#I say that ever after quote more often than you’d think

[simplygojo]

I Like Your Tie...

A/n: OMG ONE OF MY FAVS REQUESTED! I loved this request; thats why it took SO LONG I’m sorry my friend I hope you enjoyyyy!! <3 I needed another Nanami request so bad so you did me a favour with this one, LOLLL.

Request: “Your last Toji fic got me frothing like a rabid dog. Lol. in all ways it was very uniquely him indeed ! The same for Gojo and Witch!Reader. Could I shy request a fic with the song 'Talk' by Hozier paired up with Nanami Kento x Fem!Reader ? Something sensual steamy but ever so romantic for the blonde? I can practically see him saying or thinking such lyric quotes as "I won't deny I've got in my mind now all the things we'd do... So I'll try to talk refined for fear that you find out how I'm imaginin' you. Imagine being loved by me". May she's a fellow Special Grade sorcerer, and their friendship keeps building up, but neither wants to cross the line ? So they dance around it, until something happens ? Idk. >\\\\\\\\\\\\\\< I'll leave it to your artistic hands and imagination what to do with this? If you feel inspired to. In any case, please delete if this seems rubbish. Anyway, thank you for your stories ! Thank you so much. ♡” - @erebus-et-eigengrau (lurvv uu)

My requests are always open :)

Pairing: Kento Nanami x f/reader

Word count: 3.8K

Warnings: 18+ Content, SMUT!, intercourse, light choking, control kink(ish), pet name

The late-night quiet of Jujutsu High was comforting in a way—no students rushing through the halls, no teachers around to monitor. You had been grateful for the peace, retreating to your room after a long day.

But as you reached your door, you stopped in your tracks.

There he was. Nanami Kento stood in front of your door, leaning casually against the wall. 

—

You and Nanami had been friends for what felt like a lifetime, though it all began back in high school. Back then, you had a bit of a crush on him—not that you’d ever admit it. He wasn’t the type to flirt or give much attention to relationships, but there was something about him that always caught your eye. 

You had your moments, too—shared laughter, and private conversations late into the night, when the walls between friends almost seemed to blur. 

But Nanami never made a move, and neither did you. You knew how seriously he took his role as a sorcerer, and you didn’t want to complicate your friendship with feelings that you weren’t sure were mutual.

As you both graduated and eventually became high-level sorcerers, those moments of potential intimacy became even more distant. You grew into your own roles, taking on increasingly dangerous missions and fighting curses that most could barely comprehend. Nanami was often assigned to the same missions as you, his calm, steady presence a source of reassurance when things got chaotic.

There were times when his professionalism would slip, just for a moment. A fleeting look, a brush of his fingers against yours, his voice dropping an octave when he spoke your name. You always wondered if he felt it too—that same tension you tried so hard to ignore. But you never dared to ask, afraid of what it might mean if the answer was yes.

And now, standing in front of him in the quiet after everything that had just happened, you realized just how deeply those old feelings still ran.

There were times, though, when your old crush resurfaced. 

Sometimes, it was the way he’d look at you across the battlefield, silently checking to see if you were okay, his eyes filled with a concern that was more than just professional. Other times, it was the rare, gentle touch when he’d help you after a fight—his hand brushing your arm or waist as he steadied you after a particularly tough encounter.

But you always pushed those feelings down, refusing to acknowledge them for the sake of professionalism. 

The sorcery world didn’t leave much room for distractions, and you knew that Nanami was as dedicated as ever. He was the picture of control, never letting emotions dictate his actions, always focused on the mission at hand. You convinced yourself that whatever crush you had on him was just remnants of your high school days, a fleeting fantasy that had no place in your current life.

—

His arms were crossed, his tie long loosened, and the top buttons of his shirt undone. The dim lighting of the hallway cast a shadow over his sharp features, making the intensity in his eyes even more pronounced. He looked every bit the composed man he always was, but something about the way his gaze followed your every movement made your heart stutter.

“Nanami…” His name left your lips in a quiet murmur, not expecting to see him there, not like this.

“You’re out late,” he observed, his voice steady but lower than usual, as if the stillness of the night demanded it.

You nodded, feeling the weight of his gaze on you. “Well, one of the first-years wanted some late-night training…What are you doing here?”

He didn’t answer right away, eyes flicking down to your lips before settling back on yours. 

You could feel the tension in the air, thick and palpable, making it hard to think clearly. His usual restraint seemed to falter, just slightly, but enough to make your pulse race.

“I was waiting for you.” His voice was steady, but the words made your breath hitch.

Your heart pounded in your chest. 

“Waiting for me?” You said quietly, a heat beginning to pool between your thighs.

Nanami pushed off the doorframe and stepped closer to you, his movements deliberate. The space between you closed as his tall figure made its way toward you—the tension that had been simmering beneath the surface for weeks finally came to a boil. 

“Why were you waiting for me..?” You questioned, “I need to talk,” He responded, his voice barely above a whisper.

He was close enough now that you could feel the warmth radiating from him, the faint scent of his cologne filling your senses.

“I used to try to talk so refined, in fear of you finding out…” He admitted, his voice lower now, almost rough around the edges. His eyes locked onto yours with an intensity that made your knees weak. 

“Finding out what, Nanami.” You breathed, watching how his lips parted just slightly while he paused. “How I’ve been imagining you." 

The air between you was thick with tension, so heavy you could almost taste it. Nanami stood inches away, close enough that you could feel the heat radiating from his body. His normally professional demeanour had cracked, revealing something raw, something primal. The careful distance you both had maintained was no longer there.

"Imagining me…?" You repeated, your voice barely more than a whisper. Your heart pounded in your chest, and you were certain he could hear it.

Nanami’s eyes darkened, and his gaze roamed over you in a way that left your body practically squirming under his scrutiny. His jaw clenched for a moment as though fighting some internal battle, but when he spoke, his voice was low and hoarse, filled with a desire he was no longer trying to hide.

“Every time I look at you,” he confessed, his hands flexing at his sides, like he was resisting the urge to touch you, “I think about how you’d feel under my touch… under me.”

Your breath caught, your throat suddenly dry as his words sank in. The image of his hands on your skin, the weight of him pressing against you, the feeling of him between your legs—it sent a wave of heat through your body, leaving you borderline trembling with anticipation.

“Nanami…” you whispered his name, your voice trembling with the same desire that was now coursing through you. The distance between you felt unbearable.

The professionalism you both held onto so tightly was crumbling, and the temptation to give in was overwhelming.

The hallway was too quiet, too intimate, and it felt like the rest of the world had fallen away. It was just the two of you, standing there on the precipice of something dangerous and irresistible.

“I won’t deny I’ve got in my mind now all the things we’d do,” he confessed, his voice barely a whisper as his thumb traced your jawline, gently tilting your head with two fingers. His eyes darkened with want, and the weight of his words hung heavily in the air.

That was all it took. The pull between you snapped, and before you could think, your hands were fisting in his dark blue shirt, pulling him down to meet your lips in a kiss that was heated, desperate—inevitable.

His hand swiftly opened your door before pushing you into it, causing both of you to stumble into the dimly lit room. With a loud thud, Nanami kicked the door shut before pushing you back up against your entryway wall.

Nanami groaned softly into your mouth—your pussy practically throbbing at the sound—and his hands immediately wrapped around your waist, tugging you closer as if he couldn’t stand the idea of any space between you. His lips moved against yours with a hunger that you hadn’t expected, and it left you breathless.

You gasped when his hands gripped your hips firmly, pushing more firmly against the wall. The cool surface against your back was a stark contrast to the heat that radiated from him as he pressed himself closer, his lips never leaving yours.

His kisses were deliberate, slow—but rough—as if he wanted to savour every moment of this. 

"Mmf…Nanami," you breathed, pulling back just enough to look at him, your lips swollen from the kiss, breathless. "What are we doing?"

His forehead rested against yours, his breath ragged as he looked down at you. There was something raw, unguarded in his expression. “What I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

Your heart fluttered at his words, and before you could say anything else, he was kissing you again, deeper this time. “Now be a good girl for me, y/n.” He practically purred against your lips, as he lifed you so your legs wrapped around his waist. 

His hands moved with more confidence now, sliding up your sides while you were pinned against the wall, his touch sending shivers down your spine. You tugged at his hair, your fingers desperate to feel more of him.

His hands, rough from battle and years of work, were surprisingly gentle as they slid beneath your shirt, fingers brushing over your painfully hard nipples, teasing you. You arched into him, your body responding to every touch.

He made quick work of your jacket—and that tiny tank top you wore underneath it, his hands roughly reaching for every bit of exposed skin.

Nanami growled softly with your legs wrapped around his waist, his lips trailed down the column of your neck, his teeth grazing your skin in a way that had you moaning his name.

"Do you want me to stop?" He asked, his breath hot against your neck, but the fire in his eyes told you stopping was the last thing he wanted to do.

"Don’t," you whispered—pleading with him for more, your fingers tangling in his hair as you pulled him closer. "Don’t stop."

Nanami’s eyes darkened further at your words, and a slow, subtle smirk spread across his lips. "Good girl," he murmured, his voice rough with desire. 

His hand moved up to the tie hanging loosely around his neck, fingers working quickly to loosen it even further. Before you could register what he was doing, he slid the tie off entirely, his movements deliberate and slow as he looped the fabric around your neck.

The silk felt cool against your skin, a stark contrast to the heat radiating from your body. His eyes never left yours as he gently tugged at the tie, pulling you closer, the pressure on your throat light but enough to send a thrill through you that went straight to your now-soaked pussy.

“There,” he whispered, his thumb brushing over the side of your neck as he admired how the tie looked wrapped around you, it falling on your bare chest. In a moment, his lips were back on your skin, trailing lower this time as his free hand continued to explore your body. He kissed a path down to your chest, the tie around your neck tightening just slightly as he pulled you even closer.

He brought you to the couch in your small room with one hand while the other held the back of your head as his tongue explored your mouth.

“You look so beautiful like this, do you know that, y/n? With my tie around your pretty little neck…” He murmured against your skin, his voice laced with raw, unfiltered need. 

Hoisting you up onto the back of the couch, his hand slipped beneath the waistband of your skirt, fingers brushing against the wetness between your thighs, and the contact made you gasp. 

With one swift but gentle movement, Nanami slid your skirt and tights down your legs, and now you sat in front of him—completely vulnerable.

“Nanami—” Your words were cut off by a moan as his fingers returned, pressing more firmly, the slow, torturous circles he drew making your entire body tremble. The tie tightened just a fraction more as he leaned back to look at you, his thumb brushing against your clit in a way that had your heart racing even faster.

“You’re so responsive for me,” he growled softly, his fingers entering your dripping cunt slowly, making sure to feel every inch of your interior. “It’s driving me insane.”

You could barely breathe, the combination of his fingers between your legs and the light pressure of the tie around your neck leaving you a trembling mess in his arms. You clung to him, your hands gripping his broad shoulders as you fought to hold on, your body betraying you with every ragged breath and every desperate moan.

"Nanami, please..." You barely recognized your own voice, hoarse and breathless as you begged for him.

He smirked against your skin, clearly pleased by your reaction. “You want more, don’t you?” He asked, his voice thick with amusement, but the tension in his body told you he was just as desperate as you were.

You nodded, your head falling back as your body arched into his touch. “Please…”

The sound of your begging seemed to snap something in him. With one swift motion, he lifted you up with one arm and spun you around before setting you on your feet in front of him, your ass pressing up against his bulge as the cool leather from the couch pressed against your lower abdomen. 

He leaned down, his lips brushing your ear as his fingers slipped inside you again, making you gasp loudly at the sudden (welcomed) intrusion. 

“I want to hear you beg for me again,” he whispered, his breath hot against your skin as his fingers moved with agonizing slowness, teasing you, driving you to the brink of insanity. His other hand subtly undid his belt, lowering his pants just enough to expose his desperate cock.

You moaned, arching into his hand, your body betraying you as it responded to every touch, every whisper of his breath on your skin. “Nanami...hmmf…please...I-I need you in me.” You managed to get out between moans.

“That’s it,” he growled, his fingers exiting you, but they were quickly replaced by his dick as he inserted himself into you—feeling you stretch around him caused him to throw his head back in pleasure, and he gave a little yank on the tie, your head jerking backwards as your stomach pressed harder into the couch, provoking a pornographic moan to exit your lips.

“Fuck,” he growled, his breath hot against your skin as he buried himself inside you, again and again, each stroke thrusting deeper into your gummy walls, sending waves of pleasure through your body. “You feel so good.”

His pace quickened, and the slow, deliberate rhythm gave way to something more primal and desperate. His control was slipping, and you could feel it in every rough thrust, every growl that rumbled from his chest as he claimed you completely.

The tie tightened again, the silk digging into your skin just enough to heighten the pleasure, and the sensation sent you spiralling toward the edge. Your body trembled beneath him, your nails digging into his shoulders as you gasped for breath, the intensity of it all overwhelming.

He leaned forward, the new angle allowing him to go even deeper into you. He gently moved your hair off of your shoulder as his delicate fingers traced the border of his tie and your skin. “You really are such a good girl.”

His thumb pushed into clit as he thrusted into you at a dominating pace—the sensation was nearly enough to push you over the edge—but you held on a little longer. You cried out his name, your entire body shaking as his pace quickened, he tightened the feeling around your throat with the tie around your neck pulling you closer to him.

Nanami’s body moved behind you, the warmth of him pressing against your back as his hands gripped your hips. Bent over the back of your couch, with the cool surface a stark contrast to the heat radiating from your flushed skin. “Mmhf–Nanami…Oh please.” You moaned out, practically begging him for more as he fucked you with a controlling pace

His breath was heavy, ragged, as he leaned over you, his chest pressing against your back, making you feel the sheer size and strength of him as he dominated you completely.

Nanami’s fingers wrapped around his tie nicely wrapped around your neck, pulling it taut. The sensation made you gasp, your head tilting back slightly as the silk tightened around your throat just enough to send a jolt of pleasure through your already overstimulated body. Suddenly he took his soaked dick out of you letting it land on your ass, rubbing his hand over the smooth skin.

“You look just perfect like this,” he growled low in your ear, his voice thick with lust as he tugged the tie just a bit tighter, your chin tilting up as he whispered in your ear. “Bent over—begging for me.”

Your legs trembled beneath you, your body quivering with anticipation, but before you could respond, he was inside you again. 

The stretch was immediate, deep, and overwhelming as he thrust into you from behind, filling you completely with a single stroke. You cried out, your fingers gripping the edge of the desk as he pulled you back against him, the tie keeping you tethered, under his controlled.

“Nanami…” You moaned his name, your voice barely more than a breathless whisper as he began to move, his hips snapping against you in a relentless rhythm. Every thrust was harder than the last, his grip on the tie tightening with every movement, pulling you back into him, forcing you to feel every inch of him.

His pace was brutal, his control slipping entirely as he watched the way your body reacted to him, the way you moaned his name with every stroke. His free hand found your hip, gripping you so tightly that you were sure there’d be marks tomorrow, but the thought only sent another wave of arousal through you.

“You feel so good, y/n,” he growled, his voice rough as he leaned over you, his lips brushing against the back of your neck. “My good girl...”

His words are what sent you over the edge, the stimulation of your orgasm turning your vision white. 

Your body was on fire, every nerve alive with pleasure as he drove into you again and again. The tie around your neck tightened even more, the pressure just enough to leave you lightheaded, completely at his mercy. You felt every inch of him inside you, the sound of skin against skin filling the room, along with your breathless moans as pleasure washed over you.

Nanami's body pressed closer as you shuddered beneath him, the waves of your orgasm still coursing through you. 

But he didn’t stop. 

Even as your body trembled, oversensitive and breathless, he kept thrusting into you with the same relentless intensity. His pace didn’t falter, and each stroke seemed deeper, more demanding, as if he couldn't get enough of the way you clenched around him.

Your moans turned to gasps as pleasure mixed with the overwhelming sensation of him continuing to push you past your limit. Your fingers clutched at his back, nails digging into his skin with a painful force, but he didn't slow down. He leaned over you, his lips brushing against your ear, his breath hot and ragged.

“Look at you, taking it so well," he groaned, his voice dark and full of praise. "You feel so good, I don’t want to stop.”

Your legs shook around him, your body still pulsating from your release, and the overstimulation had you crying out, your nails leaving marks along his back. 

"Nanami... please..." you gasped, unsure if you were begging him to stop or to keep going. You felt like you were being consumed, every nerve on fire, and yet your body responded to his touch, desperate for more.

He shifted slightly, angling his hips to hit that perfect spot inside you with every thrust, his hand still pressed firmly against your clit drawing rough circles. The tie around your neck tightened just a bit more, enough to remind you of the control he had, the control you were willingly giving him.

“I’m not done with you yet," he growled, his thrusts growing rougher, faster, his body taking full control over yours. "You can come again for me, can’t you?"

You didn’t know how it was possible, but the overwhelming pleasure began to build again inside you. His touch on your clit was insistent, his hips snapping against yours in a rhythm that left you breathless, teetering on the edge of something even more intense than before.

Your body trembled beneath him, the overstimulation and pleasure merging into something maddening. Every nerve was alight, your body responding to him in ways you couldn’t control. You were already too sensitive, your mind spinning as he pushed you closer and closer to the brink once again.

Nanami could feel it—he knew exactly how close you were, how your body tensed around him. His lips brushed your ear as he spoke, his voice low and commanding. “Come for me again, y/n. I want to feel you fall apart around me baby.”

With that, his fingers pressed harder against your clit, and his hips slammed into you at a brutal pace, each thrust sending you spiraling further out of control. The pressure inside you coiled impossibly tight, and with a cry of his name, you shattered once more, the intensity of your second orgasm crashing over you like a tidal wave.

Your body shook uncontrollably, your moans turning to sobs of pleasure as you convulsed around him. The sensation was too much, too overwhelming, and yet you never wanted it to end. Nanami’s name fell from your lips like a prayer as he continued thrusting into you, his own breathing growing more ragged, more desperate.

"That's it," he growled, his voice thick with pleasure as he watched you unravel beneath him, his pace rapidly increasing. "So fucking beautiful."

He wasn’t far behind. The way your walls clenched around him, the way you shook with each thrust, sent him over the edge. 

His pace grew erratic, his grip on your waist tightening as he buried himself deep inside you one last time, groaning your name as he came. He tugged at the tie harshly, yanking you up form your bent over position so yoru back was against his sweaty chest, his hand gently holding your chin up. 

“You were so good for me,” he breathed, his voice hoarse, igniting a spark in you again. You remained silent for a few moments, breath staggered as you tried to catch it, still shaking with pleasure as he held you upright in front of him. 

Finally, you opened your mouth to speak, a cheeky smile playing on your lips, “I like your tie…”

[darkwooddt]

“There was a bee 🐝”

[gay-dorito-dust]

Dick loves your plushie collection.

He doesn’t find it embarrassing in the slightest! If anything he finds it more offensive that you’d think it embarrassing having plushies as an adult. After he himself has a plush bunny dressed in his nightwing attire -escrima sticks and all- that he won at an arcade game a while back perched on the top of his bed back home.

He calls it dick jr and cuddles it when he has a rough night of crime fighting.

So he’s the last person to ever cast judgment on your plush collection.

If anything he lets his imagination run wild with them and takes full advantage of them. So if the instance came where you weren’t home, Dick would always send you photos and mini videos of him taking excellent care of a plush hare called Sir John Roderick Wellington the third by tucking him in bed at night, pretending to brush his teeth, etc

Or he’d make enact a photo shoot with a couple of them and send the results to you as your left asking where’d he manage to get all sorts of accessories for them…you’re still awaiting the answer to this day. Another thing he’d do with them is take them with him as company while he’s doing mundane chores in the apartment and act as though the plush is helping him.

You were quick to catch on that Dick having a hell of blast with it with how often he spammed your phone with a plethora of photos and videos that kept you up to date with the daily misadventures of your plushy. And yet you weren’t any better either as you kept them all in a album in your phone and are still wondering why your phone keeps informing you that you are running low on space…

Your favourite picture of your plushy was one where Dick had it tucked in bed, a picture of you on its lap, meanwhile Dick’s face could be seen peaking up from the bottom corner of the screen followed by the caption; ‘he misses you and can’t wait for you to come home and cuddle him. Oh and also me. :(

It’s became your Home Screen now and it was the best decision you’ve been made because it never failed to make you smile even on a bad day.

Jason loves it when you wear his clothes.

It’s free therapy for the man seeing you in his clothes and you can quote me on that.

He fucking loved coming home to see you do your own thing while looking all comfortable and relaxed in his shirts or hoodies doing so. For all Jason could ever want for you was for you to feel comfortable with him however you saw fit.

Also it gives him the more reason to stare at you shamelessly, well more than he did already, but you get the point. Jason is a simple man who’s not above letting it known how much he absolutely adores you.

So you wearing his clothes only added onto that adoration that he had for you. No one else could be more perfect in his eyes then you and he stands by that that statement.

‘You look perfect.’ -Jason

‘Jason, I’m wearing sweats and one of your shirts while eating pizza.’ -you

‘Yeah, perfect.’ -Jason

‘Doofus.’ -you, smiling.

Some days Jason would even go out of his way to leave his clothes on your side of the bed as a hint that he wants you to wear it for the day. Other days however he would be outright and blunt with the fact that he’d rather have you in his clothes than your own at this point.

‘Why are you wearing your clothes?’ - Jason

‘Because they’re my clothes and I feel bad wearing all of yours all the time.’ -you

‘Well I on the other hand don’t, take this shirt and go back into our bedroom and change.’ - Jason says as he takes off the shirt he was wearing and hands it to you, uncaring of the fact that he was shirtless in the living room.

‘You’re being dramatic Jason.’ - you as you take the warm shirt from his hands.

‘No I’m not, I just like you in my clothes a lot better than anything else.’ - Jason said, crossing his arms over his chest.

‘You’re getting jealous over clothes now?’ - you asked, raising a brow.

‘Yes.’ Jason responds instantly. ‘Now for the sake of my sanity go back and put my shirt on please.’

You kiss his cheek before leaving for the bedroom to change. ‘If you insist.’

‘I heavily insist chipmunk.’ - Jason says as he watched you walk away before following after to grab another shirt.

Jason loves it when you’re in his clothes. It’s his greatest strength and his greatest weakness.

[rookiesbookies]

Captain John MacTavish x His wife x Sergeant Johnny 'Soap' MacTavish

I dont know how it would happen but i'm imagining sweet little Johnny ‘Soap’ Mactavish meeting Captain MacTavish and his wife. I guess this is me rewriting what happened bc Im made we’ll probably never see Neil as his boy again. 

Masterlist is pinned on profile as always, don’t forget to leave me a comment or a request in my inbox to let me know what yall want to see!

Smut smut smut under the cut for my lovely mutual @shotmrmiller of my John and his wife meet sweet little Johnny au thing.

Also @glitterypirateduck this one is for you and #soapitup

“Bhean,” he whispers loudly, following it with squirrel noises, motioning for her to follow. She walks out of the recreational room. He nuzzled bis face into her neck, letting her know he was nervous about what he was going to say. “I'm getting serious deja vu.”

“Talk to me, Goose.” A shameless quote of their favorite date night movie from when they dated made his nervous face crack a smile.

“I have this crazy memory,” he mumbled into her neck, she always worried he’d hurt himself craning it down like that so often.

“What about, don’t leave me on cliff hangers, Mr. MacTavish.”

“Do you remember our first time together?”

“Skiing or fucking? Because I remember both very well.” He chuckled at her bringing up his failed skiing attempts from a vacation they went on.

“Making love, Bonnie.” He hummed, “would you believe me if I told ya it’s because I had done it before?”

“Considering baby you told me he’d call me mommy? Yes. Yes, I would.” She hummed. “You also found my clit really fast which makes that really reasonable in retrospect.”

“What if, like my future self taught me at that stage, we teach him how to make love to you so he can charm you with the monster.” It came out more as a question, making his nerves hammer against his chest. He was more than sure he beloved wife would say yes, but he didn’t want to risk making her uncomfortable or saying it wrong. 

“He does really want to impress me,” she mumbled. “Fine. But there’s ground rules.”

“Of course, Mo chridhe, anything.”

“Just the tip, you know how I am about hygiene. I don’t fully try young you to keep everything clean. He swears to secrecy and if I ever think for a second he mentions this im ending his blood line. And you stay with us. You are my husband after all, not the boy.” The Captain nodded with every word. He’d make sure. He knew the Sergeant would want no harm to come to his future wife, and the Captain didn’t need a scorched relationship.

“Thank you, Mo leannan, it’s what helped me keep up hope I could lock you down when I met you when I was his age.”

“So it was a memory and more than deja vu?” She asked with a raised brow.

The Captain just simply nodded, planting a kiss on her temple, “you’d tell me if you wanted to back out right? If it made you uncomfortable?”

“John.” She was serious, she never called him just ‘John’. “I expect the same from you. And you’d know I’d never keep that from you.”

She reached up to his face and gently rubbed it. He melted just a little bit into her touch. “I assume you don’t plan to do this on base?”

“No, but that’s the hard part.” “I’ll handle it, go tell the mini you,” she said softly, planting a kiss before walking away.

The Captain sighed and let his shoulders relax, he knew he was so lucky to have her. The sergeant was about to be the lucky one though.

He made his way down the hall and stole his past self from a conversation with Gaz. “My wife and I have decided to give you an opportunity to learn more about her.” He said in a low deep voice. “I will be teaching you about her body so you can please her but there are ground rules she set and a few of my own.” Once he covered his wife’s, he got on to his own, “do not bite her, dig your nails into her, or ignore me if I tell you to do something. No coming inside either and don’t try anything.” Sergeant Soap nodded along, “I’m not sure you’re actually listening, sergeant.” The Captain growled. Soap’s eyes went wide, “Captain me, sir, I prayed last night for an opportunity to feel her skin, honestly I was just expecting to be allowed to shake her hand.” The younger Soap grumbled, “believe me, I’m all ears.” “And none of that ‘I have a latex allergy so I can’t wear condoms’ crap. I know we don’t have that allergy. You will be wearing one.” “You’re so no’ fun,” Soap mumbled. “Fine.”

The Captain didn’t entirely know how he felt about the kid creaming his wife. Sure, it was him, but it was a younger, rowdier, dumber him and not his same body. Getting married meant he was the only one allowed to cream pie his wife, and yes, it is a version of him, it wouldn’t be the same as him doing it. Even if his wife is on birth control and enjoys them, he knows he’d get jealous, way too jealous. Besides it’s his job anyway, he signed a paper to be able to do it, and this kid version gets to just randomly do it.

“So when do I get to show mo bhean how a younger body is better to make love with?” Sergeant asked, patting his older self on the back. This made the Captain flip until the voice of an angel spoke up.

“Ya mean when you meet yer own damn wife. Ya wee-” the Captain’s rage was cut off. “Tomorrow night. I’ll be there ahead of schedule to prepare, my husband will drive you.” She said, walking past the two with effortless grace and a sway of her hips. She flicked a piece of hair back over her shoulder. 

The next 24 hours were full of different forms of tension for younger Soap. He was eager, so eager, almost too eager in the Captain’s eye. The Captain’s raging jealousy made him almost want to shut down the whole thing. 

When he loaded the sergeant and himself into the old truck he sighed. “Remember the rules?” “Of course.”

“Can’t believe you still own this truck.” “She’s carried me through a lot.” “When you meet YOUR wife, she’ll appreciate it. Square bodies are her favorites.”

The rest of the drive was small talk. The sergeant saw a notification appear on the Captain’s phone and snatched it up, since the captain was driving. He back read the short conversation from this morning between the Captain and his wife, who had been the notification. ‘Mo chridhe you better not warm yourself up on that clarty vibrator’

‘You expect him to be able to get me warmed up enough?’

‘Its a teaching experience, mo leannan’

‘I don’t want to make him wait too long, I remember how impatient you were <3’

“Does she think ima div?” Soap looked at the Captain and asked. “Reading my personal texts? Real professional, ya eejit.”

“Does she think I can’t make her feel good? Or make her feel like she’s on Eccie?”

“No, she just doesn’t want you to wait too long. She does this. I bought it for her first time I left on a long mission, now she uses it to take away the fun part of getting her warmed up.”

“So she thinks I'm a fandan.”

“Dinnae fash yersel.” The Captain sighed, “we’re here and the least ya can do is make her feel good as a thank you.”

When he dragged his younger self into the hotel room, it finally set in that he was going to be cucked. By a younger him. Fucking his wife.

He knocked on the door twice and it kind of felt like his wedding night all over again. There she stood in a silk robe, eyes only on him with a gentle and soft smile. It's a smile she only gave when she was nervous, he gave a similar smile back to let her know he felt the same. It was subtle, but he reminded him this was indeed his beautiful wife.

“Go strip in the bathroom and sit down in the chair when you’re done, we need to talk.” The Captain said sharply. 

“Aye aye Captain,” the sergeant mumbled, walking into the bathroom. 

The Captain’s hands immediately found his way to his wife’s hips. 

“Are you nervous?” He asked, holding her close with his mouth near her ear between kisses he placed in her hair.

“Of course,” she said softly into his chest.

“Do you need to back out? We can leave and forget all about this if you need.”

“Do you need me to want to back out?” She asked soft, turning her head to look up into his eyes.

“No, I don’t think so, mo bonnie lass.” He said, planting a kiss on her forehead. “Give me a safeword to give him and a safeword for emergencies.”

“Two levels of safe words?” 

“Just in case I don’t hear the first one, he’s kinda loud.” She giggled and placed a kiss on his neck.

“Bubbles for him and Soap for emergencies.”

“My old callsign?”

“I never call you anyway,” she said softly, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Can I undress you and keep that privilege to myself?” All he needed was the little nod she gave before he moved to untie the robe. 

The lace blue bra she had been taunting him with with the matching panties drove him crazy. She ran her hands up and around his chest as his opened the clasp with one motion and undid the hooks holding the straps over her shoulders so she didn't have to remove her hands from his torso.

He sunk down lower as he planted sloppy kisses down her body and removed her underwear. Lovely pacing a kiss at her lower lips before trailing bite marks backup as the Sergeant exited the bathroom.

“I thought you said I couldn’t bite!” He accused as he watched the Captain leave a hickey on his wife’s chest.

“YOU can’t, I can.” This made the younger Soap look offended. The Captain smirked at the Sergeant’s face. “My wife, remember. Not yours.”

His wife just ran her fingers through his slightly grown out mohawk, a means to sooth him. 

Captain MacTavish moved to his wife’s ear and whispered softly, “may I told yer hand through this, mo ghraidh?”

“Gu sìorraidh is gu bràth,” she said back, pointing to the tattoo on her collarbone. When Soap heard it he almost fainted.

“She knows the language?” Sergeant Johnny asked.

The Captain hummed, pulling his mouth away from the dark hickey he was leaving on her neck, “learned a little bit for me.”

The Captain gave his younger self a once over before landing a sarcastic remark as his eyes landed on the bush, “glad to know you haven’t started shaving yet.”

“You trim?”

“Occasionally,” the Captain pulled his waistband down a bit, nuzzling into his wife, “I wax for special occasions. Yer lucky I found one who doesn’t care.”

The Captain locked his fingers with his wife’s, gently herding her to the bed. He laid her down gently and got her into a good position, shoving a few of the lousy pillows under her waist to offer a better angle.

“How are you?” He asked softly, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand. “Ready as I can be,” she said with a soft giggle, as he bent down to plant a kiss on her lips.

“Sergeant, come here.” The Captain commanded, pointing at the foot of the bed, his wife couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her as she dropped her hand over her face. The Captain moved his wife’s knees apart with his free hand, the other still lovingly holding her’s. Johnny got on his own knees as John commanded him as he spread his wife’s pussy lips apart with his fingers. “Ya see that?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, sir,” John corrected Johnny. He basically gave his younger self a tour of his wife’s softest pieces. Telling Johnny her favorite things that he does and what she reacts best to. Johnny was so enthralled with her body he could move his eyes anywhere else. Especially when John put his fingers inside and curled them suddenly making her gasp so Johnny knew how far in her g spot was. The way her body jolted and softly raised as the gasp left her lips was his new favorite thing. He was so jealous he didn’t have her yet. That she wasn’t his wife yet, that he didn’t have the liberty to mark her body yet. “Get to work,” the Captain said, patting Johnny. He didn’t need to say it twice because Johnny went right in.

The wife brought her free hand down to her mouth to hold in the gasps and moans as Johnny ate so eagerly. John was usually slow and sensual, to the messy and a vehement eating that was happening at her core was a much different sensation. John gently pulled her hand away.

“Checkin in with ya, are ya doing good?” he asked his lovely wife. Her eyes couldn’t focus, her mouth gaping and shutting. 

She gave a nod and a hum as her body started to clench as Johnny inserted fingers between her legs and curled, making her body lurch towards the sky and gasp. The Captain gently placed kisses on her face, her velvety cries just make Johnny want to do it again. “She’s even prettier from this view,” Johnny mumbled, spreading her apart with his fingers.

“She donnae like condoms but imma make ye wear one anyway,” Captain Mactavish told his younger self before placing a kiss to the forehead of his flushed wife, still coming down from her orgasm as her husband ran his fingers through her hair as her breathing slowed with her closed eyes. John threw the condom at Johnny, who quickly rolled it on before standing up. “Donnae force it in, go in slow.”

Johnny positioned himself, putting one of the lovely wife’s ankles to his shoulder before giving it a soft kiss. He didn’t dare pull her down the bed like he would have normally done, he walked on his knees to meet her. Hands sliding down her legs to lift her ass, one he saw as so perfect.

He slowly slid it in as John kissed his wife’s face, holding her hand. She was more than used to John’s dick by now, but she was far from used to Johnny’s pacing. So much energy and stamina, not to say John didn’t have it but John was definitely more about making love than he was about fucking or just having sex.

Once she started to grind her hips, Johnny’s face lit up and he immediately started a toe curly, back arching pace. His tip bullied her g spot, making her mouth fall open but no sound falling from her lips.

John cooed at her as Johnny bullied her soft parts, not caring about his own pleasure, solely the pleasure of this goddess in front of him. Once he was sure he had found the spot, Johnny folded her a bit more to hit it a bit deeper, making sure everything was dragging against her.

The only thing that left her were whines, she felt her melted brain might just spill out her ears as the white, staticy heat built up. 

A nice ring built up around Johnny’s cock as he began to roll his hips. Her pulsating cunt milked him so much he felt an almost numbness in his fingers as all he could do was hold her and roll his hips as she let out a broken moan and came. Her husband’s voice echoing around her head with praises and loving words.

It was down right impossible for Soap to not come from her body's pulsations so he did. He wished it hadn’t been into a condom but he was grateful he just got the chance.

John gave him a look and Johnny took it knowingly, going to get a warm and damp towel. He handed it to John who began to clean his wife up, nodding to Johnny to let him know he could leave. 

Johnny didn’t know it was so John could reclaim his wife with some slow sensual sex and lots of love bites.

John, unlike Johnny, was going to come inside. Johnny looked at the photo he had taken of himself with the wife of Captain John from the night prior, "I'm going to marry you. Yer the one I've been looking for."

[seravphs]

ੈ♡˳·˖✶ — GOJO SATORU x FEM READER

“What I want from the river is what I always want: / to be held by a stronger thing that, in the end, chooses mercy.”

wc — 1.5k

tags — quote from Advantages of Being Evergreen by Oliver Baez Bendorf, title from the Louvre by Lorde, feral Gojo, kidnapping, NPC death

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” Gojo asks as you’re lying in bed, whispering to each other before you fall asleep as you often do. It’s a strange question, but not worse than other ones he’s asked before.

“I’m not sure…once I helped Shoko steal cigarettes from the local konbini because she wanted to try the delinquent life, but I left money behind when she wasn’t looking.”

He laughs so hard tears pop into his eyes, probably more at you than with you, but you don’t care. You’re as gone for him as he is for you, and that means humiliating yourself for a chance to hear him laugh is an honor you’d accept over and over.

“What about you?”

“You don’t want to know,” he says, hand rubbing your stomach lightly. He can’t help the urge to touch when he sees your pajama shirt ride up. It makes you squirm, his long pale fingers stroking over the tender skin.

He likes it. Something about seeing you belly up - vulnerable, trusting, ready to be plundered - speaks to the worst instincts in him. He never pretended to be a good man.

“No, seriously,” he shakes his head when you pout. You’re a little annoyed by the unfairness of it, after all, you had shared yours with him. “I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. You really don’t want to know, especially before you fall asleep.”

You’ve never really thought about it before, but Gojo is a bit of a monster, isn’t he?

“Hey,” someone taps your head lightly. “Keep her awake.”

“Is she fucking dying? Hello? Are you dying?”

It makes sense for them to ask. Your eyes keep fluttering shut, but you’re not dying. You were just reminiscing on the past.

“Idiot!” There’s a yelp from somewhere in the room. “I told you not to hit her so hard!”

“I thought she could take it! That’s Gojo Satoru’s girl!”

That hurts more than any of your injuries. How embarrassing, to be caught off guard. When Gojo rescues you, he’s going to make fun of how easily you let yourself get captured.

“Is he coming soon?”

“Why, you scared?”

“Are you kidding me? Of course I’m scared! It’s Gojo Satoru!”

“Good,” comes a familiar voice. “You should be.”

You open your eyes. Gojo looks like Gojo, which is to say-

Impeccable. Mischievous. Divine.

A smile flickers across your face even in your condition.

“Took you long enough,” you croak.

“Don’t move!” One of your guards is holding a knife to your neck. If you had the energy to, you’d sigh at the naïveté. “I’ll kill her!”

In the blink of an eye, Gojo’s by his side. He wrenches his hand off you with nothing but brute force, without even using a technique. You take the dropped knife and plunge it into the man. It’s only right to return the favor. Even that one movement takes so much out of you. You’re shaky on your feet.

“You’re stronger than this,” Gojo chides even as he pulls you into him, supporting your weight. You slide forward limply, letting your chin hook over his shoulder. He hoists you up with one arm to carry you.

You know he won’t hear any excuses. When you’re back on campus and fully recovered, it’s going to be hours of training before he lets you go on another mission on your own again, regardless of the fact that you were set up.

“Close your eyes,” he murmurs into your ear. “I’m going to take care of the rest.”

Then the screaming starts. It dies as quickly as it began. You peek up at him. The look in his eyes is terrifying. He doesn’t look all human - or all there. There’s a thirst for blood in him, a debt to be paid.

“Is it over?”

“Almost, sweetheart. Just give me a minute.”

“Please,” you hear someone begging. You think it’s the man who confessed to being scared. It’s so like Gojo to save him for last. Those who know their own place should be rewarded, after all.

“I have a message for Suguru,” Gojo says casually. The guard relaxes a little in his hold. He knows that means he’s getting home. “Tell him he doesn’t need to hurt her to get my attention.”

The guard starts to open his mouth, and then Gojo tightens his grip. “I changed my mind.”

He’s dead before a second has passed.

You don’t remember getting back to campus, but you remember Shoko giving you a Hello Kitty band-aid after she patches you up.

“Just got them,” she says, rattling the little can. “Satoru dropped them off. Says he wants me to use them on Megumi. I don’t have any stickers, so this is all you’re going to get from me.”

She pats your back when you hug her.

“Okay, okay,” she says with a laugh. “I get it, I’m amazing. Satoru wants to see you when you’re done, by the way. Think he’s hanging around the training yard.”

You give her a pained look. “Please, no.”

“Oh yes,” she says cheekily.

When you get there, Gojo is pacing the training grounds like a chained animal. His head snaps up when he sees you. Relief spreads over his face before he whisks it away.

“Good, good,” he nods. “There you are. I was starting to think Shoko was losing her touch.”

“I was just making conversation,” you say, walking over to him. “Some of us are polite, you know.”

“I’m polite.”

“You’re so cute when you’re delusional,” you say, leaning forward to give him a peck on the nose.

He scrunches his nose up, never quite sure how to respond to your overt affection before he just takes it.

“You can call me names after you beat me once,” he says, hefting a wooden staff in hands. He tosses you another one.

“Did you steal these from Maki?”

“Don’t try to distract me,” he scolds. “I know what you’re doing.”

“Come on,” you wheedle. “I’m not in the mood.”

“I must not have trained you well enough if you’re getting taken down that easily,” Gojo teases.

“Don’t play the all knowing teacher with me,” you say. “I’m not Megumi. I knew you when you were struggling with Infinity.”

“Three rounds,” he promises, “and we can get food after. Just give me three.”

You’re smarter than the cronies Gojo just annihilated for you. It’s because you know the cardinal rule of facing Gojo: never expect to win. All you’re trying for are one or two hits.

You give him the first one. Then, right when he’s in your space, you lunge forward, tapping your staff against his shoulder. It touches -

And he doesn’t flinch.

“Cheater! Turn off Infinity!”

“I never said I was turning it off,” he says, returning to his starting position. “I’m going to be serious now. Get ready.”

“Okay,” you laugh, and then you’re flat on your back. Gojo leans over you. He looks the same as he did during the earlier fight, his teeth bared. It’s the kind of expression that belongs on him, blood on his hands and eyes like that of a god.

You can’t stop staring, devouring the image of him even when it shakes something in you. As much as your animal instincts are cowering right now, telling you to roll over in submission, it feels strangely good. You know Gojo would never hurt you. To be caught in his grip like this, still knowing you’re safe despite being able to feel all of the power that thrums through him does something for you. Your breath catches.

“Oh,” he says. “I thought so.”

You blink at him, completely and utterly confused as to what he’s blathering about now. Sometimes the only way to deal with Gojo is just to let him run his course.

“I know it’s the first time you’ve seen me-“ he gestures vaguely in the air, which does nothing to clarify the matter for you, “but it doesn’t have to change anything. Just forget it happened, and I’ll tone it down. You’ll never see me like that again.”

“Babe,” you say, patiently in a tone you usually only reserve for the students. “What are you talking about?”

“I know I went a little harder than I normally do on those curse users, but I was just worried about you! I’m not normally like that-“

Lies. He totally is, and you know it. It makes you laugh at him.

He grabs you by the chin, his big palm covering your mouth in an attempt to shut you up. You know it annoys him a little, to see you so lighthearted when he’s so tense. Must be hard to get a dose of his own medicine.

“Oh, Gojo,” you say, unbearably fond even through a mouthful of his flesh. “I’m not scared of you - I’m scared of how much I want you, even at your worst. I’ll never look away from what you are.”

“Okay,” he says softly. “Good.”

“Good?”

“I like the part of you that needs me,” he says, and it’s more of a confession than anything he’s ever given you.

[crashandlivewrites]

👀👀 let me throw you some kyle coded quotes. do what you wish with it 🫴

"If the choice is the mission or coming home to you, I’m coming home."

"There will always be another mission, _ , but there won’t always be another you."

This has been sitting in my inbox for a wee bit and I’m sorry it took so long. Thank you for sending this through! I hope I did it justice for you.

Pairing: Kyle Garrick x GN!Reader

CW: slight angst, relationship troubles, but comfort and happiness because Kyle is the sweetest boy <33

You loved your boyfriend. With all your heart. Kyle was the sweetest guy you’d dated, the most caring and attentive man you could have ever hoped for. But every relationship has their gripes and unfortunately, Kyle’s job was yours.

It was important, you knew that. He saved countless lives every time he went away, putting himself in danger in the process. But the fact he was gone so often made everything hard. He often missed important events; wasn’t home for your birthday or your anniversary or the holidays in general.

Despite you trying to be understanding, sometimes you couldn’t help but feel a sense of unwanted frustration towards your boyfriend. He made it up to you whenever he was back, you knew that, but it wasn’t the same. And you selfishly wished for more.

“I want you to be here more!” You yelled at him in frustration one night, having one too many drinks. “I know your job is hard—”

“No, you don’t know how hard it is. You have no idea what I go through.” Kyle snapped back, just as agitated.

“And you have no idea what it’s like sitting here waiting for you, watching all my friends and their partners and wishing I had that instead of praying you’re not dead.” Shaking your head in exasperation. He just laughed darkly, rolling his eyes.

“Sorry for getting my hands dirty so the world stays clean. Do you have any idea how dangerous some of these arseholes are?” Groaning in frustration, you push past him, walking down the hall to your shared bedroom.

“You’re missing the point.” Gritting your teeth, you huffed out a breath. “I’m not a priority for you.”

The harsh words make him stop, no longer stomping after you. It’s enough to make you turn around, and the hurt expression on his face immediately makes you feel guilty.

“What makes you think I don’t?” He whispered, voice barely audible as he blinked with uncertainty. Ducking your head, you look away from him, not being able to stomach the expression on his face anymore.

“It’s just… you always leave. There’s always something more important than me.” His expression twists with anguish and steps forward with two strides, hand closing around your wrist.

“Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.” The dark brows on his forehead were pulled tightly together. His warm eyes, usually so calm and comforting, were wide and panicked. “You’ve always been a priority to me.”

The tears pricked in your eyes as his words dug into your skin, pulling down the defences you’d tried so hard to build around yourself. Shaking your head, you try to push him away, wiping furiously at your cheeks.

“I don’t feel like it, Kyle. You’re gone so often. And I know it’s important and I know I’m being selfish, but I don’t know how much more of this I can take!”

As if the universe decided to play a cruel joke on you, his phone began to ring. Kyle winced, closing his hand around your wrist tighter as he dug into his pocket. You knew whose name would appear on the screen before he even needed to tell you.

“It’s Price.” His voice sounded wounded, broken as he looked up at you, eyes desperate and pleading as the phone continued to buzz in his hand.

“Go on. Answer it. It’s important.” The iciness of your tone couldn’t be missed, despite trying to keep your expression dismissive.

“Fuck, babe, please.” He begged, keeping a firm hold on you and not letting you walk away. “I can fix this. We can fix this. I just—”

“You need to take it. Yeah, I know.” Shrugging, you leaned back against the wall, watching him as he gave in, putting the phone up to his ear.

“Sir?” The shift between Kyle and Sergeant Garrick was something you used to find attractive, enticing. Now, it just left a bitter taste in your mouth.

You watched the one sided conversation closely, Kyle’s face becoming more and more strained. His jaw twitched as he grit his teeth and you sighed, knowing what was inevitably coming. Flicking his eyes towards you, he saw the hurt on your face, the sad acceptance and his own heart pounded before opening his mouth.

“Actually, Captain, I was thinking about taking a bit of time off.” At his words, your ears pricked and head snapped up to meet his gaze. He met your eyes as his thumb tenderly grazed against the back of your hand. “Yeah, sir. Just something important that I need to attend to here.”

Dropping your wrist, he lifted his hand up to cup your cheek tenderly, pressing his forehead against yours. At this distance, you could hear the tinny voice of his captain coming through the phone speaker.

“Alright Kyle. Take care of yourself. And take care of that partner of yours. You’ve put them through hell this last year.”

“I know, sir. Need to sort out my priorities. See you in a few weeks.” And he hung up the phone, pushing it into his pocket and lifting the hand to join his other.

The pair of you remained there for longer than you cared to admit, your face tenderly held between his hands as you breathed deeply.

“You mean more to me than I ever could express. What you do for me, I couldn’t ask for someone better.” Curling your hands into the fabric of his shirt, you tugged him closer. Sliding under the cotton, you rested your palms on the warm, firm skin of his torso.

“I’m sorry—”

“No, you don’t need to apologise. I’m sorry.” He lifted his head up to look down at you with sincerity. “I have been putting work first, and not you. It always should have been you.”

“But I said those hurtful things—”

“Because you were upset, love. It’s okay.” His voice was smooth as he pulled you into his chest, wrapping his strong arms around you. “I love you, babe. So fucking much. I’m sorry I made you feel that way.”

Being wrapped in his arms had always made you feel safe, and this time was no different. Breathing in, you let his familiar scent surround you, settling deep into the back of your mind as you hugged him back tightly.

“Still no excuse for saying all that stuff before. The work you do is important. If you need to leave… I understand.” Deep down, you knew it was the right things to say. If Kyle was being called to work, it was something important and as much as you wanted him for yourself, others needed him more.

“No, love. I’m not going anywhere. There will always be another mission, but there won’t always be another you.”

Letting out a breathy chuckle, you lifted your head out of his chest, staring up at him with a soft smile.

“You really mean that?” His deep brown eyes sparkled with mischief as he backed you against the wall, tilting your chin up and lowering his face to seal his lips over yours.

His fingers curled into the hair at the base of your neck, holding you close as his lips moved slowly, dragging out the kiss. His warm breath fanned over your cheek as he groaned, cupping your cheek and letting his teeth drag across your bottom lip before pulling back.

You knew your lips were already swollen, the temperature of your body rising as your breath came out in short pants.

“If the choice is the mission or coming home to you, I’m coming home.” He whispered, thumbs tracing against your cheekbones. “You are what’s important to me.”

[gremlinmodetweeker]

Soft Sighs in the Late Night, Red Eyes in the Early Morning

Very simple little story of you getting snacks for König when he works at night and learn he's being deployed. Not so sad, just a slice of life kind of work.

TWs: references to combat

Wordcount: 1.4k

Art from This Post

Story Below the Cut

Soft Sighs in the Late Night, Red Eyes in the Early Morning

You always liked scurrying into König’s office when he was working. He didn’t often take his work home, but on the rare days he did you liked to bring him snacks and drinks while he studied the fine print of military contracts.

You creaked open the door and crept up carefully as you took in the sight of König by the yellow architect’s lamp. Placing the tray down, he paused his writing and looked up to you with a smile.

“Has it been that long already?” he chuckled as he leaned back to take a better look at you.

“Guess so,” you smiled, taking your place on the stool he left out for you and leaning on the desk.

König was always subtle in how he flipped his papers over when he put his fountain pen down. Once, you’d been offended by how he hid his work from you. Over time, you realized it was safer for him to keep his papers covered. He’d told you once of a man who’d had his wife kidnapped, and after meeting the shell she became, you decidedly left the papers unchecked.

He steepled his fingers over the pages and gave you a grin, “So, what has my little mouse been up to today?”

You sighed, “Work was hard. Aaron kept complaining about the new marketing campaign that head office has been working on. He kept going on and on about how it was stupid and nobody would ever buy into it.”

“He’s the one who is stuffy, ja?” König asked.

“He’s the one who was going on about how he bought his first home when he was twenty,” you groaned.

“Oh, that one,” König rolled his eyes, “I sometimes wonder what his Kinder think of him.”

“Last I heard he tried to send his son to some wilderness survival camp for smoking a joint with his friends,” you rubbed your temples, “I really try not to tell people how to parent their kids, but I just couldn’t let that go.”

“Did his son end up going?” König cringed.

“Thank God he didn’t,” you took a cracker from König’s snack bowl.

“Those are my snacks!” König huffed.

“Gotta pay the tax,” you munched away happily.

König grumbled as he scooched the bowl closer to him. It was a nice attempt, but you stole another cracker regardless. You only relented when you reached for a third, only for König to swat your hand away like some pesky fly.

“Rude,” you sniffed.

“The ends justify the means,” König replied dryly.

You rolled your eyes at that. König would be the type to quote Machiavelli, wouldn’t he? Sometimes you couldn’t believe him.

“Why did I ever marry you,” you rested your cheek on one hand.

“Because I’m a good provider,” König answered as he took a cracker into his long fingers, “though you do your fair share.”

“My fair share?” you scoffed, “I think I do a bit more than that!”

“You do,” König acquiesced, “but I’m still the provider.”

You decided that today wouldn’t be the day you tried to tackle König’s misogyny. You could always do that tomorrow, or the day after, or whenever it came up next.

“So, can you tell me anything about what you’re doing tonight?” you slumped down so your chin lay on the desk.

“A bit,” König smiled faintly, “it’s mostly just about an upcoming project in Serbia.”

You frowned, “You’re getting deployed soon?”

König gently brushed his hand through your hair with a faint smile, “I’m sorry, but it shouldn’t be long.”

“You always say that,” you grumbled.

“This is just a one week job. We’re protecting someone in a car convoy. It’s nothing too exciting,” König assured you, “they tell me that I probably won’t even see any action. It’ll just be a security job.”

“Can you tell me who you’re working for?” you asked hopefully.

“Nein,” König pressed a kiss to your forehead, “not until after. Then I’ll tell you everything I can.”

Of course, everything he could was always terribly limited, but that didn’t particularly matter. You were more interested in the stories of his day-to-day life than the grand plans of the powers that be.

“Do you know who’s coming with you?” you asked.

“Nikto is one,” König said, “and Askel.”

“Isn’t Askel kinda weird?” you scrunched up your face.

“Not weird,” König grimaced, “he’s just too chatty.”

“Maybe that would be good for you,” you pointed out.

“Maybe,” König shrugged, “but I like the quiet. Nikto is good; Nikto is very quiet.”

You nodded and nestled your head against his bicep, closing your eyes and taking a moment to breathe in the moment.

König brushed your hair through his fingers mindlessly. He seemed lost in thought, as he usually was before deployment. You hated the thought of coming home to an empty home for the next month, but you knew that this was just a part of dating König. You could never escape the shadow of KorTac.

“So, how long will you be gone?” you asked.

“The mission says one week, I’m thinking that it should be three,” König murmured into your hair, “it won’t be as long as the last.”

You cringed. You didn’t handle the last one well. You didn’t think you could deal with that again so soon after the last.

“I promise I’ll be safe.”

You burrowed your face into his arm.

“You always promise.”

A low chuckle.

“And I’m still here, ja?”

You sighed. He was right, he was still here. It didn’t mean you didn’t notice the new scars that decorated his body. He tried to hide them, but you always found them eventually. Thankfully, he didn’t tell you how he got them. Well, not unless they were funny.

“So, no Horangi to set you on fire again?” you giggled.

“No,” König let out a long sigh, “thank God for that. My ass still hurts thinking about it.”

You laughed and hugged him close, getting in all the love you could before he left.

“Will you be leaving soon?” you whispered into the dark cotton sleeve.

“Soon,” König admitted, “I’ll be leaving soon. Most likely in a month.”

“Promise me you’ll be okay.”

“I’m always okay,” König laughed.

“Please,” you insisted.

“Then I promise, little Maus,” König kissed you gently, “I will be okay.”

You held him close a little longer, not wanting to let the moment go. König let you, knowing full well it was all you had to hold onto until he came back home. He hated leaving. He hated it every time. But if it was to keep you safe, to keep a roof over your head and food on the table, he’d do it a thousand times. You were worth every scar upon his body just to see you sleeping safe in bed when he’d come back home.

Konig Dump

Regular Stories

[candycandy00]

Little Miss Nobody Part 3 - A Gojo x Reader Fanfic

You’re a weak, lowly sorcerer who barely qualifies as an assistant, but you get the opportunity to work on a mission that includes THE Gojo Satoru. Unbeknownst to you, he finds you incredibly attractive despite privately looking down on you as a nobody. On the last night of the mission, he invites you to his hotel room. 

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Any feedback or comments whatsoever is greatly appreciated! Thank you to @doumadono for the name Mystigram!

Smut. 18+. Gojo x short/thick/curvy fem Reader. Rough sex, oral sex (69), implied bondage/use of toys, mention of Gojo being bisexual. Just pretend the Shibuya Incident never happened!

You allowed yourself to grieve for one week. You took time off from work and spent those days crying, yelling at no one about how much of an asshole Gojo was, and eating ice cream from the carton to numb your pain. Once the week was over, you cleaned up, went back to work, and returned to your normal daily life. 

It still hurt to think about him, and despite your best efforts not to, you did still have the occasional intrusive thought. Sometimes you wondered if he regretted anything he said to you, or if he simply regretted ever meeting you. Sometimes you wondered what kind of mission he might be on and who was in his hotel room with him. Sometimes you dreamed about him, dreamed of his hands gripping your hips, his cock rough and powerful between your thighs. 

In a weak moment you decided to check his page on Mystigram. A few particularly tech savvy sorcerers had made a social media site just for Jujutsu sorcerers. It began as a way for sorcerers to stay connected to their coworkers and share information, but it had grown to be something used for networking, planning social outings, and getting to know sorcerers from different branches.  

You’d looked at Gojo’s page before of course, back before you met him, when you were just a curious fan. He mostly shared memes about Jujutsu society, pictures from the places he’d traveled for work, and photos of the various treats and desserts he discovered at different restaurants and shops. There were occasional selfies, almost always with his sunglasses rather than his blindfold, and a few photos of him with friends. He often had his arms casually thrown around Ieiri Shoko and Nanami Kento, with both of them generally looking annoyed. 

You scrolled through his page, feeling desperate and pathetic as you searched for any sign that he felt anything at all about what happened between you. Even him sharing a vague, sort of sad quote or meme would have satisfied you. There was a four day period immediately following your last encounter where he didn’t post anything at all, but he could have simply been busy with work. 

One of his most recent posts was a selfie of him pulling down his shades and looking at the camera with gorgeous, bedroom eyes. It was the first one you’d seen with his eyes clearly visible, and it made you ache in more ways than one. The caption read, “The real reason I keep my eyes covered is to keep the whole world from instantly falling in love with me!” What a Gojo thing to say. 

His students had responded with laughing emojis (and in a couple of cases, barfing emojis). Ieiri Shoko commented with only a gif of a woman dramatically rolling her eyes. Nanami Kento commented with one word: “Disgusting.” You found the interactions charming, but also felt sad when you realized you’d never be a part of that group, a part of Gojo’s life. You’d never be able to casually talk and joke with him like the others did. 

Just once, during a night when you couldn’t sleep, you actually wondered if you should have just let him keep using you for sex. You thought about the “weekend of debauchery” he’d mentioned and imagined what it would have been like. Did he really want to tie you up in his basement? And why did the thought of that make you wet? 

You finally fell asleep right after thinking these things, and had a nightmare in which he kept telling you how unworthy you were to be his girlfriend, as he walked off with a glamorous, powerful woman on his arm. 

When you awoke, you had renewed resolve that you made the right decision to walk away from him.

Nearly a month after your second time sleeping with him, you crossed paths with him on the street. He was wearing his blindfold, but he pulled it down as he stopped in front of you and asked how you were doing. 

You wished he hadn’t. You didn’t want to see his eyes. You gave a vague, cordial reply and continued walking down the street, taking deep and steady breaths to keep yourself from bursting into tears until you could get far enough down the street to dart into a cafe. You bought a coffee just for an excuse to be there, but left it untouched on the counter and instead rushed into the restroom to cry in private. 

Seeing him hurt. Hearing his voice hurt. The fact that he didn’t seem bothered at all, that he had absolutely no hesitation in speaking to you, as if you were just friendly acquaintances, hurt. Deeply. But you pulled yourself together, dried your eyes, and walked out of the cafe with your head up. 

It would take time to fully heal, as all wounds to the heart did. 

Three weeks later, you met a grade one sorcerer on a mission who asked you to have dinner with him sometime. His name was Haruto, and he was kind to you. Handsome in a completely different way than Gojo, he was respected and liked among the assistants for his down to earth attitude. You accepted the dinner invite, and soon after, the two of you began dating. 

You liked him, but so far you hadn’t fallen in love with him. You kept waiting to feel that burning passion you felt for Gojo, that ache to be in his arms, but it hadn’t happened yet. Still, a slow burn romance might be a better fit for you, and you enjoyed Haruto’s company enough to date him a while longer and decide how you felt. It was clear that he wanted to be intimate with you, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to do that yet, not so soon after your experience with Gojo. But Haruto was patient, never pressuring you. 

As time passed by and the season changed from autumn to winter, you thought less and less about Gojo.

****************

Gojo wasn’t dealing with the fallout from his last hookup with Little Miss Nobody very well. He’d went through several different reactions, from anger at her for saying the things she said to guilt for saying the things he said to her. At first he tried to convince himself that he’d done nothing wrong. He’d been honest with her about the sort of relationship they could have. His only mistake was in telling her that after fucking her again. 

Just like before, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Despite being busier than ever with missions and his teaching job, his mind kept wandering to her. He worried she would do something reckless on a mission. She wasn’t a fighter, but she clearly wouldn’t hesitate to endanger herself to save someone. He admired the courage that took, but he found himself wishing she would just be a coward from now on. She didn’t have the strength to back up that desire to protect. 

Sometimes he laid awake at night, jacking off while remembering their encounters. It was almost too easy to get off, picturing her with her hands tied behind her back, her face pressed into the pillows. Every time he wore his blindfold, he remembered how it had looked around her wrists. 

Then, he saw her on the street one day. He spotted her from across the road, but she hadn’t noticed him yet. She looked like every wet dream he’d ever had, jeans tight over her perfect ass, a form-fitting sweater with a cutout right over her ample cleavage. She looked soft and squeezable. Pliable. His first thought was that he wanted to pull her into his arms and just hold her. His second was that he wanted to hear her voice. 

He crossed the road and approached her, trying to act as casual as possible. When she looked at him, there was an instant where she looked stunned, but she quickly covered that up with a pleasant smile. He pulled his blindfold down and said, “Hey, how’ve you been?”

It was petty of him, he knew, but he knew she liked his eyes. He wanted her to see them again, perhaps to make her want him again. There were plenty of hotels in the area and-

“I’ve been good,” she said, her face frozen in that same mild expression. “Thank you for asking.”  

And then she was gone, walking away quickly and then going into a cafe down the street. He thought briefly of following her, trying to talk to her again, but abandoned the idea. She clearly didn’t want to talk to him, and he wouldn’t press her into a situation that upset her. 

He’d left feeling frustrated, in several different ways. Finally, he grew desperate enough to talk to his friend about what was going on. But when he’d gone to Shoko for advice, she had been blunt with him as usual. 

“Are you a fucking moron?”

He gaped at her. “Huh?!”

Shoko took a drag of her cigarette and regarded him with a withering stare. “You find a girl who’s sweet, brave, laughs at your shitty jokes, who fucking bakes, and likes it rough? And you manage to screw it up? You’re hopeless.”

Gojo was sitting on a bench in the outdoor area of the high school, near some vending machines. He leaned back, slapping his forehead as Shoko stood beside him. “I don’t know where I screwed up,” he said, “I just told her the truth.”

“You told her she wasn’t good enough for you immediately after fucking her. Do you think anyone wants to hear that?”

He glanced up at his friend. “I didn’t say that to her.”

Shoko met his eyes. “Did you deny it?”

He sat there silently for a moment, thinking. “I didn’t know how to respond to that,” he finally said. “I don’t think she’s not good enough for me. If anything, she’s way too good.”

“Then what’s the issue?”

“It’s not about her as a person, or even me as a person. Maybe I’m being a narcissistic asshole. But I feel like I should be with someone closer to my level in terms of status, you know?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t know.”

Gojo sighed. “I just… can’t imagine myself with an assistant who can barely use cursed energy. She’s weak. She’s not from a sorcerer family…”

“Geto wasn’t from a sorcerer family,” Shoko pointed out. “That didn’t seem to bother you.”

Gojo looked at her suddenly. Shoko rarely mentioned their departed friend. “Suguru was strong. At one point as strong as me,” he replied. 

“So?” Shoko asked. “A lot of people would call me weak. I sure as hell can’t fight.”

He stared at her, realizing she was making excellent points. Why did it matter what someone’s status was? He never cared about status when it came to picking friends, so why care now? Maybe he had to face the fact that he’d gotten too full of himself over the years. He’d started looking down on those who were weak within Jujutsu society, even if he felt no ill will toward them. 

He looked at Shoko, who was a precious friend, and couldn’t imagine looking down on her, even though she was exponentially weaker than him. Then he remembered Little Miss Nobody’s crying face, and he realized how monumentally stupid he’d been. 

“I seriously fucked up, didn’t I?”

Shoko exhaled, smoke drifting around her face. “Sure did.”

He leaned forward on the bench, resting his hands on his thighs. “Any ideas on how to fix this?”

“For starters, you better be damn sure of what you want,” she told him. “I’m serious, Gojo. Don’t toy with her again. Don’t contact her, don’t stir up her feelings, and for God’s sake don’t fuck her unless you’re sure you want to start something serious with her.”

Gojo nodded. “I’m sure.” He’d never felt more certain of anything. He saw her face everywhere he looked. He heard her voice in his dreams. He hadn’t even been able to fuck anyone else since her. He’d tried once and couldn’t finish, and boy was that embarrassing. 

“Then call her,” Shoko said. “Apologize, tell her you were wrong.”

“I don’t have her number,” Gojo said, remembering with a small degree of shame how she’d shyly offered it to him after their first time together and how he’d rejected it. 

“We can probably find it,” Shoko told him, digging into the pocket of her white coat for her cell phone. “I have a couple of friends who work at her branch.”

Gojo perked up, listening as Shoko called someone and made a bit of small talk before asking if they knew Little Miss Nobody. Shoko gave him a thumbs up, and asked the person to text the number over. Then he heard Shoko say, “Oh, she is? Right now?”

After the call ended, Shoko said, “They’re sending the number over but they said she’s in Tokyo right now. She’s supposedly meeting some friends for drinks at that bar for sorcerers in Ikebukuro.”

Gojo stood up. This was the perfect opportunity. He could talk to her in person, apologize properly and see if this could be fixed. He knew exactly where the bar was, having gone there to hang out with Shoko and Utahime just one week prior. He thanked Shoko for her help and hurried over to the bar. 

It wasn’t very crowded yet when Gojo arrived. It was late afternoon, and customers wouldn’t start pouring in until at least seven. He scanned the room for her when he first walked in, and quickly spotted her sitting amongst several other sorcerers in a corner booth. She was smiling, and he was glad to see her happy. 

He took a seat at the bar and ordered a soda, then tried to keep from attracting any attention. It didn’t happen all the time, but occasionally people recognized him and acted like they’d seen a celebrity. He supposed he was the closest thing Jujutsu society had to a celebrity, and while he usually found it flattering to be approached in that way, today he hoped no one noticed him. He planned to wait for her to go to the rest room or even to the bar. He didn’t want to approach her when she was surrounded by people. 

So he sat, and waited, and watched. After several minutes, he noticed that the man sitting to her right was a little too handsy with her. The man kept touching her arm and subtly leaning closer to her. Gojo didn’t like that, but she didn’t seem to mind. She was a little naive about things like that, so maybe she didn’t even notice. 

But the more he watched and listened, the more a knot tied itself together in his stomach. She was also leaning toward the man, giggling at something he said, playfully slapping his arm. Then, the man threw his arm around her, and she smiled, doing nothing to push it away. 

The realization hit Gojo like a punch to the face. She was with this man, romantically. Gojo was too late. He’d spent too much time being an egotistical jackass, and now she’d moved on. He couldn’t blame her. She had the right to pursue happiness with someone else. But where did that leave him? He sighed and lowered his head. For the first time in his life he considered trying to get drunk. 

He heard chattering from her table and glanced over. Little Miss Nobody, as well as the rest of the women in the group, were leaving together. Something about going to see a movie together. Gojo moved to the other side of the bar before they got near, making sure not to be seen. He watched her walk out, and it felt like she was stomping on his heart with each step she took. 

The thought occurred to him that he could potentially take her away from the man. If Gojo talked to her, maybe she’d decide she liked him more. But should he do that? She seemed happy. What right did he have to burst back into her life and possibly screw it up?

While he sat there, deep in thought, he almost didn’t notice the man she’d been with coming to sit at the bar, just a few seats down. But he did notice, and he couldn’t help paying attention to him. 

The man’s friend, the only other man who’d been at the table, sat down next to him. 

“Any luck yet?” the friend asked. 

The man shook his head and took a drink from his glass. “Nope. She’s still holding out. I think she’s hung up on some ex boyfriend or something, but she won’t say it.”

Gojo’s ears felt like they were on fire. His full attention was now on this conversation, but he sipped his Coke and pretended not to be listening. 

The friend laughed. “Sucks to be you, dude. You score a hot girlfriend and can’t even fuck her.”

The man laughed too. “I’ll wear her down. She’ll be sucking my dick soon enough.”

Gojo’s hand gripped the glass so hard, he had to force himself to calm down to avoid shattering it. 

Then the friend said something else, and Gojo felt his skin prickling with rage. 

“Don’t forget to record it when you finally get her naked. You promised you’d show off the goods.”

The man nodded. “Don’t worry, I’ve got cameras hid around my bedroom already. She doesn’t have a clue.”

“Good,” the friend replied, “cause I’ve been dying to see those tits for months.”

They both laughed, and Gojo stood up from his seat. He walked the few steps over to the two men and stood looming over them. He was wearing sunglasses instead of his blindfold, but he was still recognizable to most people who noticed him. The man she’d been with gaped up at him. “Gojo?”

Gojo grinned widely. “I couldn’t help but overhear you guys,” he said in a friendly tone. “Can you share those recordings with me when you make them?”

The men glanced at each other, looking like students who’d been caught smoking by a teacher who then asked for a cigarette. 

“You… want me to send you recordings? Of my girlfriend?”

Gojo’s grin was probably becoming more frightening as the moments passed. “Well you’re sharing them with your buddy, right? What’s one more?”

The man shrugged, still looking a little uneasy. “Sure, why not? Give me your number.”

Gojo kept staring at him. “So she has no idea you plan to do this?”

The man must have mistaken Gojo’s slightly unhinged expression for perversion. He laughed and said, “She’s clueless. Totally naive. Wait till you see her! Huge tits, fat ass, cute face. She’d be a perfect porn star.”

The friend chuckled and added, “Hell, I guess she will be after this. We could make a fortune selling the videos!”

That was enough. That was all Gojo could bear to listen to. He’d let the guy dig a big enough hole for himself. “Call her,” he said in a low voice, and both men looked at him with confusion. 

“What?”

Gojo’s smile was gone. He pulled off his shades and glared at the man. “Call her. Tell her you need to see her in private. It’s urgent.”

The man didn’t move, he just stared up at Gojo as if he’d sprouted another head. 

Gojo leaned down. “I think she has the right to know about this, don’t you?”

The man looked positively horrified. A bead of sweat ran down his face. “You want me to tell her? I can’t do that! She’ll-“

Gojo looked at the man the way he would look at a curse that had just attacked him, and the man’s words died in his throat. Gojo put one hand on the man’s shoulder. “I said call her. Right fucking now.”

The man’s fingers were trembling as he pulled his phone from his pocket. As he began dialing, Gojo pointed at the friend. “And you, if you ever so much as glance at her again, I’ll rip your eyeballs out of your fucking head.”

****************

You were standing in line with three of your friends to buy tickets for a movie when one of them asked how things were going with Haruto.

“Okay I guess,” you answered. “I’m still not sure how I feel about him. I like him, but I don’t think I’m in love with him.”

Your friend Sumi smiled reassuringly. “Give it a little more time. You guys are still getting to know each other.”

Aiko, another friend that you had been on many missions with, sighed and patted your back. “You’re still holding out for Gojo Satoru, aren’t you?”

Sumi and the third friend Keiko looked surprised, and you instantly reddened. “Huh? Gojo? What do you mean?”

Sumi asked, looking from Aiko to you. 

“They hooked up,” Aiko said, “twice.”

You looked at her with wide eyes. You’d never told her about that. “How did you know?”

She grinned. “Actually I just suspected it, but now you’ve confirmed it.”

You winced, but she laughed and went on. “The first mission we were all three on, you left the sushi joint with his arm around you on the last night. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened. Especially with his reputation. Then the second time, you two disappeared together in the middle of a mission.”

Sumi and Keiko stared at you for a moment. When you didn’t deny anything Aiko said, they launched into a string of rapid questions. 

“How was it?”

You shrugged. “Uh, nice?”

“Is he good in bed?”

“…. Yes.”

“Does he really have a huge dick?”

You blushed, but nodded, and the girls made a squealing sound. 

“I heard he keeps his sunglasses on during sex. Is that true?”

“I asked him to take them off,” you answered. 

“Can’t believe you scored him twice,” Aiko said, interrupting the interrogation. “From what I’ve heard, he never sleeps with the same person more than once.”

You blinked. “Really?”

Aiko nodded. “Yeah, he’s a one and done kinda guy. Guess he doesn’t want to get serious with anyone. Speaking of which, you should be careful. Don’t get too involved with him. He doesn’t seem like the type of guy to settle down, from what everyone says about him.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Thanks.”  You gave a vague answer. Aiko had no idea what had really happened between you and Gojo. You hadn’t realized that being a repeat lover for him was so rare. You wondered what the girls would think if they knew he’d invited you to spend the weekend at his place. 

But all that was over, you reminded yourself. You and Gojo were over. You had more respect for yourself than to be flattered by a guy, even one as amazing as Gojo, wanting to use you as a sex friend. 

Your phone suddenly rang, and you fished it out of your purse to see who the caller was, thankful for the distraction. It was Haruto, and you felt a little guilty that you’d just been talking and thinking about another man. You answered, and his voice sounded strained on the other end. 

“I need to see you,” he was saying, the words coming out a little too quickly. “It’s urgent.”

“Right now? But we were just together,” you said, confusion building in your mind. You hoped he wasn’t just trying to get you in bed. His attempts had started to feel a little pushy lately. 

“It’s important,” he said. “I’ve rented a hotel room near the bar so we can talk privately.”

“Haruto, I’m really not comfortable going to a hotel with you.”

“It’s not what you’re thinking, I swear,” he told you, his voice sounding frantic. “I just… need to talk to you. And it has to be in person. Okay?”

You sighed. “Alright. If it’s just to talk.”

After you ended the call, you got a text from Haruto with the name of the hotel and the room number. You told your friends what happened and waved goodbye to them before heading back to see what was so urgent. 

As you walked down the carpeted hallway of the hotel, you felt a faint feeling of panic, like something might be very wrong. Had Haruto received bad news? Or perhaps he’d grown tired of waiting and had decided to break up with you. The thought made you feel relieved rather than worried, and you thought that was a bad sign for your relationship. 

You reached room 404 and took a deep breath before knocking. A few seconds later, the door opened, and Haruto stood on the other side. He looked terrible! His face was damp with sweat, his skin was pale, his eyes darted about like a frightened animal’s. “Haruto?” you asked. “What’s wrong?”

He stepped back and motioned you in without a word. When you stepped through the door, your breath caught in your throat. 

Sitting on the edge of the bed was Gojo. No blindfold or sunglasses, which was rare, and his face looked deadly serious, which was even more rare. He stood up as Haruto shut the door behind you. 

“Gojo? What are you doing here? What’s going on?”

Gojo’s expression softened when he looked at you. “I overheard your boyfriend talking to his buddy at the bar after you left. I think you deserve to know what he was saying.”

You looked curiously at Haruto. He wrung his hands nervously and looked at the floor. 

“Haruto,” Gojo said, and there was a coldness to his tone that you’d never heard before. It was like that one word alone was the most terrifying threat in the world. 

Haruto nearly jumped at the sound, then he finally looked you in the face. “Alright! Fuck it, I’ll admit it! I have cameras hidden all over my bedroom. I was gonna record us whenever I could talk you into sleeping with me!”

You stared at him, hearing the words but not processing them. “Record us? What are you talking about?”

“I was gonna make videos of you without telling you,” he said. 

Gojo chimed in. “Tell her what you were gonna do with the videos, Haruto.”

Haruto was avoiding your gaze again. “I was gonna share them with my friends. And maybe sell them online.”

Ah. So that was it. He didn’t like you. He didn’t care about you at all. He just wanted to sleep with you, just like Gojo. Just like all the guys who approached you in high school and even now. Only this was much worse. He wanted to share your intimate moments with others against your will. Thank god you hadn’t slept with him. 

You glared at him, your face feeling hot with humiliation and your eyes becoming wet. All this had to happen in front of Gojo! Haruto took a step toward you. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t-“

“Stop,” you said, cutting him off. “I don’t want to hear another word. Stay away from me.”

He must have known you were serious by the look on your face. His expression changed from guilt to annoyance. “Fine. Whatever. I was only interested in you for your tits anyway. Not like you’ve got anything else I want.” 

Gojo stepped over to Haruto and shoved him toward the door. “Alright, you can get the fuck out now, you useless piece of shit.”

Haruto flinched at the harshness of Gojo’s voice, and was out the door in seconds. Now alone in the room with Gojo, you turned your back to him so he couldn’t look at your face. You were already embarrassed enough. 

“Thank you for warning me about him,” you said, trying and failing to keep your voice steady. You wanted to leave, but you also wanted to give Haruto enough time to be gone by the time you got down to the hotel lobby. You definitely didn’t want to run into him again. 

You heard Gojo’s footsteps coming closer to you, then his voice, so much softer than before, asking, “Are you okay?”

Wiping your eyes, you turned to face him, surprised that he was already so close. “I’ll be fine,” you said with a fake smile plastered on your mouth. Then you stepped toward the door to leave. 

Gojo suddenly grabbed your wrist. “Wait,” he said, “I was at the bar tonight because I knew you’d be there. I wanted to talk to you.”

You pulled your hand free of his gentle grip. Tears were still burning your eyes. “Please, I can’t handle this right now,” you told him. 

“Handle what?”

“You telling me again how I don’t meet your standards but you’ll lower yourself enough to fuck me sometimes. I get it, okay? Just please leave me alone.”

Gojo just stared at you, a hurt expression on his face. “I guess I deserve that,” he said. “But no, I came to apologize. I was wrong. I was an idiot, a dumbass, whatever you wanna call me. I said a lot of stupid shit that hurt you, and I’m sorry. If it’s not too late, could we start over?”

Your heart was doing flip flops. You’d longed to hear him say those words, but… after what just happened with Haruto, you had to be more careful. 

You looked away from him, not wanting to let him charm you with those beautiful eyes of his. “Do you want me as a sex friend?

Or something more?”

He moved closer, close enough to put his hands on your shoulders. “You’re all I can think about when we’re apart. I miss the way we talked during that first mission, the way you laughed. I want us to go back to that. I want to see where this goes. So I guess I’m asking if you’ll be my girlfriend.”

You turned away from him. “I’d love to, but I can’t be a secret, Gojo. If you can’t tell anyone about us-“

“I’ll tell the whole world!”

You looked at his face. “What?”

He looked totally serious. “I’ll tell everyone. I want everyone to know.”

You almost dove into his arms, but something held you back. “It’s easy to say that here, right now, in a hotel room. Will you still say that in the morning?”

He hesitated for a moment, and you felt that familiar sense of dread. But then he pulled out his phone and closed the distance between you. He wrapped one arm around you and pulled your face closer to his, then he kissed your cheek. At the same time, his other hand held up his phone and took a selfie of the two of you.  

He pulled away and began tapping on his phone, leaving you stunned into silence. Then, your phone chimed. You pulled it out and found a notification that you’d been tagged in a post on Mystigram. With trembling fingers, you opened it to see. 

Gojo had posted the picture of him kissing your cheek to his page, and tagged you in it. The caption read: “Me and my hot girlfriend! Try not to be jealous!”

Your eyes flew back to his face. He was grinning at you. The post started getting comments immediately. 

Itadori Yuji: Congrats, sensei! 😁

Kugisaki Nobara: Ugh, she’s way too pretty for you! 

Ieiri Shoko: Try not to fuck this up.

You couldn’t stop yourself from smiling. But you had one more question. 

“What made you change your mind?”

Gojo was laughing as he read over the comments pouring in. “Oh, it just took Shoko talking some sense into me. I was going crazy, worrying about you being on missions, wondering what you were doing, craving your homemade sweets… so I went to her for advice. She’s always had a way of making me see logic.”

“You told her about me?”

“We’ve been friends since high school. Of course I told her,” he said. Then he laughed again. “I told Nanami too but I don’t think he was paying much attention. I was mid sentence when he said, ‘Please stop telling me about your sordid escapades. I’m going to vomit.’ And that was all he had to say about it.”

He’d told his friends about you. He’d been worried enough about this situation to consult them. And he didn’t mind those closest to him knowing about you, even before realizing he’d been wrong. Those thoughts warmed your heart. 

Before you knew it, you were crying again, so overwhelmed with emotion. Gojo dropped his phone on the bed and wrapped his arms around you. “So? Are we a couple now?” he asked. 

You nodded against his chest, and his arms tightened slightly. “Great,” he said, stroking your hair. “Want me to fuck you?”

A laugh escaped your lips, and the tears stopped. You pulled back and looked up at him. “So romantic.”

He leaned down and kissed you. “I’ve been dreaming about rearranging your insides,” he whispered, his voice tingling in your ear. “Have you been dreaming about me?”

You kissed him back, tasting his lips. “Yes,” you breathed out. 

“What were you dreaming?” he asked, his voice turning husky as his hands began to roam over your body. 

“Ahh,” you moaned as he kissed your neck. “It’s… embarrassing…” You had been dreaming about him. A lot. Most of it had been quite filthy.

One of his hands slipped under your dress, rubbing up your bare thigh and then squeezing your ass. “Embarrassing? Heh. I’m gonna have to fuck that shyness out of you.”

That sounded fun, you thought, raising your arms to allow him to pull your dress over your head. You unzipped his jacket, your hands desperately trying to get his clothes off as fast as possible. 

The jacket discarded, he pulled his black T-shirt off next, then stood back to look at you in your silky black underwear. “Seriously,” he said, “tell me what you want. I’ll make it happen, whatever it is. Any fantasy, any dirty idea that pops into your head. I wanna hear it.”

You looked at the floor and muttered something. 

“What was that?”

You stepped closer and met his gaze. “I said… I want you in my mouth.”

His beautiful eyes widened, and there was a glimmer of excitement in them as he grinned and said, “Holy fuck, I hit the jackpot!”

***********

Gojo was lying on his back in the bed, completely nude, his naked girlfriend halfway across him, her warm, wet mouth greedily sucking his cock. He raised his head up to watch. He couldn’t imagine a more lovely sight than her soft, full lips sliding down his shaft. 

He moved one hand down to touch her hair, just happy to have her within reach. She glanced sideways at him, her face tinted pink. How cute of her to be shy even while deep throating him. 

He’d had plenty of blowjobs in his life, even given a few, but this… this was different. Was it because he’d formed an emotional connection to her? He felt so much affection for her that simply being touched by her at all felt far better than anything he’d experienced with anyone else. 

Well, with one exception, but he wasn’t ready to think about that, to compare them. He’d tucked those memories into a neat little box in the back of his mind where they could remain untouched and protected. 

But this wasn’t enough. He wanted to taste her too. He grabbed hold of her legs and swung them up and over him, so that she was lying face down on top of him, her head at his groin and his at hers. She gave a little cry of surprise and drew her knees forward to lift herself off him, but that only spread her thighs apart and gave him easier access. 

“G-Gojo, what are you doing?” Her voice sounded so flustered. He could practically hear the embarrassed arousal. 

“I thought I told you to call me Satoru,” he murmured, pressing his lips ever so gently to her heated, quivering flesh. She jerked, but he grabbed her hips and held her in place. He waited, feeling her taut legs relax slowly, giving her time to get used to this extremely intimate position. 

“Don’t stare at me,” she said in a shy voice, then he felt her lips around his cock again. 

“Oh I’m gonna do so much more than stare,” he said back, using his fingers to open her folds. “I’m gonna do so many embarrassing things to you…” He ran his tongue over her open slit, tasting the plentiful juices. She was drenched, and deliciously sweet. He felt her body twitch nervously, but her mouth never slacked off. He felt her tongue lapping at his tip, her soft hands squeezing wherever they could. 

Her clit was so cute, sitting there so glossy with his saliva and her fluids, completely defenseless to him. His thumb rubbed over it, then he prodded it with his tongue, drawing circles around it. 

She shifted, her mouth leaving his dick long enough for her to moan out, “Satoru… I’m… I’m about to…”

He licked her clit again, slowly. “You can cum first,” he said.

She wiggled a bit in his grasp, but then took him into her mouth again, stifling her own moans. She took him so far in it felt like he was being swallowed, and the little gagging sound she made sent shivers through his entire body. Now it felt like a competition, and Gojo never lost. 

His tongue was on her clit again, and he pushed two fingers inside her, curling them in a way that made her thighs tremble on either side of him. He felt himself slide out of her mouth, and then her tongue was gliding over him from base to tip. He could feel his cock twitching under her touch, but he kept himself under control. Then, he heard her sweet little voice say, “Satoru… cum in my mouth… please?”

Fuck, she wasn’t playing fair! His breath hitched in his throat, a shudder rippling through him, but he wasn’t defeated just yet. He leaned up and lapped at her clit again, gently, slowly, feeling her clenching his fingers, and then he grazed his teeth over it, lightly pulling on the tiny nub. 

She moaned around his cock, her legs shaking, and he knew he’d won. He kept pumping his fingers into her as she rode out her orgasm, her lips still around the base of his cock. With no more reason to hold back, he let the feeling of her hot mouth overwhelm him, and he came straight into her throat. 

He let his head fall back onto the pillow as he panted, and she took the opportunity to turn her body around so that her legs fell off the side of the bed, her face still buried in his crotch. She waited until he was completely empty before she removed her mouth, but a few strings of cum were drizzling down his cock. He held his head up enough to look down at her as she licked him clean.

When finished, she straightened up, sitting on her knees beside the bed. She looked like an angel, or a goddess. How could he have ever thought he was out of her league? How did it take him so long to realize how amazing she was? He’d been a fucking fool. 

He sat up in the bed and smiled at her. “Take a shower with me?”

She blushed. “A shower? I guess so.”

He laughed. “How are you shy after everything we’ve done? I had my face shoved in your pussy just now.”

She turned beet red. “Ahhh! Don’t say that! I was trying not to think about it!”

He stood up from the bed and pulled her into a hug, their naked bodies pressed against each other. “Do you still doubt how hot you are? You can’t even imagine how many times I’ve jacked off while thinking about you.”

She looked up at him. “Really?”

He gave her a quick kiss on the lips. “Really.”

She smiled then, and took his hand as they walked into the bathroom. 

**************

You were still nervous about showering with Gojo. It felt like such a private thing to do, but he seemed really into the idea, so you agreed. He joked around as he turned the water on, pretending he didn’t know how to work the knobs and “accidentally” spraying himself in the face. He was trying to put you at ease, and it was mostly working. You found yourself giggling at his antics as you both stepped into the large, walk-in shower. 

Before you could even reach for the small bottle of shampoo sitting in a tiny corner shelf, Gojo suddenly shoved your back against the glass shower door and kissed you passionately, his mouth overtaking your own. The steamy water was spraying both your bodies, soaking his shiny hair, running down his torso. Without even looking, you knew he was hard again, the large erection pressing against your stomach. 

You wrapped your arms around his neck and his hands slipped under your thighs, lifting you up so that your legs could wrap around his body. You were pinned against the shower door when you felt him push inside you, deeply, roughly, the way you loved it. Your back collided with the glass with every powerful thrust, an ache you’d been craving building between your legs as he pounded into you. 

You were going to be covered in bruises after this, but that thought only turned you on even more. Gojo had that wild look in his eyes, the one that almost made you cum on the spot. You wanted him to break you. It wasn’t that you were a masochist. It wasn’t pain that excited you, but rather watching him lose control, seeing that unhinged expression and knowing you had that effect on him, that you could drive him mad with your body. The pain, the bruises, they were just the evidence. 

Burying your face in his neck, you tried to muffle your moans, your breaths shuddering. He was making such lovely grunts and growls, his fingers digging into your soft thighs. You chanced a peek at his face, and he looked like an entirely different person from the man who’d just been joking around with you. His wet hair was partially covering one eye, the other practically glowing with uncontrolled lust, his lips parted, teeth showing as ragged breaths pushed through them. 

God, he was beautiful. Frighteningly so. Inhumanly so. For the second time, you wondered if he actually was a god that had been banished to earth. He certainly fucked like one. 

Your legs slipped from his waist, the water making it hard to keep your grip, and they dangled helplessly above the floor. He didn’t even seem to notice that he was holding more of your weight as he plowed into you, every thrust feeling deeper than the last. Your arms were still around his neck, but your strength was failing you. You clasped your hands tightly and leaned your face up to kiss him. His mouth was hungry upon yours, his tongue shoving its way in. 

When you came, your arms fell to your sides and your body went limp in his arms, quivering with pleasure as he kept fucking you. His grip on you tightened, and after several more minutes of being slammed into the glass door, you felt his whole body stiffen. Then, you felt hot cum shoot deeply inside you as Gojo groaned. 

He stayed inside you for several more minutes, even after he’d finished cumming. It was like he didn’t want to separate from you, but eventually he pulled out and set you back on your feet. You legs gave way immediately, as if they were made of spaghetti, but Gojo caught you. He held you gently until you regained your strength, then he reached you the soap with a grin. 

“I’ll wash your back if you wash mine,” he said. 

You laughed, taking the soap from him as he turned his toned back to you. 

An hour later, you were both dressed and sitting on the bed in the hotel room, talking about what each of you had been up to lately. During a lull in the conversation, you leaned your head over on his shoulder and whispered, “Is this real?”

“Hmm?”

You hesitated, then said, “I keep waiting for you to say this won’t work out.”

He wrapped an arm around you. “I’m not gonna lie and say this will be easy. I travel a lot for missions, and my teaching job is important to me, but we can make it work. We’ll spend time together whenever we can. Speaking of which… wanna come to my place next weekend?”

You laughed, feeling the tension dissipate from your body. “For pancakes? Sure.”

“And debauchery,” he said. “Don’t forget the debauchery.”

****************

Epilogue:

The first thing you thought when you arrived at Gojo’s house was, “Holy shit, it’s huge!”

Gojo stepped up beside you and gave you a peck on the cheek. “That’s what she said.”

You giggled at his silly joke and let him lead you inside. The house was of an old fashioned design, with a closed in yard, sliding doors, tatami floors, the whole works. It was a sprawling estate that looked as if it would have dozens of servants roaming the halls. 

“You really live here all by yourself?”

He shook his head as he laid out some slippers for you to change into, then pulled off his own shoes. “I have an apartment near the school that I use most of the time. I don’t use this place often, but this is a special weekend.”

“It’s beautiful,” you said, looking around. Despite the classic design of the structure, it had modern furnishings. You were admiring a lovely vase on a glossy wooden end table when you noticed a large cardboard box sitting just inside the living room. It looked totally out of place, and Gojo noticed your interest. 

“Go ahead and look inside,” he told you, a strange smile on his lips. 

“Okay…” 

You approached the box and pulled the flaps open, squatting down to get a good look. Inside was an assortment of items you couldn’t quite identify at first. But as you began pulling them out and looking more closely, your face began to burn. 

“Are these… all sex toys?!”

Gojo laughed at your reaction. “Well, not all of them. There’s some costumes, handcuffs, edible underwear…”

You grimaced as you pulled out what appeared to be a riding crop, then the biggest dildo you’d ever seen in your life. There was also a skimpy maid costume, among other bizarre garments. “Why is all this stuff just sitting here in a box?”

Gojo rubbed the back of his head, messing up his hair a bit. He looked oddly shy. “I ordered it all. I figured we could have fun trying a bunch of stuff, see what we like.”

That did sound like fun. You examined each item, sometimes having no idea what its function was. 

Gojo sat down on the floor beside you, watching your face as you looked though the box. “If there’s anything that makes you uncomfortable, just put it back in the box and I’ll toss it. Or better yet, I’ll have it delivered to Nanami’s place.”

You laughed then, imagining the strait laced-looking man you met a few days ago opening a box full of items like these. 

When you were finished sorting them into piles of “will definitely try”, “might try”, and “hard no”, you and Gojo both stood up. “So, are you going to give me a tour?” you asked.  

Gojo gave you a somewhat menacing grin, his dark sunglasses blocking out your view of his eyes. “Sure. Let’s start with the basement.”

The End. 

Tag List:

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[middleearthpixie]

Here I come bringing my obsession your Ask Box!

AUgust Mashup:

Eomer + Enemies to Lovers + “I didn’t know you cared.”

No pressure: Please and thank you! <3

Ahhhh... I know this took me FOREVER, but here you go (and you should know, this is my very first time ever writing Éomer, so I really hope I got him right!)

I hope you like it! 💜💜💜

Fair Enough

Trope: AUgust Mashup Enemies to Lovers

Quote: “I didn’t know you cared…”

Pairings: Éomer x fem!reader

Warnings: None. Just fluffy fluff

Rating: G

Word Count: 4.6k

***

“Isn’t there some way we could just—you know—knock him from his saddle?”

You bit back a smile at Cynewyn’s suggestion, although it did have merit, and tried instead to focus on the plate you were drying. “The trouble with that would be, we might spook his horse and if it was injured, we’d never forgive us, would we?”

“Well, no. I don’t suppose we would. But, the horse might be just fine. Only Éomer would get no less than he deserves.”

“True, but it’s a risk I’d rather not take. The last thing either us or papa needs is to to pay for replacing his horse.”

“It would be no less than he deserves as well, the snake. I’d like to throw a rock at him right now.”

“Makes two of us, but again—” 

“I know,” Cynewyn sighed, “it’s a risk you’d rather not take.”

“Exactly.” You smiled at your older sister. “We can only hope that one day, he gets his and that we are lucky enough to witness it.”

“Which is not going to happen.” Cynewyn went quiet as she dunked another plate into the washbasin. “Still, why would he do that to you, anyway? What was the point?”

You shrugged, taking the plate to wipe dry. “To make sport of me, I suppose. After all, isn’t it funny when a man pretends he’s interested in you and then when you show up at your agreed upon meeting place, he’s nowhere to be found? And isn’t it funny when he and his friends were just outside of the pub, giggling like children, is just so amusing?”

“Men? Bah! They are but boys. Big boys, but boys just the same.” She passed you another plate.

You said nothing, but dried the plate and then slid it onto its shelf in the cupboard, atop the small stack you’d already dried. In the time it took you to do that, Éomer had moved on down the road that ran before the kitchen windows of your family’s small stone cottage. You should have known he’d been sporting with you when he asked you to meet him at the coffeehouse the previous week. Until that morning, he didn't seem to know you were alive. It was only too bad you could not say the same, because not only did you most definitely know he was alive, you thought he was the most perfect man alive. That afternoon, however, he toppled from that pedestal and shattered at its base as far as you were concerned. 

Of course, that didn't mean his thoughtless actions didn't hurt. Because they did. They most definitely did. 

But, you’d not think about what happened any longer. He’d gotten a good laugh at your expense, but you would rise above it. You had no other choice, really. He was the king’s nephew and you were… well…

You were nobody, really. 

A depressing thought.

You finished drying the dishes and left your sister to whatever it was she was doing. You shared a room and night after night, you would stretch out on your bed and try to read whilst she went through her seemingly bottomless supply of fabric for whatever gown she was going to try to copy from whichever lady she saw in town. She was really quite gifted, so you didn’t mind when she asked you to be her model, as you had no dressmaker’s dummy. But tonight, she did not need your assistance and, claiming a headache, instead she chose to go to bed early. A good night’s sleep was always welcomed, but as you lay there in the dark, sleep mocked you instead. It had been happening more and more often now, as the world grew more unsettled and while you could usually find some way to drift off, tonight was not one of those nights. You were simply too restless and so you slipped from the small stone cottage to go for a walk. 

You tried not think about how disappointed you’d been when Éomer stood you up at the coffeehouse. Perhaps you should have expected it, but it hurt just the same. Of course, you weren’t the only one who imagined catching his eye. Half the women of marriageable age in Edoras dreamed of doing just that and no one could blame a one of you. Not only was he the king’s nephew, but he was so blasted handsome, with his long, wavy dark gold hair and direct hazel eyes. And whenever you saw him on horseback—you melted a little on the inside each time.

Of course, now he knew you fancied him and not only that, but he’d used it against you. Knocking him off his horse wasn't even close to being enough. Still, you couldn't dwell on it forever. In time, everyone who was in that coffeehouse would forget.

Everyone but you, anyway. 

“And that is the last we will think of it,” you muttered, trying instead to focus on something, anything, else as you strolled on. 

It was a peaceful night, hints of the coming autumn in the crisp edge of the breeze that stirred the leaves last night’s storm had pulled from the trees. The best thing about the stone cottage at the end of the road in Edoras? You were the farthest point from the king’s residence, which meant you would most likely not cross paths again with Éomer at this time of night. True, he’d been riding south, which meant that at some point he would pass by here again, but you’d have enough warning, as the road was wide and almost no trees lined it. Sneaking up on you would be almost impossible. 

Not that he would even try. He’d made himself perfectly clear where you were concerned. 

The night sky was clear, spangled with stars and moonlight bathed everything as far as you could see an etherial silver color. There had been rumblings to the east, and you’d heard talk amongst the menfolk about the possibility of war, and you also knew that orcs had been seen on the borders of Rohan. And that was why you did not leave your house without a blade of some sort. Although your father was not overjoyed at the thought, he allowed both you and Cynewyn to carry a small sword, which you were almost never without. You weren’t a master by any stretch of the imagination, but Papa had made certain you and your sister learned how to defend yourselves, should the need ever arise.

Your walks had become your way of remaining sane when it seemed there was so much uncertainty all around. The thought of war was so foreign to you, as your father insulated you and Cynewyn as best he could, and yet you knew it wasn’t far off. The king’s health was failing, and you’d heard rumors that he, Éomer, and the king’s advisor, Grima, had been butting heads of late. 

Perhaps that was why Éomer had gone thundering past the kitchen windows on his horse as he had. One too many cross words with his uncle, maybe? In some ways, you hoped so, for if Éomer was banished, life would become easier for you.

But at the same time, if you were completely honest with yourself, you knew if he left for good, you would miss him terribly. How difficult it was, caring so much for a man you also tried so hard to despise! If only you could forgive him.

If only.

You vowed once more to not think about it. 

Instead, you concentrated on the beauty of the night sky, of how those stars seemed so vast and endless, how the moon managed to bathe things silver although it gave off no light. You listened to the whisper of the wind through the scrub grass and bushes that dotted the landscape seemingly to the edge of Middle Earth. The wind whispered, crickets chirped, and in the distance, an owl hooted. A normal night.

Or so you thought.

You heard the noise before you saw the creature that made it and as those sounds reached your ears, the stench reached your nose. Your heart lurched, your stomach kinked, and a sour taste filled your mouth, brought on both by the stink and the coldest, iciest, most petrifying fear that ever permeated your being.

Papa always told you not to venture too far from the road. One never knew what lurked in the fields sweeping east and west, where twisted trees grew in clumps and provided cover for many things.

Such as the orc now standing over Éomer’s prone body.

You ducked, shifting toward the stand of pine trees twisted by the winds, which thankfully carried any sounds you might have made away from the orc and Éomer. Metal clanged Éomer blocked the orc’s downward swing with his blade. He held fast, his arms trembling from the effort and his heavy glove the only thing keeping the dual-sided blade from slicing into his hand.

The orc appeared to brace harder against his blade, determined to run Éomer through and you couldn't let that happen, no matter how angry or hurt you were because of him. So, you slid your blade free and crept about the pines as silently as you knew how. You’d learned from Papa, who would take you with him when he went hunting, and although you could never bring yourself to kill anything, you learned from him just the same. Besides, an orc wasn’t anywhere near as beautiful as a deer or fox. Quite the opposite, really. They were the ugliest, vilest, most disgusting creatures to walk the earth as far as you were concerned. 

Your soft-skinned boots made no sound as you approached and the orc never knew what hit him when you swung and cleaved his head clean from his shoulders. What was left of him collapsed like a sandbag atop Éomer, who swore softly as the creature’s thick, black blood splattered him. 

Nausea rose in your throat as it spattered you as well, and you tried to ignore it as you grabbed the still-warm shoulder and threw the corpse back. “Are you all right?”

“I’ve had better nights,” Éomer groaned, rolling over and onto his knees, his sword clattering softly in the dust. “What are you doing out here?”

“I was but going for a walk. What is that—” you gestured to the dead orc—“doing here? They do not usually venture so close to our borders.”

“They grow bolder and have been for some time now.” He rocked back on his knees and swept his silver and brass helmet from his head to let it clatter to the ground alongside his sword. “Are you all right?”

“Me? I am fine.” You resheathed your sword and carefully crouched alongside him. His dark blond hair was damp with sweat, pulled away from his face and held back with a small strip of worn leather. “And you?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“What happened?”

“It’s nothing.” He winced as he shifted onto his backside and gingerly prodded at his left thigh.

You looked down, your stomach clenching at the sight of the wound that must’ve bled terribly, for the entire front of his trouser leg was stained with a large wet patch. It looked as if the orc’s blade had sliced through the fabric. Without thinking, you brushed his hands aside to see for yourself and as soon as you had, you wished you hadn’t. 

The wound was ugly and raw, a long slice from just below his hip to his knee, and still bled freely. “We need to get you home.”

“You go on. I need to find my horse.”

“Your horse is not here,” you told him, scanning all around to make certain you weren’t lying. You were’t. There was no sign of a horse anywhere about. “Come, let’s get you up and I will help you.”

“Just leave me…”

“Oh, don’t be a fool!”

He jerked back. “I am serious. Leave me. The last I want is harm befalling you on my behalf. So please, just go. There will be more of them coming, looking for this one,” he nudged the corpse with one boot. “And I am not at all certain I’d be able to protect you.”

“You mean you aren’t certain you’d want to.”

He just stared up at you. “I didn't say that, nor would I.”

“You might as well. Aren’t I only a laugh to you anyway? Ever the fool for you and your friends to chuckle over.”

At least he didn't try to deny his actions or motivations as he said, “Oh… the coffeehouse.”

“Yes,” you nodded, “the coffeehouse. So, you’ll forgive me if I don't believe you would lift a finger to keep an orc away from me. Of course, you would do well to remember that it was I who saved you from an orc regardless. Still, if you wish to be left alone, far be it from me to insist on staying.”

You moved to stand, only to have him catch you by the wrist. “No, please,” he said softly, looking up once more, “don’t go. I—I owe you an apology for that.”

“To save your sorry skin, no doubt.”

To your surprise, he chuckled. “I deserve that.”

“Oh, that’s mighty big of you to admit,” you said dryly. “How very big indeed.”

“Very well, you’re right, you know. About all of it. And I mean that in the most sincere manner possible. Honest.”

That took a bit of wind from your sails and you sighed. “Perhaps we might fight about it later?”

He bobbed his head. “I wholeheartedly agree with that notion. Much, much later. In fact, we should never speak of it again.”

“Once you apologize, you mean.”

“I just did apologize.”

“No,” you shook your head, “you said you owed me one, which you do of course. But admitting it is not an actual apology.”

To your surprise, he burst out laughing. It was cut short by a sharp inhale of pain, but his smile only wavered as he snorted, “You’re joking, right?”

“You mean to tell me you honestly considered that an apology? Those sorry words? Truly?”

“Well…” he nodded. “Yes."

“Fine.” You stood up and brushed dirt and crushed pine needles from your backside. “I’ll bid you good eve then. You should hope you’re mobile once more before they come looking for their friend.”

You had every intention of marching off, of just leaving him there to rot, not caring if any more orcs happened upon him. It would serve him right. Apology. Bah! He could go pound sand, as Papa would say.

However, you only got maybe ten feet away when your conscience got the better of you and you came back to find he hadn’t moved an inch. 

“Come,” you growled, crouching beside him once more to take hold of his left wrist. “Let’s get you back.”

“I didn't know you cared,” he said even as he allowed you to help him up.

“I don’t. I should let you rot.”

“So, why aren’t you?”

“I don’t know. I’m a soft-hearted fool, I suppose.” You gave a not so gentle tug. “We should go. His pack is bound to notice he’s not returned and I do not want to have to explain to your uncle how I let you get butchered by orcs.”

“I’ll be forever grateful,” he replied drolly.

“Do you wish my help or not?”

He draped an arm about your shoulder. “Yes, of course I do. And I appreciate it as well.” He winced. “How far are we from Edoras’ border?”

“It’s better if you don’t know.”

“That far, eh?”

He leaned heavily on your shoulder, and you tried to ignore the stinging along your neck, the dull ache that spread down into your shoulder from bearing the brunt of his weight, as he was considerably taller and heavier than you were. “I’m afraid so, yes.”

“Wonderful.”

For reasons you couldn't begin to explain, the drollness in his deep voice made you laugh. “Yes, I couldn’t agree more.”

You managed to get him back to the road, him leaning hard against you with each step he took on his wounded leg. And with each step, his gait slowed. “Take care,” he said when you stumbled. “It would do us both no good if we fell.”

“I beg your… pardon,” you gritted, hefting him higher on your shoulder once more, “but… you are… not light, you know.”

“I know and I appreciate your help here as well.” He went silent for a long moment, then, drew in a deep breath and added, “And I’m sorry. For what I did at the coffeehouse.”

“All you had to do was come in and tell me you’d changed your mind, you know.” you told him, staring straight ahead, waiting for Edoras’ reassuring lights to come into view. At least then, you knew you’d be close to home and close to safety. 

“The thing of it is, I didn’t change my mind.” The regret in his voice surprised you and you stopped without warning, catching him as he stumbled, then scolded, “Take care, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“I’m sorry, but what? What do you mean, you didn't change your mind? Of course you did. I was there, remember? I was there and you were not.”

“No, I know that, but,” he pulled free, easing his arm from about her shoulders before shifting to settle on a rock, “I need to sit a moment.”

You didn't fight him, happy to be free of his weight, even if only for a few minutes. You rubbed the side of your neck. “Only a few minutes, though. We don’t know how much time we have left.”

“I know.” He looked up at you. “I didn’t change my mind, you know.”

“So you’ve said. What you haven’t said, was why you just left me sitting there like a fool.” Finally, you were able to get that weight off your chest, your eyes stinging the way they had in the coffeehouse, when you realized he was not coming through the door. “Why did you do that to me?”

“I was coming in,” he said slowly, looking up to meet your gaze, “and when I saw you… I got nervous and I know that sounds idiotic, but it’s the truth. It was a stupid, fool thing to do to you and I am ever so sorry I hurt you. If I could but do it over, I would walk through that door and we would not be having this conversation. And for that, I am also sorry.”

You had waited so long for him to assume responsibility for how he’d hurt you. And now that he had, you were at a loss for words. How did you respond to that? What did you say?

“Am I supposed to believe you had an attack of nerves? You, of all people?”

“Is that so hard to believe? I’m only human as human as any other man, you know. And that means that yes, sometimes, I have an attack of nerves. I’m not made of stone, I’ll have you know and you—”

You waited a moment for him to finish, your heart beating erratically now as those words were the last ones she ever thought she’d hear from him. But, when he remained silent, just staring at the ground, you leaned in. “I what?”

He looked up then, his eyes soft, and murmured, “You stole the breath from my lungs.”

You could only stare. Were you but dreaming or perhaps he’d suffered a head injury before you reached him? One of those had to be the truth because there was no other rational explanation for his words, no matter how they set butterflies free in your belly to batter your insides with their wildly-beating wings. 

“Éomer, I—I don’t know what to say,” you finally managed. 

“No, I’m sure you don’t,” he replied softly. “And I cannot fault you. But, if you could find it in your heart to forgive me, I would like another chance. A chance to right things between us.”

“Things between us? Is there a thing between us, never mind more than one?”

To your surprise, a sheepish smile lifted his lips. “I should like there to be.” 

“I don’t even like you, you know.”

His grin widened. “Somehow, I don’t believe that. After all, you came back, didn’t you?”

“Don’t let it go to your head. I could still leave you out here.”

“You could.” He nodded, then shook his head. “But you won’t.”

You stared at him for a long moment, then let out a heavy sigh of resignation. “No. I don't suppose I will.”

His eyes sparkled with mischief. “I knew it.”

You offered up a smile of your own and then, with all the force you could generate, you punched him square in the shoulder. 

He yelped as the blow sent him rocking backwards. “What was that for?”

“Because you, Éomer, are an ass and I should leave you here to suffer whatever fate you deserve.”

“You should, but I wish you wouldn’t.” He reached for your hand, caught it, and linked his fingers with yours. “I am truly sorry, though. You have to believe me.”

“Why should I believe you now?”

Éomer winced as he carefully stood. “Because I would like the chance to right my wrong where you are concerned.”

You looked up at him. “And how do you think you can do such a thing? I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.” 

“I’m fairly certain I do.”

He smiled then and bent and before you could say anything, his lips met yours. Despite his wounded leg, he caught your face between his hands, not so much as wavering as his lips moved teasingly and gentle against yours, as his tongue eased between your lips to caress yours, and you shivered at the silken caress. His lips were soft and warm and those butterflies fluttered harder now, with more fury as he kissed you slow and deep and made your head spin as it had never spun before. 

Éomer was slightly breathless when he drew back. “So, will you allow me another chance? A chance to right what I’ve done wrong?”

“By all rights, I should say no.”

“But you won’t.” His hazel eyes sparkled with mischief.

“No,” you shook your head slowly, “I won’t.”

In the distance, came the snarl of wargs and that was enough to spur Éomer to drape his arm about your neck once more and say, “We should go.”

“A wise idea, to be sure.”

You made it back to Edoras without incident and you wasted no time in rousing the healer  from her bed, just as she wasted no time in shooing you from the infirmary. Someone must have alerted Éowyn as well, for she came hurrying down the corridor, her hair bound up away from her face and still in her nightdress.

“What happened?”

“He was set upon by orcs just beyond the border.”

“But what were you doing out there?”

You managed a smile. “I was but going for a walk. I was having trouble sleeping, and sometimes that helps.”

“You need be careful,” she warned. “What if you’d been alone?”

“We won’t think about that.”

The healer came out. “My lady,” she said with a tired smile. “His lordship is resting now and he’d like to see you.” 

Éowyn stepped forward, only to have the healer shake her head. “No, my lady, I’m sorry. He meant you,” she said, looking at you.

You swallowed hard. “M-me?”

The healer nodded now. “He was very clear.”

“I’ll just see what he might want,” you said, feeling no little guilt at Éowyn’s almost hurt expression. “And when he hears you’ve come down to see him, I’m sure he will ask you be brought in.”

Éowyn said nothing, but bobbed her head and you followed the healer into the small, quiet, semi-dark room. 

Éomer was abed, the linens stark even against his pale hair, and your heart skipped a beat at the sight of him, as you’d never seen him so informally dressed, his loose tunic left unlaced to offer up an enticing patch of what you were certain was a finely-muscled chest. The image that came to your mind brought those butterflies to life once more deep within your belly. 

His eyes were closed, his enviably thick lashes dark crescents against his pale cheeks, but as you drew near, they opened and a tired smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I thought perhaps I’d dreamed everything that happened this night,” he said softly, “but the pain is far too real.”

“I assume your healer stitched the wound. It looked fairly ugly.”

He nodded. “She did. I can resume duties in a week, according to her.” He gestured for you to come closer and when you did, he added in a whisper, “and we won’t tell her when I’m gone come morning, will we?”

“You should take her advice.”

“I cannot. Not right now.”

“Éomer, you will be useless with only a few hours’ rest and one leg. You need allow yourself time to heal.”

“Are you taking her side?”

“In this?” You nodded. “Absolutely.”

“But… you’re supposed to take my side.” 

“I would be, if you weren’t talking such foolishness.”

“Ouch. You wound me.” As he spoke, he reached out and caught your hand, and your mouth went dry as he gave a gentle tug. “Come and lay with me.”

“I couldn’t.”

“You could.”

“Éomer.”

“What?”

“I don't even like you.”

His eyes glinted with a hint of mischief. “We both know that isn’t true, don’t we?”

“Oh, it’s true.”

“Liar.” He tugged again. “Are you truly going to make a wounded man beg?”

“Éomer.”

“What?” He brought your hand to his lips, to your surprise, brushed its back with a kiss and murmured, “Please?”

You stared down at him for a long moment. “You are supposed to be injured.”

“I am injured. Nearly twenty stitches are holding that wound closed. But somehow, I don't think I’ll mind being trapped in this bed, if I have someone to share it with.”

Your heart fluttered. “Éomer. You are in an infirmary.”

“I know, but I’m in my own room, as you see.” He smiled. “No one will bother us and I promise to keep my hands to myself.”

With that, his smile grew mischievous. “Unless, of course, you’d rather I didn’t. And then, the next time I see you in the great hall or the yard, I’ll just look across at you and smile and only you will know why.”

You sighed softly and then, after a quick look about, gingerly stretched out alongside him, your heart beating faster as he drew his arm about your shoulders to tug you closer. You peered up at him. “And why will I be smiling?”

His eyes glinted with that same hint of mischief that let loose even more butterflies in your belly. “You’ll see.”

With that, he caught you beneath the chin with one bent finger, lifting your face ever so slightly and as his lips captured yours, you smiled. “You aren’t going anywhere come morning, you know.”

He broke the teasing kiss to gaze down at you. “Is that so?”

“It is,” you nodded, “because you have some very real making up to me to do. And I’m fairly certain it will take longer than a few hours."

“Making up to you, you say?” One dark brow arched and his smile grew wicked with promise. “I think that’s fair enough.”

***

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[hearts4renaa]

JUST FOR THE WEEKEND.

summary: visiting your first love from your hometown is always difficult, especially when you both know you won’t be around for long. featuring arataki itto, thoma, and kaveh.

contains: 1.9k words. hurt no comfort. childhood friends to almost lovers.

a/n: i quoted lyrics from tis the damn season by taylor swift :) this honestly hurt to write, as a girl who thinks about hometowns and nostalgia very often

Sleep in half the day, just for old times sake. I won’t ask you to wait if you don’t ask me to stay.

“Y/N, I got you a farewell gift!” Itto calls out happily. The familiar voice is like music to your ears. Returning home after so long was always interesting; especially since your usual trips frequented less and less as the time went on. But either way, you would come and go. And every time, Itto would be there to greet you with a smile. Leaving your hometown was hard. Leaving him was worse. But a small town in Inazuma couldn’t bring your dreams to life. However, Mondstadt could.

Itto can’t help but feel helpless whenever you return, only for you to leave again. He wanted you to chase your dreams, but he’d just wish he’d be there for that too. Or maybe he wished you’d find a way to stay. No matter what, Itto was there, and your feelings for each other were too. But he knew you’d eventually leave - who was he to hold you back? He remembers the last night before you left. Hushed whispers and pinky promises under the stars, making you swear to visit him as much as you could. “Of course I will, you’re my best friend.” was your response. The two of you knew it was more than that, but speaking up wouldn’t have made the goodbye easier.

You smile at Itto’s enthusiasm. “Oh yeah?” Your voice has a teasing edge.

He grins back, pulling out a small gift box from behind his back. He plops himself next to you, handing you the box. You open it with a screen-worthy smile, gently pulling out the necklace inside. The chain glimmered under the sunset, the pendant shimmering in the dim light. You look closely at the engraved words. “For old times sake.” it read. You feel your eyes sting with tears, facing away from him. You blink rapidly to hold them back, clutching the necklace. “Thank you, Itto.” You choke out. Your back faces him, but you can feel the melancholy coming from his form. Silence emerges between the two of you, apart from your slight sniffles.

“…Did you ever wish you never left?” Itto’s mood is a complete 180. The two of you were now back to back, unable to see the other’s expression.

“What do you mean?” Your voice is quiet. You know damn well what he meant.

“Like, Inazuma.” He says. “Did you ever regret moving away from here? From…” He hesitates for a moment. “…From me? Or us, if we ever even had something like that.”

Your breath hitches in your throat. Of course you regret it. How could you not? Sure, your career might be booming in Mondstadt, but what’s the point of stability with no satisfaction? With no him? Leaving all you had ever known and loved for an opportunity in Mondstadt. Besides, even if things became official, who said you guys would last? You knew you’d be busy. You couldn’t have been there for him like a proper partner. If you could go back in time, you’d turn down every opportunity if it meant you could be next to him. With him. But you couldn’t dump all of that on him now.

He sighed, taking your silence as an answer. You’ve never heard him so dejected before. “It’s okay. I hope Mondstadt is doing you well.” You feel the tears begin to build up again, but you can’t stop them this time. They fall freely, like rain in the night sky. He begins to speak again. “I think we could’ve worked out, you know.”

But that’s what stings the most. He was there. In some other universe, the two of you were happy, the whole time.

So I’ll go back to L.A, and the so-called friends who’ll write books about me if I ever make it. And wonder about the only soul who can tell which smiles I’m faking.

Thoma’s arms are locked around you, caging you in as if you’d disappear forever if he dared to loosen his grip. His bedroom is silent, save for the occasional hitched breath or soft sniffle. It was your first visit to Inazuma ever since the Vision Hunt was over, and Inazuma was open again. You left not long before the initial shutdown, and you were unable to return home, finding refuge in Liyue instead. You rebuilt your life in the land of Geo, becoming a successful writer. Liyue became your home, and your time in Inazuma slowly faded from memory. But there was one thing about Inazuma that you would never forget; Thoma. How could you forget him, your first everything. Your first kiss, your first date, the first boy to give you flowers.

Above all, he was also your first heartbreak. The pain of being away from him felt like your heart was being ripped out of your chest. But as time went on, you learned to live apart. You learned to be away from him, but being in his arms again makes you feel like you’re right back at square one.

“I have to go, Thoma.” You whisper. “I have to get back home.”

“You are home.” He chuckles lightly. “This is our home.” He gestures to the space around the two of you.

You sigh shakily. “No, Thoma,” You try to get the words out. “Liyue. I need to get back to my home in Liyue.” Your eyes refuse to meet his own.

His heart shatters in an instant as the realization hits him like a boulder. This isn’t your home anymore. He wasn’t your home anymore. To Thoma, nothing screams home more than you did. Your hair, your scent, your touch. Everything about you felt like home. You were his home, but he wasn’t yours anymore. His hold on you loosens.

“Right.” He murmurs. His arms drop slightly, but they’re still wrapped around you. “Liyue.”

You reach over to remove his hands from your frame, gently grasping his wrists. Once you’re fully out of his grip, you take a step back. The space between the two of you feels like the ocean separating your respective nations. Your respective homes. The silence is deafening. Your eyes direct themselves to the floor.

“I really think you’ll change the world someday, just like you dreamed of.” His comment is sudden, but the solemn edge to his voice makes it obvious that he’s been thinking about it for a while. You glance over at him. His eyes are downcast, deep in thought. “And I’ll cheer you on the entire time.”

That comment floored you. Your tears ran freely across your cheeks, creating rivers of salt. “Thank you…” Were the only words you could choke out. The two of you sat in silence for a while, but the setting sun told you that it was over. It’s time to go.

You make your way to his door, and he seems to catch on, following behind you. “Think of me while you make history, okay?” He lets out a sad laugh. You turn to face him one last time. A wry smile etched itself onto his face. You hug him one last time. You hug him so tightly it almost seems like you’re trying to commit his body to memory. He squeezes back. His lips brush against your ear.

“Have a safe trip home.”

And the heart I know I’m breaking is my own. To leave the warmest bed I’ve ever known.

“The Akademiya is running wild over Y/N’s return.” Alhaitham mumbled, flipping the page of his book. Kaveh freezes for a moment. The pair were in the Akademiya library, each doing a personal activity. Kaveh sets his pen down, rolling up his latest project without a word. Alhaitham’s eyes look up from his book, veiled sympathy in his look. “Do you think you’ll greet them?”

Kaveh sighs softly. “I don’t know. It’s been a while.” And he was right. It’s been over a year since you graduated from the Akademiya. Beloved and idolized by so many scholars, you made the choice to leave Sumeru in hopes of traveling the world. You made the choice to leave him. Kaveh, your childhood best friend, the boy next door. The boy who saw all your worst times. The boy who cushioned every fall and lifted you up again. The boy who adored you, but was far too afraid to bring it up. The boy who loved you endlessly, even as he watched you leave, unknowing that you felt the same.

He doesn’t even get the time to fully ponder Alhaitham’s question before he notices a figure begin to near in the corner of his eye. “Kaveh,” A voice says. He didn’t need to fully look up to know it was you. Alhaitham’s eyes flicker between the two of you before he ultimately decides to take his leave, muttering a quick goodbye. Having no choice but to face you, he turns his head to look up at you from his seated position.

“Hey.” His voice is meek, as if he was afraid to overstep. You notice his awkwardness, deciding to take the seat across from him. The silence is almost painful. Anyone could tell that the tension between the two of you was so thick it could’ve been cut with a blade. “How Liyue?” He asks, finally mustering the courage.

You hum, grateful for the long awaited conversation prompt. “It’s pretty great. I got to learn a lot of things.” He sees the way your eyes have a certain shine when talking about this foreign region. It stings him to see how he used to see that shine in your eyes back in your Akademiya days. Back when you weren’t so far away. You smile softly as you retell a brief recap of your Liyue adventures.

“I’m glad.” He says. “I’m happy that you got to do what you dreamed of.” His timid smile throws you off, and you realize that the once lived familiarity between the two of you is long gone. And you know that things like that can’t just snap back after a year of each other’s absence. The silence returns. You feel as if you’re suffocating.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” You whisper.

He flinches. “Tell you what?” He’s nervous, and you can tell by the way his eyes dart back and forth anxiously.

“That you loved me.” Your eyes are like storms as you look at him. Not the thunder bringing storms, but the kind with the heavy rain where the ‘pitter-patter’ keeps you up all night. He was taken aback. Was he that obvious? Were you really able to tell? “I already know, Kaveh.” A sad smile etches itself onto your face.

“Yeah, I did.” He finally responds. You’re the one who flinches this time. Not because he admitted to it with little to no resistance, but because of his choice of words. Did. Not that he does. Past tense, did. He did love you. He loved you in the past, but he doesn’t right now. You freeze up, immediately going silent.

He takes note of your discomfort and stands up, beginning to pack up his things. “Sorry, Y/N.” He apologizes. “I have… some things to work on.” You’re silent the entire time. He carries his things into his arms before looking back down at your sitting form. He opens his mouth to speak once more. He hesitates. His mouth closes. He turns around without a word, his figure slowly but surely disappearing from your line of vision.

You sit and watch him leave, the same way he did for you.

[riaaanna]

The drummer Roger Taylor, sipping champagne on a leather sofa in his penthouse duplex overlooking Battersea Park, finds the whole situation hilarious. “Oh God, we’ve always got stick for everything,” he grins. “People say, ‘You’re mistreating the legacy’, and I think, well, thanks for your concern, but it’s my f***ing legacy.”

A random article from 2011 (in anticipation of Stormtroopers in Stilettos exhibition) I'm unpaywalling simply because of Roger's epic quote above. "It's my f***ing legacy" damn right! Full article below.

Revisiting history

Queen are 40 this year — and, to celebrate, they’re reissuing their first five albums. Brian May and Roger Taylor talk to us about Bowie and Freddie

Freddie Mercury once described his band’s songs as being like “disposable razors — use them, darling, then throw them away”. Yet, almost 40 years after Queen’s first LP, that seems an ever more unlikely scenario. Every possible attempt has been made by critics and the self-appointed guardians of musical good taste to ridicule, belittle and bedraggle their arch, explosive, overwrought, emotive, theatrical, propulsive, gargantuan records (bet­ween March 1974 and December 1992, they had 40 UK chart hits — even their successful streaks were wildly over the top), but the public voted time and time again, and the public voted, more often than not, for even more Queen, even more of the time.

Nine years ago, the band spent a reported £7.5m of their own money on a musical, part-written by Ben Elton — then, as now, easily as unfashionable as Queen — featuring their songs. It was savaged by the press (one reviewer from the American magazine The Advocate flew across the Atlantic just so they could call it “complete bollocks”), yet, nearly a decade later, the towering, if rather unflattering, statue of Mercury triumphant still towers above the entrance to London’s Dominion Theatre — and, every night, every seat in the house is full.

“Respect is a funny thing,” says the guitarist Brian May, enjoying the aubergine special at a smart Italian restaurant in Holland Park. “If you look for it, you’ll forever be disappointed.” Queen have had very little, I suggest. Does that seem fair? “It’s true,” he laughs. “But we get everything, from complete, overwhelming love to total, outright derision. I don’t take any of it on board, really. It would ruin you if you believed it. You’d go nuts. I care what people say, but both extremes are dangerous.”

The drummer Roger Taylor, sipping champagne on a leather sofa in his penthouse duplex overlooking Battersea Park, finds the whole situation hilarious. “Oh God, we’ve always got stick for everything,” he grins. “People say, ‘You’re mistreating the legacy’, and I think, well, thanks for your concern, but it’s my f***ing legacy.”

Five years ago, it was announced that the band’s Greatest Hits LP was the UK’s biggest-selling album of all time, and now Queen have signed a new record deal with Island/Universal, after almost 40 years with EMI. The band —effectively May and Taylor (Mercury died in 1991, while the bass player, John Deacon, keeps his old colleagues “at arm’s length”, according to the guitarist) — will be spending the next 12 months revisiting their history.

The anniversary celebrations begin with a photography exhibition — Stormtroopers in Stilettos — that opens this week and focuses on the band’s nascent, ultra-pouty, satin-blouse-and-nail-polish years, most of the images coming from May’s own “air-conditioned and bomb-proof” archive. “I do look at those pictures in wonderment,” he says. “I’m so strange and angular and awkward and uncomfortable-looking. I used to be embarrassed by it, but now I feel really forgiving. It’s like looking at my own children.”

There's a basic truth there - you shouldn't be ashamed to reach a lot of people. What could be better than reaching a lot of people while retaining some intelligence?

Following that will be the re­release of their first five albums, from the ultra-glam, heavy-rock debut up to the panoramically ambitious A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, which marked the end of Queen part one. All will arrive as deluxe sets, with a wealth of extras, and all have been remastered by May and Taylor. The pair have been closer to their early material than they have been for years, and seem genuinely amazed by what they found. “You can hear how we wanted to be intense and passionate and heavy, but still very melodic,” May says. “We were always trying to find ways to fulfil what we heard in our heads.”

“What was always thrilling to me was when people really loved the records,” Taylor smiles. “There’s a basic truth there — you shouldn’t be ashamed to reach a lot of people. What could be better than reaching a lot of people while retaining some intelligence?”

Few groups can claim members born in King’s Lynn and Zanzibar, but then few groups are quite like Queen — “the most preposterous band that ever lived”, according to Mercury. May and Taylor met at Imperial College London in 1968 and formed a band called Smile. In early 1969, their own bass player introduced them to a friend of his called Farrokh (Freddie) Bulsara (later Mercury), who was studying art in Ealing. May and he had lived less than a mile from each other in Feltham, southwest London, but had never met.

“I remember the first time I went round to his house,” May says. “He wanted to play me Jimi Hendrix on his Dansette record player — he was totally obsessed with him. Even then, Freddie was a star — very shy, but he’d com­pensate by being grand and flamboyant. He was a serious dandy.”

“We got on immediately,” laughs Taylor, who teamed up with his new friend to set up a vintage clothes and art stall in Kensington Market. “We had a dream of being in a working band, but the only way to live was to sell the sort of outlandish clothes we loved. So we ponced around in velvet capes and tight trousers, and sold the look to other people.”

Freddie had his own bands, Ibex and Wreckage — the latter even supported the psychedelic journeymen Iron Butterfly — but both came to nothing. By late 1970, after he had tried out various day jobs, including working for a bootmaker, the friends came together as Queen. Taylor remembers their first gig being arranged by his mother: they secured £50 to play for the Red Cross in Truro. Soon after, they were doing regular gigs, and rehearsing, at Imperial College. The band signed to EMI in late 1972 and were introduced to the world with a showcase gig at the Marquee. Their first single, May’s Keep Yourself Alive, flopped on release, while their ambitious debut album also failed to make an impact. Meanwhile, David Bowie, for one, was developing into a huge success with a similar mix of high camp and hard rock. “It was a traumatic time,” Taylor says. “We always feared we’d been left behind. It took us such a long time to get any success.”

“Me and Freddie would travel up and down to our management on a No 9 bus, asking why nothing was happening or why we couldn’t get back in the studio,” May says. The band used downtime at a place Bowie had hired to record. The call might not come until 3am, but when it did, they would race in and work until the sun came up. “It was a shambles,” May laughs.

Queen embarked on a bout of prolonged, intensive touring, including an infamous US trip with Mott the Hoople. A Billboard review from 1974 admonished Mercury for “leaning a little too heavily on stage dramatics”, but that never bothered the increasingly devoted crowds too much. “Mott were perfect for us,” Taylor says. “They had an open-minded, very rock’n’roll, insane audience. They were liberated, colourful — not the normal rock crowd.”

“That was when we learnt how to be rock stars,” May smiles. “Just as you thought the day was over, one of Mott would burst into your room, loaded with bottles and whatever else, and off you’d go again. It was very, very full-on and very, very exciting.”

Fred wouldn’t get out of the van some nights. He and Brian had black-and-white fingernails, and literally wore dresses

All the touring made Queen II a proper hit; then Bowie helped out again by pulling out of Top of the Pops at the last moment. Queen filled in, and Seven Seas of Rhye became their first chart smash.

“We got our hook into the mainstream,” Taylor says. “The shows got bigger, but it was rough. Fred wouldn’t get out of the van some nights. He and Brian had black-and-white fingernails, and literally wore dresses, but the tough audiences in Liverpool and Glasgow and Newcastle loved us.”

The band’s third album, Sheer Heart Attack, pushed them over the top. The most heinous excesses were reined in, in favour of a streamlined, hit-delivering monster. Taylor describes it as “grand, but not preposterously so”. The single Killer Queen became their biggest hit yet.

Queen had other problems, however. Playing two shows a night on early tours left Mercury with nodes in his throat, and the band were in a “stifling” relationship with their management. “We were penniless,” May says. “They kept all the money and spent it on swimming pools.”

A new deal with Elton John’s manager, John Reid, promised to wipe out these worries, and the band soon delivered their next single, Bo­hemian Rhapsody. EMI turned it down flat, demanding a radio edit. No such cut was made, and the six-minute song stayed at No 1 for two months. The album that followed, A Night at the Opera, went Top 10 all over the world. Taylor laughs, recalling how, when Queen came to record A Day at the Races, they realised that Opera was “bloody impossible to follow up”.

All the looking back has made May and Taylor consider the 20 years that have passed since Mercury’s death. “These days, our creative fire is more like an ember that flickers occasionally,” Taylor says. May stirs his espresso and smiles. “I just wish he was here to enjoy this with us. He would love this. It was Roger and me in the beginning, and it’s Roger and me again, but Freddie’s always with us. He’s eternal, part of the fabric of every day of our lives.”

[marta-bee]

Let’s talk about good and evil, Good Omens-style. 

Pressing on with reading the book, I’m maybe two-thirds or three-quarters through the first chapter. Still not through! But War has made her first appearance, Aziraphale and Crowley are finally sobered p and decided to be god-parents, and I think I’m ready for another mental break. It’s hilarious. It’s harrowing. I am marveling at the sheer genius of the writing. And feeling for Aziraphale being stuck in his own goodness. He’s a cheeky bastard what with the bible-proof pages and all, but still so hemmed in by what he’s defined himself to be. 

Mostly I think I need to take a break, because there’s some really interesting philosophy going on here and I need to unpack it a bit to really feel his weight. 

Last week I’d stopped with Crowley and the Spanish Inquisition. Still feeling the *oomph* of that passage; but this week starts out with its flip-side, which had such an aura of hope to it, for me.

And just when you'd think they were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved. It was this free-will thing, of course. It was a bugger.

That’s one of my favorite things about humanity, how we’re capable of what my human-bound sense of morality connects with goodness. We’re both. We’re potential. And I think for Crowley, that potential is almost more important than what we potentialize into. Maybe it’s that humans have creativity and a spark that lets them do things stolid heaven and decrepit hell just can’t conceive of. But there’s something very attractive to Crowley about this ability change, to make a choice and not just do or be what they’re predestined to do or be, that’s very attractive to Crowley. If anything connects to what I think of as morality in this world, I think that ability for growth is it. A capacity to surprise and spersede your programming, for lack of a better term.

There’s actually a really delightful exchange I’d forgotten about, on the concept of free will, leading up to that snippet I quoted earlier:

Aziraphale had tried to explain it to him once. The whole point, he'd said-this was somewhere around 1020, when they'd first reached their little Arrangement-the whole point was that when a human was good or bad it was because they wanted to be. Whereas people like Crowley and, of course, himself, were set in their ways right from the start. People couldn't become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.

Crowley had thought about this for some time and, around 1023, had said, Hang on, that only works, right, if you start everyone off equal, okay? You can't start someone off in a muddy shack in the middle of a war zone and expect them to do as well as someone born in a castle.

Ah, Aziraphale had said, that's the good bit. The lower you start, the more opportunities you have. Crowley had said, That's lunatic.

No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

Aziraphale. The Enemy, of course. But an enemy for six thousand years now, which made him a sort of friend.

Crowley reached down and picked up the car phone.

Being a demon, of course, was supposed to mean you had no free will. But you couldn't hang around humans for very long without learning a thing or two.

Angels and demons can’t change; except of course they can. That’s the whole point of Satan, as Crowley points out later:

"What will happen to the child if it doesn't get a Satanic upbringing, though?" said Aziraphale. "Probably nothing. It'll never know."

"But genetics-"

"Don't tell me from genetics. What've they got to do with it?" said Crowley. "Look at Satan. Created as an angel, grows up to be the Great Adversary. Hey, if you're going to go on about genetics, you might as well say the kid will grow up to be an angel. After all, his father was really big in Heaven in the old days. Saying he'll grow up to be a demon just because his dad became one is like saying a mouse with its tail cut off will give birth to tailless mice. No. Upbringing is everything. Take it from me."

"And without unopposed Satanic influences – "

"Well, at worst Hell will have to start all over again. And the Earth gets at least another eleven years. That's got to be worth something, hasn't it?"

Now Aziraphale was looking thoughtful again.

"You're saying the child isn't evil of itself?" he said slowly.

"Potentially evil. Potentially good, too, I suppose. Just this huge powerful potentiality, waiting to be shaped," said Crowley. He shrugged. "Anyway, why're we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that."

"I suppose it's got to be worth a try," said the angel.

Satan can change. Satan did change. And Crowley, too, in the first passage; he decided to make a choice when that’s supposed to be very much a human thing. Even Aziraphale shows a real capacity to, not change his mind perhaps, but let himself be swayed, certainly That whole conversation between Aziraphale and Crowley over what to do about the antichrist reeks of motivated reasoning on his part.

"That's it, then," said Crowley, with a gleam of triumph. He knew Aziraphale's weak spot all right. "No more compact discs. No more Albert Hall. No more Proms. No more Glyndbourne. Just celestial harmonies all day long."

"Ineffable," Aziraphale murmured.

"Like eggs without salt, you said. Which reminds me. No salt, no eggs. No gravlax with dill sauce. No fascinating little restaurants where they know you. No Daily Telegraph crossword. No small antique shops. No bookshops, either. No interesting old editions. No" – Crowley scraped the bottom of Aziraphale's barrel of interests-"Regency silver snuffboxes . . . "

"But after we win life will be better!" croaked the angel.

"But it won't be as interesting. Look, you know I'm right. You'd be as happy with a harp as I'd be with a pitchfork."

He’s supposed to want good. He’s with heaven, that’s the definition of being heaven-aligned, to want good; and taking better as a synonym... yeah, probably if the win the Apocalypse (which they probably would), life would be more good. And that thought makes Aziraphale desperate; he’s croaking the words there, see? He’s torn between what he’s supposed to want and what he actually wants, and it’s all coming to a head. 

Then Crowley said it won’t be as interesting, something else entirely, from the heaven- or hell-aligned, and that’s when he starts to crack. It’s a rebellion, or at least a falling (sauntering vaguely downward, if you prefer); because he’s choosing something here too outside what he’s supposed to be working toward: not better, but more interesting. And thank Someone for that.

Let’s go back to that first exchange, though, where Aziraphale and Crowley are discussing free will. Because Crowley makes a really interesting point, both narratively and in terms of real-world philosophy.

Hang on, that only works, right, if you start everyone off equal, okay? You can't start someone off in a muddy shack in the middle of a war zone and expect them to do as well as someone born in a castle.

Ah, Aziraphale had said, that's the good bit. The lower you start, the more opportunities you have. Crowley had said, That's lunatic.

Aziraphale’s line is one I heard often enough from the Protestant-Christian side of my upbringing. Blessed are those who suffer for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And Crowley’s right: it’s nonsense to think people who are fighting all day every day to survive will ever be able to do as well at this free choice sanctification scheme as people who have the luxury of a bit of breathing space. Free will, for one thing, is meaningless if you don’t actually have two options to choose from; and the space (mental and otherwise) to actually make a decision.

Personally this isn’t the interpretation of Christianity I’ve found most useful, or consistent with the way I read the (Christian) Bible. It’s not that suffering gives you more opportunities for growth; there’s a sense of to-whom-much-has-been-given-much-will-be-expected shot through so many of Christ’s parables (the Five Talents, for instance), and of course there’s the line that it’s easier for a rich man to pass through the Eye of the Needle than to get into heaven; if you know your Biblical archaeology, that’s essentially saying you have to be stripped free of your baggage, which is the one thing rich people won’t be able to do.

Put another way: those who suffer, those who are poor and week, are blessed not because their suffering lets them achieve more heaven-points, but because they don’t need them precisely because they’re small. Whereas those given more resources, more is expected of them. I don’t think Crowley would approve of that kind of valorizing of smallness, but intellectually at least it makes more sense than what Crowley’s been twisted to think is correct.

I’m more a fan of the Aristotelian approach, myself. There are virtues that ought to motivate actions, but at the same time it’s all tied up in what’s possible for an individual. So a person who’s, say, OCD and deals with excessive anxiety might show more genuine courage in crossing the street than someone without that psychology would need to run into a burning building. Of course there’s certain maladies that make it impossible to exercise true virtue and we should feel pity for those people even if we don’t think of them as virtuous. But at least within certain limits, courage isn’t just about doing the most extreme thing, even necessarily what the situation demands, because courage is being guided by fear in the right way so we behave courageously; and if you’ve got more fear to navigate you need better courage than most to do the navigating.

That’s a much better way of thinking about things to me. Afflicted people aren’t better than those with a better starting out point because they get more heaven-points (whatever form that takes) or reach some better external state than people with a more favorable starting point; it’s that to even get to the same result as other people, they need more oomph, more grace, more whatever, because of all they’re pushing back against. It’s not fair, but it seems at least a more generous interpretation of the reality we’re all trying to struggle through.

Getting back to the book, though, I find it really interesting that Aziraphale and Crowley think of good and evil in these terms. It’s a sign of the headspace Heaven and Hell drive them toward, I think; to the point Crowley says they’re just labels for our side, those words don’t actually mean anything. 

But he’s still shaken by Barcelona. He’s still begging with Aziraphale- test them, sure, but not to destruction. He doesn’t want humanity to be ended, and it’s not for the more self-centered reasons that drive Aziraphale here, those lovely little bits of life on earth he finds so enjoyable. There’s a sense that he shouldn’t allow that to happen. There’s a should, an ought, a moral imperative still, even for a demon who’s been trying to tempt humanity toward his side for six millennia here. And while I don’t want to indulge on simple moralizing, there’s something at his core that won’t let him just let history do its thing. It may not neatly align with what heaven or hell is pointing for, that’s really the point, but there’s still an ought in play that’s somehow independent of all that.

Frankly, I find all that fascinating, not to mention a damned compelling narrative.

And War’s up next, I see. I need a readerly break, but when I get back, I think things are about to get fun.

[micheya]

The Sound of Music | Genshin x Reader

Characters:

Part 1: Cyno and Albedo Part 2: Dehya and Fischl (out soon) Part 3: Razor and Yanfei (out soon)

Prompt:

"Eggo, what instruments do you play?" "piano, cello, guitar, electric bass, double bass and ukulele"

Synopsis:

Of all the instruments you play, what's their favourite?

Content warning:

No pronouns mentioned. Second Person. Can be interpreted as platonic or romantic

Genre: Fluff

Word count:

Cyno x reader - 1009 Albedo x reader - 969

@favonius-library my submission for the gift exchange for @egnengg

Cyno - Guitar

Leading on from the previous windblume festival and his quite strange but fun insistence to committing to his role as an adventurer, he thought it was perfect that you knew how to play instruments, even if you didn't get round to performing often, you had immediately acquired the role of "Travelling bard, tenacious and tactful with every touch made when playing their instruments." quite literally his words.

In any case, a guitar was just the most practical of the instruments you played. Carrying a double bass and piano around certainly wasn't efficient, and asking for someone to carry them or for a carriage to travel across the nation would be expensive. "That and we're supposed to be experienced and seasoned travellers,” he'd say, but really what's a TCG match without you playing some good background music as he once again takes Tighnari and Collei down. (You still didn’t know what being seasoned travellers had to do with you carrying what instrument. You assumed, maybe he was trying to say travellers don’t carry more than they can handle, and are efficient in terms of travel weight).

While the ukulele had the same benefits, and was technically easier to transport, he just much preferred the heavier sound and diverse range of a guitar. It would fit his range in voice when singing, and honestly it sounds a whole lot more dramatic when monologuing at the beginning or near the end of a match. 

“You really thought such a move would work on someone as well versed as me?”, “I commend your efforts, you fought valiantly, but alas fell an inch too short.” and “And now begins yet another fateful match, another block in the road I have yet to carve a path through. I will emerge victorious.” and…

Well, you get the point.

Tighnari is almost resentful with the way you’ve been enabling him, groaning in displeasure whenever Cyno was or wasn’t playing. He seemed to always have something to say when near a TCG match. You’d think every once in a while he’d pull a book worthy quote, then he’d pop a joke right after and you’d instinctively stop playing to wallow in your disappointment. “I thought it was funny.” 

And some were! 

“Just not this one” you’d reply. Putting your guitar to the side for a bit, to relieve yourself from the ache of that day’s session. 

When your hands would ache on the journey of your collective vacation, he’d often stretch out your hands, while massaging ointment onto them. You didn’t necessarily need the help, but it sure did feel nice, and getting free supplements for your skin at the request of Cyno to Tighnari surely could be counted as another win. Especially when he’d be the one insisting you play, “If our tactful and tenacious bard could play some battle music for the oncoming duel, we would be most grateful.”, “Y/n, how are your hands feeling, up for some practice with your guitar?”, “I really like that last song, could you play it again?”, “I found this music sheet being sold by a merchant, it looked like it’d sound good so I bought it. How about you give it a go.” 

He was your biggest supporter, along with Collei and Tighnari, almost too big of a supporter   (though in your heart you don’t think it’d ever be possible). It was endearing, and you were happy to have someone anticipate your next little performance, no matter whether you played perfectly or made a few to many  mistakes.

When asked of any hobbies outside of Genius invocation TCG, he’d smile fondly and answer playing guitar with his family. Collei had one day gone to Cyno talking about wanting to learn the guitar after watching you play for so long, she thought it’d be fun, she didn’t know if she’d be interested in the instrument in the long run for herself but figured it would be a fun way to bond and also help with the rehabilitation of her fingers. 

He nodded, humming thoughtfully too, he had often wished for the opportunity to play with you, the thought of spending more time with you never ceasing to warm his heart. So plucking up the courage to ask you to teach them, the two bashfully yet filled with a steadfast determination, approached you with their newly bought guitar’s. 

 ‘Why not?’, you thought, “You already have your guitars, and this would be good for Collei… Let’s make a schedule.” and therefore began what would be a weekly session with Collei and, if lucky, bi-monthly Cyno would join due to his work schedule, (with Tighnari popping in to watch with some snacks). 

Off duty, the way Cyno would express himself would sharply contrast with the deadly aura he’d exude when interrogating wrongdoers. His neutral expressions on and off duty, while similar, would often have his co-workers tilt their heads trying to play ‘spot the difference’. His eyebrows would ever so slightly relax their barely seen creases now completely unseen, the slight downturn in his lips instead changing into a slight upturn. 

Many couldn’t put their finger on what exactly on his face had changed, but then again the fear that they had done something unknowingly wrong for the general Mahamatra to even be in their presence often clouded any sort of thought process they had going on. 

“What brings you here today, General?” 

“Be at ease, I’m just here to report on my latest mission. The perpetrators have been turned in, and so I’ll be taking my time off for the next two days.”

“Ah, so that’s why you’re in a good mood.” The Professor unknowingly let out a sigh with his chuckle, that’s why he seemed a bit different.

“Yes, I wasn’t expecting it to be so obvious, but really it’s to be expected.” Unable to hold back his smile at the thought of the next guitar session with you and Collei he nodded, “I was very particular in finishing this job quickly, as I’ll be going to visit my family.”

Albedo - Ukulele

 One of Albedo’s most recent wonders in his life is how you make his synthetic heart beat with joy when around. It’s always a joy to spend time with you, even when he’s busy with his experiments and hardly sees anyone all day. Those little passing-bys he manages to squeeze in when in Mondstadt for work has him counting himself fortunate. 

Especially when he knocks on your door to be greeted by the sound of small excited footsteps and a joyful, “Y/n! Y/n! Big brother is finally here!”

Whenever he hears that, he’s only reminded of Klee’s answer when he had asked how she could always tell it was him at the door. “Wow, Klee, you were right.” You smiled standing behind her as she leapt onto her brother’s leg in a tight hug, “He does knock to that rhythm. You really do have a good memory, huh?” You praised the little girl as she nodded an even bigger smile on her face.

“I know my brother the best.” Letting go of said brother she puffed out her chest, arms by her side to further showcase the pride she held. It was endearing, and she almost seemed to glow in the afternoon sun that peered through the doorway.

“I’m grateful to have such a caring sister like you, Klee,” Albedo said, patting her head, before finally entering your house, “So, what have you been up to today? Drawing? Learning some new music?” 

Barely finishing his sentence, Klee grabbed his hand and dragged him through the building, with a “Follow me!”, taking him to your music room where pillows, crayons, drawings and instruments lay on the ground. “Look, look..! This is me….and this is Y/n and,” The ‘and’ was elongated, “we’re playing in front of a crowd, and” again the ‘and’ elongated, “We're singing a song-” She dropped her picture and picked up a ukulele, one of two, Albedo’s eyes followed her, a soft smile instinctively making way, as he took two of the stray pillows on the floor, handing one to you and sitting down next to you who soon followed suit. “We’re singing this.” 

Klee took a breath, a little cough rumbled to clear her little chest, as she sat down (more like suddenly dropping her body weight without caution) and wiggled a bit more to adjust herself. One more exhale escaped from her with closed eyes before she slowly opened them with a smile again. 

Clumsy, but clearly well practised, fingers played a C chord, her first ‘down down up up down up’ strums, a little slower than the original tempo, but in the beat (which she was proud of) it was supposed to be in, “...You are my sunshine-” An uncontrollably bright smile appeared on your lips, as you swayed and nodded along to her, even with the little pauses between the change of chords. “You make me happy, when skies are grey…” 

Albedo glances between the two of you, seemingly pausing, despite there not originally being any movement. He feels warm, and overcome with an overwhelming fondness to the situation, a stark contrast to the type of intrigue he feels when researching new alchemic breakthroughs. Truly a different type of revitalisation, he thinks when watching Klee fumble but finish the performance nonetheless, glowing at the applause, hi-fiving and running back to the image she was previously explaining. 

It was a bit longer than a pass-by greeting (He would have to apologise to Timaeus for the late report), the three of you ultimately eating lunch together talking about anything and everything. All taking turns listening intently to the topics of interest each person had. It was more than just a normal pleasant afternoon stroll, there was an emotional connection strengthening with each visit, an invisible link formed with every activity spent together and a bit of time invested into learning more about the other person, with making an effort to get along with those they also loved. 

“So, Klee, what song will you be learning next?” Albedo asked. His body shifted ever so slightly, inclined towards her.

“I want to learn piano next. Twinkle twinkle little star.” She replied, mouth still full of food, “Can we, y/n?” 

“Oh, really? But you looked particularly good at the ukulele, are you already done with it?” He frankly was a tad bit disappointed, he thought she looked especially cute when playing it, and thought he’d be able to see future performances with it. 

“Don’t worry. You can see Klee play ukulele more another time.” The young girl responded, “I just really really want to play the piano this time. It looks soooooo cool!” 

“You really do know me well, Klee” Albedo once again smiled.

There seemed to be no shortage of those that day. There also seemed to be no shortage of those same smiles the next time he dropped by for Klee’s next performance, which was as cute as the last. He supposed that it wouldn’t matter what she played, she'd still look adorable. However, he knew he still held a bit of bias to how her voice sounded when singing along to you or her playing the ukulele. Maybe it was because that was the instrument he had seen her playing first. The one he first witnessed you teach her, and the instrument out of size and cost convenience she bought to learn along with you, kicking off this new implicitly agreed on rendezvous.

Yes, he was quite fond of watching you play your other instruments. But the ukulele held a slightly different emotional weight to it, he figured it was also these little bits of bias held within the heart of a person that made them human. On days like these, any doubt of him being anything but, would fade away.

A/n: Please reblog :')

[the-smart-house]

Say, Hermione, you’re a girl? (Pluck up the courage and ask!)

867 Words

(A/N: Warning, I stayed up way too late writing this and it's probably rushed.)

Hermione Granger, Minister of Magic, sits at her desk, well, it’s not hers, but it’s as good as. She’s never been one to be picky about working environments. Maybe she would’ve been in her school days, but ever since living in a tent for months, it hardly mattered. And, of course, she was given a spare office at Hogwarts. Headmistress McGonagall was more than happy to accommodate her.

Now she reads over important documents (she’d needed an enlarged suitcase to bring them all with her), deciding whether or not to allow her enchanted quill to sign them. Hogwarts is once again holding host to the TriWizard Tournament after it took another short hiatus, and she’d spent the past week busy preparing for the first task, so the papers stand in piles too high for her to see over. 

She glances over at the blue velvet envelope on the corner of her desk. A letter of gratitude from the Headmaster of Beauxbatons for organizing the event, especially after all the trouble was caused last time. The envelope is beautiful, with embroidery work, and a metal butterfly as the seal. The enchanted thing flits about the room, landing every so often.

Between one line of legalese and the next and knocking at her door breaks her concentration.

“Who is it?”

There’s a security charm around the office, to prevent curious or lost students from distracting her by wandering in, so she knows whoever it is must have already been approved by the wards. She isn’t scared so much as confused. It’s late, everyone else should’ve gone to sleep by now. In fact, she should be asleep.

“Ronald.” Her husband answers.

“Oh, well, come in.” She laughs. “You know you don’t have to ask.”

He comes in, holding a bouquet of flowers, all varying shades of blue. He looks nervous, but Hermione can’t think of why he would be.

“Ron, is that a peacock feather?” She asks, gesturing to the bouquet’s decoration.

“Oh, yeah. Mal- I mean Potter, gave it to me when I was stocking up on potions from the Apothecary. He said and I quote he ‘was happy to pull a feather from one of those pompous bastards.’”

Hermione snorts, “My, he really does hate those peacocks, doesn’t he? I wonder why?” 

“Yeah, I wonder.” Ron agrees.

But they both know why. The Malfoy peacocks belonged to Lucius.

“So, what’s the bouquet for, anyway?”

“Do I need an occasion?” Ron asks, sitting himself on the edge of her desk.

Hermione smiles, “No, but to get here you’d have had to appear into Hogsmeade, then take a carriage up to school. Besides, I know you’ve been busy at work. It’s quite a lot of effort to make just for flowers.”

“Well, you’re worth it . . . but actually.” He blushes. It reminds Hermione of their school days, Ron’s hardly ever embarrassed now. “It’s more important than that.”

“Oh.” She teases, leaning towards him.

He bites his lip, “Well, it’s about something you said to me 20 years ago. And I know I don’t say it, I don’t think we need to, normally, but I do still feel rotten about it, so I thought I would go and do it right this time.”

She cocks her head, thinking. 

‘20 years ago? Well, that would have been 4th year. I said loads of things that year. Is this about the tournament? I’ve told him it’s perfectly safe. He knows that. He didn’t seem worried about it. Is this about SPEW maybe?’

“Ronald, what’s this about?” She’s a little concerned.

He stands up, facing her, a look of determination on his face, “Hermione Jean Granger-Weasley, would you like to go to the Yule Ball with me?”

It’s one of the Minister of Magic’s duties to attend the Yule Ball of the Triwizard Tournament when it’s hosted in their country, of course, she was going.

She can only stare for a moment. Suddenly she’s not sure whether to giggle or cry. He waits patiently, holding out the flowers.

She ends up doing a bit of both “Oh, Ronald . . . well . . . you’re quite a bit early. Obviously, I’m going with you. Who else would I go with?” She stands up, getting on her tiptoes to kiss him.

“Oh well, you know, just making sure.” He jokes when they break apart.

“Yeah.” She hugs him again, holding him tightly, memories of the last tournament flashing through her mind. “I’m glad it wasn’t you, Ron.”

He nods. It pays to be just a sidekick sometimes. Hermione doesn’t think she could love someone who was always running from death. Ron is safe, and she loves him more than anything.

“I wished I’d just asked you back then, blimey I really was thick back then.”

Hermione shakes her head, “Eh, you just weren’t ready, but we are now . . . and you have real dress robes.”

“Oh, Merlin, don’t remind me. I’m so glad there weren’t photos.” A wicked grin corset shi face, “You know, Hugo is too young, but we could send them to Louis.”

“Ronald, nO. Flour would kill us, or just you.”

“Oh come on, just as a joke. You know Bill will agree with me.”

“Hmm, maybe. Let’s go home and see if we can even find those blasted things.”

“Okay, let’s go home.”

With another kiss, the two are off.

[maxwell-grant]

By no means do this now, but if you ever get the time recommending some good shadow fanfiction would be cool?

(Art by Michael Walsh)

Because fanfiction can be a touchy subject, I feel like I need to add a big caveat upfront that I don't endorse or necessarily agree with every single aspect of a fanfic take on the character, nor do I expect others to agree with mine for that matter. I've written Shadow fanfic and taken liberties aplenty with the material, and will probably take more if I get back on that saddle. This is just par for the course when it comes to fanfic. I’m not trying to be judgmental, I just wanna put this out here to try and prevent misunderstandings if possible.

There’s really not that many Shadow fics out there to begin with (especially not after the Conde Nast webpage purges of the 2000s) and not that many that I’d even particularly recommend, I’ve read pretty much all of them still available online as is. I’m gonna leave out some things that could reasonably be called published fanfiction, like the Tales of The Shadowmen stories featuring the character, and stick purely to what you’d find online. So here goes some of my recommendations

Works written by Cryptix / @oldschoolcrimefighters: I've said this before and don't think I can say it enough, but @cryptix23's posts on The Shadow's pulp magazines were one of the biggest deciding factors in making my liking for The Shadow turn into, *gestures at that masterpost on top of my blog, this. I owe her a debt I can never really repay for showing me the heart of this character in a way nobody else had, just by pointing out what was in the source material all along, and particularly regarding info on the agents where there was nowhere else to be found. I still greatly enjoy reading her own fics for the character and how she depicts the dynamics between the agents and The Shadow, and how much color and life they inject into these adventures. 

The Nexusverse Shadow / works written by evillurks: You can find some of the prompts written via their Deviantart account Shadowtricker. This one is a lot harder to find in it’s entirety and I think some pages for it are non-existant outside of the Wayback Machine, I compiled as many as I could find in a couple of Word docs for personal reading and probably missed several. It’s on livejournal and comprises a couple hundred (maybe over a thousand) posts of a Shadow RP blog, based around the idea of a somewhat aged-up version of The Shadow still living and active in the 1980s, interacting with an AU version of Myra Reldon (the protagonist more often than not) as well as other characters and worlds through a sort of multiversal crossover dimension thing. 

I haven’t had time to read all or even most of the long-form RP stories published but I have read most of their short snippets and I can definitely recommend them. These feels the most like Shadow pulps out of any of these I’ve read, there’s certainly a case for this to be the best version of Myra Reldon (taking everything that worked about the pulp version and doing it better) to the point I kinda default to this as my frame of reference for Myra at times, and though it’s not a high bar to clear, it’s the best take I’ve seen on a “The Shadow in modern times / out of his own time” concept, letting the character age and adapt to different times for better or worse, and still remain recognizably distinct and fiercesome.

Kimberly-Murphy Smith’s Shadow saga: Quoted this one briefly in another post. Will reiterate that, yes, there are aspects about this take on the character that I do find very disagreeable to the point I feel the need to point it out, but all in all: This basically takes the movie version of The Shadow and thoroughly combines with the radio, pulp and comics versions, as well as the other iterations of the movie story such as the James Luceno novelization and the Kaluta/Goss comic, and somehow makes it work.

It’s the best take there ever was on specifically the “movie” version of The Shadow because it’s structured entirely around making the inserted movie changes into a fleshed out character and universe for these things to be in. It did maybe the best job anyone had ever done, until Matt Wagner, of combining and editing all the separate takes on The Shadow into something cohesive and entertaining, as well as making his relationship with Margo work. I like it enough that it even went a long way in redeeming the movie characterization for me. It also did the one thing I absolutely think Shadow fanfics / modern works should be doing, which is introducing new agents aplenty to the fold that don’t overlap with the established supporting cast. 

Der Dunkle Adler by Keith Holt: A short one, it takes place in a German tavern in WW1 with soldiers sharing stories about encounters with the mysterious flying ace with a boogeyman reputation. Really good premise, really good execution, solid ending, this is the one that inspired me to do my own take on The Shadow’s war years (although not how I’d “canonically” handle it, for the most part).

Identities and the 8th Wonder by Matt Dennion: It’s The Shadow vs King Kong told through the perspective of his 3 main identities, as Lamont Cranston shows up to Carl Denham’s exhibit, The Shadow frantically struggles solo to save people from Kong’s rampage despite being completely powerless to do anything but temporarily distract Kong, and then, as The Black Eagle, he works alongside G-8 and his team to put down Kong for good. Not the only time I’ve seen this premise done and usually this kind of “spot the cameo” exercise bores me, but this one stuck with me for a long time as an excellent display of The Shadow fighting despite being hopelessly outmatched in a way he’s never been before, spinning plans and traps on the fly against an unsurmountable menace destroying his city, making mistakes (even fatal ones) in trying to save lives, and finding a way to overcome the odds and help save the day, to a grim resolution unusual for Shadow stories. It’s a little The Spider-y and in a way that works really well for me. 

Never to be Cheated by @saphura: Another short one. I like the premise, I like the prose, I like the characterization, the concept’s intriguing, very solid all-around and I tend to appreciate the more explicitly supernatural takes on The Shadow that emphasize the ring and it’s weird significance. 

The Life of an Agent series by Greg Daulton: This one sort of provides a bit of backstory for the main agents by showing how they could have met and joined The Shadow. I don’t have much to say about it but it’s pretty allright, more interesting as kind of a shorthand to get to know the agents a little better. 

Lineage by Matt Dennion and Tom Kurtz: It’s The Shadow, Batman, and Zorro (both the original and a descendant) battling across four decades to foil Ra’s al Ghul’s master plan. It’s this big epic that does a couple of things I do find interesting, namely 1: I think Ra’s al Ghul being the arch-villain of several different established characters (and even killing one of them), with big names and legacies in their own right across the decades works pretty well in selling him as a big immortal threat to the world at large, 2: I kinda like the idea of Shambala being presided over by god-like figures from different mythologies, I mostly hate Shambala conceptually and in entirety to begin with so anything mildly interesting for it is a plus 

In His Shadow by JanEyrEvanescence12: This one falls more on the “very loose reinterpretation of a lot of things and plenty of concepts I find brutally disagreeable, but it does some things interestingly enough that I still think it makes for a pretty allright read to go back to, and because it’s fanfic it’s easy to look at it more for what it is” side of things. It’s unfinished and I wouldn’t even particularly recommend it for it’s story, more so for it’s imagination and some of what it’s doing to reinterpret the character. 

Strange Bedfellows by Zath Chauvert: Cute, simple, conceptually pretty funny, and I’m giving away the twist here as is, but the Phurba becoming sort of Lamont and Margo’s weird dog monster, that likes Margo and still kinda hates Lamont, is pretty great.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

“[After the end relationships] I’d feel this odd combination of sadness and failure on my part, but genuine happiness for her. Genuine happiness, like a kind-hearted prison guard after a particularly audacious escape plan had gone very well indeed. I’d be like, ‘You go for it, yeah! I’d leave if I could.’ ” – Daniel Kitson, After the Beginning, Before the End

That audio clip got to me so much when I first heard it, because that was exactly why I never got into anything for the past ten years, until 2021. I occasionally met women on dating sites (really, really not often, but a few across ten years) and always told them that I know I don’t have the emotional capacity to do a proper relationship, and they said they understood, but it felt like getting them to sign a contract waiving their right to be upset about my incompetence in a scenario in which contracts do not work. It got to me to hear someone describe that feeling so accurately.

I mean, it’s not an exact match to me. Unlike Daniel Kitson, I’m just wired wrong; I do not have the excuse of saying it’s all because a relationship went bad ten years earlier and I never got over it. Though to be fair, I’m not sure it’s a great excuse when he says it either. I mean, I don’t know, and I can’t make assumptions about that stranger’s life. Maybe he really did date the best woman in the world in like 2003, someone so great that that breakup was worth talking about in every single stand-up show he wrote for the next ten years. Or maybe it just seemed like it would be a good explanation for other things if he turned that into something so huge that it was worth spending ten years talking about. Then again, maybe the ex-girlfriend he spent ten years talking about is a fictional character he invented for stand-up material. Maybe Daniel Kitson’s been happily married since 2008 and doesn’t really have a stutter. I don’t know.

Last year I did try an actual relationship, for the first time in a decade, and I made several posts on here about how I’d lucked into finding the best girlfriend I could possibly ask for, and all that is still very much true. There’s another comedy quote that might be relevant here, when Nish Kumar said his relationship was incredibly good with only one tiny little flaw, and if he could change just one thing about it, it would be: “Everything about me and my entire personality.” Because it turns out that if you’d spent years avoiding doing something because you know you can’t do it properly and doing it improperly will involve hurting someone you care about and then feeling incredibly guilty about it, maybe you should fix some aspect of that before just trying it anyway (I mean me here… I’m sure Nish and his girlfriend are very happy together and it’s fine).

Anyway, the point is that I experienced a breakup today, and the first thing I thought of as something to do about that was re-listen to the bleakest comedy show I’ve ever heard, which is Kitson’s 2013 one. He’s done theatre shows that are meant to be drama rather than stand-up comedy, and he’s done other stand-up shows that have dark depressing themes in them but also jokes and laughter-inducing whimsey and notes of hope. But in 2013, he did something that was in the stand-up category but just cold and bleak as all hell. His theatre show about the guy on the verge of suicide had way more hope in it than that 2013 stand-up show: After the Beginning, Before the End. That’s what I thought when I first heard it months ago, and that’s what I thought when I listened again tonight. It’s very, very good. But Jesus Christ, it takes desolate comedy to new levels.

I don’t think I’m going to write about that breakup beyond this post, because I am not Daniel Kitson. And because this blog is an escape for me and I would really like to use it to its full potential as distraction and escapism at the moment. But I thought I’d throw in one post to let people know that if you ever struggle with a relationship’s end, try listening to After the Beginning, Before the End. It’s on Bandcamp and it won’t make you feel better but it will make you say, “Oh yeah, that is what that experience is like.”

This is like how last year, I learned that if your friend dies suddenly while under a lockdown, you could try spending a week watching all of Simon Amstell’s sitcom/stand-up DVDs/those weird movies he made, and listening to a lot of Nirvana. I’m just out here sharing helpful tips, providing pairing options between parts of British comedy and really fucking shitty things that can happen in life.