#I know in the grand scheme of things it doesn't mean very much

[lurking-latinist]

.

[tswwwit]

I feel like if Dipper were ever reincarnated as a demon, he wouldn't fit in super well with the others. Yes, he's been raised to vie for power and step on everyone in his way using whatever means is necessary - it's the same toxic bizz as when he was a human, appealing to gender norms. He's tougher, scarier, more powerful (than ordinary humans, that is), but when it comes to asserting control - being Evil - he doesn't have it in him. Given enough time, I think he'd grow pretty vocal about leaving living things alone. NOT torturing organisms for the hell of it, or stealing people's souls, or conquering planets. Sure, he's a demon. That's no excuse to be a MONSTER.

It's a VERY unpopular opinion amongst neighboring demons, and rumor spreads fast about the Goody Two-Shoed Activist imp raining on everyone's blood-splattered parade, so much so that it makes it to Bill, who's immediately intrigued. Call it intuition, but only one soul's capable of overriding goddamn demon nature for some preachy bullshit about "Doing Good." Lucky for him, demons occupy the same plane of existence, so all it really takes to verify the guy is a snap of his fingers, and POOF! He's floating right next to him. Sure enough, Dipper's fashioned himself a new and improved demonic form, and it is lovely!

No one likes Dipper's kumbaya "Can't We All Just Get Along" ideology, but Bill's almost instantly smitten with the guy, whoever he is, so he's gotta be at least somewhat powerful. Demons take notice when the all-powerful Bill Cipher starts lending his time (and magic?) to some low-leveler like Dipper. Is he being blackmailed? Are they working together? No. Not possible. Bill doesn't "work" with anyone, save for whatever human catches his eye every few decades. Doesn't look to be doing him any benefit, either. The opposite, even. Lending power to a saint like Dipper only makes it harder to cause chaos, after all. Why would he actively go against his OWN best interest to cater some imp's? It's almost like he's. He's.

A henchmen.

(Bill's also 30% more affectionate the first month they reunite, because he still can't believe that his adorable little human husband came back as the same SPECIES as him! He'd never complain over having a sweet human to squeeze, but one with teeth and claws and cute pointy ears doesn't hurt).

[luvvyouforever]

headcanons : harry potter boys x keeper!reader

↳ harry, ron, draco, neville, fred, george, remus, and sirius with a partner who can wield ancient magic (hogwarts legacy style).

↳ requests are open! submit ideas, drabbles, headcanons, or one shots to the link in my bio! don’t be shy <3

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

harry potter:

-thinks it is the coolest shit ever! when you're in a fight together and you protect him by shooting a powerful blue bolt towards the enemy that disintegrates their very beginning, he feels so proud to be your partner!

-on the other side, he also knows it feels like to have a lot of pressure and power on your side. he worries about what it must feel like to wield ancient magic and be the only living person who can see it. every time you use it, he checks on you after, ensuring that you don't feel too exhausted and can continue fighting.

-supported you so much through the trials. he didn't need to know every detail of what you did and went through but he would hold you so tight when you came back, praising you over and over for being so strong and brave.

ron weasley:

-he's a little jealous, ngl. like his partner can use this sick magic and is responsible for keeping the magic safe and alive out of the wrong hands?? why can't he do that???

-i also feel like ron would be confused, if not a little angry, that you refuse to share the power and attempt what others have before (such as isidora using the magic to remove pain). he doesn't really understand the problem and feels like the keepers are suspicious.

-he'd brag about you alllllll the time though! like oh my god every second he would find some way to bring up the fact that you can do really awesome things and that you are his awesome partner forever!

draco malfoy:

-draco loves you a lot and finds your magic incredibly cool, don't get me wrong, but i think his family swayed his pursuit of you because wouldn't it be so grand if the malfoys had a keeper in their family? someone so powerful and knowledgeable? who would pass down the truth and their magic? yes please! (every time narcissa brings it up, it irks draco but also he pats himself on the shoulder for choosing you)

-wants to know every detail about the trials and the past and the memories you're viewing! you'll come back from a trial, sweaty and tired, maybe bleeding, and he'd help you first then ask hundreds of questions after.

-your use of ancient magic is not necessarily unknown and makes you quite popular among the students of hogwarts. this, however, makes draco really jealous. if he could, he would follow you everywhere, glaring down anyone who tries to make a move on you. before you go on adventures, classes, or just to the common room, he'll drape you in his slytherin scarf as if he was marking you.

neville longbottom:

-poor thing gets so nervous when you have to complete the trials or do something incredibly important for the sake of keeping the magic safe. he knows he can't go along with you but he'd stay by your side until the very moment you enter the map chamber, whispering praises and support the whole time.

-would heal up all your wounds and take care of you if you exerted too much during a fight. he knows how much everyone depends on you and the least he can do is take care of you properly! he would run you a bath, apply soothing balms to your skin or use his plants to heal you up, and cuddle you tightly!

-tries his hardest to not feel useless but sometimes it's hard when you're so strong and he's so...not. of course you'll always reassure him and give him the confidence he needs but very frequently, he gets really down on himself about it.

fred weasley:

-every day he comes to you with a new scheme that involves your magic. could you make a portal that leads from the dungeons of hogwarts to the top of the astronomy tower? it's important. snape is gonna get really mad when he goes into his office? can your magic fix that?

-begs, and i mean BEGS, you to let him come along on your adventures and battles. he wants nothing more than to support you and fight along your side! as long it's not a trial, you can't help but let him come along. you usually end up saving him after he pays a little more attention to the way your whip around the battle, taking down everyone effortlessly.

-speaking of paying too much attention to you, he thinks it is so attractive than you can do what you do! he gives you some time after fighting to recuperate but then immediately he is ON you. he's kissing you and telling you how hot it is when you turn someone to just particles.

george weasley:

-he wants you to teach him everything you can. there are some things that are just simply innate and can not be taught but all your tips and tricks when it comes to fighting will now be all of his tips and tricks. you two would just find some field away from the burrow and go at it, sending spell after spell at each other. georgie is just overflowing with adrenaline and it's a great way to get it out.

-deep down, a part of him wants to be protective of you. he wants to keep you from going out into danger and taking on dangerous tasks all for magic and some old people telling you what to do. but he knows better, trust me. he knows you can defend yourself just fine but he just wants to put you in a little bubble and never let anything hurt you.

-just like ron, he will brag about you whenever he can. everyone is sitting around the great hall table, talking about how it's so cool that you defeated a troll in one fell swoop and he just wraps his arm around your shoulders, a glimmer in his eye as he proceeds to say "yeah, aren't they just so amazing?"

remus lupin:

-fears for your health and safety so much! when you come back from a trial, he's hushing you and putting you in bed, feeding you chocolate and brewing tea until you feel better!! you are bearing the weight of centuries old magic all alone. the least he can do is take care of you!

-supports your decisions throughout your entire journey as a keeper. if you truly believe that releasing ancient magic to the world and using it for more than the original keepers intended, then he understands. if you want to continue to keep it hidden, he will not question your judgement.

-this is so fluffy but i feel like you figured out how to manipulate your ancient magic to floating, bright blue scenes and pictures. around remus's time of the month (said lovingly), you'll lay in bed with him and use your wand to paint pictures of animals, lakes, waves, stars, or, in more sappy moments, your future.

sirius black:

-he thinks it is SO hot that you can take someone down without barely blinking an eye. his favorite move you do is when you lift someone into the air and slam them down repeatedly. gets blushy and turned on excited every time.

-once followed you down into the map chamber only to be very harshly yelled at by one of the keeper's portraits. he just wanted to see what it looked like and to know where you go on dangerous missions!! who can blame him, truly? definitely grumbled the whole rest of the day.

-when you two get married, he refuses to let you take his last name and instead will either take yours or say screw it and come up with one! he doesn't want his family to have the gratification of having a keeper with the black family name. he wants you to shine for who you are and in another century, he wants your name to be yours, not his.

[franavu]

While the Archheart's plan seems completely in character for a chaotic god who just wants out of their current situation (kudos to Abubakar), it's also an absolutely terrible idea. Let's say the absolutely best case scenario is going to happen. In that best case:

Imogen and/or Fearne can control Predathos enough that they're not completely erased (this would be the least important part in the grand scheme of things.)

When Predathos is syphoned from the moon it only takes the energy and doesn't cause the moon to crack/explode/implode, causing it to rain chunks of moon down on Exandria.

All the gods actually leave. This is not a certainty as per Taliesin the Wildmother has invested so much of herself in the world that she likely can't leave. I would imagine that that means that the Lawbearer is sticking around as well. Not to mention what would happen to the Chained Oblivion, it's not the same as the other gods, and as far as I know it only showed up sometime during the schism. (Is it even prey for Predathos? Is it of the same species? Would there be a Chained Oblivion Predathos Kaiju battle, with Exandria as the battleground? Who knows?)

On the way out the lower and higher planes get locked down so there is no extraplanar invasion. (The biggest worry would be demons/devils but I can imagine planetars etc. can make a problem of themselves if they see a good cause)

On the way out Predathos doesn't decide to snack on lesser divine beings/things (Uk'otoa, parts of the Luxon, etc) leaving its mutating properties behind. (see the Savalir wood)

The bloody bridge gets dissolved and doesn't tear Exandria's magic apart.

Now, in the absolute best case scenario, none of the above is going to be a problem. Regardless, what is going to be a problem:

Divine magic is going to be weakened at the least. The number of divine healers is going to tank, and while there are lesser beings that can grant divine magic, and it is possible, but difficult, to wield it without any (see Calamity). That's going to take a while to sort out, and in the meantime there's going to be a lot less healing.

A lot of things that got out during the Solstice are still out, like the Phoenix thing that is similar to Uk'otoa (which is probably out again as well) and they are a lot more difficult to seal without divine aid.

There is also still a significant invasion force of Ruidians that are going to be a problem, not to mention the Ruby Vanguard

With the gods gone, a lot of semi-divine powers, whether good or bad, are going to be empowered through new followers and/or warlock pacts, without anyone to keep them in line (again, see Artagan or Uk'otoa)

Vasselheim, the oldest city in the world, is going to have massive issues of at least morale, and is likely not going to be in a state to do anything outside of its own borders.

Other political entities are also going to be looking inwards, consolidating their own resources, and shedding their pereferies. I'd say that, for example, the Dwendalian Empire is likely going to shrink. Countries that are less effected by the loss of the gods, may very well go to war. Places that have been protected by the gods are going to lose that protection, Niirdal-Poc and the other cities which were protected by the Wildmother are probaly going to be run over by the Iron Authority.

Outside of actual war, demagogues, warlords, cult leaders, etc. are going to spring up in the chaos, with various degrees of violence.

And finally there is the biggest problem, wizards. Since long before the Calamity the holy grail of magic was ascension to godhood, and now the thrones are empty. A whole bunch of wizards are going to try for them, and in the best case scenario they fail and only take a chunk of empty countryside with them. In the worst case they succeed, seeing that wizards who's ambition is godhood absolutely should not have it. And now there is no divine gate or other deities to curtail them. So there'll soon be a new, worse pantheon.

So the Archheart is right, there will be a new balance, but as that usually goes, the new balance is going to be built on a pile of corpses, and is likely going to be worse than the previous one.

But hey,

[minhosbitterriver]

🌧️ 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐍-𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐒 ( stray kids )

❛ On a rainy evening, a deepening connection unfolds between you and Hyunjin as you explore your newfound intimacy in the cozy sanctuary of your studio apartment. Amidst clumsy yet heartfelt moments, your bond blossoms into a magical dance of tenderness and desire, celebrated under the gentle rhythm of the falling rain.

𝐡𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐲𝐮𝐧𝐣𝐢𝐧 + female reader ೯ ( 𝐨𝐧𝐞-𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐭 )

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 4.5k 𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞: 18 mins

꒰ 💌 ꒱ ミ This piece was requested a little bit ago by my lovely 🌪️ Anon! I genuinely loved working on this purely for the awkwardness between Y/N and Hyunjin. I just feel like this is something that is not talked about enough, especially within the writing community. It's completely normal to be a bit clumsy and/or awkward the first time you have sex with someone — it doesn't mean that you or your partner is a virgin or is bad at it! Everyone's tastes when it comes to this is different so it might take a second to figure your partner out! And that's totally okay! Alright, anyway, requests are currently open! I hope you guys enjoy, reblogs and feedback are much appreciated! ── ( 𝐥𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐲 )

𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: MDNI, established relationship, it's first time Hyunjin fingers you, neither of you are virgins, it's awkward and a little clumsy at the beginning, very fluffy, please let me know if I missed anything!

( 𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 ) ( 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 & 𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬 ) ( 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 )

꒰ 🫙 ꒱ ミ Tip Jar!

It had been a Saturday to remember, one that etched itself into the tapestry of your memories, marked by the presence of Hyunjin. His charismatic charm had woven itself through your days for the past month, casting a spell of enchantment that lingered in the air. Though the span of time you had spent together might appear fleeting in the grand scheme of things, it felt as if you had experienced an entire lifetime’s worth of moments within those precious weeks.

Each shared glance carried the weight of a thousand unspoken words, creating a silent dialogue that only the two of you understood. Every burst of laughter echoed like a melody, resonating with joy and warmth that filled the spaces between you. The conversations you shared, whether deep and contemplative or light and whimsical, wove a rich tapestry of connection that seemed to transcend the mere passage of days.

It was as though time itself had bent and stretched to accommodate the depth of your interactions. The moments you spent together, whether walking hand in hand through sun-dappled streets or sharing quiet, emotionally intimate evenings under a canopy of stars, left you with the impression that you had journeyed through countless experiences together in just a short while. The intensity of your bond created a sense of timelessness, making each day feel like a chapter in a beautifully unfolding story.

The day dawned under the crisp, invigorating light of morning, painting the world in hues of possibility. Hyunjin stood eagerly by your front door, his eyes sparkling with anticipation and a smile that promised adventure. The air was charged with the excitement of a day uncharted, a journey waiting to unfold as you both boarded the train bound for the newly opened museum.

As the train carried you toward your destination, a sense of exhilaration grew, mingling with the rhythmic clatter of the tracks. The cityscape blurred past, a fleeting backdrop to the conversation and laughter that filled the space between you. Upon arrival, the museum revealed itself as a grand sanctuary of artistry and history, its towering facade inviting you into a world where time seemed to stand still.

Stepping inside, you were enveloped by the cool, hushed atmosphere of the museum, a place where every corner promised discovery. The labyrinthine halls stretched out before you, each exhibit unfolding like a new chapter in your shared journey. Vibrant paintings, intricate sculptures, and ancient artifacts beckoned you closer, igniting lively discussions and thoughtful reflections. With every step, you meandered through galleries side by side, your connection deepening as you shared insights and marvels.

The experience felt timeless, an effortless immersion into a realm of creativity and wonder. You lost yourselves in the stories etched into each piece, the artistry that transcended the mundane and spoke directly to your souls. The hours slipped by unnoticed, each moment adding a brushstroke to the canvas of your day, painting a picture of shared exploration and discovery. In that museum, amidst the echoes of history and the whispers of creativity, you found not only a deeper understanding of the world but also of each other.

After immersing yourselves in the museum's artistic treasures, you both boarded the train once more, the thrill of the day still crackling in the air between you. The rhythmic clatter of the tracks beneath you seemed to echo the excitement of the adventure that awaited. Your destination was your favorite restaurant, a cherished haven where comfort and familiarity wove seamlessly into the fabric of its ambiance.

Upon arrival, the restaurant greeted you with its warm, inviting glow. Soft light spilled from hanging fixtures, casting a gentle radiance over the rustic wooden tables and cushioned chairs. The scent of savory dishes wafted through the air, mingling with the rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee and baked bread. As you settled into your seats, the meal became more than just sustenance; it transformed into a canvas for laughter and playful banter.

Each dish that arrived at your table seemed to serve as a catalyst for shared stories and inside jokes. The vibrant colors of the food mirrored the lively exchange between you, as conversations flowed effortlessly alongside bites of deliciously crafted dishes. The restaurant’s lively bustle provided a vibrant backdrop, its hum of chatter and clinking of cutlery blending into the symphony of your shared experience.

The meal, rich with flavor and affection, was more than a mere dining experience; it was an extension of the day's joy and companionship. With each course, you both found yourselves drawn closer, the savory dishes a tangible reflection of the deepening bond between you. As you enjoyed each bite, the connection you had forged earlier in the museum seemed to be solidified, the warmth of the food and the ambiance merging to create a perfect continuation of the day's adventures.

Adjacent to the restaurant stood a quaint psychic shop, its sign casting a gentle, ethereal glow that beckoned with an almost magnetic allure. The delicate, swirling script on the sign seemed to whisper promises of mysteries and hidden truths, igniting a spark of curiosity within both of you. Driven by a shared sense of adventure and intrigue, you decided to venture inside, stepping into a world that seemed to hold its breath in anticipation.

The interior of the shop was a treasure trove of curiosities. Dimly lit by the soft flicker of candlelight, the space was adorned with richly embroidered tapestries and shelves brimming with intriguing artifacts. The air was tinged with the heady fragrance of incense, mingling with the faint aroma of old parchment and aromatic herbs. In the center of this enigmatic realm sat the psychic, her presence as compelling as the surroundings.

Her gaze was shrouded in an enigmatic aura as she performed the reading, her eyes glimmering with an inscrutable wisdom. As she declared with a knowing smile that you and Hyunjin were soulmates, her words seemed to reverberate with an almost palpable magic. The statement hung in the air like a delicate thread, weaving itself into the fabric of your shared experience.

The psychic’s cryptic smile was met with a blend of surprise and shyness on your faces. A soft blush crept across both your cheeks, accentuating the nervous laughter that bubbled up between you. Each of you cast furtive glances away, caught between a fluttering sense of embarrassment and an exhilarating hint of delight. The moment felt like a secret dance, a playful intimacy that hung between you, adding a layer of enchantment to the day. The encounter at the psychic shop became a cherished memory, a touch of magic that lingered like a sweet aftertaste, enriching the tapestry of your shared adventure.

As the evening unfurled, you both returned to the serene sanctuary of your cozy studio apartment. The tranquility of the space embraced you like a warm hug, with the soft, rhythmic purring of your cat—curled contentedly on the nightstand—embodying the essence of home’s simple pleasures. The room was gently illuminated by the soft, golden glow of the lamp, casting a soothing radiance that seemed to enhance the peaceful ambiance.

In this haven of calm, you set about preparing warm tea for both of you. The aroma of the brewing tea leaves mingled with the subtle scent of the evening, creating an olfactory embrace that complemented the warmth of the space. As you poured the steaming liquid into delicate cups, the gentle clinking of porcelain was a soft, melodious counterpoint to the quietude surrounding you.

The conversation that followed was a tender and intimate exchange, your voices barely rising above hushed whispers as you both savored the serene atmosphere of the moment. Each word shared was like a caress, adding to the richness of your connection. Cradling your tea cups in your hands, you both reveled in a profound sense of contentment, the day’s adventures seamlessly blending into the gentle comfort of your shared refuge.

The evening unfolded as a quiet yet significant culmination of laughter, connection, and deepening bonds. The day’s escapades, full of vivid experiences and cherished moments, seemed to melt into the soft, welcoming embrace of your studio. This tranquil conclusion transformed the day into a cherished memory, a treasured chapter that would linger tenderly in your hearts.

As the night wore on, the rain began to fall in a steady, soothing rhythm, each droplet creating a symphony of tranquility against the windows. The gentle patter of the rain became a serene backdrop to the evening's unfolding events, wrapping your world in a cocoon of calm. Within the comforting familiarity of your bedroom, the atmosphere was imbued with a sense of warmth and intimacy.

You extended an invitation to Hyunjin, offering him a place beside you on the bed, a gesture that had become second nature over the short time you’ve been together. Yet tonight carried a different energy, a palpable shift that neither of you could ignore—evident in the way Hyunjin’s heavy eyes followed your every move. The ambiance was charged with an emerging affection, an electric undercurrent that seemed to hum softly in the space between you.

Each fleeting glance you shared was laden with unspoken emotions, eyes conveying what words could not. The subtle brush of skin against skin felt like sparks igniting a fire, each touch leaving a trail of warmth in its wake. Your quiet conversations, spoken in hushed tones, wove a delicate tapestry of words and sentiments, each one deepening the connection you felt.

In the stillness of your home, every moment seemed to heighten the sense of anticipation. The rain's gentle cadence matched the rhythm of your hearts, beating in sync as if to the same unspoken melody. The space between you felt charged, a magnetic pull drawing you closer to a deeper intimacy that was steadily approaching, its arrival inevitable and eagerly awaited.

The night continued to unfold in this gentle yet intense dance of emotions, the rain outside acting as a serenade to your evolving bond while you prepared your bed for the night. Each moment spent together was a testament to the growing affection that had blossomed between you, transforming the ordinary into something exquisitely profound. In that cozy sanctuary, under the spell of the night and the rain, you both felt the irresistible pull toward a connection that promised to be as enduring as the rhythmic rain itself.

The tension between you both thickened as you handed him a t-shirt he had intentionally left behind during a previous visit. The fabric of the shirt, worn soft and familiar, passed from your hands to his with a weight that seemed to carry unspoken significance. As soon as he grasped the shirt, a spark of unspoken urgency ignited between you. His lips met yours with a fervor that had been quietly simmering throughout the day, an electric connection that surged with the intensity of all the emotions you had harbored.

The kiss was a profound mingling of longing and desire, a tangible culmination of the feelings that had been building in the quiet spaces between you. It was as if the very essence of the day’s shared moments converged in this single, impassioned exchange. 

Even amidst this deep connection, an endearing awkwardness lingered in the air. As you both clumsily undressed each other, your movements were hesitant and unpracticed, yet brimming with sincerity. Nervous laughter bubbled up between you, a symphony of shared amusement that softened the intensity of the moment. Your hands fumbled gently, each touch a mix of tender care and uncoordinated eagerness, creating a dance of intimacy that was both innocent and heartfelt.

Your gaze remained locked on his dazed eyes, the unspoken emotions between you speaking volumes. Every brush of your fingers, every accidental graze, was charged with a sense of wonder and discovery. The garments fell away piece by piece, leaving you both in only your underwear, vulnerable and exposed yet completely at ease in each other's presence.

The path to the bed was a journey marked by stumbles and shared glances. Each step was a testament to the raw and unrefined nature of your intimacy, a beautiful reminder of the genuine connection you were forging. The nervous energy between you added a layer of charm to the moment, making each interaction feel even more precious.

As you finally reached the bed, the clumsy yet heartfelt nature of your movements only served to deepen the bond you were creating. The tender moments of hesitation and the bursts of laughter wove together, forming a tapestry of intimacy that was uniquely your own. In the gentle embrace of the night, surrounded by the quiet rhythm of your shared breaths, you both discovered a profound sense of closeness that transcended the physical, creating a memory that would linger long after the night had ended.

This clumsy yet heartfelt interaction only added to the night's charm, weaving an intricate tapestry of shared experience. Every hesitant touch, each nervous laugh, became a delicate thread, binding you closer together. As he settled between your legs, the intimacy of the moment deepened, turning every interaction into a genuine and endearing part of your growing bond.

A breathy moan escapes your lips as Hyunjin's kisses trace a delicate path along your jaw, each touch igniting a spark of electricity. When he reaches the sensitive spot just below your ear, a shiver runs through you, heightening your senses. This reaction seemed to bolster his confidence, and with gentle yet assertive hands, he guided you to lay back on the bed.

As you sink into the soft embrace of the mattress, his mouth works its magic, sending waves of pleasure rippling through your body. Each kiss, each caress is a jolt of pure electricity, making your heart race and your breath hitch. The intensity of his touch leaves you yearning for more, each moment an exquisite blend of anticipation and ecstasy.

Your arms instinctively wrap around his neck, pulling him closer, craving the warmth and intimacy of his presence. As he continues his descent, his mouth finds your hardened nipples, drawing a gasp from your lips. The sensation is overwhelming, a perfect symphony of pleasure that leaves you arching your back, pressing yourself against him.

In this intimate dance, every movement feels deliberate and profound, each touch a testament to the deep connection you share. The room around you fades into obscurity, leaving only the two of you in a world of your own creation, where time stands still and nothing exists except the intoxicating rhythm of your bodies entwined.

His kisses, like whispers of fire, trail across your skin, igniting every nerve ending with a burning desire. The magic of his mouth, the gentle yet insistent way he explores your body, leaves you trembling with need. Every breathy moan, every gasp of pleasure, becomes a part of this beautiful symphony, resonating in the quiet sanctuary of your shared space.

Your hands find the courage to wander, fingers trembling with anticipation as they begin their exploration. Every touch is an act of reverence, a slow and deliberate journey to memorize the curves and contours of his lean body. The warmth of his skin under your fingertips sends shivers down your spine, igniting a fire within you.

As your hands glide over his torso, you savor the feeling of his defined muscles, each movement a tactile symphony. Your fingertips dance over his chest, tracing the lines of his pecs before drifting down to his abs. The rhythmic rise and fall of his breath beneath your touch is mesmerizing, drawing you deeper into the intimate connection you share.

When your hands finally reach his abs, you slow your pace, allowing yourself to fully appreciate the sculpted firmness beneath your palms. The tension in his muscles, the way they contract and relax with each breath, is a testament to his strength and beauty. Your touch becomes more deliberate, a silent communication of desire and admiration.

As you move lower, your fingers find his hardened core, and a breathy groan escapes his lips. The sound is intoxicating, a blend of need and pleasure that fuels your own arousal. He pushes his hips into your hand eagerly, a wordless plea for more, and you can't help but chuckle lightly at his neediness. There's something incredibly endearing about the way he responds to your touch, a vulnerability that makes him even more irresistible.

His groan resonates in the quiet room, mingling with the rhythm of your shared breaths. The intensity of his reaction sends a thrill through you, a heady mix of power and tenderness. As your hand continues to caress him, you revel in the connection between you, the unspoken language of touch and desire that binds you together.

The moment stretches into eternity, every touch, every sound, deepening the bond you share. The intimacy of your exploration, the way your hands map the landscape of his body, becomes a testament to the growing love between you. In this private sanctuary, you find a profound sense of fulfillment, a beautiful merging of souls that transcends the physical and touches the very essence of your being.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been waiting for so long to have this moment with you,” Hyunjin murmurs, his voice a soft whisper against the backdrop of your shared breath. His words hang in the air, delicate and poignant, carrying the weight of anticipation and longing. You can see the depth of his emotions reflected in his eyes, a swirling sea of vulnerability and desire that makes your heart ache with a tender ache. The sincerity in his voice, the quiet urgency, speaks volumes about the unspoken yearning that has built up between you.

His words touched you deeply, a wave of emotion washing over you as you absorbed the sincerity in his voice. With a soft, reassuring smile, your hands left his already leaking length, the warmth of his arousal lingering on your fingertips. You reached up, fingers threading through his long, silken hair, feeling its softness and reveling in the intimacy of the gesture.

"Don’t ever apologize, Hyune," you whispered, your voice filled with affection and reassurance. "You’re being wonderful."

Your fingers continued their gentle journey through his hair, each stroke a tender caress that seemed to convey all the emotions you felt. His hair, smooth and luxurious, slipped through your fingers like strands of midnight silk, and you marveled at the way it framed his face, accentuating the depth of his eyes and the curve of his lips.

The two of you lingered in a realm of shared kisses, each one deepening the connection that pulsed between you. What began as gentle explorations quickly evolved into a deliciously messy entanglement of lips and tongues, leaving both of you breathless. Droplets of shared saliva glistened on your mouths, a testament to the fervor with which you embraced each other. Every time your needy cores met, grinding against the thin barrier of fabric that still separated you, a gasp escaped your lips, mingling with his in a symphony of desire.

The friction, though clothed, was a tantalizing prelude to the ecstasy that awaited, a mere glimpse of the pleasure that loomed on the horizon. Each grind, each press of your bodies, sent waves of adrenaline coursing through your veins at an intoxicating speed. It was an addictive rush, leaving you craving more—more of him, more of the sensations that set your skin aflame and made your heart race.

Time seemed to blur, the minutes stretching into an eternity of heated kisses and desperate touches. Your hands roamed freely, memorizing the contours of his body, tracing the lines of his muscles, and committing every inch of him to memory. The room was filled with the sounds of your shared passion—breathy moans, whispered names, and the rhythmic beat of two hearts caught in the throes of desire.

It wasn't long before the intensity of your need became almost unbearable. A soft, desperate whine escaped your lips, a sound that conveyed your longing and frustration. You could feel the slickness between your thighs, a testament to how thoroughly he had aroused you. Your body ached with a deep, insistent need, practically begging him for more.

"Please," you whispered, your voice a soft plea as your fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. The word hung in the air, heavy with the weight of your desire, and you looked up at him with wide, imploring eyes.

Hyunjin's gaze darkened with a mixture of lust and affection, his breath hitching at the sight of you so vulnerable, so open. He leaned in, capturing your lips in another searing kiss, his hands moving to cup your face with a tenderness that made your heart swell. The kiss was both a promise and a reassurance, a silent vow that he would give you everything you craved.

As he pulled back slightly, his eyes locked onto yours, the intensity of his gaze sent shivers down your spine. "Anything for you," he murmured, his voice a husky whisper that resonated deep within your core.

With a slow, deliberate motion, his hands slid down your body, his touch igniting a trail of fire along your skin. The anticipation built with every second, your senses heightened to a fever pitch. Each brush of his fingers, each lingering touch, was a tantalizing prelude to the ecstasy that awaited. You arched into his touch, your body responding instinctively to the promise of pleasure.

His fingers danced tantalizingly close to your drenched core, skimming over the slick heat but avoiding the sensitive places where you needed him most. The tease was exquisite yet maddening, each near-touch sending shivers of both pleasure and frustration through your body. You could feel the dampness of sweat on your skin, mingling with the warmth of his body pressed against yours.

Mildly frustrated, a soft whimper escaped your lips as you reached down between your intertwined bodies. Your fingers wrapped around his wrist, guiding his hand to where you craved his touch. The movement was driven by a mix of urgency and desperation, a silent plea for him to end the sweet torture.

He chuckled lightly at your eagerness, the sound a blend of amusement and affection that reverberated through your chest. The gentle tease in his voice only heightened your desire, making you acutely aware of how much you wanted—needed—him. Despite his amusement, he didn't leave you waiting for long.

His thumb found your clit, the touch electric and precise, sending a jolt of pleasure through you. A gasp left your lips, the sensation intense and immediate. Without warning, his index finger slipped inside you, filling you completely. The sudden intrusion made you yelp in surprise, your body arching into his touch as a wave of heat surged through you.

He quickly glanced up, his eyes searching yours with a mixture of concern and passion. The thrusts into your core halted, yet he kept his fingers buried deep inside, the sensation still pulsing through you. "Are you okay?" he asked softly, his voice a husky whisper that mingled with the heavy breaths filling the room.

You licked your lips, a slow and deliberate motion, trying to gather your composure amidst the swirling intensity. Your chest rose and fell with each pant, the air thick with anticipation and desire. You nodded, the movement gentle but assured, your body trembling slightly as you held back the urge to grind into his hand. "Yes... just please go slow when you're down there," you whispered, your voice tinged with a blend of need and vulnerability.

His eyes softened at your words, a tender smile curling at the corners of his lips. The connection between you felt almost palpable, a silent understanding that spoke volumes. He nodded in response, his fingers beginning to move once more, but this time with a deliberate slowness that made every touch more intense.

Each movement was a study in restraint, his fingers exploring you with a gentleness that contrasted with the earlier urgency. The deliberate pace allowed you to savor every sensation, the pleasure building in slow, delicious waves. Your body responded instinctively, a soft moan escaping your lips as you felt him delve deeper.

He watched you closely, his gaze unwavering, the concern in his eyes gradually giving way to a renewed desire. The intimacy of the moment wrapped around you both, a cocoon of shared trust and passion. His other hand found its way to your hip, holding you steady as he continued his slow, measured rhythm.

The atmosphere in the room shifted, the earlier frenzy giving way to a tender, almost reverent exploration. Your breaths synchronize, each inhale and exhale a testament to the deep connection that had formed between you. His fingers curled inside you, finding that sweet spot that sent shivers down your spine, drawing out gasps and sighs of pleasure.

As he moved, his thumb brushed against your clit with a featherlight touch, sending sparks of electricity through your entire being. The slow pace allowed the pleasure to build gradually, each wave cresting higher than the last. Your hands reached out, fingers tangling in his hair, pulling him closer as you lost yourself in the sensations.

He responded to your touch, his lips finding yours in a kiss that was both tender and intense. The world seemed to narrow down to the two of you, every sensation magnified in the cocoon of intimacy you had created. The taste of him, the feel of his fingers, the sound of your mingled breaths—it all wove together into a symphony of pleasure.

You could feel the tension building within you once more, a slow burn that promised an explosive release. The deliberate pace made every touch, every caress, more poignant, the anticipation heightening your arousal. Your body arched into his touch, a silent plea for more, for everything he could give.

His fingers moved with a steady, unerring rhythm, guiding you towards the edge with a skill that made your heart race. The slow, deliberate thrusts were interspersed with gentle caresses, the combination driving you to the brink of ecstasy. Your moans grew louder, the pleasure building to an almost unbearable intensity.

And then, with a final, deliberate thrust, the tension within you snapped. Pleasure crashed over you in a tidal wave, your body trembling as the orgasm tore through you. You cried out his name, the sound echoing in the small space, your vision blurring as the world dissolved into pure sensation.

He held you through it all, his fingers still moving gently, prolonging the waves of pleasure. The aftershocks rippled through you, leaving you breathless and sated. As the intensity faded, you clung to him, your body still humming with the remnants of ecstasy.

In the aftermath, the room was filled with a quiet, almost sacred, stillness. You looked up at him, your heart full of gratitude and love, knowing that this moment was one of many that you would cherish. The night was a tapestry of shared passion and deep connection, a journey that had only just begun.

꒰ 🏷️ ꒱ ミ Permanent taglist: @agi-ppangx @sunnyrisee @jisunglyricist (Click on the link to join! All you have to do is answer a few questions to help me stay organized!)

🍉 FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE! DAILY CLICKS! STAYBLR FUNDRAISER!

[merakiui]

OHSHC AU where reader breaks a precious arrifact from one of the dorms maybe all but instead of repaying the huggeeee debt with hours of labour she has to pay with her body and can’t refuse :)

every kink in the book is used as she’s pleading with the dorm leaders for mercy, crying about forgiveness but all they can hear is that her mouth is very wide open and needs to be replaced with a cock or gag </3 poor reader doesn’t have time to take birth control! and none of the students at nrc know what condoms are oopsies!! imagine savanaclaw in their heat … oh boy rip her pussy! she’ll never know a peaceful day until graduation but even then one of the dorm leaders might take her with them to spend forever with them

Omg yes,,, ohshc au, but it's freaky and full of sex because those scheming boys now have a girl in their debt and that opens so many possibilities. Their methods in dealing with you would all be different, of course, but in the end you're probably getting dicked down either way. <3

I think Riddle's punishments are probably more old-fashioned. If you can't fix whatever it is you broke, then you will write lines stating that you will be more careful, that you won't break anything again, etc. Or he'll make you write an essay detailing why exactly you're sorry, why you ought to be forgiven, etc. T_T really, these are just punishments his own mother gave to him in order to push him to do better in his studies. Riddle doesn't know any better.

He thinks differently when someone like Ace or Cater offhandedly and jokingly remarks how unlucky you must feel. Good thing their Housewarden isn't some pervert, otherwise he could totally force you to give him blowjobs whenever he wanted all under the guise of "repaying your debt." Riddle is appalled. He would never stoop so low! This is Heartslabyul, not Octavinelle. >:( still, the basic concept is just a little appealing. So maybe he's got a small crush on you, and maybe it would be easier to get you to spend time with him if you had no other choice. He makes you join him for tea parties in the gardens, for games of croquet, etc. His hope is that you'll warm up to him and not feel so rigid around him. orz

Leona probably doesn't care as much about the artifact as someone like Riddle might. It has no sentimental value to him personally, so why should he be worried? Besides, it was pretty old anyway. But that doesn't mean you can get off completely innocent. You're the reason he's got more work on his plate now, what with having to deal with the Headmage squawking at him about it. He allows you to choose between two punishments: either you become Savanaclaw's errand girl and do much the same work Ruggie does around the dorm, or you spend every night literally warming his bed (i.e. let him use you as a pillow if you're going to be good and still and quiet). If you want an easy way out, you'll choose the latter. Besides, his bed is comfortable, big enough for two. And as long as you aren't a pain, he doesn't mind. (You are definitely going to be warming his bed in other ways. The innuendo in his words is not lost on Leona.)

Azul...... of course he's slimy and sleazy about it. Oh, you poor soul. How is he ever going to get over this dear, priceless artifact that you have so carelessly broke? Jade is there to oh-so-helpfully inform you of its market price and what it could currently go for if sold. And Floyd's there to poke fun at the unfortunate predicament you've found yourself in. But Azul is a resourceful octopus. He makes a grand show of contemplating what he should do with you just to watch you squirm nervously, as if he hasn't already planned it out from the very beginning. He'll capitalize on your being a girl and have you work the floor in the lounge. There's always an increase in tips and sales when you're serving the customers, and why wouldn't there be? A cute, helpless girl in a school full of boys is an appealing sight.

He's irritating, but he isn't callous! Jade and Floyd are there to look out for you in case any of the patrons get it in their heads that they ought to appreciate you through touch instead of simply staring. Your uniforms change with every new event Mostro Lounge holds. Azul knows his target audience well because he also fits into that same group LOL. So maybe the sight of you in frilly uniforms is appealing. Sue him. >_< he wants you so badly, and luckily (with you being indebted to him) he has you all to himself. :) after hours are a very fun time at the lounge.

Kalim doesn't see what the issue is. He's not mad, so please don't cry!!! 🥺 you'll make him cry if you're not happy... Jamil is just about ready to pass out while he calculates just how bad this is. And here Kalim is, not caring in the slightest! T_T but Kalim is more sympathetic towards you, not the vase you broke. Besides, he can just get another one. :D no harm done at all! There really isn't any punishment to be had. If you insist on repaying your debt, Kalim tells you it's all water under the bridge.

Jamil is the only one who insists this is a good idea, and if Jamil thinks it's fine then Kalim agrees. So now you're sort of,,, there in Scarabia. Jamil puts you to work when Kalim isn't around, but when Kalim is there he spoils you rotten. The complete opposite of a punishment. There's definitely dubious shadows to this, though. For all of the delicious foods and alcohol you consume, you wake with hazy memories, only ever recalling you looked into the eyes of...something before you fell. Was it a snake? Maybe... but Kalim is always there in the morning to smother you in affection, so maybe it's not so bad.

You are Vil's newest pet project. He goes in with metaphorical fork and knife and cuts into you with his criticism, all of which is completely valid. You were clumsy when you broke that artifact. You weren't paying attention to your surroundings. You were completely oblivious, so in your own world. Epel would feel bad for you, but finally he gets to relax just a little bit now that Vil's eyes are mostly off of him and centered on you. Vil is going to put you through a reformation of sorts. You will come out of it your best, most elegant self! A wonderful improvement from your earlier carelessness. Only then will he forgive your previous transgression.

You and Vil get on like oil and water. That is, you don't mix at all. You are subjected to curses left and right because Vil is so strict. Suddenly, you can't eat certain foods and if you try to sneak them you find they've all been cursed (courtesy of Vil). If you try to slack on the work he has you do, even when you know he's not around, somehow word gets back to Vil. That creepy hunter always seems to know everything you do even when you're alone. It's troubling. Vil likes to think his heart is an iron fortress, so it's impossible to fathom when he falls for you first (and so hopelessly, at that)!

Idia doesn't put as much value in that artifact as he does in his own anime collection. If you broke something from his collection that was limited edition, he'd be far more upset (and then proceed to pull out the second one he got as back-up for this very specific moment). But this is an easy fix, really. He has the technology to make it good as new and, if that can't be done, he can always build a new one. Upgrades are important and necessary in some cases, especially when things get too outdated. It's a little awkward having a real 3D girl in his room all the time, though. >_< kick his ass in the twst equivalent of Smash and he's looking at you in a completely different light (hearing you trash talk him is so arousing; he's never been more hard).

Let's say the thing you broke in this case was a gargoyle. You're not sure how it happened, but it's headless now and Malleus is just staring silently at you. You can't read the emotions on his face, but with the way Sebek is shouting at you to get on your knees and beg for forgiveness you think you're about to be burnt to a crisp. It's so uneasy and awkward, and all you can do is apologize profusely, insisting you didn't mean to break it. It's Lilia who comes to your rescue: "Now, now, Malleus. You'll scare the poor child if you keep frowning so. Mistakes happen, do they not?" Silver also comes to your aid, adding that it wasn't your intention to break this gargoyle. It was an accident.

So now here you are, the second member of the Gargoyle Studies Club, accompanying Malleus for club activities while he teaches you all about gargoyles so that you can gain a better appreciation for them. It was Lilia's idea in the first place. He is Malleus's unofficial wingman. One way or another, you're going to find yourself alone in the woods with Malleus while Lilia is in the bushes belting out "romantic" love ballads from the old ages. T_T someone put peepaw to bed... at the very least, it lessens the awkward tension between you and Malleus, and it even gets the both of you laughing.

[yayll]

~ a little something about Dazai and his tantrums ~

"... Hmph. I hope you crash this car and we both die."

The moody brunet mutters under his breath as he looks out of the car window, his arms crossed over his chest, refusing to look at you. He was awfully cute whenever he did this, and oh so vexing at the same time. You learned to acclimate to this very early into your relationship with him.

"What? All I said was that I was going to be driving us, Osamu!"

Your laugh is light hearted as you focus on the road ahead, dismissing his whiny behavior for another one of his... Melodramatic performances, his co-workers once called it. He finally turns to glare at you, but a wicked glint in his narrowed eyes betrays him... You can tell he's more unserious than anything. Playful, even. And besides, he would never actually be upset with you, he just can't stop thinking up schemes to make you roll your eyes at him. Your smile alone makes his thoughts impure, shame on you!

"Yeah, well... I feel dehumanized! overlooked! neglected..." He feigns offense, sighing heavily as he slouches into the passenger seat. He places a bandaged arm over his face, groaning softly but still side eyeing you to check if you're looking at him or not.

"You do that all on your own, silly."

"Excuse me? I'm expressing my grievances and you're calling me silly? Oh, so that's what this is really about. You don't love me anymore! What a cruel beauty you are..."

He gasps, now burying his face into the crook of his elbow, pretending to weep as he mumbles incoherent nonsense about how much you mistreat him. In actuality, he was giddy as hell. You park the car, and turn to face him, a coy smile flashes on your lips.

"Nobody said anything about not loving you. Now, what can I do to fix this, Mm?"

He lifts his head up, suddenly composed and shrugging his shoulders as if nothing ever happened, speaking in a matter of fact voice that somehow deepened.

"Well, definitely don't let me drive. I don't even have a license. I'd kill us in an instant."

"... Then why argue about it?!"

"Because you look so beautiful when you're yelling at me. And you make me feel alive. Anddd, because I'm bored~"

He flashes you a cheeky grin, it's dreamy and sickening. His eyes twinkle with mischief as he leans over the seat and flicks away a stray hair from your face. Dazai then taps the tip of your nose, slowly dragging his finger down to your plush bottom lip, gently flipping it over to expose your teeth. The pad of his finger gently swirls against your canines, and finally, retreats... He knows there's a time and place for his worship prodding. His eyes travel back up to yours, and you can swear they look darker than usual. If only the Port Mafia could see what became of the Demon Prodigy... A new man reborn! A man who loves!

The rest of the day is spent with you indulging Dazai, something along the lines of 'reparations' is what he calls it. Only he knows how much it means to him that you can handle him during his calculated outbursts... or rather harmless tests to prove you won't leave him at the first sign of trouble. He needs you to be in it for the longhaul, just like he is. It's deceptive, but no one has to know! He just loves you and these are simply counter measures. You'd probably call him selfish, but as long as you call him at all, he doesn't give a shit. Because in the grand scheme of things, he really can't drive, and you two are inevitably endgame.

You're the ball, and he's your chain.

[whipped-for-kpop-fics]

Thinking about; getting choked by H.JS

[look at the size of his fucking hand. nobody cares about the pastry shua]

🖐Who; Hong Jisoo (Seventeen) x reader 🖐What; Not exactly smut but definitely 18+ 🖐WC; 1.2k 🖐Warnings; Profanity, choking, Shua is a bit condescending/teasing, I guess dom Shua if you wanna label it that way, I feel like I was gonna tag something else but i can't remember, it's actually a pretty fucking tame lil thot despite being about choking in my opinion tbh

Summary; Jisoo accidentally chokes you and discovers you're into it.

Minors do NOT interact, which means liking/reblogging/commenting on this story. I WILL block any account that interacts without an age indicator in the bio.

-2024 Masterlist-

You're just about to walk away from Jisoo to go get a drink, or get a snack, or something else that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. And for some reason, Jisoo reaches out and grabs the back of your t-shirt to try and pull you back to him. Yet all it does is almost make you stumble and let out a choked sound thanks to the collar pulling tight against your throat.

Of course, the sound worries him, it hadn't been his intention to hurt you, but there's a dark little part of his brain that lights the fuck up at hearing you choke because of him. Still, he pushes it down and moves you out of the party crowd to an almost hidden corner to fuss over you.

"Okay, chill the fuck out," You slap his hands away from where they're fluttering around your throat in worry that he's hurt you.

"I choked you."

"In the boring way." You mutter without thought then look at him with wide eyes as you register that those words came out of your mouth and didn't remain in your head.

"The boring way?" He repeats, eyes sparkling with mirth as he straightens to his full height and tilts his head at you with a sweet smile that you know hides a sharpness that you've always wanted to taste on your tongue.

"Shut up." You try, even if you know it's fruitless. Hong Jisoo is not a man who easily backs down when he's caught something or someone in his trap.

He takes a step closer, and you instinctively move back and thunk against the wall which you truly hadn't noticed was so close. He takes another step, and then one more until his feet are blocking yours, his body so close you can feel the heat rolling off of him.

"Are you telling me there's a method of choking you enjoy, sweetheart?" He taunts softly as he lifts his left arm to lay his forearm against the wall diagonally, his elbow to the side of your head and his curled fist a little above your head. He's truly trapping you and honestly, you don't want to escape, wouldn't even try if there wasn't a wall blocking on the other side.

"Jisoo," You murmur.

"Mm?" He tilts his head and smiles a little brighter, though his eyes are darkening with a promise. You're not quite sure what that promise is yet, but you really want to find out.

You don't respond, there's truthfully nothing you have to say, well other than the urge to tell him to hurry up and put his hand on your throat, but you're certain if you even tried to suggest as much, he'd draw it out even longer and get off on your frustration.

"What's the matter? Lost your voice?" He smirks, dancing the fingers of his right hand over your left forearm, drawing goosebumps to the surface from his delicate touch. "Is that right, sweetheart? Did you lose your voice from just a tiny bit of pressure on this pretty throat?"

Suddenly, his fingers are against the side of your neck, palm not even brushing the very front of your throat and his thumb on the other side of your neck. Your brain immediately blanks but for one thought; how fucking big his hands are.

"Mm? Not going to answer me, baby?" He coos, leaning down towards you until his nose almost brushes yours. His eyes dart down when he catches your lips moving in his periphery, though no sound comes from your mouth and he chuckles, tone low and condescending. "Oh, honey," He straightens up just enough to meet your gaze, with that sparkle even brighter despite the darkness swirling in his eyes. "Is that pretty head of yours struggling already? I haven't even done anything. I'm not sure I should either." With a theatric put-upon pout, Jisoo starts to remove his light touch from your throat and push away from the wall.

You react without even thinking, both arms darting up to grab his right forearm and pull it back to you with big, pleading eyes locked on Jisoo. He can't help but lean back in, utterly mesmerised by how desperate you look to have his hand pressed to your throat.

Someone suddenly passes behind Jisoo much too close for his liking. They don't even glance your way yet Jisoo still angles his body to hide you as much as possible from them in a protective, possessive manner while his head lowers until the tip of his nose passes over your cheek when he turns his head towards you. "What do you want, baby, come on, tell me." He encourages you, a dark edge suddenly to his words. He suddenly sounds a little desperate himself, frantic even.

"Shua,"

"Yes, yes, that's my name, we know that." He huffs out, almost meanly and rolls his eyes. "Tell me something new. Tell me what you want me to do."

You turn your head as much as you can with his own so close to your right that your lips brush the side of his chin when you talk. Jisoo naturally tilts as soon as he feels your lips, as if you've done this a thousand times and it's nothing more than instinct to seek your lips with his own. But you haven't done this before, and even now, he doesn't kiss you, just lets your lips flutter over the edge of his mouth with your words. "Choke me," You whisper against his skin.

"You want me to choke you, sweetheart?" He repeats, both to tease and to make certain that you truly want this.

He wants it, wants it with everything in him but if you say no, he'll back up and do whatever he needs to make sure that you're comfortable, even if it means he leaves the party without you in his passenger seat to drive safely home like he always does.

You nod a little and urge his hand closer to your throat, hoping he'll get the message. The short chuckle he lets out in response puffs against your lips and vibrates from his chest, he's so close to you that you can practically feel it against your own.

"Mm," He hums and traces a gentle path over your cheekbone with the tip of his nose as his fingers and thumb press down in the exact right places, with a sudden pressure that makes your eyes roll back as your hands grip his forearm to support your suddenly weak body as best as you can. Jisoo notices your loss of strength by the way you slide down the wall a little and adjusts his stance so intuitively, nudging his right foot between your feet so that he can shove his thick thigh between your own.

And then he tightens his grip a little more on your throat, the perfect amount of pressure to make your mind empty and your body slump harder against his thigh. His breath blows over your ear as he laughs a condescendingly. When he talks, you can hear the taunting grin in his voice. "Like this?" Just like that, you know that this man is going to ruin you, and you're going to love every fucking second.

Tagging; @okiedokrie

[chatsukimi]

ʀᴇɢʀᴇᴛ

featuring: jujutsusorcerer!nanami, curse!reader, angst, breaking up. synopsis: life is too short to hold yourself back. you force a certain uptight sorcerer to learn the hard way. masterlist

nanami likes to think he has no regrets. he tells the students that he'd never had a lover, not one that lasted very long anyway. he tells anyone who asked that he is too busy in his job to date.

too busy to date a normal person outside his job, he means.

in other words, nanami likes to forget he likes a curse.

you're sitting on his couch, folding his shirts fresh from the laundry. "kento-kun!"

nanami likes to think he turns away. likes to think he goes to the kitchen to prepare his dull blade to kill you, but, recently, he's learnt that he's a liar.

you tiptoe over, examining how he runs his knife under tap water to clean off the curse residue. you had reacted better than he thought you would when you learnt he exorcised curses, probably because you were a mediocre curse yourself, not involved in the grand scheme of things.

you peer curiously over his shoulder. "that's your weapon?"

he lifts it up purposefully close to show you, but instead of shrinking away, your hands attach to its sides, gracing the cloth gently.

"woah..."

he stills. when he begins chopping up the vegetables, you're right by his side, helping him cook with rapid skill.

"careful. don't add too much salt in," he says, an uneasy monotone gracing your ears.

he doesn't look at you.

you pause on the salt, staring at him. "is something wrong?"

a flashback zips through his head, of a dying colleague, of a growing curse. mostly holding himself back, nanami lets out a long exhale. he shakes his head.

"no. i'm alright."

the atmosphere is tense under your scrutiny, probably because, for you, he would taste better than any human dish might. truthfully speaking, you only eat his food out of politesse.

'liar,' you whisper into his ear, glaring at him with an infinite amount of human hurt. "don't lie to me."

you know as well as he does.

nanami likes to think his heart doesn't clench when you reach out to hold his hand, your skin that reminiscent of that terrifying rubber feel he's constantly associated with death. you pause when he flinches away.

"nanami?"

kill them. that's your job, it's what you must do. kill them.

he murmurs lowly, "i think it's time for you to leave."

you take a step back. he doesn't move. you wait for him to chase after you while receding from him, two steps at a time.

nanami likes to think he's a serious man. likes to think he knows what's right for him and others at the most important incidences. but strip away the guise of having it all together and he realises what's most human about him is slipping through between his fingers: you.

watching you, nanami cannot think.

he's stalking towards you towards the exit. you've turned your back on him. his heartbeat tremors.

"wait-"

your voice is empty when you respond- is this what he'll remember you by?

"what, nanami?"

would nanami force you to stay? he's always been selfish in keeping you at his place, treasuring the heartfelt words, midnight slow dances, pretending the outside world didn't exist. the world which draws a distinct line between humans and curses. good and evil. but now, now nanami has to choose.

"don't go." he croaks. pathetic.

you stand there, head lowered. "why? what even am i to you?"

curse or human?

the words taste bitter in his mouth, crawling to the tip of his tongue. speak! kento, what are you doing?! speak! and in the ideal world, he says them, right there, held in your molten gaze. those three words would have you rushing back into his arms, ready to start anew. it would read like a fairy-tale.

he would be happy.

yet earth is a hell that confines him. he cannot force himself to take another step forward. you cannot force yourself to take another step back.

this is what would've always happened.

in a split second decision, you put on your shoes.

"forget me, kento," you breathe. let's pretend this never happened. "i know you hate curses getting stronger."

you cross the threshold of his door. the fantasy dissipates.

when he opens the door again, nanami looks down the corridor of his apartment complex and sees no one.

not even the curse of regret.

[artbyblastweave]

So, the thing about Ward's worldbuilding is, it's bad on purpose. This is something I didn't catch until a relisten of the earlier parts, but the disconnect between the actual literal apocalypse that occurred two years prior and the shockingly advanced levels of infrastructure and technology is very deliberate. The entire thing is slapdash and farcical. You have people out the door of a shitty concrete hovel lining up for bad coffee. You have cars built out of random scavenged parts, "dumpsters" that Victoria can't manhandle because they're made of clumsily-welded-together scrap metal. Victoria can't reliably navigate at night because power to the city below is intermittent (and her mother Carol happens to live in one of the parts that does have consistent power; that's unexamined, make of it what you will.) The mall cluster shitshow goes down in a "mall" that, IIRC, is called out later as having been basically a dead end economically, a doomed grasp at a sense of normalcy. The patrol block uses recycled PRT gear, Dot's interlude involves the machine army jumping a bunch of bog-standard apocalypse scavengers. What you're looking at isn't a new society built up shockingly quickly; you're looking at the previously-well-supplied-and-externally-supported outpost of the recently destroyed society, and after two years they're finally chewing through the last of the head start they got. The societal equivalent of Wile. E. Coyote hanging in the air above the cliff, or of the seemingly-untouched duelist seconds away from sliding in half. Unfortunately, due to choices made about the timeframe and focus of the story, the Coyote sprouts wings. The duelist whips out a staple gun. Or to come at this from another angle- in The Walking Dead, a comic I really like, I can sort of organize the arc of the apocalypse into three-ish big chunks. For the first eight or nine months in universe, about 48 issues, things are obviously bad, right, quite a few people have died, but there's a sense among Rick and company that they might be able to ride it out, that things are on the upswing. They've got crops going, they have new births, maybe help from the government proper isn't coming the way they thought it might towards the start, but things are looking up! Then, of course, the Great Fuckening of Volume Eight occurs, and you enter the middle phase of the comic, where they're down to like a third of their group, they're food-insecure, they're constantly on the move, they're under attack from rapists and cannibals who've descended into habitual atrocity because they're totally without hope. Children are having mental breaks and killing children, the first friendly guy Rick met in the whole comic is now an insane hermit feeding dead bodies to his undead son, on and on and on and on and on. Bad times, but a comparatively short middle in the grand scheme of things. Then they find Alexandria, and the back half of the comic is spent basically on an upward trajectory with some zig-zags, there are still periodic existential threats but they're clearly past the nadir.

Ward feels like it starts midway through that first part, the you-don't-know-how-much-worse-this-can-get part, with the emphasis on the social tensions, the encroaching winter, but then it just...doesn't get much worse. I mean they have a rough three months, but then they sort of speedrun right to the hopeful future ending as soon as the titans are dealt with. There were parts that I suspect were supposed to be the dark-night-of-the-soul I'm alluding to but they didn't land as such. I feel as though the superhero genre stuff kind of subordinated the apocalypse stuff, made it less visible by virtue of whose POV we were following, and sometimes I feel that as a remedy to this, Ward should have taken place over the course of years, and it should have Just Kept Getting Worse. For example Breakthrough should have had to kill and eat Rain to survive the winter

[nautilusopus]

okay FIIIIIINE i'll throw my hat into the Goncharov ring

Been a while i've done a proper movie breakdown, may as well be this one.

Rather surprisingly (but perhaps not too surprisingly given the unexpected renaissance of things like the original Dracula and Breaking Bad on this website out of seemingly nowhere and with very little prompting), I'm seeing a lot of new people suddenly interested in Martin Scorsese's seminal film classic Goncharov, originally released in 1973. Obviously a movie like that doesn't make it coming up on 50 years without generating a lot of discussion about the different ways the movie resonates and why, but coming into it in 2022 there's been so much cultural cruft that's collected around Goncharov that (similar to stories like Fight Club and Scarface) it's a little hard to parse what it's actually about with all the mythologising that's gone on around the characters.

Those movies, in one way or another, are about portraying the downfall of their protagonists -- Fight Club's after ironically creating another system of control and dehumanisation and becoming what he sought to destroy, Scarface's after being consumed by the wealth and power he's amassed. A lot of people assume it's that kind of story, because aren't most well-loved movies? However, I think this is ironically an assumption made because of the genre of film it is. All the people that aren't going, "OMG Goncharov is so cool and badass and fucks bitches," are going, "WOW I can't believe Goncharov is a cautionary tale about power corrupting," and in the process people miss that Goncharov is first and foremost about loss, in all its different forms.

I'm both kind of surprised and frustrated people miss this, given how utterly pervasive the movie is with its clock symbolism -- it's the one thing everyone remembers about it, it was in all the tie-ins. I dunno, maybe that got funneled back into the theory where they're meant to reinforce how Goncharov is just a mortal man at the end of the day, which is fine I guess, but the movie overall becomes a lot clearer when you interpret it through the lens of, "These things are gone and you can never get them back; clocks don't go backwards."

One of the most fascinating things about the movie is how every character embodies a different kind of loss. I'm gonna ease into this and start not with Goncharov but with:

Rybak, who is usually associated with loss as we typically think of it, i.e. the loss of loved ones via death. This comes up all the time, either in his trust issues (why he's being such a prick at the wedding), in the card game (he never bothers to bet much money, knowing he's bad at poker, and still loses all the same). Rybak is terrified of loss, cannot manage it, and ultimately is punished by losing what few people he had left and then being spared by Lorenzo who deems him punished enough, and is forced to survive, to grapple with what his life is now without them.

Goncharov's is actually more subtle, and it's loss of small, insignificant things as a result of the larger losses he believes he's processed. This is something that's frequently contrasted against Rybak. The pawn shop going under is actually a microcosm of this whole thing. Goncharov anticipates that this is obviously going to lead to financial issues for him, plans accordingly to deal with this, and... it works! He's saved! Except that means card games can't be hosted at his place anymore, given it's burned to the ground. Does this matter, in the grand scheme of his life? No, of course not. Poker night still gets had all the same. But it is different now, and always will be. Little things like this continue to add up, until something as insignificant as a towel -- a towel that never should have been in his room, but Sofia is no longer there to drop off his laundry and chat with him -- is ultimately the final nail in a coffin built of insignificant splinters, each one an imperceptible change underneath the much more larger, noticeable story beats of things like grief.

Otto is the big obvious one I'm not gonna linger on: loss of his youth, moments in the past that he wants to redo but can't. Most people at least seem to have gotten this one.

(This is also what the clocks get associated with a lot, which again, doesn't NOT make sense but also if it were just for this one character that, while thematically important, was honestly just a side character with limited screentime and only two scenes, would they really be all over the movie before Otto's name is even mentioned?)

Sofia's a bit abstract, and is the loss of self -- of the familiar anchors we have to who we are, what we think our core principles are, our place in society, who we want to be to our loved ones -- and by the time she dies she is rendered utterly unrecognisable to herself, and is horrified by it. She grieves herself the same way Rybak grieves his wife (even gets a direct visual callback via the way her face is lit when she's burning Lorenzo's check). You see echoes of this in Goncharov as well, but while Sofia is grieving the person she used to be, Goncharov is grieving the world around him (even though really, it's the same world it always was -- time keeps ticking on, one second per second, and neither one of them can ever un-fire that gun).

Lorenzo, tragically, gradually loses his freedom (and maybe in a parallel world would actually be the protagonist of a movie where he chokes on his own hubris like everyone seems to think Goncharov is GRUMBLE GRUMBLE). As he comes into his own more and more by his family's legacy, he is afforded fewer and fewer options about what decisions he can even make. Arguably he was doomed from the start, but the further he clings to power as a means to freedom, the more it drives him to destroying everything he ever (thought he) cared about. The tragedy of his character, and what makes him a good villain, is that he can clearly see what he is doing to himself and he absolutely hates it (his walking out early at the wedding is a tacit admission of this), but his absolute refusal to accept loss, to accept grief and pain and all the awful shit that comes with the human condition, is what causes him to toss aside every out he has because if he has enough CONTROL over his situation, surely he will never have to lose anything ever again. But, really, he already has.

I dunno. Goncharov is one of those movies that is great, and everyone seems to realise it's great, but nobody ever really puts into words why, and that's how you get Fight Club fans lmao. And it sucks because the actual discussion around the movie beyond "it's another hubris story but REALLY GOOD guys" is so much more fascinating and a much more earnest emotional truth that just never gets talked about.

[ostensiblynone]

Ryan: Breakups are very tough. Your life goes on, though. I was very sad after a breakup, but my life went on. Shane: It did. Steven: It did, and— Ryan: But it does feel like the end of the world. That's actually one thing Shane told me, when I was going through my breakup, that I haven't really forgot. It did—it did help quite a bit. He had mentioned that when people go through breakups, in that time, it does feel like it is at the center of the universe and in re- reality, it doesn't really matter that much in the grand scheme of things. Shane: I mean, it's one of those things where you can't—yeah—you go through those phases where you simply can't imagine ever [wheezes] not feeling horrible. Steven: Loving again. Ryan: Yeah. Shane: And then eventually, uh. Ryan: It was very helpful, 'cause I was pretty down during that time. But I, uh. We've never actually mentioned this in any media that we've done— Steven: What? Ryan: —but Shane has a very—it's funny to me now—and, look, it's—and we both find it funny—don't get angry at Shane—I think it's very funny. There's a photo of me [laughs]. There's a photo of me in Savannah, Georgia. We were filming an Unsolved episode. At the time I was very depressed and I was going through this breakup. You could actually see it in those Unsolved episodes. I had lost—I want to say 20 pounds. Shane: Yeah. Ryan: Like, 'cause I was just—I was unable to eat. I was just not—I had no appetite. And there's a photo that Shane took of me standing on the street with T.J. Marchbank. Shane: And to be clear, when I took the photo, I was just like, 'hey guys!' [mimes holding up a cameraphone] It was just— Ryan: 'Hey, look over here!' kind of thing. Shane: Yeah. And then I looked at the photo and I was like, 'oh boy.' [Ryan and Steven laugh] Ryan: And you could see in my face I'm just not having a good time. Steven: [to Shane] Do you have the photo? Shane: Yeah! Ryan: And look I get that this is, like, you know, a weird thing to think is very funny. [points to self] I think it's funny but—uh. Shane: Well, in retrospect we can laugh. Ryan: Yeah, in retrospect we can laugh. Shane: Especially because, you know, it was a great time for T.J. 'cause he had just started wearing hair gel. Ryan: That's correct. Steven: [laughs] Ryan: T.J. had never understood how to do his hair or use gel and so I guess we taught him how to do his hair. Shane: So he's looking—he's like, looking like Mister Cool over there and you're looking like Mister Real— Ryan: I—I look like a husk of a human. Shane: Well, you're going through the—you're going through the motions of—you're smiling. Ryan: Yeah. I remember just before this picture I had run, like, five miles. Shane: So, to the naked eye, it's like: there's two guys. Let me zoom in on Ryan. Ryan: [laughs] Steven: [laughs] oh! Ryan: Just the saddest man on Earth. [all laugh] Ryan: It was not a good time. Shane: That was rough. Ryan: But, a very funny memory.

Pod Watcher 007: Movies, Water, Magic posted Nov 27, 2023

[thesherrinfordfacility]

so @theeminentlyimpractical and i were yodelling at each other in the DMs last night talking about general time-fuckery stuff in s2 and trying to riddle it all out, and i mentioned that i had noticed something that only now seems obvious from the s1 scriptbook (and im sure that someone pointed it out in 2019 but im wondering how relevant it still is):

everything is running late.

working backwards chronologically in s1, we have when newt arrives at jasmine cottage:

unfortunately the line isn't in the show, but in the interest of pooling all resources, the scriptbook says the following:

NEWT - I swerved to avoid Tibetans in the road. At least, I think I did. I've probably gone mad.

ANATHEMA - If you have, noone's going to notice. You're twenty minutes late.

we then know that crowley was late for arriving to collect the antichrist:

which the scriptbook doesn't elaborate on/give a timeframe, and may be extraneous to the previous and next example, but the antichrist is reportedly part of the Great Plan, so im including it for the moment.

but the kicker is agnes nutter, right?:

a precise and accurate prophetess who doesn't foresee that pulsifer would arrive late to execute her? how?

so when it came down to it, i started to wonder where something might have happened that has shunted the timeline along, between 10-20 minutes... maybe something in eden? but no - laure cracked it:

GOD - Archbishop James Ussher claimed that the Heaven and the Earth were created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004 BC, at 9:00 a.m. This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour. It was created at 9:13 in the morning, which was correct.

now. all of the times don't match up completely, but the general sense is that the world may be running a little behind schedule, compared to what it should be - ie. the timeline that agnes predicted, and ussher/his team calculated.

we know that adam reset everything at the end of s1, but:

given that he's not omniscient, would he know that the world is 15 mins behind schedule (and therefore, when s2 starts, are we still running late)? probably not, so does he revert things back but keeps the world on the original clock, so to speak?

alternatively, did he reset the clock, and is the universe that we see in s2 actually on the correct time?

this might not mean much, if anything at all (see: it's just all for The Bit), in the grand scheme of things... but im now starting to wonder if it does. because what would have happened if everything had run on time? because maybe it's not so much thinking about individual events, and how they would have played out otherwise if the world had been on the 'correct' timeline all along, but maybe just the sheer possibility that there is an 'alternate reality' in which those 10-20 minutes meant things played out very differently?

ive talked about the chair (x), and ive talked about the sideburns (x), and ive talked about how crowley somehow seems to be existing at a different time to everything else around him (alternatively - whickber street itself is running in a different... reality? timeline?), as well as the random moments where time seems to disappear entirely/the clock swaps its hands around in ep6 (x). about crowley's comment about it being "too late", and how he seems to act slightly odd just before aziraphale tells him about the metatron's offer (x)... but is it all somehow interconnected? and connected to the 13-minute delay?

and if it is... what caused it? what might have delayed god by 13 minutes, or what might have gone wrong to cause the delay, that has then had a hypothetical knock-on effect, whether it be because adam did fix it, or didn't fix it?

[devilfic]

❝right place, right time❞

IX. I'm the well they're gonna drag you down.

parts: previously / next plot: and they were rooommates. pairing: battinson!bruce wayne x gn!reader. cw: surgeon!reader, secret identities, slow burn, mentions of blood and stitches and drugs and alcohol, this chapter is fluffier because reader deserves a break, reader and bruce discussing their one-night stands, bruce thinks he's funny but he just can't hide how much he likes you okay, jealousy thy name is "disturbed". words: 6.9k. a/n: shoutout to allnurses.com contributing to at least 8 hours of research on how medications are stored in hospitals for one scene. any nurses in chat please do not stone me, I took creative liberties. also, in case there is any confusion, this chapter and the vignette take place all in (mostly) the same day.

The car gets about halfway down the street before Bruce observes out loud, "Something's bothering you."

You're clean and changed, but your hands are shoved between your thighs as you try to control their shake. Knowing what you know now, you have no reason to keep this from him. He is, by all means, the one person you should tell.

But you struggle to work up the courage without a mask looking back at you. The character of Batman you'd created in your head clashes violently with the character of Bruce. You'd written your own Jekyll and Hyde and tripped yourself up in the final act when it turned out they were one and the same, "You have a lot on your plate right now."

"So do you."

You resist the urge to grit your teeth, "It's about Judith."

Bruce thinks for a moment, "The old lady who doesn't like me."

"The very same. I... wasn't there for her last night, when I should have been. She was mugged on her way home."

Bruce doesn't make a big show of a reaction, though you notice he sits straighter, taking a break from gazing out of the window to glance at you every once in a while, "Is she badly hurt?"

"It could've been worse but... she's more shaken up than she wants me to believe."

"And her family?"

"Murdered." Bruce's car rolls by a street corner where a young mother wrangles her child back from the crosswalk, "I tried to convince her to have one of the deacons from church ride home with her from now on but she wouldn't listen. She doesn't want to be babied." Her stubbornness isn't at all unfamiliar.

"Did she see who did it?"

"She said some guys at the liquor store down the way. They hang out there every night," your eyes trail from the window down to the floor before finding Bruce's face. His profile is sharp and clean, the dark neck of his sweater stops just before the hair at his nape begins to cluster. Your eyes follow the bridge of his nose and it mirrors Batman's profile, a mix of pointed and blunt edges, "There's a... an heirloom in her purse. A lighter. She keeps it with her all the time. Her husband had it on him when he... well, he had an awful habit. She'd really like it back."

Bruce turns his head to you and you steel yourself. In the bright early morning, he is annoyingly resplendent. In the unfair way that all pretty people tended to be. It feels wrong to be asking him this. This is a stranger. You're begging for help from a stranger. You force down the sickness rising in your belly, "Please, will you-"

"I'll take care of it." He answers and it is final. He seemed to have made up his mind before you'd even asked.

The resolve in him is enough to slow your shake to nothing. There's a part of you that still doesn't quite believe what you'd seen last night, and so the certainty of Judith's well-being does not deluge you. It trickles down, dripping over your eyelashes, sprinkling off your fingertips.

You let yourself get caught up in his eyes the way you used to. You let the familiarity of them ground you and, though not with a sweeping acceptance, sigh in relief.

It's a small win in the grand scheme of steaming hot bullshit going on in your life.

You’ve taken things from General for Bruce’s sake before. Bandages and needles and disinfectants. This, however… this was a schedule II drug that could land you in prison if you got caught with it. And you were going to walk out of here with it like you were none the wiser.

A hand on your elbow forces you to slow down, drawing you back to your companion’s side. You don’t need to hear it so he doesn’t say it, but you’re embarrassed anyway. How Bruce maintains himself is enviable. “You’re a good actor.” Bruce peeks at you as you guide him through the first floor, “The thing with Gordon. You took it on the chin like a champ. You turned into a whole new person.”

“I avoid implicating myself when I can.”

“The party too. You diffused the tension, like, perfectly.”

Bruce hovers beside you as you call the elevator, a few patients and nurses lingering further behind. You can feel him probing your words for your natural line of thinking, “Couldn’t pull one over on you, though.”

No, you think, you just creeped me out while every bat-shaped clue flew right under my nose.

The elevator door slides open and the two of you squeeze into the back as the rest file in. You find yourself in a corner, braced against Bruce’s side as his hand reaches around your back to hold the railing. One of the nurses catches sight of him and swoons, the other trying (and failing) to look uninterested.

“Coming to see the new wing?” The swooning nurse asks, turning around to grin at Bruce. “Sounds like it’s coming along great. They make lots of helpful noise all day long.”

Bruce laughs good-naturedly, “Hopefully it’ll make up for all the trouble once it’s finished.”

The “uninterested” nurse nods, eyes frantically flashing from Bruce’s eyes to the floor and back over and over, “For sure! It’s really great you give back to General like this. Your dad would be proud.”

His face has no distinct reaction to it, nothing immediately telling that that comment hit too close to home. He smiles as he always does and thanks them as he always should do, and as they get off on the second floor, it’s just you two and an old man waiting for the next stop.

Bruce, to you, had long lived in his father’s shadow. The great Thomas Wayne who, despite his briefly smeared reputation, had been the face of the Wayne family for you. Even the some-twenty years after his passing had yet to shake that image from your brain.

It was his father’s legacy he was tending to here. All of the good and ugly that came with it. You couldn’t imagine how many times he’d heard his father would be proud. Did it comfort him? Frustrate him? Did he do this to make his father proud, or because it was expected of him?

Before the flood, you’d heard gossip about Wayne Enterprises going under, the reclusive in the tower giving no sign if he was alive or dead. Knowing what you know now, you wonder how much he truly wants to be a Wayne… with all the baggage that comes with it.

He’s wound tight. You can feel him against you.

Before you can talk yourself out of it, you find his hand on the railing beside you and cover It with your own. He’s shocked, judging by the way he jolts under your touch for a second. You think you’ve overstepped but when you go to apologize, he is already staring wide-eyed at you. Like when you’d caught him on the stairs.

The tension is still there, and his face has fallen in its warmth and friendliness. His hand had only partially slipped out from underneath yours, but as the seconds pass you feel it rest once more, not bothering to shake you away any further.

You both force yourselves to stare ahead until the elevator dings to let you out, but through the reflection on the door, Bruce is still looking at you.

You break first, distracting you both this time as you walk out, “You kept hitting me with your knee.”

Bruce, in a daze, asks, “What?”

“At the party. While me and Roberts were arguing, you’d nudge me with your knee like it was an accident.”

Bruce seems to remember who he is and where you are, because he quickly gets back to himself, “Guess I’m not that good of an actor.”

“Why’d you do it?”

��I knew where the conversation was going. I could feel you thinking.”

You remembered holding your breath as the mayor prepared herself for confrontation back then, “And the second time?”

“I was trying not to laugh.”

You flush. You’d been so impassioned that night, defending your hero who, unbeknownst to you at the time, was hiding a snicker behind his glass. You feared you’d be remembering a lot of moments like that over the next few days.

As soon as you both get into your office, you shut the door behind you, “I need you to wait here for me.” Bruce’s face tightens, “Don’t… argue. They keep extra vials of the antivenom down in the ER. I can grab one from the med room, but I can’t have you following me down there. It’s off limits for anyone without ID, let alone a patient and a donor.”

Bruce doesn’t look comfortable. Since last night, you hadn’t been anywhere Bruce or your police detail couldn’t follow. You hadn’t even been allowed to enter your apartment until the latter had deemed the place safe. A med room not much bigger than your office—locked behind an ID scanner—posed less of a threat than your two-bedroom ten minutes away.

But it was two stories down, and anything could happen in the time you were away from Bruce.

You can see the wheels turning in his head, trying to think up some plan that allowed him to remain by your side. You have to restrain yourself from feeling… flattered.

Flattery turns to bewilderment as Bruce reaches into his pocket and drops something into your hand. It’s a gadget the size of an AirPods case, shining in the light of the fluorescents. It looked perfectly unassuming and hid—lightweight as it was—a marvel of expensive technology. You could tell just by looking at it. “The hell is this?”

“It’s an EMP generator. Put it in your pocket and I can disable any communications within your vicinity, including cameras.”

“Okay, no. This is a hospital, and I’d be going into the ER with this thing. That’s too dangerous.”

Bruce looks offended. You can practically hear him say “You don’t think I’ve thought of that?” with his eyes. He silently holds his phone up to your face and you shouldn’t be as shocked as you are that it’s got live camera feed of the entire hospital. “I can control the radius. You said you trust me. So trust me.”

You swallow back your retort. You did say you were going to trust him on this. Whether or not it would be your doom had yet to be seen. You nod once, dropping the device in your pocket. “I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes. Fifteen at the most.”

Bruce’s lips purse together. He still doesn’t look settled with letting you go alone, but he has very little room to argue, “Ten minutes.”

You don’t waste time. You skip the elevator for the emergency stairwell, taking two steps at a time until you’re back on the first floor and walking to the ER. The med room at the very end of the hall would—if you were lucky—be as empty as the waiting room. All you needed to do was get in, grab what you needed and very quickly get the hell out of there. Without raising suspicion. You can feel the phantom pull of Bruce’s hand on your arm, begging you to slow down before you draw unwanted attention.

You round the corner to the med room, scan your ID, and head in.

The two nurses waiting inside greet you, analyzing you curiously, “Hey doc, need something?”

Words rattle in your brain like a d20 on a deception roll. You pray for something good, “I just wanted to grab some meds for my patient.”

One nurse sits at a computer, head titled in confusion, “Did you put in a prescription? You could’ve sent a nurse to grab it for you.”

Your eye catches the camera on the ceiling, its dark glass glinting at you, mocking you. A scrying glass recording your every move. And Bruce on the other side of it, hopefully buying you an alibi. “It’s a… special case. My patient needs it soon, so I thought I’d speed up the process and grab it myself.” You force a lightness into your tone, trying your best to appear apologetic and not at all suspicious.

The nurse hums. Then, she jabs the pen she’d holding over her shoulder, “Cart’s over there. Help yourself.”

You maneuver through the shelves separating either half of the room, keeping your head straight and eyes from wandering.

Your biggest hurdle was at the back of the room.

It’s a clunky cabinet on wheels with a monitor on top and an ID scanner on the side. In one of its many drawers, your golden ticket awaited, but these things kept logs of who checked out what, and if someone were to go through them later and find out you’d stolen a highly addictive drug without prescription…

You swallow. The generator in your pocket suddenly hangs heavy against your thigh. You glance at your phone for the time and note that four minutes have passed. You need to move quickly.

You approach the cart, fingers twitching at your sides, and right as you step up to the monitor, it flickers and goes dark. You give the power button a push for good measure but nothing happens.

Well, not nothing. You hear the cart drawers all click at once, like they’d unlocked by themselves. Tentatively, you try the top drawer and it slides out without issue. Glancing behind you, you check to make sure no nurses have wandered over, but you are the only one on this side of the room.

Your fingers drift down to the right drawer next and that one slips open too—by the grace of some god—and there you see it. It has an alien glow to it, a more subdued blue to its adversary’s green. The top of the tray holding the vials pops open with just as much ease as the drawer, allowing you to sneak one into your pocket. You shut the drawers, slowly backing away from the cart, but the monitor does not turn back on.

“What? This thing too?” You’re startled when the nurse from before suddenly jogs up from behind you, grumbling under her breath as she smacks the monitor.

You rush to cover, “It just went kaput on me.”

“Yeah, so did mine.” She maneuvers around the shelves and back to her desk where you see the other nurse at the desk scratching his head. Their monitor is glitching, having some gory digital stroke, “Here. You can sign out what you take for now and I’ll bother IT about this.”

You write down “Ibuprofen” and your name next to it, “Never seen that happen before.”

“Yeah. Thing froze up on me a minute ago. Guessing around the same time this thing died on you.”

Your stomach is still nervously fluttering, but you do feel a little smug. “Weird.” You hand her back the clipboard and go to grab a bottle out of a different drawer. “Good luck.”

You try not to sprint past the nurses as they fuss with the computer. You’re out and back upstairs before your ten minutes are up.

Bruce is sat leisurely on your couch, no doubt watching you scurry into the office on his phone. He looks from the pill bottle in your hand and back to you.

You toss the bottle into his lap, plopping down on the couch beside him. He frowns at the label. “For you,” you poke his injured leg and his eyes follow your every movement, “you’re favoring the other leg today.”

He can’t bring himself to deny that, even if the look he gives you from beneath his eyelashes says otherwise. You flash the antivenom at him as a peace offering. “How’d I look?”

His gaze flutters slowly from the vial to you before he shows you his phone. The screen is a recording of the medication room. It shows you greeting the nurses, walking up to the med cart, and then… nothing. Black screen for forty-five seconds. When it flickers back on, you're signing the clipboard and walking away. Your body sags into the couch with relief.

“You did good.” Bruce praises you.

“I thought I was going to go into cardiac arrest.”

“There are worse places to do it.” You look at him and he’s smiling just a little. You’re aware, though, that he’s aware of the toll this has taken on you. He takes the vial out of your hands and puts it in his own pocket, holding his hand out to you. “We should get going.”

Bruce follows dutifully behind you as you lead him back down to the first floor. You feel much better than when you'd arrived, but your heart stutters each time a security guard passes you by. Years ago, stealing and getting away with it was second nature to you. You were also arrogant back then, uncaring of what happened to you. How quickly the tides had changed.

You feel Bruce nudge you with his arm. He isn't looking at you, but you know what he's trying to tell you: you've got a few more hallways to turn down before the exit. You just have to-

Someone calls your name.

You spin around, nerves electrified, only to find Em running to catch up with you, "What are you doing back at work already? Is your arm okay?"

The adrenaline rush had done wonders for your pain tolerance. You didn't even think about it until she brought it up, "I'm fine, it's fine. It's-" You go to rush out some sort of explanation but at that moment, Bruce turns around.

You can see the moment of impact across Em's face as soon as she realizes who you're with, her back straightening and hand pressing down flyaways. In an instant, she has forgotten all about you. For better or for worse. She rubs her palm on her leg before holding it out to shake his hand, "Mr. Wayne! Hi! I'm surprised to see you here." Her eyes are twinkling, "Everything alright?"

"Just some leg pain, nothing painkiller can't fix." He flashes the pill bottle for good measure. You're honestly impressed he admitted to being in pain at all, "It's good to see you again, Dr. Madison."

Em's face droops into a frown, "Well, you look fantastic, but you've got a mirror," she pats your arm, "and I'm sure you're being well taken care of."

"Only by the best."

You smile (borderline pleadingly), preparing to dismiss yourselves while you still have your wits about you, but then Em asks Bruce a question and, to your surprise, Bruce is happy to entertain her.

It strikes you that you had landed in your situation with no prior interest in who Bruce was, and it shows in how you barely keep up with the topic of conversation.

It's like watching a tennis match between the two. The topic in Em's court, then Bruce's, then Em's, back and forth without issue. No awkward pauses or uncomfortable looks. She recalls details about him out of thin air, your knowledge in comparison merely fringes of what Em knew.

The longer it goes on, the more it weighs on you that aside from the strange man who'd circled around you like a frightened kitten, you really didn't know anything about Bruce.

You knew Batman. You felt you knew him. Even when his identity was still a secret, you had felt comfortable with him. Vulnerable, even. He'd let you touch him in your home, fixing him up and helping you with this mess and... outside of that, what did you really know?

You feel an odd twist in your chest.

Em's voice floats back in, disrupting your retrospection, "I've always wanted to go to Italy. You must get so sick of these places after having been so many times."

"They still have their magic," Bruce grins, "but I don't like being far from home."

"Really? You could go anywhere in the world and you'd still miss Gotham?" Em's tone is teasing, but curious. Something flickers in her eyes as if she'd just remembered something.

Bruce takes in the hallway, chest swelling with pride, "Lots of things to miss about it."

"Name one."

Bruce's eyes cut to the side as he thinks, "The noise."

"You can get noise anywhere. LA, Chicago-"

"It's special here."

"No, try again."

His smile turns sheepish, "The rain."

"Now you're lying. Come on, pretty boy. I know you've got something. Penthouse, nightlife- heck, I'd even understand the freaks and clowns giving everyone PTSD."

Bruce exhales, purses his lips. His eyes flit around the white walls, "Okay. I'd miss you."

What the hell?

You straighten up. The absurdity (blatant sweet-talk) of the line shouldn't work—seriously, it wouldn't work on you—but Em goes pink in the cheeks. A strand of dark hair falls from her bun and frames her smile just so, "Well," she snorts, "aren't you just a flirt?"

To your utter dismay, they are both eating this up. "You light up the room, Dr. Madison. Your patients are very lucky."

"My patients are usually seven and way more interested in the candy I bring them."

"Candy?" Bruce finally looks at you, all humor and charm, "I never get candy. I just get yelled at."

Something in you is disturbed when Em grabs onto Bruce's arm, hanging off him as she pouts at you, "Oh! You're heartless!"

"Very much so." Bruce is somber.

"I don't-" Your voice comes out strained, a little too defensive right off the bat, "I don't yell." But you'd gotten close, and you got closer everyday, "But if I did, you'd deserve it."

Bruce is amused. You watch as he pretends to cower into Em, even as he dwarfs her in size. They start joking back and forth, more teases at your expense, and you notice that the persona he puts on around others is practically nonexistent here. You'd watched it dissolve within minutes. It's refreshing, you realize, that he seems to really be enjoying himself right now.

You catch Bruce insisting that he ought to get going, sharing pleasantries and desires to visit once more. Em looks genuinely saddened to let him go. The second Bruce's back turns, Em reaches out and squeezes your hand, whispering, "Please tell me he's single."

You fluster. You imagine yourself in the car ride back to the tower asking Bruce what he thinks about Em, offering to exchange numbers between them, and you're disturbed again.

Twenty-four hours ago, you would've been warning her to run for the hills. Twenty-four hours ago, he was only Bruce Wayne. Now he was Batman and all that came with it and, well... once upon a time, you would've wanted nothing more than for Bruce Wayne to sweep Em off her feet. Batman had always been more your style.

Then, you realize, you don't actually know the answer to her question.

Em looks expectant. You shrug. She exaggerates her disappointment but releases you all the same, "Keep me posted."

"I'm comparing the samples from the crime scene to the antivenom. I should have something in a few hours." Bruce taps the antivenom vial, watching the remaining blue liquid slosh against the glass, before handing it off to Alfred.

You're mesmerized by this backyard (or, more aptly put, garage) chemistry lab. Beakers and flasks spread out on the long table as you watch from a stool a few feet away, "How'd you get so good at this?"

"College," after a few seconds of silence from you, he adds on begrudgingly, "I started messing around with stuff down here when I was 13."

"You had all this when you were 13?"

"Some of it, whatever I could get my hands on. I liked to see how things worked."

You have a unique opportunity to learn about Bruce here, so you take it with both hands, "You majored in chem, then."

"And biology, and physics."

Your eyes blow wide. "You had three majors?"

"I bounced from one to another, sometimes double majored if I liked the professors. I followed my interests and they took me everywhere," Bruce picks up the venom test tube, little drops of green pooling at the bottom of the glass, "I've enrolled in more universities than I have degrees."

Your eye twitches, just a little annoyed, "Must've been nice going wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted."

Bruce senses your tone of voice. He peers at you from the side, elbows resting on the table, "I spent a lot of time away from home. It must've been enough because I don't miss it."

"You said the same thing to Em earlier." You recall.

"I didn't think about it as much while I was gone, but when I came home for good... I just couldn't imagine myself leaving like that again."

"He barely liked boarding school," Alfred chimes in from the other side of the room, lazily reading a book at Bruce's desk. Boarding school was posh. You imagined little Bruce in a school uniform like the British boys in movies, "I should bring out the scrapbooks once we have a moment."

Bruce sets the test tube back on its rack with a bit of aggression, "Thank you, Alfred. You can go now."

Alfred chortles. He skims one more page of his book and then shoves it under his arm on the way back up. The elevator clinks and rattles up the tower until it stops some sixty stories up.

It's quiet now. You sort of appreciate the silence- the relative silence. There is the steady drip, drip, drip coming from here and there in the cave. The whirring of the machines, the humming of the lights, the very faint sound of a news anchor forecasting snowy skies this weekend. Bruce's breathing.

It's harder to hear unless you focus on it. His mountainous build hunched over the table—staring into the venom as it stares back—rises and falls in slow rhythm. You watch him being and it captivates you. For the umpteenth time since last night, you are struck with the reminder that this was Batman. In all his broody glory, an arm's length away from you, about a hundred feet under the city.

It's funny; you paid so little attention to the man before, and now you wanted to take him apart and examine his terrible insides. You have accidentally become obsessed with the man.

"I want to take you to Blackgate."

"Sorry?"

"Lucien is there," the name makes your blood run cold, "he was with the Vipers the longest. He could answer a few things for us."

You do your best not to immediately say no. Not because you think he'll force you, but because you know—somehow—that he won't, "What about Detective Gordon? Shouldn't that be his job?"

"I think he'll talk to you." Bruce turns slowly until his back is pressed against the desk, arms crossed over his chest and pulling his shirt completely taut. "He knows you."

You hadn't seen Lucien since the night Alex died. For once, you're kind of grateful Bruce can read you. He turns fully toward you, "I can go alone."

"You just said you think he'll talk to me."

"I can make him talk." His head droops a little to meet your eyes, expression impossibly understanding. You have no doubt he can. Your throat feels like it's on the verge of closing up. Somehow, sending Bruce alone to handle him felt worse.

"But you think I can..." You have to pause to force in a breath, feeling yourself go lightheaded, "You think I can get more out of him." Bruce doesn't respond to that. He's still watching you like you might start stress-sobbing. "Okay."

"You sure?"

"Mm."

Bruce calls your name. You'd been tracing the lines of his arms with your eyes to distract yourself, not processing how much closer he'd gotten until you feel his breath against your eyelashes.

His arms are uncrossed now, one hand pressing into the table beside you, the other hovering by his hip. His fingers twitch. Does he want to touch you? You were about to go three for three with the crying in his arms thing.

You force yourself off the stool and the speed at which you stand gives Bruce very little time to react. Your chest bumps against him, but you're already slipping behind him, "Lemme see your stitches," you rasp, hand ghosting over his shoulder, "need to... redress them, probably."

Bruce tries looking over his shoulder at you but you hide behind him and after a moment, he relents. His shoulders drop in defeat. You watch him drag your stool into the light and sit.

The dismal mood did you a favor. He looked like he'd be submissive today.

You're halfway through clearing away his dried blood when you ask, "Are you single?"

Bruce's shoulder jolts just the tiniest bit, almost driving your finger into the stitch. "What?"

"Em asked," you quickly explain, "and I realized I didn't know."

You don't know exactly what he's thinking, but his answer is as straightforward as you could hope for, "Yes."

"Oh."

"You sound surprised."

"I mean... I sort of assumed..." What did you assume, exactly? You couldn't see him with a long term partner, definitely not like this, but the idea that there wasn't anybody didn't sit right with you, "no flings? Situationships, even?"

"Why? Is Dr. Madison interested?"

Your jaw clenches. You force the muscles in your face to relax, "I just don't want any secret lovers of yours adding me to their shitlist if I go through with your plan. I can't stress how little I want to fake-fight over you right now."

Bruce huffs. You finish cleaning around his wound when he pipes up again, "I had something... someone. It didn't last."

"Oh. Are you... tender about it?"

"Not anymore. I don't have time for that kind of thing anyway."

He says it like it doesn't bother him, but in the way someone might brush off a scrape on the knee or a paper cut. Like it stung, but you had to be a big boy about it. The pain would go away eventually.

You press new gauze over the stitches, taping it down as gently as you could, "I assumed someone like you would have a whole lot of someones, a revolving door even," your eyes flit over his other bruises and healed cuts, "I never made time for relationships either. I was kind of just going through the motions."

"No one interested you?" Bruce rolls his shoulders once you peel away from him. He doesn't look at you when he asks that.

"Just... childish crushes here and there. Sometimes I'd let someone take me home..." Your voice catches in your throat for a moment. You recall a stamped down memory, one of you standing blindfolded in your apartment imagining the Batman with his mouth on your throat. That wasn't very long ago. Your breath shudders as you fit Bruce into the memory instead. You don't... know how to feel about it.

"Never back to yours? And here I thought Judith was just hard on me." You belatedly register Bruce standing, rolling his shirt up his arms before pulling the neck over his hair. His question hangs lightheartedly.

Your shoulders sag, "You're not gonna believe me if I tell you I was paranoid about letting one-night stands into my home."

"Why? 'Cause you let me in?"

The back of your neck grows hot. "What about you? You ever bring yours back to the cave?"

After he's done tucking his shirt into his pants, Bruce shakes his head at you, "No. Just you."

That was the second time he'd said that to you. You were starting to feel special.

You step out of the shower and you think, almost as soon as your foot touches heated floors, that you really despise Bruce Wayne.

The towels are warm too, waiting for you as you preen yourself in the mirror, a clean you staring back. You kept your toiletries bag on the bathroom counter, afraid to unpack anything as you rustled around for deodorant. It was massive and quiet. The water pressure alone had you swearing at the marble lining of the shower.

Bruce eventually lured you downstairs with the promise of making dinner. Alfred was skeptical, but had backed off and allowed Bruce full range of the kitchen, still possessed by his book next to the fire.

He'd asked you what you had the stomach for. Eventually he was copying something out of a celebrity recipe book with you beside him.

You argued that he hadn't really made you dinner given that you had helped him do half of everything, but it was his ingredients and it was his kitchen and the food tasted good so you didn't argue long.

After Alfred offered his stamp of approval, he'd retired for the night and left you and Bruce in the kitchen to clean up. Bruce had left the pots and pans to you when you proved too nervous to handle the porcelain, "Alfred won't kill you if it breaks."

"Alfred would kill me for less, I think."

Bruce gives a short laugh, drying off the last pot. He's pouring you a glass of the wine you'd opened last night when you slide his little gadget across the counter, "I forgot to give that back to you." You swirl your glass, admiring the color as Bruce packs away the leftovers. "You looked like you were enjoying yourself with Em earlier."

"I was. Your friend is funny."

"I... also noticed something you said. When she asked you what you would miss about Gotham, you mentioned the noise and the rain. Would you really miss all that?"

Bruce glances at you, popping a top onto a glass bowl, "Of course. It's part of what makes the city."

Your eyes narrow, searching for the lie, but there isn't one. He's being sincere. "Is that why you became Batman? Because you love this city that much?"

You can feel the mood getting doused with ice water. It forces you upright in your chair, makes your hand clench around the stem of your glass. Anyone with eyes could tell you'd just touched a nerve.

But he answers you, intense as it comes out, "I hated it." The loathing is a mere shell of what it used to be, you can tell, "I hated what it took from me." His eyes cast down to the countertop. "At first, I was aimless. Everyone was worried about the future of the company but Alfred and I were just trying to make it through the day. Over the years, I boiled up with this... restlessness. I still didn’t know where I was going but I was full of something for once. I studied, I traveled, I learned from all manner of teacher. And when I came home, I was... determined."

His words sit heavily on you. You can see flecks of that restlessness in his eyes, the slight tremble of his hands as he rests them against the countertop. "Why a bat?" You whisper.

"They're what I feared the most."

Past tense. "Feared?"

"I got over it. I won't let them close enough to bite, but..." The humor in his voice breaks the intensity of his expression.

You mull that over, "You became what you feared to strike fear."

"Not anymore," his head shakes, "fear is a tool, but... there's enough fear in this city. I wasn't making a change, I was making it worse."

You remembered the first time you'd ever heard of the Batman. Back then, he was just "Vengeance". In the grand scheme of fucked up things this city had to offer, someone running around dressed as a bat didn't register as abnormal. Another Tuesday, maybe. You awaited what they'd say about his crimes: a mugger beaten and strung up on the street, a gang felled and dropped at the GCPD's door. You remembered something stirring in you when he put away the Joker.

"I remember when you became a hero. Like really, to everyone. When you took shape… they were flying in people. I was rushing in patients while you stood on top of the Garden and pulled people out of the flood. I hadn’t felt hope like that since… yeah."

Your admission moves something in Bruce. His eyes find yours, "I was just doing what you'd been doing for years."

"But I never left that hospital. You transcend boroughs, the gangs, everything. I used to think you couldn’t possibly be one guy. I still can’t believe it. How are you not dead on your feet by now?" Bruce smiles knowingly at you and you feel yourself flush, "Besides that. You’ve been doing this for longer than I've been around to patch you up."

"That would be Alfred."

"You should tell him, you know. That you appreciate him. I think he'd like to hear how much he means to you more often." Bruce's eyes soften. He doesn't debate you. "Anyway. How's that sedative going?"

"I'll take another look before I leave tonight."

Oh, yeah. This guy is Batman.

You don't know when next you'll get this chance, "Can I ask a favor? Can I... watch you put it on?" Bruce wobbles to the side, genuinely confused. "The suit?"

He examines you, mouth almost curling up into a shocked smile. He hadn't expected you to ask that, that's for sure. "All of it?"

You grip your glass so hard you think it might shatter, "No." And then, when he has the audacity to snicker, "Asshole."

He stays true to your request.

You watch with your back pressed up against the wall. His under suit hangs undone at his hips while he leans over his desk, digging his fingers into a can of black paint. He uses the reflection of his computer screen to smear it over his eyelids and under his eyelashes until the white skin beneath disappears.

Next is zipping up the under suit. You barely resist rushing over to hold his bandage steady as the suit catches on it, but he manages to get it up and over without pulling it off. Then come the plates of armor. Each piece clips into place, clinging to his waist and chest and arms. You've seen it up close enough times to know the quality of it, a wonder how he'd gotten his hands on that kind of stuff until now.

You don't ask him to, but when it's time to put his cowl on, he turns sideways so you can see.

His gloved hand combs through his hair, pushing back the longer strands so he could fit the cowl over it.

It's kind of embarrassing how it takes your breath away. Bruce had quite literally transformed before your eyes, and now there was no denying it.

Bruce stands still as your eyes bore into him.

After a few seconds of admiring every piece of the suit, your eyes flit up to his face. He's not looking at you, almost shy. Apart from Alfred and, perhaps, his someone, Bruce has probably never put on the suit in front of anyone else. Is it weird you missed seeing him shy? "It fits perfectly." Your voice is barely above a whisper.

Of course it does. You know it's dumb to say. Bruce doesn't say that, though.

He waits a beat before turning away from you, his cape sending a breeze of cool air up against your legs. His car awaits on the train tracks, headlights beaming into the near endless darkness as he approaches and you follow.

The car thrums eagerly with life at the push of a button, sending vibrations through the ground, all the way up to the ceiling where you hear a sudden flurry of wings and chirping. Bowing your head close to Bruce, you watch about a hundred bats scurry about above you, disturbed by the sudden rumble of the engine. Bruce holds his cape over your shoulder, though none of the bats fly low enough to concern him. "They don't freak you out a little bit?"

"They haven't bothered me."

"Well, when you dress like them I guess they get confused."

"I'll be back before sunrise," Bruce promises, "and I'll look into Judith for you. Maybe you should... call first."

You're tickled by the discomfort he's so desperately trying to hide, "Scared of a little old lady?"

He pointedly ignores you. You step back as he throws open the door and settles into his car, but before he can pull off into the darkness, you shout his name to get his attention over the roaring engine, "Hey! Be safe."

Bruce looks at you and... you don't know what he's thinking, only that the muscles in his jaw relax a bit. Was he used to that? Did Alfred often stand on the cold, empty train tracks before every patrol and wish him luck on another night of beating criminals to a pulp? Was he used to the worrying? Annoyed by it, even?

He doesn't say anything. The car leaves in a spray of dust and you hide your face in your shirt to shield yourself from it. By the time the dust settles, you can only see two red lights blurring into the distance.

[theother-will-grayson]

Well the class is over and I doubt a few years after wrap anyone is still under NDA so let me finally tell this story.

I just finished a stage combat SPT class (bear with me I'm about to drop a few fun facts but all of this is relevant info I promise) -- I was getting my certification in smallsword which for anyone not in the know is the smaller, faster, fancier son of the rapier -- the weapon of choice for dueling among nobility and the predecessor to modern day sport fencing. It was used around the time of the golden age of piracy. Think the Jack/Will fight in Pirates of the Caribbean.

Well if you hear that description, you might be like me and think "Oh like Our Flag Means Death" as well. (You have to also have a scene around the fight to get your SPT because they judge your acting as well as your technique.) So on the day we pitched scenes, I walked in and told my instructors I wanted to do the Izzy/Stede scene in Our Flag Means Death.

Instructor A gets this goofy little smirk on his face and turns to Instructor B and goes "I suppose you'll be coaching them on that one, then." (NOT a direct quote but it was something like that).

I go "Why."

A goes, "Oh because he worked on that scene."

WHAT

I never got full clarification whether he actually choreographed it or if he was just the style/technique coach but apparently he worked with Con O'neill for approximately 5 hours on smallsword technique and with Rhys Darby approximately 2 hours (because apparently Stede didn't need to be super good at it which is HORRIBLE practice for safety reasons. Like...the actor still needs to be good at it lmfao). He says he told Con that he's gonna teach him to wield a smallsword but they would undoubtedly give him a rapier because it's very common for Hollywood to just merge the two. He was like "I guess they'll explain it as he was trained in smallsword but the rapier would be whatever they could find laying around on a pirate ship which doesn't make sense because he's supposed to be this super skilled swordsman...I don't know." From what I can gather fight directors are generally perpetually tired.

Let me tell you as a fan that 5 hours SHOWS because Con definitely looks like a skilled swordsman. But half of that has to be Con himself because 5 hours is also in the grand scheme of things NOT THAT MUCH TIME especially for what I can attest to be a very difficult weapon. And also the additions this gives to Izzy's lore because he's so skilled a dueling with that weapon specifically...

Anyways if I ever get my hands on the video of me doing the scene I'll post it. Also this is not a homestuck cop story. I live in Los Angeles and all of my professors have been industry professionals. If I wasn't afraid of doxxing the guy I'd post proof. But the way my mind blew in that moment.

[celaenaeiln]

What's the deal with fanon Tim bc I read some comics with Tim and I've seen him in cartoons but all I see people talk about is "haha coffee addicted nerd who doesn't sleep!" and that just seems weird and wrong. Like my view of Tim has always been "he's a nice and extremely smart guy who sometimes pushes things a bit too far and maybe a bit set in his own ways/Batman's ways" but now I'm not even sure of that because I really haven't read THAT much (mostly seen him in other series) lol

No you're right!! Anon you're so right!!!

What the heck is up with fanon Tim Drake??

The thing about him not sleeping is actually true though

Detective Comics (2016) Issue #937

Batman: Contagion Issue #11

(I agree with Catwoman, Tim is so cute)

So I understand where the coffee addiction in fanon comes from but Tim's not actually addicted to coffee in the comics. I actually don't recall him mentioning coffee at all. At some point he might have but if he did, then those instances are so little in the grand scheme of things it might as well be called negligible if it's trying to be called an addiction.

But more importantly, Tim is so much more than that!! My favorite Tim Drake aspect of him is how sassy and sarcastic he is, it makes him so endearing!!

UGH NO ONE APPRECIATES HOW MUCH OF A LITTLE SHIT HE IS!!

Robin (1993) Issue #58

CMON CMON CMON LETS TALK MORE ABOUT THIS!!

Tim, you little shit, you know exactly what they say - cause you did it!!

HIS SELF-SATISFIED SMILE!!!

In all honesty I find Tim the funniest of the entire batfamily to read because he's so-he's so wholesomely quirky in a mean way. That's such as awkward way to describe it but reading his comics, you just can't get enough of them because he's just too funny!

At one point he has a massive fever and stuck underground with a bunch of weird kids and one of the girls is just like "please get better, please get some rest!" as she's wiping away his sweat and Tim has like no breath or energy at this point. But with the last remains of will power, he uses his breath to push one last question between lips.

Robin (1993) Issue #70

And as the audience waits in baited anticipation we get this-

Robin (1993) Issue #70

It's actually a very valid question and shows his detective thinking and yada yada yada but THE COMEDIC GOLD OF HIS TIMING!!

Like his situation and his question there's a massive gap that's almost incomprehensible about it all which is why it's so fantastic!!

The way he sasses batman is top 5 fav moments with him.

Azrael: Agent of the Bat Issue #91

Thanks @paladin-of-nerd-fandom65 for finding it again <33

But Tim overall is just like a normal kid. He's what authors tried to do with Stephanie but failed. They were able to make him relatable to the audience because the way he acts, it's so quirky but funny. Yes, he's a boy detective genius but he likes messing with people, he likes solving crime, he likes hanging out with his big brother, he asks for relationship advice, he can get insecure, he can get upset without acting cold, he gets tired, he gets anxious, he's determined, and he's super dorky.

Robin (1993) Issue #25

Like really dorky.

But what I think really defines him is this panel

Robin (1993) Issue #48

This scene is probably what explains him best. Tim is someone who ponders a lot. He thinks constantly all the time whether it's about cases or his personal life, he just goes over the choices he makes constantly because he's just soul-searching alot.

He always means well even if he's awkward about it and he's just a diverse personality overall. The fanon interpretation of his character doesn't really do him any justice because it doesn't address how funny he is or confused or just a likeable, real person in general.