#I’ve had the idea for ages but only recently got it down

[evansbby]

I’ve been keeping a secret from you guys 🤭🤭

For the past two weeks I’ve been writing a Steve Rogers fic. It’s my first time writing a fic where Steve is STEVE aka Captain America!

It’s a dark Au though. Dark Captain America. In fact, it’s really dark. Almost as dark as I could possibly make it. And it’s very long. And very smutty.

I will be posting tonight or tomorrow night 🩷🩷

[cheqorb]

OFF-SCRIPT ROMANCE ft. reo, sae, kaiser

you’re both just in a fake relationship for both of your own benefits, nothing more is going on behind the scenes! and it’s definitely not actual love!

NOTES: made in mind with characters aged up to maybe around 20+ ish? i’ll continue working on mer-love requests. im even thinking of opening bnha requests since i’ve gotten back into it recently. can’t tell if kaiser is ooc or not, but i’m sure you guys are sick of my apologies so i’ll try to stop LMAOO

edit: wrote this before kaiser’s backstory and goddamn it.

as the heir to the illustrious mikage corporation, REO knew, deep down, that the time would come when he'd have to step into his parents' shoes and take control of the company. and speaking of which, his parents seem to be growing increasingly more eager to see him settle down, constantly badgering him about finding a suitable partner whenever he visited them. however, his career of being a professional soccer player meant that he would probably only be able to see them if he played games in japan itself, which rarely happened anyway.

he wasn’t an idiot; maintaining a relationship with his schedule would be practically impossible, his s/o would certainly get tired of it after a few months, and he wasn’t keen on the idea of forcing them to travel with him to every single match.

the thought of starting a relationship under false pretenses, merely to appease his parents, left a bitter taste in his mouth. he wasn’t exactly the type of guy who wanted to break someone’s heart over this. reo was stuck wondering how on earth he could pull this off, until by some stroke of genius, you came into his mind.

though not close friends, your paths had crossed enough times for him to recognise your presence. considering your own status as the heir to your own family’s fortune, his parents would also approve of you. plus, you’re already familiar with the expectations such wealth brings, surely, the lifestyle of being his significant other wouldn’t be too different from the one you already had?

as reo stumbled over his words, his usually confident demeanor giving way to a palpable sense of unease, you couldn't help but feel a twinge of empathy. despite his attempts to mask his nerves, it was clear that this request weighed heavily on him, even more so than his typical bravado could conceal.

“so, i was hoping you could consider—“

his tentative smile faltered as you swiftly interjected, a curt “yes” escaping your mouth before he could even finish his carefully rehearsed proposal. the relief in his eyes was unmistakable, though tinged with a hint of disbelief at your response. his expression softened, a mixture of surprise and relief evident in his features. “you…you don’t need to make your decision so quickly,” he stammered, clearly taken aback by your immediate acceptance. “i understand it’s a difficult thing to ask of you…”

reo couldn't help but feel nervous, in hindsight, the arrangement had fallen a little too seamlessly into place. your willingness to dive headfirst into a relationship without a moment's hesitation freaked him out slightly, but it did ultimately solve his problem! with you by his side, he could continue his career while still making his parents happy.

of course, he still had his doubts but you seemed perfectly happy to spend your days in comfort and go on luxurious vacations with your friends if he had matches coming up.

and as if his luck couldn’t get any better, you’re quite the lovely person yourself. even in the absence of his parents, you always go above and beyond to maintain appearances (he thinks that’s what your trying to do anyway?) and ensure he’s happy. whether it was a home-cooked meal awaiting him after a long day or your presence in the stands, cheering him on during matches, your seemingly genuine care for him truly warmed reo's heart.

in return, reo finds himself taking extra care of you, making sure you’ve got nice clothes to wear, randomly calling you in the middle of the night, a slip of the tongue petname here and there…

nagi could only only sigh (internally in his head, it’s too much work to actually sigh) as reo picked up his phone for the umpteenth time this hour. “maybe they’re just sleeping..?” he offers, though it doesn’t seem to help very much.

“they haven’t responded to any texts, they won’t even pick up the phone…” the man laments, sulking in the corner of the room, “my dear (name) could be in danger and i’m not there to help them-“

a quick ding from his phone soon shoots him upright from his misery, a hopeful look now on his face. he only seems more cheerful once he notices it’s a voice message too, he just loves listening to you speak! your voice is always so— ‘reo, please go to sleep, it’s late in (country) right now, isn’t it? call me back in the morning, don’t you dare think of staying up to text me.’

huh? does he really do that?

SAE’s attitude and abrasive personality is definitely one of his manager’s least favourite qualities about him. the midfielder's dislike for interviews and meet-and-greets, coupled with his unabashed insults towards those he found irritating, posed a significant challenge for his public image. while some die-hard fans may have been drawn to his aloofness in the first place, it was hardly the ideal image for sponsorship deals or modeling contracts.

his manager entertained the idea of sae entering into a relationship. perhaps, he mused, the presence of a significant other could soften his rough edges and make him more approachable to the public. though he doubted sae would ever agree to such a scheme, he was a bit desperate now. can’t hurt to try, right?

as you sat outside the room, the tension hung heavy in the air. each candidate that emerged only served to heighten your nerves, leaving you questioning your decision to agree to this dumb offer in the first place. the obvious heartbroken expressions of the people leaving the room, along with the unmistakable voice of itoshi sae uttering the word "rejected," did little to ease the growing pit in your stomach.

finally, your name was called, and you entered the room with as little flair/flamboyance as you could, no need to embarrass yourself more than you already will. his bored expression did little to boost your confidence and you found yourself avoiding direct eye contact as you introduced yourself in a sheepish manner. “hello, uhm, it’s nice to meet you. i’m (l/n) (name).”

despite sae’s initial perception of you, there was something about your genuine yet unassuming nature that intrigued him. you spoke about yourself with an honesty that bordered on indifference, almost as if you had resigned yourself to an inevitable rejection so you didn’t care how genuinely insane the things you were saying were. (seriously, wdym in college you went to a skate park and came home with a horse…)

the words escape his mouth before he can even think of what he’s saying, “look up at me.”

his request caught you off guard, and you couldn't help but stammer out an apology before reluctantly meeting his gaze. under the intensity of his teal eyes, you felt a pang of self-consciousness but thankfully maintained your composure until the end. “but, uh. that’s all I can really say about myself. thanks for listening to me.”

you flash him a smile, before swiftly getting up and exiting through the door without even letting him get a word in. ‘finally, that’s over with…’ you do feel a little bad for sae though, hopefully he would take an interest in at least one of the candidates that came in after you.

you truly believed you had created a lasting impression of someone who was most definitely not a good fit for a prodigy like him (as well as a bit of a weirdo), so imagine your shock at the email sent to you the very next day by his manager. to make a long paragraph short, you got the position! well done..?

and now, his manager arranged for you and sae to meet together for a first date to truly make sure this relationship would, at the bare minimum, allow you to be cordial with one another. well, that’s what he was hoping for anyway. if you’ve got a person like sae on your hands, you learn to not expect things to turn positive.

his blunt remarks and stoic demeanor could’ve easily derailed the evening, but to your credit, you held your own with decent resilience considering how timid you seemed upon your first meeting. in spite of the occasional falter at his words, you continued to only show kindness towards him.

he’d never, ever, admit it out loud but he does feel a little guilty at how you just take his words without complaint. he had expected some form of resistance or annoyance from you, yet you only met his words with a laugh or simply ignoring it, leaving him feeling unexpectedly unsettled. also slightly questioning your self esteem.

just as he was contemplating bringing the date to a close, you suddenly bow your head with a smile on your face. one that really captivated sae because of the actual, sheer sincerity in it.

“thank-you, sae, i mean it. you’ve been very nice to me considering i’ve just been talking your ear off this whole time, so thanks for that. i liked today a lot.”

with your words hanging in the air, sae was at a loss for how to respond. what was he supposed to do after hearing that? not decide right there and then that he wanted to give you the entire world and more? (I’M SO SORRY I CANNOT FOR THE LIFE OF ME WRITE SAE WITHOUT HIM BEING EXTREMELY OOC)

unlike the other two, KAISER’s situation can vary a little more. as in, his reasons for needing a pretend relationship can differ depending on anything. it could stem from dissatisfaction from his management, a desire to maintain his image, or simply on a whim. regardless of the reason, you’re stuck with him one way or another.

his overconfident demeanor can be jarring at times, even though you thought you had steeled yourself for it beforehand. it doesn’t seem to disappear even when the two of you are alone together; which by common sense, should be when you’re most comfortable with each other, no? yet, there are also instances when his bravado feels forced, the occasional slip in his facade.

for better or for worse, you hesitated to say anything; not wanting to overstep any boundaries. you weren’t his actual s/o, you were getting paid like the relationship was a career. besides, would someone as arrogant as to call themselves ’emperor’ even want help from you? if you’re the more compassionate type, you may just immediately cave in and try to help. well, even if you aren’t, you’ll find it increasingly difficult to ignore him, ultimately realising he is unlikely to seek help himself.

initially, he adamantly opposed any attempts from you, making it clear he preferred to deal with his troubles alone or that he didn’t need your help. your persistence is slightly alarming to kaiser, whose probably wondering if you’re trying to increase your allowance or something, but he still doesn’t give in (yet).

suppressing a sigh, you turn on your heel after placing a cup of water and a modest plate of food on the coffee table. staying where you're evidently not wanted seems pointless. "try to eat something before heading to bed, kaiser. and if you need anything, just tell me, kay?" the words spill from your lips almost automatically, uttered countless times before.

as you take a step forward, a sudden tug on your arm sends you tumbling to the floor. "ow-"

kaiser remains silent, clutching your hand as if it were his lifeline. awkwardly, you place your hand on his shoulder, engaging him in small talk. though he doesn’t respond, he doesn't push you away either. it's progress of sorts, you suppose?

after that, there’s a gradual improvement in your relationship! kaiser appears to be coping better, even seeming happier than before. good for him, you think to yourself.

even so, you figured that your dynamic with each other still wouldn’t change all that much. you’d help him out whenever he needed you to, you’d both continue with your lives as usual. however, fate clearly had other plans.

for starters, he’s much more affectionate in private moments rather than it simply being for the public eye. gone are the days when displays of affection were reserved solely for public appearances. now, it’s like there isn't a day that passes without his presence: resting his head on your shoulder, intertwining fingers, or wrapping his arms around your waist. and then there’s also the random pet names he bestows upon you.

another change would be that kaiser genuinely cares if you’re around or not. attending his matches had become routine to you, necessary to maintain the image of being his supportive significant other but nothing more.

while you had no intention of not going, you couldn't help but notice kaiser's new habit of personally inviting you to his matches. with a smug grin, he would insist on you showing up, emphasising how he wanted you in the crowd, cheering him on. instead of receiving tickets through the usual channels (his manager, mostly), he even took it upon himself to hand-deliver them to you!

with the crowd roaring with excitement, signalling the start of the match was close by, kaiser's gaze finds its way to you. he takes a stride in your direction, his hand reaching out to gently lift your chin to face him.

you meet his eyes, a questioning expression flickering across your features, as he lets out a dramatic sigh. "not even going to give me a bit of luck before i step onto the field? i mean, a supportive partner would offer a kiss for good luck, wouldn't they?" he murmurs, a playful smirk dancing on his lips.

he’s ever so slightly more unbearable like this though. how awful!!

[buckyalpine]

Work Wife

Bucky x reader 

Some angst, past crappy relationship with cheating but Bucky is a sweet baby and makes it all better. Lots and lots of fluff

“See you soon doll” Bucky pecked a kiss onto your head before making his way out to a new job he had taken up at a small bookstore. He’d taken a few months off of missions, needing a break from it all and the store that wasn’t too far from the compound was perfect. 

You smiled watching him run off, not wanting to be late. It warmed you seeing how happy he was, it had only been a couple of weeks and he was glowing. 

He clearly loved it. 

Every day he’d come back, excited to tell you about how his day went; the new book he read, how his coworker, Rosa, introduced him to a new coffee, the puppy that visited the store, the new café he went to with Rosa, how to processed an online order for the first time, how Rosa walked him through the whole thing. 

You were curled up in bed with Bucky, your head on his chest while he cuddled you close, telling you about the most recent events that took place that afternoon (which of course, included Rosa). He laughed about how the owner of the store, Dave, told them to stop flirting so much, it was going to make the other customers sick. 

“Almost followed her home today, she made these almond cookies that were so good, I wanted to bring you some but Dave finished them” 

You hummed, shaking off the tiny inkling of insecurity and jealously that had started to crawl up your spine. You were over thinking. It was nothing. Rosa was a coworker.

Bucky would never cheat. 

He loved you. 

“Come visit soon?” He whispered, before kissing your forehead and turning the lamp off so you could both fall asleep. 

“I will” You kissed his chest, biting your lip, wondering if it was a good idea. You had been meaning to visit for ages but missions and recovery had taken up your time. Now you feared actually seeing everything in person would make everything too real. 

You didn’t know if you could go through that again. 

*****

“Sounds like you have a work wife” Tony snorted, over hearing bits and pieces of Bucky’s day at the book store while you both sat at the kitchen island, eating dinner. 

“A work wife?” Bucky looked confused, having never heard the term before, he was already on the struggle bus trying to find the courage to make you his wife, what was this additional fuckery. 

“Y’know, like a close bond you have with someone at work and it almost feels like you’re married to them cause you get each other and there’s some banter and bickering in there. Like a wife”

Bucky nodded, it made sense. His relationship with Rosa was sort of like what Tony was describing and he certainly felt a deeper connection with her than just someone else he worked with. 

“Pepper says Nat is my work wife but Nat said Steve is her work husband, Cap still doesn’t understand the concept, so we’re all in a bit of an entanglement until further notice” 

Your heart started to hammer in your chest. You knew they were all just joking and you kept reminding yourself that Bucky would never, never cheat but...

That’s also what you thought in your last relationship. 

When he said they were just co-workers. 

When he literally introduced you to her as his work wife.

She was in every single one of his stories. 

His day wasn’t complete unless she was in it. 

You tried to give him the benefit of the doubt but surely being a work wife didn’t entail sending each other nudes. 

You swallowed thickly, trying to calm yourself down before you got ahead of yourself, Bucky was different. 

*****

“So...” You fidgeted with your fingers, watching Bucky get ready for work, letting your curiosity get the best of you. “Whats-whats Rosa like?”

“She’s super sweet. We have a lot in common, its incredible. I don’t think I’ve had that type of connection in a long time. She’s caring, she listens, more patient than I am, that’s for sure” Bucky snorted to himself, embarrassed over the number of time’s he had asked her to help him go over the system they used for returns. She didn’t mind, showing him again, every single time. 

“Oh” You felt your heart sink, you didn’t know what answer you were expecting from him but his words felt like salt rubbed on a wound. You didn’t want to dump your insecurities onto him, it wasn’t fair when he hadn’t done anything wrong. He gave you a kiss good bye as always before heading out the door. 

It was getting late. Bucky was never late. You couldn't fall asleep, your stomach churning at the number of reasons he could be late but nothing brought you comfort. 

“You’re still up?” Bucky had walked in quietly, expecting you to be asleep but you were up, reading a book, still waiting for him. “Sorry baby, I got caught up with Rosa, I lost track of time. She really is like my work wife” He strode over to the closer to change out of his clothes, not seeing the tears that had welled in your eyes. 

That did it. You couldn't swallow the lump in your throat or mask the sniffles that escaped you. You tried to bite your lips shut but you couldn’t hide the tiny whimpers that slipped through.  

“Doll?” Bucky frowned when he heard your soft cries, rushing out to come by your side, his heart racing when he saw how distraught you looked. “Babygirl what’s wrong”

“It’s-it’s nothing, it has nothing to do with you” You shook your head, not wanting to go into the way you had trusted your past boyfriends so much, only to end up hurt every single time. You were practically watching history repeat itself and you hated it. 

“Babygirl, talk to me, please” Bucky pulled you into his lap, doing his best to soothe you but it didn’t seem to work. 

“W-would-would you ever-ch-cheat on m-me?” You hiccupped between sobs. 

“Never doll, I’d never do anything to hurt you baby, you’re it for me. No one else comes close to you. Where’s all this coming from sweet heart” 

You sucked in a breath, your body feeling hot, almost embarrassed to tell Bucky about your past relationship but he had to know. You told him about how your ex endlessly spoke about his coworker and how amazing she was. It started off fine. Then he started coming home late. He gave her that glorious title. Then he tripped and put his dick in her. 

“You-you said work wife, I guess it just reminded me about him” You shrugged, “I know you like working with her a lot, Its just hard because I trusted him when he said there was nothing between them” 

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that baby” Bucky wrapped his arms tightly around you, peppering kisses onto your face. “I promise you it’s nothing like that with Rosa” He could tell by your face you were not convinced even though you were trying hard to believe him. You nodded against his chest, closing your eyes, hoping sleep would help you feel better. 

“I think you should me et her” Bucky smiled softly while you blinked up at him, his sweet hopefully eyes looking down at you. “Please?” 

****

You gripped Bucky’s hand tightly as he walked with you down the sidewalk, your heart racing while his was jumping with excitement. The bell jingled as he opened the door, the soft scent of books immediately evading your senses, calming you slightly. Soft music from the 40′s played in the background on an old record player. 

“Rosa!” Bucky called out, grinning when he heard the tiny footsteps rustling between the rack. 

“James! It’s your day off darling” A tiny old lady popped her head from around the bookshelf; she was wearing a soft pink cardigan, her grey hair tucked in a bun and thin gold framed glasses perched on top of her head. She was half Bucky’s height, standing on her toes to pinch on of his cheeks before looking at you with bright eyes. She was adorable. 

“Rosa, this is my girlfriend, y/n” 

“Oh! I see why you call her a doll, what a sweet heart” She didn’t hesitate to pull you down for a hug, cupping your face gently in her soft hands “He talks about you so much darling” 

“Y/n, this is my work wife, Rosa” You felt your cheeks heat up while Bucky smiled bashfully, excited you finally got to meet the people and see the place that brought him so much happiness. 

It all made sense now. 

Of course she understood him well. Of course he felt happy here. They reminded him of all the things he had missed out on. When he was with them, he felt like he had a small piece of his old self back. 

“What are you doing here Barnes” Dave snorted, shaking his head “Here to flirt with my wife again?” An older gentlemen made his way over, cane in hand, dressed handsomely, nudging his wife playfully. “I hired you to work here, not flirt with the punks that come in here” 

“We’ve been married 60 years, he still insists we’re just colleagues” She shook her head, elbowing his side while Bucky chuckled, enjoying the typical banter between the two, something he hoped he’d have with you one day. 

“When you’re on the clock you work for me” Dave shrugged, giving her a gentle kiss before sitting down and sorting a pile of books. “Shouldn’t have hired this one to work here, he’s been distracting you” 

“Can you blame me, look at how handsome he is” Rose threw him a wink before helping her husband while Bucky blushed beside you, walking you through the store. “Handsome little devil” 

“He’s a little shit” 

“They won’t let me call them Mr. or Mrs or Sir or Mam” Bucky shook his head, thinking back to the utter struggle her had the first week, getting bonked with Dave’s cane every time he slipped up. 

“Don’t age me, I’m younger than you, if anything I should be addressing you as Sir, Sergeant. You were already in your 20′s when I was born” 

“They’re so sweet” You giggled, squeaking when Bucky tugged you to the back of the store. 

“They are” Bucky hummed, wrapping his hands around your waist, pulling you closer “I-I want that with you some day doll” He whispered, nervous with what he was hinting at. 

“and what’s that my handsome devil?” You stood on your toes, kissing his lips sweetly, your heart fluttering while he rested his forehead on yours. 

“Be happy with you, love you, grow old with you” 

“I want that with you James”  You could feel your eyes sting a little, snuggling into his chest, nothing would have made you happier than getting to spend the rest of your life with your soldier. 

“Propose to her already!” 

“Shut up and let the boy be” 

Bucky chuckled, his eyes twinkling as he looked down at you, giving you a few more kisses before spending the rest of the afternoon, cuddled up with you on the couch with some coffee, books, and his mind planning how he wanted to ask you to marry him. 

(and eventually he does propose to you. At that very bookstore. Dave and Rosa are 100% at the wedding. They’re more excited than anyone else that their son is getting married because Bucky is like their baby now. Your babies call them grandma and grandpa. Bucky still teasingly calls her his wife and she blushes like a little girl every single time)

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[deakyjoe]

Not A Place, But A Feeling

Pairing: Joel Miller x Reader (fem, she/her)

Category: angst and maybe a little fluff idk

Summary: They say home is where the heart is. And your heart is with Joel Miller.

Warnings: 18+, age gap (reader is mid 20s and Joel is 56), a rewrite of episode 3 basically, kissing (!!), groping (!!), implied smut, mentions of death & suicide (Bill & Frank, Sarah), reader is Bill & Frank’s adopted/surrogate daughter, guilt, sadness, grief, loss/bereavement

Word count: 3.9k

A/N: In celebration of Pedro’s birthday, have something I’ve been working on for literal months <3

Consider buying me a coffee :)

Bill and Frank were dead.

Their corpses sat rotting away in their bedroom, the door locked shut, as Ellie read their goodbye letter, a note of upbeat confusion in her voice. You couldn't blame the kid, she'd never met either of them.

Joel stood next to you rigid, unsure what to do or say as he just listened to the final words spoken by two of the few people he'd chosen to trust in this world.

You, on the other hand, felt as if the universe was crashing down around you. All blood had escaped from your body, seemingly draining out from your feet, as your head floated around in a storm of lightness that threatened to knock you unconscious at any moment.

Bill and Frank had raised you, the former finding you abandoned as a toddler when the outbreak had started. You'd stayed shut away in their own private community for years, Tess and Joel being the first people you could remember meeting that hadn't been your surrogate parents. And when Frank had come up with the genius idea to dump you in their responsibility so you could socialise some more and see the real world, you'd been all too eager to sneak back into the QZ with them.

You were beginning to regret that enthusiasm.

"And take care of our girl for us, we know you will." The final words of the letter hung in the air for a moment as Ellie lowered the paper into her lap, eyes flicking between the two people stood in front of her.

Joel said nothing. And you ran.

The front door almost fell off its hinges with the force of you swinging it open to get to the front yard. Barren flowerbeds were quickly flooded with the contents of your stomach. You retched at the floor, nothing else coming up but the feeling of needing to vomit still strong.

They were dead. Dead. Gone. Forever. What were you supposed to do now?

Your legs trembled beneath you, struggling to keep your weight as every fibre of your being just wanted to give up and collapse into the ground. This wasn't supposed to happen.

Trying to shake the feeling off, you pushed yourself into an upright position and started walking. To where? You didn't know. But this is what you used to do when you needed time to think, time to clear your head, time to escape. You walked the town. You hadn't had that same ease in the QZ, it was nice to have it back now. Even in the worst scenario.

You couldn't dwell on this for too long. People died. Regularly in this world you lived in for that matter. It was an inevitability. The loss of Tess had been a warning sign of that only recently. You'd been taught not to grieve too much, you didn't have the time for it. And it wouldn't change anything.

But you still ached, feeling as if a part of you had been ripped away and stolen for eternity. So, you walked.

Joel had watched you leave out of the corner of his eye, not surprised by your reaction at all. It was a little understated if anything. The men who had raised you were dead. Nobody coped well with the loss of family, he knew that better than most.

"You should probably follow her." Ellie said, looking towards where you'd abruptly left the house.

"She'll be fine." He insisted, rolling his shoulders back and taking in the room around him. He'd have to figure out everything for himself now that Bill wasn't around to help. So he got started on that, distracting himself by creating a mental list of inventory the group of you would need for your journey. And all of it was bound to be lying around here somewhere.

Ellie could only watch as Joel ignored what he really should have been attending to and took to wandering around the house instead, staying careful to keep clear of the downstairs bedroom.

It took two hours for you to reappear in the house again, acting as if nothing had happened.

You strolled in to find Ellie rummaging through a dusty old box with your name plastered on the side of it in block capitals, the black ink slightly smudged.

"Hi."

Her head snapped up to meet your eyes. "Oh, hi. I found this."

You shrugged. "My music collection, right?"

She visibly relaxed and smiled. "Yeah." Ellie wasn't a shy kid by any means and she certainly didn't have any trouble with her confidence or prying, but she liked you and didn't want to overstep since you'd been nothing but nice to her since you'd met.

You nodded. "I think I've got an old Discman around here somewhere if you want to take some of it on the road with you."

Before she had a chance to respond Joel stomped back into the room, gaze landing on you. He didn't say anything but his expression was questioning. You just gave a short nod which was enough for him.

"Take a shower and I can find some clothes for you both." You said, collapsing into one of the wooden chairs. It creaked under your weight but you paid it no mind.

The both of them could tell you still were not feeling quite right but didn't push it, Ellie disappearing upstairs to take advantage of the luxury of a shower that was actually hot with good water pressure. Joel silently followed you to a closet where the stash of unused clothes was stored away.

You found jeans for him and Ellie, a t-shirt for the young girl and a plaid shirt for him. It was one of Frank's. Joel watched you silently as you hesitated before passing it over to him. Luckily, neither of you had to fill the tense silence that followed as the shower switched off upstairs.

“I’ll go give these to Ellie then you can shower.” You mumbled, pushing past him when he gave no more than a grunt of acknowledgment.

You don’t know what you expected from the man, he wasn’t exactly well-versed in emotional support. Just something a little more would have been nice. You pushed the thought aside as you knocked on the bathroom door.

“Yeah?” Ellie called back.

“It’s me. I’ve got you some clothes.” You were slightly turned away from the door in case she decided to open it.

“Oh! Okay, hang on.”

There was muffled rustling from the other side before the bathroom door opened a crack and a hand stuck out.

You laughed and gave her the pile of clothes. “Should be some spare toothbrushes under the sink too. Maybe some toothpaste. If you’re, I don’t know, feeling extra hygienic.”

“Feeling extra hygienic.” She echoed back in amusement. “Thanks!”

The bathroom door slammed again and you rolled your eyes.

“You’re welcome.”

You trotted down the stairs to find Joel hovering by the door to the kitchen, surveying his surroundings. You recognised that look.

“What do you need?” You asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

You sighed. “Don’t tiptoe around me, Joel. What do you need?”

His gaze shot back to yours.

Tense silence hung in the air for a few seconds.

Just as he opened his mouth to reply, Ellie came bounding down the stairs and collapsed in front of the box of CDs again. She didn’t seem to notice the staring contest going on between the two of you as she rifled through the music rapidly.

Joel’s mouth closed again momentarily before he appeared to change his mind. “You good here for a while?” He directed at Ellie.

The young girl glanced up from the box and nodded, finally noticing the atmosphere in the room.

Joel turned back to you and tilted his head towards the front door. "Let's take a walk."

You followed him silently as he walked past you and out the front of the house, not stopping his fast pace until he was well away from the building.

Falling into step beside him, you debated whether you should be the first to speak. Thankfully, you didn’t have to think on that for too long because as you reached the point where the boutique was coming into view, Joel stopped and suddenly turned on you.

"You should stay here."

The statement felt like a knife in your chest. The way he said with such finality, such conviction. Like he’d been thinking it for a while. You wondered if that had been his plan all along.

"What?" You didn’t let your confusion and hurt go amiss from your tone.

Joel could only repeat himself. "Stay here."

You scoffed. "Why would I do that?"

"It's safe." He pushed through clenched teeth.

You nodded. "Safe."

"Your home."

He’d completely lost you.

And yet you nodded slowly again. "My home."

He nodded tightly, wishing you'd stop repeating everything he said in that sardonic tone.

You clicked your tongue quietly. "You think this is my home?"

"Yes."

You glanced at the row of derelict buildings next to you, the cracks on the ground, the dead grass. "The place I left years ago, where I had no friends, where my parents have recently killed themselves, you think that's my home?"

Joel had never heard you directly refer to Bill and Frank as your parents. It pained him to hear the word used in such a horrific scenario. But he didn’t let up.

"You grew up here."

You laughed humourlessly. "You grew up in Texas. Do you still refer to that as your home?"

He'd like to. But didn't. "No."

"And what is your home, huh? What do you think of your home as, Joel?" Your brows furrowed together as you watched him thinking about it.

Sarah.

Tommy.

Tess.

...You.

You didn’t let him answer. "Bet it's not a place, is it?"

You were right.

You knew that so you carried on. "Bill and Frank were my home. Now they're gone. Tess was my home. But guess what? She's gone too. Tommy's gone fucking M.I.A.! So what am I left with, Joel?"

Him.

"I'm left with you." You shoved at his chest, surprised by your own strength when he took an unsteady step back. "So if you think that I'm going to stay in this fucking ghost town alone instead of following my home wherever he goes with that girl who needs us, then you really don't know me at all."

You went to push past him, to leave his ridiculous suggestion behind and maybe go clear your head with a hot shower, when he stopped you with a statement that felt like the knife he’d already plunged into your chest was being twisted around to hurt you even more.

"Tess promised Bill and Frank that we'd look after you."

The scowl on your face deepened and Joel knew he'd given the wrong answer but it was the only answer he knew to give.

"Is that what I am to you, Joel? A promise that Tess made?"

He didn't respond.

A sting that threatened tears bit at the back of your throat. "Because if I'm a promise that someone else made for you then fine, I'll stay. I won't burden you with having to take care of me anymore." You ran a hand down your face. "You've got your hands full with Ellie anyway."

“That’s not what I meant.” He tried.

And failed.

“Then what do you fucking mean?!” You wailed, fingers clawing at your scalp in frustration. “Do you want me to stay here for me or for you? Just spit it out, Joel! So I understand what the fuck you want!”

Joel Miller was an intimidating man. He marched around with a permanent frown on his face, his tall and broad figure parting any crowd that saw him coming. That's why, when he took a few sudden paces towards you, you inched back a couple steps. It was instinct. He was a killing machine. And he didn't look too happy with you right now.

But the pure shock that rocketed through your system when his large hands landed on each of your cheeks and he crashed his mouth against yours would have been enough to keep a whole city's electricity running for a month.

You froze for a moment, eyes fluttering shut in surprise, not sure what to do with yourself. Joel Miller was kissing you. Joel Miller was kissing you. Out of every possible outcome, you never could have predicted this. The older man who you had adored quietly for years and trusted with your life, with your soul, was kissing you.

Your fists curled into the front of the shirt he’d been wearing for days, fabric a little stiff with dirt and grime, using it as leverage to meet his lips halfway.

He kissed you hungrily, like a man starved, devouring everything he could possibly take from you. Fingers tangled in the back of your hair, tugging roughly to elicit soft whimpers out of you. He licked into your mouth hotly, tasting as much of you as possible.

The feeling of your palms sliding up his chest seemed to knock him out of his stupor, detaching himself from you and taking a couple of unsure steps back.

He looked at you surprised, almost like he couldn't believe he'd done that. "I-"

"Joel..." You trailed off when he gave you a warning look. So you went for another approach. "I thought you and Tess..."

His face tightened in frustration. "No."

You didn't believe that. "No?"

"No." He gave a subtle shake of his head. "Never."

He seemed adamant. And sincere. So you chose to believe him.

You weren’t shocked when he looked at you for just a couple of seconds more before spinning on his heel and started walking back in the direction of the house. He was like that. Joel seemed to enjoy ignoring his feelings.

But then he changed his mind and looked back at you again. "We can stay a couple of days and then we need to move again."

You nodded slowly. "Okay."

He tilted his head up towards the dull sky for a moment before turning again and stalking off.

You waited until he was out of sight before following him. If he was conflicted on what he’d just done, then pestering him with your presence certainly wasn’t going to help.

When you got back to the house, Ellie was still sat on the floor.

She didn’t even look up as she spoke to you. “The old man’s showering, thank god. Thought my nose was going to fall off.”

You stifled a laugh and set about finding out if there was any food in the pantry that was still good to eat. You knew there was an endless supply in the basement and garage, but something slightly fresher was more likely to satisfy the three of you for the next couple days you were apparently staying. Managing to find something mildly edible and leaving it out for the two of them to eat, you informed Ellie she could help herself to anything in the house before making your way upstairs to find some of your own stuff to wear in what used to be your old bedroom.

You’d miscalculated how long it would take Joel to wash away the days worth of dirt as he emerged from the bathroom just as you walked past it, hair damp and slicked back and new-ish clothes on. He looked good. Very good. And somehow better than usual.

You swallowed thickly and slid past him into your old bedroom, not saying a word as he watched you go. The knowledge that he felt something for you, you didn’t know just what yet, was weighing down on you. What were you supposed to do with the idea that he maybe liked you just enough to want to kiss you? Joel wasn’t the kind of man to suddenly open up about his feelings and tell you he was hopelessly in love with you. Maybe he was pre-outbreak, you thought. You’d like to have known the him that existed pre-outbreak, you decided. But he certainly wasn’t that man now.

You pushed your door shut behind you, leaning against the wood and letting out a long exhale. God, why had he decided now was a good time to make this more complicated than it already was? You almost despised him for it.

Shaking the thoughts away, you found yourself some clothes and traipsed to the shower. The hot water and steam would clear away the temporary worries whilst you figured out how you were going to address your own feelings for him. Sure, you’d always known you’d silently harboured a thing for Joel. But you’d always assumed that nothing would ever come of it, he was a lot older and Bill would kill him if he ever caught wind of anything, so you’d buried the feelings deep down inside of yourself. Until today apparently. When he’d decided to dig it all up by kissing you.

You scrunched your eyes shut and forced that thought out of your head. The memory of the way his lips felt against yours, the way his hands, his very large hands, held you, the way his tongue licked into your mouth, the way he groaned lowly deep in his chest.

Thoughts. Forced. Out. Gone.

The rest of the day was uneventful. The three of you ate in silence before Ellie declared she was tired and you told her she could sleep in your old bed. She seemed ecstatic with that as she’d admitted to snooping earlier and thought that the mattress looked comfortable. You’d laughed and waved her off. Joel had then mumbled something about supplies and had disappeared into the basement.

You took that as your opportunity to speak to Bill and Frank, something you’d wanted to do since Ellie had first read that letter. So you hauled yourself up from where you were sitting, padded down the short hallway to the room where their bodies rested, and promptly sat down right outside the door.

You spoke to them silently in your head, giving them updates like you would’ve done were they still alive and you were just visiting. Telling them about life in the QZ and what you’d been up to. In retrospect, it seemed ridiculous. But at the time, it felt right.

When you were done, you just closed your eyes and leaned your head back against the door.

"Don't go in there."

Your eyes shot open at the deep voice to find Joel standing a few feet away from you. Of course. Who else would it have been?

"I'm not. Just wanted to sit with them for a minute." You sighed and squinted your eyes at him. "I know that sounds crazy."

He shook his head in disagreement. "I understand."

There was a brief moment of silence.

He broke it. "It's late. You should go to bed."

"Ellie's in my bed.”

"Master bedroom." He countered.

You frowned. "I thought that's where you were sleeping."

"Couch." Joel’s line of defence was unwavering; you didn’t really know why considering you were having a simple conversation about sleeping arrangements.

So you pushed on. "Couch? Why? Isn't that uncomfortable?"

"I've slept on worse."

"What's wrong with the master bedroom?"

He hesitated. "That's where Bill and Frank used to sleep. Feels like an invasion."

Oh.

You hummed and nodded your head. "That's why I can't do it either."

"You can't stay here all night."

"I've slept on worse." You repeated his words back to him, surely he would understand.

He nodded and slowly offered out his hand. “Come on.”

You almost didn’t take it, shocked that he was doing it. But after a moment’s pause, you slipped your hand into his and let him pull you up. And when he didn’t immediately let go, and started to pull you towards the couch instead, you thought you might have a heart attack.

When the two of you reached your apparent sleeping grounds for the night, Joel turned back to look at you. Only to find that you were a lot closer than expected. He didn’t like the way you looked up at him because it reflected a grief he’d only ever seen in himself. It was too personal, what you were feeling. He hated it. And yet, he couldn’t help but feel tempted by it.

He’d already crossed that boundary once. What was once more?

You were less surprised the second time Joel Miller kissed you. In fact, you were more relieved.

One hand cupped your face, keeping you grounded, the other clutched at your waist, keeping you close. Whether that was for him or for you, you weren’t sure. But you weren’t going to complain either way. And when the two of you fell back onto the couch all bitter memories of loss, of grief, of confusion, of him all went away.

Joel could only wish that he was on the same mental path.

This was so unbelievably selfish of him. Bill and Frank trusted him with your safety and security. And here he was on their couch, the memories of their lives still dancing around him fresh, kissing their daughter as he groped and grabbed at you with lust fuelled energy. It was more than lust, Joel knew that, but the ghosts of Bill and Frank didn't.

You were on top of him, full weight pushed against his body, and Joel could think of nothing but how fucking soft you felt under his touch. He ignored the betrayal of two of his only friends, ignored the glaring age difference, ignored that he was feeling what he should have felt for Tess. None of it mattered when your skin was warm and velvety in his palms. None of it mattered when your tongue slid against his and you swallowed the soft groans he'd accidentally let loose every now and then. None of it mattered when you whispered his name against his lips almost checking like his was still there with you. And of course he was. He'd never leave you from this moment on.

He'd continue to be selfish and ignore all the reasons why this was so wrong because it just felt right. Like you'd said, he was your home. And you were certainly his. Maybe he could afford to be selfish for once in his life.

The kisses were sweet, almost as sweet as you, but Joel could feel you yearning for more. Your fingers itched against him, twitching in anticipation. He understood perfectly as he felt the same, letting his hands drift to wherever they wanted. And you had no complaints, arching into his touch as much as you could.

The two of you were like horny teenagers, making out on the couch and trying to stay as quiet as possible so as not to wake the rest of the house. The rest of the house being Ellie in this scenario. Although the teenager wasn’t stupid; she’d felt the tension as soon as she’d met the two of you. Even if you both appeared unaware of it.

The sun dipped below the horizon.

Hands dipped below waistlines.

A war raged through Joel’s mind. This was wrong. So unbelievably wrong. But you felt so right.

He broke away momentarily, running a thumb along your bottom lip. “Maybe you should sleep.”

You only nodded at him, eyelids half closed and pupils blown. Joel just kissed you again. Maybe his moral dilemma could be a problem for the morning.

A/N: When I say this has been sitting in my drafts for ages, unfinished, but calling to me. Glad I finally got around to completing it :)

[livyjh]

Hi lovely! Hope your day is going great, I read your most recent requested fic and it was GOOD!!!!🥵

Then I thought of an idea that I know you would execute so well. So Joel and reader are friendly but secretly they are down baaaaad for each other like A LOT, tho both think it's unrequited. So one day at a safe house at patrol or something like that, they have some nasty sex in the heat of the moment😅 but afterwards reader gets weird because she's worried that Joel only wants some casual sex, and Joel starts to panic because the poor guy wants to have a relationship with her but thinks she regreted being with him because of the age gap they have and his not so good reputation as a dangerous person around town. Yay miscommunication trope!!But with a happy ending, pleaaaase💗 hope you like this ask!

I loved this request!!! I apologize it took me a bit to get to it, I haven’t been feeling super great lately but things are starting to look up. Thank you so much for sending this, I hope you like what I’ve written up! 💝💝💝

Anything You Want

Joel Miller x Afab!Reader

Rating: EXPLICIT 18+

Word count: 2.2k

Warnings: smut, unprotected p in v, oral sex (f receiving), nipple play, mention of being cold, fire in fireplace, cute crush awkwardness, mention of losing family member, mention of eating, admitting feelings, post sex awkwardness, miscommunication!!!!, pet names, reader is fem coded and can be any size and shape :)

Joel Miller Masterlist

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

You and Joel.

Joel and you.

Things were easy going. Friendly. Fun. Actually flirty sometimes.

You were on a two day patrol with him today and tomorrow. As of right now, you were walking along a creek to find your way to a safe house about 5 miles from Jackson.

You’d been chatting about different things along the walk since this morning.

It started with small talk. “How you been?” and “what have you been doing lately?”

It turned into you telling Joel a childhood story about your sister running away from home a few days before the outbreak. She had thankfully made it home before everything started, but she didn’t make it past day three.

This made Joel’s heart hurt for you. He’d always had a soft spot for you, ever since you met. You were kind and sweet, caring and compassionate.

You had a bubbly personality that never failed to make him smile. Truth be told, he had a bit of a crush on you. But you didn’t know that yet.

You had a crush on him too, and he didn’t know about that either. You were both oblivious to how the other felt.

That would soon change.

***

“You been on patrol here before?” Joel asked as you walked into the small one-story house.

“Once. Came up here with Tommy and Maria a few months ago.” You answered.

Joel hums in response, closing and locking the door behind the two of you.

The sky was starting to darken outside, the winter making the days short.

The house was cold, but not unbearable. You’d almost definitely have to sleep in your jacket though.

Joel started a fire in the living room fireplace as you got settled on the couch and opened up a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli. One of your favorites. And Joel’s too.

Once the fire was able to keep going on its own, Joel joined you on the couch and started digging in his pack for food.

“Wanna share?” You offer the can with a fork to him.

“Love to.” Joel smiles, fingers brushing against yours as he takes the can from you.

“Jesus, you’re cold.” He laughs a little.

You sniffle, nose starting to run. “I know. I’m not great at producing very much body heat.” You shrug.

“C’mere.” Joel sets the can down on the coffee table and puts his arm up on the back of the couch to welcome you into his side.

You gulp, blushing at the offer. But you nod anyways and scoot in closer, leaning into him.

He wraps his arms around your shoulders and rubs one hand up and down your back to try and warm you.

You shoved your hands in your pockets and leaned your head on his chest, breathing in his scent.

“You’re so warm.” You smile.

He hums affirmatively, slowly setting his chin on the top of your head.

You felt butterflies erupt in your stomach at the action. You were so close to him. Getting warmer by the second. But it was a slow process, heat gradually transferring through your clothes.

“There are some blankets in the bedroom, right?” You ask, almost shivering.

“Yeah. Gimme a minute, honey.”

Honey. He certainly hasn’t called you that before.

He gets up and goes to the bedroom for a moment. You feel yourself starting to freeze again so you open up your jacket and get down on the floor in front of the fire to get warmer.

Joel returns after a minute with a couple blankets in hand, smiling when he sees you sat by the fire. He sits down next to you, knee bumping yours as he wraps a large blanket around you both. Another blanket going over your laps.

In less than ten minutes you were quite warm, moving to take off your jacket.

His eyes looked you over, something that didn’t go unnoticed by you. You look over at him and he looks like he’s blushing. Maybe he was just too warm, too?

“What?” You laugh a little, a tinge of nervousness there.

“Just, um,” he paused. “Wanted to tell you you’re beautiful. In case no one’s reminded you lately.” He swallows thickly.

You giggle, definitely nervous now. “Oh-“ you smile. “Thank you.”

Joel nods and grins softly.

“You know,” you start to speak before you can stop yourself. “You’re very- uh, very handsome.” Your stomach starts to twist in knots.

“Is that so?” Joel smirks, almost teasing.

“Yeah.” You laugh softly, eyes gazing into his.

Before you really know what’s happening, you’re both leaning in, lips gently pressing against each other’s.

You let out a soft moan, something you couldn’t stand to hold back. God, you’ve wanted this man for awhile.

Joel’s warm hands move up to cup your face, keeping you close as he breaks the kiss to give you another.

You can’t stop yourself, pushing the blanket off of your laps and moving to straddle his thighs, kissing him harder now. His hands find your waist, gently squeezing the plush skin through your shirt.

“I need you.” You whisper against his lips.

Joel just nods in agreement, moving to get his jacket off with your help.

The making out continues as you both get naked in front of the hot fire, blankets and clothing strewn about the floor.

You’re laid on your back and Joel’s between your legs, one of your nipples in his warm wet mouth.

You fist both hands in his hair as he praises your body with his tongue and lips. You hope to god he goes down on you. It’s been… years.

And like he read your mind, Joel starts to trail kisses from your chest, down over your tummy, and to your now soaked pussy.

“Please, fuck.” You whine, fingers still in his hair as his tongue moves through your folds.

Your hips buck up against his face, his nose nudging your clit and making you cry out in pleasure.

“Taste so fuckin’ good. Goddamn.” Joel moans against your cunt and thrusts his tongue into you.

His facial hair against your sensitive lips and thighs make you tingly all over. You feel like you’re floating when his mouth moves up and covers your clit before starting to suck on it.

You almost feel bad for doing it, but you pull hard on his gray curls and start to grind up against his face, whimpering with each roll of your hips.

His teeth graze your sensitive bud and it elicits a squeak from you.

“Joel, I’m- ohh…” you gasp and suddenly your thighs are shaking, squeezing around his head as you cum hard.

He groans against you, lapping at your cunt like it was his last meal.

“Fuck, darlin’. Sound so good when you get off.” He looks up at you, chin covered in your slick.

You moan at the sight, clenching around nothing. “W- wanna hear it again?” You laugh softly, teasing.

He nods and moves up between your thighs, kissing you hard as he guides himself to your entrance. You whine at the taste of yourself on his lips, wrapping your legs around his hips.

He starts to push into you, stretching you quickly. You’d gotten a look at his cock while you were both getting undressed and he was… well, he was hung like a fucking horse.

“Fuckin’ tight, princess.” He grunts.

You whimper at the nickname, pushing your heels against his ass to get him to press into you further, faster.

Once he’s completely inside you, you’re both panting while you make out, hands roaming each other’s bodies.

He pulls out part way before moving back into you slowly.

“Joel, y- you’re not gonna break me. Please, fuck me.” You breathe.

“Anything you want.” He hums in approval, setting a fast pace as he slams into your pussy. He’s moving in a way, rolling his hips, that his happy trail is rubbing against your clit with each thrust and it has you going mad.

“Feels so good.” You gasp when he thrusts into you especially hard.

“I know, baby. Fuck.” He moans into your mouth as he reaches down to play with your clit again.

“I’m so close.” You sob, senses on overload.

“Come on, sweetheart. You can do it. Cum for me.” Joel rubs fast circles into the apex of your slit, cock hitting that special spot inside you over and over.

Your back arches and then you’re squirting on his cock, crying his name repeatedly.

“That’s it. Good girl.” He coos, thumb on your clit slowing down. “Fuck, where’d ya want me to finish?”

You’d kind of hoped he would cum inside you, but considering all of the risks behind that, you didn’t blame him for asking.

“Dealer’s choice.” You whine, slowly coming down from your orgasm.

He moans at the offer, wanting desperately to finish inside, but he knew what could happen, he didn’t want to put that kind of pressure on you.

He pulls out and strokes himself quickly, warm seed covering your vulva and dripping down your slit as his deep groans fill the room.

He kisses your chest and lays down next to you for a few minutes as you both start to get sleepy.

The sticky mess between your legs is starting to bother you slightly, getting cold now. You get up and go to the bathroom to clean up.

This leaves Joel alone, feeling a little off. He doesn’t know if you just weren’t the cuddling type person or if this was only a one time deal. He sighs, running a hand over his face in frustration with himself. He should’ve admitted his feelings for you before sleeping with you. But he just couldn’t resist your moans and whines. You felt so good.

While in the bathroom cleaning yourself up, you become acutely aware of how intimate you just were with a man you had strong feelings for. Now that you’ve put out before even telling him how you felt, you’re afraid that it’s all it’s gonna be. Just sex.

Not that you’d hate that, but… you want more with Joel.

You return to the living room, cold from being naked and away from the fire. Joel is dressed again and sat on the couch eating some of the ravioli you’d gotten out. He barely even looks at you as you put your clothes back on and it makes your stomach churn.

Once you’re dressed, you sit down on the couch but not too close to Joel. He hands you the can and fork. “Here. Rest is yours.” He smiles softly.

You take it from him and stare into the can, frowning. You look up and try to make your expression neutral now. “I’m actually not that hungry.” You hand him the can back. “You can finish it off.”

“You sure?” He asks.

You nod in response and lay down on the floor by the fire, pulling a blanket over yourself and putting your backpack under your head as a pillow.

You end up falling asleep without another word between you two.

***

It had been four days since you slept with Joel. Three days since you saw him last.

The return trip to Jackson was quiet and awkward, both of you feeling bad for not revealing your true feelings and intentions to the other person. But neither of you knew what the other was thinking.

You were sat alone in your small house on the edge of town, reading a book, when the doorbell rang.

You got up and answered the door, surprised to see Joel standing there.

“Hey.” You give a half smile.

“Hey, Y/n. I need to talk to you.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

“Okay. Come in.” You step back and let him inside before closing the door.

He shrugs off his jacket and hangs it on the coat rack, folding his hands in front of him awkwardly. “Uh, can we sit for a minute?” He blushes.

“Of course.” You nod and lead him to the living room, both of you sitting down on the couch together.

“So, about the other night at the safe house-“

“I already know what you’re gonna say.” You sigh, stomach upset once again.

“You- you do?” Joel raises his brows.

“It was a mistake and it shouldn’t happen again, right?” Your face drops a little as you speak.

He looks at you, confused. “What? No…” he shakes his head. “I was gonna apologize because I didn’t… I haven’t told you that I actually want more than just sex with you. I, um,” he clears his throat. “Well, I like you. A lot.”

Your head cocks back in surprise, heart skipping a beat. “Really?”

“Yeah.” He laughs nervously.

“Joel, I’ve had feelings for you pretty much since we met.” You smile a little.

“Yeah?” He grins, scooting closer.

You nod. “I want more than sex, too.”

“Good.” He smiles wide and leans in, cradling your face with both hands before kissing you.

You kiss back, feeling warmth spread through your body with the sudden happiness.

“Be my girlfriend?” He whispers against your lips.

You nod and giggle. “Anything you want.”

____________________________________________

Tag list: @evyiione @chyannealaniz @cesspitoflove @supersingle @dizzyforyou @jrosie25 @blackfemalenerd @bongsrconfusing @milly-louise

[filthgarbage86]

Okay I literally do not know where this came from please do not criticize or say anything about this, I do not know lol oh my gods

CW: pussy eating, praise kink, a lot of dirty talk, a lot of possessive talk mentions, primary? Is that what it’s called? The one where you’re like animalistic for the other slightly? If you squint. Squirting, filth, garbage.

Okay but can you imagine

Just imagine for a second

You and Eddie are cleaning up after hell fire. You had just recently started dating, you were maybe 2-3 months in, and sure, you had been a little intimate. A little kissing-make out sessions, harmless groping, the works. But he still hadn’t gone as much as to like..touch you.

And you see him. You know him. You know how he kisses you, you feel how much he wants you and needs you - but it’s like something is holding him back. You’re trying to figure out what.

At this point, Eddie is still packing up but is looking over at you every now and then, realizing you are deep in thought. You are checked out and somewhere else. He’d stop and stare for a moment or two, waiting to see if you snapped out of it yourself before “hey babe?” You snap up immediately, looking at him with the lights behind him, his hair still looking frizzed out and a little crazy post-session. He had been so into this session, the gang had finished the campaign and it was a long night of adrenaline. You think about the passion in Eddie’s eyes then and you think back now to this moment.

“Babe? Baaabby? Angel what’s got you so dazed out? What are you thinking about?”

You look at him, thinking about tonight, thinking about the confidence and passion and drive that he had, think about how he made you feel, and you decided right there and then-

“I think you should eat me out.”

The world is silent. You can hear a pin drop, you’re convinced. Eddie is looking at you, wide eye and processing did I really just hear that right? I’m not dreaming right?

The silence has you spiraling. You had been known to be honest and straightforward, but that was just blunt. However, Eddie’s gapping jaw soon slowly inches up becomes a big, cheeky, dorky grin of “can I right now?”

You nod and giggle nervously at his enthusiasm, not long before you’re giggles turns to oh- at him clinging to you. He’s ravishing you, covering you with heavy kisses around your face, your throat, the place behind your ears, and collarbone. He is mapping out your body and thanking you repeatedly like you had just answered his prayers.

“You have” he pauses only to move from across your throat to the other “no idea” throat to face “how long” face to chest “I’ve wanted to devour you.” He’s moving downwards with urgency but not missing an inch of your skin he can get to. He’s kneeling there, in the dungeons of the high school, grabbing at your waist, hips, ass, thighs, anywhere he can grab at you, through clothes unfortunately. Literally on his knees, look up at you with those big, brown eyes that this point are almost black. Eddie had completely turned to lust in this moment.

“Please baby, on the table” he looks at you and silently asks if he can take off your skirt/pants and you’re just nodding, already a bit in a daze. You never realized you were what was holding Eddie back.

“If I had know you wanted me like this, I would have said something a while ag- oh”

He has in that time stripped your clothes down to your ankles, put your legs over his shoulders, hooked his arms under your thighs and immediately sucked on your clit. He suckled there for a while, moaning at the taste, eating you like he had been starved and you were the first taste of relief for him. The vibrations have you a moaning mess within a few moments.

“Eddie!”

“Shhh baby I’ve waited so long to meet her, don’t bother my introduction.”

You’re blushing like a tomato at the way he’s talking to your pussy like it’s his. His to have and to enjoy. He’s not wrong, at all, especially if he treasures it this much.

He suddenly slows. Mind-numbing slows. Painfully, sinfully slow. He is spelling out the ABCs, forwards, backwards, his name to really let it be known. He is taking his sweet, precious time and you do not know how much longer you’re going to last like this.

“Eddie, honey, baby, I promise this won’t be the last time, I just really need to cum. Please baby. I really really need to cum.”

“Oh my gods first you ask me so nicely to eat your delicious pussy and now I get to eat your cum? Fuck baby, go for it, give it to me. Please give it baby, I know you can do it, cum on my mouth and give me everything you’re willing to.”

You’re blushing down to your chest and you’re sent over the edge with Eddie’s praise. His words are cut silent by the sounds of your finish echoing around the dungeon and your release dripping down his chin.

He laps up every drop of you, making sure you’re clean and he’s clean. You’ve never felt so deliciously and disgustingly wet at the same time. He stands up, wiping off his chin with his hands and licking off the excess from his fingers and looks at you like you just gave him the winning lottery ticket.

“That was a really good thought sweetheart. You should think of those thoughts more often. And let me know.”

You’re out of breathe, closed eyes still in bliss, when you breathe out “Give me a minute to rest and I’ll probably have dreamt a thing or two.”

Just you know.. imagine.

[montrealmadison]

in your palace warm, mighty king

okay i’ve recently found myself on angel tree tiktok. if you’re unfamiliar with the concept, basically, some stores will put out a tree around the holidays with gift tags for anonymous local kids, and people coming in to do their own shopping can take a tag off the tree and buy kids gifts off their wishlists for the store to pass off to them. (the linked video shows it in action!)

anyway this got me thinking about jack zimmermann at the beginning of his career. he has been fabulously wealthy and privileged for his whole life, but he’s only recently started earning a massive salary of his own and has no real idea of what to spend it on. he’s comfortable. he has a car and a nice apartment and an engagement ring hidden somewhere in said apartment. he knows he should probably donate to a worthwhile cause, but he hasn’t figured out what.

one day, though, bitty’s visiting for the weekend and comes to the store with him, and right there in the entryway, he just… stops. jack doesn’t notice and consequently almost runs him over with the cart.

“you alright? careful, eh?”

bitty does not respond, because he’s looking at the tree.

“bud?”

jack follows his gaze. it really doesn’t look like much. it’s fake, unlit, and has seen better days if the way it’s a little flattened on one side is anything to go by. there is an equally squashed-looking stuffed snowman sat on the floor next to it. it’s the kind of thing your eyes slide over easily, hurrying from one place to another. blink and you’ll miss it.

bitty isn’t blinking.

“lord, i haven’t seen one of these in years,” he says. his voice is soft. he still isn’t looking at jack. “do you know what it is?”

jack doesn’t, so bitty explains. and when they inch closer, jack sees that all the ornaments he thought were plain paper before are actually printed with ages, shoe sizes, requests for warm coats and toys and cute jeans and deodorant. here and there is a specific wish—a bluetooth speaker. a particular board game. one kid, age eight, is fervently hoping for a bike.

and—okay. here’s the thing. they’ve been together for more than a year, and bitty is pretty willing to go along with jack’s desire to spoil him. but although he’s so open and accepting when jack wants to kiss him, or cook dinner for a change, or lay him out on their bed and make him feel good—he will always, always get uncomfortable where significant amounts of money are involved. it was the subject of the one and only fight that sent them to bed still heated. the fundamental difference between their upbringings is the hardest for them to grasp: jack has never known a life without plenty. and bitty—

“i think my parents put me on one,” bitty says. “the year we moved back to madison, after—”

the closet looms between them, black and yawning.

“well. you know. coach had to leave a good job in lawrenceville. took us a while to get back on our feet, i think. and that year, they couldn’t—i mean, i heard them talking at night about how we might not be able to make christmas work, when they thought i couldn’t hear them. but i still wrote my letter to santa, and there were a couple presents when i woke up christmas morning, so.” he scuffs one shoe on the industrial carpet. “maybe an angel sent ‘em.”

the words make something sizzle down jack’s spine and settle low in his gut. he steps forward, reaches out, turns over the nearest tag.

boy, age 11. shoe size: 8. wishlist: sneakers, earbuds, basketball, patriots merch, chapter books. loves fantasy and mythology.

once upon a time, jack spent three months in a rehab center designed specifically for the privacy needs of celebrity clients. his parents footed the bill, had the windows on all their cars tinted for him to hide behind when he got out. at the same time, thousands of miles away, bitty sat at the top of the stairs in his parents’ house and listened to them wonder if they could afford to keep the magic of christmas alive another year.

people are stepping around them to get out of the cold, now, their eyes skipping right over the tree and the boys in front of it. once upon a time, strangers on the street picked apart jack’s overdose like a piece of tabloid gossip. strangers on the street made sure a thirteen-year-old kid had something to unwrap with his family on christmas morning.

“bits?”

bitty sniffles, swipes at one eye with the sleeve of his sweater. “yeah?”

jack lifts the tag gently off its branch, catches bitty’s gaze. bitty’s intake of breath is so sharp it’s audible over the music playing overhead. do you see what i see?

“what do you think? wanna go get us another cart?”

[idyllicwillowtree]

Vickie's Friend

Genre: Steve Harrington x fem!reader

Summary: Robin isn’t the only one chatting up a lady while volunteering at Hawkins High. 

Word count: 1.5K

Warnings: swearing, use of y/n, gay stereotypes?, earthquake mention, fluff

Author’s note: I like the idea of Vickie having a friend they could go on double dates with lol let me know if you want another part!

Main Masterlist

Saturday, March 29, 1986

“Okay, then we sort by age,” you hear Marge say. Looking up from the baby clothes you were folding, you see she’s talking to none other than Steve Harrington. He quickly bends down to rescue some fallen clothes, as he follows Marge, “We’ve got infants, girls, boys, men, women…”

You scan the gym with new found excitement. Wherever Steve was, you knew Robin would be close by. They always seemed to be together whenever you saw Robin outside of school. When you spot her, you couldn’t help but let a smile slither onto your face. She was assigned to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, alongside your best friend. You watched as Vickie came out of the kitchen, freezing the moment she saw Robin.

Unfortunately, you were interrupted from watching the rest of their interaction when Marge brought Steve over, “and Steve, this is Y/N. You guys can work together on this new pile,” she said, motioning to the clothes you just started organizing.

You never really cared for Steve. He seemed a bit egotistical for your liking but if Robin allows his company then he couldn’t be that bad. Truth be told, you wanted a chance to talk to him one-on-one to see if he and Robin were dating. Vickie was convinced they must be together since they’re basically joined at the hip, but you weren’t so sure. You’ve seen Steve back when he was in High School all over whatever girl he was dating at the time, always one to show off public displays of affection. But you’ve never seen him do that with Robin so now was your chance to do some investigating.

“Hey Y/N, good to see you,” he said with a sad smile.

“Hi Steve, you too,” you said softly.

You and Steve had a couple of classes together back in the day so you knew of each other but never really had a conversation outside of school before. On any other day if you saw Steve at a grocery store or something you’d probably pretend not to recognize him and turn the other direction. But there’s something about a giant traumatic earthquake that made you happy to see that he was okay. 

As you both work, you notice him glancing over at Robin every once in a while and smiling to himself. 

“Oh wow,” he said suddenly.

Looking over at him, you see he’s holding a piece of clothing with the most atrocious pattern you have ever seen. Patterns were all the rage right now, but this was just too much. Steve unfurrowed it to fully reveal a giant pair of hammer pants with stirrups. Half of it was neon yellow and the other half was black and white checkers. Fortunately, it was missing a huge chunk of fabric in the crotch area so you wouldn’t have to subject it to some poor person who recently lost their house.

“Now why would anyone want to donate this? It had to have been an accident,” you say sarcastically.

“Maybe I’ll take them home. I’ve been meaning to get a pair of parachute pants that’ll actually accentuate my junk,” Steve laughed.

“It’ll make life easier in the restroom, that’s for sure.”

Steve barked out a laugh, his hair moving out of place as he shook his head. Your heart swelled and your palms began to sweat as you chuckled alongside him. Succeeding in getting Steve to laugh left your cheeks feeling warm.

“So you and Robin work at the video store, right? Family Video?” you pry, trying your best to sound casual.

“Yep. You and Vickie rented Fast Times recently, didn’t you?”

You stiffened, “y-yeah, how’d you remember?”

Steve’s movements stuttered, he tried disguising it by scratching the back of his neck. “Oh, uh, just cause Robin and I liked it,” he cleared his throat, “how’d you guys like it?”

“Well, Vickie and I loved it. We happen to be normal,” you say with a laugh, “Dan, on the other hand, did not.”

“Dan?”

“Vickie’s boyfriend. Well, ex-boyfriend.” Steve stood up a little straighter and turned to look at Robin, watching as Vickie said something that made her laugh. “They got into this weird passive aggressive argument about it and I was there to witness it all,” you shuttered dramatically.

“They broke up over Fast Times?” Steve chuckled.

��No, but I’m sure it didn’t help,” you giggled with him. “I say good riddance though, I don’t know what she saw in him. Thank god she’s single now.” Now her and Robin have a better chance, you thought. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be talking shit about Vickie’s ex-boyfriend to you.”

Steve flung a kids t-shirt over his shoulder, “no please continue. I love the drama,” he said, sending you a smile that awoke the butterflies in your stomach.

“What about you and Robin? How’s that going?” 

“Me and Robin? Oh, we're not dating. We’re both very single,” he said.

A victory smile made its way onto your face and you pushed down the instinct to pump  your fist in excitement. You were right, Steve and Robin were just friends. Maybe part of you was happy that Steve was single too.

“What?” Steve said, looking at you head on now.

“W-what?”

Steve’s eyes had a sparkle to them as his face broke out into a smug grin, “you smiled. After I told you I was single.”

“Did I?” you turn away from his gaze to continue folding, doing your best to push down the blush that was creeping up your neck. “You also told me Robin was single. Who’s to say I’m not smiling about that?”

Technically, that was true. You were excited that Robin was single, just not for your own sake. You couldn’t help but tease him back a little.

“Hey, there’s no reason to get defensive,” he held his hands up in surrender. “For the record, if you told me you were single I’d probably smile too.”

Your head whipped over to him in surprise. Was Steve Harrington flirting with you? Were you flirting back? 

You smiled shyly, looking back down at the blouses you were folding, “well it’s a good thing I’m single then, isn’t it?”

It was Steve’s turn to look at you in shock before he quickly recovered, looking like the cat that caught the canary. Your eyes connected and it was like all the pieces started coming together. He looked at you like you were the most precious thing on earth. Despite the hardships your town is going through right now, you couldn’t help but feel hopeful for the first time in forever. 

-

“Our best friends are gonna start dating now, aren’t they?” Vickie laughed.

Robin giggled at the dopey look on Steve’s face, “oh, most definitely.”

-

A few days earlier…

Friday, March 21, 1986 

“I just feel like if I start trying to date now and I fall in love, or whatever, I’m just setting myself up for disappointment because what if we move away from each other after graduation or something? I don’t know, does that make sense?...Vickie? Vickie, are you listening to me?” you said, turning away from the road to look at your friend in the passenger seat.

Vickie’s mouth was agape as she continued painting her lashes with mascara, “yes, yes, I’m listening.”

“What did I say?” you challenged.

“Something about…I don’t know, wanting a boyfriend?”

You slapped your hand against the steering wheel in frustration, “No! That’s not, ugh, nevermind.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! It’s seven in the morning and I’m just not built to handle these deep conversations when it’s this early! And now we have to go to this stupid pep-rally and I woke up looking like an actual dead person!”

Glancing over at her you noticed how fidgety she was being. She kept going back to retouch her lip gloss and was tugging at her red bangs, trying to get them to cooperate.

“Ohhhh, I see what’s happening,” a shit-eating grin spread along your face. “You’re nervous about seeing Robin,” you sang, teasingly.

“What? I am not!” Vickie’s fair skin immediately turned a violent shade of red.

“Yes you are! You really expect me to believe you’re freaked out over a stupid basketball game? And you know what else I think?”

“Uh, I really don't care what-”

“You’ve gotta ditch the stick and go after Robin!”

The corners of Vickie’s mouth turned down, “the stick?”

“Yeah, I’m talking about Dan. The stick being his penis,” you said plainly.

“Ew, gross, don’t say penis!”

“The fact that the word itself grosses you out, tells me you’d be a lot happier with someone who doesn’t have one. Someone like Robin!”

“We don’t even know if she likes girls, Y/N.”

“Her favorite movie is Children of Paradise, Vick. I don’t know of any straight girls who can sit through a foreign film, let alone call it their favorite.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Vickie said in defiance.

“Okay fine. But we both saw the way she was staring at that Phoebe Cates standee in Family Video. You can’t forget about my ‘Operation Fast Times’ plan.”

Vickie rolled her eyes and scoffed in frustration, “I still can’t believe we did that.”

“It’s the perfect plan! She’ll see you paused at 53 minutes 5 seconds and boom, you’re in!”

_______________________________________________

Part 2

[aphroditeslover11]

for oppie maybe he meets a foreign student when he is studying abroad like in the beginning of the movie in germany? he is so stressed then he could have used a friend… loved your exam piece so i thought maybe you would like an idea like this ❤️

An Unexpected Friend

Hi there, I hope that this is something along the lines of what you meant. My first ask, so I’m using that as an excuse if it’s crap! I ended up writing a little more of myself into this than I meant to. 🤣

I should probably warn that Oppie ends up having a bit of an existential crisis incase that bothers anybody. But yeah, please read and enjoy, any feedback or further requests are much appreciated.

Robert Oppenheimer was thoroughly fed up. He was twenty two and in the middle of a real dip in his life. The last year that he had spent studying at Cambridge had been nothing short of a disaster. He was starting to doubt himself intellectually for the first time, he felt as if he was losing his identity. Though he would be hard pushed to admit it, he also felt as if he had nowhere to turn, his friends all seemed to be meeting women, some making the more permanent choice of settling down into early domesticity, leaving him feeling completely alone in the world. This was where his decision to pack his bags and move to Germany had come from, to try and reinvigorate his love of physics if nothing else.

He was on an overnight train, headed to Gottingen for the place at the university that he was taking up. He was dosing in and out of sleep, waking up for the third time since he had finished the sandwiches that he had bought before he left the station. The lights of the carriage were slightly dingy, yet he reached for the book that he had been reading earlier that evening, a newly published physics paper, hoping to get a bit more reading done before he arrived.

After about half an hour of reading he was fully awake again, concentration completely engaged, only to be pulled out of it by a knock on the door of his compartment. He opened the door to find a girl, about the same age as him, carrying a suitcase and with a reticent look on her face.

“I’m really sorry to bother you Sir, I got onto the train at the last station but I can’t find any seats, all the other compartments are dark and I didn’t want to disturb people if they were sleeping.” Robert ran a hand through his hair in contemplation, then moving away from the door to let you in.

“It’s alright, I’m on my own. We can share it for the night. I’ll warn you that I’m planning on staying awake for the rest of the journey though, so the light will be on.”

“That’s not an issue, I’m probably going to read anyway. I’ve always been a dreadful sleeper. Thankyou, Mr?”

“Oppenheimer, Robert. And you are?”

“Y/N.”

~

You had both started the evening with your noses buried in books, trying to be quiet and not disturb each other. Robert had uncharacteristically broken the silence when he realised what you were reading a volume of Plato. You started a discussion between you about how philosophy and physics could be compatible with one another, learning that you were both heading to the same university to study your respective subjects. When you got off the train you agreed to meet up soon.

Over the first few weeks of your time at the university you saw each other a lot. Neither of you were hugely social, of course making some friends through your courses, but you certainly considered Oppie as your closest. You met up most evenings, sometimes going out to eat at a local café, but most often just reading and working on assignments or papers in silence. It was always nice to know that you could talk if you wanted to though.

It was on one of these evenings that Robert started an unexpected conversation.

“Y/N, I was wondering if I could ask you about something. I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but it’s just been bugging me recently.”

“I’m all ears Robert, go ahead.”

“Do you ever just walk into a room and feel like everybody in it hates you. That you open your mouth and everybody just thinks ‘what the hell is this idiot going to start on about now’.” He was saying everything very matter of factly, though it was clear that opening up to someone wasn’t easy on him. You paused briefly, trying to decide how to respond.

“People that you know, or just everyone?”

“Everyone. Although it’s easier when it’s just new people, you can just put up a facade for a bit, you know. Convince them that you aren’t as bad as you really are.”

“I guess I kind of know what you mean, I ended up with a bit of a complex because my mum used to ask me not to talk about my interests. She used to say she didn’t want to know because she didn’t understand, I don’t think she could handle the fact that I knew more than her. It kind of gets better though when you make some decent friends… the complex I mean. What’s so bad about you anyway Robert?”

“All I’ve ever done is academics, I don’t have a personality outside of that. I hate making friends and nobody ever understands me. I went to Cambridge and got stuck doing lab work, I was hopeless, just couldn’t do it.” His fragile facade was starting to drop now, you could hear it in his voice. “I couldn’t even manage the one thing that I’m meant to be good at. Without my science who the hell even am I?” He was trying to hide it, but you had noticed the few small tears that had fallen from his cyanic eyes.

You moved from your seat to be beside him on the sofa where he was sitting himself, wrapping a gentle arm around his shoulders. Given how reserved he usually was, the picture of perfect manners and politeness, it caught you off guard when he wrapped both of his arms around you, burying his head in your shoulder. It was rare to see him so vulnerable, it was the same of any man really, but it was strangely gratifying that he trusted you enough to be around him like this.

“You are J Robert Oppenheimer. You are you Robert, and that is enough to ask of anyone.” You spoke firmly. “I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but I certainly don’t hate you. In fact, I think you’re the best friend that I’ve had in a very long time, and I’ve had my share of identity crises as well.” He pulled back from your hold then, sitting up straight.

“Is this feeling ever going to go away though? I can’t bear it, I just can’t.”

“It will, it will take time but you will get past this. Both of us are learning who we really are, and when we do we’ll be all the better for it.

“Would you mind if I hold you, just for a bit? I just need to know that somebody’s here, with me.”

“Of course I don’t mind. In truth, it’s been a very long time since I’ve been able to feel this comfortable with someone.” With that, he put a heavy arm around your waist, pulling you securely into his side.

“Robert, I promise I’m not going anywhere.”

[savemefromanepicoftimewasted]

Creature of the Night

Task Force 141 X Platonic!Reader

While that was always true, there was something about the situation you couldn’t shake. You knew better than to poke a sleeping bear, even if Price was only a bear figuratively.

A/N: hi! I've had this idea stuck in my head for a few days, and thanks to @gaylemonshark for always fueling my ideas I finally had ambition to sit down and write, so I hope you enjoy!

Warnings: none really, maybe mentions of wounds(nothing graphic, just a small accident)

You’d only recently joined the task force, Kate being the reason your file had ended in the hands of one John Price. You were thankful, not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, however you were also skeptical of some things. While the Captain, as well as the other recruits, were friendly and treated you well, they seemed…odd. They would leave on missions at the most random times, never calling you into briefing. More often than not it was strictly the four of them heading off, assuring you it would only be a couple weeks before they came back. While that was always true, there was something about the situation you couldn’t shake. You knew better than to poke a sleeping bear, even if Price was only a bear figuratively.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

“I’m telling you, there’s something going on and I’m going to figure it out,” You huffed softly, crossing your arms over your chest.

“You think they’re selling secrets to the enemy?” Private Johnson was a newcomer, fresh faced and barely old enough to even legally be in the army.

“No, John’s too ‘fuck the enemy’ to willingly sell information,” It was one of the theories you’d had, but after writing up reports it was pretty clear that wasn’t the case.

So what would the case be if they weren’t running off to the enemy to spill secrets, and none of them had secret families, not that you could find at least. You’d done all the research you could, slightly illegal at times you were sure, but curiosity had gotten the better of you. Johnny was the middle child between two sisters. Gaz was the oldest, a younger brother and sister he often visited when able. Simon was a lot harder to figure out, his file was almost entirely blank except for his name, age, and birth date. John’s didn’t surprise you at all, oldest brother of six kids(jesus)and had joined the day he turned eighteen. His father had been a general before he passed away, it seemed so fitting.

Your eyes locked on Gaz and Johnny as they walked into the mess hall, Johnny’s accent thicker than a bowl of oatmeal in the middle of winter. No one could understand a word he said whenever he got excited, or angry, or stressed. Frankly, most of the time no one could really understand the Scot. He did his best around you to keep his words clearer, considering Simon’s accent tended to get thicker whenever he was pissed off.

“You look like you’re thinking real hard,” Johnson leaned closer, whispering softly so no one could hear your conversation.

“I swore that Soap shaved this morning, but he’s already got a five o’ clock shadow going,” Your eyes narrowed as you stared at the other man.

The stubble on his cheeks was darker than this morning, you were absolutely positive of that, but how would that even be possible? You’d walked in on him shaving, he had the razor against the skin of his neck, the sound of thick hair being shaved off. So, how in the actual fuck was he sporting stubble dark enough it was mere days away from a beard?!

“Maybe his facial hair just grows fast, I’ve seen it happen before,” Johnson shrugged, as if your words were nonsense.

“There’s no way in hell it grows that fast. I’ll eat my left shoe if that’s true,” Okay, maybe that was taking things a step too far.

Suddenly, as if some higher power had called the man’s name from your direction, Johnny’s eyes landed on you and Johnson. Your heart plummeted, eyes widening as you immediately turned to face Johnson and pretend you weren’t staring down the other man.

“So, have you talked to that recruit you have a crush on?” You needed to change the subject lest Soap realize you were talking about him originally.

Johnson’s eyes widened, jaw dropping open as you suddenly called him out on the secret he’d drunkenly whispered to you only a few days prior. Was it a risky move bringing up something like that out of the blue? Maybe, but you were desperate.

“No, I haven’t had the chance to talk to her yet,” His cheeks flushed a light pink, it was kind of cute if he wasn’t so young, and dumb.

“Aye, what’re we talkin’ about over ‘ere?” Soap slapped his hands down onto the table in front of you, a smirk pulling up his lips.

“Sorry, my lips are sealed MacTavish,” You mimed locking your lips and throwing away the key as you smiled up at the other man.

He laughed loudly, a deep belly laugh as he threw his head back. Gaz watched with a raised eyebrow, though you could see a faint smile on his own face. It made you happy knowing that you could make your teammates laugh, though sometimes you wondered if it was genuine at times.

Okay! No more depressive thoughts at the dinner table.

“I’m sure they are, but Gaz ‘n I have to head out soon,” Johnny nodded over to where Gaz was standing.

“Oh? Where are you guys heading to?” Would he admit the truth? Or would you be wondering once again?

His lips parted as if he was about to answer before Gaz’s hand landed on his shoulder, grip tight as he whispered lowly into the other man’s ear. Johnny’s eyes widened almost comically before he straightened up suddenly.

“Sorry, duty calls.” Johnny didn’t wait for you or Johnson to say anything before he and Gaz were heading off.

You were definitely more curious now, what was so important that Johnny couldn’t even tell you whatsoever? You guys told each other everything, at least most of the time he actually bothered to come around. Maybe…maybe you just weren’t as close friends as you suddenly thought.

“Do you think they don’t like me?” Your voice was much softer, an edge of hurt at the mere thought the people you saw as friends saw you as nothing more than a nuisance.

“They definitely like you, the missions probably got them stressed and they’re doing their best not to worry you,” Johnson shrugged his shoulders, lower lip pushed out in a playful pout.

Your mind was racing with a million and one different thoughts, surely if any of them were truly stressed out they would come to you, right?

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Okay, so maybe things hadn’t really gone back to normal once Gaz and Johnny came back from that last mission, but they were talking to you again! Price had even taken you on a mission with him, except now you were beyond sore and could barely get out of bed. An enemy had managed to sneak up when you’d had your back turned. Hell, the only reason you were even alive right now was because of your tac vest, their blade barely piercing the thick material.

“Sergeant, how’re you feeling?” Simon’s face wasn’t something you saw often, the man preferred keeping his personal life private, so seeing him in your room was a surprise.

“Like shit, didn’t think falling nearly two stories would hurt so much,” You chuckled weakly, wincing as pain shot up through your side.

“Yeah, that’ll happen,” Simon shook his head with a soft sigh, stepping over to your bedside before gently lifting your gown.

It was nothing more than a large bruise, the very center of it nearly black from how hard you’d hit the concrete. He hummed softly under his breath as he laid a gentle hand against the surprisingly large bruise. You groaned loudly, gripping the sheets in your fists as the heat from Simon’s hands seeped into your skin. Jesus, why the fuck was he so hot?(pun intended).

“I knew about the dangers of war when I signed up, falling out buildings wasn’t on that roster,” The heat of his palms slowly soothed the throbbing ache in your side.

“Accidents can happen, you know that better than any of us. Johnny nearly lost his head trying to disarm a bomb,” You weren’t entirely surprised by that, the man was insanely smart, but sometimes the enemy was just a little bit smarter.

You both sat in silence for a few more moments until Simon pulled his hand away from your skin, laying the gown back down so it covered your mottled skin. There was a slight tension filling the room, the urge to understand who your Lt. actually was.

“Try and get better, we need you in top shape,” Simon didn’t wait for your response before leaving the room quickly.

Your mind was suddenly racing, his skin felt like fire against your own, and while you’d spent a lot of time around a lot of different people, there was no way that was normal. No, that’s stupid to be thinking about, he was just a normal guy who tended to run hotter than the average guy. Nothing more than some silly thoughts.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

You were exhausted but couldn’t sleep as usual, so what’s better than sneaking out of your room and heading down to the mess hall to get a bite to eat? They wouldn’t care as long as everything was cleaned up afterwards, and you never left a mess anyway. Sighing softly you slipped on a pair of slippers and pulled a hoodie on to keep the chill out. As you slowly and quietly made your way down to the mess hall you realized there were more people inside. Who else would be awake this late at night?

“C’mon! I’m starvin’,” The voice was muffled by the door, the only light being the one they were using by their table.

You pushed the door open slowly, seeing Johnny, Gaz, Simon, and Captain Price all sitting around the largest table in the mess hall. The table was loaded with food, a slightly smaller pile of trash at the opposite end. Gaz was stuffing his face with what looked to be a burger and fries, while Johnny was stuffing his own with…garlic bread? To each their own.

“Hey,” You mumbled as you walked inside, heading straight for the freezer to see if your pizza rolls were still in there. 

You had threatened everyone on base that if they ate your food there would be hell on earth, mainly because getting into town to buy food wasn’t easy. Johnny’s head whipped around to stare over at you, almost as if he wasn’t expecting anyone to drop in on them. Then again, it was nearly one in the morning and they were all stuffing their faces as if they hadn’t eaten in days. Come to think of it, they almost always have appetites like this, keeping the fridge stocked is nearly impossible at times.

Getting a plate and your pizza rolls out of the freezer you pour a few onto the plate before placing it into the microwave. The boys were nearly silent as you waited for your food to cook, murmuring amongst themselves. Reaching to stop the microwave from beeping loudly as it hit End you pulled the plate out. Thanks to the many calluses on your thumb you could barely feel the heat from the plate.

“Have a good night boys,” You nodded quickly before heading down to your room to eat in peace.

You could have easily sat down with everyone and eaten, but there was something off about the way they stared over at you, as if they were watching you like predators. No, you weren’t going to sit here and assume your friends were secretly out to get you, that’s weird. With a soft grunt you plopped down onto your bed, pulling open your laptop to turn on a movie. Your eyes caught on a title you hadn’t watched in years. Twilight. Snickering you turned it on, picking up a pizza roll to see if it was actually cooled enough to eat. Not that that ever stopped you of course, but maybe this time would be different.

Normally you would eat your snack and fall asleep within a few minutes, tonight however was going to be a nightmare. You were absolutely hooked into the terrible movie, clicking onto the next one, and the next, and of course you couldn’t not finish the saga. Suddenly it was morning and you were shocked to see the sun, well now you were definitely going to be in trouble. Groaning you turned off your laptop and pulled your blanket up and over your head, exhaustion seeping into your bones like a weight.

By the time you opened your eyes again it was dark outside, the sky lit up with stars as you groaned. You were half tempted to go back to sleep, your body still aching for those few precious minutes. Unfortunately your stomach was rumbling, and your bladder was nearly bursting from being in bed for so long.

Pushing up and out of bed you headed into the bathroom to do your business and brush your teeth. After you’d done everything that was urgent you grabbed the plate from the night before and headed back down to the mess hall. As you headed into the mostly dark area you could see the boys all sitting together. They were eating again. This time though it looked like they had gotten take out from one of the Italian restaurants nearby. God, what you wouldn’t give to have a big plate of spaghetti ragu.

Shaking your head you ran over to the sink to wash your plate and make yourself some more pizza rolls. You didn’t have much energy to actually cook something proper, so something easy would have to be the way you went for the night. Price was staring over at you, waiting to see if you would make your way over to their table. Considering you hadn’t the night before the other three didn’t think you would bother.

The microwave beeped loudly, indicating your food had finished cooking while you were daydreaming about future missions. You quickly grabbed your plate and headed over to the fridge to grab a bottle of water.

“Have a good night, boys,” You nodded towards them before heading back to your room.

Your shoulders were sagging with exhaustion when you made it back to your room, carefully setting the plate and water down before sitting in bed. Instead of turning on a movie, knowing it could keep you up, you turned on a show. It was mainly background noise as you quickly ate your dinner, sipping your water every now and then. Once your plate was empty, and your belly full, you scooted down into bed. Your eyes slipped closed, unable to keep them open a minute longer as you fell asleep. Dreams plagued with different werewolves and vampires, though they seemed so…similar.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The entire base was in full swing, everyone letting loose with good food, and enough beer to drown an entire village. It was a way to thank the soldiers that were risking their lives daily, and it felt damn good. You’d had your fair share of drinks, laughing at Johnson’s jokes when his crush wasn’t around so she didn’t get the wrong idea. You made it clear to everyone on base that you had no romantic intentions for anyone, refusing to ruin a good thing. Johnson had wandered off, following Ashley, Amanda, Amber? Shit, maybe you were way more drunk than you’d realized if you couldn’t even remember her name.

“Gonna get some fresh air.” You mumbled to no one in particular, heading outside to see if the chilly air could help sober you up.

The air nipped at your exposed skin, goosebumps rising as you stared up at the full moon. It gave off a beautiful light, the stars that surrounded it twinkling in the inky blackness. You’d always been fascinated by space, and getting to actually see the stars meant a lot. Your body had a mind of it’s own, turning and stumbling off towards the barracks. As you kept walking you soon realized you weren’t in the barracks at all, in fact you weren’t on the base anymore. Shit, were you going to get lost in the woods and have to have someone find you? That’s beyond embarrassing.

A deep rumbling growl stopped you in your tracks, heart racing as you slowly turned to face the noise. If it was a bear you could possibly manage to outrun it, but being as drunk as you were there was a chance you’d just get killed. Two bright glowing eyes stared back at you, lips pulled back into a snarl as your heart dropped and you took off into a sprint. Branches tore at your skin, the scent of blood permeating the air as you pushed your legs to run even faster. You were thankful you’d worn your boots, not wanting to ruin a pair of nicer shoes.

Your feet came to a grinding halt as suddenly you were surrounded by what could only be described as giant wolves. You knew they were big, having seen the comparisons to a regular Siberian husky, but these? They’d be able to kill you with one swipe of their giant paws.

“Oh shit, I’m gonna die, this is how I die,” Your heart was racing, eyes comically wide as you watched the three wolves and…oh god were those mountain lions?!

“Y/N! It’s us!” Gaz’s voice echoed around you, the trees swaying slightly as the wind whipped around you.

Your throat closed up slowly as the rest of the task force and both Rudy and Alejandro walked over to where you’d stopped. How were they all here if you had just been surrounded by wolves and mountain-

“I fucking knew it!” You pointed an accusatory finger at each and every person standing around you.

Simon’s jaw dropped open, did you just say that you knew about the secret they’d tried so hard to keep hidden?! Are you serious right now?!

“How the fuck did you know?” Simon was almost angry, though he wasn’t sure if he was angry at you or because you somehow knew?

“You guys run off whenever there’s a full moon, you eat way more than everyone else, your skin nearly burned me when I fell out of that building…also I may have watched Twilight and found some similarities.” You admitted sheepishly.

Price was shocked and also affronted that you’d found out their hidden secret because of a movie made for teenagers?! Jesus, maybe he really was getting too old to deal with any of this shit. 

“So, are there more of you guys?” Your curiosity was piqued now, if your friends were werewolves and werecats, could there be more?

“Yes, but it’s not our place to say so when the time comes we’ll let them tell you, alright?” Price wanted to get back to the compound and sleep for the next few days if he could.

You were excited at the idea of meeting more people like your team, but you were also nervous they wouldn’t like you knowing who they truly were.

Sometimes real life is even stranger than fiction.

[littlespacereader]

Can I request cg!spiderpunk with spidey! little reader who starts having accidents in littlespace and she's rlly embarrassed cause she's a hero? Thanks! Feel free to ignore!

Heck no I’m not gonna to ignore!! I absolutely LOVE this idea!! This is such a huge issue a Regressor superhero might have! Trying to save the world but what if you need someone to save your world?! What if an accident happens while fighting crime?! I couldn’t love this idea more! So I hope you enjoy this fic! Feel free to send me another idea!!

The Little Spidey

Caregiver! Hobie Brown (Spider-Punk) & Spidey Fem Little! Reader

Tags: an accident, pull-ups, fighting, stuffies, hiding/reveal of regression, sippy cups, stuffie,hurt&comfort

Nicknames: darling, sweet one, love

Alright let’s do this one last time.

My name is Y/N L/N. I was bitten by a radioactive spider. And for 3 years I’ve been the one and only Spider-Girl.

Thats is, until I realized there’s a whole multiverse full of different Spider people! Recently I became a part of this Spider-verse, which had its ups and downs.

My universe was completely different from everyone else’s, which took some getting used to. In my universe Age Regession was a normal every day thing for people. It wasn’t shamed at or thought of the wrong way.

I’m one of the age regressors in my universe. I regress really young so on missions I usually wear a pull-up, just in case I begin to regress or can’t find a bathroom in time. And trust me, with the long hours of crime fighting, this has come in handy on numerous occasions.

My suit is designed by yours truly. It has a special feature that wearing a bulky pull-up or diaper isn’t shown. It just looks like a normal Spidey suit. I carry a backpack with me at all times with supplies for myself and some extra gear for missions.

Because regression it wasn’t mainstream in most of the other universes, I kept it to myself. That way I wouldn’t have to embarrass myself infront of the other Spideys. There were some universes where regression was just a normal every day thing like mine but those were rare to find, and it was hard to ask incase the answer was no.

After joining, I quickly became friends with Hobie and Pav, my two best friends. The three of us would travel to different universes and kick some butt together! We really worked well as a team!

Pav always strikes me as a Regressor. But I never have the courage to ask him in fear of him asking me if I’m one.

I often visited Earth-50101 to see Pav and spent time in Mumbattan. But I spend most of my time with Hobie in Earth-138 London.

Hobie and I are the closest. He made me feel welcomed the moment I joined the group. Miguel and Jess can be a bit intimidating at times, but Hobie always takes me under his wing.

He makes me feel comfortable and he never lets anyone yell or order me around. He’s a very free spirited freedom fighter. In London I watched his concerts with his band and in my universe we got ice cream together. He’s versatile.He also has the coolest Spidey moves with his guitar! It’s sick!!

He introduced me to Pavitr. Now the three of us hang out all the time! And when we’re not hanging out we’re fighting crime together!

Despite our close friendship I’ve kept my regression hidden from them. When they come over I just hide all my little gear and when we’re out I fight my hardest not to regress.

So with my regression under wraps I continue to fight crime now not only in Queens, NY but in the multiverse as well! Nothing can go wrong!…….Or so I thought.

~~~

Today was my day off, if that’s even possible for a Spidey. I decided today I’m going to regress and relax the rest of the evening. Hobie is practicing with his band, Pav is on a date with his girlfriend and my watch hasn’t gone off with a new mission. So I’m taking a me day.

I ran to my bed room and grabbed the box from underneath. I ripped the box open and grabbed my favorite stuffie and pacifier immediately. Then I had a choice of sippy cup: am I feeling princess or hearts today? Ummmmmmmm…….hearts!

With my things in hand, I walked into the kitchen. As I washed and filled my sippy cup I started to ramble off everything that’s been going on to my stuffie. Gotta let him know all the juice crime fighting details.

Then I made my way to the couch, plopping infront of the tv to watch hours and hours of cartoons. And hours and hours and hours…..

I woke up some time later to the buzzing of my watch. I quickly jumped up and spit my pacifier out before answering.

“Y/N! Where have you been? We been trying to contact you.” Jess aka Spider-Woman yelled at me.

“Sorry I was asleep after a long day. What’s up?”

“We got another anomaly. Suit up we’ll be there soon to pick you up.” And with that the call hung up.

Be there soon?!?!?!

I immediately started to shove everything under my couch or in the couch cushions. Then I ran into my bedroom to get changed fast! I quickly suited up but not without pausing in my bathroom.

I forgot a pull-up, how stupid of me let me just-

Suddenly I heard a portal open in my living room. “Y/N! Where you at?” Hobie yelled out.

I eyed the pull-up and then the door. It’s okay, it probably won’t be a long mission anyway. Just in and out and I’ll be back before I know it. I’m totally not feeling Little in the slightest so I should be fine without protection. Wait who am I lying to?

With that little pep talk I stormed out of my bathroom, grabbing my back pack on the way, and greeted everyone in my living room. There stood Jess and Hobie ready for the next mission.

“How was practice?”

Hobie rolled his eyes, “Don’t get me started! What practice? I was two second from going on when these guys called.”

“Don’t they know you’re trying to be an artist!” I said all dramatically.

He laughed and smirked, “Oh darling don’t you know? I’m already an artist.”

“Come on you two, we got a mission to complete.” Jess redirected.

The three of us set our watches to Earth-3624 and then we took off into the portal.

~~~

The mission is simple, or should I say was simple. There was a Doctor Octopus found in the wrong universe. We were tasked with finding him and sending him to the right Earth. Only problem is he was somewhere in the middle of NYC. So we had all of NYC to find him…just the four of us…looking for one person…in all of NY.

If you’re saying to yourself “Wow that sounds impossible” you’re totally right.

The night began to drag on and on and on. I was exhausted from the constant searching for hours on end. It didn’t help I was also fighting myself from regressing. But as the night dragged on it seemed Doctor Octopus was winning and I was losing.

My regression nagged at me every single moment. All I wanted to do was find a place to curl up, grab my pacifier and take a nap. But I couldn’t! Not now! I had a job to do!

What didn’t help the most was the nagging feeling of needing to go to the bathroom. I know what you’re thinking and you’re right, I should’ve gone before I left. But I was in a rush! I didn’t even know I had to go! Now I’m sitting on the roof squirming every two seconds.

Everything was so frustrating! I’m stuck on some stupid Earth looking for stupid Doctor Octopus in the middle of the stupid night!!…..Okay, maybe my regression was kicking in more than I thought it was.

“Hey,” Hobie swung up onto the roof I was sitting on. “How’s the search going?”

“It’s going.” I said a bit frustrated. “How about you?”

“About the same.” Hobie said, sitting on the edge of the roof next to me.

“I can’t believe they got us working this ridiculous mission. You think Miguel and Jess could just handle this on their own. But noooooo. Instead they pull the two of us in the middle of the night to try and find this wackjob.” I ranted away.

“That’s right Y/N! Stick it to the man! Let that frustration out.” Hobie smirked, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. I started to squirm in place a bit. I crossed my arms infront of my chest in an effort to mask it.

Hobie eyed me curious but didn’t say anything about it. “I know Jess is searching on the upper east side. I just wanted to join you midtown and make sure you’re doing alright.”

“I’m doing okay. Tired but okay.” I tried to reassure him. But I felt as though he could see right through me. Before he said another word I changed the subject.

“I don’t understand how we’re supposed to find Doc Oct in all of New York.” I said dramatically.

Hobie laughed. “Yeah, what do they expect? Him to come to us?”

The moment those words left Hobie’s mouth we both felt it, our Spidey sense. Of course we jinxed ourselves.

We flipped backward and just out of range for a giant sign that was flying towards us. I landed back on the roof and looked over to an adjacent building. There, standing bold as ever was none other than Doctor Octopus.

“Hello Peters.” He smirked.

Hobie swung over first. “Yeah you’re wrong on both fronts mate.” He swung his guitar at him, landing a nice blow sending the Doctor backwards.

“Once you go against one Spider-Man you go against them all.” He swung his arms again, this time hitting Hobie and sending him backwards.

Now I stepped up, running up, casting my webs and swinging full force towards the doctor. I managed to wrap one of his arms up, but while I did he grabbed me with another. With my leg trapped in his claw, he leaned back and threw me to the roof of a building next to him.

The back of my head hit the ground hard and for a moment I was seeing stars. I was drifting, I wanted to get up and help but my body just wouldn’t let me. I started to fade into darkness for a moment. Both in and out of consciousness.

It was at this time my regression decided to give in. Choosing for itself that it needed to regress more than anything else. What tipped it over the most was the warm feeling I started to feel between my legs. Tears started to fall from my eyes as I realized I was having an accident.

Then came the float gates. My regression wrapped around me like a warm blanket, trying to comfort me in a time of pain and embarrassment. I just want to go home. I don’t want to be here with my wet suit and headache! I just want to go to sleep with my stuffie at home, my pacifier and my pull-up.

I shut my eyes, not wanting more tears to escape. I had to get up, I had keep fighting. What kind of hero would o be if I couldn’t.

“Y/N? Hey! Y/N! Are you okay?” Hobie’s voice echoed in the background. I could hear his footsteps as he ran over to me.

Oh no. Nonononono!

Hobie and I caught eyes the moment I opened mine. He saw everything already. How could I explain the puddle beneath me or the tears streaming down my face?! I’m supposed to be a hero, someone who takes care of others. But I can’t even take care of myself.

There Hobie stood, not disgusting or confused, but worried and concerned about me. “Awwww sweet one-.”

“I’m fine.” I said with a cracking voice. Tears still fell from my eyes as embarrassment filled me.

I tried to sit up fast but he stopped. “Wow wow wow there darling you might have a concussion. Easy does it, easy now.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and helped me to sit up slowly.

He sat beside me, letting me lean on him for support.

I tried my hardest to talk between crying, “ I-I can explain…it just…just-”

“You’re a Little? I figured as much. No need to worry yourself with worries. You’re okay, it’s all okay love. I’ll take care of everything.” He said plain as day.

Maybe it was the concussion. “What?” Was all I managed to say.

“You know, on my Earth everyone knows about regression. It’s more common than you would think. Plenty of Earths know about regression, even if they aren’t as open about as our Earth’s are.” He went on to explain.

“But all of that doesn’t matter right now. Right now we need to get you changed and padded. Then we need to take care of you and your concussion.” Hobie threw his guitar to his back and lifted me bridal style into his arms.

“Wait.” I tried to say.

“What?” He raised an eye brow.

“Don’t we have to get the bad guy?”

“The bad guy? First off, I don’t listen or do what anyone tells me, especially Jess or Miguel. Second off, I already too care of that for us.” He gestured to the roof across from us. There all webbed up stood Doctor Octopus.

“I already phoned Jess who’s on her way to take care of the boring details. I say we get a move on before she starts ask questions we’re not going to answer.” He explained.

After a moment I nodded my head, wrapping my arms around his neck. With the click of his watch Hobie and I were soaring into another portal.

Before I even realized it we were back in my apartment. Hobie walked us into my bathroom, setting me down on the counter top. Then he began to search around.

“Where are your pull-ups at Y/N?” He asked searching under the sink.

To be honest, I was still in shock from this day. Blame it on the concussion but I couldn’t even fathom that this is even happening.

As I watched him raid my bathroom I spoke up, “What are you doing?”

“I just told you I’m looking for your pull-ups.”

“Why?”

“Why?” He stood up and walked back over to me, “Because we need to get you changed before you get a rash or worse.”

I stared at him, still in disbelief. “Why are you doing this for me? How come you don’t think this is weird and why are you being so-.”

He immediately stopped that train of thought by holding my hand in his. “Hey, hey hey. No more worrying about big thoughts okay? Like I said earlier, regression is something I’m familiar with. I’m happy you have an escape from this life as a Spidey. It’s a safe and healthy coping mechanism. I don’t find you or any of this weird. More than anything I want to take care of you.”

“You don’t see me as a weak Spidey because I’m a Little?” I asked, still a bit insecure.

“A weak Spidey?! Hell no!!” He shook his head. “Do you think Pav is a weak Spider-Man?”

I looked at him confused but shook my head no.

“That makes two of us. Pavirt is a Little too. He regresses around the same age as you. Doesn’t matter if you regress, you’re still a Spidey. Don’t get me wrong, I love Pav and I take care of him from time to time when he regresses. But his girlfriend tends to him most the time, I’m just the babysitter. But there’s something special about you. You bring out a side of me that I didn’t know I had.”

He sighed, “I realized early on you were probably a Little, so I kept a careful eye on you. Before you, I was still the cool artist you see before you today. But I was always missing something…something amazing. And I realized that amazing something was you. Without or without your regression. I think you’re truly amazing.”

He leaned forward and took my hand in his, “If you’ll have me, I’d like to take care of you whenever you’re regressed. That way you have someone watching out for you and taking care your needs. I can see you regress pretty young so you’re gonna need a careful eyes watching your trouble maker self.” He smirked.

“So…what do you say?” He asked.

I honestly couldn’t believe my ears. Hobie wants to be my Caregiver?! Also Pav is a Little?!! But mostly, Hobie the “coolest, mysterious, rule breaker” Brown wants to be my Caregiver?!

In disbelief yet happy beyond belief, I smiled and squeezed his hand. “Yes. I’d love for you to be my Caregiver.”

Hobie smirked and squeezed my hand back. “Trust me darling the honor is all mine.”

“But first and foremost let’s get you changed out of that wet suit and into something more comfortable. Now for the final time where are your pull-ups at?” He said dragging the last part out.

“They’re in my backpack.” I shrugged it off and handed it to him.

Hobie took the backpack from me and started to take all the supplies he needs out.

“So you don’t think I’m gross?” I asked, still anxious about the whole accident.

“Nope. You’re a younger Little. Happens all the time. It’s no big deal at all.” He said as if it was nothing. But he’s right, it really is nothing. It’s just an accident. “Alright let’s get you changed darling.”

Hobie helped me take my suit off. He grabbed me a fresh pair of pjs and a new pull-up then proceeded to change me into both.

“There,” he stood back admiring his work. “All nice and cozy!” He picked me up and carried me into the living room. “See? Nothing to worry about. It’s as if it never happened.”

I hugged him tightly in his arms, “Thank you.”

He smirked, “This is just the beginning.”

He carried me over to the couch and set me down. “Hold on, who’s this?” He pulled my stuffie from the couch cushion. “Y/N you didn’t tell me you had a friend over. Introduce to your mate.”

“Hobie this is (your fav stuffie name).” I said introducing the two.

“Pleasure to meet ya.” He said, shaking the stuffies hand. I started giggling.

“Now, I want you resting on this couch. I’m going to get you some juice and a cold compress for your head, okay?”

The moment Hobie left I immediately started to miss him. He’s only been my Caregiver for not even 5 minutes and I’m already so attached to him. Plus he wasn’t even that far! He’s literally just in the kitchen.

Luckily he returned soon, sippy cup of juice in one hand, and a damp towel in the other. “Alright sweet one sit up for a second,” he sat down on the couch and pulled me into his lap. “There we are.”

He laid the towel on my forehead which felt sooooooo nice! He handed me the sippy cup before he grabbed the tv remote. “Alright let’s see what your earth has on the telly.”

I always thought that as Spider-Girl I had to be the one taking care of everyone else, but Hobie made me realized what I needed more than anything was someone to take care of me too.

I haven’t felt safe like this in a long time. Just leaning against him, watching some mindless show on the television and feeling safe and cared for. I curled into his side and rested my head on his shoulder. He leaned forward and placed a kiss to my head.

We stayed like that the whole night, just Little Spidey and Caregiver Spidey.

[starogeorgina]

Broken bonds

Paring: Ser Harwin Strong x Targ OC

Warnings: Mentions of blood

3.01

“This is my favorite part,” Harwin says, between kissing your neck. “I love it when you start to swell, and everyone can see you are carrying my child.”

You turn your head to capture Harwin’s lips with your own. You’d recently found out you were pregnant with your fourth child, and although you were delighted, you hadn’t thrown a feast to celebrate like your previous pregnancies, as it didn’t seem right. Days before the maester confirmed you were with a child, Ser Richard, Rhaenyra’s lover, suddenly died, leaving her utterly devastated. You had flown back and forth between Dragonstone and the red keep to try and comfort her, especially since she was pregnant with her third child, but no amount of sweet gestures or kind words would bring him back.

“I’ve got a gift for you,” Harwin takes your hand and leads you towards your bedchamber. He chuckles, seeing the mischievous look on your face. “That’s not what I was planning on giving you, but I could most certainly—”

You swat at his chest playfully. “I’ll hold you to that.”

When you enter the bedroom, you notice two beautiful sky blue dresses laying across the bed. The material was soft and had loose layers so that it would accommodate your growing bump. Harwin hugs you from behind; he kisses your cheek. “I know you want to feel close to your mother, and I thought wearing her house colors might help.”

Your eyes become glossy. “Thank you.”

The peacefulness of the moment is abruptly interrupted when one of your ladies-in-wait knocks on the door and then enters; her face is flushed red. “Forgive the intrusive princess, Ser, but there has been an incident during the children’s lessons today, and the maester said I was to inform you at once.”

Harwin is still behind you. “Was anybody hurt?”

She nods hesitantly, “The princess and prince's are fine, but a dragon keeper has been injured.”

Harwin starts to ask more questions, but you immediately know which son is behind whatever transpired. “Where is Vaegon?”

“In his chambers, princess.”

“Thank you,” you shake your head and go to leave, but a knight appears at the doorway before you have the chance to leave, “Ser Cartel.”

“Princess,” he greets. “Word has just arrived from the Red Keep that Princess Rhaenyra has gone into labor.”

—

“Unless you are accompanied by myself, your father, or you are attending a lesson, you are no longer permitted in the dragonpit.”

“You flew on Varos much younger than I am.”

You shake your head and say, “This isn’t about your age, Vaegon. You are my son; it’s my job to keep you safe, and until you can assure us you won’t do anything reckless like that again, you will lose some privileges.”

You were changing into something more suitable for dragon riding while your son continued to do anything but explain everything that happened. “I didn’t say it,” he says. “Nightmare thought she was protecting me. I told her to stop, but it was too late. I didn’t mean for anyone to be hurt!”

“We know,” Harwin says calmly. “But that still doesn’t explain why you disrespect the maester by sneaking out of your lesson.”

Vaegon excused himself to go to the bathroom during his history lesson and made his way to the dragonpit. One of the dragon keepers had spotted Vaegon climbing upon his dragon, and when he attempted to bring him down, Nightmare burned him. Luckily, the dragonkeeper managed to jump out of the way, and only the back of his hand was badly burned. You, Harwin, and your son all apologized to the keeper. The maester assured you the man’s hand would heal, but it did nothing to help with the feeling of guilt.

Once you’ve finished buttoning your jacket, which was threatening to pop, you go to where your son is sitting and smooth his hair out of his face. “Remember what your grandsire told you? The idea that we control our dragons is just an illusion, and we must always remember that. Not only for our own safety, but others as well.”

Vaegon says nothing. Since the day he could walk, he had been getting himself into mischief, but something has changed recently. He was frustrated a lot of the time, and even now you can see the rage on his face. Vaegon was an exceptional dragon rider for only being ten years old, but he often failed to see the danger he was putting himself in.

“Muña?”

You turn to the doorway to see Aerion and Ada, and as soon as your daughter spots her father, she lets go of her brother's hand and skips over to him, and Harwin lifts her up, causing her to giggle. You smile at Aerion. “Yes, SweetPea?”

“Can I travel with you to the keep?”

“Of course, we will be leaving soon.”

“Thank you,” Aerion says, running off to his room to get changed.

Before the question leaves Vaegon's mouth Harwin answers it, “No, you will be traveling with me and Ada by boat. And you are going to attend the rest of your history lesson and apologize to the maester before we leave.”

—

You ignore Ser Criston’s presence as you barge into the queen's quarters, holding onto Aerion’s hand. The first person you see is your brother-in-law, Ser Laenor, who was holding a newborn boy in his arms. Laenor had deeply disappointed you by allowing your sister to be treated so atrociously. Then your eyes land on the queen herself.

“How lovely to see you, princess,” Alicent says sarcastically. “And you too, Prince Aaron.”

Your son looks up at you confused, almost as if he’s trying to process why Alicent called him the wrong name.

“Sweetling, go say hello to Ser Laenor and the baby.” When Aerion goes over to them, you glare at Alicent. “What is the meaning of this? My sister should be resting after her labor.”

“I did insist the princess should be resting.”

“Before or after you demanded her newborn be brought to you? What kind of queen abuses their power by taking a babe from their mother?” You don’t even attempt to hide the venom in your voice.

As soon as you arrived at the keep, you were informed that your sister had only given birth less than an hour before, and the queen summoned the baby to be brought straight to her. And not wanting to be away from her child, Rhaenyra walked through the castle carrying her newborn. You kneel beside your sister, who looked exhausted, and kiss the back of her hand. “I’m so proud of you.”

“I’m glad you are here,” she says weakly.

“There she is, Vaella, my girl,” your father says happily when he enters the room. He greets you by kissing both cheeks. “I’m glad to have both my daughters under the same roof again.”

You notice your father's left arm is amputated up to his elbow, something Rhaenyra had failed to mention in any of her ravens you’d received recently. You smile at him and say, “I’ve missed you, father.”

“Rhaenyra has done us proud; he will be fine knight, I believe.” Seeing the way he smiles at your sister warms your heart. He rubs at the back of Aerion’s head and asks, "Are the rest of my grandchildren coming over?”

“Yes, Harwin will be bringing them over by boat.”

Laenor stands beside you and hands you the tiny baby. “This is Joffrey.”

You lock eyes with Rhaenyra, and you can tell she’s dissatisfied with the name choice. “He is precious.”

“That he is,” Laenor says, staring at the baby with so much love in his eyes. “I believe the princess has exhausted herself heroically.”

He helps your sister stand up, and you follow them with Aerion closely by your side. When you step into the hallway, Rhaenyra informs you that Jace and Luke needed to be informed that they had a new sibling. “I’ll go,” you offer. “Do you want to come to the dragonpit, SweetPea?”

“I’d like to stay with Auntie Rhaenyra and the baby, if that’s okay.”

Rhaenyra ruffles his hair. “Of course, sweet boy. Now, tell me all about your dragon; your mother told me you flew him for the first time last week.”

You watch, concerned, as they walk away. Your sister was putting on a brave face, but the trail of blood coming from her told a different story.

[hiorintruther]

An Updated ‘Reasons Why I Ship Hiorin’ — Because It’s Been Ages Since I Made The First One And I’ve Had More Thoughts (and we got more moments!)

Aka: can you tell this ship makes me mentally unwell?

Hi again! It’s been a while. I did make one of these long posts a while back outlining why I choose to ship hiorin even though they’ve barely interacted and on the surface don’t look like they’d make sense at all. Since then, hiorin has gained quite a few shippers in the fandom and I keep thinking about my boys, especially with the Bastard Munchen vs PXG game FINALLY giving us some new moments. Unsurprisingly, ever since making the first post I’ve also had a lot more ideas about the dynamic, it’s potential, some more connections between them that I never touched on before, etc… and rather than editing the other post I thought it would be easier to just make a new one.

Some stuff I go over here might be familiar from the first post. I want this to be a kind of hub for any and all of my hiorin interpretations, analysis, trivia, headcanons, ‘theories’ (which I don’t think will be canon but the narrative potential for them is through the roof) and anything else I think is relevant to the ship. Feel free to jump around and read whatever is most interesting for you. Hiorin is a ship that, for me, is built on mountains of untapped potential. I just want to bring that potential to light all in one place.

Note: for this post I’ll only use information that has been written by Kaneshiro, drawn by Nomura or Sanomiya, or has otherwise been green-lit by Kaneshiro as canon. Merch collabs, voice actor QnAs, the PWC game etc… for me do not count as canon and I won’t use them. Also, the 10-image limit is biting my ass so my formatting for certain bits might be a bit all over the place. Apologies.

So without further ado. Let’s start! Enjoy the yap sesh!

Part 1 — The Manga Canon

Hiorin get their (very sparse and brief) interactions mostly from the Third Selection Arc (chapters 87-108) and the U20 arc (chapters 109-151). We recently got some new moments in the BM vs PXG match (chapters 250-present).

First off, the tryouts. It’s implied here that Hiori and Rin have never met, as Hiori notices Isagi’s response to Rin and asks if Isagi knows who Rin is. Rin also doesn’t acknowledge Hiori in any way here, so we can presume they’re strangers (although some shippers like to headcanon that they met during the first selection).

That being said during the match, after Isagi has been thoroughly shut down by Karasu, Rin turns his attention to Hiori as a teammate to help him get the ball up the field. Rin has never seen Hiori play before (as far as we know). They’ve never even talked. They’re barely getting familiar with each other’s play styles. And yet, they immediately link up to form a clean, deadly back and forth that optimises Rin’s play style. In fact, this duo helped Rin score 1 goal, and it would have helped Rin score 2 had Shidou not rudely interrupted the second.

It was so deadly that Otoya had to intervene specifically to break them up, so that they could no longer continue their one-two passes up the field and threaten to go for another goal. (Also notice in this page below how as soon as the kickoff happened, Hiori was already running into position in the background. He understands what Rin wants to do).

Not only did Hiori and Rin naturally form a link-up, but Hiori was also fully capable of keeping up with Rin, something Nanase admitted he struggled with during this match and even Isagi was struggling with as well, since later on we see Isagi fail to intercept one of Hiori’s passes due to not being able to reach it in time (which presumably Rin would have been able to were he in Isagi’s position). So, from what we see of Hiori and Rin in this match, they’re on a similar wavelength in terms of skills, field vision and gameplay, and are naturally able to link up even as strangers. I’ll note here that neither of them were playing at full power — Hiori was playing on 0 motivation, and Rin was still utilising his Puppeteer play style instead of his Destroyer. More on this later in the ‘Headcanons’ section.

After the Tryouts, we next see them interact in the U20 match. We start with a brief callback to their tryouts link up in chapter 132, where Rin passes to Hiori. Hiori is acting as a relay between Isagi and Rin, which in my opinion would be a good way to utilise him in the current manga after the NEL. Whether or not that’s how Kaneshiro chooses to use him in the future is anyone’s guess though.

The next big moment comes in chapter 140, after Shidou has kicked Rin in the face and the game has briefly paused. I think this is by far the most ‘iconic’ hiorin moment. While Isagi is analysing the previous gameplay and Karasu is arguing with the ref, it’s Hiori who is the only one to actually go and check on Rin. Even Bachira and Reo were right next to Rin and neither of them were the ones going up to him. Hiori was further down the field but he was the one who moved to help Rin first. Not only is he gentle with and worried for Rin, but by some miracle Rin actually accepts his help! It feels almost out of character given how angry Rin is for the rest of the match, but for this very brief moment he lets Hiori help him up and reassures him that he’s ‘totally fine’ (yeah sure buddy…).

For many this is the main ‘ooooooh’ moment with hiorin. But what if I told you it actually happens a second time this match? After Aiku goes rogue in chapter 142 and tries to score a goal, Rin ends up slide-tackling him to prevent it. And once again, if you look in the background of the panels following the interception in chapter 143, who is it helping Rin stand? It’s Hiori. And this time they actually hold hands!

The final hiorin moment in the U20 match come soon after this in chapter 144, when Rin is about to enter his Destroyer mode. When Rin enters Destroyer mode, Hiori is in possession of the ball and so Rin steals it from him in a completely unpredictable move that had everyone stunned.

The U20 match moments, for many of us hiorin shippers, felt like the last time we’d ever see them properly interact. I at least had zero hopes for PXG. But oh boy was I wrong! Kaneshiro might not realise the dynamic he’s setting up with this duo but I’m gonna milk every interaction for what it’s worth! And so with that, I’ll bring you to the BM vs PXG match (note: currently still ongoing, so I might have to update this section soon). Since the U20 match, we’ve had some changes. The biggest one is Hiori’s personality. After going through his arc in Ubers, Hiori has become more outspoken and confident, playing into his ‘Ultra-Sadist’ style and being more than happy to speak his mind. He’s more argumentative and can whip up a good piece of trash talk (my gamer boy fr!). We see this on full display in chapter 251 when he completely shuts down Rin’s goal opportunity because Rin was too focussed on Isagi to see the bigger picture of the match. He turns around, points at Rin, and tells him “if ya want a goal… come at me with an unpredictable script!”

Notice here how he isn’t simply putting Rin down for not being able to score. Hiori may be taunting Rin, but he does still technically give Rin helpful advice. In a previous panel he explains how he was able to read Rin because Rin was too focussed on Isagi, and in combination with Hiori’s ‘unpredictable script’ line it forms some rather blunt and rude but nevertheless useful advice. Hiori is telling Rin exactly how to get past him and what Rin needs to do to improve. Notice the focus on unpredictability. This is veering into headcanon territory, but I don’t think it’s too unreasonable to think that perhaps Hiori is thinking about Rin’s unpredictable Destroyer mode. He experienced it first hand when Rin stole the ball from him in the U20 match. He knows what Rin is truly capable of. To Hiori, that version of Rin is a reasonable expectation (and I’ll get to their relationship with ‘expectations’ later) that would be the perfect key to getting through BM’s defence. But Rin isn’t showing that off because his obsession with defeating Isagi over scoring goals is hurting his performance. Hiori’s advice is reasonable and maybe Rin should listen to it.

As of right now, the final moment we have of them together is from chapter 259, where Hiori is aided by Raichi to block Rin in a 2-person press, causing Rin to lose the ball. From a purely indulgent shipping perspective, notice how Hiori and Rin’s legs are touching, their hands are on each other’s chests and they’re looking at each other. Raichi is just there lol.

This may be it for their canon interactions, however it’s far from all the canon information we have about them that’s interesting for the dynamic. A big part of the hiorin ship is about looking at their individual information and drawing together similarities and/or parallels. While on the surface they seem very different, almost opposites, digging a little deeper reveals a lot of small coincidences about them that build up to make you realise that they’re a lot more similar than you might initially think.

Part 2 — Where Hiori and Rin Align

Analytical players. Both of them have a deeply analytical play style that utilises field vision and high levels of technical skills. They don’t rely on brute strength or pure intimidation to get through the opponents’ defence, rather they analyse, play with and overcome their opponents with strategy and out-play their opponents with sheer levels of skill. This similarity is likely what led to them to be able to so easily link up when they first met.

Sadism. Both are known sadists. Rin’s Destroyer mode is particularly sadistic but in general he revels in being at the top with others under him. He’s open with his insults and destroys chaotically, looking for breaks in his opponents’ defence and completely tearing them down until there’s no hope of his opponents winning. Hiori is a self-proclaimed “ultra-sadist” (personally I think he’s more a sado-masochist but we’re sticking to canon only here). After his arc, he enjoys watching his opponents scramble to try and keep up with him only to be destroyed by his top-tier plays, especially in a ‘best play’ scenario with his chosen striker of the moment. He’s also not loyal to any one striker and will leave them behind if they’re not playing up to his standards or goal vision. Hiori’s sadism also manifests as him teasing his friends, as we see in chapter 241 when he jokingly teases Isagi for getting shipped with Kaiser by BLTV fans.

Sae connections. Rin is Sae’s younger brother and was abandoned by Sae after Sae returned home from Spain. He says he hates his brother after the U20 match, when Sae noticed Isagi over Rin, and now Rin is playing for the sake of crushing Sae (more on this later). Hiori also has connections to Sae though. He’s been compared to Sae twice in-universe, once by Sendou in chapter 129 who said his passes had the same level of skill as Sae’s, and once by Yukimiya in chapter 241 who thinks Hiori’s ultra-sadist mindset is similar to Sae’s.

They’re both gamers. Obviously we know Hiori is one. That’s been a big part of his character ever since we first met him. However, Rin also plays video games, specifically horror games. We get this info from both the Egoist Bible and his prequel light novel, where it explains that he plays horror games to de-stress at night: (chapter 2) “… even games, should be chilling and scary. Playing horror games alone at night is quite thrilling”.

Horror, gore and zombies. As well as playing horror games to de-stress, it’s explained in the Egoist Bible and Rin’s light novel that he watches horror movies for the same reason: (chapter 2) “When he’s done, he watches a horror movie and then goes to bed. This is his daily routine. For some reason, since Sae has been gone, he only watches horror movies. Movies, videos …”. The light novel slightly expands on this to specify he enjoys splatter films, as well as showing an illustration of him watching rather a gory zombie movie: (chapter 4) “Lately, he's been into splatter films. The one where a killer comes out with an electric saw and a big-ass ax, then blood splatters all over the place. The one where a killer chases you no matter how hard you try to escape, and if you get caught, you end up being dismembered. His heart is pounding, but he’s not the type to show on his face, so Rin watching the slaughter scene without any expression on his face is much more horrifying”. Likewise, Hiori is shown in chapter 206 playing a zombie shooter in which he imagines the zombies being his parents and he violently kills them. We see his inner monologue of this in his prequel light novel, showing the depths of how much he wants them to suffer: (chapter 6) “Before he knew it, in his imagination, his parents became zombies. His father and mother are coming towards him, laughing. He shoots without hesitation. Bang! Headshot. The bullet that entered the father's jaw blew off the back of his head. Bang! Bang! His mother's eyeballs pop out and there's a hole in her chest. He aims for vital spots with rapid fire, but they don't fall easily because they're zombies”.

Solitude. They’re both introverts according to their MBTIs. Rin is ranked as the most anti-social member of Blue Lock in the Egoist Bible. He says he “doesn’t have time for lukewarm conversations” (although I do think on some level he longs for approval and love from someone, given how much he craves his brother’s attention). He is also one of the only characters who genuinely has no friends in Blue Lock. He tolerated Bachira for a time and trained Nanase begrudgingly, but no one is very close with him at all. Now, at a glance Hiori might seem far more social. He has a lot of friends and seems to enjoy hanging out with them. However, in a Twitter qna (which tend to have questions compiled for the Egoist Bible but alas Hiori doesn’t have a page) it was revealed that his ideal type in a romantic partner is “someone who can leave me alone”. The wording he used — 放置し合えるん — seems to imply a reciprocal nature of this ‘leaving alone’, ie ‘you leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone’. Now tell me that arrangement wouldn’t work perfectly for Rin. Hiori is also shown in chapter 172 (pre-character arc) spending time alone in the BM dorms while others are out training. While Hiori can enjoy socialising, he also needs plenty of time to himself to the point where it becomes a deal-breaker in a relationship for him.

Ochazuke (tea on rice). Rin’s favourite food according to the Egoist Bible is ochazuke, specifically taichazuke. In the new Episode Rin extra chapter we also see him going to enjoy some taichazuke at a traditional restaurant because he was hungry for ochazuke. When Hiori was asked in another Twitter qna what his favourite accompaniment for rice is, he replied that it was the ochazuke brand Nagatanien.

Stripes. Rin’s casual outfits for both the Shibuya collab (designed by Nomura) and Episode Rin feature a striped/ribbed pattern. Likewise, Hiori’s casual pyjamas, childhood design and one of Nomura’s coaster designs all feature him wearing striped clothing.

Eyelashes. Both of them have long under lashes. That’s kinda it for this one lol.

Name kanji (yes, I’m in this deep). In Rin’s surname, the kanji 糸 means ‘thread/yarn’. In Hiori’s surname, the kanji 織 means ‘weaver’. Both of them have kanji relating to weaving, likely in relation to both Rin’s Puppeteer play style (and Sae’s insane control of the midfield), and Hiori’s way of ‘weaving’ together a best play through his skills (and his parents ‘weaving’ his life for him rather than letting him control it himself). To get poetic about it, you could say Hiori is the weaver who knows how best to utilise Rin’s threads and can guarantee their shared goal vision will be woven into place. To get even more conspiracy theorist-y, when Charles meets Hiori he calls Hiori “水色お兄さん” — literally ‘water-coloured big brother’, likely in relation to his hair colour because 水色 can also mean ‘cyan’. To keep it on the topic of water though, whose aura is made of water? That’s right. Rin’s! (yes I know this is really grasping at straws but I did say this post was for EVERYTHING hiorin soooo).

Part 3 — Family Relationships: Love, Expectations and Abandonment

Rin and Hiori both have relationships with particular members of their family that are similar and also unique among the rest of the cast. For Rin, it’s his relationship with Sae. For Hiori, it’s his relationship with his parents.

To begin with Hiori, his parents only wanted a child who could fulfil their dream of being number 1. They held this expectation of him throughout his whole life, pretending to genuinely care about and love him when in reality all they wanted was for him to be the best. If he tried to step out of line, they’d become monstrous, as seen in Hiori’s light novel: (chapter 2) “Can I take a day off from soccer tomorrow and go play with my friends?” As soon as he said this, the smiles disappeared from his parents’ faces. His mother looked very surprised, and then she made the scariest face he's ever seen. “......!” He doesn’t remember what she said. He just remembers that he was scolded terribly. After that, he was hugged tightly. “Hiori, you are born to be the best at soccer.” “You can play with other kids anytime you want.” “But if you don’t do soccer properly from now on, you will never be the best.” His mother was desperate. His father was behind her, looking sadly at Hiori. “Please, Hiori, trust us and play soccer.” Hiori felt that he had done something very wrong. … What should I do? I said something bad. I'm sorry. The air was stifling, as if he had been locked in a room full of needles. He felt like he would get hurt if he moved, so all Hiori could do was nod.” We also see the extent of this in chapter 206, when Hiori overhears his parents threatening to get a divorce if he isn’t the best. This makes him realise that if he doesn’t fulfil their expectations, he’ll be abandoned by them.

With Rin, it’s a bit more complicated. His relationship with his older brother Sae is still pretty up in the air as to what really happened from Sae’s perspective. We need to distinguish between what actually happened (which is difficult to determine as of right now) and what Rin interpreted as happening. From his perspective, Sae pretended to love him while they were growing up, only using him as a stepping stone to get to the world stage. After that had been achieved, Rin was abandoned (as seen in his inner monologue in chapter 125). While it’s difficult to discern, on a broad scale we could argue that instead of this, Sae has a particular expectation of Rin that currently Rin is failing to meet, and as a result Sae sees this abandonment as somehow ‘necessary’ to get Rin to evolve… or he really has abandoned Rin and is just an asshole, but I hope towards the former. This is where I cry on deaf ears for a Sae light novel or spin-off chapter, anything to get his side of the story. My current interpretation of canon is that Sae still loves Rin, however he knows that Rin’s desire to be the world’s best as a duo is impossible, and his way of trying to ween Rin off such a dream was to sever their relationship. No matter what really happened though, I’m more interested in what Rin interpreted and took away from being abandoned, which is an interesting mix of hatred and confusion but also still a desire for recognition.

This to me reads as very similar to what Hiori’s relationship with his parents used to be. He hated them. He wished death upon them. And yet he kept fighting for what they wanted, fulfilling their expectations because he was so afraid that if he didn’t, all the blame would be placed on him for their family falling apart and his parents abandoning him. Rin’s situation is sort of a dark mirror to Hiori’s where instead of just fearing that abandonment, Rin was abandoned, with all the blame being placed on him by Sae. And yet, deep down, he’s still fighting for Sae’s approval and love again, trying to find any way he can to fulfil Sae’s expectations. We see this in the way Rin has chosen Isagi to be his rival, not because of anything in particular that Isagi has done, but because Sae acknowledged Isagi over him. We see his desire for love in the way he travelled to Tokyo in the Episode Rin extra chapter to possibly watch Sae’s match, even though they’d already fallen out by that point. Rin and Hiori both strove for love from their families, it’s just that Hiori has now managed to break free from this mindset and fight only for himself, meanwhile Rin is still clinging to the memory of Sae no matter how much he wants to crush Sae for abandoning him.

This complicated relationship the two of them have with love, expectations and abandonment in relation to family members is what draws me to a lot of hiorin headcanon material. Rin is cold, antisocial and ruthless, and yet Hiori potentially has the capacity to understand his pain more than anyone else. This is especially true now that Hiori has broken free of his parents’ expectations. It gives him the freedom to look at these situations more objectively while retaining an understanding of their emotional core. He knows how difficult it is to both hate your family but strive for their approval, perhaps fruitlessly. And likewise, Rin might be able to actually learn something from how Hiori overcame his situation by going all-in with the egoist mindset, playing only for himself, completely discarding his family members’ expectations.

Part 4 — Headcanons Part 1: The Hiorin Potential For A Joint Arc (which yes I know won’t happen. Let me dream)

Anything from this point on is pure headcanon, taking into account all the canon information listed in the previous sections. This is NOT ‘speculation’. I genuinely don’t think any of this will be canon or else Kaneshiro would have started calling attention to it by now in the main manga. However by the end of this I’m sure some of you will join me in wishing it could be canon, because even if Kaneshiro hasn’t consciously laid the groundwork for Rin and Hiori to have a joint arc together, he has done so by accident and all the pieces are in place.

The bulk of this section revolves around Rin’s Destroyer mode and Hiori’s ultra-sadism, as well as the ‘best-play’ scenario theorised by Isagi and Hiori in the recent PXG chapters. Basically, I think that a ‘best-play’ chemical reaction between ultra-sadist Hiori and Destroyer Rin would be both broken as fuck and would be a great way to showcase Rin’s character development as he learns to break away from wanting to crush Isagi and Sae.

In Rin’s light novel, we learn that as a child playing alongside Sae as a duo, Rin didn’t have the Puppeteer play style he’s known for in the main series. Instead, he was fully zoned in on himself and the game, moving on instinct, looking for the perfect spot to break through the enemy’s defence, trusting fully that he’d receive Sae’s pass (chapter 1): ‘“Rin, what are you thinking about when you play soccer?” Rin scored two goals in today’s match. Meanwhile, Sae scored three points with a hat trick. His Nii-chan is great after all. “Hm? Nothing. I guess it's just about goals. I just run to the bad area and then Nii-chan passes to me.” “What do you mean by bad area?” Sae asks, while playing with the stick in his mouth. “Hm. The area where the enemy panics and falls through.” The area the enemy falls through. Sae let his younger brother's words quietly seep into his mind. “You rely too much on your intuition, you know.” “But Nii-chan always passes to me, so why not? Nobody else is good enough for me.” That’s why it’s okay to move on impulse without thinking. “......What will you do when I’m not around?” “I don’t know but, I guess I’ll look for a replacement.” Rin says nonchalantly.’

This method of running ‘to the area where the enemy panics and falls through’ seems to be alluding to Rin’s Destroyer mode — the version of Rin we see in the final moments of the U20 match after he loses control and goes on a destructive rampage. Indeed, in chapter 152 we also see Rin wondering what this side of him is truly capable of and how he wants to try harnessing it more, but he still only wants to use it to destroy Isagi and Sae rather than playing for himself. His Puppeteer is not his original play style, instead it’s one he developed after Sae left in order to appease his teammates and be a able to carry his team to victory by himself (chapter 3); ‘Even in a high-level club team, no one could handle Rin’s moves’, (chapter 4): ‘Without Sae's passes, he can't play the way he wants to play’, (chapter 5): ‘Rin erases his best image and then captures the whole picture. In his head, he sees the movements of all the players, as if filmed from a drone’, (chapter 5): ‘No one understands Rin's frustration. But they can win, so that's fine. It's as if there are marionette strings attached to his teammates, controlling and moving the team…… That is Rin's new weapon. It is a play that can only be made with Rin's combination of technical, physical, and tactical skills. It has also led him to bring out the best in his teammates’. It was only in the U20 match that the Destroyer was able to come out again after it had been sealed away for so long. It was a completely different way of playing that was more primal and natural for Rin but less controlled and more clumsy due to his lack of practice using it. Still, its pure destructive power was insane enough to almost score.

In the current chapters of the manga, we know that Rin has gotten a certain better grasp of the Destroyer since the start of the NEL. In chapter 239 (immediately after Hiori says he’ll happily drop Isagi for someone else should they come along, mind you) we see Rin utilising a seemingly toned down version of the Destroyer against Nagi in the PXG vs MC match. Clearly he has been trying to improve it since first letting it loose again during the U20 match. However, so far in PXG vs BM we haven’t seen it at all. Given Hiori’s comment about focussing on Isagi and predictability, as well as Isagi and Hiori’s theory of ‘ego types’ and a ‘best play’ scenario, it appears as though Rin’s biggest problem is that he’s using a world-type ego to show off his skills to Isagi (and therefore, by extension, to Sae as well). This is the ego type suited for the Puppeteer, one that utilises teammates and was created for the sake of appeasing others. The Destroyer on the other hand seems far better suited to a ‘self-type’ ego because Rin accesses it when in a state of mind that ignores Isagi, ignores Sae and hyper-zones in on himself and his own ability to score a goal. This would mean that Rin’s ‘true’ ego is a ‘self-type’ but he is hindering himself by using a ‘world-type’ to try and prove something to Isagi and Sae.

Now, undoubtably we’ll see the Destroyer at some point in this match, and I really hope when it comes out we see it decimate Hiori. Since Hiori flat out told Rin to come at him with ‘an unpredictable script’, the Destroyer can be the ‘unpredictable script’ that blows Hiori away. And I think that would catch Hiori’s attention. Remember, his resolve in chapter 239 is to create the greatest striker, and his ultra-sadism means he’s more than happy to drop Isagi for someone he thinks is better. So, no matter what the outcome of the match is, I think Rin’s Destroyer should pique Hiori’s interest as a potential best striker candidate. This is especially so when you remember that Hiori has technically already experienced Rin’s Destroyer first hand in the U20 match, when Rin stole the ball from Hiori (interesting side note here: Hiori’s immediate thoughts before the ball was stolen from him were him struggling to figure out who he should pass to, Barou or Nagi. He thought ‘which one of you?’ but didn’t pass, in my eyes because he couldn’t envision the play working with either of them, and then immediately Rin stole the ball. Rin unknowingly answered the question Hiori was asking in those crucial seconds).

In the next arc (a U20 World Cup training mini-arc I’d presume), I’d have Hiori and Rin slowly start to come to an understanding. I think Hiori’s ultra-sadism would be incredibly useful in helping draw the Destroyer out of Rin because Hiori only passes to the best spot on the field. He doesn’t alter his level of play for the sake of his striker. So, if Rin is in a mindset where he’s too focussed on proving Sae wrong, crushing Sae and defeating Isagi, then his plays become affected and Hiori simply won’t pass to him, likely passing to Isagi instead. This creates a bottle-neck where Rin has to evolve his mindset, discarding the ‘world-type’ ego of the Puppeteer (which is still useful in some cases, but not here) and instead fully embrace the Destroyer. If he can get into that mindset, only focussing on himself and not Isagi, Sae or even the other players around him, zoning in on just the goal ahead, he is guaranteed to be rewarded by receiving Hiori’s perfect pass to the ideal spot where the enemy ‘breaks’. It mirrors how Sae used to pass to him in their childhood (remembering Hiori has been compared to Sae in terms of both skill and mindset), except now Rin isn’t thinking that he’s part of a permanent duo, rather he alone is the star and he can trust his midfielder to aid him and match goal-visions without the need for the Puppeteer.

The key word here is trust. Rin and Hiori would have to develop a level of trust. Hiori has to trust that Rin will embody the Destroyer, and Rin has to trust that Hiori will side with him. It’s why Hiori has currently been able to work so well with Isagi. Their goal visions aligned and they placed the utmost trust in each other to perform at their individual bests, thus leading to Isagi scoring successful goals. For me, if Rin could also reach this state, it would be a showcase of the culmination of his development as he breaks free of Sae and learns how to play fully for himself. It would simultaneously be a return to his childhood, where he was able to freely utilise the Destroyer without worrying about the rest of the team, while also showing his evolution because he no longer places that trust onto just Sae ‘because it’s Nii-chan’. When Rin trusts in Hiori, it wouldn’t be because ‘it’s Hiori’, rather it would be Rin fully focussing purely on himself and his own plays, forgetting about everything and everyone else, and simply allowing the ball to land in the ideal spot at his feet. It’s a completely sadistic, self-serving mindset, just like Hiori’s is from a midfielder’s perspective. Hiori’s ultra-sadism means he likely can’t be controlled by Rin’s Puppeteer style, since he plays for himself fully. Therefore in order to successfully earn Hiori’s passes, Rin would need to fully embrace the Destroyer, abandon Isagi and Sae clouding his judgement, and throw himself fully into goal-scoring. Hiori can’t be controlled but he’s reliable and can be trusted. I do think the road to building this trust should have its ups and downs. Let Rin get frustrated at Hiori not being controllable. Let Hiori want to see Rin improve while also not bending to Rin’s will. Let Hiori refuse to work with Rin sometimes. All of it would be part of a gradual, arc-spanning development for Rin that doesn’t take place in a single chapter.

In my personal opinion, having Hiori specifically be the midfielder who helps Rin most would be more narratively satisfying someone like Nanase (no hate to Nanase or nanarin tho. Love them 🫶). While Nanase works as a nice support for Rin especially at the moment in PXG, plus his sunshine personality might help to make Rin relax and open up more over time, his skill level isn’t quite up to scratch for Rin’s highest level plays. Nanase’s passes are useful with his ambidexterity but they aren’t clean. They aren’t as reliable. Rin still has to pay attention to Nanase in order to guarantee a successful play. He can’t block out literally everything else to hyper-focus on goal-scoring in this state. Hiori on the other hand provides that high level of play which means that Rin can afford to essentially forget Hiori even exists — the ball will still find its way to him. They wouldn’t even have to look at each other (much like the Isagi x Hiori best play we saw in Ubers that was recently recreated in PXG). There’s also the thematic element that Hiori has been compared to Sae before, setting him up as a Sae parallel which I think could be utilised in Rin’s evolution. Placing trust in Hiori would show that Rin is finally able to detach his reason to play from Sae and he can stop striving so strongly for Sae to notice him. Then there’s the shared relationship Hiori and Rin both have with expectations, love and abandonment, which could arguably help them get on each others wavelength to understand exactly what they want from a play and how best to execute a strategy they haven’t even discussed beforehand, as well as have Hiori be the one to help ‘create’ Rin since Hiori has already gone through the mental baggage of his arc and would understand Rin’s mental blocks.

Still, I do think canonically Rin and Nanase will be the duo that continues forwards into the next arc. Rin’s development will likely come from a combination of Nanase’s kindness, Isagi’s yap sessions and a lot of internal monologues. Meanwhile, Hiori will continue to improve alongside Isagi as a plot device who can be pulled out at convenient moments, while occasionally passing to other strikers for dramatic flair (I don’t really like this after Hiori’s resolve so strongly telegraphed that he’d very happily drop Isagi without a second thought, but oh well, what can you do?). I doubt Hiori will canonically play into Rin’s development at all.

Still, from the moment Rin and Hiori met in the third selection tryouts, they were able to flawlessly link up without the need for planning or communication. Hiori understood what Rin needed and moved to the perfect spot to work with him. If both of them were in Flow, creating a ‘best-play’ scenario with the Destroyer and the Ultra-Sadist, it would both be a show of incredible skill and high-level play while also showcasing Rin’s personal development and evolution, as well as utilising Hiori as a narrative support in a way that doesn’t impose him too strongly on the main plot but keeps him relevant and active in the story.

Part 5 — Headcanons Part 2: Some Fun Ideas

This section is all about some fun ideas I’ve had about hiorin, mostly trying to use canon as a strong basis so that they make sense. They aren’t things I think will ever be explored in canon but they’re fun to think about nonetheless. These can range from canon-adjacent to domestic AU material, it’s a whole mix really. I’ll probably come back to this bit every now and again to update it with new ideas I have, so keep an eye out for that.

A shared understanding. Since they’re both familiar with what they perceive to be feelings of false love from family members, it creates a situation where they can understand why they act the way they do better than anyone else. I hc that this would help them to more naturally form link-ups on the field, since they’d be in tune with each other’s mental states as well as general play styles, and off-field in being able to recognise when something has ticked off the other and resurfaced some unpleasant memories. I don’t think they’d really be ones to talk about their family traumas to each other openly, but they’d have an understanding of the things they do find out and wouldn’t think the other is overreacting, especially Hiori understanding Rin. While I think it’s good that Rin has friends like Nanase who he can be more chilled out with, I personally prefer the idea that his partner be someone who can actually understand the depths of his issues and sit with him in the eye of the storm rather than trying to just ‘fix’ him or drag him out of it.

Touch-starved and both slow to physical affection. Since they’re both introverted and Rin is emotionally constipated as fuck, they aren’t really a couple that would be very into PDA. Not even hand-holding. But it doesn’t really matter for them. They’re both not very used to that sort of physical comfort especially in the presence of others. However, while I think in general Rin might be a bit more reluctant to initiate intimacy than Hiori, I do think he’d still be more inclined to initiate hugs. Why Rin of all people? Because he grew up with a sibling. And he was a younger sibling at that. On some level he would have received attention from Sae while their relationship was still good, even if only a little bit. Hiori on the other hand grew up an only child in a household where hugs and doting were used as a tool to manipulate him. He’d likely not be used to the idea of hugs as a genuine show of affection. But Rin’s hugs are always genuine and often given out sparingly and bashfully, after a lot of hesitation. They’re both slow to physical affection but they’d find a way to navigate their wants and needs together, taking their time.

All-nighter horror dates. Be it playing co-op horror games or binging horror movies in the dark, I think they’d both prefer that as a date night over going out to a restaurant. It’s an activity they can both have fun with as a shared interest, just the two of them, alone at home with no need to even leave the house. They can let themselves get more passionate and competitive (and sadistic) while playing horror games too.

Yoga together. While we only have canonical confirmation that Rin both regularly does yoga and is good at it, I hc that Hiori would also be quite good at it due to his parents likely drilling him with intense schedules and being helicopter parents about his health. Yoga would likely fall into it somewhere as a cool-down and a good way to exercise on rainy days. While Hiori initially wouldn’t find yoga fun to do with Rin due to his negative associations with it, I feel like over time it could be a nice bonding activity for the two of them. It requires minimal talking of they’re doing their own things, and as long as Hiori isn’t messing up the moves I think Rin would tolerate the two of them existing in the same space. At the very least, Hiori wouldn’t try to one-up Rin with moves he can’t do and topple into Rin as a result (looking at you, Isagi…). They wouldn’t do couples yoga though, just their own thing in the same space.

Sharing food. In the Twitter QnAs, it states that Hiori’s favourite food is salt-grilled saury (saury shiyoyaki) “including the bitter bits”. His least favourite food is cotton candy because “it’s just sugar”. Therefore, I hc that he tends to enjoy bitter food while disliking sweet food. In contrast, we know that Rin quite likes sweet food because he used to eat ice cream with Sae on the way home from practice, plus in the Episode Rin extra chapter he goes to buy dessert at a special desserts cafe after eating ochazuke (a traditionally salty dish). Because of this difference in tastes, I like to hc Hiori giving any sweet food Blue Lock offers in their meals to Rin. Likewise, if the main meal Rin is given is ever burnt or charred too much for his liking, he gives the charred bits to Hiori since he knows Hiori will eat them so the food won’t be wasted.

Tea and coffee. As an addendum to the previous hc, I think Hiori would be a coffee drinker and Rin would be a tea drinker. This is because coffee tends to be more bitter, especially ones without sugar like espressos, so I can see Hiori preferring it to tea. There’s also the idea that ochazuke is made with tea, which is a bonus for Rin liking tea over coffee.

Cooking. Last food-related one I promise! While Hiori likely has a ton of technical knowledge about nutrition, dieting, calorie counting etc… due to his mother’s frenzied control of his diet growing up, I headcanon that he doesn’t actually have a clue how to cook. Once again, this is because of his parents being overprotective and worrying that he’d injure himself with a kitchen knife or on the stove. So he has zero clue where to start in the kitchen. On the flip-side, while Rin isn’t the best cook in the world I reckon he’d have somewhat an idea of how to cook the basics, plus he likely also has knowledge of dieting and nutrition for the sake of his own health. So while they’d both have things to learn in the kitchen, it would be Rin doing more of the actual cooking and Hiori deciding what meals to eat to optimise their health and training.

A joint-aura that’s a blizzard — in the event that they ever were to team up on the field, I think that the aura they’d give off together should be a blizzard. It makes sense to me for them to have this because Hiori has ice associations with the kanji 氷 in his surname, which means ‘ice’, and in chapter 239 when he gives his monologue about finding a reason to play, a metaphorical key appears with a snowflake on it to symbolise his newfound resolve. Rin’s connections to snow are less positive though, since it was snowing the day that Sae abandoned him. I think making their joint aura a blizzard could symbolise both Hiori’s ultra-sadist resolve to play, and Rin finally being able to move on from Sae to associate the snow with his sadistic determination. The fact that it’s a snowstorm emphasises the pair of them having a sadistic, destructive take-down of their opponents.

Hiori has a type. His canon type is already ‘someone who will leave me alone’ as I previously discussed in section 2. However, I do like to semi-jokingly say that his type is also ‘dark-haired, analytical guys with an attitude who are really good at football’. Obviously this is meant to refer mostly to Isagi and Karasu (we’ve all seen the heart-eyes you give them, Hiori!), but it is amusing to me that the description also fits Rin perfectly.

Part 6 — Transformative Works I Recommend For New Shippers

These are just some of my favourite fanfics all linked together in one place. I’ll start with a shameless plug of my own fic:

14 Days To NOT Fall In Love (but guess who did anyway)

Summary: This annoyingly mandated break of Ego's was only fourteen days long. That would never be enough time for Rin to fall for this aggravatingly sweet, understanding, level-headed, cyan-haired gamer boy... Okay, maybe he'd need to exercise SOME restraint. Aka: how Rin and Hiori become mutually pining idiots after the U-20 match through a combination of video games, late night discord calls and learning that perhaps they're not all that different after all.

(Chapters: 10 , Word Count: 67088 , Rating: T)

And now for my personal favourites I think new shippers will enjoy, in no particular order (if any of the authors see this and have tumblrs you want me to tag, lmk!):

catch us in the morning by transrightssokka (kellallyourfriends)

Summary: Hiori looks down and brings his hand up to his mouth, hiding a faint smile. “You don’t wanna go home, do you?” “No shit, I don’t,” Rin says. He’d rather sleep on the sidewalk than spend the next two weeks with Sae. Hiori is silent for a minute. His pretty eyes flick to his feet. Up to the back of the seat in front of them. Over to Rin. “So.” “So?” Rin says. Hiori lowers his voice. “So, what if we didn’t?”

(Chapters: 3 , Word Count: 27206 , Rated: M)

Even When It’s Starless by saturnshots

Summary: Everyone’s had an imaginary friend or two — it’s not often they change the course of your life, but who says being imaginary could stop them from bringing your dreams come true?

(Chapters: 1 , Word Count: 2838 , Rating: G)

sine wave by starstruckdove

Summary: Rin discovers Bachira’s “super secret surprise” sooner than he’d thought. There’s a new boy standing next to Ego at practice, and Rin knows he’s new because each of his unfortunate teammates have made their presence (loudly and raucously) known in his life. The boy has a nice face–wide eyes and soft mouth, all rounded corners instead of sharp edges. His hair is a shocking shade of blue and Rin finds it almost familiar. “This is your new manager,” Ego says with about as much energy as a dead battery.

(Chapters: 1 , Word Count: 8990 , Rated: T)

Daydreaming by em_hiorin

Summary: Hiori can’t seem to concentrate during practice, as a certain Itoshi has been plaguing his mind.

(Chapters: 1 , Word Count: 1560 , Rating: G)

My family thinks we’re dating. by akiangelsolos

Summary: “Oh, I see.” His mother hummed, placing her silver fork down on the table. “You must be upset, Hiori hasn’t come over in a while. You have to be lonely without your boyfriend around.” “I’m not lonely-” Rin shot his eyes at his mom, “What did you just say?”

(Chapters: 2 , Word Count: 5486 , Rating: G)

Part 7 — Wow, You Made It This Far? Congratulations And Thank You!

If you’ve made it this far, then I am both immensely thankful and I applaud you. Seriously, thank you for putting up with my insane, delusional brainrot over this silly rarepair that has barely any canon backing to speak of. Hopefully if anything, you now understand why people are starting to take interest in the ship (or at least why I enjoy it). And if you’re a shipper now, welcome to the club! You will now have to watch Hiori and Rin never affect each other’s development, never interact in any meaningful capacity and you’ll be eternally bitter about it 👍. For any aspiring fic writers, I hope this can be a nice hub of info for all of you if you want to consult the hiorin ‘dynamic’ (i say in quotations because let’s face it, I made up like 95% of the dynamic based on analysis and a canon dynamic doesn’t actually exist). Also, bear in mind that in the off chance we do get some more moments, I plan to update this post. So you may end up being subject to even more brainrot in the future.

Until that day comes though, I can only thank you once again. Hiorin is my otp and no matter how much Kaneshiro doesn’t make it come to fruition, he will have to try incredibly hard to make me stop shipping them. The dynamic can change. They can become more and more ‘incompatible’. I don’t care. If hiorin has no shippers, I have passed on from this world.

[arimiadev]

Developer Interview — Making A Date with Death

6 months ago, a brand new self-insert romance visual novel hit the market called A Date with Death, created by visual novel veterans Two and a Half Studios. Coming off of the success of The Divine Speaker, they dived into the chat sim space in visual novels with a huge splash. A Date with Death is currently sitting at over 5,000 positive reviews on Steam with a Kickstarter for an after story launching this week.

Read the interview on my blog or read it below.

Arimia: Hi Gabby, thanks for sitting down to talk about A Date with Death! Both of us have been into visual novels for quite a while, but what got you into them?

Gabby: I feel like my introduction to visual novels was probably similar to a lot of people my age…. and that was being on Tumblr too much and being introduced to Dramatical Murder much too young, and installing the fantranslation for myself and all of my friends, hahaha. From there I played the rest of the N+C games, and then moved to things like No Thank You! since it had a translation. After that I moved further to Japanese games that didn’t have a translation. These were 95% BL as well – I’ve played one or two otome games in my time but never really been super into them.

Actually, when I first got into development, I hadn’t played any Western visual novels yet. It was only after I started in game development that I tried more indie visual novels in general.

As for my favorite VNs, I have a few favorites! My first favorite and it’ll always have my heart is Lamento. It was kind of the culmination of a lot of different things I love in media, and I still love the game. There’s another untranslated game I really like called Pigeon Blood. I actually helped with some editing of translations for some of the routes a looong, long time ago. A more recent favorite, and probably my favorite overall, is MAMIYA! MAMIYA is a Japanese indie visual novel by KENKOULAND which I will happily shill over my own games (LOL) about a group of people at the “end of the world”. The way the story is presented, I don’t think I’ve ever played anything like it, and I found it very inspiring. I was lucky enough to work with the creator Kokoroten on an animation for my own game Dreambound, which was fantastic.

Arimia: Would you believe I’ve never played DMMD? Definitely cut from the same cloth though about being exposed from too much Tumblr time and hearing about all of these Japanese VNs that would never get localized over here, but now Fate/Stay Night is coming to Steam in a few months…. the visual novel landscape has changed so much.

You’ve worked on several boys love and girls love titles before A Date With Death that are more in the fantasy historical realm – how did you come up with the idea for ADWD?

Gabby: Well, we’d actually been wanting to try something more modern for awhile now, despite our love for fantasy settings, and we only happened across a screenshot from another developer’s chat sim and I kind of fell in love with the format. I’ve been really wanting to try my hand at something “cozy”, and though A Date with Death doesn’t really sound cozy on the box, we have a lot of features that I think set well with that crowd. I’m a very big fan of the informal aspect of the writing. I think even in my more serious games, I always lean into humor a little bit and I really enjoy writing banter, so the chat sim format was perfect for that.

(I styled my MC after my character Rose. he’d probably wind up in a shady chatroom like this)

Arimia: Having played some of A Date with Death, I can definitely see how it’s more “cozy” than some of your other games, and I think a lot of the player reactions I’ve seen have shown that too. The overall scope of the game is also on the smaller side, despite the player customization. How did you go about deciding the size of the game? Were there any parts/features you wanted to include but didn’t?

Gabby: Actually, the size is a lot BIGGER than we originally planned. Being our first free to play game, it’s always a little bit of a risk to put a lot of money into something when visual novel development is your livelihood, and obviously with a free game there’s no guarantee of a return. We originally planned for each “day” of the game to be only around 2000 words, for a grand total of 14,000 words for the game. Very short and sweet. Over the development we realized we had a lot more words than originally planned that we wanted to tell, and part of that is owing to just how many choices and options there are. There’s some conversations in the game which people are honestly surprised about because they’ve never managed to get them on any of their playthroughs. The game actually ended up being around 60,000 words, and this should be near doubled when Beyond the Bet releases.

We also included a lot of other things that weren’t originally planned when we concepted the game. We knew we wanted character creation and some degree of room decorating, but we also added a lot of small missable content – like interacting with your pet, watering your plant, reading books on your bookcase, minigames and websites on your computer, eavesdropping on your neighbor… the one thing we had originally planned but cut was voice acting. It’s something we really wanted to do, and we wrote Casper’s character with a very talented voice actor in mind, but it was a bit too much of a risk with the price of it and the unknown of releasing a free game but still making money on it. We don’t believe in having people work for us for free, even on free projects or jam games, so it wasn’t something we were prepared to have someone do for free even though I’m certain we could have.

Luckily, in the end we decided to hold a Kickstarter for the project, and that allows us the possibility of adding voice acting if it goes well!

Arimia: Yeah, it’s definitely a risk to spend so much time and effort on a free project, but I’m glad it worked out in the end. When announcing the game, what was your strategy? Did it differ any from how you announced and marketed your previous games?

Gabby: It was a little different! This is the first time we’ve had TikTok as one of our platforms when announcing a new project, and we knew we wanted to focus a lot of our attention there. Video content is very strong performing we’ve found, but it is definitely a skill in and of itself. We spent a lot of time honing down on our hook and how we could make people get it in a single line. On a platform like TikTok, you have a split second to catch someone’s attention.

We also had a much shorter amount of marketing time than our usual multi-year projects. We knew we wanted it out within a few months of announcing it, so we needed as much impact as possible in a short amount of time. We knew we wanted to get an animated opening since it can be a very powerful piece of marketing material, and I think that was a great idea and we’ll likely continue it going forward.

At the time of announcement, we had less than 10,000 followers on Twitter. Twitter is probably my favorite platform, but it was kind of falling off for us a little when we were ready to announce A Date with Death – but it just took off after we announced the game. We had a multi-month document with marketing beats and announcements we’d make over the few months we had, but with everything taking off much more than we expected we added to it a lot. I think you always have to be ready to adapt to change quickly in this field.

We actually never planned to market the game as “tease the babygirl”, but it’s something fans latched onto, and you can’t make that kind of marketing yourself, I think. We really leaned into our audience and what THEY thought of the game, and used that to our advantage in a way. I’m very thankful for whoever first asked if he was a babygirl.

Arimia: Twitter (was) probably my favorite platform too, mainly because it’s so easy to just make a quick post or update. TikTok has so much reach but it’s just so much easier to tweet a meme out somedays.

A little side question- with the name having the word “death” in it, were you worried about SEO / being censored on social media, or did it affect you? When I was creating Drops of Death years ago, I was worried social media platforms would suppress posts about it but ultimately went with it because it fit with the serial killer theme.

Gabby: Actually we weren’t too worried about that – we’ve definitely used words like death, kill, murderer, etc. in relation to our other games before and haven’t have much trouble. There ARE certain words especially on TikTok that it’s best to censor, but I haven’t had any problem using the name anywhere and we were prepared to risk it to use the name we wanted.

Arimia: It’s definitely a catchy name that summarizes the experience well. Back to the part where when people were first getting exposed to the concept and came up with Grim being a babygirl— how would you advise other devs to understand what keywords and pitches work better for their games?

Gabby: My first suggestion is to look at similar games to yours and the words they use. Look at the concept of your story and try to boil it down to a paragraph, then a sentence. Look at what makes your game unique, or how you can lean into what fans will get out of your work. Give your players elements that they can recognize instantly without a lengthy explanation.

“A romance chat sim where you flirt with and/or bully the Grim Reaper”

“Compete against the Grim Reaper to keep your soul… or die trying”

“Create your custom MC and flirt with the man trying to take your soul”

I use all of these in our marketing, because even though there’s a lot more to the game we’re not talking about, this is a hook that can capture someone’s attention straight away and then you can funnel them to your game.

Arimia: Getting hooks down can be such a difficult part but it’s so, so important. What do you think helped you most marketing-wise?

Gabby: It’s a tough question. We did a lot, and had huge amount of attention from all over the place and it just snowballed more, and more, and more. I think honestly what started the snowball was TikTok. Once we had one video go big, we were having multiple a week go 30k-400k views. We were getting 500-1300 wishlists per day for months. A lot of people joined our Discord from there and went to follow us on Twitter. TikTok is hard and the format is a lot to handle when you’re new to the platform, but it was absolutely worthwhile for us. Another thing I’ll quickly note – reuse your content. I just repost my TikToks to Insta Reels and they get a similar, if not more views, for no extra effort.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Two and a Half Studios (@twohalfstudios)

Arimia: Yeah, it’s wild how quickly TikTok can blow up for someone. I’ve had posts get 100k+ views and then a few posts later they’ll struggle to hit 1k.

Side note: Gabby has written about her experiences with TikTok on her blog. You can also read about my discussions on TikTok marketing for visual novels here.

What do you think was the least effective thing you did for marketing?

Gabby: I suppose Steam events this time around kind of paled in comparison to our own marketing efforts. They’re always worth doing though – any Steam events you can get into, participate in them! You’ll always see some kind of return. But for us, an event giving 200-300 wishlists was just a drop in the water. Not at all not worth doing, but certainly it wasn’t a huge focus for us this time around.

[A]ny Steam events you can get into, participate in them!

Apart from that, I posted also to some other social media sites like bluesky, but I didn’t find it very worthwhile and stopped rather quickly. There’s only so much time in a day, and as the only person handling all of the marketing, it just wasn’t worth it.

Arimia: For newbie devs, what would you recommend they focus on? TikTok, Twitter, or something else?

Gabby: I think TikTok is the easiest platform to hit it big on “fast”. I say “fast” because it’s not guaranteed that you’re going to hit it big, it really depends how well you adapt to the platform, but your content there has a chance of being seen, even without any followers at all. That’s probably why I recommend it as a platform for new and old visual novel devs alike.

I think you’ll also find that once you pick up the format, it can be pretty fun to make. I think platforms like Twitter are easier to use, but getting started on them is hard. VNs are so visual heavy so we already have so much content that works well on TikTok. Of course, there could be problems in the future with using TikTok in the US, so we’ll see how that goes.

It’s best to focus on a few places though, and not to put all of your eggs in one basket. When you’re putting your audience in places that can go away, it’s always a risk, so it’s good to spread them between places like TikTok, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

Arimia: Yeah, I think one thing devs forget is that these social media platforms are ran by big tech that don’t care about the little guys – if your account gets banned or falsely flagged, what are you going to do if you can’t get it back? Always best to have more than one site you’re posting on, but you don’t want to spread yourself too thin.

At what point in ADWD’s development cycle did you start marketing it? It was a pretty short development cycle to begin with.

Gabby: We started working on the concept of A Date with Death January of last year, and announced it on the 5th of July. This wasn’t really 6-7 months of dev time though – we were working on two of our other games at the time. By that point, we’d finished maybe half of the game and announced the game in time for the Steam Visual Novel Fest a month later.

This was actually pretty successful for us, and gave us a decent boost to start from. We then released the demo at the end of September in time for Steam Next Fest, which was a bit more meh for us despite going in with a high wishlist velocity. We then released the game at the start of December. But, like I said, we were working full time on Dreambound and The Divine Speaker: The Sun and the Moon, so I think we could have made it in much less time if we didn’t have other games on our plate.

My suggestion is to announce the game and start marketing early, but not so early you run out of content you can post. My strat is usually announce the game at the same time the Steam page is ready, so you can use the announcement to drive people straight to it. A trailer can be another marketing beat, and then lead up to the demo release. Going in with a solid marketing plan is a great idea, too.

Side note: despite the short amount of time to market the game, they were able to enter it into at least 2 different Steam-ran festivals! That’s a great boost to wishlists and they usually don’t require much work from yourself.

[A]nnounce the game and start marketing early, but not so early you run out of content you can post.

Arimia: Once you’ve worked on a few games it’s a lot easier to gauge when that sweet spot is, but when you haven’t it’s definitely hard to figure out. I usually go with how much progress I have towards something playable like a demo. When ADWD was ready to release, how did you reach out to press?

Gabby: Actually, I didn’t sent out any press releases for the full game! I can’t tell you exactly if this was a good thing or not – but the way I’ve done it for all of my other games is that I send out a press release and streamer keys for the demo only. Especially for A Date with Death, we already had a lot of press and streamer interest naturally, so we decided to use our time for other forms of marketing and polishing up the game instead.

For the demo though, we curated a list of ~70 people to send out early keys to. I think this is quite worthwhile in hyping up the demo release, and it’s quite easy these days with tools like sullygnome.

Arimia: What lessons learnt from your previous games did you bring with you when making ADWD?

Gabby: We’ve been very lucky to work with our amazing artist Fuyuure for over six years now, so we came in with a great team who worked incredibly well together. I think that was a big bonus – working on something like a big character creator can be a difficult task for many artists, because of the sheer amount of assets you need. So, I would say coming in with a talented team who were ready for their tasks was a massive boon.

I think working on so many games beforehand prepared us to make the game in the time we did. We usually work on bigger, multi-year projects, and this was our first proper commercial endeavor into a smaller game. Our experience helped us to pinpoint exactly what we would need, which is a lot less than our other projects. The game actually only has 5 CGs, which is less than usual for us, but I think we managed to do it in a way where it doesn’t feel lacking, either. Getting scope right is a difficult thing and it’s easy to want to include anything and everything, but we were very particular about what we wanted and how long it would take.

Arimia: I can definitely see how that helped – working with people you’re already comfortable with can alleviate a lot of stress. For the A Date with Death: Beyond the Bet Kickstarter, how did you prepare the marketing campaign for it? How long did that pre-planning take you?

Gabby: We really started planning the new DLC the day A Date with Death launched last December. We knew we wanted to make more content, and with Dreambound nearly complete it was a good time to start thinking of running a new campaign. I would say the preplanning took a couple of months – working on a good date, working with lots of artists on new merch, setting up the page, getting the page to our graphic designer to make some images up for it… running a Kickstarter is definitely a lot of work! Even organizing the tiers takes some time.

We prepared mostly by getting the prelaunch page up as early as possible and getting the word out on all of our socials – Twitter, Tumblr, TikTok, Reels, Steam itself, Discord, our email list, itch…. basically, did a big blast out everywhere and we had a huge amount of people come and prelaunch straight away. We also really enjoy doing countdown images the week before launching – it lets us work with a bunch of amazing artists, and we use the art for rewards during the campaign too (as prints). Being our third campaign, we came into it knowing what we had to do, which is a big timesaver. For new developers, I’ll say don’t sleep on the prelaunch time – it’s not a good idea to put up a Kickstarter and instantly launch it. You need to bring an audience with you and get as many pledges lined up on that first day as possible.

Honestly, the support so far has blown our mind. With a similar amount of prep, Dreambound launched with less than 300 followers on the page, but as of writing this we’re already over 4500 on A Date with Death.

[I]t’s not a good idea to put up a Kickstarter and instantly launch it. You need to bring an audience with you and get as many pledges lined up on that first day as possible.

Arimia: Even though I’ve helped run and advised several Kickstarters before, there’s always something I forget or push off until the last minute. Was there anything you learned from the Dreambound KS that you used/did differently for the ADWD KS?

Gabby: Oh, for sure. I learned a lot about my tiers and page organization from our past Kickstarters. We actually have a lot more tiers than usual on this Kickstarter and I don’t think we’d be able to manage that without our past experiences.

If I had to pick one thing from the Dreambound Kickstarter that I’ve changed for A Date with Death’s, we decided to have all of our stretch goals viewable from the get-go. I enjoyed the “unlocking” of stretch goals we had before, but with the amount of attention I think we’ll get, it’s just easier to lay everything out for everyone.

Arimia: Yeah, I imagine you’ll probably be hitting stretch goals pretty early on with how many people are excited for the KS. Aside from social media like TikTok and Twitter, how do you keep your audience interested?

Gabby: I think one of the things that mobile games have as an advantage is continuously adding more content and patches. That really keeps people interested and coming back to your game and characters. Obviously we don’t really have a big enough team or enough time to be adding more and more content, so keeping people interested can be quite tough. We were very conscious of this when deciding WHEN to hold a Kickstarter in the first place – if we wait too long, people will move on. It’s already been 6 months since the game released, after all.

There’s multiple ways we’ve kept people interested during these months. One is that we funneled a lot of people to our Patreon, where we have exclusive art every month from the game, as well as behind the scenes stuff about the new DLC. We then can tease these on social media too, and drip feeding content works pretty well to keep people interested.

Another is we now have near 8000 members in our Discord, and these people become some of your core audience. We encourage interaction with each other and the game by weekly game questions that players can answer. If you had enough time to organize it, I honestly think even doing daily questions would be a really great idea. Anything to kind of keep people chatting and thinking about the game.

Arimia: To wrap this up – what advice would you give to other visual novel devs?

Gabby: There’s so much I’d like to say, but I’ll just give a few pieces of advice that I think could help newer developers. Don’t think of marketing as a bad thing, or an annoying thing. I see a lot of new developers come in and say “I won’t market. I feel like a shill and my game will speak for itself”. I think this is a huge mistake, because people won’t play your game if they don’t know it exists. Marketing can be fun! Share your little stories with the world proudly, don’t feel bad about that.

If you want to do game dev as just a hobby, then that’s absolutely fine – but it’s totally possible to do this as a profession, too. My partner and I have been working on visual novels full time for over two years now. A lot of people tend to think that’s there’s no money in visual novels, but I would say that’s not true at all. It’s hard work – like all small businesses are – and not every game is going to be wildly profitable, but it’s totally possible with a good game and good marketing. Keep making the games you love, doing market research to see what other people love, and you might be able to find a good crossover.

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And there you have it, some insight into the development and creation of A Date with Death! If you haven’t already, check the game out – the base game is completely free to play on Steam and itch.io. You can check out their social media here:

Twitter – TikTok – Tumblr

Support their Kickstarter!

[blackgirlwhowrites2k23]

A/N: Inconsistency is my middle name💀. But here’s this idea that came to my mind that I just HAD to write. Also sorry if the emojis look terrible, I wrote some of this on my phone, some on my iPad and then the rest on my computer so the format is kinda crazy.

Summary: You’re a well renowned actress and bachelorette that many have been trying to get at. Unfortunately, you never gave them the time of day. Until, someone comes along.

Possible Continuation: This may (emphasis on may because you know me💀) be a part of series I’m planning on doing. If not, I'll just come back and delete this paragraph and pretend nothing happened.

You have one message from...(Jamal Musiala)

Part 1:

Song:

Yourusername added to their feed

Liked by jordan_poole, judebellingham, keke, and 7,006,726 others

yourusername: Can’t believe how far I’ve come! Taking home not one, but three. Forever blessed💕 🙏🙏🙈

View all 21,346 comments

fan1 WOW. WOW. WOW.

fan2 W actress >>>>

zendaya Words cannot describe how proud I am of you 🥹❤️❤️❤️

↪️yourusername Love you loads🥹💕💕

fan1 Did I mention WOWWWW😍😍

fan3 Ok, but who’s doing it like Y/N. 3 Back to Back,!?!?! Literally making history🥳😍😍😩

fan4 Y’all peep all the athletes in her likes and comments. I wonder how many are in her dms👀🫣

↪️fan5 Shiiittt. Im in them too!!😭😭💯💯

↪️fan4 Me too🤦‍♂️

skaijackson YUP!! I know that’s right!!💁🏾‍♀️👸🎉🎉

❤️ liked by author

Jamalmusiala10, judebellingham, and 1,274 others started following you

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yourusername added to their feed

Liked by judebellingham, jamalmusiala10, cocojones and 6,697,442 others

Yourusername: Party, afterparty, after party🥳🎉

Tyla: The prettiest!!!

↪️ yourusername: And that's what they prefer😝🤩

↪️ tyla: LMAOOO love that!💖💖💖

Judebellingham: 😍😍

↪️random1_Hey Jude??🤨...

random2: The way both Jude and Jamal started following her at about the same time.

↪️random3: Real ones know he's been lurking for a fat minute now!!

↪️random2: Guess I'm not a real one. Who?

↪️random3: Mr. Jude Victor Bellingham

↪️random4: And she's liked some of his pics, even though they don't follow eachother. Looks like Musiala already lost LOL

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The weight of exhaustion presses down on you as you sink into the comfort of your bed. It's been a relentless week, filled with auditions, interviews, and movie filming sessions. The tranquility of your bedroom offers a brief respite from the chaos that typically surrounds your life.

But of course, that doesn't last forever.

Your phone buzzes on the nightstand. You debate ignoring it, anyone texting at this time falls into one of two categories—people who are wayy too thirsty for their own good and miserable haters. For some reason tonight, perhaps out of boredom or a faint hope for something different, you decide to check.

You received one instagram notification from JamalMusiala10

The name doesn't immediately register with you since it's so late and your mind is still heavy with sleep, but you open the message anyway.

You groan inwardly, already regretting your decision to open the message. Jamal Musiala—the famous soccer player that plays for that German team? Bayern? You only recently got into football, so there was still much for you to learn but you're pretty sure that's who he is. You'll stalk his socials tomorrow.

For now, though, what could he possibly want from you? It's 2 in the morning. Again, he's either wayyyy too thirsty or maybe he's a possible hater?

How's it hanging?!?!?

This boy can NOT be serious.

You can't help but stifle a laugh at his attempt at casual banter. Is he a middle-aged white dad?

Wayy too thirsty it is! Never fails.

To be continued…..

[lulu-tutu]

Oopsie 💕 Kai (Ninjago)

A/N: first actual post in a while and it’s something I made like,, a year or so ago lol Ninjago has infected my brain again so expect more of these for the next few months, and yes, I’ve seen all the requests in my inbox and I promise you all, I will get to them! It just takes time to get motivated but I swear I’ll get them all out eventually. For now, enjoy this little read (and if you have more Ninjago requests - please send them I beg 🙏)

Desperate need for Ninjago mutuals 😭 Dragons Rising has me hooked all over again.

Pairing(s): Kai x Fem!Reader

Warning(s): mild language, fluff overdose, pretty tame and somewhat short and sweet.

Word Count: 868

🔥🔥🔥 🐉🐉🐉🔥🔥🔥🐉🐉🐉

"Are you absolutely sure it's on?"

It was a sunny Sunday, and thankfully the theives in Ninjago City seem to be non-existent, giving the Ninja a day to finally kick back and relax with their loved ones.

A few moments ago, you had your little girl in your arms, swaying her side to side as you tickled her stomach. As her laughter slowed down, she started to gurgle and you were shocked at the fact that she was trying to speak.

Recently she had turned the age of two, which excited both her parents. Soon, she would be saying her first words, which she was close to.

You had the magnificent idea of making your daughters first words her favourite animal, frog. Wanting that moment to be special and remembered, you got your husband, Kai to film the event.

"Yes, (Y/n)! It's rolling! See! The red light is on!" Kai leans away from the camera slightly to point at the glowing red light.

"Okay, good. We don't want to miss a single detail." Biting your lip in excitement, you motioned to the lounge area. "She's playing right now, come on."

As you lead Kai to the lounge, you could finally see your daughter on camera. In one hand was a pink tea cup and in the other was a Kermit toy.

"Amaya, darling." You coo and kneel down in front of the young girl. Amaya glances up from her tea party, her eyes widening now that you were here in front of her.

Amaya was a gorgous girl and Kai always said that she was going to break every guys heart when she grows up. While that was his opinion, he was most likely right, if she was anything like her father. She had her fathers hair, attitude and his freckles from when he was a child. You hoped that the freckles would be permanent, unlike how Kai only had his as a kid.

She also had your eyes, nose and curiosity. She was almost always up to mischief, which sometimes gave you and Kai heart attacks.

"Sweetheart," You start and grab her chubby hands as she reaches out for you, "Mama heard that you could almost talk!"

Amaya lets out a giggle and nods her head, most likely not even knowing exactly what you said.

"Can you try again? How about you try saying 'frog'. Can you say that?" You made sure to say each word slowly, wanting Amaya to understand what you needed her to say.

"F-F..." The small girls fumbles with the first letter, her eyes downcast as she concentrates.

While you stared at your girl in adoration, Kai made sure to zoom in to your loving gaze then over to Amaya, watching as she touched her own lips. He had to choke down a chuckle.

"That's it! F-r-o-g." You tried to help her by saying each letter slowly and a bit slurred. Amaya stared at you for a moment, her eyes trained on your lips as you say each letter.

You watch as she gasps, almost like she had had the greatest idea in the entire world. She bounced on her feet a little, her eyes wide as she opened her mouth, "F-fuck!"

"Maya!" You shriek as a hand comes up to clasp your agape mouth, your face having shock and horror all over it.

While you stared mortified at your daughter, Kai was laughing himself dead on the other side of the camera, a free hand on his stomach as he laughs.

"W-Who taught you that!?" You look down to your daughter who was laughing as well at her father.

While little giggles leave her lips, she points a finger to her father. "Fuck!" She laughs out and ends up falling down on her rear end.

With wide eyes and a scowl, your head turns slowly towards your husband, "Kai Smith! Look at what you did to our daughter! Her first words! This is-"

"Hilarious!" Kai snorts out and with shaky hands, he zooms the camera in to capture the look of horror and pure rage on your face.

"You're so dead!" You yell out before standing up from your crouching posistion and sprinting at the laughing man.

Kai immediately halts his laughing, "Oh crap." He curses before sprinting off and away from the hands of his blood thirsty wife, the camera recording every bit of the situation.

While the two lovebirds fought in the kitchen, Amaya went back to playing with her frog. She picked him up and hugged him close to her chest, "Kermy." She mumbles with a giggle.