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abbythewritor · 10 months

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"Fairness" One Piece x Saitama reader twelve.

"Just a Normal girl looking for an everyday life. At least, if you call sailing across the seas with idiots with useless dreams a simple task, then you might wanna see a doctor. Seriously."

Warnings: Blood, gore, mentions of Luekimia, and heaps amount of blood and strength. It might be a little cursing, but not bad, and maybe some flirting in there, but it's mostly clean.

Other things:

-You didn't get bald due to your powers; you got bald to an extreme illness.

-You part of the straw hat crew, but others are interested in you and your power.

-Everyone that is a male is taller than you.

-Monsters from the OPM world will appear in One Piece, and I'll make some new monsters you will fight.

Enjoy the twelfth chapter everyone!!

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Man, it's been a while.

Last time we left off, I accepted to join Luffy's crew, and for the past two years, as a captain, he ordered everyone to grow strong, for two years straight.

Including me.

Yep, that's right, he trained his Haki with Rayleigh, and I trained my haki and strength with the Marine hero, Garp.

It's been interesting, as he didn't go as hard as he did with Luffy when he was a kid, but I still worked just as hard.

Every single morning, I start with a prestige workout.

10-kilometer run.

Upper body strength.

Core strength.

Lower body strength.

weight training.

Inner peace activities, Yoga, Stretching, and Balancing.

Then Garp worked on my strategy mindset, along with different defense techniques, attacks, and mind movements with chess, and other Japanese-like games that I wasn't familiar with.

He also taught me different Haki tequniques from himself, and stuff he learned from fighting Roger, who was the last king of the pirates.

At first, I was confused on why he would train a person who would become a pirate, then I realised he knew how important I was to Luffy, and wanted to make me storng so when he comes across me again, he won't hold back his strength, which I wouldn't blame him.

But, things aside, Garp also worked on combat training with me against Koby, who I formed some sort of bond with over the past two years.

The blonde didn't like me because I was a pirate, but I grew on him once the two years were coming to an end.

But, all of the harsh training and sparing, making new friends with some Marines, and people, the two years will soon come to an end, when Tomorrow I meet up with Luffy, and meet my new crew members.

It was a start of a new journey, and Journey of fun, excitement and Adventure, which was something I've been longing for forever.

Oh, and your probably wondering, what about Crocodile, buggy, and the ones who helped me and Luffy at Marineford? Well, let's say I was writing them all letters, and knew that Ivankov was training one of my crewmembers I've yet to meet yet.

All of them are doing quite well, Mister Three Joined buggies crew, while Mister One was working beside Crocodile, as they are trying to rise the ranks, to become something differemt which makes me proud.

Jimbei hasn't written back at all, which is understandable as he is a busy fishman all the time, but it makes me curious on how he is doing.

Luffy has seemed to be doing well, as he wrote back to me all rayleigh has taught him, all the jokes and fun things the two did these past two years, which made me excited to see him more and more.

Ace, however, did some training of his own, which is understandable from the Marineford incident, but he never really told me who trained him.

Either way, I'm glad he's living a fair life right now, as Pop's death is put behind everyone who fought in that war two years ago.

He told me he was doing quite well, finding hobbies to keep him busy, as well as rebuilding the Whitebeard Pirates into something more, which makes me glad his life is taking a turn for the better.

With many thoughts running through my mind, the sunset of this day was showing onto the sea, myself sitting on a grassy hill as the trees and the flowers danced with the sea brease.

You look a little different as well, grown up, as you were still Y/B/T, (Your body type.) but you looked stronger, happier, and more intelegent.

Wigs, the ones you used to wear, you got everything that could cover your bald head out of your life, as you learned that being bald, doesn't mean anything different about a person. You learned hwo to embrace yourself, and your bald head, as it is a symbol of beauty, and it shows a symbol of piece to people, just like Saitama did with his bald head-well, kind of.

As i continued to watch the beauty of the sunset in front of me, I felt a familiar presence behind, as Koby sat in the spot next to me. "It's quite beautiful isn't it?" I nod. "Yeah, I'm sure going ot miss doing this everynight....these past two years have been...." He chuckled. "Hard?" I shook my head with a smile. "No-well, yes, but I've never had to much fun in my entire life....learning new skills, eating different kinds of food that's not from my world, even making new friends." I nudge Koby, as he chuckled. "Never expected this when I was first recruited. Training with a girl who will become apart of a pirate crew who's run by Garps Grandson. Especially a girl from a different world. I say, when a mad man tells me that, I'd think their crazy, but a girl like you, with powers like yours, explaining everything that had happened, how can I not belive it?" I smile more.

"Your lucky I didn't turn on you, 'Admrial.'" He snorted. "Future, Admiral, well, that's still the plan anyway. It just makes me think how far both of us came, and it makes me wonder more how far Luffy proceeded, and how strong he became, guess you'll find out tomorrow, huh?" Sighing, I looked back at the sunset. "Yeah..." Many thoughts ran through my head, as I was quite nervous with meeting his crew, as koby could sense my uneasyness, as his head tilted. "Are you alright, Y/n? You seem to be thinking a lot lately..." I let out another sigh. "Let me ask you a question, before you joined the marines, where you ever nervous?" Koby was silent from my question for a moment, before he ssmiled. "Of course I was, all my life I was scared, but, once Garp trained me, and i've became stronger and knew what being a marine was like overall, all my nerves went away. I knew what my purpose was, to achiev the Marine Admiral title, and I know I can let my nerves get away from my goals." His words struck you in the heart, as you smiled again, your eyes then looking to the ground.

"I see...well, I guess I shouldn't be nervous then huh?" Koby chuckled. "Don't get me wrong, it's ok to be nervous when your entering a new chapter in life, but, trust me when I tell you this, the straw-hat pirates will be the nicest people you ever meet, because I know them too." My eyes widened slightly. "Ah, that's right, you told me you've encountered them a few times." He nodded. "Yes I have, and they are strong too, but now that two years have gone by, I'm curious too see how thye have grown, and how they will think of your strength, I have faith Y/n you'll fit right in, because Luffy asked you to be apart of his crew for a reason." Sighing, Koby was right, as my smily grew a lot more. Luffy didn't just ask me because I was desperate, or on the verge of death, he saw potential in me, he saw my strength physically and mentally, and he sought of it as a perfect fit. Plus he saw my loyalty to him, which a captian needs a loyal crew member in order to survive these treturous seas. "The boys right." Both of us looked to Garp, who held his usual smile, as a cookie was in his hands. Koby's eyes widened with the sight, as he got up. "Sir, are you sure your supposed to be have that?! The doctor said-“

“Bah! Screw what the doctor says; I’m grown up and can have anything I want! Besides, I earned this for training you idiots!” Garp interrupted, laughing while taking a bite of his well-deserved cookie. “Sir, with all due respect, sweets are nice to have oonce in a while, but with how old you are, having too much sugar is not the greatest idea-“ Koby got bonked “I CAN EAT THIS COOKIE IF I WANT TO IS THAT CLEAR?!” “Y-Yer sir!” Giggling from the usual antics, Garp sighed and took the final bite of his cookie while looking at me. “Nerves can be a great obstacle when sailing the seas, but trust me on this: my grandson can take your nerves away in an instant; besides all the training we did, all the battle strategies and studies I’ve shown you both, I have full faith you both will make it in this pirate world. Just remember the important tactics in the future when I’ll be chasing you down, and pray that your God will help you throuth. HAHAHAHA!”

His words made my eyes rolled. "I can achieve anything through Christ who strengthens me, so don't be surprised when I don't hold back." My smirk made him laugh more as he patted my back. "That's the spirit kid! Even if you are a pirate or a marine, a strong will and heart will always be a good power when facing tough opponents; just remember not to gloat about the positive attributes since you always have your crew on your side to back you up. Who am I kidding? I'm a marine, not a pirate. HAHAHAH!" Koby sighed. "I think you had enough cookies.." he took to bag, and Garp paused before slumping, and I giggled more. "Thank you guys…I know I'm going to be ok. I've worked hard for this; now it's time to start a new chapter in my life… I will never be more blessed to be alive right now." Turning to the two, I gave them a huge smile. "Thank you both for the best two years of my life; when we meet again, we won't consider friends or family; we'll be rivals with benefits." Koby nodded, smiling at me. "Right!" Garp put a finger to his chin. "Rivals with Benefits huh? I've never heard that before, but consider me a family Rival. Y/n, keep Luffy in check because he will need much help to get through the seas. Especially now that Ace is saved, just don't do anything reckless, alright? Don't wanna drop you off tomorrow, and something went wrong."

I nodded this time. “Of course, Sir. I’ll do my best.” Garp crossed his arms. “Now, you must know a few things when we arrive tomorrow. One, I will give you a 5-minute head start before sending my marines after you. I will give you coordinates to where Luffy’s ship would be, as Rayleigh told me. Find the ship, don’t get caught, and meet your new crew mates, understand?” I nodded again as he continued. “There will be a high chance the Kuma army will be there two, but nothing you can’t handle. Think smartly, not rashly. Therefore, I have nothing else to teach you; now get some rest; we set sail for Sabaody at dawn.” Me and I nodded again. “Yes, sir!” With that, he left, and Koby looked at me. “Are you going to be ok?” Signing, I smiled, looking at him. “Yeah, actually..”

“I have a feeling I’m going to be more than ok…”

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“Alright, listen up!” It was the next day, as the marine ship you were on was approaching the destination, as Garp was telling you the plan. I had everything ready, all packed, as my excitement grew more. “Here are the coordinates to Luffy ship; before I give you a five-minute head start, you will run into familiar people, new foes, and some idiot lowlife pirates that boast about themselves. Just focus on getting to the Sunny, with no distractions or errors, understand?” I nodded to Garp. “Yes, sir!” He grinned. “Good, now here is a month's supply of food; since I know how Luffy eats, all of this is needed-“ “DID YOU STEEL THE COOKIES FROM HERE?!” Koby snapped as Garp froze, whipping at the boy. “ONLY ONE LUFFY CAN SURVIVE!!” “YOU DID NOT TAKE ONE SIR YOU TOOK A WHOLE BOX!” “LIKE I SAID, LUFFY WILL SURVIVE NOW. SHUT UP!!” Koby got hit with Garp's fists before handing me the food bag, which I could carry easily. “Now, the coordinates should be easy for you to understand since I wrote the instruction for kindergarteners, so don’t screw up and get lost. Once we dock, immediately hop off the ship, no of that emotional goodbye stuff even though I will miss having a girl to train…” he started to get emotional and turned as Koby approached him. “DON’T CRY THEN!” He snapped as I smiled. “It’s okay; crying isn’t a sign of weakness. I’ll see you both again. The two years was just the beginning.”

Koby smiled at my words as he walked closer to me. "Of course, I'll put up a good fight next time." I smiled at his confidence as he held out a fist, but I ignored it and hugged him, and he froze. His face was red; he was shocked that I was doing this. I was getting emotional when I felt his arms wrap around me. "Be safe. Koby… don't get yourself killed.." I whispered as he hugged me tighter; I could feel his breath on my skin. "Same to you, Y/n.." Pulling away, I wiped my tears before looking to Garp, who was still crying while facing out, as I sighed. "Garp." I knelt to him and smiled. "Thank you for training me and helping me to grow stronger. The techniques you taught me will also come in handy for defense. But sometimes, when good people part ways, it's always good to cry occasionally. But don't worry, I won't think any less of your strength because you are crying. I'll be ok, and keep Luffy safe, I promise." His brows knitted together. "You better; I don't want another brat to worry for when I'm chasing me. Besides, you'll be one hell of a pirate, a strong one at that." I smile. "And it's all thanks to you. Well, I guess I should go, huh? Thank you two again. Be safe!" As my five minutes were starting, I grew excited. I bowed, grabbed my stuff, and hopped off the Marine ship, running straight ahead. As Garp and Koby watched, Bogard walked up to the two and just glanced at Garp. "You're giving her more time, aren't you.." Garp laughed. "Of course I am; she'd be considered lucky since this place is confusing; she should be just fine. EVERYONE GET READY TO PULL TO THE FRONT BAY! WE'LL CUT THEM OFF!!" A bunch of 'Yes sirs' rang through the deck as the ship went out of the dock while you, of course, were looking at the directions as you followed the numbers on the trees.

This place was unique, full of bubbles which is meant for a five year old.

Everything looked plastic, even though it wasn’t, as you took a chance to take in the scenery, grasped the food bag and stuff, and adjusted it on your back.

Many people were here, and it was pretty lively with different people. The more I got closer to town, the more excited I felt.

Continuing to run, I tried my best to avoid many people and not make a big scene, as marines were already around the area, but they were probably not under Garp's command.

Making sure not to be seen, I kept a low profile as my posture was normal, my head was down, and my excitement was high.

It was not just excitement running high through me; it was also nervous because I hadn't seen Luffy in two years, let alone met his whole crew, and I heard rumors that they were just as strong as him.

Garp informed me of their names, as they all sounded unique, and I couldn't wait to meet them.

Roronoa Zoro: The fearsome swordsman.

Nami: Cat Burglar or Navigator

Nico Robin: the famous archeologist.

Chopper: The doctor.

Vinsmoke Sanji: The Cook.

Franky: The Shipwright

Brook: The musician

Usopp: The fearless sniper.

All of their titles seemed unique and different, and it made me even more nervous to meet them, as I didn't know where my strength and title stood against them, but I hope I get along with everyone.

As I kept running and running, I arrived at a green-hilled pasture, as more bubbles from this island were formed, until...I saw him.

That's right. I saw Luffy's big backpack on his back as he was in front of Rayleigh, who had trained him for the past two years.

Behind him were two handsome men: a tall, muscular, green-haired guy with a slash on his left eye and the other male beside him, who was blonde, elegant, and had a black go-tee.

"Huh, those two men must be a part of his crew.." I stated as I continued running that way, but as I was heading to them, the Marines yelled to stop Luffy and the two men as they were about to attack.

My eyes widened, and my teeth gritted as I jumped before the three. When I got close enough, my cloak blew in the wind as my fist went back. "NORMAL SPREAD PUNCH!" I yelled, Slamming my fist on the floor as all the marines that were in front of the three suddenly scattered in a large explosion.

The ground rumbled, and the leftover marines' eyes widened as they couldn't believe how much power suddenly occurred.

Dust arose, the chaos in front of Luffy, and the two men widened their eyes as my Silhouette was shown, making Luffy's lips form a bright smile.

"You're an Idiot, Luffy....for not having your guard up all the time.." I stated, a smile curling on my lips as I was revealed.

The marine's eyes widened more when they saw me, as some of them backed away with fear.

"I-It's Y/n L/N's..! The powerful girl that saved Fire Fist Ace years ago!"

"W-Why is she here?! Rumors said she joined a pirate crew; wait, don't tell me.."

"Stop her from helping the Strawhats escape!!!"

Luffy couldn't stop smiling. "Y/n!!! Is that really you?! Wow!! You look so different! HAHA!" Luffy hugged me, and his laughter brought warmth into my ears as I laughed, too, hugging him back. The blonde Male had hearts in his eyes and was waving his arms. "Wah! A pretty lady!!!" I blushed, flattered by the blonde's comment, as the green-haired male stepped forward, grabbing onto his sword handle. "Luffy, you know this girl?"

Luffy smiled, letting go of me as he began to pat my back repeatedly. "It's Y/n! I forgot you all haven't met her yet! She is a part of our crew!" Both of the men froze, as I smiled nervously, and I waved. "H-Hi...I heard a lot about you both...Garp has told me a lot of information...your Zoro and Sanji right?"

The two's eyes widened as Sanji's eyes turned into hearts, his nose bleeding a little. "She knows my name!!" Zoro stepped forward, a little shocked. "Yeah, those are our names... you said Garp told you information about us..which means you were with the Marines?"

Laughing nervously, I scratched the back of my head. "Well, I wasn't a part of the Marines; I just gotta taste what it was like for the past two years. Garp trained me, actually." Sanji paused his simpering as his and Zoro's eyes widened. "Wait, really, Garp trained you?" Sanji asked. "I'm surprised," Zoro added, then continued. "Being the hero of the Marines, I would expect the least of him to train someone who's part of a pirate crew. Well..it's nice to meet you, Y/n gotta admit, you're strong, but are you worth enough to fight alongside Luffy..?" Zoro's calm question caught me by surprise, but I wasn't hesitant when I firmly nodded my head to him before speaking."Luffy has a strong heart and a great dream. People like him deserve Fairness and to achieve his goals and actions in life. Two years ago, I fought alongside him to Save Ace. I won't stop fighting with him until he becomes pirate King. For the world to know even the lowest of people who are pirates or Marines or even just regular people, all deserve Fairness and to live in a world where they won't be bored but have a sense of fun and adventure." My words struck Zoro somehow, as he could see the determination, loyalty, and Kindness in my eyes. He didn't know who I was or what Luffy had brought to the table, but he knew I was loyal to Luffy, making his lips curl into a small smile as I saw his hand go out to me. "Well then, that settles things...dI like you Y/n.....Welcome to the crew..." My heart fluttered as I looked up at him before smiling, as my hand firmly grasped in his. "Thank you both!"

"You kids better go; I'm sure more Marines will be coming this way." A familiar voice spoke, and we all turned to see Rayleigh as I smiled at him. "Rayleigh!" He smiled down at me calmly, his tall form towering over me. Even though his age had seen better days, his looks never failed him, as he was as handsome as ever. "Hello there, Y/n-san; I must say, Garp trained you well. Did you lose weight?" I smiled more at his question as I nodded. "I did! I've never felt better about myself, and I have your Grandpa to thank for that, Luffy." Luffy laughed, holding his stomach with a smile as Rayleigh chuckled.

"Well, I'm proud of you, Y/n; you look good... perfect. Be who you want to be...don't let anyone else tell you who you are, because if you let them..well.." His hand reached out, gently popping a bubble about to land on my nose as my cheeks rose in color, and his smile continued to show the more he looked at me. "Your life won't be as bright as it is now...you don't want that, do you, Y/n?" My heart continued to beat rapidly; I felt like I was going to explode as my head quickly shook, which made him smile more, his hand going onto my head. "Good girl...because bright people like you deserve fairness, just remember that. I want to keep seeing your Kindness when you rise with Luffy on the Grandline; just don't forget to Visit this Old Geezer occasionally, ok? Can you Promise me that?" Nodding from his question, my eyes met his again. "Of course, I'll visit you, Rayleigh; that is a definite promise, right Luffy?" Luffy nodded also. "Yes! That's right! You are not alone anymore, Rayleigh! Your family to us now!" When Luffy smiled, Rayleigh got emotional as he wiped his eyes. "Family huh? I quite like the sound of that...you all better be careful...the Grandline is even more dangerous than ever, so remember to always keep guard and protect each other...you four better head to the Sunny; I'll take care of the Marines here.." Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, and I all nodded with Rayleigh's words, as we turned, and started running, heading to Luffy's ship.

Before the Marines could attack us more, Rayleigh fended them off, serving no match against him.

As the four of us ran, heading in the right direction, Luffy smiled brightly beside me. "We have so much to catch up on!" I nodded to his question. "Indeed we do. Luffy." As Luffy smiled brightly again from my agreement, a large shadow cast over the four of us as we paused to see a Giant bird, which widened my eyes.

But, before we could be hesitant, a familiar voice spoke, and we saw the familiar Doctor, known as Chopper, waving and Yelling to Zoro, Sanji, and Luffy.

"Chopper!" Luffy yelled, smiling more as the bird landed. My eyes sparkled when looking at the Reindeer, as he was so cute when he tackled Luffy into a hug, and Zoro and Sanji, the four of their laughter, warmed my heart.

As Chopper looked at Luffy, he looked at the bird. "Everyone is waiting for you, Luffy, at the Sunny!" Luffy's eyes widened. "Robin, Brook, Nami, Usopp, and Franky are there already?! Well, we can't keep them waiting! Zoro, Sanji, Y/n, let's get on the bird and hurry!"

The three of us nodded, soon getting on the bird, which took off, as Chopper directed it to the right path while it flew high in the sky.

I couldn't help but be in awe with the View of this island, as it was pretty beautiful. It was peaceful, flying so high in the sky as I closed my eyes, enjoying the calm wind hitting my skin. The bird continued to head to the Sunny until Luffy saw his ship in his eyes and smiled again. "There it is! OI! GUYS!! EVERYONE!!" He yelled as I looked down at him, and the other members of his crew smiled more, too, getting up from their spots and running to the edge of the boat, greeting him back with the same amount of kindness.

I noticed some of them crying, and it made my heart warm when the bird got closer.

But, then suddenly, a pool of blood came out of Sanji's nose as he flew off the ship, and my eyes widened with shock as the chopper yelled for him as he fell into the water.

Zoro wasn't bothered to get him, as it was customary for his nose to bleed like this; I was just concerned for Sanji as the bird was close enough to Sunny, allowing me, Luffy, chopper, and Zoro to hop on, as Chopper thanked the bird.

As the bird flew away, Usopp cried for Chopper to stop Sanji's nose from bleeding, as Zoro simply walked past, and I looked amongst the Chaos, not knowing what to do as Luffy was too busy admiring Franky's new form. "Excuse me." A voice spoke as I turned to Robin, who looked at me curiously as her tallness towered over me.

"Are you the new crewmember Rayleigh spoke of?" My posture was fixed as soon as she asked that, and I nodded. "Y-Yes, my name is Y/n; it's nice to meet you." My answer piqued Nami's interest. "Oh, so your Y/n! You helped Luffy save Ace!! I'm Nami! It's nice to meet you!" She offered me her hand, and I smiled and shook it. "It's nice to meet you, Nami. Luffy told me so much about you." My statement made her sigh. "I'm sorry if Luffy has caused you trouble. He's a good captain but can be a handful sometimes." I giggled at her statement. "Ah, not Luffy is fine, he's not a handful I promise-" I paused when a Skeleton, or Brook, approached me as he bowed like a gentleman.

"Hello there, beautiful Lady! My name is Brook! I do have one question, if you don't mind me asking." I smiled up at him. "Ok, sure, go ahead." He coughed in his handkerchief before he leaned down to me more. "May I see your panties?" My face fumed red before Nami suddenly bonked his head instantly. "STOP ASKING TO SEE WOMANS PANTIES! YOU'RE GOING TO MAKE HER UNCOMFORTABLE!" she snapped; I was shocked by the sudden outburst but then snorted when holding my mouth as this situation was quite funny. "Don't mind, Brook." I turned to look up at Franky, who had a smile on his face.

"He asks that question to every woman, so don't feel a bit embarrassed; the name's Franky and I gotta say, when I heard Luffy asked a girl like you to join our crew, I didn't believe you'd be this cute." His compliment made my face flush more as Nami's head whipped to him. "Don't add gas to the fire, Franky!" Franky shrugged. "What? It's the truth. Besides, I don't think she's too bothered by it, right?" His wink made me giggle as I nodded. "You're right about that. Say, Franky, I think you're pretty cool; I knew of a Cyborg once." His eyes widened. "Really? What was he like? Strong, tall, handsome?" Watching him smirk, I smile. "He was all three of that thing; sadly, he died when fighting a monster, but he still lives in my heart!" Franky's facial expression changed slightly. "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that; you have my respect, Y/n. He must have been a true good friend." I don't remember Genos, but he seemed to be a good friend of Saitama as I nodded with Frankie's command. "Yeah, he sure was.." I looked around before my eyes landed on Usopp and Chopper chatting with Luffy. "And you two must be Chopper and Usopp, correct?" The two pauses when turning to me, as Usopp nodded confidentially, his lips forming a grip. "That's right! I'm Usopp the Great, The most feared sniper of Luffy's crew!" My eyes sparkled with curiosity as I smiled. "That's so cool! So you shoot guns and stuff?!" He smiled nervously at my comment. "Well, not just guns; I can shoot lots of stuff and also make throwables to aid me in a fight, I know; hold your applause; it's awesome..." I smiled more, impressed with his Skill, as Nami glared at him. "We all know you are just being greedy now.." She growled as Usopp froze suddenly before laughing nervously. "I'm a pirate; what do you expect, Nami-"

"Oi, everyone heads up," Zoro spoke, as suddenly a Cannonball flew by Sunny, almost hitting it as it alerted everyone else.

Usopp and I ran over to the ship railing, looking more serious as we looked towards the Marine ships. "Oh no! When did they get here?!" Usopp asked as I glanced that way, as there were about three Navy ships. "It seems there are three Navy ships that way," I stated, as more Cannon balls barely missed the Sunny as I turned to Luffy. "Luffy, should we get rid of them?" But, before he could answer, more Cannonballs flew, heading straight for the ship this time, as the crew prepared to deflect them until pink-like arrows took them down, which alerted us to look at a familiar ship, Boa Hancock's ship.

Smiling, Robin walked up beside us; her face was blank. "That's Kuja's logo." Nami turned to her, confused. "Kuja?" "They're strong Amazonian pirates led by a pirate empress, Warlord." Robin's words shocked Usopp. "A Warlord?!!" Robin turned to him. "Her name is Boa Hancock. They say anyone who sees her will be attracted by her beauty." Brook stood on the other side of me, looking through the scope, as his face turned to shock, pink hinting at his bony facial structure. "Oh, too bright! She is dazzling!" He almost stumbled backward, as I giggled while Usopp caught the scope, looking as well as his mouth nearly dropped to the floor. "Wow! She must be a goddess!" His words widened Sanji's eyes as he hopped up from the floor, bolting to Usopp as he looked. "Goddess? Goddess! Let me see, let me see, where is she-" He paused when he saw her, turned into stone, and I Usopps eyes widened. "He turned into stone!" We both shouted with shock as Luffy came up behind us. "Oh, that's Hancock and the others!" He spoke as Usopp looked at him, as well as Brook and Sanji.

Boa turned her head to look at the sunny, as she saw me smiling which warmed her heart before she winked at me, which made my cheeks rise in color as Brook almost had a heart attack when he flung back.

"She helped us," Luffy spoke. "Let's set sail now!" he ordered, as Nami questioned if he knew her, as he nodded. "Yeah, I was sent to Maiden Island and I became friends with them. They helped Y/n too in keeping her in their country to recover her injuries." He stated as Usopp looked back at Boa's ship. " So that's the legendary female-only island, right? They definitely live up to their name." I nodded with his question before Sanji came up behind Luffy, a dark aura behind him. "Luffy..you were friends with the pirate empress?! HEY! WERE YOU REALLY TRAINING HARD?!" Sanji asked, tears of remorse coming from his eyes as Luffy smiled nervously at him. "Yes, Sanji, I really did train." Sanji slumped, going on all fours as he was crying more, I was then beside him, patting his back. "It's ok Sanji-kun, at least theirs other empresses out there in the sea..." He sobbed more, and my eyes widened as I felt like I made it worse as Zoro walked past, with a blank face. "Ignore his cries, he's grown more than an Idiot since two years ago." Sanji whipped to his feet. "SHUT UP MOSS HEAD!"

Nami sighed, as she spoke up before the two started fighting again. "Okay, let's get ready to set sail now!"

Everyone agreed, as no more marines were attacking us or stopping us from leaving, as a Marine ship was in my view, I saw Garp, Bogard, and Koby, and I smiled at them; waving. "GARP!! KOBY!!! BOGARD!!! THANK YOU FOR THE BEST TWO YEARS OF MY LIFE!!!" I yelled, catching the straw hat's attention, as Usopp and Chopper's eyes widened with fear when seeing Garp's ship.

But, Luffy told the crew not to attack, as everyone saw the tears brimming on Garp and Koby, while Bogard just smirked, as they stated their goodbyes, as it was an emotional moment.

Tears brimmed my eyes also, as the thousand Sunny continued to pull out of port, The three marines stayed until the Sunny's ship was out of sight. But, as the Sunny was sailing across the sea, a bubble roof was formed from the stuff coating the ship, as me, and everyone else's eyes widened as Nami spoke up again.

"Listen up everyone." She opened a paper. "A coated ship can reduce any kind of pressure. So once the floating bag at the ship's bottom which keeps it on the surface has been removed, it'll be less buoyant and start to sink."

"I see." Luffy, Zoro, and I spoke as Nami smiled. "Pretty easy to understand, right? Anyway, spread the sail now!"

Everyone nodded with the agreement as the straw hats, and I prepared to set sail.

Garp was right; Luffy and his crew weren't so bad, as from that day forward, I had a pretty good feeling about the future...as I will not stop fighting along side Luffy until.....

He becomes king of the pirates...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author: I AM SO SORRY, IT HAS BEEN A WHILE!!!

Author: You're probably wondering where I went, so I'll tell you! I have been away fixing myself and my mental health. Many things in my personal life have been going on, and I needed a break from activities to help aid myself and refresh my life.

Author: But now, after very long months and days, I'm finally back to writing. I am sorry if this chapter is a bit boring, but I promise there will be more exciting chapters in the future!

Author: Anyways, I am sorry again for being away so long. More chapters of this book will be published before Christmas, and the New Year, so I hope everyone is having a good last month of the year! Happy Holidays, and have a good day, everyone!

Bye lovelies!!!

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absolutebirth · 4 months

Text

READ THIS POST ON NEOCITIES AT ABSOLUTEBIRTH.NEOCITIES.ORG

Absolute Destinty: Analysis is a biweekly blog analysing Revolutionary Girl Utena as a I conduct my third watch-through in summer 2024. My three priorities are to A) create a guide suitable for following along with a first watchthrough which is spoiler-free enough to not have the show spolied but which might highlight hints toward the cumulative storyline, B) knit together a full analysis of Utena which tackles the show's main themes, with an emphasis on my personal interests of surveillance, spectacle, and power, or the questions who sees? what do they see? and who decides? and C) maintain a section at the end of each blog post with the intent of pointing out, for people who are on their second or third watchthroughs, my favorite allusions to the End of the World.

Each post will be, following my favorite quote from the episode, split into 7 sections:

Episode Summary: what it says on the tin

A Wider Gaze: An attempt to put this episode into the wider view of the show as a whole, contextualizing the development of characters, themes, and relationships in Ohtori academy, and then taking that wide view of the show and applying it to the world as we live it-- the world outside of Ohtori academy.

Institutionalized: Drawing from The Shawshank Redemption (1994), here we look at how the characters in each episode have found themselves embedded in Ohtori, enacting actions against their own better interests for fear of leaving behind a comfortable confinement.

The Eye That Fucks the World: Donna Harraway describes ubiquitous surveillance as "the god-trick of seeing everywhere from nowhere" and goes on to say that "this eye fucks the world." Revolutionary Girl Utena is a story about being watched, not only by the viewer on the other side of the camera but, as we will eventually find, by another eye-- which certainly has intentions to fuck the world. Here we see how this ethos of watching and being watched plays out, episode to episode.

Who Decides Who Decides?: Ohtori is a world of power. As the student council squabbles, power shifts between them are some of the most significant developments in each episode. Here, we check in with the power balance, what changes it, and what that means for both Utena and Utena.

Saito Solace: A piece of Saito's manga art from The Gallery At Empty Movement, to finish off the spoiler-free section of the post.

(SPOILERS) The End of the World: The section for those in the know and my kicking-my-feet giggled realizations about the clues Ikuhara leaves us throughout the first 35 episodes. I don't want to say too much here, because I don't want someone who isn't looking for it to read too much, but suffice to say that Utena is certainly one of those stories where hindsight is 20-20.

In terms of my own background, Utena related and otherwise: I was born and raised in the northern Midwestern United States and moved out east for college, where I'm majoring in "data economy" (a self-made amalgamation of economics and computer science) and ethics. I was into anime in high school, mostly grew away from my obsession, but recently viscerally remembered the awe inspiring masterpiece that is Utena and decided it was probably once again time to think about Anthy at least twelve hours a day. My favorite other pieces of media are Disco Elysium, Against Me!'s album Transgender Dysphoria Blues, Don Delilio's novel White Noise, Infinite Jest, Neutral Milk Hotel's In an Aeroplane Over the Sea... in terms of other seminal pieces of lesbian liturature, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and everything by Alison Bechdel, but especially Dykes to Watch Out For.

My favorite Utena characters are and always have been Mikage, Anthy, Nanami, and Saionji (in that order) but I hold a soft spot for every single one of them and the spider-thin lines connecting them emotionally and thematically. I believe thinking about the duelists in terms of right and wrong or our id-pol concepts of oppression hinders a reading of the show, just as a flat understanding of those things hinders meaningful connections and community building across the false lines the patriarchy creates, so I generally find myself more sympathetic to Touga, Mikage, and Saionji than others may be. Finally: I suspect, although I haven't cracked their code, that the Nanami episodes are the most significant in the entire show.

The first post, for the first episode, will be posted this Wednesday, May 22nd, 2024.

#rgu #anthy himemiya #revolutionary girl utena #utena tenjou #utena analysis

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true-blue-sonic · 10 months

Note

all four hedgehogs for the ask game

Sonic:

My boy! I don't talk about him a lot, but I think Sonic is a great character. He is incredibly inspirational to me, and I think I'll always have a soft spot for him because it is through his games that I gained the level of English I have now. Sonic is tremendously powerful, and I like how he both just does whatever he wants, but that "whatever he wants" is helping other people. He's got far more layers to him than you would see at first glance, and that is why I think it's sometimes hard for fans (myself included! I tend to make him too idealistic imo) to get him right. So yeah, a highly intriguing character that I cherish deeply!

Shadow:

Another cool character! This is interesting, because I was wayyyyy too young to play Sonic Heroes when it came out, but I do not disagree with the sentiment that reintroducing him one (1) game after SA2 was perhaps too quick. Especially considering the four storylines and twelve characters of Heroes, it feels a bit... odd? That Shadow just appeared again with amnesia and not that much attention brought to it, not at all helped by all the confusion of the Shadow Androids and whether or not he was the real one to begin with. Then add Battle making things more confusing with him allegedly having his memory back, and then StTH on top, haha. That being said, I think he's got a solid characterisation in '06, and I like his backstory and design a lot as well. I can certainly see why he is so popular in the fandom.

Amy:

Huh... I also like Amy, but none of these statements are really applicable, haha! I like Amy's optimism and her being the heart of the team, but also her occasional no-nonsense attitude and the fact she can be hot-tempered. She's not only a sweet innocent lil bby girl, but she's also not constantly angry and therefore unlikeable because of that. I would say that the early 2000s had WAY too much of the latter, what with her constant chasing after Sonic in just an unfun way to me (still thinking of her characterisations in Rush and Battle there), but she's gotten a lot better over the years, I feel like. She's sweet and kind but knows what she wants, and I quite like seeing her appear.

Silver:

My favourite character <3 <3

Usually I am not fond of the "So Literally Me" statements, but there's quite a few things in our personalities wherein Silver and I match. But what I like about him is that he's also got characteristics that I lack myself, such as his determination and his never-ending hope and just how far he is willing to go to make everyone happy. I find it incredibly inspiring! It did not take long for Silver to become my favourite (at first it was Blaze for a few months), and somehow he always finds his way back to the position. I really cannot think of anything about him personally I dislike: it's mostly just that it seems very difficult for fans and official/"official" media alike to see just what makes him who he is. He's not a weakass bby cinnamon roll 100, but he's also not a rage-driven idiot asshole (where my hot take of the day is that in the Rivals games, they actually manage to strike a balance between both these extremes as well!), and the only game wherein he was truly shown as naive and easily deceived was '06. There's a lot going on with his personality, and I love dissecting it all.

I would love to see more of him; I understand why Sega swiftly removed him from any large roles following '06 and its reception, but I also feel that Silver is becoming more popular again, at least on Tumblr. So maybe one day he'll get a game of his own, or be featured in a larger role than in prior instalments? Iizuka did say it is not impossible, in 2018. I do wonder how they'll make it work with his powers in a game series that focuses on speed first and foremost, but perhaps it'll be less of an issue if he's not presented alongside a speedier Sonic. Regardless, I'm (almost) always happy to see Silver appear!

#thanks for the ask! ^-^#silver the hedgehog #sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #amy rose #long post

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araksi413 · 4 months

Note

hi hello!! can i ask 🎮, 🌈, 💙 and 🤔 for the oc ask game? i don’t think i’m familiar with any of your ocs yet so feel free to tell me abt as many ocs as u want to if you have more than one :D

- @bumblebee-bumbling

hiiiiii so sorry for taking so long to answer ! thank you so much for asking !!

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🎮 VIDEO GAME CONTROLLER — what are three of your oc's favorite hobbies?

ooh okay instead of three hobbies per oc ill do three ocs. smiles

Sarah - gardening !! she likes to grow vegetables that her wife bakes into yummy food. they're a very sweet couple

Mattias - fashion.. he likes sewing his own dresses when he has time, though with uni he's much busier then before

Eva - some sort of fighting sport ? probably boxing, she has a lot of anger so venting it by punching people that consent to it is probably nice.. also probably did like. dancing when younger but quit bc of the teachers

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💙 BLUE HEART — does your oc have any cool/special powers and/or abilities? how are they with magic, if it exists in their world?

the Special Twelve are my dnd-ish ocs, so at least some of them have magic :D

most that do have an average skill with magic, tho Bon is a bit of a prodigy for his age.. he had an access to powerful high level magic since early childhood which 1) resulted in him blowing himself up with a fireball at age 10 and 2) means he learned impressive powerful spells before groundwork so he's incredibly powerful but. cant do common level stuff

in World 1, Anna is a time walker... she can pass through different time bubbles/areas and affects time around her (morphs it into what she considers her time, does so subconsciously)

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🤔 THINKING FACE — what are some of your oc's quirks/mannerisms?

Ezry - likes to give people nicknames and petnames ! they get very silly with it

honestly not sure who else to put here..

Al'ixia-MariUnak is super anxious and wrings her hands a lot and pulls on her hair

hmmm Mattias is very touchy but only w people he's close to (so mostly Eva)..

Emobear is mute and not very expressive which is highlighted by Deer who is overly expressive and talkative...

[no name entered] growls a lot, before they learn to mimic human speech, and even afterwards when around people that uh. aren't bad <<they were in a pretty bad situation for a while

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🌈 RAINBOW — what is your oc's sexual orientation/gender identity? what pronouns do they use?

alright, putting this one last bc im gonna do p much all of my ocs:

World 1:

Eva - trans girl, straight (?), she/her

Mattias - gnc cis guy, gay, he/him

Sarah - lesbian, butch, she/her, definitely used he/him at some point

Sun - bisexual, she/her

Zara - bisexual & polyam !, she/her

Anna - transwoman, hasn't ever thought about romance or sex, she/her

Deer - gender is just deer, it/its, Emobear's girlfriend

Emobear - it/he/they, no gender, Deer's girlfriend

Charles - transmasc, not really a man tho? complicated identity issues die to being dead and isolated from society, doesnt care all that much, uses no pronouns

[no name entered] - that's a alien. uhm. nonbinary in a way, fully outside our gender norms. they/them and neopronouns

Araksi - agender aromantic asexual, has a qpp, they/them, sometimes it/its

Daphne - she's a snake.. probably aro? but not ace, i think. doesn't rly use pronouns for herself but other people call her she and she hasn't corrected them

Special Twelve :

(labels would be more complicated bc they would not exist in their world and their society is different then ours, none of them actually have the words to describe their identities the same way we would)

Cari'sam - cis and straight(?) (is it comphet? is it compallo? is she straight?)(she's struggling), she/her

Roben - trans woman, bi, she/her

Menir - gay bear man. he should've gotten to be a bear. he/him

Bon de Ciel - hasn't thought about it (hes just a babyyy), potentially aro/ace , he/him

Illumm - he/they, would get very flustered if asked about romance (questioning, probably)

Al'ixia-MariUnak - bisexual, grey-ace <- but so unaware, she/her, probably she/they if she ever thought about it

Man Uu - gnc genderqueer man, free with his love (wouldn't label), he/him usually, but wouldn't mind any other pronouns (i should make him do drag....)

Faelyn Anastasia Boldur - genderfluid/genderqueer, wouldn't id as trans, they have a job so they're not thinking about it, the uniform isnt gendered anyway, they/ze/he/she

Em - they/them nonbinary, wouldn't id as trans

Kamari - they/them but due to additional identity issues, not being trans. they're weird about it <3

Ezry - they/them nonbinary, would id as trans

Camm Dan - in love with his best friend, wouldn't label himself, he/him

Other OCs (holy shit theres more ??):

Un: eh??? probably aro but married? at some point, she/they/it

Rikuki: pan & arospec probably? they/xey/ze

Láng and Lú have the same deal really - when you have lived countless lives in many shapes and forms how can you just be one. all of them are you - their different reincarnations use different pronouns and names but their souls are like. genderless. forever chasing each other because noone else can understand.

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if you wanna see what all of these guys look like, head over here :

#ask tag #araksi posts #oc tag #ocs #ask game #thank you sm for asking abt my ocs. i love themb so much #asks and answers

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unmarketableplushy · 2 years

Text

I Am a Ten Year Old Girl

I am not the bigger person

I am a ten year old girl

A girl without peers

A girl drowning in fears

Crippled and alone

With only the phone

To keep me company for years

Is it any suprise what resulted

When there was no one to be consulted

And I hope that you feel insulted

I already knew I was doomed

But I was still so easily groomed

I hope you see why I bolted

I hope you never get better

I am an eleven year old boy

Drowning in this weight on my heart

What remains of me torn apart

I am not being dramatic

When I say I am an addict

I had a lonely head start

I realized that September

That I didn't have to live forever

And I stopped trying to remember

What a child is supposed to be

And I'm sure I felt so free

I never got put back together

I'll Never forgive any of you

I am a twelve year old girl

I am inherently sexual

Mostly just the perpetual

Boredom and frustration

And endless deliberation

But mostly it's all contextual

All that I could do is seethe

And try to bare my teeth

But this wouldn't bring relief

I thought all this anger would kill me

And I'm sure you'll think it silly

But I still could barely breathe

I want you to hurt the way you hurt me

I am a thirteen year old girl

I'm slowly being drained

But it hasn't stopped this pain

From where I tore myself to shreds

Trying to find my head

While I was drowning in the shame

I tried to see the sun

Even when there was none

I tried to find some fun

In living in this world

And try to cut the cord

But i had to take it as it comes

I don't care about you anymore

I am a fifteen year old boy

You have no power anymore

I have been dulled to the core

I struggle through the day

I try to find a way

To be anything but a whore

I can no longer hide

From all my other sides

But at least we can confide

I bare my soul

It takes its toll

But we hadn't scratched the surface of my mind

We don't hate you. We just hope your guilty

We are sixteen years old and everything

It all hit us like a freight

And we just want to be safe

But now all of that lost life

Won't go down without a fight

But we must pretend to stay brave

But I think we might be okay

But not tomorrow or today

because we don't have the strength to stay

In this fight much longer

If we want to keep our head above water

But I know we can be saved

We are a ten year old girl

We are an eleven year old boy

We are a twelve year old girl

We are a thirteen year old girl

We are a fifteen year old boy

We are more than what you once made me

Even if I am still a ten year old girl

#havr been working on this poem for like a week sonce i had a minor beeak down over the topic.#am really proud of how it turned out. last lune is figurative and is more i feel just as vulnrable as i did at that age but.#plushy's poetry #csa mention #grooming mention #suicide mention #sh mention #c slur #ok2rb #longpost

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novelmonger · 2 years

Text

Book Review: The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H.G. Parry

The quote that should have been on the back of the book: "'Uriah Heep's loose on the ninth floor,' he said. 'And I can't catch him.' My brain was fogged with sleep; it took a moment for his words to filter through. 'Seriously, Charley?' I said when they did. 'Again?'"

Premise: Rob Sutherland, a lawyer in Wellington, New Zealand, has a younger brother, Charley, who is an English professor at the university. His brother, a literary prodigy, has the peculiar and often alarming ability to read objects - or characters - out of books. This causes lots of problems, as you might expect, especially because they're trying to keep this ability secret from the world. But things start to go especially crazy when Charley reads Uriah Heep out of David Copperfield, and he hints at a "new world" that is fast approaching....

Thoughts: I. Love. This. Book. Seriously, if that premise alone isn't enough to make you want to pick up the book and read it for yourself, I don't know what's wrong with you.

At first glance, this book might sound a bit like Inkheart, and while there are certainly similarities when it comes to reading characters and things into reality, it has a very different feel. Yes, both are stories about stories, about the power of really connecting to a book you're reading until what's happening on the page is as real as the world around you. Both are about villains trying to take advantage of this power, book characters trying to make a life for themselves in the real world, and the chaotic rush to stop the world from being overrun with the worst horrors books hold. But I guess I would say that The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep feels a lot more grown-up. Not to say that it's boring by any means; there's still a lot of beauty and whimsy and wonder. But it deals not just with accidentally reading stuff out of a book or the power of a good story well told. It also deals with how every single reader will have a slightly different interpretation and imagination of a character, some more nuanced than others. It deals with what it means to be a person. What it means to be a family. What it means to have a life. It makes absolute sense to me that the main characters are a lawyer and a university professor, rather than a twelve-year-old girl and an itinerant bookbinder.

Of course, one of the main draws to this story is all the wonderful literary references. These are mostly from British literature, particularly Victorian literature, which meant that I was familiar with (or at least could easily identify) most of the characters you end up meeting. These include Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Darcy, Dorian Gray, the Artful Dodger, Matilda, the White Witch, Dr. Frankenstein, Dracula, Miss Matty, the Scarlet Pimpernel...I'm probably forgetting somebody else super obvious, there's just so many of them! Even for the ones whose stories I haven't read, like Uriah Heep, it's not vital to the main plot to understand what they're about. Rob isn't familiar with all of their stories either, and so gets any necessary explanations from Charley, usually.

I adore any story that praises the power of stories. Of course I do. And this one makes it so clear how powerful they are, how comforting and edifying and exhilarating the written word can be. But even more, I love that this is first and foremost a story about brothers. I'm a sucker for those kinds of stories on the best of days, and so this book got me hook, line, and sinker from page 15 when Rob says, "I would do anything--I would kill the whole world--to keep him from being scared or hurt." a;ldkfjsd;kfljsd;fklj YES PLEASE.

Not once did I have to worry that the brothers' relationship would fall to the wayside for the sake of the plot. The story opens with Charley calling Rob for help in the middle of the night, and the entire story revolves around these two helping each other, fighting with each other, saving each other, pulling each other down and then dragging them back up again...it's everything. Their bond is the bedrock of this story, and I can't get enough of it. The bio in the back says that H.G. Parry has a sister, and I have a hunch that they must be really close. You can tell that she knows what it's like :')

There were so many quotes, especially in the climax, that I wanted to scream from the rooftops (and instead just sobbed quietly in my room as I ugly-cried my way through the ending). They were all so simple that, out of context, they wouldn't seem that remarkable. "I don't care" "I still want him back." "You're my brother." "I know you."

Or this quote from Sherlock Holmes: "Your brother thinks you the best and wisest man in this world. As I said, emotions are antagonistic to clear reasoning." Which is just a;lkjg;dslkgj;sdklgjds;afkj I CAN'T IT HURTS IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL BECAUSE HOLMES AND WATSON AND ROB AND CHARLEY AND AAAAAAHHHHHHH TT_______TT al;kdfgjas;dglkjsd;flkjds;klfj

In conclusion: If you love a good book, if you have ever found yourself sucked into a story till it felt more real than reality, you need to read this book.

#book thoughts #the unlikely escape of uriah heep #hg parry #the power of stories #brotherly love #i'm slowly reading my way through dickens #and now i don't know what i'm going to do with myself when i get to david copperfield ._.

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nancypullen · 2 years

Text

DONE

Whew! Ladies, we did it again. The holidays are ending with no casualties and no one carted off in a straight jacket. Our Christmas was sweeter than ever, mostly because of a certain little girl. More than anyone in the family she appreciated my decorations and the goodies. We were probably tied in our excitement about Santa’s visit. She is a wonderful recipient. You could wrap up a potato in a pretty box and she’d name it and love it. Her preschool was closed the week after Christmas and her parents had to work so she stayed with us. She is an absolute joy, but I am OLD. When my youngest was four, I was twenty-eight. She is easy, bath time and bed time were a breeze. She is cooperative, no tantrums or fussing. But she is FOUR, and she is a smart, curious, bouncy, chatty girl. I wouldn’t have missed a minute of this visit, but you know I slept on a heating pad last night. I hate to even joke about this because I’m going to blink my eyes and she’ll be 8, 10, 13, and then gone to college. Her birthday is in just over a month and in the fall she’ll be a kindergartner. Make it stop! I could cry just thinking of how quickly she’s growing. Anywayyyyyyy...we had a fabulous Christmas, everyone was generous and kind to each other, lots of love around the tree and the table. I wouldn’t change a single thing, I’ve got plenty of sweet memories tucked away in my heart. Matt departs on January 2nd, he’ll be home about a week before heading to Uganda. So we’ve got company for New Year’s Eve and may manage to stay awake long enough to welcome 2023. I’m going to make a few snacky things, we’ll watch a movie, and around midnight we’ll say yippee and kiss each other. We walk on the wild side around here. I, for one, am so ready to close the calendar on 2022. Every year I get excited just thinking about a fresh new year and all it could hold. I’m choosing a word to focus on for this year, and it is flourish. I want to flourish in every aspect of life, and I’m the only one who can make it happen. I want to use the meager talents I’ve been given and do something with them. I want my health to flourish, I want my relationships to flourish, my home, my life! It’s time to bloom where I’m planted. I have experience with that, but I was successful at it because I had to be - my kids were counting on me, my family, etc. I sort of accidentally flourished while making sure everyone else did. This time it’s just for me. I may be a blooming idiot, but at least I’m blooming.

There are probably braver words that I could have chosen - I’m sure that there are people out there claiming courage or determination as their word for 2023. I hope their years exceed their wildest dreams, but that’s not what I need. I’ve decided to believe in myself this year, and nurture myself too. With that sort of fertilizer, surely I’ll flourish.

Alright, this kooky post is sort of all over the place. I just popped in to let you know that we’ve all survived the holiday madness and have settled in for a quiet New Year’s Eve at home. My favorite sort. Think about what your word for 2023 might be - what do you want or need more of next year? Peace? Connection? Adventure? Simplicity? Passion? Harmony? I have a friend who has chosen the word YES, because she intends to say yes to more things - everything from lunch invitations to job opportunities. There are so many powerful words that might mean something different to each of us, and might change your focus for the next twelve months. Food for thought. And speaking of food, I have to check the meatballs in the crockpot and get started on tonight’s menu. I hope that you are sending this year off with a kiss or a kick, depending on how you feel about 2022, and greeting the new year with open arms. Let’s make the most of it! Sending out BIG love tonight! Stay safe, stay well.

Nancy

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brawlqueen · 2 years

Text

"Stop asking, you’re not going to like my answer." With hand to his head, it's clear he's not in the best of moods. The drink he has before him is mostly done, ice cubes still bathing in the whiskey. Not a moment after he sighs and winces before turning to face her as Mama looks solemnly at the bonito they continue to polish, as they always do. "Sorry, sorry. It's been a shitty day. I know it's... hard on you but I still haven't seen him. If I do, you'd be the first person I'd tell." There's another pause before he turns away, raising the glass to his lips. "And none of my connections have heard or seen anythin' either. I'll keep an ear out for you." / @zelotae

‘honey .... ‘

mama seems to almost whisper with pity at least in mizuki’s ears; the sight of her. her, the girl that no one could best in a fight; clinging to crutches and ripped away eye on her left covered upon layers and layers of gauze and an eyepatch. no one commented that the eyepatch was very familiar, and normally she’d deflect why she’d wear something so stupid from d-- ( no. ) but date wasn’t here. he was still somewhere under the rubble; waiting for someone strong enough to get him out. mizuki was more than spades strong enough. too much power dwelt in that twelve year old body. and too much brokenness.

the insignia of aiba’s core glittered on the patch as she instinctively whacked him with the edge of her crutch at his crass remark. unlike his boyfriend, he had no sense of sensitivity, and she highly doubted there was even a brain in there.

“ yeah, you’re right! i shouldn’t expect a bum to answer anything about date! it’s not like he bought you tickets for iris’ concert even if the stupid idiot did---doesn’t have half the money to barely get by! or that one time when you were so drunk he let you and your gross breath plop on his couch and then date didn’t have anywhere but the floor, how pathetic is that?! i can’t decide which one of you is more! date is --- you’re wrong you know?! you’re wrong about date! your answers are probably wrong too because you’re so wasted! you’re just wrong!

stupid drunk idiot! you’re so stupid! every single man is stupid! “ she snarled; voice full of venom and vitriol and hurt. she could feel the stinging of tears against her existing right, grey-blue eye and swallowed hard at the eerie silence of mama, their silence and the brief glimmer of what she suspected was tears ignored by mizuki.

and it was then she stumbled into the stool in front of her; wobbling as her crutches deftly prepped her. aiba was on her shoulder; date’s partner never seemed to want to leave her sight. what...was left of it. she wasn’t used to moving, shouldn’t be moving, but time was of the essence and she had to find out anything. that’s why she went to mama’s. mama would...mama would know right? they always did.

thankfully her hair shrouded her right eye; so the plop of tears on the counter as the pain of the sharp impact could be ignored like every other tear mizuki ever shed. she could see a hand reaching out; mama’s probably; but the inferno of rage that she had unleashed upon hearing the redhead’s words after her emotional assault upon him made the tears only fall harder. stubbornly and stoically having no expression despite them continuing to form a puddle on the counter. the only thing that made them disturbing aside from gutwrenching was that the adopted date did nothing but stare blankly even as her face; still red with fury and hurt; swollen with tears that came too quickly for someone who wasn’t dead --- he --- he !!! at the lining of alcohol.

“ will you? he’s not dead. he’s....he’s not, okay? h - he’s not! sometimes there are people so stupid that they aren’t capable of even dying properly. that’s what kaname date is. a stupid person who doesn’t even know how to properly kick the bucket a-and give me life insurance! “ choked out; but still the same unwavering stoicism painted across her face -- in contrast to her voice.

“ ..................... also? “ clumsily, trying not to break his glass, she grabs it in her hand; caring little for his annoyance.

“you’ve had enough. seles will be upset. she says she gets worried when you drink too much . . . she’s still here so....stop worrying her. “ his sister was her friend, so --- even in this, the innate kindness bled; despite wanting to dispel it all for good this time. weren’t the cyclops serial killings enough?

“ .... i’ll leave when you go home. i’m.....” aiba is still eerily silent. ever since...she hadn’t talked much save to her. protectively and almost obsessively not leaving her sight despite not being at home in her missing partner’s eye socket.

apparently hers....was worse for wear than her adoptive father’s. a name she hadn’t barely been able to grasp yet and -- tears stream a rivulet in silence.

“ i have rehabilitation therapy soon. i’m gonna stay here and talk to mama. they should know something. so......” angrily wiping her eye of any tears; the only proof the puddle on the counter; mizuki stares with an unquenchable pain in her heart that the person closest to a family member and father she’d ever had’s old friend was openly wiping bonito with tears streaming down their face.

just like her.

it was a wonder she still walked with her entire chest cavity smashed in half. it hurt so much more than the current agony she physically felt.

“ z-zelos? don’t be a pervert but.....can you lift me onto the stool?” a bit angrily and indignant as if defending herself before words came out.

“ i....i can’t see yet. but i will in like, five days. no three! then i’ll never be lifted by any old pervs ever again, i swear!” the bravado is not fooling anyone. she forgets how warm his arms were after the psync, she doesn’t forget. she forgets. she doesn’t, she couldn’t, she’ll never. he didn’t give up for eight years right? so....so.... she ----- another tear falls.

#she's wearing's date's eyepatch :') she's fine #𝐈𝐂 *ೃ༄ braver than all flowers.#zelotae #𝐕; 𝐍𝐈𝐑𝐕𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐈 / 𝐃𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐆𝐄 𝐈 *ೃ༄ an end and a rebirth.

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justmanic03 · 8 months

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Amethyst - Chapter Twelve

A/N: As I've said a few times life has been kicking me up the bootyhole as of late, and I've run into a bit of writers block as a result ;-;.... I really wanted to get a chapter out though, apologies that nothing MAJOR happens here but it's packed with humour and fun (also please comfort Lisa, she really needs it here)

Mackenzie was the one to break the awkward silence following Lisa's outburst. "I guess we should start trying to get down the mountain?" There was a pause before I nodded, along with Lisa, who was visibly dejected. As she trailed behind us, her head hung low as we began our descent down the slippery pathways. Stalagus led the way, letting out a squeak to let us know every time we reached a dangerous point. As the path to Krodania became visible, we were able to jump off certain ridges and land softly on the snow. As Mackenzie ventured ahead, I felt a tap on the back of my shoulder. I turned around, and Lisa was whispering, "Thanks for standing up for me back there."

"Don't mention it," I shrugged my shoulders.

"No, I mean it. Nobody's ever stuck up for me like that before."

"What about Mackenzie?" I queried.

"Nah, he's too much of a pansy. Completely clams up whenever he's faced with confrontation."

"I heard that!" An angry Mackenzie growled, eliciting a slight chuckle from the two of us.

"You're pretty tough though, as a person as well as in battle. You'd make an excellent Team Moon grunt for sure."

"Yeah, about that, Lisa, there's something I need to tell-"

I was abruptly cut off by an earthquaking roar that completely shook the mountain and knocked us all over onto our backs. The sound had caused the snow to blow upwards, dusting in our eyes. The feathers of the terrifying bird were initiating a whirlwind as it glared down at the three of us with beady blue eyes. "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS THING?!" Lisa screamed out.

"IT'S ARTICUNO! A LEGENDARY ICE POKEMON!" Mack called in response, though his voice was mostly drowned out by the noise from the Pokemon and rumbles from the ground.

We immediately threw out our Pokeballs. Lily, Hydroxica and Lisa's Gryffin paled in comparison to the legendary Pokemon hovering above them. However, I was determined that we at least stood a chance. The rage inside of me that had been ignited by Harp Girl, and her elitist attitude only served to fuel my determination.

I decided to make the first move and hit the bird with a new normal-type move I had taught to Lily myself rather than by TR, Aegis.

Gladlily used Aegis! The opposing Articuno's defence harshly fell!

"Lisa! Do a powerful fire attack!" I commanded. Ironically, the usually dominant Lisa just complied, and proceeded to use Fire Fang. Although it was supereffective, it only knocked Articuno's HP down by a tiny 8%. Mackenzie was next to attack, using Waterfall. The bird shook its feathers in protest, before using Brave Bird against Lily.

Gladlily fainted!

I proceeded to then send out Zelda. In the meantime, Mackenzie had already achieved two hits on the Pokemon using his Hydroxica. Yet, for some reason, Lisa was holding back. This was so unlike her.

***

Several minutes passed, a slew of attacks were exchanged between both sides until Articuno became weak enough to be captured. Mackenzie yelled out, "Articuno is weak! Y/N, throw a Pokeball now!"

I hesitated for a second, and then turned towards Lisa. "Do you want to catch him?" I asked. She stared back, clearly not expecting this, yet she nodded anyway, and threw out a Great Ball. After three tries, Lisa had managed to capture the legendary Pokemon. "Thanks... but why me?" She asked.

"Because what that girl said seemed to have really rattled you. I thought catching a legendary Pokemon might help you feel better." I explained.

Lisa eyed me suspiciously, before shaking her head. "You're not being honest with me, Y/N. You let me catch it because you feel sorry for me because I'm not as powerful as you or Mackenzie."

"N-no, that's not it at all!" Mackenzie protested. "You're the one who trained me up. How can you say that, Lisa?"

"Because it's true." She sat down on the floor and proceeded to cross her legs. "I'm no use to either of you. Or to Team Moon. I'm always the last to pass each gym challenge of all of us."

"You're still faster than Danny." I remarked. Mackenzie nodded in agreement.

A smirk grew on her face. She couldn't hide her amusement. "Yeah, that's true. That guy only ever goes on about how strong he is. I don't care for him at all,"

"Anyway, that doesn't matter." I continued. "Articuno is yours now. And you must be pretty special since he let you catch him, being a Legendary and all."

"Y/N's right. So come on, Lisa! We've got a Steel Gym to take on! And you've still got to face off Danny!" Mack encouraged.

The purple haired girl smiled, before rising to her feet once again. "You're right. I'm no use to Team Moon whilst I'm down in the dumps. Let's rock on!"

I knew this wasn't the right time to tell her the truth, but I also knew in the front of my mind that I couldn't let her go on for much longer thinking that Team Moon were heroes. Now that I had heard it directly from an Elite Four member, there was no doubt in my mind, Team Moon were dangerous.

***

"So this is Krodania?" Lisa asked, marvelling at the modern city behind the gates.

"Yep. Pretty cool, right?" Mack asked.

This particular city was very modern, with electric trains running across tracks in the sky. They reminded me of roller coasters as they whizzed in all directions at an incredible velocity.

Krodania was known for being the hub of inventions and innovations amongst Taldoursians. There were even ancient coal mines with plenty of treasure down there. It reminded me of the Galar Mine I had seen on TV, where years back Flossi and Kossi had posed for a photograph with Chairman Rose, holding amethysts and sapphires, which were later used in the making of their Champion's Crowns.

"Hey Slowkings and Slowqueens!" A familiar voice called from behind the three of us. We all spun around to see Danny jogging towards us.

"Hey Danny, how's the badge collecting coming along?"

"Pfft! Easy! I just came from the big hill at the back of the Church and battled about fifteen trainers there. Crushed the lot of 'em without barely lifting a finger." He crossed his arms triumphantly. Although I rolled my eyes at his smugness, a part of me was relieved that he had bounced back to his normal self after being defeated by Mackenzie the day before.

"Aha, now that's the Danny we all know!" I patted him on the shoulder.

"Yeah, good job, pal!" Mack chimed in.

"Thanks guys, so I guess you're all headed into the Steel Gym to take on Maddie, huh?"

"Yeah that's right." Lisa said, although her tone was still somewhat glum. "I'm going to let Y/N and Mackenzie get in there first, though. Still got to train up that legendary Articuno of mine,"

Danny's eyes widened. "You caught Articuno?!" He gasped.

"Yep, it was on the mountain. Y/N and Mack were there to back me up, but I did most of the work." She boasted.

Mackenzie and I exchanged a knowing look that she was embellishing the truth.

"I believe you guys still have yet to battle!" I interjected.

"Oh yeah, I was gonna ask you about that." Danny scratched the back of his head.

"Why do you keep touching your hair like that? You have nits or something?" Lisa inquired.

We all burst out laughing, except for Danny of course, who just looked on in horror. She really was a head case. I bid my opponents goodbye, and as Danny and Lisa prepared for their battle, I headed into the Steel Gym to get my Steel Badge.

#pokemon au

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talldarkandroguesome · 1 year

Text

27th of First Seed, Morndas

So far it has been a lovely time with the girls here.

We spent an extra couple of days with the Mabrigash and Kuna, who is always very interested in the power of other women, wanted to know all about Mabrigash society. Not in any deep way, just in the sort of basics of how everything worked.

Cariel seemed confused that the tribe did not follow the Tribunal. She has gotten the impression, most likely from her House tutors, that all Dunmer follow Almsivi. It was a very good thing that it was Orilu who she decided to ask so many questions of. Orilu, although a fierce warrior for her tribe, is a very patient and peaceful mer by nature. I apologized for the curiosity of little Cariel later, but she waved her hand and said that it was good that Cariel learn at a young age, that it would serve her well.

I was shamed by the wisdom of those words. I should be spending more time educating than disciplining my children. Of course there are times when one must see that they follow rules, but perhaps it is best to indulge their curiosity at times. Cariel is at the age where questioning everything is the norm and I need to accompany her to that place of wonder with the world and desire to learn. I should nurture it. Especially since the House will undoubtedly have their own influence upon her learning, I need to make sure that she gets a more balanced view of our people’s culture and religion.

Sildras has been a very proud elder brother. He has been watching after Cariel as much as he can. She very clearly would rather be by my side. She likes to sit upon my shoulders, where she can see better, and give my hair a tug in the direction she would like to go. I have to remind her that I am not a pocket mammoth, nor a guar, if she wishes me to do something, she best use her words.

There is a slight shyness developing in her and so I have told her it is alright if she is feeling shy to tell me softly in my ear. So far that has been working, at least when she remembers to do it. If not, I am making sure to remind her each time.

Kuna has been running around with the other children of the tribe. At such a young age they have little concept of why they might be different other than the color of their skin or hair. I think Kuna’s eyes being of the same color makes it easier for her to fit in amongst them and despite being one of the younger children, she seems to find a way to lead most of them around. They are very taken with her knowledge of hunting and she has started a trend of climbing trees or fungal stalks to get a better vantage point.

She seemed very sad when it was time to return home.

Kuna and Sildras sang songs in Velothis on the way home in the carriage. Mother kept eyeing me, but mostly focused her attention on the children. I am anxious for learning why she was giving me such looks, but thus far she has said nothing to me. Simply looked at me as though trying to access something. Not in any arcane way, at least none that I noticed, but I feel like there is something that will come to the fore soon enough.

In other news, the day before last I was brought a missive from uncle Urnel. Apparently, as there are a number of vacant homes that are designated for our family, and several of them currently unoccupied, he wished to know if I would like to select a home for Sildras to have as his own upon reaching adulthood. Of course he has almost two decades left before that, but since the homes are likely about to be selected for other purposes soon, I suspect one will be given as a temporary home for my mistress, fist choice is to go to my direct heir.

It is still hard to believe he is about to turn twelve! And what an auspicious age. I am sure that my uncle intends the home to be outfitted to Sildras’ liking and gifted upon his nameday.

As such, I have agreed to view the properties which are available. Two of them are here in town. Another one lies in Ebonheart. I would not like to see him so far away. I feel secure that the home is within Redoran territory, but it is such a great distance from home.

Of course he is always welcome to his room here whenever he should like. I would still be sad to know that when the time comes that he produces his own heirs, that I should be so far from my son and grandchildren. Seeing how he dotes upon his sisters, I have no doubt that he will grow up to be a kind and nurturing father.

I will not have the opportunity to visit the property in Ebonheart until next week, but I have appointments set to view the two here in town. I recall one of them rather well, it is uncle Urnel’s home, which he has decided to make available because of his current residence within the House palace. He still retains his country estate and a small fishing cabin out in Eastmarch. I asked him if he did not want the home for when, one day in the distant future, he retires.

He simply told me that as amusing as it was, he knows now that when he steps down, he will want to turn to a quiet life, one away from the city. If he wishes to visit Mother or I, he can always stay with us, where he would want to be anyhow.

I was touched by his words. And by how caring he is. I know that his home is likely to be the best choice for Sildras. It is within the same district as Mother and I, it has rooms that would be perfect of an alchemy workshop and a spell training room, and it is on the edge of the city so that the sound of any of his arcane workings would not disturb the neighbors so greatly.

I feel such gratitude to The Three and to my family. So many great things are happening that I am at a loss for words. Every day has been family outings and nights spent in joyous song or games. I have not seen Avon so happy in a long while. Longer than it should have gone. He wants to make love nearly every night. Sometimes midday as well, while the children are off playing or finishing their studies.

Even my lessons with Luayl have been better. He is steering me back towards the physical side of training once more and leaving alone my past and dreams. He has been tender with me. Gentle. And he gives me all that my body could need with such a tenderness that I have nearly been brought to tears. He has us go into an meditative place, breathing deeply of the incense and listening to the sound of bells, and then has me go through a guided meditation with moving components that puts me in such an altered state that I feel as though I am connecting with something beyond myself. It is a near spiritual experience. And as our bodies come together I feel as though we are connected more than in a simple physical way. There is something beyond that as well. Though I do not know how to put that feeling or place into words. In a way, I do not believe it is meant to be able to be put into words.

Golden is this time of renewals. Thank you, Lady of the Dawn and Dusk, of change and of mystery, for your blessings upon this, your humble servant. By The Three, a mer can find happiness. And I am glad of it.

#ESO #TES #RP #Dunmer #Elder Scrolls Online #The Elder Scrolls

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sopebubbles · 3 years

Text

Banner by @memphisfaith

Synopsis: 15 year old Kim Yn has her fair share of poor choices and bad days. She used to get through them with her brother, Namjoon, and their friends, Yoongi and Hobi. When they dismiss her dream, she's determined to make her voice heard and prove her resilience. Luckily she meets a few new friends a long the way that help her become bulletproof.

Genre: social media au with written parts mixed in, high school au, heavy angst, a teensy bit of fake dating

Kim Yn × ?????

Themes: coming of age, girl power, unrequited love, underground rap line vs. punk band vocal line, toxic relationships

Warnings: mentions of past self harm, mentions of sex (no depictions of sex since all characters are minors), depitctions of anxiety/panic attacks, under age use of drugs and alcohol, just an enormous amount of angst.

Status: complete

Send an ask or comment to be tagged..

Look below the cut for more author notes than anyone ever asked for.

Bulletproof Heart

❣ teaser

🎤 Intros: D-Town Boyz + Yn

🎸 Intros: Bulletproof

Arc I

❣one: yn has left the chat

❣two: anti account

❣three: look it up babyboy

❣four: I was born this way

❣five: the feeling is mutual

❣six: potato tomato

❣seven: aww but you love it

❣eight: what's the truth Tae?

❣nine: have fun

❣ten: war of hormone ✏

❣eleven: what am I forgetting

❣twelve: making her moves

❣thirteen: a tough one

❣fourteen: bulletproof yn

❣fifteen: a thing?

❣sixteen: don't bother

❣seventeen: I'm with you ✏

❣eighteen: THE LINK YN

❣nineteen: don't be nervous

❣twenty: give it to me ✏

❣bonus: bulletproof birthday

Arc II

❣twenty-one: three conditions

❣twenty-two: I remember +✏

❣twenty-three: kool kids

❣twenty-four: a date +✏

❣twenty-five: friends for now

❣twenty-six: watch his back

❣twenty-seven: your bf jimin?

❣twenty-eight: collaboration +✏

❣twenty-nine: no party +✏

❣thirty: a deal +✏

❣thirty-one: better for him

❣thirty-two: a regular thing

❣thirty-three: I love you ❤

❣thirty-four: we're not waiting +✏

❣thirty-five: everything is fine +✏

❣Bonus: School Yard by JHope and Heart

❣thirty-six: mental health day

❣thirty-seven: follow your heart

❣thirty-eight: a fourth option ✏

Arc III

❣thirty-nine: called it

❣forty: good kisser

❣forty-one: gonna regret it +✏

❣forty-two: crashing your date

❣forty-three: you're totally 🥵 +✏

❣forty-four: Neanderthal brain +✏

❣forty-five: guilty

❣forty-six: left out

❣forty-seven: get back here!!!

❣forty-eight: it's what I want

❣forty-nine: MY hope

❣fifty: where you belong ✏

❣fifty-one: producer Yn

❣fifty-two: something new

❣fifty-three: 👀👀👀

❣fifty-four: we need therapy

❣fifty-five: let's be Bulletproof

❣fifty-six: the end +✏

❣bonus: one year

🎄 Bulletproof Christmas Special

Author notes:

Yn's theme song is:

Itzy's Yeji is used as a face claim for Yn simply for aesthetic purposes. Some other random pictures may be used for outfits etc. The character of Yn and her musical style are in no way related to the idol and no other members of itzy will appear

Photos of OT7 from 2013-15 approximately will also be featured bc that's closest to the age they are in the story

Everyone is a musician but I don't consider this to be "idolverse" at least not for now

Members of NTC will appear in name only bc I get tired of coming up with names and that's like 57 names for the taking.

This story takes place in Daegu but it's mostly American teen culture 🤷🏻‍♀️

I love yoongi so much and I'm so sorry idk why he has to be such an ass but if you need some fluffy Yoongi go read The Sea Without You lmao. I promise next au I'll make him more likeable. 🤪

I'm not creative enough to make a banner for this so if anyone has those skills and wants to lend them hmu the lovely @memphisfaith made my beautiful banner. Please support their work!

If for some reason my blog disappears there posts have all been reblogged on @jinkooktae

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no-droids · 4 years

Text

Rumors, Freebies, and a Race for Last Place

Part Two of The Bet series

Pairing: Poe Dameron/Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 22.5K DONT say shit alright just don’t

Warnings: Okay. There is degradation in this, some name calling and heated interactions. There is a LOT of smut, dirty talk and rough sex. If these things offend you, please do not continue reading.

***

It’s recommended to read part one first.

***

Getting into the x-wings is always fun.

It actually might be your favorite part. Granted, alarm bells ringing and thousands of jumpsuits scrambling in all directions is never typically a good thing, but there’s also an inherent rush about it, a thrill in launching up the metal paneling as quick as you can and suiting up to provide aid. It’s a side-effect of camaraderie, of being surrounded by like-minded individuals willing to do everything they can to help. You never feel like you’re going to your death, even though that’s often the grim reality for at least one of you on a good day. There’s always a roaring in your ears while you do it, adrenaline sharpening your senses and preparing yourself for conflict, not thinking anything beyond gogogogogo—

But getting out of the x-wing is… not great. At least for you. It’s sluggish. Your body is always completely drained and you never come out of it feeling the same way you went in. Even in times of victory, there’s a somberness inside you after battle. As much as you tell yourself you’re fighting for good, for prosperity against an evil machine hellbent on enslaving the galaxy, there’s only so many explosions lighting up in front of your eyes and screams cutting out through your comms you can take before winning just doesn’t really feel like winning anymore. Most pilots are able to handle it better than you are, but since you joined the Resistance, you’ve never truly felt the desire to celebrate. Not even when you serve a massive, glaring defeat to the other side. There’ll always be at least one missing x-wing, one empty seat at the table, one person not here to celebrate with you.

You came back in one piece this time. Barely.

The whole mission went sideways—literally. You’d purposefully stationed the tandem just outside the coordinates you were meant to be surveilling so that you’d be hidden from sight and dead to the scanners should the fleet arrive, but something must’ve happened. You must’ve powered down a few seconds too early after he turned the thrusters off, because apparently the ship drifted in dead space for close to eight hours without either of you noticing, having no working computers to actively read your location and correct it. You were sitting ducks right in the hyperspace drop zone by the time the First Order showed up, and by that point you had no choice but to engage.

“Gold-Ten,” a voice murmurs from behind you, and you blink, suddenly seeing the base landing platform stretching out long in front of you, hundreds of docking ships and boisterous pilots scrambling out of them to hug their comrades and congratulate them even as medics rush past with white coats and gurneys. They’re never for the pilots, but they dispatch healers anyways whenever a convoy returns in case a straggler gets picked up. There’s an unspoken understanding in space battle—pilots never get injured. They either come back unharmed, or they don’t come back at all.

Dameron.

You turn around and watch him slowly approach you with an unreadable expression, his jumpsuit still bunched halfway down his torso. The once bright white sleeveless undershirt is now greasy and damp with sweat, his dark curls sticking to his forehead. He winces with every bow-legged step—you know the feeling—before he’s standing directly in front of you and something is carefully being pulled out of your hands. You didn’t even realize you were holding onto anything.

Your helmet. You forgot to leave it in the x-wing, and you’ve been carrying it around under your arm aimlessly while mentally checking off the squadrons as they return, counting the numbers you lost today while everybody else hugs and whoops and claps each other on the back.

It’s not as bad as you were expecting it was going to be, not as bad as it seemed just an hour earlier when you were listening to Dameron bellow out evasive flight maneuvers a millisecond before he enacted them and you adjusted your firing at the TIEs accordingly. You used to think you were quick with how rapidly you could suit up and fly out, drop in to assist and engage, but on the other side, it felt like your reinforcements lollygagged for ages before arriving. You were left to defend against an entire fleet in one stupid ship, more lines of TIEs sinking like flies from launch decks every second.

“Gold-Ten,” you hear again, and you blink a few times, needing to focus your vision before you can find his gaze.

Dameron’s palm, previously hovering a few inches above your shoulder, suddenly drops to spread along the curve of it and you take a deep breath, almost wanting to shudder at the feeling of something touching you. You channel all your focus into it, feel his fingers branch out strong along the tight muscles in your neck, giving you an anchor you automatically lean into.

You and him are no strangers to touching. Before today it was mostly reserved to poking and prodding and flicking and light slapping in an effort to piss each other off, but now… you can’t even think about it right now, your body will just fucking glitch out on you. After everything that just happened, you cannot think about where else that hand has been recently, not right now.

“You did… you did really fucking good today,” he tells you quietly, slowly trailing his hand down the length of your entire arm until he catches your wrist and a few of your fingers in his loose grip. “Seriously. That was… we were…”

His touch is so present, so reassuring. Grounding, when all your mind wants is to just float away. You glance down at where his fingers are gently tangled with yours and you feel your hand tighten just slightly, the smallest squeeze while he blinks down at you.

“We almost died, like… every single second,” you barely manage to croak, not really having the words to express it right now. You always need at least an hour or two after missions like this to just sit in one place and regroup. Usually you find yourself wandering back to your room to lay on the bed and stare up at the ceiling while you consider your own mortality, but Dameron interrupted you this time before you could process it by yourself. “We…” Your voice sounds absolutely shredded. “W-We shouldn’t even be alive right now.”

“I know,” he nods in soft agreement, taking a small step closer to you. “But we are alive. Hey.” He dips his head as soon as your gaze starts to drift, catching your eyes once more and drawing your attention back to the present with a squeeze of your hand. “We’re alive, right? Be alive with me.”

You take a big breath in and close your eyes, feeling the oxygen fill your lungs once more, but this time, it’s… restorative. A wonderful, beautiful reminder of your existence. You’re alive. Usually the word just feels like a synonym for persevering. Pushing onwards despite trials and tribulations, not looking back. But the way he says it, especially with his hand in yours and a quiet invitation to tag along, it sounds… breathtaking. Full of light, and hope. It suddenly leaves the dim shadows and slides into a completely different category of feelings, feelings you’d never imagine being able to conjure so quickly after such a close brush with death. Alive—it slots right in next to words like colorful, radiant, sunshine, and butterflies. Enchanting words, ones you’d like to hear again and again.

Your eyes slowly open and there he is, the man you were sure was going to accompany you to the afterlife. You were stuck with Poe Dameron in one of the closest calls you can remember, and strangely, his presence was nothing if not… a comfort. For the first time in your life, you were grateful he was there.

You open your mouth, suddenly feeling the needy, unfounded urge to tell him that. “I’m gla—”

“Dameron!” You hear a series of voices call from somewhere to your left, and he immediately drops your hand to whip his body around and place himself directly between you and the approaching onlookers, using his large frame to hide you from their sight.

“What’s up, Briggs?” Dameron projects to one pilot in particular that seems to be leading the group, his back oddly close to you in this position. Your fingers still feel tingly from where he was holding onto them.

A chorus of congratulatory, “Nice flying, Captain!” and the like can be heard floating through the air from beyond his shoulders, before the leader speaks loudly over them. “Hey—me, Seven, Six, and Twelve were gonna grab some drinks in the mess hall with a few of the Blue girls,” he tells Dameron, slowing to a stop as soon as he sees you standing awkwardly behind him. “Oh hey, Goldie.”

You lift a hand and clear the remainder of the dissociation from your throat, not knowing him well enough beyond the squadron he and his group fly with. “Greenies.”

“Anyways, I guess they wanted to know if you’d come too. These idiots are convinced they’re never gonna give us the time of day unless you—”

“Uh—fine, whatever, just give me a few minutes alright?” Dameron quickly assures him with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’ll meet up with you guys later.”

A few of them take turns giving him heavy claps on the shoulder and acclamatory words before the group eventually disperses, and he waits a few more seconds for their attention to fully scatter in another direction before turning back to you.

Shit, he’s standing really close. Why is he so close to you? You take a step back and blink up at him, the noises of the landing deck gradually amplifying back up to normal volume as you retreat back into your own space. Since when did he have that effect on you? You suddenly feel wide awake, and the chorus of happy chaos surrounding you is something you’re finally able to take in. You knew it was happening before, but it was like it just existed outside of the creeping numbness. Now, the knot of internal turmoil has untied itself a bit and you feel your surroundings start to fight for your direct attention.

Dameron continues to look at you the same exact way, though. Like you’re still the only one here.

You look down at his half-suited figure and blink at the helmet loosely held in one of his hands. Hey. Hey, that’s yours—

“Give me that,” you hiss, suddenly snatching it from his fingertips. “You have people waiting.”

The cutting words serve to snap him out of whatever spell he’s under. Dameron quickly lifts his head and looks around a few times with sharp eyes, before hooking your elbow and twisting you into a complete 180 until your back faces most of the excitement. You resist, immediately trying to push him off you and worried he’s going to confront you about… things, but he’s determined.

He doesn’t say anything to you at all, though. His fingers quickly grasp the baggy fabric of your jumpsuit even as you sputter and start to ask what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, and you glance down just in time to see him yanking the gaping velcro closed at your crotch.

Your cheeks instantly start burning as he tugs and smooths the fabric down until it’s seamless once more, especially when his eyes flick up to yours without moving his head. Fuck, you’re instantly hot with some wicked emotion, a mixture of embarrassment and outrage and… something else. Maker, you almost wish you were numb and disoriented again, if only so you could avoid feeling whatever the fuck this is.

You quite suddenly shove your helmet back into his stomach with an infuriated sound even as he doubles over with a shocked whoosh of air, changing your mind about returning it to the ship yourself before storming off without another word.

***

Okay, so you’ve done some thinking, and. Well. Fuck him, that’s what you’ve decided.

No—not… fuck him. But like, fuck him. You know. In the negative sense of the word. The bad fuck.

There’s a full tray of food sitting in front of you but you’ve so far been unable to touch it. Mostly you’re just wondering why the fuck you’re even here. Well, you know why you’re here—you should eat, it’s dinnertime and this is the mess hall. You’ve been known to skip out on meals after heavy missions, secluding yourself away and just wallowing for a bit, but you… strangely didn’t feel like doing that today. You don’t want to self-isolate when you feel okay enough to avoid it, not again. So you’re here, because the clock says your tummy should want food, but you can’t bring yourself to even look at it.

No, you’re looking at him. Glaring, actually.

Across the mess hall and beyond the transparisteel divider that separates the cafeteria from the bar area, Dameron is all eyebrows and smiles and side nudges and winks right now. You can’t hear him—the sound won’t travel this far, but you can see him situated in the middle of a rowdy group of pilots. He laughs in that disgustingly charming way of his, where his stupidly cute nose scrunches up all cute and stupid and you want to just ask the Maker why he’s doing this shit to you. What have you done to deserve this torture? Sure, you may have willingly agreed to it, even… conceived and propositioned the idea, and sure, absolutely nothing is stopping you from forfeiting and walking away at this exact second, but does that make it okay? No, you’ve decided. It’s not okay. He’s not allowed to… to make you feel like this, so fuck him. In the bad way.

“Just fuck him already,” a voice suddenly grumbles as someone plops down into the seat to your right, plastic trays of food clattering loudly on the table and snapping you out of your reverie. Gold-Sixteen blocks your view as he silently drops into the seat in front of you and wraps his green lekku around his neck a few times before immediately beginning to shovel food into his mouth, while Gold-Three opens her box of blue milk next to you and continues. “The Blues never fucking shut up about it, it’s getting annoying.”

“Don’t listen to her, Dime,” Gold-Eleven tells you, quickly occupying the seat on your left and biting into a crunchy piece of fruit, talking loudly over the chatter even as he chomps. “Rossi just knows her pool is up tomorrow, she doesn’t want to lose any of her precious credits.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Gold-Three immediately snaps, leaning forward and around you to point the prongs of her fork at Eleven threateningly. “Zhang’s pool starts on Sunday.”

“Oh fuck off, you guys are betting on this now?” You groan, shoving your plate away with a flick of your fingers now that you’re certain you’ve completely lost your appetite. Sixteen immediately snatches up one of your bread rolls while Zhang swipes your juice and Rossi goes for a packet of glockaw sauce.

“You’re the one who announced it in front of everybody, we’re just being active spectators,” Rossi returns, ripping the packet and pouring the sauce on her vegetables with a shrug. “How the fuck do you bet against fucking each other though, that’s my question? It’s a paradox, wouldn’t you both just lose at the same time?”

“Dameron and I aren’t going to fuck,” you tell her very slowly and clearly, starting to get a headache. Why is it impossible to avoid this conversation topic, even with an entire Resistance base to roam around in? “Ever. The bet never had anything to do with fucking each other, it’s about not fucking other people.”

“Literally what is the difference?” You hear Rossi ask with her mouth full, but Zhang speaks over her.

“Somebody should probably tell Nine that, she’s the bookie,” he tosses out carelessly, dropping the core of his piece of fruit to his tray before wiping his hands on his jumpsuit. You bury your face in your hands and let out a loud, exhausted sound into your palms, not knowing which response serves to aggravate your already emotionally overloaded ass even more. Nine is the bookie, of fucking course she is. “But hey, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think any of it actually goes outside of Gold, so.”

“I’ve heard the Blues talking about it, but that’s it,” Rossi chimes in while chewing some of her veggies. “Maybe some Reds. Point is everybody else thinks it’s already happening, honestly.”

“What the fuck,” you whisper, using your knuckles to rub at the backs of your eyes until bright spots appear. Where are stress headaches localized? Are those the ones right under your brow bone? Because stars, you feel it. “Fucking… why? Why do people think that me and Dameron are…?”

Nobody at the table immediately responds, and you drop your hands after a moment to look at each of their astounded faces in turn.

“You fucking serious, bitch?” Rossi blurts first, her voice completely deadpan, and you growl in vexation.

“Have I not been vocal enough about my severe dislik—”

“And yet you kicked Nine out of your room to let him bunk with you,” Zhang immediately suggests.

“You request mission assignments together,” Rossi adds.

“Spend your off-days together,” Zhang continues.

“You’re both really weird about how long it takes the other person to shower,” Rossi tacks onto the list Zhang is now making on his fingers and you shake your head frantically.

“No—no, that’s so that we know neither one of us is cheating,” you try to explain, and you already know it sounds unconvincing without needing the two quick, lofty and sarcastic nods on either side of you. “Showers and off-days are prime masturb—no, you know what? No. I’m tired of the assumptions, I don’t owe anyone shit. This is super fucking uncool of you guys, you know that? It’s insane that this is what counts as gossip in the Resistance nowada—”

“There’s only so much bad news people can take, Ten,” Gold-Sixteen grunts down at his almost finished plate, and all three of you snap your gazes across the table at him. The forest-tinted twi’lek doesn’t speak much, it’s uncommon to hear his voice without distortion over the comms, but you blink as his sharp teeth continue to form words without looking at you. “Quit being so sensitive. Rather bet on this shit than which system is getting demolished next.”

And with that, Sixteen excuses himself with a silent nod, having gobbled down his full plate while you, Three, and Eleven were bickering. You feel your cheeks flare with anger and shame—you didn’t deserve that, you immediately reassure yourself, but the hidden self-doubt the comment sows just further contributes to your upset. You want to call out to his back that just because the First Order exists doesn’t mean you have to put up with your own fucking squadron turning you and your mortal enemy into glorified race fathiers, but he’s already leaving the mess hall while Rossi and Zhang have moved on to other topics, both of them continuing to grab more food from your tray as they talk.

You have a tough shell. But today was… a lot. You bite your lip down at the table against the sudden wave of emotion, blinking quickly to clear the weakness watering your vision.

See, this—this right here is why you use last names. These people aren’t your friends. Betting on who you fuck for laughs, using you as a source of entertainment without your consent just because they’re in the middle of a war, and then guilting you into feeling like you’re the one acting like a stuck up bitch about it? You’re fighting in the same fucking war—you’re on the front lines just like everybody else and nobody gets to lecture you on the devastation of battle. You almost died today. You fought tooth and fucking nail to stay alive and by all accounts, you shouldn’t even be sitting here right now, much less dealing with this childish shit. This is your squadron. These people are supposed to be the ones closest to you out of everyone, the ones you’ve been flying into chaos in formation with for years, and yet not a single damn person has even mentioned your performance to you today, all anyone can ever seem to talk about is—ugh.

Unfortunately, your unobstructed view also allows you to look at the source of your bad mood once more, immediately noticing the way more people have crowded around him now, and the headache continues to throb painfully behind your eyeballs. You were in the same ship, does nobody realize that? You were gunning, he was flying—you were offense, he was defense—that’s the only fucking difference, and yet, it’s like that side of the mess hall is just completely lit up with hearty laughter and music playing from someone’s holopad and congratulatory drinks being passed around, while yours is… well.

You continue to fume inwardly, struggling somewhere between bitter and hurt, and you can see your reflection through the transparisteel giving him a death glare, wondering how many of the people surrounding him have made bets with Nine. How many of his little entourage have their money wagered on Dameron getting in your pants by a specific dat—

You stop short while staring at his handsome face, an infuriating, horrifying thought suddenly striking you. No… no, he wouldn’t…

“Does he know?” You immediately interrupt the chitchat between Three and Eleven to ask with a deadly edge in your voice, tipping your forehead at pretty boy. Ooh, you can already feel it burning. It would be so fucking typical. Oooooh, Maker, if he’s heard even a fucking whisper about this outside wagering going on amongst the pilots, you will fucking smother his ass in his sleep tonight. How could he not know? With as many friends as he has? If you’re just being made aware of it, then it’s a given that somebody has to have told him by now, which just means that it’s all the more possible—shit, even more likely—that he’s… participating, too. You do your best to keep your voice even, but you can hear the quiet fury shaking in it. “The bet about when me and him are gonna fuck, does he know about it?”

“Who—Dameron?” Zhang turns his head. “No, I don’t think s—”

“Yeah,” Rossi says at the exact same time, and your blood instantly turns ice cold as Zhang leans around you to blink at her stupidly.

“No. Yeah? What?” He says, sounding genuinely confused.

“Yeah, remember?” Rossi confirms with a shrug. “Nine was mad as all shit, came at me in the rec room a few weeks ag—fucking Maker, Eleven, you were there.”

“Oh,” Zhang suddenly exhales, “yeah, that’s right. Oh, yeah, Dime, he knows.”

You’re—fuck, you’re about to rampage. You’re burning a fucking hole through Dameron while he converses animatedly with his numerous buddies, waving an open hand and shaking his head at someone with a smile and then gesturing broadly to this side of the transparisteel. His pool is probably up soon, you figure. That’s why he came onto you so strong earlier today. He was going to get two weeks of your pay, plus whatever he must’ve offered up to Nine that says he’d get it to happen within a certain amount of time. Perfect, your old roomie and the arch nemesis you stupidly agreed to trade her for, two asshole peas in an asshole pod.

“—she thought I was the one who told him—” You know Rossi is still talking but you’re not actually hearing any of it. Nobody has any fucking idea. Nobody has any idea what he did to you today, how unbelievably close you were to… to actually… “—was all just for fun, but then he had a few choice words for her and told his squad that if any of them had made a—” You don’t know why you’re so surprised honestly, you should’ve expected…

Wait.

“Wait,” you suddenly blurt, and while she shuts up immediately, your mind starts whirling even faster. Dameron had some… what? “Wait. Explain. You’re saying he didn’t…” You slowly shake your head, furrowing your eyebrows and trying to piece it together. “He didn’t… place a bet with her, or anything?”

“What? No,” Rossi shakes her head a lot more forcefully than you, getting frustrated. “No, fucking—didn’t you hear anything I just said, Ten? He got all high and mighty for some stupid reason, totally reamed her ass out for it.”

“But…” You blink, stunned. “But… why? Why would he…?”

Rossi shrugs. “Fuck if I know. All she said was that he ordered Black not to throw in, made her lose a fuckton of money from it. Had no idea Dameron would be so touchy about his sex life, honestly.”

He… he isn’t. He isn’t touchy about his sex life—you feel like he never shuts up about it.

Rossi continues talking, but you’re not listening again. You stare stupidly at yourself in the clear transparisteel as Dameron’s voice comes back to you, repeating something you specifically remember him saying earlier today. Something you thought was just a careless jab at the time, aimed blindly at one of your comrades with nothing more than the intent to piss you off.

…I swapped housing assignments with your shitty roommate and slept in the bunk below yours for a month and a half…

You blink beyond your own reflection to focus on him once more, still lost in his own little world, not paying a single lick of attention to you while you’re essentially having a fucking crisis over here. You didn’t think the insult had any real substance to it at all. You just naturally assumed that was the result of him wanting to lash out at anything or anyone remotely close to you, if only to get a reaction, so you never gave him one or paid it any mind.

This is why he said that about Nine? Because he knew she had organized this fucked up betting pool behind your back?

Stars, you need to get out of here, all these rumors are fucking with your head. Your assumptions and the hairpin turnarounds are giving you worse whiplash than Dameron’s… well, admittedly spectacular flying today. You were wrong about wanting to avoid isolating—in fact, that suddenly sounds like a phenomenal idea.

So, you just get up and leave right in the middle of Rossi’s sentence, needing some time alone. Neither of them call out to you as you quickly walk around the table and through the barrier towards the exit, thank the Maker, and you’re just about to retreat with no interruptions until suddenly two Greenies step in front of you and block your path.

You halt immediately, looking up at them with a furrowed brow. “What now?” You grunt, not having the patience to even wait for a response before attempting to squeeze around them.

“Hey, so you really saved our asses out there today, Goldie,” the one on the left quickly sidesteps in front of you and rushes to say, and you settle your weight back on your heels with a huff.

“What are you talking about?” You glance back and forth between them, not recalling a time you’ve ever spoken to either one, before jerking your head to gesture over your shoulder. “Go congratulate trophy boy over there, he was the one flying.”

“We did,” the one on the right tips sideways to look at Dameron behind your shoulder, likely still laughing and joking with someone about something, something super fucking dumb probably. “Well, uh. We tried.”

“What?” You let out a heavy sigh and rub your temples. “The fuck is that supposed to mean? I don’t have the time.”

“He won’t take any credit, just keeps saying that all he did was steer you around,” the other one shrugs as his companion straightens and looks down at you once more. “Wouldn’t accept any drinks we offer him, nothing. So we thought we’d buy you one instead. Unless you’re… leaving?”

It takes you a few seconds to process that, even as he allows the open invitation to hang in the air. You can’t stop the way your torso automatically twists around to study your copilot from across the mess hall in baffled silence, suddenly realizing that they’re… they’re right. Dameron has no congratulatory drinks sitting in front of him even though more and more people have made their way into the bar. He’s just sitting there grinning and nodding along to something someone else is saying, completely and blissfully unaware of the extent to which he’s fucked with you in the past twenty minutes. The past… whole day. Month and a half. Or… fuck, how long have you known him? Two years?

But then Dameron’s gaze gradually drifts this way, before suddenly locking with yours. His eyes flick behind you to look at the two Greenies blocking your exit, and then back to the way you’re staring at him, wide-eyed and startled.

He suddenly stands up and starts to take a few steps towards you, and the sheer abruptness of the movement causes you to react immediately. You stumble your way backwards through the two pilots, feeling a few hands reach out to steady you through the awkward fumbling, but you slap them away and announce loud enough for Dameron to hear beyond them that you’re taking a shower, and you don’t give a fuck how long it’s gonna be this time.

***

The knob squeaks as you turn the water on. Usually you’d step back and wait the grueling five minutes or longer it takes for it to heat up with your arms crossed over your naked chest, but this time you move directly under the freezing spray, hoping to use the ice cold to shock your system.

You're finally alone.

Technically solitude doesn’t really exist within this base. You’ve heard of others that are a little nicer, having a little more room for the ranks, but not here. Housing assignments, showers and restrooms, mess and recreation halls—they’re all communal. Everyone is given rotating shifts, so while that means there’s never any true quiet to be found, it also means that showers are spread out well throughout the day and night.

But, at least for this moment, there’s nobody else around. At least in here, in the tiled chamber with multiple shower heads stationed around you—you’re sure there are a few girls lingering in the locker room and the entry area beyond it, but for right now, you’re blissfully by yourself.

And yet, you can’t seem to enjoy it.

You know you should be basking in the isolation. You should be thrilled at the rarity of only hearing your own flipflops slap against the floor as you turn around and drench your hair with the icy spray, but the lack of an immediate distraction for your focus allows it to wander to things you don’t want it to.

Explosions, mostly. Lighting up like fireworks in front of your eyes even as they flutter closed and let water drip down them. Constant, never-ending. Some of them small—TIEs you shot down, allies drawing fire away from you and then subsequently getting overwhelmed, zipping through dense debris from deadly collisions so quick that you had trouble distinguishing friend from foe. Some of them were massive—star destroyers splitting apart, warp drives overloading, enormous casualty counts. You don’t know how many lives you took today, not directly.

The beginning was the worst—when you were still slightly disoriented, when you were panicked and screaming into the comms for assistance. Then the closest stationed tandem showed up first—Red-Two and Eight, you think it was. Doesn’t matter now. They took some heat off you before the cavalry arrived, but you remember Dameron barking out your name the second their left thruster got nicked and they started spiraling, a ferociously deep, “With me!” cutting through the white noise. It was enough to snap you back, forcing you to instantly flick your eyes away and focus dead ahead without witnessing their demise.

It wouldn’t have normally been necessary. You’ve been flying with the Resistance for years, you’ve seen way too much bloodshed by now. But you’ve never been the catalyst of it—you’ve always been able to confront threats accompanied by your squadron, right between Nine and Eleven, the flight controls rumbling steady under your palms. You’ve never faced down an entire fleet in one single ship. You’ve never had to rely so directly on the skills of another pilot in order to stay alive.

The water slowly heats to a lukewarm while you reach for the shampoo.

Surprisingly, for as much as the two of you clash in normal interactions, it was like everything eventually became… synchronized. Spectacularly so. Dameron started off the enemy confrontation by calling out his flight patterns to give you a chance to adjust your firing in real time, but then at some point, it just stopped being necessary. There was a moment where you both were able to suddenly… get it. Get each other. He didn’t have to say anything after that—you could predict each other without second guessing, react instantaneously, and work your way through the littered battlefield accordingly. You never thought it would be possible to collaborate so well with someone you’ve spent ages despising. Sure, you’d both die if you didn’t—shit, you’d probably still both die regardless—but this kind of teamwork extended beyond the need to survive. It doesn’t matter how much you want to stay alive when reading someone else’s mind is physically impossible, but for some reason… You have no idea why, but it apparently came naturally between you. It fell to pure instinct, pure reaction, and remarkably, his would somehow match yours perfectly, every single time.

You lather the shampoo in your hair, remembering how his voice changed over the course of the mission. How it gradually shifted from panicked roars and barked orders into ecstatic cheers and genuine praise after landing a difficult shot, how he just couldn’t seem to stop whooping.

You smile softly as the tepid water rinses away the dirt and sweat from your body, until the temperature is brought up to a gentle, comfortable warmth raining down you and echoing in the empty shower room.

And, your first name. Dameron kept calling you that, the whole time. The one you’re now absolutely certain you’ve never personally given to him. The one he would’ve had to have listened for specifically. Remembered, or at least asked the right person about. But why? It’s not… it makes no sense, he doesn’t give a shit. He’s notorious for not giving a shit. He can’t even be bothered to remember the names of the girls he’s actually with—so why did he go to the trouble to figure out yours? You’ve been nothing but a thorn in his side the same way he is to you, right?

Right?

Your mind starts recollecting more recent events, trying to work through and process it by yourself. He was… singing your praises today. He was openly giving you credit for the win while you pouted in the corner and assumed the absolute worst of him. As much as you’re frustrated that nobody else seemed to give voice to your contributions, you’re even more surprised that he was the one who did.

And then even earlier. Gold-Nine, holding wagers with members of your squad (and others, apparently) about when you’re going to fuck him. Dameron, tearing her a new one for it, forbidding Black Squadron from throwing in and not attempting to hide his disdain for her from you. He… he defended you. Stood up for you when your own squad was being a bunch of dicks behind your back. And nobody ever fucking mentioned it to you. What did Rossi say—a few weeks ago? He’s known all this time and only today, only after you… openly showed more interest in him than you ever have, after you worked up enough nerve to try in your own little way to flirt back this time instead of responding to his casual comments with contempt and disgust, only today is when he decided to make a real move on you.

…Your mind is completely blank and yet you still feel yourself start to heat up just a bit at even alluding to the events that took place earlier. The way his fingers felt—

Steam begins to fill the open concept chamber while you shake your head against the train of thought and reach for the soap, beginning to circle the bar along your arms and shoulders with a sigh. This is already the longest shower you’ve taken in almost two months, and your body slowly relaxes under the mist and heat as you take forever cleaning yourself, slowly and hypnotically rubbing the soap along your skin.

The second you let your eyelids dip shut at the feeling, you immediately shiver at a flash of Dameron dragging his finger out of his mouth and blinking dark eyes at you through the transparisteel.

Fuck. The soap slips from your hand and you quickly catch it against your body before it falls to the ground completely, suddenly feeling the need to breathe in the misty air a bit harder. Shower, you’re in the shower. Come on.

The dirt and grime is scrubbed from your face and you tilt your head to move the bar of soap across your neck. As it lathers, you can’t help but remember the way his lips felt against the skin right there, the scratch of his beard. You keep working the soap against that same spot for a while, not knowing if you’re trying to wash away the sensation or simulate it, until you gradually slow and make it lighter, softer—yes, that’s closer to how it felt, that’s—

Soon the water is boiling hot and you’re trying not to boil along with it, remembering everything he said against this spot, the filth he whispered to you here. Your pussy starts to throb between your legs as the memories play out in your mind, how close he got you to shattering bliss without even really working for it. If you put it all together collectively, you don’t think he actually touched you for more than a minute or two total today. Mostly he just talked to you, but stars, he hit buttons you didn’t even think you had, had you a split second away from cumming harder than Maker knows while his finger rested just above your clit and provided no stimulation whatsoever.

Fuck, you enjoyed it. You did, you’ll admit it when there’s no one else here but you. You enjoyed the fuck out of it. You wish he’d do it again. Force you to lose, force you to cum so you can at least blame him for it, remove your responsibility from the equation and allow you to put just one more thing on his shoulders, to taste ecstacy instead of expecting you to bear the weight of pretending you don’t need it any longer. He was doing you a favor, you realize that now. Your body is staging a fucking coup and you wish you could’ve called mercy before it got to this agonizing point. He turns you on, you fucking admit it. He inspires violent emotions in you—jealousy, arousal, anger, temptation—thoughts you don’t want to have and consolidating it all into various forms of hatred makes the finer details easier to ignore. Your perception of him has always been skewed by your iron will, but he all but took a fucking sledgehammer to it today, dented it beyond all recognition. You want him, you want to him to take it all away, you want him to fuck you—in the… fuck, in the good way.

You don’t have a thought beyond that. Your hand quickly falls down the length of your body to wash your private parts, biting your lip as your hips slowly start to rock into it. You’re getting clean, you’re getting clean, this is how you clean yourself, this is… yes, as long as you keep the bar of soap pressed between your palm and the top of your curls like this, you’re cleaning yourself and you can just… ease your finger down just a little bit and—

Flipflops suddenly echo from the twisting hallway leading to the tiled freshers, and you immediately snatch your hand back up again, not needing to turn around to know another girl is walking into the room. A knob somewhere to your right eventually makes a dull squeak as you quickly finish washing up and turn your showerhead off, grabbing your towel and wrapping it around yourself.

Maker, you feel like your pussy is plotting your demise. Fuck, you can’t believe you almost cheated in the fucking showers just now where literally anyone could walk in, you thought you would’ve had more self-control than that. You make your way into the changing rooms and grab your pajamas, starting to tug them on without fully drying your body and having only one thought in mind.

Dameron will probably be celebrating late tonight. You can tuck in early, scurry back to your room and cheat there.

Well, no, not cheating, because you clearly remember making a very compelling argument about wet dreams earlier today. Maker, a freebie, the word has never sounded so enticing. What you’d say amounts to a… bye-week orgasm basically, since you know he’s already lost at least one match against his own body and you’re meant to be competing on the same level. It’s only fair to let you persevere through the toughest part of the challenge if he was allowed to throw a game early on and still stay in the competition. Maybe he threw multiple games, you never got a straight answer concerning that, so it’s still under review. He could’ve thrown… three games, even. Or four.

You dress as quickly as possible and then nearly bolt through the entrance area to the restrooms with all the sinks and stalls. The balled up dirty clothes and wet towel in your arms allow you to hide the way your nipples are stiff and tender against your thin pajamas, and you can’t wait to climb into your bunk and take everything off under the covers. You’ll be able to cum, at least once. It’ll relieve so much stress, get rid of this nightmare headache, rip through your body like lightning and paralyze it until you can start over from square one and think like yourself again.

And, you’re just about to power walk your ass back to your quarters when a body nearly slams into yours as soon as you step foot outside the door, your shoulder jerking back just in time to avoid a collision.

A mechanic, you think. You’re not exactly sure, you don’t hang out with too many of them—he’s Chiss and his glowing red eyes don’t even land on you as you gasp and sidestep him at the last second, but it’s not him that catches the majority of your attention. He just exited the men’s room at the same time you left the women’s, and the door takes a moment to swing shut behind him.

You freeze. It can’t be more than a few seconds—but it feels like everything slows down and it lasts a fucking eternity.

Dameron is standing at a sink in the far corner of the room, naked except for a towel identical to the one in your arms wrapped loosely around his waist. He cradles the base of his own throat with one hand and gently drags a razor down the smooth contour of it with the other, his chin tilted up high and regal while his eyelids dip low to concentrate on his movements. He glances down and holds the foamy blade under the running faucet, tapping it twice against porcelain before the door slides him out of frame.

I can shave, a low, silky murmur slowly fills your ears, heat swelling low and hot in your tummy. Tonight, I’ll shave it off. Make it nice and smooth for you.

You feel like your body is just a collection of rigid knots all tied together, and the one between your legs is the tightest it’s ever been. Stars, on another day you’d say it feels like a bad cramp, even though you know your injection makes your period rare and like clockwork. Regardless, the split second image makes you shudder and clamp up painfully, and you just stand there and stare at the closed door for a second, trying not to shake.

Fuck, this is so fucking… presumptuous of him.

Realistically, you know it could have absolutely nothing to do with you. It’s his face—you’re not self-centered enough to have completely lost your concept of autonomy. He can do whatever he wants to his body, and that includes facial hair, full stop. You also know that he’s not being… obvious about it, no matter how much it feels that way to you. He’s using the sink and mirror at the very end of the room, not any of the ones nearest to the door—but even if he was, it’s not like he could’ve planned for you to walk out at the exact moment the metal hinge was angled wide open. He couldn’t possibly have intended for this, for you to see him doing this. He wasn’t making a show, didn’t even notice you standing there. You blame literally everything on him, or at least you always try your absolute best to—but this one…

It sends a hard shudder down your spine and you clutch the fabric in your arms tighter, trying not to drop it. Fuck. This is torture. Fuck him. Good and bad—both ways, all the ways he can be fucked, fuck him. Your head is spinning, you’re sweating fresh out of the shower, you need to cum. Maybe if you hurry, you can get that precious orgasm before he’s finished, because if Dameron is able to intercept you before you can tend to this, you’re… you’re not sure how you’re going to say no to him.

You don’t even think you want to anymore.

You feel like you’re just… holding onto it on principle now. Too stubborn and hardheaded to want change. Too stuck in your own ways to recognize how much everything already has changed.

Somehow, you end up making your way back to your room, but the whole thing is a blur. Your flipflops plap against your heels as you navigate through hallways as quick as you can, emptier than you’ve seen them in months. You know most of the pilots are probably out celebrating in either the mess hall or rec room, but the thought doesn’t really presently register. Almost nothing registers besides your continuous forward motion and the way you feel yourself throb with every step, aching for something you are going to get tonight. Fuck, you are so attached to this orgasm now, it’s not going anywhere and neither are you. You deserve this, you deserve some relief. Come hell or highwater, it’s happening tonight.

As soon as you step into your room and slap your hand blindly against the wall panel to close the door behind you, you’re carelessly dropping the bundle of fabric to the floor and then shrugging out of your pajamas in the cool pitch darkness, having exactly one mission in mind. You don’t bother with lights, with brushing your hair, with literally anything besides clamoring up the ladder to your top bunk and wiggling under the thin bedsheet, making sure to pull it up to your chin before your legs butterfly open. The tip of your finger wets itself on your tongue and then you’re dropping it down and sliding it against your poor clit, the pleasure arcing and flaring so sharp and sensitive even from your touch that you have to give it just a second.

…No, no you don’t. You don’t have to give it fucking anything. You keep moving your finger hard and quick even as your hips naturally want to jerk away from it, shoving yourself through the sensitivity with gritted teeth and a ferocious will.

Fuck, how long do you think you have? Was Dameron shaving pre or post-shower? You can’t remember, all you know is he had a towel around his waist. And that thin gold chain hanging down his neck. Was his hair wet? Fuck, why can’t you remember? His chin and jaw were smooth as silk, you know that much. Post-shower, then. Probably. Probably?

His chin and jaw were smooth as silk. You keep getting stuck on that no matter how chaotically your thoughts whirl; they fling out in different directions at different velocities but all somehow manage to go in a perfect circle and end up at the same place you started. His chin, his jaw, his mouth, his neck, his chin, his mouth, his jaw, his mouth, his mouth, his mouth—

You feel yourself start to clamp down and you speed up, chasing it. The pleasure starts burning deep inside you, the fire slowly licking down your thighs and rising up into your abdomen, and then—

And then a series of quiet beeps from the hallway practically blare like alarm bells to your frantic mind.

You immediately stop moving your finger, snapping your legs tight together and flat to the mattress as soon as the door to your room shifts open and fluorescent light spills inside, and you feel like you could actually fucking cry right now.

All this edging is just a form of self-flagellation at this point. You lay there and try not to make a sound, try not to tremble hard enough to shake the whole bunk with it, but even your breathing feels like it’s going to give you away. Dameron, shirtless with his towel draped over his shoulder, slowly steps into the room and then pauses almost immediately, making your heart stutter for a second at what so blatantly caught his attention.

One quick glance down towards his feet confirms the simultaneous hope and fear—you left everything on the floor. The towel, the dirty clothes, and your pajamas are strewn about haphazardly right where he needs to walk.

You know what it must look like to him. A trail of clothes leading directly to an occupied bed isn’t exactly subtle, even though you didn’t necessarily intend it that way. Still, what can you say? Your hand is shoved in between your legs right now and you’re in your birthday suit under this thin sheet, what the fuck can you say to him? Sorry Dameron, got too caught up with how stupid wet you get me that I left those there on accident on my way to cheat, but totally not because I lowkey want your help doing it. Convincing, that’ll go over great.

Dameron slowly lifts his head to look at you. Or, at least you think he does—the light from the open door behind him casts his body in a dark silhouette, but you know your face is perfectly illuminated for him right now. Blinking down at him from the top bunk with your brows pulled up in the middle, wide-eyed and desperate and caught red-handed. Fuck, you don’t know if he can see the way your knees are clamped tight together and your hand rests perfectly still against your pussy like this from the angle he’s at, but you know it has to be super fucking obvious either way. You’re breaking the rules, you’re touching yourself, and you both know it. You can’t lie, you can’t even sit up without confirming his very valid suspicion. He can call the game at any point, but…

You watch his head fall back down to study the mess you left for him once more. Fuck, are you positive that was an accident? Normally you wouldn’t second guess anything about your own understanding of the interactions that occur between you and him, but—you’ve never done that before. You’ve lived with roommates on this base for years, you don’t just… get naked before getting into bed, that’s bad form. How are you going to get up in the morning without having your pajamas shoved near your feet while you sleep? Wrap this thin bedsheet around yourself and scamper down the ladder until you can snatch them up from the floor, and then what? Climb all the way back up just to wiggle the clothes on underneath the blanket before going back down again? Maker, you fucked up, your pussy is plotting your fucking demise.

But then everything inside you pulls taut as Dameron suddenly decides to move. Slowly, he leans down to catch your orange jumpsuit closest to his feet with a few fingers, before he stands upright and carefully begins folding the fabric without saying a single word to you. Electricity buzzes through you as he very obviously takes his time with it, using nearly his whole armspan to lengthen and fold the sleeves while his chest and chin meet for support. When he’s eventually satisfied with it, he takes a few steps toward the empty desk on your side of the room and then sets the neat rectangle of fabric atop it where you usually keep it.

You bite your lip and you can’t help it—you start to move your finger as he goes back to sort the pajamas you wore for barely two seconds from your dirty clothes, folding and putting away whatever is clean and then tossing the rest into the shared laundry basket that gets collected every week. Somehow it makes you feel even more naked, seeing all your clothes be returned to their proper places, realizing that this is your base state now, this is what you’re going to wear tonight. Nothing. You left everything on the floor and trapped yourself up here, he’s simply shifting a pawn forward two spaces in kind now that you’ve made your first move.

You can feel yourself pulse threateningly against your own fingertip while he collects your wet towel and drapes it over your closet door to dry, and your breath comes louder through your nose while you bite back the noises you want to make, the way your movements so desperately want to speed up. Your hand working the way you want it to under the white sheets would be too much, too revealing, but you don’t know how much longer you’ll be able to care.

But then of course, the asshole has to go and put away his towel and clothes, and you endure through the whole thing while pressing back and forth against your clit so hard and slow that your toes curl and pull the sheet tucked under your chin taut. After that’s done, he makes his way over to the portshade above his desk and slowly slides it open a few inches, the light of three moons outside gradually filling the room. However, when Dameron goes back to press a button on the wall panel and close the door to the hallway, you immediately see how much softer it is in here, how the artificial fluorescents have thankfully disappeared and the room illuminates more than it blinds, glows more than it beams. He presses one more button as the lock inside the paneling slides into place.

You bite your bottom lip and try your best to hide the pleasure you’re building for yourself while he makes his way back to his desk, quietly swiping the radio off it and lowering the volume knob completely before he flips it on. The noise slowly amplifies until you’re able to catch two distinct voices conversing in Huttese—it’s the only lingua franca that still broadcasts on this old technology in this part of the galaxy, but he’s already flipping through the stations in search of something specific.

If you were thinking straight, you may have actually recognized this for what it is, but you’re having trouble even processing the details of your general surroundings right now, your mind is lagging and too slow at reading between the lines. Dameron’s doing exactly what he said he would do. He laid it all out earlier for you in the x-wing, telling you exactly what he wanted plain as day, and now he’s checking the whole list off one by one. The shade is open and the room is lit just enough to make him out, the door is locked, and he’s finding something to listen to. Something quiet, and easy.

If you were thinking straight, you’d realize that there’s a much more obvious reason why he shaved his beard—you never told him the truth about how much you liked it. You never tell him the truth. You allow—even encourage him to think the sharp things you say to him are exactly how you feel. He did it because he believed you.

Oh, but you’re not thinking straight. Your thoughts are scattered and the only thing they can agree upon is how good this feels, even as your breathing starts to grow heavier, grow louder underneath the sound of the radio. The thought stays right beneath your consciousness, tugging at your preoccupied mind. You work your finger with just a little more verve now that he’s flipping through the stations, knowing he’s distracted by spinning the dial through intermittent white noise while different voices and songs fill the room for just a second at a time.

Your bed, his voice suddenly echoes through your thoughts, originating from your subconscious but almost sounding like it’s coming from the radio in your delirious mind. I want you comfortable.

Fuck, the understanding finally clicks the second he flips to a slower song and you start to burn at the thought of what’s next. The silent promise that his actions allude to. You have the realization way too late but at least it still comes at all with the state you’re in. Your hand slows down immediately, not even needing to consciously consider the choice between achieving orgasm through your finger or his mouth. Still, it’s hard to stop touching yourself completely when it feels so fucking good to your deprived body.

Fuck, it’s barely been a few seconds since your realization and yet you immediately bristle in distress at how fucking long he’s taking.

So you open your mouth. You’re desperate and needy and on the verge of something, and it comes out without thought. You don’t think it’s loud enough for him to hear, but his head immediately lifts and looks unseeingly at the wall in front of him for a second, as if he’s questioning if he imagined it. A soft melody plays on a bluesy guitar while you hiccup and wait, but he doesn’t move.

And then you say it again, higher and tighter in your throat, pitched up to an impatient, girlish whine. “Poe…”

The radio is tossed onto the bottom bunk as soon as he spins around and walks towards the ladder, but it’s like your finger has a mind of its own the moment he disappears underneath your line of sight. Your legs spasm against the mattress and you bite your lip, not caring about the frantic way your hand begins moving under the sheet as his muted footsteps climb up the rungs.

Your eyes snap to his as soon as you can see him beyond the railing at your feet, heaving himself up until everything above his waist is above you, too. His pauses there and his lashes quickly dip to the shameless movements between your legs as you work yourself towards that approaching bliss, and then flick back to the way you’re biting your lip and looking at him so torn, wanting so badly to wait for it but not being able to right now.

Slowly, he begins to move forward, crawling his way up the mattress and over your body, noticeably careful with where he places his limbs. You’re not hard to dodge, though—you’re like a rigid stick of desperation under him, knees and ankles still clamped tight together and your arms streamlined as close to your body as possible with tension as you keep rubbing your clit. Not to mention the sheet is thin and shows your figure almost perfectly with how tight you’ve hooked it under your chin, only leaving the finest details to the imagination.

But then there starts to be a little strain against the fabric, an unspoken question he’s still bothering to ask even though you could’ve told him to fuck off ages ago. Poe could yank the sheet down and flip your shit over and destroy you right now if he wanted—fuck, like you want him to do—but his face slowly appears in front of yours instead and his dark eyes search your features for answers. The length of his chain dangles from his muscular neck and glows against his golden skin, his whole upper body stretched long and bare over you.

From the gradually increasing tightness pulling on the fabric, you expect the sheet to rip down your body as soon as you lift your chin and let that resistance go, but instead… stars, it’s slow. Why is he going so fucking slow?? The bedsheet barely flutters down to your collarbone before he’s able to stop tugging on it so hard, and then he just gently inches the hem down from that point on.

Fuck—your eyes drop to his lips as he eventually reveals your shoulders and sternum to the room, and then lower to your cleavage while you let out a hushed whimper, praying he understands the extent of how vulnerable you’re allowing yourself to be. You don’t do this often—and you definitely don’t do it with someone like him. He’s the one who said you needed this, isn't he? So why the fuck is he dragging out the anticipation? Pretending like he doesn’t see the way you’re begging for help in the middle of another warzone that’s breaking out for the second time today?

Poe’s head drops down to give the contour of your neck a long drag of his tongue, slow and hot and wet, the sheet eventually dropping beneath your nipples and exposing them to the cool air. You bite your lip and keep working yourself under the fabric even as it’s led down the length of your tummy, and you just get wetter and wetter feeling him mouth at your skin as the radio continues to play soft from the bottom bunk. He follows the skin as it’s revealed, licking down from your collarbone and working with the increasing rate of your breathing. His lips never feel like they vary in pressure, even as your chest heaves up and down and your lungs work hard for air.

His open mouth slowly drags down the curve of your breast and it makes your blood burn fire through your veins. You nearly choke when your nipple is enveloped in soft heat, his tongue quickly fluttering up under the stiff peak and giving it to you so gently, contrasting so light and vernal with how brilliant and neon bright the need between your legs is. Your hand starts to work quicker, and fuck—you can hear it now, your desperate movements audible over the shallow breaths and the sound of one song gradually fading into another below you. You’re just too fucking wet and your pussy is smushed with how tight your legs are pressed together—the noise is unavoidable, and Poe’s knees are planted too close to either side of your thighs to spread them really at all.

Fuck, you knock against the resistance regardless to let him know what you want, but he doesn’t budge and it makes you just about lose your damn mind. Does he have to make everything so fucking difficult? You couldn’t close your legs earlier and now you can’t open them, and it’s like he’s able to take perfect advantage of each opposing position to prolong your torture.

But then his tongue leaves you even as his jaw opens just slightly, and that’s the only warning you get before his teeth graze your nipple with a sudden arc of sensation and you flare up all at once.

It’s a miracle and a curse that you’re able to stop at the very last second, your hand jerking away from your pussy and flexing into a fucking death claw on your thigh at how close you were, and you don’t know why. Why did the fuck did you stop? There’s nothing standing in your way right now, you’ve consciously given yourself express permission to cum, but still. It must just be learned instinct at this point—hammered into your muscle memory for weeks on end to not allow the pleasure no matter what, especially when you’re this fucking close to it.

Nonetheless you garble out nonsense and cinch inwards on yourself to fight it off now that you’ve apparently decided against it. There’s nothing worse than a half-assed orgasm, and you have to quickly summon the conviction behind your split second reaction before it’s too late and your body takes the pleasure any way it can get it.

Poe’s mouth releases your nipple at the way your whole spine suddenly hunches in and he drops his forehead to your chest, breathing heavy down the slope of your breast as you tremble and grapple for your sanity.

“Did you just cum?” Is the first thing he says to you, his voice is so ragged and stony it’s practically gravel crunching as he speaks.

“N-n-no,” you quickly stammer at the ceiling, trying to remember how to breathe correctly. Inhale, exhale—fuck, which one is inhale again, which one comes first? Maker, does he need to call a fucking medic? “Huhhhhalmost?”

Poe takes a deep breath and slowly releases it with a bassy and warm mmmm rumbling against your skin, so coarse but pleased enough to sound like melted chocolate dripping down your body. The noise sends a violent shudder through you and it’s almost enough to knock you back to that edge again, even without your fingers assisting it.

His head dips and the sheet pulls down even more, just below your belly button now, and you let out a quiet gasp in anticipation, nearly on the verge of begging him to keep moving downwards. But when Poe’s eyes close and his mouth suddenly moves back up to open over your other nipple instead, your patience snaps.

Fuck him, bad way. This is your orgasm, you’re done waiting.

“I’m gonna cum,” you snarl furiously down at him, shoving your hand between your legs even as Poe’s lips quirk against your skin. It’s not a warning, it’s a threat. If he’s gonna be like this, he doesn’t get to share it with you. It’s your orgasm, you’ll give it to yourself if he doesn’t give a shit about it. “Thought you wanted it, guess not.”

You immediately feel his teeth again in response to your admittedly slightly bitchy comment and this time he lets your nipple roll just a bit between them, making you jerk at the sensation and quickly find your clit again. Oh, you’re soaking fucking wet, you’re wet everywhere. Slick and swollen and burning, and it’s not going to take much at all. The sheet sticks to your overheated body and you can’t tell the difference between your sweat, his saliva, or wetness from between your legs—it all just feels damp and slippery as you gradually lose your bearings under his mouth.

“Fuck this, I’m gonna cum,” you breathe once more, possibly nothing more than a mindless reiteration but most likely just one last veiled plea for him to give you what you both want. As if he can tell, Poe quickly lifts his mouth and suddenly the sheet is ripped the rest of the way down your naked body completely, sharp and frustrated, and then his lips brush against your elbow as it twitches, nipping the sensitive skin there.

“Brat,” he growls quietly against your forearm as he keeps dragging his lips down further, following the path it makes along your tummy. “Just likes making shit difficult.”

“You’re the one—” you hiccup, trying to sound angry but just melting into a puddle at the tip of his tongue slowly trailing down your frantically moving wrist, “—you’re the… the o-one who… who…?”

But you’re already sprinting towards that edge, feeling him drop even lower and his hot breath fan against your fingers, and at this point you’re too far gone. Poe gently kisses at your closed thighs, in perfect position and ready for you, but you can’t stop yourself anymore unless he makes you stop, and the longer he waits down there without grabbing your hand to replace it with something better the more you don’t give a shit about whether or not it’s going to happen. You can feel the orgasm rising, you can feel your toes flex and everything start to lock down for the approaching tsunami. You’re going to get it this time, you’re going to cum, you’re going to—

“This is—” you rasp, “—this is a f-free, a fffff-ffreeeeb—”

His tongue softly grazes your knuckle as it works.

And then there’s a moment. A suspended moment that seems to go on forever, where you’re launched directly over that cliff and yet you still seem to be gaining altitude. Where’s the drop? You’re already cumming—you can feel it, there’s absolutely no fucking going back now, but it’s like your sheer desperation has so much momentum that your body tricks itself into believing there’s nothing to land on, no gravity to immediately rip you straight down to your demise.

You choke out his name and your back arches with it and that must be the signal, because Poe finally pulls your hand away and lets his chin dip, and then his jaw falls open and allows you just enough time to catch the glimmer of his pink tongue before it slides wet and slow through your swollen folds.

Heat. It sears through your whole body with a wracked shudder, the slick glide over your clit as his eyes flutter closed, and within the very first second of feeling his mouth on you, you’re instantly cumming inside it.

There. There’s the drop.

The burning erupts into molten chaos, crumpling your whole body on impact like an accordion, but he sinks all his weight down on your legs and forces you to endure it with everything below your waist pinned to the mattress. It’s fucking mayhem. You feel like your voice actually rips itself in half with the ragged cry of blinding relief, so enormous and soul wrenching in power that you couldn’t even hope to muffle it. You can’t move your hips through it, you can’t stutter up to ride it out—you have to experience the whole thing with your lower body completely still while his tongue takes slow, gentle licks at your throbbing clit, only able to sit your shoulders up and slam them back down and grab his head as you endure.

You cum hard. Fucking hard. It’s daunting and explosive and utterly devastating in the havoc it wreaks, and just when you think you’ve seen the worst of it, it’s just so slow. Creeping along and obliterating everything in its path, taking an eternity to pass because of how fucking big it is.

When you’re finally able to float back down into your own body again, the first thing you notice is how tight his hold is. Poe’s arms are wrapped around your thighs to keep them pressed tight together and you can feel the wetness all the way down to your fucking knees as they tremble against each other. Stars, what did he do to you? You feel like you actually wet yourself, there’s way too much dampness on the mattress underneath you to feel anywhere close to normal for you.

His mouth eventually leaves you but his head doesn’t move, nothing else moves. Even his hot breath feels like rough stimulation to your throbbing pussy.

And then Poe shifts and adjusts his body just enough, catching the backs of your knees and slowly spreading your legs up and apart like you wanted to do ages ago. They feel like jelly, wobbly and unsteady even as his thumbs hook right under your knees and easily support most of their weight. Your pussy is soon exposed completely, and his shoulders move down just before his head drops to lick the collection of wetness right from your entrance. Fuck, he couldn’t get it from the previous angle your legs were at, just your clit at the very top—but this is deep and personal and you know he’s probably getting mouthfuls of how hard he just made you cum, using the tip of his tongue to scoop your arousal up and swallowing it quietly before going back for more.

“Poe,” you whisper, and he rumbles low in his throat in response without stopping. This isn’t for you, this isn’t for your benefit right now. Your pleasure receptors aren’t concentrated right here, just the physical evidence of them being overloaded just a few moments ago, but he stays for longer than necessary. He keeps his mouth here far longer than you need to push past the throbbing sensitivity and start to crave the sensation again, forcing you to bite your lip to stop yourself from telling him to move back up just a couple inches.

So you seek it out instead, the lower part of your body clearly not listening to a damn thing your mind tells it right now. Your hips drop and his velvet tongue catches your clit at the apex of its repetitive motion, and you gasp and rock upwards again as Poe groans and immediately rises with you to chase it. He attaches to the swollen flesh and sucks at it gently for you, following your lead, letting your wet fingers comb his hair back from his face and clutch a good fistful of it as you plant your feet and slowly grind up into his mouth.

Fuck. He was right. You needed this. Everything about it is heaven—endorphins pour off you in waves as you roll your hips against his face, and he lets you do it. He’s not just pliant, he’s willing. His tongue works diligently, his eyes close and he moans into your pussy, allowing you to tug his hair and fit to his mouth exactly how you want.

Oh, everything burns. Everything smolders and sparks, because he’s always been so withholding and now he’s just going for it. He’s reading your mind better than he did during the battle today, not necessarily submissive in his approach but… servicing. Accommodating. Finally giving in and putting real effort into helping you chase after another shot of ecstasy without being so stingy about it like before.

As soon as you feel another familiar swell of something deep down, your mouth is suddenly dropping open.

“How many—” your ragged voice comes out without thinking, and it takes so fucking long to actually attach the train of thought to its conduit of translation. You swallow thickly and flex your fingers in his hair, tugging at him to ground yourself, trying to anchor yourself to the very thing that’s about to fling you into oblivion again. “—fuck, how many times did you… how many fr-freebies do I—do I…”

Poe eases his chin back just enough to respond, and the slick sound his tongue makes leaving your clit makes you shudder and miss the wretched words at first. “Mm. Just the one.”

And then his tongue is already sliding back through your pussy by the time your eyes pop open in immediate panic, and your clit is in his mouth again as soon as yours drops to frantically contest.

But the words aren’t coming, it feels too fucking amazing. Your jaw goes slack and your fingers tighten in his hair. Maker almighty, the orgasm swells up so sharp and quick that you have to fucking kick him at the very last second to get away from it. Thankfully Poe’s mouth abruptly leaves you with his oof of shock at your audacity, lifting his head as you snap your legs together and grit your teeth through your miserable retreat from ecstasy. You don’t even notice the way your knee almost knocks into his jaw with it—you just focus on shamefully easing your way back down again from the platform overlooking bliss like you’re too afraid of the high-dive. After a second, you actually have to turn on your side and rock yourself like a child as Poe slowly sits up with a grimace, lifting his arm to rub at his ribcage where your heel slammed into him.

You peek an eye open to watch him do it and oh no, it’s not a good plan. He’s so… fucking hot. Fuck. He’s unbelievably good-looking—his hair curls and frames such handsome features, his body is lovely and warm and seeing his chest bare and up close like this makes you want to reach out and slowly drag your hand down the smooth curve of his side. But then your gaze catches on the dark sweatpants tented shamelessly between his legs and how he’s glistening with perspiration, too, and how he tugs at the fabric covering his crotch and sighs softly, blinking down at you slow and intoxicated with lust.

You have to close your eyes and bury your face into the pillow because your body is latching onto anything to keep you within inches of that edge. The mere sight of him is enough to make you worry for yourself. You take deep breaths and do your best to tune his existence out entirely. Just you, just you in your bed, trying desperately not to cum without even touching yourself. You’re naked and curled up and there's no one here to look down at you with deep brown eyes, no one else breathing and especially not equally as loud as you are. Just you, just you.

And, just when you think you might finally get to the point where you’re not teetering anymore, where you’re at least mostly certain that moving around and looking at things and just existing in general isn’t going to make you completely unravel hands-free at any moment, he has to fucking… go and be himself.

You peek up to see him staring down at you, dark and intimate and devouring, before his hand gently brushes down the curve of your hip. “Maker, you are so fucking hot right now. Was that a close one, pretty baby?”

Your hand snaps out to grab his wrist with a whimper and you don’t know if your intent is to stop him or just hang on for dear life, but your grip is weak and you shake and Poe takes the opportunity to grab a handful of your ass while you do absolutely fuck all to stop him.

“Mmmm. Open your legs,” he murmurs, releasing your flesh just to give it a soft smack. “You’re only making it worse like this.”

“What? W-What do you—” you stammer, but Poe drags his hand down your thigh to catch one of your knees and pull it up without waiting for your babbled reply. Both knees go with him, your pelvis wound too tight and frozen to do anything but rotate your whole entire body on your tailbone.

“You’re just adding more pressure by keeping them closed,” he explains, wiggling his fingers in between your knees to try and get enough of a grip to pry them apart. “C’mon—open your legs, let yourself breathe.”

“Nnnnnnstop talking,” you groan, trying to slap at him, but he’s strong enough to force the movement regardless, levering your knees apart and then pushing them tight to the mattress. And, though he would normally be right about it, you’re fighting your mind to get away from the orgasm just as much as you are your body. The sudden exposure and the positioning and the way he automatically drops his gaze down at your needy pussy with his cock still hidden in his pants like that only serves to displace the cause instead of eliminating the effect. Closing the door and opening a window, shifting the stimulation somewhere else but allowing it to throb steady and aching regardless.

“Much better,” he sighs lowly, digging his fingers into the sore muscles inside your thighs and you just keep your hands loosely attached to his wrists as he works. “Fuck me, baby’s got such a pretty pussy doesn’t she?”

“Poe,” you wheeze up at him, hearing him rumble at the sight of your cunt contracting around nothing, probably shining and glistening with your desperation for him. By this point, you’re worrying again. You have no doubt whatsoever that he could talk you into cumming just like this, with your hands trembling and clutching at his wrists. If he keeps murmuring filth while holding your legs open and staring at your pussy like this, you have no doubt you’ll find a way to get there somehow.

Thankfully, he seems to understand. He goes quiet and just keeps massaging your sore muscles while you try not to writhe underneath him. Stars, it’s like he’s genuinely doing what he can to take it easy on you and you’re still all kinds of fucked up about it, still frantic and desperate while all he’s doing is just squeezing your legs.

“Calm down,” he gruffs, but you can’t. “You’re working yourself up, don’t—”

“Stop talki—” your ragged growl is cut off by your own hiccup as you quickly find the strength to shove at his hands, knowing they’re at least mostly to blame for your prolonged tightrope walk. You can’t fucking think when he’s touching you, you become too hyper-aware of your own body, it feels too good in a way that’s hard to describe and impossible to explain. Poe’s palms immediately listen and raise in front of him in surrender, his back lifting to give you space while you hide your face from him with shaky hands and gasp. It’s pathetic and your legs are still held wide open and your fingers tremble hard enough to resemble a malfunction.

You just. You need a hard reset. You need that thirty seconds of complete idle, of figuring shit out on your own without an electric current running through you before you can start working properly again. It can’t be rushed, it’s necessary when most people just want to power down and then right back up again. The wires connecting your parts are all criss-crossed and tangled and sparks are lighting up at the slightest stimulus, you just need to experience absolutely nothing for thir—

“I’m sorry,” Poe murmurs, still staying in his own space but the gravelly voice shooting a bolt of lightning down your spine. Thirty seconds, of course he couldn’t give you thirty fucking seconds. “Fuck, you’re so hot, I’m sorry—”

“Please stop talking,” you beg him, your fingers curling against your face, “Maker, I—I don’t want to cum—”

“Fuck, I know, it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever fucki—”

You go to kick him again and even though it collides wrong and does nothing more than get your message across, the jostle is enough to knock you back from the approaching oblivion just slightly. It serves to wake you up way more than it remotely hurts him, the equivalent of someone just smacking a piece of machinery and fixing the problem temporarily.

You heave an enormous breath and blink your eyes open behind your fingers, immediately locking with his. Poe’s teeth are digging into his bottom lip but he’s mercifully silent, even when you drop your shaky hands down to your spread thighs and stay equally silent another full minute while you make the effort to right yourself. After awhile though, you realize he must be taking cues from you, waiting for you to speak.

Only, you suddenly don’t know what to say. You’re at a complete loss, looking up at him through your eyelashes in uncertainty now. Something you’ve never been around him, even as your pussy is wide open for him to look at. He hasn’t recently, though, you don’t think. He’s just keeping his eyes on your face, watching you bite your lip and blink up at him while your mind whirls, the only sound that can be heard is the radio continuing to lull from the bottom bunk.

You wish he’d say something. How come he’s choosing right now to listen to what you tell him to do? You don’t… you don’t know what to say to him. Why can’t you figure out something? You fidget but then suddenly feel your expression lose all its struggle and just look… innocent. Needing his help.

“Do you want me to leave?” Poe eventually asks after another moment, tentative of breaking the silence, and you frantically shake your head before he’s even finished speaking. Fuck, something drops in your stomach at how desperate you’re probably coming off right now, but you’re so lost and you know that’s at least one question you know the immediate answer to.

Poe tilts his head thoughtfully, slowly reaching a hand towards your thigh without removing his eyes from yours. “Want me to make you cum again?”

You shake your head again, wide-eyed and worried. He immediately pulls his hand back and blinks slowly at you.

“You want to be edged more?” He asks lowly, and you shake your head vehemently for the third time. Poe sighs and sits back, planting his palms to his thighs and pulling at the fabric of his pants in budding frustration, clearly tired of playing twenty questions. “Well what do you want, baby? You wanna just hang out? That’s fine, I don’t care, but you gotta tell me.”

Fuck, he’s right, what do you want? The only thing that’s standing in your way of feeling better, you soon realize.

“Want you to cum first,” you mumble, cheeks warming at how childish you sound.

“Not a fucking chance,” Poe immediately scoffs, crossing his arms over his bare chest. “And pouting at me isn’t gonna help.”

“Why not?” You breathe, dipping your gaze down his body. “I can use my mouth.”

“I don’t—” he stops short, suddenly registering what you said and switching gears. “You can—?” Poe narrows his eyebrows and looks suspicious. “You’ll let me… cum in it?”

“Okay,” you whisper in breathless agreement, sitting up and reaching for him, but Poe groans and pushes you back down on the mattress with a flattened palm against your shoulder like you just aced a test he was hoping you’d fail.

“Fuck whoever’s idea this was,” he grits darkly to himself while you arch up against his hold, wanting him to grab your tits but knowing it’s not a good idea right now. “Maker, I’m so fucking hard—fuck whoever’s idea this was, making me turn that down—”

“You said,” you pant, licking your dry lips and blinking up at the ceiling, trying to control yourself, “before, you said that you’re… you’re not doing this for a bet, right? So why not?” Your voice goes softer when you flutter your gaze back at him, even though the accusation feels like it should be sharper if anything, since it comes from a very real place of distrust. “Were you just… lying to me about that?”

“Fuck, come on,” Poe groans, his voice starting to waver as he shakes his head and squints one eye at you, exasperated. “You don’t get it. You can’t think of a single fucking reason I don’t wanna blow my load just yet? Really?”

The sentence coupled with his rock solid hold on you skitters a thrill through your body and you automatically reach up to run your hand along his forearm. He looks down at the caress and then back to your face and fuck, even you feel like you’re sending mixed signals right now.

“You could… fuck me,” you whisper, and Poe’s dark eyebrows pull up as his gaze falls down your naked body, nodding and digging his teeth into his bottom lip. An agreement backed by so much unspoken desire that it looks like it almost hurts him just to hear you say it out loud. “And we can just… see who cums first.”

“Yeah?” He croaks, his eyes pinned between your open legs. “Just say fuck it all and race for last place? Okay.”

Your heart pounds, having just enough wherewithal to preemptively establish a safety net for yourself. “And—and we can’t finish at the same time or we both lose.”

“Fuck,” Poe groans, reaching down to catch the hem of his sweatpants with his thumb and lifting his hips until his cock is exposed to the dim room. “We can’t stop once we start, then, we’ll have to see it through.”

Except you don’t catch any of the last part because, uh. Well, to sum up. May the Maker have mercy on you all.

Just like that, the only thought in your mind is… you get it. Okay, you get it. He told you before that girls were only interested in him for his cock, and it actually… stars, it makes so much fucking sense now, you totally get it. You thought maybe he was just boasting as a form of overcompensation at first—or, to put it another way you’ve probably used in conversation with him before, talking big talk but walking small walk. Only now, you’re… humbled. By a fucking dick, you’re humbled.

You haven’t seen more than a few of them in this context, so you know you’re not necessarily qualified to give an informed opinion, but heavens it’s a sight. It’s thick and swollen and just a shade darker than his complexion and everything inside you rockets to attention as soon as he wraps his hand around it. It’s big. It fills his whole palm without much room to spare. Far larger than what you’re used to, and you know that no matter how he fucks you with it, you’re gonna feel it tomorrow. Next weekend, probably.

Your eyes must betray you, because Poe suddenly loosens his grip and breathes your name softly, causing you to flick your eyes back up to his. You didn’t realize you were staring so openly.

“I’ll go slow,” he reassures you quietly, voice gentle and knowing. The complete lack of sarcasm or aggression in his tone is enough to snap you back to yourself, knowing that can’t possibly be right. He’s talking to you like he did when you stumbled your ass out of the x-wing today, when you were barely responsive and lost in dumb shock. He doesn’t have to… be nice to you right now, like you’re still only moments away from losing it. It’s offensive.

“I can handle it,” you harumph, widening your legs while Poe immediately suppresses a grin.

“'Course you can,” he sighs with the slightest note of fondness creeping into his voice, dropping his hips as he lines up at your entrance. “And I’ll go slow anyways.”

You open your mouth to respond but at the first push of his head inside, you inhale sharply and your palm immediately shoots out to press against his chest on complete instinct. The stab of pain is impossible to mask from your features and Poe instantly stops with a shaky breath, watching how your jaw drops at the intrusion and your face contorts.

“Ahh. Shit…” he whispers as his head tips down, dark eyes clamping shut and his hold on you tightening. “What—shit, what the fuck…”

“Keep going,” you growl out, even though you know you’re just making it more difficult on yourself. You can take Poe’s cock, you can take it, he has absolutely nothing to brag about, it’s completely normal-sized—

His hips inch forwards and you gasp at the excruciating arc of sensation, slapping at him harder.

“Keep going,” you babble while locking your elbows and shoving him back, “fuck, keep going, keep going—”

“Baby,” Poe groans, wrenching one of your hands from his chest and bringing your wrist up to his mouth to kiss and breathe hot air on it, “baby, you gotta let me—”

He moves a little more and you cry out, jerking your hand back from his lips and knocking it hard against his chest before you even realize it. Oh shit, you can’t handle it, you haven’t been fucked in so long—

“I’m sorry,” you choke out, trying to be nicer by flattening your palm but then immediately digging your nails in, “fuck, I’m sorry, it’s just—it’s been awhile since I—”

“Shit, I can tell,” he pants brokenly, his fingers dropping back down to flex hard on your hip. “Hoooolyfuck, I can te—ah, fuck, it’s alright, it’s alright, just—nnnnnnshit, okay, just relax, don’t tense up too muuuh… much—”

His cock pushes deeper even as he keeps rambling through it and you feel yourself being rearranged to make room for the slow movement, giving way to a rich pleasure even as the discomfort increases.

Poe stops once more when your hands shove up against him, somehow simultaneously shakier and firmer than all the other times put together and a little more than half of him inside you at this point. You’re so slick and hot between your legs that there’s no resistance besides the stretch, nothing to stop him from slamming home besides your weak hands trembling at his collarbone, but everything about the way he stays completely frozen for ages says he’s controlled and patient.

Everything except his face, you soon realize.

When your body is finally able to come to terms with the sensation and you blink up at him, Poe isn’t looking at you anymore. He’s staring directly over your head at the wall, tangible regret manifesting itself in seething frustration marring his expression. His eyebrows furrow and he scowls but all of it is silent and directed at himself, as if he’s asking why the fuck he actually agreed to do this. You know then that it must be really fucking wet. You know then that you must be just blazing hot and tighter than sin and as if in rhythmic agreement, his cock jumps inside you with each pounding rush of blood through it. You can see the sweat beading at his hairline as he continues to ignore you for the moment, choosing instead to silently lament at the wall like it did something to mortally betray him.

You could… make this a sprint, something devious suddenly whispers to you. He’s struggling through the pleasure and you can outlast. From the severity of that look alone, you can put an end to it before it even starts.

Admittedly, you don’t even let the devil finish his damn sentence before you decide to take your own initiative. You clamp down around him as hard as you can and Poe whips his attention down to you and punches out a curse that sounds like you wrenched the word from his throat before he was anywhere near ready for it. It comes from somewhere high and defenseless in register and then quickly falls down into a growly pit as his hips automatically lurch forwards the rest of the way inside, hard, smacking into yours as you squeeze wickedly around him.

You keep squeezing through the sudden upward shove of bliss, you keep tightening up even though you’re making agonizing noises and your eyes clamp shut and it hurts. But stars, it feels good, why does it feel so good when it hurts so bad? It makes your throat scrape and your face twist up, but you can hear his cursing getting louder and more desperate so you still don’t relax your viselike hold around him.

“Stop it—” he snarls down at you rabidly, “—oh fuck, stop or you’ll make us both cu—”

Shit, he’s right. You know he’s never been more right about anything as soon as his hips stutter and kick up to a full blown gallop in the middle of his furious scolding, and the sudden build of ecstasy is so fast and intense that you sob his name, not being able to loosen your muscles anymore as soon as it overtakes you. But it’s like a closed circuit, you’re both recycling the same pleasure without knowing how to shut it off. The harder you bear down on him, the faster his hips work, the vicious cycle compounding and circling and manifesting in the perfect typhoon within just a few tumultuous seconds.

But then suddenly he rips himself out of you with a gasp and it’s not a moment too soon, because both of you have to scramble and grab onto things to brace yourselves through the worst of it. You choose the mattress and he chooses the railing, and through the searing discomfort and settling of the chaos that’s becoming more and more familiar to you as this exhausting day passes, you know you fucked up. You underestimate his self control, time and time again. But, exactly like earlier today, you feel a thrill skitter up your spine at how he’s going to respond to your brazen treachery in the face of a newly established truce.

“Fuck,” he jerks his head to spit the obscenity at you, sounding more pissed off than you’ve ever heard him, the shredded anger in his voice starting to burn through you. “Fuckfuckfuuuuck—you make me so mad. You make me so mad. I wish I could fuck you right now, on Maker, I’d ruin you. I’d wreck your shit until you learn and you’d deserve every single fucking second of it, you—”

He stops short and growls jagged sharp in frustration, but you can’t help yourself.

“Say it,” you whimper on a dare, feeling your heart pound. The words quiver with an inexplicable sort of excitement as you dig your fingers into the mattress, wanting to hear his voice snarl the mysterious profanity. “Say it. ‘You…’—what? Say it.”

Shock suddenly paints his previously tense expression blank, even though his pupils blow out and his chest heaves. Your voice is too breathless, it’s too needy to sound nearly as antagonistic as you want.

And then Maker, it’s as if the sheer control he’s clinging to serves to spark his vexation even more. Mad that you would ask for something so enticing at a moment like this. Your heart thunders as Poe nearly flashes up close to you and points a threatening finger at you.

“You’re not going to get what you want from me,” he snaps, quiet and furious. “Not tonight. I don’t give a shit, I told you I’d slow fuck you and now I’m gonna do it until you act right.”

“You’re an asshole—” you move to lift up onto your elbows, but his hand suddenly plants against your clavicle and shoves you back down flat on the mattress.

“Not even ten minutes after I make you cum and you’ve already got a fucking attitude problem again,” he shoots back, positioning his cock at your entrance with his other hand once more, and Maker you’re drowning between your legs. His sharp rebuttal and the firm hold on the upper part of your chest makes it that much wetter, knowing you can’t do much more than lift your legs the way you need when he eases his way back inside.

“P-Poe—” you gasp breathlessly, but it's like he doesn’t hear you.

His expression tenses and he shudders out a low growl. “Fuck. Tight little baby. Rude little baby, just wants everything her way but doesn’t know how to behave herself.”

You have to bite your lip hard to hold back a whine when he’s completely sheathed and his hips connect to yours, and… shit. You already feel it. You already feel that simmering starting to take hold deep down once more, that monstrous second orgasm you’ve been fighting now digging its claws into you and licking the base of your spine with fire. And, as if he can tell, his demeanor instantly changes.

“Uh, oh,” Poe murmurs quietly, equal parts lilting and baiting, slowly dragging his cock out and then starting up the laziest pace you’ve ever experienced with his hand still planted high on your sternum right below your collarbone. “Can you feel it coming? Fuck, I can,” he shudders. “Already. Fuck, you’re so wet, you’re so wet—wish you had let me eat you out mor—”

“You can’t c—umm,” you hiccup, grasping his wrist and writhing through the building ecstasy, and you don’t know who you’re talking to at this point. Your other palm slaps at his shoulder with increasing urgency—fuck, he’s been fucking you for barely ten seconds and you’re already struggling to hold everything back. Only, his hand quickly grabs yours and pins it to the mattress, his face dropping closer as he rolls his hips achingly slow. You feel his back working with the steady pace, you see his neck flex as his cock drags so thick inside you, and then your gaze starts to lose focus a bit. It slides up his throat as lazily as he’s augmenting your pleasure, following the contour of his smooth skin until it reaches his face.

And mercy, Poe’s tongue comes out to wet his lips and a dark curl hangs down his forehead, concentrating hard on fucking you steadily without giving into the same creeping euphoria you’re feeling, and you have to turn away and bite back a whimper at the metal railing when the image starts to burn you alive.

“No,” Poe gruffs and his hand slides up a few inches to frame your jaw, twisting until you face him directly once more. “Right here, you stay right here with me.”

Your eyebrows pull up weakly and your eyes flick across his stunning features, the way he’s so present, so focused and determined while you’re starting to drift. His skin is so smooth, so golden when his jawline used to be dark, and—

“I—” you choke, starting to lose it, “—I-I…”

“What is it, baby?” Poe growls, staring down at you with unwavering, intense concentration. “Tell me. You gonna cum?”

“I…” you whimper, blinking at him slowly, “I… liked your… b-beard…”

Poe’s eyes, previously hardened and steadfast, suddenly go a bit dumb, a bit dazed. After a second, his eyebrows lose all strain, his gaze turns warmer and he rolls his hips deeper—

But the swell begins to become the only thing you can comprehend—that and the fact that you should be fighting it. You should be revolting against it, but now he’s looking so softly down at you and you can’t remember what could possibly be so bad about letting him take away all this ache and desperation again. Let him continue to take it away, over and over and over until it’s nowhere to be found at all.

And then Poe leans down and kisses you. And it’s… nothing like you’d expect.

It’s gentle. It’s tender. It goes on forever while he rocks into your soaking wet cunt, easing his throbbing cock in and out of you with such a smooth, repetitive motion that sends sparks of ecstasy down your spine at the apex of each thrust.

You handle it silently. At first. You don’t audibly react to any of it, you force your voice to at least keep quiet if you can’t hide the pleasure from your face or body, but then true to fucking form, he has to go and ruin it all. Poe uses his knees to scoot up just the slightest bit, and then his moan breaks through the absence of the desperate sounds you’ve been holding back as his tongue slowly slides into your mouth.

Your pussy flares, contracting painfully around his cock as it hits a spot that makes your legs shake against his sides. Your eyes roll back as his soft tongue dips into your mouth and everything just gets tighter, and tighter. Poe moans again and his hips push a little bit harder into yours on the next thrust, and it’s almost like a domino effect, except that doesn’t do it justice. It doesn’t topple one by one, it doesn’t take any time at all for the beginning to reach the finish—it’s a house of cards, the whole thing collapses and crashes down in on itself all at once.

You cum.

You lose. Fair and square.

You make a long, anguished whine into his mouth as you just start spasming, clutching hard at his shoulders and drenching his cock with it, your eyes squeezing shut as you cum so slow and fucking helpless around him. Oh Maker, it’s fucking devastating, it feels even more destructive and powerful than the first one. You pull and shove and claw at him equally, mouth slack as Poe tightens his hold and keeps tasting your whimpering cries, fitting his hips snug to yours as he slowly pushes you down through the debilitating ecstasy. You sob in euphoric defeat and a low, bone-shattering groan of satisfaction rumbles through his chest in response, grinding his cock into you and holding it deep as your pussy convulses.

All those weeks of holding out, just to lose. You had a freebie, he gave you an orgasm already and it was like a massive dose of spice to your deprived system—all it did was make your body want it more. Even worse, your orgasm doesn’t immediately inspire one in Poe like a part of you hoped it would, if only so you could reasonably contest the validity of the outcome. He’s able to ride out every twitch and flex as you shudder your way through it, continuing to lazily slide his tongue into your mouth while it’s held open and slack. He tastes like you. He tastes hot and slick and everything about your body feels the same way, damp and unbearably warm from your nape to your elbows to your cunt to the backs of your knees.

You lay there for what feels like a lifetime afterwards, powerless to the way your thighs tremble violently against his hips and letting the tip of his tongue slowly trace the bottom edge of your teeth while he firmly keeps his cock buried inside you. It pulses thickly and you know he wants to cum, you can feel the tension pulling at his shoulders as he keeps perfectly still. But then Poe shuffles his arms up until they’re braced around your head, using himself to box you in completely without moving his lips from yours. His teeth close on your bottom lip as he inches his hard cock out long and aching from your sensitive channel, and then groans and goes back to the same exact dragging pace from before.

Your expression furrows, even as he keeps kissing you and the movement lights up your oversensitive nerves. Fuck, you want him to speed up, it’s all the more shattering and viseral when he takes his time. What is he doing? What is he waiting for?

“Fuck me,” you whine against his lips, demanding a quicker pace. You don’t know why he isn’t just letting loose on you now, giving into his body’s need to cum. He’s aching for it, still rock hard inside of you. “Come on, I already l-lost, just fuck m—”

“Told you before,” Poe whispers back, refusing to speed up. He keeps his pace dragging and steadfast, no matter how much you work to entice him. “Never… fuck. Never gave a fuck about that stupid bet. Suffer though.”

The complete lack of harshness in his tone sears through your nerve endings even though what he said wasn’t exactly nice. You never thought hearing him tell you to suck it up could be delivered in a way that inspires so much arousal in you, but then his tongue is in your mouth again as his hips work slow and easy, and your eyes roll back at how… overwhelming it feels. So intimate. You’re completely surrounded by him, his forearms propped next to your head and his mouth on yours, and… Maker, there it is again. Your body is so deprived that it’s already gearing up to go again. He’s being lazy and you can’t fucking stand how it’s breaking you down. Gradually, with incredible stamina and a patience you never expected from him. When you first feel that pull, part of you still wants to pick up the other end and start a tug-of-war with the sensation. You’ve been fighting for so long that your body almost doesn’t know any different, its automatic reaction is to resist.

A distraction, that’s what you need. That’s what guys do to stop themselves from cumming too soon, right? Fuck, think of something, think of…

—Poe, you can't think of anything but Poe. Fuck. His cock sinking deep, the way he tastes, how his fingers thread into the damp hair at your crown so you can feel him that much more, how you can hook his biceps with both hands and swirl your tongue around his while he fucks you open. Your hips roll up with the pace and almost immediately stutter back down again, not sure if you can handle the wicked shot of oversensitivity—but then Poe groans and shifts up until his thighs are under your ass and he can curl you in more, lift your feet a bit more and make you feel smaller. And—stars, the next thrust in is enough to nearly make you bite him on complete accident, an unexpected sound ripped from your throat as he keeps that specific angle.

Poe keeps going. He keeps kissing you, keeps rocking into you. He lets you claw at him, lets you grapple helplessly while his cock shreds molten hot euphoria deep inside you, and then everything tightens up again.

“Ah, fuck,” Poe breaks away and curses a whole few seconds before you descend into mindless chaos once more, garbling out broken syllables with the absense of his mouth keeping yours occupied. Your voice crescendos and breaks at the same time you do, the pleasure arcing through you over and over and wringing you out repeatedly around his throbbing cock. Poe’s lips quickly move forward and give your whole cheek an open kiss while your expression crumples with it. Teeth drag down your skin as he moans hot air across your skin, his hips slowing to a complete stop with an obscenely slick sound.

You throb and clench around him and his lips are suddenly on yours again, his tongue sinking deep and dominating. Your mouth is slack and all you can do is squeeze him through the bliss, scrape your fingernails down his back and hope it leaves a mark.

Eventually the tremors pass and you’re dead in the aftermath, you don’t have energy. Your body is starting to acclimate to the slow orgasms and just let them steamroll you flat, fully accepting now that you can cum but still putting everything you have into it like every single one might be your last for a while. You come back to yourself enough to feel Poe’s cock solid and achingly hard inside you, and your bottom lip is being tugged between his teeth.

And then he eases out and goes back to fucking you. Same speed, same control.

Your eyes nearly fucking cross. “P-Poe—”

He immediately makes a noise of disapproval with his mouth closed, a nuh-uh but kept tight in his throat. He doesn’t want to hear it, he’s not even letting you finish your thought.

You can’t take it, though, you didn’t think he was capable of this. This is torturous in an entirely different way, overstimulating and shattering you with every thrust.

So, you think back to the one thing that got him to nearly snap earlier, the one time you really got to see that fire you love playing with. Only now, you need that fire, you need him to take everything out on you. Your floor muscles clamp down without warning and squeeze him as tight as possible, squeeze squeeze squeeze until you feel his hips stutter to a halt once more. Your breath catches—fuck, is this gonna work?—but then Poe breaks away from your lips to drop his head and sink his teeth into your neck.

You nearly squeal at how careless he is about it—an animal that bites you lazily even though it sends sharp agony rocketing through you. Again, your attempt at sabotage backfires spectacularly as a subsequent flare of pleasure swells up, and oh, that’s what you want, you want him to be mean—

“Please,” you whimper, hooking your ankles behind his back and locking down hard enough to make your toes curl. Poe groans as you grab a fistful of his hair and tug at the way your skin pinches between his teeth—you know you’re gonna have a bite mark for a few days and it thrills you. “Fuck, please, Poe—please just fuck me, please, I want you to fuck me until it hurts, fuck me the way we both nee—”

“You and me almost died today,” Poe grits into your neck, cutting off your desperate whimpers with a short growl. “Maker, it was so close, I don’t think anybody has any f-fucking…” His hips pull out and then spear deep and you choke, tightening and tightening. “But—shit, we didn’t, we lived and now—oh fuck, now baby’s finally letting me fuck her and I’m not cutting it short, no matter how pretty she sounds asking.”

His words sound slurred against your neck and you can’t tell if it’s his delivery or your perception that’s lagging. But when you feel Poe inch his cock out and start to slowly fuck you through the tightness, you let out a weak little whine and feel yourself drifting… somewhere else.

Things subtly lose their clarity, your eyelashes dip and you stop talking because words won’t come. You can’t tell if you’re staring at the ceiling or your eyelids or the back of your head, but Poe’s voice abruptly breaking through the silence makes you realize you don’t have a concept for time anymore. You couldn’t tell him how long you’ve been floating, but you almost don’t understand what he’s saying at all and it takes you a remarkable delay to fully comprehend. But judging from what he says, it sounds like it hasn’t been long.

“Shit, are you cumming again?” He suddenly gasps into the crook of your neck and grinds his hips achingly hard into yours, “O-Oh—fuck yeah, you are—baby’s cumming again—”

“P-Poe?” You stutter and smack your hand against something, him maybe, not knowing literally anything else. Not knowing what he’s talking about, not knowing where you are, not knowing your own name, “Poe—oh m-my… God—”

“Whhh—W-What—?” You hear him breathe a split second before everything compresses down tight, and then it all shoves forward at once. All of the buildup makes itself known the very moment it becomes too much to control, like a flash flood but the downpour happened miles away. You think you might actually squeak this time, helplessly cry out like it hurts because stars, it does. It hurts so fucking good, it spiders pure plasma through your entire body with rhythmic jolts and wipes your mind completely vacant. Your shoulders shoot you up and knock your chin into something and you think you might be crying? You don’t know anymore. Your spine comes back down to the mattress like the damp fitted sheet covering it is made of pure ice—your body is overheated and you keep tensing and jerking back up until Poe forcefully pins you tight against it, growling filth under his breath as he slow fucks you through it.

You feel his hand dropping down between your bodies and you sob pitifully at the ceiling when the tip of his calloused finger brushes your clit.

***

You lose count.

It’s just… constant, there isn’t a point in keeping track anymore even if there happened to be the ability—which, nope. Not even close.

He ruins you slowly. Meticulously, with nothing more than steady, unwavering determination. Every structure you built, he takes apart by hand instead of bulldozing it the way you beg him to when you find the words. You’re certain you find them—you must find them at some point, but they’re interspaced between babbled gibberish and breathy whispers of his name.

Even though it’s slow—Maker, it’s so slow—you’ve never been so fucking exhausted. He makes you give him everything and then he drains the reserves, the hidden ones you weren’t even aware existed. He never goes fast enough; in fact, you think he’s actually slowed down over the unknown amount of time it’s been since you first called out his name and asked for this. If you were in a frame of mind to notice, you’d probably realize he’s trying harder and harder to not cum, but in your wild headspace, it just feels like a prolonged punishment for you. It still feels like he’s depriving you for his own pleasure, even though he’s actually depriving himself for yours. But you always do manage to find some way to read things wrong with him.

Eventually, he begins to waver. He stops talking so much, stops chastising you when you plead with him. He hasn’t looked at you since he first kissed you—he’s either hidden his face in your neck or closed his eyes as his soft tongue slides across your bottom lip before dipping inside.

But then there comes a point where even you realize he’s struggling not to let go now, and in your faded traces of sanity, you hear your broken voice cut through the sounds of the soft radio.

“Y-Y-You—” you gasp, trembling under him, “—youneedtocum. You need to—”

“No,” Poe grits against your chin, sounding shaky and weak no matter how sharp he makes his consonants. “Fuck, not yet, I—I-I don’t want to yet.”

“Oh no,” you wheeze out, feeling the swell begin again, the familiar flicker of warning you get as his cock slowly rocks into you. Maker, the pleasure is getting raw and painful even as your pussy is drowning his cock with it, allowing him to glide slow and deep into your sensitive channel and letting the sheer tightness of it be the only resistance your body puts up. You can feel the wetness on your cheeks though, the tears of frustration gathering as your body prepares itself for yet another wave of attack. “Oh no, ohhhhhnononononono—”

“I don’t want—” Poe gasps, his hips stuttering just a bit and one of his hands coming down to smack the pillow next to your head as he chokes, “—don’t want this to… e-end yet, I—”

Your next orgasm suddenly slams through you and Poe immediately rips himself out of you before it’s too late. He shushes you frantically while you sob in distress and writhe side to side through the contractions solo this time, having nothing to clamp down on, not even able to grind up into him because he keeps his leaking cock elevated far beyond your reach.

Oh, that’s it. That is it.

“Fuck me!” You wail up at him, water blurring your vision and tears streaming down your cheeks, “Stop fucking around and just fuck me, you asshole! Fuck me and fuck me hard Dameron or I swear to every fucking star in the sk—”

You don’t get too far. He’s immediately scrambling over top of you and a strong hand is clamping down tight over your mouth, muffling your high-pitched cries against his palm. Your legs are shoved apart and one is caught under his arm and wedged back as far as it can go. His head drops to your neck, and then he snarls a ragged, “Brat—“ under your ear before ramming his cock back inside you.

Stars. Stars light up, it’s so much—the angle, the force, the speed, the sound his hips make as they start ruthlessly colliding with yours. Your eyes screw shut and you dig your nails into the meat of his back, but he doesn’t slow down—he speeds up—

“Fuck, you still think that throwing your little fucking fits works on me?” He hisses, drilling into your g-spot with such blinding hard precision that you can’t do anything more than just claw at his chest, gasping for air that just won’t come into your lungs. “Huh? Think you can just be a little bitch to me about it and it’s gonna change anything? You still don’t have any fucking idea, do you? Look at me—” he snarls, grabbing your face and shaking it to get you to respond, “—look at what you fucking do to me—”

But you can’t. You already came countless times and he’s lurching you up the bed with every single rabid thrust into your blindingly sensitive cunt, fucking you into the railing and then the wall behind it. You still feel his fingers grasping at your jaw, forcing you to address him, to look at him, and you can’t seem to focus your vision on his blurry features even when your eyes flutter open. You’re too dumb with grinding pleasure to see anything besides blurs and stars, to say literally anything back to him. But that’s not what he cares about.

“Oh fuck yes, there it is,” his voice whines, pitching up something vulnerable as his hips ram you into the corner hard and unyielding, “fuck, there’s those pretty eyes, that’s what I wanted, baby, that’s all I wanted—th-that’s—fuck, that’s—”

They must cross, or roll back, or something, because suddenly you can’t see him at all anymore. You don’t know what happens—but you know it’s wet. You know it bursts forth something fierce and you shriek his name with a hoarse and shredded voice like he steals the last part of your whole fucking soul with it. Fuck, you’re not even there for most of it, you might actually black out.

In your conscious moments, you can feel his whole body flexing over and over again on top of you. He empties his load deep inside you and takes a fucking eternity doing it, so many breathless praises leaving his mouth so quickly that they slur together and you can’t understand any of it even if you could hear him. All you can do is feel your cunt tighten and convulse in tandem with the throbbing of his cock, rhythmically working the cum out of him until Poe stops stuttering his hips, until he finally trails off into nothing but labored gasps and slumps down on top of you in exhaustion.

You both lay there for a while, dead weight breathing.

You want to hold him, your cum-struck mind quietly provides in the comedown. You want to feel his body now that you can finally think straight and take a moment to enjoy this blissful relief. He fucked you so good and you want to touch him, you want to run your fingers through his hair and massage the tight muscles at the base of his neck.

But then you just start giggling.

It’s stupid. It’s so fucking stupid. You smack your hand over your mouth but the garbled noise easily floats beyond it, completely elated and having absolutely no explanation at all.

Poe quickly pulls his head back to look at you and you try to twist sideways under him to hide it, but you can’t stop—like a complete loon, you snort and start to laugh harder at the ridiculous sound. Oh, you don’t just float, you’re the air itself, so light with endorphins that you close your eyes and get lost in the fit until water wets the outside corners.

After a moment, a hand gently grasps your wrist and slowly pulls it down until he can see the way your mouth opens as you giggle, hear it unobstructed and let the sound bubble up at him and fill the room. And you blink your eyes open just in time to see him slowly break into the most dazzling smile you’ve ever seen him bestow a person.

And… you’ve seen him grin a million times. He’s almost always smiling, as long as you’re not right in front of him. He smiles at his squadmates, he smiles at girls, he smiles at complete strangers, and you always thought it was pretty. Always knew that he could light up a room with it, you always knew he could get anything he wanted with it, but this… this isn’t that kind of smile. That one is practiced and alluring. It wasn’t fake, necessarily, but that smile’s purpose always had more to do with making anyone who happens to witness it feel a certain way than it did about signifying his own emotional state.

This one is… goofy. Amazed, and uncoordinated. Thunderstruck in a way, except the clouds all part at the same time and let you see a rainbow. It makes you feel… alive. Colorful. Radiant. Sunshine. Butterflies.

Poe quickly drops his lips to catch yours and you moan happily, sliding your tongue into his mouth this time. You both adjust, you arch into him as he pushes your damp hair back and makes a deep noise of satisfaction, letting you explore while he wraps his arms around you and finds a way to make this atrocious position comfortable. Every part of you is smushed up against him and there’s absolutely no space to be found, and you’ve never been happier.

“We made a mess,” he groans against your lips, rocking his hips into you with a disgustingly slick sound as if to illustrate, and his cock is soft but it’s still so thick that it stays buried inside your sloppy entrance. “Shit, I—I think I might be bleeding.”

“What?” You ask breathily, and he heaves himself up with his elbows just enough to reveal his chest. You both tuck your chins unattractively to look and you don’t immediately see any blood, but your claw marks are clearly red and visible scraping down his pectorals. “Oh. Pfft. You’re fine.”

He drops back down with a huff and your head is tilted at the perfect angle catch on the tiny droplets of blood decorating the marks criss-crossing his shoulder blades. Oops.

But he’s already kissing up your neck and over the curve of your jaw and making out with you again like he can’t get enough of it, and you forget. You forget everything. You forget every disagreement, every gripe with him you’ve ever had. It’s all wiped away and replaced with giddy, childish adoration. Resetting completely and starting off on the rightest foot imaginable.

“Let’s go to my bed,” he murmurs, and you make a tight noise of disapproval. No. This is good, this is how you want to stay. The railing is digging into your lower back and he’s heavy but you’re perfect like this, this is perfect. “Baby,” Poe pants against your lips in exasperation when you quickly clutch the back of his neck and keep him glued to you, “mmph—you got everything all wet—”

This time you make a low hum of agreement and drag your hand down the bare curve of his spine to his ass to give it a squeeze. A testament to how hard and raw he fucked you. Poe shudders hard enough for you to feel his body tremble but you just kiss him harder, pulling him down onto you more.

“You’re gonna have to give me, just like—I don’t know, at least an hour or two,” he chuckles, grabbing your hands to make it easier to peel himself from your body and groaning when his cock finally slips out. “Come on, let’s hang out in my bed.”

You’re so boneless when he pulls you to sit upright, you roll a little bit and Poe has to catch you, and you laugh again. Maker, you’re a complete mess and absolutely delighted about it. Your attempts at grumbling and complaining don’t hold any sway when you’re still trying not to giggle, and Poe is able to pull you to the top of the ladder and make his way down first.

As soon as he’s out of sight and calling up to you, you weakly slide into position with a groan and feel yourself leaking at the movement. “Gah—look what you did. I’m all… gooey.”

“I know, s’the hottest fucking thing,” he says under his breath from the floor, before beckoning you by tapping on the closest rung a few times. “Come on, be careful.”

You do as he says, easing your naked body down one step at a time with wobbly legs. It’s clumsy and you whine the whole way through, wordlessly grousing and mumbling.

“Oh, I just know it,” he comments on the sound, “nice clean sheets, I’ll get the violin.”

Normally, you probably would’ve snarked something back down at him, but you’re still so loopy and shaky-legged that you just start laughing again. The fact that he’s absolutely right and you’re being ridiculous about something like moving beds suddenly strikes you as incredibly fucking funny for some reason. You don’t realize his hands are hovering inches away from your hips until your legs buckle and Poe quickly supports your weight.

“Maker,” Poe chuckles before giving you a firm yank, and then catching you before you can tumble down the ladder in your naked, teary-eyed mania, “let’s go, giggles.”

He carries you a few steps to the mattress and plops you down on top of the comforter, letting you take up the whole bed while he sits on the end and puts your feet on his lap. Poe grimaces for a second and then shuffles until the radio is pulled out from under him, and you can hear the soft sound of it playing once again. You bury your face into his pillow, inhaling the warm scent lingering there while he tosses it carelessly to the side and rubs your shins for a little bit, watching you stretch out naked on his mattress.

“I’m not giving you two weeks of pay,” you suddenly grunt, and he just grins down at you, not arguing. Not saying anything. Sitting in comfortable silence with you when you’re expecting him to bicker. So you stay like that for a long time, breathing deep and relaxing, until Poe’s hands leave you for a second…

… to pull a bag of chips out.

Maker, at the first squeaky sound of the wrapping assaulting your eardrums, you want to roll your eyes. You want to tease him about how fucking typical it is. Like clockwork, you could probably set your watch to his middle of the night cravings. You don’t know why you thought fucking him would change any of that.

You want to give him shit for it. You even open your mouth, the snark on the very tip of your tongue. But then your stomach growls as soon as he rips the thin plastic apart.

Poe’s eyes shoot to yours and neither one of you move, but apparently your tummy doesn’t get the memo. It takes forever to trail off into silence again, and he blinks. Fuck, you know you should’ve forced yourself to eat at least something earlier. Warmth floods your cheeks and you scramble for something to say, but there’s no way to play it off.

“Would you like some chips?” Poe suddenly asks with a boyish grin, raising his eyebrows and tipping the open bag freely in your direction.

The corners of your mouth pull downwards even as the inside of it waters. You wouldn’t call it stubbornness necessarily as much as it is a… a desire to stick to consistency. After the unbelievably hard time you always give him about midnight snacking, you’re hesitant to partake.

Though, the chips rustle against each other and sound absolutely fucking delicious as Poe shakes the bag and bounces his eyebrows, and you know what? Fuck it.

You snatch it without thinking, cradling the precious food to your chest as you dig your whole hand in and shove a bunch into your mouth at once. You catch him smiling again, but he doesn’t comment.

You both take turns, and by take turns you obviously mean you take turns stealing the bag from each other instead of just setting it equidistant between you and openly agreeing to share it, but it works for you. It seems appropriate. And then it’s quiet again, just munching and crinkling, except for the radio continuing to play from its place in his lap. You have to work to listen over the loud crunching vibrating through your skull, but when you finally manage to stop chewing and catch a few bars, you suddenly find yourself trying not to smile again. Fuck, it’s been years since you’ve heard this song, you love this s—

“Fuck, I love this song,” Poe promptly exclaims with his mouth full, licking the tips of his fingers before scrambling to pick the radio up and twist the volume knob without using his wet fingertips. He starts humming over the melody, loud enough to almost drown it out completely, because of course he does. The one damn time you actually want to listen to his radio and he still finds some way to mildly irritate you.

But this irritation is almost… fun. You want to laugh just as much as you want to yell at him.

“Hey, who sings this song?” You immediately ask over the sound of him clearly not knowing the lyrics, already ready with it. Oh, the round is in the chamber, your finger is on the trigger, you are ready, and Poe’s eyes sparkle as he seems to stop and think about it.

“Mm, not sure,” he eventually shrugs, just before you rush, “Let’s keep it that—”

And then he’s slapping a hand on your leg and belting out the chorus while you scoff, giggling. He ruined the punchline on purpose and is now getting chip dust all over you, but you know any complaint you make will be drowned out by his suspended notes and backing track, so you just roll your eyes and swipe the bag of chips from him while he continues to serenade you.

“My ears are bleeding,” you mutter under your breath.

He has a nice voice, you think.

#poe x reader #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron #reader insert #Smut #no-droids

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shkspr · 3 years

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hi. on your post where you may or may not have ended on 'moffat is either your angel or your devil' did you have maybe an elaboration on that somewhere that i could possibly hear about. i'm very much a capaldi era stan and i've never tried to defend the matt smith era even though it had delightful moments sometimes so i wonder where that puts me. i'd love to hear your perspective on moffat as a person with your political perspective. -nicole

hi ok sorry i took so long to respond to this but i dont think you know how LOADED this question is for me but i am so happy to elaborate on that for you. first a few grains of salt to flavor your understanding of the whole situation: a. im unfairly biased against moffat bc im a davies stan and a tennant stan; b. i still very much enjoy and appreciate moffat era who for many reasons; and c. i hate moffat on a personal level far more than i could ever hate his work.

the thing is that its all always gonna be a bit mixed up bc i have to say a bunch of seemingly contradictory things in a row. for instance, a few moffat episodes are some of my absolute favorites of the rtd era, AND the show went way downhill when moffat took over, AND the really good episodes he wrote during the rtd era contained the seeds of his destruction.

like i made that post about the empty child/the doctor dances and it holds true for blink and thats about it bc the girl in the fireplace and silence in the library/forest of the dead are good but not nearly on the same level, and despite the fact that i like them at least nominally, they are also great examples of everything i hate about moffat and how he approached dw as a whole.

basically. doctor who is about people. there are many things about moffats tenure as showrunner that i think are a step up from rtd era who! actual gay people, for one! but i think that can likely be attributed mostly to an evolving Society as opposed to something inherent to him and his work, seeing as rtd is literally gay, and the existence of queer characters in moffats work doesnt mean the existence of good queer characters (ill give him bill but thats it!)

i have a few Primary Grievances with moffat and how he ran dw. all of them are things that got better with capaldi, but didnt go away. they are as follows:

moffat projects his own god complex onto the doctor

rtd era who had a doctor with a god complex. you cant ever be the doctor and not have a god complex. the problem with moffats era specifically is that the god complex was constant and unrepentant and was seen as a fundamental personality trait of the doctor rather than a demon he has to fight. he has the Momence where you feel bad for him, the Momence where he shows his humility or whatever and youre reminded that he doesnt want to be the lonely god, but those are just. moments. in a story where the doctor thinks hes the main character. rtd era doctor was aware that he wasnt the main character. he had to be an authority sometimes and he had to be the loner and he had to be sad about it, but he ultimately understood that he was expendable in a narrative sense.

this is how you get lines like “were the thin fat gay married anglican marines, why would we need names as well?” from the same show that gave you the gut punch moment at the end of midnight when they realize that nobody asked the hostess for her name. and on the one hand, thats a small sticking point, but on the other hand, its just one small example of the simple disregard that moffat has for humanity.

incidentally, this is a huge part of why sherlock sucked so bad: moffats main characters are special bc theyre so much bigger and better than all the normal people, and thats his downfall as a showrunner. he thinks that his audience wants fucking sheldon cooper when what they want is people.

like, ok. think of how many fantastic rtd era eps are based in the scenario “what if the doctor wasnt there? what if he was just out of commission for a bit?” and how those eps are the heart of the show!! bc theyre about people being people!! the thing is that all of the rtd era companions would have died for the doctor but he understood and the story understood that it wasnt about him.

this is like. nine sending rose home to save her life and sacrifice his own vs clara literally metaphysically entwining her existence w the doctor. ten also sending rose with her family to save her life vs river being raised from infancy to be obsessed w the doctor and then falling in love w him. martha leaving bc she values herself enough to make that decision vs amy being treated like a piece of meat.

and this is simultaneously a great callback to when i said that moffats episodes during the rtd era sometimes had the same problems as his show running (bc girl in the fireplace reeks of this), and a great segue into the next grievance.

moffat hates women

he hates women so fucking much. g-d, does steven moffat ever hate women. holy shit, he hates women. especially normal human women who prioritize their normal human lives on an equal or higher level than the doctor. moffat hated rose bc she wasnt special by his standards. the empty child/the doctor dances is the nicest he ever treated her, and she really didnt do much in those eps beyond a fuck ton of flirting.

girl in the fireplace is another shining example of this. youve got rose (who once again has another man to keep her busy, bc moffat doesnt think shes good enough for the doctor) sidelined for no reason only to be saved by the doctor at the last second or whatever. and then youve got reinette, who is pretty and powerful and special!

its just. moffat thinks that the doctor is as shallow and selfish as he is. thats why he thinks the doctor would stay in one place with reinette and not with rose. bc moffat is shallow and sees himself in the doctor and doesnt think he should have to settle for someone boring and normal.

not to mention rose met the doctor as an adult and chose to stay with him whereas reinette is. hm. introduced to the doctor as a child and grows up obsessed with him.

does that sound familiar? it should! bc it is also true of amy and river. and all of them are treated as viable romantic pairings. bc the only women who deserve the doctor are the ones whose entire existence revolves around him. which includes clara as well.

genuinely i think that at least on some level, not even necessarily consciously, that bill was a lesbian in part bc capaldi was too old to appeal to mainstream shippers. like twelve/clara is still a thing but not as universally appealing as eleven/clara but i am just spitballing. but i think they weighed the pros and cons of appealing to the woke crowd over the het shippers and found that gay companion was more profitable. anyway the point is to segue into the next point, which is that moffat hates permanent consequences.

moffat hates permanent consequences

steven moffat does not know how to kill a character. honestly it feels like hes doing it on purpose after a certain point, like he knows he has this habit and hes trying to riff on it to meme his own shit, but it doesnt work. it isnt funny and it isnt harmless, its bad writing.

the end of the doctor dances is so poignant and so meaningful and so fucking good bc its just this once! everybody lives, just this once! and then he does p much the same thing in forest of the dead - this one i could forgive, bc i do think that preserving those peoples consciousnesses did something for the doctor as a character, it wasnt completely meaningless. but everything after that kinda was.

rory died so many times its like. get a hobby lol. amy died at least once iirc but it was all a dream or something. clara died and was erased from the doctors memory. river was in prison and also died. bill? died. all of them sugarcoated or undone or ignored by the narrative to the point of having effectively no impact on the story. the point of a major character death is that its supposed to have a point. and you could argue that a piece of art could be making a point with a pointless death, ie. to put perspective on it and remind you that bad shit just happens, but with moffat the underlying message is always “i can do whatever i want, nothing is permanent or has lasting impact ever.”

basically, with moffat, tragedy exists to be undone. and this was a really brilliant, really wonderful thing in the doctor dances specifically bc it was the doctor clearly having seen his fair share of tragedy that couldnt be helped, now looking on his One Win with pride and delight bc he doesnt get wins like this! and then moffat proceeded to give him the same win over and over and over and over. nobody is ever dead. nobody is ever unable to be saved. and if they are, really truly dead and/or gone, then thats okay bc moffat has decided that [insert mitigating factor here]*

*the mitigating factor is usually some sort of computerized database of souls.

i can hear the moffat stans falling over themselves to remind me that amy and rory definitely died, and they did - after a long and happy life together, they died of old age. i dont consider that a character death any more than any other character choosing to permanently leave the tardis.

and its not just character deaths either, its like, everything. the destruction of gallifrey? never mind lol! character development? scrapped! the same episode four times? lets give it a fifth try and hope nobody notices. bc he doesnt know how to not make the doctor either an omnipotent savior or a self-pitying failure.

it is in nature of doctor who, i believe, for the doctor to win most of the time. like, it wouldnt be a very good show if he didnt win most of the time. but it also wouldnt be a very good show if he won all of the time. my point is that moffats doctor wins too often, and when he doesnt win, it feels empty and hollow rather than genuinely humbling, and you know hes not gonna grow from it pretty much at all.

so like. again, i like all of doctor who i enjoy all of it very much. i just think that steven moffat is a bad show runner and a decent writer at times. and it is frustrating. and im not here to convince or convert anyone im just living my truth. thank you for listening.

#sorry if this is repetitive or makes no sense or if i got some details of the show wrong #i simply couldnt be bothered to put too much effort into this post #lest it become a research paper and take me several weeks to answer #anyway thats all my opinions #dw #ok to rb

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zmediaoutlet · 3 years

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in support of Texas relief, @padaleckimeon donated $100 and requested Dean Jr. meeting Sam and Dean in heaven. Thank you for donating!

to get your own personalized fic, please see this post. (no longer taking prompts)

(read on AO3)

When Dad dies, Dean takes a week off. It wasn’t sudden, or a surprise. Dad had been sick for a while, his body starting to fail him. At first Dean had been scared, and then he’d been angry. He was only twenty-four when Dad got the diagnosis and it wasn’t—fair, in some stupid but essential way. He’d barely graduated from college and, yeah, Dad was kind of old, older than a lot of his friends’ parents, but—he thought, somehow, that him dying just wasn't… applicable. Dad was just—there, always. Solid, supportive, kind of boring maybe but also stronger than anyone Dean had ever known, or would ever know, and it wasn’t right that he could just be sitting in his apartment midway through a novel and get a call and kind of sigh, because he was in a good part in the book, and then to sit up straight with his hair standing on end to hear Dad say, quiet, I'm sorry, buddy. We need to talk about something. That’s what he said, first. That he was sorry.

There were treatments, but not many. Dean had flown out and gone to a few of the appointments with the oncologist and Dad had been quiet, listening to the options. He’d researched a lot of this on his own, because Dean had done the same thing, and they’d both been nodding along during the options. Injections, radiation. Chemo. Dad had asked, polite, what the life expectancy was for each option, and Dean had watched the side of his face and not the doctor, and when the answer was given Dad had closed his eyes briefly, and then looked away from both Dean and the doctor, out the window at the snowy day, and Dean had known, then.

Dad made it past Dean’s twenty-fifth birthday. He had a party with his friends, at his girlfriend’s apartment, and they tried to keep his spirits up but it was a pretty shitty party, all told. The next day, his actual birthday, he flew back out to Dad’s house and he was in good spirits—had a mini-cake, even, with a single candle that he made Dean blow out—but he was thin, and his hair was growing back in snow-white and tender-soft, and when Dad fell asleep in front of the crappy old cowboy movie that Dean had picked just because he knew Dad for some reason liked it, Dean went out onto the porch into the nearly-springtime air and he cried, pissed at himself. Pissed at everything. Then just—unbearably sad, because he liked his current girlfriend but he didn’t think he was going to marry her, and that meant that whatever girl he did marry would be one his dad would never meet—if he had kids, they’d never know how his dad concentrated like a motherfucker on crossword puzzles and obsessed over documentaries and knew every single piece of the inside of that behemoth car in the garage and was just the smartest kindest most stubborn person. Just—the best person. They’d listen to Dean’s stories maybe but they wouldn’t know, because Dad would never meet them, and that was just—unbearable, that night. In the morning, Dad made oatmeal and Dean added a bunch of sugar because Dad’s oatmeal was inedible otherwise, and Dad smiled kind of rueful like he always did when Dean did that, and then Dad said, I’m sorry, again, kind of quiet, and Dean reached out and held his hand—thin, and the bones feeling frail—and he said don’t be sorry, Dad, and four months later, Dad was dead.

Dad was always pretty up-front with him about most everything, especially after he and Mom split up. When he was twelve, Dad explained the supernatural very carefully, telling him that he was safe but that other people might not be, and why. When he was thirteen, Dad told Dean that Hell and Heaven were both real and that there was, definitely, confirmed, a God, and maybe it wasn’t the same God that other people knew but that Dad said he was kind, in his own way. The person in charge of Hell, Dad said, was maybe less so, but she wouldn’t hurt Dean, ever. Dad said he knew that for fact, and he said it so certainly, looking Dean in the eye, that Dean believed him. When Dean turned eighteen, a few months from graduating high school, Dad took him to a tattoo parlor and said for maybe the first time in Dean’s life that something was non-negotiable, and Dean hadn’t cared because what other kid in the senior year was going to walk at graduation with a kickass demonic tattoo?

There were other things, though, that they didn’t talk about. Dad said one day a lot when Dean was little but then, when he was older and it was clear that one day would be never, he just said—I can’t, buddy. I wish I could.

After the week off, rattling around the old house, and the cremation with no service that Dad had insisted on, Dean drives out to the lawyer in Sioux Falls. She’s nice. Respectful but not cloying. The Samuel Winchester Estate that Dean is the sole beneficiary of is—a lot of money. A lot more money than he knew Dad had, or that he could have ever earned. Dad has assigned some of the money to go to charities, and to some people Dean doesn’t know—the lawyer doesn’t say who in the specific, but says they’re kids of some of Dad’s old friends. Dean didn’t know Dad had many friends, much less ones who’d get trust funds in inheritance. Aside from the stock options and the accounts and all the money left over, Dean inherits a list of assets. The house, of course. The Chevy in the garage, with the stipulation that he can never sell it. A safety deposit box, from which the lawyer has already retrieved the contents.

She leaves him alone, to go through the box. Neatly organized, like everything else in Dad’s life. File-folders of pictures, printed out all old-fashioned. Some of Dean when he was a baby. Some of when Dad and Mom were still together, leaning against each other, Dean hugged between them. Some—much older, creased and faded, stored in little plastic sleeves so they can't degrade. He recognizes a few from the framed copies Dad always had in the house. Some he hasn't seen. Most of them—almost all of them—are of his Uncle Dean, who died before he was born, and he looks especially at one that just—hits him in the gut, in this awful way where he has to sit there looking at the soothing taupe paint of the conference room wall before he can look at it again. Uncle Dean's facing the camera, sort of, although he's laughing about something and not really looking into the lens, and there's Dad, laughing too. He looks… young. Younger than Dean is now. He flips the picture over. Dad's handwriting, careful: 2006, Bobby's house. Almost fifty years ago. An entire life he didn't know. He thinks again of his imaginary future kids. These lives they have, grandfather to father to son, that overlap like a venn diagram but—not enough. Not close to enough.

What's a life? How to summarize, from beginning to faded end, in a way that would make sense to anyone but who it happened to?

Dad left letters, explaining, but he's gone and the context is missing. There are so many questions Dean wants to ask but he can't, of course, anymore. The first letter is attached to the key to the bunker, where he would never take Dean when he was alive, and on winter break from med school Dean flies from Boston to Kansas and rents a car and drives alone through the snowfields.

Dark, inside. He throws the big switch and the lights crackle, hum on, almost reluctant. He has no idea how it's getting power. Dust, but not as much as there could be. A library, a kitchen. Archives upon archives. Dad had explained, but what little he'd said both in life and in the letters didn't come close. It was home, he wrote, for over a decade. The only one we had with four walls, for our whole lives, although we didn't think of it that way. I didn't, at least. Dean doesn't know what that means but he looks into the bedrooms and sees… emptiness, plain bunks and old desks and funny lamps. I just picked a random room, Dad said, and as Dean's looking he really can't tell which was Dad's. Figures. Their house when Dean was growing up didn't change a bit, no matter how terrible that wallpaper was. It's only when Dean pushes open the door to room 11 that there's any personality, and he flicks the light and stands there blinking, surprised. Guns and knives on the wall. Books, piled up. Empty beer bottles crowded on the little table. Dust, but—not as much as there could be. He walks in, cautious, this feeling in his gut like he's in someone's home and they've just walked out, and could return any moment. A food bowl on the floor. A shirt flung over the chair. On the desk: more books and magazines and a folded actually-on-paper newspaper from 2024, and a job application, half filled out. Dean Winchester, it says at the top, in mostly-neat capitals, and Dean rests a hand on the back of the chair and feels… strange. He tries to picture it—the man from the pictures, Dad's brother, filling up this space. Drinking beer and reading pulp westerns and checking out—oh, weird, magazine porn. Dean shakes his head. Impossible.

In the letters, Dad said: Hunting was all we knew how to do. With everything we knew, it was our duty to use the knowledge the best way we could. I went back and forth on it. Your uncle never did, even if I know there were times he wished he—that we both—could be something else. I don't want that for you. I want you to live exactly the life you want for yourself. No expectations, okay? Not from me or anyone else.

There are printed files that go back a hundred years. More than. Paper files, but old SSDs too, with connectors Dean has to find adapters for. Dad: If you want to know what we did, it's digitized. I know I always said I'd tell you one day, but I never knew how to say it. I'm sorry for that. I always thought I'd be one hundred percent honest, if I ever got a kid, because of how we were raised. I didn't know how hard that could be. Stuff that you'd want to say, but when it came time to just open your mouth and say it there weren't any words.

Dad wrote up all the old hunts, it turned out. Simple notes about where/when/how, the kind of monster it was, the number of people who died and the people who were saved. The people they had to explain things to, who knew now about the supernatural underbelly to the universe. He noted, too, if there were injuries, and Dean reads with his hand over his mouth a long, long litany of Dean W. shot, right arm; Sam W. broken bone in hand; Dean W. concussion; Sam W. strangled. On and on. No wonder Dad didn't make a big fuss when Dean broke his leg in the fourth grade.

He sleeps in the bunker overnight, in one of the spare bedrooms that's not room 11. There's a fan on the ceiling, dusty office supplies on the desk. By lamplight he reads the letters, on his back on the stiff terrible mattress, his eyes stinging and past-midnight tired. Our lives weren't the kind of thing anyone would want, Dad wrote. I spent so long trying to get away from it because I thought 'it shouldn't be this way' – and I was right, you know? It shouldn't have been how it was. But it was that way, anyway, and in the end that was something I was okay with. We were making what difference we could. We were happy. A lot of people have it worse.

'We'. Dad hardly writes Uncle Dean's name but he's in every letter. We, we, we. Dad told Dean stories, of course, the dumb stuff they got up to when they were teenagers, or the (sanitized, Dean's sure) adventures they had as adults, but despite the pictures on the wall at home and the pictures in the deposit box and the whole life that's here, Dean can't—see it. Beer bottles on the table in the bedroom, one on either side of the tiny table. The shirt slung over the chair. We were happy, he says, but—how? Dean can't imagine it.

In the last letter Dad wrote, I think I'm writing this when I've got a month or two left. Dr. Hendricks isn't sure. I wish I had more time, to explain how it was. Who we were. I never told you the most embarrassing thing in the world, but I'm old and I'm not going to be around and not much will be able to embarrass me anymore, so screw it. (Fifty years ago I would have gotten really mad at myself for that kind of comment; more things age can fix.) There are books about us. There's a hard drive, in the bunker. It's labelled BURN THIS. (That's your uncle's handwriting.) They're true, more or less. Written by a really crappy, amateur writer, but he was a kind of prophet, and he knew everything there was to know about us, and he wrote books for about five years, based on our life and the real things we did. Some of it is exaggerated and melodramatic. A lot of it is just how it happened. You'll have to decide which is which. I don't come off too well in some of them but I hope you'll understand that the world… I don't know how to describe it. Somehow the world felt different, then. It was just us, trying our best. I hope it gives you some idea of the life we had. No matter what happened, I'm glad that life led me to you.

What's a life?

Dean marries. Not the girl from college but a woman, later. Red hair, blue eyes. Absolutely no sense of humor beyond puns. Hates cooking and has strong opinions on movies from the 1980s. They have three kids, a girl and then a boy and then a girl again. All dark-haired, smart. Dean gives the boy the middle name Samuel and his wife holds his hand, says it sounds great.

He's a doctor. He meets hunters. He sets bones for free and prescribes medication when needed and when it will be needed. A woman, last name Novak, calls him and says you know, your dad was one of the greats?, and he meets people—older than him by twenty, thirty years, with scars and dangerous lives and guns hidden in every corner, and he hears stories. Sam Winchester, who saved the world. Dean knows—he's read the books—but there are more years that the books didn't cover, more people who didn't die because of his dad's intervention. "They were the best," one man says, shrugging, and gets no argument, nods and shrugs from every hunter in the room, and Dean goes home that night and kisses his littlest girl where she's already tucked up in bed, and he thinks: what will she know, about who her grandfather was? Who their family is? What could she possibly know?

Dean's wife dies in her eighties. An accident. A broken hip, an infection following. Still happens, even in this new century. The kids are grown, have kids of their own, and the funeral is big, and there are people at his elbow who say to him we're so sorry and who share anecdotes of her life and who support him to his chair, even though at ninety he's perfectly capable of getting to his chair himself. He's a cranky old man, he realizes. She would've laughed at him. He thinks, inevitably, of his own father's death. Silent and unmourned, except by one. What's a life.

He writes letters, for his children. The estate is handled. He calls the oldest girl and explains to her that she's going to be the executor, and that there are things she has to keep. A key. A car. Pictures, so that her boys will know where they came from. "Of course, Dad," she says, placating a little because he's old and clearly starting to lose his grip, but she'll do it. She's a good kid. Dean learned how to raise a kid from the best.

When he dies, he's expecting it. The trip to the hospital. The monitors. He knows the pain meds even if he's retired and his doctor looks like an infant but she gives him the good stuff. It's—easy. A slipping away. He closes his eyes to sleep and there is a moment where he thinks with surprisingly clarity, this is okay, isn't it, and has the feeling of someone's hand laid on his, and then he sleeps, and doesn't wake up again.

He opens his eyes in an armchair, in a house that he doesn't recognize but that feels instantly familiar. Music playing, somewhere, and a gold-tinged afternoon spilling through the window, and tone-deaf singing from the kitchen. His mind feels clearer than it has in… Tears come to his eyes but it doesn't hurt. He puts his fingers to his mouth and smiles, breathing in slow, and thinks—well, this is it. Heaven.

Time is no longer time. Space is—immaterial. There's a house, not their house, but it's roomy and it has what he needs and the bed he crawls into with his wife at the end of a day is comfortable, and that's what matters, as he lays his hand on her hip where he used to lay it always, and she sighs against the pillow and squirms and tucks herself into a fetal pretzel, like she always used to. The spill of her hair red against the pillow. Her warmth, plush against his bones. She smells not of honeysuckle or vanilla but just like warm, human skin, the faint bite of salt-sweat at the nape of her neck, the must in the morning in thin bluish light when she turns over and finds him awake, and smiles. Incredible. The weight of her is real, and the spot between her breasts when he kisses her there is real, and he'd always believed in some distant way that what his dad had told him was true—that there was a heaven, that there would be some kind of justice after death—but it was distant, and academic, because of course there was a life to live and patients to care for and children to raise and a wife to bury and a death to get through. What a thing, to come to. This place, with her hair on the pillow, and her smell. He hadn't forgotten it, in the end, after all.

The house sits in some place that feels like South Dakota. Home, or close to it. A lake among trees. A distance between things. He reads, and plays games he barely remembers from being a kid, and he watches the Ghostbusters movies again because his wife insists and they are, he has to admit, still funny, but he makes fun of the weird museum guy anyway, and she kicks him where her feet are tucked in his lap, and he tickles her in retaliation, and then—well, the movie will be there, later, when they're done.

She rides her bike every day. One day she comes back and says she was just visiting her mother, and Dean sits up and says, "What?" But—of course. What's time? What's a space, between this shared slow heaven and another? She shrugs—his mother-in-law says hi—and he sits there on the couch with his game paused, watching her go into the kitchen and shake her sweaty hair back from her face, redoing it into the practical twist at her neck like she always does, and he thinks—okay. Okay, maybe now.

The bookshelf has every book he could want, and seems to know what he needs to read before he does. Raining outside, spattering gentle on the eaves, and his wife made a huge pot of tea and took it to bed upstairs and left him just a cup, and so he sits at the kitchen table with his cup of tea and opens the book—Home, by Carver Edlund—and reads it, lingering, even if he's read it three times before online, his thumb brushing over the cheap too-thin pages of this physical copy. There's a poltergeist, preposterous. The psychic, odd and familiar. The brothers, united, and he reads the next-to-last chapter very slowly, lingering, as they find the box of pictures, as they get into the car together. Drive off, to meet some new dawning day.

He finishes his cup of tea. Puts on a clean shirt, combs his hair. "I'll be back," he says, to his wife, and she blinks at him from her nest of blankets with her own book and then only nods, and Dean goes downstairs and gets into his car and finds the road, beyond the garden gate, and drives.

He doesn't know where he's going but that doesn't matter. He turns on the car radio and it's playing—oldies, but really oldies, the stuff that was old when he was little. What childhood sounded like. Farms appear, melt away. Trees rising, through hills. He sings along, under his breath, remembering: a roadtrip to his grandma's house, Mom sleeping in the passenger seat and Dad driving through the night, and Dad singing very, very badly, as quiet as he could, and Dean thinking even as a kid that this was some private thing, to see, and he had to be silent and not show that he was awake or it would disappear. That feeling, it crept up on him at the oddest times, when he was an adult, and later. That sensation of the armored tank of the car moving through the dark, and the silence around them, and the quiet music inside, and Dad, in a world of his own, entirely separate from the world he shared with Dean.

Another hill. Climbing a mostly-paved road. Not raining anymore but the sun coming in slanted gold through the trees. Distance, and a curve, and then: a house. Old-looking. Older maybe than the one Dean and his wife share. In front of it, a car. The car.

Dean parks. He gets out, and the air smells washed-fresh, a little fecund. Like summer. He puts his hand on the hood of the Impala and it's sun-warm and he tears up, completely unexpected, and has to sit on the hood and hold his hands over his face, his heart—full, in a way he's felt since dying, but not in this particular way, this way of feeling that he thought had mellowed, a lifetime ago.

So much for putting on a good face. He wipes over his mouth and dashes his eyes clear. A porch, with new-carved railings. A door, painted blue. He knocks, his body feeling empty and clean and young, terribly young, and before he's quite ready the door opens, and it's—his uncle, in a purple plaid shirt and paint-spattered jeans and grey socks, frowning at him, saying, "Uh, hi?"

He looks—almost exactly like he looked in the pictures. Maybe forty, lines beside his eyes and heavy stubble on his jaw. The age he was when he died. Dean opens his mouth, can hardly dredge up what to say, and then he hears a voice say, "Dean?" and Dean and his uncle both turn their heads to see—Dad, young too, completely shocked, standing on the far side of the porch in running gear with sweat slicking his hair back from his head, and Dean drags in air and says, "Dad," and Dad grins at him, that big creased dorky-looking dad-smile that Dean only got once in a blue moon, and he steps forward and they're hugging, then, and it's—heaven. That's all he can think. Heaven, Dad's arms tight around him, his shoulders slotting in under Dad's because—Dad was so tall, and this is where Dean fit and never would fit again once Dad was gone. Here, under Dad's arm. Like being a kid again.

Dad's hand on the back of his head. A startled, shaky, deep breath in, and then hands gripping his shoulders, and being shoved reluctantly back to have Dad look down at his face, serious and worried. "How long has it been?" he says. "Are you—you didn't—?"

"I was ninety-seven," he says, and Dad's eyebrows go high and he smiles, big and glad and real, relieved. He touches Dean's face and Dean smiles back, tears rising again for no reason and for so many reasons. "I look good, don't I?"

Dad huffs a laugh. "You look great," he says, and then his eyes lift over Dean's head, and Dean has to turn around because—

What to call him? Uncle Dean. Standing there with his shoulder against the doorframe, his mouth tucked in on one side. Like from right out of one of the pictures, returning Dad's look. His eyes drop after a second to meet Dean's and Dean feels this odd jolt, in his chest. Bizarre, to see. He's real. All Dad's stories, the wall of memories, the books, and here he is, in grey socks, looking all over Dean's face like he's seeing it for the first time. "Guess you got your looks from your mom's side of the family," Uncle Dean says, finally, and Dad says, behind him, "Nice, dude," and Uncle Dean shrugs, unrepentant, but with an unexpected dimple quirking into his cheek, and holds out his hand to shake, and Dean takes it and has another shock at it, warm, callused, firm, real—while Uncle Dean says, wry, "Well, I guess some introductions are in order, huh?"

Uncle Dean and Dad share the house. It's nice, inside. Old fashioned in a way that feels comfortable, as Dean's come to expect. (He wonders, in a few hundred years—will new arrivals to heaven expect old-fashioned arcologies?) Uncle Dean brings beers from the kitchen and Dad takes his without even looking, drinking in Dean's face when Dean's doing the exact same to him. He looks so young. Younger, maybe, than he was even in the few pictures Dean has of him being a baby, held tiny in the crook of Dad's massive arm—some past time, some time Dean doesn't belong to, but Uncle Dean clearly does. Dad shakes his head after a few seconds, huffs again, rueful. "I don't even know where to start," he says.

Uncle Dean rolls his eyes, behind him, and says, "How about you ask the kid how he's doing, genius." Mean, but he squeezes Dad's shoulder too, and Dad bites his lip, looks at Dean, his head tipping. Asking.

It's awkward, but only in the way Dean would expect. To see his dad after so long—and both of them dead—and to explain… what? A life. Being a doctor, meeting a wife. Children. Grandchildren. "Great-grandpa Sammy," Uncle Dean fake-whispers, "told you you were old." Nudging Dad, half-sitting on the arm of his chair. Looking proud enough he could burst, although Dean doesn't know exactly why.

"Are you going to make dinner or are you just here to heckle?" Dad says, looking up, exasperated, and Uncle Dean raises his hands, says, "Oh, I'm here to heckle," but he gets up, too, says, "You get tired of the inquisition, kid, we've got more drinks in the kitchen," and cuffs Dad around the back of the head before he disappears down the blue-painted hall—and music comes on, after a moment. The kind of music that was on Dean's radio as he drove. Comfort sounds that go deep into some space beyond his bones.

"He's a lot, sorry," Dad says, after a second.

"I know, I read about it," Dean says, and Dad blinks at him, mouth half-open, before he remembers.

They have dinner. Uncle Dean makes burgers, fries, a spinach salad that Dean and Dad both groan at, and he looks at them across the table with his burger in his hands and shakes his head. No salad on his plate, Dean notices. They talk but about—nothing. Uncle Dean asks if the Broncos ever won the Superbowl again and Dean tries to dredge up an answer. Dad asks what his wife did for a living. Dean wants to ask things and doesn't know how. There's time, he knows, but for now all he can do is—watch. Dad leaning back in his chair with a beer, smiling at him while Uncle Dean tells some probably well-worn story about trying to fix the Impala in a rainstorm, and Dad was pissed for some reason and so kept handing him the wrong tools. "It was too dark to actually read the grip numbers," Dad says, patient like it's the hundredth time, and Uncle Dean says back, immediately, "Who needs the numbers? You can feel the weight in your hand!" Old arguments, well-worn, in the well-worn house. The way they move around each other, washing dishes, putting plates away. The way Dad's eyes will jump across the table, half a second before Uncle Dean's even opening his mouth, a smile already waiting to be pushed back down.

When it's night he says he should get back to his wife. "I'd like to meet her," Dad says, "some day."

"Gotta see who's willing to put up with a Winchester," Uncle Dean says, eyebrows waggling.

Dad sighs but nods, too. Dean gets folded into a hug, there under the tuck of his arm, and then he hugs Uncle Dean, too, impulsive and just—wanting to, feeling like a kid. Uncle Dean startles but hugs him back right away. "You're good, kid," he says, quiet against the side of Dean's head, and Dean nods and says, "Thanks," for more than he can say other than that, right then on this particular day, and then he gets into his car and pulls away from the house and looks back to see Uncle Dean gripping Dad's shoulder again while they watch him move away—and when he's home, after a blurring drive that's long enough for him to settle himself, he comes up the stairs to where his wife's warm in bed and slides in beside her and she says, sleepy, "How was it," and he says against her hair, "Perfect," because—it was. It was perfect.

Dean comes alone to their house twice more, on days when he needs it and doesn't see a reason not to. He brings his wife, the third time, and Dad's extremely polite and Uncle Dean asks her about engineering and Dean enjoys it, from the couch, while she gets the same interrogation he did, and they're driving home with her at the wheel, his eyes on the passing trees, before she says, "They're an interesting couple," and it doesn't strike him, for what may be a mile of blurring distance, why that sentence wasn't quite right.

It should be a shock. It isn't. That it isn't should, itself, be a shock, but he sits with it for a few days, the easy rhythm of heaven sliding around them.

He goes to see his mother, finally. She's in a place on a lakeshore. Her first husband, kind but remote, giving them space. She presses his hands between her own and he goes through the list of answers to all her questions, smiling, feeling déjà vu, and then says, cautious, that he's been to see Dad. "Oh!" she says, and doesn't seem upset. "How is he?"

"Good," he says. They never married, his parents—Dad had told him, much later, that it just didn't occur to him to ask—and he knew they didn't resent each other, but there wasn't much closeness there. He didn't realize how little until he was married himself. Still, he's cautious as he says: "He and my uncle have a place. Uncle Dean, you know?"

Mom sits back in her chair. "Well, then," she says, soft. She's youngish, too. Fifty maybe, her hair shot with grey. "That sounds about right."

He doesn't know how to ask but there's no way to do it other than just—to ask. "What do you know about him?"

Mom smiles, slow, and looks out at the lake. "Honey, your dad's a good man, but I think you know as well as I do that he doesn't give a lot away." Dean follows her look. A boat, far out on the water. Not close enough to hail. "He didn't talk about his brother, much. That said more than I think he knew it did. All those pictures. Well, you remember." She shakes her head, looking down at her lap. "I resented him for a while. A dead man. Silly of me. But then I suppose your dad could have resented Luke, if he'd—cared more. Sorry. That sounds like I'm angry, but I'm not. There just wasn't much left in Sam, that's all. He loved you and he loved someone that wasn't here anymore and there just wasn't room for me, or at least not room for what I needed. I wished I could've known him. Dean, I mean. I would've understood your dad a lot more, I think, but then—I don't think I would've ever met him, if Dean were around."

When he gets home he pulls a book off the shelf. Frail, the spine cracked badly. Supernatural, the first book in the whole series. When Dad was at college and the whole thing started. He sits on the floor by the bookshelf and lets the cup of tea his wife brings go cold on the rug, and reads again and again the scene—coming down the stairwell, finding the car in the garage, going through the details of the voice on the tape, on where their dad (Dean's grandfather) could possibly be, and Dad says there's this interview he can't skip. His whole future, on a plate. In the story, it's Dad's point of view, and he looks at Uncle Dean and Uncle Dean smirks, and Dad thinks, This is exactly what I was getting away from. Dean drags his thumb over the page, looks at the shelf. All those books. All the years in them, and the horrors in those. Hell, and apocalypse, and none of it euphemisms or easy metaphor. All the things Dad wanted to get away from—and then all the years, after, where he stayed exactly where he was. And then—a lifetime later—to come back home to a house, with a blue door, and his eyes not bothering to follow his brother as he leaves a room, because he knows without doubt that he'll be back.

In bed, he asks his wife, "When do you think the kids will get here?" and she turns over and stares at him, and says, "Hopefully not for years?"

He shakes his head, folds his arm under his head. "Duh," he says, and gets her to punch his chest lightly. "Ow. I meant… I don't know. What do you think their lives will be? Like… who will they be? I can't even imagine."

She stops trying to lightly beat him and goes thoughtful. Her thumb finds the little scar on her chin and rubs it, as is her habit, and her eyes slip over his shoulder to the distance. "They'll be—them." He raises his eyebrows, and she shrugs, rolling closer. "I mean, what do you want from me? I knew Abbie for fifty-one years and I still think that girl's a mystery. When she's… probably a grandmother herself, now, I guess. Is she still at Notre Dame? Are she and Andre happy? Are the boys healthy and do they like each other, and did she ever get Jacob to stop drawing cartoon dicks on the walls?" Dean laughs—god, he'd forgotten that—and she smiles at him, props her head on one fist. Says, softer, "Did she live the life she wanted to have? I don't know. I guess when she gets here we can ask her, but we'll never…"

No, they'll never. Dean touches the scar on her chin and she focuses on him, instead of some other world they're no longer privy to. "It's a venn diagram," he says, after a moment. "All of us. Abbie, overlapping with you and me, and then us overlapping with our parents, and on and on, all the way back. I guess we don't get to know what's outside the center parts."

"Even if there's a hundred and four crappily-written books about the other parts," she says, raising her eyebrows, and Dean shrugs, caught. She grins, shaking her head at him, and then squirms in close, tucking in under his chin. Kisses his throat, sighs. "Why not stop at a hundred? Seems random."

"I don't know, maybe the publisher wanted him to stretch it out," Dean says, and she hums, and puts her nose on his collarbone to settle in. He smooths her hair back, away from her shoulder. His favorite book is Swan Song, probably. The final one, as far as most people knew. His dad, the hero, saving humanity and the world, but that wasn't the best part. The best part was the army man, stuck in the door. His dad, looking at that, and meeting his brother's eye, and that being—enough. Just that, and all the life it represented. Enough.

"Venn diagrams," he says, aloud, quietly.

"Yes, you're very brilliant, Dr. Winchester," his wife says, mumbling. "Now go to sleep."

He kisses her hair, and does.

#ffcc #wincest #dean jr #my writing #this is again just sort of a collection of paragraphs #and it's--mostly what you asked for i think?#but mainly it's me musing about the unknowability of parents and children #so uh #that's what i was able to manage #hopefully i'll remember how to construct a story soon lol

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