#WHICH THEY ARE they were all already 20-23

[snowdice]

Big Bang Editing Story [Day 124]

I started writing this fic while editing my Big Bang story years ago, but am going to continue doing it for other things now that Kill Dear is out. I will write and publish 100 words of the story every time I finish doing whatever task I’m doing. If you’d like to block these proceedings, please feel free to block the tag ‘proofread stories.’ I will reblog this post with the parts of the story I do today. Edited chapters are linked; everything else I’ve done so far is under the cut.

My Master Post Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27 Part 28 Part 29 Part 30 Part 31 Part 32 Part 33 Part 34 Part 35 Part 36 Part 37 Part 38 Part 39 Part 40 Part 41 Part 42 Part 43 Part 44 Part 45 Part 46 Part 47 Part 48 Part 49 Part 50 Part 51 Part 52 Part 53 Part 54 Part 55

I have been sick as a dog since I last worked on this story. I'm not even doing any work today lol. I just want to get this chapter finished. Will probably do a couple rounds and then cook myself dinner, so there may be a gap at some point. Mostly I'll just be, like, reading when not posting. Wish me luck.

“Good day for a picnic,” Helen commented as she handed over the basket Thomas had requested from her a few days before. He was taking Logan, Patton, and Virgil to the cliffs today and it was perfect weather for it. Spring was truly here, which meant that those of Thomas’s duties that had laid dormant over the harsh winter were about to start up again.

The world had been on pause for a bit considering no armies or agents from any kingdom could get through the snow the last few months, but the concerns of last fall were showing their heads once again.

Thomas had just gotten word a day ago that the queen of Lamir had routed out a second assassin hiding in her ranks over the winter. The assassin had been sent shortly after it was made clear that the queen wouldn’t bow down after the assassination of her mother. Luckily, the assassin sent for Queen Cecil had not managed to complete her mission during the winter months.

While there had been no similar attempt on Prijaznia soil, Thomas couldn’t help but feel it was only a matter of time now that the snow had melted. They were already working on increasing security in the coming weeks and, though it was doubtful an assassin had managed to hide in the castle all winter without revealing themselves, they’d be closely scrutinizing all of the newer staff members.

It would be a stressful time in the coming months, which is why, despite everything Thomas needed to do, he was still going to take his son and his son’s friends on a picnic today. Logan had already started taking on royal duties as of late, but he still hadn’t taken them all on quite yet. Considering this was last summer before Logan was of age, they should at least try to take advantage of it where they could. Patton was a year younger, but the sentiment held for him as well.

Then there was Virgil. Despite their best efforts, they still didn’t know enough about Virgil, but Thomas was fairly sure he’d never had a summer to enjoy until now.

“Thanks for prepping lunch for us,” Thomas said to Helen with a smile.

“No problem,” she said waving them off. “I put in some of Virgil’s favorites.”

“Great,” Thomas said. “Do you know where the kids are?”

“Patton said they were going to go pet the cats, so I’d guess they’re in the gardens.”

Thomas thanked her again and told her to have a good day before exiting the kitchen. There was a nearby door that led straight towards the part of the gardens Patton and Logan had always favored. He figured they’d either still be around there, or they would have wandered towards the stables by now knowing that they’d be taking horses to the cliffs. So, he decided to simply walk the normal path from the door to the stable, hoping to find them.

His prediction ended up being hilariously correct. They were indeed on the path Thomas had chosen. It was clear they (or at least Logan) were attempting to make it to the stable. However, as was typical, a portion of the party had been waylaid by whimsy.

Logan was standing further down the path, arms crossed and frowning as he watched his friends. Patton and Virgil were surrounded by cats. Patton was sitting down, holding two of them in his lap and watching Virgil’s legs being swarmed by the rest of them, maybe two dozen in total.

Virgil looked confused, but not unhappy about the presence of so many cats. He was leaning down to try to pet them all.

Logan met Thomas’s eyes as he approached and waved a frustrated hand at the two of them. Logan couldn’t help but smile.

“Virgil fed one of them,” Logan complained as though he wanted Thomas to somehow go into the past and prevent this crime.

Patton and Virgil looked over at Thomas, noticing him when Logan addressed him.

“You’re going to make Princess Marisol jealous,” Thomas said. Logan frowned at Thomas as he used the ‘Princess’ label for the cat.

“Princess Marisol decided not to come,” Virgil said with a shrug. He continued to pet one of the cats.

“She’s probably sleeping on my pillow,” Logan said, sounding grumpy.

Thomas just chuckled. Princess Marisol was technically Logan’s cat, at least that’s what the kids said, and she did spend much of her time in the royal rooms. However, she was very clearly actually Virgil’s cat. Virgil just spent a lot of time in the royal wing as well.

In fact, Thomas still didn’t know where Virgil was supposed to be sleeping. He and Mr. Deknis had gone so far as to tail him a couple of times, but he always ended up sleeping in Logan’s room those nights.

Knowing Virgil, he might just sleep in the walls. Though that still did not answer the question of where his parents or guardians were. They still had not figured it out. Thomas would assume he was an orphan who’d snuck onto castle grounds for safety, but Virgil had told Mr. Deknis during their first meeting that he was supposed to be in the castle, and it had not been a lie.

Then again, it had slowly become apparent that Virgil was good at dodging the multrum’s powers. It was starting to seem more likely that he’d somehow inserted a second meaning into his answer to Mr. Deknis that night than he somehow had some ghost guardian no one was able to locate working in the castle.

“She deserves the pillow more than you,” Virgil said, bringing Thomas’s thoughts back to the situation at hand. The look of audacity on Logan’s face made Thomas chuckle.

Thomas cut in before it could become a fight. “I could get Princess Marisol a pillow, so she doesn’t sleep on yours. Or we can get you a new pillow if you’d prefer, Logan.”

“It’s not about the pillow for her,” Logan argued. “It’s about her inflated sense of superiority.”

“She deserves it,” Virgil declared. Thomas could tell he was just trying to rile Logan up, and Thomas was sure Logan knew it too, but still his son reacted exactly in the way Virgil wanted him to.

“You have enabled and encouraged this behavior from the start!” Logan seethed.

“She’s a princess.”

“She is not a princess!”

Patton shook his head while squeezing the cats in his arms, completely used to this behavior. He ran a chin idly over one of the cat’s heads while watching the argument.

“We’re never going to make it to the picnic at this rate,” Thomas said to him, “and after your mother made all of this wonderful food.”

“You’re the dad,” Patton said. “Make them stop.”

And, of course, Patton did just mean that he was Logan’s dad with that statement. However, when he glanced back up at the silly argument still going on between his son and the cat covered boy, it did almost look like a fight between siblings.

Especially with the dark hair and stubborn but mischievous look in Virgil’s eyes, Thomas could almost imagine the boy being his own child.

He shook away the thoughts and glanced at the picnic basket in his hand.

“We do have a lot of food in this basket,” Thomas said, pitching his voice up so that Logan (and more importantly) Virgil would hear them clearly.

Virgil immediately turned to look at him, abandoning all interest in antagonizing Logan to look at the basket curiously.

Thomas was never sure if he should be amused or worried about how food motivated Virgil often was.

“What’s in the basket?” Virgil asked.

“I’m not sure,” Thomas said. “Patton’s mom made it. We’ll just have to see once we get to the picnic area.”

Virgil nodded in understanding and began to gently extract himself from the droves of cats. Logan rolled his eyes, but didn’t seem inclined to continue the argument he’d been dragged into. Virgil and Patton got to their feet, and they continued on their way towards the stables.

The horses Thomas had requested be prepared for their trip were already in saddles, though the stable hand who had been handling Mr. Apples seemed a bit dirtier and more exhausted than the rest.

The stable hand seemed as happy to hand Mr. Apples over to Virgil as Virgil was to have Mr. Apples handed over to him. Thomas received Bella with a smile and Logan and Patton got their own horses as well.

The cliffs were about half an hour's ride from the main castle. There was a mostly well-maintained path to them, though it was easy to get lost if one didn’t know the way. Mr. Apples knew the way perhaps better than Thomas himself and seemed annoyed by the fact that Thomas was trying to lead the way. Virgil and Thomas ended up side-by-side whenever the path allowed it to placate him.

Thomas still marveled at how willing Mr. Apples was to let Virgil ride him, especially when he tossed his head in Thomas’s direction, a horse’s equivalent of giving Thomas a stink-eye.

“Are you excited for the picnic?” Thomas asked the boy beside him.

Virgil glanced over at him and nodded.

“I am too,” Thomas said. “It’s always beautiful this time of year. I’m glad I could find the time to take you all there this year.”

“Are you very busy?” Virgil asked curiously.

“I am king,” Thomas reminded, “and now that the world isn’t snowed in anymore things will be busy.”

“With the war?” Virgil asked.

Thomas paused for a few seconds. “Yes,” he confirmed. “With the war, but you don’t need to worry about that.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Virgil asked.

“You’re just a kid,” Thomas said.

“I’m 14,” Virgil said.

Thomas glanced at him. “Exactly,” he said, “a kid, and luckily, you’re in a place that can afford you the luxury of being one.”

“What do you mean?”

“The war has been mainly fought on Mocnejsi soil in recent years. Our boarders have held strong against invasions. Unless something goes horribly wrong suddenly, it would take a long time for the main conflict to get here. The only real threat in the castle would be assassins sent after me personally.”

“Right,” Virgil said. There was an awkward pause in conversation before he spoke again. “You’re winning the war then?” he asked.

“Something could always happen,” Thomas said, “but for the most part, yes, we have quite the advantage right now.”

“Oh,” Virgil said.

Thomas shook his head as they were coming up to a narrowing of the path. “Anyway, today is a day to not think about war. Today we’re going to have a lovely picnic and do some bird watching.”

“Right,” Virgil agreed from behind Thomas as Bella took the lead (to Mr. Apples discontent.)

When the path widened again, Thomas did his best to direct the topic to lighter subjects and soon they made it to the cliffs.

Chapter 57 (Virgil)

Virgil had never been to a picnic. At least, that’s what Patton had informed him when Virgil had described his past experiences of eating outdoors. Logan had agreed even though he’d admitted that the definition of “picnic” was only eating a pre-packaged meal outdoors which Virgil had done plenty of times.

From what Virgil could tell, the main difference was just how much stuff one brought to a picnic.

In addition to the basket full of food (that Virgil still hadn’t gotten to look in yet), the king had brought a large soft quilt that he had Logan and Virgil spread out on the ground for them all to sit on.

Patton and Logan had also packed some things themselves to bring along. Logan had brought along a book to read, and Patton had brought along a board game (thankfully not checkers but something Virgil did not recognize). Virgil hadn’t brought anything (except for the fire knife he was definitely not supposed to have and was definitely not letting the king see) because he hadn’t known he was supposed to bring things. He wouldn’t have known what to bring anyway.

The blanket was soft and a much better alternative to sitting on the ground, especially because, while there was grass at the top of The Cliffs, there were also a good number of rocks.

The king set the picnic basket in the middle of the blanket once it was spread out and then lowered himself down to sit on one side. Patton quickly followed him, already fiddling with some of his board game pieces, though he wasn’t setting it up yet. Virgil highly doubted that Logan was going to be allowed to read his book unless Patton eventually got bored of the game.

However, they would, hopefully, be allowed to make use of the basket the king had brought along.

Virgil followed the king and Patton’s lead and got to his knees on the blanket across the picnic basket from the king. He peered at the basket curiously.

He didn’t quite know what picnic food was, but Patton had told them they’d be getting ‘picnic food’ and he was very curious about what that meant.

King Thomas smiled at him. “Let’s see what Patton’s mom packed us, huh?” He reached for the basket and flipped it open as Logan sat next to Virgil. “There is a lot more food than usual in here,” the king said, sounding amused. “Let’s see.”

He began to pull out packaged food and glanced in each package to identify it before setting it out.

“We have a few types of mini sandwiches,” he said, putting them down, “and some pasta salad.” He set down the bowl.

“We also have… er something else.” He showed it to Logan.

“They’re hot cauliflower bites,” Logan said instantly upon seeing them. Virgil perked up in excitement. That was one of his favorite foods.

“Ah,” King Thomas said, but shrugged and set it down. “We also have two desserts apparently: cookies and mini apple pies. That last one’s a bit extra for a picnic.”

“They’re very good,” Virgil said happily.

“And we also have.” King Thomas paused, looking confused. “Chicken alfredo?”

“Yes!” Virgil said.

“Why do we have chicken alfredo for a picnic?”

“It’s a Virgil picnic,” Logan groaned. “She packed us a Virgil picnic.”

“Hey, at least momma sent us something too,” Patton said.

“I think I’ll stick to sandwiches for today,” King Thomas said. He looked at Patton and Logan. “Do either of you want…?”

“No,” Logan said. Patton shook his head.

The king nodded and offered the entire covered bowl of chicken alfredo to Virgil. “Here, this one’s yours,” he said.

“Really?” Virgil asked tentatively. It wasn’t exactly strange for people here to offer him food, and he’d expected and anticipated getting to eat on this venture, but the king of the country offering him an entire bowl of his favorite food was something else.

“It’s not really my idea of a picnic food and you seem excited for it,” King Thomas said with a warm smile, still holding it out.

Virgil took it reverently. Despite the time it had taken to get to the cliffs, the bottom of the container was still warm. Virgil assumed it was one of the heating spells the kitchen sometimes used.

“Thanks,” Virgil said, setting it in his lap.

“Of course, Virgil,” the king said.

The bowl was enough for four people to have a little bit, but for one person it was a lot. Still, Virgil was offered a little of every other food in the picnic basket (and he ate a good number of the hot cauliflower bites).

“Where do you put all of that?” the king asked when Virgil finished polishing off the chicken alfredo bowl.

Everyone else seemed to have finished eating long before Virgil, though Patton still had a small plate of grapes, and he occasionally popped one in his mouth. King Thomas was currently setting up the board game they’d brought on the blanket between all of them.

Virgil shrugged in answer to his question. “It’s good,” he said, “and I don’t want to waste any of it.”

“You know we can just take the leftovers back to the castle and eat them later,” King Thomas said. “You don’t have to eat it all now.”

Virgil just shrugged again, watching as the king set out a group of 8 figures on the board.

“Here, which character do you want to be?” the king asked Virgil, gesturing at the group of figures. Virgil had not noticed the figures were different at first glance. They were all copper colored and about the size of his thumb, but they had slightly different shapes. He squinted at them each carefully, finding they all looked like people, but with different clothing. Some worse pants and some skirts, a few had hats, and one was even carrying a book.

After a few moments, he pointed at one that looked like it had vines wrapped around its arms and was wearing a floppy hat that almost covered its eyes.

“That’s the druid,” King Thomas told him with a grin. “Good choice, and luckily not one that anyone usually fights over.” He glanced at Logan who didn’t react to his father’s gaze. He just plucked the figure clutching the book off the board for himself.

Patton and the king picked pieces for themselves. Patton picked one with an apron that kind of reminded Virgil of his mom and the king picked one that was in a suit of armor before putting the other 4 figures away.

Unlike checkers, this game wasn’t just for two people, and so no one had to sit watching people play while bored out of their mind.

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They played a practice round so Virgil could figure out how the game worked, though honestly it wasn’t that complicated, so it wasn’t really necessary.

The theme of the game was all about stealing. They were supposed to steal special tokens from other players as well as characters in the game and the first person with 20 tokens won.

The other three players argued that stealing was not the point and not the main mechanism of the game, but considering Virgil was consistently winning the entire time, he would argue they were just playing it wrong. He managed to collect 20 tokens before anyone else. In second place at this time was Logan with 9 tokens.

Logan insisted on continuing to play the game to determine 2nd and 3rd place, so Virgil ended up watching them play for a bit. Virgil didn’t mind sitting and watching other people play this game, mostly because he still had the joy of victory running in his veins.

Thomas was definitely going to lose, he noted. He kept wasting his money feeding the nonplayer characters who lived on his lands. Virgil didn’t mention this faulty strategy to him in case Virgil ever played him again.

When Logan took too long thinking about his next move, Virgil took in their surroundings.

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He’d been a bit too distracted by the prospect of food and then trying to understand (and then win) the game to truly take in The Cliffs. They were settled a good distance away from the cliffside but Virgil could still see how quickly the edge dropped off. He couldn’t see the large river he was told was at its base from where he was sitting, but he did see a few of the promised wild birds (including doves) flying around. The king had promised they’d bird watch for a bit, and Virgil figured that would happen after the game was over.

A cool spring breeze brushed across Virgil’s face, and he put his hand in his hoodie pockets to warm them. Instead, his fingers hit something icy cold.

For a moment, he didn’t remember what it was. The crescent shape of it was familiar when he put his hand over it, but he had never felt it cold before.

It was the protection charm: the first charm Virgil had ever made with Logan so many months ago. It was meant to ward off small threats as well as warn you about larger threats by changing temperature…

It had always been warm.

“What?” Patton asked, having noticed Virgil suddenly tense. Virgil, despite how he drilled into his friend’s heads to stay alert had gone soft. He’d let himself be distracted by a full belly and warm blankets and fun games.

He didn’t answer Patton. He filtered the other boy’s worried face out as well as Logan’s face as he glanced at him and the king’s still focused on the game for now. He filtered out the picnic blanket and smell of food still lingering in the air and the vine covered figure set in the middle of the board on the winner’s space. He filtered out the sound of the breeze and the breath of his companions and the distant chirping of birds.

And he heard a whoosh.

Chapter 58 (Patton)

If Patton hadn’t already been looking, he probably wouldn’t have had any idea what happened.

Everything had been fine. Virgil had been sitting cross legged, idly watching the conclusion of the game they’d been playing when his posture had suddenly changed. Patton had looked over at him only to see an expression on his face he didn’t recognize, but it didn’t seem good.

“What?” Patton had asked, but the question didn’t seem to register to Virgil.

Logan had glanced up confused and also noticed Virgil’s face. He’d just opened his mouth to also ask what was going on when chaos descended.

Virgil was suddenly moving, crashing into King Thomas who hadn’t even looked up to see something was wrong at that point. Patton realized after the fact that Virgil had swiped up the board of the game they’d been playing as he jumped over it, the pieces previously stacked on it scattering all over the blanket. There were three thumps as some things hit the thick board, imbedding themselves into the surface.

When Virgil discarded the board in favor of the picnic basket, Patton saw there were small darts in it oozing a dark black liquid. The parts of the board they touched were dissolving, the grass under the new holes beginning to wilt rapidly.

Logan seemed to notice the oozing liquid the same moment Patton did and was quicker to realize what it was. He grabbed Patton’s arm and yanked him away from the board so hard he almost dislocated Patton’s shoulder, not that Patton was too worried about that. He scrambled away from it when he realized what it must be himself.

He could hear the sound of glassware smashing above them. Logan and Patton had rolled off the blanket in their quest to get away from the smoldering, melting board and apparently Virgil had pulled the picnic blanket fully over the king at some point.

Virgil himself was now gone from where he’d been the last time Patton had looked and it took him a moment to figure out where the boy had gone. The person who had been shooting poisoned darts at them had been drawn out of the wooded area they’d been hiding in by Virgil’s attacks.

They were cloaked in dark green from head to toe, explaining why they’d been difficult to spot when they were in the woods. Whoever they were, they were significantly larger than Virgil, possibly an actual adult or almost adult assassin, but they were also clearly a long distant fighter. They had not been expecting resistance let alone resistance in the form of a so quick he was almost a blur fellow assassin.

They had a bow strapped to their back, but they hadn’t had a chance to get it. Instead, they were trying to fight Virgil off with an arrow they’d managed to draw from their quiver. Virgil, meanwhile was lunging at them with a broken piece of plate in one hand and the picnic basket in the other.

Virgil dodged out of the way of the arrow striking towards his arm, though Patton didn’t think it was because he was afraid of getting scratched by an arrow, but because it may also be poisoned tipped.

Virgil was distracted by dodging for long enough that the older assassin managed to hit him in the face with the arm not holding the arrow.

He went down, but he took the older assassin with him, sweeping their legs out from under them. Patton hadn’t noticed (his mind working too slow for how fast they were moving) but they were on a slight incline. They went rolling in a tangle of arms and legs towards the edge of the cliff and skidded to a stop only a few feet away.

Virgil ended up on top, his piece of broken plate in his hands. He moved to slash it across the other assassin’s throat and managed to draw blood, but the assassin’s fist came out to shove at Virgil’s chest at just the right moment, causing the strike to veer off course and slice across the assassin’s cheek instead.

Virgil jerked to the side to avoid a second strike to the chest and went back for another slash. The other assassin rolled to the side as he did and the plate only managed to nick their ear. The point of the motion hadn’t been to dodge, however. They were lunging for the arrow they’d dropped a few feet away while they’d rolled. They grabbed it with their right hand and in the same motion stabbed back behind them towards Virgil.

Virgil rolled to avoid the hit, already slashing up with his plate as the assassin turned back towards him.

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He didn’t hit them this time but his swipe managed to stop them from stabbing him when they tried again. They shoved themselves back to avoid Virgil’s swing, putting a bit of distance between them. Both of them managed to make it to their feet during the momentary reprieve, but both also stayed crouched, eyeing each other.

They both lunged towards each other at the same time. The assassin went for a stab to Virgil’s neck with the arrow, but Virgil was already ducking down. This time, he wasn’t going for a kill shot. He grabbed the assassin’s wrist and at the same time drove his piece of plate into the assassin’s arm, slicing down from the elbow to wrist. The assassin spoke for the first time, cursing in a language Patton didn’t recognize as they were forced to drop their arrow.

Virgil took a moment to kick the arrow away from the assassin and it ended up falling off the cliff.

However, this pause gave the assassin enough time to regroup. Despite their arm bleeding profusely, they still decided to use it to backhand Virgil across the face viciously, leaving a long line of their own blood across his face.

Virgil lunged back forward, but the assassin was able to get a leg between them, kicking Virgil squarely in the chest and sending him flying back a few feet parallel to the cliff’s edge.

The assassin went to grab their bow and another arrow from the quiver still strapped to their shoulder.

Virgil, however, apparently went for another weapon too and he was much faster with a knife than any archer. A knife appeared in his hand, having been strapped to his ankle and was embedded into the assassin’s chest before they could even full remove an arrow from their quiver.

The assassin promptly burst into flames, fire catching their clothes (and from the smell of it their skin) ablaze. Panicked and dying, they stumbled two steps to the side. They stepped directly off the cliff.

There was a second of silence. They heard the sound of the body hitting the ground far below and then the flap of wings and screeching as birds below fled from the startling sound (and possible soon to be forest fire).

…

“Uh, Virgil?” King Thomas said. He had managed to get the blanket off his head at some point. When, Patton didn’t know, but seeing any of it was probably enough.

Oopsie.

Chapter 59 (Logan)

Logan and Patton had been useless during the fight, but that may have been for the best. Considering the skill differential when it came to fighting (and that differential had never been as clear as it was in this moment), that was probably for the best. They likely would have just gotten in the way.

The moment Logan’s father spoke, however, they both jumped into action.

They both knew their jobs in a situation like this. Patton pushed himself up to his feet ungracefully and all but sprinted over towards Virgil. Logan, on the other hand stood to face his father, putting himself very purposefully between the man who had no idea what was going on yet and the boy who was two seconds away from remembering what was going on.

“I can explain,” Logan said.

His father was still sitting on the ground. “You can explain,” he said slowly, “how Virgil just threw an assassin off a cliff.”

Logan thought pointing out that Virgil hadn’t thrown anyone off a cliff and instead had set them on fire with a magical knife causing them to walk off a cliff, would not be useful in this moment. He glanced back briefly towards where Virgil and Patton were standing and then turned back to his father. “Yes.”

“And what would that explanation be?”

Before even starting to speak, Logan found himself making large dramatic ‘explaining hand gestures’ that he’d thought he’d long since trained himself out of. When he was younger and in trouble, he always used to give himself away as guilty by being overly expressive with his hands (and arms).

“So,” Logan said. He was still not able to stop the hand motions. “Virgil was an assassin. He came here to kill you last fall, but he accidently went to the wrong room in the royal wing. Patton and I were having a slumber party and caught him in the act. Then we reformed him and now he doesn’t kill people anymore.” He paused and glanced back, remembering the body that had just toppled off the cliff. “Er, uh, he doesn’t kill people who haven’t shot poisoned darts at people recently anymore?”

“What?”

“Look,” Logan said. “You’re going to have to tell him you’re not going to execute him soon. Patton can only keep him from bolting for so long.”

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #13

April 5-12 2024

President Biden announced the cancellation of a student loan debt for a further 277,000 Americans. This brings the number of a Americans who had their debt canceled by the Biden administration through different means since the Supreme Court struck down Biden's first place in 2023 to 4.3 million and a total of $153 billion of debt canceled so far. Most of these borrowers were a part of the President's SAVE Plan, a debt repayment program with 8 million enrollees, over 4 million of whom don't have to make monthly repayments and are still on the path to debt forgiveness.

President Biden announced a plan that would cancel student loan debt for 4 million borrowers and bring debt relief to 30 million Americans The plan takes steps like making automatic debt forgiveness through the public service forgiveness so qualified borrowers who don't know to apply will have their debts forgiven. The plan will wipe out the interest on the debt of 23 million Americans. President Biden touted how the plan will help black and Latino borrowers the most who carry the heavily debt burdens. The plan is expected to go into effect this fall ahead of the election.

President Biden and Vice-President Harris announced the closing of the so-called gun show loophole. For years people selling guns outside of traditional stores, such as at gun shows and in the 21st century over the internet have not been required to preform a background check to see if buyers are legally allowed to own a fire arm. Now all sellers of guns, even over the internet, are required to be licensed and preform a background check. This is the largest single expansion of the background check system since its creation.

The EPA published the first ever regulations on PFAS, known as forever chemicals, in drinking water. The new rules would reduce PFAS exposure for 100 million people according to the EPA. The Biden Administration announced along side the EPA regulations it would make available $1 billion dollars for state and local water treatment to help test for and filter out PFAS in line with the new rule. This marks the first time since 1996 that the EPA has passed a drinking water rule for new contaminants.

The Department of Commerce announced a deal with microchip giant TSMC to bring billions in investment and manufacturing to Arizona. The US makes only about 10% of the world's microchips and none of the most advanced chips. Under the CHIPS and Science Act the Biden Administration hopes to expand America's high-tech manufacturing so that 20% of advanced chips are made in America. TSMC makes about 90% of the world's advanced chips. The deal which sees a $6.6 billion dollar grant from the US government in exchange for $65 billion worth of investment by TSMC in 3 high tech manufacturing facilities in Arizona, the first of which will open next year. This represents the single largest foreign investment in Arizona's history and will bring thousands of new jobs to the state and boost America's microchip manufacturing.

The EPA finalized rules strengthening clean air standards around chemical plants. The new rule will lower the risk of cancer in communities near chemical plants by 96% and eliminate 6,200 tons of toxic air pollution each year. The rules target two dangerous cancer causing chemicals, ethylene oxide and chloroprene, the rule will reduce emissions of these chemicals by 80%.

the Department of the Interior announced it had beaten the Biden Administration goals when it comes to new clean energy projects. The Department has now permitted more than 25 gigawatts of clean energy projects on public lands, surpass the Administrations goal for 2025 already. These solar, wind, and hydro projects will power 12 million American homes with totally green power. Currently 10 gigawatts of clean energy are currently being generated on public lands, powering more than 5 million homes across the West. 

The Department of Transportation announced $830 million to support local communities in becoming more climate resilient. The money will go to 80 projects across 37 states, DC, and the US Virgin Islands The projects will help local Infrastructure better stand up to extreme weather causes by climate change.

The Senate confirmed Susan Bazis, Robert White, and Ann Marie McIff Allen to lifetime federal judgeships in Nebraska, Michigan, and Utah respectively. This brings the total number of judges appointed by President Biden to 193

[boxfullaturtles]

I’m Bored and Anxious So I Slapped Together a List of Fan Fic Writer Asks

1. Share a song that makes you think of [fic title] 2. Do you read/reread your own fics? 3. What's your favorite fic that you've written? 4. How many WIPs do you have right now? 5. What's a fic idea you've had that you will never write? 6. Are there any fics from others you reread all the time? 7. How many ideas for fics do you have right now? 8. What project(s) are you currently working on? 9. Do you write every day? If you wrote today, share a sentence of what you’ve written! 10. Is there a fic that got a different response than you were expecting? 11. Do you have specific playlists for writing fics? 12. Do you have a playlist for your current WIP(s)? Share it! 13. How much planning do you do before writing? 14. If you could see one of your fics adapted into a visual medium, such as comic or film, which fan fic would you pick? 15. How do you come up with titles for your fics/chapters? 16. At what point in the process do you come up with titles? 17. What's something you've learned about while doing research for a fic? 18. What's one of your favorite lines you've written in a fic? 19. Give us a small teaser from one of your WIPs. 20. What's a favorite title for a fic you've written? 21. Have you ever deleted an entire scene after spending hours laboring over it? If so, why? 22. Do you know how your fic will end before you start writing? 23. How do you choose where to end a chapter (if you have multi-chapter works)? 24. Share a moodboard for (one of) your current WIP(s). 25. Have you ever upset yourself with your own writing? 26. Is there something you've written that you would never want your family to see? 27. Is there a fic you were nervous to post/share? Why? 28. Have you ever tagged a fic “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat”? 29. Share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic. (If you don’t have either, just share a random fic idea you have that you don’t plan on getting to.) 30. Ask anything!

[irawhiti]

while everyone's rightfully talking about oppenheimer and its flaws regarding the erasure of japanese and native american voices regarding nuclear testing and detonations, i'd like to bring up the fact that pacific islanders have also been severely impacted by nuclear testing under the pacific proving grounds, a name given by the US to a number of sites in the pacific that were designated for testing nuclear weapons after the second world war, at least 318 of which were dropped on our ancestral homes and people. i would like if more people talked about this.

important sections are bolded for ease of reading. i would appreciate this being reblogged since it's a bit alarming how few people know about this.

--

in 1946, the indigenous peoples of pikinni (the bikini atoll) were forcibly relocated off of their islands so that nuclear tests could be run on the atoll. at least 23 nuclear bombs were detonated on this inhabited island chain, including 20 hydrogen bombs. many pasifika were irreversibly irradiated, all of them were starved during multiple forced relocations, and the island chain is still unsafe to live on despite multiple cleanup attempts. there are several craters visible from space that were left on the atoll from nuclear testing.

the forced relocation was to several different small and previously uninhabited islands over several decades, none of which were able to sustain traditional lifestyles which directly lead to further starvation and loss of culture and identity. there is a reason that pacific islanders choose specific islands to inhabit including access to fresh water, food, shelter, cloth and fibre, climate, etc. and obviously none of these reasons were taken into account during the displacements.

200 pikinni were eventually moved back to the atoll in the 1970s but dangerous levels of strontium-90 were found in drinking water in 1978 and the inhabitants were found to have abnormally high levels of caesium-137 in their bodies.

--

i'm going to put the rest of this post under a readmore to improve the chances of this being reblogged by the general public. i would recommend you read the entirety of the post since it really isn't long and goes into detail about, say, entire islands being fully, utterly destroyed. like, wiped off of the map. without exaggeration, entire islands were disintegrated.

--

as i just mentioned, ānewetak (the eniwetok atoll) was bombed so violently that an entire island, āllokļap, was permanently and completely destroyed. an entire island. it's just GONE. the world's first hydrogen bomb was tested on this island. the crater is visibly larger than any of the islands next to it, more than a mile in diameter and roughly fifteen storeys deep. the hydrogen bomb released roughly 700 times the energy released during the bombing of hiroshima. this would, of course, be later outdone by other hydrogen bombs dropped on the pacific, reaching over 1000 times the energy released.

one attempt to clean up the waste on ānewetak was the construction of a large ~380ft dome, colloquially known as the tomb, on runit island. the island has been essentially turned into a nuclear waste dump where several other islands of ānewetak have moved irradiated soil to and, due to climate change, rising seawater is beginning to seep into the dome, causing nuclear waste to leak out. along with this, if a large typhoon were to hit the dome, there would be a catastrophic failure followed by a leak of nuclear waste into the surrounding land, drinking water, and ocean. the tomb was built haphazardly and quickly to cut costs.

hey, though, there's a plus side! the water in the lagoon and the soil surrounding the tomb is far more radioactive than the currently contained radioactive waste. a typhoon wouldn't cause (much) worse irradiation than the locals and ocean already currently experience, anyway! it's already gone to shit! and who cares, right, the only ""concern"" is that it will just further poison the drinking water of the locals with radioactive materials. this can just be handwaved off as a nonissue, i guess. /s

--

at least 36 bombs were detonated in the general vicinity of kiritimati (christmas island) and johnson atoll. while johnson atoll has seemingly never been inhabited by polynesians, kiritimati was used intermittently by polynesians (and later on, micronesians) for several hundred years. many islands in the pacific were inhabited seasonally and likewise many pacific islanders should be classified as nomadic but it has always been convenient for the goal of white supremacy and imperalism to claim that semi-inhabited areas are completely uninhabited, claimable pieces of terra nullius.

regardless of the current lack of inhabitants on these islands, the nuclear detonations have caused widespread ecological damage to otherwise delicate island ecosystems and have further spread nuclear fallout across the entirety of the pacific ocean.

--

while the marshall islands, micronesia, and the surrounding areas of melanesia and polynesia were (and still are) by far the worst affected by these atrocities, the entirety of the pacific has been irradiated to some extent due to ocean/wind currents freely spreading nuclear fallout through the water and air. all in all, at least 318 nuclear bombs were detonated across the pacific. i say "at least" because these are just the events that have been declassified and frankly? i wouldn't be shocked to find out they didn't stop there.

please don't leave the atomic destruction of the pacific out of this conversation. we've been displaced, irradiated, murdered, poisoned, and otherwise mass exterminated by nuclear testing on purpose and we are still suffering because of it. many of us have radiation poisoning, many of us have no safe ancestral home anymore. i cannot fucking state this enough, ISLANDS WERE DISINTEGRATED INTO NONEXISTENCE.

look, this isn't blaming people for not talking about us or knowing the extent of these issues, but it's... insidiously ironic that i haven't seen a single post that even mentions pacific islanders in a conversation about indigenous voices/voices of colour being ignored when it comes to nuclear tests and the devastation they've caused.

[zvaigzdelasas]

[AlJazeera is Qatari State Media]

[5:18 GMT - 7:52 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

[5:18 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

The leader of Hamas’s military wing says the group has launched a new operation against Israel. In a rare public statement, Mohammed Deif said that 5,000 rockets had been fired into Israel early Saturday to begin “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm”. Israel also reported an infiltration from Gaza. “We’ve decided to say enough is enough,” Deif said as he urged all Palestinians to confront Israel.[...]

[5:26 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

Here are some more lines by the statement of Mohammed Deif, head of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas: “We have already warned the enemy before. The occupation committed hundreds of massacres against civilians. Hundreds of martyrs and wounded died this year due to the crimes of the occupation. “We announce the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, and we announce that the first strike, which targeted enemy positions, airports, and miltary fortifications, exceeded 5,000 missiles and shells.”[...]

[5:45 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

More than 5,000 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel in the first 20 minutes of the operation, Hamas’s armed wing has said. “We decided to put an end to all the crimes of the occupation (Israel), their time for rampaging without being held accountable is over,” the group said. Israel said it had activated its Iron Dome defence system.[...]]

[5:49 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

The Israeli army says it has declared a “state of readiness for war”.[...]

[5:50 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

Saleh al-Arouri, deputy chief of Hamas in the occupied West Bank, has issued a call to arms.[...] “The West Bank is the final word in this battle, and it can open a clash with all the settlements in the West Bank. We call on our people to participate in the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood.”[...]

[5:53 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

The Israeli army says it has started an operation aimed at Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. “There are many pictures circulating on social media especially Palestinian Telegram channels showing Israeli soldiers in Gaza, but as captives,” Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem said.[...]

[6:05 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

Videos circulating on social media have shown Palestinian fighters driving Israeli army vehicles into Gaza.

[6:06 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

“On the streets, we’ve also seen the military vehicles in Gaza with Palestinian youth in the vehicles roaming about the streets happily,” she said. “The Israeli response to all this is going to be different from other times because nothing that has come out of Gaza before has been this strong. This is a first in the history of Gaza, for soldiers to go into Israeli towns, hold armed confrontations,” she added.[...]

[6:09 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

Rockets are still being launched from Gaza towards Israel. The sound of Israel’s Iron Dome defence system being activated in response can be heard.[...]

[6:12 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

Hamas fighters have taken control of the police station in Israel’s Sderot and a number of people have been injured in a fire exchange, the Israel Broadcasting Authority has reported.[...]

[6:14 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

Organisers of protests against the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul plan have cancelled their weekly demonstration scheduled for Saturday night.

“We stand with the residents of Israel and give full support to [the security forces],” the protest organisers said in a statement quoted by the Israeli media. They also called on the people who were planning to participate in the protest “to play their part to safeguard the security and health of the residents of Israel”.[…]

[6:18 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad group has said it is “part of this battle”. “Our cadres stand alongside their brothers in Hamas, shoulder to shoulder, until victory,” a spokesperson said.[…]

[6:20 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

Israeli Defence Minister Joav Gallant has approved the mobilisation of reservists, according to his office.[…]

[6:35 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr says that Hamas’s call for others to join their operation against Israel could be interpreted as a reminder to Tel Aviv that if attacks against Gaza continue, there will be a response from other fronts.[...] “So far there has been no response from the armed groups in Lebanon. But what have we seen in the past? There has been coordination every time there is a flare-up, or heightened tension in Palestinian territories,” she added.[...]

[6:43 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

Stephanie Hallett, the charge d’affaires at the US embassy in Jerusalem, has slammed the rocket attacks from Gaza against Israel. “I condemn the indiscriminate rocket fire by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians,” she said in a statement on social media platform X. “I am in contact with Israeli officials, and fully support Israel’s right to defend itself from such terrorist acts,” she added.[...]

[7:13 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

Reporting from the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera’s Youmna ElSayed says that rockets are still being fired “very intensely” from the area. “We’ve seen pictures and videos of Israeli soldiers being killed and videos of Palestinian fighters celebrating around Israeli armed vehicles set on fire,” she said. “We also received a video showing two Israeli soldiers being captured. The video shows that the soldiers are alive and confrontations are still taking place inside those Israeli towns,” she added.[...]

[7:11 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

Hundreds of residents in the Gaza Strip have fled their homes to move away from the border with Israel, an AFP correspondent has reported. Men, women and children were seen carrying blankets and food items as they left their homes, mostly in the northeastern part of the Palestinian territory, the reporter said.

[7:29 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

Akiva Eldar, a columnist at the Israeli daily Haaretz, says the attack by Hamas should be a wake-up call for Israel. “You can’t go about normalising relations with Arab countries while also trying to expand into Palestinian territories,” he told Al Jazeera. “The image of status quo that you [Israel] can keep Gaza under blockade, you can keep expanding the settlements, and the Palestinian will sit back and say we approve your normalisation with the Gulf countries as long as workers from Gaza can make some money, isn’t going to work,” he added.[...]

[7:29 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

We now have the statement by Ismail Haniya, the head of Hamas’ political bureau[...]

“The enemy besieging Gaza has planned to surprise it and escalate the aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip, in addition to the settlement and aggression that continues every moment in the West Bank, which seeks to uproot our people and expel them from their land, and the crimes of the occupation against our people in the 1948s, as it stands behind all the killing and assassination operations there, and the occupation’s continuation of detaining our prisoners for decades, and reneging on agreements when he re-arrested those liberated from the swap deal. “For all of this, we are waging a battle of honour, resistance and dignity to defend Al-Aqsa, under the title that was announced by Brother Commander-in-Chief Abu Khaled Al-Deif, “Al-Aqsa Flood”. This flood began in Gaza and will extend to the West Bank and abroad, and every place where our people and nation are present.”[...]

[7:47 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

Israeli ambassador to the US calls “the free world to unequivocally condemn” the attacks by Hamas and support Israel’s “right to self-defence”.[...]

[7:50 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

President of the European Council Charles Michel says “EU stands in solidarity with Israeli people”. “Strongly condemn the indiscriminate attacks launched against #Israel and its people this morning inflicting terror and violence against innocent citizens,” he wrote on Twitter.[...]

[7:52 GMT, 7 Oct 23]

Israeli army launches ‘Operation Iron Swords’ against the Hamas group in the Gaza Strip, in response to attacks from the territory. Israeli raids have started, as witnesses tell Reuters news agency that explosions are heard in the Gaza city.

[chaos-company]

Angstpril 2024

Hi everyone!

It’s that time of year again! We are excited to announce that we are hosting the event again this year!

All prompts, FAQs and rules can be found in the graphics and below the cut! 

Prompts:

1. homesick

2. frozen

3. broken-hearted

4. longing

5. rise from the ashes

6. this isn’t going to work

7. bad dreams

8. lost battle

9. trust issues

10. phantom pain

11. no way out

12. a little too late

13. learning the truth

14. surrender

15. confrontation

16. cry for help

17. last chance

18. left behind

19. trembling

20. broken

21. faking a smile

22. drained

23. swept away

24. the ghost of you

25. cold shoulder

26. grief

27. panicked

28. never see you again

29. betrayal

30. the last time

Alt Prompts:

1. troubled mind

2. not strong enough

3. you were never mine

4. the night we met

5. mental scars

6. miscommunication

7. jealousy

8.rock and a hard place

9. emotionally distant

10. paranoid

Rules

All posted content must be your original content. The use of AI for creation of any kind is prohibited.

All tags must be utilized in order to be reblogged. NOTE: the mods are human beings, so not all works will automatically be reblogged, even if all tagging is correct.

Any art form is acceptable, including original writing, gif sets and fan art.

FAQs

“Do I have to create for all thirty days?”

- Not at all! Feel free to jump in whenever you’d like. This is a creation event, so create as much or as little as you want! However, if you want to be entered in the shout out post, you must participate in all 30 days.

“Can I post a creation after the day has already passed?”

- Yes! You’re welcome to post for a prompt day even after the date, just be sure to tag with which day and prompt you’ve created for! You will only be eligibile for the shoutout post if you complete all 30 days within the month of April.

“What if I don’t understand/like a prompt?”

- We have a list of 10 alt prompts for you to choose from if you don’t like the main 30. Feel free to use our alternate prompts for any day, and if there’s any confusion send us an ask!

[h00nerz]

spots on!

pairing: choi yeonjun x fem!reader (+ second lead mark lee)

genre: comedy, fluff, superhero!au, non idol!au, college!au, some angst, ladybug!reader, chat noir!yeonjun

summary: by day, you’re a regular college student who’s just trying to get her assignments done on time and get your oblivious crush to wake up and finally notice you. but by night, you’re a superhero protecting the city from evil alongside your extremely annoying partner who is obviously infatuated with you. you were great at fighting crime, and always two steps ahead of your enemies. which is why you can’t believe you didn’t see your crush being the man underneath your partner’s mask coming.

characters: txt, stayc’s sieun, skz’s jeongin, nct’s mark, enhypen’s heeseung, choi yena, jo yuri and lots more.

status: complete

warnings: profanity, kys jokes,

* some links are broken, use 🐞.spotson tag to read!

profiles

01 — doughnut enthusiasts

02 — chat noir support group

03 — extra

table of contents

preview

01 — Baby Bread

02 — abuse deez nutz

03 — jypu education

04 — no it’s jungkook

05 — ladyflop

06 — friends already

07 — i’m gonna throw up on yeonjun

08 — hi yeonjun! (written 2.8k)

09 — *beomgyu left the gc*

10 — a chance

11 — /j… /hj

12 — all part of the process

13 — potato tomato

14 — i’m iceland

15 — stress

16 — kitkats

17 — exclusive relationship

18 — strawberries and honey (written 1.9k +smau)

19 — hey cutie

20 — it’s not CRAZY

21 — pretend babies

22 — heeseung empath era

23 — flowers (written 2.6k)

24 — captain of y/n defense

25 — losing the idgaf war

26 — you’re a clingy cat!

27 — that soobin guy is cute

28 — you’re dating chat noir!

29 — wooden shoe

30 — i know

31 — Kang Taehyun mr smart guy

32 — Choi Yena.

33 — exclusive dongshik drop off

34 — maybe okay will be our always

35 — i’m not lying (written 1.6k)

36 — girls only

37 — well yes!

38 — i should have known (written 4.5k + smau)

39 — respect the vote.

40 — can we talk?

41 — finally

42 — a little bit (written 1.9k + smau)

43 — just lost a follower!

44 — fever dream

45 — soft launching

epilogue

tag list (closed)

@therealhyunjingf @jakeshands @impureperhaps @mazeinthemoon @tyunlatte @loveliii @ningswings222 @exohclipse @17szn @txtbrainrot @bubblytaetae @qluvrv @serafilms @luvlyjay @iirene304 @snowfalltxt @choistick @lost-leopard-beanie @taekwondoes @captivq @aestheticsluut @surshica @suburbiataehyung @cecedrake2217 @omiomipepperoni @ttyunz @stellz581 @dearkamal @cher-bears @hochipochi @eggomi @rikismiel @vianna99 @certainyouthpeanut @cookiehaos @90sni-ki @http-gyu @iad0ru @viagumi @reverbtunes @fatoompie @ka143 @sserafimez @cathaerin @ahnneyong @cutiespaghetti @wonioml @emohazuzworld @taylvvrr @cowsmicwu

authors note: yeah we doing a miraculous ladybug au 😍 idk how silly it is it’s gonna be fun and that’s all that matters!

[stary-darlin]

JUST HOLDING HER LIKE THAT, MAKES YOU FEEL LIKE TURNING BACK

— ex!ellie williams × reader

It's been 150 days since your last conversation with Ellie, which was an argument, unfortunately. none of you were pleased by the result of it, yet you two still decided to not talk, ignoring when your friends asked you about what happened or if you guys still have a connection with each other. you both were at fault.

And just like teenagers, you both would eye each other when you see each other in the club or anywhere honestly. luck wasn't at any of your sides, maybe because both of you were scardy cats that would die if you chatted with your ex that you still love? maybe.

Moral of the story: both of you became strangers, trying to forget your significant other's name each time you heard their name be called, your body letting out an electric shock each time your shoulders touched each other.

Ellie's friend, Dina knew damn well what was going on, and she was not surprised by so. since when you guys were friends – before confessing your love to each other – you both did the same thing. blushing when you would get close to each other like some teenagers, staying quiet when you sit next to each other. even though you both were pleading for each other's love, your eyes would say it all. As they say, eyes are the window of the soul, and it was indeed. but Dani knew she had to stop this period drama play of yours.

So she came up with a plan that would work on the dumbest couple in the whole world – aka you and Ellie if that's not visible – but needed others' help so she called Abby and Jesse.

SATURDAY, 23:08 PM

— Jesse: why are we doing this again?...

— Dina: to stop them from looking like sad puppies when they see each other

— Jesse: damn right lol

— Abby: so what are we going to do?

— Dina: okay so we will invite them to our party but separately, so they don't know that the other is coming.

— Jesse: okay...

— Abby: mhm

— Dina: and you both know that Ellie has a low tolerance for alcohol

— Abby: so she gets drunk and confesses to y/n? bet.

— Jesse: tbh, I feel like we will regret this...

— Dina: Shut up jesse, come in 30 minutes.

Dina called you, inviting you to the party as the plan says, and you agreed to a party freak like yourself. Dani nodded to the others and set up the living room with LED lights and party decorations, sipping on their fresh drinks when they were done as a prize for their hard work.

"Imagine if this doesn't work," Jesse spoke to himself, "I would die cause I have a test in like two days."

Both Abby and Dina glared at him like two eagles looking for their meal of the day which shut Jesse up. "as if you get good grades in 'em or study" abby replied to him before rolling her eyes and opening her phone, calling ellie with Jesse's stunned expression in the background.

When you arrived to dina's apartment, abby was done with inviting ellie with force because ellie said she didnt feel good a.k.a felt depressed after the break up that was five months ago, i mean come on ellie is sad cause she lost her ultimate sweetheart, her sweet soulmate.

You parted with all three like there was no tomorrow, all of you hugging with your arms on your shoulders while jumping around with your glasses in hand. dani and abby looked at each other, finding it weird that abby didn't come till now and it was already 20 minutes after ending the call. jesse couldn't even care, he was having the time of his life dancing with you and drinking shots of vodka, letting the burning effect of the alcohol burn down his throat.

"Where is ellie?" dina whispered to abby while pretending to dance, "didn't you call her like 20 minutes ago?"

Abby looked down at her phone and nodded, "yes, she said she will come after 10 minutes."

Dina groaned and took a shot before taking her phone and calling ellie. ellie answered quickly, pretending to cough and making the excuse that she's sick, letting dina pull out plan B.

"Don't you want to get back with your darling sweetheart?" she whispered angrily to the phone, forcing a smile and raising her glass when you smile to her. ellie then all of a sudden ellie was no longer sick, "wait, what? you have her with you? oh my god, thank you, thank you." 

"Just come fucking here before she passes out from all the drinks shes taking–" she hung up and ellie jumped off her bed like super mario, putting on the sexiest silk black blouse on herself, was it because she was going to re-marry you today? yes, actually, she daydreamed of being your husband with the confidence of a greek god.

As you went to the bathroom, you heard loud banging that you later on ignored when Dina opened the door. you fix your lipstick, apply another coat on your lips before adding lip balm on for a little glossy look, looking at your face for a last time before opening the door and walking back to the living room, the loud music muffling the sounds of the chatter and laughter as you tilted your head to the side and took another glass that was on the kitchen's pantry with the other snacks, noticing a hand take the last glass right in front of you, trapping you on the side of the pantry. turning around you saw Ellie with that black blouse that was perfect with her biceps and her skin color, looking at her with widened expressions, both of you keeping eye contact for a moment before you walked away with the glass in hand.

Ellie turned around, her eyes following your figure, watching the way your jeans skirt moved on your hips with each step you took and the tight crop top with graphics on it, showing your torso and body to her, causing Ellie's mouth to water for a second. remembering she has to act sexy and cool to attract you back, she put down the glass and took a shot of vodka that was soon mixed with other rough heavy alcohol drink.

She watched you in the corner of everywhere, admiring your beauty that was in its most divine shapes; looking like a painting that was waiting for her to start painting to complete it, and she does admit you both complete each other and that's what she loved about you. she didn't have to work hard for anything cause she knew you were worth all her time, she was willing to be the mark to your Cleopatra with every fiber in her body.

She held her chuckle and smile when she watched you almost trip on the couch's leg, seems like the alcohol was working indeed. and her clumsy little sweetheart just keeping on tripping over and over again before letting out a tiny burp, she knew it was her show time. So she walked to you with her hands in her pants, "hey, you good, babe?" she whispered against your ear, causing you to flinch and look back at her, your eyes closing and opening lazily.

"Yeah, you are not, are you? come, should we go to the guest room?" she took your hand with her arm around your waist, her hand grasping your waist with slight grip. her braincells laughing and giggling at being able to feel you again. "come, let's go."

She walked you to the guest room that was away from everyone, chuckling to herself as she saw you with your gaze still on her looking like a total deer in the headlights. "stop looking at me like that, babe." she tilting her head to the side as she slide you into her other arm to close the door behind her.

"Woah–" you replied to her with your lips curled into an 'O' shape, your eyes turning into hearts as you stared at the two unbottoned buttons that gave you the view of her fair skin, making your cheeks redden. ellie hummed and looked at where you stared at her before letting out a laughter and looking back at you, her eyes narrowed into a curve with her lips, her smirk causing you to let out random babbles.

"Uh-huh, baby?" ellie played along as she placed the back of her hand against the side of your cheek, screaming internally as she felt the warmth of your soft cheeks that were caused by the alcohol. "u–...uh-huh" you shuttered as you nodded with nothing but pure emptiness in your head.

"You're so fucking cute, god." she groaned as she leaned in, taking your lips against yours, savoring every second of it. her hands cupping your face to the back of your ears – with ellie deepening the kiss – her tongue sliding against your parted lips, tasting your cherry lip balm causing her to groan once more. leaning back to let you get your breath, your face flushed with your lipstick smudged, turning on ellie even more.

You whimper softly while opening your eyes lazily, leaning your head closer to her face, and putting your palm on her collarbone, tip-toeing your way to the top to take another kiss, whimpering once more as she backs away playfully. "Do you even know what you're doing right now?"

"Uh-huh..." you nodded before tip-toeing again to kiss her, causing her to lean back before your lips meet hers, "let me–" you pout as you try one again, only repeating the same loop over and over again until you got tired to the point you started tearing up. Head down and bottom lip forward into a sad pout. "No, baby. Don't cry, I'm sorry." Ellie quickly lifted you head see your face, wiping the tears away with her hand cupping your face to only see that it was all an act. "Are you actin–" you cut her off by kissing her but this time you were the one in lead, tip-toeing on her shoe as you pressed your body against her, one of your arms on the beginning of her back and the other on the back of her head. Letting out a soft gasp as she bites your bottom lip, pouting as the shining pain continues when she continues kissing you.

Your intimate moment speaking words as much as your actions did, ellie leaded you to the bed while not letting go of your lips as if she wanted to get a new record on kissing you for the longest time.

"Ellie–" you gasped once more, hands on her shoulders as you pulled away from the kiss for a little mini break, all of that kissing sobering you up. "You–...we shouldn't do this."

Ellie frowned and took your hand to her chest where the heart, "you love me still, don't you?" You nodded with a pout, "and I love you so that means nothing is wrong with it. Now come here–" she took your lips against hers before you pulled away again.

"But we broke up" you spoke as you gazed up at her, "okay and? It was a heated argument, baby. We both couldn't live without each other." You looked over at her eyes, the shine in them like the one when she confessed to you; real and true.

"Look, I'm sorry for raising my voice. I regretted it since then and didn't know how to make up for it, I'm really, really sorry. I loved you since the first day I saw you, and the same love for you is still with me, I love you with every energy to my soul." She confessed while keeping her tilted head beside yours, her hand on your jaw with the other on the other side of your hips, pinning you to the bed. You let out a soft whine of her name as you pouted, tears in your eyes as you kissed her once again but this time it was heated and full of regret and hope for the upcoming, ellie let out a groan and leaned closer, cupping your throat with one hand, her thumb pressing gently on it.

"You don't know how much I missed you, missed this." She murmured against your lips before continuing to kiss you, parting your lips with her tongue which caused you to let out a soft moan as you lay down on the bed with ellie on top, following you.

As the situation got more heated, Jesse walked past the room to go to the bathroom since abby was in the other one and heard muffled moans and gasps, his face reddened as soon as he knew what you and ellie are doing. Dina followed him to ask him about what music to play next and heard the noises too, her expression freezing as she looked at the door.

"I told you we will soon regret this..." Jesse whispered to her while pressing his lips together into a straight line. "L-let's just...uhm go." Dina's voice softly appeared since the next song came up, both her and Jesse walked back to the living room, their faces traumatized as if they were kids who noticed their parents have sex. Abby came out of the bathroom and stood infront of them.

"Is everything okay?" She asked while taking a glass and taking a sip.

"N-no, no. Nothing's okay– I mean everything is okay." Jesse mumbled while staring at the floor like an insane person in the asylum.

"Why do you guys look like that then?–" she asked while raising a brow, confused. God replying to her by himself as soon as she says that. The music lowered down by siri with a combination of muffled moans that were now louder and bed-creaking noises. "Oh." She shut her mouth so quick, "well atleast they are together right and having fun?" She tried to comfort their brains that was traumatized in a second.

"Yeah..." both of dina and Jesse replied back.

​All rights reserved to @stary-darlin , please do not copy, rewrite, translate my works on any other platform.

Requests: open <3

[jiminjamms]

sex therapy :: 26. together

chapter tags/warnings: a very broken marriage. heavy angst. at least i am not gege. mai and maki and megumi as an iconic trio. infidelity/adultery. family drama. strong language. corruption. 

word count: 4.8k

notes: thank you for the overwhelming reception from the last chapter! work has been consuming my life, sadly, which is why this chapter took longer than i anticipated. gr. in this upcoming piece, though, my main focuses are the character development in y/n as well as explanations from toji himself. enjoy! likes, comments, and reblogs are much appreciated. xoxo

fic masterlist | 01. 02. 03. 04. 05. 06. 07. 08. 09. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

A large, warm hand massaged the delicate stretch between your thumb and forefinger. 

Gently. Leisurely. Daintily. 

Vanilla and cinnamon notes entered your lungs with every inhale, a velvetiness akin to everything you imagined clouds to be like if brushing against your cheek, the comforting sensations bringing back nostalgic memories from the carefree times your heart longed to return to. 

Was this Heaven? you wondered in this dark and dreamy daze.

You would not mind staying in this state eternally if that meant the promise of peace and quiet forever.

A voice, not from yourself, dispersed your thoughts.

“Suguru, what are the chances she won’t ever wake up?” 

Wake up?

Oh, so you were just asleep.

“Shut up, Sukuna,” another person quipped, this tone more leveled and coarser than the last. “Don’t say shit like that.”

The first person, who must be Sukuna then, chuckled lowly to himself. “Oh, who would’ve thought? Choso is having a soft spot?” he marveled with great interest, “Since when did you care so much about—”

But a third voice interrupted the banter. “She’s awake.”

After a long struggle, your eyes fluttered open to see a crowd gathered around you. Immediately beside you was Suguru Geto. He had been the one nestling your hand, but he practically didn’t look like himself with the concern etched into his brow, replacing the cheerfulness in his typical visage. Behind him stood Sukuna and Choso. The former grinned with fierce satisfaction, while the latter…scowled at you?

To be fair, Choso always scowled at you.

“Good evening, gorgeous.” Geto greeted with a melancholic smile, giving you another squeeze, firm and encouraging. Like a true gentleman, he helped you sit upright, his other hand reaching over your head to brush aside some stray strands by your forehead. “Are you feeling okay?” 

Exhaustion, meanwhile, rattled you to the bone.

You were weak, your movements fragile, almost like you were a fawn in her first hours of life. You blinked rapidly while taking in the new environment, only to quickly recognize the gray and cream colors in your surroundings. Back at Toji’s apartment was where you found yourself, with the familiar spiced floral scents from the flickering candle nearby confirming that this was the master bedroom. 

Given the dull throb by your temples, you frowned.

“What—?” your voice came out as a hoarse rasp. “What happened?”

The trio traded looks at each other with communicative eyes.

In the end, Choso tucked his hands into his front pocket and took the initiative to speak. 

“You were in the Zenin residence with Mai and Maki, remember?” No, not really.“Got into an argument with your husband. Started having a panic attack. Collapsed. Puked.”

Oh…

Recollections from your last conscious moments flooded your head like a tsunami: the screaming, the crying, and the fighting. Loud, angry, bitter fighting. 

Fighting for your dignity. Fighting for your heart. Fighting for your life. Goodness gracious. As much as the memories sucked all life from you, you instead felt completely…numb. 

After all, you had already been dead on the inside. You were too worn out, both physically and emotionally, to react. Everything that you had to go through since your wedding had brought you to your wit’s end, and this recent altercation with Naoya Zenin was truly the icing on the cake. 

When you caught sight of yourself in a nearby mirror, you could hardly recognize yourself. Your expression, glum. Your lips, chafed, Your face, pallor. Absent of any other color than an ashen hue. 

“How…did I get here?”

“Mai and Maki got worried and called Toji, who told them to bring you here,” Sukuna answered this time. “You’re lucky the girls reacted fast, else we would have sent you to an emergency room. Suguru even stopped his shift at his clinic to watch over you.”

“I—,” you sighed, lost for words and dropping your tired gaze to the floor. Dealing with inner turmoil to this degree was more than what any sane person could handle. All efforts towards your happiness were in vain anyway, as the cosmos conspired to make your existence one neverending nightmare. Everyone else had their ambitions and shit to deal with, but here you were as an absolute nuisance to the people who should not be otherwise pestered, and you were ashamed for the unnecessary trouble that you had caused. “Gosh, this is embarrassing.”

“We are so sorry!” 

Unexpectedly, the apology came from a girl’s voice, and you had to turn around to see three familiar teenagers by the bedroom door. 

Just last week, you would never have imagined ever seeing Mai, Maki, and Megumi together. Yet, here you were, watching the twins and their—technically speaking—nephew (cute) standing side-by-side, twiddling their thumbs in their nervous corner (also cute). 

Flustered and prepared for admonishment, Mai bowed her head at a slight angle as she hurriedly explained, “We don’t…We don’t mean to put you in an awkward position. We just didn’t know what to do. Maki and I were worried when you fell to the floor and started throwing up. We…We should’ve asked for your permission on who to call for help. But we didn’t know who else to phone, so we ended up dialing Toji. Now, we’ve put you in a weird spot and that is all our fault—”

“Do not apologize. That was the right thing to do.” The comment came from yet another person, and when Sukuna and Choso stepped to the side, who you saw at the room’s furthest end was none other than Toji Fushiguro himself. 

He had taken a seat all the way by the wall, with one leg thrust over the other in a relaxed but kingly sort of manner. With his sleeves rolled up, his forearms bled to his wrists with ink, and the emeralds in his sharp gaze gleamed as he stared pointedly in your direction. 

Of everyone in the room, his countenance appeared the most composed, but you could feelhim reading through the emotions present on your face. He inclined forward, resting his elbow on his knee and his chin on his palm. 

When he noticed the slightest shift in your posture too, the tiny scar by his lips flexed along with a smile.

“So, you’ve figured me out, hm?”

Easily, you could sense all seven pairs of eyes in the room (the four therapists plus the three teens) landing on you. The sudden attention rendered you nervous. Even if you chose silence as your response, the entire room, the entire planet, and perhaps even the entire galaxy could speculate your answer through your expression alone.

After a long while, you breathed out, “You didn’t tell me that you were a Zenin.”

The elephant in the room had to be addressed obviously, and you were not shy to confront the situation head-on.

While you did not intend to sound accusatory, your tone came off as such anyway. How could you not, when you had essentially been misled for weeks? Sure, Toji probably did not want to be badmouthing the Zenins to the very person (you) who had been recently married into the family. But, by withholding the fact that he and your husband were cousins, Toji had created much unnecessary anguish including the current limbo that your marriage was in right now. 

Meanwhile, that same man pressed his nails into his chin in contemplation. 

“I am not a Zenin, though,” he eventually corrected in a domineering voice, all austere in his throne. “At least, not any longer. I took my first wife’s last name years ago. I go by Fushiguro now.” Curt, direct, and pithy. Toji wasted not a syllable. “Everything worked out though, I guess. Naobito cut me off from the Zenin clan earlier this year. Gave me ten billion yen and told me to get lost, so I did.”

Toji always kept his private matters to himself, but with everything that he had gone through, you were struck by his poise, as if being expelled from such an influential household had been a high-school breakup he had gotten over long ago. 

Nonetheless, you wondered if he missed that other life, and you brought your knees toward your chest.

“So,” how should you put this, “you’re not upset?”

Toji scoffed immediately.

“Upset?” A bitter grin spread off his lips. “Why would I be upset? That household is a trash dump. All my life, there were no choices for me to make when my uncles and granduncles decided everything already,” and he began counting with his fingers, “my teachers, my classes, my extracurriculars, my friends. Everything. I was only a puppet to bring honor to the family name, bring in money for the company.”

Listening to his sonorous voice, you rested your cheek onto a knee.

"I see."

His story was depressing, and from conversations with in-laws such as Mai and Maki, you knew that he was not lying, either. Coming from nobility as well, you were also aware of the pressures that came with the people who boasted their 'old-money' statuses, but the Zenin household had always been notorious for being miserable. 

Toji had said so before in a prior discussion, how ‘family isn’t family for something like the Zenins’ because both politics and business took precedence.

Then, he went on.

“Some people would kill to have my problems, but I did not want that life, you know? Around the time I started college, I decided that I wanted to make judgments for myself and be my own distinct entity, but that made people upset. Privileged. Entitled. Ungrateful. Whatever. My family members called me many things as a young adult when they figured I did not want to be their pawn for my whole life, with the only person who understood me for many years being my best friend in university.”

Megumi’s mom.

Toji nearly appeared to be an altogether different person whenever he spoke about his first wife. The chartreuse in his eyes would stir with both sorrow and fond reminiscence as he thought about the Mrs. Fushiguro you would never get to meet, his closest confidant whom he lost to the cruel separation brought by life versus death. She must have been someone whom he valued a lot—a person who completely transformed him—as Toji had discarded his last name (which was Zenin, of all things) for hers.

‘He truly loved my mom,’ Megumi explained before. 'He had given up everything.’

Thus, fate could truly be unfair.

The loss and pain Toji must have endured, a topic Megumi had alluded to in his discussion with you before.

Not to mention, the expectations, frustration, and suffocation that came from the clan's elders, too. Experiencing the intense atmosphere in the Zenin household firsthand allowed you to empathize with him. Given the stark differences between him and your lawful husband, there was no wonder Toji did not wish to deal with his older relatives' high-strung conventions.

But, if he had been suffering so much… 

“Why did you care so much for what your family thought?” you asked, disregarding the look that the three teenagers by the door exchanged with each other. “Toji, you went to university in the United States. You had a wife and son at a young age. You went from a business background to a licensed therapist, so why did you not—”

“Leaving is difficult when you’re the family heir and the corporation’s CEO.” 

The expression that you then returned was blank.

Huh?

His words triggered something in your head, so you repeated after him.

“Leaving is difficult when,” and your voice trailed off, “when…you…are the heir and CEO.”

Heir. CEO.

Zenin.

Toji.

Naoya.

But Toji’s older.

‘Naoya got into a huge dispute with him earlier this year.’

Sheer realization slapped you hard across your face. No way.

“Toji,” you began after letting the revelation sink into you a while later, but your voice barely eeked above a mumble, “so you were once the successor to the Zenin household and company?"

The man in question did not respond, but the silent affirmation from the six other onlookers was an answer in itself.

Yes.

In hindsight, you wanted to say you had always seen the possibility. Still, you never fully registered this until now: the thoughtfulness in his strategy, the sophistication in his speech, the charisma in his leadership. 

Previously, Toji had impressed you with how much he knew about the Zenin Corporation’s market share in the Asia-Pacific or the firm’s outsized influence on the international stage. Yet, most (including yourself) would not guess that someone like Toji Fushiguro—your tattooed and brawny sex therapist (plus single dad)—had once been heralded as the indisputable inheritor to the proud lineage and conglomerate. 

That had been your mistake. 

Toji was more than what people made him out to be, which reminded you to never assume anything superficially about someone—a remark he had once made. For good reason, because he had been referring to himself all along.

You could almost visualize Toji Fushiguro as the seasoned executive he had once been in light of this new information: his black strands slicked into a side part, his charcoal blazer freshly pressed, his leather oxfords newly polished. 

Maybe because he was more mature or maybe because he was simply older, but Toji appeared more fitting for the important roles in the Zenin household compared to the man presently poised for succession. 

Consequently, you must also ask, “Then, how did Naoya end up in your seat?”

Sukuna and Megumi shared a glance.

Choso grimaced, and Suguru kissed his teeth.

Meanwhile, Toji ran a lone finger down his jaw, following the lines from a tattoo. 

“Let me give you some context, sweetheart,” he offered, now brushing his chin as he spoke. “For the last—let’s say—few hundred years, the oldest male in each generation became the leader in the Zenin clan. Is the rule stupid? Yes. Should there be more criteria in evaluating a potential heir aside from birth order? Also yes. But nothing has stopped this before because the Zenins, as you know by now, are a family built on antiquity and tradition. So, when I was born as the oldest male in my generation and Naoya had come in second place...” 

Toji did not have to finish his sentence for you to figure out the rest.

Despite the demands that came along with being the next family head, Toji must have been esteemed as nothing short of a crown price among the Japanese elite, with seniors in the Zenin household utilizing all their resources to prepare the once young and starry-eyed boy for taking over such an influential role. Naturally, his enviable position would spark jealousy, even from those whom Toji deemed related to by birth.

Including his very own younger first cousin.

Toji frowned in exasperation.

“Your husband is one childish and jealous brat, but Naoya Zenin has been like that for as long as I have known him. To claim the heir and CEO titles, he acquired the trust from myself and my colleagues by working with us in sex therapy, only to stab us all in the back. He’s a liar. A total manipulator.” 

And, from personal experiences, you knew that those words could not be more true.

At this point, Toji sank his handsome face into his immense palm. 

“Well, now Naoya Zenin has everything he wants but is still an incompetent asshole. The whole enterprise is hanging by a thread. The entire clan cannot fucking stand him. What’s crazy is that his father Naobito is not doing anything about this, and I cannot tell if that is because the old man is giving his son free passes or because he has finally gotten senile. With Naoya's pettiness, though, the father-son duo have done everything to erase my name from the family, even going as far as to dismiss the executives that I brought onto the management team to undo my legacy.” 

When Toji glanced up to cast his gaze forward, you then suddenly understood that the three other men in the room were more than just his fellow board-licensed colleagues.

You recalled Toji’s words in the Teyvat meeting room.

‘I recruited these guys right when they completed their undergraduate degrees, around the time I just opened my therapy office,’ and the puzzle pieces clicked into place from the realization that sex therapy had not been the only thing that Toji had worked with them on—Sukuna, Choso, and Suguru had been executives at the Zenin Corporation reporting to Toji, too. ‘We’ve been working together since, for the past four years.’

Discerning these revelations from your expressions, Toji added in confirmation.

“I had selected these three to oversee the Zenin Corporation’s operations with me,” he said, and you remembered the same conversation in which the men discussed their University of Tokyo studies while Toji listed their previous roles. Sukuna, Economics. “Sukuna, Director of Investments and Real Estate.” Choso, Mechanical Engineering. “Choso, Chief Engineer and Supply Chain Manager.” Suguru, Biology. “Suguru, Healthcare and Innovation Administrator.”

Arguably the most consequential divisions in a conglomerate that spanned numerous sectors, with each department bringing in yen by the billions every year.

‘These guys have treated me like family more than my blood-related kin have.’

Learning this about the four therapists added to your fascination. 

For you, the discovery was like uncovering a hidden treasure trove. To imagine everything that the four—as one cohesive unit—had gone through together at the top of the corporate ladder: scrutiny from the media and stakeholders, impromptu meetings that demanded make-or-break decisions, and immediate responses to industry trends and regulations. 

Only for them to be cast aside by no one other than your husband.

In the end, this all made sense.

Now, you understood why the therapists were once incredibly demeaning and belligerent toward you. How could they possibly sympathize with the woman married to the man who had taken virtually everything from them? 

Heck, if you were in their shoes and had no further context, you would hate yourself, too.

Only now were you hearing their perspectives, and you were grateful that—compared to several weeks before—they trusted you enough to open up. 

At last, all you could do was sigh and mutter, “I’m sorry.” 

“For what?” 

Sukuna shot back without hesitation, which stunned you given how he had been the one who mocked you the most. Yet, a scintilla of kindness flared in his fiery eyes, so you continued with your tone softer and quieter.

“I feel terrible.” Such vulnerability in front of so many people at once went beyond your comfort zone. “For the unfairness Naoya had brought upon you all, and how I…I can’t change anything. I can’t do anything. All I am is…useless.”

“No, you are powerful,” Suguru interjected this time. “Your husband relies on your public image to keep scrutiny off him. He needs you. He’s been demoralizing you for months because he knows the ball will always be in your court, and never his.”

His words made you stop.

“You truly think so?” you asked.

“Yes.” 

Choso, who replied, seemed honest. 

He was honest. 

He might throw you off from how aloof and stoic his attractive face would appear, but Choso was not a liar.

Bringing your feet off the bed, you slowly swung your feet. 

“I…am surprised you all even want to talk to me.” 

Toji tugged at his dress shirt’s collar and flashed his ink-covered muscles underneath. “What makes you think that?” 

His pointed question made you realize how much Naoya had been fucking with your mind, blaming and villainizing you at every chance, thus devolving you into a spineless worm feeling remorse for every little thing.

Shrugging, you tossed your gaze to the side. 

“I don’t know,” you admitted. “You could have avenged yourself by now. I am Naoya’s wife and Naobito’s daughter-in-law. There had been a thousand chances for you to do something horrible to me: to hurt me, blackmail me, spread dirty rumors about me, but…you haven’t.”  

“Why would I do that?” Toji replied instantly and candidly. Rather than appearing offended by your judgments, he started giving you that look again whenever he had his therapist hat on—the one where he would tilt his head at a slight angle to gauge the sentiments painted across your face. “I could have chosen to be bitter and vengeful for the rest of my life, but I am grateful for what I have. Why let a toxic bunch impact my life? I already told you how that household is an absolute fucking hell. I'm glad I have found an out. At the very least, my son would not have to deal with the crap from my young adult years because you know who is the oldest male in the generation after mine?”

Megumi. 

All gazes now fell upon the younger Fushiguro, who tried to casually shrug the attention off. 

Who cares if I was second-in-line to leading perhaps the most prestigious family in Japan? his nonchalance wanted to convey, but his ears turned pink anyway.  

Toji continued, “Then, of course, there are some people whom I care about a lot.” Using his head, he gestured to the twins. “These girls are the best aunts to my son that I, as a father, could ever ask for. They’re only one year older than Megumi, but Mai and Maki used to go on playdates with him on the weekends, walk him to school every morning, and cook him breakfasts over the holidays. The twins even helped my son take his first steps. There is this one photo we have in the library—I don’t know if you have gotten a chance before to see it. But there’s Mai and Maki, each holding one of Megumi’s little hands back in his chubby toddler days and—” 

“Dad!” a very flustered and irritated teenage boy finally had to say. “This is not the time to talk about that picture!” 

Next to him, a proud Mai and Maki coo and tease their grouchy nephew, poking at his puffed-up cheeks and ruffling his uncombed hair. 

“Aw, is someone a little embarrassed?”

Smiling at the little banter from the trio, Toji did not let them distract him from his conversation with you. “What I’m trying to get at is…life’s too short not to enjoy the happy sides of it,” but his eyes glazed with rue nevertheless, “Now is the perfect time to focus on your well-being. Take a look around this room. A lot of people want to see you leading a fulfilling life, Y/N. A fulfilling life for yourself, not for anyone else. Not for me, not for anyone in this room, and certainly not for your husband. Nothing—and I mean absolutely nothing—should hold you back from pursuing your health and happiness.” 

While you assumed that your best times were over, Toji reminded you those good days can be brought back with the right attitude. He had a point. Why should you allow your marriage to hinder you from connecting with people whom you care about, working towards the passions that brought you purpose, and feeling the love that you deserve? 

Instead, you should seek every sunrise and sunset as an opportunity to live better and without regrets.

As you ruminated on this different mindset, a sudden knock from the door cut your thoughts short.

Who…

Like you, most others looked around blankly, but Toji ordered from his seat, “Let him in.”

Mai, who stood closest to the entryway, obeyed. 

Once she unlocked the door, the room fell silent save for the footsteps of the man walking in, his soles creating soft echoes on the linoleum floor. Overhead, pale lights revealed the lines etched on his exhausted face, the worry that sat heavily on his chest. 

“Mister Daisuke,” someone eventually acknowledged out of respect.

Your father did not hear the greeting as he searched the room, his sullen gaze darting from face to face until he found you. His shoulders fell from his overwhelming relief. Still in a suit after a long workday, he stumbled forward feebly. 

“You’re alright,” he whispered between steps, scarcely audible. 

He crouched toward the floor once he approached you, and when Suguru transferred your hands into your father’s, you noticed the unstoppable quiver from the latter even as you gripped him tightly in an attempt to stop the tremor. 

His skin was tough, weathered by his additional decades in life. But, in his palms, you found the familiar tenderness that had comforted you since you were a little girl and, in his gaze, you noticed the sadness only found in the despair of a heartbroken parent.

“Thank goodness, you are okay,” and before everyone, tears slipped past his eyes, “I was terrified. I was so scared. When Toji called to tell me you had thrown up and collapsed, do you know how afraid I was?” 

You glanced over at the said therapist, reminding yourself that—if Toji had been the CEO before Naoya—he must have worked very closely with your COO father up until recently. For your father to know exactly where you were and walk in with this expression suggested that the former colleagues had had a lengthy conversation about your circumstances. A part of you wanted to be angry. Why drag your father into this worry? But a larger part of you had always wanted to reveal to him the wretched months that had gone by and longed for his support. 

And now, he was here.

The older man took a shuddering breath and brought his fingers to your cheek, holding and cradling you like he would never get to do this again. 

“I can’t lose you,” he lamented. “I have lost enough in my life already. I cannot lose you, too. I just can’t. Why have you not told me the truth? If you were not happy with Naoya, why have you not told me sooner? Did you think I would place my loyalty to the company over my own child? I feel so guilty and broken to hear about what you have been going through.”

Frankly, you felt just as broken, too. 

In fact, seeing and hearing your father weep like this shattered you. As devoted as your father was, his front never failed to be unwavering and strong. Even when your mother’s death left a significant hole in his heart, he bit back his grief. Scars from your mother’s untimely death scarred his heart, wounds that never healed and would stay with him until his last breath, but he rarely expressed his suppressed sorrow. 

All for your sake. Because you were his one and only daughter, his one and only child. 

So now, for him to see you in such a sorry state was crushing his whole world that had become you.

“Dad.” You helped him wipe his tears away, just like how he had always done for you. “I didn’t want to make you disappointed. I didn’t want to make you sad. I…I just wanted to protect you.”

“No,” he responded firmly. How could a loving father accept the possibility that his daughter would even think about placing him before herself? “Protect yourself first.”

You looked up when you sensed two more approaching individuals and found Mai and Maki with doleful smiles.

“We still have something to return to you, Y/N.”

In your left palm, each girl pressed one ring—the first which promised a future forever and the second which symbolized an infinite unity. 

You stared at the jewelry as your chest remembered the waves of happiness, excitement, hope, confusion, betrayal, and pain. 

So, so much pain.

Your father, who would not miss the solemn undertones in your gaze, squeezed your hands in his. 

“My dear daughter,” he started, and you could tell he could no longer bear to see you suffer any longer, “what are you planning to do?”

Your throat turned dry.

Any possibility seemed like a viable solution, a means for a desperate escape. 

For months, you should have prepared yourself for this very question, but now that you were confronted with this reality for the first time, you did not know what to say. 

You had clutched onto the false hope for your troubled marriage to be sorted out. Escaping your dreary matrimony had once been too far-fetched of an option given an impending cold war between your families, which you would never wish upon the stars to happen. Therefore, even as you found yourself stuck on a stifling dead end, you did not exactly prepare for the next steps for the occasion you found Naoya Zenin’s mistreatment too much to bear.

However, times have changed.

Your allies and enemies have changed.

Most of all, you have changed.

Therefore, with all the universe’s possibilities at your fingertips, one particular option stuck out. 

“I’m going to file for a divorce.”

last chapter || next chapter

end notes: So many things. To see us freak out at the idea of a divorce during the beginning of the fic, up to now, where we suggested the option out of our volution. Also, the much-needed heart-to-heart conversation between Toji and us, and how that really shows a slow maturation in our relationship with him (and everyone else)! Let me know what you think, and see you next chapter!

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[24kmar]

𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝐀 𝐇𝐔𝐑𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐄 (T. DUNCAN, A. DONALDSON, P. ZWEIG)

𝐁𝐎𝐑𝐍 𝐒𝐓𝐔𝐍𝐍𝐀 𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐄

Apart of my fic "born stunna" and p2 to my fic "why you do the things you do"

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: Art Donaldson x fem! Reader, patrick zweig x fem! Reader, tashi duncan x fem! Reader

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: 18+ MDNI,smut (edging, choking, bondage, being called a brat), angst, language, age gap (early 30's tashi, pat, and art early 20's reader) manipulative reader (wolf in sheeps clothing), sugar! Baby reader!, cheating, comfort sex with patrick and reader.

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: y/n goes home after hanging out with patrick, to which tashi and art scold her. What happens when patrick decides he cant get enough and goes to her match the next day. Arising conflict. Enjoy!! 🎀🩷

THANK YOUU TO MY GIRL @doll-0f-flesh FOR HELPING ME OUT IMMENSELY

Y/n learned from a very young age that she could get whatever she wanted. Growing up the golden girl with daddies money. All she need to do was flash her million dollar smile and she was in. That didnt mean she didnt work hard. No, she worked harder. Why use a minimum of your abilites to get something when you can get anything.

She was smart, ambitious, power hungry, always wanting more. She was good at using things to her advantage. A rich scholar and outstanding tennis player. Tennis was almost everything. Playing since 13, getting a scholarship to stanford at 17, going pro by 19, getting signed to NIKE a year later, and being coached by one of the best tennis players by 21.

Tashi and art have been coaching her for 2 years. Her now being 23. The word failure wasnt in her dictionary. It wasnt win or lose, just win. And tashi loved that. Tashi also loved her. And so did art. They both found themselves falling in love with her 3 months into coaching. To which they decided to go on a limb and make her theirs.

"Where the fuck were you" tashi spits out, walking towards y/n as she puts her keys on the counter.

"Taking a drive, i told you this before i left." Y/n rolls her eyes. "Dont roll your fucking eyes at me." Tashi says putting her finger in y/n's face. "When you said 'drive'" tashi airquotes "i didnt think you meant come home two fucking hours later! You have a fucking match tomorrow y/n!" tashi yells

Turning her head, y/n see's art leaning against the doorway, arms crossed with a dissapointed look on his face.

"Were you with patrick?" Art speaks up, walking towards her. Now its tashi and art infront of her. By the she gives him, the answers clear. "You fuck him?" He asks, walking behind her. Moving her hair out of the way and placing slow kisses on her neck. He already knew she did. He just asked to mess with her. "Course you did" tashi scoffs, gripping y/n's jaw.

"You know whats gonna happen now right?" Tashi asks, recieving a nod from y/n.

"Tashi please" y/n pleads, arms tied above her head. Tashi's strap hitting all the right places.

"Why'd you fuck him huh?" Tashi ask gripping her neck, though not enough to restrict any airflow. To be met with incoherent mumbles. Squeezing harder she asks again "fucking answer me" she gritts out, using her other hand to slap y/n's cheek. Not hard, just a tap.

"Mmm, cus y'were being mean" y/n babbles "bein too hard on me with tennis." She moans, getting closer to her climax.

"so you're telling me you did this cause you were being a whiny brat?" Tashi scoffs, pulling out. Ruining her orgasm for the second time tonight.

Letting out a pitiful whine y/n begs "tashi please, i just wanna cum" tears starting to brim. Turning her head to try another tactic. Locking eyes with art as he sits in a chair in the corner of the room. "Art" she whines, hoping he'll help tashi go easy on her.

"Nuh uh brat, hes not gonna help you" tashi spits, lining up her fake cock with y/ns entrance, slaming into her. Standing up, art walks over to the bed. Sitting behind y/n, pulling her to rest her back against his chest. Trying to lessen the blow, kissing her neck, fingers groping her front softly. The softness of his touch contrasting with the roughness of tashis.

It was gonna be a long night.

𝑮𝑨𝑴𝑬 𝑫𝑨𝒀

Stepping out of the car, y/ns nerves are all over the place. She knows she cant lose. If she did, they would blame it on patrick and what happend yesterday. She would never hear the end of it.

Now here she is, stepping out of the locker room. Stretching and getting ready for the match to start. She doesnt see art or tash. But she knows they see her. She feels a weird presence. Like someones watching her. Turning to look behind her she sees...oh shit. Patrick.

Locking eyes with her he send i small wave and smile. Why the fuck was he here? Did he want tashi and art to kill him?

She couldnt let him throw her off her game. Not win or lose, just win.

The match is almost over, y/n dominating the court. Walking her opponent like a dog.

"oh fuck no" tashi scoffs

"What? What happened?" Art asks, worried something happened with you.

"Patricks here" tashi shakes her head in disbelief "the fucking nerve on him".

Watching him get up to go to the bar, they stand up to follow. If he thought he was just gonna get away with this, he was sorely mistaken.

"Patrick" art calls out, him and tashi walking towards pat. "Why the fuck are you here" tashi narrows her eyes.

"Woah guys, dont get your panties in a twist" patrick chuckles "just here to support my girl" he smiles.

Oh no the fuck he didnt.

"you mean OUR girl" tashi spits "what on gods green fucking earth made you think you could go for her. None the less, come here."

"we already told you yesterday, dont ever try coming for her again. Are you trying to get us mad?" Art says

"Dont-" patrick begins, getting cut off by y/n

"Where the fuck have you guys been" y/n speaks, her words laced with venom "you missed my whole fucking game"

"We're handling something" tashi dismisses her

"Handling something, or being petty"

"Dont act like you didnt start this" tashi turns to y/n

"If i upset you then talk to me about it, dont scold me like a fucking child and pick a fight with patrick"

"Guys-" art tries to calm them down

"If you didnt act like one i wouldnt have to" tashi retorts

"you know what, fuck this." Y/n scoffs, reaching into her tennis bag "i hope you're happy to hear that i fucking won" she says, shoving her medal into tashis hands. "Dont even bother taking me home, im calling an uber" y/n turns around and walks away.

Tashi and art felt like shit. The whole car ride home being completely silent. Tashi staring at the medal and art driving, thoughts swarming his head. When they got home, y/n was no where to be found. Her keys and car gone , everything else still there.

They called out her name, looking everywhere. They didnt think the fight couldve had affected her to the point where she just went MIA. Calling and texting her countless times. Only to be met with the call going straight to voicemail. Meaning one of two things, they were blocked or her phone was on airplane mode. Both bad scenarios since it meant she didnt want anything to do with them.

The only one who knew where she was, was patrick. She didnt go far, just to some hotel. He was the only person she answered the phone to. She knew he wasnt the one who started it, since he explained what happend. Now here she was, crying into the bed as he rubbed her back soothingly.

He had never seen her cry, unless it was tears of pleasure or joy. Tears of pleasure when he made her feel good. And tears of joy when she won. It broke his heart.

Making her sit up, he cupped her face and spoke "what you thinking about pretty girl" he said softly, brushing her hair out of her face. "Dont wanna talk about it" she sighs "can you just...hold me?" Without skipping a beat he pulled her into a hug and sooths her. This had been the most intimate moment theyve had.

"Just wanna forget" she sniffled

Moving to kiss her neck, he whispers "can i help you forget?"

Sighing, she nodded. She needed this, and he needed her to know that he was always there. Whether art and tashi wanted him to be or not.

When tashi said patrick had no dreams she was wrong, soso wrong. Because he did have a dream. And it was y/n. She was all he wanted, all he needed.

She was arts star, tashis winner, and patricks dream.

His dream, his fantasy, his happily ever after.

[yourstrulybluelover]

Title: Heat

Pairings: Na’vi Reader (23) x Lo’ak (20)

Warnings: MDNI

Contains: fingerings, oral, p in v, rough sex, forced, dom Loak, sub reader

Word Count: 2460

The hunting party decided to split up in an effort to catch the next meal. Meat has been scarce lately due to the Strumbeest retreating further into the hinterlands. This only made your jobs more challenging as the hunting party would now have to spend more days away from home to provide food for the clan. It's been a day already and 3 miles from home. You would have packed some belongings to camp out, the team expected to spend at least three days to get enough meat for the clan. You sighed in desperation, beads of sweat dripping down your neck and back, the weather has not been kind either. This dry season was one of the hottest the clan had ever encountered. Strangely enough, everyone was not as bothered by it today as you were.

“Y/n, how you doing over there?” Jake called out to you as you propped yourself up by the tree.

“I’m fine sir.” You breathed out rapidly as you stiffened up trying to regain your stance. You did not want to appear weak, it was rare for women to be a part of the hunting party but not impossible, three other women were already part of the team, and two decided to stay back to assist the clan with fishing.

“I told you we don’t need to bring women with us they just slow us down.” Your ears perked at the sudden comment, and your face grew hotter from the share gall of that comment you opened your mouth to turn to the younger Navi man but your were abruptly interrupted.

“HEY! We don’t make those comments here! Keep that narrow-minded thinking in your hut! Y/n has more endurance and more kills than you, so watch it!” Neteyam hissed as he flashed his fangs.

You shot him a thankful glance, to which he nodded in acknowledgement before returning to his father, Jake. You smiled as you observed Akwey shoot glares at both you and the Sullys. Neteyam has always backed you up no matter what, part of it was due to the fact that he was your hunting instructor at the get go. Insulting you was like insulting him and his teachings.

“Don’t worry about them y/n, you felt a familiar smack on your shoulder, they’re just jealous you’re one of dad’s favourites.” Lo’ak said smirking at you as he handed his canister offering you some water to combat the heat.

“Second to Neteyam, of course.” You said sheepishly.

“Alright guys we’ll split up.” Jake said beckoning the team to come forward. We know that the main river is here, he explained therefore if we split up we can reach them on either side, ambushing them.”

You nodded in acknowledgement before grabbing your bow and hunting knife. “Neteyam, you take your team and your brother and you head down east, we’ll go west.” Before leaving you see Jake whisper into Neteyam’s ear while looking in your direction.

“Alright guys we’ll split up, ensure your comms are working,” Neteyam said. “Lo’ak keep an eye on y/n, she doesn’t look so good, and we both know how stubborn she is.’’

“All right bro,

You rolled your eyes in annoyance. Usually you would have found some witty comeback, and purposely out run them to show them who was truly weak. However, the heat had you dazed, you were suddenly feeling weak when midway through the journey you stopped.

“Shit.” You watched as Neteyam led the team, beckoning some to take to the canopy of the trees. You felt a familiar wave overcome you as you began to sweat profusely. Your skin suddenly felt feverishly hot when the throbbing sensation began to grow in your lower stomach.

“Y/n?” Lo’ak stopped and turned to you, brows furrowed. “What’s wrong?”

“I-I uh, shit, I uh I need to leave.” You stammered, face flushed from both embarrassment and agony.

“What? Y/n why are being so weir-” Lo’ak walkes swiftly towards you grabbing you by your arm when your pheromones punch him right in the nose. He loosens his grip and reaches to cover his nose. He stops to watch you, your body now soaked in sweat, your clothing and hair clinging to your skin, your top now clutching at every crevice of your mounds. Your eyes suddenly darken and pupils dilate as whimper escapes your lips.

Lo’ak turns away sharply. Walking away from you to meet with the team way ahead. You began to back away to continue to distance yourself from the party, avoiding the direction of the wind. One whiff of your pheromones and you’d have the team prying at you. You see in the distance Lo’ak and Neteyam mumble, before Neteyam sends the troops further up, with his second in command.

Lo’ak comes running towards you where you’re now propped up against the tree, in significant pain.

“Y/n, we’ll notify Dad so we can get him to send a Banshee to fly you back home. The comms are down so Neteyam is gonna go look for him. I’ll escort you back to base before the others pick up on your scent.”Lo’ak said hurriedly as he tied a torn garment around his nose and mouth in effort to prevent the infiltration of your intoxicating scent which has evidently gotten stronger.

“I don’t think I can make it back Lo.” You mumbled bent over in pain clutching to the tree.

“Y/n come on you’re stronger than this.” You hear Neteyam coach you, his hands are covering his nose as he struggles to maintain the distance between you two.

“So much for a woman being a part of the hunting party huh” you laughed as you lifted yourself up from the hunched over position.

You hear the brothers hiss at your bad joke in efforts of comforting you.

“Look after her brother.” Before you can thank Neteyam, he springs to his feet climbing to the canopy of the trees as he leaps from branch to branch.

Lo’ak leans to your side propping you on his shoulder as he guides you back to camp, unaware that his touch intensified your heat. Twenty minutes into the walk you began to feel your legs weaken. Not here. You thought to yourself. You pause, moving off from Lo’ak as he looks at you intensely.

“Break?”

“Something like that Lo” you mumbled breathlessly.

“I’ve never seen you like this y/n” he said huskily, his voice low, his face hardened.

“I had no intentions of anyone seeing me like this Lo, this one, this cycle is way off it’s normal course.” You admitted, slightly embarrassed that the Sullys are going to see you experience the onset of your heat.

You propped yourself onto a boulder, asking for water. He reaches out to hand you the canister, the garment over his nose seems to be useless as your pheromones permeate the forest air. You sip on the water in efforts to conserve, but the drops do nothing to tame the heat. You desperately splash the contents of the canister onto your face and chest.

“Don’t worry about it, I have another” Lo’ak says he back now facing you.

Your whimpers soon grow louder as you take advantage of the little privacy Lo’ak gives you. The heat growing between your legs intensifies with evey breath. In desperation to make it stop you quickly reach to touch yourself, but instead of easing the pain, it makes it worse. Your finger pressing slightly on your clothed clit does nothing but make it worse, you decide to push through. Rising to your feet only to collapse once more onto the boulder.

Lo’ak turns to face you, almost entranced by your weakened state, he takes a second to take it in, before reaching down to help you back up onto your feet. You both continue your walk back in silence minus your whimpers and breathless pants. Lo’ak’s grip is stronger and based on his contorted expression one can easily tell that his is fighting the pheromone scent. A sudden snap and within seconds you lose balance, clinging to the younger navi for support only to cause him to crash down with you.

You both groan in pain, looking up there is Lo’ak a tangled and heavy mess on top of you, your legs are sprawled, with his hips snuggly between them. The sudden pressure between your legs caused you to redden, as you began to feel the wetness pool. Lo’ak looks up to meet your eyes feeling the dampness, his eyes widen and the mess before him.

“Sorry y/n” he says huskily, quite aware of the moisture seeping from your loincloth.

You stutter in embarrassment.

“It’s okay y/n,sshh. I can make you feel better.” His eyes are no longer soft but narrowed, and lust-filled as he is now fully enthralled in your scent.

You prop yourself up on your elbows, to try and get up, but Lo’ak wouldn’t move. You contemplate for a minute as your eyes roam the younger Sully’s body tracing his chiseled shoulders down to his toned chest and lower to his abuse to see the vine dip, your core only getting hotter by the second.

“Just say it and I’ll make you feel better.”

You whimper at the sound of those words as you feel your conscience leaving you before leaning forward to press your lips into his. Within that second, all self-control gives way, you both are hungrily devouring each other rustling through the grass as you both undo your coverings His hands rough and hard, manhandle you as he strips you of your top to only grab the soft tender mounds and massage them roughly, biting and sucking at your neck simultaneously as you struggle to undo his loincloth. His focus now leaves your breast to your loincloth. In one swift movement, you’re naked before him as his fingers make their way to your folds. Expertly rubbing and massaging your clit before prying at your already wet entrance. His hands stop moving as he locks eyes with yours before plunging his fingers into yours. You arch your back a bit dumbfounded that the younger Sully was doing everything right. You reach down to grab his member, pumping him as he fingers you and soon your hand is covered with precum. He growls at the sensation and soon you find yourself begging him to fuck you senseless.

He flips you over on your tummy, lifting your hips slightly as he reaches down to now taste you. You gasp from emabrassment, but your heat makes you forget it in an instant. Your push yourself forcefully into his mouth while his tongure ciricles your throbbing bud. Your maons grow louder as you try to turn slight to catch a glimpse of Lo’ak. He smirks, stopping his assault before grabbing your hands, pinning them behind your back. He leans over, towering you, to kiss your check, dragging his fangs down your neck. You hissed at the sudden touch before feeling his mushroom tip push on your entrance. A sudden pressure is felt, as he pushes past, stretching your walls. You scream in both pain and pleasure, before the air is knocked out of you. A sudden thrust causes you to gasp, another hits your walls mercesillessy, another angled thrust finds your g-spot and now you’re spewing his name, begging him to make you cum as you push back onto his cock. Lo’ak lets go of your hands and now graps onto your fleshy waist, digging his nails into your skin as he rams himself into you forcefully. Your moans continue to grow louder as you feel your walls tighten with the familiar build in your lower stomach growing.

“Fuck y/n you’re so tight!” Lo’ak growls.

Within seconds you’re spewing your juices onto him as he throws his head back trying to hold his back. You scream his name as you grind yourself onto him to milk every bit of your cum from him when he suddenly spills into you. A wave of relief washes over you before you come to terms with what just happened.

You’re naked slumped on the forest floor and just had the sense fucked out of you by the younger Sully. You turn around to see Lo’ak recollecting himself with a smirk on his face.

“Didn’t think you were a screamer y/n”

Before you can answer you hear a familiar voice, stern and disappointed.

“Lo’ak what were you thinking!” Neteyam bellows, anger evident on his face. “You know better than to take advantage of someone in their heat, especially y/n.”

“Bro, I swear it wasn’t like that, her scent was so strong-”

“Shut the fuck up and get dressed! Your comms were on during the whole thing, I heard you!”

“Wha-, bro come on what are you talking ab-”

“You said just say it and I’ll make you feel better !” Neteyam yelled angrily.

Oh my god. You instantly went pale. “Did everyone hear?” You got up and asked flabbergasted while trying to tie your loincloth back on.

Neyetem doesn’t look at you, still angrily staring at his little brother. “No everyone ditched their comms as there was a signal problem due to the altitude, I kept mine on in case I contacted Dad on the way back.

You sighed in relief but couldn’t help but notice the bulge evident in Neteyam’s loincloth as he stared angrily at his brother. The familiar wave of your heat consuming you again.

P.S I hope you all liked this. I know I have some others to finish off lmao but this one just happened and I'm also not sure if I'll make a part 2 but it has been awhile since I posted. Thanks for the love thus far 💗❤️

Also the comms part was totally inspired by @puddleswimmingnerd-blog has amazing work particularly "Throat Comm Sex"🔥🔥🔥

[lambentplume]

Maui Fires & How to Support Relief Efforts

(Posted on 8/10/23) Hi, I'm Jae and my family is from Lāhainā. I watched my hometown burn down this week. The fires caused immeasurable loss in my community so I'd like to spread awareness of the situation as well as provide links to support local organizations directly assisting survivors. I'm pretty sure most of my following is Not local so I'm writing with intent to inform people outside the situation, but if you're reading this and happen to have family in the affected area that isn't accounted for, message me and I can send you the links to the missing persons tracking docs + more localized info!! If you'd like to skip down to how to help and follow community organizations, scroll to the bottom of the post after the image.

Earlier this week, Hurricane Dora passed south of the Hawaiian Islands, bringing strong wind gusts that caused property damage across the islands. On Tuesday August 8, high winds caused sparks to fly in the middle of Lāhainā town, knocking out power lines and immediately igniting drought-ridden grasses. The fire spread quickly and destroyed the entire center of town, the harbor, and multiple neighborhoods including Hawaiian Homes (housing specifically for Native Hawaiians), parts of Lahainaluna, basically all of Front Street, and low-income housing units. There is only one public road in and out of town, and after a very hectic evacuation period that road has been mostly closed off except to emergency responders, thus it is extremely difficult for anyone to leave town to get help. The nearest hospital is 20 miles away in Wailuku, and most grocery stores in town have burnt down.

As of Thursday, August 10, over 1,000 acres have been burned and 271 structures (including homes, schools, and other community gathering places) have been destroyed. Cell service is still extremely spotty, many of the surrounding neighborhoods deemed safe for evacuees are still without utilities. There are currently confirmed 53 deaths but that number is expected to increase as search-and-rescue efforts continue. Countless families have been displaced and many have lost the homes they lived in for generations. Places of deep historical significance have been reduced to ash, including the gravesites of Hawaiian royalty, the old Lāhainā courthouse where items of cultural significance were stored, and Na ‘Aikane o Maui Cultural Center. To add further context: Lāhainā has a population of about 13,000 residents. EVERYONE I know has been impacted in some way--at best forced to evacuate, at worst their house was burnt to the foundation, they cannot find a loved one, etc. I'm still trying to track down family members and it's been over two days. My neighbors down the street had homes last week and now many don't have ANYTHING. The hotels are taking in residents (tourists are also being STRONGLY urged to leave so that locals can recover). Without open access to the rest of the island, Lāhainā residents are now dependent on whatever people had in their homes already as well as disaster relief efforts coming in, but it's been difficult to organize and mobilize due to the location + conditions. People who have made it out are in shelters where no blankets or medicine were provided. Friends and acquaintances from neighbor islands are preparing aid to send over. Community response has been incredible, but the toll on the town has been immeasurable. My parents were desperately walking through town yesterday, my mom sounded absolutely hollow talking about it on the phone with me. It's horrifying. Below is a satellite map with data from the NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System showing the impacted areas from the past week; all of the red blotches were on fire at some point in the last three days.

Here are ways you can help:

If you have the means to donate:

Here are three donation sites verified by Maui Rapid Response, which also lists FAQs for people who are wondering about next steps.

Hawaiʻi Community Foundation - Maui Strong Fund accepts international credit cards. Maui United Way

Maui Mutual Aid Non-monetary ways to support:

If you know anyone who is planning to travel to ANY Hawaiian island, not just Maui, tell them to cancel their trip. Resources are extremely limited as is. Advocate for climate change mitigation efforts locally, wherever that is for you. The fire was exacerbated by drought conditions that have worsened due to climate change.

Lastly, remember that these are people's HOMES that burned, and Native Hawaiian cultural artifacts that have been lost. Stop thinking of Hawaiʻi (or any "tourist destination" location, really) as an "escape" or a "paradise." If that's the only way you recognized my home... I'm glad I got your attention somehow, but I would ask that you challenge that perspective and prioritize local and native voices. For transparency, I don't currently live in Lāhainā, I've been following efforts from Honolulu. My parents and brother have been updating me and I've been following friends and family who are doing immediate response work. I'm doing my best to find reliable and current sources, but if I need to update something, please let me know. If you're going to try to convince me that tourism is necessary for our recovery, news flash ***IT'S NOT***!

Thanks for reading.

[jeanmoreautemple]

Thea Muldani: a rant

I feel weird about Thea but I can’t really put into words exactly why? So I’m writing down some things I’ve thought.

I honestly didn’t think much about her before TSC, like she was okay (I wish she’d been introduced earlier tho or that she hadn’t graduated already so she was a recurrent Raven player or something).

After reading the extra content I wasn’t bothered about the age gap between her and Kevin but yes a little bit about the fact that Kevin was fourteen when they first met + the -you fuck like a virgin, maybe some practice will make you better at it- comment that Nora included. It was uuhh weird but the rest of the Kevthea story was okay, and Thea is 100% not a groomer. Plus, Nora technically deleted the extra content so in theory nothing there is canon yet.

Now in TSC we get her sole appearance in TKM from Jean’s POV, who has known her since he was fourteen (like Kevin- this is important to keep in mind). The scene starts out cute! We find out she took him under her wing and even had nicknames for him like Paris and her little duckling🥰. So the fourteen year boy that just arrived from france with broken English looked up to her, Thea was ~21 at this point.

We know Jean is going through HELL during this time:

And we also know the Moriyamas were always particularly cruel with Jean, getting more physical him than with Kevin. Even though It’s said that Riko would torture Jean and Kevin (broken hand incident) in private, hence the other Ravens not knowing the whole picture, how can a fourteen year old kid hide such pain? But apparently , as we later find out, Thea was too deep into the Evermore raven cult mindset that she didn’t find anything strange about the coach and Rikk’s behavior towards Jean.

At 15 Jean is given a number and place in the perfect court, but only at 16 joins the lineup. He gets a lot of hate, especially from the other defensemen, whom Thea works with:

Although the Ravens are know for being extremely violent training, at least in the court Thea must have noticed that the defense line were especially brutal to Jean. Or SOMETHING.

But here comes the worst part: during this same year Riko forces Jean to sleep with 5 defensemen. By the time Jean is a junior most of these have graduated which means they were 20 or older. So Thea had been playing with each of these guys for at least 2 years (except for Grayson), she knew them.

They went on to joke and talk about the whole ordeal as Jean paying for his perfect court number. Thea also being in the defense line could have heard all of this first hand, we don’t know. But It’s so widely talked about that it reaches Tetsuji and we do know Thea witnessed Jean’s punishment:

Coincidentally Thea starts a sexual and emotional relationship with Kevin this year (it’s her last too).

So here’s the part that made me dislike Thea very much. In TKM she goes to Kevin demanding answers, Kevin then brings her to Jean, who is looking like this:

It’s been three years since she graduated but she’s still wearing her Raven number in a necklace, and when she sees Jean’s state in TSC she comments how if Kevin hadn’t said anything she’d think it normal:

By now it’s clear she at 26 is still 100% brainwashed, but this next line of hers cemented it:

YOUR OLD TRICKS ?!

So let’s break that down:

1. The immigrant kid (16!) she watched over for two years from age 14 to 16 suddenly starts having sex with members of HER (23!) defense line who are all around her age and openly hate him for 5 consecutive nights and she doesn’t suspect anything?

2. Said defensemen then brag and shame Jean afterwards calling him a whore, which leads to Jean getting beaten half to dead by their coach and still nothing?

3. Years later she recalls the incident as Jean being up to his little tricks and being rightfully beaten to a pulp?!!!!

I can’t. I know she’s also a cult victim but no. It was super common for Ravens to have hate sex with each other but her being close to Kevin (and somewhat Jean) during the time Jean’s (a 16 year old!) assaults were happening and still remaining this clueless… I’m sure she must be lovable for both Kevin and Jean to respect and care for her so much but her one scene convinced me she’s way too deep into the Raven spirit and her presence around Kevin and Jean would be just so harmful.

But I have to give credit when it’s due, apparently after some hours with Kevin and 7 years later she believes her King broke Kevin’s hand:

In conclusion:

Thea is absolutely no groomer but if one takes a look at her attitude towards Jean’s sexual history when he was 16 and how her relationship with Kevin was happening simultaneously, her you fuck like a virgin, maybe some practice will make you better at it and tell me you weren’t up to your old tricks comment combo, it all makes me dislike her. Cause you’d think someone who at 22-23 was dating a boy who had just turned legal would be careful or mature enough to choose her wording better when talking about the sexual activity between a boy close in age to her own boyfriend with people around HER age, but nope. The fact that Kevin married her, has a child and lives happily ever after with her seems unbelievable to me.

PS: Her and Kevin’s (we don’t know if he believes Riko) apparent ignorance or lack of suspicion of Jean’s freshman year assault was the most hurtful part of TSC tbh (not counting Elodie). Imagine having the closest people to you misunderstand/ believe lies about such a traumatic event. I guess this is why Nora didn’t include a Andrew POV, I would have died or wanted to kill Nicky and Aaron for not looking deeper into Andrew’s attitude.

[shanastoryteller]

Happy Pride!!!! Living Blood or Lady Mo please!

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Xuanyu disrobes unashamedly, hesitating only at the last second with the sleeve covering her left arm.

Jiang Yanli laughs. “Bit late to be modest, I think.”

“Modesty is overrated,” she returns, which is something that Zixuan would say and A-Yao would think. She slips the rest of the robes off and steps into the steaming bath, letting out a deep sigh of satisfaction.

The changes her body has undergone are even more obvious without the thick layers of the robes obscuring her form. The extra weight seems to have settled in ideal places, not only thickening her waist and limbs but settling heavily along her hips and breasts, which hadn’t exactly been small to begin with.

She sits behind Xuanyu, filling a bowl with water and then pouring it over her hair to rinse it of blood and dirt that had been hidden by her dark hair. Acting as a bathing assistant is far below her station, but Xuanyu had sent all the servants away and she doesn’t mind, really. Xuanyu is her sister, likely the only one she’ll ever have considering A-Cheng’s track record with matchmakers, and she’s been worried about her. This gives them time to speak alone. “How has your marriage with Lan Wangji been? Has he been kind?”

Xuanyu pulls a face, which isn’t encouraging. “I guess. He mostly left me alone, and then we had a couple fights and he was a jerk, and now I think he’s trying to make up for being a jerk, but it’s a little – well, it’s nice that he’s making an effort. I suppose.”

Not as good as she’d hoped, but not as bad as she’d feared. “Sect Leader Lan seems fond of you.”

“Oh, Lan Xichen is great,” she says easily. Better than reaction to Lan Wangji, but still not what Jiang Yanli had been hoping for. Then her eyes light up. “Sizhui is wonderful! I’ll give Wangji one thing, he’s raised a good kid. He’s so sweet, and a great cultivator, and he’s always trying to help out everyone around him. I’m glad Jingyi’s always hanging around – without him, I think everyone would just take advantage of Sizhui’s good nature.”

Well, that’s something. Surely Lan Wangji can’t resist Xuanyu’s charms for long, not when she dotes on his son and gets along with his brother.

“What trouble did you get into on the road?” she asks, running her hand over the wound on Xuanyu’s shoulder. It looks nearly fully healed already and there’s another mostly healed wound on her hip, a thin slice on her left arm, and the shadow of various bruises that were likely much worse a couple hours ago. It’s of course a good thing that Xuanyu has a strong golden core, but Jiang Yanli can’t help a moment of wistfulness.

Her own core never lived up to her mother’s expectations, or her own. If she’d had a stronger core, she could have given A-Ling siblings. A child should have siblings. She would have had a calmer childhood without two little brothers underfoot, but a lonelier one too.

Xuanyu shrugs, lazily scrubbing herself down. “Looks like Xiao Xingchen picked up the girl, A-Qing, while he and Song Lan were separated and was trapped in this place that was basically a ghost town.” How could he be trapped by a place that had no people? “And I’d heard some rumors so when we ran into Song Lan I helped him find Xiao Xingchen, but there was a bit of a fight with someone who didn’t want him to leave. I just happened to get caught in the crossfire, so to speak.”

She’s stretching the truth to outright lying. Before Jiang Yanli can call her on it, her stomach growls.

“Didn’t get a chance to eat on the road?” she teases.

Xuanyu flushes, ducking briefly beneath the water to hide her flaming cheeks before resurfacing. “Things were a little hectic. It may have slipped my mind.”

How has she managed to put on weight while also forgetting to eat? Perhaps Lan Wangji deserves more credit.

“I think I have some candies in my room, if you want something before the banquet,” she offers. “I know the speeches take forever.”

Her eyes light up before dimming and she slumps in the bath. “Thanks, Yanli-jie, but I better not. Sizhui gave me some on the road and I usually love them but just putting it in my mouth almost made me sick. It was awful. And weird! They’re my favorite.”

Jiang Yanli blinks then gives Xuanyu’s significantly larger chest a considering look. It could be nothing. It’s probably nothing. She hasn’t even been married a year and it doesn’t sound as if she and Lan Wangji have been seeing eye to eye.

Then again, the same could have been said about her and Zixuan.

“Can I ask you something personal, Meimei?”

Xuanyu nods. “You can ask me anything, Yanli-jie.”

“Are you and Lan Wangji having sex?”

She turns bright red and ducks beneath the water for so long that Jiang Yanli is starting to get concerned before she resurfaces, still red faced. “Um. We did once. Well – I guess, technically, it was three times, but it was only one night.”

Well. Apparently Lan Wangji has stamina on and off the battlefield.

“One moment,” she says, briefly squeezing Xuanyu’s shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

It takes one whispered conversation with the servant outside the hall and approximately ninety seconds before her personal healer is standing in front of her. Jiang Yanli ducks back inside to see Xuanyu out of the bath, in a thin bathing robe that’s clinging to her as she wrings her hair out. “I’d like my healer to take a look at you, Meimei.”

Xuanyu freezes, slowly standing straight with a wary look on her face. “That’s really not necessary. The wounds were just superficial and they’re basically healed already.”

“It’ll be quick,” she says, because if she’s right then she can’t let Xuanyu go down to the banquet without letting her know. “She’s very discreet – she’s been my personal healer since I was a child.”

“Jiang Xingyi?” Xuanyu asks, some of her tension draining away.

Jiang Yanli nods, trying to think of some reason that Xuanyu would know her healer’s name, or her reputation, but all the servants are terrible gossips and her health is a frequent topic of derision. “Just your wrist, okay? Your golden core has changed a lot. I just want her to take a look.”

She feels bad about lying, but Xuanyu had lied to her first.

Xuanyu relaxes even further. “Okay, Yanli-jie. If it’ll make you feel better.”

“Thank you,” she smiles, then opens the door to usher Jiang Xingyi in.

The old woman doesn’t smile, but Xuanyu grins back undeterred, and says, “Hi, Granny,” before paling and adding, “uh, um. Sorry.”

Jiang Yanli feels a familiar pang of grief go through her. A-Xian had referred to Jiang Xingyi as Granny, the only disciple both bold and beloved enough to get away with it.

Jiang Xingyi ignores her, instead reaching for her wrist and pressing her fingers against it. Xuanyu fidgets, shifting from one foot to the other, but says nothing as the moments stack on top of one another.

Finally, Jiang Xingyi drops her wrist and steps back. Her stern visage breaks, a smile stretching her mouth across her face. “Congratulations, Madame Lan.”

She knew it!

“Thanks,” Xuanyu answers before wrinkling her nose. “Um. For what?”

“You are expecting,” she answers. “At least a couple months along, I believe, although I’d have to do a more thorough examination to be sure.”

Jiang Yanli moves to embrace her, but Xuanyu’s face drops and she turns dangerously pale. “What? No. That’s not possible. I can’t be.”

“Three times,” Jiang Yanli reminds her, trying to goad Xuanyu into laughter.

But instead she just shakes her head. “No, no I can’t, I – this can’t be happening,” she whispers to herself, grabbing her own arms in a white knuckled grip. “It’s not. It’s impossible. I can’t be.”

She’s young, and this wasn’t a marriage of her own choosing, and it’s so new. Of course she’s surprised and nervous. Jiang Yanli touches her elbow, intending to say something soothing, but Xuanyu collapses into her arms, gripping her waist and hiding her tears in her shoulder.

“Xuanyu!” she says, hugging her back just as fiercely, her heart breaking for the younger girl’s anguish. “Meimei, it’s okay, I know this is scary, but it’s going to be fine.”

“It’s not,” she says, voice thick with tears, “A-jie, this is awful, this is – it can’t happen! It can’t, Wangji is going to be so mad, he’s going to hate me, and everything is ruined and awful, I can’t be – I can’t! I’m going to die!”

Jiang Yanli’s whole body goes cold and she grips Xuanyu even tighter against her. “You’re going to be fine,” she says, pushing her conviction into every syllable.

No matter what Jiang Yanli has to do, Xuanyu is going to be fine.

[hotchswifey]

a little bit shy - rafael barba x reader smut

i wrote this like a year ago and never posted it???????? oml i kept thinking it was unfinished but like it’s 2700 words  😭 😭 😭 😭

 anyways i’m not rewriting it or even rereading it so!!! anyways, this is shitty but it’s mine so it’s fine

warnings: shy!reader, smut, vaginal fingering, reader is a virgin (par hand stuff she’s done with rafael), reader owns a bookstore/cafe, written with an age gap in mind (rafael is like ?? 40?? 45??? reader is like 23/24), rafael is a babe and i love him, your honour, also rafael is a brief man and nobody can convince me otherwise, also like the office spoilers ig??? but nothing major, daddy/papi kink, the reader may have a slight humiliation kink (it’s self-projection babes), also the translation is through google so sorry if it is incorrect!

(word count: 2740)

---------------------------------------------------

You sat on the counter of your café, reading one of Stephen King’s books. You had closed up at 19:00 like you did every day (par Sundays where you closed up at 17:00); however, you had stayed behind in your store, deciding that you would leave when the rain cleared up - which, it hadn’t. You looked at the grandfather clock standing up against the wall - quarter past nine. The time had flown by as you were too engrossed in your book to notice the world outside and join the world written on the pages. You sighed as you jumped off the counter, folding the corner of (what was now) your personal copy of Doctor Sleep, realising that the weather would not get better anytime soon. Grabbing your hoodie (while cursing your past self for not bringing a coat to work), you turned off the lights, ensuring the ovens and such were also turned off. You grabbed your keys, preparing for the harsh weather, before stepping outside (albeit reluctantly). The rain hit your face harshly, the wind almost making breathing impossible, as you made your way quickly (or as quick as the wind would let your body move) down the sidewalk. You should have probably just called an Uber as you got to the corner of the street. But, then again, you had money to return to the shop. You halted on the corner, debating it but rejecting the idea. You were already soaking from being outside for a few minutes, so what were another... 20... to your apartment. It took you about ten seconds to go to Rafael’s apartment. You had only been dating for a couple months, but his place was, at most, ten minutes away from your shop, and you were freezing. You rushed down the sidewalk until you got to his building, standing underneath a roof; you quickly texted him with trembling fingers, asking if he could let you in, figuring he wouldn’t hear your voice on the intercom system due to the wind. The door buzzed open within seconds, which you were highly thankful for, and you made your way to the elevator, which you took to the top floor. Rafael answered the door after you knocked, still in his suit (confirming your suspicion that he had not stopped working even now; you were pretty surprised he was even home, as he was usually spending all his free time in his office). His eyes went wide immediately, taking in your wet form. “Hermosa, wha-” he cut himself off (something you didn’t know he was even capable of doing) as he opened the door wider for you to come in. “You’re soaking,” he said as he reached for the zipper of your hoodie. “Really? I hadn’t noticed,” you quipped back as you slapped his hands away, grabbing the zipper to try to pull it down, but you couldn’t quite do it with your trembling hands (which were a dangerously dark red). Rafael grabbed it again, slapping your hands away this time, pulling the zipper down and peeling the fabric off your skin as it stuck to you. “What were you thinking?” he looked down at you sternly, causing you to roll your eyes. “Calm down, I’m fine-” “You’re going to get ill,” he interrupted, taking your phone from you and placing it on the coffee table face down (which seemed to be his way of telling you I’m taking this because you are almost vibrating from how cold you are, not because I’m going to look through your phone, Hermosa). “you need a shower.” “I’m fine!” you argued, and Rafael looked at you with a deadpan look. You stared at each other for about ten seconds before you gave in, mumbling quickly, “Fine.” He walked you towards the bathroom as if you didn’t know where it was and opened the door for you. A quick “thank you” later, and you were peeling off the rest of your clothes before figuring out how to turn on the shower. After about a minute (which felt like an eternity, considering you were feeling hypothermic), you grabbed a towel before heading back out to find Rafael putting your hoodie in a washing basket. “Rafael?” he turned around at that, his eyebrows furrowing - he was cute when he was overly concerned. You suddenly became aware that you were naked and blushed heavily, “How- how do you, um, turn the... shower on?” Once he showed you and left the room, you basked in the water, feeling your previously numb fingers returning to life. You were highly aware of how long you were in the shower, not wanting to waste water or heat or anything. As well as the fact that you couldn’t stop thinking about how you were only one wall away from Rafael - totally naked. You took his (very expensive looking) shampoo and soap, cleaning yourself and your hair, before turning off the shower and leaving. Only then did you realise that you had no clothes - unless you would put on cold, wet ones. You wrapped the same towel around yourself before sheepishly entering the bathroom. Rafael smiled at you from his seat on his couch, his work abandoned on the dining table, his suit jacket on the back of one of the chairs and his tie looser than when he had answered the door, and a glass of scotch in one hand and the tv playing Netflix. “I don’t- um, I- I don’t have any... clothes,” you stuttered, looking down at your feet and fiddling with the towel. “You can borrow one of my shirts,” he said, as if it was the most casual thing ever, like you two always did this. he got up, pausing (in what looked like) the office (which you had convinced him to watch after it came to your knowledge that he had never watched it), and began to pull out a shirt from his drawer in his bedroom, handing it to you, which you thanked him for, still blushing from your current predicament. He went to leave before you spoke again. “I- I don’t have any-” you stopped talking, blushing too much before you could say ‘panties’. “You don’t mind wearing mine, would you? Because, you see, I don’t have any panties,” You blushed at his bluntness but shook your head to say, “No, I don’t mind. When, in actuality, you did mind, but only because the thought made you feel hot. Like everything else had once you had made your way into his apartment. You were naked. And, now, you were going to wear Rafael’s clothes. He left for you to get dressed; you shut the door, making sure it was locked, before you dropped the towel, pulling on his briefs and shirt. His shirt was white, and as you looked in the mirror, you realised that, yes, he could definitely see your nipples through the shirt. You buttoned three buttons before turning around and checking how much of your ass it covered. Thankfully, it fell to your mid-thigh, and even more, it smelt like him. You exited the bedroom, turning to close the door behind you softly to not disturb Rafael’s Netflix. What you didn’t see, with your back turned, was Rafael staring at you (specifically, your ass) and licking his lips. As you turned back around, you saw him sit forward and place his free hand (the one without scotch in it) on his knee - unbeknownst to you, he was trying to hide his growing member. You smiled at him, which he returned, and joined him on the couch, sitting about a foot away. You were right when you thought he was watching the office. He was currently watching Jim fax Dwight messages from future Dwight. You brought your legs up to your chest, sitting back on the couch. I watched as Jan told Michael that the branch was closing. “Would you like a drink, cariño?” he asked, making his way (very quickly, you noticed) behind the couch, as you watched the TV. You looked up at him, smiling, asking him for some coffee. He kissed you on the forehead, causing you to giggle, and then started on your coffee. But you swore as he turned around that he was... hard? Your eyes widened, and your cheeks grew hot as your head flew forward to stare at the TV. A smile grew on your face, and you tried to hide it multiple times, but you just couldn’t; it was... cute. Rafael was unbelievably cute right now - plus, his ears were pink, which made him look... well, adorable. You made sure he couldn’t see your face as you smiled widely, but you realised you were failing when he said; “What’s happening?” “What?” you turned to him, still smiling. “In Scranton,” he said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, which it was, but you weren’t focused on the TV. You were focused on what was going on behind the kitchen counter he was standing behind. “Oh, right, there,” you said, although you were sure you sounded teasing, which you must have because Rafael’s eyebrows furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean, ángel?” he asked, coming back to join you on the couch, handing you the coffee. He sat closer to you than you had previously sat next to him, not that you minded - you wanted to sit on his lap, not next to him, but you’d settle for this. “Nothing,” you smirked as you glanced at him - his trousers were still tight. Your eyes went wide momentarily, but it was enough for Rafael to notice. “What?” “What?” you sipped your coffee, covering your smile as you looked at him. he narrowed his eyes at you before putting his arm around you, bringing you into his chest. He put the coffee on the table for you, looking down at you as you turned your head completely to look him in the eye. “You’re hiding something.” “Am I, counsellor?” You moved your legs over him, and he pulled you onto his lap, causing you to yelp and him to chuckle, burying his face in your neck, nipping and kissing at your skin. Your cheeks began to burn again as your smile and teasing attitude disappeared, replaced with whimpers and gripping onto the hem of your (or, rather, his) shirt. You did notice, however, that you weren’t exactly on his lap but on his legs. Which meant he thought you hadn’t noticed his... situation. “What are you hiding, cariño?” he began to kiss further down, kissing at your collarbone. You reached down to palm at his slacks, the office still playing in the background. You heard his breath hitch, and his head flew up to look you in the eye. “What are you hiding, counsellor?” you grinned at him, blinking through your lashes. His ears burned, as well as his cheeks, and he looked pretty shocked, too. However, he quickly recovered. He smirked at you, gripping your wrist, causing you to pout. His lips found yours, and you whimpered into his mouth, causing him to smirk again. “I’m not hiding a thing, cariño,” he said against your mouth, moving your hand back down to his bulge. He hummed against your mouth as you squeezed him lightly. His hand gripped your thigh, the other resting on your cheek as he deepened the kiss. You whined into his lips, putting your hand, not playing with his bulge, on top of the one on your thigh. “Please, Rafael,” you whimpered. His hand on your thigh began to creep up your leg, coming up to the waistband of your briefs before slipping inside. That was new. Sure, you had done things with Raf before, but he was always very... slow. He just wanted to ensure you were completely comfortable with what was happening, but now? Seeing you in his shirt? His fingers teased your entrance momentarily before he gathered your slick and began rubbing at your clit with steady circles. Your hand immediately gripped his wrist, your fingers not even managing to close around his arm. Your back arched, your tits pressed against him, and pathetic whines fell from your lips. His lips were attacking your neck and collarbone, marking you. “Oh, god,” you whimpered out, his fingers beginning to speed up, his other arm wrapped around your waist to keep you against him. Your fingers, the ones not around his arm, gripped his waistcoat. His rubbing sent impulses up and down your body, your vocal cords working on their own accord and your limbs twitching. “Please, oh, god,” his fingers and mouth were the only things you could focus on, and the rest of the world fell away. You were becoming incoherent with your words, that much you were aware of, as you mumbled out, ‘please’s and ‘fuck’s. You were pretty amazed you had stayed coherent for that long, considering that you were usually a mumbling mess of a woman who couldn’t make eye contact or stop blushing when he touched any part of your skin. You brought his face up from your neck, wanting to kiss his scotch-flavoured lips. The passionate kiss did not stop you from whimpering against him or prevent you from moving his hand away from your clit and towards your entrance. "estás tan necesitado, ¿no es así, cariño?" his tone was teasing, though you had no idea what he was saying. You moaned as his fingers edged around your entrance, and you dropped your head into his neck to hide the growing blush, your eyes fluttering shut. Your hips bucked as best they could in the position you were in. You whined when he took his fingers away from you; however, after he had moved you onto his lap (and, therefore, on top of his hard-on), his fingers continued their previous actions. He sunk one finger into your heat, causing your hold on his vest to tighten and your other to clench as you lifted it, trying to decide what to do. Your legs fell wider as Rafael curled his fingers into your sweet spot (and, of course, he knew exactly where that was, despite only having done this a couple of times). “Please, Rafael,” your voice was heavily muffled by the fact that you were pressing your face against his neck. Still, he must have heard you because he added another finger into you, rubbing against your sweet spot with two fingers whilst his palm ground against your clit. “please, papi,” you mumbled out, causing Rafael to stutter in his pleasing ministrations and his cock to twitch. You immediately seized up, your eyes flying open against his neck. However, Rafael’s fingers continued without hesitation, his other hand moving to your ass and squeezing it, pulling you more towards him. He hummed against the side of your head. “Papi, cariño?” your cheeks flushed, the embarrassment of the situation catching up on you. Your hold on his vest tightened, and you were sure you were seconds away from tearing it. You whimpered against his skin, the humiliation only contributing to your impending orgasm. Rafael smirked down at you, loving how you looked, squirming and whimpering on his lap. he loved that you were shy. You were adorable when you were blushing and stumbling over your words whilst you looked everywhere but him. When you called him Papa? he almost groaned aloud. He could feel you pulsing around his fingers, your legs spasming and back arching. Taking his hand away from your ass (and slightly lifting one of his legs to not make you fall), he unbuttoned your shirt, kneading one of your breasts. Your whimpers turned into moans, gradually increasing in volume and frequency. “That’s it, Hermosa, cum on papi’s fingers."

[queenshelby]

An Illicit Affair

Part 20: FILMED

Pairing: Cillian Murphy (46) x Reader (23)

Warning: Age-Gap, Taboo Relationship, Infidelity

The following day, just as Danielle had planned, Max went to Cillian's apartment to let the cable company inside, telling them to close the door behind them once they were done.

"Will do," said the contractor engaged by Danielle before getting to work and installing cameras and sound equipment in the master bedroom and living room. 

He hid them securely behind paintings on the wall and furniture, while making sure that they were connected to a secure server online.

"There, I think that should cover most areas," he said confidently, tightening the screws one last time, attaching the final device, before finally calling Danielle and giving her the access codes.

When he provided the information to her, he reminded her again that she was breaking boundaries by installing surveillance devices in her own home to spy on her husband, but she did not seem to care.

"You get paid well for this kind of job, don't you?" she chuckled over the phone, rolling her eyes and brushing off his concerns. "So, don't worry about me," she said. "I'll handle the consequences," she insisted before hanging up on him. 

The technician shrugged in agreement, but the conversation lingered in his mind long after he left the apartment.

Luckily for him, he also left just in time as, on the way out, he saw Cillian enter the building. 

His shoot had been cancelled and he arrived back home much earlier than expected. He had done some shopping on the way, intending to cook dinner for you before you were set to arrive at his place between seven and eight. 

***

As usual, you were right on time, arriving at Cillian's apartment just after seven following a long day at work.

Expectedly, by this point and following your sudden departure from his apartment last night, the anticipation of seeing him had grown significantly, and your nerves were starting to show signs of weakness.

Just last night, you admitted your feelings to him after he had done the same and whilst you had lots of talking to do about how you might be moving forward with this affair, for now, you were simply desperate to be close to him.

You had been fantasizing about Cillian all day after last night's rendezvous was being cut short and hoped that, tonight, you would not be interrupted so unexpectedly again.

You wanted to be completely lost in each other without any interruptions and that was all you could think about when stepping into the elevator, taking you up to Cillian's apartment where he was already waiting for you. 

***

"You cooked?" you asked with surprise soon after he opened the door for you, causing him to nod apprehensively. 

"I did," he replied softly before giving you a quick kiss as if to say "hello", following which you smiled gratefully, appreciating the effort he put into preparing dinner for you.

"I hope you are hungry," he then said and you nodded eagerly.

"I am starving," you responded sincerely. "Although I thought that we could start with dessert first," you continued teasingly, playfully batting your eyelashes as you eyed him flirtatiously. 

"Well, did you bring dessert? Because I didn't make any," he winked, a hint of mischief sparkling in his eyes. He knew exactly what you meant by dessert but played along nonetheless. 

"What do you take me for? Of course, I did," you grinned back as you slowly unbuttoned your coat, beneath which you wore nothing but a set of black lingerie that left little to the imagination.

As you let your coat slide off your shoulders and onto the floor, leaving you only in your lingerie, Cillian couldn't help but raise an eyebrow in surprise.

"Well, that looks quite delicious," he chuckled, feeling himself grow increasingly aroused.

"Thank you Cillian, I tried my best," you winked before pulling him in for a kiss.

In response, his lips met yours gently, and you could feel his body stiffen slightly beneath his clothing. As you pulled away, you noticed the hunger in his cerulean gaze. His hands found a hold of your waist, pulling you closer until there was hardly any space between you two. The scent of freshly prepared food filled the air around you, mingling with the scent of cologne that hung in the atmosphere. It was intoxicating.

"Do you need to turn the oven off or something?" you gasped, feeling his erection press against your lower stomach.

"No," Cillian murmured against your lips, his voice husky with desire. "Dinner is sitting on the bench. We can heat it up later. Now, all I want is you," he whispered heatedly, his grip tightening around your waist.

In response, you leaned in close, pressing your lips against his. The taste of passion swirled between you both, sending shivers down your spine. Your heart thumped faster, matching the rhythm of the growing tension between you. As you kissed, Cillian pushed the strap of your bra aside, exposing one breast. He took it gently in his hand, grazing it with his thumb before sucking on your nipple. You moaned softly, arching your back, inviting more.

"Hmm," you gasped. "More," you then demanded. Cillian obliged, his tongue tracing circles around your nipple and then trailing downwards across your chest towards your navel. Your breath hitched, and you clung onto his arms tightly, not wanting him to stop.

"Lets take this to the bedroom," Cillian suggested huskily, breaking the spell of pleasure that seemed to envelop you both.

Without hesitation, you grabbed his hand and led him to the bedroom for what would undoubtedly be a night of intense passion. Once inside, Cillian closed the door behind you, locking out the world for just you two. You stood near the bed, gazing intently at each other. The fire burning within you both grew stronger.

"Take off your clothes," you told him firmly, feeling the heat rise to your cheeks.

"As you wish," he responded cautiously, already halfway undressed. You watched as he removed his shirt, revealing his lean freckled torso.

His muscles rippled slightly as he reached for his belt buckle, loosening it before sliding his pants down to reveal his black CK briefs. He paused momentarily, meeting your gaze, a smoldering intensity igniting in his eyes. You felt a growing warmth pooling between your legs, and your nipples hardened under the thin lace fabric of your bra.

"Let's get rid of these as well," he murmured, reaching for your bra clasp, gently opening it before allowing the garment to fall of your shoulders. The sensation of your breasts bouncing free sent a jolt of excitement through you.

You let out a soft sigh as Cillian cupped them gently, running his thumbs over your nipples, causing you to arch your back in ecstasy. He leaned in close, his warm breath fanning across your skin as he teased you with soft kisses. His fingers slowly slid down your stomach, tracing lines across your belly button. You felt a shiver run down your spine and a throbbing need begin to build deep within you.

He then hooked his fingers into the lace hem of your panties, gently easing them down over your hips and thighs until they pooled around your ankles. The cool air caressing your most intimate parts caused goosebumps to break out along your skin. His gaze locked onto you as he lifted his head to meet your eyes, a slow smile spreading across his face.

"I've been looking forward to this," he admitted softly, his voice thick with lust. You swallowed nervously, unable to tear your gaze away from his. The room suddenly felt hotter, and you knew it wasn't just the fire blazing in the fireplace.

"Now lie down for me and let me taste you," Cillian commanded, his voice low and seductive. You obeyed without question, eager to feel his skilled touch.

Your heart raced as you lay down on the bed, your pulse pounding in the silence of the room. Cillian kneeled beside you, his eyes dark and full of desire. He moved closer, his warm breath brushing against your neck, sending shivers down your spine.

"God you are beautiful," he whispered as he traced light patterns along your inner thigh, drawing ever closer to your center. \

Your breath quickened, and you could feel your heart pounding in your chest. When his finger finally touched you, you inhaled sharply, biting your lip to suppress a moan. Cillian licked his lips, watching your reaction closely.

"You're so wet," he observed, his voice hushed yet insinuating. "You really want this, don't you?"

"Always," you nodded, too nervous to speak. He dipped a finger inside you, testing your readiness.

You cried out softly, your muscles clenching around him. A small smirk played on his lips, and he withdrew his finger, licking it once before repeating the process. This time, he added another finger, stretching you open.

"Oh God!" you whimpered, squirming beneath him. "Please, Cillian!"

He looked up at you, his eyes shining with lust. "Please what?" he taunted, smiling wickedly.

"Tell me what you want," he demanded. 

"I want you to kiss me," you groan, unable to resist anymore.

"Kiss you where?" he asks, his voice dripping with sultry confidence.

"Right here," you plead, motioning towards your throbbing core.

Cillian smiles devilishly as he lowered his face between your legs. You gasped, arching your back as his hot breath washes over your sensitive flesh. He paused just long enough to tease you before diving in, kissing and licking every inch of your sweet spot.

"Fuck, yes!" you screamed, digging your nails into the bedding as Cillian's mouth hungrily worked on you. His tongue darted in and out, expertly flicking against your swollen clit. Each flick brought you closer to the edge, your entire body quivering with anticipation.

"That feels so good," you panted, throwing your head back and forth in sheer bliss. 

You felt his tongue pause for a moment, the tip lightly grazing your engorged clitoris.

A surge of raw desire coursed through you, your pussy clenching spasmodically around his fingers. Cillian's eyes sparkled mischievously as he dragged his lips up your inner thigh, kissing the sensitive flesh just below your crotch.

"You're so fucking sexy," he breathed heavily, his voice vibrating against your trembling skin. "I've wanted you since the first day I saw you," he admitted, causing you to moan even louder. 

"Oh god, Cillian, please!" you begged, thrashing around on the bed. "Don't stop now!"

With those words, Cillian's tongue resumed its assault on your pussy, plunging deeper and deeper inside you. The sensation was overwhelming, and you felt yourself rapidly approaching orgasm. Your breathing became ragged, and your body shook uncontrollably beneath him.

"I'm gonna cum!" you screamed, gripping the sheets tightly. "Just like that, Cillian! Yes!"

The room filled with the sounds of slurping and groaning, punctuated by your desperate pleas for release. Cillian's talented tongue danced around your clit, making you writhe helplessly on the mattress. You wanted to come so badly, but he kept edging you, refusing to give you the satisfaction you craved.

"Fuck, please!" you screamed, clutching at the sheets beneath you. "I need to come!"

Cillian's eyes gleamed mischievously as he shifted his attention upwards, planting soft kisses against your inner thigh. With each new sensation, your need for release intensified, your body craving satisfaction like never before.

"Not yet. Not until my cock is buried deep inside you," Cillian growls against your skin, his tone thick with lust. His words send a wave of electricity through your veins, causing your heart to race and your pussy to clench. 

"Are you ready for me?" he asked, his voice rough and commanding. Before you can even respond, he pulled away, leaving you panting and begging for more.

He stroked his cock, slick with pre-cum, before aligning it with your entrance. "Look at us," he murmured, guiding your head to look down at the sight of you both. "We're perfect together," he then groaned, watching his cock tease your wet pussy. 

His words drove you wild, and you bit your lip to stop from screaming. Instead, you wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him closer, letting him know how much you wanted him.

"God, I want you inside me," you moaned, the anticipation building within you. " I want you so fucking bad right now," you whimpered, his fingers slipping easily inside you again, reminding you of how incredible he made you feel.

"Then beg for it," Cillian teased, his fingers moving in a tantalizing rhythm before withdrawing them again. 

His cock then pressed against your wet folds, almost penetrating you, but stopping just in time to maintain the exquisite torture.

"Cillian, please fuck me," you pleaded, your voice barely audible, strained with desperation but Cillian simply chuckled, his voice dark and husky, filled with raw lust. 

"I need your cock, please," you begged, reaching out to grab his shaft. "RIGHT FUCKING NOW!"

"Fuck you make me so hard Y/N," Cillian rasped, his voice husky with longing. 

You heard yourself moan, the sound echoing in the room around you. Cillian was a master of control, and he knew exactly how to draw out your pleasure. You arched your back, thrusting your pelvis upward, silently begging for him to fill you.

But Cillian continued to torment you, sliding your lubricated juices over his cockhead.

"Ah," he groaned, pumping his dick, coating it with your slick essence. He was determined to make sure you were ready for him. And oh, you were. More than ready. Your whole body yearned for him. But still, he refused to enter you.

"You're driving me crazy," you moaned, clawing at his arms, trying to pull him inside you. "Please, stop fooling around and just fuck me!"

Cillian merely chuckled again, his deep voice sending a shiver down your spine.

"Alright, alright," he cooed before slowly pushing his cock inside you. You gasped, biting your lip, as you felt yourself stretch around him.

"Oh, fuuuuck," you moaned. "Yes, yes, yessss... That feels so good," you sighed, closing your eyes and savoring the feeling of being filled by him.

He responded with a low, guttural growl, squeezing your hips tightly. His cock pulsed within you, filling you up completely. You could feel the steady throb of his member, rubbing against your most sensitive spots. It was pure bliss.

"You're so tight," Cillian whispered, burying his face in your neck. "I can't believe how good you feel every time we do this," he moaned before he pulled out slightly, only to thrust back inside you with force.

You gasped sharply, your nails digging into his arms. By this point, neither of you knew that you were being recorded, the hidden camera in the corner of the room capturing every passionate moment.

"God, I love you," Cillian murmured, his words muffled by your skin.

"I love you too! Fuck!" you moaned, reveling in the feeling of his cock pulsating inside you.

"Harder, Cillian," you begged, grabbing fistfuls of his hair and pulling him closer. "Fuck me harder!"

Cillian complied, increasing the speed and power of his thrusts. Your bodies slammed together, creating a symphony of skin slapping against skin. Each movement sent waves of pleasure radiating from your core, threatening to consume you entirely.

"I am so close Cillian," you whimpered, tightening your grip on his shoulders. "And I want you to cum deep inside me."

Cillian responded with a low, guttural growl, squeezing your hips tightly. The throbbing sensation intensified, his cock pulsing within you, grinding against your most sensitive spots. "I'm going to explode inside you," he grunted, burying his face in your neck.  "Fuck," he cursed, his movements becoming erratic.

You could hear the desperation in his voice, the frantic pace of his thrusts escalating with urgency. "Come with me," he panted, his voice hoarse. "Cum for me, baby."

You held him tighter, your nails digging into his skin. The familiar sensation of an orgasm building within you overwhelmed everything else. You cried out, your voice blending with Cillian's, rising to a fever pitch as you both neared completion.

"I'm coming!" you cried, your body convulsing around him as he thrust harder, deeper, and faster, each stroke bringing you closer to the edge. The pressure built within you, intensifying with every passing second. Your grip on his shoulders tightened, nails digging into his skin. you shouted, your voice hoarse. 

You came hard and fast and Cillian redoubled his efforts, his cock slamming into you with renewed vigor. Each thrust sent a jolt of pleasure shooting through him, finally sending him over the edge. He groaned loudly, his body stiffening as he emptied his seed deep inside you.

"Ah," he gasped, collapsing on top of you, his sweat-covered body heavy and sticky.

After catching his breath, he pulled out of you, his cum mixing with your juices as it dripped onto the sheets.

"Damn," he muttered, kissing your shoulder. "That was amazing."

You could only manage a weak smile, exhausted from the intense encounter while, unbeknownst to you, a hidden camera had recorded your every move.

Still, lying beneath Cillian, you remained blissfully unaware of the intrusion, instead focusing on the residual sensations coursing through your body.

"You okay?" Cillian asked, concern evident in his voice.

"Yeah," you managed to reply weakly, still struggling to catch your breath.

"Good, because I am not done with you yet," he teased, propping himself up on his elbows and staring down at you with a mischievous grin.

"Oh no," you laughed, playfully pushing him away. "How about dinner first and then we you can fuck me all night long," you teased, wriggling your eyebrows suggestively. Cillian chuckled deeply, his eyes twinkling mischievously.

"It's a deal," he agreed, planting a quick kiss on your forehead before helping you up from the bed.

"Come on, let's go eat," he urged, leading you out of the bedroom and back into the kitchen.

To be continued...

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