#hero sitter

[geroya]

will not stop thinking about him* (*dilf keme)

[reallyromealone]

Can you do a long fic where bakugou has a baby brother like maybe 2 years old?

Title: sibling bonding

Fandom:my hero Academia

Warnings: male reader, baby reader, fluff, big brother Bakugo, soft Bakugo

Notes: I can't promise a long fic as my fic lengths are based off of how much steam I have but ill write what I can

☁️🩷☁️🩷☁️🩷☁️🩷☁️🩷☁️🩷☁️🩷☁️🩷☁️🩷☁️

Bakugo was happy to have the house mostly alone, his parents in Milan for two weeks he had off for a fashion show.

Why was he mostly alone?

Well they couldn't take his little brother, the two year old didn't do planes well and it was just easier to find a sitter or let him stay with someone for the time, usually their aunty. "Uh-oh" (name) said as he dropped his sippy cup carefully lifting it back up before wandering to his brother "ka!" He said happily as he climbed onto the couch "what squirt?" Katsuki said to the young tot who looked at his phone "what do?" He asked as Katsuki got notifications from discord "I'm texting a few friends, they're coming to visit later for a movie" he was always so soft with his brother, sure he was loud as the rest of his family but his baby brother took more after their dad so he always tried to be gentle.

"Oovee?" He asked curiously and Katsuki nodded "yeah a movie, we gotta get some snacks for you and me before it" he said to the boy who smiled "cake!" "No cake but we can get you a cake pop when we get our walk home drink" Katsuki knew how to compromise with the boy who clapped his hands excitedly.

Katsuki helped (name) put on his shoes before putting him on his shoulders, it was easier to do than hold his hands and (name) got to have fun.

The two went to the convenience store as (name) pointed to various snacks, Katsuki having to hinder the boy with the fact he wanted /everything/ the store had to offer but did compromise with some ice cream and little treats for after dinner and such.

"Cake!" (Name) was absolutely thrilled when Katsuki handed him a cake pop, the teen holding the snacks with one hand and had (name) on his hip as they walked home, (name) eating his treat contently, the boy taking a sip from their drink occasionally.

(Name) loved helping his brother, the tot getting to help put things together for the hang out "you get to watch a movie then it's bath time alright?" Katsuki said to his brother who did a little dance before running off to go play with his toys 'weird kid' Katsuki thought fondly as he finished prep.

"YOOOO BAKUBRO!" Kirishima said as he and a few other classmates entered the Bakugo house, Kaminari whistling at how nice it was inside "whose ready to paaaarty!" Mina said as her, ochaco and Momo came inside with snacks "let's watch some scary...shoopuff" mina halted when she saw the two year old in Katsukis arms, little (name) looking curious but recognized Kirishima from a few visits "little man!" Kirishima ran and grabbed the boy and lifted him "what's up!"

"Hiiii!"

"Whose the kid?" Kaminari asked as (name) spoke nonsense to Kirishima but it was probably his day if any context about "walk" and "cake pop" were to go off of "that's my brother" Katsuki said gruffly, a slight glare on his face as his friends looked at the babe curiously.

During the movie, the teens would notice Bakugo would be soft with the boy even when he scolded him "oi, leave that alone" "but you're smelly!" (Name) argued back, holding a book in his hands "put it down and park your ass and watch the movie or its night time" Bakugo said to his brother who huffed but complied "you're not my favorite brother anymore!"

"Ah? And who is?"

"Dad!"

The movie went on well, the group putting on a hero movie and before they knew it, it was (name)s bath time "bubububbub!" (Name) was pleased with the bubbles as he played with his toys, his older brother working around him to wash him "head back" the teen said gruffly as he put a visor on the boys forehead and rinced out the shampoo before repeating it with the conditioner "kaa! Ducky!" The boy squirted some water at his brother who rolled his eyes "wanna see something cool?" He asked his little brother who looked curious "ya!'

Katsuki put his hand in the water and activated his quirk, just enough to give a jacuzzi affect "whoa!" The boy said excitedly as Katsuki pulled his hand out "now, out ya go!"

"Nooo!"

"None of that! Come on, let's brush your fucking teeth and get you to bed brat"

(Name) cuddled into his brothers shoulder as he wore his fuzzy pajamas, the other teens waving him goodnight as Katsuki brought him to his bedroom and tucked him into bed "hah? What's this?" Katsuki held up a small handmade plush of him in his hero suit "Die'ite!" (Name) grabbed the plush and Katsuki felt a small smile creep on his face as his little brother hugged the toy "he a hero you like?"

"He's the bestest!"

[f1]

[adabird]

MHA BOYS - reactions +headcannons

REACTING TO GETTING A CALL THAT YOU WERE INJURED!

!Aged up characters! Readers 16+ please!

Should I start writing for the girls in UA? WARNING, ENGLISH IS NOT MY FIRST LANGUAGE, so I apologize for any mistakes!

(I’m thinking about writing about some U.A teachers, let me know who you want to be written, and any kind of theme!)

Iida Tenya-

THE PACER?

THIS. MAN. The second he gets the call that you are hurt, whether it was while you were on hero duty or stuck as an innocent bystander, he’s right by your side holding your hand. Now, Iida is a very work involved person, so when he called his assistant to block his work hours for the next 42 hours, they were really surprised. But he’ll be at your beck n call, I mean, really this man will get you anything you want. You don’t even have to ask! Flowers, your favorite drink + snacks, he’ll also make sure you get a good hospital room. He’s also the type to pace the floor, with a book in his hand. (Make sure you answer all his ‘I love you’s’ because on the inside this man is panicking..)

Monoma Neito-

!THE YELLER!

As we ALL know, Monoma is very self involved so when he hears that you, his s/o, his love, his everything is hurt, he’ll try his best to help you. He would cancel or leave his hero shift for that day, wait for your health status, then decide if he’ll need to take anymore days off. But he try’s really hard to make you comfortable, and he tries to put himself in your position. He’s definitely the type to yell at your side kicks ( if you were a hero) or yell at the “hero” that was on call when the incident had happened. This man is definitely stressing!

Shinsou Hitoshi-

!THE CHAIR SITTER! (hehe..)

BOYYY. MM MM. I definitely feel like he’d fall asleep, and accidentally leave his phone somewhere, so while he was searching for it, one of the big tvs would be broadcasting an incident that occurred. And while the news agent was releasing who was hurt, your name was called out he would absolutely panic. Like I tell you he’d start running to every hospital, and med-tec center just to find you. But once he sees the condition you’re in his ‘dad mode’ would kick in. And he would remember all the talks Eri’s therapist gave him about staying calm when bad things happen. Definitely goes to the bathroom and stares at himself in the mirror. Kind of like a, embracing the situation at hand, type of thing. He’d sit by your side for as long as it takes to make sure you’re okay..

Kirishima Eijiro-

THE RUNNER

This man is a big gigantic teddy bear. He may seem intimidating to villains but all his fans know he’s a loving individual. So, when he was at a meet and greet and one of his fans started to yell at him “RED RIOT, RED RIOT, HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT Y/N AND THE MAJOR INCIDENT?” He would immediately place his hands in a low-position, indicating to his crazed fans to please be quiet. It immediately became silent as he asked that person to repeat what they had said. The person repeated “Y/N? THEY WERE INJURED IN THAT INCIDENT ABOUT 4 MINUTES AGO!” everyone gasped, I mean they all love you two together so hearing that was a shock. After this he immediately drove to the local hospital, calling his gruffy pomeranian friend crying. Safe to say the second they allowed this man in your room he was all over you, showering you with love..

Tamaki Amajiki-

‘SOFT’ JITTERS

This boy is so baby coded, the second he heard y/n, his lover, was injured he immediately got in contact with the people that were with you. Suddenly all of his shaky-voice + body movements were eliminated. He was trying to hold things together once he heard how sever the incident was. And he would most likely call over his close friend Mirio. He, and Tamaki would stay over in your room, ordering food and chatting. Anything to help his best friend and his S/o. Mirio would also make sure the paparazzi were contained and away from the room. 

Mirio Togata-

THE NEGOTIATOR

Mirio is definitely the kind to pray. To whom? he doesn’t know. Whether it’s to the gods or to his ancestors. He’s known to be the person that cheers everyone up, including his friends, during stressful situations. However, once it comes to you, his walls break immediately. He needs to know you’re okay, he needs to hold your hand, telling you in a soft voice that ‘everything will be okay’. But the hospital staff workers must refuse any visitors, they really all feel bad for him, and YOU but you would have been really injured. He even tries to pull the ‘I’m the number 5 top hero” but once that doesn’t work he’ll definitely panic. (he always feels bad bringing up his ratings) - he was just really worried. but once your parents grant his access he’s all up in your grill, making sure you know he loves you with all his heart.

Denki Kaminari-

THE SHAKER

He’s all shaking when he hears you’re hurt, just like Tamaki Amajiki! But really he’d be in the waiting room, when a nurse comes out telling him he can come into the room. And once you tell him everything that had happened he’d immediately be on the phone calling people to deal with the situation. He’s definitely the type of person to jump into the bed with you and hop under the scratchy covers and crack jokes to make you laugh, in reality, hearing your laugh helps his anxiety.

Bakugou Katsuki-

(should I write a one-shot about this?)

‘ACTION’

MAN. MAN. MAN. He’d be forced by his publicist to dress into a tux and join Pro Hero Deku, for a convention. Of course, he and Izuku are close now but he’s getting agitated with all the flirty questions, flirty touching, and tightness of his dress shirt. He just can’t wait to come home to you. That being said, when a Secret Service agent comes to whisper that Y/N has been attacked protecting a child, he stands up so fast he also most flips the table. Luckily, Izuku caught it. He immediately had a cab called, half way in the process of loosening his tie, and taking off his suit jacket is when you called him. Telling him everything was okay but you were injured and trapped where you were. You had made him grit out a promise from a clenched jaw, that he would save the child first and not you. He made sure to bust into action, and placing you in the best hospital known to man.

Izuku Midoriya-

THE PUSHER

Izuku would most likely be on work hours when he caught news of you being hurt, and he would immediately stop everything. You’re his e. v. e. r. y. t. h. i. n. g. Like dead ass, he would be jumping building from building searching, and feeling for you. He’s immediately calling his publicists, asking them to make sure the media isn’t as obsessed with the incident at hand. When he leaves the hospital to get your favorite foods all media lines come in and surround him, asking him questions. He would repeat ‘Not comments at this time’ and ‘No answers at this moment’. He made sure he could take you home, creating a safe spot for you to have an “at home” hospital room. Man… he gets so jittery..

Tokoyami Fumikage-

THE YELL-STRESSOR

As he became a high end hero, he controlled dark shadow extremely well. There had been no slip-ups in 6 years. Well, that was until he got the message that you had been severely wounded, and you had just finished surgery headed to your room. Let’s just say he was livid, and so was dark shadow. How could they not contact before hand, he could have supported you, his love. But now, he can only assure you he’s there? You mean after the fact? When he arrived at the hospital he started to yell at the doctor, including his assistant for being incompetent. He’s usually quiet and keeps his words on the down-low, but after seeing you, he’ll definitely tear up. I’m sure dark shadow comes out himself to lay over you and sulk. (he loves you soo so so sooo much)

YOU GUYS!!! I really want to write a one shot on the Bakugou one, but I feel like it’s embarrassing if nobody requests it. I don’t know, anyways should I? Let me know. As always don’t be afraid to ask or give suggestions for whatever character in MHA you want.

(I’m thinking about writing about some U.A teachers, let me know who you want to be written, and any kind of theme!)

Also, I completely forgot my try, and tries. IM SORRY. Please correct that but at one point I just started to wing it.

Anywho!

-Onie out!

[cosyvelvetorchid]

Something cute:

Jee gives Uncle Tommy a friendship bracelet she's made, and Tommy's still wearing it a few days later when Buck fetches him from work (it's the first Buck heard about it).

Bonus if Tommy mentions that the guys at work have been trying to give him grief about it but Tommy doesn't give a damn, it's a present from his niece! 🤣❤️

Sorry for taking so long to get to this. This was a super cute one to do 😊

As always you can send me a bucktommy or saltommy prompt to my ask. Smut, fluff or whimp or a mix. Whatever you want.

🩶

********

“Sorry Maddie I have to leave for my shift in like 30 mins.” Buck said

“What’s up?” Tommy asked.

“Maddie needs to run a couple of errands for an hour but Jees daycare is closed so she needs a sitter.”

Tommy removed the phone from Bucks hand without a word.

“Hey Maddie.”

“Tommy, hi! How are you?”

“I’m good. Listen, my shift doesn’t start for another 4 hours if you need someone look after Jee for an hour.”

“Oh my god, really? Are you sure?”

“Of course. I mean, if you’re okay with that?” He asked just to be sure. He loved spending time with Maddie and Jee but he hadn’t done so before without Evan being there.

“Oh please. If you handle my brother you can handle a four year old.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” He said smirking at Buck.

“What?” He mouthed in response. Tommy simply winked at him. Buck would be mad if it wasn’t so fucking hot when he did that.

“Uh, I can be there in about 40 minutes?”

“Tommy you’re my hero!”

“I’ll see you soon.

“Bye! Thank you again!”

“Did you just offer to babysit Jee?” Buck asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“I.. you’re just really amazing, you know that?” Buck said with a soft smile.

“It’s nothing, Evan. You’re my family, which makes her, them, my family too. Of course I’d help.” He kissed Bucks temple and got up to finish packing his bag.

Family. He’d said it so nonchalantly. They hadn’t said anything as serious between each other yet, although Buck had been dancing around the ‘L’ word for weeks like a world class ballet dancer; desperate to say it yet utterly terrified of saying it.

It was going to be even trickier to not let it slip out when Tommy says such sweet shit like calling his family his family.

They finished packing their stuff and separated for the following 48 hours thanks to their shifts for once actually lining up for a full week - 48 on, then 72 hours off. Together.

Tommy arrived at Maddie’s to a very excited Jee-yun grabbing his hand and dragging him over to the coffee table to show him what she was doing.

“I’m sorry she’s in a very important friendship bracelet making phase right now.” Maddie told him.

“Well that’s just perfect because I love friendship bracelets!” He said in an exaggerated way for Jees benefit.

“You do?!” Jee asked

“Of course!”

Maddie stopped by the door for a moment just watching the way Tommy was with her. Every time he’d been over with her brother he always made time to indulge whatever she wanted his attention for. A little picture in her head of her brothers future flew by and she smiled at the thought.

“You okay?” Tommy asked pulling her back to reality.

“Uh, yeah. I should be no more than an hour. You have mine and howies numbers and everyone else’s are on the fridge just in case. Bye baby! Be good for Tommy!”

“So.. what bracelet are we making?” He asked Jee.

“For you!”

“For me?” She nodded. “Okay. How about you pick the colours and tell me what it should say and I’ll thread it together. Sound good?”

“Yeah!”

*

“Now that is the best friendship bracelet I have ever seen! Don’t you think?” Tommy held his wrist up to Jee to inspect their work.

“And the prettiest!”

“I agree! Good job.” He held out his hand for a high five which of course she gave him.

***

2 days later Buck was picking up Tommy from work and though exhausted from his own gruelling shift he was practically vibrating at the prospect of 72 uninterrupted hours with his lo- boyfriend.

“Hey babe.” He greeted Tommy getting in his car.

“Hey baby.” Tommy leaned over and pressed a quick kiss on the corner of Bucks mouth. “Good shift?”

“Exhausting. Please tell me you feel like take out? I don’t have the energy to cook?”

“Pizza?”

“This is why I-“ he stopped himself. Again. “-why were, uh, perfect for each other. You read my mind.”

45 minutes later they’d arrived at Bucks apartment and were getting undressed to shower. Something caught bucks eye as Tommy removed his shirt and undershirt in one pull.

“Hold up.” He lightly grabbed Tommys wrist, inspecting the glittery pink and white letter beads threaded around the elastic. “What’s this?”

“Oh.” Tommy smiled fondly. “Jee wanted to make friendship bracelets when I baby sat her the other day. I promised her I wouldn’t take it off. The guys at the station have been riding my ass about for the last 2 days.” He laughed.

Bucks finger tip glided across the letters “Uncle Tommy.” He read out loud and looked at him.

“Yeah.” He laughed “She told me what she wanted on it.”

Buck just looked at him with the softest eyes.

“What?”

“Just so I understand correctly: you offered to babysit my 4 year old niece, you willingly made friendship bracelets with her, including her calling you uncle Tommy, promised you wouldn’t take it off, then kept that promise when your colleagues make fun of you even though she wouldn’t know if you’d taken it off?”

“I would know, Evan, and I promised i wouldn’t.”

Buck threw his arms around Tommys neck and planted a firm few kisses onto Tommys lips.

“Hmm. What was that for?” He smiled.

“Because I love you.”

Tommy face morphed into a bigger smile. “I love you too.” He kissed Buck back for a few seconds before pulling away. “I’d love you more if you order the damn pizza - I’m starving!”

[sweeterlovers]

⊹₊ ⋆ 𓂃 masterlist ‘ 💌 ── ୨ৎ ⊹₊ ⋆

arthur leclerc

charles leclerc

summer lovers

hometown hero

forever one

forever one part 2

carlos sainz

sunkissed

daniel ricciardo

cruel summer

reminders

pocket full of sunshine

fernando alonso

labyrinth

family time is the best time

george russell

jenson button

kimi räikkönen

the iceman

lewis hamilton

5 years of secrets

lando norris

fast times

brand new

finally

lance stroll

logan sargeant

daylight

mr. america

salt air

meant to be

on pointe

mark webber

vacay

mick shumacher

max verstappen

ok mr championship

marc márquez

nico rosberg

oscar piastri

sweetest girl

dog sitter

ollie bearman

charmed

flower girl

pierre gasly

paul aron

pato o’ward

sebastian vettel

toto wolff

million dollar life

vacation state of mind

other

pet names

f1 drivers as rom coms

f1 drivers as romantic gestures

dates

ms. madrid

[machveil]

I demand(Lovingly) Konig bringing his kid onto base with him because reader couldn't watch them

But no one was aware Konig Had a child :)

Maybe include the 141 and not just Kortacs reactions?

(Google translate warning lol) to his team’s credit, they only knew König was married because they’d seen the band around his ring finger a handful of times. they knew he was a private man when it came to his home life, what they didn’t expect was König bringing a child with him to base.

his spouse was all set up to watch the kid, their school was having a teacher’s conference and the building was closed. unfortunately, they had gotten a call from work - an emergency came up.

a last minute sitter was off the table, the usual neighbor had arrangements already out of town. that left König, looming, intimidating Colonel that he was, to bring his kid with him to work.

to his relief, today’s priorities were just paperwork. König figured he could just b-line to his office and set his kid down with some paper and a pencil

only problem? well… König isn’t exactly stealthy. it’s hard to go unnoticed when you’re as tall as him and lugging a kid around (a kid that begged dad for a piggyback ride)

general head cannons for operatives interacting with König’s kid:

Horangi, to his credit, had a suspicion that König had a kid. that didn’t stop him from doing a double take when he saw the little one. definitely calls the kid 작은 새끼 (little cub) because I said so. immediately treats König’s kid as his own - jokingly claims he’ll teach the child how to play cards (“no money, we’ll play for snacks.”)

Johnny is the fun uncle, prove me wrong. can’t believe his eyes when he sees König carrying around this itty-bitty kid compared to his behemoth size. definitely steals the kid away for some shenanigans and teaches them how to prank their dad (“put his hand in hot water when he’s asleep” type of of stuff). lots of hair ruffling and teasing

Gaz hot take, I think he’s neutral on handling kids. isn’t surprised that König has a kid. back to my hot take, it’s not that Gaz doesn’t like kids, he’s just okay with them. he’s friendly and cracks a few jokes with König’s kid, but he definitely feels old now he’s not, but still. hypes up König by telling his kid PG rated “hero stories” about how cool their dad is and how “he’s a real knight in shining armor”

Price has major dad energy, I’m sorry. is he surprised König has a kid? not really, is he surprised König brought his kid on base? yeah, a little. Price and König teaming up to tease this poor child :( (“pull my finger” war flashbacks). Price and König lecturing giving life lessons to the kid when they ask a mundane question lol

Ghost is standoffish, but warms up to König’s kid. he doesn’t want to come off as scary because… well, between the skull on his balaclava, dressed in full black, and being built like a truck, he scares adults :( he doesn’t want to wig out this tiny person. inwardly relieved that the kid isn’t scared (“my dad wear a mask sometimes too!”) and instantly becomes fun uncle number two. cracks horrible, dry jokes that has the kid complaining and laughing. if König’s kid brought markers with them he definitely lets the kid color in his tattoos (“oi, missed a spot.”). low-key heals his inner child playing with König’s kid

König never made it to his office, he spent the day watching his kid meet and have fun with his uncles - uncles that keep complaining “when are you going to bring them around again?”

Johnny, journalist and scrapbooker that he is, definitely has a polaroid camera - takes photos of König and his kid and hands them over before the pair leave base

(for any KorTac members I didn’t mention, just know they teased König for not mentioning he has a kid and they treat his child like their own as well)

[nztsume]

• waiting for the big twenty-five •

homelander x you

{“Only one more year till the big 25. Aren’t you excited?”

This piqued at his curiosity. “What’s the big 25?”

“It’s when your brain finishes developing.”, you replied, remembering the information from back in the day, when you were still trying to get your Psychology’s degree. “Your frontal cortex- the one in charge of your personality and all- it stops growing at around 25 years old.}

Even if you’re just kind of a glorified baby-sitter, you just want to see him happy - instead, you accidentally make him worse.

read on ao3

------

Hi yall!!! The voices won and I finally ended up starting to write the young homelander fic of my dreams where we find out how he ended up being the deranged insecure insane man we know and love!!

In this one, you're Madelyn Stilwell's niece who works at Vought- and have striken an unexpected soft spot for the company’s latest investment- this insecure, shy but sweet young hero called Homelander.

Enjoy!

• 1 •

July, 2005

Every single day, at exactly 5.30 a.m., Homelander was to be awoken by the smell of coffee on his kitchen table. The coffee had to be fresh, beans grinded that same morning, no sugar, no milk, no exceptions. To accompany it, he was to have his pills: two of creatin– for muscle growth, three of protein- to feed them, a weight gainer– so he would stop being so lanky, and an extra dose of vitamin D, to fight those pesky pimples guys his age still got sometimes. All of them should be in a small container, so he could swallow them at once with his first gulp.

Next to his coffee and his pills, he was to have a folder with any relevant document for the day- interviewer’s questions and the answers he was to give, profiles of important people he would meet, scripts for any ad he was to film. All of that, including his schedule for the day- except that was to be read to him by you. This is how Maddie had told you it had to be done, and how you’d done it since day one.

You looked at your wrist watch, holding his coffee on your hand- piping hot, just how you knew he liked it-  and you yawned, watching the thinnest clock hand go round it, as the last minute before you could walk into his apartment went by. 

Finally, it was 5.25, and you could already walk in- so you did. 

You weren’t exactly his maid- he had several of those, but none of them were to do anything to his apartment whenever he was around. He wasn’t to have much contact with the normal civilians, the normies- as Maddie called them. You preferred to reserve your opinions at that- your aunt had changed a lot since she had started working here. 

What you were was Maddie’s secretary- and Maddie was Mr. Edgar’s secretary- or something. There was a fancier title for that, but you couldn’t recall it. All you knew was that she was aiming for vice-CEO or something, as it was the only thing she talked about whenever she dragged you to a bar after office hours, and insisted on drinking glass after glass of whisky.

As you finished setting things up, you appreciated the result- his cup of coffee, his pills, his documents and ah, a special surprise. One big, obscene chocolate cupcake, the kind where the chocolate topping is so rich that it spills and drips all over, with one beautiful strawberry on top, and next to it, one single candle. You weren’t sure if chocolate was his favorite, but you knew he had a bit of a sweet tooth- so he’d appreciate it, at least some. 

Finally, you took out your red lighter and lit the candle- and less than twenty seconds later, you looked up- and there he was. 

"Good morning, John.”, you put the lighter back on your blazer’s pocket, smiling at him. 

He blinked- eyes still not fully alert, as he scratched them. They were boring holes into the chocolate cupcake, and you couldn’t help to smirk a little- you knew he’d be interested in it. 

“Is that for me?”, he asked, surprised, almost like a child- and you laughed. Ever since you’d met him, about five or six months ago now, you’d felt like he was younger than his actual age- there was something about the way he stood in the middle of his own massive penthouse, like a kid lost in a big, elegant furniture showroom. Alone, quiet and shy, even when wearing his own super suit. It didn’t help that it was actually way too big for one person, with its tall, tall roofs, marble everything and sleek furniture- much less for an overworked twenty-something with no time for a social life.  

“Of course.”, you assured him. “It’s your birthday after all, right? Happy 24th!”

He pressed his lips awkwardly, trying to contain a smile- but that didn’t work, as he let out a laugh, and finally came to the kitchen island, almost a skip on his step. You couldn’t help to be glad- finally this kid was getting some happiness in him.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re welcome.”, you said, sarcastically, as he went to town on the cupcake, taking big bites out of it. He stopped for a second mid-bite, mouth full of chocolate, to look at you with a smile- and there was a gleeful glint in his eyes. Actually, that was enough of a thank for you. Anything that made that perpetual sadness that he always seemed to hold go away, even for just a few minutes, was worth it. You laughed at him. “Okay- just go for it. But don’t forget your pills!” 

“I can’t believe it- this tastes so good!”, he finally said, after taking another bite- in less than thirty seconds he had eaten half of it. Unbelievable! “Best birthday gift ever!”

“Oh- shush.”, you crossed your arms, leaning back against the counter, watching him take a big gulp of coffee. “Just wait until you see what Maddie has gotten you- it’ll blow your mind.”

“I don’t think it’ll be better than having chocolate as breakfast.”- he set the last bite of the cupcake aside, finally taking the pill container, and eyeing them with disgust. You sighed- perhaps if they let the kid eat his breakfast he wouldn’t need those nasty pills- it wasn’t like he wasn’t going to burn it off in the training center literally thirty minutes later. You didn’t know much about supe genetics, but they couldn’t be too different from normal people’s, right?

You yawned again, this time covering your mouth to the side, as you let him have the rest of the cupcake and his coffee. You liked to give him some minutes of silence so he could enjoy it properly- you knew that that’s how you liked it when you had yours.

This morning in particular, you just wished you had gotten to drink your coffee alone- but your fiance was just arriving from a shift at the E.R., and you had to deal with his graphic description of a dick that had been cut in half by a broken wine glass. You were still trying to forget about it. At least you lived close enough to Vought- just a ten minute subway trip away - so you didn’t have to wake up much earlier than that. It was just lucky you knew how to do your make-up on the move, another time-saving skill you’d learnt in your college years. 

You heard him drinking the last of his coffee- doing that big slurp noise he always did, and you finally decided to take the document with his schedule- ready to tell him about his day. 

He was tired -he always was, but today he seemed particularly so, even behind the hint of a smile the cupcake had left him with. You could tell by his posture under those cheesy button up burgundy silk pajamas, shoulders too slumped, hips rested against the counter. You weren’t surprised- according to Maddie, ever since they’d debuted him close to two years ago to the public, he’d been worked non-stop. It was only time until he broke, you thought- but you could never say it to her. Your aunt had always been too good at pushing people further than they could reach, and too good at seeing only ahead of her; John was just another one of her subjects. 

“Alright”, you finally said, seeing the subtle move of his shoulders straightening at your voice, “Ready to hear about your day, birthday boy?”

He groaned in response, the hint of his smile completely being wiped away, “I guess…”

You pressed a smile for him, but mentally frowned reading over his schedule- he was packed, of course. “What’s that? Not excited about being 24?”, they’d even put an interview right after his birthday celebration- his 1 hour long birthday celebration. They as in Maddie and Mr. Edgar. “Only one more year till the big 25. Aren’t you excited?”

This piqued at his curiosity. “What’s the big 25?”

“It’s when your brain finishes developing.”, you replied, remembering the information from back in the day, when you were still trying to get your Psychology’s degree. “Your frontal cortex- the one in charge of your personality and all- it stops growing at around 25 years old. So you get only one more year of acting like a dumbass without people holding it against you.”, you added that last one joke to make him laugh- it worked. He wasn’t used to people throwing curse words around him. “Congrats!” 

“Just one more year, huh?”, he said, more seriously than you expected. “That’s kind of sad.”

“No way- it’s great.” you shook your head, “After 25… it’s like your brain rewires. You’re not embarrassed anymore, you get some self-esteem back from when you were a kid.”, you couldn’t help but smile to yourself, remembering how stupidly shy you were back when you were his age. It wasn’t that long ago, really, just four years- but it felt like another lifetime, somehow. “10 out of 10, if you ask me. Anyway–”, you gave one more sigh, before turning your attention back to him, “Let me tell you about your day. So- it officially starts at 9.10 where you- oh. I didn’t know this. You’re getting a new suit!”

His eyebrows rose, “I thought that wasn’t until September.” 

“Hmm, maybe they wanted to launch it at today’s park inauguration for your birthday- which is at around 11.30, by the way. So you get your suit fitted and all, then it’s an one hour drive, and then the inauguration. After that, lunch, and after…”, she frowned. “You have to have tea with- with Margaret Pataki and her friends ...?” , no way they were making the kid spend his birthday with a bunch of rich old ladies that wanted to get in his pants. You couldn’t believe Maddie. What in the world could have they offered your aunt to get the privilege of The Homelander’ s time on his birthday? Unbelievable.  You huffed. “Well… too bad you have your weekly marketing meeting. You’ll have to miss it.”

“I thought that wasn’t until Thursday.”, he frowned, but there was a hint of relief behind his confusion. 

“It’s not-”, you shot a look at him, “But you should get to rest for a couple hours on your birthday, don’t ya?”, you winked at him- and then moved on, before he could protest any further. Better not to think about it too much, or you’d get extremely mad at your aunt. “And then… your birthday celebration!”

“You’re coming, right?”

You looked up from the paper, surprised at his sudden intensity as he cut you off. You found those crystal blue eyes boring at you- like you were another cupcake, expectating of your reply.

“ ‘Course.”, you simply smiled- surprisingly secretly pleased. You liked him- he was a nice guy, behind all the pizzazz that Vought put him through in front of the cameras. Perhaps too nice, in your opinion- there was some trauma somewhere in there, you could tell. But you didn’t weren’t close enough to him to recommend therapy or something, although you had suggested it to Maddie… who obviously shrieked at the thought of their golden child going to the shrink. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Johnny.” 

“Thank god-”, he sighed, rolling his eyes in sass, “If I have to deal with Stan or Madelyn or any of the other old farts there by myself, I’ll laser my own foot.” 

This made you laugh. It always surprised you whenever he showed a bit of bite, as it seemed like whenever he was with Maddie or Edgar, he seemed like the best behaved pupil in the boarding school- and whenever he was in front of the public, he was an absolute boy-scout. “Oh- come on. I’m sure Noir’s gonna be there too. I’m not your only friend here, you know?” She hoped so, at least. John seemed to like Black Noir, although his presence in the Vought building was far and apart, since they hadn’t officially re-debuted him under the company’s name yet.

He shot you one last skeptical look before taking the folder with the rest of the documents- this was your dismissal, and you took it. It was ten to six, and he had to be in the training center soon. 

“Anyway- I’ll take my leave. Maddie’s probably sent me my tasks for the day already.”, you heard a low distracted hum coming from him, already walking to the door. Before you left, you peeked at him one last time, before saying: “Happy birthday.”

He looked up just as you waved, and there was a hint of a smile in his face- good. You smiled back, and finally, slammed the door closed.

 

-

 

When you worked at Vought- more specifically, in their superhero division, every single day felt like standing in the middle of the sea during a storm- wave after wave of issues and tasks coming at you, suffocating you at times. Truth be told, you weren’t supposed to be working there- you were far too unqualified, both emotionally and academically. 

When your aunt Maddie had found out about your mother’s disease, she, of course, had refused to help her. She had always been resentful at how resentful your mom had been of her, at how she had chosen a professional life path while your mom chose to have you at just seventeen, dropping out of school to form a family. Just your average sisters’ feud, splashed with just a bit of new wave feminism and abandonment issues. However, knowing you had dropped out of college, Maddie was kind enough to offer you a job in her workplace- none other than Vought Enterprises. Big shot shit. 

She had told you that she wouldn’t make any promises, she wouldn’t work with you, and she wouldn’t slide you in with the big supes, where she worked. She had hustled her ass off to be where she was- she wouldn’t let your wormy little self run on the path she had so laboriously paved. You were okay with that- any corporation job would pay more than what you were doing in the dingy bar downtown where you’d been working since you dropped off college. Besides, you knew your aunt had never been all there- the love-hate she always showed you wasn’t personal, it was just a thing she did.

It didn’t help that you weren’t even more than seven years younger than her, so a lot of your childhood memories involved playing with her teen self. She was more a cousin than an aunt, to be fair. So there were a lot of things you could easily let slide- her insane mood swings was one of them. You knew she meant well- behind all of her power plays and degradation.

Either way, that didn’t end up happening- you working for a less important division, like pharmacy. As soon as she suggested Mr. Edgar to give you a job he was into the idea- he liked to keep things between family. And in hindsight, it was understandable. The things that happened behind the scenes for supes weren’t half as glamorous or exciting as they seemed to be on camera.

This morning had been particularly busy, the waves of work slowly turning into a tsunami, as Homelander’s birthday was a top priority for the entire department. He was the star, after all- had been for almost three years now. He was Vought’s face and voice, their personality. The bright eyed, all-american, charming, strongest to ever exist superhero. America turned into the shape of a man. Everything they’d ever dreamed, they were training into this twenty-something-year-old. Any excuse to celebrate him was good enough for them- because it was as if they were celebrating Vought itself.

That’s why you’d been running all over New York the entire morning. The tailor had managed to mismeasure John’s shoulders, somehow, and they needed two more of the handmade eagle feather golden shapes that went… well, you didn’t know where they went. You had only gotten the gist of it, along with a brown envelope to take to the goldsmith- any goldsmith that would get them done before 11.30 a.m., when Homelander was supposed to debut his new suit to the world, to mark a new era or something.

Luckily, it was 11 sharp as you ran through Vought’s main hall’s doors, and 11.04 as you knocked the costume division’s door on the 45th floor. You were breathless, knowing that he had to be on the other side of the city, to Fort Lee in less than half an hour- although seeing how tight they were, he was probably going to fly to the inauguration. The city council had granted him his very own children’s park after he’d saved a school bus from sinking into the Hudson a month ago, and they had chosen to inaugurate it the very day of his birthday. As if he had nothing else to do on that day.

Maddie opened the door, blonde waves all over the place, breath ragged. You knew the signs, she had been yelling at someone- and you were lucky it wasn’t you. You saw a flash of dark blue somewhere in the background and you knew it was John- and your curiosity was piqued. Would the new suit be too different? At least it seemed they’d keep his colors. 

“Where are they?”, your aunt demanded.

Wordlessly, you took out a fancy necklace case out of the bag you were holding, “I had to find a different place- our goldsmith was taking too long to decide whether he could do them or in time or not.”, you explained, as she snatched it off your hands and opened to inspect them. While she did that, you subtly went on your tippy-toes, trying to catch the new suit without her knowing. “I think they look just like the mold-so…” 

“Perfect.”, she concluded, slamming it closed, and she took one look at you, with those severe eyes of hers. “Go to the 72th. They need help with the party.” 

After that, she slammed the door on your face. Oh well- you’d see it later, hopefully. 

 

—

 

The 72th was a mess- as it always was, since it was the floor where most Vought only parties were held, the ones no outsiders should know about. Before, you would have thought that that meant something sexual- perhaps some sort of massive over the top superhero and congressmen orgy, the kind conspiracy theorists would talk about- but soon you found out it was not the case. Rather- it was the kind of party where millionaires would get drunk and discuss whether bombing another South Asian country would make them profits or not. You didn’t know which of the two types of parties were worse.

This time, though, at least the purpose of the preparations was much more innocent- just a small party for every person in Homelander’s life to celebrate him and his birthday. It was kind of impressive so many people showed up, in your opinion. It was the 4th of July, after all- most everyone would choose to celebrate it with their families at the park- or even just watch the fireworks from their TV at home. Instead, about twenty or more people were there, running around with you- decorating, inflating balloons, making every cookie in the dish look beautiful and photogenic. All for him- everyone wanted him to be pleased. You were sure that as long as he was allowed to eat enough of them, he’d be just as happy. 

One thing you ended up noticing about the attendees was the variety, or more like, the lack of thereof. Most people there were some of Vought’s scientists, the ones you only knew of by their pictures on the Vought’s Best wall. You wondered what they had to do with Homelander, or if they were there just for protocol. Maybe these were the kind of people Edgar wanted him to surround himself with. Important people- people who did good for humanity. 

And no, no Black Noir to be found.

Interestingly enough, even they were helping with the organization. Perhaps they were close, you wouldn’t know. You didn’t know much about John’s past aside from what you’d figured out by yourself- and what the public knew. 

Either way, he was about to arrive, and you were to get Maddie’s gift ready for him. The box was a bit too big for it- but it needed the space, you guessed. You just wondered if the box was necessary at all. 

Somebody heard the elevator sound starting to ding up- and began shushing everyone, as they started crowding around the room, hiding the big table with the cake and different foods that they had set up in the middle of the room behind them. You, of course, didn’t want to steal any spotlight from someone who could actually be important to him, so you placed yourself to the side, excited for him to arrive. You knew he was going to love this; he loved attention- even affection, as much as he tried to hide it.

The elevator finally dinged on their floor, and the doors opened, and-...

“Happy birthday!”, everyone shouted- only for Maddie to come out, her heels clicking as she saw on her that particular face she made when she scolded someone- her words drowned by their scream. Everyone made a confused noise- wasn’t it supposed to be…?

Then- a massive spot of blue walked in- a young man with wide shoulders, an unhesitant stroll and perfectly coiffed blonde hair- clad in an imposing red and blue suit. Homelander.

You began singing Happy Birthday- loudly, completely drowning everyone’s confusion and whatever Maddie was nagging the young supe about- and everyone was super quick to join. And you had the pleasure to see John’s face go from a slight frown to a bright expression- as everyone sang for him- claps and even stomps to go with it. 

But… there was something off in his smile as he started recognizing the faces around him. You saw his eyes go through every person in the room with a strange restraint- like he was holding back something. Then- they fell on you, and they stayed there, somehow, it seemed that it made that off feeling fade off. You clapped and sang more excitedly.

“Happy birthday, dear… John-Homelan-Johnny !”, everyone laughed, as nobody quite knew how to address him, “Happy birthday to you!” 

You saw him laugh- eyes looking around in surprise at the decorations. Everything was red, white and blue- with lots of golden details, that had been your touch. They were the expensive kind, but anyone could tell they weren’t set by professionals. You thought it added a homey touch that he’d enjoy- and he did, as he quite didn’t know what to do with himself, with his hands, as everyone clapped and whistled for him. 

“Oh-!”, he finally said, “Thank you- thank you, guys!”, he was trying to play it cool, calming them awkwardly. 

After that, the short event officially started. The attendees started mingling amongst each other, coming up in groups at times to talk to John, who seemed more interested on whatever was going on on the food table. You had caught him eyeing it from time to time whenever he was left alone for a second or two, as if he was deciding whether he could have a treat or not .

Meanwhile, you were busy guarding Maddie’s gift- which was secretly the only reason you were here at all. Not by your own volition, of course- you’d obviously come to John’s party if it was up to you. But… somehow, you felt that without your aunt’s express invitation it would have created problems for you. Sometimes it felt like Maddie got insanely possessive of the kid- as if anyone could come and snatch him away from under her management and steal her progress doing that. You didn’t quite know- all you really knew is that whenever you made a small observation, offered a small detail you’d noticed about him, she responded incredibly bad.

It wasn’t too bad, though. At least you were saving yourself from awkward conversations with strangers- plus, sometimes John caught your eyes and smiled at you. He had even tried to make his way to you a couple times, always interrupted by a new group of people who called for his attention.

He looked good in his new suit, you had to admit. A far cry from the leotardish one-piece he had before- that only worked to accentuate his still teensy physique, still too skinny and lanky for what he was supposed to be Edgar’s final vision of him- this new suit was magnificent. It looked like it was a two piece, for once- which he was probably thankful for- held by a strong golden (gold?) belt, and a high collar, covering just enough of his neck to draw attention to the slight v line it formed. He had some padding, she knew that- but it was just enough, not to transform his actual size, but to accentuate it. He looked more mature, more secure in his skin, and it showed - even if just a little bit.

Either way, you could hear her gift getting more and more agitated by the minute- so it was a relief when you heard her voice loud, commanding everyone’s attention.

“Let’s open your gifts, John.” Maddie said, coming up from behind and slapping a hand on his shoulder, making him jump a little. 

The party moved to the gifts table, where a small pile laid. You dutifully took the box you’d been guarding on the corner of the room and started walking it by it with a bit of difficulty, mostly because it kept moving all over the surface- but also because it was making your nose itch.

By the time you had gotten there, John had already started opening some of his gifts. Someone got him an insanely expensive wine you knew he wasn’t even going to try, and someone else a piece of pottery. It was hard to make someone like him a gift- what could you even get someone who could have anything? Not that John ever asked for anything, though. But he could- and everyone was aware of that. Vought made sure they were.

As soon as Maddie saw you with the box, she took it from your hands and walked up to him- and the second he turned to it, his face illuminated. 

“A dog?!”, he took it from her almost immediately, sitting on the floor with it on his lap- hands fighting to open the wrapping as soon as he was settled. 

“Oh John!”, Maddie scoffed, annoyed, “You spoiled it for everyone else!”

He didn’t seem to hear her though- entranced on the unwrapping, and you couldn’t help to hold your hands together on your chest, excited with anticipation. You were sure he was going to love it.

And as soon as the little guy jumped from inside the box- you know he did.

“Oh, lord!”, he exclaimed, as the small dog started barking and twisting in his grasp- as excited to see him as he was, its tiny tail wagging so hard it was moving its entire little body with it. “Oh, my god!”

The dog, a small Jack Russel with a big, brown spot over one of his eyes, barked excitedly, and you were sure you could see John’s eyes shining with tears, sat on the floor while everyone else aww’d at them. You could tell that- for once- he had forgotten about the people around him, as he let the puppy jump on his legs, on his chest, licking his face, sat back on his hands, as if he was stopping himself from squeezing the little thing. He was happy, so happy , and the dog was too.

“I can’t believe it!”, he gasped, again, as he finally decided he needed to pet it, getting rid of the thick gloves that his new suit had, grabbing it with both hands. The puppy barked at him, tongue out, and a laugh escaped from his mouth. “You’re the cutest thing I’ve seen in my life !”

The puppy wriggled its way out of his grasp, and jumped at his face again, licking him- and everyone aww’d once again and clapped. You finally unglued your eyes from the adorable scene to your aunt- and she looked incredibly pleased with herself. You would be too, this was probably the first time you’ve seen him actively elated.

Suddenly, she was startled by something- and you saw her hand going to her blazer’s pocket, picking her cellphone in a second. As she walked away with it, you took a step closer to him- and he turned to you.

“Did you know about this!?”, he asked, incredulous, fighting against the dog’s excited licks, “I can’t believe it!”

You couldn’t help the smile on your lips as you saw him. “Obviously. I went to pick him with her!” you crossed your arms over your chest- still remembering the horrors of the testing lab you’d gone get the poor dog from. It had been a month ago, and the dog had stayed with Maddie until now, “He was not the youngest puppy in the uh- adoption center but…”

“Shush, he’s perfect.”, he interrupted you, holding it to his chest, and turning to you, “What’s his name?”

“I’m not sure actually-”, you turned towards where your aunt had left- and you saw her smiling into the phone, a small skip on her step- and you knew that body language. She was sucking up to someone on the other end of the line. “We could ask Maddie if she named him when she comes back.”

But as you said that, Maddie actually came back- almost running in the short steps her heels allowed.

“Let's get this over with”, she whispered to you, as she walked by you taking over the center of the small round that Had formed around him, “Hey, everyone! Let's cut the cake!”

Everyone agreed happily- but you frowned, running to follow her as she went to the food table, already starting to make space for it. You knew that this was supposed to come at the end of the party, but not even half an hour had gone by yet- what was she doing?

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw John's eyes shoot from you to her to Edgar, as he as well tried to figure out what was going on.

“Maddie-”

“Seems like his birthday interview got delayed a couple hours”, she whispered to you excitedly, almost like a secret, “Guess who'll get to make up for his fatal mistake of not seeing Mrs. Pataki and her friends!”

A sense of disgust immediately took over your stomach, as you realized why she was so happy. She was making John spend time with those women after all- she was going to get him to butter them up for Vought On his own fucking birthday. 

“Go help with the cake.”

You felt sick.

Behind you, you heard John approach and Madelyn’s arm immediately shoot to get a hold of his forearm and guide him to the center of the table, the dog still in his arms.

Suddenly, a lot of things started happening simultaneously. Edgar was on the scene now, - a cameraman that you’d seen wandering about the event next to him - finally caring about this party at all, as he seemed to be giving him directions about how to encapsulate the happy event. 

Maddie, on the other hand, stood next to Homelander- whose eyes seemed far, as he heard whatever she was telling him, his lips pressing in some sort of emotion you didn’t have time to figure out, eyes looking far away from the scene unfolding. You got closer, as you started fixing the cake decorations, and got to hear some of it.

“And you'll show off your fucking new suit and tell her ‘ You like it, Margie?’ like she's the woman of your dreams, okay? She needs to go home and tell Pataki that Vought's doing great things while she considers divorcing his ass. You need to make up for the time you made her lose, John.” she was instructing right next to his ear, and he seemed more out of it by the second, “You'll be so fucking sorry to her she won't doubt for a second that you made a honest mistake with your schedule.” 

People started gathering as well- their loud chatter surrounding them like a massive beehive, buzzing so close to the table it was even starting to make you dizzy and desperate, as you fought to make one of the star decorations stay up. One of the scientists came up to you with a lighter, offering to turn the single candle on and you nodded, mindlessly as your focus kept shifting to him, and the way his gaze dissociated more and more- and you were actually worried now. You’d never seen him like this, not this badly. 

“Homelander!”, Edgar called, his serious nasal voice adding a new layer to the buzz, just like the scientist's lighter he couldn't get lit on. “Move one step to the left and turn a little, the lighting's bad there!”

“Seriously - apologize like a fucking dog, you hear?”

“Fuck”, you cursed under your breath- snatching the lighter yourself and trying- getting to turn on.

The camera started snapping- and it added another layer. A group laughed loudly in the background. Edgar kept giving needless instruction. The dog started wriggling, running out of his grasp. Madelyn kept barking into his ear.

“You'll lick her feet- and…”

And you could almost hear it before it happened. 

“Madelyn, I fucking GET it !”

The loud high sound- the sound his lasers made.

The crowd gasped, shocked- but more importantly, the dog started fucking screaming in pain.

“Oh- no!”

Someone screamed- and all hell broke loose. John ran from the table to the side- where his laser had left a dark, charred line that ended with… with the poor puppy laying on the floor, bleeding and crying. You ran after him.

“Oh no- no, no, no, no…”, he was on his knees, and you fell next to him as he whispered the words to himself, holding the poor thing as it wriggled, its loud shrieks vibrating in your ears. His hands were starting to get covered in blood, and its fur was so bloody- flesh so mangled you couldn't make sense of any of it. “No- please !”

You were speechless, shocked, and the blood was draining from your face by the second. “It was an accident!”, you were immediate to comfort him, but his eyes were glued to the animal- unable to think, to do anything, “It was an accident, John, and-and…”

You looked around- but nobody thought like you- nobody else was stepping up to comfort him. Instead, everyone stared in… fright , taking fearful steps away from the scene like he was a monster- and that made you so insanely mad.

“I-I killed him!”, he exclaimed in horror. “Oh, God, I fucking killed him!”

“ No, you didn't! ”, your hands went to his shoulders, shaking him a little as his eyes filled up with tears- and your heart was going a mile a minute, “He's crying ! He's still alive!”

“N-no, no, I-”

“John!”, Maddie’s voice shouted- and you looked up to see her walking to you, angry, as she got out of her shock, “What the hell was that?! Are you insane?! Are you retarded ?!”

He turned slightly to her, eyes full of tears and remorse and pain- and you couldn't take it anymore.

You stood up like a spring and took a step between them.

“Madelyn!”, you looked at her in the eyes, heart still drumming, “ Are you fucking serious?!”

You saw her eyes widen and her mouth fall open.

She started sputtering your name, visibly shaken. You'd never ever had spoken like this to her. She was always the one that was right, the one whose decisions just weren't questioned.

“Y-you stay out of this!”, she finally managed, and tried to push you to the side- but you slapped her hand away.

“No, I won't! Not this fucking time, Aunt Maddie.” you stood your ground, stomping a foot.

There was a rage in you burning- and you instantly realized this wasn't just about this, right now. This was a rage that had been slowly burning- building up these last six months as you'd witnessed how they treated this kid, how they exploited every single second of his time. How tight his leash was. How simply sad and alone he looked all the time.

It had been burning since your mother had been diagnosed with that heart condition- and how ironically heartless her sister had been to her. How she'd offered you the job the same way someone offers leftovers to a starving stray dog, and how you had to swallow your dignity and take them.

It had been burning, you'd even say, after the first day Maddie had started this fucking job, and how she blew you off when you went to her apartment with a cake you'd made her to celebrate it- saying she had coworkers over and she couldn't deal with a child like you here, too, as if they were too important for you to even see them.

She growled your name one last time, “You're about to lose your job.”

“Then fucking do it, Maddie.”, you hissed back, feeling venom in your voice, “Fire me. Fire me! Who wants to work in a company that depends on how much they can exploit some twenty-year-old, anyway? Oh, but the second he makes one mistake you all look at him like he's a monster, right?!”

You couldn't help to turn around, including everyone in your rant now- every single person that was important in John’s life, who was looking at him like he was going to laser them next. Him, who was still holding onto the crying puppy, hands drenched in his blood.

“Don't look at him like that! God- look at him ! He didn't do it on purpose! You all pushed him to do it!”

You felt frustration building in you- as your eyes started to burn as well, angry. No, you couldn't let yourself cry, you needed to speak up!

You saw Maddie about to say something else when someone took a step forward- Mr. Edgar.

“Okay, okay everyone…” he had his hands raised up, voice infuriatingly calming and imposing. “Let’s calm down. You-”, he pointed at a random woman, who jumped at his calling, “Take the dog to the fifteenth, there must be a vet somewhere there.”

The woman quickly stepped forward- a middle aged with a messy bun hanging off of her head- arms in front of her, ready to take the still wailing dog from John while putting the most distance from him she could. Your eyes followed the movement as he extended the creature to her- his hands still shaking. For some reason, as this happened, you felt absolutely insane- like you were some schizoid character In a movie, and everyone else was just watching your crazy rants unfold. 

“And you- miss… Stilwell?”, he continued, turning to you- and as you shook your head (you didn't share your aunt’s last name, thank you ), he held a hand up, like he didn't actually care about that, “Why don't you take Homelander here home? He's still a bit shaken.”

And you're the only one here not afraid of his lasers, seemed to be the tacit rest of his request. 

At that, you stood straighter, facing him as a bitter bile pooled in your throat - desperate to keep jawing off about all you've been keeping, seeing these last months, about every single thing that they'd knowingly been doing to him- but you held back for him. Edgar was right, he needed to get away from this,  he needed some peace- and perhaps not to have to spend his birthday with some old lady who would be pawing at him all night. 

You swallowed it and nodded at him, chest still out and shoulders squared, like you were a shield and shot one last look at Maddie.

She was boring holes into you- mouth in a thin line, dark blue eyes unblinking in anger, hands fisted to her sides. You knew that look, your mother had been the end of it one too many times. But unlike her, you did not relent- and Maddie should better get used to it.

Then, you simply turned, falling to a kneel once again, as you grabbed his shoulder. His eyes were on you as well, those clear blue eyes, still watery, still shaking. His hands were drenched in blood, as was the rest of his new suit- he looked so small in that moment, so scared.

“John?”, you let your voice fall into a soft tone. At your call, his eyes tuned into an emotion you couldn't quite decipher- aside from intense gratefulness, “Let’s go home.”

[theangelcatalogue]

ISLAND OF THE LOVESICKNESS || ★!

꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦

Romantic!☆

Gender neutral!☆

Starting notes; Little project i wanted to make, since i love total drama and iots! This was inspired by iots but with Yandere ghosts! I will have multiple chapters, everyday one vitcm! I hope you all like it! (IOTS WAS MADE BY @eavee-ry )

TW: BLOOD, VIOLENCE, KILLING, OBSSESIVE BEHAVIOR, YANDERES, POSSESIVE BEHAVIOR, THROW UP, OUT OF CHARACTER, BAD ENGLISH, BAD GRAMMAR AND MADE BY A MINOR!! YOU DON'T NEED TO READ IF YOU DON'T WANT! (Tell me if i missed something)

꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦

They are death

Every single one of them, you know that

You were hired by your own uncle Chris McLean to be a intern at Total Drama, you would be something like a camp counselor! Your job was to check the campists

People said your uncle was a amazing guy, but you knew it was a lie, you never knew anyone more arrogant that him

Well, at least you have something to do at summer! And it would be fun see some drama...

Your job was to be a baby-sitter to resume, you were checking up and taking care of tennagers! People of your age! It was kinda fun but you were so tired of them

The nice thing is that they seemed to like you! Even Heather, but sometimes they were acting toward you(you thought that was weird cause it dind't make so many time you knew them)

It was going to have a challenger! Everyone was there except for Beth, you decided to look for her

In the florest you decided to worry, where is she? You heard a sound in the cave, as the beautiful curious you are, you got in

A bloody axe...

A lost arm...

Her body was bloody

She was dead.

SHE WAS DEAD!?

You wanted to throw up, the smell of blood...

You felt sick

You Chris and the interns, and they discover that a killer is in the island, what should we do!?

Chris had the idea of left the campers here

You tried to convice him other wise, but when you noticed you already in a boat leaving the island, you felt guilty, Chris made you leave them

Chris dind't left you because how would him explain this to your parents? Your Mother would kill him!

And when you came back home, he said to tell that you were in vacation...?

You passed the next months feeling guilty and sick, you wanted to throw up, and sometimes you really did it

You should had stayed, or at least try to convice Chris....

One day, Chris called you to go with him and two new interns to go back to the island and save them

You knew why Chris was doing that

He wanted to be the hero, that's it

But you decided to go, cause now it's time

Time to the truth, and let's be honest

You were afraid of the truth.

꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦

I left the boat, this place looks so weird to be honest, you felt sick again

Something was wrong, you knew that! But now it's time

What happend to them

" I hope they are okay... "

I was afraid, afraid to go anywhere in this island, i dind't wanted to do that, but at same time...

I was scared

I felt something in your shoulder, a hand

" Don't worry Y/n! We going to find them, i hope... "

Sierra was trying to comfort me, but i could look at her eyes and see that she knew the truth

" Amigos! Everything will be alright, but i hope we have everything to survive here, Chris dind't explain so well "

Alejandro was in Sierra's side while looking at the island and looking around, he was right, Chris dind't explained how would you guys find the others, does him even know how to walk around this island?

I don't think so

" Can we stop to talk! Come on you- we have job to do! "

Chris said and started to walk, me, Sierra and Alejandro just followed him

Something is wrong in this place, i feel watched while walking

Oh god.

꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦

Notes:

★ THIS IS SOOOOO BAD HELP WHAT??? i tried ★

★ I hope you all like it! I will try to be more online even thought school is making this nearly impossible ★

★ Idk but Ily you guys <3 ★

[unidentified-ending]

What's up bro! I was just wondering weather you could make a little oneshot-headcanon about a male student in aizawas class who's younger brother (age 4-5) is quite dangerous due to his quirk but he's never done anything and he's been declined from multiple daycares and his parents are super stressed but Aizawa ends up taking the male reader younger brother to U.A's daycare and everyone in the dorms loves him bc he's so cute.

Thanks man, have a good day!!!!!

A/N: of course bro, this request is so cute so buckle up for some fluffy, maybe ooc aizawa and a cute younger brother.

This can be read as a trans or cis dude but if trans js imagine you got top surgery at a young age (not that young tho!). It's not mentioned anyways

Your parents were stressed. Like stressed stressed.

Your younger brother with (h/c) hair and (e/c) eyes was boping around in your living room.

His name was Kuragari and he could destroy all of reality in one clap of his hand

But it's never happened before, but most people stay away from the cute ball of happiness.

When he was a child (2-3), everyone would stay away from him but he had you

Y/n L/n, a (personality trait) boy who was in class 1a, UA. Aspiring hero, and the best brother anyone could ask for.

Anyways back to the point.

Your parents were stressed, Kuragari's power was getting in the way of his daycare applications.

He was dangerous and so nobody came near him bc of "the sake of the other children"

And your parents both worked and you went to school so it was a hell of a time trying to do something for him

He'd usually get a baby sitter but he'd cry a couple of hours in, begging for you and his parents.

Which made either you, your mother or father come home from work early and have to settle him down

But that when the offer of you life came true.

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

"Y/n" you hear a faint voice call for you.

"Y/n!" The same voice but louder said again.

"Y/N!" The person said and you shot up straight away, the redness in your eyes and the bags under them were a huge sign of no sleep.

You looked around, you were in your classroom but nobody was in there, just your homeroom teacher calling out for you.

"Yes sir! I'm up, I'm up." You exclaimed into the empty room, your brother had woken up crying at exactly 2:27 am yesterday night and your parents wouldn't wake up so you had to deal with Kuragari by yourself and that lasted duntil 4:16 am when he decided to sleep. And you knew you had to wake up at 7 tomorrow so only 3 hours of sleep didn't toll well on your body.

"It's break, why are you still sleeping?" Aizawa questioned, though not making any visable facial expressions.

"I-uh, I just didn't get enough sleep. I'm okay" You said, blinking in drowsiness

Aizawa raised an eyebrow and said "Are you sure? Is there something I need to know?"

"Nah, not really. It's just my younger brother Kuragari. He's been declined by so many daycares' bescuse his quirk is too dangerous for the daycare but hes never actually used it before." You explain and Aizawa listens intently.

"He can break reality in one clap of his hands but he's so cute, he's 5 this year and me, my mother and my father have been extremely stressed about this issue because nobody can baby sit him for more then five hours before he starts to throw a fit and cry. And we have to take care of him at night and its very tiring."

Aizawa listened to your story all the way through and at the end he said, "How about we take him and we can take care of him? It's up to your parents though." Your eyes glimmered at the idea and you told him you'd ask them this evening.

That evening~~~~

"Mum, Dad. I've got news! Sensei Aizawa said he's take in Kuragari into the U.A daycare! Only if you want." You exclaimed when you got into the house and ran straight into your living room.

"Wait what?" Your father said, a hint of surprisment in his voice. "Really?" You mother said, a huge smile growing on her face.

"Yes!" You shouted with picking up your little brother and he immediately started laughing and clapping his hands together in excitement even though he had no idea what you were talking about.

A few hours later

"So what do we need to do to get Kuragari in there?" Your mother said while feeding him some food.

"Nothing, we just have to bring him in tomorrow and they take him in, look after him and there is another sweet girl called Eri in there. She's so sweet and I think they would get along together."

"Are you sure about this, honey?" Your father said to your mother

"It's a opportunity we must take. For the sake of our sleep" Your mother yawned.

Your father nodded on agreement.

"Alright then, but it's your responsibility to dress and wash him in the morning because we have work tomorrow. Fair?" Your father asked while taking a sip of his coffee.

"Fair" you agreed while picking up Kuragari and placing him on the couch and turning on some baby shows.

The next morning~~~~~~

You looked at a snoozing Kuragari at 6:50 am. You knew he was gonna throw a fit about waking this early but he had to get up.

You picked up the snoozing boy and cradled him in your hands, gently rubbing your finger over his forehead to wake him.

He started to fidget in your hands and kick his legs about. That's when he opened his ayes and started wailing.

"Shh, shh it's okay. I need you to wake up for me." You say as you kissed his head and put him in his baby chair.

You made his baby breakfast and ate your own, he was still glaring at you for waking him up early.

After that, you ran a bath for the two of you while he played with some of his toys.

"Kuragari." You exclaimed and he came crawling over to the bathroom with a toy car in his hand.

You undressed him and put him in the bath and you also got in. He flapped around with his bath toys in the bath, accidentally hitting you with some bubbles.

"You silly child" you sighed before taking him out and dressing him in some new clothes.

"Alright lil bro, I'm gonna carry you to school today. So climb on my back." You said while taking your keys and unlocking your front door.

You crouched down do he could climb on your back and he crawled up your back and seated himself right on your shoulders.

Off you two go to school~~~

Surprisingly you were the only two there in your class. Mean class did start at 8:20 and you two got there at 7:59 so it was pretty early.

You went to sit at your desk and then you took your brother off your head and placed him on your desk, then placed your own head on the desk, hoping for some of your own sleep.

Your promised it would 5 minutes but 5 minutes turned into 15.

Your self-consciousness was telling you to get awake and that's when you shot up awake, immediately in search for you younger brother.

"Kuragari" you said, your eyes darted across the room but all you could see were your fellow classmates crowded around something..or someone.

"Where's my brother?" You said in panic and the whole class looked at you in surprise.

"You mean this bundle of joy" Denki said as he held your smiling and laughing brother in his hands.

Your face immediately relaxed, you hadn't lost him.

"I'm so sorry guys-" you started but Mina interrupted.

"There no need to be sorry he's so cute!" She said while the rest if the class agreed with him. You went to join the classmates of yours and when he saw you he did his signature grabby hands and you picked him up.

"Bakugo saw you sleeping when he came in then me spotted your brother on his desk. He carefully just put him back on your desk and sat down."

Bakugo tsked at his desk but didn't deny it.

"What's he even doing here anyways?" Sero says as he laughs with Kuragari.

"Oh it's a long story, so-" then a door slammed open and Aizawa walked in.

"What is going here?" He questioned and everyone moved out the way of Kuragari and Aizawa had one look at the child and back at you and he knew you two were siblings.

Kuragari on the other hand started to cry at the old grizzled man and immediately started to grab onto Deku's shirt.

"Sorry man, he's a bit grumpy. I'll take him out." You say to deku and he waves it off completely fine.

When you walk out of the room, Aizawa walked out as well.

"Sorry sensei, he's just-"

"Yeah yeah, I know. Let's just get him in the daycare and we can start lessons" Aizawa said and the two of you walked to the daycare in silence.

You dropped him off to the daycare in silence where he met Eri and they got along together.

The two of you walked back together to class in silence before Aizawa said. "He looks like you".

"Really?" You say, surprised at the comment.

"Yeah, I bet he's a hard one to deal with."

"Oh he is" you say, enjoying the small talk.

"I can see where he gets it from" he says and you accidentally let out a chuckle.

You knew you had a good teacher.

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 山河令/Word of Honor.

Word of Honor is a 2021 adaptation of a novel by priest that tells the story of two beautiful murderers, their three kids, and their collective attempts to ignore the fetchquest madness that has taken over the rest of the jianghu.

Look, you know what Word of Honor is. Doing a rec for this is like doing my rec for Nirvana in Fire -- I am not introducing you to a new concept. Even if you haven't watched it, you've probably osmosed enough through the rest of Tumblr to have an opinion on it. At this point, if you haven't seen Word of Honor, I'm assuming it's for one of two reasons: either you haven't gotten around to it yet, or you haven't been sufficiently moved by what you've seen fandom do with it.

So I'm going to give you five reasons to watch the show, and they're probably not going to be the reasons you've seen already. Not to say that the other reasons are bad, but you've heard them already, right? What I've got for you are five somewhat more unexpected reasons that may just convince the fence-sitters that this nut-flavored morass of toxic relationships is worth your time.

1. No matter how gay you think it is, it's gayer

Okay, sure, you've probably been given the impression that this show is real gay. But I don't know if you know how gay it is. This show is so gay that we still haven't seen many of the other BL-flavored shows filmed around the same time period or since, because Chinese censorship gay-panicked and locked them all away before they could air, because Word of Honor was just too gay.

Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing (L-R above) are in love. The story does not make sense if they're not. There is no story if they're not. Everything else in the show is set dressing to this incredible adventure story of two horrible people who fall for one another.

Oh yeah, did I mention that they're both bad guys? One's a fascist toddler-murderer and the other's a cannibal mob boss. These two deserve one another, in every possible sense of that phrase. In any other property, they'd be the villains -- and even here, they're still kind of the villains! It's just that the heroes are worse.

What's more, their two actors absolutely understood the assignment. They got the memo. They read the book. No one ever had to sit them down midway through shooting and explain their dynamic. They had it from the table read. When given creative freedom, they chose to double down and make the gay shit even gayer.

But the actors weren't the only ones who knew what they were doing! Everybody working on the production was pretty much in full-on Let's Make A BL mode. There are no gay accidents here. It's so gay that it's actually gayer than the version that aired. If you can do a little lip-reading (though beware of spoilers in those links), you can get at the original filmed version, which had a number of lines that were too homo and/or sexual for Chinese television.

No, they don't kiss. They don't have to. This is the TV version of the tweet about, what's gayer, gay sex or whatever these two have going on? The answer is, whatever these two have going on.

It's so gay that they're not the only gays. No, I'm not going to tell you who the other gays are, in part because spoilers. But trust me, they're there. Lesbians too! And a bisexual elderly polycule! And one pair of hets that we love love love, and most other heterosexuals are creepy and gross. And if that's not an accurate representation of how the world looks to queer people, I don't know what to tell you.

2. Go nuts!

You are not prepared for the product placement.

Word of Honor started off having a budget, so they went ahead and started spending that budget in the way you do when you're making a TV show. Unfortunately, circumstances changed, and their budget became much less, which meant they couldn't keep making that TV show unless they got more dollars. But where to get a sponsor for a fairly low-profile wuxia BL property?

Enter our hero: Wolong Nuts.

I have seen actors do bumper ads in costume for products from their various sponsors, and I have seen actors do bumper ads in character for the same. But the feeling of seeing a modern product diegetically hawked mid-scene by ancient fantasy characters is like none other.

Something like 40% of Word of Honor's total budget came from this nut sponsorship. And here the thing: It worked! It sold nuts! Hell, I’d buy them if they were sold anywhere near me; I like nuts in general, and nuts that support the queers in particular.

I'm including this as a selling point because, come on, it's funny as hell. But it's also a good place to warn you that Word of Honor has what we're politely going to call a spotty use of its funds. Some things, like everyone's outfits and the score, are lavish and beautiful. Other things, like some of the sets and a lot of the CG, are janky and sad. Crowd scenes are thirty humans and a bunch of Blender assets. I've never seen so many fake plastic trees together in one place before. There's a lot of visible hairnets. Like, a lot.

The show was originally planned as being 45 episodes long. It wound up being 36 + a tiny epilogue. That's a huge cut! I’ll say to its credit that you mostly can’t feel the seams; the production team did a heroic job killing their darlings (in many senses) while keeping the narrative coherent. If you know about the original vision, though, you can identify pretty quickly where the excised material should have been. Don’t be surprised when the last two episodes in particular smack you like a hit-and-run.

They blew a truly unwise amount of the budget on costumes in general, and Wen Kexing's costumes in particular, and thank goodness. (@canary3d-obsessed has done a noble job of cataloging everyone's wardrobes, and some of the details are just stunning.) See that red outfit he's wearing there, with the elaborate, delicate embroidery? That apparently took two people literal months to hand-sew. It's a terrible use of limited funds, and I am living for it. Even when Wen Kexing looks awful, he looks stunning -- especially when you put him side by side with Zhou Zishu, who is wearing the jianghu equivalent of slutty yoga pants and a thrift-store dollar-bin t-shirt that says IT'S WINE O'CLOCK SOMEWHERE.

So if, while you’re watching, you’re ever disappointed by the quality of the production in front of you, just console yourself by thinking: That’s nut money, baby.

3. The ghosts (and everyone else) doing the mosts

This is a show that somehow managed to accumulate a tremendous supporting cast of actual grown-ass adults, then had the wisdom to make them play a wide variety of balls-to-the-wall bonkers roles.

You can't throw a rock in a crowd scene without hitting a dozen actors with resumes as long as their arms, who have been acting since before you were born. Apparently they poached a couple veteran film and stage actors from other contemporaneous productions and had them come over to film bit parts on their days off. If you see a character played by an older actor who's getting more lines and face time than you think their character strictly deserves relative to their importance to the plot, and you're like, hm, I wonder if this older actor has a career that includes roles in several dozen other shows and/or stage productions, the answer is yes.

I've seen the tone of the show described as melodramatic, but I don't think that's quite it -- it's more operatic. People speak to the middle distance and play to the back row. Several actors have the body language and line delivery that makes it seem like they're always about three words away from breaking into song. Several of my favorites are downright camp. It's magnificent.

Statistically, everyone in this show is a bad guy. There are the respectable people who don't mean to be bad guys, but wind up being bad guys anyway because they support bullshit systems. There are the morally grey folk who are willing to become bad guys because they think they'll be the good guys when all is said and done. And there are the bad guys who know they're bad guys and are going to chew every piece of scenery in the vicinity about it, so watch out.

My favorite collection of scene-stealing weirdos is probably the clutch of freaks that make up the ghosts of Ghost Valley. They're not actual ghosts -- this is not a supernatural show. They are instead living people who call themselves ghosts because they've found themselves on the margins of society for one reason or another, and have created their own little society! With hookers! And blackjack! And also a little murder, as a treat!

These ghosts are so extra that they actually have a Top Ten List, where all the ones that have code names and specific costumes hang out. How do you get on the Top Ten List? By killing one or more of the people already on it, of course! I told you these guys are villains! They're not even the only villains! They're not even the only villain organization! It's wall-to-wall bad guys around here! And oh my goodness, the actors are clearly having a ball with it.

When the screenwriter came to adapt Faraway Wanderers (the novel) into Word of Honor, she realized that there weren't a whole lot of ladies in the book -- so she invented/adapted some for the show and made most of them sinister! (In fact, if you watch Legend of Fei -- and you should watch Legend of Fei -- you can see a lot of the inspiration for said ladies.) Some of the female characters in the show were men in the book, while others weren't even in the book at all. They all feel organic, though, and not like someone was trying to get Strong Female Character Points. It's the good representation you get when there's a lot of representation, so nobody has to be The Girl, and all the girls can just be people.

...Alas that another casualty of the budget cuts is that several of the lady characters did not get to live up to their full ass-kicking potential. But that potential is still there! The badassery may be implicit instead of explicit, but you don't doubt that many of these women would eat your heart at the slightest provocation, and you would thank them while they were doing it.

This show is perfect food if you're the kind of viewer liable to get sucked up into the worlds of villains, NPCs, bit parts, optional side characters, and other narratives going on outside the main storyline. Because there's a lot going on outside the main storyline. I mean, that's kind of the running joke of the whole novel, that there's this whole complicated political plot happening, and yet our dudes are over here studiously trying to not know what the hell is going on. Obviously that's harder to preserve in a show, but it's still a key feature of the narrative. Most of the Big Power Play What-Not is always happening a few towns over from where the main party is at any given moment. I know people who've watched the drama several times and still can't explain whatever's happening with all that. That's fine. You roll with it for the sake of everything else.

So! Do you like gazing upon delightful character actors and having imagination adventures about the unexplored workings of a bunch of tantalizingly mysterious and often very sexy weirdos? Great! This will keep you busy for a good long while.

4. The juciest pining in the jianghu

I said I wasn't going to tell you about all the gay shit going on here, and I'm not. What I do want to cover, however, is how much gay shit isn't going on here -- and by that I mean just how much of the show's gay longing is unrequited. If you like it when the boy yearns for the other boy, friend, you will feast well tonight.

You have likely already, through fandom, been alerted to the existence of the biggest gremlin in the land and an understandable number of people's favorite character, immortal grandpa Ye Baiyi. What may not have been conveyed, however, is just how tragically gay this bitch is. The ultra-condensed, scrubbed-for-spoilers version of his backstory is that he was in love with a guy who got injured because of him, so he decided to stay and live on a mountain with that guy and the guy's wife and coparent their son with them, all the while never once telling the guy how he felt.

This is not me with slash goggles on. This is canon. Well, okay, the "in love with" part is only confirmed in the book, but Huang Youming, Ye Baiyi's equally gremlin-like actor, has also clearly done the reading and understands how to break your heart with it. Ugh, it's so good.

Shidifuckers, rejoice! Zhou Zishu has Han Ying, his devoted little dumpling who would -- and does -- do anything for him. Back in Zhou Zishu's regrettable (but very fashionable) fascist days, he had a bunch of little underlings; one of them was Han Ying, who still works for the same evil empire. Problem is, Han Ying isn't evil. He was never loyal to his job; he was always just loyal to Zhou Zishu. It's cute the way Wen Kexing hisses like a cat upon meeting Han Ying and immediately identifying him as a rival for Zhou Zishu's affections. If you like OTPs that occasionally roll in a service-top third, please consider that adorable muffin boy up there.

And speaking of quitting your job, have you ever had the problem where you had to orchestrate your own death to get away from your toxic boss who won't stop sexually harassing you, and that motherfucker still expects you to show up for your shift next weekend? Meet Prince Jin, who has refused to accept Zhou Zishu's resignation letter with extreme prejudice.

Zhou Zishu isn't even the only ex he's mad he drove off! But that's just a namedrop in the show; see my bonus selling point for instructions on how to get into that whole gay-ass story. [insert obligatory "Prince Jin is not Helian Yi" disclaimer here]

...Nope, uh-uh, we're not going to get into what's going on with Scorpy. Suffice it to say, this is one of those cases where the show can't outright call a thing gay (though uhhhh it sure can imply a lot of it!), but it can set up an unspoken Gay Bad Idea as a direct, textual parallel with a canon Straight Bad Idea and be like, see? see? Anyway, daddy's boy there has deliciously terrible taste. This is the one that'll have you screaming crying throwing up etc.

And then there's this handsome jackass, who isn't doing the pining, but is the unfortunately heterosexual object of the often confused and misdirected longings of his friends. About the first thing you know about Rong Xuan is that he died before the series begins, so you only see him in a few flashbacks. The precious few times you do, though, you're treated to scenes of him holding court among his besties (many of whom are the spectacularly cast younger versions of major older male characters) while they all wrestle with varying degrees of homo longing for his cocky dreamboat self. You ever wanted to fuck a straight guy so bad you got both him and his wife killed about it? Because somebody in this drama sure has!

I sense you think I'm making this all up, that I'm just a fujoshi looking at the world through rainbow-colored glasses and telling you about her favorite slash pairings. Friend, I am not. Okay, I am being a little cheeky about the last one, but I swear that everything else I have listed in this selling point is about as textual as the show could make it, if not outright straight (ha ha) from the books.

(I have a whole separate theory about how priest herself is a real-life queer, based on how basically everyone in her works is either queer-coded or a token straight who's on thin ice, but that's a subject for a completely different Tumblr post no one's ever going to read, so save us both the time and imagine I already wrote it.)

I cannot stress to you enough how much this show knew what it was doing with the queer stuff. I love how amazingly toxic so much of it is, too, because one of the big themes of the show is that secrets will destroy you and everyone you love. If you have gay longing in a society that forces you to hide that gay longing, yeah, you're going to be extra-vulnerable to making some shitty decisions because of it! You're either going to suffocate yourself by keeping silent, or you're going to open yourself to intimate partner abuse you can't reveal to anyone else, or you're going to do some murders about it! Or some combination of the three! Either way, it's not good!

Also, tell your partner about your chronic health conditions, whether they be Can't Remember My Past, Would Eat A Guy If I Had The Opportunity, Stuck Some Nails In My Chest And Am Now Dying And Also Can't Get A Boner, or Whoops Took The Nails Out Of My Chest And Still Can't Get A Boner. Oh, and tell your partner if you're about to run off and go confront your dangerous ex. And absolutely tell your partner if you're about to fake your own death. Just ... learn to have conversations with the people who love you, okay? Avoid huge amounts of narrative suffering with this one weird trick!

5. Putting his whole Zhang Zhehussy into it

See, Gong Jun (playing Wen Kexing) is not what I'd call a great actor. This is more of a case where you take a guy, you cast him as a character whose motivation can be summed up as "I want to fuck that man in half," and then you cast opposite him a man that the guy in question clearly actually wants to fuck in half. And you let the magic work.

Zhang Zhehan (playing Zhou Zishu), however, legitimately knocks it entirely out of the park. Whenever the camera's on him, it's hard to take your eyes off him. He holds his own in a sea of veteran actors. He can do comedy and tragedy with equal panache. It's lucky he's such a beautiful crier, because Zhou Zishu cries so much. I have never seen someone more perfectly portray the mood of "in love and absolutely furious about it."

As the story goes, when he auditioned, he actually wanted to play Wen Kexing -- but the director told him, look, while you'd be great at that, I can find another Wen Kexing, but I'm never going to find another Zhou Zishu.

Zhou Zishu is bad man who has done terrible things and resigned himself to suffering to atone for his crimes, and he is so mad to find himself at the end of his life suddenly having a reason to keep living. Zhang Zhehan does a pitch-perfect tsundere right up to the point where he breaks. I'm not going to call it an understated performance, because nothing in this show is understated, but it is often times subtle and always complex, and fuck does he have a good crazy grin.

One of the first things you find out about Zhou Zishu is that he's got just a couple years left to live, over which time all his senses are going to deteriorate. In fact, they've already started going. And as the show goes on, you can watch Zhang Zhehan play it so you can tell when he's missed something he should otherwise have picked up on, reacting to noises and touches a split-second late. It's a testament to what a thoughtful job Zhang Zhehan's doing, keeping track of how much of Zhou Zishu has already slipped away.

There are, if you've read the book, legitimate complaints to be made about the adaptation's interpretation of Zhou Zishu's character, and I get that. But you can't say that Zhang Zhehan isn't pulling off exactly what he means to here. I say this too as someone who loves the novel: I think it works. Given the constraints of Chinese television in particular and cinematic adaptations in general, the show made the right choices when it came to figuring out what were the more filmable, actable options, and Zhang Zhehan plays every one of those choices within an inch of his life.

Also did I mention he's like the most beautiful man to ever exist? Holy crap. You're going to be so mad about what they do to his face for the first several episodes.

Don't worry, it washes off eventually.

caveat: Kind of a bummer!

You may have been warned that this one's got a sad ending. Well ... yes and no. On the "no" side of things, there's a "secret" mini-episode 37 that rolls back one of the major points of tragedy. (It's also clearly the first version that got shot, and then they shuffled around and redubbed some material to make the aired end of episode 36.)

But oh man, not all of them. Plenty of characters we love do not make it to the end. Like ... kind of a shockingly large number. Some are dispatched offscreen, some have tragic onscreen deaths, some are probably dead given the circumstances we last see them in, and a couple aren't dead yet but are almost certainly going to be soon.

(It's also kind of a meta-bummer! I mean, I don't recommend falling down the rabbit hole of what happened with Zhang Zhehan's career after the show aired, but tl;dr, it's not great.)

So yeah, it's not an outright pain simulator, and if you've got the mettle for Nirvana in Fire or Guardian, you should be okay here. But hoo boy, don't just blunder on in expecting a cheerful romp from start to finish, because ... yeah. I said it before: This is a story about a bunch of bad guys. Bad guys don't live long lives, nor do the good people who get tangled up in their shit. Just be prepared!

bonus selling point: black and white husbands

Okay, I will tell you who one of the other pairs of gays is. You'll see the two of them show up near the tail end of the show, and then you'll decide you want to know more about what their whole deal is, and then you'll read Qi Ye, which is a novel entirely about gay pining, and then it'll be all over for you.

Ready to wander this way?

There's a number of ways to watch this one! Viki, Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime all have you covered -- but Viki's the only one that has the epilogue at the ready, so I'd go there if you can.

And I get it, if you're enough of an aging hipster that you don't want to play in the same sandbox everybody else is playing in. Believe me, I understand that impulse on a visceral level. After all, this is not a small fandom -- 7718 works on AO3 (at time of writing) isn't Untamed levels of content, but it's nothing to sneeze at. Maybe you want to leave this one for a little while longer, until the hubbub dies down a bit more and people's attention is redirected by a different gay and shiny thing. That's valid. I get it.

But if you do, I still encourage you to get around to it someday. For all its flaws -- and yeah, it's got flaws -- it's a good, solid story that makes you feel lots of feelings about some fascinating characters in some beautiful costumes, running around being real queer (and okay, occasionally straight) to beautiful music. This, to me, is television.

Fun fact! There is also a Japanese dub, if you feel like taking it at that speed, and the guy who voices Zhou Zishu is the voice of Kaworu from Evangelion, and the guy who voices Wen Kexing is the voice of Victor Nikiforov from Yuri on Ice. See what I mean???

I'm telling you, everybody ships it.

[dwailol]

Great Toss

First post ❤️‍🔥 👅

Summary: Fem reader x Bucky Barnes. Established relationship. You get a surprise visit for the night you thought you were spending alone.

Minors DO NOT INTERACT

Warnings ⚠️: smut, oral (female receiving), unprotected p in v, creampie

Word Count: 1.3k

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

The compound was empty. The lights were down low. I was enjoying my night alone or so I thought. As I was casually dancing around the living room with full control of the music, I all of a sudden felt a presence behind me.

No one was supposed to be back for days. I grab a metal decoration off the side table and hurl it into the dark corner of the room. I hear the sound of metal on metal catching. Out of the dark steps Bucky Barnes. Fuck.

“Great toss,” he says dropping it on the floor and walking towards my frozen body. He caresses my face with his vibranium hand and tucks my hair behind my ear. He leans in close and with a deep hushed voice whispers, “Did they leave you all alone in here?”

Just as I catch my breath, I lose it again at the feeling of his other hand resting on my hip. We are eye to eye. This wouldn’t be the first time he’s gotten me into a rush like this.

“What are you doing here? Everyone left today for—“ I try to explain.

He cuts me off. “Oh no, I knew that they’d be gone and that you had some sort of a ‘conflict of interest’ which makes you the heroic house sitter! For a few days right? I just wanted to get under your skin a bit with that entrance. Did it work?” He gives a smug look. It worked.

He sits down on the arm of the couch behind him and slides his metal hand down to my other hip. Blood rushes where he had his hands that move lower and lower. It had been a while since he had shown his face. That’s what I’ve been coming to learn about the hero life style—that people show up and leave and show up again when you aren’t expecting.

“You could have texted before scaring me like that,” I say.

“Well I just missed you so much doll,” he sweeps my body onto the couch with ease as he pins me under him, “I especially missed seeing those eyes get wide like that.” I feel his hand slip under my shirt. “I missed a lot of things about you.”

I think back to the first time I saw those intense eyes of his staring at me up and down. All with his eyes he told me that he would have me and that he would have me in anyway he wanted. He did. He was about to again.

“Did my good girl miss me?” he asks now squeezing at my breasts and kissing from my collar to my jaw. I take a deep breath. “I missed a lot about you too,” I respond as cool as I can.

“Show me.”

Just like that our faces smash together. Coming up for air was not a priority. He slides his hand under my back to push me as close to his body as possible. His vibranium hand clutches my thigh. There was only so close our bodies could get with all our clothes on. I pause and catch my breath saying, “We need to take these off.”

He kisses me before saying, “You’re full of great ideas bunny!” He sits up and pulls me up close to his face. “You first,” he orders. He takes off my top and stares as he glides his hand over what was his.

“No bra? Making my job easier,” he kisses all up and down me while untying the string of my lounge shorts. “You wearing anything under these?” The answer was also no and I was ready to not be wearing those shorts too.

He pushes me back down and starts peeling away his clothes down to his boxers. He finally slides my shorts off. You could see the shine from how wet I was. He towers over me and starts to run his flesh fingers along the most inner part of my thighs then lightly over my clit. He starts rubbing faster and harder. I let out a gasp.

He grabs my face with his other hand. He locks eyes with me. “I missed my pussy,” he says, inserting a finger and moving it up and down and in and out. I let out a loud moan. We both loved that I was about to be as loud as I wanted.

“Good girl. Whose pussy is this?” He inserts another finger and starts to go faster. I let out a scream and I’m already close. I hadn’t answered yet.

“You can’t cum until you tell me whose pussy is this,” as he holds my arms above my head.

“It’s yours!”

“It’s whose?!”

“It’s Bucky’s!” I cry out. I’m finally allowed to cum. I sigh out the air I’d been holding in.

“My beautiful girl,” he leans down close to my face again. “So beautiful when you’re cumming for me.” My arms are still held down and I can feel him sliding his boxers off. I can feel his precum now rubbing against my entry. I press my hips forward but he moves back to look into my eyes. The suspense was killing me.

“And you’re so so beautiful taking my cock,” and then he slides right in. He starts his first strokes. I moan and feel his girth testing my limits. Thank god he gets me so wet. Having a big dick is one thing but he knows how to use it too. I let him know just how much I’m loving it, “Fuck. Bucky I love feeling you inside me!” His beat is steady.

“That’s music to my ears Angel. Wrap your legs around me.” As I do he sits up while still inside me. I’m in the position to ride him but he never makes me do any work. He grabs my hair and pulls me in for a messy kiss. Bringing my head so that my ear is on his mouth when he says, “Now I wanna hear you sing.”

Just like that he picks up the beat hard and fast. I shriek so loudly it bounced off the walls. He pushes me back so he can see my face while he’s fucking me. I bite down on my lip. He goes harder. “I said I wanna hear you sing!” He pulls me in again so I’m yelling right in his ear to the beat of his thrusts. He smacks my ass, “Good girl!”

He rolls me back onto my back and hinges my hips up while looking over me. He starts rubbing my clit. My breath falls heavy again. “I think I’m gonna cum!”

His beat steadies as he demands, “Not until I say so. When you’re cumming I want to be cumming inside you. Do you want that Angel?” I whimper out an mhm. He picks up the pace, “Sing it for me!” Leaving me screaming “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! YES!” I hear him grunting which means he’s close too. He begins rubbing away and my pussy is absolutely throbbing waiting for the release.

“You can cum in 5,” he’s moaning.

4. I can see his neck tensing ready to spill into me.

3. He bends over me without his hand leaving my clit. Still caging me in with his other arm.

2. God I am so fucking close. “Please please please!” I beg.

“1,” he grunts out thrusting me through and multiplying my orgasm. He falls onto me with his cock still inside to fuck all his cum deep inside me, making sure none of it spills out. “I love cumming in you.” He kisses the side of my face and onto my lips again.

He gets up and lets a deep breath out. “Want some water before the next round?”

Fuck.

[phantoms-lair]

Hero's Spirit: A Vision of Nightshade

All For One did not reach the age of over 200 by not listening to his medical professionals.

He was still looking for a faster way to regain his full vision, but until then the Doctor had recommended him using a cyberpathy quirk to look through security cameras and such, so he wouldn't be out of practice with light levels, colors, and shape recognition.

He didn't enjoy it, because he disliked having his consciousness out of his body (at least unless it was going to be a permanent transfer). But he recognized the value of the Doctor's orders and did a few short bursts a day.

During one of these he noticed Tomura's little rival, Midoriya. (He would allow it until All Might finally chose a successor, then he'd encourage Tomura to switch over.) Midoriya was talking to a young woman on the sidewalk he seemed to know, who was speaking to him fondly. Maybe she had been his baby sitter when younger, or a neighbor? He focused the camera in on her.

She was beautiful, with long dark hair and purple eyes and lips that made a stark contract over pale skin. All For One felt his pulse quicken through his weak connection to his body as his heart pounded in his chest. His mouth when dry and his palms began to sweat. What was this feeling? It had been so long since he felt it? Ah, right. Abject Terror.

He slammed back in to his body and immediately opened the communication like to the League of Villain's current hideout.

"Shigeraki Tomura you will immediately cease any activity targeting Midoriya and any focusing one UA class 1A that might involve him." Tomura, predictably, did not like this announcement. "No! You said I could destroy the things I hate! And I HATE him."

"Tomura if you continue this vendetta we will both die."

"This is stupid! I'm not afraid of All Might-" "Nor am I. He is a pathetic worm that will one day die at your hand. But Midoriya is under the protection of Nightshade." Fear shone in speaking her name.

"Never heard of a hero by that name." Tomura began scratching at his neck.

"Not a hero, no." Kurogiri tilted his head in thought. "Was Nightshade not the name of the first villain?"

"It was. It is. I knew her well, as we had been allies for a time. She didn't seek power, but wielded it effortlessly. Personal power, power over others. She had amassed an army of those with powerful quirks even at the dawn of them and laid waste to the United States. She had been fond of the first hero, you see, though he was never credited as such. And the American Government not only killed him, they covered up all he had done, to ensure he was forgotten and their mistake never came to light. She crippled the country which at the time boasted the strongest military force in the world." "But she was stopped. I mean, America's still a country."

All For One shook his head. "No. She stopped when anyone even tangentially involved in the decision and those who defended them were dead. No quirk affected her, and he quirk could not be stolen. She is an untouchable wildcard who will slaughter thousands to make her point. She has chosen Midoriya as hers. Do Not Touch Midoriya Again!"

[f1]

Mexico City pole-sitter Verstappen expects good fight for victory as home hero Perez rues costly qualifying issue

Red Bull driver Max Verstappen is readying himself for a scrap with Mercedes pair George Russell and Lewis Hamilton during the Mexico City Grand Prix, after beating them to pole position in qualifying. Verstappen and the Mercedes drivers were closely matched after the first Q3 runs at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, but the reigning world champion pulled three-tenths clear with an impressive final lap of 1m 17.775s. Admitting that he found it difficult to get into a rhythm ahead of his pole-setting effort, Verstappen reflected: “I think every session it got a little bit better and, in Q3, we finally could push a little bit more with the car and [deliver] two decent laps. READ MORE: Verstappen fends off Mercedes pair for maiden Mexico City pole “I’m very happy, as around here, for me at least, it’s very hard to nail a lap – it’s always very low grip. There are a few kerbs you have to perfectly hit to actually gain time, so it’s definitely not the easiest of qualifying [sessions] – it’s the same with the tyre warm-up. But it seems like in Q3 we had it under control.” 2022 Mexico City GP Qualifying: Max Verstappen seals pole position ahead of Mercedes pair Verstappen will be looking to make it four wins from five races in Mexico on Sunday, having claimed victory there in 2017, 2018 and 2021 – the 2020 event cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Assessing his chances of keeping Russell and Hamilton at bay, Verstappen said: “I’ve started everywhere except pole here, and we won the races! It’s always important to have a good start here. I think our top speed is not too bad to defend at least with people who are in the draft, so we just need to focus on that. READ MORE: ‘It was our pole to have’ says Russell as he and Hamilton rue Q3 mistakes in Mexico City “I think if we have good race pace, it will be a good fight [for the victory]. Of course, we’ll try to stay ahead [of Russell and Hamilton] into Turn 1.” While Verstappen stormed to pole position, Perez had to make do with P4 in front of his home fans Verstappen’s team mate, home favourite Sergio Perez, was unable to join in the fight for pole position after encountering technical problems in the grid-deciding session, with the Mexican having to settle for P4, and left to ponder what might have been. “It was a big shame. We had an electrical issue throughout quali, and with DRS we were struggling and so on. It was important to make sure we got everything right, but I was pretty much blind through quali – I had no reference lap time, I had no information on my brake balance or times, so it was just a mess,” he explained. FACTS AND STATS: Verstappen starting P1, but no pole-sitter has finished on the podium here since 2016 “When I look back at my quali, I nearly got knocked out in Q1, and in Q2, so to be P4 is not the end of the world, but I really believe we could have fought for pole position.” via Formula 1 News https://www.formula1.com

[punkeropercyjackson]

Claimin' Luke Castellan is a radicalist has got to be the FUNNIEST shit to ever come out of the Percy Jackson fandom.Babycakes,he's a cishet physically abled allistic blonde blue eyed conventionally attractive white man who grew up sheltered in a literal fantasy world where he was constantly praised and uplifted and protected but got exactly one taste of the real world and turned into a pedophile who exclusively showed interest in underaged girls,four of them to boot,targeted boys of color over white boys he could've manipulated way easier due to being closer to them,groomed the children at the summer camp he grew up at and largely helped raise into becoming an army for him,explicitly provided zero nurturing of them at that point and was openly mean to them too,blew up a black guy after lying to the specific underaged girl he convinced to be a spy for him after gaslighting her about protecting him in exchange for her betrayal,insulted a little boy who's a Down Syndrome allegory for his symptoms by calling him just a monster,one of the other underaged at the time girls was also his adoptive little sister and pseudo-daughter by virtue of their age difference and dynamic and background,never actually went after the goverment he claimed to be fighting against in favor of getting power for himself and abusing everyone around him and even used a cryptofash dogwhistle as one of his ideals('destroying society to build it from the ground up').That second to last bit isn't propaganda-Luke was doing in-universe propaganda and calling yourself a radicalist without the actions or even beliefs is extremely common of self-obsessed whites irl.You can't make the 'unfairly demonized' argument either because he's never been demonized!He 'died a hero' according to the text and is potrayed sympathically post-death and he wasn't nearly as personally victimized by the gods as he acts-It was one quest and we're not shown or told him being directly impacted by them other than Hermes.Luke's whole deal is white man fragility,male entitlement and white violence/supremacy.You can say i'm taking things too far by putting him that way but i'm saying this because you guys are spreading misinfo about radicalism and as a black punk autistic trans person who's also been traumatized by the system but way worse than Luke,i don't gotta put up with that or feel bad for him and you also call Percy a fence sitter and downplay how he's the actual martyr of the gods Luke thinks himself as and the actual radicalist Luke thinks of himself as too by virtue of being canonically completely accurate to punk subculture and i don't gotta put up with that either seeing as his traumas and personality traits are so much like mine.The C in Luke Castellan stands for Colonizer and the P in Percy Jackson stands for Punk and i have proof of Punk Percy based on our culture for those who don't believe me

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Came back from a weekend of ttrpg convention.

My wallet hurts...

A mempo leather mask

A dice tower

A supplement of quests and creation of cities for medfan games

Reimagined a duo game of fanfictions

The Coyote and the badger

Heros d'argile - a superhero game of drama and vulnerability, focused on the civilians helping the hero, their family - with signature from the author

Ryuutama

The sitters

La couvée - a game about being weird beasts serving Mother, with signature from author

Capitaine vaudou - a pirate game ala Pirates of the Caribbean

Plus all the food, gift for others, accessories, and tombola tickets that gave me nothing while a friend got a Ars Magica box set, and another Fateforge box set *table flip*