because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.
you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.
you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.
don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.
if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.
you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:
how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!
aren't you happy yet?
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Regina cuts her off, her stomach roiling. “You talk about me with Henry?”
Emma shrugs. “You come up sometimes. He really does care about you. And I think you care about him.”
“You think?” Regina demands, and her fists tighten. “You think?”
Emma turns away from her, focuses on Henry on his swing. Regina follows suit, letting the sight of him calm her. He’s going higher and higher, and he kicks off his shoes when he’s at the top of the swing, sending them flying across the playground. It’s so normal, so much like a scene from a year ago, before everything had fallen apart. “I wasn’t sure,” she says. “I didn’t know if you…if you saw him as something to have. Or if you really loved him.”
Regina seethes. Something in her chest withers and dies. She’s furious. She isn’t hurt, because she will never give Emma Swan the power to hurt her again. “This town still stands only because Henry is inside of it. And you think that I don’t love him?”
Emma doesn’t respond to the threat, which had been stupid and will set Regina’s time with Henry back again, she’s sure. “You didn’t kiss him. When he was…after he ate that turnover. You didn’t even try to kiss him awake.”
Regina had sat in the hospital room and wept, had felt the world falling apart around her, and no, she had not kissed Henry as Emma had. How arrogant it is, to believe that a kiss can work magic. How privileged it is for the laws of the world to break only for you. “I am no Charming,” she spits. “I don’t get beautiful fairytales, and I don’t expect them. Forgive me for being a realist.”
Emma is silent. When Regina turns, Emma is watching her again, and there is a lingering something in her eyes. Not quite pity, not quite sorrow. But understanding, and Regina hates seeing it more than anything else. Hates the way that her heart leaps, and the next few breaths hitch and don’t emerge right.
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this is so sero-coded.
thinking about how after a night out with your friends, you couldn’t get Hanta out of your head. before you left, he looked so hungry.
“baby…” it was like he couldn’t decide which part of you was calling his name the loudest, his eyes were slowly shifting down each inch of your body, “looks like you’re on a mission to get free drinks tonight.”
The blush warmed your cheeks a little too quickly, just like the smile that you were trying to push down.
It’s been a little over two years since you’ve first gotten together, but when he looks at you like that… it gives you the slightest glimpse into later tonight. The thought has you shifting, clenching yourself under his weighted gaze— something that doesn’t go unnoticed.
hanta pulls his lips in before his skilled tongue darts between them and licks his bottom lip, “or is this for me?…” he draws out, wandering gaze leading back up to your stare.
“Is this for me to peel off when you’re done with the club?” he mumbles, stepping towards you; close enough to where his fit front is against your back, the curve of your ass slots perfectly against his stiffened cock. “when you come home after being ogled at and all you wanna do is feel how full I can make you?” his lips were ghosting the shell of your ear, raising goosebumps all along your skin. His hands, spread and open-palmed, cupped the fat of your hips as he presses impossibly harder against you. “This is a little reminder for you that no matter how bad those lame asses want you, they could never fit the print of my dick that I’ve carved into that pretty pussy.”
you were close to salivating, the temptation to stay home was weighing heavily on the scale of options— you did promise your friends that you’d go out… but you didn’t specify for your long…
A couple of hours. That’s how long you could take before all thoughts led to the yearning of felling just how full your boyfriend could make you. The way his dick perfectly curves to hit the gummy spot that makes you feel like you’ve melted into a puddle of warm wax, the way his toned arms hug you close to shape each other perfectly— skin on skin, hot and sensual. In your semi intoxicated state, you needed it now more than ever.
“Hanta…” you whine uncomfortably into the phone, fiddling with your keys while trying to balance the device between your cheek and your shoulder.
“what is it, baby? Are you home?” his voice comes through the phone like velvet, warm and inviting, enticing the human equivalent of a purr out of you.
“‘Mm home but the keys are being so mean…” you trail off as the keys jingle in opposition while you sift through them.
It took no more than 3 seconds for the door to swing open with a shirtless and disheveled Sero Hanta to greet you. He was back-lit, mullet extra shaggy, his broad chest rising and falling as if to even out his breath— not to forget the grey sweatpants that hung low to expose the dark happy trail that guided your eyesight from his belly button to the fulfilling print that was teasing you with every passing second.
You felt yourself salivate.
“those clothes need to come off-“ he nearly growled before cutting himself off by pulling you in by the waist.
You could barley gasp when you were pulled in, there was no time before his lips were on yours.
Animalistic was how it felt, everything went by so fast— your shoes were scattered somewhere, bag dropped and so we’re the keys. Hanta’s hands were everywhere and feeling everything, all the while, you were reminded how hard the man before you was with every hard press against him.
“Were you stroking my pretty cock while I was gone?” you moaned, attempting to sound like honey as you watched him haphazardly kick off his sweats.
“fu… your cock?” he looked back down at you, almost rabid with his pupils so dilated, only making the thumping of your clit heavier.
taking a few steps back, his calves hit the back of one of the chairs in the living room, prompting him to fall into the seat.
“that’s my cock, just like this pretty pussy is yours.”
the look on his face was that akin to a worshiper seeing the deity he’s placed all his faith into— eyes wide and jaw slacked. he followed your movements as you slip out of the base of your fit, leaving you in only your top as you go to straddle his bare lap…
tagging: @nkogneatho
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