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hellfire--cult · 2 months

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Johnny Storm x Fem!Reader

wc: 6.7k+

summary: Johnny grows infatuated with you, something he never thought was going to happen to him, at least for a long while. He liked being single, but then you came along, and all he could think about was you... then you got kidnapped thanks to him, and he felt so guilty for it... but not everything was as it seemed.

warnings: +18 smut, p in v (no protection), roughness, hate fucking, some fluffiness, branding of skin, description of getting burnt, slapping, some violence, porn with plot

a/n: I had this vision that needed to be written cause it would not leave my fucking mind, and this was the only chance i would be able to write something like this. I will clarify, this is my first ever MCU fic, and I do not believe I will write anything else for it, at least not now. If you are from the MCU fandom, and decide to follow me, don't expect more really... i mainly write stranger things, i was just... too haunted with this image...

Anyways, I love Joseph Quinn, so I pictured HIS Johnny Storm for this (yes, he triggered the thots.)

thank u to @andvys and @ghost-proofbaby for proofreading this and helping with my editing cause i never wrote marvel and i needed their opinion, i love both thank u

Enjoy and don't forget to reblog!

BRAND ME

When Johnny Storm saw you for the first time, he thought Cupid fired an arrow his way.

Now, it wasn’t the best of situations of course, he had to save you from a slight altercation regarding some of Doctor Doom’s subjects wreaking havoc in the city and all that, and he saved you by beating up the guy that held you hostage in spirits of saving his ass.

You had thanked him, smiled at him and he may or may have not thought of having you as one of his conquests. He was known for it, you absolutely knew about it, but he couldn’t really help himself when he started talking to you. He first asked to meet up with you privately and you immediately rejected his advances, surprising him, sure, but not stopping him, so you offered to meet up with him for a coffee after work.

Coffee was not something he did often. It was usually drinks, and to be fair, no women really ever said no to him. Sure he messed up a few times, but who hasn’t? Still, sharing a coffee with you didn’t sound like a bad idea. It was different, but different didn’t always mean bad.

So you gave him the address to your building, and at 1 PM sharp on Tuesday, he met up with you right outside of it. You were wearing the typical office attire, skirt to the knees, a nice blouse, a comfortable jacket and he still thought you looked absolutely beautiful. Sitting down at the coffee shop, you two talked, and talked, and he found out so much about you.

You were an only child, and you have been working since you could remember. You lived alone, you liked to cook, and you absolutely disliked pickles. Every small thing he found out about you, he reciprocated with a fact about himself, without giving much away of course.

One coffee date turned into two. Then four. Then, counting didn’t matter anymore.

For a month he has been seeing you, and never once has he made a move on you. It’s not that he didn’t want to… He absolutely wanted to. But you were different. You were completely different from all the flings he had, and he even tried to have one after meeting you and it felt pointless. He didn’t know himself any longer, even Reed got a little worried from all the sneaking around he did, but Johnny couldn’t help it. He couldn’t help it when it came to you.

You were magnificent, a breath of fresh air to be around with. You always greeted him with a smile to your face and he’s never felt more alive when you did. He, of course, had to be careful with you. Not because of trust, but of what might happen to you if you were seen being involved with one of the Fantastic Four. He always picked out private places for the two of you to meet, away from public eyes.

Coffee shops turned into take-out coffees and parks. Talks that happened at your home’s balcony. Him looking for a comforting shoulder after a long day of being a hero. He was always careful in keeping you away from public. In keeping you a secret. In keeping you safe.

But not careful enough.

When you didn’t answer your phone that day, his heart stopped. You always answered. He tried and tried but you just wouldn’t pick up and he became restless. He flew out of the headquarters, not caring for the waves people gave him, with your apartment as his only destination. He felt himself growing cold despite being up in flames, flying, the horrible feeling that something happened to you making him want to puke.

And when he arrived at your home, he froze. Your balcony’s sliding door was open and what he saw inside made his whole world shatter. Your things were all thrown to the floor. Your furniture was destroyed. Your pictures were all broken and shattered. And then, as he put a foot into your apartment, he saw you.

You were breathing heavily as you lay on the floor, facing down, and your hair was all over your face. He rushed towards you, jumping over everything that was on the floor, and immediately dropped to his knees in order to scoop you up in his arms and turn you. He pushed the hair off your face as his heart beat loudly in his chest, only for it to come to a stop as he saw the open wound on your eyebrow and the bruise that was starting to form all around it.

“Crap– fuck!” He felt his world plummeting to the ground as he tried shaking you awake, calling out your name, and he sighed with relief as your eyes slowly opened, only for your face to contort into a wince.

“What…?” He shook his head at you and held onto your form, one arm underneath the back of your knees while the other was wrapped behind your back. He got up on his two feet with ease as he rushed towards the balcony. You made a sound of discomfort as you were moved around, and all he wanted was to keep you safe right now. He needed to take you with him. He cannot leave you alone, not when all of this is probably his fault.

“It’ll be quick, I promise…” He took a deep breath as he controlled his flames temperature, ensuring it would not go towards his arms. Your eyes looked up to meet his, his eyes that were now fiery orbs, looking down at you with sadness displayed on his eyebrows. You whined through the pain again and he immediately leaped out of your balcony.

You could feel the heat off his body, but he made sure to make it as less uncomfortable as he could, but he still knew he had to be quick. He was angry, desperate, and that wasn’t making the flames be any less intense. He knew he was gonna break a rule, but he couldn’t give two shits for the consequences he might face with his family. His sister was going to kill him, but she will understand. They all will have to understand.

He sneaked you in, heading straight to his room, laying you down on his bed. The rage he felt with himself was scorching him from the inside out, so he took the top of his suit as fast as he could and rushed towards the bathroom to get one of his medical kits.

He aided you, cleaned your wound, put the butterfly strip over it, and even gave you medicine for any impending headaches. He checked for other wounds besides the one on your eye, but there was nothing else, at least from the places where your clothes did not cover you.

An hour passed and you were slowly coming back to your senses. You opened your eyes to see him walking back and forth, pacing, worry displayed on his features as he seemed deep in thought. You slowly sat up on the bed, looking around, wincing slightly thanks to the throbbing in your head.

“Johnny?” Your voice was small but it was enough for his head to snap towards you and rush to the bed, sitting on the edge right next to you. His hand came up to caress the side of face, making sure to not touch the bruise on your eye.

“Hey…” His eyes were filled with fear, anger, sadness, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down in his throat as your eyes roamed all over the room.

“Where… am I?” Your eyes found his again and he gulped, thumb caressing your cheek softly.

“My room… I– I couldn’t leave you alone…” Your eyes widened for just a second to then look down at your hands. Your breathing turned heavy as your eyes filled with tears, shaking your head at him.

“I– I thought it was you… I opened the sliding door and– They wanted information–” Your voice was cut off with a sob and Johnny saw how you winced in pain, your hand flying to press onto your temple and he quickly shushed you, scooching closer to you, lifting his hand to grab yours gently and move it away from your face.

“Don’t touch it– I… I seriously thought I was careful in keeping you safe and hidden… I screwed up.” Your eyes met his, seeing the guilt that was flooding inside, knowing he was torturing himself because of it. His lips were downturned, disappointment written all over. You shook your head at him, your hand grasping his.

“I don’t regret a minute of it…” His eyes met yours as you guided your gaze around the room, frowning slightly as your headache seemed to start to drift away. “So this is your room…” “Fantastic Four headquarters… nobody knows I sneaked you in, but I really couldn’t care less. I won’t let you out of my sight, at least until whoever is stalking me is captured.” You turned towards him again, a soft smile on your lips that made his heart combust in its own flames.

“Probably a fan.” Even now you still joked to him, when you were the one hurt. You were too beautiful. Too incredible, even for his own good. He should be careful with his moves, he should let you know how different you are to his other flings… but his body betrayed him as his free hand came towards your cheek, holding it gently, and his lips surged forward, slotting right onto yours.

Your eyes were wide as a surprised gasp fell from your lips, but you reciprocated that kiss, even if a bit hesitant at first. His lips moved with yours as his body started rising in temperature which he was trying to keep at a warm number. He could easily control his temperature but with you, he was finding it hard to do so.

He was happy because you were not pulling away from the kiss. You were moving into it, following his lead, not even stopping it after your tongues started to dance together. He wanted you. He definitely wanted to show you just how special you are but– You were hurt, and he can’t do that to you now… so he pulled away. Your breaths were heavy as you looked at each other and he rubbed your cheek with his thumb.

“I’ll tell everyone tomorrow you’re staying here for a while. You need safety, and I can give that to you… Just stay with me…” He held you so gently, afraid of you running away, or disappearing right before him. You licked your lips as you nodded slowly at him, to which he responded with a satisfied smile. He leaned forward, pecking your lips once more before getting up which alarmed you, getting hold of his hand.

“Where are you going?” Your voice was small and he thought he was going to break listening to it.

“I’m not going anywhere, just going to get you some clothes for you to sleep in, baby.” Your eyes widened at the new petname, but Johnny noticed how you tried to look away from embarrassment, and he found you too cute. He will definitely protect you. He won’t let whoever is looking for him, or his team, hurt you.

But when he fell asleep and cuddled up to you after having some tea with you before bed, he didn’t expect to be awoken in the middle of the night to a ring of his cell phone. He was startled, sitting up on the bed quickly only to realize you were not by his side. He looked around frantically and grabbed his phone from the night table next to his bed. He answered it, getting up from the bed to walk towards his bathroom in hopes of seeing you in there.

“Hello?” And all he heard was heavy breathing on the other side until a raspy, robotic voice talked.

“How does it feel to wake up alone?” And Johnny’s blood drained, evaporated, and he knows you are not in the building. How did it happen? How? There were cameras, security, detectors, how?

“What the fuck did you do to her?” His voice was coming from in between his teeth, like a growl, a hiss, a threat. The other voice only laughed, igniting Johnny’s anger even more than before.

“Come find out. We’re at her old apartment. We have to talk, Johnny, so come alone.” And like that, the line clicked. He was breathing heavily as he looked down at his phone and his hand shook as he grunted, his eyes igniting in yellow as the hand that was holding his phone set aflame, destroying the device before he threw it across the room, making it hit and for the plastic to splash onto the wall.

He ran his hands through his hair, wanting to rip it all out, to burn the whole building down. If he didn’t tell anyone, he might die, but if he does, then you… He couldn’t. He has a chance, even if alone. He has to save you, he can’t let them have you, he can’t let you suffer because of him.

So he stepped out to his balcony, his body engulfed in flames as he leaped into the sky, headed straight to your apartment. He was trying to go as fast as he could, his breathing heavy with anticipation as he swerved through the buildings. He finally got onto your balcony, the sliding doors were open again but when he looked inside, he couldn’t help but feel confused.

He took a few steps in as his flames subdued, and all your furniture was gone. All your pictures, even the cabinets… it was just empty. Empty except for the big windows that were on the side. What happened?

A chuckle coming from one corner startled him. It was the robotic voice that slowly transformed into a female one. A voice he knew too well. A voice that never chuckled in that manner, always be it a giggle, or a little scoff, but never… this. He turned to face it, and his eyes widened as the figure stepped into the small bit of light that came through the windows thanks to the night sky.

“Aren’t you a little naive Johnny?”

And there, in front of him, was you. Face hard, wearing a simple cocktail black dress, some black heels… nothing like what you normally wear. You didn’t look dizzy because of your bruise, the butterfly strip he applied to you hours ago was still there. It was you… but at the same time, it wasn’t.

“W-What…?” He stuttered, not feeling the tips of his fingers as he looked at how you slowly walked towards him, throwing a device to the ground, a voice-changing device.

“I really didn’t think you would take me to your headquarters. Not this quickly at least.” You sighed, looking out the window as you kept talking. “I had a whole large plan for it, but you just had to make it THAT easy.”

You finished with a giggle, the giggle that he knew too well. The giggle you directed to him many times when he told you stories about Sue and him. Stories about how he made a fool out of himself on a few dates. The giggle that he liked so much… all for it to be a fucking lie. You–

“You lied to me… You–” He felt his heart twist as your eyes turned to meet his once more. He really isn’t lucky, isn’t he? The first time he feels something genuine and he gets stepped on by the universe. You took a step towards him as you put your hands behind your back.

“Not all the time. I can promise that, but my boss will be glad to hear I got into the headquarters in such a short period of time…” Your eyes studied his face, seeing how his features turned from shock to anger, slowly, making a wicked grin appear on your face. “Aw… are you mad?”

“What the fuck do you think?” His voice turned low, and it almost made you freeze in your place, but you kept talking, your head high.

“You look cute when mad. I wish I could take a picture right now–”

“Stop–”

“I would hang it up, frame it… Name it ‘My best show yet’.” Johnny felt his body start to burn, and he had to try to keep the flames from igniting out of his suit, but each word you spat out, made it more and more difficult for him to hold himself back.

“I said stop–”

“I just didn’t think it would be this quick. Who would've thought that Johnny Storm would be so desperate for actual love? So much, he throws himself head first like an idiot–”

A hand came to grab the back of your head, fingers gripping onto your scalp, grabbing your hair, and yanking your head backwards with no restraint, no care. And suddenly your eyes were looking at the Human Torch. His eyes were yellow flames, his face, his hair, his body, everything was on fire and it was burning you. He was baring his teeth at you, your face illuminated by his flames, and you noticed the hand holding the back of your head was not lit.

“I could kill you right now. I could easily burn you to a crisp for no one to find your body.” You trembled under his grasp, and your breathing turned a little heavy as you stared into his flaming eyes.

“But you won’t…” Your reply was soft, making the flames go down, making you breathe out in relief, feeling the cool air again on your body and face. He was still glaring, his nose slightly scrunched up in anger, in disgust. “Approaching you romantically was never the intention.”

That made him tilt his head at you, his eyebrow twitching at the mention of romance. Of how he was so close to having it but–

“Why tell me this? Why not keep the fucking act until you have more?” And you didn’t answer him, still under his grasp as you looked up at him. He couldn’t describe what he saw in your eyes, but he knew that it wasn’t hatred. He knew that there was a feeling that you shouldn’t be experiencing but you couldn’t help it.

So you stayed silent, swallowing as you kept your eyes on him. You saw him tremble slightly and he raised his free hand, making your gaze turn to it as the flames enveloped it all, to the tip of his fingers. It wasn’t a massive flame, more like embers, small, yet damaging.

You felt anything but scared of him, and he knows it, yet his anger fuels him in ways he cannot describe, and he wants to show you. He wants to show you just how fucking angry, enraged, he is. He wants to hurt you, burn you, engrave himself deep on your skin and in your mind.

“Say you don’t want this.” He needs to know if he connected the dots right. Why tell him? Why tell him who you truly were? Why not keep faking it to get more out of him? Did you take whatever you needed in the short period he kept you there? Those few little hours…

You remained silent, looking into his eyes as you struggled in his grasp slightly. Your right hand flew to the wrist holding the back of your head, which only made him pull on your hair once more, making you wince. It was another warning, another chance for you to push him away.

But you didn’t.

His right hand lifted up to reveal that it was slowly being covered in small embers, not yet flames, and he pressed it on your back. Your eyes widened when you felt heat engulf your back, the scent of burning fabric filling your nostrils. You winced when the burning turned a bit painful, his eyes not leaving your face.

He was still scowling at you, his eyes traveling to your exposed neck as his hand kept moving on your back, making small holes in it, the embers spreading slightly. He knew he was burning you, but it doesn’t compare to what you did to him. You will heal from these superficial burns.

You wanted to tell him to hurry up, but you knew that you weren’t the one with control right now, so you had to be careful with your words. You yelped when his hand started moving to your front, leaving embers fluttering over the black satin. It was burning easily, the material too thin, too flimsy.

His eyes caught onto yours once more. You were breathing heavily, waiting for his next move. He clenched his jaw as the memories of those picnics filled his head. Those movie nights. Those nights when you told him about your family. You showed him those pictures that were on your wall that you probably faked. Those pictures were all fake.

His fist grabbed onto the front of your dress and pulled on it as he grunted from the force. Your dress ripped easily away from your body thanks to the holes that were burned on your back and side. Your body will probably have scarring, burnt marks, or red spots, but you couldn’t help the excitement in your body when he held your torn dress in his hand.

His eyes turned to it for a second and then back at you. You saw how they glowed in a deep yellow and his hand engulfed into flames, your dress catching on fire and burning into ashes in three seconds. His eyes returned to their natural color as his hand dropped, and then he could finally take a look at your half-naked form.

You took the opportunity of his distraction to push him away, making him rip his hand off your hair, looking at you with surprise and anger. You were breathing heavily in just your bra and thong, a matching black set, looking at him, the anger in you also coming out to light after how he treated you.

Anger, but no hatred. Not from your side… nor his.

So you took a sharp intake of breath as you lunged forward, wrapping your arms around his shoulders as you slammed your lips against his, connecting your chest to his. He groaned at the kiss, his arms immediately wrapping around your frame, his lips moving against yours instantly, like a starved man. Weeks of wanting this with you, dreaming of having you, but he never thought it would be like this.

You bit his bottom lip, yanking a bit on it with your teeth, provoking a protest on his part but you silenced it by sliding your tongue into his mouth. You moaned in satisfaction as his right hand slid downwards, grabbing onto your ass cheek and squeezing tight. You responded by raising your leg up, thigh against his hip, while his hand moved, leaving your behind to graze your thigh, gripping it tightly to hold you in place.

His hips pressed against your core, earning him a moan from you. You felt his buckle against your clothed cunt as well as his hardness as he rutted himself on you, moaning into your mouth. One of your hands went towards his hair, running your fingers through it and then you gripped tightly, pulling his head backwards and away from the kiss. He hissed at the action, his eyes connecting with your defiant ones.

“Doesn’t feel good, does it?” Your voice came out through your teeth, a taunt. He gave a tilt of his head as if asking if you were really defying him right now. You could almost see the smoke coming out of his nostrils as he huffed in anger, his hands flying to the back of your thighs, pushing you upwards with his strength, making you yelp slightly at the sudden movement.

Your legs instantly wrapped around his waist so you wouldn’t fall, but then your back was slammed against the window, with such force that you were amused by how strong the glass was. You whimpered at the coldness against your naked back and ass, eyes glaring back at him.

“You think you have the right to talk back to me right now?” One of his hands left your thigh so it could get between the two of you. His lips reconnected to yours before you could even reply back to him, and you heard how he started undoing his buckle, that ‘F4’ shaped stupid belt he had.

You felt him move underneath you and you heard the rustling of clothes and then something pressing against your wet thong, making you whimper into the kiss. You pulled away to look down in between the two of you, and he had pulled his pants and underwear mid-thighs, enough to let his cock free, which was now pressing against you.

He got hold of the elastic of your thong, pinching it between his thumb and index finger, pulling it away from your body. You then saw a tiny and quick flame set fire and it quickly snapped the elastic apart, making your thong drop from your cunt, left to dangle thanks to the scraps still holding onto your other thigh.

You were exposed to him now, and then he pressed himself against your aching clit, rutting his hips against yours, causing a beautiful friction that left you moaning, throwing your head back, thumping against the glass.

He groaned as he looked at your exposed neck, moving forward so he could bite on the side of it, making you wince as your clit kept being hit with the ridge of his dick. It was hot. Literally hot. Not even warm temperature, it was burning and you wondered how that would feel inside of you.

He was coating his cock with your wetness, and he couldn’t be bothered with foreplay, he didn’t care for it, and you didn’t either, not that you needed it. You’ve been wet the moment he gripped your hair. So he pulled his hips back, letting the tip of his cock kiss your clit for a brief second before it caught on your entrance.

A voiceless moan got caught on your throat, where his teeth still remained, as he slowly pushed inside and– it was a perfect burn and stretch. He was perfect as he seethed himself inside, your walls fluttering in need around him as his mouth unlatched from your throat in order to look at how your face contorted at each inch of him.

“Good. That shut you up.” He held back the groans as he watched how your eyes were wide, looking in between the two of you now, seeing how his cock was disappearing inside of you. He wanted to hate you. He wished he could. It wasn’t fair that even now all he could think about was you, even if it wasn’t like before.

He cracked his neck as he felt his control slipping away, afraid of letting his flames burst out without his intention. He slammed his hand on the glass, right next to your head, as his left one gripped your thigh tightly and he struck his hips forward, bottoming out inside of you in one forceful thrust.

You gasped as your eyes met his. He was deliciously deep. There was a little bit of discomfort due to not having any prep but it was worth it. He was breathing heavily as he looked at you and your eyes danced with his in uncertainty, in rage, in sadness, in confusion. He was letting you adjust, or maybe he was just catching his breath, either way, you didn’t think you deserved it.

“You’re gonna cum already Johnny boy?” He gave you a glare, which only made you smirk at him. You didn’t deserve the kindness, at least not from him. He started pulling out of you, only to roughly slam back in, causing you to choke on your own moan. You felt it in your throat almost. And then, he set the bruising pace. No mercy, slamming into you like a wild man.

The glass behind you shook, the metal hinges making loud sounds as he kept smashing his hips against yours over and over again, not leaving a single second for conscious thought, not leaving a single second for even a memory to slip through the both of you. All he wanted was to pour his anger out, all he needed was to show you how you made him feel then and how you made him feel now.

The sound of skin slapping echoed through the now empty apartment, an apartment where he spent a few nights with your company. He growled at the memory, his hips picking up a pace as your moans raised in pitch, your fingers digging into his shoulders, scratching on him while your eyes filled with tears. Was it pleasure? He didn’t know.

“Not acting so smartass now, huh?” You choked out a moan as you tried to speak but he was piercing you right where you needed. Your g-spot was being abused at each sharp thrust of his. Punch. Punch. Punch.

You felt your body heating up, more than any other time you slept with someone, feeling as if you were sweating more than you should and you knew it was him. You knew he was raising the temperature of his body, including the one in the entire room. Your forehead was sweaty, your neck, your chest that was still covered in your bra that you now need to rip off because it was just too fucking hot.

You lowered a hand and pressed it against the glass, right next to you, and you grunted as you pushed against it, forcing him to stumble backwards. He fell to the ground, holding onto you, his back hitting the floor, his dick never slipping out of you as you landed on him, which caused you to choke.

You were breathing heavily as you looked down at him, who only winced slightly at the sudden hit on his ass and back. Your hands were now on his chest, still covered with his suit. You stared at the number 4 logo, glaring at it, and then your eyes found his. He was looking at you now with furrowed brows, sad instead of angry ones.

You didn’t deserve those.

Your hands went towards your back, unclasping your bra off and ripping it off your body. A sigh of relief escapes you as the air hits the sweat that’s on your tits. Your hips started circling against him, slowly, and he threw his head back as his hands gripped your hips, his digits digging into your skin.

Your belly coiled as you started rising yourself up and then slam back down again, knees pressing against the hard floor, knowing you will be bruised tomorrow, but you could give two shits about that right now. His hands traveled upwards, grabbing onto your breasts and everywhere he touched just left a lingering feeling of warmth, of burning.

You threw your head back as his fingers pinched your nipples, making your belly coil as you slammed yourself down again and circled your hips against him, making the tip of his cock rub against your g-spot repeatedly. He moaned your name in pleasure, the first time he did during the night and you looked down at him.

“You sure that’s my name?” And his eyes clashed with yours in new found anger, sitting up as his left hand gripped your waist, while the rest remained on your hip. His face came close to yours as his words became venomous.

“I wonder how many names you had to come up with. With how many you had to whore yourself to in order to get information for your boss. Whoever that might be.” And him calling you a slut was not something you expected. You didn’t want him to think that. You became angry. Not at him, but yet, you had to direct it towards someone.

So you slapped him.

His head was turned with wide eyes and you had to pretend you weren’t shocked at your own actions. You looked at your hand and then back at him, opening your mouth to say something but as he slowly turned to face you again, you knew you had fucked up. You saved yourself by talking once more.

“I didn’t jump your bones. You jumped mine, back in your room. Who’s the actual whore here, Johnny?” And you let him have the small memory of that innocent kiss he gave you. Of that kiss that made him so happy you had reciprocated, only for that memory to be shattered, tainted. His glare turned murderous as he looked at you.

You started feeling the areas he was grabbing you at become hotter and hotter. Your breathing became heavy in nervousness as your head turned to look at his hands which were becoming redder by the second. He laid back down and pushed his hips up, making you raise yourself a bit on your knees and before you could say something, he started slamming himself inside of you once more.

Your mind became mush in an instant, your moans choking up your voice as he hit your insides over and over again, the slapping of skin loud and quick. Your belly started turning, the elastic band about to snap as your hands dug into his chest. And then, you screamed as pain took you out of your pleasure palace.

The smell of burning filled the room, very slightly, faint, but still there. You looked down at where he was holding you, and his hands were now almost as red bright as metal against fire. He didn’t stop his pounding either, growling as he looked at you with his yellow irises, filled with flames.

“This is your reminder of who you betrayed. For you to remember me.”

Tears fell down your cheeks as you felt the pain of your skin being burnt, of being branded by him, and then your climax hit you out of nowhere. You choked out a whimper, a cry of his name as your walls tightened around him, pulsating. His balls tightened with the need for his own release, and he cooled his hands once more but kept them in place on your body.

He groaned loudly at your tightness and he looked at how tears fell down your face as well as the drool that had pooled in the corner of your mouth. He cursed under his breath and slammed his hips upwards one more time, completely seething himself inside as his cum filled your insides and you felt the heat of it. You could feel it.

He was breathing heavily as he lowered his hips, his hands keeping you in place so you wouldn’t lower on him. He hissed as he pulled out of you, his cum already dripping down from your hole, falling on the red tip of his cock. Your eyes looked down at his hands as they slowly parted from your skin, a squelching sound following after.

You were bleeding in some places, layers of your skin successfully burnt with his handprints. They were hurting you, they were very painful, and you… you couldn’t be mad at him for them. Your eyes connected to his as he lay there looking at his own hands, trembling at the sight.

Pieces of your burnt skin were stuck to his hands, on his palms. He lost control. He didn’t want to hurt you like this. You saw the guilt that displayed on his face and you raised your hand, wanting to touch him and tell him–

“Shit…” You winced before you could say anything else. He snapped out of his thoughts and sat up, pushing you to sit on the floor next to him. Without another word, he got up and you looked as he pulled his pants back up and buckled his belt once more.

“I guess we’ll see each other again now that you’ve entered the headquarters.” He was asleep while you were there. He was sure you took something, and it was just a matter of time for you to strike the building or him. He walked towards the sliding doors, and you moved on your place, wanting to go after him, but the sharp pain of the burns made you stay put.

“Johnny… wait.” Your voice was choked, but he turned around to face you again. You felt the room becoming cooler, and you didn’t want it to be that temperature… but it had to do for now. “My name… I didn’t lie about my name.”

His eyebrow twitched in confusion at that. Should he believe you? Should he trust you on that one? He didn’t know, he didn’t want to find out, he didn’t want to see you again, but he knew that one was inevitable. He turned away from you and you saw how his whole body turned into flames and flew out of the balcony, leaving you bruised, branded and alone.

In an empty, cold, room.

“It’s been a while since your last report, Chameleon.”

The stupid nickname your boss gave you. You had the ability to infiltrate through people without being spotted. It wasn’t a superpower, just good hiding.

“Got a little bit busy Boss.” Your voice was flat as you looked at how the man turned to look at you. So many people are afraid of this man, but there was something about Doctor Doom that just made you want to laugh.

“I hope that ‘bit busy’ was to get the information we need.” His voice was threatening, menacing as he looked at you through the screen. You gave him a sharp nod.

“Yes, I was planning my next encounter with Storm.” At your report, he gave a small nod of approval. You felt your bandages becoming sticky underneath your oversized sweater. It was about time to change them again, so you had to make this a quick call.

“I see. So, you still didn’t get into the headquarters then?” And you wanted to smile at his question. You wanted to show him how fucked he was, but you held yourself back because you had another plan in action, one that doesn’t include a boss.

“No sir. I require more time to create a bond with him.” He gave a small nod as his sharp tone filled the speakers.

“Get it done.” And the call ended abruptly.

You stared at the black screen, a smile appearing on your face as you slowly got up from the couch, walking towards the windows that were all blacked out. You pressed a button that was on the side and the windows returned to be transparent, showing the city lights in the night.

But what caught your attention was the orange gleam that was far away, still, floating, as if looking your way. You knew it was him. He has been waiting for you to turn the windows transparent once again. You had blacked out the apartment from his view for a whole week. You had refurbished it again, even hung up a real picture this time, the only one in the room.

One of you and him. One that you took at a picnic you had planned for the both of you. One that wasn’t part of the plan. Like the theater. Like the nights spent in this fake apartment. Like the drinks spent on a terrace. But he didn’t know that.

And then you saw him fly away, making your heart plummet to the floor. You winced as you turned to walk towards your kitchen, ready to take care of your wounds. Of his markings. Of his handprints that will permanently stay on your skin.

It was funny. First, you betrayed Johnny, and now you are betraying your boss, someone who might rip you apart the moment he finds out you’ve been lying. Yet, you are more scared of losing the only fire that made you feel alive after a long while.

You’ll keep that flame alive. You have to.

You’ll make sure it does.

end

a/n: um, yeah, the thot was the burning of clothes, like, how was i supposed to do that one with just like, a normal person with no superpowers... with a lighter? not sexy enough.

also, handprints.

ta-ta

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shiroxichigo · 5 days

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Ichigo gets a lot of shit (typically from outside of the Bleach fandom) for being a character whose wants/goals never change from beginning to end of his series. He always wants to protect people (and even though I could argue that he went from only wanting to protect those close to him to wanting to protect everyone he can, that's not the point I'm making with this post).

I think a lot of people who only give Bleach a passing glance fail to see Ichigo's true character growth. It's not about what his goals are or who he's trying to protect, but rather, it's about how he achieves it.

Ichigo is very self-sacrificing in the first third of Bleach. He believes that if the mission is successful, then it doesn't matter how broken or close to death he gets. The mission, saving Rukia (and hurting/killing as few people in the process), is all that matters.

Then, when a part of himself (his inner hollow) emerges, and says "hey yeah no, I'm not letting you get yourself killed and I'm also not letting you hold back against your enemy", Ichigo immediately rejects it.

It's not until he defeats his inner Hollow that we see Ichigo really dive into a fight with the intent to kill. The problem is, once his Hollow is defeated, he thinks that's it. He's freed himself of that part of him and he can go back to being self-sacrificing.

We see this throughout the Hueco Mundo arc. It's why saving Orihime parallels saving Rukia. Ichigo naively thinks he can suppress a part of himself. He bottles it up until it explodes, coming back to haunt him in his fight with Ulquiorra, etc. He learns that side of himself isn't so easily tucked away, and if he recklessly endangers himself, he could end up endangering his friends too. At his own hand, no less.

Then Ichigo discovers he can commit the ultimate sacrifice. Final Getsuga Tenshou. He can throw away these powers and the parts of himself that he doesn't like, and he can get rid of Aizen all in one go. He's lucky that it worked, but only because Kisuke was there.

Then, once Ichigo is powerless, he learns that's not what he really wants. Life doesn't "go back to normal". The can is open, and there's danger out there beyond just Aizen. And Ichigo can't do anything to stop it unless he gets his powers back.

So he does. Then he cuts down the threat to his friends and family. And he doesn't hesitate this time. Yes, he still has compassion for his enemies (he even goes to the Soul Society to ask for Ginjo's body so he can give him a proper burial), but he's learned not to hold back and he's learned that new threats will appear and he'd rather have the power to face them head on.

So then comes TYBW, and Ichigo is facing battles head-on without hesitation. He goes straight to the "bad guys" with the intention of cutting them down. He learns the truth about who his Inner Hollow is, and he accepts it. He's even willing to accept whatever consequences may come from training in the Royal Palace and becoming stronger. He accepts his power and potential fully, and learns that he has what it takes to protect his loved ones with his strength, and not with a sacrifice.

Ultimately, he heals the part of himself that thinks his life is worth less than other people's. He heals the part of himself that blames himself for not protecting his mother (when he was 9!! Like come on Isshin, put the kid in therapy!! Anyway...) He grows into someone who knows his self worth. And I think, for me at least, that makes him one of my favourite protagonists of all time. Because can't most of us relate to feeling worthless at times? And don't we also wanna overcome that?

Thanks for reading my ramble lmao, I'm sure this could have been more elegantly written but I'm very sleepy and just wanted to get my thoughts out there.

#bleach #ichigo kurosaki #hollow ichigo #zangetsu #bleach anime #bleach manga #bleach tybw

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kallypsowrites · 1 month

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I feel like I've seen so many TV cancellation announcements for stuff that I might've watched but now might not. And it really just emphasizes how much the current system is eating itself.

Binge culture means that people are expected to consume a show right as it drops. Because so many shows are binged now, even weekly shows are held to the same standard. If they don't perform well during the initial release, they are written off because binge numbers are the numbers that matter.

So you get more and more people who are afraid to get invested in shows because it might get canceled on a cliffhanger. Because of that, they don't tune in to watch something until they're sure its going to continue. So the next bingeable show gets less viewers. It gets canceled. More people join the 'I'm not going to watch yet because I'm afraid to get invested' crowd. Less people watch TV.

And it sucks because people like this are often the most ardent fans of a work--the ones who will write fanfiction and make fanart and write long analytical posts convincing people to watch a show. The people who will make a new show their whole personality because that's how hyperfixation works. I am amongst that crowd. I can't let myself get invested in something anymore unless I know that I'm going to get emotional payoff.

TV execs have been continuously breaking trust with fandom spaces for the past several years. They don't give shows a chance to find their legs, to grow an audience, to gain a cult following. They kill something in it's cradle in service to the numbers.

And it's not just the fans who suffer because of this. It's writer's rooms. I'm going to school right now for screenwriting and its BAD out there. So many writers who pour their heart and soul into a concept only to never get to bring it to fruition. There's no room for slow burns. For thoughtful storytelling. For trusting the audience. There's no room for real creativity. So the shows that do get renewed are often competent but uninspired or sequel/franchise content. Cause that's what gets views.

I cannot imagine how disheartening it is as a writer to start so many projects and never get to finish them. Think about your own writing. If you were working on a fanfiction but knew at any moment someone could stop you updating because you aren't getting enough hits/kudos, would you find joy in that anymore? I sure wouldn't.

I believe that a lot of the best storytelling is going to come out of indie spaces in the next few years--writers and artists moving outside of Hollywood and making their own low budget stories. Because it's almost impossible to thrive within the current system.

It's not the writer's fault. It's not the fan's fault. It's the way TV has become. And its going to crash and burn and I'm sure execs will find a way to blame anything but the system they created.

#writing #tv shows #my lady jane #the acolyte #rant post #shadow and bone

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secretmellowblog · 8 days

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Jean Valjean's Canon Toxic Unhealthiness around Romantic Love

( alternate titles: “Does Jean Valjean is Gay?”, or “Does Jean Valjean is Asexual?” Or: “Why is it so difficult to slap an identity/sexuality label onto Jean Valjean?” Or “LGBTPTSD+”)

I was looking at the responses to this poll about whether people interpret Jean Valjean as gay/asexual/straight or something else….and it got me thinking again about Jean Valjean’s canonical intense, complex, awful, toxic, and overwrought emotions around identity/ romantic love. I want to talk about that for a bit because I think it often gets overlooked in fandom!

I've noticed that Les Mis fandom/analysis often tends to interpret Jean Valjean as being far more content, more "at peace with himself," and more "comfortable in his own skin" than he ever is within the novel. This is also a common change in adaptations. The musical's version of Jean Valjean is great-- but he also seems a lot more self-actualized, more like he's gotten himself completely "figured out" by the end of the story. Other, bad, Les Mis adaptations — the adaptations that generally portray Jean Valjean a worse more violent person — also usually make Jean Valjean more confident in himself, more confident in his own feelings/desires, more certain that he’s entitled to certain things, and more willing to demand or take what he wants.

But one major aspect of book Jean Valjean's personality is that he does not have a healthy relationship with anything about himself. He has a tortured broken relationship with his own identity. He repeatedly thinks about “Jean Valjean” as a person outside of himself, a person who he finds frightening, repulsive, savage, and horrible— like a wild animal he needs to sedate, or beat into submission. He is obsessed with self-denial and self-repression. He is fixated on the idea that he is subhuman, that he is not allowed to want things or to pursue having any kinds of relationships with other people-- and that the most heroic thing he can do is "grab himself by the collar” and violently force himself to stay away from the things he wants. He is desperate to be loved and fixated on being unworthy of love and on denying himself love. He is absolutely not at peace with his identity: to paraphrase Jean Valjean in one of the later chapters, he believes he can only gain inner peace by “eviscerating his own entrails.”

He is never truly content with who he is, what he wants, or what kind of love he wants— and he never learns to be. The novel ends with him cutting himself off from his only family, breaking ties with the only person who loves him, and essentially slowly killing himself out of self-loathing.

There are other characters in Les Mis who seem very content with who they are and what they want. Enjolras is self-assured in his identity, and doesn’t appear to feel like there is any kind of love that is missing from his life. Whether you interpret him as gay or ace or trans or w/e, book!Enjolras is written as someone who is extremely self-assured and has a loving support system that is enough to keep him happy. But I don’t think that’s true for Jean Valjean at all XD.

And that’s why it's hard to apply labels like “aromantic” or “ace” or gay/straight/etc to Jean Valjean, when talking about his canon characterization. Those labels imply the person has a basic level of comfort with acknowledging their own desires/lack of desire/identity. And Jean Valjean never achieves that level of comfort. What “label” do you give to someone whose relationship with their identity is “I do not belong in a family, I have no right to want things, I have no right to be happy, I am outside of life, and I will never be at peace until I eviscerate my own entrails?” Is there a “self-disembowelment" pride flag? XD I've seen a lot of interpretations that go "Jean Valjean never expresses any interest in romance, he's perfectly content just to have his relationship with his daughter" but I honestly don't think that's true. Jean Valjean tries to content himself with having only Cosette. But part of why everything explodes so catastrophically in the end of the novel is because he needs more than just a paternal relationship. He doesn’t try to have a “normal” father-daughter relationship with Cosette, he tries to force his relationship with Cosette to be literally everything and everyone to him, for her to be his entire world: and it doesn’t work.

There’s a passage in the novel that talks about how all the love Valjean is capable of ends up being suppressed/sublimated into his relationship with Cosette. The love of a brother, of a friend, of a father, of a husband, the love of everything he is capable of, gets repressed so that he can throw every part of himself into being a father. There are Bad les mis adaptations that incorrectly misinterpret that passage to mean that Jean Valjean is incestuous/grooming Cosette. But in context, that’s not what the passage means at all.

The passage specifies very explicitly that Jean Valjean “did not love Cosette otherwise than as a father,” that “no marriage was possible between them,” that his feelings for her are absolutely paternal. But the passage does show how Jean Valjean is doing a very different unhealthy thing: he’s relying on Cosette to fill every single emotional void in his life.

He’s relying on parenthood to fill the grief/emptiness left behind by all the other kinds of love that he has wanted, but never been given.

To quote a bit of that passage:

Jean Valjean did not love Cosette otherwise than as a father (…) Let the reader recall the situation of heart which we have already indicated. No marriage was possible between them; not even that of souls; and yet, it is certain that their destinies were wedded. With the exception of Cosette, that is to say, with the exception of a childhood, Jean Valjean had never, in the whole of his long life, known anything of that which may be loved. The passions and loves which succeed each other had not produced in him those successive green growths, tender green or dark green, which can be seen in foliage which passes through the winter and in men who pass fifty. In short, and we have insisted on it more than once, all this interior fusion, all this whole, of which the sum total was a lofty virtue, ended in rendering Jean Valjean a father to Cosette. A strange father, forged from the grandfather, the son, the brother, and the husband, that existed in Jean Valjean; a father in whom there was included even a mother; a father who loved Cosette and adored her, and who held that child as his light, his home, his family, his country, his paradise.

Jean Valjean reminds me of a Failmode I’ve seen in a lot of different real-life parents? There are parents who cope with their own hard lives by telling themselves that parenthood is their sole reason for being alive, and who obsess over their child’s success as their only source of purpose, meaning, love, happiness, community, and validation. But it’s a bad idea to rely on one child to provide the emotional support that should be shared by friends, parents, siblings, every possible loved one, etc etc—- One child can’t actually heal you from your trauma, be a replacement for your broken relationships, pull you out of your grief, save you from your adult loneliness, etc etc etc etc.

When I see the common interpretation that Jean Valjean is perfectly content just to be the father of Cosette, I think of this line:

Thus when he saw that the end had absolutely come, that she was escaping from him, that she was slipping from his hands, that she was gliding from him, like a cloud, like water, when he had before his eyes this crushing proof: “another is the goal of her heart, another is the wish of her life; there is a dearest one, I am no longer anything but her father, I no longer exist”; when he could no longer doubt, when he said to himself: “She is going away from me!” the grief which he felt surpassed the bounds of possibility. To have done all that he had done for the purpose of ending like this! And the very idea of being nothing!

On one hand, the terrible Les mis adaptations that portray Valjean as Incest Creep are incorrect and wrong. On the other hand, though, Jean Valjean IS unhealthy about Cosette— just in a different and actually sympathetic way.

He has made fatherhood his only purpose, to replace every other purpose he could have in life. So he can’t be “just Cosette’s father.” He can’t imagine her becoming an adult and leaving the nest, like children do. What does he have if he’s not taking care of her? What is his purpose in life if she doesn’t need him to be her parent? He's not just being her father, he's relying on her to be his entire reason to exist. He hasn't been allowing himself to have things outside of her.

And speaking of things outside of Cosette: segue time. This post was supposed to be about Jean Valjean and romance, so let's switch gears and talk about his canon 'romantic experiences' more:

We’re told that in his youth he “never had a sweetheart” because he “never had time to be in love.” There is no indication that Jean Valjean never wanted to be in love. The opposite is implied. Hugo frames it as a tragedy that Jean Valjean’s does not experience young love; it’s the horror of poverty taking yet another thing from him.

Within prison, Valjean is “gloomy” and “chaste;” when he traumadumps to Montparnasse about it, he talks about women looking on galley slaves with horror and disgust. Romance, at least “normal” heterosexual romance, is no longer something that is permitted for him. Jean Valjean knows very little about romance/love/sex and it repeatedly messes up his life. He spends 19 years in the all-male environment of prison, then about a decade in the almost-all-female environment of the convent. He has very little experience with how men and women are supposed to interact. The oppression Fantine faces as a sex worker, and Cosette's relationship with Marius, are both two big 'blind spots' that he struggles with.

At one point romantic love is described as “The only misery Jean Valjean had not yet experienced, and the only one that is sweet.”

In his massive confession to Marius, he agonizes over how he is not allowed to be part of a family, and is incapable of being part of a home. He compares himself to someone sick and diseased, that poisons good and normal people with his presence, and cannot be allowed to make himself part of their families.

So Jean Valjean doesn’t frame Romance as “a thing he doesn’t want:” it’s a thing “he is not allowed to want,” it is one of the many things he is banned from wanting. It's impossible to tell what kind of things he would want, if he were allowed to want them.

One of the most interesting things to me, however, is his general attitude towards Marius/Cosette.

Obviously his first reaction to Marius snooping around is fear and resentment— he doesn’t know to interact with romance, having never experienced it, and immediately begins catastrophizing. He views Marius as a privileged booby ruining his life for something as frivolous as a love affair: it reads to me as partially envy, envy of the fact that Marius lives the kind of safe comfortable life that allows him to experience young love.

Jean Valjean added: “What does he want? A love affair! A love affair! And I? What! I have been first, the most wretched of men, and then the most unhappy, and I have traversed sixty years of life on my knees, I have suffered everything that man can suffer, I have grown old without having been young, I have lived without a family, without relatives, without friends, without life, without children, I have left my blood on every stone, on every bramble, on every mile-post, along every wall, I have been gentle, though others have been hard to me, and kind, although others have been malicious, I have become an honest man once more, in spite of everything, I have repented of the evil that I have done and have forgiven the evil that has been done to me, and at the moment when I receive my recompense, at the moment when it is all over, at the moment when I am just touching the goal, at the moment when I have what I desire, it is well, it is good, I have paid, I have earned it, all this is to take flight, all this will vanish, and I shall lose Cosette, and I shall lose my life, my joy, my soul, because it has pleased a great booby to come and lounge at the Luxembourg.”

But, even though Jean Valjean views romance as something he isn’t allowed or have or to want, views it as a threat and catastrophizes over how it will ruin his life……he seems to also put heterosexual romance on a pedestal.

The way Jean Valjean idealizes marriage is one of his weirdest character notes for me.

He views marriage as Cosette’s “happy ending.” It’s her “happily ever after” point where she won’t need him anymore, where she won’t need anyone outside of her husband. A Man And a Woman Are Meant to Get Married, It's Fate, and It Means They Will Live Happily Together Forever. Marius is “the goal of her heart, the wish of her life; her dearest one.” Nothing outside of that matters anymore.

He treats her marriage as if romantic love is inherently always more important than any kind of platonic relationships, and always takes priority over them. He later dismisses the unconventional family structure he has with Cosette, saying that despite his love for her he was only a "passerby" and was not actually her real father, because they were not biologically related.

There's a moment where Jean Valjean is described as someone whose ideal is to be angel on the inside and a bourgeois on the outside. Jean Valjean's worship of bourgeois social norms, norms he can never truly be a part of, is one of his character flaws. He has a similar "guard dog" energy as Eponine does when she defends Rue Plumet from her parents.....Eponine and Jean Valjean both become the guard dogs of a kind of romantic relationship they believe they are banned from having. Jean Valjean believes that getting Happily Straight Married in a Middle-Class Home with a Picket Fence(tm) is the ideal path for life....but believes himself broken/incapable of ever following that path. And so he instead throws his entire life into securing that future for Marius and Cosette.

In what manner was Jean Valjean to behave in relation to the happiness of Cosette and Marius? It was he who had willed that happiness, it was he who had brought it about; he had, himself, buried it in his entrails, and at that moment, when he reflected on it, he was able to enjoy the sort of satisfaction which an armorer would experience on recognizing his factory mark on a knife, on withdrawing it, all smoking, from his own breast. Cosette had Marius, Marius possessed Cosette. They had everything, even riches. And this was his doing.

TL: DR:

Jean Valjean's gender/sexuality label is “idk but he’s super fucked up about it.”

#les mis #jean valjean #les mis letters #because i BRIEFLY tied it into Eponine #my idea for a self disembowelment pride flag #is that its like. prometheus and the eagle #but prometheus is into it #not sure how coherent this essay is but I am POasting it

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gerec · 1 month

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best long fics? i've only been reading oneshots lately. i like cherik which can be a book too.

To make this list even a tiny bit manageable I'm choosing to define 'long' as over 100k. There are a lot of superb fics on this list, Anon; happy reading!

Nine Eleven Ten by Subtilior (WIP - the definition of a fandom classic with fantastic worldbuilding)

Years later, Charles would remember that day. Sometimes he would wonder if he could have changed anything; other times he would despair over what he had since become. But he would always hold the image in his mind: Raven, laughing, and his thoughts flying alongside her on strong wings, silver-gold through the winter air. Once upon a time.

The stars incline us, they do not bind us by ikeracity, Pangea

Intergalactic Federation pilot Lieutenant Charles Xavier is assigned last-minute to a high profile mission: transporting over two thousand prison inmates from an old and overfilled prison complex to a newer, higher-capacity prison stronghold located on the outer reaches of the galaxy. Just as he's settling down for a long and uneventful ride, things take a turn for the worse after the inmates riot and stage a hostile takeover of the ship, leaving Charles to find himself at the complete mercy of cold-blooded killers and facing the chilling prospect that he might not ever make it back home alive.

A Curious Carriage of Crystal and Cold by Etharei

Charles, a miner from a poor village in the countryside, saves the life of Erik Lehnsherr, scion of a successful business family and the richest man on the planet Eisen. Charles is a telepath and somewhat anxious about it, while Erik abstains from relationships because the lights flicker and doors open and electronics vibrate when he gets too excited.

Also featuring a long-suffering sister, a foul-mouthed bodyguard, and a best friend with a heart that is definitely not gold.

In which there are princes, spaceships, long journeys, and old secrets uncovered. (An AU sci-fi fairytale)

Tessellation by nekosmuse

He had been following Xavier's career for years. He had read and reread and reread again everything the man had written. He had tried, on more occasions than he could count, to recruit Xavier into the Brotherhood, but each request for a meeting had been denied. Aside from his work, no one knew anything about Xavier. Not what he looked like, not the full extent of his power--though from what little they did know, he was by far the most powerful telepath in existence--and not what his intentions were.

The man was a recluse. As far as Magneto knew, Xavier had never once stepped foot outside his impenetrable Westchester manor. And now he was scheduled as the keynote speaker for the largest pro-mutant conference in the world.

The Marriage Bargain by kianspo

Erik Lehnsherr had made a fortune manufacturing steel in Europe. When he wished to expand to the New World, he discovered that no one would do business with him unless he was affiliated with one of the First Families, the creme de la creme of the NW aristocracy. When Lord Marko holds an auction to give away his 14-year-old stepson's hand in marriage, Erik sees his chance and takes it. He has no interest in Charles himself, but now that he has him, can they make it work?

Everyday Love in Stockholm by tahariel

Prompt: Magneto is the ruler of the posthuman world.

His only secret? Charles Xavier, the human he's kept locked in his bedroom ever since his right-hand woman, Mystique, came to him pleading for mercy for her stepbrother, who accepted her mutant form and protected her as a child. The human he started fucking after Mystique was killed in battle, despite the guilt he feels at contaminating even this last promise to the woman who was integral to his life's work and happiness.

The Proper Care of Actors by afrocurl, Clear_Liqueur, Clocks, Etharei (series)

Erik is an A-list action star who is notoriously difficult to work with, until the day he gets cast alongside Charles Xavier, rom-com darling who can charm the pants off movie audiences the world over and apparently even one Erik Lehnsherr. The paparazzi catch them out and about soon enough, and their real-life Hollywood movie romance becomes instant tabloid fodder.

The Associates by ikeracity, Pangea (series)

Being a mob boss' associate has its ups and downs. Having sex in the back of a limo on Valentine's Day is definitely one of the ups.

The Sonnet Series by afrocurl, nekosmuse (series)

Erik Lehnsherr is a visiting professor at Columbia University, as well as an acclaimed and award winning poet. Charles Xavier is a lead researcher with the Genetics Department who is well on his way to tenure. But what happens when Charles has to cancel a class because half his students abandon him in favour of a mysterious new English Lit professor? Naturally he ends up sitting in in the class, where Professor Lehnsherr mistakes him for a student. It's really too bad Erik has such a strict policy against dating students. It's also too bad Erik doesn't seem to know how to use Google.

Space Oddity by MonstrousRegiment, Pangea (series)

Prince Charles Xavier is Deputy Commander of the TEF Heartsteel and the newest mission they've been assigned starts out less than desirable and quickly goes downhill from there. It's alright, though, he'll cope.

It doesn't help, though, that he's in unrequited love with his best friend and Commander of the Heartsteel, War-Prince Erik Lehnsherr.

Nation Building and other Diplomatic Negotiations by Pookaseraph

With the recent passage of a submissive registration law in the United Kingdom, there are now only two industrialized nation with a relatively stable government to have neither a mutant nor a submissive registration law. Erik Lehnsherr, the newly minted King of Genosha, and his Prime Minister Emma Frost intend to take advantage of this turn of events to bring the Xavier Institute to the island nation of Genosha. They both know bringing Charles Xavier, the noted activist of mutant and submissive rights, to the island will necessarily politicize the man, and create all manner of complications. With a constitution not yet finalized and external threats to Genoshan security all around them, Erik, Emma, and Charles will fight for what they believe in to shape Genosha into what it should be.

Do You Love Me by cgf_kat

Charles and Erik have been married for 25 years, thrown together by a mandatory post-apocalyptic pairing system attempting to increase and strengthen the population. They have seven children. They have never spoken of love, but change is on the horizon.

Ritual Self-Torture by TurtleTotem

For the following prompt: Shaw is King, Charles is his royal consort and Erik is a Knight/Lord. Shaw is sterile but his kingdom can't find out, so he asks Erik to impregnate Charles.

He doesn't know Erik and Charles are in love.

But I Would Walk Five Hundred Miles, And I Would Walk Five Hundred More by luninosity (series)

In which Charles isn't really an escort, Erik thinks he only wants a one-night stand, everybody's got a past, and there's quite a lot of sex on the way to the happy ending.

We Met At The Park by StarRose

AU, no powers, based on McAvoy's performance as Martin in Murder In Mind. Unable to sleep one night Erik takes a midnight walk in the local park. He finds himself being followed and propositioned by a rent boy named Charles, and begins to fall rather rapidly for his charms. Charles however has never known what love is, and doesn't recognise it even when it's staring at him in the face. As for Erik, he doesn't realise a creeping illness is slowly affecting Charles, and his dark past is something he couldn't have imagined.

Strict Machine by euphorbic

When Professor Charles F Xavier accepted a visiting professor position in Arizona, he did so in order to be geographically closer to his sister. What he did not expect to find was the living, breathing specter of the sportbike gang-oriented past he’d been trying to put to rest.

A tale of sport bikes, consequences, and sacrifice.

MAD Dogs by ClarkeStetler, Goosenik (series)

Charles and Erik are (loosely) friends with benefits. They don't share personal details, last names, or anything concrete about their lives. This is ruined rather spectacularly when Charles gets recruited by the Mutant Apprehension Division of the FBI. Surprised is a bit of an understatement for their reaction to finding themselves partnered up and sent out on cases with the team.

Bit of a detective fic? Really just an excuse for us to play around with MAD (Mutant Apprehension Division) that we created in Playing House.

A Doll's House by lachatblanche

Welcome to the Dollhouse, where all your dreams and fantasies come true. At a price. Based on the TV show Dollhouse.

#gerec rambles #cherik #long fic #>100k #long post #fic rec #gerec's fic rec

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honeyed-nothings · 3 months

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To Have a Crush: Heartslabyul

Warning(s): Gender-neutral reader, not proof-read

Notes: I’m pretty new to the writing side of the fandom and it’s been a while since I’ve last written something, or really anything for that matter, but I hope you’ll all enjoy! (>ᴗ•)

Riddle Rosehearts

❤︎︎ Slowly, steadily, and like a flower love bloomed. At first he simply thought of you as a good friend, someone who he had approached out of guilt for the incident that you were dragged into not of your own will. It started off with passing conversations in the hallway to tutoring sessions in the library to personally asking you to attend the Unbirthday Parties at Heartslabyul. Don’t worry, there’s no rules against inviting outsiders to the Unbirthday Parties, he guarantees it.

❤︎︎ He doesn’t know when he started counting the seconds that’ve passed by until you’ve arrived to the tea party. Or when he started giving you leniency for the rules you’ve broken. Or when his eyes started trailing your figure as you walked by him in the hallway. He doesn’t know, he didn’t know.

❤︎︎ Until he did.

❤︎︎ Due to a little nudging from Cater’s discerning eye, he started pinpointing down the cause of the fast beating of his heart as not due to the caffeine of the tea or the irritations Ace and Deuce caused him but rather..you. Simply you. Your smile, your voice, and even your mistakes. He couldn’t help but realize that everything about you made him red with love.

❤︎︎ Riddle’s not exactly good at hiding it either but people have learned not to point it out to him unless they wish to be collared. His ears that are tinted with the brightest shade of red every time he’s near you. The soft, gentle gaze he holds as he listens to whatever you have to say. If there was a rule against love…then he supposes he’ll have to break it.

“If you’re available…would you like to have tea with me today?”

Trey Clover

☘︎︎ A slow process to a passionate love. Trey is not someone who chases for love but rather waits for it to find him. Patiently he waited, with baked goods and nurturing care for those around him, but he never thought he’d find that love in NRC of all places. He thought it was just appreciation that he felt towards you and at first, it was. Gratitude for your help with Riddle’s Overblot and even more for your continuous help in the kitchen and everything else you’ve done. Oh, feel free to take some treats back with you, he’s baked too much you see?

☘︎︎ You were just like every other student in NRC, maybe a little special in regards to your situation, but Trey really had no other plans other than treating you like how he did everyone else. That equality…didn’t last for too long. Gently he chides you for touching a pan that was not done cooking off, kindly he offers to lend an ear to whatever troubles you were going through, and softly how he brushes aside that flour stain off your cheek did he realize he had fallen in love.

☘︎︎ Huh, this isn’t bad at all.

☘︎︎ This realization didn’t change much of your relationship with him. In fact, it only improved it with a few hints here and there that showed his interest in developing a more romantic relationship with you. With how he sought you out to give you a bag of baked goods that everyone in Heartslabyul knew from the smell that wafted in the kitchen that early morning he baked just for you. Or how his hand lingered on your head for a second too long after ruffling it like how any good ‘friend’ would do. He loves you, he loves you, he loves you.

☘︎︎ But he won’t say it aloud. Not until you do first. Forgive him but he’s always secretly wanted to know what it was like to be the one being chased. Patience is necessary to be a good baker but as a human, he wonders how much longer he can wait for until the sweet called love is ready to be eaten.

“Hm? You look like you have something to tell me.”

Cater Diamond

✧ A love that can barely be repressed by denial. Keeping you at arms length was the goal he had made for himself when he first met you. You were interesting sure, and a bit of an enigma to boot, but he genuinely didn’t think it would develop into anything like love. Well maybe he was just lying to himself in the first place but that didn’t matter, not when it’s better to just keep your friendship as it is.

✧ It hurts. Love hurts. Trusting another person hurts. That’s why he’ll cover himself with a smile and a phone to snap a pic, to pretend that everything is normal and the day can continue onwards like always. Does it mean something that you’re now always in his pictures? Do you think there’s anything when he’s constantly seeking you out for a friendly selfie or chatting you up on the latest trend? Isn’t that what friends are supposed to act like? The Diamond desperately wants to believe that or else..he’ll crack.

✧ But maybe that was fine too.

✧ Can you tell? That his eyes are always glancing at you in the pictures you two take? How his smiles appear more genuine when you’re around? How fast his heart beats whenever he’s near you that he feels like it might burst out at any moment? No, you shouldn’t. That’s why he’ll start maintaining a distance from you, take an inch away at a time and maybe this painful feeling will go away. It’s nothing really, he’s fine.

✧ Cater doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to be apart from you. He didn’t want to fall for you. He…doesn’t want to lose you. Still, he maintains his distance hoping for a miracle that his feelings will fade when he knows deep inside that they won’t. The courage to face you and admit he’s fallen isn’t enough. The love he has towards you is fickle at best, that’s what he tells himself. Lies are the best protection against truths so why does he find himself drawn towards you still?

“Ahahaha! You caught me! Come on, let’s-Huh? Whaddya mean I look like I wanna say something else?”

Deuce Spade

♤ Hardships that create the bond called love. A reliable friend and someone he who will always have his back. He knows he’s not the best at…well anything really but he’s glad to have your support on his dreams of becoming an honor student. That’s why he didn’t think anything of it when he finds himself looking for you more. Ace teased him a lot for it, “like a duck looking for his parent”, is what he said but Deuce doesn’t really think that. He just enjoys your company so why wouldn’t he go and seek you out? Oh, and Mr. S’s shop has a sale on tuna today so maybe he can help you out on carrying the bags?

♤ The study sessions you two hold together have started becoming a little distracting for him though. With how often he finds himself looking away from the material and looking at you instead. How your eyes narrow in discontent at an explanation you don’t understand or how they light up when you’ve figured something out. Strangely, it’s actually improved his grades instead of diminishing it. He just couldn’t miss out on the smile you’d give him and the congratulations you’d say as he’s passed another test. It wasn’t until Ace pointed it out to him that he realized it.

♤ Oh…Oh.

♤ Smoke started coming off his head, at least that’s what it felt like, as the realization sunk in. Deuce could recognize it now for sure, that the rapid beating of his heart was something far more than friendship but rather love. A feeling that had been developing ever since you two met that day. He tries to treat you the same as always and horrifically fails with how bad he is at hiding his blush. Or his attempts at reaching out to hold your hand but pulling back last second out of embarrassment. He’ll just have to try again later.

♤ Getting advice from his mom was the last push he needed to fully go head first into appealing to you. His attempts at acting like a gentleman appear more like a young man fumbling his way through love but the effort is always nice to see. He’s doing his best to improve himself for you and while he knows he isn’t perfect, he hopes you’ll accept him anyways.

“Prefect! I have something to tell you.”

Ace Trappola

🂱 A blessing of love in disguise as friendship. Seriously, how did he find himself falling for you? You were just someone who attracted trouble and he happened to have been caught up in some and now he just can’t seem to leave you alone. Teasing you is an everyday occurrence and walking with you to the classes just comes naturally. Don’t think anything of it though, you’re just friends…unless you wanna be more? Alright alright, he’ll treat you to something in the cafeteria so smile okay?

🂱 Friends hang out with each other so that’s what he does too. They have sleepovers (in his case it’s more like a crash over but that’s besides that point) and talk about the weirdest stuff or maybe nothing at all. Maybe he’ll steal your blanket while he’s at it or maybe your bed if you’re kind enough. At some point he started leaving his own things at Ramshackle, more convenient than risking going back and suffering Riddle’s wrath you know? His toothbrush, a spare blanket, a pillow, and a couple snacks that he might be willing to share with you if he’s feeling like it. If you’re interested, he’ll even show you some card tricks to keep your attention focused solely on him.

🂱 Well crap.

🂱 Okay so maybe he does like your attention more than others but like, that’s just a friend thing right? People have best friends, you’re his! And sure he finds himself getting a little irritated when someone gets too close to you but you’re bros! He’s just looking out for his friend, trust him. Deuce thinks otherwise but what does he know about anything? He’s the one with relationship experience, even if it did fail on..his part, but ignoring that he knows so much more!

🂱 Like an adolescent boy who wants his crush to look at him, he lightly bullies you. Teasing you about the stray hair on your head and playing jokes on you like any would. He can’t help it, he wants your attention and he wants your love but can’t seem to admit it. Ace isn’t satisfied with just being friends, not anymore at least, but he doesn’t want to make it too obvious that he’s fallen. The light red tint on his ears and expectant expression on his face whenever he brags to you about something tells of a different story however.

“Ha! Has my coolness charmed you- Ouch! Okay okay! I’ll get to the point already!”

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katsheadinclouds · 3 months

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Romance

Javier Peña x f!reader

summary: The night is always easier for Javier when he's with you, even if it means thinking about the possibility of ending up alone. Maybe this time he's done running away from happiness.

warnings: secret relationship, smutty happenings and thoughts, mild angst, smoking, mention of drinking, hopeful ending, no pronouns for reader, no use of y/n, reader is a blank canvas. Not beta read! If I forgot something, please let me know.

word count: 2.4k

notes: The happiest of birthdays to Jo, undercoverpena 💛💛💛 I hope you've had the most amazing time celebrating and I'm wishing you the best on this new trip around the sun. You've written one of my favorite fics ever and to be on this platform and reading the art that you share has been a massive privilege. Thank you for making this fandom feel safe. You gave me this lovely tan color called desert sands as my chosen shade on your birthday bash roulette and my mind went immediately to our man Javier and one of the shirts he wears. I hope you, and anyone else who might read this, enjoy your time with this fic.

dividers by saradika

In the night, Javier stands by the open window. The sounds from the street come in through it, an ambulance and police cars with their sirens blaring make his heart thump uncomfortably in his chest. The cigarette between his fingers smolders bright, the smoke burns in his lungs, yet he relies on it like nothing else could understand him fully.

He’s pouring his stress into it. The already aching muscles irritated from chasing after people who Javier knows are always two steps ahead of them and their efforts to stop the violence. His gun in its holster, unceremoniously laying on the floor, is a reminder of the violence he’s feeding into. What other option does he have? Anything and everything they do, he does, never seems to be enough.

You stir in your sleep. Javier’s tan shirt is resting on your shoulders. It doesn’t cover your bare skin below your hips. Javier pulls another breath of smoke into his lungs, and then one more, while watching your slumber. Your back rises and falls in a slow rhythm, peaceful, far away from the stress and adrenaline you both carry at work every day.

You shouldn’t have asked him to come home with you that one evening a few months ago after a night out at a bar. You shouldn’t have gotten the courage to make a move. You shouldn’t have wrapped your lips around the cigarette he was smoking, still between his fingers, your eyes glued to his when you thanked him for sharing his smoke.

You shouldn’t have touched his thigh under the table with your hand, shown him what you wanted from him. And you certainly shouldn’t have wrapped your lips around him, kneeling on your bedroom floor, your eyes adoring every inch of him. Your hands on him. His hands in your hair, unable to resist your advantages.

You act like nothing ever happens between the two of you outside of work. You wish him and Steve good morning when you see each other in passing. You ask if they got one of the hundreds of memos they receive every day. You wish them a good night at the end of the workday, ready to go home after endless hours in the stuffy office. You’re always around, but you keep your distance.

“I’m being professional,” you said after that hours long fuck fest fueled by stress in the safety of your bedroom. “We’re colleagues. Nothing is going to change.”

Yet everything has changed. Javier comes to visit every night after work when he’s in the city. You open the door for him without questions, you don’t even ask him to come around anymore. It’s an unsaid agreement at this point.

He knocks once, then two times fast, and finishes with one more knock to let you know that it’s him, no one else. You don’t ask who it is, you don’t hesitate to open the door. You just do and let him slip in, your hand always catching his to stop him from escaping from your reach.

The kiss to welcome him in is gentle, a single touch of your lips against his. You offer him a drink, the thick rimmed tumblers always available next to the amber colored whiskey. It’s also an unsaid agreement that he’s there only to have sex. Nothing more. You don’t deny him, you never tell him to stop, you only want more, and you always give more.

“I would let you do whatever you wanted to me. I would let you have me in any way you want,” you said in the afterglow of your release. Your pupils were blown black, and your breath was still out of your reach. Your legs trembled when you tried to get off his lap, off him.

Javier’s hands squeezed your thighs, either to steady you or to keep you deeply seated on his cock for a while longer. It was well past the hours of the early morning; your alarm was going to go off soon. You would curse at him for coming by after midnight, but you would still open the door for him the next time when he got to yours as late, or even later.

“In any way, hm?”

“Whatever you like,” you hugged yourself around him, your knees against his ribs, and he was screwed.

Javier wanted to believe that the words set all his nerve endings on fire because you were still stuffed full of him. That because you spread yourself open for him every time he came around, the words only had a physical meaning.

You absorbed the nausea he had in the pit of his stomach, somehow mixed with the anticipation of having you at the end of the day. You were someone he learned to trust. He could always come to yours no matter what. He could always rely on you to catch him. You always opened the door, and you never denied him access to you.

The offer was too tempting. Javier tipped you on the bed and kept himself lodged inside of you. Your limbs were weak and pliant. You closed your eyes when he ran his hands down your sides, admiring your figure, the curves where his hands fit perfectly on your waist. You emptied your lungs when he pulled out of you, spilling your mixed releases on your sheets.

You inhaled the heavy air of your bedroom in preparation. One last breath before he’d pin you under himself. Before his lips attached to your sternum.

Tasting you was like coming home. Feeling you squirm under him in anticipation was exciting. Hearing you whine his name was intoxicating. He didn’t need drugs. He had you.

You came on his tongue buried deep in your folds, sucking, playing with you, taking you to the edge over and over until Javier decided when you had had enough. Your thighs were glued to his shoulders, your heels against his shoulder blades. You ground against his mouth, your hands holding onto his hair, pulling him in, and pulling him off you at the same time. Even when the pleasure crossed the line of too much, you still stayed put and lost your breath with another high as his moustache gathered the slick from you like he was saving it for later.

“You shouldn’t say that.” Javier muttered when you got out of the shower. He was sprawled with his legs out on your bed, watching you. You had outrun the moon without a moment of true rest, and the sun had caught up to you, ending the night with its first rays.

Your legs were unstable still and you couldn’t balance on your other foot when you pulled a fresh pair of panties on. You leaned against your vanity and stumbled through dressing yourself.

“I meant it.” When the door closed after you, leaving him to sleep in your bed, the words sunk in. He wasn’t just screwed. He was ruthlessly in over his head.

Javier had already risked it all for desire, but risking opening up was another thing completely. You observed him in ways he wasn’t aware of. You saw him in ways that others didn’t, in the safety of your bed, in his most vulnerable, in his most rageful.

You saw his quietness in the tenderness he showed you. You took it all out of him, one kiss at a time, forcing him to breathe and put the pressure to the side for an hour or few. You took him apart in ways that made him comfortable in his skin, but uncomfortable in ways that you adored him. With your eyes, with your words, with your gentle hands as you undressed him and showed him slowness.

When your hands pulled off his body and left him needing, you gave Javier all the control. He could feel the goosebumps against your heated skin, caress the pebbles of your nipples and hear your shaking inhales and exhales.

His lips on your stomach, on the sensitivity of your inner thighs, smell you dripping against your panties and touch you in the most lewd ways you probably ever had allowed anyone to touch. Your gasps and moans vibrated in his spine and made him painfully hard. Every time, without a question, you edged him without doing it intentionally.

And in the night, Javier could take you slow, take you apart one push of his hips at a time. One moan at a time. One run of your wet lips against his jaw and neck at a time until your kisses would only be little gasps as your high rushed him to reach his release soon after you.

And he could take you hard, borderline ferociously, your hands trying to hold onto him, your nails scratching against his back until imprints of small half moons would litter his shoulder blades and the back of his neck. He would have them for days, and he would do it again, just to have his skin remember your cries of pleasure that he forced down his own throat to not let you wake up the neighbors.

It was impossible for Javier to stop it. Stop you from wanting him, stop himself from letting you. He watched you act like it didn’t mean anything, like it was just the two of you looking for a release. He heard your promise of this not changing anything over and over again in his head but saw that you had changed in every way possible after letting him in your bed.

“Tell me something about yourself,” you once asked while playing with a curl on his forehead and cracked your own promise into pieces.

“What’s there to tell,” he answered, and you dropped the topic immediately. The disappointment radiated off you in waves, but you hid it in licking your tongue against his, not caring about the friction of his moustache against your upper lip.

His intentions were never cruel, not to you, or to himself. Yet he was like a monster, coming back to you without you asking him to. To himself for letting him knock that pattern on your door.

You sigh in your sleep. Javier stumps the burned cigarette into a bowl and closes the window. Your naked leg is warm with his fingers gliding up against it, the back of your knee still damp from staying with your cheek pressed against the mattress, available for him on your knees for as long as he wanted.

He tilts his head the higher his hand rises. Your skin bursts with shivers when his fingers caress the roundness of your thigh and dips between them. He drags his hand against the crease under your ass, the meatiness of the muscle as his hand continues its exploration of your body, the curve of your hip, and under his shirt.

It’s easy to peel off you. Javier’s sweat still clings to it from the day. Your sweat clings to it from the night. He’s not sure when you had put it on. He only woke up to see you covered in it. He reveals the softness of your stomach, the shape of your waist, the underside of your breast. He draws a line with his thumb there.

Your eyes are open, watching him. Your face is half crumbled against your pillow, the worn out linen of your pillowcase. You’re somewhere between dream and wakefulness.

“Come back to sleep,” you whisper, your throat thick with sleep and the remnants of him. Javier moves the shirt off your shoulder to press his lips there. You sigh, relax against his mouth and move enough to give him space to follow you to the easiness of rest. Your hand follows the scrapes from your nails that are still fresh and tender. Your cold fingers look for the warmth of his skin, the burn you left there.

“What’s on your mind?” You ask, already slipping away from him in his arms. You’re pulling him under with you, the sleep in your scent intoxicating. You lean in a little closer until you’re glued against him. Javier would want to push you away if you knew what he was thinking.

The hope of a future. He has it in his arms.

It would be the easier choice to let you go. When this is all over, when this terror is done, it would be easiest to end this. You don’t deserve the pain he has convinced he always causes.

Yet underneath there’s a promise of the other side. He’d take you out. He wouldn’t let this relationship stay hidden inside the four walls of your bedroom anymore. His imagination runs rampant with the images of himself in public with you.

To see you smile under the sun, with your hand in his with people around. Your voice in his ear when you tell him about everything and nothing, not just you sighing out his name in the dead of night. He would’ve never guessed ending up in Colombia also meant meeting you. Meeting the possibility of a next day that isn’t full of violence and loneliness.

“You,” Javier breathes into your hair. The slow rhythm under his palm against your ribcage is proof enough that you’re not listening.

He would tell you who he is eventually. He’ll answer who he was before all this, before you stepped into his life and turned it upside down. He’ll let you see him in daylight, not only in the moonlight that smooths out all the edges, regrets and flaws. He’ll let you in on the good and the ugly, the person he, too, sometimes wants to turn his back to.

He’ll tell you about how he grew up too quick, too sorrowful, missing the family he didn’t have anymore. It’s just him, his dad and the house he once called home. Now it’s filled with stories he cherishes in the silence of his own memory.

Javier will forgive himself eventually. For thinking the worst of himself, for needing you to get away from him. He’ll keep on pretending though, with you, that nothing has changed. And this is just a mutual contract of desire.

“I want you to know,” he says into the glowing orange of your bedroom without any sound, the move of his mouth registering in the muscles of his face. He lets the weight of your body drag him over the border of sleep, melt against you and taste the sweetness of bliss.

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shantechni · 1 year

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"2012 Mikey is Abused" and other constant complaints that, quite frankly, don't make sense

Since one Reddit user (who shall remain anonymous) inadvertently made me type out an essay I intended to write and post in a more coherent manner at a later date, I will be using their comment and my response.

Anyways, the comment itself starts off fairly normal and agreeable:

But then I see the next three points and my sleep-deprived mind just goes off the rails, so let's start with the second point:

Let me preface this by saying I absolutely do not condone the writing here because everyone under the sun will agree that we could've easily had the "Karai is our sister!?" plot twist without Leo and Karai briefly developing feelings for each other.

The problem is that this brief development of feelings is wildly blown out of proportion by the fandom, so much so that it makes it seem as though Leo and Karai actually had anything legitimate going on between them.

The "incest-eqsue garbage" between Leo and Karai is almost nonexistent outside of the writing room. They openly crush on each other for a whopping six episodes by way of verbally teasing each other and being at odds before Karai tells Leo that she's the Shredder's daughter. That's it. He is not pursuing her after that (hardly ever did, not even to the extent that Donnie pursues April) and Karai isn't remotely fond of him anymore after he broke their deal. Then, after we find out alongside Splinter that she's actually his daughter, he tells Leo towards the end of Follow the Leader. We don't get a reaction, actually nothing on Leo's side since the Foot Clan is mostly absent with April being the main point of conflict, even in Target: April O'Neil because April's forgiveness of the turtles is the main focus.

Leo eventually attempts to tell Karai the truth in Wormquake! and The Manhattan Project and she obviously doesn't believe the poor guy, she just wants to kill the turtles and Splinter at this point. Leo doesn't tell her because "he still likes her", but because, in his own words, it would change everything. She deserves to know the truth and Splinter shouldn't have his own daughter cursing him at every waking moment. When she tricks the gang into bringing her to the lair under the guise of her finally accepting the truth, Leo is ecstatic and his first thought is for her and Splinter to make amends. He's upset that Raph still can't fully trust her in the end when she fought alongside them (who can blame Raph though, he's cradling an unconscious brother after a plan gone awry), and that's the end of that.

They dedicate two episodes to the guys attempting to rescue her because Leo has enough brain cells to worry about what the Shredder could be doing with her, and Raph makes a jab at Leo on one instance when they find her (there is absolutely no romantic undertone, Raph just picks at his old crush on her and their tendency to tease each other at the worst times). Then, when she wants to get back at the Shredder for ripping her away from a life she never knew was her's, Leo attempts to aid her because he knows it isn't wise to face someone like that alone, especially with his henchmen there.

There's one last self-aware jab at their past feelings in S5, of which Karai awkwardly remembers and forgoes mentioning, and that's the last you see or hear of that.

As much as I dislike it, I'd take this narrative over the Donnie-April-Casey hurricane any day.

It seems that 2012 Mikey's mere existence is a sore spot for fans because Jesus Christ this gets brought up way too much.

Mikey is not written as a complete idiot, he's written as someone who doesn't see a reason to take everything so seriously, has odd habits, and doesn't always think things through, yet is shown to be highly capable and intelligent when the situation calls for it. Yes the writers left much to be desired at times, but to say they wrote him to be a "complete idiot" and left it at that is just offensive. I'll ignore all the miraculous things Mikey can do with Kraang stuff and Dimension X and focus on what other things he's shown to be capable of.

Mikey was a temporary learning model for Donnie in how to fight without thinking, or in better terms, how to fight instinctually without becoming bogged down by your own mind. Splinter's lesson is shown in a comedic manner, but that's ultimately what helped Donnie defeat Falco.

Another interesting thing is his ability to keep his composure when no one else around him can do so. I mentioned this briefly in another post, but it really stands out to me how he put Leo at the top of his priority list in Invasion Part 2. He's as worried for Splinter as Raph and Donnie are, but they have with them a crippled and unconcious Leo who needs medical attention asap, compared to martial arts master Splinter who's older and wiser than the three of them combined at times. Even when they eventually find Splinter and lose him, he keeps the gang in line by reminding them, as well as himself, that Splinter can take care of himself.

Along with that is when Splinter was kidnapped in The Manhattan Project. Mikey was quick to intervene when Raph was angry with Leo for allowing Tiger Claw to coax him into calling Splinter, and he reminded the two of the problem at hand: they have Splinter, let's go find him and take him back. There are so many other moments when he becomes the levelheaded one in response to the chaos or disorder surrounding him.

Mikey is a highly skilled fighter, he's emotionally intelligent, he remembers the weirdest things that eventually aid the team, he's street smart, he's a fast learner (ex: Bradford's secret kata, as well as the temporary use of the plasma katana in Target: April O'Neil), he's great at distracting enemies without needing to become bait, he gets insecure about things, he has photographic memory, he's the most outgoing of his brothers and therefore ends up with the most friends, he's quick to adapt to a situation and think of a plan, he can throw together seemingly random ingredients to create exactly what Donnie would struggle to create, he knew exactly what to do to find Casey after his run-in with Tiger Claw, the list goes on.

Heck, just to add to this, Mikey is the one who saves the day in three separate stories in S5. 1) His temporary electric powers save the world from Dregg and the Newtralizer, 2) he convinced Frankenstein's monster to join their side, retrieved the scepter from Savanti and Dracula (he accidentally broke the scepter while he was at it, but that helped) and cured Raph and Donnie of their vampirism, and 3) he was the one who repaired Kavaxas' seal and made him reopen the portal to the Netherworld so the dead could return.

The brothers don't always take him as seriously as they should or listen to him, and that's understandable at times, but when they do, they're reminded of the fact that Mikey, in his own way, is intelligent.

If I had a dime for every comment I've seen about this, I'd be rich enough to buy the TMNT series from Viacom and right every wrong they made with the 2012 series.

These abuse allegations are as bad as people putting Markiplier in the same tweet as problematic Youtubers and saying something wild like, "these content creators should've been cancelled a long time ago." I feel like people who say the brothers abuse Mikey are either an only child or genuinely have a warped sense for what actually counts as abuse, and I'm not even trying to be mean, those are just my thoughts. I shouldn't even have to comment on this, but the fact that people are still seriously believing that to this day is shocking.

Would you also like to say that Raph was abused in Turtle Temper when Splinter had the boys ceaselessly taunt him in that little exercise? Or that the boys abused Raph everytime they downplayed his anger? Or that Raph abused Donnie by threatening to hit him if he didn't find Snakeweed's hideout? Or that Leo abused Donnie everytime he stressed him out by rushing him for answers? Or that Donnie abused Mikey because Mikey flinched 2cm to the right when Donnie raised his hand to playfully knock at his noggin? Or that Leo was abused by the team because they took forever to view him as their leader? Or that Splinter abused the boys because he was "too rough" on them during training?? Or that April abused Donnie because she "constantly led him on"? Or that Xever and Bradford abused Baxter???

I'm losing my mind over here

Mikey is never physically or emotionally abused by his brothers, the show speaks for itself. But if you somehow aren't listening, go look up a textbook example of abuse, or better yet, look at Karai.

Abuse is the Shredder locking Karai in a dungeon when she tries to escape to her real family and going so far to become a peak manipulator by saying Karai was hurting him by making him lock her away. Worse than that, he starts brainwashing her with mind controlling worms so she has no choice but to obey him. Even before then, he's lowkey uncaring of her wellbeing: he treats her like any other soldier of his and doesn't listen to her when she tries to tell him something. He doesn't address her concerns about the Foot bots nearly finishing her off, instead telling her, "disobedience comes with a stiff penalty, especially for my daughter," when she objects to him telling her not to take action against the turtles while he's gone.

He only ever pays her any attention or gives her praise when it benefits him and his vendetta against Splinter.

Splinter and the turtles are the farthest thing from the image of a family filled with abusers. Raph openly apologizes to Mikey when Splinter tells him to stop picking at him in Shellacne, Raph comforts Donnie when the brainiac is somber after forcing Timothy into the equivalent of a cold sleep, Raph apologizes when his anger gets the better of him and he hits Leo harder than intended, Donnie apologizes when he realizes he shouldn't insult Raph when the guy is visibly upset, Leo regrets doubting Donnie about Metalhead, etc., etc.

Even beyond apologies, Raph is the quickest to entertain Mikey and vice versa during a mundane moment, Donnie never kicks Mikey out of the lab, Leo plays around with Mikey when the situation doesn't call for him to be their fearless leader, and Splinter is quick to advise Mikey during Karai's Vendetta and Shellacne. There are even times when the guys just go along with Mikey's antics because there's no harm in doing so, and often times Mikey needs a moment to be silly.

If you think play fighting, teasing, or getting a little physical with a sibling is the equivalent of abuse, particularly in the context of TMNT of all things, you need to do some re-evaluation.

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