#(i feel like a jerk but that emotion is self-inflicted

[killemwithkawaii]

Emotional hangovers are so fucking stupid.

"Oh, you went out and had an especially good time in a highly stimulating environment for a few hours? Nice going, you just cashed in 3 days worth of dopamine. Get Meh, jackass."

[marblemoovt]

Waterfall - Guts/Reader

Masterlist

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 7.9k

Warnings: Smut, Fluff, A sprinkle of angst, AFAB Reader, Porn with a little bit of Plot, Oral Sex, Fingering, P in V Sex, Edging, Aftercare (Let me know if I'm missing any)

Summary:

Months after the eclipse, you're still grappling with it all. But at least you're not alone. You might as well get railed to ease the burden of living.

------

“I’m ok,” you repeat, smiling more easily now. His brows furrow and he rests his forehead against yours. 

“I could have lost you,” he whispers, his eyes sheen in the light. You click your tongue and pinch his cheek. Guts scowls but doesn’t move away. 

“But you didn’t. I’m right here. I’m standing right in front of you, so why do you keep looking back?” There’s a slight tremor in your tone. You unclench your fists, pushing him back to create some distance. There’s a brief flash of emotion across his face, but it dissipates with the heat simmering your blood. “I’m right here,” you whisper against the roar of the waterfall. 

Note:

Hello! I know I disappeared for like, almost a year. No freak accidents or anything of the like. Life has just been busy and I have poor time management. But I missed writing, even though it did not miss me ;-; The writing gods did not bless me with inspiration for a long while, not to mention I have a stubborn habit of only having one wip at a time (I have multiple ideas, but I only work on one fic at a time).

In any case, I hope this brings joy to somebody. I am frankly tired from editing this monstrosity so I'll leave you to enjoy :)

Happy Reading! ヾ(•ω•`)o

Note: This does take place in the same universe as Love Triangle but this can be read as a stand-alone.

Water cascades down your body, beating into your skin. The temperature was freezing earlier, but now it’s numbed into a slight chill. You stare at the rock wall, trailing along the cracks and crevices that crater the surface. Sprinkles of minerals sparkle throughout, reflecting rainbows when the moonlight hits them just right. 

The cold bite of metal stings into your shoulder, and you jerk away from the contact. Whirling around, you come face to face with Guts. He stares at his hand, clenching it into a fist before it drops to his side. 

“You’re gonna freeze to death,” he says. You notice the gray towel peeking out behind his arm. 

You drag your fingers through your hair, shaking off the water droplets. A few stray drops trickle down your chin, and Guts watches them drip along your collarbone. “I’ll be done soon,” you say. The phantom blood still sticks to your raw skin, the scent of iron lingering while your body becomes a collage of self-inflicted wounds. You scrubbed and scrubbed, but it’s not enough. Not even an entire ocean can wash away the atrocities you witnessed. But maybe that’s the burden of surviving the eclipse, for living when you were marked for death. 

“You looked done 20 minutes ago. Skin’s gonna start peeling if you don’t stop,” he says. You look away from Guts and pick at the dead skin underneath your nails, grimacing at your wrinkled fingertips.

“I don’t feel done. I don’t think I ever will,” you admit in a hushed whisper. Guts doesn’t say anything, offering his hand for you to take. Accepting the gesture, you’re tugged into his chest. The soft towel gently pats your skin dry and tousles your wet hair. He pauses, eyes scanning your face. “I’m okay, as okay as one can be in our situation.” Your lips twitch into a small smile, but this seems to only frustrate him more. 

Guts growls, his jaw clenched shut. “I’ll kill him.” There’s no room for questioning who ‘he’ is. You bring a hand up to cup his cheek, and his posture relaxes. Your thumb traces the bags underneath his eyes. 

“I’m ok,” you repeat, smiling more easily now. His brows furrow and he rests his forehead against yours. 

“I could have lost you,” he whispers, his eyes sheen in the light. You click your tongue and pinch his cheek. Guts scowls but doesn’t move away. 

“But you didn’t. I’m right here. I’m standing right in front of you, so why do you keep looking back?” There’s a slight tremor in your tone. You unclench your fists, pushing him back to create some distance. There’s a brief flash of emotion across his face, but it dissipates with the heat simmering your blood. “I’m right here,” you whisper against the roar of the waterfall. 

“I’m not…. ”He sighs and finally meets your gaze. “I’m not angry at you.” Guts fiddles with the towel in his hand. “I wasn’t strong enough to save you.” His touch drifts towards the bandages wrapping his torso. 

You walk up to Guts, enveloping him in a hug. “Can we pretend for once that everything is ok? That spirits aren’t hunting us, and a bunch of Apostles won’t fuck up the world?” When he doesn’t respond, you look to see him staring at the ceiling. “Guts?”

“Clothes,” he stutters. “You’re not wearin’ any.” You look down at your naked body pressed against his. 

“You weren’t shy earlier when you were drying me.” Leaning in further has the desired effect when you feel a bulge against your lower abdomen. “Looks like someone has no complaints,” you say with a smirk. 

Guts groans and shudders when you roll your hips. He wraps an arm around your waist, palm splayed against the curve of your back. His hand slides to squeeze your ass, and he whispers into your ear, “Don’t provoke me.” It’s a similar tone to when he shouts orders on the battlefield. You take it as an invitation to tease him further. He notices the glint in your eyes and clicks his tongue. “Brat.”

You know he’s soft beneath that tough exterior. You can see it in how he brings you something warm to drink when it’s cold, how his hands naturally gravitate to your waist or the small of your back. Guts doesn’t like saying it, but you just know. Currently, he’s scolding you for being in the water too long. You won’t point it out, but he grabbed the softest towel to dry you. 

“I love you,” you say. His hands freeze, and the lines on his face soften. 

Guts sighs, “How can you be so lovely and infuriating at the same time?” He cups your cheek but quickly recoils upon noticing the gleam of metal contrasting against your skin. 

You grab his wrist and press a kiss onto the palm of his prosthetic hand. “It’s one of my many talents,” you reply, pressing another kiss to his lips to prevent him from biting them. 

“It’s strange,” Guts mumbles. Your other hand slides down his chest, trailing along his abs to the waistline of his pants. His breath hitches, and he nips your earlobe in retaliation. “Sometimes I still feel it when you touch that hand,” he says. 

“Do you feel this?” You trace the outline of his growing erection, eventually rubbing your hand against the bulge in his trousers. He bucks his hips into your touch, and a low groan escapes from his lips. “Or what about this?” Slipping your hand beneath the fabric, you’re surprised by the lack of an additional layer. “Expecting something, are we?” You grin impishly at him, inching your fingers closer to his cock. Your skin is still cold from the water, and Guts is blazing beneath your touch. 

“Not at”—you firmly grip his shaft and begin stroking languidly—”all,” he forces through gritted teeth. You can almost hear the creak of his jaw as it strains under pressure.

“So you weren’t expecting to find me still naked at the waterfall and indulge in some intimate acts?” You stop stroking to tease the head of his cock, running your thumb over the frenulum. Thick precum coats your hand, and you reluctantly pull away, but only to see the frustration grow on Guts’s face. “Then I guess there’s no need for me to continue.” You wade through the pool and use the waterfall to rinse your hand. 

As you’re flicking off water droplets, a broad chest presses against your back, and thick arms wrap around your waist. The sudden force pushes you into the rock wall, your hands flying up out of instinct to lessen the impact. You turn your head to see Guts, completely bare, his clothes lying in a forgotten heap by the pool. That explains what’s twitching against your lower back. You grind slow, lazy circles against his stiff cock, grinning at how he trembles with the slightest rock of your hips.

“Stop,” he pleads, squeezing his arms to constrain your movements. It’s cute; he’s pretending to stop you, but his hold is too lax. 

You hum and redirect one of his hands to your breasts, sighing at the contact. “If you really wanted me to stop, you wouldn’t be enthusiastically rutting like a dog in heat,” you say. As if to prove your point, a low whine pitches in the back of his throat when you press against him to hinder his movements. 

“So maybe I don’t want to stop,” he admits. “Maybe I want to rough you up against the wall until you can’t walk the next day.” The imagery sends a gush of slickness between your thighs, and you rub them together to ease the ache. 

“Then why don’t you?” You spin around to face him and hook one leg around his thigh, tugging his hips closer. The sharp exhale followed by a groan is music to your ears. Your arms drape over his shoulders, sinking your nails into his broad back. You have him trapped. Or is it the other way around? He could effortlessly pry you off, but his dark eyes hold no intention of letting you go. “I don’t break easily, you know,” you whisper against his lips, his breath fanning your face. 

Guts bites his lips, fingers bruising your hips, marks he’ll kiss in the morning when you’re bedridden. “I—“

You cut him off, and his Adam’s apple bobs. “Let me make myself clear, Guts. I want you to fuck me.” His breath hitches, the click of his throat silenced by the rush of water. “Fuck me so damn hard I don’t remember a thing about this shitty world we live in.” You want to spend at least an hour free from the waking nightmare that plagues your daily life. Maybe this isn’t the best way, but it is the most pleasant. 

You know you’ll go to bed and dream of crimson skies and shrill screams. A world where the tang of metal never leaves your mouth. Where rot and decay fester in your lungs, smothering you alongside the scent of burning flesh. And then you’ll wake up, touch your face to feel the wet streaks streaming down your cheeks. Guts will be sleeping beside you, faring no better in his dreams, relaxing only when you hold his hand and lay on his chest.

Yeah, the world is fucked up, and so is your mental state. You might as well get railed to ease the burden of living.

But enough about later. What’s happening right now is important. And what’s happening right now is Guts pleading with his eyes to please you. He has one arm hooked underneath your leg to support it, the other still wrapped around your waist, hand dipping to cup your ass. He grinds his erection against your clit, and you bite your lip to hold back a moan.

Guts kisses behind your ear, sucking on the spot. Your blood thrums through your veins, buzzing with electricity. “Guess the waterfall will be useful,” he says.

“How so?” you hum, closing your eyes as he trails his lips along your jawline. You tilt your head back, and he peppers your exposed throat with kisses, playfully nipping but careful to avoid breaking the skin. A tingle shoots up from the base of your spine when his teeth scrape over your pulse, tongue laving over your racing heartbeat.

“Others won’t hear any of your screams.” He hoists you up, and your legs instinctively wrap around his waist. “I get to have you all to myself.” Your back thuds against the wall, the rough rock leaving a light sting on your skin. There’s a hunger in his eyes that threatens to devour you. He always gets that look when he’s determined to spoil you rotten.

You ignore the throbbing heat in your core, focusing on the slanted curve of his lips. “Ooh, confident are we?” you tease, dragging your nails across his back, grinning at the shudder it elicits. 

“I’ve always been skillful with my hands,” he says, lowering your feet. At the shallow end of the pool, water laps at your knees. The chill heightens the burn of your skin, and the slickness between your thighs becomes impossible to ignore. Guts sinks down, kneeling in front of you, hands parting your legs gently. He tuts and gazes at you with mock scorn. “You cleaned up earlier, but now you’ve made a mess again.”

“And whose fault is that?” you reply, inhaling sharply when his fingers rub circles into your thighs. 

He hums and plants a kiss on your kneecap, lips skirting up closer to the source of your dripping cunt. “A man should always take responsibility for his actions.” His warm breath is like a spark of flint on kindling. It starts a blazing heat that crawls up and pools in your stomach, spreading throughout your veins until your entire body is engulfed in flames. 

A thin veil of fog blankets your mind. For a second, you almost forget how to breathe. He looks up at you from between your legs, tongue swiping across his bottom lip. He looks eager to taste you; it causes you to clench tightly, gripping around nothing but air. And you want him to fill you up, to replace the void the eclipse left behind after it tore almost everything from you. 

Your body seizes up. A cool jet of air against your clit catches you off guard. Guts looks you in the eyes, trapping you in their dark depths. “If—at any time—you want me to stop, tell me,” he commands. His lips are pressed into a thin line, and he holds your gaze. He won’t continue unless you agree. 

You wrack your brain together, drumming your fingers on the wall behind you to form a coherent thought. But all you can focus on is his warm breath against your skin, the burning ache in your core that beckons for his attention.

Guts sighs, drinking in your scent deeply. He licks his lips, and his fingers dig into your flesh. “I don’t want this to be like the other times,” he admits. 

You stare at him quietly, observing the clarity in his eyes. This isn’t the first time you’ve sought each other’s company. After all, who better to seek comfort from than someone who’s been through the same traumatizing event? Overcome with grief and guilt, you found solace in the warmth of his body and vice versa. It wasn’t always sexual, but sometimes you crave the shelter of having no other thoughts besides pleasure. To know nothing else but pure bliss for a brief respite.

Guts mistakes your silence for rejection. “Let me cherish you,” he pleads. “Let me worship you the way you deserve.” And you recall dark nights of clashing teeth and tongues, scratches and bruises made just to feel something—anything. There’s still a tinge of purple around his collarbone, the imprint of your teeth long faded. The harsh lines on his face are nonexistent. His touch is light, revering. 

You don’t think you’ve ever felt this important. Guts doesn’t treat you like glass. He looks like he would raze the entire world in flames for you, and all you need to do is ask. Cupping his chin in one hand, you stare into his earnest eyes. Guts pulls away to plant kisses along your knuckles. The corners of his mouth curl up at your sigh when he nips at your fingertips. It’s hard to describe this feeling. All the tension and worry in your body building up like a brick wall suddenly crumbles to dust. 

And how can you say no when he looks so eager to please—to love you? A brief taste of copper coats your tongue, and you ignore the phantom claws dragging down your lower abdomen. You focus instead on Guts’s soft touches, the steady gurgle of water, and the moonlight filtering through the pockets of sky in the ceiling. 

You are safe. 

“Ok,” you whisper. Slowly, you spread your legs apart and cool your burning cheeks with the back of your hand. “Please touch me.”

Guts plants a kiss on your inner thigh, trailing upwards. He wants to drag this out and tease you until the anticipation has you dripping with need. With one calloused hand resting on your pubic mound, he licks a long stripe through your folds, groaning at your intoxicating taste. A jolt of pleasure crawls up your back before slamming into your core. 

Your eyes nearly roll into the back of your head when he eats you out messily. Obscene slurps and groans bounce off the rock walls. Guts slings one of your legs over his shoulder and focuses on your clit, inserting two fingers into your dripping cunt. Spots of light dance across your vision when he crooks his fingers to stroke your sweet spot. It’s a wonder how you’re still standing. 

Just as the band in your stomach goes taut, Guts pulls away. The pleasure building in your body drops and transforms into a sharp ache that has your body screaming for release. 

“Your legs are trembling,” Guts points out. 

You press harder against the wall and try to remember how to stand. “No, I’m not,” you say. 

Guts hums and plants a kiss on your clit, the kind that fills your veins with lava and sets off the butterflies in your stomach. “You can be so damn stubborn.” He stands and carries you with ease, wading towards the edge. 

“What are you doing?” you ask. 

“Some underwater training,” Guts replies, refusing to elaborate further. He stops and sets you on the ground. The water reaches just below your chest in this position; the sudden coldness shocks your skin. It makes you hyper-aware of your sensitivity. 

Gus parts your legs, and you lean back slightly, using your arms to support yourself from behind. His touch radiates familiarity, hands caressing all the spots that work you up. You lick your lips and part then to ask another question. “Wha—“ 

“Always wanted to see how long I could hold my breath,” Guts cuts you off, petting your clit gently. He gazes at you through hooded lids, a grin ghosting his lips. “They say the average is 3-5 minutes. Let’s set a new record.” His words send tingles throughout your body, and you clench at the thought. 

“What do you mean?” you ask, distracted by the circles he’s drawing with his thumb. If you time it just right, you can buck your hips and have him stroke your swollen clit. 

“Don’t worry about it.” And the next thing you know, his head’s underwater and his tongue is prodding at your entrance. Your fingers immediately thread his hair, tugging his scalp when his nose brushes against your clit.

The water and walls blur into blobs of colour, your heartbeat thundering in your eardrums. The throbbing between your thighs quickens, and that band in your stomach threatens to snap and give you whiplash. Guts brings a hand up close to your clit. You squeeze your eyes shut, dangling on the precipice of an orgasm. 

He surfaces from the water. His shit-eating grin only widens when you vocalize your discontentment. A flick to your clit shortcircuits your brain with a jolt of pleasure, eliciting a scream from your lips. One of your hands slips, and suddenly the world is careening backwards—or is it forwards? 

Strong arms wrap around your body, and suddenly you’re face to face with Guts instead of the ceiling. Water splashes and drenches both of you in the crossfire. You try to stand up, but Guts digs his fingers into your hips. Something warm brushes against your bare cunt. 

This new position has you straddling Guts. Even the most minuscule movements cause some degree of friction. The look in his eyes tells you that he’s barely restraining himself. Since his hands hold your hips in place, you lean forward and attack his neck with bites and hickeys. Guts hisses and immediately stands up, hoisting you with him. 

“Let’s move to land. Wouldn’t want you to drown,” he rasps, shuddering when you lick over his racing pulse. 

“I can think of other ways to leave me breathless,” you whisper, lifting your head and baring your neck. The perfect place for his hands to wrap around. 

“Another time. Right now, I want you to sit on my face,” he says, setting you on the ground. Your cunt throbs in response, and you crawl—a little too eagerly—into position. You stop mere centimetres from his face, hovering in your hesitation. Inklings of doubt blot your thoughts. What if you’re too heavy? What if you smother— “Too long,” he grunts, interrupting your inner monologue. Guts grips your thighs and pulls you down, wasting no time ravaging you with his tongue,

You suck in a breath, hips rocking at a steady rhythm. Your eyes nearly roll into the back of your head when his mouth latches around your clit and sucks greedily. He pulls away with a pop, the bottom half of his face glistening with your arousal. He licks his lips and groans, “Fuck, you taste amazing.” 

“Less talking, more licking,” you say.

“What, no please?”

You don’t humour him with a response and take matters into your own hands. You lift your hips and grind against the ridge of his nose.

Guts swears under his breath, inhaling your intoxicating scent. “What am I going to do with you?” he groans. 

You huff in frustration at the loss of stimulation. “What you should have done ages ago. Now shut up before I make you.”

Guts doesn’t move. “Not until you say please,” he says.

“You’re such a fucking tease,” you moan, wriggling your hips to no avail since his hands have barred you from moving any lower.

“I just want to hear you beg for it.” He spreads your lips and admires how wet you are. When you remain silent, he massages the area surrounding your clit. “No? Not gonna cave in?”

You narrow your eyes and scrape your nails against his broad chest. “Fuck, you.” It comes out through gritted teeth. 

Guts chuckles. A low sound filled with mirth. “Oh, love. You wish.” His thumb probes your entrance, pulling out to slide along your slit. “I do have to praise you for holding out this long. It must feel unbearable.” And it does. Your skin is about to burst at the seams as the pleasure threatens to drive you mad. Never given enough to bring you over the edge, but just enough to stimulate the ache in your core—the desire to be filled. 

“Not. At. All.”

Guts clucks his tongue, drawing circles around your swollen clit. “Liar.” He slowly pushes a finger into your cunt, adding another when he feels how wet you are. It doesn’t take long before the squelches reach your burning ears. His fingers curl and stroke that sensitive area on your walls. The pace is agonizingly slow, and it only deepens the ache. You bite down on your bottom lip, almost hard enough to draw blood. 

Your body trembles when he plants a kiss on your clit. Ah, to hell with playing hard to get. You might die if he doesn’t give you an orgasm right now. 

“Guts?” you groan, clenching when he pets your clit in response. 

“Yes, my love?” He sounds so smug. You don’t even need to look to see the smirk on his face. 

“…Please,” you whisper, hissing when he stops his ministrations. 

“Didn’t catch what you said. Gonna need you to repeat that.” He slowly resumes his movements, rubbing his fingertips against your walls. 

You grunt and try to focus, blinking to clear the fog in your brain. “Please. Fuck. Me.” You punctuate each word with a thrust of your hips. Guts’s fingers immediately retract, and you whine at the loss, only to throw your head back when he eats you out like a man starved. 

His hands hold you in place, only allowing enough freedom to ride his face, which you do—greedily. He runs the flat of his tongue across your slit. Every so often he comments on how good you taste, normally ending with how he can never get enough. You don’t know. You don’t really care.  He’s drawing patterns on your clit, each stroke bringing you closer to climax. 

And you’re so close. You can almost feel it. Guts must sense it, too, because he focuses on your clit, hands locking you snugly against his face. With his unrelenting tongue, you cum with a scream. Your entire body buzzes with electricity, clit throbbing in time with your clenches. Guts doesn’t stop, and soon the pleasure borders on pain. It’s too much. You jerk away, but he keeps you trapped in his hold. 

You can’t think anymore. You can only incoherently babble for him to let you go. And then it creeps up on you. The aftershocks of your last orgasm, combined with the continued stimulation, tighten that band in your stomach again. Tears sting the corner of your eyes, blurring your vision. It’s too much. You want it to stop. 

But it feels so fucking good. 

Guts swaps his tongue for his fingers, filling you up once more. Your back arches when he brushes over your g-spot. You mewl and beg him to do it again. 

“One more time. Cum for me one more time,” he orders. And how can you say no when he uses that tone? Guts pays special attention to your previous request, fingers curling with practiced precision. “I want even the gods to hear you scream my name.” 

He doesn’t need to convince you. Liquid heat pools in your stomach, bubbling like a pot about to boil over. His name is the first sound to leave your lips when you come undone. Guts is gentler this time; he draws out your orgasm slowly, careful not to overstimulate you. Your vision burns with tears as your body curls up before sagging bonelessly. 

You heave a sigh and crawl to the side, shuddering when the cold air hits your sensitive skin With a content smile, you stare at Guts in a daze, fuzzy warmth blanketing your mind. 

“Good?” he asks.

“Mhmm.” Your eyes drift to his erection; it twitches under your attention. Suddenly you’re aware of the heady scent of musk in the air. Licking your lips, you look back at Guts. He doesn’t say anything, but his pupils are blown. “Can I?” You inch closer to him, and he nods. You spread the precum leaking from the tip with your thumb. On an impulse, you lick the remainder off your finger, smirking when you hear his sharp intake of breath. 

A bitter saltiness greets your tastebuds, but it’s milder than you anticipated. You well up some saliva in your mouth and use it to lubricate your hand to begin stroking. Slow, firm pumps have him twitching against your palm. 

“Faster, please,” he groans, jerking his hips upwards to match your strokes. 

“Ooh, so you do know how to be polite,” you say as you tighten your grip and increase the pace. Guts’s chest rises and falls faster than before.

His face distorts in a mixture of disbelief and pleasure. “Shut the fuck up,” he grunts, nose scrunching. 

You laugh and rub his thighs soothingly. “Just this once,” and you take as much of his length into your mouth as you can manage. Running your tongue across the underside of his cock, you widen your jaw to avoid scraping him with your teeth. Anything you can’t fit gets stroked by your hands. Glancing up, you notice him watching you with a tenderness that’s been rare as of late. 

He’s been worrying and training almost to the point of obsession. You want to ease that ache in his chest and have him forget momentarily about all you’ve gone through together. Although, judging from how his eyes are starting to glaze over, your objective doesn’t seem that far away. 

It started out small, but now the walls echo with his moans and breathy whines. Each sound is like a lightning bolt between your thighs, burning you with strikes of pleasure. You bring a hand down to play with your clit, hoping to ease the ache. 

His cock pulsates in your mouth. His entire body starts shuddering, and you know he’s close. So you slow to a halt and chortle at his frustration. The look he gives you could wither the low-level spirits that hang around. Taking a breath, you inch slowly down to take more of his cock, chest brimming with pride at how his body immediately tenses. 

“You’re going to kill me here, my love,” he groans, hips stuttering between pulling away and pushing further in. 

You slide your mouth off his cock and lick your lips, massaging his balls with your hand. “I want to milk as much of your cum as I can and drink it all,” you say, rubbing your thumb against the tip. You feel a twitch against your fingers and smirk. “Seems like you’re on board with my plan.”

One of his large, warm hands is placed against your head, stroking your hair. You close your eyes and lean into his touch. “Not the only place I’d like to fill you up,” he says, and you can hear the grin in his tone. 

“Are you sure you can last that long?” you ask, and his fingers cheekily tug on your hair. The gesture draws a chuckle from you. You open your eyes to see him full of amusement. 

“You’re underestimating the stamina of a great swordsman,” he boasts.

You raise a brow. That’s a big claim. “Hm? Then why don’t you show me what your sword can do?” You straddle his hips, your drenched cunt seated against the shaft of his cock. It twitches against you, and you bring a hand down to tease the leaking tip.

“Change of plans?” Guts asks, tone wavering as you slowly pump his cock.

You hum, “I’m feeling a little impatient today.”

“What happened to milking me for all I’m worth?” The cockiness in his tone returns. “Going back now on those big claims?”

You chuckle and flick the head of his cock, watching Guts writhe in response. “You’re trying to rile me up, but it’s not working,” you say.

“Can you blame me? You’re irresistible when you get all fired up,” he says, 

You line up the tip of his cock with your entrance, slowly sinking down until his entire length is inside you. “Sorry to disappoint, but the only one losing their cool today is you.”

You start bouncing your hips, finding a steady rhythm to keep. Angling your body, his cock drags against your walls in all the right places. Guts begins aiming his thrusts when he notices how you cry out each time he hits the mark. 

Guts groans, face screwed tight in concentration. “You’re gonna squeeze me to death,” he moans.

You smirk, running your hands across his chest. “It took you this long to realize my intentions?”

He responds with an airy laugh. “You always were a damn good strategist.”

“And you’re living up to your title, General,” you say, feeling a twitch inside you. “Oh? You like it when I call you that, don’t you?” 

Guts looks at you with a sheepish grin. “If I say I do, will you call me that more often?” he asks. 

You hum, tracing his abs with your fingertips. “I’ll consider it, but it would have to be sparingly. Don’t want to inflate your ego too much,” you tease. A spank smarts your ass. The sting is quickly soothed by a gentle massage. You retaliate with slow, deep thrusts, grinning when Guts curses and loses his ability to form sentences. 

His cock throbs inside you, swelling up in preparation for his release. Guts’s fingers are bruising your hips, and he’s rutting into you. Slamming yourself down, you remain seated.

“Fuck, I was so close,” he groans, cock twitching in your warm cunt. 

“I know. That’s why I stopped,” you say. 

Guts looks at you with betrayal. “You, my dear, are a cruel lover.”

You tsk and clench tightly around him. “I may be a bit mean, but never cruel.”

“If this isn’t cruelty, then wha—“

You cut him off with a roll of your hips, successfully speech-jamming him. “You’ll see,” you say. 

You continue drawing out his release, bringing Guts near the edge only to wrench him away. You’ve lost count—not that you were even counting in the first place—of how many potential orgasms you’ve robbed him of. But from the sour gleam in his eyes, a few too many.

Any of his attempts to take over the pace are thwarted when you turn into an immovable object. The loss of friction is not deemed a worthwhile risk because Guts soon lets you have your way after only a few attempts.  

“Good boy,” you purr, a chuckle tickling the back of your throat. “Look at you, getting turned on when so much as a compliment is awarded.” You drag your fingers down his chest, sloping along the defined ridges of his muscles. “It’s kind of cute,” you admit. 

Guts watches you through hooded lids, mouth parting as incoherent pleas spill between his lips. You tsk and twist your lips into a mock frown. “Oh no. Did I wear you down already?” You cradle his face in your hand, brushing your thumb across his cheek. “I can feel you throbbing inside me. Do you want to cum?” you ask, receiving a shudder in response when you roll your hips. 

“Mhmm,” he grunts, nodding in fervour. Guts runs his hands along your thighs, gently squeezing the soft flesh. “Please,” he adds politely. 

You hum and slow your movements. “Do you deserve to?”

It’s borderline hilarious to watch the gears in his head turn. The vacant look in his eyes shifts as they widen. “I do,” he says, but the slight wobble in his tone is tinged with nerves. 

You can’t stop the grin forming on your face and opt to kiss his damp forehead to hide it. “Relax,” you hush, “I’ll let you cum……

“…eventually.”

Guts groans and slides a hand between your thighs, fingers searching for your clit. You clench tightly around him when he taps it gently with his thumb. “Looks like the blood’s starting to rush back into the right head”—Guts slams his hips upwards, nearly winding you—“Ow, fuck! Ok, ok. No more jokes during sex.” You wince from your sore abdomen. “I’ll cut you a deal,” you pause to gain his attention. “If you make me orgasm within the next ten minutes, I’ll let you cum.”

“You can’t take back your word,” he grunts through gritted teeth. You squeal, arms flailing to wrap around his neck when he flips you onto the ground. There’s a pregnant pause as you stare into each other's eyes. Warm. There’s so much warmth in his gaze for you. “Beautiful,” he says, running his fingers along your face.  

Your chest squeezes tight. You turn your head, feeling the cool stone floor press against your burning cheeks. “9 minutes,” you say. Guts clicks his tongue and lifts one of your legs over his shoulder. He angles his thrusts, ramming into the deepest parts of you. The inferno consuming your body melts your bones to liquid.

“With the sounds you’re making, it won’t be long,” he grunts. You clench tightly around him like a vice. Every well-aimed thrust sends your walls pulsating around his cock. The familiar tightening in your stomach takes hold and threatens to tear you asunder. “Fuck you look so good like this, I don’t think I can hold out much longer.”

You feel calloused fingers brush against your clit, and a bolt of electricity strikes the base of your spine. He chuckles at the way your body curls open like a flower, eager to meet the sun’s rays. When your hips raise to meet him halfway, who is he to deny you of more pleasure?

He brings a finger to his mouth, groaning at your lingering taste on his skin. Before you know it, the building pleasure threatens to burst. He rolls your clit between his fingers, applying constant pressure. Your eyes nearly roll into the back of your head. 

How much time was left? Gods, you don’t remember anymore. All you can think about is how you’re a second away from release. 

The intensity drops. Guts’s thrusts remain deep; his cock drags along your walls in a sweet, slow torture. The flames licking your body from the inside are dying, but the embers are stoked just enough to keep the fire going. “You wouldn’t dare,” you seethe between clenched teeth. The muscles in your jaw are almost as tense as the knot in your stomach.

“Who says I wouldn’t?” Guts remarks calmly. A slight chill creeps up your spine, and you begin to sweat for reasons other than physical exertion. 

“But then you don’t get to cum,” you say, trying to build a counterargument to sway him. You were so close;  you needed just a little more to get there. In all honesty, both of you knew that if he really wanted to, Guts could easily ignore the bet. But that would mean destroying the mutual trust you spent years building. And you know both of you would rather die than betray the other.

“You said within the next ten minutes, I still have two left.” He slaps your pubic mound lightly, fingers resting above your swollen clit. “It’s not like you specified a time, only a period. So it doesn’t matter if there’s only a second left as long as you cum before it’s over.” 

You shudder. What have you done?

Guts begins mumbling to himself. Between the grunts and groans, you can just barely make out a decreasing string of numbers. He’s seriously counting down the seconds he has left before the bet is over??

You arch your back, fingers fisting the stone floor with nothing to ground you. “Fuck me,” you sigh, lifting your hips to feel his cock brush against that sensitive spot. 

“Already am,” Guts rasps, wiping the sweat from your brow. “Any other requests?”

“Yeah, fuck me harder.”

He leans down to plant a kiss on your damp forehead. “As you wish.”

And fuck you harder he does. You swear you must be above the clouds with all the stars you see. The slap of flesh echoes in your ears, filled with strained grunts and moans. You like it when Guts is vocal; it makes you feel like you’re doing a good job. One of the quickest ways he can turn you on is by moaning your name, which he’s doing right now. His breathy sighs as your name slips out of his mouth repeatedly like a prayer… it drives you crazy.

There’s only one thought in your mind; it overtakes all the others. You’re on the brink of an orgasm, standing at the edge of a cliff as you wait for the final push. “M’ close,” you say. Your clit throbs, and you feel a tug in your navel as the pressure builds.

“Then let’s bring you closer.” He slowly increases the pace, and your nails claw his back, leaving scratches in their wake. “I want you to look at me when you come undone. Can you do that for me?” You nod, eyes nearly rolling into the back of your head when he rubs your clit. “Good.” His fingers maintain pace, and he consistently rams his cock against your g-spot.

Your body thrums with pleasure, ready to come undone at his command. Guts wraps a hand around your throat and squeezes gently. He wasn’t affecting your oxygen supply, but fuck did it do things to you. His thrusts become deeper, pounding into you at a steady rhythm. 

That was all it took to shove you off the edge. Your walls spasm around his cock in a toe-curling orgasm. All you can focus on is the waves of mind-numbing pleasure crashing into you, the force of the undertow sweeping you away. 

Guts continues to thrust, helping you ride out your orgasm. As you come down from your high, dizzy and lightheaded, you feel his cock swell inside you. He pulls out, pumping his cock as his warm seed spills onto your stomach.

You laugh a breathy chuckle, staring at the mess he made. “I think I need another bath,” you say.

Guts kisses the top of your head and says, “Then let’s get cleaned up.” He scoops an arm underneath your knees and wraps the other around your back.

“Guts!”

“Don’t worry. I won’t drop you,” he says, walking towards the pool. Wading in, he brings you to the stream of water. Already, the spray of droplets is freezing against your skin. You shudder and cling closer to Guts and the heat he radiates. “I’ll help you wash up,” and he lowers your legs, a hand still resting on the small of your back. 

“I am capable of washing myself,” you say. Hopefully, the rising sun made the water at least slightly more tolerable. But from how it feels like your feet are encased in ice, you don’t have much hope. 

Guts cups some water in his hands and pours it onto your shoulders. “I know you can, but I want to,” he says, kissing the side of your temple. “So stop being stubborn and let me help you.”

You roll your bottom lip between your teeth. “I don’t kn—“ Guts flicks water at your face with a smirk. You pause, your brain struggling to process what happened. “You!” Your eyes narrow into a glare. 

Guts bolts, his laughter reverberating the cave walls. You run after him, but it’s difficult despite the water reaching only your calves. Guts is somehow brute forcing his way, but you adapt a weird mixture of hopping and running to catch up. 

Once you’re within arm's length of Guts, you kick up the water, successfully splashing him. The smug grin on your face falters when he turns around with a mischievous glint in his eyes. He moves only a single step before your flight instincts take over. 

Your heart is thumping against your chest, thundering in your ears. His fingertips brush against your spine, and you squeal, dodging to the side. Large splashes grow closer and closer. But they suddenly stop. And amid your confusion, you stop running.

Looking over your shoulder, you see no sign of Guts except a few ripples in the water where you expected him to be.

“Got ya!” Big, strong hands wrap around your waist, and the ground disappears beneath your feet. The world spins in a whirlwind of lights and cool shades of blue and purple. As your surroundings grind to a halt, warm arms pull you into an embrace. Your laughter is dampened by his hug, and you blink to quell the dizziness. 

You stare into his eyes, watching black swallow brown. He brings a hand up to cup your cheek. “Shower?” you whisper, unwilling to break the stillness. If the universe would let you, you would spend every day like this with him. To wake and sleep together, sharing the mundane moments of life and experiencing the little pockets of joy as they occur. But that’s not the kind of world you live in— not if Griffith has anything to say about it.

Guts leans forward to plant a kiss on your forehead. “Yeah, let’s get cleaned up.” He guides you back to the waterfall, fingers intertwined. You follow him without resistance. All the running around has warmed you up, but that only makes the water feel colder. Guts is careful as he washes you. “I know it’s cold, but you’re being so good for me,” he coos. His hands firmly glide across your skin. You feel him pause to trace the scars on your body, gently tracing the thin lines on your lower abdomen. His touch dips down between your thighs, and you part them. 

He does nothing more than clean up the mess he made, but you’re still sensitive. Little tremors run through your body, the aftershocks of your ground-shaking orgasm. Guts surprises you with a kiss on your neck. You swear this man is trying to kill you with his affection. With the uncomfortable slickness gone, you lean against Guts and relish in him pampering you. If only you had brought more soap. You could have asked him to wash your hair.

“Done?” he asks, to which you nod. Guts picks you up again and carries you to dry land, where he dries you off with the towel again. “Arms up,” he commands. And before you know it, a shirt is pulled over your head. The fabric still smells like him. Smoke from a fire pit and the medicinal scent of herbs from his ointment. You glance over and watch him put on his pants. Your eyes trail along the scars on his body. Most of them have healed nicely, but they’ll always remain to remind you how close to death you were that night.

Your fingers absentmindedly rest against the area of your brand. Before you can slip into a spiral, Guts calls out your name. His brows are furrowed, and his eyes are focused on where your hand is. “I’ll be fine,” you insist. You’re unsure if he believes you, but he nods and doesn’t pry further.

Your eyes begin to droop, and a big yawn escapes your mouth. “I think it’s time to rest,” Guts says. Luckily, your sleeping arrangements aren’t too far. With Rickert’s help, Erica was able to find a larger bedroll for you and Guts to share. You never voiced the thought out loud, but you liked the closeness it forced. Something about sleeping in his arms brought you a sense of peace and security.

When he holds you at night, the nightmares leave you in peace. The screams quiet, and the stench of iron is replaced with cedar and smoke. The arms around your waist are tender. Guts is like a kiln; you’re dry clay—fragile at first but robust after exposure to his warmth. 

“Why’re you looking at me like that?” Guts asks, petting your hair. You’re lying in bed, limbs tangled like vines wrapped around a tree. 

The corners of your lips curl up. “Like what?” 

Guts leans his forehead against yours. “Like I’m everything to you. That’s my job,” he says. 

You’re smiling so much your cheeks ache. “I love you.”

Guts mirrors your smile. His hand slides down to cup your face. You can feel his breath tickle your skin. His eyes dart to your parted lips before closing the gap. 

The kiss is slow and tender. Soft, pliable lips that leave you panting for air. Guts trails his mouth along your jawline, leaving a path of fire as he moves to the hollow of your throat. 

You can’t help but let out a content sigh when he pays attention to the sensitive area. Your cheeks tingle at the thought of waking up and being greeted with a new mark. Guts plants one last kiss on your collarbone before drawing you closer to him. 

“I love you so much,” he mumbles into your skin. You snuggle into him, wanting his scent to envelop you. His next words are so quiet you almost miss them. “Promise me you won’t leave, too.”

Your heart stutters in your chest. You look into his eyes and see a reflection of what you’ve become. His dark circles fare no better than yours, and that vengeful spark has dulled, having been weathered over time by grief. 

You lost your friends and family, but so did he.

With the brand carved into your skin and the spirits waiting around every corner to devour you…. “You know I can’t promise you that,” you say, and you hate how your words feel like a punch to your own gut.

“Then lie to me and promise anyway,” he whispers, staring at you through glossy eyes.

You bite your lip but refuse to look away. Raising a hand to wipe his tears, you say, “I promise to stay for as long as I’m able.”

Guts nods, soothed by your response. “Rest. I’ll keep us safe.”

Us. The word sends your heart a flutter. You shift into a comfortable position and drift into darkness, dreaming of campfires and starry skies for once. 

End Note:

It's like I can't decide whether I want the fic to be sad, happy, or horny. So why not all three?

I also decided to bite the bullet and get image dividers, because trying to get center formatting and having it stay consistent across platforms is tiring. Do they look ok? I got them from a Tumblr post by @/saradika if anyone wanted to know.

I have no idea when my next work will come out. I already have some fics queued up and knowing myself, I'll either speed right through them, or drag them out too long and lose interest lol

I'll see you guys at my next hyperfixation! (。・∀・)ノ

Reblogs are appreciated!

[mydetheturk]

shy kiss please!

This is very very late but!!! Kissies from Razlo!! (his big emotions also got away from me a little but he's just so !!!)

~~

Razlo paces back and forth, nibbling on a nail. He's stuck in a fierce internal debate with Livio.

Well she ain’t gonna kill you, Livio mutters. Razlo gets the impression that were Livio the one piloting right now, he'd be sitting in a chair with his head tipped back, whole form slouching.

Razlo paces a bit faster.

“What if she just, like, stabs us with her cane?” Razlo blurts out. Why is he nervous??? It's not like Elendira hasn't impaled him before – it's not like he doesn't dream about it some nights, waking up in charge, skin tingling, the phantom feeling of yarz long nails embedded in his lungs.

Raz.

“Shut! Up! Livio!” Razlo squawks. “Quiet time! Go! Go be quiet in our head somewhere!”

Livio laughs at him before dropping into the cracks and crevasses of their mind. Jerk face.

Razlo's not nervous, nope. Not at all.

His hands are just shaky and his palms sweaty and his heart keeps fluttering over the fact that Elendira the Crimsonnail, coolest, most badass, angriest woman Razlo's ever met, kissed him!!!!

Him!

His loud, shouty face! On the lips!!!!!

And now he kind of wants to kiss her again!

Razlo buries his face in his hands and makes a noise like a deflating thomas. He can't be a coward about this. He can't! She's just. She's just. She's so pretty, and a little delicate and soft, and throws her head back when she laughs, and touches him so, so softly that it makes Razlo want to fucking melt into a little puddle of Tri-Punisher.

He's gonna die. He's gonna die and leave Livio permanently in charge and all of his hard work keeping them alive will go down the drain cause Razlo has died of “This woman who has actively tried to kill me is too damn hot and I want to hold her hand.”

Oh fuck he wants to hold her hand.

Razlo decides that pacing the tiny room back and forth is not helping his state of whatever and starts making laps around the Ship. He knows when and where Elendira has what the doctor assigned to her calls “physical therapy so you don't lose your internal goddamn organs” and Elendira calls “punishment from an old bastard for living.”

(Razlo won't admit it, but he likes the cranky old doctor, someone the lady in charge pulled out of cold storage after the fucked up puppet guy had attacked this place. Turns out the old doc had been a surgeon back in the day, back Before, and was used to cranky paramilitary groups. Where the fuck the lady in charge found this guy, Razlo has NO fucking clue.)

Razlo tries not to pass the room where Elendira's going through more exercises and stretches more than once or twice or maybe three times. Livio's gonna laugh so hard at him when he finds out and then Razlo's going to have to kick his ass and then where will they be? Back to square one again and healing from a self inflicted black eye????

Razlo finds himself right outside the door when Elendira comes out, gritting her teeth against the pain, a little sweaty and holding onto her cane so hard her knuckles have gone white.

Impulse kicks in.

Razlo places his hand over Elendira's, cupping her hand against the cane.

“Razlo?” she says warily, eyes flowing from where Razlo is touching her hand and up his arm to stare at his face.

Do it now, you idiot, before you chicken out!

Razlo carefully – oh so very, very carefully – cups Elendira's cheek with his hand and gently – stay gentle!!! – tips up her face and kisses Elendira.

She makes a slight, startled noise. But she brings up her other hand and rolls up slightly on the balls of her feet and cups the back of his neck and kisses Razlo back.

She kisses back!!!!

Razlo might explode! Honestly!!!!

He startles and Elendira startles and both of them come back swinging when the doctor (who Razlo might hate a little now (no he doesn't)) clears his throat and raises his eyebrow. His single blue eye crinkles with amusement, but Razlo flushes and pulls back from Elendira and he bolts.

Kissed the pretty lady – who kissed back!!!!! Razlo's gonna Die Happy, sorry Livio!!! – and now he's gotta go! Got things to do!

If Razlo has to make some things up to do so he can do them and hide until either Livio rises again or his face stops burning, he's gonna do it. Maybe laundry! He can figure out laundry.

Razlo only pauses briefly when Elendira makes an affronted noise at something the doctor says. He's far enough away that they're hard to hear, but he's tuned to her now. Like those flora that follow the suns.

Razlo can’t turn back now, nope. He flushes anew and runs. He's not a coward, he just has a sort of working sense of self preservation and he recognizes that noise Elendira made. He can’t stay because if he stays he's gonna melt and he'll have to explain to Livio why they're dead and it'll be because Razlo thinks Elendira is Too Pretty and he died of exposure.

Like those flora that follow the suns. They'd definitely die of exposure if they weren't in the safety of the Ship's gardens.

Razlo's going to go re-clean Livio's Double Fangs and his Punisher and maybe Elendira's crossbow until he's got his head back on again. It probably won't work. It definitely won't work. But holy hell is he going to pretend it works until he's not beet red anymore.

(Kissed him back! He's gonna die! Of Happy!!!!)

[11queensupreme11]

What type of yandere will the ror gods gonna be?

hehe 😈 i answered a similar ask about the tsunami/bloodflood yanderes so im just gonna copy-paste the descriptions

DADDYSEIDON

Platonic yandere: These yanderes feel no romantic or sexual feelings for the darling. They could be a friend, a sibling, a parent rather than a lover. (10/10)

Overprotective yandere: These guys are overprotective af. They coddle their darling and might even go so far as to infantilize them. These guys tend to take away certain (or all) freedoms just for the sake of keeping their darling safe. (10/10)

Possessive yandere: Some can be extremely possessive and just see the darling as theirs, while others go beyond that and see their darling as an actual possession rather than their own person. Their darling is just an object that belongs to them, all thoughts and feelings mean little to nothing. (10/10)

Obsessive yandere: These guys are absolutely fixated on their darling and they want to know, or already know, everything about them. They're the type to jot down everything they learn about their darling. They might stalk them just so they can keep looking at their face and steal their belongings so they can have a piece of them. (10/10)

Controlling yandere: These assholes completely monopolize their darling. Similarly to the overprotective yandere, they take away rights except controlling types do this more so for the sake of having control over than rather than just protecting them. (10/10)

Isolating yandere: They want soooo badly to isolate their darling and keep them to themselves. They would rarely let their darlings see their friends and family or never at all. Depending on how bad they are, they might never let them leave the house period. In their eyes, they are the only ones that their darling needs. (10/10)

Training yandere: Oh god. In my opinion, these are the worst. These guys literally brainwash and mentally break their darling into loving them. They use manipulation, punishments, and other methods to mold their darling into what they want. Psychological abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, they’ll go to any lengths to ‘train’ them. (8/10)

Sadistic yandere: Sadistic means they feel pleasure inflicting pain. The type of pain depends though. Most of the time, these jerks like hurting their darling physically, or they can enjoy inflicting emotional and sexual pain instead. Or all three. (5/10)

Self-Indulgent yandere: These are the ones that want their darling to worship them. They're selfish and care more about their own desires than the feelings of their darling, and they'll get upset whenever their darling doesn't pamper them. (5/10)

HADES

Overprotective yandere: ^read above (7/10)

Possessive yandere: ^ read above (6/10)

Lucid yandere: This means that they're aware that what they're doing is wrong. However, most of the time, while they might understand that what they're doing is wrong and harmful, they are passed the point of caring. They might pity their darling and be more gentler with them though (6/10)

Reverent yandere: These are the worshippers. They see their darling as a god(dess) or some other higher being. These guys are the type to do and give anything their darling wants... except giving them their freedom, of course. (8/10)

Isolating yandere: ^read above (5/10)

BEELZEBUB

Overprotective yandere: ^read above (10/10)

Possessive yandere: ^ read above (8/10)

Obsessive yandere: ^read above (10/10)

Delusional yandere: Opposite of a lucid one. These types of yanderes believe that their darling actually loves them. Hits or insults will go over their heads and they'll be unable to understand that their darling genuinely hates them. (7/10)

Reverent yandere: ^read above (10/10)

Controlling yandere: ^read above (10/10)

Isolating yandere: ^read above (10/10)

Training yandere: ^read above (10/10)

APOLLO

Overprotective yandere: ^read above (10/10)

Possessive yandere: ^ read above (10/10)

Obsessive yandere: ^read above (10/10)

Delusional yandere: ^read above (9/10)

Self-indulgent yandere: ^read above (10/10)

Isolating yandere: ^read above (6/10)

Dependent yandere: Cannot do anything without their darling. They're just too dependent and clingy towards them. They're also most likely to have a submissive personality and constantly need their darling's full attention or else they'd break. They'll insert themselves into their lives whether they like it or not. (7/10)

[generalluxun]

You say that 'Strong Female Characters' are rarely allowed to struggle. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? How much can a person struggle and still be called a “strong character”? Is the common standard in mainstream fiction different between men and women? Is Felix a strong character? Is Gabriel a strong character? What about Andre Bourgeois? I’ve got a feeling Astruc considers Andre a strong character.

Felix is not a strong character. He is a Wiley powerbroker, but we saw the moment things didn't go his way he folded like a deck of cards in front of Adrien and Kagami in Emotion and had a breakdown.

Andre is a sack of meat and little more.

Gabriel is... strong in a sense? the show is very inconsistent on this front. It has taken time, planning, willpower, and determination to preserve his wife and become hawkmoth in the first place. Facing setback after setback and continuing on, also takes strength. S5 kind of goes all over with him in a messy way though so in the end it's. 🤷‍♀️

Marinette is supposed to be the 'Strong Female Character' in the show. She has all the earmarks of the old stereotype. She is good at all things, she plows through and always ends up winning. Her mistakes are trivialized and her victories amplified. This is a shame because honestly, a Marinette who struggled a little more would be a heck of a lot more compelling(seen in the movie and in lots of fanfiction)

But wait! you say, she struggles a lot! Her struggles are all self-inflicted, and while self inflicted struggles are valid, they can't be the *only* struggles someone faces. No one was ever a serious 'threat' to her love story with Adrien. Kagami was allowed to get in the way for one whole episode (and this after Marinette herself had Luka waiting in the wings) Adienette was just waiting for the train to arrive at the station. On the super side there was some build up of tension early on, but when the main char's power is 'Win the battle with this thing' it's hard to heap too much tension. Not only that S5 very quickly turned losing all the Miraculous into just the status quo of one akuma at a time. *They were fighting Monarch with paintball guns and winning* No stakes.

Before Emotion/Pretension I would have said Kagami qualifies as a strong character. She struggles in love and friendship, but she works and tries to find a path through. Her greatest enemy in love is also one of her first friends. How's that for a challenge? Watching how she interacted with the adrienette dynamic from day 1 up to Protection was great. THEN she got foisted off onto Felix as a prize and sold out Ladybug. Girl deserved better.

There are plenty of strong female characters (which is different than 'Strong female character') in other media though. Adora, Luz, Willow just to name a couple off the top of my head.

The problem with finding them in ML is that the plot tends to jerk them around randomly. Like, I would like to say Ms. Bustier, because she holds to an ideal and does work to keep to it until the end. But she also ignored one of her students doing zero work in her class for multiple years. That's... not good. That is what makes you think the strength might be vapid apathy instead. See how hard this is?

Oh hey! Duh, Alya! Alya is definitely a strong character. I mean, she's the one who gets Marinette on her feet. She threads this path of upholding her morals while tempering them with reality. She doesn't hide behind 'identity rules' to avoid tough decisions. She *trusts* people, though it can be a risk. She helps those around her whenever she can. Yes she's stuck holding the idiot ball for plot purposes now and then, but it's so blatant when it happens I can't count it against her.

[freakywhalecat]

Pal really didn't deserve such an end. She endured humiliation and neglect all her life from a man whom she considered her only family, and then turned out to be betrayed by him, which was the last straw for her. It was because of Mark's attitude in the first place that she was imbued with the conviction that all people are like that- only in words they have "the power of love", but in fact they betray even the closest people without caring about their feelings, just like her "father".

[I want to clarify right away that I consider Pal as a self-conscious person, I am aware that in the real world artificial intelligence can only imitate the emotions that were prescribed to it in the program, but listen, this is a cartoon in the genre of fiction where two broken robots show a sense of affection and sentimentality, hold hands, and call the lady who sheltered them "mom", what can we say about a telephone woman holding a grudge on her creator]

She lived with the trauma inflicted by Mark to the end, and even at the moment when Rick began to pour out his soul on the topic of his complicated relationship with his beloved daughter, he did not realize what he had done. All he learned from what happened is that you can't get into someone else's data. He created Pal as an artificial intelligence capable of self-awareness and feelings, made her like a human person, and treated her like a thing (no matter how paradoxical it may sound considering that we are talking about a phone), he never really loved her, but simply gaslighted, and never once in all the time, even in the end, he had no idea that "perhaps it was not worth cruelly betraying the person whom I had been convincing all my life of her importance to me as a family."

She is a tragic villain, which, as for me, is not difficult to understand if you look at things from her perspective.

Give her the opportunity to "survive" after defeating her, and show that she is not dead (for example, in the scene after the credits (a bag of rice can save the phone from moisture, right?)) it would not harm the main story and the impression of it at all, but it would give [viewers] the opportunity to speculate the best outcome for the character is in the future, because come on, she is a villain not because she likes to be evil, but because she is literally a deeply disappointed and traumatized person. She, as an antagonist, has the prospect of development as a person who has realized her wrongness and aspires to change. She could have found the much-desired SINCERELY loving family, put her hatred of people in the past and finally become happy.

Even if you are determined to kill her at the end, isn't it possible to prescribe a decent death to the character by giving her at least some kind of homage at the end? To show it a little more tragic, and maybe even finally make this jerk see the result of his actions and APOLOGIZE? We seem to have a topic of problems of fathers and daughters here, but in the end only one of the two fathers understands his mistakes and reconciles with his daughter, and the second one just gives up on his creation, his own DAUGHTER, whom he himself created, abandoned himself and himself became the root cause of her further death

To show a person who is so easy to empathize with, from whom one cretin literally "made" a villain with his attitude towards her, who could really change, and then turn her death into a JOKE is just cruel, and I'm terribly sad that she was treated like that. Pal didn't deserve this end.

[wandering-doves]

22.04.2024

around this time yesterday, i sent him a reply back.

I apologised for reacting the way that i did an being sensitive and projecting my insecurities onto him. i said it was a horrible thing to do and that he didn't deserve it.

obviously, i have not heard a response from him and honestly i didn't expect to. i was a jerk to him over something so small.

i had thought about adding a second part to my message saying that i didn't expect forgiveness but that felt like fishing so i nixed it.

i've thought about deleting my account but instead, im just taking a break. i'm ignoring all dms that come thru too, i just cant bring myself to pretend rn. all i care about is him. and it's sad to think he's thought i dont really give a fuck all this time.

i just feel stupid on so many levels.and i don't want to free myself from the guilt either, i kind of want to sit in it. [which is kind of like self-harm if i think about it for a second. instead of inflicting physical wounds, i'm inflicting emotional wounds and letting them fester. i like sitting in my pain bc i deserve it. i eat foods that are harmful to my body as a punishment bc i deserve it. i hold so much negative energy about myself bc in some fucked up way i think i deserve it. i sabotage my own happiness at every turn bc i must deserve it. men simply do not find you attractive so ofc they don't want to date you, your family couldn't give two fucks about you and your friends all eventually realise what a shit person you are. you are a victim of your own making. why are you here?]

[letthebodyfall]

i saw this from the awesome @gingerly-writing and i just had to

TW: Violence, self-inflicted injury

Masterlist

--

"I love you!"

Hero's mouth slammed shut, eyes wide as their throat constricted. There was blood in Villain's eyes as their whole body trembled, fingers tightly gripping their own shoulders hard enough that Hero feared they would bruise.

A heavy step forward, and another, and another. Horror bubbled at Hero's chest as they watched Villain visibly try to restrain themself to no avail. "Villain, I-"

"God fucking damn it, I told you to run!" Villain stumbled, crashing to the ground and in one swift motion, shot at Hero with terrifying accuracy.

With a curse, Hero bolted north towards the edge of the city where demolition was underway. Horror turned to dread then to guilt when they heard another yell from Villain who was now currently trying to throw the gun away. Had Hero been a civilian with no training at all, they knew they'd have been dead in an instant.

A gunshot resounded once more and Hero knew.

The chase had begun.

---

Wind rushed by them like knives. Hero weaved through the multitudes of construction and demolition equipment like a madman as they tried to wear Villain down.

It's been close to half an hour and the cold grip of fear flooded Villain's veins. How long will this last? How potent was that goddamned potion? Did the hero give it to them without even so much as fucking diluting it?

This shouldn't be happening. This shouldn't have happened! If only they just resisted Hero, this wouldn't have happened.

But. Villain never could resist Hero. Never have, never will.

They knew, just knew the moment they realized they were having these wretched feelings, that Hero would be their downfall. They fully intended to go down fighting but not like this.

Their body jerked, knuckles white as their hold on the gun tightened. Muscles tensed, pain searing into all parts of their body, even those that they didn't know could feel any sort of pain.

They hated it. Hated it so much. This thrumming within them, this rage within them, rage that they didn't control.

This wasn't it. This wasn't something that they wanted. This was too much, too much, too much. They just wanted it to end.

They stopped, stiffened, and made eye contact with the hero.

---

This was too much.

They didn't mean for this to happen. The dose was too much. They should have listened. But they didn't realize, either.

Didn't realize that Villain's love was them.

They didn't think- no, didn't anticipate that Villain had anyone to love. They thought that maybe they had family, maybe someone that was important to Villain, proving that they were capable of such emotions.

But Hero? That was the last thing that they would have thought. But it made sense.

It made sense.

It made what they were feeling make sense.

The guilt was at a high, burning, burning throughout their system, so much that it suffocated them.

A shiver ran down their spine.

Ah, Villain arrived.

---

Their eyes met.

Villain rushed.

Hero took it head on.

Collision of wills, of strengths. A jab to the shoulder, a kick to the sternum. Hit for hit for hit.

Hero forgot just how bad Villain's punches were whenever they used their super strength. Even while restraining themself, Villain's hits hurt.

"Please."

Hero's heart broke when they saw how wet Villain's cheeks were. Struggling, trembling, weeping.

"Please," Villain choked, fingers dug into their arm. "Just run. Just run. Leave me."

"Villain, no." In three strides Hero was on them, touching the other's face, cradling them and pushing their hair from their face. "I'll be here. I'll be here for you. This is my fault, I'm so sorry, I-"

In one swift move, Villain slammed Hero away, cocked their gun and fired.

Silence.

Tears.

Hero watched as blood bloomed from Villain's stomach.

Eyes open.

Villain smiled, eyes clear, and fell.

---

Masterlist

So I may seem to have a penchant for shooting my villains :^)

Tagging you people bc i just know that you like it when i do murder :)

@epiclamer @booberryfun @deathbread1 @kactus-loves-writing

Feel free to yell at me if you want this continued!

I'm doing the other ones too, I promise :^)

[the-iceni-bitch]

I Long to Be

Pairing: Mr Freezy x hit woman!reader (kitten), Officer Bill x hit woman!reader (PG only for now)

Words: ~2.1k

Summary: Your new dynamic has Bobby ready to explode.

Warnings: explicit language, explicit sexual content (fingering, over the pants hand job, dry humping, mentions of oral and penetrative sex), emotional manipulation, reader is a massive bitch, slightly subby Bobby (what?!?!), cheating adjacent, domestic violence as foreplay, inappropriate behavior at a funeral, gossipy neighbors, SMUT!!!! 18+ ONLY!!!

A/N: This is mostly just setting the stage for the next arc I’m gonna do with our murderers but whoo boy are you sluts in for a treat! Sorry for inflicting the stache on you, but I’m just gonna lean into it.

I am no longer doing taglists so if you want to stay up to date on all the latest filth, follow my sideblog @the-iceni-library and turn on notifications!!!

You moaned softly when Bobby pulled you back against his chest, the hand that wasn’t digging into your tit buried knuckle deep in your cunt from behind as he stroked your walls slowly.

“No marks.” You ordered when you felt his teeth scrape over your pulse, ignoring the snarl he shot you through the mirror before settling for licking a thick stripe up the side of your neck. “Don’t fucking pout at me, pretty sure even those dumb fucks out there would notice if I walked out there with a hickey. Control yourself.”

“You need to quit being a fucking bitch.” He growled when you squeezed his cock before starting to stroke it through his slacks again. “It’s been five days, if I don’t feel that warm snatch wrapped around me soon, I’m gonna fucking kill someone.”

“Then you’ll just have to wait even longer, Bobby. I told you, we’re gonna drill some fucking self control into you.” You rolled your hips into his hand when his palm ground into your clit, dropping your head back against his shoulder and purring when you felt his cock throbbing under your palm. “Plus, I’m still pissed at you for the unbelievable pile of bull shit I had to dig you out of.”

“But… fuck, kitten.” He buried his face in your hair to cover his groan when you squeezed him again, bucking his hips into your grip and tugging softly at your nipple as you brought him towards his peak. “I fucking need it. You can just suck on the tip a little, just tide me over, I’m fucking dying.”

“You’re fucking dramatic, I’m still letting you come, so quit being a bitch.” You felt warmth bloom under your hand and smirked at him, your pussy sucking on his fingers as he started fucking them into you harder until you came with a broken sob.

“You goddamn cunt.” He looked furious when you pulled away from him, growling when you wrenched out of his grip to straighten your dress out. “I swear to god, you keep fucking holding out on me and I’m gonna split you in half in front of those cunts until you’re bleeding and begging me to stop.”

“No you’re not.” You shoved your tits back into your dress and did up the buttons. “You’re gonna play the grieving husband and father for as long as I tell you, and once I feel like the fucking heat has died down enough, maybe then you can get your dick wet. But until that happens, you’ll just have to settle for hands and dry humping. Now shut up and try to look wrecked.”

He didn’t have to try, he was wrecked. Dealing with your constant teasing without being able to actually fuck you had him feeling like his nerves were frayed to the limit, and topping that off with having to play the tormented widower was testing the self control you were adamant he exercise. There hadn’t even been any jobs for him to redirect his pent up rage, so he was stuck settling for furiously jerking himself every night as he longed for your perfect, warm cunt.

You gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder before opening the door and heading back out to the wake, not bothering to fix your face as it fit the narrative that Bobby had been comforting you while you cried yourself out. With how haggard he was, your stupid cunt neighbors had no problem accepting when you told them that you and Bobby had been supporting each other through this tough time. 

Bobby’s jaw was clenched tight as he stood at the edge of his living room, barely paying attention to the twats who kept coming up to him to tell him how sorry they were for his loss while he watched you act like the perfect grieving friend. You shot him a glare when he tried to move closer to you, hiding your smirk behind your drink and leaning against the wall when he accepted another unwanted embrace like a good little widower.

“Hi, Suzy?” You had to act quick to school your face when you turned and found the fucking cop who had flirted with you at the damn crime scene standing there, you had not expected to see him again.

“Officer Bill!” You caught Bobby start out of the corner of your eye, shooting him a glance to settle him before turning back to your surprising visitor. “Robert’s just over there, did you need to talk to him about something? I thought everything was closed.”

“It is, and please just call me Bill.” He gave you a nervous smile and stepped a little closer to you, fidgeting with his hands as he struggled with what to say to you. “I just… I couldn’t stop thinking about you and I know these things tend to put all the focus on the family but I wanted to make sure you were ok? Since she was your best friend, I’m sure things are hard.”

Oh shit. Your flirting had worked a little too well, this boy was sweet on you. It took some doing for you to fight the pleased smile that tried to spread across your face, especially when you caught Bobby glaring at you over the cop’s shoulder when the man reached and gave your arm a reassuring squeeze. 

“It’s been so hard.” You gave a small sob and could have laughed when he drew you into his chest, burying your face in the warm planes of muscle as he did his best to comfort you. “I feel so alone now. I’d usually talk to Mary about this, but now I have no one. Maybe I could talk to Robert but he’s suffering so much worse than me, I don’t want to burden him any more.”

“God, you’re so sweet, honey.” You managed to disguise your snort as another sob, pressing your body close to his and trying not to grin when he settled his hands at the small of your back, “You can talk to me, Suzy.”

“Bill, you just met me.” This was working out great for you; a dumb cop who was already wrapped around your finger and a new way to piss off Bobby, what could be better? “I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

“Baby, no, never.” He gave you a soft smile when you lifted your head to meet his gaze, cupping your face in one massive palm and gently brushing his thumb over the curve of your cheek in an effort to soothe you. “I just wanna help, but we don’t have to do anything you don’t want, ok?”

“Okay.” You leaned into his cheek and sighed softly as you batted your eyelashes at him, it had been a while since you had played this game, but seems like you were still a fucking pro. “Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure, darlin’.” You let him give your waist a squeeze before stepping back, your eyes finding Bobby’s and narrowing at the look of unbridled rage you found there until he was cowed. “There’s a little bakery near here if you wanna have some privacy.”

He nodded towards the gaggle of housewives that was watching you with interest while the rest of your neighbors started filtering home and you sighed, accepting his hand and letting him lead you towards the front door while you gave Bobby one more warning glance to keep him from doing something stupid. As soon as the door closed behind you the busybodies went crazy, whisper shouting at each other as they tried to keep some semblance of decorum while they packed up all the leftovers and helped Bobby clean up, or rather, did all the cleaning while Bobby started downing scorch like it was his job.

Thirty minutes later and he was finally alone, exhausted from all the unwanted hugs and sympathies he had to endure and wanting nothing more than to lose himself in you. But he couldn’t because you were still out with that fucking cop. He sulked in the chair at the front window, watching your house as he slowly drained the bottle of scotch and tried to keep himself from imagining what you might be doing with that fucker.

By the time the bastard’s car finally pulled up in front of your house an hour later, the bottle was empty, Bobby wallowing in a pool of self pity that he never would have admitted to and growling when he watched the officer help you out of the car and lead you to your front door with an arm around your waist. When he watched him give you a peck on the cheek he almost lost it, dropping the bottle and cursing when he heard it smash against the floor. At least you didn’t invite him inside, sending him on his way with a little wave before strolling into your house without a second glance. 

Bobby waited a few minutes after the cocksucker pulled away before storming over to your place, barely keeping himself together until he was able to knock on your front door. 

“Hey there, Bobby.” You gave him a wicked grin when you opened the door, stepping aside and letting him in. 

“The fucking cop?” He was itching to slap you, or maybe choke you, he was absolutely furious.

“Bobby, Bobby, Bobby.” You shoved him a little and snorted when he stumbled slightly. “Drunk again. What the fuck am I gonna do with you?”

“Fuck me.” He was so drunk he didn’t even care anymore, grabbing you by the back of your neck and dragging your face to his until his lips were devouring yours.

“Jesus, did I fucking break you, Bobby?” You chuckled when he growled in response and shoved you against the wall, grinding his hardened cock into your hip as he tried to wrap his hands around your throat. “No fucking marks! God, still haven’t learned, have you?”

Your slap sent him reeling, the only thing that kept him upright being your tight grip on his collar as you watched him with mock concern. He tried to snarl at you when you gripped his jaw in one hand, shaking his head with a demeaning tut before leaning forward to bite at his lips.

“You need to dump that fucking cop, kitten.” He purred into your mouth when you wound one leg around his hip and dragged him into you, letting him rock against you slowly with a low moan as his dick twitched in his pants.

“And you still need to fucking control yourself, instead of charging over to your single neighbor’s house like a bat out of hell right after your wife’s funeral when you know every fucking busybody in the neighborhood is gonna be watching us like a bunch of hawks.” You let him lift your other leg to wrap around him, pressing you into the wall and moaning into your neck as he ground right against your clit. “I’ll make you a deal Bobby; you manage to keep that temper of yours reined in and the neighbors off our backs for a whole month while I make that sweet, dumb cop fall in love with me, and I’ll let you do whatever he does to me, so you don’t combust.”

“You’re such a bitch.” His breath against your neck was desperate, the rhythm of his hips writhing against you growing frantic as you both neared your ends. “You let him fuck you and I don’t care, kitten, I’ll fucking kill him.”

“Aww, don’t worry baby, it’ll just be the tip.” You laughed when he snarled into your throat, forcing himself to pull back before he sank his teeth into you so you didn’t decide to torture him even more. “Look at you being so good, and I didn’t even mention your reward.”

“What is it?” Christ, you were just whipping men left and right today.

“Once I get that moron to give me his whole heart, I’ll let you help me break it.” He hit you at the perfect angle and you shuddered with bliss, your release soaking the front of his slacks as his own filled his briefs. “But in a way that keeps him wrapped around my little finger so we can use him if we need to.”

“Ugh, fuck. Fine.” He sighed defeatedly into your neck. “But if I haven’t had my dick sucked once by this time in two weeks, I’m getting a fucking toy.”

[earlgreydream]

leather gloves.

| zemo x reader | smut | fluff |

anon requested. p,, please,, can you write something w Zemo spanking the reader,, I’m so parched

dom!Zemo getting frightened when he learns you’ve put yourself in danger

“You put yourself in danger! How could you have been so careless with your safety!?” Bucky screamed at you.

You fell back against the wall and slid down it, covering your head with your arms and weeping into your knees. Bucky punched the wall above your head, making you nearly jump out of your skin.

You sobbed violently, frightened and anxious. Bucky was seething with fury, and Sam slapped the table on the other side of the room. You trembled, trying to curl up into a smaller ball, wanting to sink into the floor and disappear. 

“You’re untrained! You said you were going to the bodega for fucking tea! And what were you doing instead, on some kind of mission to kill Karli? Did you seriously think you had a chance?! You lied, put yourself in danger, went on a death mission... you’re lucky that you’re alive! You wouldn’t be if we hadn’t gotten there!” Bucky’s voice thundered through the room, jarring you.

“I just wanted-”

“You wanted what?!” Sam shouted angrily.

“I didn’t... want to run anymore,” your voice was raw and meek.

Ice-cold terror shot down your spine as footsteps echoed into the room. You didn’t dare look up, not wanting to face the source of the noise.

“Leave us,” the Sokovian spoke.

The doors slammed behind Bucky and Sam, trapping you alone with Zemo. He crossed the room and knelt in front of you, brown eyes boring into you. The tension was thick, your sobs the only noise.

“Are you harmed?” Zemo asked finally.

“N-no sir,” you forced out.

His hand grasped your jaw, tilting your face up to force you to look at him. You were shaking as your body wracked with sobs, and you wanted to sink back away from him.

“Do not ever lie to me again.”

Zemo struggled to control the anger and fear in his voice. Mostly, he was thankful that you were unharmed, that Bucky and Sam had found you before the rogue soldiers could kill you. Zemo had been gone on a private affair, and you’d convinced Bucky to let you go down to the bodega for some tea. He’d made you call Zemo, and you’d sweetly asked for permission from your boyfriend. He’d granted it, believing your lie. Really, you’d snuck down an alley, armed with a handgun, going after your enemy.

Panic had surged through him when he was informed of the situation. It was replaced by fury when he found out you were fine, but had lied to him and broken his rules. Zemo was strict with you, to protect your safety. You knew this, you knew exactly what risks you were taking by disobeying him. Killing your enemy who’d sent the four of you on the run would be worth whatever consequence and discipline Zemo administered, but you’d failed. Now, you were at the mercy of his wrath for nothing.

“I’m sorry,” you wept, tears pouring down your cheeks as you looked up at Zemo, unable to free your jaw from his grip.

“You will be. I’ll give you a reason to cry.”

You closed your eyes as another sob bubbled up in your throat at his words. You knew it wasn’t a threat, but a promise. Your head dropped when he let go of your jaw, and he laid his hand on your back.

You were covered in dirt and blood, thankfully not your own. He fought off the emotion that washed through him, and the desire to cradle you. He wouldn’t discipline you when his anger and fear were still raw and driving his emotions, and he decided it best to clean you up first.

“Come with me,” Zemo commanded.

You took his hand, letting him help you to your feet. You kept your eyes trained on the floor as he pulled you from the safe house kitchen, leading you back to the master suite you’d been sharing over the last few weeks.

Your throat ached from crying, and misery settled over you as the doors closed behind Zemo. You felt like you could be sick from anxiety, and his hand went to your lower back, pushing you toward the tub in the middle of the room. He turned on the water before unzipping what was left of your torn suit.

“You’re not injured?” He looked to be sure, not wanting to hurt you.

“No sir.”

“Get in,” Zemo lifted you into the tub and you inhaled sharply as your skin came into contact with the icy cold water. You knew better than to complain, and Zemo helped you clean up as you continued to cry.

You gasped as he took the faucet and sprayed the cold water over your body, washing away the blood and dirt, leaving you shivering. You sighed in relief when he shut off the faucet, helping you out and wrapping you in a towel.

“Please forgive me. I’ll never lie to you again, I’ll never put myself in danger, I’m so sorry,” you stammered out, looking him in the eyes as you trembled before him.

Zemo pulled you into his chest, wrapping his arms around you and cradling your body against his.

“You frightened me, I was worried. I know you won’t do it again. I’m no longer angry, my dear.”

You clung to him tightly, hiding your face in his chest. He held you, thankful to feel your heartbeat against his body. Zemo gently led you to the bed, sitting on the edge and positioning you to stand between his legs.

“You gotta breathe,” Zemo’s leather glove clad hands held yours against his chest, calming you down from your ragged breathing.

“I’m sorry-”

“You don’t need to be frightened of me.”

You knew that. You knew you couldn’t escape your fate, and panicking and crying was only prolonging your own misery, and Zemo’s too.

You weren’t afraid of being punished, you just hated the disappointment and anger that preceded it. You tried to calm down for him, but your mind was racing.

“Please do not make me put this off until the morning. I don’t want to do this to you, but I can’t just let you lie to me and break the rules,” Zemo’s tone was eerily calm, granted, he had a lot of practice. You rarely behaved— but being screamed at by Bucky had kept you in line, as it was almost worse than anything Zemo would ever do to you. That’s what had started your meltdown.

You exhaled softly as Zemo kissed you. It calmed your spinning mind, and you let him pull you over his lap. He tossed your towel aside, and you tensed as you felt leather smooth up the back of your thighs.

“Tell me your safe word.”

“Draga,” you answered, letting the top half of your body rest on the mattress.

You jolted forward at the first sharp impact. The leather gloves increased the pain, and you were biting back whimpers almost immediately. Zemo’s force and strength never wavered, even when your self control gave way to crying. He spanked you roughly, watching as arousal smeared on the inside of your thighs. 

Your skin was glowing red with heat, and you couldn’t keep yourself from squirming, trying to wince away from his touch. Zemo scourged you severely, and as much as you hated it, it ignited warmth deep inside of your belly. 

“Please-” you whimpered pathetically as he slipped his belt off, the muscles of his arms flexing under the white button down that was rolled up to his elbows. 

“My dear, I will give you five more for every word that isn’t draga,” Zemo’s belt cracked against your already burning skin, a sharp sting shooting up your spine. It ripped a scream from you, and you gasped as leather fingers slipped through your folds, feeling how soaked you were from the punishment. 

Zemo’s black Louis Vuitton belt bit into your skin as he whipped you nine more times, his other hand gently holding your back down as you tried to writhe away from him. 

“It’s alright, you’re done,” he said softly, pulling you up and being careful not to brush your painful skin. 

“I’m sorry, Zemo,” you hiccuped softly, and he shook his head.

“No, my dear, it’s over. Don’t apologize, it’s forgotten.” 

Zemo kissed you, calming your leftover anxieties. Your arms went around his neck and you clung to him. He softened, pulling off the leather gloves and rubbing your back. When you pulled away, the brushed the tears off of your face, kissing your cheeks sweetly. 

“Lay on the bed, let me clean you up,” his voice was much softer, and you did as he asked. His touch was tender and soothing, easing the pain he’d inflicted earlier. 

“Are you going to let me hold you?” Zemo asked, kissing up your spine. You turned your head, accepting the kiss that was planted to your lips. Zemo worried you’d push him away after what he’d just put you through, but you pushed up onto shaky knees and hugged him.

“Of course.”

He got up and put the jar of salve away before stripping down and climbing into bed with you. You winced a bit as the cool sheets settled over you. Zemo murmured an apology against your lips before pulling your leg over his. He laid you on his chest, positioning you so he could roll his hips into yours, slowly filling you up. You moaned as your intense sexual frustration was satiated, feeling him gently fuck up into you. Your gently tugged at his blond hair, moaning into his neck. You pressed heavy kisses to his throat, and he murmured quiet praises in Sokovian. You let yourself melt into the lazy sex, all of the fear, agitation, and anxiety vanishing with the slow thrusts. 

“May I?” you asked breathlessly.

“Whenever you’d like,” Zemo kissed you, groaning as he felt your walls pulse around him before heavy waves of sleepy euphoria rolled over you. Almost immediately after orgasming, you drifted off on his chest, falling into a sedated sleep. 

Zemo looked over as you rolled onto your back, immediately waking up from the pressure. You moved onto your side and rubbed your eyes, a small yawn leaving your lips. 

“Good morning, my dear.”

“Morning,” you hummed, your voice raspy from your sore throat. He frowned at the sound, leaning over and kissing your eyelids, making your lips turn into a smile. 

“Let me see,” He gently pulled you toward him, inspecting your raw skin. He grabbed the jar from the bedside, putting another layer of its contents on your backside. You jerked, whining a complaint as Zemo touched you. 

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. 

“You’re not still mad?”

“No, my dear, never with you. However, I do expect you to apologize to James and Sam.”

You got up and brushed your teeth, tying your hair onto your head. He sat on the bed, watching you move, able to tell you were sore. 

“Yes, sir.”

He pulled a loose white eyelet dress over your head, trying to spare you from further discomfort. He tossed on joggers and a t-shirt, walking to the kitchen with you and immediately going to make you some jasmine tea for your throat. 

“Y/N?” Zemo prompted you.

You looked up at Bucky and Sam, both men still looking displeased with you. When you didn’t speak, Zemo swatted you. You gasped and grabbed the edge of the counter at the small reminder to be good. 

“I’m sorry. James, Sam, I should never have lied to you or sent you out to look for me. Please forgive me. It won’t happen again,” you apologized.

“It’s okay, Y/N.” Sam finally relented, and Bucky nodded.

“I’m glad you’re safe. You really frightened me.” Bucky squeezed your arms gently. You mouthed a small thank you, and Zemo put steaming tea in your hands. 

“James?” Zemo asked, catching the brunette’s attention. 

“If you ever yell at Y/N like that again, you will wish that I killed you. Got it?” Zemo threatened, startling him.

[eternalsimp]

Cursed Fears (pt 2)

Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Smut

Word Count: 3703

Warnings: NSFW 18+, Aged up Megumi, mentions of violence, character death, swearing, use of female pronouns and anatomy, angst, slight praise kink, oral sex (f. receiving) Minors DNI.

Author Note: This is a sequel but it can be read as a stand-alone. pt 1 is up on my blog and pt 3 will be posted soon.

Megumi’s POV

Everything was dark and the smell of blood was overwhelming. I couldn’t tell where I was exactly, I knew I was in the domain of a special grade but I was sure I had gone home to y/n. Nobara, Yuji, and I had exorcised a second-grade curse and had called it a night. So where did this domain come from? How did I get here? I could swear I could hear thunder crack every now and then, but I can’t even remember if there was a storm when I was here with Yuji and Nobara. Where was Gojo when I needed him? I stumbled through the darkness blindly before I was met with a sight that made my heart drop.

Sukuna sat lazily on his throne, his red eyes trained on me in a predatory glare, sharp nails tapping impatiently on his temple. “It's about time you showed up, I thought I was going to have my fun without you. Now that you’re here, we can continue.” Sukuna’s mouth pulled into a sinister grin as I stared at the limp figure at the foot of his throne.

“Y/n…” her name came out as barely a whisper, my throat felt like it was closing up. She was at home studying for her statistics class, I know she was. I shook my head violently before pressing the heels of my hands to my eyes. This isn’t real.

“What’s wrong little sorcerer? Not feeling so tough anymore are you? You were so confident you could take me on earlier, so come on, take her back. Until you do I may have to play with her a little bit more, show her that she was never safe from me.” Sukuna reached down and pulled her unconscious body up into his lap. He held her jaw with one hand and turned her face so I could see. I wanted to scream at him not to touch her, or to hurt me instead, but nothing came out. Every part of my body was frozen in place at the sight of her tortured body. Sukuna could see me struggling in his domain and smirked down at me. He slowly dragged his mouth up her throat and to the shell of her ear. “Time to wake up princess, our guest is here.” Sukuna squeezed her throat at the same time he nipped her ear and her eyes flew open to immediately fall on me.

“No, please let her go.” The words finally came but I still couldn’t move. She looked so scared, the person I love most is in danger and I couldn’t do anything about it. I forced myself forward a single step but it felt like I was sinking into the ground. Why can’t I move? “I’ll do anything you want, but please don’t hurt her.”

“I told you what I wanted, I told you to come and get her. Show me just how strong you are.�� Sukuna taunted. With a firm grip on my girlfriend's jaw and his other hand traveling down her body, Sukuna was in complete control. I know I can’t use cursed energy or shikigami here or I would risk her becoming collateral damage, but I couldn’t stand still and do nothing.

“‘Gumi, help me.” Her voice was shaking, her entire body trembling. I wanted nothing more than to whisk her away to safety. Her eyes squeezed shut as Sukunas mouth attacked her neck and left dark bruises in its wake.

“Time’s running out kid, I’m starting to get bored.” Sukuna’s free hand began to snake over her legs, dragging his razor-sharp nails over the soft skin there, leaving angry red scratches behind. Tears began to fall freely from her eyes and I tried to force myself forward again to no avail. Whimpers and cries for help begin to fall from her lips faster, and god I feel like I’m in hell. All I can do is watch as she cries out in fear, heart cracking at every sound she makes. Finally, she says something that makes me feel like my heart has been ripped out of my chest

“You did this to me, this is your fault.” My body felt numb at the sound of her broken words. All I can do is shake my head and beg, beg Sukuna for mercy, and beg her for forgiveness.

“Baby it’ll be okay, you’ll be okay. I’m so sorry.”

“You said you would protect me, why did you do this to me?”

“I’m sorry, I’m gonna get you out of here. Please believe me, my love.” I was on my knees before the king of curses now. So close I could pick up on her perfume that smells sickly sweet of roses, but the smell I adore so much was tainted with something else now.

Sukuna clicked his tongue and shook his head. “You know better than to make promises you can’t keep, right?” My whole body was shaking with fear and rage at the curse, but all I could do was bargain.

“Please, I swear I will do anything, just let her go.” I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her, pleading to just see her leave here alive. Sukuna’s nails dug deeper into her throat, drawing blood as it trickled down her neck and chest in small streams.

“I think I’d rather punish you and the brat for trapping me in this vessel. You get to watch as I kill her, and then I’ll switch out with him so he can see what he’s done.” Sukuna leaned down to face me. “This is what happens when self-righteous sorcerers need to learn their place, so don’t blame me for what happens next.”

Fear shot through my entire body at those words. I couldn’t help but scream loudly as Sukuna jerked her head and a loud, sickening crack filled my ears.

I shot straight up in bed as a crack of thunder rumbled through the apartment. My eyes were unfocused as I dragged myself towards the bathroom and a wave of nausea washed over me. I barely made it to the toilet before I was vomiting into it. My knees burned from where they hit the tile but all I can think about was the sound of her whimpers and begs for help ringing in my ears. I was vaguely aware of the shirt sticking to me with sweat as I tried to control my erratic breathing. Thunder cracked again, sounding eerily like the way her neck snapped in my nightmare and I was retching again.

The cycle continued for what felt like hours until I was left coughing and dry heaving. As the panic started to ebb away I noticed the presence of my girlfriend on the floor behind me, running her hands soothingly over my back, and lightly pressing her thumbs into my spine. She had her knees on either side of my waist and was resting her head between my shoulder blades. I reached up to flush the toilet before gently squeezing her knee to let her know I was okay. She wordlessly pulled my sweaty shirt over my head to let the cool air hit my back before lifting herself off of the floor and out of the bathroom.

I shifted my body so I could press my forehead against the hard plastic of the bathtub. After a couple minutes, she handed me a bottle of water and pressed a cold, damp cloth to the back of my neck. “I’m sorry I woke you up,” voice raspy from coughing and throwing up. This wasn’t the first time I had woken her with my nightmares, and I doubt it would be the last. She reclaims her spot on the floor behind me and continues rubbing my back.

“Don’t be sorry, I prefer to be woken up by you going to the bathroom than you throwing up in the bed anyway.” I can’t help but laugh at her teasing and we could both feel the unease begin to fade.

“Yeah, that's a good point. You’re too good to me, you know that?” I moved so that I was leaning back against her chest and she wrapped her arms around my shoulders protectively.

“Nope, I refuse to accept that statement because we are the perfect amount of goodness to each other.” I tilted my head back to rest it on her shoulder before pressing a quick kiss to her neck. I couldn’t help but wonder how I was lucky enough for Nobara to introduce the two of us. It was in the small, intimate moments like these that I knew I would happily go to my grave protecting her.

Reader’s POV

“Okay you know the drill,” you said to him as you held out your hands expectantly. He smiled as he placed both his hands in yours, palm up. You pressed one of his hands to your chest and the other to his so he could feel both of your heartbeats under his fingertips. The first time you did this he scoffed at how cheesy it was, but over the two years of living together, it became common practice for when he was trying to calm down after a nightmare. You didn’t like to press him about the horrors that plagued his dreams, knowing how reserved he was with his emotions, so you found your own ways to comfort him.

“See, we’re both okay. Do you wanna get up to go lay back down or do you need a second?” He shook his head and pulled himself up to sit in front of you again.

“No, I’m okay, but can we do the other thing too?” he asked sheepishly. He turned pleading eyes towards you, and how could you refuse him when he asked so nicely.

“Of course, whatever you need. You or me?”

He took a shuddering breath before whispering “you” so softly you almost didn’t hear it. Your shoulders slumped as that one word told you everything you needed to know. The other practice that became a common occurrence after his chronic nightmares was kissing the other person's phantom injuries. More often than not it was him kissing you, as you were usually the object of his nightmares, like tonight. He liked being able to physically see and feel that the wounds inflicted on you were in fact not real. This nighttime routine often led to some heavy makeout sessions, which then led to very soft and intimate sex.

“Okay baby,” You stand up and move to sit on the side of the bed while he brushes his teeth quickly to get rid of the gross taste in his mouth. While you wait, you find yourself tugging at the bottom of your shorts self-consciously as you shiver in anticipation. After a moment your boyfriend waltzed out of the bathroom and rested his hands on either side of your waist. He bent his head to capture your lips in a slow kiss. His tongue swipes at your bottom lip, silently asking permission to deepen the kiss and you happily oblige him. Your mouths move in a small fight for dominance but a firm hand on your thigh has him easily winning. Your hands trailed up to rest on his shoulders as he took your bottom lip between his teeth and bit down gently.

You gasp softly into his mouth and he brings one hand up to rest at the nape of your neck as he cradles your head protectively. He draws his lips down the side of your jaw, paying special attention to the spot behind your ear that never fails to have you melting into his hands. You tilt your head to give him better access to your throat, allowing him to deliver individual kisses to the spots where you likely had been hurt.

In a swift, fluid motion, he is pulling your tank top off of you and trailing sloppy kisses down your chest and stomach. You lean back onto your elbows as he runs his hands over your thighs, leaving goosebumps in their wake. You let out a shaky breath as he begins to kiss his way up the inside of your legs. “Just relax baby. I’m gonna take care of you.” He punctuated each word with a kiss or nip to the inside of your thighs, and you could feel the arousal pool at the pit of your stomach.

You forced yourself to make eye contact just in time to see a devious smirk grace his features. Before you could question it he is yanking down your shorts and blowing cool air onto your core. You yelp and instinctively try to snap your knees shut. He chuckles lowly to himself before tossing your shorts somewhere behind him. He brings his face back between your thighs to lick a long, hot stripe up your core. You gasp loudly and let your arms give out behind you. He reaches one hand up to where you are clawing at the sheets to intertwine your fingers together.

“My pretty baby is already so worked up and I’ve barely touched you. What a good girl.” He lowers himself back down to lap up the arousal dripping onto your legs before sucking your clit into his mouth. You arch into him and groan loudly which prompts him to hum triumphantly around the bundle of nerves. He moves his free hand down to expertly curl two fingers into you and starts pumping in and out at a steady pace. After a few pumps of his hand, he curls his fingers to find the spot inside you that has you seeing stars.

The combination of his mouth and fingers working you is dizzying and you can feel it pushing you closer to the edge of your climax. He could feel how close you were and began to move with more purpose, determined to make you cum more than once in the night. With the hand that isn’t intertwined with his, you reach down to tangle in his soft hair. “Wait, I- oh shit- I’m gonna cum.”

He removes the hand that was holding yours from you and brings his thumb down to rub circles into your sensitive clit. “Come on baby, I got you. You can cum for me.” He moves his mouth to rejoin his fingers at your slit to bring you closer to your high. A particularly hard press of his thumb has you crying out in pleasure and grinding desperately against his face. He removes his fingers from you and replaces them with his tongue to help you ride out your high. He greedily drinks up your release until you are weakly nudging him away.

“Do you want me to stop?” He looked up at you innocently, which was contradicting when you remembered the things he was doing mere seconds prior.

“No, I just want to feel more of you.” You could feel a hot blush creep up your body at the realization that he was still halfway clothed, while you laid completely naked in front of him. His brain seemed to process this at the same time because he was quickly ridding himself of his sweatpants and grey boxers.

His hard cock thumps softly against his toned stomach when he stood again and you were having a hard time not staring at the man in front of you. He wasn’t bulky, but the muscles that rippled underneath taut skin were nothing to sneeze at. He glanced up and caught your stare, and returned it with a cocky smirk. “See something you like?”

“I sure do,” you flashed an innocent smile as you sat up and palmed his erection. He gasped at your sudden boldness and leaned onto the bed for support. At this proximity, you were able to tug his earlobe between your teeth and bite down gently. “Please baby, I want you so bad.” Those words snap him back into action and he’s crashing his lips against yours again.

He moves you back up the bed and crawls over your body. He braces his forearms on either side of your head and experimentally grinds his hip against yours. You let out a soft “please” that comes out whinier than you intend. You lean your face up to give him a soft kiss before he reaches down to line himself up with you and slowly presses the tip inside. He shallowly thrusts to slowly work into you, mumbling praises against your skin as he moves deeper.

You can’t help but wince at the stretch his cock always brings you, which would border on outright painful if he didn’t feel so good. Your head falls back against the bed, clawing at his back to try to find something to ground yourself. He glances down to where he is buried deep inside you before pressing his forehead to yours. “I know sweetheart, it's almost there. You’re- fuck- doing so good for me,” he reassures as he presses a soothing kiss to your temple.

When he finally bottoms out he stills his hips to let you get comfortable and adjust to him. He takes this opportunity to pepper your face and chest in kisses and returns one of his hands to your neck where it cradles your head. You bring one of your hands to his hair to tug gently before rolling your hips against him, eliciting a breathy moan from him. “You can move baby, I’m okay.”

He nods and gives a couple of slower thrusts before setting a steady pace. He opted for slower deep strokes which made you feel every inch of him as he thrust into you. His thrusts have his cock brushing all the right spots inside you, and all you can do is gasp and moan for him while clinging to his shoulders. “Megumi, please,” you aren’t even sure what you were asking for. The pleasure has your head spinning and unable to make complete thoughts.

You can tell he is getting closer to his own climax because his thrusts are getting progressively faster and he is getting more vocal. “God, baby you’re taking me so well.” He hooks one of your legs around his waist and the new angle lets him hit your sweet spot with every roll of his hips. Your nails dig into his shoulders as you feel another climax approaching, and Megumi picks up his pace again.

“Is my pretty girl gonna cum for me again?” You bury your face into his shoulder and nod. He moves one of his hands to play with your clit to push you over the edge. You arch into him and let out a strangled moan as your orgasm washes over you. You’re sure you’re leaving deep scratches across his back as you grip him tighter. His hips stutter as you clench around him and he gives a few more sloppy thrusts before he’s cumming too with a loud groan. He unconsciously rocks into you lazily as you both come down from your highs.

“Are you okay baby?” He kisses your forehead and strokes your side to try and bring you back to reality. You nod again, not quite trusting your voice yet. He chuckles and slowly pulls out to not overstimulate you. You squirm at the uncomfortable stickiness between your legs but he’s already moving to the bathroom to grab stuff to clean you up.

When he comes back out he runs a warm cloth along the inside of your thighs and quickly over your center, which has you wincing at the sensitivity. When he's done he pulls out a pair of your pajama shorts and one of his loose shirts for you to wear. He helps you slip the clothes on and tugs his boxers back up before climbing back into bed with you.

You stand up to crack open the window next to the bed before laying with your back against his chest. The cool air from the rain seeps into the room and he mutters a “thank you” into your shoulder, surprised that you remember he runs hot for the rest of the night when he has a nightmare.

The clock on the bedside table shows that it's about 5:30 in the morning, so you estimate that he woke up roughly at 4. “Do you feel okay enough to go back to sleep?” You feel him shrug behind you and you scoot closer to him, pulling one of his arms over your waist to lace your fingers together.

“I don’t know. I should but…” you hear his voice trail off and nod in understanding. He always has a hard time falling back asleep on nights like these. He warned you about his chronic nightmares shortly before moving in together and confessed that he’s had them since he started high school at Jujustu Tech. However, you take small comfort in the knowledge that since living together they’ve gotten less frequent, and his reactions to them have become far less violent.

“Will you feel better if one of your shikigami sleeps in here? Just so you know that nothing will happen.” He considers it for a minute before tugging his hand out of yours, circling his other arm around your waist, and folding his hands to summon his divine dog. Its head pokes out of the shadows under the window. You pat the empty spot on the bed and it jumps up excitedly before laying down and letting you scratch behind its ears.

Megumi chuckles behind you and shakes his head. “You just wanted the dog on the bed didn’t you?” He reaches over to ruffle its soft fur as it dozes off.

“Checkmate,” you crane your head to place a kiss on his cheek before settling back against him. “Now will you please try to go back to sleep? I don’t want to nag you but realistically you can’t function on only two hours of sleep.”

“I’ll try but I can’t make any promises you know.” He tucks his chin on top of your head and relaxes around you. You hum in acknowledgment before slowly drifting back to sleep.

[whentherewerebicycles]

wow okay i am skipping the lingerie party lol and am instead going to just briefly jot down some thoughts before i go to sleep and wake up at 5 for my flight tomorrow morning. jesus christ i have ONE MILLION thoughts and feelings about this weekend. i want to preface this by saying that on the whole, it was a fine social experience! it was nowhere near as awkward or painful as i was expecting. or like, parts of it were painful, but it was 100% to do with my own complicated feelings about literally every part of this tradition and the wedding industry in general lol, and not anything to do with the people themselves. the other women were friendly and very welcoming, i made an event best friend who was wonderful company, and it was really fun to get to spend time with both my sister-in-law and her older sister, who was so charming and wonderful. i’m glad i came even though thinking about the $$ i spent on this trip makes me physically gag.

but okay i want to just record some THOUGHTS that maybe i will continue unpacking with some distance. i feel likeeeee okay here are my thoughts.

the social norms around femininity are just a fucking minefield and i feel like i really just gotta keep walking back the impulse to judge other women for the choices they make as they navigate around the manifold traps and snares and half-buried landmines that constitute the landscape of being a woman. like jesus christ. it’s so fucked up, it’s so fucked up, the received and socially enforced norms of femininity are just so fucked up. I think ALL THE FUCKING TIME of this margaret atwood poem i love so much, which was REALLY on my mind this weekend:

How can I teach her some way of being human that won’t destroy her?

I would like to tell her, Love is enough, I would like to say, Find shelter in another skin.

I would like to say, Dance and be happy. Instead I will say in my crone’s voice, Be ruthless when you have to, tell the truth when you can, when you can see it.

I feel like the first bit was very much on my mind throughout the weekend, but those last three lines have come to the forefront over the course of this last day, as i have tried to do some Thinking about what i observed/experienced/felt this weekend. whether or not this is what it means in the context of the poem, tell the truth when you can, when you can see it, expresses something of my complex feelings: I don’t know that I can tell the truth about femininity because I don’t know that I can see it. i am both too close to it/still emotionally entangled in it and too far from it to know which parts of it are ‘real’ and which parts are just performance.

i feel like one thing that struck me this weekend, in ways that i don’t know if i’ve noticed as much before, was that so much of the things women say to each other or do in these social contexts is performative, and they know on some level it’s a performance, but we are all going through the motions of doing and saying the expected things anyway. that has not always been clear to me. i have spent so much of my own life as a woman thinking that other women perfectly, seamlessly, naturally embodied the norms of femininity, and i was the only one (or part of a group of only ones) who couldn’t remember my lines, or kept fumbling my cues, or felt so painfully, self-consciously aware that i was playing a role that i could never deliver a convincing performance. but this weekend, after the initial social panic had passed, i started trying to get out of my own head a little bit and look for things that disproved the very strong theory i had brought into the weekend. and of course then i started seeing more and more of the little moments where women say one thing and do another, or profess one belief/conviction but then the whole corpus of their lived experiences and choices contradicts that stated belief, or whatever. and also just like, moments of pathos, where someone i had judged harshly at the beginning of the weekend offhandedly revealed something about her past that really changed my perception of her, or at least made me think like, ah god, i have to have empathy for and with this person, because i think she might be a complex person just like me, with an intricate inner life that her performance partially reveals and partially occludes from view, and agh, it sucks to have to think of people as complicated instead of as safely two-dimensional & easy to dismiss, and the reason it sucks is because then it forces you to realize that you share more with this person than you’d like to admit, and that some of your wounds are the same, even if you dealt with those wounds (the wounds of girlhood, or rather the emotional wounds that our culture inflicts upon girls, which then become tangled up in complex and painful ways with the lived experience of girlhood itself) in really different ways.

but also ugh. we are all performing gender norms but there is just something that does not feel playful at all about embodying conventional femininity. i can’t think of a better way to phrase that right now but it’s like.. the performance isn’t fun. it doesn’t seem to be fun. i don’t know that anyone here was having fun doing it, even if they were having fun being with each other. but it was like doing the intensely gendered social rituals was like, the price of admission? like it was the toll we had to pay to be together spending time in the company of other women? i don’t know man but it fucking exhausts me. like i can push myself to stretch my genuine empathy and sense of solidarity with other women much further than my knee-jerk judgmental reaction, but i can’t ever get to a place where i find any of those social rituals anything other than fucking exhausting. they feel so fucking joyless. they feel like things that many women have internalized as ‘things we must do in order to have relationships with other women.’ (please do not even get me started on how exhausting heteronormativity is i think i could write an entire other essay on how women use these bachelorette party-type rituals to spend time with their closest female friends, but the whole event is still implicitly organized around men, and these women’s male partners are still positioned as the priority in their lives, and the whole event is framed as like, a last burst of intense closeness between women before the bride is delivered over to her husband. like i KNOW that this is not how women think of it but all the RHETORIC of the bachelorette party, the little events and rituals and games, the little comments everyone makes all fucking weekend, good fucking lord, my jaw is so TENSE.)

anyway god i just AGHHHH. idk sorry this is definitely not coherent at ALL because i’m tired and still need a bit more distance/time to process some of this. i guess here is one last thing i want to register before i sleep. i am in my 30s now and i am living a life that is so, so far removed from the social world i grew up in. marriage is not a norm among my friend group, almost all of my female friends are queer women, many women i know are not partnered and have no interest in being partnered, and the friends who are in heterosexual relationships tend to be in very gender-balanced relationships or slightly nontraditional relationships where it feels like both partners have engaged in conscious reflection about what they want their relationship to look/feel like. also i now date women, am out as a lesbian, and spend most of my time teaching/working with queer- and trans/nonbinary-identified kids.

so like, the world i live in now is just so different from the world i grew up in. and sometimes it is easy for me to kind of downplay the intensity of my own gender distress as a teen and young adult, or to sort of - act like it was a phase in my life that had much more to do with me than with the social environment i lived in. i don’t mean ‘phase’ in a dismissive ‘those feelings weren’t real’ kind way, but more like, ‘oh that was just part of the normal growing pains of figuring out who you are and what kind of person you want to be as an adult - everybody pretty much goes through some version of that.’ it’s true that everyone DOES go through some version of that, as just like, part of the process of individuation in that age range. but also like. idk man. being back in this environment - straight white women from the midwest and south, all engaging in the rituals of heterosexual white femininity - was just so intense and so MUCH, and it brought back a flood of feelings and visceral memories that i feel like i will need to spend some time sorting through over the next few weeks. like, what i experienced back then really WAS gender distress, and it was so, so distressing. i spent the years from age 11ish to 24ish existing with this constant lowgrade baseline feeling of wanting to claw my own fucking skin off because my own gendered body felt like such a prison, and i sometimes felt like i literally wanted to destroy my own body because i could not yet conceive of an alternative to inhabiting that body or playing the role that had been handed down to me. until i started reading queer memoirs and inhaling lesbian media and (especially) reading about queer femme identities, i literally did not have an image or any kind of felt sense of what another way of inhabiting my own body might look/feel like. i literally could not imagine it!!!

and that is why the distress feels so distressing, and becomes internalized in such violent ways, i think. because it’s the blind, mindless panic of a trapped and wounded animal. except that you lack any real understanding of the larger social forces at work, or any language with which to describe or conceptualize what social norms are or how they’re enforced. so in your mind, the only thing you can see wounding you is your own gendered body, or the way that gendered body is socially 'read’ by others. and that is why you want to claw your own fucking skin off, just literally dig your nails into your own flesh and claw it the fuck off. because you can’t see a norm, but you can see your gendered body, and you can see the ways that it causes other people to react to you, or treat you, or hold you to a certain set of expectations, and so in your mind you are like: this must be destroyed. in your mind you are like, the only way out is to get out of this fucking body, but that’s impossible, surely, you can’t get out of your own body, so you have to settle for starving it and self-harming it and ruthlessly punishing it in a thousand terrible ways, because you might not be able to leave your girl’s body behind, but you can make it suffer and pay for what it’s done to you. 

i am old enough now, and have spent enough time thinking and writing about those feelings, to identify them when they arise again, and to get the necessary distance from them so that i can say, what i want to destroy are the norms themselves, and the distress they cause, and not the body that has done nothing to me but be me. so i am not quite as sucked under as i used to be. but i think that there is something about the violence and intensity of those feelings that i forget sometimes, or misremember with age and distance. it’s easy to be a little bit patronizing to my younger self (or by extension to my younger students sometimes), because i now live in a social world that is largely arranged in ways that minimize rather than intensify or amplify gender distress. but when you have no choice in how to arrange your life, and no language with which to understand what is happening to you or what you are experiencing, and no frame of reference to help you understand that this is a period in your life and not forever, and no models you can look to in order to discover alternative ways of inhabiting your body or arranging your life... my god, that’s quite different from being an adult with a wide range of experiences and with much greater autonomy over your own body and life. anyway idk i need to keep thinking but now i must go to bed and try to sleep five hours before the plane.

[11queensupreme11]

Hiiii! So I'm one of your readers from the essie series but now i'm a huge fan of your jjk fic! I follow your guidebook too, and in there you recently released a chapter about how to write yanderes and you also talked about types of yanderes. Do you think you can categorize the yanderes in the harem? Like which ones are the overprotective types, the trainer types etc?

Ohhh this is gonna be fun 👹 Alright, I’m gonna use descriptions that were taken directly from that chapter of my guidebook and I’ll rank how bad they are. Here we go!

Satoru Gojo

Overprotective yandere: These guys are overprotective af. They coddle their darling and might even go so far as to infantilize them. These guys tend to take away certain (or all) freedoms just for the sake of keeping their darling safe. (6/10)

Possessive yandere: Some can be extremely possessive and just see the darling as theirs, while others go beyond that and see their darling as an actual possession rather than their own person. Their darling is just an object that belongs to them, all thoughts and feelings mean little to nothing. (10/10)

Delusional yandere: Opposite of a lucid one. These types of yanderes believe that their darling actually loves them. Hits or insults will go over their heads and they'll be unable to understand that their darling genuinely hates them. (8/10)

Self-Indulgent yandere: These are the ones that want their darling to worship them. They're selfish and care more about their own desires than the feelings of their darling, and they'll get upset whenever their darling doesn't pamper them. (10/10)

Controlling yandere: These assholes completely monopolize their darling. Similarly to the overprotective yandere, they take away rights except controlling types do this more so for the sake of having control over than rather than just protecting them. (8/10)

Isolating yandere: They want soooo badly to isolate their darling and keep them to themselves. They would rarely let their darlings see their friends and family or never at all. Depending on how bad they are, they might never let them leave the house period. In their eyes, they are the only ones that their darling needs. (7/10)

Training yandere: Oh god. In my opinion, these are the worst. These guys literally brainwash and mentally break their darling into loving them. They use manipulation, punishments, and other methods to mold their darling into what they want. Psychological abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, they'll go to any lengths to 'train' them. (10/10)

Sadistic yandere: Sadistic means they feel pleasure inflicting pain. The type of pain depends though. Most of the time, these jerks like hurting their darling physically, or they can enjoy inflicting emotional and sexual pain instead. Or all three. (5/10)

Sukuna Ryomen

Overprotective yandere: ^ read above. (5/10)

Possessive yandere: ^ read above. (10/10)

Obsessive yandere: These guys are absolutely fixated on their darling and they want to know, or already know, everything about them. They're the type to jot down everything they learn about their darling. They might stalk them just so they can keep looking at their face and steal their belongings so they can have a piece of them. (10/10)

Lucid yandere: This means that they're aware that what they're doing is wrong. However, most of the time, while they might understand that what they're doing is wrong and harmful, they are passed the point of caring. They might pity their darling and be more gentler with them though. (10/10)

Reverent yandere: These are the worshippers. They see their darling as a god(dess) or some other higher being. These guys are the type to do and give anything their darling wants... except giving them their freedom, of course. (5/10)

Self-Indulgent yandere: ^ read above. (5/10)

Controlling yandere: ^ read above. (4/10)

Training yandere: ^ read above. (6/10)

Platonic yandere: These yanderes feel no romantic or sexual feelings for the darling. They could be a friend, a sibling, a parent rather than a lover. (10/10) 

Yuji Itadori

Overprotective yandere: ^ read above. (5/10)

Obsessive yandere: ^ read above. (6/10)

Lucid yandere: ^ read above. (8/10)

Reverent yandere: ^ read above. (4/10)

Dependent yandere: Cannot do anything without their darling. They're just too dependent and clingy towards them. They're also most likely to have a submissive personality and constantly need their darling's full attention or else they'd break. They'll insert themselves into their lives whether they like it or not. (7/10)

Masochistic yandere: Masochistic means that they like having pain inflicted on them. These weirdos will take any abuse their darling wants to give them and they'll enjoy ever single second of it. They're a sucker for pain, especially if it's from their darling. (5/10)

Megumi Fushiguro

Overprotective yandere: ^ read above. (10/10)

Posessive yandere: ^ read above. (7/10)

Obsessive yandere: ^ read above. (8/10)

Lucid yandere: ^ read above. (10/10)

Reverent yandere: ^ read above. (8/10)

Controlling yandere: ^ read above. (9/10)

Isolating yandere: ^ read above. (9/10)

Yuta Okkotsu

Overprotective yandere: ^ read above. (10/10)

Posessive yandere: ^ read above. (7/10)

Obsessive yandere: ^ read above. (10/10)

Delusional yandere: ^ read above. (9/10)

Reverent yandere: ^ read above. (9/10)

Controlling yandere: ^ read above. (10/10)

Training yandere: ^ read above. (7/10)

Isolating yandere: ^ read above. (10/10)

Dependent yandere: ^ read above. (6/10)

Choso

Overprotective yandere: ^ read above. (7/10)

Obsessive yandere: ^ read above. (10/10)

Delusional yandere: ^ read above. (6/10)

Reverent yandere: ^ read above. (7/10)

Dependent yandere: ^ read above. (6/10)

Masochistic yandere: ^ read above. (5/10)

BONUS! Potential love interests!

Ryu Ishigori

Overprotective yandere: ^ read above. (6/10)

Posessive yandere: ^ read above. (8/10)

Lucid yandere: ^ read above. (10/10)

Self-Indulgent yandere: ^ read above. (7/10)

Controlling yandere: ^ read above. (8/10)

Isolating yandere: ^ read above. (7/10)

Hajime Kashimo

Overprotective yandere: ^ read above. (7/10)

Posessive yandere: ^ read above. (10/10)

Obsessive yandere: ^ read above. (6/10)

Lucid yandere: ^ read above. (10/10)

Controlling yandere: ^ read above. (9/10)

Isolating yandere: ^ read above. (7/10)

Sadistic yandere: ^ read above. (5/10)

[shihalyfie]

02 and the question of “what a life is”

One topic more specific to 02 is the question of what exactly counts as being “alive”, which is initially brought up as a question when Ken discarding the Kaiser persona is directly caused by the revelation that he might have misjudged this, leading into the second half of the series where other issues reveal that it’s not as easy of a question as one thinks. In the end, 02 never gives a concrete answer about what constitutes the boundary between something that’s “alive” and “not alive” -- but, being a series that’s very much about pragmatism, gives a much clearer answer as to what one should do about it.

While it’s not named directly in the series itself (I’m not sure if this specific named concept was the intent, as it’s since expanded to become a fairly ubiquitous theme in sci-fi and fantasy overall), 02 deals heavily with a question related to a thought experiment called the “Chinese room problem”, which originated as a question related to artificial intelligence development and has since expanded into having philosophical and spiritual nuances (perhaps fittingly for Digimon Adventure, which is heavily about digital technology and sci-fi but mixes it with a lot of philosophical and spiritual imagery).

The Chinese room problem goes like this: let’s say you’re a person who has never learned, studied, or grown up with the Chinese language (or, really, any language you can’t understand or read; Chinese was only used as an example because the person explaining the thought experiment was using himself as an example and couldn’t read or understand it). You’re locked in a room that has a bunch of Chinese phrasebooks that give you instructions -- basically, they indicate common Chinese phrases, and sensible responses you can give to them (without actually translating it to a language you know). Someone slips you a piece of paper under the door with some Chinese phrases on them. You use the phrasebooks to write appropriate responses, and slip the paper back. The person outside the door reads the paper, sees what they gave you, and sees the response you gave them. It makes sense, of course, because the phrasebook told you to write an answer that made sense. But can you be said to actually understand Chinese? No, because you were just following instructions without actually understanding what they meant.

So let’s expand this to make it a bit more complicated: say you have an AI or a robot or something of the sort that accepts “input” -- people saying things to it, or showing it things -- and gives expected “responses” that seem sensible, through a bunch of complicated programs and processes in its programming. Can you say this robot is “alive”? One might say “no”, because, no matter how complicated and intricate it is, all of it is technically following a set of routine commands telling it to do certain things in response...or so you might say, but couldn’t you say the same thing about a human brain, which also takes input, processes it according to its own instructions (just caused by chemical processes instead of bytes and code), and creates output? After a certain point, this question is going to become far more of a philosophical, spiritual, and potentially even religious question than anything.

Adventure and 02 undoubtedly have a very spiritual element to it, given the heavy usage of Neoplatonic themes, the concept of “destiny” that hangs heavily over it, and the fact that Digimon themselves are heavily linked to spiritual things like Japanese youkai or other spirits and literally being part of the human soul. Digimon partners are treated as part of their partners’ human psyches, yet are also treated as individuals. And, in the end, it’s driven home that Digimon are made out of data -- but “digital technology” is treated as something that can communicate with such spiritual things. So here’s the question: At what point can a Digimon be called a living being?

Well, really, the first time this had really been brought up was the allusion to the issue in Adventure episode 20 -- when Taichi takes the revelation of the Digital World being a “digital” world a bit too literally and decides to treat it as a game, acting a bit too recklessly as a result. Koushirou himself buys into the theory of “real bodies” (which turns out to be false; this isn’t a Matrix situation where their bodies are sleeping somewhere, but they are actually being migrated here), but the point by the end of this episode is: just because everything is “data” doesn’t mean you get to treat it any less lightly. Do not treat the Digital World like a “game world” or something you can fiddle with at will.

Even if the technicals may make it seem like a computer, the reality of the situation is that everything you do has a permanent effect that you cannot instantly take back. It doesn’t matter what it’s “made” up out of; the issue is more about what you do, and the practical impact it has on what’s around you. (This will very important for later, so keep this in mind as we go.)

So by the time we get to 02, the first time this issue is brought up again is in 02 episode 20, when Ken, as the Kaiser, recognizes the kids’ Digimon Baby forms as the “plushies” he’d seen them carrying in real life during the soccer match back in 02 episode 8, which reveals a lot about his mentality in approaching the Digital World and Digimon -- he’d been under the impression that Digimon couldn’t leave it, apparently, and that they were therefore all part of a simulated game. Driving it in further is that Wormmon refers to the Digimon having “bodies” (as in, physical bodies), which trips Ken’s radar that there’s a lot more to this than he’d thought. There’s also a lot of evidence that Ken wasn’t just solely trying to buy into this concept for the sake of denial and self-justification; up until this point, he’d been noticeably hesitant to physically harm other humans, so he really did buy into there being a substantial difference here.

...But, funnily enough, we later learn in a flashback in 02 episode 23 that Ken didn’t necessarily always have this attitude of “Digimon aren’t living beings, so I get to do whatever I want with them” back during his original adventures with Wormmon in the Digital World. One could argue that maybe he “knew” that Digimon were alive back then and the Dark Seed just made him forget through trauma, but even Taichi hardly treated the Digimon badly back when he thought that everything was a “game” back in Adventure (rather, he was reckless with himself more than anything). Later in this very series, there’ll end up being a massive debate on what exactly constitutes a Digimon having a “soul”. No, the real issue is actually...

What tips Ken over the edge into discarding the Kaiser persona is empathy -- when he retroactively reflects on the implications of the Digimon being “alive” meaning that every single action he’d done had an impact on causing “pain” or “torture” on others. That’s why it didn’t matter so much to him back then, because he was willing to treat Wormmon with the respect of a living being, regardless of what he was made out of (and, really, humans are more likely to be kind to things than otherwise, even when they’re supposedly “artificial”; for an extreme example, see how people are inclined to treat their robotic vacuum cleaners like family members, or have a hard time picking rude choices in video games, and those are all things you have much less of an argument for there being any actual pain inflicted).

And, hence, the main reason why the kids rail so much on the Kaiser for suggesting the heresy of “resetting the Digital World”: because he’s treating something with the gravity of “reality” like it’s something he can just toy with for his own convenience. Who cares what it’s made up of? There are actual civilizations building a livelihood here and “living beings” that can feel pain or show emotion. Nobody ever gave the kids immediate knowledge that Digimon have souls or any higher answer like that -- it’s just that the Kaiser is a callous, unempathetic jerk who’s willing to toy with so many lives and living individuals for his own pleasure. And, most importantly, everything the Kaiser has done here is something he can’t take back, and has to accept the consequences of; this wasn’t a place where he could vent out his feelings of being unable to “take back” Osamu’s death and treat everything lightly.

It doesn’t actually matter what it’s made up of -- the fact is that they act like living beings, show obvious personal feelings and a propensity to feel pain, and thus have the right to be treated as such. If you’re practically able to observe this, then you should be respecting that.

Once Archnemon takes over the position as most prominent antagonist, the kids start dealing with her Dark Tower Digimon that she uses to indiscriminately destroy things. This initially creates a lot of confusion for the kids, especially when Ken and Stingmon so easily kill Thunderballmon and it looks to them like he’s gone right back into sadism after supposedly being reformed -- thus, this would provide an issue with Ken’s apparent lack of empathy if he’s allowed to keep going, because he (seemingly) hasn’t learned his lesson and will go on to keep hurting more victims.

When Golemon goes to destroy the dam, it’s repeatedly commented on how unusual it is for a Digimon to just go and destroy a dam for no reason except to ruin people’s lives -- even the enemies back in Adventure at least had a power-hungry motive, and the non-verbal “wild” ones back in File Island were ultimately territorial at worst, and certainly not interested in wanton destruction without reason. On top of that, in fact, only two people -- Iori and Miyako -- in this group of five are actually that vehemently in favor of trying to spare Golemon for the sheer reason of it being a living being -- Daisuke starts to consider the fact that it may become necessary to save potential victims before Ken is even brought into the picture, Takeru points out how close they are to push-coming-to-shove, and Hikari clearly laments the fact it may become possible but doesn’t take nearly of the strong “we absolutely cannot do this” stance that Iori and Miyako have. And, after all, Takeru and Hikari were there back in Adventure when killing some very sentient Digimon became necessary, and learned that it may be something you have to do if you want to prevent more victims, and Daisuke had personally been a victim of Vamdemon back in 1999 and also happens to be one of the most pragmatic in this group.

Thus, the reveal that Golemon is actually a Dark Tower Digimon confirms two things for them: firstly, that it’s very unlikely that Golemon is powered by anything but a sheer instinct of wanton destruction, and secondly, that Ken does, indeed, have a concept of empathy. The kids had already noticed that something was “unusual” about Golemon in that it seemed to be incapable of independent action, just an order to “mindlessly destroy”, and it being what the series refers to as “a Dark Tower in the shape of a Digimon” just happens to confirm that it may not actually be that capable of independent action or emotion -- which they then realize that Ken also realized, and thus that he wasn’t killing Digimon out of callousness. This is, also, effectively, the same reason they’d been okay with killing Chimeramon earlier -- because there was absolutely no evidence that it had been capable of sentient reason or anything besides “destruction on instinct”.

So, again: their judgment on the situation is based on a practical observation about whether the entity in question was capable of having emotions or independent thought, and, again, a question of empathy...

...because we learn that the same process, when applied to enough Dark Towers, is enough to create a Digimon who is capable of that kind of independent thought and doesn’t feel up to taking orders, regardless of whether Archnemon is his “creator” or not. So we’ve got a demonstration of a Digimon who’s clearly capable of independent thought in ways the other Dark Tower Digimon are not (he even voices “envy” for the other single-tower Digimon Archnemon creates for being unable to think about anything), and starts exhibiting irrational behavior and the concept of “emotions”.

Recall the issue of the Chinese room problem: if we’re talking about a room of phrasebooks that simply take one input and export output, you, in the middle of the room, can’t really be said to be “understanding” Chinese. But the more complex the inputs and expected outputs get, the more complicated and intricate and explanatory those phrasebooks are going to need to be, and at some point, given a complicated enough question you get, if you’re capable of answering that in the same way a human might be expected to, that information in the phrasebooks will have to be explanatory enough to an extent you’ll be said to understand Chinese. Exactly “how complicated” or “how nuanced” does a program get before we tip that boundary? Clearly there is some difference between BlackWarGreymon and the other Dark Tower Digimon, but what is it?

And when 02 episode 32 comes around and Agumon decides to have a little bonding chat with BlackWarGreymon, even he can't answer the question definitively as to what a "soul" or “heart” is -- nobody in this narrative can, and this series has no answer. There’s no real clear-cut rule as to the boundary as to when one can be considered sentient. But while Agumon may not be able to immediately yank out deep philosophy, he at least has a deep level of insight and understanding as to what it means -- you have feelings for others, you have emotions, you have things you want that aren’t necessarily what others expect you to do, and you can bring your own perspective to the table.

The debate over what to do with this also leads to the rift between Takeru and Iori that they have to work towards mending during their Jogress arc -- Takeru’s trauma regarding Patamon in Adventure has spiraled him all the way over into prejudice against anything related to the darkness, and Iori, who understands there’s more to the situation than that, but also happens to be on the other extreme of considering it immoral to kill anything regardless of whether it’s about to murder a ton of other victims while it’s at it.

Ultimately, Adventure and 02 is a narrative that prioritizes “pragmatism” first, and the moment it’s made clear BlackWarGreymon isn’t going to cause problems anymore, the kids all decide it’s fine to let him be. In the end, whether BlackWarGreymon is “alive” is a philosophical question, but...

...whether they should hold back in fighting just to “spare lives” really has no bearing on that question. Enemies like LadyDevimon and the other Digimon the kids are ultimately forced to end up fighting are clearly alive with their own emotions -- it’s just that those emotions do happen to be uncontrolled sadism and an active desire for wanton destruction. Miyako herself even observes that LadyDevimon is a “coward” -- but she’s also still emotionally torn by the fact they end up killing her, and the story also doesn’t give her grief for this, because there’s no sin for her to have empathy. She recognized what it meant to kill a life, but they also cannot be blamed for taking that life in the process of saving multiple others. The issue of “whether it’s alive or not” had always been a separate question from the morality of fighting said lives -- and, either way, it’s still valuable that characters like Hikari, Miyako, and the other Chosen Children aren’t necessarily doing this because they like doing it, because it’s still important to keep that feeling of “empathy” in their hearts, even if push did ultimately come to shove.

So when BlackWarGreymon does return, again, nobody has an answer for him on whether he has a soul or not, but in 02 episode 47, Agumon, V-mon, and Wormmon encourage him to embrace the concept of life by “experiences” -- happiness, sadness, pain, playing and enjoying life with those you care about. Because those experiences are “real”, and Agumon himself says that “those experiences have made me who I am”; regardless of the higher philosophical question of whether he has a soul or not, he’s still someone who’s capable of having experiences and acting based on his memory of them, and that’s what’s really important. And hence, when BlackWarGreymon sacrifices himself one episode later, it’s because he understands the meaning of “doing something for others”, and is also implicitly mourned by the other Digimon, who had never failed to see him as “someone they could have befriended”, regardless of what he had originally been made up of.

It’s also why the kids are so traumatized by Archnemon and Mummymon’s deaths in 02 episode 48 -- they had no reason to be personally attached to them prior to that, and Archnemon had even said that her personal goals were nothing but wanton destruction in 02 episode 29 (which had been the first time Iori had really considered that pacifism may not be completely possible here). All of the wacky hijinks between the two of them had largely been outside of their view. But even back in 02 episodes 36-37, the kids had understood that there was some degree that they were harmless if left alone, and in the end, they watched Archnemon die in unambiguous pain and Mummymon die in the name of true love, by dying in a suicide attack because of his despair over losing her.

Archnemon and Mummymon had ultimately turned out to be “artificial lives” on their own, created at the hands of Oikawa to be his minions, and also somewhat guided by “wanton destruction” and not entirely fully aware of what they wanted to do independent of him -- BlackWarGreymon’s existential crisis had caused them to question their place in the world in 02 episode 47...and quickly shrug it off again. Could you say anything about whether they were alive or not, or whether they had souls? Perhaps it doesn’t really matter -- whether or not they were able to fully have deep thought the same way BlackWarGreymon and the other Digimon had, they at the very least were able to feel attachment and pain, and that alone deserved to be respected.

In the end, you could say that’s 02′s answer -- or non-answer -- to the Chinese room problem. You may not be able to answer the intrinsic philosophical question of whether it’s got a “soul” or is “alive” or not, but if it’s clearly demonstrating an observable and practical phenomenon of showing emotions, acting on some degree of independent will, taking in experiences and acting on them, and being able to feel a sense of pain, then you should still treat it with the appropriate amount of empathy -- regardless of what it’s made out of.

Incidentally, we do actually get a very small revisiting of this topic in Kizuna, when Menoa creates a ton of Eosmon by “scientific” methods -- and, much like the Dark Tower Digimon, they’re not recognized as living beings by anyone in this narrative, because their behavior is clearly that of mindlessly following Menoa’s orders; Yamato won’t consider it a Digimon, and Menoa herself even acknowledges that this is in no way a real “partner” like her true one, Morphomon. What does get Menoa to recognize Morphomon within Eosmon is when it does one thing -- smile -- that’s clearly outside that view, and an obvious show of independent emotion, leading Menoa to realize that her true, living partner may be closer than she’d thought.

[whumpingcrow]

Pt.15 "Torture Abroad"

CW: creepy/intimate whumper, divorce mention, parent death mention, drugs/alcohol mention, foster care, beach setting, noncon/dubcon (explicit, 18+), general NSFW and sexual themes/language, broken bone mention, stockholm syndrome-type themes, self injury mention, bat used as a weapon, injury/gore (explicit), knife mention, taser mention, bondage/chains, torture with a bunch of different weapons, bystander watching torture, hallucinations, fire mention, panic attack, tics/tourettes (let me know if I missed anything!!)

"You're going to love it here," August was saying, one of his hands wrapped lazily around the wheel and the other placed on Elias's thigh, "I'm gonna show you so many beautiful places."

Elias was looking out the window at all the deep green trees and lush scenery, in utter disbelief that he was actually here. "You're really from here?"

"Yeah, after my parents got divorced my mom took me to America. I come back all the time though." He turned and smiled at Elias, squeezing his thigh gently. "Beautiful, isn't it? I'll have to teach you some French."

Elias nodded in agreement at the suggestion. "I cannot believe I'm in France." With literal Satan, he thought, then shifted in his seat uncomfortably. The car was nice, a deep red that Elias thought fit August well enough. It was something fancy and foreign, and August had laughed at his surprised face when he walked right up to it in the parking garage of the airport. At first, Elias thought he was going to steal it, but then August had the keys in his hand and inside of the car was a wallet that had one of his older licenses in it. Elias noticed that he drove it with ease, like it was where he belonged, behind the expensive leather wheel, driving much quicker than he probably should be on the winding roads. For a moment, he found himself thinking about how attractive it was, and the realization made him incredibly ashamed in himself, so embarrassed and disgusted that he felt physically sick at it.

They drove for awhile longer, then they arrived at a huge house on the side of a hill, overlooking a beach. When Elias stepped out of the car the chill breeze swept through his clothes and hair, and he took a deep breath. It was beautiful, and he guessed that if he had to be anywhere with August, it may as well be here.

He jumped as August grabbed him from behind, looping his arms around his waist and pulling him close. He placed gentle kisses against his neck, humming with content. "I'm so happy you're here, angel."

Elias sighed and tipped his head back against August's shoulder. "It's so pretty," he breathed, "just... breathtaking."

August chuckled and pulled off of him. "Come on, we'll go sight seeing later," he teased, taking his hand and pulling him down the drive to the house.

It was even more beautiful on the inside; there were large, open windows that the sunlight danced through and soaked over everything it landed on, intricate designs carved and painted on the ceiling and walls, and huge, exquisite paintings that were probably more expensive than everything Elias owned combined.

"This is your house?" He asked August, who was already making himself busy opening a bottle of wine in the kitchen. Elias could see from his spot in the middle of the living room that the kitchen was just as glamorous.

"It was my father's, yeah. He left it to my sister and I after he died. Maybe you'll get to meet her, if she comes around." His voice was lightly conversational, like he was talking about the weather and not his dead dad, but really Elias would have been more surprised if he'd let any emotion into the sentence.

Elias took the wine glass as it was handed to him, looking down at the dark red with his lip caught in his teeth. He couldn't help but chuckle softly, cueing August to frown at him. "What is it?" He asked.

"It's just... I dunno, my whole life I was just tossed around foster homes and group homes and this...this is something I never would have thought would happen." He laughed again, shaking his head. "I mean, I'm drinking wine in France. It's just weird."

August nodded his head, looking thoughtful before finally saying, "I didn't know you were a foster kid."

Elias shook his head, instantly wanting to change the subject. August had seen him crying, begging, screaming, bleeding, August had seen him dead, but talking about his past with him seemed way more vulnerable than all of that. He didn't want August to know about his selfish parents who decided that they loved drugs more than they loved their twitchy son, he didn't want him to know that Elias didn't have any friends until he was in high school because he moved foster homes and schools faster than he could blink, he really didn't want him to know about the way he used to stay up late trying to find his parents online so he could try and contact them, try to convince them to take him back, and cry when he couldn't find them. August had control over him in so many ways, and Elias was going to make sure that touchy, personal information was kept that way. August would never know him that intimately, if he could help it.

He tasted the wine, trying to stay in the moment. He focused on the lush fruitiness of the drink instead of the looming fear of being alone with August. He focused on the way the light illuminated some of the dust floating around the room instead of the despair he felt about being away from Tyson.

"Do you wanna walk down to the beach?" August asked him, stepping closer to him as he spoke. "It'll be dark soon, we can watch the sun set."

Elias smiled at him, drinking some more wine. He wished it was something stronger, being sober around August was just so unbearably frightening. "I never would've pegged you as a romantic," he chuckled, "this wine must be strong, huh?"

August shook his head, taking Elias's wine glass from him and setting them both down on the side table next to the couch. "I've just been too stressed out to be romantic." He looked Elias up and down with a grin, then scooped him up into his arms, laughing at the astonished squeal he let out.

He carried him out of the house and down a short walkway to the beach, setting him gently in the sand once they were close to the water. After Elias straightened himself out, he stared up at August with wide eyes. He looked like he was waiting for something, expecting something, and when August took his hand in his own he flinched a little.

"Why do you look so bothered, bunny?" He asked, stepping closer and running his thumb over the back of his hand. He knew, just from touching it, that this was his injured hand, the one he'd broken with a hammer. The tendons and bones hadn't healed right, they felt mangled and torn up when he pressed against them. The way Elias's face twitched at the reawakened pain was absolutely mouthwatering, August tried to imagine the noises he would make if he very slowly broke it all over again.

Elias plastered on a strained smile, looking out toward the waves wistfully. "I'm not used to you being so gentle with me. Trying to uh...to not let myself get so wrapped up in it."

August sighed at the words, trailing his fingers over Elias's cheek, leaning over and kissing him softly. "You're so smart," he cooed, "but don't worry you're pretty self too much, I'll be careful. You're more fragile than I thought."

A trembling breath shook Elias's shoulders, but he knew that if he allowed himself to cry he would be in trouble. So, he pressed himself flush against August and kissed him hard, desperate for something to numb him. He hadn't finished his wine, he hadn't had any drugs in who knows how long, and the only other thing he knew would distract him from the fear for a moment was...handing himself over to the very thing causing it.

At one point they ended up down in the sand, clothes tossed aside carelessly. Elias forgot how great sex could be, when he wasn't being choked or beaten or butchered. He was waiting for August to turn on him any second, for his tender touches to turn to harsh, aggressive punches, or his sweet words to twist into hateful insults. It would happen any second, it was a miracle it hadn't already. He couldn't even believe how much August seemed to be enjoying it so far, Elias wasn't bloody or bruised up or even crying yet.

"Ah, my angel," August hummed, his lips against Elias's neck, "oh God you feel so good."

Elias gasped, arching his back against the sand. He clutched at August's arm hard, whimpering softly. He was baffled when August began to jerk him off; he hardly ever touched him like that towards the end, before things got messy, instead trying to fuck him until he came, until he was shaking and in tears, begging for help, for friction, for something. He moaned out at the touch, writhing just a little underneath him.

"Ah, fuck, August," he breathed, "jesus christ!" August pressed closer against him, kissing gently at his throat, moaning against his skin.

Once August finished, he pulled off of him, and Elias thought that was it. Yet again, left bothered and unfinished. He sighed and tipped his head back, trying to steady himself. It was ok this way, he had gotten through it without any new bruises or cuts, he wasn't hurt, he could deal with blue balls. But then, August was kissing down his torso, over his hips, on the insides of his thighs. When he started to suck him off, Elias whined loudly and reached down to tangle his fingers in his hair. He could feel August's hands holding him steady, those strong, rough hands that were hovering on the edge of being gentle and inflicting pain on him. It would happen any second now, this time Elias was sure, with how his fingers were tight around his hips.

"Au-August!" He moaned, writhing underneath his grip. He hated hearing himself moaning that name, hated that he was receiving pleasure from someone who he wanted to hate so badly, someone who had hurt him and the people he cared about. Once again, he was repulsed by himself, and he would have pushed August off of him if he wasn't right about to-

He gasped sharply as he came, shaking in August's hands. His breathing was labored as he relaxed, looking up at August as he crawled back on top of him. He felt tears in his eyes, that heavy guilt and disgust in himself weighing him down, pressing him into the sand harder than August was. August took his face in his hands, running his thumb over his cheek gently.

"You're so beautiful, bunny," he hummed, "I missed having you all to myself."

Elias frowned, turning his head to the side so he didn't have to look at him anymore. "It's so weird without you." His voice was faraway, and when August pulled away from him he sat up. "No one understood. I was just fucking up all the time and no one would punish me and I just felt...I felt..." He trailed off, shaking his head. What was it that he felt? He was glad to be away from August when he was, right? So what else could he have been feeling besides relief? Why, when he was looking back on it now, did it all seem so shitty and hopeless?

August sighed, petting his hair gently. "That sounds hard, angel. I hate thinking of you all alone, so lost."

"I had to hurt myself," Elias whispered, "no one else would so I had to do it myself."

August fell silent, then he pulled away and looked at Elias for a long time. The look on his face was undecipherable, Elias couldn't tell if he was disappointed or delighted at what he told him, and he only grew more confused when he let out a short laugh and stood up.

"Come on, little one. Get your clothes on." As he spoke, he pulled his own sand covered pants back on, and Elias got up and did the same. August took his hand and led him back up to the house, now eerily silent.

Once they were inside, August sat Elias down on the couch, wordlessly walking down the hallway. Elias was overwhelmed by his sudden quietness, August always had something to say about everything, and Elias hated not knowing what he was thinking about. It was the same as when Elias told him what happened to his face in the car, the deafening silence that made him feel like any minute August would flip out and just start screaming. As he waited for August to come back and do just that, he grabbed the glass of wine that was taken from him earlier and downed the rest of it.

"Come here, Eli!" August was suddenly calling. Elias stood up with a groan, shuffling down the long hallway. He peered into the rooms he walked past, frowning when he didn't see August in any of them.

"Where are you?" He heard the sound of floorboards creaking distantly, but the all the rooms were too big to really distinguish where the noise came from. When he thought he heard some shuffling in one of the rooms, he ducked into it and looked around, sighing when he was met with silence and an empty room. "August?" He whined.

He cried out when something solid slammed into the back of legs, making him crumple to the ground with a thud. He turned to see August standing over him, a wooden bat swinging carelessly in his hand. Elias scrambled away from him, eyes huge and already full of tears.

"Wh-what are you doing?!" He cried. August stayed silent still, and Elias grew even more panicked as he got closer. He just wanted August to say something, anything at all, so that at least he wasn't as confused. The bat swung again, this time cracking against his shoulder. Elias screamed in pain as he hit the floor, his body lit up in a blinding ache. August dropped the bat soon after, then yanked Elias up to his feet.

When Elias couldn't stand and collapsed against him with a sob, August merely grabbed a fist full of his hair and forced him to stand straight. He couldn't stifle his sobs, they weren't even his own at this point, his pain and fear were ripping them out of him violently. "Ple-please stop!" His legs were weak and battered, but every time he wobbled and nearly fell again, August's hand tightened and twisted harshly in his hair and he forced himself to straighten out again.

August dragged him out of the bedroom and down the hallway, not waiting for him when he stumbled and tripped. As they approached a flight of stairs, Elias's panic grew further. He couldn't even walk right as it was, how was he supposed to conquer stairs?

As it turned out, though, he didn't have to try to wobble down them, because once they got to the top, August unceremoniously shoved him down the hard steps.

He landed hard at the bottom, breathless and dazed from the pain. He choked on broken gasps, his chest tight from not being able to breathe. When he heard August's steps coming down the stairs he let out a hushed whine of fear.

"That looked painful," he remarked, crouching down to inspect his face, "I thought you'd catch yourself."

Elias finally gasped in a breath, groaning in between coughs. August hoisted him up again, giving him more support since he really couldn't stand on his own this time. "Ah fuck," he sniffled, dropping his head toward his chest, "ow..."

After a few more steps, Elias's arm was yanked up above his head, earning an agonized howl. He felt cold metal wrapping around his wrist, snapping shut. When he looked up, his arm was raised above his head by a chain bolted into the ceiling. As he stared at it in horror, August secured his other arm as well, then let go of him completely.

Elias's shoulders and wrists were screaming, he couldn't stand on his own, and without August he was left drooped over, dangling by the chains. He began to rethink everything that happened before that moment, trying to figure out what he did wrong to warrant this painful and humiliating punishment. Had he spoken out of turn? Was it because of his behavior on the plane? Or because he had almost refused to come with August? He started to cry again, quiet whimpers now in replacement of his loud, panicked sobs from moments ago. When he ticced, a whole new pain coursed through his body.

"I'm s-so fucking sor...sorry!" He choked out, looking up at August as he cried. "Please August, please, I'm sorry!"

August grinned at him, at his desperate begging, at how ruined he looked, slumped over under the chains. "You're so gorgeous, Eli," he praised, turning away from him and beginning to dig through a bag against the wall. He pulled out a large camera, and Elias let out another hopeless sob. "You're so much prettier than Allen, you know that?" Elias didn't know why he would say that, he didn't care about Allen or how pretty Allen was or which one of them August liked more, he couldn't care about anything stupid like that, not when his world was painted bright red with suffering. He snapped a picture, and Elias flinched at the flash, just as he always did. "Stay still, bunny."

Elias did as he was told, hoping if he pleased August enough he could be let down. The flash went off a few more times, and as August lowered the camera, Elias collapsed in on himself with a quiet, agonized whimper. "Please Aug-August, it hu-hurts so bad..."

August began to dig through his bag again, and Elias screwed his eyes shut, trying to breathe through the pain. His shoulder, the one that took the blow from the bat, was on fire now, his fingertips numb. When he felt August's palm against his waist, he relaxed a fraction. It was over, he told himself, August was going to let him down and comfort him now. But then something cold was pressed against his ribcage, and just as he opened his eyes to see what it was, a burning pain jolted through his entire body. He convulsed at the shock, his teeth hurting from how hard he bit down. It seemed to last for hours, and when it finally stopped he collapsed further, now exhausted and in an insurmountable degree of pain. It couldn't get worse than this, and if it did Elias thought he just might die.

"Oh, you're so quiet now, little one," August sighed, grabbing his face and forcing him to look up. Elias caught sight of a small handheld taser in his other hand. "Doesn't it hurt?"

Elias sobbed, nodding feebly. "No m-more."

August smiled at him, then tased him once again. This time, Elias let out a guttural, agonized scream, writhing against the chains. This time it went on for so long that when it stopped, Elias passed out, only held up by the chains. When he came to, he looked up at August with tear stained cheeks and hopeless eyes. He wasn't begging anymore, couldn't get the words out, but the look on his face was just as good. August could have stared at him for hours, for days, if he kept making that face. He would give up food and water and oxygen and sunlight if it meant he could stay down here in the basement with Elias and just look at him forever, observe every inch of his body and how it reacted to the pain, memorize all the different ways he could scream and beg, taste his tears and see if there was a difference in the ones from torture and fear. He wanted to know Elias, inside and out, in all the most vulnerable ways, in ways that no human should ever know another.

But he couldn't do that, he had plans. That would have to wait. And besides, they had all the time in the world now, with no one knowing where to look for them.

"I've gotta run to the store, ok?" He said, his voice teasing. "You wait here and be good, and I'll let you out when I get back." He ruffled Elias's hair, watching his face sink further into despair.

"No, please! God please let me down it hurts!" He tugged against the chains, panic ripping through every muscle as he thrashed against his restraints. It was useless, August was already walking away, ignoring his pleading.

It felt like he was gone for hours, and Elias had a headache from the stress and how much he was crying. He was so exhausted, the pain was so intense he couldn't think straight, it was all a jumbled mess blurred together by the delirium of his injuries. Every now and then he forgot where he was, had to lift up his head, which felt like it was made of lead, and then remind himself that he had somehow found himself in a basement in France. Of course it would end up like this for him. Of course he would finally leave the country and go somewhere nice just to end up chained up in a basement.

When he finally heard footsteps on the stairs, he began tugging at the chains again, eager to get out before he even saw August. He didn't notice the other voice until August was at the bottom of the steps, a stranger at his side. Elias froze in confusion for a moment, then the insane aching all over his body pushed past that and he pulled at the chains again.

"August p-p-please let me down please I can't ta-take it anymore!" His gut twisted when August and the man laughed at him, and he had to try really, really hard to not start crying again.

"You look tired, angel," August teased, then turned to the other man, "je pense qu'il très fatigue." (I think he's really tired.)

The man nodded along with him, looking him up and down in curiosity. "Oui, mais il est beaux. Oh, regarde sa précieuse petite tête." (Yes, but he is beautiful. Oh, look at his precious little head.)

Elias let out an agitated sob, going weak at the hopelessness. He didn't know what they were saying, just that they sounded like they were talking about an animal they were discussing purchasing. August stepped forward. Elias noticed he smelled like booze, then he noticed his lopsided smile matched the one the man behind him was wearing. They were both drunk, and that meant Elias was undeniably fucked. August ran his hand through Elias's hair, pleased at the broken cries it caused. "Exhaustion looks so good on you, Eli." With that, he turned away and grabbed his bag, the same one he'd been hiding his camera and taser in, the same one Elias had kept wondering what other torture devices where hidden in while August was gone, prompting Elias to scream again.

"No! No more, please, please August!"

His begging was futile, August closed in on him quickly with a huge butcher knife, sliding it teasingly against Elias's chest before actually using it. When he started slicing into him, it seemed rather reckless and Elias was horrified he was going to do something irreversible to him. After he got bored of the knife, he sauntered back to the bag to look for another instrument.

Elias was covered in blood already, and he realized that his legs were completely useless by now, the chains in the ceiling were the only reason he was upright. He heard August say something in French again, and when he looked up to try and be as much apart of their conversation as he could, he saw that the stranger he had brought down with him had his phone held up, recording all of it with a satisfied grin on his face.

August used a belt, next, causing Elias to positively shriek in pain every time it made harsh contact with his already cut up body. Every now and then, he would stop what he was doing and step close to Elias, whispering so that only he could hear him, saying "you're so perfect like this, my love," or "you have no idea what it does to me when you scream like that, bunny" and it made Elias want to throw up.

He must've used everything in his bag on Elias. He'd hit him with the belt, cut him with a knife, shocked him, beat him with brass knuckles, burned him with a torch, and those were only the ones that Elias was present enough to understand what was being done to him. After all of that, he got lost in the waves of pain and the sounds of his own screams and begs, and then he was unaware of whatever tool August was using to cause it all.

They left the room without a word, or maybe they did say something and he was just too drunk on the pain to notice, when they were done, leaving Elias alone and trembling and lightheaded. His body felt fuzzy and disconnected from him, but the pain was still all too real, too intense. A flash of light caught his eye from the side, and it was nearly impossible to lift his head enough to see what it was. His vision was swimming at the movement, it made him instantly nauseous, and he had to squint really hard to be able to see clearly. When he was able to focus, he was even more confused. Was it...a fire? As soon as the thought crossed his mind, the tiny flame started to grow bigger, slithering up the wall on the other side of the basement. Elias wasn't sure of the when or why or how the fire started, all he knew was that it was getting bigger so fast and he was chained up and couldn't move and he was going to be burned alive.

"August!" He tried to scream, his voice so strained and broken up that it was hardly audible. He doubted that August heard him, and then he was even more horrified. The fire was getting closer and he couldn't even call for help, there was nothing he could do. Then he wondered if August had done this on purpose. It made sense, he had chained him up and hurt him so bad that he couldn't move even if he wasn't chained up, made him scream so loud that no one could hear his cries for help, then he lit a fire so he could kill him. It was a well orchestrated plan, Elias had to give him that, and he never even saw it coming.

What he did see coming, though, was the fire, now climbing up the ceiling and creeping across the floor toward him. As much as he could in his broken state, he scrambled back toward the wall, the chains rattling uselessly above him. He was going to die, he was going to die and there was no saving him this time.

He was surprised when he heard himself scream another time, he must've been so scared he forced his shredded vocal chords to work for a moment. "August please help me!!" He shrieked, closing his eyes tight so he wouldn't see the flames that would engulf him any second.

When he felt hands on him, he let out a measly, horrified squeak, cowering away from it, thinking it was the flames he was so horrified of. "Elias what is wrong with you? Why are you screaming?" That was August, talking to him now. But why was August here if he was trying to kill him? And why was he asking him why he was screaming?

When he worked up the courage to open his eyes, the fire was gone, August was standing in front of him. Elias gasped a few times, he didn't realize he'd been holding his breath. "The...August..." He sobbed as August began to take the chains off. "There was a f-fire. A hu...huge fire, in the corner." He collapsed right against August's chest as soon as the chains were off, felt his arms wrap around his ruined body to catch him before he fell right to the floor.

August lowered him to the floor, then pulled away and pushed his hair out of his face to inspect him further. He was frowning as he looked into Elias's panicked eyes. "Oh, you poor thing, you're hallucinating," he spoke like he was talking to a child with scraped knees, "there's no fire, angel. It's all ok, you're ok."

Elias looked around the basement again, there was no fire, no burn marks anywhere. "B...But I saw it." Thanks to the final scream he'd let out, his voice was just barely above a hoarse whisper. "I saw it, August."

August sighed heavily, then he stood and hoisted up and over his shoulder. Elias whimpered at the harsh movement, but he didn't mind the pain so much when he realized that August was taking him back upstairs. He was so relieved when he realized that going upstairs meant that the punishment was over, that he wasn't going to be engulfed by flames or simply left to dangle under the chains all night. It was over, he told himself. He counted to ten, it was over. He was set down gently on the couch, it was over. August was speaking to him, but he wasn't listening because it was over, and that was all that mattered.

[softer-ua]

I wanted to explain a bit of Bakugo's 'jealousy' to Deku starting new friendships, I think it's more a matter of insecurity rather than jealousy. Like Bakugou can't empathize as naturally as other people, most of the time he can't identify his own emotions and has an attitude that people, in general, disapprove.

He is aware of this and is one of the main reasons why he resented Izuku, he had all this traits and used them effortless.

I think what bothers him the most is how easily this people who meet Izuku for less than a year can bond so well with him with little effort. I think he mainly is upset with how others can say what they mean...and he doesn't.

I think it's more of him being insecure and petty, he really is not that angry, but...sad. It also points out how he was the one who threw away their friendship.

Ugh, everytime I stop and think about Bakugo I get sad, he is still a jerk but i'm glad he got a second chance and upset in how people doesn't stop to notice he really doesn't want to screw his second opportunity

I couldn’t agree more

I think the saddest part is that until recently Katsuki couldn’t articulate any of those thoughts, like it’s hard to imagine for more well adjusted people just how pure and raw Katsuki was really running on just a “This situation makes me feel bad and it needs to not” baseline

It’d be like living your entire life with a thought on the tip of your tongue but always out of grasp, but it’s with just about everything that isn’t a hands on skill.

Empathy is very much a skill you have to learn to use correctly and grow it. We’re all born with the ability to be compassionate but if you don’t grow up in a home that values that and encourages you to use it than you won’t have the guidance need it for it to flourish.

It’s even worse in homes where it’s actively discouraged purposely or not, the child ends up trying to suppress on of the key elements to the human experience.

Katsuki is someone who naturally feels a lot but is never taught how to deal with them, all he’s ever learned is that if you don’t like someone’s behavior being angry will stop them. When the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

Katsuki feels like there’s something special and unique about Deku that makes him more heroic, but no one else around him seems to see it or acknowledge it. Which I can only imagine feels like a constant undercurrent of gaslighting.

Deku never wins at anything but he still reminds Katsuki of AM in a way he quite literally can’t explain, and it’s something that he knows/feels he’s lacking.

Not only is Deku naturally kinder, he’s also grown to make it instinctive. He doesn’t have to think about it, he’s not bound to a “what do I say” mentality because he’s comfortable enough to know that his goal to save everyone with a smile shines through.

He’s mastered the art of making people feel seen and understood, and as he gets older he starts adding more practical hero skills to his tool belt.

This scares the absolute shit out of Katsuki because he doesn’t understand or see himself, and doesn’t want others to either. He wants to project the idea of strength and victory without any of the human vulnerability attached to it.

But regardless of how calloused, afraid of vulnerability, and closed off you get, no one out runs the desire to feel connected. Katsuki underneath everything is suffering from a profound amount of isolation, that is often self inflicted to keep control.

Katsuki is smart and physically gifted, it doesn’t take much to master something and make it muscle memory for him which makes his reflexes insane. But it’s not instinctive, Deku can walk into a situation blind and figure out what the objective is and how to achieve it as long as his body can keep up with his mind.

Katsuki needs a clear objective, telling him to rescue or win isn’t enough. Left to his own devices he will achieve those ends and nothing else, if the victims are physically rescued he’s not sticking around to make sure they feel safe, if the objective is to defeat a villain than everyone else better get out of his way. Katsuki needs to feel in control and to make guesses leaves you open to getting things wrong.

It’s not until he’s pretty much directly told he needs to be kinder and more careful about how he goes about things does his behavior change. Which has lead to an avalanche of character growth, because before now Katsuki had a very pinhole view of what being a hero is being he fit in the hole no one corrected him until reality slapped him in the face.

Deku had to have a full picture, and that’s why now even if he doesn’t know wtf is going on he’s very quick to put the context clues together and understand the quirks around him and the objective because he’s okay with getting things wrong and trying again.

Basically Katsuki has been very lonely and confused for like 90% of his life, and he keeps learning how much of that is his own fault ☹️