wonder John hadn’t gotten himself discharged from his work yet. Ever since his first meeting with Edward Hyde a few weeks ago, he had spent his nights worrying, unable to sleep, and his days resting his head on top of the ever-growing piles of poorly drafted wills and contracts that were taking over his desk.

Worrying – or, lately more often than not, wide awake with Edward Hyde in his bed.

It was nothing to be proud of, but after having opened his door to Hyde once, John had ended up welcoming him into the house nearly every night. It was not Henry, but it was the closest he was ever going to get, and since Hyde always initiated it… John didn’t have it in him to say no.

That didn’t mean John didn’t always feel terribly guilty afterwards. What was he doing, taking such risks and doing such things with the devil that was tormenting Henry? And, supposing Henry was in there somewhere, aware of what Hyde was doing, feeling everything – well, how could John ever justify his own actions to him? John was certain Henry wouldn’t agree to him using his body like this. In all likelihood, their meetings were just one of Hyde’s many ways of making life more miserable for Henry.

Still, John wanted it so much he always let Hyde in. Let him in and thought about Henry.

Upon their first meeting, John had been certain – had desperately wanted to be certain – that Hyde was a completely separate creature from Henry, a surplus soul possessing his body. Every time they had met each other since, it had become harder to hold onto that belief. John was disturbed by Hyde’s sense of humour. It was disturbing that the demon had a sense of humour to begin with, and it felt even worse to realise how familiar Hyde’s tone actually was. John could hear Henry in Hyde’s snarky, often scornful words. The only difference was that Henry never aimed his truly biting remarks at John, trying his best to make his friend laugh by describing others instead, while Hyde’s derision was usually directed towards him.

Besides the ways they moved and the ways their voices sounded like, there were two big differences between the two that John could notice, as far as he could notice anything while receiving Hyde’s full attention. Henry had shame where Hyde had none, and while Henry had always been temperamental and tactless, Hyde was downright cruel, both in his words and in his actions. Hyde couldn’t take no for an answer – not that John was in the habit of refusing him, but everyone has his limits – and while John was stronger and sturdier he was, the punches hurt all the same.

Despite everything, it terrified John to see how skinny Henry’s body had gotten, so he didn’t strike back.

On the nights that Hyde did not knock on his door, John had plenty of time to think about him.

Most nights, John thought about an article he had read in the newspaper, complete with a gruesome illustration, about a girl being murdered at a brothel and the murderer getting away unnoticed. A girl that looked, as far as you could tell based on the messy illustration of her mutilated body, all too familiar, in a brothel that John could well recognise.

How could it be possible that Henry had created something that was capable of such senseless, ultimate cruelty?

And could it be possible that Hyde would do it again?

John had a certain respect for Emma Carew. Sure, when Henry had first told him about her, he had wanted to tear her head right off for taking away the last sliver of a chance that John could keep Henry to himself. But, upon meeting her, it had turned out he had a very hard time actually hating Emma. She was too clever for that, too quick-witted and down-to-earth. John had a feeling that, had Emma been born a man, she would have made a better lawyer than he could ever become.

Had Emma been born a man, there would also have been no wedding to worry about.

And had Emma been born a man, maybe she would have been able to take Hyde’s blows like John did. As she was, with her short stature, John was not so certain.

The pre-wedding dinner that evening had been the most excruciating affair John had ever taken part in.

It was the first time he had seen Henry in weeks. Of course, he had seen his body – the thought of how familiar, in fact, he had become with Henry’s body made John’s face burn – but this was the first time in weeks he could see Henry in there. Could be sure that the body’s original occupant was in charge of it.

If John still had some doubt as to whether Henry was aware of Hyde’s doings, the way Henry turned red at the sight of him cleared that from his mind. Clearly he could remember.

Most of the evening was spent in agonising silence. Emma’s bridesmaids, Elsie and Clara, tried their hardest to tease the groom-to-be and to talk with Emma, but their efforts were met with stone-cold silence. Sir Danvers mumbled a couple of awkward sentences about young people and pre-wedding nerves and spent the rest of the dinner quietly fiddling with the stem of his wine glass. John, Henry and Emma spent their time by, in turns, trying to catch and trying to avoid each others’ eyes.

While the dessert was being served, Henry excused himself with some unintelligible words and rushed out of the house. No one knew what to say to that, so the rest of them continued spooning away at their puddings without a word.

As John was about to leave, Emma caught up with him in the empty hallway.

“John. You have to tell me what’s wrong with Henry.”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me. You have no idea how this feels like. First I don’t see Henry in weeks, then he comes here tonight, looking completely unwell. He doesn’t speak to me, and for half the dinner, you two keep exchanging weird looks, and then he simply runs away. Clearly you know something that I don’t.”

“I said I don’t know.”

“I said don’t lie to me!”

“Miss Carew… Emma… if you’re so worried about him, have you considered…”

“Now you’re going to suggest I should call off the wedding, right? You would think it’s that simple, wouldn’t you! For Christ’s sake. After what happened with Simon… I can’t. It would ruin father, it would ruin me! You understand there is no way I’d be getting a third chance at marriage after that, do you?”

A silence.

“It’s not fair! I’m supposed to be marrying him tomorrow, I’m supposed to be moving into his house to live with him for the rest of my life, but it’s like he doesn’t trust me at all. It’s clear he’s telling you something he’s not telling me.”

“He doesn’t tell me anything anymore either.”

“John, please be honest with me. Don’t tell me what’s wrong with him if that’s such a bloody huge secret, but please, tell me this. Do you think he is ever going to get better?”

A silence, again.

“I don’t know, Emma. I really don’t know.”

The clock struck three in the hallway. For a short little moment after the unfortunate dinner party, John recalled, he had considered telling Emma the truth.

Had he loved Henry any less, he would have told her.

What was there to do? If Sir Danvers knew his precious daughter was marrying a murderer, he would use all his influence to get Henry before a judge and a jury before the day was out. John knew that to speak of what he knew would be to condemn Henry to a certain death, no matter if Hyde ever came back or not.

But not to speak… Henry had clearly been smitten with the girl Hyde had murdered. Henry had been best friends with John since they were twelve years old, yet Hyde had threatened him with a handgun, had hit and disparaged him… What if it wasn’t Henry who stood by the altar tomorrow but Hyde, and what if Emma looked at him the wrong way? Or what if Sir Danvers got in his way, or someone else? What if Hyde didn’t arrive unarmed?

Could John stand there and watch and not do anything?

For as long as he could remember, John Utterson had dreaded Henry Jekyll’s wedding day.

Placing the sword cane by the clothes he would put on when morning came, he wished, for the millionth time, that the day he would have to attend his best friend’s wedding would never come.

#Jekyll & Hyde #Jekyll and Hyde #Henry Jekyll #Gabriel John Utterson #Emma Carew #abuse cw #violence cw #and to finish off this smörgåsbord of charming #dubious consent cw #(not that either Hyde or Jekyll have any problems with it – but Utterson here doesn't know that)#trying to tackle the difficult question: what goes through one's mind when he decides to take a deadly weapon to his best friend's wedding #otp: nuoruuden hairahdus #my stories.

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adarlingwrites · 4 years

Text

Absolution

Summary:

noun: formal release from guilt, obligation, or punishment

The Capital Wasteland lauded the Lone Wanderer as a hero, a Messiah, a savior who's willing to give her life for the Good Fight. Beyond the legends, the propaganda, and the mythification that surrounded her legacy, there is only one person who knew her bare soul. She gave him his absolution, and now he will fight for hers.

VIII

September 23, 2277.

It’s been a few days since my recall. Percy told me to rest and we’ll leave for Rivet City in two days. Something about looking for a scientist called Madison Li. Percy said she might know where her father is.

On the wall opposite the couch hangs a photograph of the young mistress and her father. Percy said his name is James. Yesterday, she caught me looking at it and told me she was in a rush to leave the vault but she could never leave the photograph behind. He’s the splitting image of the mistress. Almost.

The mistress and I had supper in silence, a slab of brahmin steak the mistress seared herself, with Instamash on the side. The dog is currently curled up in my lap while I sit on the couch. I can’t remember sitting something on something relatively comfortable and relaxing for once. Hell, I can’t remember the last time I relaxed and let my guard down before this Vault girl walked into my life.

It’s… difficult acclimating to my new employer’s lifestyle. I have no complaints for the free food and board that comes with it, but having this much time to myself still feels strange. I’m afraid spending most of my waking hours standing in the corner in the Ninth Circle has something to do with it.

Percy saunters over and calls my attention, a book in hand. “Hey. I thought you might like this book, Charon,” she tells me, handing it over. The cover is faded and the paper is yellowed, but it’s intact. There’s a dog- a wolf?- on the cover, and its coat pattern looks similar to Dogmeat’s. I found it interesting, but to be truthful…

“Thank you, miss. Unfortunately, I cannot comprehend this book.”

“What do you mean? This book is in English so...”

I hesitated on whether I should tell her or not. Wastelanders never knew how to read or write, but I was born before the bombs fell. Granted, the circumstances robbed me of the opportunity to learn, but shame grows at the pit of my belly. I felt pretty damn stupid.

“I barely remember how to read, miss.”

“Oh. That’s fine, I can read to you and teach-” Percy stops mid sentence and has a look of surprise on her face. “-wait, how do you know the contents of your contract then?”

The itch in my brain returns, but I am too exhausted to entertain it. The nightmare took a toll on me. “It was taught to me. Please, don’t ask.”

My mistress nods, taking the book from my hand. “Okay. Do you want me to read to you?”

“If the miss wishes to,” I tell her, but she shakes her head.

“I’m asking if you want to, big guy,” said my mistress, a smile on her face.

It wasn’t unkind.

It’s warm, like the ones she gave me when she used to come by in the Ninth Circle. When did an employer care for what I want? I’m still learning to trust this girl, but how can I say no to a good thing?

“Yes.”

Percy’s smile turns into a grin, her too white teeth gleaming. I think I’ll never be used to how healthy the mistress looks compared to the other denizens of the wasteland. She scoots closer, the dog nestled between us, and opens the book.

“Chapter one, ‘The Trail of the Meat’,” she starts. “Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway…”

??? ??, ????

I feel the warmth of another person beneath me. A whisper tickles what’s left of my ear, voice familiar.

“Please.”

It’s Percy’s.

There’s desperation in her voice, and I get on my hands and knees to look at her. Face flushed and glasses fogging, she looks me in the eye, with an expression similar to the ones I see on the women in the skin mag she found in the scrapyard. She’s dressed in that stupid blue jumpsuit, and I grab the zipper and undo it, dragging slowly. Underneath, she wears her shirt and boyshorts, the fabric sticking to her sweat-drenched body.

Head thrown back, her pale throat is exposed. I lean in to swipe at a bead of sweat with my tongue, my ruined mouth dragging against the skin on her neck. The mistress’ skin is as soft as I imagined. My hands scrambled for purchase, squeezing her breasts, rough fingers slipping beneath her shirt, pinching her hard nipples. I latch on to one, and she sighs softly, small hands grasping what’s left of my hair.

“Please.”

I stop, on my hands and knees once more, and my hands move lower, grasping her shorts and peeling it from her hips, ruined fingers touching her in places I have no right to. She leans in and kisses my ruined cheek, before slipping her tongue in my mouth.

“Charon, please,” she begs, breaking the kiss and bucking her hips against me.

I kneel between her legs, ready to service my mistress.

“Charon…”

I want her to never stop saying my name.

September 24, 2277.

I jerk awake, an uncomfortable pressure between my legs, and I look down, cursing myself. I’m too fucking old for wet dreams. Suddenly having a nightmare seems more preferable. Of all the dreams I can have, why that, and why her?

I hear a gentle knock and Percy’s voice from outside the door.

Dammit.

“Charon?” she calls again. I scramble to find my pants, do my best to conceal the hard-on I have, and hope she doesn’t notice it.

I open the door, and Percy stands there, I can no longer stop myself from looking at her. Droplets of water are dripping from her hair, down her neck, and to her sleeveless white undershirt. She wears her vault suit with its sleeves tied around her waist. The thin, wet fabric of her undershirt reminded me of the dream I had and I felt myself twitch at the sight of her.

“Miss. What do you need?”

“Lunch is ready,” she tells me, and I nod. She turns around and descends down the stairs, and I follow her, eyes trailing down her spine, to the curve of her ass, to her legs. The guilt settles in and I look away, even if she doesn’t know where I’m looking. It felt dirty, ogling the kid who’s offering me a roof over my head.

We eat our meal in peace like before, and Dogmeat lies on my lap while I sit on the couch. After fifteen fucking years of standing in that corner, I will take every opportunity I can to sit. I pet the dog’s head until he falls asleep, the rise and fall of his breaths slowing down. The mistress sits on the other side of the couch, sipping a Nuka, legs raised to the backrest.

“Looks like the two of you had taken a liking to each other,” said Percy, that smile on her face again. I felt the corner of my mouth tug upward, but I didn’t respond. I didn’t feel the need to.

“What about me, Charon? Do you... like me?”

My head whips to my mistress’ direction, and she must’ve seen the look on my face for her to let out an awkward laugh. “Seeing how you didn’t hesitate to put down Ahzrukhal, I hope I’m earning your trust and not doing anything to earn that treatment,” the mistress explains.

When Percy clarified what she meant by the question, I felt somewhat relieved. I’m not blind nor numb; she is attractive, even when I’m more used to the sight of ghoulettes. My body’s reaction to her says it all. I thought she was on to me, and I was terrified for a moment. Not a lot of things terrify me.

I have no reason to let her know about that, and I hope the mistress never asks. This new employer is treating me so well, I’m afraid her finding out about the physical attraction I felt for her will result in the sale of my contract.

“Yes, I do like you, miss. Your treatment of other people and I is much more preferable than Ahzrukhal’s,” I tell her, and she gives me a sigh of relief.

“Great! Great, ahem- that’s good to hear. Very reassuring,” she mumbles, a nervous crack in her voice.

“Miss, is there something bothering you?” I ask her.

“Oh, me? I- I guess I’m just a little worried,” Percy stutters, averting her eyes from me. “I mean, you are the first person I’ve travelled with since I got out of the vault. I have friends here in Megaton, sure, but never someone who’d watch my back while I look for Dad. Then you came along. I’m still learning to trust you, and I hope you’ll trust in me too.”

“Your worry is not necessary, miss. The contract entitles you my absolute loyalty.”

“Loyalty is different from trust, Charon,” said Percy. “It’s the difference between you unflinchingly following Ahzrukhal’s orders to fuck someone up, and letting yourself be vulnerable to me so I can patch you up, if that makes any sense.”

I raise a brow, curious. “Please explain further.”

Percy gets off the couch and paces around. “Okay. Remember how you stood down when I asked you to, when Barrows and the others pointed their guns at us?” she asks.

I nod at her, and she sits back down. “I’ve been reading your contract. It says that you were to remove all immediate threats to my safety, and yet, you listened to me and let me talk them down.”

“I merely listened to your orders, miss.”

“But it says on your contract that you can refuse to entertain orders or requests that can cause harm to your employer or to yourself, correct?” Percy asks again, to which I nod. “Well, you must have trusted my judgment enough to entertain my request to stand down even when there’s an immediate threat to both of us.”

I am getting impatient trying to find the meaning behind my mistress’ words. “Miss, where are you going with this conversation?”

“Straight to the point, aren’t you? I wish I can talk like that,” Percy mumbles, an embarrassed look on her face while she palms at the back of her neck.

“Charon, I want you to trust my decisions not just because I am your employer, but because you think it’s sound,” Percy tells me. “At the same time, if you think something I do will compromise us, I want you to speak up.”

Pondering on her words, I finally look her in the eye. “So, you want me to question you if you think that your decisions would endanger us?”

“Yes, precisely that. I told you that you’re open to make suggestions and ask questions, right? I meant that I trust your input and opinions. So, if you have tactical advice, observations, or comments, you’re free to make them,” Percy replies.

“I understand now, miss. However, I don’t see how my input is of any value.”

“Hmm, I’m just a nineteen year-old girl who got lucky that the wasteland didn’t kill me the first month I spent outside the vault,” Percy replies. Hearing that she’s older than eighteen made me breathe more freely for some damn reason, but it also reminded me of her youth and how old I am in comparison. My mind pulls me back to my darker thoughts about her, and I felt disgust for myself.

“Sure, I know how to set broken bones, sneak around, and hack computers, but you? You’ve got more combat and survival experience than me. Hell, I would’ve been blown to bits if you didn’t tackle me when that Super Mutant threw the grenade. There was probably an oversight in my tactics for you to get hurt like that,” Percy continues. She looks… guilty.

“You’ve been around for more than 200 years. Surely there’s something in your wisdom that will help us,” she adds, a sheepish smile on her face.

“Charming. Very well, miss. I shall consider it as a standing order, and endeavor to provide my insight when necessary.”

“Thank you. I’m glad we had this conversation, Charon,” my mistress replies.

The afternoon went by slowly. While I spent my afternoon servicing my shotgun, Percy tinkers with a bunch of fission batteries. Soon, it was nightfall, and my mistress took me to the Brass Lantern for dinner, too tired to cook after an afternoon of work.

On my last bite of noodles, Percy turns to me. “Hey Charon, wanna grab something to drink?”

“There is nothing in the contract that prohibits me from accepting food and drink from my employer. So, yes.”

“Well then. Off to Gob’s saloon we go.”

I follow her through the rickety metal scaffolding that leads to the establishment, and the dog follows behind me. As soon as she breezes through the door, a woman with short red hair and a ghoul behind the bar counter stop whatever they’re doing.

“Well hello, Miss Dangerous,” the woman greets, smirking. Percy walks over to give her a hug. “Nice to see you, Nova. Hey Gob,” Percy greets, turning to the ghoul.

“Hey kid. I heard you were back in town, it’s good to see you in here again. We’re having a slow night,” Gob rasps, cleaning the bar top with a rag.

“I made new friends,” Percy tells them, and gestures to me and the dog. “Gob and Nova, meet Charon and Dogmeat.”

There’s a flash of recognition in Gob’s face, and his shoulders droops, cowering. “Holy shit. Charon?”

“Oh right! You’re from Underworld too,” Percy comments, taking a seat near the radio. “You two are familiar with each other, Charon?”

“I cannot remember, miss,” I tell her, brain itching. I was thinking long and hard when the other ghoul speaks up.

“I-I uh, remember when I told you that Moriarty bought me from slavers fifteen years ago? Charon was with them.”

Fuck. I remember now. My mistress turns to me with an expression that I can only describe as horror.

“You were a slaver?”

The venom in my mistress' voice terrifies me, and I am not easily terrified.

“They held my contract, miss. Then, they sold it to Ahzrukhal.”

Percy’s face softens. The tension from her shoulders melt. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.” Then, the soft look on her face gets replaced with a worried one. “My God, they used you to capture slaves?”

“...yes.”

Tense silence.

“Hey, I’m sorry for bringing it up. Didn’t mean to dredge up the past,” Gob finally breaks it, fetching scotch from the liquor shelf behind him. “The regular, kid?”

“Yeah,” Percy replies, exhaling shakily. “Well, at least I’m holding his contract now. He won’t have to do that shit anymore.”

The corner of my mouth tugs upwards again and I hope she didn’t see it.

“Can I get you anything?” Gob asks me.

“Beer.”

I settle beside Percy, who’s already downing her shot of scotch. Gob hands me my beer and I take a swig.

Nova sits beside my mistress. “C’mon, let’s have some fun.”

#lone wanderer #female lone wanderer #charon #charon fallout #fallout charon #oc: percy zhou #fanfic: absolution #series: through river acheron #fallout 3 #fallout #fallout 3 fanfic #fallout fanfic #writers on tumblr #tw: past slavery #cw: sex mention

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literatehiss · 4 years

Text

Face to Face & Eye to Eye

Note: Guess who forgot to cross post everything onto here!! For #JoneliasWeek2020 Day 1. Prompt Season 1/Pre-Canon & HR Violations Read on AO3 here

Jon tugged at his tie, fixing his collar as the polished floor below him shone like a mirror. He took a deep breath and took a quick peek at the notes he had prepared for his interview. There were a few other applicants dotted around the waiting room, all looking terrified.

This was not too unusual for a job interview at a prestigious research institution, but he was reasonably sure that most job applicants did not look like they were seconds away from walking to their deaths. Jon really wished the tube hadn’t been late, everyone else was dead silent and shaking in their suits. Had he missed something? He knew that the interview was with the Head of the Institute, and yes that was intimidating but really, this fear was almost unprofessional. Never-the-less, he waited patiently for the woman at the front desk, Rosie he was pretty sure she had introduced herself as, to call his name. Four of the waiting applicants had fled the waiting room before the applicant that had gone in before he had arrived finally stumbled out. Ah. Well, this explained the fear. The young man was crying and shaking, his breath high and panicked as he fled. He didn’t even stop to sign out with Rosie before he rushed out of the building, the door slamming behind him. Rosie didn’t even blink, calling out for the next applicant. No one stood up, they must have been one of the ones who had left. The next two applicants were either not there or were so terrified that they were stuck rooted to the spot. “Jonathan Sims?” Jon considered if this job was really worth it. Then he remembered the contents of his bank account and dragged himself up. Rosie looked almost approving at him as she gestured him over and gave directions to the Head Office. The corridor that he walked down seemed to stretch on forever, the heavy weight of a thousand eyes pressing down on him. It felt like whoever was in each of the offices he passed by was staring at him, but when he twitched his head to look, there was no one there. Eventually, he reached the solid wooden door, the copper nameplate on the door reading:

Elias Bouchard Head of the Magnus Institute

He reached up to knock, but before his fist hit the door, he was called in. The office was modern and impressively bland, the shelves barely filled and spaced out with strange vases and seemingly random items. The wood of the door, the floor and most of the furniture were all the exact same shade and the view from the large glass windows showed little more than the other side of the street.

The only thing in the office that wasn’t so aggressively bland was the heavy desk that sat in the middle of the room. The dark oak aged and worn from decades of use, maybe more Jon guessed from the stylized “J.M” carved into the front. With his current expectations of Mr Bouchard, Jon desperately hoped the skull sat on the desk was fake. “Hello, Jonathan was it? Please sit down.” The man didn’t sound like he was the sort of person to cause a grown man to flee an interview crying. The interview ended and for the most part, the interview was like any other, nothing that Jon wasn’t expecting. He supposed the previous applicant was having a bad day. Mr Bouchard stood up and walked over to Jon, gave his shoulder a pat as he talked. Jon became uncomfortably aware of the man’s thumb that rubbed against his throat slightly. Maybe he was just a physical kind of man, it was fine. Jon told himself it was fine. He started to zone out a little, his attention focussed on the heat of Bouchard’s hand on his shoulder. Vaguely aware that he was responding to the man’s questions, Jon felt like his mouth was moving without his permission and he had no idea what he was saying or what he was being asked. He finally seemed to shake himself out of his fugue when the (possessive) hand on his shoulder drifted up to cup his cheek. Jon blinked as he looked up at the Institute Head, who had a small smile on his face as he looked expectantly at Jon. Had he been asked a question? “I’m sorry what was that?” “When would you be able to start?” Bouchard looked amused as he repeated his question. “Oh? I should be able to start immediately.” “Excellent. I will see you in on Monday, I should have time in the morning for you” “Wait, I have the job? Already? What about everyone else?” Bouchard finally walked away from Jon, back around his desk, rifling through a draw and pulling out a sheet of paper. He gave Jon another slight smile. “Yes Jon,” He handed a pen over to Jon, looking at him expectantly “I have a feeling that you will do great things here.” Bouchard handed a pen over to him and gestured towards the contract that sat on the table. Jon could still feel the warmth on his shoulder and cheek where Bouchard had placed his hand as he pretended to look through the fine print of the contract. Pen poised over the paper, Jon scrawled his name on the dotted line, unknowingly signing his life away to the Magnus Institute and its Watcher.

#JonElias #joneliasweek2020 #Day 1

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meditationsfromthethirdrail · 4 years

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Credentials and Credibility

I’ve written about polarization and about empathy, rights and responsibilities in the last couple of blog posts. I have a long list of interrelated topics to cover before the November elections and I plan to keep plowing through them. But I’m well aware that my voice is a candle in the wind, to borrow the phrase used by T.H. White in the title of his tale about King Arthur’s dream of a more egalitarian and peaceful society. The number of readers of my blog thus far may barely run into double digits and that may never change. We are all drowning in information (and misinformation) unless we are either so socioeconomically disadvantaged as to be denied access or are actively disengaged from media. People in either category aren’t reading this.

With all the competition for the attention of readers and listeners, if someone wants to be heard above the din, he or she either has to have a forceful personality and a good platform, or actually have something important to say. I may not have either of those. Readers will judge for themselves. But it occurred to me that I ought to at least provide a little background about myself, which may or may not compel you to hear me. So here it is.

My story is not one of hard knocks and resentment - it’s a success story. There are a lot of ways to define success but I feel like I’ve grabbed a nice assortment of brass rings during my almost-seven decades on the planet. I’ve had a long and happy marriage to an incredible woman; I’ve traveled extensively (six continents and all fifty states) and lived for substantial periods in many states; I have three degrees from a major college; I attained a modestly high position in a large, global professional services firm and was financially well rewarded for my efforts; and I have many hobbies and interests that make it easy for me to stay fully occupied in retirement. Most importantly, I’m happy and at peace with myself and others. One could argue that these successes may have caused me to be out of touch with those who’ve enjoyed fewer of them, but I don’t think that’s entirely true, and I’ll try to suggest why.

My parents were the son and daughter of a sharecropper and a truck farmer/itinerant salesman, respectively, in rural Mississippi. They grew up during the Great Depression. They were married and gave life to my older brother when they were still in their teens. My dad dropped out of high school to sign up for the Army and served in the European theater in WWII. After the war he got a G.E.D. and served as a tractor mechanic for a while. Around the time I was born he was hired by a prominent agricultural implement manufacturing company, which led to him being transferred from Mississippi to Maryland to Ohio to Idaho to Oregon and to Iowa in order to earn promotions, and with family in tow. Later he also transferred to Texas, Missouri and Georgia, after I was left behind to attend college in Iowa. In those days it was possible to rise pretty high in the ranks of a business like my dad’s, without a glittery collegiate resume, if you worked hard and were willing to uproot yourself and your family whenever it was called for. So my dad eventually did rise fairly high in the ranks, and in the meantime my mom scrambled her way to a B.A., then taught high school English for a short time.

All’s well that ends well, as Shakespeare once said. My parents came a long way from the dusty fields where they picked cotton for 50 cents a day. My own road to success was much easier than theirs. During most of my childhood our family was financially situated about in the dead center of what was then considered middle class. My parents were not rich, although they accumulated modest wealth later in life, and they were always frugal, so I grew up with very few toys and a mostly empty closet. My parents were not the type to devote much time attending to my personal pursuits, other than to quietly demand that I get good grades in school. So I wouldn’t say I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but I understand that’s a relative thing. I certainly wasn't lavished with material things as a child, but I never went hungry or worried about having a roof over my head.

Aside from a base level of financial and emotional support and protection, the best thing my parents gave me was a solid education in a robust public school system. This was a pre Betty Devos era. Fortunately I had just enough innate ambition (or willingness to succumb to my parents’ expectations) and intelligence to perform in the upper tier, academically. I could have done better but I often didn’t “apply myself,” as they say. In retrospect I realize I had ADHD but few people understood or cared about that back then.

My college record was spotty at first, but ultimately pretty good. I had almost no grasp of what I wanted to do with my life. As a result, I had an abnormally extended adolescence, to roughly age 27. Maybe I was a trendsetter; I see a lot more of that happening with young people today. In any case I considered, at various times and among other things, becoming a Baptist minister (I was licensed and briefly attended seminary), an English professor (I have an M.A. in English and instructed freshman writing courses for three years), a novelist and poet (insufficient talent and discipline derailed that plan), and a hotel manager (nah). A happy accident of my wandering and indecision was that I acquired a lot of knowledge that later paid off in surprising ways I’ll come back to later. I was financially very poor the entire time, which gave me considerable perspective on what it means to be concerned about affording basics such as food and transportation.

I vividly remember the catalysts for my decision to enter the social mainstream. One was the fallout from a poker game I got into with some friends. One of my “friends” was a notoriously unethical character who, one late evening when I was especially unlucky and perhaps too full of beer, lured me into some bad bets that resulted in a $700 debt to him. At that time, when I was working several crummy part-time jobs to afford food and my $50 share of the rent on a slum-quality house we shared with two other guys, $700 dollars seemed like a million dollars. I didn't realize and no one told me that on the very next evening the same group of friends gathered for another poker game as I was licking my wounds and trying to form a plan. I was not present to witness the scene in which the guy whom I was newly indebted to suffered an equally humiliating loss - a loss that was forgiven by the victor on the condition that the loser would also forgive my loss. My friends assumed that Bart (not his real name, or is it?) would inform me that I was off the hook. He did not.

For the first time in my life, I devised a budget in order to determine how I could repay Bart the debt that didn’t actually exist, because that’s the kind of guy I am. I believed, and I still do, that a person is morally and ethically responsible for meeting whatever commitments he or she enters into. So I scrambled for more hours working as a church janitor, a tutor and a library assistant; I ate Kraft macaroni and cheese almost every day (30 cents a box, if I recall); I stayed in my room as if I had contracted the then-undreamt-of coronavirus; and I turned over every penny that didn’t go for rent and minimal food to Bart in three monthly installments until I was finally clear. I was six feet tall but my weight fell to about 140 pounds. On the day I forked over the last $200, Bart skipped town, just as the news finally arrived that I wasn’t supposed to have owed that debt.

That sordid chapter concluded with me taking a job, out of sheer desperation, in a factory where I was paid a below-minimum wage to operate a machine which applied mailing labels to printed advertisements. It was mind-numbing. There were perhaps another 100 workers in that factory doing the same thing I was doing. The output of each worker was measured daily by the factory management. By the end of the first week I was the most productive mailing label attacher in the factory. To keep myself from going insane, I approached my task as if it were a game and challenged myself each shift to beat my previous day’s output, which I always did. During my brief lunch breaks I used to surreptitiously glance around at the other workers and I understood exactly what Thoreau meant when he opined that the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation. I don’t know if he was right about “the mass of men,” but he certainly could have been describing that crew at the factory.

In my second week at the factory I met another newly-hired college guy whose wife and he were trying to save enough money to move to Los Angeles so he could take a shot at professional acting - this was his second job. Chatting with him during lunch breaks, i was inspired by his desire to fulfill a dream and the difficult steps he was taking to do it. I listened to him, I looked around at the hollow-eyed, middle-aged folks who had worked for years operating labeling machines, and I squirmed as I considered what a sap I was for racking up a poker debt and falling victim to a con man. i abruptly abandoned the factory but I felt so discombobulated that I enlisted my good buddy John to drive out to Idaho with me so I could visit my brother and try to get my shit together. By the end of that brief sojourn out west, the best job offer I could manage was from Roto-Rooter . . . to work in the field, as it were. Wake up call!

If you’ve read this far you must be wondering how any of this supports the notion that I’m qualified to write about sociopolitical matters. It doesn’t, except to demonstrate that I have at least a small measure of “street cred.” But the best is yet to come. When I returned to Iowa I found a better job in a hotel. Initially I was a night auditor, which is a position that involves being a desk clerk part of the time and an accountant the rest of the time. Only a small step forward, financially, but it gave me a taste for something I had never previously thought about doing for even one minute. Accounting, I quickly learned, was something I had a natural aptitude for, and in some quirky way I found it interesting. Once again I viewed my duties as a sort of game, but this was a game that lit up my brain much more brightly than did operating a machine to perform an exceptionally repetitive task.

My whole life is a series of lucky breaks at critical junctures. In this instance the break was that I met a co-worker - a guy who shared the hotel night auditor position with me - who had previously worked for a large CPA firm. He had taken the part-time hotel job because he was trying to become a full-time stock trader and that’s what he was doing during the day. From him I learned what it is that CPAs in a big firm actually do. Let me assure you I’m not going to get into that subject, in case you were already feeling the dread. (Thank God for actuaries - the only people who make accountants seem slightly interesting.) Suffice it to say that I figured out how I could minimize the additional schooling I would need to become qualified to be a CPA and I decided to take a stab at it.

I kept the hotel job but started carrying a heavy load of college classes - accounting, math, economics, law, etc. It so happened that I met my future wife, who was just finishing her Interior Design degree at the same college, about the same time I took the first tentative steps down my new career path. That was even more fortuitous - I give her lots of credit for helping me stay the course. The two years in which I went to college in the day, worked at the hotel at night, and struggled to get our new romance off the ground, was “character-building,” to say the least. I can barely remember anything about that period, it was such a blur. To give you an idea of how much of a blur it was, the major highlight I remember was driving with my new spouse to Des Moines to dine at Spaghetti Works. $5 for beer-and-cheese spaghetti, all-you-can-eat salad bar and a glass of swill. Heaven!

When the two hellish years finally ended and I received my B.S. in Accounting, I had already lined up a job in Des Moines as an auditor with one of the Big 8 (at that time) accounting firms. Not long afterward, I passed the CPA exam and my wife landed a spot with a local design firm, and we were on our way.

Ok, at last I’m where I possibly should have started. In the ensuring three decades I continued to work as a CPA, becoming a partner along the way (meaning that I became one of the owners), and developing a specialization working with clients in the financial services industry - investment management companies and banking and finance companies, primarily. This is the good part, folks. My career soon took me from Iowa to New York City, where my background in English earned me the privilege of being a key designer and the principal author of new practice guidance for our international firm, which was just merging with another large international firm. That put me in the spotlight for a time and gave me a leg up for promotion. After the merger we relocated to Los Angeles, where I worked with some of the most prominent investment management companies in the world, and numerous banks, mortgage banks and other financial institutions. Finally we moved to southeast Pennsylvania and I split time engaged with clients there and in California, and with our national financial services practice in New York.

Late, late nights on Wall Street helping to prepare financial offerings with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. Late, late nights at client offices in L.A., San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, New York and Philadelphia, managing teams of young accountants to deal with complex accounting problems under tremendous pressure. Board meetings, fee negotiations, staff meltdowns, discoveries of fraud and malfeasance, financial crises in which I was an inside observer. A 60-hour work week felt almost like a vacation compared to many weeks with even longer hours. It was enough to give me PTSD. I don’t want to overstate it - it wasn’t like actual life or death combat PTSD - but I still have nightmares ten years and more after the fact.

That’s a very quick summary of the 30+ years in which I obtained hard-won knowledge about global finance and economics - a period in which I also had a lot of experiences with politics, charitable organizations and other components of society I didn’t have time to get into today. I still spend a lot of time staying informed about subjects ranging from psychology and mythology to current events and hard science. There’s a ton I still don’t know. But as my all-time favorite singer Joni Mitchell famously said, I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now.

#politics #sociopolitical #accounting #credentials

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winterisakillerwrites · 4 years

Text

Recovery

One shot: Last Minutes & Lost Evenings 6/16

Character/Relationship: Tom Hiddleston/Rosemary Mathews (OFC)

Genre: Angst/Romance

Summary: The awkwardness between them was a knife to the heart. And it was his fault. All of it. He wanted to tell her so. Tell her he was sorry. That he had been stupid and selfish and that he missed her. He opened his mouth, not quite sure what he was going to say but knowing he needed to say something.

Rating: T

Warnings/Author’s Notes: This is the sixth part of Last Minutes and Lost Evenings, this series is currently on-going and will flit back and forth between past, present and future.

‘I’ve been waking in the morning just like every other day,

And just like every boring blues song, I get swallowed by the pain

And so I fumble for your figure in the darkness, just to make it go away.

But you’re not lying there any longer, and I know that that’s my fault

So I’ve been pounding on the floor and I’ve been crawling up the walls

And I’ve been dipping in my darkness for serotonin boosters, cider, and some kind of smelling salts’

Recovery – Frank Turner

“Tom, are you even listening to me?” The exasperation in Luke Windsor’s tone was unmistakable. Tom cursed himself. He’d been trying to pay attention, honestly he had; this role was important and something he had very much been interested in. The character was challenging and intense, something he could sink his teeth into. Something he could lose himself in. It was exact what he needed. But, as it had far too often as of late, his mind had been wandering.

Three weeks. God, had it only been three weeks? It was hard for him to believe that it had been so long. And yet still it felt like no time at all. When he closed his eyes he could still see her face with its strangled smile. The way her eyes had shone with the tears she seemed to fight so desperately. It hurt. God, did it hurt. But it had been for the best. Hadn’t it? He still honestly didn’t know.

Tom shook himself back into the present, “Sorry. I don’t know where my head is.” He forced a half-hearted smile and tried to focus on the papers sitting before him.

It was difficult to ignore the knowing look his friend shot. While Tom hadn’t said anything outright after he’d ended things with…Why was it so hard to even think her name? Luke had known. Somehow he always seemed to know. Tom supposed with a ruthless laugh that was why he paid the man so fucking much.

Get your head back in the game, Hiddleston.

“Where were we?”

He forced himself to focus on the various papers, folders, and contracts sitting before him; to listen as Luke and his manager, Michael, droned on about shooting schedules, press releases, the various parties attached to the project. It was important, he knew that. He just needed to keep himself focused. It was difficult and, God, he wished he didn’t have to care. But he smiled graciously and dutifully signed each paper passed his way, half listening as Michael summarized its contents.

And then finally, finally, it was done. Tom had never felt more relieved than after he had signed the last bloody form and was told he could go. He recapped and placed the pen neatly on the desk in front of him, shook both Luke and Michael’s hands and left the office as quickly as his feet could carry him.

The role was officially his and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

They’d been filming for going on six weeks now. Six weeks of alternating 3AM call times with grueling night shoots. It was demanding and exhausting, but he relished in every minute of it. He knew several of the crew from projects past and they’d gotten on quite well. The director pushed him, she was challenging and, at times, demanding; he wouldn’t have had it any other way. His co-star, Natalie, was someone he had known for years; since his RADA days. She was clever, quick on her feet, dedicated, and an absolute delight to play off of. He’d been overjoyed when he learned of her casting and they had spent much of the pre-production catching up and discussing how each would play their respective roles.

Filming was primarily in and around London. That had been one of the project’s major selling points. It meant he could spend most nights in his own bed. He could see his friends, his mother, even his bratty little sister (whom he loved dearly but even now tended to push the majority of his buttons). He refused to acknowledge the stray thought that remaining in London meant he could possibly see…No. No, that was not an option any more. He’d made completely certain of that.

But that did little to silence the voice in his head that desperately wanted to see her. To know she was okay. He just wanted her to be okay. It was utterly ridiculous and he’d known it. He’d made his choice. He did not have the right to second guess, not now.

He pushed his front door open, grateful for the silence that engulfed him. The day had been far too long and he wanted nothing more than to fall headlong into his bed and not move for at least a week.

Sighing, he dropped himself onto the couch and covered his eyes with his right arm. He hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights. He hadn’t seen the point. There was no one waiting for him, not even Bobby.

He’d sent the hyper but adorable chocolate spaniel to stay with Emma and her husband for the week. Even though he was filming close to home, the extensive hours he was being forced to keep were rough on a dog so young. And Emma certainly hadn’t protested. He wondered vaguely if she would actually give Bobby back when all was said and done. It could honestly go either way.

He ignored the small part of his brain that was lambasting him for collapsing on the couch instead of climbing the stairs to his room and his waiting bed. He would make it there eventually. Sleeping on the couch always seemed to lead to a sore back and restless tossing and turning, but he was there now and moving had ceased to be an option.

The buzzing of his phone jarred the silence of the room. He cursed as he fumbled in his side pocket for the offending device. “Hello?”

A warm female voice answered, “Tom? It’s Nat.”

He sat up, trying to fight the stupid disappointment he felt because it wasn’t her voice. “Hey, is everything alright?”

She laughed, “Yeah, everything’s decent.” There was a hesitancy in her voice he couldn’t quite place. “I really am sorry to bother you, I know you’ve got to be knackered. Lord knows I am.”

He rubbed his face with his free hand, “It’s fine. I wasn’t asleep. Can’t seem to turn my brain off,” he laughed quietly, “What’s going on?”

“So since we’re both off tomorrow and I was wondering if you’d be up for meeting up for a drink or something…”

“You sure everything’s okay? I thought Max was coming down…” It had been all Natalie had been talking about for weeks. She’d been positively blissful leaving set, despite how tired they both had been.

“Yeah, that kind of fell through. We’re…I guess we’re on a break. I don’t know.” Her voice had taken on a quieter aspect and he could plainly hear the uncertainty and confusion in her tone. “I just…I could really use a friend.”

“Of course, Nat.”

Once they had agreed to meet a pub not too far from the flat Natalie had been letting the call ended. Tom sighed and pushed himself to his feet, grateful that in his laziness he’d not toed off his boots. Keys in hand he headed back out into the warm evening air.

Natalie was several pints in by the time he’d found her at a table just off of the pub’s main entrance. She smiled half-heartedly at him as he slid into the seat across from her, clutching his own drink. As he drank she poured her heart out, relaying everything had happened and her confusion and hurt. They had been completely fine as far as she’d known. Yes, this particular shoot had been demanding but she’d been available for every call, she’d made time to try to see him as often as she could. Her frustration and anger were palpable.

Tom, not knowing what to say, simply sat and offered her his attention and sympathy. It wasn’t long before he’d caught up drink-wise and they began trading rounds. And it was bleary eyed and stumbling that they both found themselves at Natalie’s door several hours later. He’d taken her invitation for coffee without a second thought, reveling in the warmth of being thoroughly in his cups.

He woke the next morning with a pounding head and the distinct feeling that something was amiss. With a great deal of care, he attempted to roll on his side. Nausea raged through him. God, moving had been a mistake. He groped blindly for the bottle of paracetamol he kept in his bedside drawer. But to no avail.

He cautiously cracked one eye and noted with a sinking sense of certainty that the bedside table was wrong. He risked cracking the other eye and forced himself to sit slowly, very, very slowly up in bed. This wasn’t his bedroom. Where was he?

As his head pounded furiously images began to flit into his conscious memory. Snippets of laughter and drinking at the pub. The warm cup of coffee Natalie had handed him. The way her lips tasted as they crashed into his own. Clothing flying. Wandering hands. Oh God.

He heard footsteps in the hall, heading towards the bedroom. “You look like you could use this.”

A chipped mug was held under his nose and he took it gladly. Two familiar white pills were dropped unceremoniously into his other hand. Paracetamol. Lovely. He grimaced at the heat as he took two quick swallows to wash the medication down. The coffee was incredibly dark and bitter and he honestly didn’t care. “Thank you,” he murmured. It took several more gulps before he made himself ask, “Last night did we…” His voice trailed off, unable to finish the question.

“Yes,” Natalie answered, “we did.”

He raised his eyes towards her. She looked slightly worse for wear; hair mused and eyeliner smudged. She was attractive, that was something he couldn’t deny. But he’d never seriously entertained the idea of having her in that way. But he’d been drunk and she was beautiful and willing. God, he was an ass. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t, Hiddleston,” she reprimanded, “We were drunk and we had sex. Was it the best idea? Probably not. But it happened. And fuck me I really don’t need your pity or your remorse right now.”

“I’m not saying that,” he shot back, setting the now empty mug on the bedside table. “I just…I don’t want you to think I took advantage of you…”

She laughed mirthlessly, “I think it’s fair to say we took advantage of each other, Tom.” He only nodded in reply, not trusting himself to speak. “I know you aren’t looking for anything and honestly neither am I. It happened and we’ll deal.” She offered him another small smile before walking out of the room.

Once the medication had kicked in and he felt slightly more human he was able to pull himself out of her bed and gather his clothes from the floor. He dressed silently trying not to think about what had happened and what the fuck he was going to do. She was not only his colleague but his friend. He had no desire to screw that up.

Natalie was sitting on a chair in the living room. Her eyes locked on his as he stumbled out of the hall. “I um…I guess I will see you tomorrow?” He cringed at himself. God he sounded like an ass.

She nodded, “Yeah.”

And with that he offered her a nod in farewell and walked out of the door. He blinked rapidly in the bright sunlight of mid-morning. It was just the once. You were both drunk; she was sad and you were lonely. Don’t make it bigger than it is.

But it happened again. And kept on happening. Neither had put a label on what they were doing, though they both were in agreement that it wasn’t serious. It was just sex. Just a means to a mutually beneficial end. Neither wanted anything more than that.

They were friends first and foremost. This, whatever it was, was simply a way to deal with the stress and loneliness they’d found themselves in. Natalie was lovely and they had always seemed to get along famously, but it would never go deeper than that.

She was safe, in that way; she’d made it perfectly clear that she had absolutely no interest in anything long term. So he’d allowed himself to let them be. And despite everything, he was content. They had taken to spending a great deal of their free time together talking and wandering around London. It was nice, just knowing there was someone even if it was only temporary.

There had been photographers. He’d known that with startling certainty. There always were. But he tried to pay them as little mind as he could. Stories would be printed about him regardless, fighting against it or worrying about it would do him little good.

He tried not to think about Rosie, tried not to compare what was happening to what they had shared. And most days he could. He would be able to wander the city and enjoy just being. Others, he would spend wondering, fruitlessly, if what he’d done, what he was doing, was the right thing. It was pointless and ridiculous in the extreme but on those days, he couldn’t seem to help himself. On those days he felt every bit the celebrity cliché; the famous actor fucking his beautiful co-star. And he hated himself for it.

Natalie, however, was understanding to a fault. She never pushed him to talk but was always willing to listen when he did. There were times he almost wished there was more between them, simply for the sheer fact that she understood. He cared for her, adored her even, but it would never be enough. For either of them. But for the time being, it worked.

A few days before filming wrapped Natalie had pulled him aside, asking if it were okay with him if they ended things. She and Max had been talking again. Things were starting to work and she didn’t want to pass up this chance. Tom had smiled and agreed without question. Natalie deserved happiness and if that was what made her happy then who was he to stand in the way?

And he was happy for her. Truly. He just couldn’t silence the voice in his head that wished it was him. Wished he’d been the one who had ended this because he was the one reconciling. That he was getting his Rosie back. He hated himself for that. He didn’t deserve it. He’d been the one to ruin everything because he was so fucking scared he wouldn’t be enough. That because of who he was, what he chose to do, she would be the one paying the price. He was a coward, pure and simple. And he was paying for it.

It had taken all of his training and professionalism to pull his head back into the present. He finished the day, a rare short one, with little screw up on his end and was greatly looking forward to home. And to his bed.

A groan escaped his throat. “Fuck,” he breathed as he glanced at the waiting message on his phone. Ben has texted. He’d gotten back from his own filming a week prior and they’d talked about meeting up. Apparently Ben had decided tonight was to be the night. Fuck. He just wanted a quiet night. But he hadn’t seen been in months. Dammit.

With a resigned sigh, he texted his friend in agreement and grabbed his light jacket from the arm of the couch in his trailer. No time like the present.

He’d hoped the cooler air would help to clear his head; it was one of the main reasons he’d chosen to walk to the pub rather than catch a taxi. He pulled his thin jacket tightly around himself, trying to block out the wind that had started to pick up.

He still wasn’t sure why he agreed to come out in the first place. He certainly wasn’t going to be the best company. And the last thing he wanted to do was socialize but he hadn’t seen Ben in months. He’d missed the man’s dry wit and no-nonsense approach to life. Ben certainly never had a problem taking him down a peg or two when he’d needed it. With all that had happened in the last month, it was something he desperately needed.

Tom had seen the woman pacing aimlessly in front of the pub but hadn’t paid her all that much mind, too lost in his own thoughts. So finding her face first in his chest had been a shock. He’d unconsciously thrown out his hands to steady her and she in turn had done the same, bracing her own against his chest. He felt his heart cease as the familiar floral scent surrounded him

His eyes fell on her dark head. No, he reasoned with himself, it isn’t her. It can’t be.

“I’m so sorry!” Her voice was high, full of panic and embarrassment, but it was her voice.

“Rosie?” Her name fell from his lips in disbelief. Months of unconsciously searching for her face in a crowd, of hoping to see her around every corner, and here she was. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at his luck.

“Tom?”

Her dark eyes locked on his and he drunk her in, taking in every detail. Every small change and committing it to memory. She’d cut her hair, though it still fell past her shoulders. Her dress was one he’d never seen before; a deep red that clung to her hips and chest in such a way that made his breath come short. “You look beautiful,” he whispered, not caring that he had no right to notice anymore.

Color flooded her cheeks and he fought the urge to pull her against him once more, to hold her again. “Thanks,” she murmured in reply. “You look well.”

The awkwardness between them was a knife to the heart. And it was his fault. All of it. He wanted to tell her so. Tell her he was sorry. That he had been stupid and selfish and that he missed her. He opened his mouth, not quite sure what he was going to say but knowing he needed to say something.

But the words died on his lips as he watched a tall man, roughly his own height, walk out of the pub and head straight for his Rosie holding a black cardigan in his hands. No, not his Rosie, not anymore.

Rosemary jumped at the sound of the man’s voice, jerking herself away from Tom as if she’d been burned. It certainly felt like he had been.

He watched helplessly as Rosemary traded the leather jacket thrown over her shoulders for the black jumper. How could he not have noticed the bloody jacket? She smiled at the man, her lover his mind taunted, and seemed perfectly content as he rubbed her arms with familiarity.

Tom wanted to scream. She had moved on. Of course she has you selfish prick, why wouldn’t she? This is what you wanted, remember? You wanted her to be happy. He swallowed against the bile rising in his throat.

Her eyes settled on him once more as she apologized for bumping into him again. He plastered on what he hoped was a convincingly warm smile. This is for her. He heard himself reply for her to think nothing of the matter, his voice sounded hollow to his own ears. She didn’t deserve that. She was happy and he didn’t have the right to sully her happiness.

She nodded in reply, linking her arm with the man beside her. And he prayed to whatever god was listening that he was half the actor everyone seemed to think he was because he couldn’t see any other way for him to get through this. “We won’t keep you,” she spoke, her voice steady. “Have a good night.”

He nodded at her, recognizing a dismissal when he heard it. It was the least of what he deserved.

He forced another smile before turning and heading into the crowded pub. He lost himself in the noise and movement of the place, trying not to let his thoughts wander back to the woman who was now walking away from him, arm in arm with her future. This was what he had wanted. So why couldn’t he believe that?

#Tom Hiddleston #Tom Hiddleston RPF #Tom Hiddleston x ofc #Tom Hiddleston x oc #Tom Hiddleston x original character #tom hiddleston x original female character #Tom & Roise #Last Minutes & Lost Evenings

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migleefulmoments · 5 years

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There, I fixed it for you.

My Manifesto by @ajw720

Nonnie Anon, fact, I need for D to be is closeted. People Darren can deny it for the remainder of their his lives life, but it doesn’t his label does make him straight. And that fact alone-that I do not understand how sexual identification and labels work- is sad and is a total injustice. But I am going to answer this from the perspective that the closeting is a fact and how was it handled vs. how it could have been handled- aka how my fantasy could have played out.

When I see pics of D from the G/lee days, particularly pre her move, he is precisely what you say, a ball of sunshine. His smile is bright and infectious. He was a bright light, talking for hours about the things he loves. Sigh...I am in love He was young and not jaded by fame nor did he have a private life and love to protect. He was “straight” was a part of the narrative, but it was a footnote, barely pushed. Yes, she was in the background, but not in the spotlight. I believed Darren was straight back then so I didn’t pay any attention to questions about his sexuality or his lover. Present to make him straight-because he identifies as straight- but not overbearing. His girlfriend lived across the country and their relationship was new so he didn’t talk about her in interviews. His sexuality was commented on, but not incessantly. in almost every interview he gave in those early years. This is how you handle closeting, you don’t make it a focus and allow the subtly to speak for itself according to me because I’m a closeting expert. Especially when the individual closeted clearly doesn’t want to hide his/her sexuality, which has been clear from the beginning as he has clearly and consistently said he is straight as early as a 2009 interview. D has done absolutely nothing to suggest he is not straight rebelled against it repeatedly and has attempted on numerous occasions to come out at least in my head

That is the version of D that people I fell in love with and that is what i believe is the real my fantasy d. And this fantasy version of D, since Season 4 starting when they moved her to LA, has been almost completely erased, meaning I have to work REALLY SUPER hard to make him seem real. It happened slowly, the shift and changes were small at first-as one does in a new relationship-, but suddenly she became a part of the conversation, acknowledged as his gf, and by his side constantly-as one does in a relationship as it progresses from first meeting to dating to love They She not only moved her to LA but put her got a job on the set of G/lee to act as a babysitter because it was in her field and commiserate with her experience. And concurrent with her move was the introduction of W and the complete public break down of the CC friendship and this is when TPTB fandom decided it was a good idea to start rumors that C&D hated each other. And then the “I am straight and have a gf” tour happened where he was forced got a little cheesy and decided to bring women on stage every night and sign sing PPG and that awful Pheromones so he could be every girl’s teenage dream and I’m pissed that I wasn’t one of those girls...or a teenager.

And yes, this is when the questionable behavior began and D took on the straight frat boy douche persona around her because apparently I had not been paying any attention to Darren prior to this time. He wrote Me & My Dick years before this but I didn’t notice. This is when we stopped getting the real D DAPPERMAN on SM and started getting his team and PBB posting in his name and every time he doesn’t sound like DAPPERMAN, I blame it on his team. This is one way I keep the fantasy Darren alive. This is when the fandom began its great divide- those that believe that what they see is what they get, who accept Darren for who he is, and who enjoy the glimpses into his life that he shares versus those of us who have created an entirely false narrative that fits our fantasy. Being a ccer is exhausting because nothing Darren does fits our narrative and we constantly have to come up with excuses for why that is. Excuses like TPTB, contracts, his team pretending to be him on his social media, and how he is “forced” to sing songs on tour or say things in interviews or yell at 14 yo kids. Just read this manifesto and you will see all of the things we have to do to see our Darren. and D was forced to asked about his sexuality, just like he has been since he started doing interviews for Glee publicly address his . It seems to me that he was asked about his sexuality repeatedly which increased significantly during H/edwig and that sorta makes sense since he has now played two LGBTQ characters in a row and the questions were often asked by journalists whose job it is to actually get answers. Maybe I was just paying more attention to his sexuality because Hedwig was right when I discovered Crisscolfer.

But even during H/edwig - despite the sudden straight push -now 6 years into Darren saying he identified as straight- he was still bright and present (aka gay?). He did as required, but on stage, at the stage door, in interviews, he was still D. And then they sent him he went to Italy for 6 weeks to do a movie and during that time the shift happened. When he came back, the PR games were heightened aka Mia quit her job to travel with Darren and open their dream bar and it has only gotten exponentially worse every day that has passed since-at least for me. She became not just his gf, but the absolute focal point of his public and private life ya know as couples in love tend to do. This is when it became impossible to be a d fan without seeing her. This is when I became obsessed with hating and bullying Mia. This is when I started stalking her obsessively so that I am sure to see her. The stalking is all good, it’s part of my job to know what she is doing at all times so I can let the fandom know.

And the problem with M is she is divisive to me and the ccers who are entitled to have a say in Darren’s personal life. She is on record treating fans deplorably even though there is NO record of her treating fans deplorably, I will continue to claim she does without giving any credible evidence this is true.. She made D yell at a 14 year old girl. Darren is a big boy and 14 yo’s who behavior abhorrent shouldn’t get a pass so he told her off. She thrives on controversy and making D suffer. She sits in the background and lets Darren shine, rarely ever having anything to say when he is working and yet I obsess about what she is thinking and I pretend she really says all of the things I imagine in my jealousy-fueled head. She has publicly treated him like an ass and has held herself out to be better than him and acts like he should be grateful she is in his life. She has only ever been gracious to fans but I am stark raving jealous and unhinged from reality so I make up all sorts of backstories to photos where Mia is simply standing next to Darren. Oh and I have never met her. She acts like an elitist instead of being grateful for the very privileged life she lives because he family is filthy rich and her association with D. I’m so fucking jealous. Her friends are bratty and immature and they act like college students on their social media that have has nothing to do with Darren’s in life but party around the clock so I am not sure why her friends matter to me except I’m on a role and I can’t stop. My friends are assholes (hey @flowersintheattic254, hey @cassie1022, hey Leka-1998) who bully a women they don’t even know and I’m still their friend... so maybe Mia’s friends shouldn’t matter to Darren’s fans. She’s recorded herself rolling a joint in a parked car after a night of recording herself posting a handful of other pics were posted that night showing them having a good time. There was what looked like an alcoholic drink on a photo or two drinking and doesn’t even get reprimanded mooooommmm, MOM! Mia is rolling a joint...don’t touch me,...MOM! Don’t touch me, I’m going to tell mom..MOOOOOOOM! She wore a Tits of Clay band merch boobs shirt to the inaugural EF, an event marketed for families, to embarrass D and pull focus and I know this because she told me remember I make up all sorts of stories when I see a photo. She claims she wants privacy but their entire public lives are blasted all over SM I desperately stalk her, following everyone who might ever post a photo of her despite the fact that D has repeatedly stated he craves privacy he doesn’t social media and he is a private person who finds giving up his privacy really difficult and he is an emotional SENTIMENT hoarder I never get that right and has asked her not to post pics one time he told the story that when he was new to Glee, Mia posted a photo of the two of them on her Facebook that he wanted to keep for himself because he loved the photo so much. She has not respect for him. She has a private Instagram and only posts pics of Darren on her public Snapchat when they go to big public events together.

And D acts out around her more often than not. Darren adores her. Add they now have him picking fights with fans on SM over her (we know it is not him but the GA doesn’t). He pushes back when fans bully his wife. I pretend it isn’t him pushing back but it’s stupid for me to claim it isn’t him when it so clearly is him. If I accept it is him, then I have to think about my own behavior and the cc behavior that drives him to push back. Speaking of his SM, it is an absolutely mess punny and hilarious. This man is insanely intelligent, we all know two or three times he mentioned he has deleted and reposted things due to grammatical errors . and they represent him deplorably, fail to project his voice, and make him look like an asshole I hate punny silly Darren so I rage every time he posts in that voice. The only time I like him is if he is DAPPERMAN- boring, upstanding & polite and formal.

Then we have the bar. Do not even get me started on the bar because I’m stark raving mad. I do not understand how anyone can justify it and yet it is popular and people have a great time there. He is the straight male owner of a bar that glorifies naked women, calls them sluts, names drinks after large breasts, has grotesque names like Period Sex (I WOULD NEVER) and Golden Showers (What is that?), cheap innuendo and theme nights that are beyond derogatory and yet, the more I think about it, that seems exactly like what a straight, male, bar owner would do. If I thought this was him DAPPERMAN and what he loves (as she ignores all of the times Darren has gushed about connecting to people through songs at the bar), I would turn away from him so fast my head would spin because I hate everything about Darren -the man he really is - but I know he is DAPPERMAN and he will come back to me. Because that bar, that is misogynistic not my style... it makes me very uncomfortable, it’s too sex positive and at times it’s openly queer. It’s filled with debauchery and I don’t understand it. Not hating one woman because I am so jealous of her sexual freedom, her lifestyle, her money, her husband... I think she is pure evil even if everybody who knows her, loves her.

And of course, then we have the way he is presented in the press. D has built a career playing LGBT+ roles. His three major roles were gay, queer, gay. And in every print article, we are reminded he is straight, often multiple times because when he first started playing Blaine, there weren’t a lot of straight men playing strong gay characters on TV. Now we see that representation matters-asking an actor how he identifies during promo for his 3rd straight LGBTQ role is hardly out of line. And then they started making him repeatedly state it. It is awkward and uncomfortable, He has consistently labeled himself as straight since 2009 and there is no evidence to suggest he is not straight but I can’t stop fantasizing. It makes me angry when I am faced with him reminding me he is straight. It makes him look ungrateful to the community that he used to get ahead and frankly, makes him sound completely insecure. I don’t like him if he isn’t gay. I don’t care that he never took advantage of the gay community by pretending to be gay or that he has always been a strong ally, all I can see or hear is “I'm straight”. I want him to be gay and that is all that matters. Like he can only play queer if he can repeatedly assert he is straight. Absolute mess. I don’t care that by repeatedly asserting he is straight, he is telling the truth, THIS IS ABOUT WHAT I WANT. MOOOOOOMMMMMM. I dare anyone to find any other straight actor that addresses their sexuality as often. You won’t find one. (James Franco)

I’m so jealous I can’t see straight and all I see is an unrealistic And because of this narrative they have weaved, purely to elevate her, and they have torn him down, they have made him look like a straight jerk in love with a spoiled brat woman. I hate her I hate her I hate her. Mooooommmm! Sorry, i know i will get deserve hate, but it is the my truth unrelated to Darren’s reality. And I’m not just a spoiled brat, I’m a hateful one. There is nothing redeeming about her ME.

Instead they should have gotten him a respectful beard- ME, who was present but not a focus ME and not beaten into our heads that he is straight (isn’t that how beards work?). They could have sold straight and done it respectfully and in a manner that i could have accepted by me. No, I am not accepting closeting and i don’t think it is ok, but again, clearly the closeting was demanded by RIB-Ryan an important out, gay activist and F/ox in a contract they signed 9 years ago...when will it end? and if it had to be the narrative it could have been done in a manner that would have allowed D to remain true to himself and that means gay. They could have got a beard that let him be gay.

And at this point, they just are making things worse and no one is winning anything.(isn’t everyone but Darren winning in this scenario?) They should free D -let him be GAY -and put him ME out of his MY misery because no amount of promo is going to make her famous outside of her stans as long as she has a private instagram account and Darren doesn't tag her or even post her photo. She just isn’t interesting- I am interesting. This sham fanfiction I wrote has gone on way too long and completely spun out of control -I can’t make heads or tails out of it anymore- and it is NOT doing no one ME any favors except continuing to hide the my truth, the one thing his team I needs and wants, because MY the truth isn’t pretty.

#cc #ccer #ccers #cc fandom #cc blog #cc family #crisscolfer #darren criss #Abby speaks #I fixed it

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winterisakiller · 6 years

Text

Recovery

One shot: Last Minutes and Lost Evenings 6/16

Character/Relationship: Tom Hiddleston/Rosemary Mathews (OFC)

Genre: Angst/Romance

Rating: T

Warnings/Author’s Notes: This is the sixth part of Last Minutes and Lost Evenings, this series is currently on-going and will flit back and forth between past, present and future.

‘I’ve been waking in the morning just like every other day,

And just like every boring blues song, I get swallowed by the pain

And so I fumble for your figure in the darkness, just to make it go away.

But you’re not lying there any longer, and I know that that’s my fault

So I’ve been pounding on the floor and I’ve been crawling up the walls

And I’ve been dipping in my darkness for serotonin boosters, cider, and some kind of smelling salts’

Recovery – Frank Turner

Tom shook himself back into the present, “Sorry. I don’t know where my head is.” He forced a half-hearted smile and tried to focus on the papers sitting before him.

Get your head back in the game, Hiddleston.

“Where were we?”

The role was officially his and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

The buzzing of his phone jarred the silence of the room. He cursed as he fumbled in his side pocket for the offending device. “Hello?”

A warm female voice answered, “Tom? It’s Nat.”

He sat up, trying to fight the stupid disappointment he felt because it wasn’t her voice. “Hey, is everything alright?”

He rubbed his face with his free hand, “It’s fine. I wasn’t asleep. Can’t seem to turn my brain off,” he laughed quietly, “What’s going on?”

“So since we’re both off tomorrow and I was wondering if you’d be up for meeting up for a drink or something…”

“Of course, Nat.”

He heard footsteps in the hall, heading towards the bedroom. “You look like you could use this.”

“Yes,” Natalie answered, “we did.”

“I’m not saying that,” he shot back, setting the now empty mug on the bedside table. “I just…I don’t want you to think I took advantage of you…”

She nodded, “Yeah.”

With a resigned sigh, he texted his friend in agreement and grabbed his light jacket from the arm of the couch in his trailer. No time like the present.

His eyes fell on her dark head. No, he reasoned with himself, it isn’t her. It can’t be.

“I’m so sorry!” Her voice was high, full of panic and embarrassment, but it was her voice.

“Tom?”

Color flooded her cheeks and he fought the urge to pull her against him once more, to hold her again. “Thanks,” she murmured in reply. “You look well.”

Rosemary jumped at the sound of the man’s voice, jerking herself away from Tom as if she’d been burned. It certainly felt like he had been.

He nodded at her, recognizing a dismissal when he heard it. It was the least of what he deserved.

#tom hiddleston #tom hiddleston x ofc #tom hiddleston x oc #tom hiddleston x original female character #tom hiddleston rpf #tom hiddleston x original character #last minutes and lost evenings #fanfic #Tom & Rosie

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newstfionline · 3 years

Text

Friday, September 24, 2021

Travel in Canada is a prize for the vaccinated and vigilant (AP) Americans wanting to experience Canada’s vibrant autumn or its winter landscapes can do so again. But getting here means jumping through hoops before you go. Those hoops? To get into Canada as a tourist you must be fully vaccinated. You must have a PCR-variety COVID test taken no more than 72 hours in advance, with results ready to present at the border if driving or at the airport of departure before you can board. You have to pre-register with the Canadian government and get a code. You must present the basics of a backup quarantine plan in advance, in case you are randomly tested again upon arrival and found to be positive. You can’t be like the man from Atlanta whom border guards were talking about when I crossed. He’d pulled up a few nights earlier, unvaccinated, no test, no pre-registration and no hope of getting into Canada, more than 16 hours from home.

COVID-19 creates dire US shortage of teachers, school staff (AP) One desperate California school district is sending flyers home in students’ lunchboxes, telling parents it’s “now hiring.” Elsewhere, principals are filling in as crossing guards, teachers are being offered signing bonuses and schools are moving back to online learning. Now that schools have welcomed students back to classrooms, they face a new challenge: a shortage of teachers and staff the likes of which some districts say they have never seen. Public schools have struggled for years with teacher shortages, particularly in math, science, special education and languages. But the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the problem. The stress of teaching in the COVID-19 era has triggered a spike in retirements and resignations. Schools also need to hire staffers like tutors and special aides to make up for learning losses and more teachers to run online school for those not ready to return.

Sad perspective (Vanity Fair/NextDraft) In 2020, more than 5,100 kids under 18 were shot ... and more than 1,300 died. And yet, you’ve heard less about all of those deaths combined than the killing of Gabrielle Petito. Petito was a social media star and the pieces of her case are rolling out in real time. It’s understandable why internet users became obsessed. More worrisome is the way that what’s popular on social media drives what makes headlines. Every editor knows the endless and exhaustive coverage of a single murder case, in a country where murder is the national pastime, is beyond absurd. But they just can’t stop themselves.

After fence-mending Biden-Macron call, French envoy to return to U.S. (Reuters) The U.S. and French presidents moved to mend ties on Wednesday, with France agreeing to send its ambassador back to Washington and the White House saying it had erred in cutting a deal for Australia to buy U.S. instead of French submarines without consulting Paris. In a joint statement issued after U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke by telephone, the two leaders agreed to launch in-depth consultations to rebuild trust, and to meet in Europe at the end of October. The call, which was requested by Washington, was an attempt to mend fences after France accused the United States of stabbing it in the back when Australia ditched a $40-billion contract for conventional French submarines, and opted for nuclear-powered submarines to be built with U.S. and British technology instead.

Pope jokes he is ‘still alive’ despite some bishops wishing him dead (Washington Post) Pope Francis has a message for his haters: “Still alive. Even though some people wanted me dead.” Hundreds of Italians cheered for him under a Rome hospital balcony this summer. But not everybody was happy that he made it out of colon surgery, the pontiff has quipped. In his eight-year tenure, Francis’s more liberal overtones than the popes before him—from his invitation of LGBT advocates to the Vatican to his calls to welcome refugees—have stirred tensions with conservatives, and drew pushback. The post-op papal joke about bishops wishing him ill marked a frank acknowledgment of the forces within the church who are at odds with him. In answering questions about the challenges the church faces—and the divisions within—one detractor Francis mentioned was “a large Catholic television that constantly gossips” about him. Still, the pontiff said, “I just go forward without entering into their world of ideas and fantasies.”

Ambush in Ukraine (Washington Post) A top Ukrainian presidential aide, Serhiy Shefir, narrowly survived assassination when one or more attackers opened fire on his car with a barrage of at least 18 bullets Wednesday. The attack took place on a forested stretch of road near Lesnyky village, outside Kyiv, the country’s capital. President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was in New York, announced he would return to Kyiv after addressing the United Nations General Assembly later Wednesday. Police are pursuing three main lines of investigation—that Shefir was attacked because of his state duties, that it was an attempt to put pressure on the country’s top leadership or that it was an effort to destabilize the political situation in the country.

Tensions grow as US, allies deepen Indo-Pacific involvement (AP) With increasingly strong talk in support of Taiwan, a new deal to supply Australia with nuclear submarines, and the launch of a European strategy for greater engagement in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. and its allies are becoming growingly assertive in their approach toward a rising China. China has bristled at the moves, and the growing tensions between Beijing and Washington prompted U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the weekend to implore President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to repair their “completely dysfunctional” relationship, warning they risk dividing the world. As the U.N. General Assembly opened Tuesday, both leaders chose calming language. But the underlying issues have not changed, with China building up its military outposts as it presses its maritime claims over critical sea lanes, and the U.S. and its allies growing louder in their support of Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory, and deepening military cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.

Myanmar junta abducting children of people targeted for arrest, says UN expert (Guardian) Myanmar’s military junta is systematically abducting the relatives of people it is seeking to arrest, including children as young as 20 weeks old, according the UN special rapporteur for the country. Tom Andrews told the UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday that conditions in the country had continued to deteriorate. His speech was followed by the release of a report by the UN Human Rights Office on Thursday, which warned of a “human rights catastrophe” and said abuses perpetrated since the coup may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The military and its forces have killed more than 1,100 people, according to the UN report. It details systematic, targeted killings by the junta, including the use of semi-automatic rifles and snipers against pro-democracy protesters. Weapons designed for military confrontation, such as grenade launchers and artillery shells, have also been used against protesters and fired into residential areas, it said.

Mideast in shambles, but the world has moved on for now (AP) There was a time not long ago when uprisings and wars in the Arab world topped the agenda at the U.N. General Assembly meetings in New York. With most of those conflicts in a stalemate, the world’s focus has shifted to more daunting global challenges such as the still raging coronavirus pandemic and climate change, as well as new crises in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. But the situation in the Middle East has deteriorated significantly in more countries and in more ways in the last two years. Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen are teetering on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe, with skyrocketing poverty and an economic implosion that threatens to throw the region into even deeper turmoil. “The region’s been crowded out by other global crises, but there’s also a sense of Western hopelessness after so many years of crisis,” said Julien Barnes-Dacey, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Cinema returns to Somalia after decades of shut-downs and strife (Reuters) Dozens of Somalis posed for selfies and chattered excitedly in rows of red, plush seats as they waited for the start of their country’s first movie screening in three decades. After the overthrow of president Siad Barre in 1991, clan-based warlords blasted each other with anti-aircraft guns and fought over the National Theatre, which they used as a base. The building was hit so many times that the roof collapsed a year into the conflict. Islamist militants who seized control in 2006 took over the building. They banned all forms of public entertainment—from concerts to football matches—that they considered sinful. African Union peacekeeping troops clawed back control of the capital in 2011 and the new Western-backed Somali government reopened the venue the following year. But just three weeks after that, a suicide bomber from the Islamist al Shabaab insurgency struck during a ceremony, killing six people. The building reopened again in 2020. Mogadishu resident Hassan Abdulahi Mohamed remembered spending half a Somali shilling on a movie ticket and one shilling on snacks at the theatre in the 1960s. “Last time I watched films in the cinema, it was 1991,” he said.

Books (Pew Research Center) A new study from Pew Research Center found 23 percent of Americans said they hadn’t read a book in whole or in part in the past year, including print, digital and audiobooks. An interesting component is that younger adults—with TikTok and their awful attention spans—were in fact considerably more likely to have read one book than older respondents, with 28 percent of those 50 and up forgoing books compared to just 19 percent of those 18 to 49. Overall, 23 percent didn’t read a book, 5 percent read one, 25 percent read two to five books, 15 percent read six to 10 books, 11 percent read 11 to 20 books and 18 percent of people said they read more than 20 books.

Shifting Sands (Hakai Magazine) Two studies looking at how islands in the Federated States of Micronesia and the Gilbert Islands have changed amid sea level rise found that among 175 sparsely populated or uninhabited islands, while lots of them have shrunk, lots of them have also expanded since the 1940s. Micronesia increased its land area by approximately 3 percent since the ‘40s and the Gilberts are 2.45 percent larger. It clarifies the simplistic idea that all islands are all just going to be sucked under amid sea level rise, which is true in many cases but misses the reality that the complex relationship between tides and waves and surges makes things more complicated to forecast than “water go up, island sinks down.”

#headlines #news

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theliterateape · 3 years

Text

Before You Go All-in on Antifa, Try Becoming Antifra First

by Don Hall

The laughter at my expense was not the kind of guffawing that accompanies a sense of genial ribbing but of Biff Tannen cracking up at the awkward geekiness of George McFly.

"What do you think queer means, Don?"

"I always thought queer meant gay."

Laughter. "No. Queer means refusing to accept the binary in sex."

"Isn't that bisexual?"

Cackles. "No. Bisexual is having a sexual attraction to both biological sexes."

"Who the fuck decided that? Was there a memo sent out?"

The evolution of language is, taken as a long tail concept, natural. When the Miriam Webster Dictionary enters finna (contraction. DIALECT��US, verb. finna: going to; intending to. "I'm finna make a scene") one has to grudgingly accept the fact. It is both the codifying of slang as standard and the pushing the envelope of common dialect. It can get confusing but it is as normal as language itself.

The term fragile is very popular in 2021 but I'm not certain the people who use it as a political label have an understanding of what it means. The redefinition seems to be a synonym for defensive but that isn't even close to the original so it doesn't play. Considering how loaded the term has become politically, I'd suggest we take a look at the pre-DiAngelo meaning and embrace it some before we continue forcing the evolution.

Back to that handy tome of mutual agreement of terms, the dictionary has a few definitions of fragile:"easily broken or damaged", "flimsy or insubstantial; easily destroyed.", and "not strong or sturdy; delicate and vulnerable".

A nine year old boy is enticed to have penetrative sex with his fourteen year old babysitter one afternoon while his little sister watches Joe Namath as "C.C. Ryder" on the television a room away.

This is either molestation or an uncomfortably early rite of passage. The argument can be made that a nine year old cannot give consent but that's not how I remember it. A more fragile person might see this experience as traumatic. He might internalize shame and let the shame fester until he finally explodes like a liter of Diet Coke and a Mento tab. An anti fragile person might see it as no different than playing in the streets when the sewers back up the neighborhood becomes a river in the rain. No stigma, no shame, no harm.

The anti fragile adult is going to have a happier life if not the attention lauded upon a fragile victim of circumstances beyond his control.

I was a latchkey kid.

We lived in an apartment complex on the less than affluent side of town. Mom worked several jobs and the step-dad at the time was a preening, disco-dancing domestic abuser. As such, I found myself out and about without a lot of safety nets in place. I played in a septic ditch just on the outer parameter of the complex. On the other side was an abandoned housing development and I frequently went over there alone to practice my karate (which I thought I was learning from watching David Carradine in Kung Fu, a popular episodic featuring a white man posing as an Asian man who saved people with his peaceful but forceful side kicks). I’d kick holes in the drywall pretending it was comprised of bad guys.

On the north side was, in my mind, a forest but in reality was just a bunch of trees in several abandoned lots. Whenever I ran away from home (a feat that usually lasted until I was tired or hungry) I would go to my forest and “read” the tattered copies of Playboy and Penthouse I had stolen from the aforementioned step-parent.

To the south was a playground for the kids in the complex. A rickety swing set, a teeter-totter, and a broken merry-go-round surrounded by garbage dumpsters. A cursory examination of the dumpsters—a routine activity for a vagabond third grader—revealed a coterie of used hypodermic needles, marijuana roaches, empty liquor bottles and fast food trash.

It’s likely that parents reading this have already crossed themselves or knocked on wood in deference to the fact that their children would never be put in these positions. That their children are safe.

One day, as I had exhausted myself from kicking holes into drywall villains, I headed to the playground. There was no one else around and I decided that I wanted to swing but not on the actual rubber strap. I unhooked the strap from the hefty S-hook it hung from and grabbed it like Tarzan on a vine. I started to swing around in circles holding as tightly as I could to the chain.

Slowly, I began to slide down until the S-hook punctured my white jeans and then into my scrotum. I felt some discomfort and looked down and saw blood on my crotch but I couldn’t disengage. I was hooked, by my ballsack, to the chain. I panicked and did my best to scramble up the chain but the S-hook was firmly in there and the chain just followed me up.

I screamed for help. No help arrived. I struggled and the blood started running down my left pant leg, flowering out like a Rorschach. It seemed I was hanging there for hours but the reality was more likely a few minutes until the hook, now greased with blood, slid out of my nuts and I fell to the dirt.

Leaping up, I dropped trou on the spot to inspect the damage but there was so much blood that I couldn’t see what was actually a small leaking hole. I cried. I squalled. With my pants around my knees, I ran home.

I smashed into the front door screaming bloody murder that my balls were bleeding. My mother, shocked by the sight of her 9-year-old kid, reddened pants around his knees, crotch covered in blood, and in high hysteria (I mean, who make among us wouldn’t be?), laughed out loud. A giggle turned into a laugh transforming to a barking guffaw.

The more dramatic I was about it, the harder she laughed. Out of shock, out of horror, out of knowing how melodramatic her son was prone to be. She giggled as she washed my junk off and saw the tiny hole. She giggled episodically as she put an ice pack on it and tossed me in the car to go to the emergency room. She stopped laughing by the time we reached the hospital and I received two stitches on the underside of my underside.

A more fragile person might grow up with this experience in desperate need to pay someone to listen to his trauma.

"My mother laughed at my bleeding scrotum!" he'd wail as the therapist did her best to stifle her own laughter. He might write a book much later after his antidepressants and struggle session with his mother commenced entitled "Men and The Mothers Who Giggled at Their Nuts" and an article in The Atlantic "Incels and Their Reasons."

An anti fragile person might see this as pretty fucking funny.

In 1992, I was mugged just outside the Granville Redline stop in Chicago. It was around 2:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. I had just played a gig on the Southside with a big band known as The Outcasts and, still in my tuxedo, decided to walk the block to an all-night diner for some breakfast when three young black men hit me with a two-by-four and then proceeded to kick the shit out of me on the sidewalk.

They stole $14.00 in cash and a check for $200.00 from the gig.

Bruised but not broken, when I told the police that I was mugged by three young black guys and what were the chances I'd get my money back, they laughed. Not like Biff Tannen but more along the lines of Denzel in Training Day to a naive Ethan.

Later, when I met with Gil, the drummer and band leader, to have him cut me another check, Gil muttered as he canceled the first "N****rs are the fucking worst." It would have been cause for some sort of reckoning except that Gil was black.

A fragile mind might find himself going over and over the incident, blaming himself, blaming black men everywhere, blaming the cops.

An anti fragile mind understands that shit happens and you can't dwell too much on it because that means you're spending a lot of time thinking about shit.

The more time one spends dwelling on shit, the worse the place smells. It's like living with five cats. At some point, you have no idea that your apartment stinks like cat asshole but your Tinder date sure does.

Commonsense Media has polled some info out and it seems that the kids are wallowing in catshit.

23% of 14- to 17-year-olds say they "often" came across racist comments on social media in 2020 — nearly double the number in 2018 (12%).

"Sadly, but not surprisingly, the teens and young adults who are most likely to be affected by such content are also most likely to encounter it — or recognize and remember it," says the study, which was done in partnership with Hopelab and the California Health Care Foundation.

Black young people are more likely than whites to see racist comments "often" (34% vs 23%). LGBTQ+ youth are more than twice as likely than non-LGBTQ+ youth to encounter homophobic comments (44% vs 18%). Females are more likely to encounter sexist and body shaming posts than males.

On top of all this feline fecal material, it turns out that both actual mental health issues as well as the frequently self-diagnosed PTSD cases are dramatically on the rise. Where, in my formative years, comparisons of how many push-ups one could do was common, today's kids compare anti-depressant cocktails.

Under almost any definition, this is the behavior of fragility. Fragile like a Fabergé Egg in the back of a pickup truck on a dirt road going 75 miles an hour.

Surrounded by catshit, constantly seeing the injury you're looking for and thus finding it everywhere, always feeling aggrieved and victimized. What the fuck can you do except feel like you need to be bathed in Bactine just to survive life's never-ending abrasions?

First, decide what's more important than your feels.

Most people let their every waking moment be dictated by feelings—both theirs and everyone else's. This is a one-way path to thinner skin, gentler sacks, and a general inability to live in a world outside of an echo chamber that has been hermetically sealed.

Becoming anti fragile is the process of understanding that there are a lot of things more important than your feelings. Romulans are fragile; Vulcans are not. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t have the feels—just don’t let them make your decisions for you. It might feel great to scream at the obnoxious woman at the Walgreen’s counter but it’s smarter to mind your business and buy your condoms and Zagnut bar while shutting the fuck up.

Second, get better at feeling bad and keeping it to yourself.

Just like most people allow their lives to be led by the nose by their feelings, most people think they are somehow important. They aren’t. You aren’t. The way skin thickens up is by taking some hits and learning that there are far worse things than being insulted, micro-aggressed, or shamed publicly. Grow a sack and a sense of proportion.

Finally, as the Stoics go, assume you have something to learn in every interaction rather than you have something to teach. I mean, who the fuck are you? To most people, you aren’t anyone of note so suck on the bitter teat of humility and join the throng, kiddo.

As Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Rūmī once wrote "Yesterday I was clever so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise so I am changing myself."

Be wise because clever people write for McSwenis and those assholes suck.

#fragility

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