#anthropology stop taking my money | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

willtarica · 8 months

Text

Analytical Application 1: Ideology and Culturalism

Alexa Loses Her Voice – Amazon Super Bowl LII Commercial

youtube

Definition: The ideological state apparatus is when institutions such as the media, education and churches coerce the masses to maintain their own position of the ruling class. For example, when a company such as Amazon pays absurd amounts of money to celebrities to act in commercials so people will buy their products.

Analysis: In the Amazon commercial “Alexa Loses Her Voice,” we see a woman brushing her teeth and receiving the weather from Alexa when Alexa, just as the title says, loses her voice. It quickly becomes a national emergency. In the next scene, Jeff Bezos is watching the news on the TV when a colleague approaches him and tells him Alexa’s replacements are ready. Gordon Ramsey, Cardi B, Rebel Wilson and Anthony Hopkins make cameos as new “Alexas.” Gordon Ramsey does what he does best by yelling at a guy for not knowing a recipe. Cardi B is asked how far away Mars is and she responds by questioning the validity of the question. Rebel Wilson makes a sexual joke about the Australian joke and Anthony Hopkins feeds a peacock. None of it makes any sense except for Gordon Ramsey yelling, but even then, all that matters is the presence of these four celebrities. Louis Althusser wrote about how the ideological state apparatus shapes the viewer's consciousness to accept the ruling class's ideology. Bezos is the perfect example of this as we see it with his public persona, commercials and movies. Amazon assumes that if celebrities are funny then people will buy the product. They are using their power and resources to manipulate the viewer into buying their product since celebrities must use it as well. Amazon has become a media company, with Jeff Bezos at the helm, that has an overabundance of money which allows Bezos to shower the public with his advertisements.

Sharma, Aradhana, and Akhil Gupta. The anthropology of the state: A reader. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.

The Greatest Gift – Amazon Super Bowl LII Commercial

youtube

Definition: Aura is a work of art in time and space and the presence it amasses due to its uniqueness and singularity with the process it was made. Walter Benjamin wrote about how art was produced manually, but the invention of the printing press and camera has had a negative effect on what he calls “aura.”

Analysis: “The Greatest Gift” is a stop motion advertisement from Sainsburys where James Cordan sings a song in the background that is essentially narrating the commercial. The commercial begins with a man shutting off his alarm and getting ready for the day with his family. He takes the train for work and looks at his list of presents he has to buy for his family since Christmas is approaching. After work at the toy shop, he gets in the queue at the shop to buy the gifts. Fast forward and the commercial becomes a three minute ad about the importance of family. The aura of this commercial is due to its use of stop motion animation. Without it, the commercial would be just like any other Christmas ad about the importance of buying gifts for your family members. There's a certain authenticity to stop motion since it truly takes a significant amount of time to produce this type of animation. Walter Benjamin was very critical of films due to its use of retakes and cutting which he believes depletes the aura of a work of art. But, stop motion breaks his philosophy because of its delicate production process. It's difficult to appreciate something as genius as stop motion animation without seeing how they do it in person, yet that would be my only critique about its aura. Other than that, the authenticity of stop motion is immense. The audience can identify with the physicality of the art form since real miniatures and sets are utilized.

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Essay. In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 665–85. New York, NY: Oxford Press, 2009.

She's Always A Woman – John Lewis

youtube

Definition: Ideologies are ideals put in place by a ruling class to create a notion of a traditional way of life being superior. This creates labels and categories for people to live under which makes it so no one can truly feel they perfectly fit the mold of the ideology as it's impossible.

Analysis: Ideology is apparent in the John Lewis advertisement, “She’s Always A Woman.” It begins with a baby crawling as it smoothly cuts to her slowly getting older and experiencing all that life has to offer… for a woman. The commercial's message cannot be shrugged off as it's blatantly sexist and puts women into the category of motherly, instead of anything else. In most of the ad, the woman is married or pregnant and not actually doing anything for herself. So why is this a commercial for a British department store? I couldn't answer that. But, what the commercial does exceptionally well, is put people into a box. The ideology John Lewis is sharing is that mothers and grandmothers shop here for their families. Why doesn't the dad or grandfather shop there? Why doesnt anyone else shop there? The commercial has a clear target audience with traditional family dynamics. I also find it frustrating how they had to show a whole person's life in three minutes just to say, “shop at our store.” Louis Althusser wrote how ideologies compel people to fit within a specific role like what is shown in this ad. I agree with Althusser that ideology is ingrained in our society because traditionality is inescapable. Ideology is materialistic because this department store is spreading the message that you are living the right way if you grew up with our products. And the right way they are showing is a traditional family lifestyle that only applies to a specific target audience.

Sharma, Aradhana, and Akhil Gupta. The anthropology of the state: A reader. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.

Thank You Mama – P&G

youtube

Definition: Culture industry is the equivalent of factories making meaningless goods such as Hollywood making a film just as entertaining as it is mediocre to sell tickets and gross millions of dollars. Horkhaimer and Adorno wrote about the culture industry and how films, radio and magazines demand has increased so there is a rush to release newer products resulting in lower quality.

Analysis: In the P&G commercial “Thank You Mama,” mothers from all over the world raise their children who eventually become professional athletes. The viewer is shown the ups and downs of the hardest job in the world. However, the commercial is still capitalistic manipulation, so the audience will buy its products. Horkheimer and Adorno wrote how the culture industry utilizes the commodification of cultures. Displaying mothers from countries such as Brazil, England and America is blatantly obvious that this company is exploiting people to ensure people empathize with the struggle of motherhood so they might buy Tide Pods. To maintain capitalist interests, companies must unify their products just as P&G created the illusion of a meaningful advertisement about feminism, just to endorse Tide, Pampers, Gillete and Duracell. Horkheimer and Adorno wrote how even though a commercial like “Thank You Mama” might appear to be artistic, in reality an ad like this is dependent on the industry and is just for the purpose of making more money. The commercial was made to please the consumer, not because P&G was so righteous it needed to share this message. They also spoke about the culture industry manipulating and homogenizing the masses, to maintain its capitalist power and wealth. It's wrong to make an important statement about the importance of something so significant like motherhood, just to slap logos at the end so people will buy what the brand is selling. It completely ignores the message the entire commercial was about. P&G was essentially saying, buy our stuff because you, the viewer, care about moms.

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2002.

Tide Super Bowl Commercial 2018 It’s a Tide Ad

youtube

Definition: Dominant hegemonic position is when a message is decoded by the audience the way the creator indented it to. For example, people willingly accept the message of a piece of propaganda created by the ruling class which maintains the power dynamics in our society that keeps the upper echelon powerful.

Analysis: David Harbour drives in a silver automobile like Mathew McConaughey in every Lincoln ad. Harbour then appears at a sports bar and later in the ad, he is mocking local advertisements. All of this to say, “It's a Tide Ad,” over and over again. Tide utilizes its dominant hegemonic position by mocking commercials like a Lincoln ad or any other commercial. Tide is essentially punching down from its high horse that is able to afford a big celebrity like David Harbour to shape the audience's views and advertisement norms. Hegemony maintains a capitalist society because these massive companies have so much power on people and the culture that a simple commercial like “It's a Tide Ad” benefits Tides authority with market dynamics. Tide is contributing to public discourse while setting a precedent that it's superior to the other ads it's making fun of. Stuart Hall wrote how the viewer processes the intended meaning of a message as it was intended to. Hall also spoke about an alignment between the audience and the message because of a shared cultural background. The audience accepted the ideology of Tide because the commercial was displayed to the largest American audience during the Super Bowl. Even though hegemony is not inherently bad, dominant hegemonic positions still can set standards that have a negative effect on people and influence the public for the worse. Hall made an important discovery of the context of media and how it communicates to the audience, whether it's manipulative or positive. All in all, companies will do whatever they can to make money.During, Simon.

The Cultural Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 1999.

#oxyvisualanalysis #ideology #culturalism #@theuncannyprofessoro #Youtube

0 notes

virgorisingmusic · 8 months

Text

death of passion

I put on a wine red lip gloss at work the other day. It was the same shade my friend wore earlier that day. Her lips and mouth are shaped differently than mine - almost opposite. But even knowing that, I still wondered why I didn't look the same as her.

The other night I had a dream that I was going back to school. I was going to apply to an English program, which is what I’ve thought about doing for a while. I think I squashed that idea because I didn’t know what I would want to do with that degree.

I don’t like wearing dark lipstick because it makes me look the way I looked when I was 14.

I get anxious when I leave the house without my favourite lipstick on me. I’ve avoided kisses in the past because I know it will come off and I will be exposed. I often think about how smoothly I’d walk through my day-to-day if my lipstick never rubbed off.

During the span of four years, I’ve been set to start four-year BAs in three different departments at UofW: Anthropology, History of Art, and Theatre and Film. I studied communications in 2020 stopped in 2021.

I wanted to be an actress in the spring of 2023. I spent a lot of money on online acting classes that were based out of a studio in Toronto; it was just a few blocks from my friend’s apartment at the time.

My first assignment was a monologue from Erin Brockovich. I performed it for my class after two weeks of practising my lines and delivery, and some of my classmates told me that my performance gave them goosebumps. My second and last assignment was one of Anne Hathaway’s monologues from Rachel Getting Married. I read off a script with a rock in my gut as I performed the monologue to the class. After getting through the second half of the text, I knew I didn’t want to do it anymore. I gave up - I wasn’t any good and I felt too shy.

“I’m too anxious and I can’t get into character. All I keep thinking about is if I look bad and if I’m doing well or not,” I admitted to my instructor.

He ghosted me on Facebook Messenger when I told him I didn’t think acting was for me anymore. I think he was either disappointed or he didn’t care because he had too many things to worry about. Maybe he was confused and wondering what happened - I know I was.

How do you even act? To act is to not act - is that what they say?

“An ounce of behaviour is worth a pound of words,”

and that sort of stuff.

It’s beyond me. Before I quit, I bought Michael Caine’s book “Acting in Film: An Actor's Take on Movie Making” at my old thrift store job and I read a few pages. I felt more inspired than I ever had before because I thought my new goal in life was to become a great actress and to be like Emma Stone or Julia Roberts. La La Land came out when I was in high school and everyone watched it but me. I watched it for the first time with Lauren and Jenna when we started doing wine + movie nights and they for some reason wanted to watch a musical every time.

I was like,

“I will never watch Les Mis and I will never watch La La Land,”

and I ended up watching both and loving them. I listened to I Dreamed A Dream around nine times in a row the day after watching Les Mis. I listened to it on YouTube because I wanted to watch the scene, too. I listened to it after getting off the bus to go to an employment program-thing. I was going through something at the time and it was really funny.

★ Maybe you can listen to it in the background while you read the rest of this post.

“There was a time when men were kind...”

I watched La La Land twice and I cried even harder the second time around. I watched it again with my mom and I couldn’t get past Emma Stone’s first song because I couldn’t stop sobbing. I thought it was so beautiful that her character was following such a big dream - a dream I could’ve had if I was passionate or good enough. I was also on my period, so my mom and I ended up getting into a spat because she wasn’t interested in the movie and I was offended because it meant a lot to me at the time.

I’ve felt passion, adrenaline and sureness in my bones only a few times. I felt genuine passion and sureness one evening in February of 2020. We played a show (the last one before the pandemic stopped the world dead in its tracks) and I had so much fun on stage that night. I felt so proud and sure of myself, that the second the set ended, I told everyone that this is what I want to do with my life.

I performed a few scenes in high school for a play called Love and Information by Caryl Churchill. The play has no set descriptions, props, characters, and almost no direction - just lines. We got to choose our own scenes and pull every detail from our imaginations. I think about it a lot and how passionate my class and I got about changing and adding little details in our scenes. I went back to the drama room close to the end of the school year and looked around at all the props in the back. There was a battered, armless doll leaning on a fake fridge behind the curtains. It reminded me of cooking in those toy kitchens in kindergarten. Plastic steaks and the sizzling sound the stove would make when you turned the knobs. Fake sink and empty cupboards. Fridge with plastic bananas and apples. I’d always want to play in the kitchen, but so did every other kid. It was a battle if you came to school wanting to cook a sirloin because every other child wanted to do the exact same thing. It makes me sad that I can’t remember more from back then.

I’m 22 and I’ve been trying to meal prep. I walk on the treadmill at 4.8kph and go to work 3-4 times a week. I spent $60 on groceries this week and accidentally marked them for pickup instead of delivery, so I had to ask my parents to pick them up for me because I can’t drive. I regret being mean in elementary school. I wore my cap too low on the back of my head at graduation. I love kissing. I budget. I will be 29 someday. My scalp is coming up with shiny silver baby hairs. I fry frozen dumplings in a real pan on a real stove.

Every kid in my kindergarten class got a pair of orange safety scissors on the first day of school and I hope my mom still has mine.

★

Emily

#blog #journal entry !

0 notes

pitbullwithaship · 8 months

Text

DOCTOR WHO LIVEBLOG S3 EP14 (2007 CHRISTMAS SPECIAL)

Yay more Christmas Shenanigans!! (I can't spell Shenanigans I'm trusting my autocorrect here)

OH YA THE GIANT BOAT HONK I FORGOT

THERES A BOAT

I love how he's says WOT it's hilarious

Pats his Tardis he's so cute

Those are sus angels

I knew they seemed suspicious that ones a robot

TITANIC SHIP LOL HOLY SHIT

They are indeed damned, Titanic is not a good name (I could go on a rant about this)

Anthropology tour

DONT GO AGAINST REGULATIONS

He seems mildly suspicious

That tv dude has very blue eyes

She's pretty

Primitive

They did not tell them why it was famous (the worst events always get the most famous (hindenburg, holocaust, titanic, etc.))

Aw poor girl

She's very pretty

Not sir lol

He's adorable

Uh oh he's got a tuxedo on

Lol I love him sets of the champagne in the rich snobs faces

Those people seem friendly

Old man captain seems mildly suspicious

INCORRECT INFORMATION BASED ON CULTURAL RELICS LOL

Ooh it's deserted that's not good

New Zealand is quite beautiful

WILF HELLO

They've learned, good for them

YOU JUST JINXED IT VERY BADLY

Those don't look like normal asteroids

I KNEW HE WAS SUSPICIOUS

She's a good singer that's a nice song

Oh no is young crewman going to die

Information: you are all going to die (lol)

WHO OFFERED HIM SO MUCH MONEY

Oh shit EXPLOSION

Ooh I bet the robots are evil

He's adorable (I genuinely just have to say that every so often)

Oh shit he's dead now

I like the name Astrid

Awwww he's so comforting (I think I'm firmly in the 'I want david tennant to be my dad' subtype of tennant fan)

THE HALO

He's so comforting and gentle I love him

Oh dear

Recites his name and address

I love him

ALLONS-Y

Ooh working class people, always helpful

What message? SHUT UP

Lol that's cute

Oh dear the door is opening

Oh dearie me

DUDE STOP BEING A SELFSIH FUCKING DICK AND HELP

Oh yay they got out

Lol she has game

Doctor.exe has stopped working

Aw poor Anthropology dude (I can never remember names)

Oh shit he's dead no he was so nice

Aww you're allowed to have emotions, but don't make the Doctor's guilt worse

I wish dickhead would die

Aww hugs

Oh shit they can fly

Baseball to the death

Aww he saved them all

Oh no he's dying no

Aww that's so sad nooo

He should have tried 1 first

Oh shit is she

Nooooo what nooooo that's horrible no she's dead nooo

He trusts dickwad with his screwdriver?

Okay what's gonna prevent her from going with him, is she gonna die too she better not she's really pretty

Well it's not fireworks bit it is sparks

Doctor.exe has once again stopped working

Okay he's off again

Oh fantasy trope of wasting questions

Take me to your leader (dude you already said it once but maybe that time didn't count)

Oh fuck is she gonna die

Oh shit that's creepy as hell he's a head

Ooh I mean he's evil but I do feel sorry for him with that prejudice

Retirement Home from Hell

No Astrid don't die!!

That's a shiny tooth

Ethereal music plays, true zen has been reached

Oh Astrid

Oh shit it's crashing please don't crash cmon

Dramatic slo-mo shot through fire

Okay what's he doing what's going on

SUPERMAN DUH DUH DUH!!

ALONSO HE HAS ALONSO

ALLONS-Y ALONSO lol

Calls Buckingham Palace lol

Aww the corgis

YAY SUCCESS

Thank yu doctor thank yu lol

That's so cute

What happened to the fact that dude got shot

Oh dear cmon work

She made her choice Doctor

We are made of stardust after all

Awwww that's so sweetcutesadpoeticamazingheartbreacking

Aww hug but he didn't hug back he likes hugs oh yes right he's a dickwad

Very wise old man

It's never real snow ugh

Bats his eyelashes lol

He's Rich!!

He can have a house!!! Aww I love him

*skips away*

Aww that was a cute episode

#doctor who #liveblogging #david tennant #tenth doctor #s3 ep14

1 note · View note

uh-velkommen · 1 year

Text

Guys I gotta admit this isn't living up to what I expected it to be. I've been becoming more and more depressed because I thought going to grad school would be this big life changing event where I was really gonna find myself, engrain myself thoroughly into a new culture, learn so much about the topic I enjoy, and maybe even meet some super cool people along the way. And while I'm not particularly struggling in those departments, I just feel like this was a waste of time. I wanna just move back to the US, refund my student loans, and pick up where I left off in August. I keep thinking about how I had my apartment furnished exactly how I dreamed it would look and how I was able to stock my kitchen pantry with fresh ingredients to bake desserts every night from scratch and I just enjoyed living in my own peace. When I was in school I didn't want to leave because school felt like where I belonged. When I was an "adult" I didn't want to leave because I felt at peace. Now I'm back at school and I don't want either thing. I don't want to restart my meshing into adulthood but I don't want to financially struggle and only talk to people for 3 hours a day each week.

I decided to meet with my academic advisor to plan out my two years because I felt like that would give me motivation to keep going. I want to study multilingualism and neurolinguistics. All of which was advertised when it came time to search for graduate programs. But then I meet with my Advisor and she tells me they're not offering classes like that in the near future. I ask about taking classes in Copenhagen or Stockholm at the same time, she tells me I'd have to pay double tuition as a non-EU student. I tell her, okay how about language evolution, that was something I really emphasized having an interest in when I did my application. She offers me, "Variations of English" and "Sounds of the world's languages." These are classes I already took in my undergrad. And this is a recurring problem. Linguistic departments are always so small and understaffed that they end up offering the same things over and over again. I'm currently taking classes on things I already know! To make things worse, they keep telling me that I need to take B.A. level courses here since I didn't major in Linguistics in my undergrad. I explained to them over and over that I took classes in those general subjects, phonetics, syntax, semantics, etc. and my advisor replied with, "We want to make sure you take classes that cover linguistic theory" Okay so like, Chomsky and Sapir, I can do that, what are the classes called? "Syntax and Semantics." OH MY FUCKING GOD. I can't bare another semantics course, I've taken like 3 already. Finally I just show her my transcripts so she can see what classes I took and she goes, "huh, I don't see a lot of linguistics here?" And I can just HEAR her thoughts floating around saying, Why did we even admit you??

I mean, shit I've been thinking the same thing. I'm not struggling though, I was a straight A student in all my Anthro/Ling classes. And I told them over and over that I was a Linguistic Anthropologist and that's why most of my classes are listed under Anthropology and that I'm here to really narrow down my studies. I WANT to do the hard stuff. I want this interest to be reignited and I'm just not getting it here. This is a waste of time and money because this school isn't providing what I need.

But I'm not a quitter, I can't just stop something a month into it, I just don't know how. So I remind myself that this is a means to an end. We do this for two years, we get a job, we live in Sweden, we're happy. But linguistics isn't exactly a lucrative field, in fact, I know exactly what the job market looks like in Scandinavia and nobody is looking to hire an M.A. Linguistics kid. Finding work here is not garaunteed. So then what, I do all this, go into debt, go broke, ruin my credit score, end up with no job and no home to return to, scrambling to find an apartment in a city I've never been to with a job I have no true passion for and the remorse of an opportunity wasted weighing on my conscious? But hey, at least I got to live in Sweden!/s

#grad school #lund university #Scandi Saga #me

1 note · View note

taylovelinus · 2 years

Text

my university’s history, anthropology, philosophy, and religious studies departments are comprised of roughly 6 faculty members in each department (give or take one or two). and I was discussing this with one of my peers about how I go to one of the largest public universities in my state and how these departments are INCREDIBLY small compared to others and how it feels like these departments are on their last leg and the university administration is tired of them and it got me thinking…

I have a conspiracy theory (which isn’t even a conspiracy theory really bc at this point I think it’s objectively true) that the mass devaluing of the humanities and the simultaneous overhyping of STEM careers is 100% intentional. It’s necessary in order to continue producing generations of worker bees who will go on to work for big tech in order to further develop mass surveillance and AI and bolster the military while simultaneously ensuring that these very same generations are functionally illiterate AND completely unable to critically analyze literally anything AND who are entirely unable to recognize historical patterns and trends and have no real understanding of governments and propaganda and social dynamics and history, therefore creating a dumber voter base and a weaker proletariat over all :)) I don’t care that I’m never gonna make incredible amounts of money, and the money is literally bait! every STEM asshole who brags about how much money they’re gonna make has already taken the capitalist bait, hook line and sinker. and even if it wasn’t the most obvious bait, the STEM fields are all already quickly becoming oversaturated (and people have said as much) and therefore the money isn’t going to be as good as it once was… which is all part of the point anyway!!!! of COURSE the capitalists aren’t gonna pay good money to everyone, also it’s literally basic supply and demand so you think they’d get that lol. and look I don’t mean to imply that I’m like immune to propaganda or something but literally come ON. this has all been said before and much more intelligently than I could ever have said but. ugh!!! anyway humanities majors and graduate students: don’t stop what you’re doing. Understand that the money isn’t the important part, that the devaluing of our fields is intentional, and that our knowledge is absolutely crucial, no matter what brainwashed STEM capitalists have to say about it. and I'm not even saying "don't go into STEM" I'm saying be careful and don't be a self righteous shithead.

0 notes

thegeneralreturns · 2 years

Text

Thoughts on AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

Well... I liked it. That's more than I can say for the first one.

What James Cameron's mega-grossing sequel to his mega-grossing original Avatar reminds me of more than anything else is Thunderball. It's the fourth James Bond picture. The plot and the villain didn't seem to matter to the filmmakers, but the underwater photography sure as hell did, to the point that it slowed the movie down to a crawl and padded the runtime a full half-hour longer than it needed to be. They bet the farm on people in 1965 wanting to see the Bahamian travelogue, and given that it's the highest grossing Bond film (adjusted for inflation), then they seem to have been right.

The thing is, between the solid first hour of Avatar: The Way of Water and the absolutely spectacular third hour is a shapeless and ponderous second hour that seems more than content to stop, smell the roses, talk to the locals, take soil samples, and catalogue the wildlife. Which is wonderful when a great writer takes you on the nickel tour, but James Cameron has never been the best scribe. His worst impulses betray him with this one, as he brings back almost every character from the first one. Even the ones who died. The man behind the camera is a visionary. The man behind the keyboard, on the other hand, is either afraid to break his toys, or thinks building new characters will take precious time away from the endless anthropological lecture and wildlife tour.

But that first hour is still good, and that third hour is still splendid. It isn't a coincidence these are the more action-heavy hours, which is where Cameron is in his wheelhouse. This is the guy who directed Terminator 2, and thirty years later, that movie still fucks. A:TWoW has a grand eye for spectacle, helped by the cutting edge 3D visual effects (which were so persuasive that, at one, point, I had to shift in my theater seat to let someone through, only to realize that the person I was shifting for was a character on the bottom right corner of the frame). I do recommend Avatar: The Way of Water, but only if you can see it as I did, by taking out the small loan required to get the 3D glasses to see it on the biggest screen you can find. I'm not entirely convinced it works as drama, but it succeeds wildly as a vivid and stirring light show. And the moviegoing public needs that as much as it does movies about multiverse-hopping dry cleaners.

As with Thunderball, James Cameron's film broke the bank on the notion of providing a kind of experience that you just plain cannot get at home. He spent billions of dollars of the Walt Disney Corporation's money to take us into the future of filmmaking, only to show us how much some shit just plain don't change.

Which is, y'know, an idea, I guess.

0 notes

marlow-holly · 2 years

Text

After I’ve payed the rent, student loan, electricity, water, and internet bill with $0.02 left in my bank account:

#the rest went to Sephora #we poor but at least we pretty #shout out to all my broke beauties #living like larry #anthropology stop taking my money #I’m living in a self made hell #but I’m committed to the bit #so here we are #my post #relatable posts #relatable #very relatable

1 note · View note

tinyrosemarysparrows · 6 years

Text

Last night I dreamt that I was failing my biology so badly this semester that one day I went in and the professor took me aside. Very quietly, he explained to me that I probably just shouldn’t show up for the final exam and I should consider changing my major and minor because the sciences obviously weren’t for me.

Professor, I /know/ the sciences aren’t for me. However, for some godforsaken reason, I’m good at two of them so that’s my life path. Like, let’s face it, if the universe wanted to stop me, it would have done it before I received awards for being one of the top students in the health and science college. It should have stopped me back in research methods. It should have stopped me when I took Biology 2010. It should have stopped me when I wrote a research paper about something I barely knew anything about and my professor encouraged me to pursue it. It should have stopped me before people started to ask me for help in classe because they think I know what I’m doing even though I’m a dumbass!!!!

I’m living a double life. By day, I’m a respected student with good standing with both faculty and peers. By night, I lay awake wondering if I’ll ever actually care about psychology and biology. But I’m in too deep now.

#personal junk #the day i get a c or below in a science course is the day i get to change my major #but they wont stop passing me!!!!#i even straight up told kevin i dont care about this but he took it as a joke #kevin im serious #kevin i dont put any work into this and i hate it #kevin i think majoring in psych is a huge mistake for anyone that wants to make money #i can only get away with this because the dad pays for everything and my inheritance will take care of me #kevin you buffoon stop me #let me major in something i care about like literature or anthropology #theyre just as useless!!!

3 notes · View notes

jackrrabbit · 3 years

Text

Adversary /// Overhaul x f!Reader (18+)

Summary: You make a deal with the devil to save your life, but it turns out Overhaul’s not interested in your soul.

A/N: Remember when I said I was going to do a fantasy collab and then dipped for like 9 months? Hahaha…anyway…

@pleasantanathema @ present-mel @shadowworks—if it’s not too late, here’s my part for the Pleasant & Strider Fantasy AU Writing Collab from a million years ago. Go check out the masterlist and gorge yourself on these amazing pieces!!

Tags/Warnings: dubcon, demon fuckery & occult things, big heresy/sacrilege/perversion of religion, sex in a church ft. Catholic sex guilt, other than that it’s not that bad lol, inexperienced reader, mild degradation, shameless camp and demon-fucking clichés, Overhaul calls you “little girl” 👉👈

He doesn’t look like a demon.

Not that you really know what demons are supposed to look like. But…red skin, right? Fangs and claws and swirling masses of bad energy. Maybe cloven hooves for feet. Yes, that’s the Disney version—but even if you didn’t expect a cartoon personification of evil, you didn’t expect this.

He looks like a doctor, you think. Lab coat hanging open, surgery mask pushed down under his jaw, stethoscope draped over his shoulders. No, he’s a little young to really look like a doctor…an intern, you amend, shifting back in your hospital bed. He looks like he fits right in here, not a hair out of place. Except for, you know, the polished black horns curling out of the sides of his skull.

Overhaul. It was written in the book. That’s the only thing you have to call him in your head.

He’s standing in the center of the sigil you drew at the foot of your bed before midnight, surveying the room critically without meeting your gaze. He looks annoyed—that’s not a good sign, is it?—but then again, of course he’s annoyed. You’d be annoyed too if you got summoned out of your cozy hell dimension in the middle of the night. According to the book, you’re lucky he even showed up…although ‘lucky’ isn’t really how you’d describe yourself most days.

“So,” Overhaul says after a long moment of silence in which you question every choice you’ve made in your relatively short life. “You’re dying.”

You nod.

“And you don’t want to be.”

You nod again, wondering if you’re supposed to be contributing more to this conversation. It’s a bit difficult when your mouth is so dry it feels like you’ve been eating dirt, but you suppose being in the presence of an unholy servant of Satan will do that to a person.

“Fine.” He sighs, frowns, and then finally lowers his gaze onto yours—and you shiver.

Those eyes. No human has eyes like that.

“Make me an offer,” Overhaul tells you, and through his open mouth you catch a flash of sharp white teeth.

Okay. Okay. The chirping of the heart monitor speeds up (as if it weren’t obvious enough that you’re terrified) and you fold your knees up to your chest and fidget with your ring and think. He’s giving you a chance to establish parameters. You’re supposed to start with his end of the deal, the thing you want from him. That’s what it said to do in the grimoire, aka the 19th century demonology volume your creepy cousin brought back from her pagan anthropology research trip in rural France. The one you keep hidden under your bed because your mother would burn it if she knew you were reading about summoning demons.

Offer nothing to a hell creature without first telling him your price. You know the words by heart, both the winding calligraphy of the original French from the grimoire and the rushed scrawl of the English translation your cousin left for you in sheets of lined paper layered between the pages of the book for you to read. Really, this is her fault. She was the one who slipped you the book, who told you that it worked, who snuck you the ingredients for the summoning. She was the one who left a bookmark at the chapter on this particular demon, one that specializes in ‘Contrat pour Remédier au Déséquilibre des Quatre Humeurs’, which she said meant a contract to cure any illness. Even his ‘name’ is translated in her hand, practically an afterthought in the margins of the page.

‘Le Malin qui Ravage et Rebâtit’— Overhaul?

You looked up the literal meaning of this phrase on your own. It did not reassure you.

“Girl.” His voice is cold, irate. Your eyes snap back up to his and it feels like that burning gaze is laser-beaming into your skull. “Do not test me. My time is limited…as is yours.”

You swallow. “How long do I have left?”

“Less than a single human year,” he tells you without a trace of sympathy. “Seven months, twelve days, three hours. Or so. You’ll be too exhausted to leave this bed in four months, and the pain will become intolerable in six… By the end, you’ll wish—“

“Stop,” you breathe out. The heart monitor is beeping wildly and you squeeze your knees into your chest, trying to calm down your breathing. “Stop, I—I want to live.”

“Of course you do.” Overhaul’s lip curls. “How very predictable.”

Be specific, you remind yourself, doing your best to ignore the stifling disapproval from the man—the demon—in front of you. Something about him (maybe how clean-cut he looks, maybe the indisputable authority in his demeanor) makes you want to impress him. But you didn’t turn your back on your religion—you didn’t draw pagan symbols on the floor in chalk, fill silver cups with various questionable substances (including your own virgin blood), and turn the crucifix your mother hung over your bed upside-down so you could let a demon make you feel guilty for wanting to survive. “I want to be cured. I’m okay with whatever natural death I have instead when I’m older, I just don’t want to die of this illness. I want you to make me healthy.”

“Simple enough. What else?”

‘Simple’? Your heart surges with something you’ve felt very little of since your initial diagnosis—hope. “T-That’s it. Just the cure.”

Overhaul glares at you. “Humans… Every vice in the world available to you, and you limit yourselves to the basest priority of survival.”

“But you can do it? You can cure me?” you persist.

Overhaul steps forward (quiet, so quiet you wonder if he really moved) and holds a hand out to you past the foot of your bed—you hesitate, and a second later you can see the muscles in his hand flex, stretching the latex of his plastic gloves tight over his knuckles.

Just do it. You give him your hand. Carefully. Like you’re scared the contact will burn you. It doesn’t (although his skin feels warmer than yours), but after a moment his grip tightens, sliding down past your hand to circle the fragile bones of your wrist and squeeze.

“Ow?” You wince.

The demon’s eyes flicker closed for a second, lips moving silently like he’s talking to himself—and then he drops your hand unceremoniously back onto your lap. “You could be cured before the sun rises this morning. I doubt your stay in the hospital will extend past the end of the week.”

He sounds bored, voice as flat and passionless as it was earlier, but your heart is soaring. Cured. You’ve lived with this illness for so many years, you can’t remember the last time someone told you you could be cured. And getting out of the hospital that soon? You can just imagine taking down all the decorations from the walls of your room here and setting them up in your old bedroom at home. You could see friends on the weekend and not take an oxygen bag, you could get a job or—or apply to college, you could have a life—

“That is…assuming you have something to offer me in exchange for the cure.”

Your stomach drops. You’d almost forgotten about the other half of the deal.

“Don’t tell me I came all this way for nothing.” Overhaul steps back, and the orange light of the candles you set sends strange shadows over his arrogant face. The fires look brighter now, and you find yourself tracing the lines of those shining black horns. In an odd way, they look natural—so organically framing his temples that you can’t imagine him without them.

“N-No, of course not. I have some money—I mean, my mom has some, and I can get it for you…” Which is half the truth. If you know anything, it’s that your mother’s spent most of her savings on your treatment and care. You probably have more debt than you have money in the bank right now—you’d try to get rid of that, too, if you hadn’t read in the book how important it is to keep your request as simple and straightforward as possible.

…Although it’s apparently not enough. Overhaul’s eyes narrow, molten gold irises carved into slits. “Even if I had a use for human money, do you really believe your life is worth so little?”

“No—no,” you say quickly. “I just thought—in case you were interested—”

The air crackles with energy, the candle flames spark bright blood-red, and the hair on your arms stands straight up. “I am not.”

“Okay! I get it.” You wave your hands back and forth, pulling your IV line from side to side with the motion. The book was very clear about staying calm and rational while you work out the terms of the deal, but that’s easier said than done when you have a real live (live?) hell creature in front of you. You always knew this was going to be the hard part—all the stories say there’s only one thing that a demon would be interested in, and no matter how inviting the prospect of living past this illness is, you know you’d rather die than sell your immortal soul to the devil. “I’ll give you anything except my soul! And—and don’t hurt anyone I care about, or— just don’t hurt anyone, okay? Other than that, if there’s anything I can give you, I will.”

Overhaul’s lip curls, baring a thin strip of those unnaturally sharp canines. “And is your soul really so valuable?”

This throws you for a loop. Isn’t that the standard deal? A soul for a wish? That’s how it’s supposed to work—at least in this twisted version of reality where you can summon a demon to perform unholy miracles for you. But if you think about it, it doesn’t really make sense, does it? Why would your soul be valuable to him? You can’t form an argument, especially since you’re not willing to barter it away in the first place.

Your mouth is pursed open as you search for a response, but Overhaul doesn’t seem willing to wait. A gloved hand wraps its way around the railing at the side of your bed, and he leans in closer. “Little girl…what makes you think you possess anything I desire?”

Little girl. You’re not a little girl, you’re a grown woman—and yet there’s no untruth in the statement. In front of him you feel insignificant, immature, weak. You have nothing real to offer, and something tells you that you’re not going to get rid of the demon you summoned without a sacrifice you’re not willing to make.

You twist your ring around your finger—the nervous habit you haven’t bothered to break because you’ve always had more important things to worry about—and the glint of silver in the candlelight must catch Overhaul’s eye because before you even notice him moving, your delicate hand is trapped in his larger one to give him a better view of the tiny piece of jewelry. “What is this?”

“It’s—um, a ring. A purity ring.” Has he never seen one before? Well…actually, that makes sense.

Overhaul turns your hand over in his without touching the band of silver. He’s looking at it closely, inspecting the lovingly engraved cross in the design and the inscription on the other side. “Matthew 5:8,” he reads out.

“…Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” you recite cautiously. It feels wrong to speak the words in front of him, but somehow you can’t help yourself.

Overhaul’s hand doesn’t leave yours. “This ring is important to you.”

“It’s a symbol of a—a promise I made to God. To save myself for my future husband.”

“To ‘save yourself’? To save what?”

You can’t believe you’re explaining this to a literal demon. You close your eyes and inhale slowly and taste smoke. “My…virginity. It’s a promise that I won’t have sex until I enter into a biblical marriage.”

At this, Overhaul is quiet. You give him a moment to answer, half expecting him to question why you think God cares about your sexual status (honestly, you’d be lying if you said you haven’t wondered this yourself), but he stays quiet until you peek up at him to try and gauge the look on his coldly handsome face.

He’s still staring at the ring. He hasn’t touched it—maybe he can’t, because of the cross?—and through the latex, his skin feels hotter than a human’s is supposed to be.

“Is there…” you start, but you trail off when you realize you have nothing to ask. You give a little tug to try and take your hand away and you’re surprised when your wrist actually slides out of his grip to fall back on the nest of sheets in your lap. You didn’t think he’d let you go so easily.

Overhaul turns his head to the side, eyes drilling into you so you feel like you should lower your gaze. The candlelight flickers in strange shadows over his horns. “This will do,” he says quietly.

“What?”

“In exchange for your cure.” The demon taps his own left ring finger, the place where the purity ring sits on your hand, and your heart soars. He actually wants that? It’s just a simple silver band, not worth much, but you’re not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe it has some special significance because of the religious connotation. Your mother will be angry you’ve lost it, but you’re happy to cope with that if it means living to actually get married!

“Yes!” you blurt out before he has a chance to rethink his offer. Sure, you’ll miss the purity ring—you’ve had it since you were a kid, after all—but there’s no question you’re getting the better end of this deal. At least in your opinion.

Something flashes through his yellow eyes, something you don’t even want to try and identify. “The contract, then.”

You barely have time to notice that his voice has gentled, that it’s practically silken in comparison to before, when the candlelight flickers again and suddenly the contract is everywhere. Everywhere. Writing appears on every surface in the room, covering the walls, stretching over the ceiling, coiling around the sides of the hospital equipment and decorating your bedsheets until you and Overhaul are the only untouched surfaces in sight. The characters are inscribed in red, dark red like—don’t think about that, you tell yourself squeamishly. You can make out some of the letters, even a word here or there—French, you recognize, mixed with what looks like Latin and interspersed with what you can only guess are runes.

“I can’t read this,” you tell him, fidgeting with your ring for what you now realize will be the last time.

“I only need your name,” he purrs, and then you feel a fragile weight in your hand: a feather, pearl-black and glossy and too large to belong to any bird you can think of, its angled tip glistening with wet ink. There’s an empty space in the writing before you, and Overhaul’s gloved hand comes to yours again to guide you into place.

This feels wrong…then again, of course it does. Even if you’re getting off relatively easy and just losing your ring rather than your soul, you’re still making a deal with a demon. You sign your name, forcing yourself to think about the future you have ahead of you rather than a disapproving white-bearded caricature of The Man Upstairs wagging his finger at you for haggling with a literal servant of Satan. People have done worse things to survive, haven’t they? It’s just a ring.

You set the feather down and Overhaul sighs, thick black eyelashes obscuring his intense gaze for a moment—and then the contract is gone, leaving your hospital room as blank and sterile as it’s supposed to be (well, aside from the candles and all the other ritual stuff you threw together to summon a demon in the first place).

“Are you going to cure—heal me now?” you ask.

“…Patience, little girl.” He’s pulling his glove off, peeling it down his fingers to bare the pale skin of his hand. You catch your breath and wonder what this is going to feel like, and then the tips of his fingers meet your cheek and—

you stop breathing.

It doesn’t hurt.

Or if it does, you don’t remember the pain a second later when breath floods back into your lungs. What you do feel is energy. Strength in your muscles, blood pumping through your veins, every inhale and exhale as light as a bird and freer. You feel healthy. You’re surprised you even remember what health feels like but you do: it’s like you’ve only been half alive, and now life is surging into you and through you and around you, bubbling up in your core like a spring overflowing. You blink rapidly, thinking you might cry from the sheer pleasure of it, but when you open your mouth it’s laughter that comes out. You’re healthy. You’re alive. You barely notice the IV line literally falling off of your skin because the hole where it entered your vein is sealed shut and healed perfectly.

No more needles. No more hospitals. Even without all the monitors beeping out your heart rate and measuring your vitals, there’s not a shred of doubt in your mind that you’re cured.

“Thank you!” you laugh, looking up at Overhaul and for the first time, not caring that he’s evil incarnate. “I feel—I’m okay! It worked!”

“Of course it did.” His expression is inscrutable, but he lets you have a few moments to enjoy your newfound health.

You roll your shoulders back, flex each muscle you can isolate one by one to test, make fists with your fingers and then run them over your hair, which is already thicker and shinier than it was a moment ago. Your body thrums with energy—you want to run, to feel the ground against your bare feet and the cold night air on your face, and you think you could do it! Your legs are already swinging over the side of your cot, ready to run barefoot out of the hospital if that’s what it takes, but before you can stand up Overhaul’s pushing you back down onto the bed.

“Have you forgotten your end of the bargain already?”

Honestly you did forget, but only for a second, only because you were so excited to just be outside again. “Oh, yeah. Of course.” Your hand goes to your left ring finger, ready to slip the ring off and hand it over, but Overhaul shakes his head.

“Not here.”

“What—?”

You’re falling. Your hospital room is disappearing, the image of your walls and your window and your bed disintegrating into yawning black, and you’re falling through it into nothing, into emptiness, and Overhaul’s still-bare hand in yours is the only anchor you have so you clutch onto it and squeeze your eyes shut. You want to scream—that’s the sane thing to do when you’re falling through miles and miles of empty space, right?—but when you open your throat the sound is swallowed up just like the light was…

Overhaul’s hand burns into yours, an improbable lifeline that you pull closer more out of terror than conscious thought. The slick, empty air rushes around you and you think I am going to die like this and then, incredibly, as soon as you’ve accepted your imminent demise, you feel your back mold onto a chilled, flat surface, vertebra by vertebra up to the back of your head, as if you’ve been lain down onto it.

Your heart thuds in your ears and you brace for an impact because your body hasn’t quite accepted yet that it’s not falling anymore—but at the same time, you know you’re lying down on something. You pry your fingers away from their vice-grip on Overhaul’s arm and feel around blindly for what’s underneath you, and when it seems reasonably tangible you let yourself open your eyes.

Way above, vaulted dozens of feet over your head, is a ceiling studded with gilt-edged frescoes and stained glass. It’s raining (even though it wasn’t in the hospital, you think) but through the massive panes of colored glass there’s enough oily blue light to make out that you’re in a church.

You’re in a church, with a demon. Isn’t that against the rules?

You sit up stiffly and look over at Overhaul, who’s standing at your side and looking down at you…which is how you realize the soft, cold surface you’ve been deposited onto is the blanket on top of the altar in the sanctuary. “Where...did you take me?”

“You should know this place.”

And you do, when you look around. It’s empty now and you’ve never been here at night, but this is a church your mother would bring you to when you were little, back before the disease got so bad you couldn’t risk traveling to it anymore. This is where you took your purity vow…the ring feels heavy on your hand. “Why—why—“

“I can’t stand human hospitals. Filthy places… How that reek of illness and death doesn’t bother your kind, I’ll never understand.” Overhaul pulls his latex glove back on. He’s dressed differently now, no longer impersonating a doctor—black shirt, black pants, and a…bird mask in red leather and gold. So are you, as a matter of fact. Instead of your hospital gown, you’re in a gauzy white dress that’s already been pushed up to pool around the tops of your thighs.

The slip is too thin for the cold, and you can feel your nipples standing up under the cloth so you fold your arms over your chest and hug yourself. “Why did you take me here?” The sound of your voice echoes off the walls eerily and you wish you hadn’t spoken so loudly. The reflection of your words sounds girlish, nervous.

“I told you. Your side of our contract.” Even in this dark, the angular features of his face are clearly concentrating—on you. “Are you already having second thoughts? Such a fickle little thing…”

“You mean the ring?” You reach for it again, ready to tear it off and throw it at him if that’s what it takes to see your deal through, but Overhaul snatches your hand away, pinning it above you.

“Not the ring,” he says. “The promise.”

The…promise?

A chill makes its way down your spine despite the heat radiating off the demon’s body and onto yours. “I don’t understand.”

“The promise,” Overhaul repeats—and you hear a sound almost like wings flapping and then he’s on the altar with you, knees straddling your hips as a single hand holds both your wrists above your head. “To remain a virgin until marriage. Your promise to God.”

A streak of lightning cracks down on the other side of the stained glass window behind the altar, illuminating the room briefly in spectacular pits of red and orange and yellow…and then it’s dark again, and the only color you can make out is the gold in Overhaul’s eyes.

“I’m going to break it,” he murmurs, lowering his head toward your ear right as the answering thunder rolls through the sanctuary, up through the altar, up into you.

///

Méfiez-vous de son piège, the grimoire said. Beware of the catch.

Of course it wasn’t just a ring.

Overhaul’s fingers are in—inside you, his middle and ring finger pumping through the length of your cunt like they belong there, like you were made to be touched this way. A mixture of your juices and your own spit cling to the latex because he made you suck his fingers before he put them in you and he hasn’t bothered to take his gloves off—not that you asked. You’ve been too busy biting your lip to try and muffle the moans that he keeps forcing out of you. He’s bracing himself on top of you with one hand and fingering you with the other, so your own hands are free to push into your eyes and hide your face…until he yanks your arm back and stops.

“Look at me.”

Your eyes are screwed shut and you shake your head back and forth, the movement shuddering your whole body right down to your pussy wrapped around Overhaul’s fingers. He slows the movement and kneels back, pushing one of your thighs up into your chest as he does it.

“Look at me.”

And you’re not sure whether it’s some unearthly power he has over you or the plain old deterioration of your willpower, but you can’t refuse him. You crack your eyes open and he’s glaring down at you, skin pale as ice in the blue light. Once he’s satisfied that you’re watching, the demon leans back in to fuck your cunt with his fingers, slowly at first and then quicker when he hits something inside of you—a spot, a place on the inner wall of your pussy that makes you feel like you’ve been shocked— heat blooms through you like blood in water and you gasp and he curls his fingers up to pet over that spot again.

“Wait—wait, that’s—it feels—weird!” You’ve never felt like this before. You’re not supposed to feel like this, it’s wrong.

“I understand you’ve never touched yourself, but don’t pretend you don’t like it.” Overhaul says, voice as indifferent and calm as ever even though your cunt is dripping clear sticky liquid over the plastic of his glove.

He pushes back in and grinds his palm over the little button on the top of your pussy—your clit?—and you want to scream. “No, I—I don’t—nnhh...”

Do you like it? The demon’s body is so hot next to yours, like he’s running a fever except you’re the one going out of your mind… You’ve heard metaphors for sexual pleasure before (that it’s like having something to drink when you’re dying of thirst; or that it’s the ultimate act of intimacy, love in physical form) but all of that’s a fucking lie. There’s nothing to compare it to, no reference that makes sense, because it doesn’t make sense—you don’t even want him to keep going, do you? You’re only doing this because you signed your name on a devil’s contract, because you don’t want to die and there’s no alternative…but that doesn’t explain why you feel so warm from the inside out, why you’re squirming and your hips are rocking involuntarily no matter how much you try to keep still. This isn’t right. You feel like you’ve been lied to.

A good girl wouldn’t like this.

Overhaul isn’t going to let you close your eyes, so you don’t—but the sounds coming out of your mouth are so…indecent (and how can you think these things about yourself? the word feels like someone else is saying it when you hear it in your head) that your hand is drifting up to your mouth before you can stop yourself, trying to stifle all of it…

“Let your voice out. I want you to hear yourself moan.”

Long fingers slide their way out of your pussy and then move up to rub quick little circles around your clit and you moan, like a whore, like a girl getting her cunt rubbed by a demon— “Oh, uhhhn—something, it’s—coming—“ There’s something building up in your core—a peak, a climax, something that makes you fist your hands in the nightgown he put you in (so tight you’re surprised the thin fabric hasn’t torn) and tilt your hips up into him, begging without words because you don’t have any to express what your body is asking for…

But he doesn’t give it to you. Overhaul takes his hand away from your pussy and the shock of the cool air after his too-hot touch is almost enough to send you over that edge—almost. Not quite. And without it, you’re left shivering and quaking, thighs twitching as your baser instincts beg you to just put your hand between your legs for once and hump your fingers to completion if the demon won’t do it.

You’re not going to risk that, though. Not when Overhaul’s dragging your body closer, bunching up the blanket on the altar under your spine, so your pelvis is angled to his… He’s already shirtless and you hear him unzipping his pants but you can’t bring yourself to actually look at him, even when you feel something hard and hot nudging up against your inner thigh and then aligning to your sticky wet slit.

“This will hurt a bit, but I want you to look,” he says, and you don’t even understand at first until you make yourself feel it—his cock, pushing up against your tight cunt to finish this, this perversion of what your first time was supposed to be…

And what was it supposed to be? Roses and candles and soft kisses? A nameless, faceless husband unzipping your wedding dress and making love to you with the lights off? The way the demon touches you should be cruel in comparison but it isn’t, it’s lighting fires under your skin and turning your brains to mush, so how is your body supposed to tell the difference?

It’ll hurt, you know that, you’ve heard enough about sex to know that it always hurts the first time for girls…women. It was already a stretch to fit his fingers in your virgin pussy, so of course his cock is going to hurt. You turn your head toward the window at your side and try on look out at the rain drawing rivulets like veins over the glass, something to focus on instead of him.

“I said look,” the demon hisses, and his hips push forward a bit and you bite off a whimper of pain. “Watch me take your virginity…look at your tight little cunt swallowing me up just like it was made to.”

“N-No—“ you whine, even though it’s not like you can ignore it. “Don’t make me, don’t make me look, I can’t—“

“Then look at me.”

It’s what he wants, some kind of wicked satisfaction he gets off on, but you’re lucky enough to even get an option so you choose that one, shifting your gaze up into his face instead of the place where his cock is pressing deeper and deeper inside you. Overhaul’s eyes are half-lidded and it’s hard to tell from behind the mask but the look on his face is…pleasure? No, that would be too human. Restraint, at least. He could just thrust up into your body in one stroke, but he wants you to feel it for some reason.

Maybe because it’s a worse betrayal of your chastity if you want to get fucked.

Lucky for you, though, you can barely feel anything aside from the pain. The heat you felt building earlier is draining out of you even as Overhaul tilts deeper, layering his chest over yours. You’re almost grateful for the modest barrier the dress provides between your torso and the solid muscle of his abdomen. His cock in your pussy feels like it’s too big too deep too much and it’s the first time you’ve felt like your body wasn’t created specifically for this purpose so you hold it tight.

“Does it hurt?”

A second of clarity makes you want to snarl (of course it fucking hurts, I’m losing my virginity to a demon I summoned from hell) and you dig your fingernails into your palms to stop yourself from saying it out loud. Overhaul pulls out a fraction of an inch and then pushes back in and you feel like the breath’s being pushed out of your lungs. “Yes! Yes, it—it hurts—“

“I can make you enjoy it…for a price,” he sighs, settling into a slow rocking motion of his hips pushing into yours.

And you want to, every sore muscle in your cunt is telling you to give in and give up, give him what he wants so you can enjoy it like he says—but you’d rather hate every second of this than make another deal. You shake your head quickly and because you’re still too afraid to look away from him, you don’t miss the look of surprise that flits across his face before he tamps it down. “I don’t—I don’t want to—like it,” you gasp out between thrusts. “It’s better if—if it h-hurts…”

This time it’s obvious—his eyes really do widen, and you feel some petty triumph at having caught him off guard like this. Who’s predictable now? you think—and then he’s lifting one hand off the altar at the side of your head and tugging his glove off with his teeth, and you don’t even have time to be afraid of what he’s going to do to you because it’s too late, his bare fingers are already stroking over your mound and onto your core, massaging into the flesh of your stomach so he can feel his own cock sliding in and out of you—

and it doesn’t hurt anymore?

You only have a second to try and understand—he cured you, he healed the pain from your first time just like he healed your illness?—before he hooks his grip under your thigh and folds your legs into your chest so he can fuck into you harder than before. His cock slaps into your pussy and you can hear it, hear how wet your filthy little cunt is, smeared through with your juices. It’s sick—the sound of skin against skin, and the moaning you can’t hold back, you sound like a woman in a porno and you wish the pain would come back just so you could keep hating what he’s doing to you. “What—what did you do—“

The demon ignores you. “It feels good, doesn’t it.”

“Nn—“ It’s deeper like this…deeper and rougher and you can feel it. Now that the pain’s been reduced to the dull ache of a stretched muscle, you can feel everything—his cock sliding against that same spot in your cunt that makes you want to squeal, the friction of his body moving against your clit, all of it, everything you wanted to block out— he pumps into you and you hear your breath sobbing out a moan a second out of rhythm, the sounds of you bouncing on demon cock echoing over the walls. “Please—ah, ahhh…”

“‘Please?’ Are you begging—me, little girl?” Overhaul pushes your thigh up and drags his cock through you, excruciatingly slow, forcing you to feel the thick head slide over every gummy wall in your slick pussy.

You shake your head, mewl, try to force your hips to stop rocking back into his and grinding your clit against him. But you can’t. You’re a—you were a virgin, for fuck’s sake! Overhaul’s immortal. Probably thousands of years of experience on how to make you feel like you want this, like you’re only alive in the places he touches you… You’re at his mercy, if he has any. You never stood a chance.

“Then are you begging your god?” His body lowers directly onto yours and like you’re being controlled by puppet strings your arms fold around him and rake your fingernails uselessly into the smooth skin of his back. You can feel the vibration of his mirthless laughter through his chest. “It must hurt terribly…to know he isn’t listening.”

“Don’t—stop, please,” you sob. “Don’t say—don’t stop—please!”

“Listen to yourself, girl—“ Overhaul’s breath is faster now, but you don’t have time to question it because you feel your peak coming again, the tension rising up through your cunt and your abdomen, harsher and crueler than when his fingers were in you but you want it just as much. More. “Has he ever answered your prayers? Has he...ahh, fuck—who’s the one giving you what you need?”

“No— please, please just let me let me, please—“ You’re talking nonsense now, begging for the release—at least then it’ll be over, and you need it, you need it so badly you feel your muscles locking up, cramping, your ankles crossing each other behind Overhaul’s back.

“Good girl,” the demon breathes, and then he lifts off you so he’s kneeling upright with the two of you still connected, his thick, heavy cock still speared in your pussy, and his fingers come down again to rub at your clit. Everything’s so wet you can hear the motion of his fingers slicking themselves through your juices, sliding up and down the little button over and over and it feels so good that a tiny part of you almost wants to drag it out, to savor it, but the rest of your body is going to die, is going to go crazy if the demon doesn’t let you cum right now, right now, right now!

And he does. Praise the Lord. The pads of Overhaul’s fingers pass over your clit one last time and your head rolls back, your throat moves but you can’t even make a sound, your legs shake and you cum.

You didn’t know it was like this.

Your cunt squeezes down on his cock, throbbing and pulsing and your toes literally curl (you didn’t think that was a real thing!) and your vision goes black for a moment and—oh fuck oh fuck i want this i want more how is it possible that i’ve never felt like this—you understand, more intimately than ever, why sex is wrong:

because nothing that makes you feel this good could possibly come without a cost, could it?

///

It must take longer than you thought for you to come back to your senses, because when you regain awareness of your body you’re in your hospital bed. You’re clean, too, and you wonder for a second if Overhaul bothered to clean you up? Or no…he probably just snapped his fingers and transported you back to your room. You’re not really sure how it works.

What you are sure of, however, is that you just got fucked by a demon. You’re sore in places that you didn’t know it was possible to be sore, and there are already bruises forming on the flesh of your thighs from how tight he was holding you. You don’t really have time to inspect these, though, because apparently your…ordeal (if you can call it that) isn’t over.

Overhaul’s still here.

He’s facing the hints of sunrise through the east window, dressed again in the immaculate lab coat and surgeon’s mask. “You’re awake,” he says without looking at you.

You nod hesitantly. You’re not really sure what the protocol is in this situation, but at least you’ve finally held up your side of the contract, right? And so has he. Despite having been up all night doing sinful things, you’re still itching to get out of this bed and test the limits of your healthy body. “You’re…going to leave, right?”

“Yes—”

At that, you sigh in relief and settle back into your starched bedsheets.

“But there’s one more thing you owe me.”

“Goddamnit,” you swear for the very first time in your life. After what you just did, taking the Lord’s name in vain seems like a relatively minor sin.

Overhaul’s mildly irritated expression doesn’t change, but he holds his hand out to you, palm up, the way you imagine someone would if they were helping you out of a car or requesting a dance at an old-fashioned ball. And really, you want all of this to be over—you want to get out of this hospital, you want to taste what the air outside is like, you want to distract yourself from what you just gave up in exchange for a future. At this point you’re just going to have to hope God isn’t as picky about the whole premarital sex thing as you grew up believing.

So you put your hand in Overhaul’s.

Slowly, carefully, like he’s afraid it’ll burn him, he slides your purity ring down your finger and balances it in the palm of his bare hand. It sizzles when he touches it, glowing orange until it eventually burns down into a ash-black circle in the center of his palm. Once he’s satisfied that your pretty little ring has been reduced to nothing more than a scorch mark, he closes his hand around yours and you feel something sharp, painfully hot, etching onto your finger.

It’s over in a second, but you still yelp and yank your hand away from him as soon as he lets you. “Ah—ow, what was that?”

He burned you, he literally burned you! He’s already healed it, but there’s still a thin, pale scar, an intentional one left wrapping around the skin at the base of your left ring finger. Like a wedding ring.

When you look close, you can make out a symbol on the back of your finger where the cross used to sit—and even though your conscious mind doesn’t recognize it, the sight of it rings out something inside your ribcage, deeper and truer than flesh and blood. It’s the devil’s mark, you think. It’s his.

“…A promise,” Overhaul says softly, and even though it’s a chilly morning, you can feel the heat of his hands on yours a long time after he vanishes back into the dark.

#overhaul x reader #chisaki kai x reader #bnha x reader #bnha imagines #mha imagines #tw dubcon #tw sacrilege #tw christianity #overhaul #chisaki kai #bnha #mha #boku no hero academia x reader #boku no hero imagines #my hero academia x reader #my hero imagines #boku no hero fanfic #smut

2K notes · View notes

apompkwrites · 3 years

Text

reader impact || first meeting: archon edition

series masterlist characters: venti, zhongli genre: fluff summary: a game has been released entitled genshin impact, consisting of otherworldly abilities relying on the basic elements of nature. the game follows the story of an interdimensional traveling twin in search of their other half. along this journey, they meet different characters that live in this world. including you. notes: i still don't know if this will be a series but last post would've been too long if i had all four in one

venti's playthrough -

hoo boy, venti's streams would be VERY chaotic.

this boy has nothing to tie him down except for his own mortality, but will that stop him? no.

lots of late night or early morning streams because his sleep schedule is practically nonexistent.

he does a lot of singing or storytelling streams, which is why the time is perfect.

he'll sing lullabies and read bedtime stories at night. in the morning, he'll sing soft songs to wake up his viewers and talk about the rare dreams he'd have once he passes out.

he'll also have drinking streams where he just drinks as much as he can. he's a drunkard, what can i say?

anyway, gaming is something he isn't opposed to, but mainly ones with music or just pure crackhead energy.

when his viewers suggest genshin impact, he'd be somewhat hesitant?

he needs games that are chaotic and filled with energy to keep his attention.

his mods and viewers, however, are able to convince him because of a certain drunken character.

as soon as he sees the non-spoiled description of your character, he's off to download.

he actually enjoys a lot of the adventure aspects of the game, even if he's known as a lazy streamer.

anyway, his viewers definitely should have warned him about your appearance.

they never told him you were such a cute character!

"don't be afraid. it's alright now, i'm back."

"HASGDGSJFK"

he shrieked when you started talking.

"HOW ARE THEY SO CUTE?!?!"

he gets sad when his character sets off dvalin...

you disappear and your dragon friend flies off... now venti's just sad he might've made you upset.

he's pouting the whole way through mondstadt, thinking of ways to make it up to you.

he doesn't care if you're a video game character, he loves you nonetheless.

and once dvalin shows up in mondstadt, he's genuinely excited. he knows your bound to appear again because your friend is here.

when you help venti fly behind dvalin, his chat is teasing him because of the grin on his face.

he's so soft for you, man...

he will spend hours just ranting about you when he's going through the domains with the standard characters.

when he finds the other statues in mondstadt, he likes to climb up it to admire your archon design.

even though he's known you for a few minutes, he will automatically recognize your face in the game.

he knows it's annoying but he can't help but ask his chat if he'll get to see you again soon. he really doesn't want to spend hours without hearing you and seeing you in game.

he likes to yell at paimon whenever she makes fun of you

he shrieks again when he sees you running past the fountain.

he almost cries when he sees you playing your lyre for the first time.

you're perfect in his eyes and all he wants is to spend every minute of this game with you.

although, he did have to take a break the first time he saw your archon form illustrated.

you just... look like an angel and his body can't handle that.

he loves listening to your tales. like the battle pass story that occurs every time it renews, he never skips it. soon, he'll memorize it and recite it with you once it appears.

"oh! i remember you two. you both scared dvalin away!"

"I'M SORRY"

please forgive him. he knows you won't because the game doesn't require it, but he decides to always call stormterror dvalin to make up for it.

"ah, right! i haven't introduced myself... i'm (name) the bard!"

please this boy is so smitten for a video game character.

when you're revealed to be the archon, he's not too surprised? i mean, he already recognized you from the statue.

he is so excited to steal the lyre for you.

it takes him a bit, though, just because he has a bad attention span and ends up revealing his location.

he's even more excited to learn you're a regular at diluc's tavern.

he would do anything to drink with you.

he'll reluctantly end the game there just because it's time for his bedtime songs/stories.

"i'll be back tomorrow, (name), my love! i promise!"

zhongli's playthrough -

zhongli's a really good streamer even when he doesn't try to be.

he is basically the king of just chatting streams.

daily tea times and storytime streams are a go!

his voice is what lures them in and his charm is what traps them there.

he's still poor, though...

he relies on the donations from his viewers but he always expresses his gratitude.

man's respectful, what can i say?

anyway, he does play games every now and then. he doesn't tend to enjoy fighting games though.

although, he's rather good at them... for some reason.

his gaming streams tend to be a lot longer because he picks games with an overarching story.

i'm talking long games like night in the woods, detroit: become human, really any long game with deep meanings and stories.

his viewers will pay for him to just sit there and read to them.

anyway, someone donates to him and recommends he play genshin impact because of the long story and hidden lore.

he definitely enjoyed the beginning of the story, but got even more attached once he reached liyue.

he seems very intrigued when he begins the quest by watching liyue's archon fall dead on the ground.

he would definitely go on a long rant about gods and goddesses that have fallen.

when he meets childe, he does take a liking to him.

now, this man is known for being stoic and serious, so it comes as a surprise when he almost loses his composure when you appear.

keyword being almost.

he manages to stay composed but his chat knows for a fact he's freaking out over you.

your fancy suit/dress reminds him of the anthropological tales of gods/goddesses and kings/queens.

let this man drink tea with you please--

"it is an honor to meet you. i have heard tell of you from mondstadt."

"... they have quite the pleasant voice."

his chat is going wild at this point.

they get to listen to two heavenly voices talk to each other at the same time?! it's a dream come true!

another man that will let your long lines of dialogue play, listening intently to the stories you tell his character.

he actually really likes the image of his character talking to you.

he's so short compared to you--

he also really likes your animation when you're standing still.

not your idle animations, even though those are really nice as well. i'm talking about the movement of your clothes when your character is standing there. it's just so... soothing to him.

the gradient of your hair color to your elemental gnosis is also a nice detail to him. he likes how there are subtle ways archons look compared to normal citizens in teyvat.

when he finds out you are also a person who struggles with money... oh boy, this man cannot relate more.

you both can be broke together.

he will look to his chat for help every time a bargaining option occurs.

similar to venti, he'd be able to tell you were an archon automatically, mainly because of the way you carry yourself and your design.

when you give away your gnosis, he was really interested in the fact that you were so dedicated to your title of the archon of contracts that you would just willingly give your gnosis away.

when he meets the adepti, his chat jokingly says that the yaksha is yours and his adopted child.

"... i would not be opposed to that idea."

all of the artists and writers in his chat are dying at this point.

he'd look up all of the lore, especially ones involving you, and use them for his storytime streams.

#genshin impact x reader #genshin impact #genshin x reader #genshin impact headcanons #genshin impact imagines #genshin impact scenarios #reader impact #genshin impact fluff #genshin impact venti #genshin impact zhongli #genshin venti #genshin zhongli #genshin impact barbatos #genshin impact rex lapis #genshin impact venti x reader #genshin venti x reader #genshin impact zhongli x reader #genshin zhongli x reader

1K notes · View notes

haikyuuphilia · 4 years

Note

what majors do you think the haikyuu guys would choose in college?

hi these are very idealistic (and maybe controversial). half based on post-timeskip and half based on my own thoughts!

❕minor timeskip spoilers below ❕

haikyuu boys and their college majors

→ HINATA majors in linguistics. since he already knows a few different languages, he decides to go for it, not realizing how much science and math is actually involved. knows the basics of ten languages but is fluent in only two of them.

→ KAGEYAMA majors in statistics. was originally going to do accounting but didn’t actually know what accountants do. he’s surprisingly smart when he puts his mind to it, and he basically thinks of statistics as fun math. still puts volleyball first, so how he does in school doesn’t matter much to him.

→ TSUKISHIMA majors in anthropology. he’d intended to do evolutionary biology, archaeology, or history before settling on something he genuinely loves, as niche as the program is. hates that the store anthropologie is more popular than his degree is.

→ YAMAGUCHI majors in electrical engineering. he hadn’t realized it was such a competitive major until he actually went to college and realized that engineering majors have it really rough. a ray of sunshine in his department.

→ SUGA majors in elementary education. he considers nursing school or being a physician’s assistant, but he realizes that he’s more passionate about teaching. doesn’t love the salary he earns, but he doesn’t do it for the salary.

→ DAICHI majors in political science. he might consider doing criminal justice or even sociology; something about those fields suits him and strikes him as both interesting and useful. (kuroo won’t stop telling him that polisci isn’t real science.)

→ OIKAWA majors in astronomy. he knew he was going to go pro in volleyball and that his major wouldn’t matter much, so he decided to go for something he likes. originally did it because he wanted to be the one to discover extraterrestrial life. gets really offended when people mix up astronomy with astrology.

→ IWAIZUMI majors in sports science. he’d taken lessons from volleyball to heart when he went to college, and his major is a combination of two things he’s passionate about. might specialize and do sports med or nutrition. actually uses what he’s learned in class in his day-to-day life.

→ KUROO double majors in chemistry and finance. as a stem major, he probably feels like he has the authority to make jokes about business majors even though he’s basically studying business. gets made fun of a lot by his friends for “selling out.” seriously considers going into consulting after he spends 20+ hours in lab one week.

→ KENMA majors in computer science focusing in game design. it’s a mystery that he’s staying afloat in classes while maintaining how much time he spends gaming every day. gives all of his program classes really weird names and probably has a favorite coding language.

→ BOKUTO majors in international affairs. he’s not a fan of math but also hates doing readings required by most humanities majors, so he settled for international affairs. really hoping that professional volleyball works out for him because he’s struggling in classes.

→ AKAASHI majors in japanese literature. can always be found writing an essay with an absurdly high word count or page requirement. he realizes his job prospects are bleak but studies lit anyway. dreams of writing a novel one day and considers getting a master’s degree.

→ ATSUMU majors in sports psychology. he’d heard he wouldn’t have to spend too much time studying it so he’d be able to focus on volleyball, but now he actually really likes it and puts a lot of time into the classes he takes. also, frat boy energy and varsity athlete vibes.

→ OSAMU majors in business. he’s cruising through college while his friends suffer in weed-out classes and organic chemistry. might drop out or graduate early, and he ends up starting his own business and makes more money than all his friends combined.

→ SUNA majors in neuroscience. he’d originally wanted to be a psychology major because he thought it was easy and interesting, but he got more into the stem side of things and switched to neuro. likes to see people’s reactions when they hear he’s a neuroscience major.

→ KITA majors in agricultural science. he’s been invested in it since he was young. people mix it up with environmental science and ask him about climate change a lot, and he’s too polite to correct them.

→ SAKUSA majors in molecular and cellular biology. really annoying about it and always says the full name of the major instead of just saying he does bio. likes the chemistry side of things and and sucks at genetics. majors in it partly so he could avoid having to write any essays.

(+bonus: YACHI majors in design or architecture and KIYOKO majors in sports administration.)

#haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu hcs #haikyuu x reader #hq headcanons #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu imagines #philia.headcanons #request.filled #holiday.hcs

240 notes · View notes

itslieutenanthawkeye · 3 years

Text

Lucky Guy

Day 7 of Jeankasa Week: College AU

AO3

Sasha and Connie dragged him forward; they’d loaded him up on caffeine that very afternoon, picked up a set of clothes for him and tried to shave his stubble. Jean hadn’t allowed them to do the latter. The night was starting, and he already felt tired.

Final exams had worn him out, consumed all his energy for the sake of a pass, for the sake of a chance of a good job in the future, a nice home for his family. Not that he had any prospects at the moment, mind you. All he seemed to have was stress, and exhaustion nowadays.

He understood that the two dragging him to the party wanted to help him wind down, but Connie had already started taking over for his family business and Sasha had graduated culinary school a year ago. They were living the adult, independent life already.

Meanwhile Jean was stuck with physics and mathematics. At least the artistic portion part of his classes was fulfilling.

“So, where’s Niccolo?” Connie asked as they got on the tramway.

“He had to close up, but he’ll meet us at the party later.” Sasha said, taking them to the long seat at the back of the tramway. Jean sat in between the two, listening to their chatter in silence. “Aren’t you going to lighten up, Jean? You look like someone just died.”

Jean lowered his head, the repetitive rattling of the cart almost lulling him to sleep. “My will to live has died.”

“Come on, man, is it that bad since Marco left?”

“That traitor.” Jean said, with a tone of voice that spoke longing instead of anger.

Marco and he had decided to study architecture together; Jean driven by his knack for drawing, Marco driven by his desire to be by his side. A year into their university course, however, he’d gotten that scholarship to study photography in Hizuru. A great, one-in-a-lifetime opportunity that didn’t come around twice.

An opportunity that would force them to stay apart for four full years. Since neither had enough money to fly back and forth and Jean had not wanted to give up his studies in Paradis, they’d decided to remain friends. They’d been friends since the beginning, after all.

After the first months of heartbreak, Jean had realized that Marco had left him with just about enough money to pay for three months of rent. Although he couldn’t blame him, Jean had gotten the habit of cursing him lowly for the past year, whenever he was forced to balance his part time job and his ridiculous physics lessons.

“I still don’t understand why you don’t get another roommate.” Connie said, scratching the back of his ear. “Are you just holding out until a cute guy shows up at your door?”

“Or girl.” Sasha added, opening a bag of potato chips sneakily.

“Oi, Sasha,” Jean said, frowning. “We’re gonna get a fine because of you.”

“I’ll pay for it,” Sasha said, waving her hand to undermine the matter. “You guys want some? They’re new spicy ones.”

Jean reached out under her jacket and took a few chips into his mouth. “I take it the restaurant is doing well? With you being okay for paying fines, I mean.”

“Niccolo said that breakfast menu I came out with put us on top. If we keep it up, in about two years we’ll be able to set our next location,” she said proudly, her mouth also half full of chips. She gave Jean a significant look. “We’ll need an architect for the place. And someone here will be almost finished with uni.”

He smiled. “Thanks. I’ll make sure to remind you.”

“You know you can ask for money, right, Jean?” Connie said, resting his back against the seat. “You don’t need to work yourself to death when you’ve got us.”

Another lazy smile came to his face. “I don’t want to be a burden to you guys.”

“You’re more of a burden when you don’t come with us to these things,” Connie said. “First, you missed all barbecue nights at Niccolo and Sasha’s. And now you didn’t want to come, and you know Reiner throws the best parties. His little cousin took down that Galliard guy the last time.”

“Isn’t she a kid?” Jean blurted out.

“She likes to sneak in to get in fights with the college kids.” Connie explained, laughing. “I think she’s been in martial arts since five or something.”

“Now that’s a surprise,” Sasha said, elbowing Connie as the tramway arrived at its next station. Jean looked at the person getting on and his breath caught. Wearing a corseted black dress, her hair up in a high ponytail and wearing a choker around her elegant neck, Mikasa Ackerman stood out as a comet across a blue sky.

“I didn’t think she’d come tonight,” Connie said. “You know, considering Eren.”

“What happened with Eren?” Jean asked.

“Don’t you check her feed?” Connie asked, wiggling his eyebrows. “You know, since you had that huge crush on her in high school and whatnot.”

“I’ve been busy.” Jean said, too tired to try and deny that crush he’d had on her in their school days, the crush that had always irked Marco somehow. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m too busy to be concerned about other people’s drama.”

“They broke up,” Connie said in a gossipy tone, as if Jean hadn’t just snapped at him. “Around six months ago. He skipped town. Didn’t want to be tied down or something, wanted to be free as birds or whatever. He’s backpacking in the continent, I think.”

Jean sat straighter on his seat. That dick. That stupid, nihilistic piece of shit. “Why didn’t you guys tell me? Isn’t Sasha her best friend?”

“Because you disappeared the whole semester, man. That’s why I told you to ask for money instead of working yourself to death,” Connie said, shaking him by the shoulder. “You miss out on parties and gossip.”

“Stop it. She’ll hear you,” Sasha said, lifting her arm to wave at Mikasa. “Hey! Mikasa, over here! Come sit with us!”

Jean felt heat in his cheeks. “Sasha, don’t. She’ll come.”

“That’s what I want.”

“I can’t talk when she looks this pretty.”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “Stop being an idiot, Jean.”

Mikasa’s eyes caught sight of them and she made her way to their seat, not bothering to hold onto anything to keep her balance as the tramway moved forward. They had known each other from high school and little things had changed about the way she moved; she carried herself with the elegance of a swan, and the strength of a mountain. He remembered teasing Eren about her being the boss in their relationship during their very last year of school, when the embers of jealousy had begun to die for Jean, and chuckled lowly at the memory of the enraged response he always received.

“Hi, everyone,” she greeted them. Sasha scooted to the side, and Mikasa sat between her and Jean, close enough for him to smell her perfume. “Are you guys going to Reiner’s?”

“Best parties in Trost.” Sasha said, offering her the bag of potato chips. “Want some?”

Mikasa dipped her hand in the bag. “Aren’t you scared you’ll get a fine?”

“She says she’ll pay it,” Connie explained, reaching over Jean and Mikasa to grab more.

“Sasha,” Mikasa said sternly. “How many more fines are you going to pay?”

“She’s paid more this month?!” Jean said.

“She has. It’s getting ridiculous, she can’t go on a tramway without getting hungry…” Mikasa stopped herself from talking and settled her eyes on him, with a vague surprised expression on her lovely pale face. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“I’ve been busy with work.” Jean said, shrugging, hoping that she wouldn’t see the blush in his cheeks that look of her had caused. He waited a second, wondering if he should bring up that he had, in fact, seen her. “I saw you, though. Drawing, in the Maria building.”

Understanding washed over her face, and her mouth fell open. “You should’ve said hi, Jean.” She said. “It’s a huge classroom, there’s no way I could’ve seen you.”

“I’m sorry.” Jean muttered. Truth was, he hadn’t wanted her to see him in the state he’d been in two weeks ago. With his double shifts at work and his assignments for the end of the semester, Jean had resembled a walking corpse more than a human.

Mikasa was an anthropology and history major and, much like Jean himself, worked part time jobs. However, with her looks, most of her part time jobs were related to modeling. That morning at creative drawing, she’d been hired to pose for the class covered only by a thin sheet. And despite being a class full of professionals, Jean had still not wanted the girl who resembled a goddess to see him bordering a mental breakdown.

“Have you been getting enough sleep?” She asked him.

“Does it show that bad?”

Mikasa’s mouth made a perfect O in terror. “I didn’t mean to sound like that.”

Jean chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. It shows. If uni wasn’t free, I would’ve gone broke already.”

“You need to look after your health more, Jean. Have you even been eating well? If you don’t sleep and don’t eat well, you’re just going to burn out,” Mikasa said, then froze, grabbing the hand that was going to reach out to him. “I’m sorry. I just sounded like a mother there.”

“You’re right, though.” Jean replied, smiling at her. “I haven’t been eating well. With work—”

“Is that why you haven’t been to any of the barbecues?”

“You went?”

Mikasa nodded. “We missed you.”

Jean’s head came up with a thousand names to call himself in that moment. He missed his friends enough during the semesters without the knowledge that she’d been hanging out with them at barbecue night. “I’ll make it next time.” He managed to say. “Did Armin go?”

“He’s been busy with moving in with Annie.” Mikasa said, sighing. “I don’t think I’d talk to anyone outside work if it wasn’t for Sasha and Mina.”

“Wait, Armin moved out too?” Jean asked, growing concerned. “Did those two just up and left you alone in that huge apartment?”

“Armin left me some money to pay a couple more months’ worth of rent.” Mikasa said, almost apologizing in Armin’s behalf. Jean’s fists clenched automatically; he’d seen how smitten he was with that marleyan girl, but leaving Mikasa alone to pay for that huge apartment by herself…

“Besides, I insisted,” Mikasa added with a low voice. “I didn’t want him to wallow in self pity with me when he has a perfectly lovely girlfriend.”

Jean sighed tiredly. He should’ve known. Even heart broken, Mikasa cared more about her friend’s happiness than her own economic safety. In a way, it was something that made her all the more charming in his eyes.

“Hey, are you two going to ignore us all the way there?” Connie asked, slapping the back of Jean’s head. “Why did you have to sit in between us if you’re just gonna talk to each other?”

“He’s right,” Sasha said, shaking Mikasa by the shoulder. “Mikasa, pay attention to your best friend now! She brought chips for you!”

Mikasa narrowed her eyes in Sasha’s direction. “Since when do you carry food for anyone but yourself, Braus?”

Sasha’s face contracted into a miserable expression, and she threw herself over Mikasa, hugging her while kissing her head. “Not the last name treatment, Mikasa!”

Maybe a few years ago, Mikasa would’ve thrown Sasha back onto her seat. This time, however, she limited herself to exchange an amused look with him and Connie, patting Sasha’s head in a conciliatory manner. “Alright, alright. Control yourself,” she told Sasha. “Don’t you have a boyfriend? What will Niccolo say if he sees you hugging a woman like this?”

“He’ll probably think we look hot.” Sasha replied innocently.

“What a perv.”

“Mikasa!”

_________________

The tramway took them to the west end of Trost, where high skyscrapers and fancy apartment buildings rose into the sky. The elevator took them a whole thirty floors up to Reine’rs apartment. As soon as they walked in, Jean stared at the ceramic floors, the balcony with its hot tub and view of the distant mountains in the island. When Reiner came to greet them with a hug for each, Jean held him by the shoulders.

“When did you get this rich?” He asked, baffled. How had everyone gotten rich so quick before him?

“My mother and I won the alimony trial last month,” Reiner laughed, hugging him again to then make a wide gesture with his arms at the people in the room. From the way he moved, Jean guessed he was already drunk. “Nineteen years’ worth of unpaid alimony, all paid in full!”

The crowd cheered, raising their beer bottles in the air to celebrate his makeshift toast. “Galliard, Pieck!” Reiner said, stumbling back into the crowd, being caught by the two exchange Marleyan students. “Get the karaoke machine going!”

Sasha and Connie dived into the party in full, going over to Mina, who had her hands full while pouring two bottles of vodka into a large crystal bowl filled with fruits and juice. Jean rubbed his temple; getting drunk wasn’t on his list of priorities, not with so little sleep in his system.

He turned to look at his right, realizing Mikasa stood by the door, watching the crowd move around Reiner’s apartment with apprehension. He took a couple of steps in her direction, leaning against the wall with his hands crossed over his chest, perhaps in a subconscious attempt to appear nonchalant. “See anyone you know?” He asked.

“Too many people.” She muttered in response, rubbing her arms. “Sasha said this was going to be like the barbecue.”

One would think that with her looks and strength, Mikasa would be a little more popular. She’d been an introvert since secondary school, shielded behind the personalities of her two childhood friends. And despite that a few people had managed to break through the cold outer layer of her personality (like Sasha, who’s might as well have gone through it with a war hammer) it always seemed to Jean that there as hidden sadness behind her eyes, a brake of sorts that didn’t allow her to express herself to the fullest.

“Let’s go to the balcony,” she said, pulling his sleeve. “Bring beers.”

Jean almost -almost- felt bad for Reiner’s father as they walked along the balcony. Trost had skyscrapers aplenty, but very few had a perfect look of the suburbs and mountains, and very few had an infinity pool with a hot tub included. The place must’ve costed a fortune. He could almost see his own neighborhood from this height.

They found a set of unoccupied pillowed seats at the corner, far from Reiner’s infinity pool, and sat there to watch the city in silence.

“I live there,” Mikasa said after a while, pointing south to a cluster of colorful buildings. “It’s the big tall one, with the red lights.”

“Ah, party town,” Jean said. He and Marco had tried to find a place there, but the rent had been astronomical, given its strategic location near the universities and clubs. “Was it a big change from the suburbs? That’s where you grew up in, right?”

“It was a huge change from my uncle’s house,” she said, her eyes set on the red building, amused at some memory Jean wasn’t aware of. “He was grossed out when he visited last year.”

“College neighborhood isn’t for him?”

“He said it was too dirty,” Mikasa said, sighing. “Although I’m sure he was terrified at the number of teenagers that threw themselves at him. He said I was to visit him from now on.”

Jean giggled at that. “Girls threw themselves at Levi?”

“Apparently he’s got something that makes university students go crazy.” Mikasa said, making a disgusted noise. Jean laughed again; Levi had been their teacher in middle school. How any college girl found him so appealing, he didn’t understand.

“Well, at least you can have fun in that neighborhood.” Jean said.

Mikasa made another disgusted noise. “I was only there because Eren suggested it. It was too loud for my liking. Too many creeps on the streets. And the rent is too high.”

“How did you guys manage to afford that? I mean, Eren and Armin aren’t precisely rich,” Jean said, covering his mouth as soon as he realized what he’d blurted out. “I’m sorry, Mikasa! I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay,” Mikasa said, shaking her head in amusement. “Eren’s brother paid for most of the rent. He works in Marley and sent him money.”

She finished with a sigh, setting her eyes on the floor for a second before taking a sip of her beer. When she turned to look at him, Jean recognized annoyance in her eyes. “Now that he’s gone, Zeke stopped paying for that big chunk of the rent.”

“And Armin moved in with Annie,” Jean finished saying.

“And I’m in that huge place all by myself,” Mikasa said, taking another sip from her bottle. “Scraping my bank account to pay utilities, taking any modeling job that comes up besides working at Sasha’s restaurant, two months behind on rent.”

“Did Sasha offer you money yet?” Jean asked, recalling all the times their friend had tried to hand him checks for his rent.

Mikasa smiled. “A couple of times. But I don’t want to be a burden to her. As good as the restaurant is doing, having her own business can be tricky. One bad luck streak and she’ll be needing that money she offers me.”

“What about a roommate?”

“Nobody I know can afford rent there. I don’t want to disturb Niccolo and Sasha, and Levi has plenty on his plate. And it’s impossible to find a place this late in the year,” Mikasa said, sighing tiredly again. “Do you know how close I am to modeling underwear? A man in this shady company offered me so much money for nudes the other day—”

“Move in with me.” Jean blurted out, and his words were followed by excruciatingly long minutes. Mikasa rested her back against the seat, scrutinizing him with those perfect, serious eyes. “I don’t mean in a weird way. I mean, my rent is much less than yours must be. But ever since Marco left, it’s been harder to afford it on my own. I could use a roommate, and all the people I’ve interviewed were weirdos.”

“Won’t Marco be angry?” Mikasa asked politely. “Won’t he be upset that a girl is living with you?”

Jean smiled. “We’re not together anymore.”

“No?” She said, looking genuinely surprised. “Why? What happened? I thought—”

“Neither wanted a long-distance relationship, or had the money to afford one,” Jean explained, surprised at the lack of pain in his words when he spoke of what had happened. Perhaps, the exhaustion throughout the year had forced his heart to get over a heartbreak quickly.

“Besides,” Jan added, arching his eyebrow in her direction. “I know for a fact that hizuran people are beautiful. I couldn’t deny him having fun over there. So, we decided to stay as friends.”

Mikasa smiled, and Jean blushed. “You’re a good friend.”

“I’m not,” Jean replied, leaning back against his seat as well. “I had no idea about you and Eren. You’re our friend since high school, and I had no idea you’d gotten your heart broken too this year. So, I’m not that good of a friend.”

Mikasa rested her hand at her sides, her pinky almost touching his, leaning back to catch sight of the night sky. “You’re in no obligation to carry anyone’s pain, Jean, let alone mine.”

“What do you mean? You’re my friend.”

“I know. We are friends,” Mikasa said quickly, as if noticing the hint of pain her previous words had caused in him. “What I mean is…I knew it was going to happen. I saw the change in Eren. I knew he wouldn’t want to stay put. He was more in love with the idea of freedom than with me. I should’ve ended it a long while ago. So, no need to carry pain that was dragged on for no purpose.”

“And you didn’t want to go with him?”

Mikasa thought about it for a moment. He could hear Reiner and that Pieck girl singing at the top of their lungs inside, as well as Connie’s laughter. And yet, all his mind was set on was her, how her eyes focused on his as she spoke every word, how a bit of lipstick had smudged on the edges of her mouth due to their drinking. Jean had always been aware of Mikasa’s beauty, but he hadn’t been truly enthralled by it in a very long time.

“I don’t think I would’ve gone,” she said at last. “I love the island. I love my home. I want to have a peaceful life here, grow old here. I like seeing new places, but I don’t want to spend my life wandering. He did.”

Jean nodded, understanding her fully. All he’d ever dreamed of was a nice house in the inner districts, alongside the wife -or husband- of his choosing.

“Besides,” Mikasa said with a quiet laugh. “He never asked me to come.”

“What a fucking idiot.”

Mikasa blinked in surprise. “I’m not mad at him, Jean. You don’t need to be in my behalf.”

“I’m not mad on your behalf,” Jean said, shaking his head, a deep crease forming between his eyebrows, feeling all of that frustration he’d had towards Eren in high school come back in full. “What kind of idiot do you have to be to break the heart of someone like you?”

“Someone like me?”

“You’re fucking amazing!” Jean said, shocked by the confusion in her face. “Mikasa, you’re gorgeous, smart, strong. You can lift a whole hundred pounds without breaking a sweat…who would want to break your heart?”

Another chuckle escaped her throat, and she gave him a look that he could only describe a sweet. “Thank you,” she said, tilting her head to the side. “My heart was breaking the whole last year we were together, though. I guess in a way, him leaving helped me heal.”

“I hope he falls into a pit.” Jean muttered, then shook his head. “No, I hope I fall into a pit, for not noticing you were hurting before.”

“You had your thing with Marco moving away,” Mikasa replied. “If anything, I was the jerk for not helping you like Connie and Sasha did. I was too focused on trying to force Eren to be happy with me.”

“Still, I should’ve helped.”

“You’re helping now,” Mikasa replied, lifting her pierced eyebrow. “You’re letting me be your roommate, aren’t you?”

Jean took a deep gulp of his beer before speaking. “So, you are taking up on my offer?”

“Yes,” Mikasa said, setting her eyes on the section of town in which he lived in. “If you take up on my offer.”

“Which is?”

“The agency wants a couple male models,” she said, elbowing him playfully. “I heard from Sasha how you’re killing yourself at that part time. This money won’t be great, I do warn you, but it will be better, and you’ll have more time to study.”

The color traveled to his cheeks yet again. “I-I’m not a model, Mikasa.”

“No need to be modest, Kirstein,” she said, scrutinizing him again, her gaze sensing a shock of electricity across him. “I saw you on that beach trip we did. You’ve got nothing to envy from the models.”

They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity, and Jean’s mind became a storm. Had she just told him she found him attractive? No, it couldn’t be. She’d just said he had nothing to envy from male models. But that was just a creative way to call someone hot, wasn’t it? She had no reasons to call him hot, however.

“Jean, I think—”

“Niccolo!” Sasha’s shouted drunkenly, startling the two in their seats. It wasn’t until they turned in her direction that Jean realized how close their faces had been to each other.

“Alright, alright. Do it again.” Niccolo laughed, sounding quite drunk himself. Sasha grabbed her shirt and tightened it around her waist, showing him her bloated stomach.

Niccolo giggled. “It’s adorable! It does look like you’re pregnant,” he said between snorts. “How many garlic buns did you eat back there?”

“Why are you calling your baby a garlic knot, Niccolo?!” Sasha half-laughed, half cried, only causing Niccolo to laugh harder. They were soon on the floor, struggling to catch their breath because of their laughter, and Jean was grateful for the protective mesh at the edge of the balcony.

“They’re drunk.”

“They’re high.” Mikasa said, casting a glance inside. “Ymir and Historia are here.”

“No wonder they’re high.” Jean chuckled. Historia wore a beautiful pink dress, looking as happy as ever with Ymir’s hands around her waist. Ymir, as always, wore a dark suit. As always, she was more focused on kissing Historia’s neck than the conversation around her. They’d been inseparable since their wedding, and from the sparkling necklace around Historia’s neck, Jean supposed their business was growing well.

Mikasa grabbed his sleeve. “Do you want to go get some?”

“You smoke that stuff?” Jean asked, wondering when he’d smoked anything last.

“Not really.” Mikasa admitted, looking at Sasha laughing on the floor while placing a thousand drunken kisses on Niccolo’s forehead. “It looks like they’re having fun, though.”

“We could do it to celebrate,” Jean said, shrugging. “You know, each of just found a good roommate and we might not be as broke from now on.”

“You are sure about the roommate matter?” Mikasa asked, frowning. “You’ll have to take a few visits from my uncle.”

“I’ll cope.” Jean said, looking at Niccolo and Sasha. “Are you sure? What if Eren returns and gets mad?”

Mikasa rolled her eyes. “He can get as mad as he wants. I won’t care.” She said, and from her tone of voice , Jean knew she was done talking about Eren for the time being. She looked more annoyed at the inconveniences that Eren had caused her than heart broken. Perhaps, the exhaustion had forced her to get over a heartbreak quick, as well.

Jean offered her his hand. “Shall we, my lady?”

“You’re still an idiot,” Mikasa said, intertwining her arm with his. “Thank you, by the way.”

“No, thank you,” he said, using his other hand to take their bottles. He offered one to her and lifted his own. “Toast? For roommates?”

“For roommates.” Mikasa said. Their bottles clang together, their sound foretelling a change of wind for the two, perhaps.

______________________

Gabi walked along the bookstore holding onto Falco’s arm. She and her mother spent summers with her cousin Reiner in the island. And despite this being her fifth year visiting him and despite the luxuries of his apartment, she missed him terribly each time she left. So, she clung to him before and after her journeys, enjoying their time together as if it were a treasure.

“Want to get an ice cream afterwards?” He asked.

“The place by the zeppelin museum?” Falco nodded in response, and Gabi smiled widely. “Alright, then. But it’s my treat this time.”

“Let me buy the comic books this time, at least,” he said, pulling out a book with a few giants on the cover. “This looks good, doesn’t it?”

Gabi frowned at the sight of the naked giants. “I hate historical fiction.”

“It’s not like titans were real, Gabi,” Falco said, running through the pages. “This is mostly political-oriented. See? They even consulted a historian from Paradis to write it.”

“Hey, I know her!” Gabi said excitedly, looking at the picture of the main consultant from the work. “She’s the head of the anthropology museum at the island. She’s Reiner’s friend.”

“Is she?” Falco said, his eyes wide as he stared at the picture of Mikasa, who wore a fancy pantsuit and had her hair up in a ponytail. Unlike at the parties, her make up in this was formal, no bright pink lipstick, no dark eyeshadow. “She’s really pretty, isn’t she?”

“Falco!” Gabi said, then took a second look at the picture. “You’re right, she’s really pretty. Her husband is a lucky guy. He always says it himself.”

“Oh, she’s married?”

“Yeah, she married a friend of hers, I think. It was a late spring wedding, so I didn’t get to go. They’ve got a baby on the way and everything,” Gabi said, scrunching up her nose. “He’s friends with Reiner too, but I can’t recall the guy’s name.”

“Gabi, you see those people every summer,” Falco said, his kind face showing a slight hint of repeoach. “You should at least learn their names.”

“Reiner has way too many friends for me to remember,” Gabi replied, not wanting to admit that she did need to be a little more polite to them. “I do remember he had a bit of a horse face.”

“A horse face?” Falco said, horrified. “This woman here married a guy with a horse face?”

Gabi smiled amusedly. “She seemed quite smitten by him. Every time I go and they’re there, they’re always all lovey dovey. Kissing, hugging, they can’t keep their hands off each other,” she said, tilting her head to the side with a flirty smile. “Besides, it was just a nickname. The man is handsome, and taller than most guys, too.”

“Gabi, don’t talk so kindly about married men.” Falco said, closing the magazine with his cheeks flushed. Although his expression caused her own smile to grow wider.

“Are you jealous?” She teased, then placed a fleeting peck on his lips. “You’re way more handsome than horse face. And, you still have more years to grow. I’m sure that you’ll be taller than him by when we get married.”

“Gabi!” Falco said, flushing harder.

#Jeankasa #jeankasaweek2021 #JeanMika #jean kirschtien #Mikasa Ackerman #Jeankasa Week 2021 #fanfic #drug mention

36 notes · View notes