#i keep trying. i promise i do. but it doesn't work.

[1864reruns]

ㅤㅤㅤㅤgratefulness (i'm sorry, can this be over now?)ㅤ౨ৎㅤ12.9k

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ2024 ©1864RERUNS

oneㅤ/ㅤtwo synopsis. luffy loves you— you know this with how abundantly clear love is in every ministration of his outstretched hand and a grin— yet your traitorous heart demands more, even though you're in no place to give him your loyalty. you know this so you do not demand his love nor to be saved, even when met with a relentlessly stretched hand.

warning(s). gn! reader, hanahaki disease, but some creatively liberated variation of it, angst, hurt/some comfort, slow burn, but does it really count if nothing happens?, unrequited love, pining and the works, background character death, blood, violent imagery, vague allusion to an unspecified mental disorder that involves eating habits (pls be careful!!!), luffy tries his best to be kind but it's cruel, reader spirals 🙏; minimal editing and proofreading (these are basically my thoughts raw and unadulterated)

from vyon. the card game they play is a vietnamese one also known as smth like thirteen in english and has too many rules to explain but it doesn't really matter :3 i was a beast at that game though i fear; this fanfic has been in my drafts for so long, it also grew into too big of a project than it was meant to be. i also had to split this up into two parts, it was getting too long, i'm sorry ＞︿＜

do not repost / copy / translate.

Once you know Monkey D. Luffy, you'll know his heart not a few minutes after. He's welded the unmoving, burning ingot to his bicep, always on display due to his amassing collection of armless vests; rubber skin melted around the golden gem, oozing past the lines of his beating heart to staple it there, an anomaly on the expanse of skin not otherwise susceptible to bullets or cannons. Your captain is a man that lives with his heart on his tongue, always ready to dictate the lay of your next move with an irregular beat that drums against the skinned men of war and an impulsivity that makes his crew scramble after him exasperatedly; oxygen taken from his cerebral arteries to his brain are stained in the grease and oil that stick to the meat he handles so carelessly. In the same endearing way, he's careless with his heart, allows for the small stuff to momentarily prick his heart, for judgement to cloud into anger before it picks up on the bitter taste of agony.

It's always easy to get a frown onto Luffy's face. Feign disinterest in his stories; make yourself too busy to help him look for strange insects; force him to shower, scold him after he does something he wasn't meant to; keep him away from something he seems interested in; starve him for more than five minutes— he makes it all exceptionally too easy. You're not audacious enough to claim to know Luffy any more than the Strawhats, especially not those that he had met in East Blue; you try not to let it bother you that they managed to meet a younger Luffy who had so many holes in his defence, whose smile threatened through skin more, who had yet to find scars in his palm from how hard he had to clench his fists.

To you, it seems unfair that Luffy had managed to uncover so many of your firsts. His unwavering presence by your side as you learnt how hard it was to live on sea, the intonations of your screaming when a marine canon was pointed at you, to live so freely away from the confines of restrictive justice, how it felt to have a hand in yours to promise forever and then some. Luffy has no preferential treatment when it comes to people he loves; he treats them all the same, no hierarchy could dream to disrupt that.

With the same sandals he uses to stomp on the faces of Marine's, he could demand food from Sanji, money from Nami, Zoro to play with him— instead, you watch him whine Sanji, food and dissolve into a puddle when his cook orders him to wait, he allows Nami's fists to fall onto his head when he makes any financially impulsive decision (or even thinks them), and he idles himself with drawing on Zoro's face with Usopp and Chopper, with the previous two of them taking the psychical brunt of their consequences. (Chopper is let off with a mere promise that he won't join in with their shenanigans again when it involves making Zoro into a fool and a growing bump underneath his hat.)

Luffy, from second to fourth gear, is tender aggression when it is love.

His form is bizarrely respectful when the door opens and light dawns upon your face; you see him through the gaps of Nami and Sanji's legs and towering forms over him, his hands on his thighs and feet tucked underneath his bottom. He slurs out an I'm sorry that lets you know that his face is definitely messed up and then follows up with an I was hungry though!

Then Nami messes him up some more for his shitty justification.

She leaves him— some caricature of her anger— on the floor with her hands on her hips and Sanji trailing after her with hearts in his eyes at her dominant display of power. As she passes Brook, he asks for the colour of her underwear and earns himself the same treatment. It's then that you laugh. Luffy snapped his head up, following after the trembling air of your laughter and then calls out your name, the syllables are all messy around his swollen cheeks and a missing tooth that will come back after a few minutes but you cannot rid yourself of the thought that it's sticky with love that you only remember hearing when you were just a babe, screaming and crying in the arms of a tired and ill mother in a hospital. You were introduced to a group of midwives with same love you hear now, their idle finger catching into both your small hands; Luffy's hand dances across the air, breaking apart your laugh with urgency and catching onto your wrist.

You're not sure if it's you who had been pulled to him or if he'd managed to catapult himself into you but you both end up a mess on the floor regardless. Limbs tangled around each other in a wave as you both fall to the deck, Luffy does not correct the length of his arm and takes to wrapping the limb around you like a vine snaked around the trunk of a tree. You don't know a start nor an end as Luffy nuzzles his beat–up face on your shoulder. "Hey captain," you raise your head to look down on him, trying to wrench a hand through the tight spirals he's coiled around you.

"I'm hungry," he whines in lieu of a response, "and I'm bored, Usopp kicked me out after I ate one of his ketchup stars." He doesn't relent with his hold on you, simply loosening the coil that you're trying to work your hand through before tightening again once your arm makes it past to trap it against your side. You don't question the fact that Usopp's ketchup stars may be laced with gunpowder or what the small dose of gunpowder may have done to Luffy's internal organs.

You guess even Usopp has his limits when it comes to his childish captain. "I can't do a lot about either of those things if you're keeping me hostage here." He looks up at you, his exaggeratedly large lips in a pout that matches the swelling of his cheeks and then says your name again, like you’ve done him wrong. It's a disordered collection of the letters again but you find you can't really do anything to fight against it. Instead, green tendrils sprout from your trapped arm, each vine wrapped in a light of leaves and strain against his extended limb before he gives in and, instead, laughs as he wraps his rubber arm around the spindly, twisted branches splitting open layers of skin on your bicep. His skin coloured against the green runner keeps the bine from wilting down to meet gravity.

You let Luffy do whatever he wants, with an expression that you're not sure you're too familiar with etched out on the lines of your face. Thinking back on it, you could've simply done as Nami had or Usopp, ignore or scold him enough into submission but his fingers catch one of the fronds and it curls between the meat of his fingertips, reaching out to tickle his palm and something soft blooms inside you. You know it must be you, not the work of your devil fruit, because as much as you've tried in your lacklustre pursuit of beauty, you've never been able to sprout any kind of flowers.

When Luffy finally lets you go, you find your way into the kitchen and give Sanji a smile. You apologise for interrupting him and tell him that you know that lunch had been served only an hour ago but, if he wasn't too busy, you were still a little peckish. Sanji shoots up immediately and asks you what you've got a taste for— you assure him any leftovers from lunch will do and he tells you, though this doesn't come as any surprise, that Luffy had worked his way through any grain of leftovers with a laugh. You laugh along with him and well, you seemed to be craving meat right now.

The plate he prepares seem to be more about quality rather than quantity, with sauce underneath the red meat drizzled across the white ceramic, a slab of meat already cut into bite sized pieces for you and a decorative herb stuck between the fatty slices but when the light oozes down into the stretch of meat, you don't think Luffy will complain too much.

You, of course, were right about that.

The shattering grin he greets you (the plate of meat, however small it seemed) with gives you the faint smell of sticky rain drenched in the light of the sun, and you almost give him your hand when he reaches out for the plate. Brook's guitar strums in the background and your heart shakes in time with his strings and Luffy's incessant chewing.

You've really no problems with Usopp asking you to help him with target practice, it's fairly common for you to help the crew with their unique fighting style— save Nami and Franky for fear of losing your life with their less than particular aimed area of damage— it's easy enough really. You don't even have to be mentally present for it; shaking through layers of flesh, vines grow across the deck of the Sunny and rise up straight to tower over Usopp as he fixes his goggles over his eyes. You keep a quarter of your mind instilled in every chloroplast that shivers across the skies so you can keep them moving but the other three quarters are focused on the card game you play with Robin, Chopper, and Franky.

You hear the snapping of elastic and your finger twitches against the back of playing cards as the particular vine shot to the left, glancing curiously at Chopper's hand across from you when he turned to Franky and accuses him of looking at his cards.

"It's not my fault!" Franky frowned, fixing his comedically small glasses to perch on his metal nose. "Your cards just happen to be in my view when I'm looking at the pile 'cause you're tiny!"

Chopper takes to this horribly (you reshape a vine that has fallen to one of Usopp's stones and keep it relentless across the wave of air) and he grows into the much less cute and broader, more human version of himself to hold his hand out of Franky's view. (Two vines snap together and they take the path to slice through air to where Usopp stands, you hear the cracking of wood as Usopp shouts at you, saying he only wanted to focus on offence. An apology is drawn out with the green arm in the air.)

"Ivy," your eyes flicker to Robin and she gestures to the pile of discarded where the two of spades had been placed on top. "It's your turn." You glance down at your hand, eyes flickering over the collection of 7's in your hand. 

"Bomb." (You feel a vine break apart into pieces, think about the fact that it's lucky you've no nerves attached to the tendrils, and keep the one down to give Usopp a little win.) Franky curses your name as Robin chuckles.

Chopper glances at the four 7's with a sense of wonderment that you're sure is too dramatic for the moment. "No wonder I had no sevens!" You give him a sly grin and watch Robin pass her turn, ignoring Franky's levelled glare behind his glasses.

In the end, Robin wins anyways, ridding herself of her hand with her final card being the two of hearts. The loss is taken bitterly by both you and Franky though you think Franky definitely takes it worse than you do as when he stands to sulk away, cards fall out of his speedos, and they leave a trail after him. Robin, in all her morbidity, laughs behind a hand as you and Chopper drop your jaws in disgust.

Chopper collects the cards, hesitating with the ones that had been on Franky until Robin points out that you've all played many rounds and there's a chance that all of them had shared the same fate. (Another vine shutters down to the floor, broken apart and particles flown across the deck.) The cards slowly fall to the floor as Chopper cries out in disgust. Shaking your head with some colourful amusement, you use the two vines fallen to pick up the cards and start shuffling them.

Responding to Chopper's call, Luffy shoots his way from Sunny's figurehead. "What're you guys doin'?" He falls graciously to where Franky had previously been sitting; his eyes are ever so impatient to glance over the cards being shuffled. "Oh," he says with great interest, "are you guys playing 'go fish'?" He leaned towards you— the cards in your possession, actually— and blinks at the shuffling. "Lemme in!"

"We weren't playing 'go fish', Luffy." The little doctor has since calmed down, taking a seat between Luffy and Robin and shaking his head. "We were playing—" he turns his head up to Robin, to which she supplies 'bài tiến lên' with the intricate accents and all, "that!"

A flash of thinking places itself on Luffy's face, crossing his arm and tapping the side of his sandals on the deck, then it's gone. "Let's just play 'go fish' then."

Chopper whines, saying that 'go fish' is boring and that Luffy always snatches more than one card from other people's hands, which is cheating, and that he doesn't want to play.

Luffy turns to you with a pout, eyebrows furrowed at the dip where his nose bridge starts and then straightened out towards the end. The two vines that had been expertly dodging all of Usopp's shots and taunting him by doing silly dances and twisting into words in the air both crumple down to the floor at the same time, they follow the curve of your spine as you double over, a breath stuttering in your throat. You hear Usopp call your name and the deck of cards slip out from the vines that had been shuffling this entire time, your hand wraps around your throat and you hack out a cough you've managed to choke on.

"Are you dying?" Chopper shoots up, frantic as you keep coughing and choking— both violent in temperament, and scampers around, shouting for a doctor.

Footsteps tap closer as a shadow forms over you, Usopp's hand patting your back ferociously comes after the sound of shoes stop.

The blur that came with tears invading your eyes gives you the confidence to look at Luffy again before you're calling Chopper to a stop. "I'm fine, just choked on air."

You don't mention how it felt like you were breathing through a cheesecloth, how your lungs feel so restricted with every inhale as you all compromise on 'chase the ace' and how easier it feels when Usopp pushes his way between you and Luffy, too intimidated to pick from Robin's hand; when you all finish up for dinner, Robin is looking at you in a way that makes you think she's caught onto how you've been struggling.

Dinner is a strange ordeal. It's characterised with its usual events: Luffy sneaking his hands into people's plates though his stands full, Usopp trying to hold his plate out of his way, Zoro tending to his glass bottle of beer, Sanji making some quip about Zoro's show of alcoholism, Nami getting increasingly annoyed by the noise around her, Brook's laughter, Zoro escalating the situation with Sanji, Chopper screaming when Luffy clears Usopp's plate and then goes for the doctor's, Robin watching the scene with the patience of a saint, Franky pretending he was better than the rest, Usopp exacting revenge on Luffy by swapping their plates. It all ends with Nami telling them all to shut up and Luffy taking one final chicken leg from Zoro's plate. You stare down at your plate and count the missing bits, Luffy hasn't really touched any of the potatoes or asparagus, so you finish them up.

Two chicken thighs sit in stark contrast to the plate, thinking about having them anywhere near your mouth makes you a little sick for some reason, the weight of them in your stomach, the taste of caramelised skins, crisped with wells of juice sat next to a tinge of burnt flesh; you push the plate over to Luffy and detest the way he can take the colour of well–done oranges between his teeth and not care about the juice dribbling down his chin.

Luffy says thanks with his mouth full of chicken; Nami glares at him and turns a more concerned face to you (that also makes you sick) and inquires about you not eating. You mumble out some excuse about not being hungry, not feeling well, having a little bit of a headache, feeling tired— something along those faux lines, you don't remember but you remember that you don't tell them the truth exactly. "Sorry Sanji," you fix into your shitty excuse after, running a hand through your hair, to make yourself feel better about the entire ordeal.

He offers to make you a more palatable porridge or soup instead.

You take a cigarette and a red apple, going to bed hungry and angry at some unknown thing that brews on the tip of your tongue.

The next island is of great interest to Luffy.

The entire crew knows that its history nor culture was not either reason behind his excitement, only the mere prospect of digging his sandals into new, uncharted land is why he's running around the deck, filling up the empty spaces with bubbling laughter. Sanji finishes up bentos for those that are leaving, taking unnecessary extra care with Nami’s, and wishing he had it in him to starve Zoro whilst Nami is giving everyone an allowance. You take two bentos, yours and Chopper's, and head out onto the deck. Luffy only seemed momentarily sad that you were going with the doctor but bounced back immediately after when the trees come closer enough to intimidate so you push down the offer to join him instead. Franky joins up with Usopp, Luffy'll run off alone regardless of who he ends up going with, Nami ends up going with Zoro (to Sanji's displeasure), and you and Chopper make plans to find a pharmacy and a library for Robin.

Being around Chopper is easy enough with this unsettling prick of poison that's forced minimal responses, curt words, a flurry of tiredness, a sickening chill through your days recently. The little doctor is a lot more mindful of changes in mood, it's not any imminent injury either so he doesn't press to know why. Out of guilt (for being a brooding asshole lately), you ask him about his rumble balls and all his different forms. He answers cheerily and you can only pick out every other word with a persistent headache as the smell in the air changes from salty skies and bloody fish to sweetened foods and something unfamiliarly clean.

It's a bright island. You hear a faint bell in the distance that is traced over with the sound of children and stall owners; Chopper's hooves rhythmically sound beside you on the pavement and you find yourself counting them in groups of four. "Ah, there." You pick up your head and turn to follow the direction of Chopper's eyes. A sign is hung on the side of the building, the library. "Robin wanted a book of North Blue diseases for some reason," Chopper mumbles to himself as you two push open the door.

It's a small bookstore, walls lined with books and the paths carved with more standalone bookcases. "North Blue diseases?" You repeat, confused, "do they have North Blue exclusive illnesses?"

Your question goes unanswered, though it looks like it opens a vault of new questions for Chopper. Books aren't of great interests to you, so you follow behind Chopper as he walks through each section and grab whichever book he tells you to bring down for him. On the way back, you tell Chopper to keep going and change your course in search of something you're not too sure of.

You stray away from the town centre and head deeper through the small alleys of the town, there's no destination in mind; without the urgency of a fights and with the domesticity of a small knit community, you wander adrift. There's a dampness in the air to the walk around a shadowed hide of the place that loosens up the tension below your ribs, many different eyes follow after your form as the heel of your shoes click against a null path; shadows ooze around the soles of your shoe and lacquer up between the carved maze of black rubber of your soles until you find your way into a dead end.

It's a little bit of a cliché to be met with a ragtag group of delinquents when you turn to go back. Your eyes trace over them. In the hand of the one closest to you sits your wanted poster.

Something blooms inside you again— it's a much more pleasant feeling than the unmoving sap of ire that's been invading lately. Each man before you is physically bigger, towering over you ominously and shadows eating you but they all have swords and guns in their hands and that's why they lose. You, to the detriment of all life around you, are a weapon in and of itself; you choke out the vitality from others and steal their nutrients. They strained against their confines as their skin blossoms through shades of blooms, you are not the merciful rubber of a human, so your constraints don't relent, they squeeze and squeeze until the bark splits apart, until blood is cut off at the source, until they wither, until you are full.

On the way back, you buy a gift for everyone with the money you hadn't used and when they take to it, all in their varying degrees of joy, you feel less bad about the dead end alley full of brothers and sons. You tell yourself, handing Zoro a gift of alcohol, if not them, then it'd have been you.

You end up staying anchored to the island for a week to your displeasure. The longer you're stuck there, the closer you are to exploding; you always keep an eye out on the log pose strapped to Nami's wrist like you could quicken the process if you stare enough. Usopp starts avoiding you out of fear you'll blow like a poorly constructed cannon, Zoro makes you train with him to see if it'll help blow off some steam, Sanji brings you iced drinks at a rate that keeps you dizzy but you always feed it to Luffy or redirect it to Chopper's or Usopp's office with a little note.

On the third day, you follow in Zoro's example and sprawl out on the deck to rest your tireless mind. You've always wondered how sleep was ever a possible option for him when the feet thundering across the deck came with obstructive vibrations, no doubt slapping any chance of sleep away from his mind, but you find that it's almost pleasant. Beats all from familiar loves translates through the groves of wooden planks and etch through the back of your spine, you feel a bone fall back into place after Nami's heels against the floor and the thunderous kick that lands where Zoro was standing manages to work its way up your head to ease a headache.

The sun burns cries into your eyes and the skies move fluidly, they don't ripple as clouds shrivel against a light blue you're unfamiliar with; even as you close your eyes, you continue to feel the burn of the sun. The slapping of weaved straw against a sticky, sweaty sole then the deck comes as you slip into sleep.

Dreams have never been so amicable enough to become a recurrent in your life; more often than not, you're shown memories all blended together into a mess that leaves you sick, the abhorrent now and the nostalgic then bleeding past their confines until you see your mother stood next to that deceitful Marine admiral, both with that same look in their face. You wake up with a start when a loud bang scours its way through a flurry images you're unfamiliar with and then your body escapes you. Your head weighs with the heaviness of the bodies dropped to the floor, arms cold as if dipped into the river Styx, bones locked in place with a restrictive pain, muscles burning, aware of every breath that shivers through your suddenly odd body.

"Owww," three Luffys blur around each other as you pushed a hand to the floor to straighten up, you try blinking away the other two, but they're glued to the captain reflecting in your eyes; he looks down at what he's tripped on and follows it back to you. Your hand is met with something curved in shape when you go to push yourself up and when you look down, you see vines underneath you. You realise then that a burst of them had grown beneath you, splitting through the lawn deck and uplifting some of the planks underneath the greenery and inching upwards towards the guard rails of the ship. They take the form of something you think you met in your most recent sleep.

Luffy has managed to crawl his way towards you in the time you spend wondering why your devil fruit had been acting up— in your sleep no less and he wraps a hand around your ankle to get your attention. "Hey, you're really cold." He pointed out, eyes flickering down to the flesh between his fingers and then trailing his fingers up your thigh as he shifts closer to you on his knees.

The touch makes you violent and tender. "Really?" You managed to puff out, giving too much air back to the world with how much you're panting, "I feel a little warm though."

Luffy hums, clapping his hand over your cheeks with gentleness he only shows to those he loves, and it feels wrong. You get an itch underneath your skin that urges you to move, move, move but you can only push Luffy away with a ferocity he'd never shown you as you tremble under the bursting of violent air hacking up your throat, your shoulders strain as you wrapped your arms around your stomach, trying to heave out something that wasn't there.

Luffy scrambles back immediately, not caring for you shoving him away, and soothes away the rattling of your core with his clammy hands on your arm. "Are you sick?"

No, you think as a retch comes up your mouth; maybe, you correct as the path is marked by drool slipping down your chin and tears streaking across your cheeks. You shake away Luffy again. He's less submissive this time, his legs open over yours to plant his knees by your thighs. You hear him call for Chopper and it's obvious he has something of a frown marked on his face; you keep burning beneath your skin, but Luffy keeps rubbing his palms over your arms like you're cold.

You realise what your vines had drawn underneath you when Chopper comes out, fretting over you as he takes Luffy's place close to you. A grave. The image makes you laugh as the reindeer instructs his captain to haul you up after you'd ignored his inquires on if you could walk; your arm bends around the shape of Luffy's shoulder and your laughter erratically convulses into a collection of coughs from the skin on skin high.

You forced into bed rest after Chopper does a preliminary round of tests on you and declares you've simply gone down with a cold. You take to the diagnosis apprehensively, though in Chopper's defence, how was he meant to accurately diagnose you if you don't tell him all your symptoms? Instead, you sit in his office and spend the minutes, all alone, trying to retch out the feeling of having a piece of hair down your throat; you claw at the blanket and keep hacking until you've got a blanket full of tears and spit. The feeling does not pass.

At lunch, you get a visit from Franky who comes by to complain that you've made unnecessary work for him. "—seriously, how did you manage that in your sleep? Were you having a nightmare?" He ranted, legs crossed and leaned back in the visitor chair in a way that pushes his skinny, hairy legs close to your face.

Scrunching up your face, you sit up. "It was the future." You rebut, in between all his fantastical stories of his nightmares and talking about how he'd never attack Sunny even if Chopper grew a mechanical, giant arm and overthrew Luffy to become their captain. "A future," you correct yourself before turning to Franky with eyes judgemental, "are you scared of Chopper?"

"You weren't there at Enies Lobby," he tells you, which serves as a cruel reminder of sorts. You think about all the scars you've seen littered on the crew's skin and wonder which ones they've collected while they were with Luffy and who knows of which. The faint, protruding marks underneath Nami's tattoo, the stitches around Zoro's ankles, the ones pulled across his chest; you wonder if Sanji's got one hidden underneath his bangs. "The future?" Franky repeats after a moment, "are you a prophet?"

"It's a working theory," you brush off instead. "Though I can see in my mind's eye that Luffy is currently eating all the food and you’ll be left to starve if you don't go back."

Franky scrambled up from the seat not a second after your words.

With him gone, you settle back onto the bed and wonder about too many things to recall.

Between the hours after lunch and before dinner, Luffy comes by. He settles himself on the bed and forces you up as well, the shifting causes another cough to burgeon in your throat and you turn your head the other way to spit it out in an uncontrolled group of four. "You're not feeling better?" He frowns.

You see now that he's holding two pieces of barbequed meat in his hand, he's got the bone in his palm as he holds it upright like a sword, juices from the flesh dripping down to his hand and the smell gives you a headache. "Do you want this?" You move your eyes to Luffy, he's got his eyebrows furrowed together and his lips straightened out in a line when you don't answer. "Both?" He looks over at you, then the meat, and then you. "You," he swallows, "you can have them," his knuckles turn red around the bone, "since you need energy and you're sick." You think he's trying to convince himself to give them up.

You reached out and watch Luffy's face turn sour as his expression squeezes altogether around a midpoint trapped in his nose; you retract your hand and watch his face relax and his body unwind, you think he's moved his hand back a little. You repeat it again a few more times until laughter comes up and dislodges the uncomfortable feel of hair set deep in your throat. "It's fine, Luffy, you can have 'em."

"Really?"

"Mhm, go for it."

He moans around a bite of meat, crying your name as he chews and says thank you. The feeling is back as soon as it left.

No one comes to visit after that. Chopper comes by before he heads off to bed to make sure you're all set for the night and tells you that he expects to be woken up if you feel any symptoms get worse. You agree to his conditions, though can barely make yourself seem like you were taking him seriously with his cute face scolding you, but it seemed to work well enough as he's gone after he leaves a cup of water by your side. Sleep lingers around the corner, shirking away from your twitching fingertips and restless eyes; you give up after a few minutes, thinking about Robin who'd been thrown on watch tonight.

After going back and forth on the details, you bundle up yourself in the blanket (not wanting to have to mimic any semblance of serious guilt to get through Chopper's less than intimidating scolding if you get any sicker in the morning) and wander to the deck. The darkness of the sea would be safe for you, twisting around every limb extended to grope your way through your chosen path and oozing out from strands of hair to empty at your feet if not for the lamp of the moon ahead of you. Its light a forecast of tragedy, reflecting off a blade that would drive through the blood of a man who faced an unlikely love with only disgust and betrayal. "Robin?" The light hangs onto your word with a vehemence to uncover your unjustifiable deeds.

"Ivy," a shudder of surprise rattles your head to duck to your shoulders as you turn around. "Sorry, did I scare you?"

You give Robin a frown, tugging your lips down. "Yeah, my weakened bones nearly fell to the floor." She huffs a laugh. "Please announce yourself before you appear." Robin traces over your palish face and your features soften into a smile when your eyes meet.

"Can't sleep?" She asks once you two settle at the side of the Sunny where you'd napped earlier today, some of your vines still wedged between planks and parts of the floor haphazardly missing. You lean your back against the side of the ship and lower your eyes to the floor.

It's a total void, welcoming you back home. "No," you answer, a little breathless. The moon doesn't shuttle into the hole of the deck and something reaches a hand out for you between the atoms of a black hole. Roots twist out, easing close to your feet and sinking beneath the soles of your shoes. "I napped a little earlier." It's safe.

Robin hummed— I know rattles through her hum— and her elbow falls onto the guard rail of the ship. For the next few moments, you regret coming out. Robin's always been more receptive to the details and fine lines; it's not surprising that she can nitpick through a flurry of fronts and covers to the feelings you want to hide. They beckon out to her, wanting to fill that hole that's grown smaller with every day she wakes up to the open seas and the lively sound of her crew. "Chopper said you were sick?"

"A cold," you sniffle, bringing the blanket closer to you. Finding some semblance of confidence inside you, your eyes flicker over to Robin but she isn't looking at you— only turns when she feels your gaze levelled on her. You hesitate, searching for something to say and land on extending an arm and opening the blanket to invite her into your bundle. "You cold?"

She laughs, "it's fine, you should go back in if you've got a cold though." Her head tilted with a smile, "it'll be bad if the night air makes you worse."

Not wanting to find yourself softened in moonlight nor her eyes, you nod and bid her a goodnight before shivering your way back into your room. The door opens and light from Sunny's hallway is swallowed into the darkness of your room before it's banished out with the slam of your door, you shuffle around odd things thrown on the floor and slip into bed.

Your sleep is broken through with intervals with coughing, curling into yourself, shivering still though you burn in the night like a sibling of a star. When you wake up, sometime in the afternoon, you're heaving and reaching out your arms all around your duvet to haul together the skin that feels like it's melted down. Your palms prick against the leaves of vines that have overtaken your room, they fluoresce around your body and branch outwards to all corners of your room. The mess all blur together as your brain thrashes in your head with every splutter, you shake and twitch, trying to make sense of anything. Skin burned raw as you attempt to kick away the shrubbery that's keeping the blanket contorted around your body.

Your throat skinned and crude with its imminent thoughts of water.

A hand reached back blindly to grope at your bedside table for the cup that Chopper left for you last night. What you find instead is the burning touch of the sun, it seeps through the micro wounds stabbed through lines of your fortune and inflames every nerve straight to your heart. Your hand snaps back towards your body, the bones shivering from the imminent heat. Your entire body twitches at different paces, an invasive and hungry need drowns your senses. You need water, you need not for this to happen, water, you need for your sleep to be calm, you need to stop burning, you want to stop losing control, water first. You want water. Water— you turn your head to find the water, you need— Luffy?

Luffy is sat on a chair that you don't remember being there and when you look a little closer, you see that your vines had granted him a throne to comfortably lay on, other than that, they avoid him like the near plague. His body is leaned forward, his chest laid against the side of your mattress and arms crossed on your bed to sleep on like a pillow. You retch up some acid and, like the bowed head of a priest, a gentle petal disrupts the stream, flowing against the tide. It's a beautiful purple colour that's light against the transition to white towards the middle and an eye-catching yellow streaking against the white; lines of a deeper hue stretch through the petal and it's oddly reminiscent of veins.

The petal sits on the puddle of stomach acid that warms your thighs, your head bowed down to stare at it; you feel your soul unfurl at the sight of it, branches stretched outwards over a riverside, the heavy head of buds pulling weighted branches down to drink from the stream. Everything else blurs with a ripple, the petal is withstanding no matter no much you try blinking away an oncoming headache. The river near dries up in your attempt to wash down this unnerving disgust; you hunger for more.

Little changes when you find out what this 'cold' truly was. The lighting in Sunny's library is several shades warmer than the light of the sun, it draws upon the hunched shoulders down to your back as you tilt your head to hear the bones crack under your ear. Four syllables, that's all your death is. A lot of words are four syllables. Anonymous; unfortunate; hilarious; adventurous; hanahaki. It doesn't mean a lot by itself, so you try giving it some context. You pretend to tell Chopper that you're dying, you have hanahaki and that it's something he can't cure in a way you'll accept and you still feel nothing. You think about Chopper's face. He adamantly tells you that he'll cure you, he'll do it. The you in your imagination tells him no. Faced with your refusal, Chopper cannot do anything. In the end, it is a grave that cures you.

Death, as it stands, was something you had accepted when you stepped onto a pirate ship. Even someone with as stubborn a character as Zoro could be welcomed in by death, even Luffy. For a while, you wonder about death. The air in the room pauses as if to grace you with the silence to ponder on it, all you hear is the sound of your own breathing.

The closest thing to death comes searching for you a few minutes later.

You've always been interested in Brook. A skeleton with nothing but a sword; he has no lungs yet still sings, no heart and still smiles, dead but human in all his actions and behaviours. "There you are." He sneaks up behind you, bones falling onto your shoulder as you think, he smiles down at you. "Luffy asked if I’d seen you earlier.” He looms over you for a moment before he's straightening back up and calling out loudly, "but I'm a skeleton so it's not like I have eyes to see anyone anyways!"

It's the two syllables 'Lu–ffy' that shakes you the most. You stifle a cough in your chest and feel it tear through your ribs instead, searching for a path out. "For what?" The breaths rattle in your chest and shudder through your words.

"He wanted to show you a beetle." He takes the seat next to you, peering down at the picture book that you have open. You wait for him to make a comment about seeing what you were reading before disregarding it all with a lack of eyeballs so he wasn't seeing it really but he doesn't say anything, so you're forced to talk instead.

"Brook."

"Yes?"

It takes a single breath to prepare you to say this, it's warm and evident that you've not yet truly succumbed to your illness. "Do you see yourself as dead?"

Death is the art of those who do not live. It's something that keeps people tethered to the moment; it's the one thing that keeps humans humane. It's evidence you've lived, no matter how full nor how long. She's beautiful in her own right.

"I cannot see myself as anything because I am a skeleton with no eyes!"

Brook does not get to elaborate because Luffy shuttles in moments later, whispering loudly. (He'd learned somewhere that you're meant to be quiet in a library when he was younger but his whispers still manage to shake the room somehow.) "You're here! I found a beetle to show you!" He tip–toes to your side, "what're you reading— oh, hi Brook! The flowers here are pretty!" He points a finger down to a sunflower; his index covers an entire petal and he strokes it upwards to the middle. "Do you think they're edible?"

He turns to you with a smile.

You meet him with the same, "their seeds are." He gasps and picks up the book to scour through the letters in search of a name of these seeds. You take in a shuddering breath and when you feel another urge to cough, you cannot stop it.

When vines splatter around the room, they uproot the place; they've always been disruptive in this way. A wave of them washes various bouts of furniture to the floor, through the pounding of your ears, you hear the sound of books thudding as green appendages snake through bookcases and rattle them at the base; Brook's chair collapses as a vine chokes out one of its legs into splinters, the world blurs into a hue of greens and purples. A hand reaches from down in your throat, you heave around gaps of allowance for air and gag, cough, retch up more acid and some tea that Sanji brewed earlier this morning in lieu of breakfast. It's unpleasant. It's ugly in a way death should not be, though you guess the dead don't get to choose how to live in the same way the living cannot choose their death.

You're hauled off to Chopper again.

Chopper's voice comes as the hollow sounds of keys on an old piano. He does another round of tests on you— this set lasts a little longer than the previous and he takes extra caution with some. He finds that your heart is a little faster than it should be, he nitpicks at the bluish tint around your fingers and notes the concerning amount of weight you've lost in the past few weeks. When he asks you, what's wrong, you tell him that that's what he should be telling you.

Hypoxia; another four syllables for your cause of death. "Some of the symptoms are there," Chopper frowns, mumbling to himself. "It's when your tissues aren't getting enough oxygen, do you have difficulty breathing?"

You placed your cheek into your palm, elbow on Chopper's desk. "You're a pretty good doctor, Chopper."

The effect is immediate, he starts blushing and kicking his legs in his seat, a hoof goes to rub at the back of his head and nervous laughter comes from him. "That isn't distracting me at all, you bastard." You smiled and watched the compliment break any semblance of professionalism in him.

He gets back on track a little while later, placing a stethoscope on your chest and asking you to cough. You're not sure exactly what he's looking for but you give a soft cough into your elbow and you can say for certain— just based off the way he jumps back and looks at you a little quietly for a second, it's nothing good. Chopper spends a few minutes looking at your fingertips, then your lips, then some other parts of skin already exposed and humming to himself, troubled.

For now, he says, he wants you to try not to exert yourself— maybe leave fighting to everyone else and focus on resting until he can figure out a better way to confidently diagnose you. His lips are pulled into a frown, hands in his lap and trying his best to be professional and keep his emotions at bay. Before you know it, your hand is on top of his pink hat and fondly rubbing over the material softly. "Thanks Chopper, I'll keep that in mind."

He nods. You hesitate for a second before you're getting up to leave so that everyone else can see that you're not dying— or maybe you should tell them you are, you're not sure you could take another session of Franky accusing you of destroying the Sunny to create more work for him.

Your hand wraps around the doorknob and twists, stopping when Chopper speaks again. "You're not hiding something from me," he accuses gently, "are you?"

Your hand tightens around the doorknob. A flash of that imaginary Chopper comes back to you— heartbroken and confused at your refusal to be cured— you steal an unnecessarily large breath from the world. "I get sudden cravings for sweet things if that means anything."

Chopper, unbeknownst to you, takes those words and carves them true and raw into himself. His eyes are unwilling to leave you for more than necessary during the times you eat together, he watches you push aside the food on your plate, tearing small bits of meat off the bone to chew on it for a couple minutes too long before swallowing. He makes note of the way you have no problems finishing up everything but any sort of meat, sliding them over to Luffy, or one of his victims.

You're met with another blossom soon after lunch. You've made a bad habit of leaving the table early to escape the smell and resign yourself to the open deck, sprawling out on the grass like Zoro usually does. You're certain you're about to fall asleep shivering but the slap, slap, slapping of your captain's sandals are nearing closer so your brain kicks awake with a start; your eyes twitch, eyelashes shuddering in the wind. The darkness over your eyes morphs into a shadow of Luffy hovering over you, head tilting with a hand on his hat— your mind supplies you with the frown— and then you hear him taking a step back and sitting down next to you.

A troubled melody hums through his lips and when you open an eye to peek at him, you see his hands wrapped around his ankles, legs loosely crossed; he turned back to you and you quickly close your eyes. Here is where you finally learn that when Luffy touches, he's never placated with a simple tap, a light knocking between skin— no, he must stroke, he drags his fingers up the side of your thigh, he shivers from the coldness of your flesh and, even then, crawls closer. Then he's silent for a worrying amount of time and for a moment, curiosity takes you over. You find yourself wanting to draw light upon the disgusted features when he's met with someone he thinks close to him is growing closer and closer to a grave amongst the roots.

He leans his forehead against yours whilst you shuffle through the despicable crawl of your heart through your bones, something shifts in you and when you reach to itch at your side, it dislodges. It takes no more than a simple flip for your entire world to shift; you think you saw Luffy hovering over you momentarily before you had snapped to the side.

A fragment of the world greets its end.

Something strangles you, a hand of a giant pressing two fingers against the sides of your neck until everything in you bursts and splatters against parts that have gone unknown until now. There's nothing new to the tremor of vine that erupts through your skin, bubbling through the surface of flesh like a geyser; the tentacles claw their way your throat until you're choking around them, searching for an allowance for air. Your knees shuffle up to find some balance, head ducked to meet the lawn across the deck and elbows digging deep into the dirt. Your spluttering comes in time with the sound of Luffy calling your name, shouting for Chopper; there's a knot tied inside your mouth, you shake away tremors and tears all the same. You erupt yet there's nothing to be burnt, it's only ash that leaves your mouth— only the colourful petals of the wisteria plant that wash over the green of the open deck, burnt in hues with blood.

The next island is a spring island, known for their sweet peaches and sweeter music.

You watched Luffy devour two peaches in his hands, the ripe skin melting underneath his teeth— pale with a dusted blush until it snapped into a bloody red, melted at the pit. Then he's gone with a rustle of mikan trees as you held out a basket for Nami to delicately place her mikans in; apparently, she'd managed to catch the attention of some peach vendor with her sweet tangerines and swindled the poor man out of his money for a basket.

The streets are lined with lively hums and a strumming of odd instruments, music escapes through every crevice of a worn-down building as Luffy jumps from stall to stall, drooling over the goods before you're beckoning him back with his lunchbox and a promise of meat after you finish this errand for Nami. On your way to the stall, you hear faint chattering that doesn't interest you but Luffy straightened up beside you and turns to stare at the people as they argue on who had managed to grow the biggest peach this year.

You sigh, grabbing hold of Luffy's collar when he stops to stare at them and drag him off to the stall vendor who had fallen victim to Nami's schemes. The exchange is easy enough— give him the basket (ignore the fact that Nami had managed to make it look like it was overflowing by artfully bunching up a cloth on the bottom and filled gaps between the fruits with flowers) and make sure you've got the correct amount of money. It's when Luffy asks the stall vendor who has the biggest peach this year that things begin to go downhill.

Rather than answering Luffy's question, the man goes on a tangent about some kind of festival for a God and how the biggest peach will be the offering to said God this year— apparently, Shumi (the woman who owns the fabrics shops) had managed to get her hands on this, that, or the other to help her husband grow a peach large enough to bring doubt to the fact that Gyupuri had managed to grow the largest peach (again) this year.

Luffy insists on tracking them both down to help the people come to a decision as he wiped away the drool on his chin. Resigned, you managed to find Shumi first with her shop being the only one in town that sold fabrics and she denies you both permission to see the peach; Gyupuri, on the other hand, is more than happy to show you to the peach he grows. He takes you straight out of town, into the forest, and then up the mountain to where there's a clearing full of nothing but flesh coloured peaches.

As you listen to Gyupuri's story on how he was merely taking after his father to grow these strangely sized peaches, you have to keep Luffy in your hold so he doesn't go running to the giant peach and take a bite out of what could be for a God. Somehow though, he manages to get a handful of flat peaches when you weren't looking and when you attempt to apologise to Gyupuri, he doesn't seem to be fazed, shoving a few more peaches into your hand and telling you it's fine.

"So, who is this God anyway?" Luffy asks, his legs wrapped around your waist and chin hooked on your shoulder as he leaned back, satisfied with cheeks full of the peach you were holding in your hand. You turn to give him a look, but he merely stares at you back.

The people here must have made a unanimous decision to answer questions from the left side of the field because Gyupuri only tells you the name of this God when he drags you and Luffy up a hill to stare at a statue of this God carved out of generic stone.

To be polite, you call the statue pretty; Luffy feels no need to be polite, so he says it's not really. When you look at him to furrow your eyebrows at him, he's already looking at you.

When you're back on the ship, money handed to Nami, you think about that moment so much that it grows moss in your mind and vines burst through the crevices of the worn–down artifact you've made out his gaze to be. You throw up everything you manage to eat and feel hollow and worthy when you meet Luffy's eyes in Chopper's office again.

There's a chill that follows your days after that.

It's persistent and stubborn in a way that cruelly reminds you of Luffy. On a brighter side, you've got an excuse to be lazy in bed though it irks your bones not to have the weight of you walking thrumming up your body. You get visits from the Strawhats, get your food delivered to you, some of the crew shuffling into your room to keep you entertained with some card games and the likes— you get Luffy consistently making his way into your room and treating it as any other room on his Sunny. He comes in, always makes himself home on the bed, and talks about what he did today. At some point, it becomes less endearing and more annoying to be treated as though you were actually dying. (You hadn't told them for a reason.)

Four days after Chopper had resolutely punished you with bed rest, Luffy decides that he was going to start sleeping in your room. Apparently, your face had translated over what your head was thinking too quickly because he starts whining, saying that he wouldn't get to see you enough if he doesn't do this and, well, since you've always had a tender, raw, skinned soft spot for the boy, you end up saying yes.

He spends his first night telling you what he was going to spend tomorrow doing and you come to the realisation that every other sentence contains you. (Going to find more beetles to show you... Chopper told Sanji it'd be good to get more meat into your diet... Zoro accidentally cut snakes and ladders in half so Nami is giving me money to see if we can find one for you so we can play... Robin said there's a really pretty flower on this next island… For you… For you...) It’s all there laid bare and you cannot face it. You hide your face into the crook of your elbow and wretch out a cough. Luffy frowns but doesn't mention it. He talks himself into sleep and you lay awake to him, trying to keep yourself from blooming throughout the night so he doesn't wake up, cold and still.

When you're startled awake with misty embrace in a dream, you see that Luffy has gone.

What he has left is his straw hat and a mouthpiece of his greatness. The straw is rough against your fingers, resembling the thorns that grows along roses and you stare at it in your lap until you can feel the roughness in your throat— just when you think you need to get water, Sanji shows up with breakfast. You eye the cigarette in his lips and ignore the settling of the tray on your bedside table, watch the smoke fight the smell of scrambled eggs and bits of bacon to take over your room.

"We're at an island?"

Sanji walks around your bed, finding himself comfortable on the couch across the foot of your bed. "We docked early this morning," you watched his smoke rise, ash falling to the wooden floor of your room, waving and grasping hands up to God. Sanji keeps himself entertained by looking around your room, his foot pushing around odd leaves and petals on the floor before he nods over to the plate. "Eat." Then he's gone.

You stare at the tray, settling Luffy's straw hat aside, you shuffle to the end of your bed and take the fork in your hands— you look at the plate until you swear you can taste the eggs in your mouth and the slight bursts of saltiness that'll come from the bacon and you have to wash it down with the glass of water he's given you. You push it aside and opt to go back to sleep.

You dream of a still life on top of a hill, overlooking a dock as the Sunny pulls back out into the sea; you thrash but find every part of you rooted down to one spot, the wind picks up and you feel tangles of what could be hair or leaves hitting against a part of your body. You're still rooted despairingly in a garden of silks and duvets when you wake, Luffy had found himself unable to keep away from your breakfast but when you sit up and look a little closer, you see a pile of the diced bacon bits shoved off to the side as he shovelled eggs into his mouth.

Shattering free from the earth with a faltering cough broken into four, you shuffled yourself up and spit out a cluster of wisteria. At this point, you do not need to look at Luffy to know what his face looks like; he turned to face you, cheeks full and quickly finishing the eggs to shuffle closer to you on the bed with a book in his hands. "You left your book under the plate."

It's a hardback children's book, pulled out of Sunny's library and coloured a light blue that resembled the sky and broken apart by a sunflower in the middle and petals around it, the title curled around the sunflower. You know that the book was left in the library when you were having your episode. The cover is smooth to the touch as Luffy gives it to you and ends up knocking his shoulders against yours in his attempt to get closer; your eyes moved over to the tray of food and you think of Sanji, who'd grown up in the North Blue where this children's story was more popular amongst the romantic commonwealth. 

He knows, you think, and it fills you with a dread that the wisteria blossoms feast upon delightfully; he knows, and he could tell everyone, the vines throb over your heart as Luffy opens the book over your lap and looks up, expectantly at you.

Myrsa was a pretty girl, enough so that praises sang for her ended up calling upon the scorn of love's Goddess. The depiction of her getting cursed is almost comical, stricken by lightning as she returns from a forest with a basket full of flowers and mushrooms. "What happens next? What happens next?" Luffy pushes his face closer to the book, tangling a rubbery leg with yours as he moves impossibly closer. "How does Myrsa beat up the God?"

It's the certainty he holds that Myrsa will beat up God that makes you laugh, it's the fact that she does not beat anything that makes you tremble, shaking coughs and petals out your throat. Luffy seems to think that the book is too excitable, trying to pry it away from you and saying that he can ask Robin to read it to him later so you should just rest. "Don't you want to know if Myrsa will beat up the God now?" You ask instead, knowing the answer will be yes.

Perhaps they were the wrong words to convince Luffy because when you're on the last page, Myrsa buried in a forgotten land and her love used as fertiliser for a field of sunflowers, he's threatening to beat up a God made up to exact revenge for Myrsa. It's a lot more cheerful than you had expected— all the characters drawn with round faces, small bodies, and black dots as eyes. It makes death seem redeemable. 

After Luffy hauls himself out of your room, in search of the God had turned Myrsa into sunflowers, you force the bacon down your mouth and bring the tray out to Sanji. You linger in the kitchen, eyes watching him as he scrubbed the dishes and danced around the kitchen, no doubt knowing why you were there. He doesn't seem to want to be the one to approach the topic just based on the way he refused to stop even for a moment for the past fifteen minutes you've been there.

You know nothing about Sanji past the fact that he's blond, he's a cook, and he used to be a prince from North Blue's Germa Kingdom.

"You know Myrsa didn't die because she had hanahaki." Your hip meets the edge of an island, arms crossed over your chest as you watched Sanji finally slow to a halt, throwing a glance over at you. He takes his cigarette between two fingers, breathing in for a moment and then takes it out, holding it out to you. "What she was cursed with, wasn't ever meant to be able to kill her."

"I know."

Sanji takes the cigarette back after you shake your head, shrugging a little as he continued. "Myrsa died."

You laugh a little, "I read the book."

There's a point he's trying to make that's as foreign to you as the notion of a love that doesn't hurt but he turns a glance to you that almost reads like he's disappointed in you and it settles nicely against the vines choking you through. You straighten up, uncrossing your arms and his visible eye wanders back over the pots he has boiling on the stove. "You liked the ending?" The ending of the North Blue story was a two–page spread of a sunflower field, a planet of bright yellows and a dull light blue, clouds breaking apart overwhelming tones of sunny golds and drowning diamonds.

A tree split awkwardly in half due to the spine of the book, curved in shape and pinched in the middle until you held the pages at the edges and pulled to straighten in down. "It was pretty," a gentle breeze running through the leaves shedding from the tree, a shiver to the wooden flesh that split apart if looked at the right way by the right man. Myrsa was beautiful, even in a death she didn't pick treated her well.

How could you hope to live when she did not?

You find a lot of things pretty now; you wonder if that's the dead crawling in you that is beginning to appreciate the life around. Robin sat on the deck with a cup of cooling coffee on a table in front of her and a book in her hand, Nami stood between her rows of mikan trees, Zoro straining under the weights of his responsibilities, Brook with a violin to his shoulder. The sky drowned over the ocean as Luffy leaned his head against you on Sunny's figurehead, his voice a soft beat over the water rushing against the hull of the ship. He's talking about Shanks and his dream and your heart aches selfishly; his skin gulps down the orange light of the dawning sun and you resigned yourself to a death loving him.

You wonder if Luffy still thinks of his dead brother, your tongue slips against the bark of your gums, and you open your mouth without thinking. "Luffy," you hear spoken into the wind, "will you tell me about your brother?"

"Sabo?" He's clapping his feet together excitedly, turning from the sky to you with a large grin on his face, "he's a part of the Revelation Army— no, wait revocation? Revenge Army? Renovation Army! Wait— that's not right."

"No, the other one." A whisper haunts the wind, 'the dead one' written in its movement.

There's a certain hesitation to his words that brings you to the realisation that being loved by Luffy is a wonderful thing. He's never been one to be articulate with words, picking the simple ones that come to mind first without a moment's hesitation but strangely the simple–minded way served him well when it came to love. Love is not articulate either— it's one of the simplest things in the world— so when it's met with someone like Luffy, it blossoms into an art form of all things beautiful.

You regret have not meeting Luffy when Ace was around. Dancing around his features is a tender skip of tightness; his shoulders pulled up to his ears, head ducked down, lips awkward and tongue thick as he told you the story of being accepted to be Ace's brother. Hues of embers fluoresce, dripping down on Sunny's figurehead as you reached an arm around him; his words are stained in blood and adoration, strained and slow but Luffy persists, his love persists.

"You should've met him!" He finishes, turning to you with a light chuckle. "You would've loved him."

Your hand falls onto his shoulder, pulling him closer despite the crawl of vomit up your throat and you leaned your head against his straw hat. "Maybe I will."

Death is another thing you think is simple. It's as easy as slipping into Chopper's office to find him hunched over his desk, his hooves holding onto a pestle as he circled the butt around in a mortar. "Ah, you're here?" He glanced over his shoulder as you walked around him and settled onto one of the beds he has in his room. "Give me a second! I nearly have your medicine ready."

"Chopper," you think you've played this out in your head before, "I have hanahaki."

His arms slow down to a halt, his face dropping by several degrees; the previous petals that made up his hopeful and cheerful expression flutter to the floor, guided by the winds you'd altered with those four words.

"Hanahaki?" Chopper's words are slow as he settled the pestle down, "I thought— but it doesn't exist?"

"Funnily enough, it died off." You tell him with a little laugh. "As more people took to the seas and chased after the one piece, less people fell victim to hanahaki." The Chopper you've told this to before in your mind was definitely less devastated and surprised to be greeted by the fact that you have hanahaki.

He's stumbling over his words, trying to pick something to focus on first as his face was scrunched up, eyebrows furrowed, and lips open into disbelief. "How long have you known? Why didn't you tell me? You'll have the surgery, right? You can trust me; I'll definitely save you. When did it first start?" Your head is pounding with the incessant questions he spits at you, unable to answer any of them as any allowance for a response was filled in by another inquiry. Suddenly, he's pulling his mind to a stop as he turned back to you, solemn and sad and asks, "who is it?" 

It's easy to tell how Luffy has touched people, Chopper makes note of the way your head tilts and you smile and it's obvious that there was no one else capable of calling upon your love.

"And the surgery?"

The look on your face, although foreign to you, tells him all he needs to know.

That doesn't stop him though, he keeps himself by your side and urges (pleads) you to have the surgery; his constant presence becomes a problem when he makes a point of forcing Luffy away from you. It's small at first, trying to distract Luffy with other things, claiming to want to be the one to watch over Luffy when you all dock so you're not given the chance, clinging onto your arms and demanding your attention when Luffy threatens to take it away from him. Then, when Luffy notices that he's been holding onto this flower for hours, fingers pinched around a sunflower stem to ask you how you get seeds from the flower to eat, and every time he's seen a speck of your colour from corners, Chopper shows up to drag you away or points a finger somewhere to shout about a meat mountain, he has a problem.

You notice it's about the meat mountain at first though.

He's slamming the door to Chopper's office after the fourth time, shouting, "Chopper! Where's the meat mountain you keep talking about?" He doesn't seem to care about the fact that Chopper is checking up on you as he stomps into the room, plopping himself down right next to you. Chopper pushes him away when your shoulders brush against each other and you're coughing out bloodied petals. His attention diverts when he hears the shaking of your cough, how you knock into him uncontrollably as your torso leans to meet your thighs, hands deep into the foam edge of the mattress. Petals splatter onto your shoes, clinging to the leather with saliva and re–painting the laces in a sickly red. Luffy’s touch is intrusive, a hand tightened on your thigh that burns your skin to ash and forces vines to splutter out your skin. They attack him, you reel yourself away from Luffy in hopes that they don’t reach him but in some disgusting way, they force themselves to new lengths to coil around his limbs. Spindling up and up and up and you can’t see his face anymore as a thick rope of vines in the shape of his hand reaches out for you, they keep moving up until you only see his hat— your back knocks against the wall. You sternly tell yourself this death is acceptable; the vines grow limp.

When you’ve calmed down enough, the first thing Luffy asks you is, “why aren’t you better yet?” And you feel as though you’re being scolded for some reason; your eyes flicker over to Chopper, fingers tangled together in front of your thighs from the corner of the room you’ve forced yourself into. When Luffy catches the wandering glances— as if you’re trying to keep him out of something— he treats you exactly how you’re acting. Like a criminal.

“Chopper?” It’s unnerving how his eyes are still on you, no trace of expression on his face, “out.”

“But—”

“Out.” Chopper throws you an unhelpful glance as he passes you to get to the door.

You’ve always had the wrong impression of Luffy— everyone that doesn’t know him has the same image; he’s a pirate that has taken down warlord after warlord, who has brought horrifying change and shifts the balance of authority wherever his feet take him. Hearing hushed whispers of him and his close affiliates in the lightened haze of booze, to distract from a tooth getting knocked out of place never does much for his image either. Though it wouldn’t be right to say that Luffy is wholly good either— he’s selfish. Selfish and impossibly kind and downright disgusting with the handling of his own needs; the sound of your name fizzing between his teeth has you startled, nodding your head back to him on the bed you’d left him at.

“You’re hiding something.” It’s not a question nor is it an accusation of any kind. It’s an observation. Luffy slides himself off the bed, his sandals comically slap against the floor of Chopper’s office, “tell me.” His hands fall onto your shoulders, one stays there and the other slides down. He treats your skin like an amusement park for his pleasure; his nails drag across the goosebumps of your bicep, pressing down on raised scars and then splashes into the palm of your hand, dragging ripples in the centre.

You hesitate, twisting your fingers together and pulling as if to attempt to dislodge the odd feeling that follows his fingertips. “Are you asking as a captain?” Despite how general expectations of Luffy remain pretty low to those who do know him, it’s also known that Luffy has a nerve in him that’s impossibly receptive to hurt. There’s a certain way to activate it and when it’s on, it doesn't quieten down until its idiot owner is pleased. Luffy scrunches his face up in an odd way, displeasured at your question as if he couldn’t believe you’d ask him something that hurtful, and his head tilts.

“Tell me.” You’re met with an unwavering stare, the hand on your shoulder tightens and there’s a hardness to it that you’ve never associated with your rubber captain— you can feel the bone in his fingers, stern and undeniable. Your eyes trace over the exposed, tanned skin of his bicep and you wish that you could force your vines through his skin to crawl into his chest and listen to the tremors that’ll run up your devil fruit from his beating heart for some kind of answer. There’s a sudden breath that’s available to you that isn’t tainted and clogged, trapped before it even meets your lungs, but it burns in a new way as you stare at Luffy, scared and terrified of a new life that’ll be forced upon you if you tell him what’s wrong with you.

You open your mouth with an excuse, but Luffy huffs and the words shrivel in your mouth, collapsing to a grain on your tongue and when you close your mouth, you taste dirt. “Luffy,” you beg, “I can’t— just, I’ll be fine.”

There’s a hint of some anger in his gaze before it turns into a haunting realisation, “Chopper knows, doesn’t he?” He pushes you aside, “I’ll just ask Chopper.”

There’s a ringing distant in your ears that chimes like the bell of the church from that place two islands ago, maybe three— you haven’t been too good with time recently. Sunny shakes like the earth as a body hits the pavement, you feel disgusting and heavy and an itch claws through your palms where Luffy’s hand has just been. You’re sure it’s Chopper he’s shaking an answer from but you hear Robin’s voice, calling for him to calm down and when that doesn’t work, Sanji cuts in. It all gets further and further away, you think about the planks of Sunny opening to welcome you back into that darkness from nights ago, you think about being choked by one of your vines, you think about the wisteria blooming whole in your lungs— you think and you think and think and suddenly, it’s all nothing. You’re dying, you think, that’s a fact, what else? Luffy is the reason. Or maybe you’re the reason.

“Luffy,” were you the one talking? “Luffy.” The voice comes again, stern and your eyebrows furrow with the same tension that the voice is carrying. “Thank you for being my captain.”

Not that it surprises you, Luffy punches you.

[cookies-over-yonder]

two sides of the same coin

Adaine tries to relax her jaw. It doesn't work, and her ears are ringing, and fuck, her chest hurts so bad. "Adaine?" Riz. She tries to speak, but all that comes out is a sob.

for @kaseyskat

ao3

Adaine squeezes Boggy in her arms, feeling the tears slide down her face. She's curled up in a ball on her bed, and she can't breathe.

She's having a panic attack, and she knows it, but Jawbone isn't home. It's fine. She can handle it. That's what she told herself when she left movie night in the living room.

She tries to relax her jaw. It doesn't work, and her ears are ringing, and fuck, her chest hurts so bad.

"Adaine?"

Riz. She tries to speak, but all that comes out is a sob.

"Hey, hey, it's okay, can I touch you?" he asks, and his voice is quiet. Adaine doesn't think she's ever heard Riz sound so gentle.

She nods, and she feels a hand brushing her hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear, and another hand holding hers.

"Can you look at me?"

She hadn't even realized her eyes were closed.

She opens them, and sees Riz starting back at her with wide and concerned eyes. "Hey, it's okay, I'm right here, you're safe, we're gonna do some deep breaths, okay? Can you follow along with me?"

She nods.

Riz takes in a deep, audible breath, and she follows along. And she lets it out, feeling more tears slide down her face. "So—sorr—"

"Stop that. Remember what Jawbone said? It's not your fault that your brain is giving you shit, so don't apologize."

Adaine whines despite herself, a childish whine that would get her trouble for were she still living with her parents.

But she doesn't get in trouble this time.

This time... she gets a hug.

"Just breathe, it's okay," Riz says softly, rubbing circles into her back, "I'm here for as long as you need."

Adaine breathes, and she buries her face in the crook of Riz's neck despite the height difference making it a bit of an awkward position.

She whines again, and it's an embarassing thing, but she can't help it. And Riz runs his hands through her hair, and she feels so small.

"You're safe, everything is okay, I promise," Riz says, "just keep breathing, you're doing so well."

Adaine keeps breathing, and she feels the post-panic attack fatigue hit harder than it has in a long time.

"Hey, how are you feeling?" Riz asks after a moment, pulling away to look at her.

Adaine whines again, curling in on herself a little.

"It's okay if you can't talk, do you wanna go back to watching a movie with the others?"

She shakes her head.

"Okay, we can stay here," Riz says, brushing her hair out of her face again and planting a kiss on her forehead. She looks up in surprise, and he averts his gaze. "Um... my mom does that when I'm upset, I thought it might help."

Adaine nods, and she sees him let out a small sigh of relief.

"Are you feeling any better?" he asks, and she nods, and then she buries her head in the crook of his neck again. He wraps his arms around and holds her tighter. "We can just take a nap here if you want."

You sleep too, Adaine Messages him, and she hears him chuckle.

"I'm fine, you need rest," he says, and helps her shift into a lying down position, with Boggy between them. "Do you want me to stay here with you while you trance?"

She nods, squeezing Boggy and shifting so she's cuddled up against Riz.

He drapes an arm over her, pulling her closer.

"I love you, okay?" Riz says, wiping a falling tear off her cheek, and burying his face in her hair. "You don't have to be strong for everyone all the time. I'd rather help you than know you're struggling alone."

I could say the same for you, Adaine Messages him.

She feels Riz tense up a little. "That—that's not relevant right now."

Isn't it?

"You need your rest right now. That's a topic for another time."

Always avoidant.

"If I try to sleep too, will you get off my case?"

For now.

"Deal," Riz says, taking off his glasses and placing them on the bedside table before returning to cuddle with Adaine and closing his eyes.

And feeling a much more at ease, she closes her eyes too, focusing on Riz's protective embrace as she drifts off to trance.

[lumiolivier]

Clean Start

Series: One Piece

Chapter: One Shot

Word Count: 2199

Rating: T

Pairing(s): Ace x Reader (YN)

Ace works hard. He deserves a little special something, something at the end of his day, doesn't he?

a.n.: This was supposed to be smut. Where's the smut, Lumi? It's all fluffy. I ordered this with smut! But it's covered in cute! Who said you could cover this in cute?! Oh, yeah. I did. Because I decided to write something hella self indulgent. Sue me.

“Hey, baby!” You heard Ace at the front door of your apartment.  After working back to back twelve hour shifts for the last four days and coming home late, he wanted nothing more than to curl up with his favorite person in the world, “Finally free.  Just you and me for the next…Where the hell are you?”

Little did he know, you were in the bedroom, waiting for him to come home.  In nothing but a black silk robe he had gotten you for your birthday.  You caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and couldn’t help but admire the reflection.  Because let’s face it.  That robe made you look incredible.  And it only enhanced what was waiting for Ace underneath it.

“YN, where the hell did…” Ace stood in the doorway absolutely stunned.  He wasn’t expecting you to be standing in the bedroom.  Most certainly not like…that, “Oh…Hello.”

“Hi there,” you couldn’t wipe the smirk off your face if you wanted to.  You had a plan.  And part of that plan was waiting for both of you in the bathroom already.  You knew when he’d get off.  You knew how long it took him to get home.  You even factored in a stop at the gas station for a slurpee.  You couldn’t have timed it more perfectly.

“And to what do I owe the pleasure,” Ace pulled you into his hips, his arm resting in his lower back and his lips all over your neck, “of getting my girl like this?”

“I missed you, too,” you squirm under each little kiss with tingles shooting through your extremities, reveling in the smell of his sweat, “I figured you and I could do something together.”

“Oh, darling, I’m flattered,” Ace put a hand to his chest, “But I don’t think I got that in me.”

Mmhm.  Keep thinking that, “I promise this couldn’t be any less strenuous.  This is me taking care of everything.”

“Really?” Ace perked up, “Do tell, YN.  Do tell.  No, wait.  Let me guess.  Does it involve us leaving the house?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Alright,” Ace cocked a smile at you, “Does it involve you?”

“Yes…” You took his hands.

“Does it…” Ace thought a little harder, a little crease appearing in his forehead, “Does it involve…candle wax?”

“It could,” you shrugged him off, “But it doesn’t have to.”

“So, you’re not into trying the kinky shit tonight?”

“Ace!”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” His laugh warmed you inside and he pulled you back into his chest, “It could involve candle wax, but it doesn’t have to.  It involves you.  Does it involve me, too?”

“Duh,” you rolled your eyes at him.  Yes.  That’s yours.  You willingly chose him.  You looked into those big, beautiful, lost puppy eyes of his and he had you hooked.

“And…” Ace gently tugged at your robe tie, “Does it also involve me getting to see what’s under here?”

“Of course,” you were already helping Ace peel his shirt off.  And you were fighting every urge in your body to playfully nip at his beautifully chiseled chest. 

“I thought I was unwrapping my present,” Ace pouted out his bottom lip, “I don’t remember where you said you got to get at me, too.”

“It’s part of it,” you assured him as you pulled on his belt buckle.

“I don’t know where you’re going with this, baby girl,” Ace picked your chin up, getting one more kiss out of you, “But I think I’ll like it.”

“That’s the idea…” You kept fiddling with his belt buckle and slowly pulled it through the loops before taking him toward the bathroom.  The sweet smell of vanilla filled the room with hints of nectarine.  And the temperature had gone up a few degrees. 

And that’s when Ace started to piece things together, “YN, you little minx.”

“Yes?” You started to undo your robe tie, but you still kept your robe closed as you stepped into the warm water in the bathtub.

“I had all intentions of showering anyway,” Ace looked you over, more than ready to sink his teeth into you, “Are you suggesting a bath?  Just the two of us?”

“If that’s alright with you.” You took your robe off for him, showing off a little for Ace, “Come on, baby…Don’t make me sit in here all by myself.”

“And why in the hell would I ever do something like that?” Ace couldn’t get his clothes off faster.  Granted, taking a bath wasn’t his ideal way of spending his Friday night, but he couldn’t tell you no.  Of course not.  To say Ace worshiped you would be an understatement.  He loved every inch of you.  Every imperfection, every scar, every little freckle, every curve.  He wanted all of it.  Once he was naked, he poked at your back, “I’d be happy to.  Move up a bit, babe.  Let me in.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” you weren’t budging.  You had something much better in mind, “I’m not going to be the little spoon.  You get to be little spoon.”

“Me?” Ace laughed a bit, “Cute, YN.  Seriously, move up.”

You still weren’t going anywhere.  And your act of stubbornness did not go unnoticed.

“YN…” Ace gave you that look.  That one look that made you know there was about to be a large hand colliding with your ass very soon.  Anything he could do to make you behave.  And yet, you still didn’t move.  Fortunately, Ace didn’t have the energy in him to put up a fight.  And he caved so quickly as he climbed into the tub with you, “Fine.  If this is how you’re going to be, then I’m only going to be worse.”

“That’s the spirit,” you wrapped your arms around him and immediately, the tension in Ace’s body melted away. 

“Mmmm…” Ace shut his eyes for just a moment, taking in your warmth, the pillowy softness in your boobs he gladly rested his head on, “You spoil me.”

“You think I spoil you?” You kissed the top of his head, “I haven’t even started to spoil you.  I’m just letting you acclimate first.  Then, I can spoil you.”

“I’m so lost…” But he didn’t care.  He trusted your judgments and your process.  If it meant him having skin on skin contact with you and it made you happy, he’d be fine.

“It’s a good thing you have me then, isn’t it?”

“My little light in the dark,” Ace nuzzled his face in what he affectionately referred to as the valley and gently nipped at your chest. 

It wasn’t the first time Ace had called you this.  But it warmed you inside all the same as if it were.  The thought of being his light got to you.  The thought of being the center of his universe was the absolute best.  And if he needed you to be his light, then his light you would gladly be.  You reached over the side of the bathtub into the wicker basket you kept the soaps in and grabbed a bottle of shampoo.  Because the moment Ace brought a bottle of 3-in-1 into your house, it didn’t even make the trash can.  It splattered in the parking lot outside your apartment.  And never again, you declared.  Never again would such atrocities enter your home again. 

And your fingers ended up tangled in his dark, wet hair.  At first, he wasn’t sure what you were doing.  He even had that look in his eyes that told you all you needed to know.  But much like when you were trying to get him in the bathtub in the first place, he didn’t have the energy to fight you on anything.  You knew he hated doing it himself anyway, so why not make life easier for him?  That’s what you did.  He comes home tired, beyond the point of exhaustion, falling apart at the seams.  You lick his wounds.  You knew far too much about what he’s been forced to endure.  Much like the bottle of 3-in-1 he brought into your home, you told yourself never again.  That he deserved so much better. 

You knew deep down you were doing a good job when the bathwater never went cold.  His fingers shooting off little bits of heat kept it from going cold.  And those low, controlled pulses only came out when Ace was perfectly content.  Once you finished rinsing his hair out, you noticed him hardly flinch at the water.  You looked down at Ace and he was sleeping like a baby.  Like a peaceful little angel.  And a special glow radiated from his cheeks.  You would do everything in your power to protect that peace.  But once you went through a bout of conditioner and a little bit of moisturizer for his dry and severely windburned cheeks, you knew you had to do it.  You had to wake him.  There was no way in hell you’d be able to carry Ace out of the bathtub.  As much as you loved to think you had that kind of upper body strength, that wasn’t going to happen.

“Ace…” you spoke gently.  The last thing you wanted to do was cause him any alarm, “Ace…Baby…Baby…Ace…Babe…You need to get off me.  You’re crushing lefty and it hurts like hell.”

“Mmm…” Ace still didn’t move.  Not because he was still asleep.  He was far too comfortable.  All he did was move his head off your boob.

“Ace…” You knew this would happen.  You knew it was going to happen this way.  And you needed a better way to motivate him.  And right now, only one thing would work.  You got down in his ear and put on the soft, sweet little voice that drove him crazy, “I can’t hold my breath underwater for long.”

“Did I nod off?” Ace blinked the sleep out of his eyes, “I could’ve sworn I was awake.”

“Nope,” you kissed his cheek, “Not that I don’t love this, Ace, but we should probably think about heading to bed.”

“What gave you that idea?” Ace mumbled into your cleavage, still half asleep.

“Come on,” you nudged him off you and reached for a couple towels, “You and I need to go to bed.  We got shit going on tomorrow.”

“Really?” Ace looked at you strangely.  He didn’t remember making any plans.  He didn’t remember you clearing anything with him.  Unless it was while he was totally not asleep, “I kind of thought it’d be just the two of us and Saturday morning cartoons.”

“I mean, obviously,” you agreed, “But that’s just tomorrow morning.”

“Did you go to the store today?” Ace crossed his fingers.

“And found the sugariest box of cereal on the shelf,” you assured him, “Because you’re a fucking child.”

“If it doesn’t have any sugar, it has no taste,” Ace argued, “And if it doesn’t have any taste, it defaults to cardboard.  Don’t give me that shit.”

“Come on,” you nudged him out of the bathtub.

“Fine, fine,” Ace got out of the bathtub and you threw him a towel, “Saturday morning cartoons aside, what else do we have going on tomorrow?”

“We’re going to have to make another trip to the grocery store,” you told him, “Because it’s been too long since the three of you were in one place.”

“Wait…” Ace felt around in his drawer for a pair of boxers, “Are you saying…?”

“I am saying,” you nodded, “The boys are in town.”

“Hell yeah!” Ace’s energy levels started to shoot back up, “It feels like ages since I’ve seen Luffy and Sabo.  I miss them.  How did you know they were coming into town?”

“You act like we don’t keep in touch,” you giggled a little, putting your own pajamas on.  A light blue negligee would do.  It was one of your favorites.  And definitely one of Ace’s, too, “Sabo called and said he’d be around.  And it wasn’t long after that I heard from Luffy.  So, we need to make a trip to the store tomorrow.  Because there’s no way in hell we have enough to feed everyone.”

“YN, look me in the eye,” Ace stared blankly at you, “Do we ever have enough to feed everyone?”

“That’s on Luffy.”

“That is on Luffy.  Kid’s got a hell of an appetite on him.  Shit’s hereditary.”

“Is it really?”

“You’ve never seen Garp eat before, have you?” Ace asked.

“Can’t say I have.” You don’t even really remember meeting Garp.  He wasn’t someone Ace wanted to introduce you to.  You were too special.

“Trust me,” Ace assured you, “It’s a hereditary thing.  But on a less infuriating note, do you think we could go to bed now?  Because the sooner we go to bed, the sooner…other things can happen.”

“Really?” you crawled into bed next to him, “And by other things…What could those…other things be?”

“Clearly, cartoons, YN.  What else?”

“You’re a disaster,” you rolled over, “Good night.”

“Hey, hey…” Ace draped an arm around you, “Where do you think you’re going, young lady?”

“Sleep.  If that’s alright with you.”

“Actually,” Ace pulled you closer into his chest, “That sounds wonderful.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

Yep.  This was the one.

[ohbutwheresyourheart]

.

[themagnificentmx]

sigh . i wish being a better person came naturally to me

[musical-chick-13]

You know...normally the "guy is sad and murders people over it because how dare other people be happy" archetype is very annoying, but I think they made it work this time.

[arminsumi]

ADULT STORE

↳ GETO すぐる + fem!reader

"Oh, see I told you... this product's a bit intense."

1.5k words

Pt. 2

Summary : product testing with the helpful employee at the adult store!

Warnings : minors do not read/interact : smut/explicit content : using toys, stranger/hookup sex, softdom!Geto, praise, cunnilingus, fingering, dirty talk, squirting, multiple orgasms, sex fantasy trope (sex with the adult store employee)

Note : i haven't made a trip to the adult store in ages bc... everything i want is so expensive lol (the struggle) 😭 i have some rlly funny adult store stories i could ramble about but i will refrain ✋ anyways, indulge yourselves in this fantasy, angels! 😈

Playme : wanna know what it's like?

The gate of the store buzzes, the employee watches you open it with a clink and enter the adult store. Your eyes flood with the overwhelming sight of wall-to-wall toys.

The smooth voice of the employee comes from behind the cash register.

"Yo."

Long hair. Dark, brooding look — almost gothic. Attractive hands with pronounced veins running over the back of them, poised on the countertop which he's lazing over.

He sees you and slowly straightens out his back out to impress you with his height.

"Ah, h-hello..."

He hears you stutter, and assumes it must be your first time in an adult store.

"First time? I mean, in an adult store, that is." he breaks the ice.

"Haha, y-yeah... yeah, it's my first time."

Yeah, that's what I thought.

He holds hard and deep eye contact with you. Yes, he's aware of how intensely he stares. He's doing it on purpose.

"Would you like some assistance, or do you just want to leisurely browse by yourself?"

His tone is so friendly, it doesn't let on to how heated his abdomen is getting at the sight of you.

"Yes, please, I'd appreciate your assistance."

Aw, of course.

"M'kay... then let me assist you."

He smoothly comes out from behind the counter and the two of you stand in front of a wall of toys.

"Overwhelmed?" he chuckles, noting how your eyes widen while looking at all the products. "I know there's a lot to choose from. But just focus on your needs. What do you need?"

"What do I need? Honestly, I have no idea what I need." you laugh nervously.

I know exactly what she needs...

"Well, why don't we carefully go through the products together? I'm sure I can figure out what you need. Promise I know my stuff. I've been working here for three years."

His nonchalance and professionalism puts you at ease. It's something he prides himself on: making customers feel relaxed.

Your eye catches on a pink dildo, so he takes it off the rack to show you up close.

"This one's good, it's got a ribbed design." he shows it off. "Are you looking for just penetration or clitoral stimulation?"

Aw, she's flustered.

"Uh, both I guess? Yeah. I'd love both."

Of course you'd love both. That's what you need, pretty girl.

"Both? Come over here. Let me show you something you might like."

There's a flirty tension between the two of you that just keeps getting more and more... intense.

He plucks a curvy vibrator. It looks expensive. Because it is expensive.

"This one's got ten functions—"

"—ten?! Sounds a bit extra."

"Nothing's too extra when it comes to your personal pleasure."

The two of you share a long look, then laugh.

"But it really is an excellent product."

"Are you advertising?" you joke teasingly.

"Absolutely." he jokes, "Kidding. I'm not trying to come across as a preachy marketer or something. I've used it with partners in the past, that's why I'm recommending it; I know it's good. It's a pretty intense toy. Helps girls squirt even if they think they can't."

I could make her squirt.

He's running his eyes up and down your body.

"Is that so...?" you mumble flirtatiously, eyeing out the product in his veiny, manly hands.

"Hm, still a skeptic? Because I'm sure I could please you."

He hopes that you note his deliberate use of 'I' and not 'it' there.

"Yeah. I'm sure you could please me, too." you flirt.

A heat erupts in his abdomen and stomach.

Oh wow... now she's really flirting, huh? Why'd I wear tight pants today of all days...

He has an unwavering gaze on you. You've captivated him. Put him in some kinda horny trance.

"Did I say me? Sorry. Slip of the tongue." he murmurs, voice dropping lower, "I meant the vibrator." he obviously lies.

You and him exchange a suggestive, longing look. You can feel your pussy clench around nothing, begging to get stuffed up and pleasured.

He hesitates before speaking again, as if he's scared of crossing a line and making you uncomfortable.

"If you want to... we could test it out together?" he suggests. His nonchalance is an act, really he's so nervous when he asks this.

"I'd love to..." you consent, and he doesn't miss the erotic excitement in your tone.

He nods towards the backdoor, eyes keeping on you and your cute little body that he just wants to feel and squeeze like a toy itself.

"Promise to keep your lips sealed about this? I don't wanna get fired for uh... you know... demonstrating products... to my pretty customer."

"Only if you promise to help me squirt for the first time."

Oh wow. Fuck. I'm hard.

His lips widen into a devilish grin. "Sure thing."

After a sloppy, desperate make out with this stranger, you find yourself sat on the couch in the breakroom. Door locked. Blinds shuttered closed. Legs spread wide to his liking, as he cushions the vibrator into your plush slit.

He's rubbing it slowly up and down your folds. He watches your reactions intently, breathing heavier at the sight of your pussy squishing under the pink dildo. The buzzing sound fills the room, but your moans are louder.

He clutches the toy gently, massaging the bulbous head into your clit with sweeping circular motions.

"F-fuck... that pretty clit feels good, doesn't it? Yeah? Let's get it feeling even better."

He turns it up a notch. It buzzes harder against your sensitive nub.

"How's that? Haha, yeah, intense, isn't it?

"Yeahhh — Fuck! Ohhh that's so good, that's so — oh my goddd fuckkk. S-sorry I think... I'm gonna cummm — !!"

"It's okay. Cum as hard as you can, yeah? I want you to get a good idea of how well this toy can pleasure you before you buy it, after all. Oh there we go... just let go and... f-fuck... wow... j-just cum like that. Fuck... that pretty clit feels so good now, huh? Gonna cum? Gonna cum for me, with a vibrator on your cunt?"

He takes note of your reaction to his dirty talk and smirks. Then he slyly turns the toy's setting higher and it buzzes more intensely, and in one... two... three... seconds, you're squirting like crazy all over the pink vibrator and his hand.

Holy shit, look at that pretty pussy gushing... she could drench my dick. I wanna be inside her so fucking baddd...

"Oh, see I told you... this product's a bit intense." he regains his professional tone after you cum.

He turns the toy off and watches you come down from your shaking orgasm, smug look on his face. He keeps it clutched in his veiny hand, and brings it up to his lips to suck and lick up all your juices from it.

She tastes so fucking good... I feel dizzy.

You watch him with wide eyes as he tastes your slick off the toy.

"F-fuck... wh-what did you s-s-say your name was again?" you stutter, starstruck by this stranger.

You're so fucking dizzy, your pussy is buzzing like it still feels the intensity of the toy against it.

"Hm, wanna know my name?" he smiles teasingly, "How about you cum on my face and then I'll tell you."

"Fuck, okay."

And then as soon as you give him permission, he's hungrily diving between your thighs.

"Oh my god..." he loves how you gasp and writhe under the influence of his mouth.

Let's see how fucked-out I can get her. Wanna see her lose her mind 'cause of me.

His lips latch onto your labia and suckle, then onto your clit. He points his tongue at your clit, then oh my god flattens it and laps at your bud while suckling. His softness shows a hint to tenderness in his personality; he really knows how to treat a woman well.

This stranger spoils your pussy with his tongue and lips. He seems to be in his own little world while nosing between your thighs. He carelessly gets your juices smeared across his cheek and lets the rest dribble down his chin.

"Fuck fuck fuck — like that, like that. Don't stop don't stop — !! 'm gonna cum! G-gonna — fffffffucking cummmm ahhhhh — !!"

He flicks the tip of his tongue against your sensitive bundle of nerves, eager to make your pussy freak out on his mouth. Just before you cum he slips two fingers into your hole, middle and ring, and pumps them into a sweet spot hard. He just wants to get an idea of the feeling of your pussy when it cums.

Suckling at your clit, fingering you with nice hard rough strokes, closing his eyes like he's the one enjoying it meanwhile he's silent and you're moaning like you're going insane. He can tell you're close and speeds it up.

"Cum cum cum, cum for me. Just let go and cum." he sounds so desperate, and that professional tone of his is finally cracking. "Cum on my fucking face, please."

And he dives his tongue right back into your hole, wriggling his tongue around, resulting in the nastiest wet squelching sound. His lips press flat against your pussy, he draws in a deep breath and your heat is all he smells.

Please cum on my face. Please please please.

"Ah! Fuck! Fuckkkk!"

You gush right on his lips, which are plump and swollen and red and glistening with your slick.

He pulls away and licks his lips and tells you his name.

"Suguru, by the way. My name's Suguru. Hey... can I give you my number?"

Oh he's so smooth. But he's even smoother at the checkout, when he asks if you're free this Friday for a date. At his apartment. With the company of some of his favorite toys.

© arminsumi

Do not plagiarize / repost / translate / copy layouts / etc.

Do not steal what I've worked hard to create.

[cold-kitty]

Due to very, very high demand for part two of my Yan!Mermaid (looks at my notifications and cries), here it is.

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

Contains: NSFW, dub-con, same warnings as the last one other than that

Yan!Mermaid who starts clinging to your leg as you sigh, so happy that you're giving him another chance.

Yan!Mermaid who watches your hand signals and listens to your foreign words, not understanding a thing but tries to listen for your sake.

Yan!Mermaid who forces himself not to straddle you when he sits next to you, his tail swaying slowly behind him.

Yan!Mermaid who watches you fish all day, just enjoying your presence.

Yan!Mermaid who pouts and whines and clings to you when you try to leave. no no no no no! don't leave! i don't wanna be alone! stay with me, i promise to keep you warm!

Yan!Mermaid who tries to climb into the trunk of your car, and somehow manages.

Yan!Mermaid who happily slides out of your truck when you arrive home, smiling wide.

Yan!Mermaid who's surprised when you don't seem happy too. you look mad, but you suck it up and groan.

Yan!Mermaid who doesn't like how you put him in a tank with the fish you caught, he wants to sleep in your bed!

Yan!Mermaid who climbs out of the tank when you're asleep and crawls across the floor to your room, curling up in bed with you.

Yan!Mermaid who lets his mind wander to when he was grinding against you, how good it felt. y-your skin is so w-warm and soft... a-ah...

Yan!Mermaid who is immediately worked up again, pressing himself against you tight.

Yan!Mermaid who lets his hands greedily trail over you, gently squeezing your thighs and watching the flesh bounce back into place.

Yan!Mermaid who hesitantly pulls down your pants. he promises himself that he's just looking, but he can't resist the temptation. s-so pretty...

Yan!Mermaid who starts by squishing the flesh of your ass, watching it jiggle. he continues to do that for a while, almost mesmerized. he loves watching you squirm in your sleep too.

Yan!Mermaid who sticks his fingers in his mouth, sucking on them and getting them wet.

Yan!Mermaid who starts by pushing one finger into you, slowly so he doesn't hurt you. he watches how your unconscious body squirms and reacts to the intrusion.

Yan!Mermaid who slowly pushes another finger into you, but that wakes you up. you look behind you almost immediately, a horrified look on your face.

Yan!Mermaid who expects you to hurt him, staring at you with wide and fearful eyes. he starts moving his fingers nonetheless, hoping that it might calm you down, twisting and curling them with slight hesitation. oh please don't hate me! you're just so irresistible!

Yan!Mermaid who watches as your body starts to quiver softly, your head falling back into the pillow. you were giving up to the pleasure, even if reluctantly.

Yan!Mermaid who feels encouraged, his fingers thrusting fasted, twisting and curling them to his hearts content. he makes sure to get real close to you so he can hear all of your soft whimpers and moans. a-ah... keep making those sounds... so cute...

Yan!Mermaid who keeps this up until you cum, and oh my God is he so happy. he watches as you convulse softly, pulling his fingers out and licking them. he doesn't mind if it's nasty if it's you.

Yan!Mermaid who lowers himself down and starts licking up the cum that fell onto the bed.

Yan!Mermaid who pats your back reassuringly as he positions himself behind you, helping you out though the whole thing. stroking your hair, praising you in his language, kissing every inch of your body, going as slow as he can.

Yan!Mermaid who cuddles you the whole night after that, kissing you softly. he's so happy, so fucking happy. he finally got to mate with you like a real lover, even if it was only one short round.

(BONUS NSFW: Yan!Mermaid definitely does analingus, %100. Yan!Mermaid puts your needs and wants before his, if he wants to go fast and you want to go slow he goes slow. he hates seeing you in crying, so he refuses to overstimulate you, nothing rough or degrading, and he doesn't dare leave marks on you. Yan!Mermaid AFTERCARE, SO MUCH OF IT.)

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Does anyone know how mermaid dick works? Like honestly, how. Is it in the tail? Just hanging out there? HOW!?

~🐈‍⬛

[nanaslutt]

Playing with Toji's nipples

cont: fem reader, established relationship, nipple play, edging, a wink of Sub!Toji, dirty talk, unprotected sex, cumming inside, teasing, rough sex

MDNI

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ

Even now, after Toji had already accepted his fate, he was pouting. His massive back was pressed to your chest as you sat against the headboard behind him, your feet hooked over then under his thighs, keeping them spread slightly. Toji stared at the wall, his bottom lip slightly pouted out as he waited for you to make your move so this would all be over.

"Tojiiiii, what's the matter?" You ask teasingly, a big smile across your face as you grab his chin from behind and turn his head to look at you, tilting your head around his body to get a better look at him. Toji doesn't speak, just keeps the 'fate accepted' expression on his face. Your smile grows as you lean in and press your lips against his, making him release an annoyed grunt at the action. He knows you know how much he loves kissing, but he wants to keep his defiant facade up.

"Toji if you really hate the idea that much... we don't have to do it." You say, a bit dejectedly as your hand leaves his face to reach around his body and caress the skin of his abs, your fingers tracing the indents of the strong muscles. Toji shut his eyes and sighed, relishing the feeling of your warm hands on him. "It's your birthday princess. Said I would do what you wanted." He says, his expression softening.

Despite the act he was putting on, he didn't hate the idea of you playing with his nipples all that much, he just hated looking weak in front of anyone, and he knew better than anyone how weak his nipples made him. You pressed a kiss to his shoulder as Toji turned his head back around to watch your hands caress his abdomen. His cock was already half hard, and it was slowly getting harder the more you touched him. 

You were sitting on some pillows to make yourself a little taller, that way you could actually see what you were doing over his bulky shoulders, but even then your view was a little obstructed. You had tried to introduce the idea of a mirror, but Toji had shut it down faster than you could even fully finish your proposal. The possibility of you seeing his debauched expressions during this sent shivers down his spine.

"You're so good to me Toji." You giggled, continuing to press little kisses on the expanse of his shoulders. "Oh trust me, I know." He responded cockily, shaking his head. Toji sucked a breath in through his teeth when your lips made contact with the nape of his neck. He sighed loudly, trying to keep his breathing steady when you focused your attention there, the kisses becoming harder, traveling higher up his nape, the short hairs on the back of his neck tickling your lips. 

"Do you like it when I kiss you here?" You asked him quietly. Toji grimaced, "Don't use my words agaisnt me." He said, his eyes darting around the room. You smiled to yourself, knowing this was getting him worked up. You trailed your fingers down to the hem of his boxers, where his cock was now fully hard and straining agaisnt the fabric. Toji pressed his lips together, swallowing hard as he waited for you to breach the waistline of his boxers and pull his cock out, even though he knew you wouldn't.

"Don't tease me like that if you aren't gonna touch my cock." Toji said, feeling himself throb at the neglect. "Sorry Toji, if you cum without it I'll let you fuck my throat as a reward, kay?" You said, instantly making him feel better.

Tonight's proposition went like this. Toji promised you could do anything with him for your birthday, and of course, you chose to play with the one thing that was usually off-limits- his nipples. You told him you wanted to make him cum from nipple play alone. You knew he could do it, he was just too defiant to let you go anywhere near them. Only one time had you barely grazed your fingers across his nipples and he released the cutest sound, a sound too cute to come from such a big and scary man like Toji Fushiguro.

You so desperately wanted to hear it again. The desperate sound replayed over and over in your head almost every night as you went to bed. Toji reluctantly agreed after tons and tons of negotiation. Toji tried to steer you away from the idea and instead offered Shibari or blindfolded him, but you knew what you wanted and weren't going to give in for anything. 

"Fuck..." Toji groaned, his cock twitching at the thought of getting to shove it down your throat when this was all over. If you had mentioned that compromise when you had first brought this proposal to light, maybe he would've been a little more receptive to the idea. "Whatever just... just do your shit," Toji said, his back muscles flexing against your chest as he leaned against you, getting comfortable. You tightened your legs over his thighs, your ankles pressed just under where his boxers ended, too close to his cock. The pressure from your ankles on his thigh alone was driving him crazy.

"Don't worry, I don't think this will take very long." You reassured teasingly, poking a jab at just how sensitive his chest really was. Toji watched with bated breath as your hands slowly started traveling up his body, away from his cock. A small patch of wetness had started to form where Toji's tip sat behind his boxers, his pre wetting the fabric all wet.

You felt his breath rise and fall quicker when you reached his chest. Toji was internally battling with himself. He couldn't decide if he wanted to watch your hands play with him, or if he needed to look away. Your hands groped the sides of his heavy chest and squished it inward, making it look like he had cleavage. The sight made you smile as you rested your chin on his shoulder, your head tipping against his. "So big..." you said, repressing a giggle.

"You think you're so funny, huh?" Toji said, licking his teeth. Though he sounded ticked off, he was grateful for the playfulness. He would never admit it out loud, but he was nervous. His skin was practically buzzing with it, so your actions now were helping him calm down. "I do actually." You replied, rubbing your head affectionately against his as you continued to massage his massive chest together, making sure to stay away from his nipples for the time being.

You kept massaging him for long enough until all the humor had died down and you just rested on his chest with a focused face, watching the way his chest moved under your ministrations. Toji was getting fidgety at this point, he would rather you touch his nipples already and make him cum than teasing him like this. Your fingers would get so close, but never close enough. He hated to admit it but he had started to crave feeling you there.

Toji tipped his head back against your shoulder, pushing his hips upwards against your legs hooked over his as he got more comfortable. "You okay?" You asked, gazing at the side of his handsome face. His eyes were focused on the ceiling as you spoke. "Just wondering when 'ur gonna do something," Toji said in a bored tone. If it wasn't for his massive boner creating such a large wet patch in his boxers, you would've really believed he was bored.

You smiled and pressed a kiss to the side of his face. "Can I take that as you want me to touch your nipples?" You said, gauging his response. You watched Toji's Adam's apple bob hard as he swallowed whatever saliva was left in his mouth. You hit the nail right on the head, but it was going to take a little more coaxing to get it out of Toji. "No." He said flatly, his eyes fluttering slightly.

You pouted and looked down to his chest before you released the fat of them and started slowly tracing your nails around his areolas, still not touching them, but a hair's length away from doing so. "No?" You repeated, looking back up at him. Toji was adamant about staring at the ceiling, not wanting you to see his expression falter.

Toji pressed his lips together again, his eyes falling shut for half a second longer than normal. If you weren't paying attention, you would've missed it. You kept up that motion, slowly circling his nipples before changing the direction, circling them the other way. Now, his breathing had picked up significantly and was much more noticeable and less suppressed than before.

"Toji..." You said softly, making a choked moan cut off in his throat. "You're dripping." You said, exposing the obvious. Toji dropped his head down from staring at the ceiling and found his cock with his eyes. His mouth dropped open ever so slightly, his arousal almost getting to the point of being too much to bear. 

Your eyes never once left his face. You felt yourself throb between the legs watching how effective this type of teasing was at getting him so worked up. You'd never seen his face so flushed before, it was almost the color of his blushing chest. "Fuck..." Toji groaned, licking his teeth in annoyance. On one hand, he, really, reallllllyyy wanted you to touch his chest, but on the other hand, if he begged, you would never let him live it down. 

Your words interrupted his internal dilemma. "Toji, just tell me you want it. I'm not asking you to be specific how you ask me to. Just tell me you need it... please." You begged, tipping your head against his again, trying to comfort him. Toji shut his eyes, his breath coming out stuttered and shaky each time you switched the direction of your fingers around his nipples. 

With one last heavy sigh, he spoke. "N...need it." He said quietly, his entire face flushing a deep red as a look of displeasure spread across his features. A smile of satisfaction spread across your face, and you squeezed your thighs around his solid body a little harder, forcing his lower back to press against your cunt a little, giving you some relief.

"Good boy Toji," you said. You would absolutely be paying for talking to him like that later, but right now it didn't matter. Giving him no time to rebut, you finally dragged your fingertips to his nipples, raking them up and down, keeping the pressure light at first. Toji jolted forward hard, a sharp breath could be heard getting inhaled from the man in front of you. "Relax." You said, pressing against his abdomen and pulling him back against you before you brought your attention to his nipples again.

Toji's thighs flexed agaisnt your ankles, his cock twitching hard behind his briefs. You started up the circle motion again this time touching his actual nipples each time you went around. Toji's abs clenched each time you made a full circle, followed by loud gasps and choked groans. He was fighting it. "Toji you can let your voice out. It's hot." You told him before flicking his nipples up and down a little faster, increasing the pressure.

Toji shook his head, his teeth baring the open air as his face was screwed in what would appear to be a pained expression, only he was feeling far from pain right now. "I won't tease you Toji, promise." You said, increasing the pressure once more, virtually giving him no room to fight against it. Toji's hair tickled your skin as his head jerked back and forth against you, his body trying to deal with experiencing such pleasure.

You wet so wet, you didn't know how much more of this you could take. His foreign expressions and reactions were turning you on more than you thought they would. When Toji's teeth separated and his jaw fell open, the first noise that fell out of his mouth was just like the same one you heard all those months ago. "F-fuck!!" Toji groaned, his moans and whines falling freely from his lips now.

Your eyebrows were furrowed in pleasure as you watched him, he looked so hot. "God, it feels good huh?" You asked, not being able to contain your own little noises, only spurring him on. Toji felt mortified, but the pleasure he was feeling helped negate some of that embarrassment. He nodded, before his face scrunched in pleasure, his teeth occasionally baring into the room when you touched his nipples particularly harshly. 

"Goddd.... C-cum, g-gonna cum." Toji groaned, doing his best to keep the whines and whimpers down. You stopped when you heard him say that, a lightbulb going off in your head. Toji breathed heavily into the air, his body relaxing against you now that you'd stopped, save for his cock which was twitching with the need for release. "What the fuck... is your problem?" Toji complained, anger seeping into his brain now that you had taken his orgasm away from him.

"Just hold on, think you'll like this a lot better," you said ambiguously, patting your palms over his pecs before you slid out from behind him. Toji looked at you with furrowed brows as you slung your legs over his lap, just under his cock, and pulled down his boxers. His eyes fluttered as his cock was released from the confines of the annoying fabric. 

It slapped loudly against his abdomen, his length completely wet with his pre-cum and still dribbling agaisnt his skin. "Though you weren't touchin' my cock?" Toji asked, his voice coming out more desperate and airy than he would've liked. Stradling his cock, you grabbed it with one hand, making him wince, before you reached down and pulled your panties to the side, looking back up at him. "I changed my mind."

Toji watched with wide eyes as you lined his cock up with your entrance. His hands shot out to grab your waist for stability, his hands shaky as they touched you. Toji released a long groan when you slid down on his cock, the stretch made easier thanks to how wet the both of you were. "Holy fuuuuuck, ohmygod you're so fucking warm." Toji groaned, his head tipping back against the headboard now that you weren't behind him.

You released some of your own noises as he split you open, his cock filling you so nicely, just how you wanted. Toji knew he wasn't going to last long like this, but little did he know that's why you did this. Before you were even halfway down on his cock, you reached out for his chest and pinched his nipples harshly, rubbing them between your fingers.

Toji's eyes shot open, his legs curling in on himself as his body jerked, forcing his cock fully inside of you. "F-fuck fuck, w-what are you doing?" Toji asked, panic in his tone as he looked down at you tweaking his nipples. You felt his cock kick against your walls, already ready to spill his seed again. "Though you would like it if I milked your orgasm out of you while I play with your chest." You said smiling, doing your best to keep your words coherent, and even despite how badly you wanted to whine and cry like you normally did on his cock.

Toji groaned at your words as you started bouncing up and down, his cock jamming against your g-spot with every thrust. "F-u-uu-uuck-" He groaned, his body falling limply agaisnt the sheets as you rode him. His jaw went slack and his eyes rolled back repeatedly in his head each time you jumped up and down on him. "G-onna cumm, gonna cum, g-gonna cum-" Toji repeated, his hips weakly fucking up into yours as your fingers raked up and down on his nipples, your nails catching them and making his abs clench each time.

"I know baby I know, can feel you twitchin'. Cum inside me Toji, let it out I got you." You sounded like him when you were cumming, it would've made you giggle if you weren't so enthralled with Toji's actions right now. Usually, when he came, his teeth were pressed firmly together and he let out loud, deep grunts. Now though, his mouth was open, his eyebrows furrowed and his eyes fluttered in his head as he was worked up to his orgasm.

Toji was gripping you so hard, you knew instantly you were going to have dark bruises there in the morning. Toji's legs started to spread, and his back arched ever so slightly as you went back to pinching his nipples, rocking back and forth on his cock as you bounced up and down, trying to give him as much stimulation as possible. 

"A-ahhh a-ah fuuuuuck- f-ah-" Toji came with a high-pitched whine before his noises turned into groans and grunts as his cock twitched and sprayed his thick cum out inside you. "Keep fillin' me up Toji, feels so g-good fuck." You whined, feeling hot all over as you worked him through his orgasm, your tight walls milking his cock.

His balls throbbed with his release, his seed getting fucked so deep inside you thanks to the angle. His orgasm seemed to last longer than normal, probably thanks to your fingers on his chest. His abs spasmed and jerked inward with his high, his head shaking back and forth against the sheets. "St-hahhh." Toji tried to tell you to stop when he felt you fucking him into overstimulation, but his words failed to find him.

Immediately you stopped, keeping his cock snug inside your walls as you finally ceased your attack on his chest. Leaning forward you grabbed his face with your hands, cradling him as you started pressing kisses all over his cheeks, eyelids, forehead, anywhere your lips could reach.

"Toji, thank you Toji, thank you thank you thank youuuu." You repeated softly between kisses. Toji was still basking in the aftershocks of his orgasm, his arms leaving your hips to wrap tightly around your body, keeping you flush against him. "Are you okay? Wasn't too much right?" You asked, pulling back to look at his face. Toji's eyes were glossy and all out of focus, and his face was flushed red and dripping with sweat, and still, he had the audacity to look at you and say, "I'm fine. I'm not a baby like you."

You jerked your head back in surprise, your jaw falling open at his words. You just fucked him dumb and he still had the energy to be a bitch? Tsking at him you gripped his cheeks, making his lips pursed together like a fish as you shook his head back and forth. "You sure sounded like one a minute ago." You spat back, squinting your eyes at him. 

You swear you saw Toji's eye twitch before your head was pressed harshly into the crook of his neck, his large hand firmly on the back of your head. "Bitch. Said you wouldn't bring that shit up." Toji pouted, feeling his face heat up at your words. You snorted before biting his neck teasingly, feeling his body harden underneath you at the action.

"You lie all the time, I can do it too." You said, wrapping your arms around his neck. Toji shook his head, feeling himself soften inside your walls. He knew you said you would let him throatfuck you after this, but honestly, Toji didn't know if he had anything left to give you. He was sure you had taken every last drop of his cum from his balls just moments ago.

"Brat. Happy birthday, hope you enjoyed yourself." Toji said, closing his eyes as he released his hand from your head, wrapping his arms around you once more. "I did, I did very much." You answered, feeling extremely satisfied and content when Toji sighed loudly at your words, his breath tickling the back of your neck. 

[luveline]

Hi idk if u have already written this if u have pls igonore but what about the first time bombshell reader calls Spencer beautiful?

fem, 1k

“Gideon has a new prodigy.” 

Your head rises of its own accord. “Yeah?” 

“He's younger than you. Twenty three, I think Hotch said. Fresh out of college, two degrees and working on a third? Or maybe he was getting his doctorate? I couldn't keep up.” Morgan shakes his head in disapproval. “Overeducated and under-experienced. He failed his physicals. The ones he took, anyways.” 

“Ooh, ouch. A baby on the team before me,” you joke with a smile. “Genius baby, but a baby.” 

Morgan smiles when you smile, he's too nice not to, but he picks up soon enough, crossing his arms where he's stood and wrinkling what was once a finely steamed suit jacket. “I don't know what Gideon's thinking.” 

“Does anyone ever know what he's thinking? What's Hotch say about it all?” 

Morgan reads what you're typing from over your shoulder and corrects a mistake. One day you won't need his help, but for now you take as much of it as you can get. You're not too proud to acknowledge when you mess up, you're a realist. Super sensible (in mind if not action). 

“Hotch lets Gideon do what he wants, mostly. What can you do when he's one of the originals?” Morgan leans heavily onto his desk by the forearms and shrugs. You’re similar in this regard; complain, move on. You're similar in other ways, too. That's why you get along. 

“Well, I want to meet this guy,” you say. “We'll be teammates just as soon as Strauss stops hating me. I'm one strategic boxed bouquet from a full pardon.” He laughs and touches your arm like he believes you. “Is he around?” 

“Here they are now.” 

You spin in Morgan's desk chair slowly. Jason Gideon is stalking through the office with his head in the contents of a manilla envelope, while a new face follows behind him talking a mile a minute. 

“Obviously,” you hear Gideon interrupt as they get close enough. “Agent Morgan can explain that to you. Don't overthink it, Spencer, just try to get through it.” 

He doesn't acknowledge you nor Morgan as he leaves Spencer and hurries up the steps leading to his and Hotch's offices. You aren't expecting much else from him. What little Gideon knows about you he doesn't like. If you ever get over the Strauss hurdle, it's him you'd have to convince next. You don't watch him cross the landing, your gaze focused on the man making his timid way toward you. Your lips part briefly, and then quirk into an overjoyed smile. 

“Oh, you're beautiful,” you say without thinking. 

He frowns at you. 

“Reid,” Morgan interrupts, “This is Y/N L/N. She works in the sex crimes division. As you can imagine, we get a lot of crossover.” You stand, holding out your hand. “Y/N, this is Spencer Reid.” 

“I don't shake. Sorry.” 

You press your hand to your chest. “Oh, that's okay. I shouldn't assume…” Your voice melds into a silkiness that has his shapely brows furrowing further, “It's nice to meet you, Spencer Reid. You're really pretty, do you know that?” 

Spencer peeks at Morgan quickly, who laughs good-naturedly. “She's serious, Reid. She's not making fun of you.” 

“You'd know,” Spencer says. It isn't malicious, but it isn't exactly friendly, either.

You twist to frown at Morgan deeply. “Morgan, you're not being nice to him?” 

“I'm being plenty nice, sweetheart, but this is how it works. I gotta haze him a little.” 

“No, you don't.” You tip your cheek toward your shoulder to look at Spencer through your lashes. “He pretends to be worse than he is, I promise. But don't let him neg you, okay? You're smarter than he is–” 

“Hey.” 

“–and he's used to being the office pretty boy. It's jealousy, nothing else,” you finish. Spencer really is gorgeous now you're close enough to see his eyes. A brown like caramelised sugar tented by dark, dark eyelashes. When he smiles, the very slightest hint of teeth shows, and it makes him even prettier. You endeavour to make him smile again. “Sorry if I'm coming off a little strong. It's not my intention.” 

“She's just nervous. You have everything she wants,” Morgan says. 

You sigh forlornly. “Oh, doesn't he?” Spencer's confused pout is even cuter than his smile. “Getting into the BAU is about as easy as walking on water.” 

“For a human,” Spencer says. “Easier if you're smaller. Like a water strider.” 

There's a silence. Morgan is aghast, you think. You're in love. 

“Yeah?” you ask, stars in your eyes as his own spark to life. 

“Because water strider's can transfer their weight, but also due to their hydrofuge hairpiles. Their microhairs.” He catches himself, measuring your expression carefully. “Did you really wanna know?” 

“Do you wanna get a cup of coffee and tell me about it?” you ask. 

His lips part as yours had when you first saw him. 

He's prevented from answering as Hotch's office door opens and the man himself walks out near the railing. “Good, you’re here. I have something to talk to you about.” 

You grin at him. “I'd love to chat, Agent Hotchner, but I'm getting to know your new protégé.”

“I see.” He waits. 

You would ignore him —Hotch has a soft spot for you (or rather, he likes you enough to put up with you, which is more than can be said about other members of his division) and he'd shrug off your dismissal— but you're really keen to hear what he has to say. Perhaps Strauss has changed her mind about your proposed trail basis with the team. 

“I'm so sorry,” you say to Spencer, immediately re-dazzled by his pretty, lovely face. “It was really nice to meet you, Spencer Reid. Maybe next time you can tell me more about it.” 

You give Morgan a quick thank you for the help with your paperwork and trust him to log out of your emails. In your rush up the stairs, you hear a wisp of conversation. 

“Was she messing with me?” 

Morgan laughs. “No, kid. That's how she is.” 

"Oh... She's nice."

"You have no idea."

[diedoverahat]

A Different Kind of Compensation.

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part two!

pairing: mike schmidt x fem!reader

prompt: you’ve been babysitting abby for mike nearly three months now. he constantly apologizes for not paying you yet, you constantly tell him it doesn't bother you. one night he comes back from his shift at freddy’s and has a different idea on how to compensate you for all of your hard work.

warnings: 18+, oral (fem receiving), vaginal fingering (kinda???), munch!mike.

word count: this was supposed to be a short dirty work that somehow turned into a 2.2k monster. told you i love to ramble.

authors note: remember when i said i might write smut if i was just so moved by an ask? well turns out my very first ask moved me. y'all are nasty, i love it. mike, of course, is a munch because why would he be anything else? i never, with a capital N, write smut so please bear with me if it sucks. i hope whoever requested this loves it! i wrote it instead of finishing my scientific article for bio so it better be decent hehe.

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The sound of the front door opening followed by heavy footsteps woke you up from where you were dozing off on the couch. You gazed at the clock on the side table near you and sure enough, 6:10 blinked back at you. Mike was finally home. You heard him shuffling around in the kitchen, most likely shedding his work vest and hanging his keys on the little hook by the door.

You yawned, trying to rub the sleep out of your eyes as you sat up on the couch. The blanket you used to cover yourself falling to pool around your waist. Mike finally made his way to the living room, sitting on the couch with a soft grunt. 

“Hey,” he said quietly, his voice rough from lack of use. “Abby eat anything?”

“Yeah, a little,” You mutter back through a barely concealed yawn, head lolling to rest on the back of the couch. “You know how she is.”

He hums in acknowledgement but stays silent apart from that, keeping his gaze trained on the infomercial playing on TV. A comfortable silence settles over the two of you. You sit up even further on the couch, leaning against the arm rest facing Mike. The blue/green hue of the TV bathed him in light, his hair was unruly with curls sticking out at awkward angles. He had deep bags under his eyes. Just as you thought about getting up to take off, he spoke up again. 

“I promise I’ll get you the money,” he says softly, not taking his eyes off the TV, “I…I just need some time.”

You scoff in mock annoyance, crossing your arms in front of your chest. “Mike, you know I don’t care about the money. I don’t mind doing this for you.” You reply, nudging his knee with your foot softly then just leaving it perched on his lap.

Mike finally turns to look at you, there's a strange look on his face that you can’t quite place, but you give him a small smile all the same. He stares at you for a few beats, you can practically see the gears turning in his head. 

“You deserve something,” he whispers, his brows furrowed in frustration. “You do so much for me, it’s only fair.” As he speaks, he slowly moves his hand off the couch to your ankle still resting on his thigh, he starts rubbing slow circles over the skin there. His eyes never left yours as he touched you, a very obvious question in them. Asking if you wanted this.

Heat instantly rushed to your belly, cheeks turning a light shade of red at his touch. You’d always thought Mike was attractive, but you never would have imagined he’d want to be anything more than friends. Since he was already so busy with taking care of Abby and his hellish new job.

You swallow once before speaking, your throat feeling dry all of a sudden. “What are you suggesting?” You ask so softly, wondering if he even heard you. Mikes’ fingers stop in favor of trailing his hand up your calf in a featherlight touch, disappearing under the blanket to seek out more of your soft skin. Your heart is beating so fast you think you might die, the sound of it echoing in your ears loudly. 

Mike's big brown eyes stare into yours with a newfound intensity, visibly shocked that you're reacting so viscerally to his touch, his pupils are blown to hell. Chocolate brown being swallowed by black.  His tongue coming out to sweep over his top lip.

“How about you,” he says slowly, scooting closer to you on the small couch. He crowds into your personal space like he belongs there. Mike’s lips inches away from yours. He smells like old leather and dust from being cramped in the security office at Freddy’s. Your chest heaves as your eyes flit back and forth from his eyes to his lips. Seconds drag by like hours as you painstakingly wait for him to finish his sentence. “Stay right there while I make you feel good.” He finally says, his breath fanning over your face hotly. You can’t even speak, afraid of how desperate you might sound, just nodding your head roughly, not looking away from his hungry gaze.

Mike’s hand runs up your leg quickly after you give him the green-light, slipping further under the blanket and higher up your leg until he reaches his destination. He rubs you gently through your shorts, your breath hitches sharply at what should be just a simple touch, but you’re still so worked up from earlier that it feels ten times more extreme. You grasp the blanket still strewn over your lap tightly in your fists, it's the only thing keeping you from seeing Mike’s hand at work between your legs.

Mike reacts to touching you for the first time like he can feel it too. His breath stutters out of his chest, eyes fluttering shut at the feeling of your already wet folds through your thin cotton sleeping shorts. “Fuck.” He breathes out quietly, so quietly you doubt he even meant to say it out loud. He opens his eyes again, breathing slightly rougher as he stares at you through his arousal induced haze and heavy eyelids. 

Seeing your face must spur him on because he starts rubbing with more fervor than before, his clever fingers applying more pressure making you moan softly. You cut yourself off quickly, eyes darting down the hall to Abby's bedroom door. It's still closed, there's no light leaking through the crack between it and the floor.

"Shit, Mike." You whine quietly.

Mike groans softly at the sound of his name leaving your lips, body trembling slightly with the feeling. Suddenly he wrenches his hand out from under the blanket, and rips it off your lap frantically. You gasp sharply at the cool air breaking through the bubble of warmth the blanket provided, involuntarily closing your legs.

Mike pushes up from his position on the couch next to you, knee walking over so he's kneeling in-front of your clenched thighs. You're still slightly sprawled across the cushions, leaning on the arm of the couch.

"Do you know how crazy you make me?" He asks roughly, putting both his hands on your still closed knees. It takes a second for your brain to catch up to answer him, after a few moments you finally manage a faint shake of your head.

"No?" He asks, tilting his head to the left slightly. "Let me show you then."

Mike grabs your wrist, tugging you closer to him, and leads your hand down into his lap. Your breath catches in your throat when he places your hand directly over his clothed erection, but it gets drowned out by Mike's louder whine thanks to you touching him for the first time. You drag your eyes downward, his dark grey sweatpants leave little to the imagination. He got more worked up touching you than you first thought, if the wet patch forming near the tip of his hard-on was anything to go by.

As soon as you started to rub him with purpose, Mike grabbed your wrist, halting your efforts. "No," He said breathlessly, practically panting. "No, this is for you tonight. Just wanna focus on you."

He let go of your wrist, turning his head in your direction. Both of you failed to realize how close you'd gotten when he dragged you to him. Your noses practically touch when he turns, catching you both off guard. His eyes travel down to your lips, staring at how red and puffy they'd gotten from you biting them to muffle your moans.

"How sweet of you, Mike." You whisper, leaning in just a tad closer. He lets out a guttural groan and closes the distance between your lips, claiming your mouth with his own. He leans forward, gently guiding you to lay back on the couch. His body completely covering yours as the two of you makeout, his arms on either side of your head and his hips slotting against yours, letting you feel the hard length of his cock against your cunt. You moan into his mouth, your hips bucking up to meet his.

Mike breaks the kiss with a whine, trying to muffle the noise by shoving his face in your neck. You bring your hands up to tangle in his curly hair, yanking it roughly as he starts littering kisses all along your collarbones. Nipping and sucking in-between his gasping little moans as you twist and pull his hair in your grip.

He tears his mouth away to stare up at you through his lashes, his lips are swollen and red. “Please,” He gasps out, his hips unconsciously grinding down into your thigh. “Let me eat you out. Please. Tell me I can, say I can.” He babbles, hips rutting faster every second you don’t answer him.

“Yes.” You exclaim as quietly as possible. “Do it, Mike. Eat me out.”

Mike’s whole body shudders at your words, eyes falling closed for a second before he quickly slides down your body, leaving an odd kiss here and there as he goes. He brings his hands up to grip the waistband of your shorts, pausing to take a single steadying breath, then he tugs them down along with your panties and tosses them aside. He stares down at you in awe for a good few moments before he lays on his stomach, right in front of your dripping cunt.

Mike kisses along the inside of your thighs for a bit, licking everywhere but where you want him to the most. “Thank you.” he mutters, tone way too earnest for the situation at hand but you don’t have much time to think about it before he’s diving face first into your thighs.

“Fuck!” You let your voice get way too loud in the quiet atmosphere of the house, but you can’t help it. You didn’t think Mike had lots of experience because of some late night drunken talks before, but he was either lying or holding out. He works his tongue expertly along every inch of you. Every swirl, flick, or suck has you catapulting to the edge way faster than you’d imagined.

It doesn't help that Mike keeps letting out these noises. Small needy whines or deep guttural groans that you can feel. He’s moaning like he’s the one getting head, unashamed and authentic. It’s so fucking sexy.

“Shit Mike, I’m close. I’m so close.” You whisper too quietly for him to hear with his head trapped between your thighs, but it doesn’t matter. Mike brings his thumb up to lightly circle your clit as he laps against your entrance, and you're gone.

Your thighs shake as you release, grabbing on Mike’s hair for dear life as you go through the most intense orgasm ever. He moans into your cunt, working you through the aftershocks. He laves his tongue along you until the overstimulation gets to be too much and you drag his face away by his hair.

He sits up, the bottom half of his face covered in spit and slick. That visual alone is almost enough to get you ready for round two. It’s silent except for the heavy breathing coming from you both.

After he catches his breath, Mike retrieves the blanket from behind his back somewhere to cover the lower half of your body. Your thighs are still shaking as he lays next to you, it’s a tight squeeze but neither of you seem to mind. He kisses the side of your face sweetly, throwing his arm around your waist to pull you in even closer.

You finally regain enough conscience to speak. “Are you sure you don’t want to get off?” You ask, “I mean I can’t feel my legs but I’m sure we could think of something.” Mike only laughs quietly, shaking his head. “Maybe next time, this was about you.” He said, beginning to rub his fingers back and forth on your hip. “Plus I, uh, I already sort of…” He trails off, a flush forming on his cheeks.

It took you a second to realize what he was saying, but when it clicked you couldn’t help the small giggle that escaped your mouth. You lifted up the blanket covering the two of you, and sure enough Mike had an impressive wet patch seeping through his sweats.

He pinches your hip lightly, offended by your giggling. “Don’t laugh at me,” He complains with a smile, yanking the blanket back up. “I couldn’t help it.”

You stifle another laugh to the best of your ability, though your shoulders still shake ever so slightly. You turn your head to press a kiss to his lips. It’s different from the previous kisses you shared tonight. It’s slower and softer, full of a new emotion that you both feel, but know that it can wait to be talked about later. For now you’re both just basking in the afterglow.

You break the kiss first, pulling back only slightly to lean your forehead against his. You both smile at each other for a second.

“Okay,” You give in, brushing a strand of sweaty hair away from his face. “But believe that tomorrow is all about you.”

[fuminoomi]

stolen clothes.

[odinsblog]

“One weird, silver lining positive from the WGA's strike has been a sense of calm over a reality that has plagued me with anxiety for years — the fact that despite having a great agent, manager, and lawyer, despite having been in hundreds of rooms with top execs and producers, despite having pitched countless networks, and despite having sold multiple pilots and pitches, I still work in food and bev. For so long, it felt like such an embarrassment in so many ways because it felt like I was the only one who was biding time in between sales with a side hustle. When I would tell people at work that I wrote television, they'd look at me like I had ten heads, or like I was delusional. They couldn't IMAGINE someone who *actually* wrote television would also be asking them what temp they wanted their salmon.

But the reality is, TV money goes fast, especially when it's just a pilot sale. And if shit doesn't get picked up to series, that money only lasts for so long. Being responsible meant swallowing my pride and keeping a job that was more consistent and steady but also gave me the ability to take pitch meetings, to write on my down time, do rewrites, answer e-mails, and take notes calls.

And for so long I thought I was a minority in that regard. Like I had done something wrong to not be successful enough to rely solely on my career as a writer.

Yet the strike has pushed SO many stories to the forefront of writers doing the exact same thing I've done, GOOD writers, great writers, writers who shit I watch all the time, whose names I instantly recognize, whose reputations in this industry precede them. So when the studios leaked that the goal was to bleed writers dry, to make it so we lost our homes, I had to laugh. Writers like me will literally do anything to keep the dream of writing alive. It's in us. It never goes away, no matter how many steaks you server, how many martinis you mix, how many cold calls you make, how many Uber passengers you pick up, how many pizzas you have to deliver. We always always always find a way to make it to that next great hope of a pitch, a sale, a green light.

And that's how you know that the CEOs are so fucking out of touch with reality. With the industry. With the POINT of the industry the point for most (not all, but most) has never been to be filthy rich, or own a yacht, or even have a membership to SoHo house. It's been to make something we love. To see it come to life, and make other people happy, or sad, or angry, or scared. To take this story you have kicking around your head and turn it into some epic journey. To be part of the process of making worlds and characters come to life. To tell stories.

The CEO's point has been to make as much money as humanly possible. And so they think that's all there is motivating writers. it's not. It never has been. Just because those CEO's wouldn't wait tables or mix drinks or drive a Lyft in order to keep a dream going, doesn't mean the rest of us wouldn't. The CEO's don't have a dream, they have a lifestyle. And I promise you a dream is a much better motivator than a yacht or a Porsche.

Try to bleed us dry, guys. Just because you'd let your own dream bleed to death, doesn't mean we would. We will always find a way to keep it alive.”

—Stefanie Williams, a tv writer on strike

[werecreature-addicted]

🥲 a werewolf mercilessly fucking someone while apologizing for being too rough, but not being able to stop. :( pussydrunk werewolves my beloveds…

pussy drunk werewolf. what will he do

Before he even gets you naked your werewolf can smell your yummy pussy from a mile away, he knows when you're wet almost before you do. Poor baby is left licking at your belt begging you to please let him eat you out he promises he'll do a good job :(

It’s only a second after you give your consent that your clothes are shredded with their massive claws. You might be allowed to keep your shirt on if he's feeling generous he only really wants access to your sweet cunt anyways.

His big claws dig into your thighs pushing your legs apart and giving him access to what he's after. It feels like he's trying to fuck you with his tongue the way he digs it into you, his nose bumping and rubbing against your clit in his desperate attempt to get his tongue deeper into your cunt.

100% the kinda man to eat pussy for his pleasure, not yours. He doesn't even notice when you cum the first time... or the second. he's just so obsessed with the way you taste, the way you squeeze around his fat tongue.

If he's smart- he'll shove a pillow between his legs to hump. but if he lets his instincts win he'll just pathetically buck his hips into the air while he eats you up.

Really the only way to get him to come up for air is to beg him to knot you. Tell him that you need to feel his cock where his mouth is.

"Are you sure you can take it? you were so tight around my tongue and my cock is much bigger..."

He's suddenly sadistic, he'd be happy to eat you out for hours, if you want more than that he's going to need convincing. He won't use his big fingers on you, you have to stretch yourself out for him. Prove how much you want his dick, beg for him to fuck you deep in the parts you can't reach with your pathetic human hands.

Whatever prep work you manage won't be enough. It hurts as he pushes into you, but the sting makes your mouth water. He wasn't planning on giving you time to adjust but you're literally so tight around his cock he can't move. It takes a surprising amount of strength to pull back from the vice-like grip of your cunt. Don't worry sweet thing he'll fuck you loose.

"s-slow down. I can't! it's too much!" you whimpered. But he can't stop now- the way your cunt spasms around him sucks him in, it's like his hips have a mind of their own as he fucks you. His clawed hands fall to your hips pinning you against the bed with his weight. He's so much bigger, so much stronger than you what choice do you have but to take it?

"Sorry, I know- I know it's a lot but-fuck baby you feel so good. I can't stop I'll just cum real quick then we can be done- I'll just knot this tight pussy then I'll feel good-"

His string of apologies soon becomes incoherent babbling and snarling. You feel so good around him that he can't help but give in to his instincts. And his instincts are telling him to pound you until you go colorblind.

He leans down and licks your face, drinking your tears of overstimulation before he buries his face in the crook of your neck and bites down on your shoulder- through the shirt he let you keep on back when he just wanted to eat your pussy.

"sorr- sorry- fuck I'm sorry baby-" he cries out in warning as his thrusts pick up speed and he forces his knot inside your already full cunt as his seed pours into you.

Even as his cock goes soft and his knot goes down he doesn't pull out, he keeps his hips flush against yours as he holds you close. your pussy just feels too good to leave. so warm and perfect for him.

He'll give you a little time to catch your breath- maybe he'll even let you fall asleep but if you do just know you'll wake up with his tongue deep in you once again.

[what-even-is-sleep]

AARARRRRRRRHRHGHGHGHSDFGHASDKHFAS;JKGHASJDHFKASK;HJF;KAHSFH;LAL;HAE;LEJAAJE. ARRRRGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHHSDKPAGSSADAS. ASIIIJJASJJDJDS ASD SDFASDIFASOOOOOOAE FWE EW FE AFE EFG A DJJJJJJJJJJJDVJDFVJDVIASDIFSIEEJJNNCSDFASDFSDSDF

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

I am not the asshole, and I think this whole thing is stupid, but I was promised that if I sent my side of things to this blog I could pick the hotel for our honeymoon, and I am marrying a man who once tried to take me BACKPACKING of all things, so this ask has become a necessity. In light of that:

AITA (I'm NOT) for planning the seating for our wedding in a logical way?

I got engaged in June, apparently in part because of my partner writing in to this blog (I don't know how to find or link to his posts, but I'm the man who got the cat to bite him, if that rings any bells?). At any rate, for the past ten weeks, I've been in the beginning stages of planning our wedding with my fiance, whom I have been secretly attempting to remove from the planning process as much as possible. I have ALREADY been given a list of his must-haves, and I AM incorporating as many of them as our budget allows. This has NOTHING to do with the emotional side of the event, and EVERYTHING to do with the fact that this is an idiot with no real planning experience or taste who thinks he knows more than me.

For the most part, this has worked very well. I'm the one who's been collating all the contact information for things, so I just replaced all the emails for the tacky companies with false addresses, responded to his inquiries as the companies to say the date was already booked or the price was outside our budget, and let him filter his way to the ones I DO like on his own. I also made a fuss about being "willing to compromise" on the few things he's picked I'm completely fine with in the hopes I can use it to make him compromise later, and have been humming portions of the songs I want on the playlist in the hopes he'll think he came up with the idea to include them himself.

None of this is the real problem. The PROBLEM is that he is deliberately ruining my seating chart, by moving our horrible friend's seat when I'm not looking.

The man in question dated both of us at one point in our VERY early 20s (both ended BADLY), is generally the messiest person we know, and will almost certainly get sloppy drunk and try to make a speech IF he does make an appearance. I'm banking on the fact that he won't, because he's also ridiculously wealthy, and will almost certainly send us some very lavish gift in lieu of coming.

He is SUPPOSED to be sitting beside my fiances aunt, at the same table as his grandmother, his work friend, and her girlfriend, because all four of these women are stone cold terrors who I believe are more than capable of keeping him in line on the slim chance he does come. My fiance INSISTS they won't be able to have any fun if they're running interference all night, and keeps moving him to sit at the head table instead. You know, where WE are. I finally caught him switching the label magnets on my planning board last night, and confronted him.

I tried leveraging how much I've been compromising already, that he's almost certainly going to RSVP no, and that I shouldn't have to deal with him on our big night. My fiance said he knew about all the fake emailing and such, and told me, and I QUOTE: "Look, the mind game shit was hot when it was just about the colour scheme or whatever, but I actually care about this. So you can suffer with everybody else, or you can do the normal thing and not invite a guy you hate to our wedding, you weirdo."

I said that if I did that, it would take out half his groomsmen, he called me an asshole and said I should go explain this to "literally any rational adult" so they could tell me I was in the wrong, and now here we are.

Would you recommend calling my fiance's bluff, since he doesn't want the man sitting near us either? Or should I focus on ensuring he'll turn down the invitation no matter what, so the matter of where he WON'T be sitting can be a moot point?

What are these acronyms?

Original post

The update