#I’m so used to the ED that it only just registered that it isn’t a good thing you were there LOL

[skyloftian-nutcase]

i was stuck in the er for ten hours yesterday (watching those who came in after me go in for less and to start their labs what a joke where were MY labs) and the whole time i was just thinking "the boys would NEVER treat me like this"

Aw that stinks, they could have at least gotten your IV and started the blood work to save you some waiting time, we do that in my ED 🤔

You’re darn right the boys wouldn’t treat you like that! They’d take good care of you ❤️

[finniestoncrane]

Unburied!Riddler x Fem!Reader, word count: 6k commission: eddie is made for cuckoldery, particularly when he gets to stroke his ego as the bull. and reader is lucky enough to have captured his attention on the kink forum to provide his services 💚 commission me here! request info • prompt list • send me a request • kofi • masterlist minors DNI!! 🔞 cw: cuckoldery, videotaping sex, plus size reader, lil bit of humiliation and degradation, penetrative sex

There were plenty of hotels in Gotham that asked no questions and gave no answers when any authority came questioning. As long as the money was paid upfront, cash only, then you could do almost anything you wanted to within reason. The one you had chosen for your arranged dalliance was no exception, though it was one of the cleaner and more reputable ones. Worth it, however, for that semblance of safety and comfort for what was potentially a one-off experience. A trial. A taster. An adventurous step into uncharted territory. And it was going to be awkward, even just initially, so why not treat yourself. A strange encounter in a classy environment. 

Thinking about it, it felt almost like a dream. It was strange to know that you had been conversing with Edward Nygma, renowned and widely disliked criminal, for weeks now. Arranging this meet-up, contacting him through the burner email account you used for registering on the fetish forum. Secretly, you had hoped it wasn’t actually him on the other side of the screen. But as you made your way down from the room you had booked, you could see him in the lobby. Unmistakeable. Standing out, but fitting in seamlessly. Free of Arkham yet again, and fulfilling requests to participate in organised cuckoldery with strangers. 

It was an awkward greeting. He smiled knowingly, all too smug for your comfort, but something in the way he carried himself with what you felt was, despite his notoriety, an undeserved level of confidence struck a chord within you, a chime that resonated through your chest and sent vibrations over your skin. But despite him feeling secure and smug, confident in himself and his reputation, he still politely introduced himself which put you at ease a little. And the way he gestured towards the elevators to the rooms took away the nerves that wrestled in your stomach as you had been wondering how you were going to proceed with the events to come. 

“Shall we then? I’m a busy man, believe it or not.”

The elevator ride was quiet, a brief moment of small talk as Eddie asked how you were. You could only muster an awkward smile in response, thankfully saved from what was going to be a relatively snippy retort by the ding of the antiquated elevator reaching your floor. With an air of confidence, only somewhat forced, you led him down the hallway, smiling as you pressed the key card against the lock. 

You opened the door to the empty room and ushered him inside, gesturing to the space with an awkward grin before watching him enter and look around. He nodded as he took it in with a haughty air before pressing his fingers together and taking in a deep inhale. Irritated by what you perceived to be judgement, you pursed your lips together and took a breath before you spoke. 

“What? Got a problem?”

Folding your arms, you raised an eyebrow expectantly, waiting on his response. He turned to you, his eyes slowly shifting from your feet to your head, training his gaze on yours as he smirked. 

“It’s better than Arkham.”

With a slight laugh, you replied.

“I’m glad you think so.”

“That isn’t as great a compliment as you’re welcome to pretend it is.”

You rolled your eyes, but still smiled. His sense of humour, though you wouldn’t admit it to him, was delightful. Something you had always admired in partners, or people in general. Sharp wit, taunting, but in a way that excited you. You’d noted it in the interviews you’d read with him, remembered it from your email correspondence, and in person it had an even stronger effect. 

Ed definitely excited you. You had seen the images of him with barbara Gordon, old coverage of his previous arrests, snapped pictures of him by Gotham’s warped paparazzi. Always messy hair, a sweatshirt, his arkham jumpsuit. And while there had always been something about him that caught your eyes, you were faced with a far more obvious attraction as he stood before you. 

His dark hair was slicked back into a tidy, classic style. Every so often, he would reach his long fingers, well-manicured nails now, to the flat, neat lapels of the deep green suit jacket. His clean shaven skin was smooth, impossibly clear, and the sweet shade of brown seemed to have an almost golden hue to it, though you imagined the sparkle was due to the fog of attraction. Freedom suited him, and it suited your tastes. Especially as you noticed the slightest hint of ageing which had begun to show on the corners of his mouth and around his eyes. 

“So… are you wearing this? Do I get to undress you from your street clothes? Add an element of narrative to this little roleplay?”

Eddie’s voice had interrupted your thoughts so unexpectedly that you began giggling, unable to help yourself in the face of his charisma, the smug smile that creased into his cheeks, tittering like a school girl at the way his deep brown eyes seemed to hold you, magnetised and focused. 

“I’m actually going to go get changed into something a lot more attractive and a lot less comfortable. You can make yourself comfy in here, if you need to. I won’t be long.”

“Oh, please, by all means take your time. If it’s for my benefit, I’d rather you looked your best.”

Another eye roll as you made your way into the bathroom, turning quickly to hide the blush that had begun to heat your cheeks. And once in the bathroom, you took a moment first to catch your breath and calm yourself. You weren’t usually a nervous person, but something about him made your heart beat a lot faster than usual. Unsurprising, really, when you thought about it. It was Edward Nygma after all. A criminal. A handsome criminal. A handsome criminal who, without much doubt, was going to fuck you. He’d looked at your pictures, read your rules and stipulations and what you wanted from him, and had decided that he was happy to oblige. He wanted you.Or at least, he wanted to please you, which was just as good in your books. But the way his eyes lingered…

The notion of being desired by him made your chest shudder, a refreshed confidence that spurred you on as you quickly changed out of the sweatshirt and skirt you had on and into the lingerie that your partner had picked out. Something they knew you would look good in, and which would look good being taken off of you by Edward.

Leaning against the bathroom door, you rapped with your knuckles and spoke out to Ed. 

“Are you ready in there?”

“”Uh, yes. I’m a genius, remember? I’m capable of unlacing my own shoes in record time without any help, believe it or not.”

Rolling your eyes once more, and biting your lip to curtail the spread of the grin that rose on the corners of your mouth, you left the bathroom and offered Edward a smug smile of your own, knowing you looked exceptional. 

He sat on the edge of the bed, his shoes and tie off, suit jacket folded neatly on the back of the desk chair. The sleeves of his clean, white shirt were rolled up, showcasing his arms which were slim, toned, and covered in thick, dark hair. His eyes rolled over you, up and down, slowly, lingering, learning, as he took in the outfit you had changed into with a dark smile. 

Standing, your back leaning against the dresser, you folded your arms and watched as Edward managed to drag his eyes away from you and began studying the room again. The silence was uncomfortable for only a moment, but you had prepared yourself for that. This felt like a game of chicken though. Tense. Who would break first? It definitely wasn’t going to be you. You had known Edward for such a short time, but you were certain you couldn’t give him any win, no matter how small. And as Ed opened his mouth to sigh, you celebrated this minute win. 

“So what? They’re being cuckolded in spirit? Didn’t want to come watch the professional in person?”

Typically, yes, being cuckolded would involve you being in the room to watch as your partner was satisfied by another party, but you and your partner had come to a different decision.

“I think it was enough to know that it was happening.”

“Huh…”

Eddie walked around the side of the bed, an inquisitive and exaggerated frown on his face. 

“So, I suppose we don’t need to do anything at all. For all they know, I rocked your world. Which I would. But if they’re not here to witness it, then I can claim this time back and go and have a coffee. It’s the simple pleasures, y’know, when you get your freedom back.”

Raising an eyebrow, suspicion clouding every other thought in your mind, you questioned him in a somewhat sharp tone.

“You don’t want to go through with this?”

Eddie raised his hands defensively, shaking his head with a slight smile.

“Of course I do! Humiliation, ownership, rule breaking, taboos, viciously lewd sex. All of that is well within my wheelhouse.”

“So…?”

“But you want to as well. I can tell. Far more than just a quick dive into kink. And while I do think, no, know, it would be fun, I’m willing to risk it for something I would find even more delicious.”

You folded your arms in front of you, eyes narrowing as you tried to figure out what his game was. 

“And what might that be?”

He lowered his head, looking up at you from his furrowed eyebrows, mischievous smile changing the way he said the words. 

“I would like you to beg for it. Either you beg me, or I walk away. You can still them that we did this, pretend that you lived out your little cuckold fantasy. But if you want to really experience the good stuff…”

Ed��s hands flourished in front of his crotch, a gesture that made you grimace, but sent a tingle down your spine and left a heat in the pit of your stomach.

“... then I want you to look desperate.”

You scoffed incredulously, refusing to give in quickly despite being particularly inspired by this request. With a derisive hand motion you waved off his proposal, pretending it was ridiculous and completely out of the question. 

“We both benefit from this, Nygma. You think you’re any different from any other person who might have answered the call for a one-time bull to play out this experiment in kink?”

Taking a step towards you, Eddie leaned in, his nose almost touching yours, his hot breath on your lips and cheeks as he spoke. 

“I don’t think anything, I know I’m different. And so do you.”

You inched closer to him, noses pressed together now, unafraid of stepping to him in whatever kind of game this was. The tension, the adrenaline, the arousal, it was all more than you could have even imagined. 

“Oh yeah?”

Ed pressed forward even further, your noses squished together, chests almost touching as you both took deep breaths in and out. 

“Obviously, I’m the greatest and smartest man alive, duh.” 

“Smartest, huh?”

As he nodded, you let your body fall back ever so slightly, your lips pouting forwards as you whispered your winning statement.

“Not smart enough to notice the camera on the dresser though.”

As you pulled back, you smacked your palm on his cheek twice in succession, soft enough that he still stood, blank stare, the gears in his big brain turning to find a suitable retort. But he couldn’t find one. He knew he had to say something, but there was a burning excitement in his chest. Heartburn? He thought it could be. There was a faint sensation of bile churning in his throat. But it felt good. To be challenged. Someone who was going to put up a fight against his demands, against his sarcasm. Wit versus wit. You were someone he could genuinely have fun with. So, at the risk of sounding stupid, but knowing he had to have some give if he waned to keep you on side, he said the only thing he could think of. 

“I see. You’re recording this.”

Looking over your shoulder, you winked at him.

“Treasured memories. I only… perform… for one person at a time. Having someone, even them, watching me while I do my thing… the idea of it made me feel nervous.”

Eyes widening, Edward looked you up and down, taking in the vintage lingerie you wore under the sheer robe you had changed into in the bathroom, an outfit he had to admit had been clouding his mind and rendering his IQ in half since he’d first seen it. 

“You don’t strike me as the shy type.”

“I didn’t say I was shy. I said I was nervous.”

Parrying on the nerve he had clearly hit, Ed took another step closer to where you stood by the dresser. 

“What are you nervous about then? Worried you might be able to perform to my standards?”

You stifled a laugh which turned into a choked snort. Ed’s eyebrows narrowed as an irritated, but falsified, frown formed. 

“No, I’m worried this might be a waste of time. I’m beginning to think I should have been far more shrewd in choosing a potential participant. That I shouldn’t have let my partner jump at the chance for, and I emphasise that this is their words and not mine, ‘a celebrity’ involved in our sex life.”

“A celebrity, hm?”

Eyes rolling dangerously to the back of your head, you sighed and returned to the bed, untucking the tightly made sheets and setting out the lube you had brought for the occasion. You ignored his question until you were walking away back towards the dresser. 

“In name only, Nygma. In name only.”

The warmth in your smile was obvious, unable to be hidden as you enjoyed the back and forth. Strangely enough, he put you at ease, like you had known him your whole life. He picked up on the banter, the tone, never offended and never offending. Not truly anyway. 

Without breaking eye contact, you reached for the camera on the dresser. It was borrowed from a friend, loaded with your own memory card. Better to have these things separate from something like a phone or a laptop. Your private life, and Ed’s, you supposed, were worth protecting in any way you could. You looked up to him once through your eyelashes, a silent question asked as your fingers hovered over the buttons on the camera, one which he responded to with a slow nod. 

“I won’t beg, Mr Nygma, bu-”

“Ed. Eddie. Edward. Anything but Mr Nygma. I think formalities need to be set aside for an occasion such as this.”

Ignoring the urge to chastise him for interrupting, you continued.”

“I won’t bed, Ed. But I will say… I do want this. And while I’m still undecided on whether the choice of candidate was a mistake or not, I can hardly hide the fact that there’s an element of excitement that comes with you. One I’m keen to experience fully.”

To your surprise, Ed only nodded, self-admiration written over his face as he nodded in agreement. Not wanting to give him any more satisfaction from that little admittance of the truth, you turned away from him, bending in front of the dresser. You angled the camera as best as you could towards the bed. A high definition reflection on the side screen showed you the view, almost perfect, the bed behind you where Ed sat still, silently, and not so covertly admiring your rear in the position you were in. 

“Enjoying the view?”

“It would be rather pointless me being here if I didn’t, don’t you think?”

Quick, sharp. You were going to have to keep up with him, unless you wanted him to ever think he had the upper hand. 

“I don’t know, Mr Ny-... Ed… I do wonder how many prospects you have given your reputation.”

Ed laughed, leaning back on the bed, nimble fingers undoing another button on his shirt as he made himself more comfortable. 

“And you? Like what you see?”

It had been so quick, the nervous glance to the side, to where the camera sat just behind you. All three of the parties were consenting, but you weren’t sure how into it you should be. Jealousy might make a fire, but it was one that could potentially burn out of control. Sensing the question, understanding it before you had even really asked it to yourself, Ed offered what was conceivably a solution.

“Of course you do. Who wouldn’t? Look at me, I’m adorable.”

When you brought your eyes to him, you could see that he was looking directly into the lens of the camera. He was putting on a show. That made it just a little bit easier for you to play along with, calming your nerves, giving you some direction. And while words still weren;t coming to you, Ed was happy to continue the delivery of his own lines in this role which suited him so well. 

“You can say it. In fact, I might make you. Because, after all, what was even the point in letting me have you if you weren’t going to be a good little slut for us both and enjoy yourself?”

With wide eyes you swallowed the collecting drool as he looked at you, staring intensely as he spoke his next words, no longer focused on the audience, but giving his full attention to you. 

“Or is that question a little too hard? Too difficult for you? You can take it with you as homework then. Oooh, Professor Nygma… I like the sound of that… Do you think they let ex-cons teach night classes?”

You looked to him, smirking at the suggestion that he’d place himself in such a reserved position on the academic ladder. Returning your stare, he rolled his eyes and scoffed. 

“Oh, come on. I’m egomaniacal, yes, but I am a genius. I’d have to be pretty stupid to think I’m going to be the fucking department head with tenure. Not with my rap sheet… Babs might vouch for me though…”

He caught your eye, realising he had trailed off of the important events of the day.

“... maybe roleplay isn’t the way to go, I tend to get distracted with the details… Anyway!”

Eddie clasped his hands together, folding all but his two pointer fingers together and pointing them both, hands clasped behind him, straight at you. 

“Shall we begin?”

“An odd way to propose sex.”

Striking his cheek with his palm in a look of faux shock, Eddie gasped.

“Oh! I’m so sorry, how formal of me. Just trying to play the part here, y’know? What would you rather I said? Hop on the bed so I cna fuck you good and hard? Or something in between? You know, if we postpone actually having sex a little while longer, we could really labour over this and come to the correct answer if you want?”

Before either of you were really aware of it, the heel of your hands were pressed into his collarbones, fingers clutching his shoulders as you pushed him down flat onto the mattress, settling yourself on top of him, thighs straddling his waist. 

“Ah, now this is more like it! I enjoy a ‘take charge’ lover.”

But as the words came out of his mouth, you found yourself losing balance, his arms surprisingly strong for all that he was slender and toned, and he had you pinned down on your back in no time. Each of his hands curled around your wrists, holding your own arms above your head. He marvelled at you for a moment, allowing himself to indulge in the vision before him. Breasts spilling over the top of your lingerie, your hair in loose curls spread over the bedsheets like a halo. Your cheeks flushed as his dominance sunk in.

The way he looked down at you. Condescending, controlling, authoritative. Irritatingly sexy. It made you forget who you were and what you were doing. So much so that you had stopped pushing your wrists out against him, instead almost admitting defeat in your lovestruck stupor. 

“I hadn’t thought of you as someone who would give up so easily. I imagined you’d have a little fight in you.”

“Are you saying… you’d rather I was difficult to control?” 

He mulled this over, looking to the ceiling as if it held the answer, before his eyes shot back down to catch your gaze.

“No. Not at all. But I do enjoy a challenge. It’s far more… stimulating for me.”

With a gleeful giggle, you tried to struggle against him, wishing you had your hands free to hide your blush. You teased him, sticking your tongue out before you spoke.

“I know what we’re here for, but I’m not about to take orders from you.”

“Now that is exactly the kind of bratty attitude I was hoping for. If you keep that up, I’ll have no complaints to make.”

“Oh what? Are you going to give me a bad review otherwise?”

“We’ll see.”

He let go of your arms, his body still above you as he knelt on the bed, back straight, your hips closed in by his thighs. With his now free hands, he unbuckled his belt, slowly pulling the leather strap through the loops of his pants and tightening it around his knuckles. This display, the dominance, Ed could feel it soothing him, his chest swelling with pride at his ability to command anyone, or anything. Beneath the fabric of his pants he felt his cock, now semi-erect, twitching in response to the pleasure he received from the way you bit your lip, anticipating his next move. 

“Roll over and push your ass out.”

“Please.”

He was suddenly at your level, catching you as mid-roll and pressing his lips to the shell of your ear.

“You're mouthy, and yet you do exactly as you’re told. What a little conundrum you’re turning out to be. Does your partner take this kind of attitude from you? What am I saying, of course they do. A pathetic cuck? I’m surprised this was even partly their idea.”

You stayed silent, wriggling around onto your stomach and pressing your hips up and out towards Edward. It was a desperate display, but you felt like he was due some leeway. Besides, as much as you enjoyed being a nuisance, you wanted this just as much as he seemed to, so a little bit of giving in meant you could reassure him that you were still very much interested. 

He didn’t seem deterred, though, as you felt a soft thud against the base of your spine, a warmth on the skin as Ed lay his fully erect cock against you. His hips rolled softly, allowing himself the pleasure of friction as he spoke, almost in a whisper, but loud enough that he knew the camera would pick it up.

“So, how do I compare then? And there is a correct answer, so that better be the one you give me. And be sure to speak up, we wouldn’t want to miss any juicy gossip for the record.”

And then, quiet enough that only you would hear, his lips so close to your ear that his lips would be covered from the lens.

“Make sure to play it up for the camera. I want them to be seething at home.”

Trying to suppress your giddy glee, you kept your face away from the view of the lens, hiding the grin and the blush as you spoke. It wasn’t the best quality acting you could do, but you were flustered, nervous, and excited. 

“I hate to give you the ego boost, since you definitely don’t need it… but credit where credit is due, you do feel far more impressive, Eddie.”

“Mmm, it does feel good to hear someone else say it.”

Ed grabbed your hips, pressing his cock between your soft, plush ass cheeks. With what sounded almost like a trembling whimper, he slid it up and down, masturbating himself with your flesh, letting his fingers dig deep into your love handles as he held you in place, fingernails making impressions in your skin that you hoped would last long enough for you to admire them later, alone.

You nodded, biting your lip to hold back the guttural groan of ‘yes’ that longed to come out. But nodding wasn’t enough for Ed, evident by the way he reached for your cheek, hand caressing it gently, holding you firmly in place. 

“I asked you a question. It would be impolite not to answer it. Unless of course, you don’t have an answer… but I don’t expect that you’re truly that stupid, despite knowing that my assumptions are never incorrect.

Nodding again, you made sure to utter a clear answer alongside the motion.

“Yes, I’m ready for you.”

His hand slipped away, thumb grazing over your lip as he went, and he busied himself with the lube by the side of the bed. 

“I would have expected a please, or a more excited tone. But I think I know you well enough now.”

With his cock coated in lube, he pressed the tip against your lips, sliding himself in easily, but carefully. The way he filled you up, pushing past your natural instinct to clench around him, made your mouth open in a silent gasp. Without realising it, you arched your back to give him a better angle, pushed your hips into him to help him enter you further. 

“Patience, dear. Good things come to those who wait.”

His condescending tone, the patronising way he chose to lecture you for wanting him, only made your desire for him stronger. And as much as you wanted to push yourself back on him, cheeks meeting his abdomen as you felt him squirm at being completely inside of you so quickly, you did as you were told and eased up, relaxing further into the mattress, lifting your ass higher, spreading your thighs wider, to make it easier for him to tease you.

Each little bit of himself that entered you felt better than the last, and you let out a sigh of relief as you felt his high, tight balls graze against you. Eddie stayed there, still, relishing in the warmth of your body for just a moment before he pulled back out, almost completely, and then eased in once more. Quicker this time, but still not as rough and ready as you wanted. You were aching for him, your body clenching around him to keep him inside of you. And you were certain he could tell how desperate you were. 

“Someone’s enjoying themself… is this a new sensation for you?”

You whimpered as he brought a hand down to your cunt, fingers pressed flat to it as he stroked your skin, your hair, teasing around your clit until you twitched, at which point he withdrew the source of satisfaction. Cruel, and in control.

“No answer again… well, how about an easier one for you?”

Eddie’s pace stayed the same, slow, almost painfully slow, but each thrust into your body was firmer, with more effort behind it, as he spoke. 

“Tell me, and please do note that this is a question simple enough that even your pleasure-addled mind will be able to answer it, so make sure that you do…”

You rolled your eyes, aware he couldn’t see the feature from his position behind you, and knowing full well that in his typical self-satisfied and sanctimonious way, that his eyelids would be gently closed anyway while he was talking down to you.

“... do they ever make you feel like this? Do they tease you to the point where you’re just desperate, close to begging like a good little slut? Or is it just me that makes you this wet, so needy? Hm?”

The silence between you spoke volumes. He was right, it was a simple question. And one with a very obvious answer. But it was one you weren’t quite willing to accept, not just yet anyway. And certainly not at the behest of Edward Nygma. Besides, he said he liked a challenge, so it was surely your duty in this role to hold out a little bit with any praise, despite the fact that you could have happily opened the windows and screamed to all of Gotham how good it felt to be fucked by the Riddler.

And Eddie seemed ok with you not offering him a response, despite his demanding one moments ago.

“Fine, fine. Keep quiet. I’ll remember that though! And I’m deducting one point from you. You’ll be taking home a terrible report card. Won’t they just be the picture of disappointment.”

It was hard to contain the excited, mischievous giggle that fell over your lips, but it was a sound that made Edward smile. He liked the confirmation that, over everything else, you were enjoying yourself. It would make for a far better experience for you, and for him, and for your partner, watching later, irritated that some previously thought ineffectual nerd had you begging for his touch and laughing along with his charms.

That stroke of his ego, the kind that had him purring like a cat, that was what he was hoping to get out of this. Imagining, as he had to with this particular set up, the emotional scarring, the ego bruising that your partner might experience at his hands, or at his cock. The way they might wince at his cheesy lines, at the way he spoke them without thinking, without worry, and still managed to have you swooning over him. That he was so unforgettable, to them and to you, so annoyingly wonderful, just as wonderful as he thought himself to be. Committing that kind of crime, against someone’s confidence. That was his specialty, and he was glad he found a legal way of committing it. 

“I don’t need you to give me the answer anyway… I’m Edward fucking Nygma. I don’t need help to be correct.”

His pace quickened, his hips barrelling into you as he fucked you harder and faster, picking up the speed and the force as he continued his self-congratulations, the demeaning, humiliating words aimed at your partner. 

“They can’t be any better than me… you’re so tight… so quick to bend to me… to fit me in… to clench around my shape…”

A hand clapped against the side of your rear, the most forceful thing he had done so far, spurring your heart into a frenzy.

“So tight… feels good to get stretched out, hm?”

You could feel his cock twitching, turning himself on inside of you as he upped the effort he was putting into the gimmick. Or was it even really a gimmick? Someone like him, like the Riddler, who for all intents and purposes seemed to forever be trying to prove himself… Cuckolding someone’s partner while complimenting himself seemed par for the course. 

“I feel like I can really leave my mark on you… would they like that?”

So much of your effort was placed into keeping yourself up and calm, not wanting to collapse into an almost immediate orgasm under his control.

“Would you like that?”

The way he fucked you felt amazing, different, not better, than your partner. But it was an experience you wouldn’t forget quickly. His tone, his arrogance, they all added to his specific brand of attraction. But the way his hands smoothed over your waist, around to your stomach. How he held his breath as he felt the slight jiggle of your soft skin. You could feel him, rutting into you like a stud, wild and animalistic, but his touch was still gentle, secure, as though he had remained entirely focused on the fact that he was still a stranger to you, despite the surface level of familiarity he seemed to exude.

There was care in the way he held himself. It made sense. He didn’t seem like the type to half-ass a job of any description.

It was probably why you felt yourself coming undone so soon, against your will almost. You’d wanted it to last longer, desperate to keep him for as long as you could. And luckily, even as he felt your arousal dripping out of you around his cock, he kept pumping, only gripping tighter.

“I’m not… done with you… yet…”

Ed thrust into you, keeping himself still for a moment as he maintained his composure, unsure of how much longer he could keep up, but refusing to succumb easily. The hair on his chest had begun to mat with the sweat that dripped down, his hair no longer slicked back neatly into the tidy style from before. Instead, strands draped in front of his eyes, giving him a dishevelled look that suited the deep, guttural grunts that poured over his lips like granulated sugar. 

“Does your partner let you get away with that? With coming first and then stopping?”

Even through the frantic moans and frenzied motions he still put the effort into the humiliation, ever committed to his work. 

“Keep going… that’s it… You’re still mine until I’ve filled you up. I wouldn’t want to have to leave without tainting what’s theirs. A moment preserved in time forever. Featuring yours truly.”

With a slight vocal flourish as he referred to himself, you could feel Eddie losing control, his fingers pressed tighter into your skin, but his grip loosening up as the rest of his body tensed up, almost completely rigid as he prepared himself for the orgasm that began surging through him. 

Ed’s seed was warm within your walls, and as he pulled himself free of your satisfied cunt you could feel it dripping down over your skin. A quick, playful smack against your rear cheeks told you it was over. Regretfully so, you mused. A brief encounter with the Riddler. It would have been disappointingly short had it lasted a week. There would never be enough of him. His ego was well-deserved, though you would never consider admitting that to him. 

You would have the memories though. Preserved for as long as the medium you stored it on was available. It wasn’t something you’d give up easily, and it wasn’t something you wanted to forget in any kind of hurry.

He had walked away, presumably to get dressed, so you followed suit, making your way to the bathroom. But as you approached the door, Ed moved in front of it,blocking you from entering. As you stood there in a stalemate, trying hard to keep your eyes from wandering down his smooth, slim chest, you folded your arms and sighed.

“Make as much fuss as you want, but you’re not going in there. Don’t bother with modesty, and don’t bother showering.”

In response to the quick shift in your eyebrows and your questioning gaze he continued.

“Pull up your panties and head on straight home.”

“But-”

“Think of it as a… souvenir. Surely your partner will be expecting you to bring them a little something back other than just the tape.”

He brought his fingers to your cunt, still wet with your own slick, sticky with his cum, spreading the collected arousal around.

“A little extra proof. Something to keep me in your mind a little longer. Although I doubt you’ll be able to forget me quickly. No one is.”

He laid a hand on your cheek, pushing his lips out in a pout as he kissed at the air in front of you. 

“And don’t try to argue about it. Let’s leave on a high note, shall we?” 

A wink, a grin that you couldn’t help but return. A high note indeed.

[venus-haze]

Creep (Bo Sinclair x Reader)

Summary: You’d grown up in Ambrose, but seeing the mill town’s glory days coming to an end, your family packs up and moves the summer before your senior year of high school. You never expected to return to Louisiana, let alone see Bo Sinclair again, but when your distant husband’s new job brings both, your life goes to hell faster than you can blink.

Note: Yet another Bo Sinclair fic because that man lives in my head rent free. Reader is a cis woman (and a horrible judge of character), but no other descriptors are used. Title comes from the TLC song. This one isn’t as implicitly dark as my other Bo fics, but it’s still there…lurking through the rose-colored lens of nostalgia. Do not interact if you are under 18 or post thinspo/ED content.

Word Count: 7.3k

Warnings: Death, murder, violence. Marital infidelity, emotional manipulation. Implications of kidnapping and prolonged captivity. Sexually explicit content that involves coercion (dubcon re: degradation, choking, bondage, and unprotected sex). Do not interact if you are under 18.

The Traveling Wilburys song that was playing in Taylor’s Drug Store only served to remind you of how old the place was. You stopped in to pick up a prescription for your husband and do some light shopping. The interior hadn’t been updated since at least the ‘80s, save for the digital cash registers and security cameras, a monitor above the glass doors where you walked in reminding you that you were being watched. You shuffled along the scuffed linoleum tile, shopping basket on your arm as you looked at the shelf of painkillers. 

Throwing a bottle into the basket, you continued along, trying to remember what you had put on your mental list and coming up blank. You went to the snack aisle, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to grab a bag of chips. While considering whether to go with barbecue or sour cream and onion, you noticed a man walk over just a few feet away from you, holding a basket filled with odds and ends. Normally, you minded your own business, but you turned your head to get a better look at him. He was tall, wearing a well-worn flannel shirt that made you wonder for a brief moment what it’d be like to have your legs thrown over his broad shoulders. Despite the trucker cap pulled snugly over his mess of brown hair, almost covering his eyes, his profile seemed hauntingly familiar until it dawned on you—Bo Sinclair.

You could remember Bo being a cocky troublemaker with no regard for his own personal safety, regularly getting into fights in and out of school. With a swoon-worthy smile and an attitude that made your mother emphasize to stay the hell away from him, you did have a bit of a crush on Bo, one that you kept locked in a box to wither and die when your family moved out of Ambrose. Years had passed, though. You’d changed so much since high school. Undoubtedly, he had to have changed too.

Fuck it. You’d been in town a little over a month and had yet to make any friends. It was nice to see a familiar face—a handsome one at that. 

“Bo Sinclair?” you exclaimed, as if you hadn’t spent the past ten seconds staring at him out of the corner of your eye.

As expected, his eyes didn’t light up in recognition when he saw you. In fact, he seemed startled and suspicious. Brows furrowed, he stood stiff as he straightened his posture as you approached him in the snack aisle. His hostility made you second guess your decision to approach him, but you’d already made a spectacle of yourself. Nothing else to do but follow through and hope for the best. 

“I’m not sure if you remember me. My family moved out of Ambrose at the end of our junior year, but—“

He relaxed a bit, giving you a grin that made you want to throw your wedding ring on the ground. “Now I know I must be dreamin’ if I see Y/N standin’ in front of me.”

You smiled. “Yeah, you look great—I mean, y’know, it’s great to see you.”

“It’s great to see you too, doll. Ain’t many familiar faces ‘round anymore.”

“Do you live in town, or—“

“Still in Ambrose, few of us left out there,” he said. “Most of the stores shut down, so I gotta drive out here for stuff.”

“Well, maybe I’ll see you around, then. I just moved here a few weeks ago, and I still don’t really know anyone.”

“You mean you and your husband just moved here,” he said, motioning to your wedding ring.

“Yeah,” you sighed.

You had just barely missed it, the gleam in his eye at your response. Somehow, you suppressed the chill that threatened to run down your spine. That much hadn’t changed about him, the darkness that reared its ugly head whenever you found yourself getting too comfortable around him.

Just as quickly, he claimed he had to get going but that you’d see him again. You gave him a half-hearted goodbye, taking his promise with a disappointing grain of salt. 

Looking at the bags of chips yet again, you grabbed several, intending to spend the rest of the day marinating in your loneliness with snacks and movies until your husband arrived home from work. Maybe you could talk him into getting takeout rather than you having to cook.

The half-empty house was eerily quiet when you arrived back, ignoring the unopened cardboard boxes that had been taunting you for weeks. Unpacking on your own was a monumental undertaking, since your husband worked so much during the week and spent the weekends doing home repairs that you weren’t able to take care of on your own. 

The red light on the answering machine was flashing, and as you set your shopping bags down, you would have bet a million bucks on who the message was from and what it said. 

You folded your arms as you listened to the message, huffing discontentedly under your breath. “Hey honey, I’m working late tonight. We hit some snags with that big project for the quarter. Don’t wait up for me. I’m not sure when I’ll be home. Love you.”

“Yeah right,” you scoffed aloud, pressing the button to delete the message.

Just because it didn’t surprise you, it didn’t mean your feelings weren’t hurt. You’d suspected for a long time that your husband had been cheating on you, though you could never prove as much. Still, it didn’t take a genius to put together the consistent late nights, how he’d finally arrive home with the scent of another woman’s perfume lingering on his clothes as if to taunt you. The part of you that was still a little bit in love with him had hoped that the move would bring the two of you closer together, and for the first week, it did. Then, he started at his shiny new job and found someone to scratch his itch just as quickly.

Being in a new town meant you didn’t have your normal circle of friends to gossip and air grievances with, and doing so on the phone wasn’t the same. You wondered if they’d forget about you eventually, tuck you away in a corner of their minds that they didn’t explore often. It wasn’t as if you hadn’t done the same, running into Bo Sinclair earlier that day was the first time you’d even thought about him since high school. 

Your morbid curiosity getting the better of you, you wondered where your old high school yearbooks were. Looking at the intimidating stacks of cardboard boxes on the other side of the room, you wracked your brain for where you would have packed them.

The cardboard box labeled ‘photo albums’ proved your gut right, as you dug through it to find your high school yearbooks. The familiar blue and gold design that covered each of the books sent a rush of conflicting emotions through you. Fuck, did anyone actually enjoy high school? 

Even back then, Ambrose had been such a small town that to save money, the county had the middle school and high school in the same building. There were so few of you left that it hardly made a difference. Students often had to go to surrounding high schools to participate in extracurriculars and varsity sports. Families who saw college scholarships as their kids’ ticket to a better life would put thousands of miles on their cars to drive them to and from practice during the school year. Your graduating class–at least what was supposed to be your graduating class–couldn’t have been more than forty people. 

Such a small town with an even smaller school meant everyone knew each other’s business. It was suffocating. Still, you opened the yearbook from your junior year of high school and flipped toward the back of the thin book, skimming past the R’s and to the S’s. You studied his photo, strange yet familiar. Handsome with his messy brown hair and cocky grin, you wiped at the paper, assuming there was some kind of smudge on his cheekbone until you realized, no, it was a bruise.

Beauregard Sinclair. You’d forgotten that was his first name, not that anyone ever called him that anyway. You certainly never did. Vandalism, fighting, and hot-wiring cars were his hobbies of choice back then. He did well in shop, you knew as much because your home ec teacher bitched about how the shop instructor pulled some strings to let him stay in the class, even after he swung a wrench in another guy’s face and knocked out three of his teeth during class. You’d see him at house parties, lurking in the shadows with a dangerous and almost feral gleam in his eyes, a beer in his hand as he waited for the right time to pounce on a tipsy target. More reason to stay away from him, your high school best friend who you hadn’t spoken to in years would whisper to you. He was young, then, troubled and immature. The man you spoke with in the convenience store was so different–confident and flirty, a strong, blue collar man you should have pursued instead of being blinded by the false promises of white collar domesticity. Damn.

You looked at the photo directly to the right of Bo’s. A boy with long hair who seemed to shrink into himself, as if to be in as little of the picture as possible. You squinted to make out his odd expression–the mask, how could you forget the mask.

Vincent Sinclair. You remembered Vincent, odd and quiet, though by the end of freshman year no one said anything about it. Bo had beat that out of more than enough people that the gossip was only whispers. The two of you had several classes together. Perhaps because you were one of few students who actually gave Vincent the time of day, your US History teacher had assigned you as partners for the final project, an essay on a past president with a visual element to accompany it. Luck was on your side when you reached into the bowl at the front of the classroom to draw the name of the president you and Vincent would cover—John F. Kennedy. While most of the other duos made poster boards or had someone dress up for the visual element of their project, Vincent had crafted an incredibly detailed wax diorama of the Kennedy assassination that almost got the two of you sent to the principal’s office because the blood splatter looked a little too realistic for your teacher's taste. 

You set the yearbook down, wracking your brain for the name of the youngest Sinclair brother, a friendly boy who’d run around Ambrose barefoot and often covered in mud. He had just started middle school when your family moved, but you’d seen him briefly in the two times you had gone to the Sinclair house to work on the history project with Vincent. Linus? Leonard? Lester.

In all honesty, you didn’t remember Lester very well. All of the Sinclairs were odd, though. Their father was a doctor, but not the kind your parents ever wanted you to go to. Their mother’s wax sculptures lost their appeal after you turned about 10, the last year that you’d go to the wax museum as a school trip. Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair had always been nice enough to you, but in the second grade, Bo had cut off one of Cindy Jacobs’ pigtails during craft time. He came into school the next day with a black eye, his already scarred wrists an angry red. You could never bring yourself to like the Sinclairs after that.

Slamming the yearbook shut, you closed your eyes, trying to keep memories of Ambrose at bay. Maybe it was for the best that your family moved. You took a deep breath before throwing the yearbook back into the box you found it in and retrieving a bag of chips.

Your husband had already put together the entertainment center, all of your VHS tapes and DVDs well-organized. They were one of the first things you unpacked. After briefly pondering your first movie choice of the evening, you grabbed The Postman Always Rings Twice and put it into the VHS player. 

As you settled onto the couch with your bowl of chips, the black and white screen was your security blanket, lulling you to forgetting your woes and instead on Lana Turner and John Garfield making the screen their home for the following two hours. You’d fallen asleep on the couch just before the movie ended, and your husband didn’t bother waking you up when he arrived home at some point that night, because you woke up with a crick in your neck and a note on the fridge that he’d be working late again. You threw the dirty plate he’d left in the sink at the wall. It didn’t make you feel much better.

The rest of the week dragged on as you went about unpacking on your own, your husband working his usual late nights. 

When you pulled into the parking lot of Taylor’s Drug Store the next Thursday afternoon, the same day and time you saw Bo the previous week, you couldn’t help but feel a little bit pathetic for deliberately planning your shopping trip around the possibility of running into him again.

Any negative feelings that festered within you on the short walk from your car into the drug store vanished as soon as you walked inside, seeing Bo standing in the shampoo aisle, brows furrowed as he stood in front of the dozens of bottles on the shelves. This time, however, he was dressed in a mechanic’s work shirt and jeans, his cap still pulled over his face, cigarette tucked behind his ear.

“Hi Bo,” you said as you approached him. 

He grunted in response. “Huh? Oh, hey, Y/N.”

“3-in-1 not cutting it?” 

“You always had a smart mouth?” he said, glaring at you. For a split second, you thought he was angry with you for your quip. “Vincent needs one with this Jujube shit in it. I don’t even know what the fuck I’m lookin’ at.”

“Jojoba oil? Here,” you said, grabbing a shampoo bottle and handing it to him. “He still got long hair?”

He nodded. “Yeah, he ain’t got it cut in a long time.”

“It suited him,” you said.

“I’ll let ‘im know you said so,” he grinned. “You always come in here on Thursday afternoons?”

“I do now.”

“Sure know how to make a guy feel special.”

“Do you wanna get coffee?” you asked, feeling foolishly bold.

He raised an eyebrow. “Your husband gonna be alright with that?”

“I don’t care,” you answered. So what if people thought it was a date, it’d be about time your husband got a taste of his own medicine.

“Well, we can at least pretend you care about your reputation and go somewhere a little bit outside of town.”

You smiled. “Sounds like you already got a place in mind.”

He wasted no time in throwing the rest of what he needed into his shopping basket while you picked up your husband’s prescription, not bothering to grab anything else that was on your list. It wasn’t like you had any other plans for the week.

You followed his truck to a small roadside diner, a greasy spoon type of place family would go to some weekends growing up as a treat. Even though you’d already eaten lunch before going shopping, the smell coming from the restaurant when you got out of your car was tempting enough for you to consider seeing what they had on the menu. 

The restaurant’s decor was simple, old yet charming, and as indicated by the handful of cars in the gravel parking lot outside, there weren’t many people there. A friendly-looking older woman sat you and Bo in a booth, the kind with worn out upholstery that cracked in some places to reveal the cushion underneath. You couldn’t help but smile when you sat down.

“Hi there, what can I get started for y’all?” the waitress asked.

“Just coffee for me,” you said.

Bo nodded, pulling the cigarette from behind his ear and sticking it in his mouth as he muttered, “Same for me. Thank ya, ma’am.”

“You got it,” she said.

He lit a cigarette, leaning back in the booth seat a bit. Of course he managed to find one of the few places that still allowed smoking indoors. Looking at his hands, you didn’t notice any kind of wedding band on any of his fingers. The waitress returned to the table less than a minute later with two mugs of hot coffee, pointing out the creamer and sugar at the end of the table.

“So, are you working as a mechanic now?” you asked, fixing the coffee to your preference.

He smiled. “What gave it away?”

“Shut up,” you laughed. “You were always great in shop class. Didn’t you help one of the teachers fix their car once?”

“Vice principal, and he got me out of a suspension for it.”

“Do you work around here?”

“Got my own place in Ambrose. You’d be surprised how many people end up with car trouble in the middle of nowhere.”

“I’m really happy for you,” you said, trying to suffocate the ‘what if’ scenario that began making itself comfortable in your mind. Visions of helping him run a small family business, a kid or two with your smile and his eyes hanging around left you with a lump in your throat. “How are your parents?”

“Folks kicked the can a while ago. Nothin’ really you could do,” he said with a shrug.

“Yeah, mine too,” you said. “How about your brothers?”

“They’re good,” he answered. “Just doin’ their thing.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Any weddings, or—“

“Nope. But how long ago d’you tie the knot?”

“‘Bout four years.”

“You don’t sound happy about it.”

You paused, considering how to phrase your answer as you played with the ring on your finger that suddenly felt like it weighed a ton. Growing up, you and Bo weren’t what you considered friends, but his familiarity made you feel comfortable. Still, you felt odd airing your marital woes to a man you were supposed to just be catching up with over coffee.

It was one thing bitching about it with your friends, most of whom had their own relationship issues, offering you the validation you were seeking. Your strained marriage had come to define your life, as embarrassing as it was to acknowledge.

“Things were good for the first year or so, but after that, I could tell he was getting bored. No matter what I did, it felt like I was an obligation,” you said. “Then the late nights at work started, and by the time I realized what he was pulling, I didn’t know what to do.”

“Why not get divorced?”

“I haven’t worked in years. I’d be on my ass, and he knows it. Sometimes, I think he took the job out here so he could fuck around behind my back and not have my family or friends breathing down his neck about it.”

“Maybe he does it ‘cause he knows you’ll be a pushover about it.”

You scoffed. “I ain’t a pushover.”

“He’s only been pullin’ this shit for so long because he knows you’ll just take it,” he said, the cigarette pointed at your face punctuating his harsh words. “Sometimes when people do ya wrong, they don’t get the message ‘till you show ‘em.”

Clenching your jaw, you looked out the window, avoiding the knowing expression on his face. He was right. Your marriage had been on the rocks for far longer than things had ever been good, but you couldn’t bring yourself to be the one to initiate the end. It was long overdue, and you knew with his history of infidelity that you could get a decent settlement from a divorce. 

Perhaps you couldn’t admit to yourself that your marriage was nothing more than a dead horse you just kept beating. Throwing in the towel on your relationship felt like failure and inadequacy, which left a sour taste in your mouth. Things couldn’t continue as they were, though. You had to do something. 

You frowned a bit, looking at the clock on the wall behind Bo. He startled you by snuffing out his cigarette in the ashtray on the table, the rattling bringing your attention back to him.

“Got somewhere you need to be?” he asked.

“Nope, he won’t be home for another three or four hours. I got nothin’ but time.”

“Me too.”

You nodded, suddenly feeling shy and averting your attention to the empty coffee mug in front of you, tapping your nails against the ceramic. He put his hand over yours, the clinking noise ceasing as you mustered up the courage to look at him again. As soon as your eyes met his, you were a goner the moment he whispered something about a nearby motel that charged for rooms by the hour, his lips curling into a dangerous grin when you merely nodded in response.

It felt like you blinked and he had paid the check, pulled you outside with him, and led you to his truck, your heart hammering like it did when you were sixteen. The motel was just as sleazy as you’d expected, but when the clerk handed the room key to Bo after he’d gotten it for two hours, you couldn’t bring yourself to care.

As soon as the door opened, it just as quickly slammed shut, Bo grabbing your purse from you and throwing it aside as he trapped you between himself and the wall, feeling as though you were shrinking beneath his intense gaze. When you tried to avert your gaze, he grabbed your chin, forcing you to look at him, and you did. For the first time since you were in high school, you really looked at Bo Sinclair. He was just as handsome and terrifying as you remembered him being back then. You wanted him just as much as you did back then, too.  

He growled his one and only warning, “I ain’t gonna be gentle with ya, darlin’.”

“I—alright,” you said.

Your hesitance didn’t deter him at all. The kiss that followed was devoid of any romance, but you supposed you’d settle for passion. You kissed him back, trying to keep up with how much of you he wanted. Your open mouth, free for him to claim with his tongue, suddenly felt foreign to you, as if it were no longer your own. Oddly enough, it reminded you of your first kiss.

Despite being a memory you hadn’t revisited in at least a decade, as you replayed it in your mind, you could remember it a bit more clearly. Bo’s truck idling in the driveway, the radio playing soft as the two of you talked. He’d driven you home at his mother’s request as you’d stayed at the Sinclair house late to work on your project with Vincent. You had kept glancing at the front door, waiting for it to swing open and one of your incensed parents to drag you out by your hair for being alone in a car with a boy for so long. 

Then, taking you by surprise, he had kissed you, far rougher than you’d anticipated your first kiss being, especially when he tried pulling you onto his lap when you actually kissed him back. You remembered your heart hammering in your chest when he pawed at your thighs. Something else had happened which you couldn’t quite remember. You had felt shameful and uncomfortable when you walked into your parents’ house.

You gasped, brought back to reality when he stripped you of your shirt and bra, exposing your skin to the cool air in the motel room. He unbuckled his belt, and so quickly you could hardly process what he was doing, he grabbed your wrists, binding them tightly with the worn leather so that your skin chafed whenever you so much as tried to move your hands. 

If anything, it seemed your shocked and worried expression only served as motivation for him to rid you of the rest of your clothes, pushing you onto the dingy bed as he took off his own clothes, his wild eyes glued to your nude and vulnerable figure.

He stroked his hard cock in his hand as he approached you. “You’re gonna take all of it, ain’t ya?”

“Bo, I don’t know—“

“Don’t act stupid, doll,” he grinned, licking his lips. “It ain’t a good look on you.”

He slid two fingers in your pussy, kissing you as he pumped them in and out of you, and you moaned against his lips. Sure, you’d used vibrators and dildos to make up for your husband’s lack of attention, but you were almost overwhelmed at getting the real thing from a man who actually wanted you, even if it was on such dubious terms.

When he pulled his hand away, your whine at the emptiness became a strangled moan when he slid his cock inside you. His thrusts were harsh and unforgiving, as if he were punishing you for something. Maybe you deserved it for being unfaithful to your husband. You’d initiated everything with Bo until the moment you stepped into the motel room. 

You felt helpless beneath him, your bound wrists emphasizing what little control you now had over your body. The way his thrusts became more erratic, sweat beading on his forehead, you knew he was close. You could only imagine the state you were in.

“Gonna fill you up real good,” he groaned.

“Not inside, Bo. Don’t—“

He covered your mouth with his hand that he’d used to finger you. “What? Lil’ slut don’t want my cock all of a sudden? ‘S all you were thinkin’ about when we were sittin’ in that booth earlier.”

You shook your head frantically, unsure of whether you were doing so in protest of his cumming inside you or his taunts. A pathetic whimper came muffled from your lips, and he cursed under his breath, thrusting harder.

“Your pathetic fuckin’ husband don’t make you feel this good huh?”

Again, you shook your head. Sex with your husband was painfully boring. This was more painful than pleasurable, and you considered if you were the pathetic one for being so desperate for attention you’d let your old high school crush treat you with such brutality. You hated how the smug grin on his handsome face made you feel, wishing for a moment you could smack it off of him. 

His calloused fingers were ruthless on your sensitive clit, and your stomach tightened as you felt yourself nearing orgasm, struggling to catch your breath with his hand over your mouth. You were dizzy and could feel a tear roll down your cheek from the overstimulation. Digging your nails into the leather of his belt that was still secure around your wrists, you writhed as you came, your pussy clenching around his cock. His own orgasm followed soon after, and you felt him bottom out inside you, cursing under his breath as his cum filled you. 

When he pulled out, he pulled his hand away from your mouth, leaving you humiliated at the string of saliva that went along with it. He, on the other hand, didn’t mind as he licked it up, almost to your disbelief. 

Freeing your wrists from the restraints of his belt, he threw it aside and settled next to you on the bed. You rubbed your sore wrists, but found the additional friction only made them sting more. For a split second, you wondered how you were going to explain your soreness and the raw skin to your husband. You let out a frustrated exhale. He probably wouldn’t even notice, or maybe he would, but not mention anything, the same way you never called him on the proverbial lipstick on his collar.

A pit of shame and discomfort formed in your stomach as you lay next to Bo, but chalked it up to cheating on your husband for the first time. He deserved it, after all he put you through. You’d thought about cheating on him before, wanting desperately to for so long, but in your mind, it was more on your own terms, as an active participant rather than how Bo threw you around. 

Turning over to face him, he was sitting against the headboard, a smoldering cigarette between his fingers. You scooted over, throwing an arm over his bare torso as you rested your head against his chest. He stiffened, but before you could move away, he pulled you a little closer. 

The two of you spoke softly for the next hour or so, before finally getting up from the bed. Neither of you said much when you got dressed, you waiting by his truck while he turned in the room key. He drove you back to your car, which you’d left at the restaurant.

“See you next week?” you asked quietly, the slightest bit of hesitation in your voice.

He grinned. “You can bet on it, darlin’.”

This rendezvous continued for the next few weeks, the two of you eventually stopping the pretense of getting coffee altogether and meeting at the motel once or twice a week. Whenever you’d see him, he’d have a new bruise or scratch somewhere, claiming it was just a byproduct of his work. That didn’t explain the scratches that looked like someone had clawed the hell out of his arm. He never mentioned having a cat, and while you knew better to assume the two of you were exclusive, you wished he wouldn’t lie about it.

Though generally you knew what to expect from him, it was as if each time you had sex he was testing your limits, pushing you further than you were comfortable at times. Still, you were worried that if you protested too much, he wouldn’t want to see you anymore, and you’d be on your own again.

“He’s gonna be out of town this weekend for a work trip, at least that’s what he says. You wanna stay over?” you asked as you got dressed, taking care to keep the fabric away from the fresh bruises on your hips.

“You askin’ me to defile your literal marriage bed?”

“Yeah, and I’ll cook dinner too.”

He laughed. “You drive a hard bargain.”

In the days leading up to Bo staying for the weekend, you could hardly contain your excitement. You didn’t know anyone to have a housewarming party, so you never got the chance to show off the house to anyone. It was neat enough, but you wanted the place to be spotless, each room cleaned and unpacked so you could indulge in your increasingly frequent fantasies of Bo coming through the front door at the end of the day.

As much as you didn’t want to admit it to yourself, you were excited for the gossip. You had a cordial enough relationship with your neighbors, but you wanted them to see the truck that certainly wasn’t your husband’s in the driveway, the handsome man leaving your house Sunday afternoon looking far too disheveled and satisfied for an innocent weekend visit. What’s more, you wanted them to hear you, no doubt what you were up to while your husband was away, word eventually getting to him that his wife was stepping out on him. Finally he’d get a taste of his own bitter medicine.

Your husband hadn’t bothered returning home after work on Friday, bringing his suitcase to work with him in the morning so he could head straight to the airport from the office. You honestly didn’t remember where he was going, and you couldn’t bring yourself to care. Not when a little after six, you heard the knock that made you rush to the front door.

A change from his usual work shirt, worn out jeans, and cap, Bo stood on your front porch in a dress shirt and nicer jeans. You smiled, giving him a kiss on the lips for the neighborhood to see. Moving from the doorway, you felt a bit nervous for him to see where you lived.

“Some place ya got here,” he said, looking around.

“It’s his. My name’s nowhere to be found on the mortgage,” you said.

“The guy buys a house like this and is barely in it?”

You shrugged. “I don’t get it either. I’ll give you the grand tour later, though. For dinner I was thinking chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, and I forgot to get a vegetable so that’s just gonna be frozen green beans,” you said as you walked into the kitchen.

“As great as that sounds, I was thinkin’ of startin’ with dessert first,” he responded, his gaze hungry as he took in the sight of you standing in what had become your natural element.

“The bedroom’s right up those stairs,” you whispered, glancing toward the staircase.

He grinned. “Lead the way, darlin’.”

Taking his hand, you led him upstairs and down the hallway, past the closed doors of the empty spare bedroom and hardly stocked guest bathroom. Your bedroom door, however, was wide open. You’d never admit the amount of time you spent cleaning it before he came over, at least wanting a nicer experience than the dingy motel rooms that the two of you had been accustomed to having sex in.

He hardly took a look around before pushing you back onto your own bed, kissing you as he slid one of his knees between your legs, pressing it against your clothed pussy.

“You know what I wanna see you do tonight?” he asked, his voice low.

“What’s that?”

He practically spat his answer back. “Ride my leg like a bitch in heat.”

Your breath hitched, and you nodded, wasting no time in moving over so he could sit on the edge of the bed. When you reached for the hem of your shirt to start undressing, he clicked his tongue.

“Clothes on, darlin’,” he said, patting his thigh. 

You could feel your face heat up as you settled on his lap. Doing this fully clothed left you with a sense of humiliation you weren’t sure whether or not you liked. Slowly, you grinded your hips against his leg, holding onto his shoulders for support. 

His hand slipped between you, his fingers rubbing your clit through your panties while the other squeezed your hips. You could feel your orgasm building up when he pulled his hand away from your clit suddenly, giving you a cruel grin in response to your look of betrayal.

He smacked your ass. “C’mon now, you gotta work for it.”

It didn’t take you long to get a rhythm going from there, squeezing his shoulders and letting out high-pitched whines of frustration as you chased the pleasure that seemed just out of reach. Something in your core tightened, and you desperately tried to get more friction from the rough material of his jeans to your aching, clothed pussy.

Biting your lip, your eyes fluttered shut for a brief moment as you considered the situation you were in, humping the leg of a man who wasn’t your husband in your shared bed while he was none the wiser. It was wrong and debauched, but it made you wetter than your husband ever had.

“Jesus Christ, ya really are a lil’ bitch in heat, gettin’ my nice pants fuckin’ soaked,” he taunted, flexing his thigh as you rutted your hips against it.

You moaned, hiding your face in the crook of his neck. “Bo, fuck, I’m close.”

“What the fuck?”

You felt like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on you upon hearing your husband’s voice. Turning around to look at him, he was furious—and marching right toward you. 

He pulled you off of Bo, and you landed painfully on the ground. Just when you thought he’d start in on you, he punched Bo square in the jaw. Pushing yourself off the floor, you narrowly avoided the two men beating the shit out of each other in your bedroom. Your husband managed to get a solid kick to Bo’s leg, and his knees buckled as your husband readied himself to land another blow.

“Fuck you! Get off of him! Get off—“ without thinking, you grabbed the lamp off of the nightstand and swung directly at your husband’s head.

The ceramic base shattered upon impact. He collapsed to the ground, blood slowly pooling from his head, though his limbs continued to twitch. You dropped the broken lamp, eyes wide in shock at what you’d just done.

“Oh my god. Oh my god—what am I gonna—“

You looked to Bo, who despite his split lip, was shockingly unbothered by the situation as he stood up. From the floor, your husband emitted a groan, choking on his own blood.

“He’s still alive. Oh fuck, call an ambulance or-or—“

Bo rolled his eyes, grabbing the cord from the lamp and strangling your husband with it until he stopped making noise. You turned away to vomit on the carpet.

“Are you finished? ‘Cause the way you were carryin’ on, there ain’t no way one ‘a your neighbors haven’t called the cops by now.”

“What do I do? I mean, can we say it was self defense?”

He kicked over your husband’s limp body, showing you the damage in all its bloody glory. “That look like self defense to you?”

“Fuck. Bo, I can’t go to jail. I can’t—“

“Darlin’, no one’s goin’ to jail. You just gotta do exactly what I say. Got it?” he grabbed your face, pulling your attention from your dead husband to him. “Got it?”

“Okay,” you whispered.

He instructed you to break the lock on the front door, and then gather any valuables you could. Your stomach lurched when you realized he wanted to stage a break in, your husband an unfortunate casualty and you abducted in the fray. It was genius, but worrisome how quickly he came up with the idea. 

As you set the scene of your now ex-husband’s untimely demise, you tried not to think about how Bo didn’t hesitate to kill him, cold and calculated. No time to consider the implications. You’d made your bed, and there was nothing to do but lie in it—except you couldn’t even do that, because your husband’s blood was splattered all over it.

You took one last look at the house, knowing whatever Bo had in mind involved you leaving and never coming back. The thought evoked no emotions in you. The place was never a home, somewhere you felt particularly attached to. Instead it served as a facade, an ornate casket that was fit for your marriage to formally be laid to rest in. 

Upon returning to your bedroom, you grabbed your duffel bag, the one you’d kept packed and hidden in your closet for when you’d meet Bo at the motel. Shoving what you could into the bag and your purse, you attempted to appear casual as you walked outside, putting your things in his truck and waiting for him to join you. You wished you had time to clean yourself up before leaving, feeling self-conscious of getting your husband’s blood and your own wetness on the passenger seat.

Your heart skipped a beat when he opened the driver’s side door a few minutes later, but you calmed down a bit when you saw it was him. Wordlessly, he started up the truck, leaving the headlights off as he slowly drove up your street. When he turned them on a few blocks away from your house, you let yourself breathe a little easier, but you weren’t off the hook yet, not until you got the hell outta town. 

“You passed the turn for the motel,” you observed.

“We’re not goin’ there.”

“Then where—“

“Ambrose. Ain’t no one gonna look for ya there.”

“It’ll be all over the news. Anyone could see me and turn me in,” you said.

“They won’t. Trust me,” he said, his firm tone giving you the assurance you were seeking.

He continued driving, the old country backroads becoming more and more familiar to you. So many times when you’d thought back to your youth, you wondered what was a dream or a memory, but these narrow, pothole-littered roads confirmed it was all real.

As soon as you saw the sign welcoming you to Ambrose, you felt like you could finally breathe. The sign had definitely seen better days, but it didn’t matter. You were home.

“God, it’s like nothing’s changed,” you whispered, mostly to yourself as Bo drove up Main Street, passing the places your teen spirit would haunt when life seemed so complicated but was still so simple. 

“A few things have,” he said, “but yeah, ya know how people are ‘round here.”

You nodded, about to respond when you noticed the gas station coming up. “Wait, can we stop here? I wanna see your shop.”

He hesitated for a moment but obliged, wordlessly pulling into the station and turning off his truck. You got out, leaning into him when he wrapped his arm around you. Being in your hometown again filled you with conflicting emotions, but the safety you felt on Main Street slowly began to fade as soon as you stepped foot in the gas station.

“So you run this place on your own?”

“Yeah, just me. Not enough people comin’ by to warrant extra help, but—“

He was interrupted by the sound of metal clanking and what you could have sworn was a woman’s muffled screams.

“Bo, what was that?” you asked, anxiety lacing your words as you stepped closer to the source of the noise.

He sucked on his teeth, the sound making your skin crawl. “Nothin’ you need to worry about.”

You stopped in your tracks, feeling yourself become dizzy as the distressed yelling didn’t stop. It sounded far too clear to be your imagination. “What the hell did you do?”

“See, if I was you, I wouldn’t be showin’ so much hostility to the man who saved your ass from the electric chair,” he snapped. “‘Less you want me to drag your ass to the cops that’re crawlin’ all over your house by now?”

“Bo, c’mon,” you whispered, feeling tears well up in your eyes.

“Just get back in the damn truck,” he said, his voice low. 

You nodded, dazed as you made the short walk back to his truck. Sitting in the passenger seat, you put your head in your hands, trying to figure out how your life got fucked up so quickly. You’d never know what brought your husband home from his work trip early—if that was even the case, maybe he had his own plans to cheat over the weekend that didn’t work out, his usual squeeze standing him up. 

There were so many what if’s that raced through your mind, like if you hadn’t impulsively grabbed the lamp and made the situation go from bad to worse. The way Bo had escalated things to absolute worst by dealing the death blow to your husband, cold and calculated, suddenly made sense. Even if your husband had approached the situation calmly, you knew Bo wouldn’t do the same. It would have come to fruition at some point, but you didn’t expect it to be so soon.

When Bo returned to the truck, you noticed the fresh blood on his knuckles as he grabbed the steering wheel, but didn’t mention it. What was there to say? It wasn’t like you could do anything to help whoever he had trapped somewhere in that gas station. It did explain the scratches and bruises he’d show up to the motel with.

“So, how about that dinner you were gonna make? I’m starvin’,” he said nonchalantly, the key in the ignition making the engine roar to life.

Staring blankly ahead, you whispered something about mashed potatoes. He gave you an unreadable glance from the driver’s seat before throwing his arm over your shoulder and driving up the street to his place, the Sinclair family’s house atop a hill. When he drove past your childhood home, the lights were on inside. You wondered who lived there now.  

[spade-riddles]

Submission: Ed Louis Harry and 🎃

I’m the Ed Sheeran anon and further to the Ed, Taylor Harry, Louis links I wanted to add some further things if that’s ok!

Taylor refers to someone being ‘too young to know the song intertwined in the magic fabric of our dreaming’, among many other Louis Tomlinson song titles littered throughout TTPD.

In bejewelled we see the clock showing exile ends at midnight. The clock has the numbers 3,6,9 missing. Louis has plugged ‘3,6,9’ since 2022 alongside his album faith in the future. 3,6,9,(12)??. He has also said: he has written songs for other artists that he isn’t credited on. He also said his third album will be the kind of music he wants to make, that album 2 - faith in the future(3,6,9) is a kind of bridge between album 1 and the sound he wants to have by LT3. This was a reference to genre but if we are building to midnight.. LT3 would be his midnight like TS12 is Taylor’s. He has just registered a song called ‘Hello’ which reminded me of message 13 🎃.

wildest dreams and perfect are songs overtly related to each other, perfect was written by Harry and Louis and to Larry’s seems to nod to their relationship, despite the appearance it’s about Taylor in the same way HStyles is the Style red herring.

Within the days of the 1989 TV drop, Louis made a very vague unprompted Larry denial on Twitter that was immediate picked up and ran in the press (without once mentioning the word Larry in the Twitter question or response). I believe this took place on 31st October: the veil between this life and the next, thinner than ever🎃.

Again in the week or so lead up to the TTPD release, Louis made a Larry denial in an interview stating Larry’s are so ‘intertwined with what they believe’ there’s nothing he can do, nothing he can say - so be it. I checked the dates and it’s close to an anon spade msg here from April 10 that could maybe reference that? Aside from the intertwined parallels in his denial/Tays music and the 🎃, this denial has also been picked up to be referencing the lyrics of the song total eclipse of the heart… My only one, smoking gun, my eclipsed sun ❤️

He quietly dropped his live tour album the week of TTPD and tweeted a screen shot of him ‘listening’ to a song of his thought to be about closeting, but the song was paused at ‘13’ seconds which Louis fans have taken as support for Taylor.

The track Peter is no. 28- to Louis fans that’s his number the way that 13 is Taylor’s. He has it tattooed on his knuckles. Peter, my lost fearless leader, he also has a song called fearless asking someone if they remember being young enough to get it wrong in front of all these people. Taylor ordered ‘Louis champagne ‘ for $28,00 recently. I really think she wants us to be looking at Louis.

I did notice ‘face the music’ (a Louis song) written in the 🎃 messages as well as ‘they’ll say we’re lucky’ or something, another song of his ‘we were lucky once, I could be lucky again’. 🎃also constantly references faith like faith in the future.

But daddy I love him! Nods to harry’s t shirt (prior to BDILH searching that phrase would lead to basically just Larry edits and fanfiction) and also lyrically nodding to kiwi ‘I’m having your baby! it’s none of your business’ which for Larry’s evokes babygate. Louis has been loud on tour, changing a lyric in back to you to visibly mouth ‘I love him!’ every night for months. BDILH references braids which I think comes up again and again in the album, these braids (and as 🎃 says ropes) and intertwined fabric of our dreaming, or ‘stiching we were just kids babe’ pointing to Louis: ‘we were kids just trying to work it out’ .

As the other Ed Sheeran anon said, Ed tweeted about his best friends wedding on the 28th and Harry’s Joni lyric referenced the town hall- as does BDILH. 28 is Louis number, believed to be for this reason- some sort of commitment on that day so 28 September is a super significant date- I read somewhere Taylor did a cover of a song changing a lyric to ‘love was born on the 28th of September’ when it was supposed to be the 21st.

The Ed album fascinated me as both a Larry and Gaylor. It is littered with so many symbolic references to LT,TS and HS and then understanding the lyrics I find it’s difficult to discern if they are about Louis, Harry or Taylor narrative wise. It has a clock as one of the art symbols, showing its nearly 12 and a track called midnight. There is literally a ‘Bowery bar’ reference.

Ed’s song ‘friends’ has always felt like it was about Larry and he has played shows with imagery of a couple that looks like an exact clip of Larry in the background. 🎃 talks about friends - and friends of friends and I think as the other anon said Ed is such a close link between these two parallel stories. In promo of autumn variations he brought up how he loves pop and how great NSYNC and Britney Spears are. To me these are two tortured poets- one being a boy band including Lance Bass, a closeted band member who has since come out .. and that Taylor exchanged a friendship bracelet with. Two being Brittney who is evoked on the album thank u Aimee/*~ if you seek amy~. It seems Easter eggy that Ed referenced those two artists but that could be a reach.

I’ve been looking into Harry, Louis and Taylor’s allusions to ‘home’, ‘America’ and ‘London/England’ and they all tell an interesting story together about the safety of England, Taylor has loved that place for so long . The track English girl in an American town raised eyebrows if you consider it to be American girl in an English town, or, if the girl in the song is Harry. Lighthouses, darkness, the cold, ships, burning things down, being with your lover at night and then having to go to work for weeks.. these things are all in Ed’s album.

Taylor could make out the fairy lights through the mist in so long, London and in Ed’s song England the picturesque town ‘has fairy lights on the building supplying us power from the sea’. On open day, the town is cleaned up: the stones are hidden, the lighthouse is retired and a new one that’s taller hired. The town has a pub with a flag working flexible hours (glass closet, in my mind). The album also refers to things being in shade, or things being painted black (‘a home made of stones painted black’ for e.g). That song England solved the mystery of the nonsensical phrases in keep driving in Harry’s house: ‘choke her with a sea view, tooth ache, bad news, just act normal’ . The stone homes painted black have a glass window out at the back of them for the view (the sea view) as in, contrived moments giving a look into the privacy of the homes. There is only one sign in the town and people slow down to look on open day in Ed’s song, but harry says should we just keep driving?

The autumn variations cover art symbols have a grave with ‘bad news’ written on it, and a ring for ‘good news’. Along with a bird that looks like the tattoo on his chest and other lyrical allusions like to having a cup of tea ☕️ with a friend called Matilda; who doesn’t have to go home. (who is so Taylor in my mind). On tour he always began the song: this song is for a friend of mine it means a lot to me and I hope one day it will mean a lot to you, too. which I always found confusing but if comingoutlor is happening it makes sense to me as Matilda tied up her hair like it’s no big deal (like the now tight hair pins, no longer dropping, shown in TTPD vids) and is hosting a party with her friends but not the family who never showed her love (to be clear I don’t think of that so literally to be saying her blood family)

There are so many other parallels in their music: Harry’s been praying, ever since New York. Louis says he knows you left a part of you in New York. Taylor says… you know I left a part of me in New York. New York for me is the 1989 era: the girls and girls boys and boys, it is an interrelated, intertwined closet and why I think 🎃 references ‘wildest dreams’. We also have a lot of imagery parallels with the moon and saturn, ladders, clocks, the wizard of Oz, Alice in wonderland that all three use. As well as meeting in the hallway..

In exile WB and TS say they gave so many signs, all this time!!!! Louis has a song called all this time: ‘just have patience…’ ’building mountains hoping that they’ll turn to gold.. the friends we make, the love it takes it’s worth it, all this time’ reminds me of karma taking all my friends to the summit.

He has references about fabricated fairytales, half told stories and love being a lie in his music. One or two music videos show a group of people all standing together, uniting to be victorious I believe it’s in ‘we made it’ or ‘silver tongues’. (I am an I think Louis or both Harry and Louis are William Bowery clown, if you can’t tell🤡!! ). Louis has ‘sat down with a master plan’ and TS is a ‘mastermind’, which written on a shirt worn by Louis recently. Louis being with prince william within days of Taylor was so suss to me!!

Sorry that’s so long - I recently have clicked that my two separate interests in Gaylor and Larry come together in so many ways🙊🙊

[priderock-inc]

Shenzi's Den

Lost in busily regretting every life choice that has led him here, Zazu nearly misses the building.

The skies open up just as he enters the upscale apartment building; pouring bucket after bucket of rain onto the pavement outside as he glances around the foyer, trying to find the elevators without making eye contact with anyone. 

It’s a nice place. A very nice one, all cool grays and muted accents and paneled walls. There aren’t any signs, which Zazu could really make use of, but he manages to locate the elevators after a surreptitious bout of glancing around. 

Stepping into an unoccupied lift, he consults his phone for the fifth time.

4th floor suite B, 2nd door after you turn left

Thanks a lot, Sarabi. 

He reaches the fourth floor without incident, turns left, and there’s the door. Zazu listens carefully, hoping for a clue as to what he might find inside, and then sighs deeply.

He knocks.

Silence.

He waits ten seconds and knocks again.

The door swings open, and Zazu nearly drops his file.

Skull-shaped clips is the first thing he registers, hot pink and thoroughly incongruous, nestled in Scar’s hair and pinning the long locks back from his face. Open-collar white shirt is next, followed by fang necklace and-

“Zazu?” Scar's usual drawl is slightly nonplussed, effectively jolting the advisor back into the present. He blinks. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

Oh. Right. Zazu holds out the file, hoping his hands aren’t shaking. “I’m just here to drop this off.”

Scar makes no move to take the papers. “On a weekend? Do you ever stop working?”

“I- y-" With a monumental effort, Zazu gathers his shredded composure. “I will have you know that I wasn’t doing anything else today anyway and Sarabi asked me to give you these. Which, I might add, she says you left in the office last week.”

Scar’s lips form a thoughtful moue. Zazu fixes his attention very firmly on a particularly fascinating section of doorpost.

“Never mind. Well, come in. I’ve got company at the moment, so what’s one more?”

“I’ve got to get going.”

“You just said you weren’t doing anything else today.”

And with that, he saunters back into the apartment, not bothering to look and see if Zazu is following him. 

Zazu follows anyway. 

The place isn’t decorated in as modern a style as downstairs, but it’s certainly no less elegant. Zazu tries not to peer too obviously about. Deep green carpeting, clawed furniture in a luxurious dark wood, several rare-looking volumes on the bookshelf near the window against the far wall. An expensive-looking camera on a tripod in the middle of the room, standing a few feet away from a salon chair and a small, high worktable heaped with what looks like cosmetics and makeup tools. Shenzi’s puttering around these last three; Ed is on the floor tinkering with some black plastic strips and wires and a small remote.

“You’ll have to excuse the mess,” Scar says, gesturing at his other two visitors and then, somewhat ruefully, at his head. “And these clips. I’m just helping Shenzi with a little project.”

Zazu coughs. “I… see.”

“You know, it was only yesterday that Mufasa was encouraging me to ‘stop spending so much time cooped up all by yourself’. Here I am, hosting not two but three workmates in a single day. I can just imagine how proud he’s going to be.”

“Scar, whattaya doin’- hey!”

A weak greeting is all Zazu can manage before a bolt of lightning streaks across the window, its intensity matched only by the glare of sheer annoyance that Shenzi levels at him. Ed looks up and waves. 

“What’s he doin’ here?” Shenzi whines.

“The poor thing is being worked to the bone,” Scar replies briskly, sauntering over to the salon chair and perching himself on one of the armrests. “And to think it’s begun to rain- we can’t possibly let him out in such a downpour. Make yourself at home, Zazu.”

“I really need to get going.”

“But Scaaar, we were doin’ a video,” Shenzi complains. “My viewers are countin' on me! Do you know-“ she turns to Zazu- “how long I’ve been workin’ on gettin’ him to agree to be in this makeup demo?!”

“I really can’t imagine, but-”

“You can stand here.” She steers Zazu behind the tripod with a surprising amount of force. “Make sure nothin’ weird gets on camera, okay? Like if somethin’ happens in the background or out the window or whatever. Then we can stop and do a retake.”

“I’m hardly qualified to babysit a cosmetics tutorial,” Zazu says tartly and, if he’s being honest, just a little desperately.

“Yeah, well, neither is Banzai, not that he showed up to help. So it’s gotta be you. Aren’t you, like, super good at catchin’ mistakes? C’mon! Don’tcha wanna watch me turn Scar into a-“

“No, I most decidedly do not!”

Scar pouts. “Zazu, you wound me.”

Shenzi grabs the back of the chair, shoves Scar into it, and spins it around so Scar’s facing away from the camera. “Less chatter and more makeup-in’, guys. Scar, no movin’ till I say, remember? Hey, Zaz, we’re already rollin’, right?”

“What- live? Shenzi, I did not agree to-"

“Nah, we’re gonna edit it all together at the end. Ya don’t even have to be in it, so can you please chill out already? Okidoke, Ed, hit it!”

Ed presses a button on his remote, and neon-green smoke spirals forth from the black strips on the floor. 

“Hey hey heyyy, whassup and welcome back to Shenzi’s Den! It’s ya girl, the fierce, the fabulous, the bone-afide beauty Shenzi Marie, coming at’cha again with some hot new stylin’ tips on this rainy Sunday. As you might’a noticed, we’re not actually in my den today... and that’s ‘cause I’ve got a suuuuuuper special surprise for my favorite viewers! Well, not so much a surprise if you read the video title. Can you say... guest! Of! Honor?!”

Ed hits the fog machine again. Zazu has to admit the overall effect is impressive.

“Yeah, that’s right! We got a brand-new canvas to play with today. Wanna say hi, Scar?”

Scar spins around to face the camera, raising one hand and wiggling his fingers in a leisurely wave. “Hello, YouTube.”

He winks at the camera, making eye contact with Zazu, and smirks. 

“So remember that lewk y’all have been beggin’ me to try out?" Shenzi grins into the camera and begins ticking off on her fingers. "Dramatic, edgy, bone-chillin’ fierce? I’ve just been waitin’ for this guy-" she thumps both hands onto Scar’s shoulders- “to finally let me show him off a little. We’re talking smoky, sultry, angles, color, the whooooole shebang! So it’s everyone’s lucky day, especially his-" she claps Scar on the shoulders again- “because this look is gonna knock your socks off!”

“Explains where all my laundry has been going,” Scar drawls, and Shenzi cackles. 

“Yeah, yeah. Personally I think the dryer’s out to get me, and Banzai has this whole conspiracy about aliens. Okidoke! So first we’re gonna do some moisturizin’. We’ve got the same sponge as last time, link in the description below, but always make sure ya clean it off well in between uses...”

She reaches for one of the innumerable pots on the little table and begins smearing white stuff onto Scar’s face. 

Much of what follows flies entirely over Zazu’s head. He has no idea what ‘priming’ and ‘foundation’ are, or why ‘matte’ versus ‘gloss’ matters, but he certainly gets some of it; Shenzi’s delighted exclamations about her favorite Outlander Eyeliner that she’s planning to use (“ We’re talkin’ black as my soul on a Monday mornin’, people!”), and as for “these cheekbones could cut glass! ”, well. 

“Now onto my favorite part! We’re really gonna make these peepers pop. Gonna be using this palette here for that olive-gold royal vibe with a little emerald smoke for flavor, and of course, we’re gonna highlight that signature scar."

“Ah, yes, my pièce de résistance.” Scar lets his eyes fall shut. “Smoke away.”

Blacks, browns, golds, and greens fly from Shenzi’s brushes. Zazu sincerely hopes nothing has been happening in the window that he’s supposed to be catching, because he hasn’t been watching the window at all.

“Villainous!” Shenzi cheers. “I mean, I am magic! Okidoke, guys, we’re gonna craft some wings now, these babies are gonna cut through steel-”

“Or mountains of paperwork, perhaps,” Scar adds lazily, winking again. He tilts his chin slowly upward to give Shenzi a better angle. “If only.”

Zazu exhales. It’s going to be a long afternoon. 

[hoidn]

tl;dr spanish has formal pronouns and english doesn’t and this is what FOMO looks like for me, a nerd.

one of the downsides to engaging with media in languages you don’t know is that you're locked out of a lot of the experience because things like cultural/social references and contexts don’t necessarily register or have meaning when they’re not in your frame of reference (and while this happens at times to everyone generally, because even within one’s own culture it’s impossible to be aware of ALL the things, it’s much more pronounced when coming entirely from outside of it). 

of course for me it’s primarily about language itself and shades of meaning and aughghg it’s so frustrating to know that there are linguistic nuances failing to have an impact either because the translation is (of necessity) filtered through the interpretation of the translator and they can only convey so much, or because their presence is simply not readily apparent to me. but i want to knooooooow. LCDP is the first non-english language show i’ve ever been fannish about and it’s certainly been an education in how much i actually remember from four years of high school spanish classes lo these many years later. it’s more than i thought, but it’s mostly just isolated words and short phrases, and it’s largely recognition rather than immediate understanding. it’s like i’m on a two-second delay, so that by the time my brain has (a) picked out the word/phrase from amongst all the unfamiliar sounds, and (b) found its meaning, i’m two sentences behind what the characters are saying. mostly it’s been more distracting than useful.

however!

my bits and pieces of spanish sort-of-understanding have allowed me to solve the mystery of something that had been sitting in the back of my mind with a question mark since i first watched THAT SCENE in 1x12. (well, once i got over the initial “omg they’re making out!!!” reaction, anyway.) according to the english subtitles, raquel says “about you” then stops and repeats “about you” again. i couldn’t figure out the significance of the repetition or how her next line “i think it’s time we stop being so formal” followed on from that. it was only on a rewatch, when i already knew the meaning of the dialogue and didn’t have to focus on the subtitles, that i actually listened to what she says. and i realised they’re still using the formal pronoun ‘usted’ with each other. so the first time she’s saying “de usted”, but the subsequent times she’s saying “de ti”. hence less formal! and since modern standard english doesn’t have formal pronouns, in a literal translation both ‘usted’ and ‘ti’ are the same word: you. achievement unlocked! VICTORY!

for confirmation i switched my subtitles to ‘european spanish’ and, first of all, how cool is it that they get different colours for different speakers?! that makes it so much easier to read! stupid english subtitles all being in white. then, because i am A Nerd, i transcribed the spanish to compare to the english translation, and i put the important bits into google translate to see what it came up with (bolded in brackets).

english:

R: I want you to know I'll never pull my gun out again. Yeah? S: Okay. R: Or frisk you or have any doubts about you. S: Good. R: About you.... About you. I think it's time we stop being so formal, isn't it? S: I couldn't agree more. R: Yeah. S: I agree. R: Me too.

spanish:

R: Quiero que sepa que no voy a volver a sacar la pistola nunca más. Sí. S: Ya. (ed: i definitely hear him say “bien” but w/e) R: Ni a cachearle ni a duda más de usted.  S: (ed: i hear him say “bien, bien” but there’s no dialogue at all in the captions here) R: De... De ti. De ti, de ti, de ti. Ya va siendo hora de dejar da tratarnos de usted, ¿no crees? [“It's about time we stopped talking about you, don't you think?” <- yeah, see, the literal english translation of that sentence means something quite different to what the spanish sentence means, which is sort of how we ended up here] S: Yo creo que es momento de tutearnos, sí.  [I think it's time to call each other, yes. <- i feel like we’re missing a word, there, google] R: Sí, sí. S: Yo creo que sí. [I think so] R: Sí.

from my perspective, even with this rough translation, there’s a lot of nuance left out of the english subtitles, and that’s really disappointing. it’s... i don’t want to say it’s cuter or more adorable in spanish because that sounds like i’m being condescending about the language itself, when it’s actually that the english translation leaves out elements of the original that convey a level of meaning. the kind of babbling repetition they’re doing in spanish, which is what makes it adorable, isn’t even hinted at in the english translation. basically, the adorableness of the moment is baked into the language of the original; it’s supposed to exist as part of the emotional landscape. but if you rely solely on the translation, you don’t really get that, or the way it kind of builds momentum. (maybe it comes across better in the dubbed version? idk i can’t stand dubbing.) 

anyway, while i don’t understand the translator’s choices here wrt to that, obviously they did the best they could with the usted vs ti issue. (this is one reason written media is better for translation: you can have footnotes!) still, i have to wonder whether someone who’s not familiar with spanish would really get the underlining meaning of the “stop being so formal” line.

and i genuinely mean no disrespect whatsoever to the translators of this show or translators in general everywhere because i am incredibly grateful to them for making the world so much richer and there are so many wonderful media i’d never be able to watch or read without their work. but this single exercise in explication has just emphasised for me how very much i’m missing out on and it makes me sad that short of thoroughly learning every language on earth there’s no way for me to fix the problem to my own satisfaction.

i really hate that.

(also i have so many more questions about the whole translation process for visual media now. for starters, i have the suspicion these people were translating without a net (i.e. a script) and had to go on what they heard. if that’s the case, it’s a ridiculous way to go about things and infuriates me as someone who used to do court audio transcription. because i can attest that transcription of multiple speakers is hard enough even when you can isolate individual mics and you only have to work with one language. the idea of having to translate from a single sound file on top of that? fucking hell. i hope they got paid very well. (lol of course they didn’t.))

[moonsuke]

Woke up today with the shinsekai yori ED playing in my head, and also feeling really affected by one of the spoilers I read yesterday? It’s strange because I wasn’t really that affected when I first read it. I think the fucked up-ness of it didn’t register since I didn’t let myself linger on it and was focusing on crying over Shun lol. I’m guessing I was dreaming of it that’s why I woke up understanding the gravity of it? But it’s weird since I would usually remember I was dreaming, if not the actual contents... But I’d to be lingering on it in my sleep because I woke up really feeling very affected by how fucked up it is… Maybe my mind supplemented and embellished it with even more fucked up-ness since I didn’t fully read the spoiler lol…

Very aligned with the subconscious theme this anime is covering huh.

Anyway, as I woke up more and more those feelings started dissipating and me being emotional about Shun took over… Guess my conscious self still isn’t registering the fucked up spoilers and prefers to focus on crying over Shun lol. Maybe I need to actually get to that part of the anime before it really hits me… It’s a really fucked up plot point though… I wasn’t all that invested in the plot until this whole Shun thing happened and I guess now this.

And now about Shun… I’m still not over it 😔

I just rewatched it so I can move on to the next ep and man, I think I cried even harder lmao. I started sobbing when mutated Subaru (Shun’s loyal af dog) appeared and you can just HEAR Shun’s voice starting to break and he went “I never wanted to do any of this” 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

The VA, the animation of the little wasp balls as Shun tried his hardest to focus his attention on manipulating them so as to not let his subconscious take over warping everything, the balls wobbling when he was talking about Subaru… the BALLS ALL FALLING AS SUBARU GOT KILLED PROTECTING SHUN FROM THE TAINTED CAT SENT TO KILL HIM.

Like screw Shun and Saki, or Shun and Satoru, his deepest bond is with Subaru which is just so fucking sad. Shun has always been a lonely boy for some reason despite having a good family and close friends, yet he acknowledges Subaru as his only confidante, again for some reason.

According to “karma demon” lore, loneliness and isolation leads to an accumulation of “karma” and subsequent loss of control over it which creates a being that loses control of all their powers.

Yet “karma demon” is also called a sickness, Hashimoto-Appelbaum syndrome, which is a disease that strikes humans with psychic powers. Kind, gentle and reasonable children are the most prone to it which makes Shun even more sad… Perhaps because they’re such good people, their subconsciousness are particularly dark? I mean, fears and all have to go somewhere.

So for now I really don’t know which explanation is the right one. I’m leaning towards the second, and Shun’s loneliness was just a plot point to make him a more tragic character. The sickness prob amplified it because he has to stay away from everyone else (whom he hasn’t killed yet). It’s made clear he killed his parents, but I’m wondering if he killed everyone else in his village too since everyone there is missing. Or maybe they got wiped by the “ethics committee” to keep Shun becoming a karma demon a secret.

Oh yea… This is probably also the start of us finding out the extreme methods needed to maintain a society of walking nuclear bombs. Justified or not, I’ll have to watch more to decide, but the “fucked up” spoiler I mentioned before had something to do with this too so…

But the way they handled Shun did seem reasonable. They tried to seal his powers, gave him (restricted from children) information to maybe help him and for him to add on his experience, gave him pills to off himself, and eventually sending Tainted cats to kill him once his transformation is irreversible and becomes a bigger threat. Otherwise, things that might help would be to make this information known to children in the first place, but I think the storyline is going towards if they know about their dark history, it’ll trigger even more fear and loss of control over their subconscious and powers. A lot of their social interactions are actually already carefully manipulated (sometimes even genetically) and crafted to ensure no violent and aggression is directed to each other. The children are really kept sheltered with no access to any information to ensure they grow up “properly” and won’t become dangerous to society. But once they’re adults they seem to be able to learn about everything though. I’ll just have to keep watching to find out…

-

Man, the voice acting man, fuck I’m not over Shun (Also fuck u Murase Ayumu). The music is really cool too this ep. Animatjon is okay for Shun and his out of control magic, not for Saki though. This director is doing the same shit as in ep 5 making Saki all weirdly flimsy and fragile and floating around damsel-like. All her lines are said in gasps too like it just feels so fucking unnatural. It’s only like this when this particular director takes charge though. I get trying to make the ep ethereal but whatever he did with Saki is not it man.

[the-acer-scientist]

hello, internet. lovely day to ponder into the void, isn’t it? how wonderful it is that I can just posit my queries on my silly little blog secure in the knowledge that probably no one will actually see this, myself included.

so here is my conundrum, my dearest echoing, empty void. is there a way to tell people-pleasing apart from a genuine reason to be concerned? strange question, I know, but hear me out.

I am non-binary. I take immeasurable pride from being able to write that out, and to say it to the friends I love and cherish. It is a core piece of my being, and I’ve reached the point where I am so comfortable in my identity that getting she/her-ed feels like a kick in the chest. One that I am fully capable of dealing with, no doubt, but a swift kick nonetheless.

And so, my dear nonexistent reader, riddle me this: how do I know whether and to whom to come out? Because here’s the dealio. I’m an academic, and it feels like the only faster route to ridicule and discrediting than being a Woman in STEM is being Non-Binary in STEM. Because women have a place in stem that they have carved out for themselves, and frankly more power to yall. I can’t express how much it means that my field is not exclusively rich white men anymore. But, and here I will admit that I’m only an undergrad and have far from the whole view of things, I’ve never met another enby high-level academic. And so, dear nonexistent reader, not only do I fear facing transphobia in a direct way (that frankly and thankfully I’ve never directly experienced because I tend to present andro at best and cisfemme on average), I fear that transphobia will prevent me from reaching the heights that I want so desperately to reach.

Fear number two (thanks, crippling self-doubt!!) is that in coming out, I will pose an inconvenience, or worse, an annoyance to those I inflict my identity upon.

I want to tell Mel because it’s important to me that she knows me for me, but if I tell her, not only will it be difficult for her to adjust but also she then runs the risk of, in her lovely and wonderful and amazingly supportive self, accidentally outing me in a place that would be incredibly unsafe for me to be outed in, and for me to ask her to keep that secret for my own comfort is an unnecessary burden.

I want to tell Dr S, because even though I know it’ll never come up in class because he doesn’t ever refer to us, he just lectures and leaves, I want to be understood and I think given some of his sidebars that he would understand. At least a little. And yet, it’s a huge ask to ask someone 3/4 of the way through a semester, when I won’t even see him for more than two more months or so, to readjust his whole perception of me! what right do I have to add that additional stress of remembering me specifically and my specific pronouns out of the hundreds of students he teaches?

I want to tell Dr F, because by the gods below I need him to perceive me because his mentorship means more than the world to me and I can’t imagine how euphoric it would be to hear my pronouns used in the same sentence as discussions of my thesis project. And yet, again, difficult adjustment and running the risk of outing me to people who have been actively transphobic because said people have known me as ‘her’ for so long that the second Dr F ‘they’s me, it’s going to register and I’m going to have to answer questions I don’t want to answer. And, if the whole point is that I’m referred to correctly, does it not defeat the purpose to then add the caveat of ‘only around certain people?’ to assuage my fears about my own identity?

So, my dearest and most darling echo, how do I know whether the fear of systematic transphobia is a valid reason to safeguard my identity or whether it’s just a mind-blockage because I don’t want to be an inconvenience?

[rainylana]

bedtime shenanigans<3

“Eddie?” You poked his back, over and over against his bare skin. “Eddie, wake up. I wanna ask you somethin’.”

He grumbled in his sleep, twitching at your pokes.

“Eddie!” You hissed, giving him a shove that jolted him awake.

“Huh? Wh- who is it?” He twisted around with wild bed hair, eyes still half closed.

“It’s me!” You giggled. “Who else would it be?”

He was already falling back down to his pillow, not able to stay up. He muttered something under his breath that you couldn’t hear. “Hey- I said I gotta ask you a question!” Your squeaky tone made his eyes shoot open, blindly rapidly up at you as he tried to adjust to reality.

“What- what time is it?” He yawned, fishing for his lost blanket.

“I think I figured out what I want our halloween costumes to be.” You smiled, resting on your elbow. “Popeye and olive oil!”

He was too tired to barely register what you were saying, just nodding along and giving a small twitch of his lips. “That’s nice…nice, nice.” He lowered himself back down, already back asleep.

“Hey!” You shook him, drawing a surprised gasp as he shot back up.

“Who is it?!” He looked around quickly, grasping his pillow.

“For the love of god, Edward,” You rolled your eyes, grabbing the pillow and placing it back down. “I’m bored! Wake up so you can entertain me.”

A loud, whiny groan left him as he squeezed his eyes shut, finally starting to come to his senses. “Fuck off.” He buried himself face first into the pillows.

“Wow.” You scoffed, lowering yourself so you could lay on his bare back. “We should watch The Labyrinth again! I can make us popcorn!”

You only heard muffled sounds.

“I can’t hear you, Ed’s.”

He turned his cheek to poke out his lips. “Too late for musicals.” He said hoarsely, reaching back to try and get you off him. “Go t’ sleep.”

You scowled as your allowed him to shove yourself off him, crossing your arms as you stared up at the ceiling. Perhaps it was cruel to keep him awake, but you loved teasing him when he was asleep. “Would you still love me if I was an anaconda?”

“Where!” He screamed, causing you to do the same as you both shot up. “Fuck, where, y/n!”

“Christ, calm down!” You heaved, grabbing his shoulders. “There’s no snake, Eddie, Jesus!”

He was huffing and puffing fearfully, backed up against the headboard in a delirious state of sleep and confusion. He gave you an incredulous look. “Then why the hell would you say there was!”

“I didn’t!” You exasperated. “I asked if you would still love me if I was one.”

His eyes tripled in size. “Absolutely not!” He shook his head wildly.

You gasped. “Eddie! But I’d love you!”

He scoffed, bringing the blanket to his chest. “That’s great! But I ain’t loving you, sweetheart. I don’t fuck with snakes and I- what the fuck, it’s three o’clock in the morning!” He screeched, pointing to the clock. “The hell you asking me all this shit for! I’m trying to sleep for god sakes!”

“Well, hell!” You threw your arms up. “Forgive me for wanting to talk to my boyfriend! I’m heart broken, Eddie! You don’t even love me anymore!” You playfully pouted.

“No, I said I wouldn’t love you as an anaconda, y/n.” He pointed his finger at you. “Not that I don’t love you. There’s a big difference.”

You pursed your lips and gave him a glare, and he matched the expression, grabbing your chin to pull you close and plant a firm kiss on your lips.

“No there isn’t.” You mumbled.

[gonzo-rella]

A Vow | Jim Jimenez

MASTERLIST | AO3 | KO-FI

Relationship(s): Jim Jimenez x gn!reader (ambiguous/unspecified)

Summary: Struggling to cope as part of Blackbeard’s new crew, you fall back into old habits. Luckily, Jim’s there to support you.

Warnings: Self-harm (specifically cutting, specifically on the thighs), blood, mental health struggles (specifically anxiety), references to suicide/suicidal ideation, reference to vomiting/nausea (in association with anxiety). (Let me know if I need to add any)

Word count: 0.6k

(A/N: You know someone’s not well when they’ve written two self-harm ficlets and a graphic 2k word self-harm one-shot for the same fandom in the span of a month [/lh] (if you’re interested in reading the latter one, I’ll link it here). Did I just use my poor mental state as a means of shameless self-promotion? Kinda, yeah. Anyway, I need to write more for Jim my beloved, so here’s a contribution to that cause. I wrote Jim and the reader’s relationship as ambiguous so you can read it as platonic or romantic (this definitely has nothing to do with my arospec questioning crisis). Feel free to send in a Jim request that isn’t based on mental anguish. Or, do. Either’s fine with me.)

Jim really was far stealthier than you, not that you’d ever thought anything to the contrary.

You’d managed to (unintentionally) wake them up on your journey to the bathroom, but you didn’t hear them approaching when you’d spent far too long in there. Perhaps they had sensed that you weren’t using the room for its intended purposes, just the privacy that it afforded.

They closed the door behind them as quietly as possible while you were in the process of dabbing your cuts with alcohol. Upon registering their presence, you jumped and rushed to hide the knife and various medical supplies behind your back.

“I saw all the stuff, so I can guess you’re not shitting on the floor,” Jim began dryly, alluding to the fact that you were sat on the floor with your trousers tugged down to your knees. “Or jerking off.”

Luckily, that’s all they could really see, since the room was feebly lit by a candle.

When all you did was stare at them with wide eyes, they sighed and perched themself on the rim of the tiny bathtub. Now that they were closer, you drew your knees as close to your stomach as you could get them without the cuts touching your shirt.

“I won’t look. If you don’t want me to.”

Your chest rose and fell with increasing speed, but you reluctantly straightened your legs despite your panic. As promised, they averted their gaze. After a moment of hesitation, you returned to cleaning up your cuts.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“I-I didn’t think you liked talking.” you replied shakily.

They exhaled a chuckle.

“You’re one of the only people I can stand on this ship.” they shrugged. “I don’t want you to off yourself.”

“I’m not going to ‘off myself’.” you mumbled. “I just... I hate this. Even when Izzy isn’t aiming a pistol at my head, it feels like he is. I’m fucking terrified that I’m gonna wake up with a toe missing, or a-a hole in my stomach or... that I won’t even wake up at all.”

“So, why are you slicing yourself open, if you’re so afraid of them doing it to you?”

“It’s always helped me in the past.” you answered. “I know it’s not the best way of dealing with things. But, it gives me some relief, and Lord knows I need some relief right now. Ever since Ed went all ‘Blackbeard’, I’ve felt like I’m gonna pass out, throw up or shit myself.”

You reached for the bandages behind you and carefully wrapped them around your thigh.

“I won’t let anything happen to you.” Jim stated. “You know that, right?”

You hesitated before asking, “Why?”

“What do you mean ‘why’?” Jim snorted. “I told you: I... like you. Enough said.”

“I’m not worth you getting yourself into deep-shit over.”

“Look, they’re not gonna kill either of us. They’re running low enough on numbers as it is. Can’t do anything to me that I can’t handle. Maybe something you can’t handle.”

You laughed weakly.

“Fair enough.”

There was a pause as you finished bandaging your cuts. You rose to your feet to pull up your trousers, then crouched back down to gather the knife and medical supplies.

“You can look now.”

Jim turned their head, watching as you stood back up and stared contemplatively at the knife.

“Are you gonna do it again?”

“I don’t know. Probably.”

They sighed and scratched their neck.

“I can’t stop you.” they shrugged. “Well, won’t.” 

They paused. You glanced over at them, but your gaze dropped to the floor.

“Just keep yourself safe and all that shit, y’know?”

You hummed in response.

They stood up and clapped a hand on your shoulder.

“I meant what I said.” they insisted. “I doubt you’ll come out of this unscathed, but you’ll sure as hell come out of it alive if I have anything to say about it.”

This elicited a weak smile from you.

“I know.” you murmured. “Thanks, Jim.”

After a moment of consideration, you went on, “If you promise you’ll keep me relatively intact, I promise I’ll cut down on this.”

You held up the knife.

“Okay,” they nodded, a small smile tugging at the corners of their lips. “Deal.”

[eldritch-muppetshow]

playgroup au fun facts bc i’m too lazy to draw art for it today

vicki

- small. she’s like 4 and a half so that’s a given

- sorta-friends with digit, but also finds him kind of off-putting sometimes.

- generally the voice of reason, since she doesn’t like getting in trouble/her friends getting in trouble. unfortunately, she tends to get brushed off as a little kid who doesn’t know any better (more in a “don’t worry, the big kids know what they’re doing” way than a teasing way though)

- constantly wants to help kermit (ie. carrying his backpack, retrieving toys for him), even though kermit obviously doesn’t need her to do this (he does find it sweet though).

leon

- i know this isn’t shown in canon (since it’d be impractical, expensive, and probably wouldn’t look very convincing), but he can change color like an actual chameleon! it’s all just varying shades of purple though, and he can’t blend into his surroundings (as much as he wishes that were the case)

- also friends with digit, but mostly because digit is naive/spacey enough to easily go along with whatever scheme he’s come up with for the day. most of these schemes involve trying to make money (think ed edd n eddy). these usually don’t make him anything, both because the other kids generally don’t fall for it and because they’re little kids in a playgroup, they’re not gonna be carrying money around.

lindbergh

- i’ve already told you pretty much all there is to know about him generally, but i will add that his method of “fixing” things involves smacking them with a plastic hammer. if it’s a “complicated job” he’ll hit the thing with other plastic tools too

digit

- the reason he’s constantly spacing out, not registering what people are saying to him, and absentmindedly touching things is at least partially because he has an awful sleep schedule. he knows about the Forbidden Early Morning Shows that no one else at the playgroup does (the shows that air at the ungodly hours of the morning). he’s pretty energetic when he’s actually rested

- a huge sci-fi nerd. the other kids barely heard him talk until kermit mentioned sci-fi movies in passing, at which point digit perked up and wouldn’t stop talking.

- the only kid who fully knows how to use the tv remote (although their caretaker limits the amount of tv they can watch to get them to play outside/with each other)

[ashdumpsterpile]

of siblings and spies

@libblyster said: edmund rescuing lucy from danger (only a year or two into their reign as kings and queens)

ao3

Edmund finds her one week into her captivity.

She’s not expecting someone to show up (read: she’s not expecting Edmund of all people to suddenly come flying down from the rafters and take her guard out with one well executed kick to the head).

Her expectations lie more in Peter storming the castle or a tense, but nonviolent trade of prisoners or whatnot. But here her brother is, quickly frisking the unconscious guard of his keys and swiftly trying each one in the lock.

(This really should be an indicator of things to come, but it will be several more years before Oreius finally recognizes Edmund’s potential as a spymaster. Lucy likes to say she knew it all along, but to be perfectly honest, all she can think about is the pain in her ankle and how cold she is.)

Edmund finally finds the right key and throws the door unceremoniously open.

She flies into his arms, forgetting about her twisted ankle for a moment, and buries her face in his neck. “What are you doing here?” she hisses, pulling away after a moment.

He has a cut on his cheekbone and dirt on his chin. She reaches up, trying to rub it away.

Edmund bats her hand away. “Did you really think I wouldn’t come?” He frowns, eyes quickly sweeping over her, assessing the damage.

“No, but I didn’t think that Peter would be alright with sending you straight into a den of traitors,” Lucy says back, eyes darting toward the door. They’ll need to move swiftly if they want to avoid capture again.

Edmund’s lack of reply tells Lucy everything. “Edmund,” she groans. “Please tell me Peter knows you’re here.”

“Peter knows I’m here,” Edmund replies obediently, clearly lying. He quickly takes off his cloak and wraps it around her shoulders when he notices her shivering. “Don’t worry about it, Lu.”

“I’m worried,” she mumbles, knowing that if she has concerns, Peter’s are tenfold.

“Can you walk?” Edmund asks, eyeing her swollen ankle with trepidation.

Lucy takes an experimental step. Pain shoots through her leg, but it’s bearable. “Yes, I should be able to.”

Not fooled for a second, Edmund pulls her arm over his shoulder and let’s her lean the majority of her weight on him. He carefully leads her out of the cell.

The room beyond is just as Lucy groggily remembers it--she was mostly unconscious when they arrived--no windows, one door, which is locked. Lucy frowns.

“How did you get in here anyway?”

_______

Their escape does not go smoothly. The path Edmund had taken did not lend itself kindly toward two travelers--particularly one of which was incapacitated and could not take a single step without limping. They end up accosted by guards on more than one occasion, and--worst of all--nearly taken out by a werewuff.

Edmund handles the situation quite masterfully, Lucy reluctantly admits, save for the bit with the werewuff.

The growling and howling from the distance had immediately put him on edge--face paling and hands shaking--and by the time the creature had come across them, he was already a bundle of nerves.

After taking a truly nasty slice to the side, Edmund manages to unsheathe his sword. It’s Lucy, though, who surprisingly deals the killing blow.

While he’s fighting the wolf creature off, a few badly aimed stabs to the side that mostly angered it, she manages to grab ahold of his dagger and slam it with all the strength left in her into the monster’s heart.

Edmund stares at her with round eyes as she pulls the blade out, wiping it on her borrowed cloak. “I think we need to sign you up for fencing lessons.”

“Susan will like that.”

“Susan’s not the one gutting werewuffs in her nightgown.” He holds out his hand, helping her to her feet. “Come on, we’re almost out of here.”

_______

“I hope you’re fully prepared for Peter to murder us,” Lucy says, pressing her cold nose to the back of Edmund’s neck. Her brother jerks his head away, but can’t get very far with her perched so precariously on his back.

He sighs, readjusting his grip under her knees and continues his unsteady gait through the forest.

They’ve been walking for about two hours now, because apparently Edmund did not have the foresight to bring a horse with him. He took the ribbing with a good-natured grin, though, and hoisted her up onto his back after she began to tire.

Despite her own exhaustion, she can’t help the concern slowly taking over. It’s a long walk back to Cair Paravel, and Edmund hasn’t been able to do much for the wound in his side beyond staunching the steady flow.

She doesn’t think he’s going to pass out from exhaustion, but wouldn’t put it beyond his already flippant constitution.

“What Pete doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Edmund finally replies, realizing that she’s waiting for an answer. She can hear the smirk in his voice and rolls her eyes.

“I’m fairly certain he’s going to notice the two of us covered in werewuff guts, strolling merrily through Cair’s gates,” Lucy snorts, wrinkling her nose at the smell of said entrails. “Not to mention your absence will have been noted by the entire court by now. Really, you didn’t even think to leave a note?”

“He would have stopped me.” Edmund sounds winded.

Lucy sighs, ducking her head to lay on his shoulder. “For good reason,” she mumbles.

Peter’s been particularly over protective of Edmund of late, and by late she--of course--means since he bled out in his siblings arms on the battlefield. Peter had excellent reason to be cautious concerning his little brother.

Still, Lucy is glad that Edmund came.

“To be frank, I’m more scared of Susan,” he says, breaking the silence.

Lucy groans. “She’s going to kill us.”

_______

Susan is crying.

Lucy’s still half asleep, but she dimly registers being handed over to her big sister, who tearfully wraps her up in her arms. She smells of expensive perfume and the velvet dressing-gown is soft against Lucy’s raw skin and her embrace is warm. Lucy sinks into it with a sigh, allowing Susan to pet her hair and lay kisses on her forehead just this once.

She sneaks a peak out of one open eye over to her brothers, who are quietly arguing over something.

“Sorry for scaring you,” she says, as Susan lets out a particularly loud sniff.

“If you ever do that again-” Susan threatens, but then cuts herself off. Lucy gives her a weak grin.

“It’s alright. Edmund came for me.”

That gets her a raised eyebrow, which Lucy primly ignores. Susan wouldn’t get it anyway. Younger siblings have to stick together.

“You smell terrible,” Susan finally says.

If Lucy wasn’t so tired, she thinks she’d hit her. Instead, she settles for huffing loudly. Trust Susan Pevensie to be flustered over a little smell when Lucy had quite literally been locked up in an impenetrable fortress for seven days and then fought off a werewuff with a borrowed dagger.

“I-Ed?” Peter’s panicked voice breaks through Lucy’s annoyance. She squirms in Susan’s grip, trying to get a better look at the commotion. Edmund is on his knees, clutching his side with a pained expression. Peter is hovering over him, one hand tentatively on his shoulder. Edmund pulls his hand away. It’s coated with blood.

“I thought the werewuff didn’t slice you that deep,” Lucy frowns.

Susan stills.

Peter makes an intelligible sound, sinking down in front of Edmund. He shouts something to one of the guards who runs off, presumably on Peter’s orders. Edmund leans forward, dropping his weight into Peter’s waiting arms with an unamused laugh.

“Oops?” he offers, brow pinched in pain.

Peter smooths his hair back from his forehead. “What am I going to do with you,” he mutters, glancing between him and Lucy, who gives a lazy wave. “Both of you.” The annoyance in his voice doesn’t detract from the fear she sees in his eyes.

Lucy shrugs. Edmund mumbles something intelligible that has Susan rolling her eyes. Peter just sighs briefly, and holds his brother tighter. Lucy smiles, closing her eyes, trusting her older siblings to take care of them.

_______

Lucy wakes up in the infirmary.

The bed isn’t terribly uncomfortable--it’s a damn sight better than the threadbare cot in her cell--and the blankets piled up are soft. She runs her hand over one of them, watching as the fur rubs the wrong way and then smooths it back. It reminds her of Susan’s velveted dressing-gown.

Ah. Susan.

Her sister is nowhere to be found, but Peter is sitting in an uncomfortable wooden chair by her bed, head pillowed in his arms by her legs. There are dark purple bruises under his eyes and the faintest hint of tear tracks on his cheeks. Heart aching, she reaches out to wake him.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Edmund says, startling her. He’s perched on the windowsill, shirtless, legs dangling in the air. His side has been expertly bandaged and there’s color in his cheeks. Lucy feels her worries slowly lift. “Unless, of course, you would like to experience round 3 of ‘Edmund gets yelled at,’” he adds, lips twisting into something of a grin. He lets his legs swing back and forth for a moment, watching her considering.

“Should you be out of bed?” she asks, voice low.

Edmund shrugs and then winces. “Probably not,” he admits.

Lucy rolls her eyes and scoots over as much as she can without waking their older brother. She lifts one edge of the blanket nest up as invitingly as she can. “Well, come on then.”

Edmund tentatively pads across the floor, slight limp in his gait. After a brief moment of hesitation, he ducks beneath the blankets and settles beside her.

The two of them stare at the ceiling for a moment.

Lucy is reminded of a time, years and years ago--before things got complicated and Edmund got cold and Lucy became alone--when she used to crawl into Edmund’s bed after a particularly bad nightmare. This is like that, but better. Better, because this time Edmund lets her shift closer and drop her head onto his shoulder. Better because he wraps an arm around her and buries his nose in her hair. Better because that’s what both of them are now. Better.

“Hey Ed?” she mumbles, exhaustion making the edges blurry.

Her brother hums in response, angling his head toward her.

“Thanks for coming to get me.”

Before she falls asleep, she feels his thin arms tighten reflexively. “Of course, Lu.” His voice is impossibly gentle. “Always.”

[oneisallallisone]

All I Know, All I Know Greedling x Reader fic Chapter 2

In a land ruled by alchemy, there are some who would call you a sorcerer. You intend to understand what this means. Along your journey you end up getting mixed up with two strange brothers, a military conspiracy, a potentially world-ending event, and the avarice of something more than human.

Chapter 1

Read on AO3

_______________________________________________________________________

All I Know, All I Know

Chapter 2: The Agreement

The metal boy remained very still. But the blonde boy burst into sudden laughter. 

“A-a sorcerer?” he stammered. “Come on, I thought you were going to tell me the truth. Sorcerers don’t exist.” 

“Your companion said it himself,” you argued, “I didn’t perform any transmutations. You both saw. Whatever this is, it’s not alchemy.” 

“Yeah, well, the concept of sorcery spits right in the face of alchemy!” the blonde shot back. “Alchemy follows the law of equivalent exchange, in order to obtain something you must give up something of equal value. These are the laws of the universe as much as they are the laws of alchemy, and nothing can bypass the laws of the universe. Unless…” 

There was a sharp intake of breath from the suit of armor as his companion’s voice trailed off. “A Philosopher’s Stone.” 

The blonde boy grinned almost wickedly. “You have one, don’t you?” 

“A what?” you asked. 

He took a step closer to you. “A Philosopher’s Stone. An all-powerful artifact from legend that ignores the laws of equivalent exchange and allows its user to will practically anything into existence. You have one, right?” 

You took a step back. A heavily charred book crumpled to ashes near your feet .“No. I carry no such stone.” 

“Liar.” 

“I swear!” 

“There is no such thing as a sorcerer!” 

“Brother,” the armored boy placed a hand on the blonde’s shoulder, halting his steps towards you. “Many people say that there’s no such thing as a Philosopher’s Stone either. Maybe on our hunt for the impossible, it makes sense that we run into something else impossible too.” 

Your gaze shifted to the metal boy. His fixed expression was that of a cold, unchanging helmet, but his voice had been soft when he spoke. And you could have sworn he gave you the slightest bit of a nod when your eyes met his. 

The blonde considered his brother’s words for a moment, his eyes still studying you. Your hand had traveled up to the collar of your bearskin cloak, as it so often did when you felt nervous. The violet energy was gone now, but you felt it lapping just beneath the surface of your skin, ready to spring forth if you felt even the slightest bit more threatened. 

“What’s your name?” the blonde finally asked. 

“I am (y/n).”

“(y/n),” he repeated. “I’m Edward Elric, and this is my brother Alphonse. I think we can help each other out.” 

The agreement was simple. The Elrics would help you try to figure out the nature of your abilities, and in return you would assist them in their pursuit of their goals. Just another equivalent exchange, as Ed would say. 

You’d learned that the brothers were in search of a way to get their old bodies back—Ed having lost an arm and a leg, and Al having lost his entire body in a horrific alchemical accident. When pressed further about the details surrounding the accident, both of the brothers became very quiet. Sometimes it felt like learning the truth about them was going to be as impossible as learning the truth about yourself. 

“Ed?” You called as you knocked on the door of the brothers’ hotel room. “Al? Are you in there?” 

Several days had passed since the three of you had spoken with a woman named Sheska—a former employee at the National Central First Branch, who offered to provide transcripts of all the research the Elrics were looking for—and, after sitting alone in your room and reading for days, you found yourself at a dead end. The books you’d borrowed from the National Central Main Library hadn’t given you any insight into your powers at all. 

The door opened slowly, and you were greeted by the sight of Al. “Oh, hey (y/n). What’s going on?” 

He moved aside for you to enter the room. You nodded at him, sinking onto the couch once you were inside. “I haven’t been able to uncover anything. If there is any written record of other individuals with abilities like mine, it’s not in the Main Library.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Al said, sitting on the other couch across from you. 

“Eh, it just means I have to start looking elsewhere, I suppose,” you said. “What about you and Ed? Have you made any progress?” 

“I wish we hadn’t.” A door had opened near the small kitchenette. Edward came walking into the room, his hair down instead of in the usual braid it was normally tied back in. His eyes were downcast, dark bags hanging on the skin underneath. 

“You look terrible,” you said. 

“Wonderful to see you too again, (y/n).” He took a seat next to Al. 

“I take it you…didn’t find what you were expecting?” 

The brothers were silent for a while. The room was dim, filled with low candle light and the aura of the moon. A cool wind ruffled the curtains of the open window. 

“No.” Al stated simply. 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” you said. “If it means anything, I found absolutely nothing of what I hoped for. So you’re already doing better than me, at least.”  

Ed forced out a bitter laugh. “I’m not so sure about that, (y/n). I’m really not so sure.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“It means, well…” Al’s voice trailed off. He looked down to his older brother, and Ed gave him a short, resigned nod. “It means that we did find something. But it’s horrible. It’s making us sick to think about.” 

“What is it?” you pressed. 

A silence fell over the room again. 

You softened your voice the next time you spoke. “We made an agreement with each other. You help me, and I help you. You’ve already given me my own room to stay in while I’m in Central, and you’ve checked out books from the Main Library for me. You’ve helped me, so…let me help you.” 

For the first time since walking into the room, Ed’s eyes met yours. “We were successful in deciphering Dr. Marcoh’s notes. The Philosopher’s Stone isn’t just a myth, it’s real. But the main ingredient to make them is human life.” 

Your stomach dropped just as another cool wind wafted into the room. “Oh…oh no.” You were shaking your head. “Oh god, I’m so sorry.” 

Ed just shrugged in response. Al had closed his eyes, the usual red pinpricks of light beneath his helmet gone. It felt like you were an outsider, watching this grief you could not understand. Yes the revelation about the ingredients of a Philosopher’s Stone was horrific, but you knew that whatever sinking emotion it caused was only amplified by the agony of why the brothers needed the Stone in the first place. A reason that they still had not even whispered to you yet. 

You didn’t understand the weight of what they were going through. But you could tell it was crushing. And they needed their space. 

“I’ll be down the hall if you need anything.” Slowly you stood up from the couch and made your way to the door. You glanced back once before slipping into the hallway, eyes searching over the brothers yet again. Al still had not opened his eyes. Ed was curling up on his side. 

At some point you registered a loud banging on your door. 

“(y/n)!” the voice called. “(y/n), open up!” 

Having not bothered to change into pajamas that night, you sprung from your bed fully clothed and rushed to the door. A wide-eyed Edward Elric stood there on the other side, with Alphonse right behind him. 

“Good, you’re awake,” Ed said, pushing into the room. 

“Yeah, I am now,” you half grumbled. “What time is it?” 

“Early.” 

“Is everything alright?” you knew the answer was objectively, probably, no. But after the state you had left the boys in, you felt it was only proper to ask. 

Ed turned to you, his expression surprisingly very different from where you last left him on the couch. His eyes were alight with that usual spark you had come to recognize, and his mouth curled upwards in a grin. “We have a hunch. There might be more to the truth about the Philosopher’s Stone than meets the eye, and we know where to go to investigate more.” 

“Okay?” 

“Brother is trying to ask if you’d be willing to come with us,” Al said. 

You looked back and forth between the boys. “Where exactly would we be going?” 

“There’s an old building that was designed to be a government laboratory not too far from here,” Ed explained. “It’s supposedly been classified as ‘off limits’ for a long time due to structural imbalances, but it might be hiding something beneath the surface. Al and I think we can find more information about the Philosopher’s Stone there.” 

“Why? I thought you were giving up on your search for it after learning what the main ingredient was.” 

“It’s like Dr. Marcoh told us,” Ed said. “We have to search for the truth within the truth. There could still be more about the Stone we don’t know, and we can’t pass this up.” 

You leaned an elbow back against the counter. “And you want me to come with you because…?” 

Ed shrugged. “Maybe you could find something there too.” 

“Plus we might be in need of your powers,” Al said. “Brother and I have a tendency to run into trouble, and we have no idea what we could find at this laboratory. One more person with us might help even our odds.” 

You thought about it for a moment. “This building. You said it was ‘off limits,’ right?” 

“Yup,” Al said. 

“And you intend to poke around to see if you can unveil some secrets that are potentially  hidden inside a government building, and you’re asking me if I’m willing to trespass with you?” You thought back to your home in Drachma. How the Briggs mountains were so close, though it was never safe enough to go to them. “Do you have any idea what could happen to me if your government officials find a Drachman citizen just casually breaking into a restricted municipal facility?” 

Ed’s grin widened into a smirk. “That just means we won’t have to get caught.” 

[comicaurora]

If you ever, for whatever reason, animated Aurora, who would you choose to voice the different cgaracters?

This question keeps coming up and it’s really hard for me to answer!

It’s bizarre - I’ve got plenty of voiceover experience at this point and have spent literal years honing my ear for other people’s voice acting, but when it comes to my own characters I can’t really conceive of giving them any voice but my own. When I write them and sort out their dialogue, I’m the one playing out the scene. I know how I’d want them performed, but I have genuinely no idea who else I’d want to play them.

That’s not to say I’d cast myself as any of them given the choice - my own voice tone is naturally low and harsh, so the only characters I’d even consider feeling halfway appropriate voicing are, like, Falst or Tess - people who have that loud harshness built in. Someone like Kendal or Vash would need a much more Stock Heroic Voice to sell the archetype he’s supposed to resemble, so someone like Josh Keaton or Yuri Lowenthal would probably fit pretty easily - but everyone else is trickier to pin down, because unlike Kendal they’re not supposed to resemble stock tropes at first glance. Alinua’s only requirement to my mind is a base vocal tone that’s suitably gentle and smooth, and I have literally no caveats for Erin. Apparently some people conceive of him as having some kind of british-adjacent accent, which isn’t at all what I imagined but isn’t really outside the realm of possibility either. As long as he’s young, suave and arrogant, anything works.

And even the villain stuff is tricky! The Void Dragon should be the easiest voice to conceive of - deep, resonant, dripping with malice, standard issue evil deity, that should be so simple! Steve Blum, Tony Jay, Frank Welker, Keith David, Travis Willingham, Paul Dobson - they’ve all played incredibly intimidating deep-voiced villains that fit various facets of the archetype, but none of them quite seem to fit to my ears.

I think the fundamental problem I run into when people ask me to fancast my own characters is that an actor will always be performing their version of the character, and all I know is my version of these characters. Apparently this is something some proper casting directors struggle with - they don’t know what they’re looking for until an actor comes in and brings exactly what they didn’t know they needed. There’s an anecdote I heard at a convention about how the voice casting for Teen Titans was going kinda iffy until Tara Strong finished her first read and was like “can I try something weird?” and then pitched her voice down into that strange, buzzing monotone she ended up using for Raven for the entire show. No casting director thought to ask for that kind of performance, but after they heard it, suddenly it was exactly what they wanted. A different actress would’ve hit on a different performance, and it might’ve been perfect in its own way.

I’ve also observed this recently while watching some anime subbed and dubbed back to back. I’ve watched the FMAB dub at least four times, but I recently started watching it subbed for the first time, and every performance is just different enough from the english version to produce what feel like different characters. They’re still saying all the same things and doing all the same actions, but the different performance produces a different interpretation of the character. Mustang sounds a lot younger and somewhat more chill, which is a change from Travis Willingham’s harsh bass register, and Ed’s energetic shonen hero voice makes him an arrogant little shit, which is delightful. Both sets of performances are good, but they’re also different.

Idk, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to answer this question. I love it when you guys suggest stuff, though, so feel free to fancast and headcanon as much as you like!

also thought I should mention your icon causes me physical pain thanks

[juniorgman187]

Most Ardently (Spencer Reid Drabble)

Based on my incurable obsession with Pride and Prejudice!

Summary: Regular customer, Spencer Reid, proclaims his love for Reader, a worker in the bookstore, through the only thing as beautiful as love itself - literature.

Couple: GenderNeutral!Reader x Spencer Reid Category: Fluff, Drabble, One Shot Word Count: 1.1k

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　

Call me what you want, but if there’s one word you should use to describe me - it better be observant. 

Most people would call me nosy, but it’s not like I was snooping or prying to get the information that I did. It was just there, in plain sight. Every time I cashed out a customer, I observed what they were buying for books, which, again, isn’t snooping, and therefore, isn’t nosy. 

Regular customers like Miss Jane, the third-grade teacher, often bought books geared towards her students’ demographic, with the occasional steamy romance or self-help book. I liked her. She was fun.

Another regular was Ed Corrigan. He was just an elderly man that liked to stop by on Sundays, usually with a piping hot cup of coffee in hand. He read books about fantasy, utopian and dystopian worlds, science fiction. 

If I had one wish, I’d wish to be half as cool as him when I grow up. 

But there was one regular customer in particular that I had my eye on. 

Mr. Spencer Reid.

He didn’t come in as frequently as Miss Jane or Mr. Ed Corrigan - his visits were monthly, and if I got lucky, sometimes he’d come in every other week. But the reason why I could remember him so vividly despite the rarity of his presence was because of his taste in literature. 

It was the exact same as mine - classics. 

Dickens. Wilde. Asimov. Bradbury. Poe. Chaucer. Bronte. Melville. Homer. Thoreau. Emerson. Whitman. Doyle. 

I think his affinity for classical authors made him all the more attractive - not to say that his looks wouldn’t suffice if he had a different preference, because they most certainly would. He was certainly beautiful. Very, very beautiful. 

But to be frank, I looked forward to his visits for the sole reason that I was unequivocally, irreversibly, hopelessly in love with him. 

He’d been coming to the bookstore for years now, and even though we never spent time together outside of my work, I felt like I knew him - that I’d known him my entire life. 

People like to say that books are the windows to the soul, but I strongly disagree. The books you like are the windows to your soul. Thankfully, he was always around to buy ‘the windows to his soul.’ And each time he was here, I’d cash him out, observing his ‘soul.’ In fact, he bought books so often that I had to wonder what his job was. I suppose the same well-paying job that helped him afford his red-bottom shoes, suits, high-end messenger bags, and the occasional Comme Des Garçons cardigan supported his book addiction, too. 

Luckily for me, he was a gentleman. Whether it was intentional or not, he’d never make me wait too long after leaving before he came back. Even luckier for me, he came in twice this month - once a couple of weeks ago and today. 

I was organizing a bookshelf in the autobiography section when he stumbled upon me. 

“Hey!” His voice only ever reached that high a pitch whenever he was truly overjoyed. 

“Hey, Mr. Reid!” I grinned, getting up from the floor to greet him at the proper eye level. “How are you?” 

“I’m good,” he nodded slowly. “Great now, actually. Because you were just the person I was looking for.” 

“I am?”

“I was wondering if you knew where I could find Pride and Prejudice.” 

I didn’t mean for my eyebrows to furrow quizzically, but they did out of earnest shock. “Pride and Prejudice?” I asked once more to confirm that I heard correctly.

“Yeah. Why? Do you not like Pride and Prejudice?”

“No, no, I love that book, I’m just surprised you’d want to read it. It’s not really your type.” 

“My type?” 

Now he was the one with the quizzical brow, returning the same perplexed expression I had on my face just a moment ago. 

“I just mean it’s . . . it’s a love story. It’s romantic.”

Rule 1 of when you’re stuck in a hole? Stop digging! 

Instantly, I tried to renounce the words that seemed to be failing me. “Not to say that you’re not romantic, just that it’s sort of like -” Thankfully he spared me the agony. “I didn’t think that’s what you meant.” A chuckle escaped him, lightening the room’s air that was suffocating me a second ago. 

Trying to regain some dignity, I brushed aside my mental malfunction and said, “But yes. I do know where to find it. Lemme show you.” 

He followed close behind as I guided him through the bookstore. He was so close that I could smell his cologne. It was the kind so unique to him, but so perfect in its own way that you could smell it over and over again and you’d never grow tired of it, but you’d never satisfy the insatiable desire to smell it. 

When I finally found the bookshelf with Pride and Prejudice, I went down the aisle, and strangely, he departed from me, walking into the aisle on the other side of the shelf. I didn’t question it and just left it up to the assumption that he was being his delightfully peculiar self. 

While searching for the book, I’d peer between each spine and inadvertently notice him staring down at me from his towering height. I even saw how he followed my every movement, right down to the pace of my footsteps as I walked through the aisle. At one point, I caught one of his stolen glances, unconsciously looking down immediately after I did so that he might not catch the way my eyes lit up from looking into his. 

Eventually, we both made it to the end of the row, and we met at the opposite side of the shelf that we started at. Handing him Pride and Prejudice, I said the usual line I would normally say at the cash register. 

“Did you find everything you were looking for?” 

He paused to fight the smile creeping onto his face. 

“I did, actually. That - and then some.” 

My quizzical brow returned. “And then some? What else did you find?”

I waited for an answer that never came but an answer I already knew. 

Love. 

Just as a means to break the loud silence, I told him, “I think you’ll really like this book.” 

“Actually, I’ve read it before.” He responded, not surprising me in the least. Given how well-read he is, how could he not have already read it?

“What’s your favorite quote?” 

He didn’t even pause to think before answering. 

“We are all fools in love.” 

This brought an unexpected smile to my face. “Do you believe that?”

“Ardently.” 

His word choice alluded to a quote in the book he knew I’d be reminded of. 

‘I love you. Most ardently.’

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　

[thegirlwithataser]

hey hey, could you write buck and eddie in a car accident with hurt!buck and love confession from eddie? thank youu

Hi! Thank you so much for this prompt, I hope I did it justice. I really enjoyed writing this, so let me know what you think!

If you have a prompt for anything surrounding 911 on Fox send it to me and I can almost guarantee I'll write it for you!

You can also read this on ao3!

Never Letting You Go

Eddie doesn’t mean to tell Buck that he’s in love with him as the other man bleeds out. It just kind of happens.

They’d been driving back to Eddie’s house after a shift, Buck offering to drive Eddie to and from work while his truck was in the shop. They’d been joking about something Chimney had said during shift when Eddie saw a truck careening towards them, running the red light and going at least seventy-five in a forty-five. Eddie had barely gotten out Buck’s name in warning before the Jeep jolted and everything spun.

Eddie comes back to the present slowly. His vision is blurry and he tastes something metallic. Blood, his mind supplies. His ears are ringing and for a moment he can’t remember where he is.

It all crashes back to him as his vision clears partially. Car accident. They were in a car accident. The jeep seems to be upright, but there’s glass everywhere and the metal frame of the car is bent unnaturally.

Buck, Eddie’s mind screams at him. Where is Buck?

Eddie turns his head, sending a sharp pain to his shoulder as he moves.

His breath rushes right out of him when he looks at his best friend in the driver’s seat. His eyes are closed and there’s blood trickling down his face. Too much blood. Buck isn’t moving and Eddie can’t tell if he’s breathing. Frantically, he tries to reach over to Buck but he can’t move. Seatbelt, right.

Eddie groans as he manages to unclick his seatbelt. He extends his arms, bruised, but not broken, and sighs in relief. He’s able to maneuver himself closer to Buck with some difficulty, forcefully ignoring the throbbing in his head and focusing on getting them out of this. Alive, preferably.

Buck still isn’t moving but looking closely, Eddie can see the shallow rise and fall of the other man’s chest.

“Buck,” he says. His voice is scratchy and desperate but he doesn’t care. Buck has to be ok. He’s going to be. Eddie reaches over and puts his hand on Buck’s cheek. “Buck, come on, I need you to wake up.” Nothing happens. Eddie is panicking now. “Buck! Wake up, damn it!”

Buck doesn’t respond. Eddie drops his hand from Buck’s face and his head rolls to the side. Eddie forces his knees under him on the seat so he can lean over Buck and assess the damage.

Buck’s left arm is visibly broken, but that will heal. Eddie can’t see his legs, so he has no idea if they’re broke or not. He prays that they’re fine, Buck can’t handle redoing the crush injury from the fire truck. There’s blood on Buck’s shirt and Eddie reaches out to pull it up. There’s a long gash on Buck’s abdomen, deep enough that he’s going to need stitches. There’s another cut on Buck’s neck. It looks like it missed the carotid but it’s bleeding heavily. That combined with the cut on Buck’s abdomen and the cuts on his head could mean that he’ll bleed out if they don’t get help soon.

Eddie takes off his own shirt, faintly registering that there’s blood on it. He must be bleeding somewhere, but he can’t bring himself to care right now. “Buck, please, you need to wake up.” Eddie puts the shirt on the gash on Buck’s torso and presses down hard, hoping to stem the blood flow. “Buck,” he sobs, “Buck, you have to wake up. Wake up! Buck, don’t leave me, don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to Christopher. Please, Buck, we need you, I need you. Buck! Please, I love you, you can’t die, not like this.”

Eddie is truly crying now, desperate to hear his best friend's voice, to see the light in his eyes when he laughs.

Eddie hears Buck groan right as he hears the sirens and he nearly sobs in relief. “Buck, that’s it, wake up.” Eddie wipes the blood away from Buck’s eyes, still pressing his other hand over the cut on his stomach. “Come on, Buck.”

“Ed—“ Buck’s voice catches in his throat. His eyes blink open slowly, but only slightly and Eddie lets out another sob.

“I’m here, Buck, I’m right here.” Buck’s eyes flutter closed again and Eddie’s panic is back. “Hey, no, you gotta stay awake for me. Buck, open your eyes.”

With what looks like a considerable amount of effort, Buck opens his eyes. He mutters incoherently but Eddie nods. “I’ve got you, help us coming, you just have to stay awake.”

Buck nods before groaning in pain. A paramedic runs up to the car, bag in hand being followed closely by a firefighter holding jaws. Eddie nearly passed out from relief.

What comes next is more of a blur than anything else. They get Buck out of the car first and onto a stretcher, rushing him over to an ambulance. Eddie goes next, and honestly doesn’t remember much of the ride to the hospital.

Doctors rush around the emergency room as he gets checked out. A few cuts that need stitches and a mild concussion but overall he’ll be fine. He asks everyone that passes him if they know anything about an Evan Buckley but no one will tell him anything.

What if—no. No, he’s not doing that to himself, he’s not letting himself go down that road.

“Dad!” Eddie whips his head around too fast and feels a sharp pain behind his eyes. Chris is coming towards him as fast as he can with Carla’s hand on his shoulder.

“Chris,” Eddie breathes out, deliriously grateful to see his son. He pulls him into a tight hug, hoping he never has to let go.

“Dad,” Chris repeats into his neck, holding him just as tightly. “Are you ok?”

Eddie pulls back slightly to brush a piece of hair away from his son’s eyes and give him a watery smile. “Yeah, buddy, I’m ok?”

Chris nods, looking unsure. “Where’s Buck?”

Eddie chokes back a sob, looking out at the emergency room, then to Carla, then back to Chris. “I’m not sure, but we’ll see him as soon as we can, ok?”

Carla puts a hand on Eddie’s shoulder reassuringly. “I’ll go see what I can find out.”

She disappears around the corner, presumably to go harass some nurses into telling her what they know. Eddie helps Chris onto the bed and settles back against the pillows, holding his son close. He starts to drift off immediately, even though he knows he needs to stay awake.

“Eddie, oh my god,” Maddie’s voice snaps him back to reality and he stares groggily at her.

“Maddie?” he finally manages to say.

She sighs, eyes roaming over him, obviously trying to assess the damage. “I was on my way to work when they called about Evan. The nurse says he’s still in surgery but directed me to you,” she explains before he’s able to ask.

“Did she say anything else?” Eddie asks, fully awake now and desperate to see Buck.

Maddie shakes her head, looking like she’s barely holding back tears. “No, she didn’t. God, what happened?”

Eddie closes his eyes, fighting back tears as well. “There was a car accident, a truck sped through a red light and hit the driver’s side. I don’t remember much else, but it was bad. I’m mostly fine, a few stitches and a mild concussion but Buck—“ Eddie’s cut off by a sob and he has to look away.

Maddie’s eyes are wide when he finally looks back at her. She nods and clearly puts a lot of effort into composing herself. “He’ll be fine, he has to be. Everyone else should be here any minute,” she says softly. “Chim took Jee-Yun to Mrs. Lee and Bobby, Athena, and Hen said they’re on their way.”

Eddie nods, looking down at Christopher who is sitting silently in his arms.

“He’s still in surgery,” Carla says, appearing around the curtain again.

Eddie nods, thankful that she’s here if nothing else. Maddie looks up at Carla hopefully. “Did they tell you anything else?”

Carla shakes her head sadly. “I’m sorry, dear.”

Maddie nods, shrinking into herself as silence settles over their little crowd.

Eddie’s doctor comes back in a few minutes later and gives him the all clear as long as he follows concussion protocol. Eddie thanks him with less gratitude than he’s probably owed and follows Maddie and Carla to the waiting room with his hand on Chris’s shoulder.

Bobby and Athena rush into the waiting room mere moments after the other four sit down. They both frantic as Carla waves them over.

“What happened?” Bobby asks, his voice desperate.

“You said there was an accident?” Athena adds.

“Eddie!” They all look around and see Hen rushing towards them. She pulls Eddie into a tight hug, looking terrified. “Are you alright? Where’s Buck?”

“I’m—“ Eddie can’t get out the words. He can’t say anything. How is he supposed to explain this to the people he loves, the only family Buck really has he… he can’t.

Carla steps forward, filling them all in on what happened, Eddie’s condition, and what they know about Buck. Eddie sits silently the whole time, barely registering a word.

Chimney arrives a few minutes later and someone must explain the situation to him but Eddie doesn’t hear it, doesn’t notice anything around him.

They sit there in silence for what feels like hours. Dozens of people filter in and out of the waiting room as they all wait for news. Eddie sees a few people crying. Me too, he thinks.

At some point someone must have gone to get coffee because a hot cup is pressed into his hands. He doesn’t drink it.

“Family of Evan Buckley?” a female voice says. Eddie hears it distantly, not registering what’s going on until Maddie stands up shakily.

“That’s us, uh, I’m his sister. This is Eddie, he was in the car with Evan.” Eddie snaps his head up and watches the doctor walk over. She’s wearing a scrub cap.

“Of course, well, Mr. Buckley has just come out of surgery. There was quite a bit of internal bleeding from the accident but we got him fixed up.” The doctor looks at Eddie. “The paramedics told me you stopped the blood flow before they got there. You saved his life.”

Eddie nods, unable to say anything. The doctor gives him a small smile and turns back to Maddie. “He has a few broken ribs, a broken arm, a pretty bad concussion, and more stitches than I’d like to see on one patient but he’s stable. He’s still asleep, but you can go visit him if you’d like. We just ask that you limit it to two at a time.”

“So he’s going to be ok?” Maddie asks, a drop of hope finally seeping into her voice.

The doctor smiles. “He should be just fine. He’s going to need lots of rest and someone to keep an eye on him with that concussion, but he’s okay.”

Maddie sobs in relief. “Thank you. Can you take us to him?” She looks over at Eddie, motioning for him to stand up. He does, on autopilot. His mind is reeling. Buck is okay. He’s alive. I love him.

Eddie follows Maddie and the doctor down the hallway silently. The mantra of Buck is okay continuing in his head on repeat.

Maddie goes in first as Eddie takes a moment to steel himself for the sight that lays ahead.

Buck is unconscious when they walk it, although the doctor had already told them that. He’s hooked up to a heart monitor abd a few other machines are beeping around him but overall he looks better than Eddie expected. He’s breathing on his own, there’s no more blood caking his face. He has bruises up and down the left side of his body and the cuts in his face are still ugly and red but he’s alive.

Eddie doesn’t realize he’s crying until Maddie grabs his hand, forcing his eyes to meet her gaze. “He’s alive, Eddie. You saved him.”

Eddie shakes his head. “He was only on that road because of me, he wouldn’t have—“

“Stop.” Maddie’s voice is firm and there’s a strong emotion flaring in her eyes. “This was not your fault, this is that idiot driver’s fault. You did everything right, Eddie. You saved my baby brother’s life.”

Eddie stares back at her, tears stream down both their faces. Without warning, Maddie pulls him into a bone crushing hug and he winces, pain flaring from where she’d hit a bruise.

“Sorry!” She says, pulling back quickly. “I forgot.”

Eddie manages a watery smile. “It’s ok.”

They each take a seat on either side of Buck’s bed. There’s a cast on his left arm, so maddie can’t grab his hand. Instead, she reaches out and brushes a lock of hair off his face. “You’ve gotta stop scaring me like this, Evan,” she says sadly.

They sit together quietly for ages. At some point, Eddie takes Buck’s right hand in his own and squeezes. He puts his other hand over Buck’s wrist, feels the pulse beat in time with the monitor.

“I told him that I love him,” Eddie whispers. Maddie’s gaze snaps to his face, shock clear in her expression. She doesn’t say anything, simply sits and waits. Eddie takes a shaky breath, staring at Buck’s face. “He was unconscious, back at the accident and I—he needed to wake up. I needed him to wake up, I couldn’t let him die. I wasn’t thinking about anything but keeping him alive and it just—I said that he couldn’t leave me like that because I love him.”

“Eddie,” Maddie says, barely above a whisper. She looks like she wants to say something else but then Buck groans and Eddie feels Buck’s fingers tighten around his own. “Hey, Evan, are you awake?” Maddie asks, immediately moving to rest her hand on his cheek.

Buck makes a noise that almost sounds like a word and his eyes flutter open. He looks around the room slowly, his eyes pausing on Maddie before they land on Eddie. He squeezes Eddie’s hand again and Eddie chokes on a delirious laugh. “You’re awake,” he says, almost in awe.

Buck cracks a small smile. “Did you mean it?” His voice is scratchy and it comes out weak.

Eddie's heart starts beating harder in his chest. “Mean what?”

Buck looks down at their intertwined hands then back up at Eddie. “At the accident. You told me you loved me.”

Maddie stares between the two of them, fighting a smile. Eddie gapes at Buck. “You heard that?”

Buck nods. “Did you mean it?” he repeats.

Eddie is at a complete loss for words. Buck was unconscious, he was dying, he—he heard Eddie? Eddie gives a miniscule nod.

Buck laughs, although it sounds more like a cough. “Good. I love you too.”

Eddie stares at Buck. This isn’t real. This can’t be real. Eddie must have died at the accident because this isn’t possible. “Buck, you—“

“I love you,” Buck repeats, firmer this time. “I’ve loved you for a long time, Eddie.”

And suddenly Eddie is grinning. Buck is alive and he loves Eddie back and none of this should be happening but it is and Eddie is crying again. “God, I love you so much, Buck. I thought you were dead.”

Buck smiles. “I can’t believe you waited until you thought I was dead to tell me you love me.”

Eddie huffs out a surprised laugh. Maddie is looking between them both like she can’t decide if she’s happy or angry. “I didn’t want to ruin anything,” Eddie explains. It feels like an inadequate reason now that he knows Buck loves him too.

Buck rolls his eyes at Eddie fondly. “Is Chris here?” he asks hopefully.

Eddie nods. “Yeah, uh, I can—“

“I’ll go get him,” Maddie says, interrupting him. She shoots her a grateful smile. He’s not ready to let go of Buck’s hand just yet.

Buck comes to stay with Eddie and Chris while he’s recovering. Bobby and Athena offered, since Maddie and Chimney have baby Jee-Yun to take care of, but Buck declines.

“I’d rather be with you,” he says, when Eddie asks.

It’s a long recovery for Buck, Eddie is back at work after a few weeks off. But this is better than when his leg was crushed. Buck isn’t afraid that he won’t be able to return to the 118 this time around. Eddie worries about him all the time, but he knows that Buck has Chris and Carla with him all the time and at night Eddie gets to climb into bed with the man he loves.

Eventually, Buck is completely recovered and asks if he should go back to his apartment. Eddie doesn’t even hesitate before saying no. He just got Buck, he’s not letting go of him. Not ever letting go if he has any say in it.