#i was in the trenches when i started this and somehow it's only gotten worse

[northern-passage]

me at tnps resting place: hey girl…. miss u so much (shuddering sob) i think about u everyday..

yeah me too

[beneathashadytree]

SICKBED - MONKEY D. LUFFY X READER

Warnings : mentions of sickness and medications, reader is gender-neutral!

Genre : fluff and comfort 🫶🏽

Word count : 0.9K words

Additional notes : I always thought that activating Gear Fifth would make Luffy ill, and this is my take on it!

Tip jar if you’d like to buy me a Ko-Fi!

Masterlist

As soon as they stepped into the Thousand Sunny’s infirmary, they clicked their tongue at the rather-predictable sight. All bundled up and swathed in a million layers of thick blankets, they could spot just a few tufts of ebony hair indicating that Luffy was indeed buried underneath all the cotton.

They pulled up a chair from Chopper’s desk (they’d be sure to put it back, though) and sidled up right against Luffy’s side of the bed. He seemed to be making no moves to acknowledge their presence, only small miserable huffs and whines coming from under the blankets. It took all they had to stop themself from keeling over with laughter at that, the part feeling sorry for him winning out this time.

“Honestly, what did you expect would happen, after going all out with Gear Fifth?” They shook their head, reaching out to pull down the blankets and finally see him. His forehead was lined with beads of perspiration, and his hair was somehow both mussed and sticking to his skin. “At least you look like you’re starting to sweat your fever out.”

Bleary eyes blinked back up at them, and if he didn’t look so pitiful, they would’ve called him rather adorable. If it weren’t for the fact that he had never gotten ill before, he probably wouldn’t have been in such a terrible condition.

“Luffy, you really need to sit up and take your medicine. Chopper asked me to do it for him while he tends to Zoro’s injuries.”

With a very pronounced frown on his awfully paled skin, he sluggishly pulled himself up, blearily blinking past the unconscious of his sick sleep. His limbs flip-flopped all over the place, barely scrambling to grab onto the glass of water they handed him—despite the alarming fact that his grip seemed precariously close to slipping.

Though he hated taking medicine in the forms of sticky pills that often got glued halfway down his throat, he clearly felt terrible enough to not say anything about that and quickly gulp them down and wash them down with the entire glass in one go, before falling back against the mattress with a groan of pain, surely caused by his sore body protesting.

Whining out their name, Luffy’s hands stretched of their own accord and latched onto their arm. “I feel like shit. Make me feel better, please?”

This time they couldn’t help but chuckle. Perhaps his clinginess made him a little more demanding, but they had no qualms indulging him a little. “I’m no Chopper, but that’s why I came here.” Prying his fingers off with much difficulty—and much protesting from his end—they turned to the bedside table, where Chopper had so thoughtfully left a cold compress on a bowl of ice for them to leave on his burning forehead. “There, there, you big baby.”

Patting it on his skin only served to make him scrunch his nose up in displeasure, and reach out to clasp their wrist as firmly as a sick man can. “I don’t want you to touch that wet thing. I want you to touch my head.”

“No can do, captain. Your hair’s all greasy and shit. I’m not touching that until you shower.”

His pout only grew worse, and paired with his slightly nasally voice, it felt like a double threat to their heart. “But you always run your fingers through my hair, even when I haven’t showered.”

“There���s a difference between not showering for a few days, and not showering for almost a whole month,” they snorted, before taking pity on him and ruffling his hair; the most they would allow themself to do without having to subject themself to the trenches that were oily and grimy hair. “Happy now?”

“I guess that’ll do for now,” he grumbled, slowly blinking up at them. His grip loosened on their wrist, and they could tell from the haziness of his dark eyes and the flopping of his legs on the bed that he was quickly falling into a drowsy stupor. “Stay here, will you?”

“I intended to do that anyways,” they reassured him, taking his hands and setting them back on the bed. Then they asked a question that most probably counted as taking advantage of his half-delirious state. “Want me to read to you?”

Luffy closed his eyes for a second, before he gave a slow, sage-looking nod. “Yeah, it’ll bore me to sleep.” Opening his eyes halfway, he pointed at a book on the desk. “Robin left this here when she visited Chopper in the morning.”

They hummed in agreement as they walked over to grab it and sat back down again. “She does have the best adventure book collection amongst the crew. It’s only natural that’ll be your choice.” Readjusting their position in their chair, they tucked the blankets well under his chin, reveling in the sweet little tired smile he gave them in return.

As they cleared their throat and prepared to start reading out loud, they watched their boyfriend with all the love and affection in the world, nestling into the soft pillows, and his eyes fluttering shut once more.

“‘I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow…’”

Taglist: @stories-that-shaped-me @wifeofkyojuro @livwritesfics

[invisibleanonymousmonsters]

All Men Have Limits - IX

Character: Dick Grayson x Reader x Bruce Wayne

Summary: A certain bat believes that Y/N is in way over her head, that she’s too naive to act in her best interest. So, whether she wants it or not, the vigilante family is going to help and protect her before she gets herself killed.

Word Count: 2,800+

Warning: Violence, Mentions of past domestic abuse

Previously on…

A WEEK LATER...

Of course it had to be raining the night they needed to execute their plan. 

Y/N didn’t know if she was shaking because she was freezing or because she was so nervous. Even with all the layers and her knit hat, she couldn’t seem to warm up.

Y/N had been walking around for half an hour. They’d mapped out her route so her face would get picked up by as many street cameras as possible. If The Court was as sinister as rumored, they’d be watching.

“Scratch your nose if you’re doing alright,” Dick said in Y/N’s ear.

The whole family had explained how imperative it was for Y/N not to speak. They had to assume that Y/N was being watched the moment she left the manor. And if her lips moved, the Talons would know something was up.

So Y/N scratched her nose and looked over her shoulder suspiciously, just like they had talked about.

“Remember: you want out at any moment, just press the distress button on your watch,” Dick added for good measure.

Y/N wanted to roll her eyes at his worry and overprotectiveness, and say, ‘I know. I know.’ But she knew better than that.

“Someone’s tracking her,” Jason spoke up in the comms. “Civilian clothing.”

Jason started calling out the identifiers to his family, and in 30 seconds everyone spotted the man that was tailing Y/N.

But this was all part of the plan.

“I still don’t like this,” Dick muttered to his family, making sure he cut Y/N’s connection off so she didn’t hear his nervousness.

“’Course you are. We’re throwing your girlfriend to the wolves,” Jason commented.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Dick muttered with annoyance.

“Focus,” Bruce chimed in for the first time.

“She’s stuck to the route we gave her,” Tim commented. “All well-lit and crowded with people. They won’t make a scene with this many witnesses.”

The family moved across rooftops, following Y/N’s path from their designated points.

Dick and Bruce both hated this plan, but they were handling it in different ways.

Bruce had become almost mute with focus. He didn’t want a single thing to slip past him. His senses were acute as ever. He was barely communicating with them because he was too busy keeping an eye on Y/N. His eyes hadn’t stopping shooting around, making sure to cover all angles.

“She’s entering the warehouse,” Damian announced.

Everyone shifted their focus and made their moves.

Y/N stopped at the computers she had set up. Or really that Bruce had hired men to set up for her.

She started typing away rapidly, not sure how much time she’d have before deadly ninjas would start dropping on her.

With one final slam of a key, she let out a shallow breath. “Signal’s been sent out. We’re live.”

“Nice!” Tim answered.

Jason started to chime in, but suddenly his voice became crackly and then the line went silent.

“Red Hood?” Y/N asked.

Nothing.

“Anyone read?”

Nothing.

Y/N felt a chill go up her spine.

She whipped around to find three Talons awaiting her attention.

Y/N quickly took a step back and pressed the panic button on her watch. She hoped The Court hadn’t somehow intercepted that signal as well.

“You were lucky with our last encounter,” a Talon stepped forward to speak.

Y/N ignored him and took out both of the guns that had been hiding in her trench coat.

He laughed at the weapons. “Have we not already tried this?”

“At least I’m not a coward hiding behind a mask. Won’t even let me see the faces of the idiots who want to kill me?”

They all ignored her attempt to get them to unmask themselves, but started stepping toward her. “Not want. We will kill you this time.”

But before Y/N could answer or the Talons could get any closer, a smoke bomb was dropped in the space between her and her enemy.

Just as it erupted, Dick dropped down from the bannister above and shoved a gas mask over Y/N’s face.

This wasn’t just any usual gas bomb that Batman and the family used as a distraction. No, this was a special formula designed to burn eyes and cause coughing fits.

One thing was made quite clear, the Talon’s masks were not used to protect them from such attacks. They were meant to hide their identity and nothing else.

Y/N smirked when she heard the sudden coughing and groans of pain. They weren’t muffled by fabric, meaning they had no choice but to remove their masks.

“Stay back,” Dick warned her before lightly pushing her behind a pillar as the smoke bomb started to settle.

Barely giving them a chance, Dick attacked the weakened Talons.

But now the three of them were unmasked. Their eyes were burned red and watery with tears.

And their faces were exposed. 

Y/N’s stomach dropped as she saw Dick flip to them and attack.

But she had a job to do and started tapping away on the high-tech watch around her wrist. She was walking backwards, staying away from the fight, just as Dick had instructed. 

But then she backed into a body.

“Fuck,” Y/N muttered as she froze and her eyes widened in panic.

She whipped around to find a Talon with his sword drawn.

Then other blurs were dropping down from the banisters, more were joining the fight.

Y/N reached for both of her guns and was ready to start firing – despite that not benefiting her in the slightest bit last time.

But before she could take even one shot, someone dropped in front of her protectively.

Bruce was a like a wall of shadow, blocking Y/N from the enemy.

“Run, Y/N.” He demanded without breaking eye contact with his opponent.

She knew better than to fight him on it. This was what they had agreed upon: Y/N was to be used as bait and do her job, then get the hell out.

“No matter what you hear or see, you run like hell,” Dick had told her. His eyes had been desperate and his grip on her shoulders had been tight. Y/N hadn’t been able to find it in her to do anything but give a slow nod.

Barely a second passed after Bruce’s warning before multiple Talons were on him. But Bruce was a worthy opponent and was able to distract them enough for Y/N to get away.

She ran for the nearest exit.

But the warehouse was now crawling with Talons.

Two more blocked her path, making her screech to a stop and turn around, facing Jason.

“Get down,” he told her calmly as he raised two guns.

She dove to the ground and covered her ears as Jason cleared out his ammo.

Without waiting for further instruct, Y/N jumped back onto her feet and tried to find the least chaotic route out.

Tim was using his bow staff almost like a windmill, taking out multiple Talons at a time with just a simple swing.

Y/N looked across the warehouse to see Damian and Dick fighting alongside each other. Despite Damian’s capabilities, Dick couldn’t help but look out for the boy, and he was never far from his side during a fight.

Damian slashed down opponent after opponent with his Katana sword. Meanwhile, Dick had the boy’s back, using his escrima sticks and countless acrobatic kicks and flips.

They were all holding their own, which further urged Y/N to get out of the way.

‘Run, Y/N. Run!’ Her brain screamed at her.

She spotted her opening and sprinted for it.

With only a few yards to go, Y/N felt a sting in the back of her leg.

No.

It was more than a sting. It was a lightning strike of pain that threw her to the floor.

As she sat up, Y/N looked up to see that a knife had clattered to the floor with blood staining it. Her blood.

Then she looked at the back of her thigh to see that she was bleeding from an open wound. It could’ve been worse. The knife could’ve embedded into her muscle and flesh. But she had gotten away with a graze – but one that brought her to the ground.

It all happened so quickly.

One moment Y/N was looking at the blood dripping from her leg. And the next, there was a Talon standing above her – unmasked – with his sword about to swing down on her.

Y/N winced and shielded herself as best as she could. But there was no saving her from such a blade – and a blade wielded by a Talon of The Court.

Just when Y/N thought she’d feel the sword strike her, a presence flew between them.

Y/N opened her eyes when she heard the sound of metal clashing with metal.

Bruce’s forearms were crossed into an X, with his gauntlets intercepting the Talon’s sword swing.

Y/N crawled back to get out of the way, ignoring the screaming pain from her leg.

All she could do was watch as Bruce now fought the Talon one on one. They wielded two katana swords – one in each hand.

Meanwhile, Bruce was using his gauntlets and therefore could really only be on the defense.

It was clear that he was trying to disarm them and make the fight even.

Eventually, through many complicated maneuvers, Bruce knocked one of the swords out of the Talon’s grip. He picked it up.

Y/N didn’t know why it was so surprising to see Bruce wield a katana. Of course he had been trained in sword fighting. That just wasn’t his chosen weapon. It didn’t stop her from being amazed by his skill with the blade. 

But Bruce was getting tired. Y/N could see it.

His movements were still quick, but they had slowed since the beginning of this particular fight.

Y/N managed to clench her teeth and fight through the pain of her leg, slowly bringing herself to a standing position.

But just as she did so, Bruce’s sword was knocked clear out of his hands and the Talon followed it with a kick to Bruce’s abdomen and a punch to his face.

Y/N’s stomach dropped at seeing the infamous Batman get knocked to the ground.

Of all the footage she’d seen, Batman always seemed to have the upper hand. She never doubted that he was going to win a fight – and he was going to do so without killing the enemy, which as always impressive.

“Get up, get up,” Y/N hissed to herself as she watched Bruce struggle to get back on his feet.

“So much time spent protecting her,” the Talon patronized. “Such a waste.”

He landed yet another punch across Bruce’s face. A punch that was harder than anything Y/N had seen before. 

And it knocked Bruce out cold.

Y/N felt it – the death in the air.

Time seemed to slow.

She was about to watch Batman get slaughtered right in front of her.

Her eyes raced around her, looking for one of the boys to call for help or anything that could be used as a distraction. But Dick and Damian were suddenly being overpowered. Tim wasn’t even in Y/N’s eyesight. And Jason was failing to shoot every Talon that surrounded him.

Then Y/N saw the katana that had been ripped from Bruce’s grip. It lay just a foot away from her.

Without thinking, Y/N picked it up.

She lunged forward just as the Talon was bringing his sword down to finish Bruce.

With just an inch away from his victim, Y/N’s sword intercepted the final attack.

The Talon gaze whipped to her. And Bruce was oblivious to his life being saved.

Y/N’s eyes widened, realizing she acted without any sort of plan. And now she had the Talon’s full attention and she had no clue how to wield a sword of any kind – or how to physically offend herself to any degree. 

“You have been a nuisance long enough,” the Talon growled.

“Oh, but I’m not even done yet,” Y/N smirked wickedly.

He tilted his head to the side, choosing to amuse her instead of strike her down immediately.

“You really think I can hack the oldest and most powerful secret, but not every major news network in the country?” She asked offensively.

But then she smiled and tapped a button on her watch.

The screens in the warehouse flickered to life and their volume was turned all the way up.

Everyone ceased their fighting.

Each screen showed that every network was hacked, their signals interrupted with Y/N’s own broadcast.

It was live footage from inside the top secret base for The Court of Owls. All of its members were unmasked, either being gathered by FBI and Gotham PD or pinned to the floor, getting handcuffed.

“That’s not possible,” the Talon gasped.

Y/N tapped her watch and a tiny drone, almost the size of a bumblebee zoomed in front of his face. Then his face was being broadcasted across the world.

“Say hello to America, Calvin Rose,” Y/N announced as her face-recognition system instantly identified him and his name appeared on her watch.

Then the camera moved to another unmasked Talon in the warehouse. “William Cobb,” Y/N announced, adding his name to the screen when he appeared.

As her footage was live-streaming on all major networks, the names of each member were appearing on the screen as well.

Calvin Rose screamed in frustration. 

“Detonate the bomb!” He yelled to his men.

“You mean the bomb you first threatened me with?” Y/N cooed.

He whipped back around to glare at her, not understanding her meaning.

“You really think we wouldn’t be able to find it? After you gave us weeks to track it down?” She teased. “The bomb is in the possession of the FBI, safely neutralized. But not before I helped them reverse trace a signal back to the detonator.”

They knew they lost. But they had not only lost, they had been discovered.

There would be no recovering from such exposure.

And Y/N hadn’t even told them about all the evidence she had stored that tied The Court of Owls to every corrupt act they had performed in the last 20 years.

Sirens suddenly blared in the distance.

All the boys had stopped to look at Y/N, realizing that their plan was coming together.

“You lost,” Y/N declared as she lowered the sword to her side. “And they’re coming for you, too.”

That was finally what set him off.

He growled before stomping to her.

Y/N was surprised by this new attack and quickly stepped backwards, but not nearly fast enough. 

In one motion, he grabbed Y/N by the neck with one hand, lifting her off the ground with his sheer strength and rage.

Not a second later, he shoved his sword into her abdomen.

It seemed like the sound of metal cutting flesh and muscle echoed through the entire warehouse.

“No!” Dick screamed shoving his way across the warehouse to get to her.

In the same moment, Y/N was dropped to the ground like a rag doll.

Chaos had erupted around her, a new fight had begun. But she heard none of it.

Her hands warmed from the blood that was leaking from her abdomen.

The pain was something different to her.

She couldn’t even put a number on how many times her father beat her to a pulp. Nothing could ever compare to the pain of being physically hurt by the person who was supposed to love you the most in the world. This was nothing.

Y/N was just happy she’d die doing something good for the world. A final act of sorts.

Just as she was about to succumb to the tired and dark feeling threatening to envelop her, she felt a warm presence next to her.

“Y/N!” Dick yelled when he reached her side. “You’re OK.” His voice started to shake. “You’re gonna be OK. Y/N, I need you to hold on.”

Police and FBI agents flooded the warehouse as Dick pulled Y/N into his arms.

Y/N looked up to see tears had filled his eyes.

“It’s OK, Dick.” She tried to tell him. “I’ll be fine. I’m fine.”

But when she reached up to cup his cheek, she stained his skin with her own blood.

Y/N was starting to lose her grip on life.

She swore she could feel Jason and Damian’s presence move her side, and then hear Tim talking to the cops. But she could also be imagining it. She could be imagining it all. Maybe she had already died and this was just how she had wanted to go, her mind giving her that final wish.

Things went from being so loud and warm to cold and silent.

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

Part 10

I edited this really quick. And for that, I apologize. 

[crispyjenkins]

Rexobi. I really just wanna see Rex and Obi-wan drinking together and complaining about the disaster that is Anakin Skywalker. They decide to team up to get anakin to calm the heck down and to talk about his feelings. Anakin doesn’t realize what’s going on but gets the idea he needs to play matchmaker with his master and his captain. He thinks he’s the smart one but he’s really not

(i have once again chickened out of your full prompt and instead give you the leadup to rexobi getting anakin to talk about his feelings. 

i uhhh may be unable to think of anything but a rexobi au à la this post by @norcumii and @dharmaavocado about roleswap-ish senior padawan obi hella vibing with this mutant clone that can’t get above the rank of captain even as an arc trooper because the kaminoans are Like That, and qui-gon is going spare, because between anakin somehow being allowed to be in charge of a whole battalion and obi-wan picking fights with every single seperatist leader, he and cody never get a moment of peace. and like. just obi and rex being dumbass 20 year olds trying to deal with a general/master like anakin in the middle of a war. i don’t have TIME for that though

thank you for the prompt as always, i think this is the only rexobi/obex prompt i’ve ever gotten and this ship is criminally underappreciated. like?? kadavo?? anyways here’s whatever this is)

Alt+R to Quick Reblog on Desktop, Hold the Reblog Symbol to Quick Reblog on Mobile

 Not for the first time, Rex wishes Kote were the one here dealing with this, because “how to comfort your favorite Jedi” hadn’t exactly been covered in ARC training – actually, Alpha probably withheld the information on purpose, the fucker.

  But Kote is on the other side of the galaxy with the 187th and just as upset they’re not here in Rex’s stead: it’s barely a month off General Kenobi returning to his own face, and Rex knows his vod would strangle the entire Senate if given even half a chance for deploying them separately on their general’s first mission back after the Hardeen... incident. 

  And Fett’s Ghost knows Rex’s own general is going to pitch a fit when he finds out Rex is here instead of taking leave like the rest of the 501st, but Kote certainly wasn’t about to let Kenobi go all the way to Alderaan unguarded so soon after his supposed death; and honestly, Rex would have been offended if they had asked anybody else to do it. Thankfully, Kenobi hadn’t seemed offended when Rex had shown up at the Jedi Temple’s flight hangar before he could take off; instead, he had been rather amused. 

  Even luckier, Alderaan is barely a day’s jump from Coruscant, so they don’t have to spend too much time awkwardly pretending that Rex hadn’t attended the man’s funeral in Kote's place (that he would have attended anyways), or that Rex doesn’t know Anakin hasn’t spoken to his former master since their debrief to the High Council about Cad Bane. Which Rex should absolutely not know in the first place, but Anakin is his friend, for better or for worse, and Ahsoka thinks her master airs far too many of his grievances to his captain.

  It isn't until their cruiser is making the descent over Alderaan that Kenobi finally addresses the tension between them, which only proves that Kenobi is well aware of it, but had put it off as long as he could. It's a humanising observation, that Rex wishes he could have had when he isn't the only vod in a ten mile radius that isn't the pilot, because at least then he wouldn't be the sole receiver of the soft smile Kenobi gives him as he joins Rex to wait by the shuttle's access hatch.

  Rex thanks his progenitor's laughing corpse he has his bucket on, because all he can do is stare. 

  "You are worried about Anakin," Kenobi says matter of factly, though not unkindly, and Rex lets out a breath that's almost a laugh. 

  "I promise I am far more discrete with my thoughts in the field, sir."

  Kenobi chuckles warmly, tucking his arms behind his back to watch the planet under them grow larger as they approach. "Do try not to worry so much, my dear, this will all resolve itself in time." 

  It's hard to stare right at his gentle assuredness, so Rex looks away. "You have far more faith in his ability to forgive than I, sir."

  That laugh strains at the edges. "Yes, well, I'm afraid some of my lessons seem to have been... lacking."

  Rex has regs carbon-printed on his brain, he knows that even without the direct chain of command, the soft push and pull of his relationship with Kenobi, the steady, serene growth of it, is... problematic, for so many reasons that he wouldn't know where to start. Not least of all is rank, how much more important a Jedi is than a replaceable CC-track washout, but, well, Rex had washed out for being too emotional, so it's not as if he's exactly unused to reacting to things inappropriately for a good little soldier.

  "It's not my place, sir," he murmurs, remembering Kadavo, remembering Umbara, remembering the hand Kenobi had laid on his shoulder for far too long after the Blue Shadow virus, and has Rex really been this gone since then? "just say the word and I won't mention it again. But just because Kote isn't here doesn't mean you have to... shoulder all of this alone."

  In fact, it's wildly not his place to make such an offer, however implicit, but that month on Kadavo did happen, and Rex isn't so self-deprecating to believe he  hadn't had a heavy hand in helping Kenobi make it out on the other side as well as he did. He doesn't think so little of the bond they had formed then, to believe that Obi-Wan is unaware of it. 

  Not when he smiles at Rex like that, like he's a warm cup of caf after a week in the trenches, like Rex is... worthy of such sincere affection. 

  As the shuttle settles around them and the pilot announces their arrival over comm, Obi-Wan simply says, "I did not for a moment believe I was, my dear."

-

  "You and Rex seem close."

  Normally Obi-Wan can feel Anakin coming from an entire corridor away, but he also knows Quinlan has been teaching him a few Shadow tricks, so he isn't entirely surprised when Anakin appears at his elbow in the empty bridge looking like a smug necu.

  Aside from eating firstmeal with Kote in the mess, Obi-Wan hasn't even seen Rex today, much less interacted with him: as he understands it, Rex is trying to round up the remaining 501st shinies that are running around the Negotiator, so Obi-Wan really doesn't know where Anakin had gotten that notion. Recently, at least. 

  Anakin rolls his eyes and scoffs, leaning back on the railing next to him and crossing his arms. "Please, Master, even Snips has noticed."

  Obi-Wan refrains from telling him that anyone with a modicum more self-awareness than him has noticed. Be that as it may, "This is one of those times where I truly don't know what you're trying to say, my dear: I have been close with Rex since he was in the 212th."

  It isn't even an exaggeration, that there had been... something between them before Anakin whisked Rex away to his own battalion after his knighting, though back then it had been nothing more than friendship. If he recalls correctly, and he does, the cleanup of the Ryloth capitol had been the first time since then that they had worked closely, while Anakin had been on the ground with the locals and Mace had been with General Syndulla, and Obi-Wan had found he still quite enjoyed the way they worked together. Their time on Naboo combating the Blue Shadow virus had only endeared the captain more to him —he does remember a slip in propriety in his relief that Rex had been rescued safely with Padmé and Ahsoka, a hand left too long on the captain's shoulder until Kote had called him away— enough that Obi-Wan had been both relieved and horrified that it was Rex there to support him on Kadavo.

  "Cody said Rex was the one to go with you to Alderaan; you sure nothing 'happened' while you were there?" Anakin chuckles to himself like he's being incredibly clever, like there isn’t a hickey visible over the collar of his under tunic.

  Obi-Wan raises a brow slowly and refrains from rolling his eyes. "Despite what you may believe, Anakin, not everyone leaps into committed relationships after life-threatening situations." Not that Alderaan had been life-threatening, it had actually been as close to actual leave as Obi-Wan has had the entire war.

  "Please, it took Padmé and I ages to–" 

  Anakin seems to swallow his tongue, then, face rapidly going purple, and it really is a miracle the entire Republic doesn’t know about his marriage; the GAR certainly does.

  Sighing, Obi-Wan checks the chrono and decides it isn't too early for another cup of tea. "If you have a specific question about my relationship with Captain Rex, I do wish you’d be direct, my dear."

  Anakin splutters. "Relationship?!"

  "Great Maker, Anakin, you’re easier to spook than a half-starved blurrg." He pats Anakin’s arm, his sonbrother floundering for anything other than abject confoundment, as Obi-Wan turns away from the bridge to go locate both tea, and his commander to hopefully finalise their newest mission orders. "Don't worry," he calls over his shoulder, "I'll actually let you come to the wedding, unlike someone."

  Not that Obi-Wan has any such plans, Maker knows he and Rex have yet to address their feelings in the first place, but he'd be lying if part of him doesn't want to conspire with the captain in question —and perhaps Ahsoka— to see just how far they could take this before Anakin realises they're stringing him along. 

 Remarkably, Rex is waiting by Obi-Wan’s office with a flimsi cup of tea and a harried smile that promised quite the day chasing after shinies, and Obi-Wan decides conning his former apprentice can wait.

Mando’a: vod/e — “brother/s”, “comrade/s”, “sibling/s”, technically gender neutral but used most often in fandom as “brother/s”

[suna-reversed]

the sweetest thing

MAFIA AU! USHIJIMA X FEM READER !!nsfw!!

warnings/tags- slight voyeurism, fingering, smut turned fluff

The mixed scent of alcohol and that one expensive cologne he always wore hit you like a ton of bricks. That’s all you forced yourself to focus on, but you found it quite a tough task as the strong lingering trail of your juices filled the air, two of his long digits pushing past your slick walls. Choking back on a moan, you gripped his wrist tightly, confused as to whether you wanted to pull his hand off of you or beg him to rub it against you harder. He stopped his ministrations as you did so, not because he got the hint, but just so he could make you look up into his stern eyes that conveyed exactly how much worse tonight would be for you if you didn’t let him continue. 

You don’t exactly know how you ended up here. In the backseat of a posh car owned by the most dangerous man amongst Japan’s underground mafia. Just a whisper of his name had even the most powerful of gang leaders shaking with fear. You were still conflicted about the fear, but he sure did have your legs shaking more and more with each thrust of his fingers. You had buried your face in his shoulder, hoping that the red-haired driver would simply believe that your closeness to the man he answered to was simply a gesture of affection and not a desperate attempt at muffling your moans. You seemed to fail at that task as the fingers inside you were pulled out, only to be placed at your sensitive nub instead, rubbing circles so hard and fast that you couldn’t contain the sudden moan that left your mouth. You came undone, hips bucking against the rings on his fingers as your mind drowned in both pleasure and shame.

You could barely breathe as you felt the car come to a stop in front of your college campus. Ushijima simply put your pushed aside panties back in place, bringing up his fingers to his mouth to suck off your juices, his intense gaze locked onto yours. You didn’t think your face could get any more flustered. 

“Let me walk you back to your dorm.” Not a question. 

A shiver went down your core for what you were in for. Your mind flashing back to the memory from barely less than an hour ago when Ushijima had you pressed up against a wall outside the venue of the banquet, his lips attached to yours, the taste of champagne and cigars still heavy on his tongue as it explored yours with a passion as deep as the mariana trench. 

Your train of thought was interrupted as you noticed he had already gotten out, waiting for you with an outstretched hand. Despite having just felt him so deep inside you, the gesture somehow managed to give you more butterflies. It felt different. somehow more intimate. His calloused fingers slowly wrapped around yours, his large hand encasing almost all of yours. It made you feel warm. protected. safe. The crimson blush that grew on your nose didn’t go unnoticed by him, and maybe that’s why he didn’t leave your hand even as you started walking. Looking back, you wondered how differently things would’ve turned out if you hadn’t tripped over that one particular chair leg that unfortunate day. 

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

“I would rather eat glass than live this day all over again” you thought to yourself while recapping the events of the last 18 hours.

Your roommate had shown up drunk late at night, bruised up and beaten from a bar fight, barely giving you any time to sleep as you tended to them. Because of that, not only were you sleep deprived, but also super late to your morning classes. Plus, you were pretty sure you had managed to royally fuck up the exam you had in the afternoon. 

Wanting to unwind from the trainwreck of a day, you had stopped by your favourite cafe to grab a coffee. A headache seemed to be crawling up your head as you stood in line waiting for your order. You were so tired, you barely paid attention to your steps as you grabbed your order and went to leave. Instead, you felt time slow down as your foot got caught on the edge of a left out chair, your drink going flying onto the chest of the person who had been sitting on the opposite side. It took you a second to scramble up your feet, ready to apologise to whoever you had just sprayed with a high dose of caffeine. But as you looked up, you found yourself a little breathless staring into the olive brown orbs of a greek god of a man. A greek god whose face was raging with passive anger. The look immediately sent you into a ramble of apologies, your words of “I’m so sorry” and “I’ll pay for the ruined shirt” getting all jumbled over each other as you poorly tried to explain your own clumsiness. 

‘It’s alright. You don’t have to pay for anything.’ The deep rumble of his voice made your insides shiver. 

“Are you sure? I can get you a tissue-”

“It’s fine, I was leaving anyway.” 

A curt nod was all you received before the man turned his broad back to you, striding out with confidently. You found it weird that not even a single person turned their head to look at the man in a white shirt with a large brown stain stretched across it. You pushed that thought out to the side as a wave of tiredness hit you again. Relieved that the situation didn’t get messy, you walked back to your dorm for a much needed nap.

On the other hand, people who had known the identity of the menacing man gawked at you, wondering how you had walked just out the place without a bullet in you. 

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

“Achoo!” 

You wrapped your arms around yourself, visibly shivering as the cold air hit you. You almost whined at the warmth of Ushijima’s hand being pulled out of yours. But then a much larger and warmer fabric was thrown over your shoulders, you could've melted right there at its softness. Gazing up at him from under your lashes, you muttered out a small thanks as you nuzzled further into the collar of his cozy coat. You could've sworn you heard him sucking in his breath. His hand slipped into yours again, tugging you closer. You walked in silence, your mind still clouded by all that had happened in the span of half a night. 

“Well, that’s my building.” you said. Looking over at Ushijima’s face, you found it glowing under the illumination of the lights coming from past the entry gates.

“ Thank you for accompanying me tonight y/n.”

“ Oh, it was no big deal really. Plus, I enjoyed it a lot. Thank you for inviting me.” 

He gave you a small smile as his hand left yours and he turned around, ready to leave,

“Wait! Aren’t you going to…” You trailed off as he turned back, raising an eyebrow at your puzzled face. 

Your face contorted in confusion, was he not going to join you in your dorm? Especially after the bulge you’re sure you felt while you had been grabbing onto his thighs for support in the car earlier. 

 “...come inside?” You finished, your voice small and hesitant. 

His lips twitched upwards almost playfully, 

“Was the perverse exposition in the car not enough for you?”

“No!- I mean yes, it was.” You found your voice getting smaller and smaller. “But um- don’t you...need anything?” 

Your breath hitched in your throat as he took two long strides towards you, your face now an inch away from his chest. You felt a finger lift your chin as he brought his head close to your ear to whisper,

“Not now- I want to take my time with you” His teeth grazed down as he mumbled onto the skin of your neck, “- to learn every inch of you.” 

A small moan escaped past your throat. Pulling away, his intense burning gaze faded as a smirk formed on his lips, 

“Besides, we wouldn’t want you to wake the whole building up with your screams now would we?” 

Your eyes widened at that, causing a small laugh out of him. That only resulted in you getting more flustered.

“Ok then, I guess I’ll see you soon Ushijima-san.” 

“Wakatoshi” 

“Huh?” 

“It’s Wakatoshi for you.” He said, adjusting the collar of his coat on you and then leaning forward to press a gentle kiss against your brow. 

You tried to ignore the deafening drumming of your heartbeat in your ears as you muttered out a “Goodnight Wakatoshi”, earning a pleased look from the man himself. 

“Goodnight y/n.” 

 Was he really as vicious and bloodthirsty as he was known to be? But then who was the man who had just now made you drown in an ocean of pleasure and then tender affection? Walking away, you could only wonder of all that you were yet to receive from the dual faced man.

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

N E ways, hardcore dom-sub rough sex in part two? ☉_☉

[floating-mid-air]

The Princess of All Saiyans

-

Masterlist

-

Chapter 10 is finally here. Something I noticed while working on this chapter is when I'm writing as the narrator. I use Goku and Kakarot interchangeably. I looked back into the other chapters and noticed I've been doing that the entire time. I honestly just write whichever name feels natural in the context. I think I'll continue writing like that. I think it's more fun switching up Goku's name every once in a while. As always, if you have any comments or questions, feel free to let me know.

-

Chapter 10

-

You and Goku sit on opposite ends of the ditch. The choice to sit as far away from him as possible was strictly for your own sanity. You can feel his scolding gaze on you, burning holes through the entirety of your body, making your skin crawl. 

You've been desperately attempting to evade eye contact with the defective Saiyan, which is becoming significantly more strenuous with each second that passes. Goku lets out an exaggerated sigh. "Can we at least sit closer together?"

You turn your head at him, narrowing your eyes. "No, Kakarot."

Goku presses his thumb and index finger together, leaving a tiny hole. He brings the flexed hand up to his eye, looking at you through the minuscule opening. "What about this much closer?"

"No." Your gaze remains locked on him, with a deadpan look on your face.

"But why not?" He wines as you begin to massage your temples. If he keeps this up, the two of you won't survive down here together for much longer. You're ninety-nine percent sure that being stuck with Kakarot will somehow be the greatest adversity of your life. Okay, so maybe you're being just a tad bit overdramatic. 

"Because I don't trust myself not to kill you." You snarl at him. Your composure is dangling by a thin thread, and Goku is an extremely sharp pair of scissors.

Your words seem to have shut Goku up, well, at least for a little while. "Hey Y/N?"

You ball your hands into fists, clenching your jaw as your right eye begins to spasm. You're developing an eye twitch. How lovely. "What is it now, Kakarot?"

"How did you do that thing with your eyes?"

You furrow your brows at the younger Saiyan. "What the hell are you talking about?" You're really starting to get fed up with him, and you've only been trapped down here for around fifteen minutes.

"Your eyes turned red when you were fighting that guy." Your eyes widen before you quickly cover up your shock with a scowl. Fuck. You knew you should've kept your temper under control. How could you have been so stupid?

Lucky for you, Kakarot is a moron. He lacks understanding regarding body language and various emotion cues. It shouldn't be difficult for you to get out of this at all. "Your eyes were just playing tricks on you. Your vision was probably strained from traveling for such an extended amount of time. My eyes did not, nor have they ever changed color."

"But, I saw---" 

"Well, you saw wrong!" You take several deep breaths, attempting to regain your composure. Spoiler alert, it doesn't work. "I can't take this anymore!" You've finally snapped, but to be fair. You lasted much longer than you expected. "Stop asking me a million questions! No, you know what. Stop speaking to me in general! You are the most infuriating---"

Amidst your screaming, Goku jumps up, pulling you into a far corner of the trench. One of his hands is placed over your lips. And his other arm is tightly wrapped around your waist, his hand ghosting over the base of your tail. Your back is pressed up against the rocky wall, and you feel like his larger body is engulfing your form entirely. You glare at him in irritation as an oddly serious expression crosses Goku's face. 

"I'm gonna take my hand away. Be quiet and focus for a minute." He moves his hand, resting it comfortably on your side. It's placed directly on your wound, courtesy of your battle with Burter. You bite your lip, preventing yourself from wincing. Even the smallest amount of pressure is causing you severe pain. Maybe your injury is worse than you presumed. 

You shut your eyes partly to distract yourself from the pain, but the main objective is to focus on the energy around you. There's someone out there, and they're powerful too. That has to be Ginyu. Shit, your explosive outburst could have just gotten you both killed. What is wrong with you today? 

Where you're standing in the pit. There's still a patch of grass over the top. Providing a shield from anything or anyone from the outside. You hate to admit it, but this was actually a wise decision on Goku's part. Never did you think that Kakarot would be the one to remain collective while you're the one behaving recklessly.  

The two of you remain pressed up against each other. Frankly, you're too close for comfort. You can feel every fall and rise of his chest. You can even hear his heartbeat, which is thumping just as rapidly as your own. The sound of Ginyu's faint murmuring invades your ears, though you can't hear anything he says clearly. He must be too far away.

You try to keep your erratic breathing under control, which stems from both pain and nerves. Your surroundings grow quiet, and Ginyu's energy disappears altogether. He must have left. You finally have room to breathe as Goku takes a few steps back, distancing himself from you. His eyes scan your face before quickly darting down to one of his hands. Specifically, the one that's now covered in your blood. His eyes go-round as he moves closer, invading your personal space once again. "Are you hurt?"

His tone lacks his typical cheery nature, causing you to tilt your head upward, your brain desperately attempting to form a contingency plan to get you out of this mess. "I'm fine." Goku makes you uneasy. He's nothing like a Saiyan should be. His behavior is all over the place, and not a single one of his actions adds up in your realm of logic. Out of all the ruthless and sadistic Saiyan's that could've survived, never in a million years did you expect one as pathetic as Kakarot to live.

"But, you're bleeding." This timid side of Goku is somehow worse than his typical cheerful self. You didn't think he could disgust you further, but once again, that defect proves you wrong.

You suppress an eye roll, keeping your piercing gaze locked on him. If you were to look away now, it would appear like you were backing down. And you refuse to let a fool like Kakarot win. "It's not my blood, Kakarot." Hopefully, he'll fall for your lies and drop this pointless conversation here.

"If it's not your blood, then let me see." He moves his hands to your hips, clawing at the bottom of your chest plate.

You grab his wrist, pushing them away. The two of you continue going back and forth, gripping and pushing at each other. It's been a while since someone challenged you like this, one on one. No one back on the Frieza Force would have dared to go against your wishes. Goku's different from them. He's not afraid of you, and it doesn't seem that he'll give up anytime soon. You would've never pegged Kakarot for the stubborn type. Maybe there's still a bit of true Saiyan nature in him, after all. And as infuriating as he is, you can't say you're disappointed. "Knock it off, Kakarot!" 

"Stop being such a baby, and let me help you." If you were in a public setting, those passing by might have believed you were a couple. Having one of those sweet but sicking play fights. While in reality, that was far from the truth. This proves just how thin the line between love and hate truly is. 

"I don't want your help!" You stop fighting him, crossing your arms over your chest, denying him access to your upper half. 

You thought you had outsmarted him, that was until his hands landed on the sides of your top. "Fine. I'll just tear your armor off then."

You stare at him in disbelief. "Do you have no boundaries?" He has to be bluffing, right? No one could be this shameless. However, the look on his face, mixed with his grip on your top tightening, tells you a whole different story. He's serious about this. "Wait---" You place one of your hands on his chest. "If you back off, and shut up. I'll take it off."

He complies with your terms, stepping back, pressing his lips into a thin line. Your hands are violently shaking as you slowly move them to the corners of your chest piece. You've stripped your armor off in front of Raditz, Nappa, and Cado a million times before. So why does this feel so different?

You steadily pull your tunic above your head, slipping your chest piece off your body, leaving you in your nylon blue sports bra. And it really doesn't leave much to the imagination. You turn your head, finally getting to see the wound yourself. It's much deeper than you thought, but due to your Saiyan genetics, it's already healing quite nicely. "Are you pleased? Now, will you finally shut up?"

Feeling self-conscious from his gaze, you cross your arms over your chest again. "No. Why would I be happy about this? It looks, really, bad Y/N." Why does he care about your physical condition? At the end of the day, you're enemies, and your nauseating alliance is only temporary. You just don't understand him. You can't read him either, so you have no clue what he'll do next. And it's driving you mad. 

"Wait." He grins. "I brought Senzu Beans with me." A Senzu what now? Those must be those healing beans he gave Krillin and Gohan back on Earth. He searches his pockets, only to come up empty-handed. He grabs his head as a look of realization crosses his features. "I'm so stupid. I left them on the ship."

Well, there's one thing you both agree on, Kakarot does have a moronic nature. "Hey, relax. I'm fine, Kakarot." You wrap your tail around your waist, applying pressure to your wound. "This is all I need to do. I've done this several times before, and look, I'm still standing, aren't I?"

Your assurance doesn't seem to be enough for Goku. "Please--- just let me help you." He's pleading with you. Does he really have no ulterior motives? Does he really just want to help you? You'd typically laugh at someone pleading with you, but when it's from him. It makes you uncharacteristically sad.

Those puppy dog eyes should be illegal. You swear Goku would be able to make you do anything just with that one look. "O-Ok." Did you seriously just agree? How can a simple glance make you so weak? An expression like that would typically make you sick. Maybe the amount of blood you've lost has made you delirious. That's a plausible explanation. You're clearly doing everything under Namek's three suns to evade the possibility that these new strange feelings could be your own mind's fabrication. 

He removes the cord holding his gi together, causing the orange fabric to hang loose. You now have a clear view of his torso, revealing the blue undershirt that was once hidden under his gi. He slips the shirt off, ripping the bottom of his shirt into strips. "You know I might not be the smartest guy in the world. But I do know that you have to keep wounds clean to avoid infection." He kneels in front of you, giving himself easier access to your side. You don't mind. Him leaning down to help you would've probably made you even more flustered. 

His hand brushes against your tail, causing you to jump. He stares at you in alarm. "Sorry, I forgot that hurts you."

"I-It didn't hurt. I trained myself out of that weakness a long time ago. It's just a sensitive area still." He nods as you uncoil your tail, giving him direct access to your injury. He wraps the strips of cloth around your torso. The fabric is in replacement of a bandage, not bad for a makeshift patch-up at all. You've seen Nappa and Raditz do much worse.

Goku stands back up, tying his gi back together. "See. Good as new." That dopey smile on his face really makes you want to punch him. His facial expression may be causing you mild irritation, and his words had no humor to them, but you can no longer hold back your fit of laughter that is now escaping your lips. "What's so funny?"

"You are."

He pouts, which only makes you laugh more. "I'm not funny."

"Oh, yes you are, Kakarot. Everything about your existence is either. A. amusing or B. irritating." You're about to berate him even further, but you stop yourself. Someone is standing directly above you, and It isn't Ginyu this time. Their power level is far too low. It's not anyone you're currently aligned with either. By now, you know Vegeta's power level by heart, and you were able to memorize the other's energy levels during your previous encounter with them. So it's best to assume that above you is one of Frieza's minions. 

You do have a weapon at your disposal. No one knows that Goku is here except for you. And you intend to use that piece of knowledge to your advantage. You grab his wrist, pulling Goku back to the wall, successfully switching positions with him.

 You look up, getting a good look at the figure above you. Just your luck, it's Jeice. What's next? Will a scorned, old flame of yours show up in an attempt to win you back? Or will Frieza show up for a tea party?

Sadly, it's too late for you to duck back into the corner. That prick already saw you. You move out into the open, keeping Jeice off Kakarot's scent. A self-satisfied grin appears on Jeice lips as he admires your practically bare torso. "Hello, love. You having fun down there?"

"Oh, it's a real party, Jeice." His gaze makes your skin crawl differently. Kakarot's makes you nervous, but Jeice's makes you want to hurl.  

"I have to say, Y/N. I am surprised you'd fall for something so simple-minded."

You turn your head, subtly glaring at Goku. "You're right. That's not like me at all. I must have had a severe lapse in judgment."

"Well, gorgeous. Looks like today's your lucky day. I'll pull you up, but under one condition." You wouldn't accept his aid even if there wasn't a catch. You'd rather spend an eternity in the pit with Kakarot than owe Jeice any favors. "All you have to do is betray Vegeta, re-pledge your allegiance to Lord Frieza, and of course, become my wife."

You scoff, shaking your head. "Ya, no chance in hell I'm doing any of that."

"Oh, come on, Y/N. You'd rather be stuck down there, all alone. Then be with me."

"I wish I was alone right now." You mutter to yourself. Whether this statement was directed at Jeice of Goku is unclear, but it's most likely the latter.

He moves his hand to his scouter. "I didn't quite catch that Y/N. Was that your native tongue? Or were you just whispering?"

"I said I'd rather rot down here! And by the way, the only thing less appealing than death on this shitty planet would be marrying you."

He scowls at you. "I was trying to play nice, but now I see that's not a viable option. So if you insist you'd rather die down there, I won't be the one to stop you. Just know, you lost your only chance of leaving this damn rock alive." He takes off, now in an irritable mood. Maybe you should've played nice and asked him about Vegeta and the others. It probably doesn't matter either way. Who's to say Jeice would've told the truth.

Goku walks over to you, sheepishly handing you your chest piece. You find him much less irritating now. It turns out Kakarot isn't the worst being you could've been trapped with. It could've been much worse. You could be stuck down here with Jeice instead.

-

The group of four has covered a lot of ground, considering what terrible shape they're in. Recoome really did a number on them, especially Vegeta. He's limping while the others are still able to walk with only mild discomfort. After Vegeta was down for the count, it took Gohan, Krillin, and Raditz all together to finish Recoome off. Raditz is by far in the best shape of the group. Since he jumped in last, getting the KO. The other three would've been executed without the intervention of the largest Saiyan. And lady luck appeared to be on their side because Jeice fled shortly after Recoome fell. A few weeks ago, this group teaming up would've been unimaginable, former allies, enemies, and friends alike, with the lines between each category, quickly blurring together.

The issue with you suppressing your power level is now more prominent than ever. They can't easily locate you, so a search party is sadly the best they can do. Vegeta knew he should've gotten you chipped when he had the chance. He'd be able to locate you anywhere, anytime he wanted. So what if it violated your privacy. If it was up to Vegeta, you'd be one leash by now.

Gohan turns to his uncle. "Do you think Y/N's alright?"

"She's fine. Y/N's incredibly resourceful. If she couldn't surpass him in strength, she'd be able to easily outwit him. Y/N's always done as she's pleased, so it's not surprising if she got a bit carried away." Raditz knows you're alive. He can feel it. A creature as brain-dead as Burter wouldn't be the one to take you out. You'd definitely go out with a bigger bang.

"Stop the chit-chat, and stay focused!" Vegeta snarls at the uncle-nephew duo.

Raditz lowers his voice to a whisper. "Don't mind him. Vegeta's just worried."

"Shut your damn mouth, Raditz! Before I shut it for you, permanently." Raditz's eyes widen in terror as he frantically restarts his search. Pissing off Vegeta right now would not be an intelligent choice.

They explore another good portion of the planet. The only downside is they haven't found any sign of life. The group was about to pause and rest until a strange ship entered their field of vision. Krillin's eyes widen, a grin spreading across his lips. As he reads the words located on the side of the vessel. He begins sprinting toward the machine with Gohan not far behind. "Capsule Corp! We're saved!" 

Vegeta and Raditz observe the two in bewilderment. Vegeta never thought that Raditz could ever be the second smartest person in his vicinity. Today is just full of surprises. "Slow down, you neanderthals!" Vegeta shouts. "It could be a trap." The two Saiayn's have obviously seen more of the world. Even a fool like Raditz understands protocol about behavior on a foreign planet.

The pair ignore their Saiyan allies. With Krillin entering the ship first. "Goku?" He shouts.

"Dad?" Gohan enters the ship, only to find no sign of his father. The pair begin searching the aircraft, looking for clues to where Goku's whereabouts may be. The two Saiyan's tread carefully into the ship. Nothing seems dangerous at the moment. And they wouldn't put it past Kakarot to abandon the only source of transportation off this damn planet. Gohan furrows his brows. "Where could he have gone?"

"Do you guys think he could've been captured? Krillin's question was directed toward the Saiyan's. Vegeta and Raditz both know what the Frieza Force can do while he and Gohan are basically fish out of water.

"Relax." Raditz is the one to break the silence. "If Kakarot was captured, we'd all already know."

"There would be signs of a struggle. And extreme damage to the outside terrain. Kakarot left on his own accord, now let's go, we now have two fools to find."

Krillin was about to follow Vegeta's orders until his eyes land on a small bag. "Wait." He grabs the bag from the table. "If this is what I think it is--- it is. Leave it to Goku to forget an entire bag of Senzu beans." He pulls one of the green beans out of the bag, tossing it to Gohan and grabbing another for himself. 

He throws the bag at Raditz, who catches it with ease. The Saiyan watches the earthling and half-breed eat them first. Their injuries heal instantly, so it isn't poison. That small fact seems to be enough for Raditz, as he eats one of the beans himself. 

After he heals, he hands the bag to Vegeta. "Wait! Raditz!" Krillin shrieks. He's aware that their alliance is quite temporary and will probably end once they successfully disband the Ginyu Force.

Krillin charges at Vegeta, only to be stopped by Raidtz's hand. Which is placed firmly against his forehead, the Saiyan can hold him back with ease. "Stop. You know we can't do this on our own, even with Kakarot's help. Take it from someone who personally knows Frieza and the Ginyu Force. We need him."

Vegeta holds the Senzu bean in his hand, eyeing it skeptically. Before tossing it in his mouth, chewing it slowly. His eyes flash in amazement as his substantial injuries heal instantly. Even though he's seen the bean work wonders before, he still can't believe its capabilities. 

"Do you guys think that Goku and Y/N could be together?" Krillin's question makes a lot of sense, and unknowingly to him, very accurate. 

Vegeta sighs. "It's a possibility." The idea alone makes Vegeta cringe. Just the possibility of you being alone with Kakarot makes him irritable. 

"Well, if they're together, that's a good thing, right?" Gohan's cheerful voice cuts in. "It should be easier to find them, then."

Raditz snickers. "But, will they both be alive? That's the million-dollar question."

Krillin's eyes widen. It wouldn't surprise him if Goku's personality pushed you over the realm of sanity. He sometimes even feels like he's losing his mind when he's with his childhood friend. "Good point. If that's the case, we better step up our game."

The group of four exits the ship, continuing their search. And it doesn't take long for them to discover something else that stops them in their tracks. They located Burter's corpse, more specifically a headless Burter. Decapitation seems to be your go-to method of execution today. It's good to mix things up once in a while.

"Well, it looks like we know what happened here." You jump up in the pit. You'd recognize that voice anywhere. As always, your big brother, Vegeta, comes to your rescue.

"Vegeta! Get me the hell out of here!" Vegeta furrows his brows, desperately looking in all directions. He flys up to get a birds-eye view of the landscape. A higher altitude should be beneficial in tracking you down.

As soon as you hear Vegeta's obnoxious laughter, you know he's found you. He lands on the side of the dip in the ground. "Looks like you're in quite the predicament there, baby sister!" You've never been happier to see that arrogant smirk before in your life. 

"Vegeta, come on, get me out of here! I can't take another second of this torture."

"I don't know." Vegeta rubs his chin. "You did leave me alone, with those three idiots. Maybe I should leave you down there with Kakarot so you can learn a lesson."

"Come on, Vegeta. You know we don't have time for this." Raditz places a large branch in the pit. You should easily be able to climb up it. The barrier is only activated for those inside the hole. So it should cause a rift when something is poking out of it.

You place your hands on the wood as you start shimming upwards. You wince in pain, stumbling a bit. Your injury must be affecting you more than you thought. Goku quickly grabs you, placing his hands on your hips holding you in place.

"D- Don't touch me!"

Goku sighs. Your hot and cold behavior is really confusing to him. "I was just trying to help you. You were gonna fall."

"As we discussed before. I don't want your help." You pull yourself up the rest of the way up, rushing to Raditz. You wrap your arms around the giant, desperately clinging to him. "I take back every bad thing I've ever said about you."

Raditz furrows his brows, looking over your head at his brother, who had just climbed back to the surface. "God, Kakarot. What did you do to her?"

"Relax, you drama queen. You were only down there for about an hour or so." Vegeta pulls you off Raditz as your hand quickly lands over the sight of your wound. There's no need to worry Vegeta about this. It's just a minor scratch, that's all. He scans his eyes over your from, checking for any irregularities. "No injuries. All your limbs are intact. I'm surprised."

"Well, actually---" You slap Goku's leg with your tail, causing him to yelp out in pain. 

"Yep, I'm all good." You plaster an ingenuine smile on your face.

Gohan, Krillin, and Goku all have a little reunion. The rest of you will not take any part in that conversation. Kakarot's arrival isn't something to celebrate. He won't be your saving grace. "So, what's our next move?" Raditz turns to Vegeta. It's almost like nothing has changed. Like you've stepped into a time machine and went back to a much simpler time. Back when things were much less complicated.

"We go find Ginyu and Jeice too." Vegeta turns to you. "That red menace got away."

"I know. Jeice paid Kakarot and me a visit. Putting it simply, he's not gonna be in very high spirits."

Raditz chuckles. "Well, getting turned down so many times can't be good for his ego. Especially by the ice princess."

"She's far from an ice princess. Saiyan-wise, my sister is actually quite friendly. Out of our entire bloodline, I'd say she has the best people skills. She knows how to work a crowd. That's why our father wanted to put her in charge of foreign affairs."

"Was that a compliment, Vegeta?"

"I wouldn't dare." He pauses, turning to the other three. "Alright, let's get this over with. I don't want to spend any more time with you fools than necessary."

-

The group is finally reunited. But what does Captain Ginyu have in store for our heroes? And will Jeice ever get Y/N's attention? Find out in the next chapter of The Princess of All Saiyans..

[books-letstalkaboutem]

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue Quotes that I Loved

This is just a list of quotes or excerpts that I highlighted while reading the book- literally all of them and there are a lot. I’m going to go ahead and say spoilers below just because there are so many quotes and while I don’t think the quotes actually spoil anything, I don’t want to accidentally spoil something for someone.

Some of the quotes might seem a little weird out of context but these are quotes that hit close to home, made me say “Hell, yeah, Addie!!!", quotes that made me laugh, and then basically all of the other quotes that I loved while reading.

I know that I didn't completely fall in love with this book like so many other people did, but it was still so beautifully written and there were so many amazing quotes in this book.

And just a heads up, I read this on my kindle, just in case the page numbers I list don’t match with your copy of the book.

Spoilers Below:

Quotes that Hit Close to Home

“Three and twenty, a third of a life already buried.” Page 39

“The day passes like a sentence. The sun falls like a scythe.” Page 41

“[...] and when she dies it will be as though she never lived.” Page 42

“I am so tired of not having choices, so scared of the years rushing past beneath my feet. I do not want to die as I’ve lived, which is no life at all. I—” Page 46

“[...] she swears sometimes her memory runs forward as well as back, unspooling to show the roads she’ll never get to travel. But that way lies madness, and she has learned not to follow.” Page 61

“His parents meant well, of course, but they always told him things like Cheer up, or It will get better, or worse, It’s not that bad, which is easy to say when you’ve never had a day of rain.” Page 97

“But then a night would go long, and a day would start late, and now he feels like there’s no time at all. Like he is always late for something.” Page 119

““I see someone who cares,” she says slowly. “Perhaps too much. Who feels too much. I see someone lost, and hungry. The kind of person who feels like they’re wasting away in a world full of food, because they can’t decide what they want.”” Page 140

““Life is so brief, and every night in Rennes I’d go to bed, and lie awake, and think, there is another day behind me, and who knows how few ahead.”” Page 167

““I mean feeling like it’s surging by so fast, and you try to reach out and grab it, you try to hold on, but it just keeps rushing away. And every second, there’s a little less time, and a little less air, and sometimes when I’m sitting still, I start to think about it, and when I think about it, I can’t breathe. I have to get up. I have to move.”” Page 177

““Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”” Page 179

“It was such a lovely jar she had kept them in. But the glass is cracking now. The water leaking through.” Page 215

“Moments of joy register as brief, but ecstatic. Moments of pain stretch long and unbearably loud.” Page 225

“[...] you’ve never felt called to any one thing. There is no violent push in one direction, but a softer nudge a hundred different ways, and now all of them feel out of reach. Page 226

“[...] in wanting to live, to learn, to find yourself, you’ve gotten lost.” Page 226

“He lets it ring, holds his breath until it stops. He tells himself that if they call again, he’ll answer. If they call again, he’ll tell them he is not okay. But the phone doesn’t ring a second time.” Page 229

“He misses the structure, misses the path, misses the purpose. And maybe it wasn’t a perfect fit, but nothing is.” Page 257

“That he’d blinked and somehow years had gone by, and everyone else had carved their trenches, paved their paths, and he was still standing in a field, uncertain where to dig.” Page 283

“And those first two years, he was happy. He had Bea, and Robbie, and all he had to do was learn. Build a foundation. It was the house, the one that he was supposed to build on top of that smooth surface, that was the problem. It was just so … permanent.” 283

“Choosing a class became choosing a discipline, and choosing a discipline became choosing a career, and choosing a career became choosing a life, and how was anyone supposed to do that, when you only had one?” Page 283

““The vexing thing about time,” he says, “is that it’s never enough. Perhaps a decade too short, perhaps a moment. But a life always ends too soon.”” Page 333

“He is all restless energy, and urgent need, and there isn’t enough time, and he knows of course that there will never be. That time always ends a second before you’re ready. That life is the minutes you want minus one.” Page 421

“The world is wide, and he’s seen so little of it with his own eyes. He wants to travel, to take photos, listen to other people’s stories, maybe make some of his own. After all, life seems very long sometimes, but he knows it will go so fast, and he doesn’t want to miss a moment.” Page 438

Quotes that Made Me Laugh

“Henry loves his sister, he does. But Muriel’s always been like strong perfume. Better in small doses. And at a distance.” Page 120

““Sorry, Book,” she mutters, lifting the cat gingerly onto the back of the old chair, where he does his best impression of an inconvenienced bread loaf.” Page 248

““It’s Halloween!” defends Robbie. “It’s the twenty-third,” says Henry, but Robbie treats holidays the way he treats birthdays, stretching them from days into weeks, and sometimes into seasons.” Page 274

Quotes that made me say “Hell, yeah, Addie!!!”

“If she must grow roots, she would rather be left to flourish wild instead of pruned, would rather stand alone, allowed to grow beneath the open sky. Better that than firewood, cut down just to burn in someone else’s hearth.” Page 31

“[...]from this moment forward, her life will be her own.” Page 48

“There is a defiance in being a dreamer.” Page 117

““It has only been two years,” she says. “Think of all the time I have, and all the things I’ll see.”” Page 132

“It will take time, but time is the one thing Addie has plenty of. So she opens her eyes, and starts again.” Page 192

“But then Addie straightens, lifts her chin, smiles with an almost defiant kind of joy. “But isn’t it wonderful,” she says, “to be an idea?”” Page 261

Quotes that I Love

“[...] never pray to the gods that answer after dark.” Page 7

“What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?” Page 15

“The things that last, even when memories don’t.” Page 16

“As if you couldn’t like one place and want to see another.” Page 23

“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.” Page 35

“The kind of place where time slips and blurs, where a month, a year, a life can go missing.” Page 39

“[...] attraction can look an awful lot like recognition in the wrong light.” Page 56

“The rise isn’t worth the fall.” Page 56

“Being trapped, buried alive, these are the things that scare you when you cannot die.” Page 57

“Funny, how some people take an age to warm, and others simply walk into every room as if it’s home.” Page 58

“Déjà vu. Déjà su. Déjà vécu. Already seen. Already known. Already lived.” Page 66

“[...]a lifetime of knowing brushed away like a tear.” Page 73

“[...] and it is sad, of course, to forget. But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten. To remember when no one else does.” Page 77

“[...] ideas are so much wilder than memories, that they long and look for ways of taking root.” Page 77

““These days, everyone’s looking down,” muses Sam. “It’s nice to see someone looking up.”” Page 101

“Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered?” Page 103

“If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?” Page 103

“Dreamer is too soft a word. It conjures thoughts of silken sleep, of lazy days in fields of tall grass, of charcoal smudges on soft parchment.” Page 11

“She considers the cut of their clothes, the absence of bone stays or bustled skirts, and thinks, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, how much simpler it would be to be a man, how easily they move through the world, and at such little cost.” Page 129

““I remember you.”” Page 135

“The darkness claimed he’d given her freedom, but really, there is no such thing for a woman, not in a world where they are bound up inside their clothes, and sealed inside their homes, a world where only men are given leave to roam.” Page 163

“She watches these men and wonders anew at how open the world is to them, how easy the thresholds.” Page 165

““I think there are many ways to matter.”” Page 179

“But ideas are so much wilder than memories, so much faster to take root.”” Page 210

“He is full of roots, while she has only branches.” Page 212

“Easy to stay on the path when the road is straight and the steps are numbered.” Page 229

“Outside the window, the day just carries on as if nothing’s changed, but it feels like everything has, because Addie LaRue is immortal, and Henry Strauss is damned.” Page 235

“[...]I didn’t want to live forever. I just wanted to live.”” Page 236

““There’s this family photo,” he says, “not the one in the hall, this other one, from back when I was six or seven. That day was awful. Muriel put gum in David’s book and I had a cold, and my parents were fighting right up until the flash went off. And in the photo, we all look so … happy. I remember seeing that picture and realizing that photographs weren’t real. There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid. So photos are like fictions. I loved that about them. Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.”” Page 239

“God, it feels good to be wanted.” Page 256

“[...] And ideas are wilder than memories. They’re like weeds, always finding their way up.”” Page 261

“Homesick—Henry knows that one is supposed to mean sick for home, not from it, but it still feels right.” Page 262

“Dressing up, he thinks, is just like watching cartoons, something you enjoyed as a kid, before it passes through the no man’s land of teen angst, the ironic age of early twenties. And then somehow, miraculously, it crosses back into the realm of the genuine, the nostalgic. A place reserved for wonder.” Page 274

“Bea always says returning to campus is like coming home. But it doesn’t feel that way to Henry. Then again, he never felt at home at home, only a vague sense of dread, the eggshell-laden walk of someone constantly in danger of disappointing.” 282

“He doesn’t know what he believes, hasn’t for a long time, but it’s hard to entirely discount the presence of a higher power when he recently sold his soul to a lower one.” Page 284

““You can’t make people love you, Hen. If it’s not a choice, it isn’t real.”” Page 290

“He has asked the wrong god for the wrong thing, and now he is enough because he is nothing. He is perfect, because he isn’t there.” Page 290

“A life reduced to a block of stone, a patch of grass.” Page 299

“The present folding on top of the past instead of erasing it, replacing it.” Page 306

“She knows the paint will fade, rinsed off by a puddle, or simply wiped away by time, but that’s how memories are supposed to work. There—and then, little by little, gone.” Page 307

“Without the bells, the organ, the bodies crowding in for services, the church feels abandoned. Less a house of worship and more a tomb.” Page 311

“God is so large, why build walls to hold Him in?” Page 311

“Once you know about a thing, you start to see it everywhere. Someone says the words purple elephant, and all of a sudden, you catch sight of them in shop windows and on T-shirts, stuffed animals and billboards, and you wonder how you never noticed.” Page 314

“There is a freedom, after all, in being forgotten.” 325

“Memories are stiff, but thoughts are freer things. They throw out roots, they spread and tangle, and come untethered from their source. They are clever, and stubborn, and perhaps—perhaps—they are in reach.” Page 327

“They’ve been lucky, so lucky, but the trouble with luck is that it always ends.” 329

““You said it yourself, Luc. Ideas are wilder than memories. And I can be wild. I can be stubborn as the weeds, and you will not root me out. And I think you are glad of it. I think that’s why you’ve come, because you are lonely, too.”” Page 332

“She closes her eyes, reminds herself there are many ways to leave a mark, reminds herself that pictures lie.” Page 337

“She may not feel the years weakening her bones, her body going brittle with age, but the weariness is a physical thing, like rot, inside her soul. There are days when she mourns the prospect of another year, another decade, another century. There are nights when she cannot sleep, moments when she lies awake and dreams of dying. But then she wakes, and sees the pink and orange dawn against the clouds, or hears the lament of a lone fiddle, the music and the melody, and remembers there is such beauty in the world. And she does not want to miss it— any of it.” Page 342

“Luc’s smile darkens. “Because time is cruel to all, and crueler still to artists. Because vision weakens, and voices wither, and talent fades.” He leans close, twists a lock of her hair around one finger. “Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end,” he says, “everyone wants to be remembered.”” Page 351

“It is a sign, when even gods and devils dread a fight.” Page 367

“And this, he decides, is what a good-bye should be. Not a period, but an ellipsis, a statement trailing off, until someone is there to pick it up. It is a door left open. It is drifting off to sleep.” Page 419

[cursestothemoon]

If It Were Me

Requested: Yes

Draco Malfoy x Bestfriend!Slytherin!Fem!Reader

Warnings: death, battle, blood

Word count: 2297

guys i’m sorry 

✧✧✧

Draco was in his fourth year when he first met you, a third year. You had been sorted into Slytherin your first year and had kept to yourself since then. It was Snape who introduced you two in the years to come. Students fourth year and above had been asked to tutor kids in the years below, Draco ending up with you Y/n. At first Draco was… apprehensive, to say the least. You were quite most of the time, and not in an embarrassed or shy way, no Draco could tell you just didn’t want to talk to him. He found out why when he looked at your potion notes...they were perfect, if anything he needed your help in the class. Same with all your other class notes and he couldn’t help but be amazed.

“You're worse than Granger, why’d you even ask for help?” He sneered, only slightly jealous.

You shrugged, “Didn’t ask, Professor Snape just thought I needed to make more friends in my own house. As for the notes, I won’t get anywhere with incompetent work, now will I?”

It was from then on that Draco thought you weren't that bad, but fifth year (your fourth) was when he realized you were more to him then just some acquaintance. He had gotten back from winter holiday, the news of having to get the dark mark soon was still eating away at his nerves.

The common room was empty, rightfully so it was nearly three in the morning, apart from a pacing blonde. It seemed he had just realized what he had to do and he wasn’t taking it well. He wanted to do it, surely he did, it would make his father proud not to mention ensure his safety with the Dark Lord. But it was what came with it that he wasn’t sure if he was ready for, if he was ready for turning his back on all things morally correct.

You were just thirsty and the pitcher in your dorm had been fresh out of water. You weren’t expecting to see a sweaty, pasty Draco walking a trench into the common room floor.

“Bit early for a run isn’t it?” You tried to lighten the mood, but the humor you were going for didn’t pass to your words.

“Go back to your dorm.” Draco was quick to turn away from you, you didn’t need to see him like this.

You bit the inside of your cheek in thought before responding, “Would you leave if you found me like this?”

The question was enough for Draco to stop in his tracks. Would he leave? The answer was obvious, he wouldn’t because you were his friend and if you needed him he would be there. He turned to look at you and he nearly laughed, your pajamas were crooked, hair a mess and you just looked so much younger than you usually do in your robes. That was when Draco started to see you as not only his closest, dearest friend, but as a little sister. You were just so small and innocent and young in Draco’s eyes, just like he used to be. And he couldn’t help but unload all of his worries and problems onto you because you were finally someone he could trust, finally someone he knew that loved him in the most innocent and truest way. You loved him like your own brother.

From then on you and Draco were inseparable, he looked after you and you him. Draco would come over to yours over summer for a few weeks at a time, and you had met Narcissa on many occasions. Draco’s mother was quite fond of you, coming to see you as her own daughter. Draco was more than happy to have you in his family in such a way, oftentimes thinking to himself how amazing it would’ve been if you two were really siblings. You were there for him when he got the mark, it was the first time he had cried to you and he hated it. He took the job of role model very seriously and breaking down in front of you was not something he wanted to do, but he still very much wanted the mark. Whether it was him being naive of what it actually meant or because he just wanted to make his father proud, he hadn’t regretted getting it. Not yet.

--

When the fighting started he made sure you were the first person he had by his side, the sight of you being locked away in the dungeons because people just assumed all Slytherins were evil made his blood boil because honestly, you were the furthest from such.

The fighting seemed like ages and Draco’s main concern was that you stayed alive, and as he watched you fight. Bloody, dirtier, and just desperate for it to all stop he felt the smallest pang of regret. The quietest voice in his mind asking if maybe making his father proud wasn’t as worth it as he thought.

The mood was somber as everyone stepped out of the broken castle, the air vibrating with fear of what was next. Draco grabbed your hand as you exited the building, Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters were making their way to them.

“What…” Your voice was quiet as you spotted Hagrid carrying a limp body.

Draco turned to you, “Don’t, don’t say anything. Whatever you do, don’t get their attention.”

You nodded reluctantly, Draco pushing you further behind himself as you two continued to walk out into the courtyard.

“Stay by Luna.” The words were mumbled but you knew better than to argue and stood next to the Ravenclaw girl just behind Draco.

Luna gave you a soft smile, but said nothing as you stood by her.

“Harry Potter… is dead!”

Your body went numb as you sucked in a breath.

“No. No!” It was Ginny.

Her cries were enough to make you flinch, a lump rising to your throat as you watched her. Draco felt his own lip quiver but stopped it immediately, this was what he wanted right? This is what came with having the mark… right?

“Stupid girl, Harry Potter is dead.” Voldemort said, his voice maniacally calm. “From this day forth, you put your faith… in me.”

You snarled to yourself, unable to keep your hatred for the man at bay. He’d destroyed Draco completely, you knew it no matter how many times Draco brushed it off, and now he ruined your school, your home, and he killed a brave, innocent boy.

“Harry Potter is dead!” He repeated with a smile, his followers laughing.

Draco, from the corner of his eye, saw the way you had stepped out from where you were and he turned to you to give you a pointed look. You narrowed your eyes at him, how could he be asking you to just stand there and do nothing?

“Come forward and join us... or die.”

You were proud to see that no one budged, not even Draco moved to step toward him but his hand raised subtly to pull down his left sleeve.

“Draco!” The voice was unmistakable, Lucius Malfoy was calling Draco to join.

It seemed that for the first time in his life, Draco did not jump to obey his father.

“Draco…” It was his mother now, her voice was kinder and her eyes found yours.

She had an unreadable expression in her eyes as she looked at you for a moment before turning back to Draco.

“Come.”

He turned to look at you and your heart dropped, he wasn’t going to actually go was he? Your question was answered when he moved to walk toward the otherside. You felt frozen for a moment, watching his back as he left. But it was the way Narcissa caught your eye, the same expression amplified now, that brought the feeling back to your body and forced you to act.

“No.” Your voice was quiet at first.

You pushed past the people in front of you getting to Draco, “No!” Your hand went for his wrist, “Draco don’t go.”

He turned around, eyes wide, looking at you incredulously and if circumstances had been different he would’ve been in tears at the way you so openly came to his side when no one else would. But right now was not the time for you to play hero.

“Go back to where you were. It’s alright.”

You shook your head, “Draco, I’m not letting you go.”

Draco turned to look back at his parents, his father was beyond ready to explode but his mother had the faintest smile on her face.

“You are welcome to join with him, my dear.” Voldemort smiled at you, his short, sharp teeth making your skin crawl.

It was the possibility of Draco dragging you into this that made his stomach lurch, his decision made as he took steps back to be at your side.

“She won’t join you...neither will I.” His voice was low but strong enough to be heard.

Lucius let out a growl at the betrayal by his son, but Narcissa put her hand on his wrist stopping him from advancing toward her son and her daughter.

You started to walk back to where you had been, Draco in tow before you heard the angry voice of none other than the Dark Lord.

“You dare turn your back on me, boy? Avada Kedavra!”

Draco hadn’t turned fast enough to try and somehow protect himself and waited to feel the jet of green hit him, only...it never came. What did come was the feeling of something knocking into him, effectively pushing him out of the way.

“Move a little faster next time, Draco.” You huffed at him going to stand up.

Fighting had broken out again as Harry, alive, tumbled out of Hagrid’s arms. Draco stood up and pulled you into him, crushing you with a hug before placing a kiss to the top of your head.

“Don’t you ever do something as dimwitted as that again.” He warned, but a bright smile broke out onto his face. They finally had a chance of winning and Draco, at last, felt he was on the right side.

Everyone was moving into the castle, Draco and you included, until he heard the yell of his father.

“Draco! Where are you going?”

Lucius was rushing toward Draco, his wand out and pointed at him. You were quick to move in front of Draco, ignoring his hand trying to push you back.

“He’s not going with you.”

Lucius laughed, “And who’s going to stop him? You?”

“Lucius, let them go. They’ve chosen.” Narcissa said softly.

“I won’t let him ruin our name just because some incompetent witch told him to!”

Draco snarled, going to walk up to his father, “You’ve ruined our name yourself, father.”

It seemed his father had been left speechless and he turned to pull you back into the castle, back into safety. And Draco was almost there too, until he heard his father again.

“Sectumsempra!”

Again, Draco was shoved to the side by you. He assumed his father had missed, seeing as he felt completely fine, rage being the only thing building in his gut, that is until he heard a strangled breath from next to him. He looked down to see you lying on the ground, blood slowly seeping out of your clothes.

Draco rushed to your side, his hands going to cradle your head.

“I told you to move a little faster, didn’t I?” You gave a weak laugh, but Draco was not in the mood for humor as he took out his wand.

“Episkey!”

“Dra-”

“Episkey! Episkey!” He pointed his wand at the wounds over and over again, nothing happening.

His voice was thick with tears, ears barely picking up the scream his mother let out behind him before being pulled and apparated away by his father.

“Draco it’s not going to work… you know that.” Your voice was soft, face paling quickly as the blood rushed from your wounds.

“Snape, Snape knew how to fix it- I- just let me remember.” Draco fumbled, cursing himself for not remembering the almost song like counter curse his now dead head of house used to help him.

His eyes snapped up to meet yours as he heard you try to take in a breath, you looked a sickly grey and Draco felt his hands start to shake more vigorously.

“We just- you can’t do this. Not now, not ever.”

“I don’t think...I’ve got much of a choice, Draco.”

Draco let out a sob, gut wrenching and heart tearing, as he realized he was completely and utterly helpless. He raised his hand to brush the hair away from your face, eyes struggling to focus on one thing.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen, Y/n.” He cried into your shoulder.

You tried your best to turn to him, “It’s ok. Go, go fight.”

Draco scoffed in disbelief, “Would you leave if you found me like this?”

You smiled, your own words used against you. No, you wouldn't leave him. Your eyes travelled to the sky, the pain had seemed to stop and there was a calm quiet that surrounded you.

Draco watched the life drain from your eyes and let out another sob. His yells were loud and he was sure people had heard them, he was sure someone knew what was happening, but no one came to help the boy cradling his best friend, his little sister. No one came to help the boy with the dark mark.

And for the first time Draco regretted it, with every fiber of his being, he regretted getting the mark.

[selfproducingfanfictionauthor]

the worlds collide - i: an old face

Summary: Who are you? Now that the new world has collided with the remnants of the old? 

Pairing: BTS x reader (slight Got7/Jackson x reader)

Warnings: Referenced violence, covert sexism, zombies  Notes:  I knoooow I should be working on lessons to build and looking back at you but this idea just won’t let go. I originally wrote it for my 30 minute challenge but it got out of hand. So here it is, a zombie au! Not sure how long it’ll be yet but we’ll see! UNEDITED. Word Count: 3.2k

At the center of the end of the world, humanity was stripped to what it only needs to exist - strength, camaraderie, and grit.

With the undead nipping at your heels day and night, the only thought that remained were thoughts of where the nearest exist is, how to store food, how much farther for the next stronghold, and how long will that stronghold last. To survive, you stripped away everything unnecessary from your former life. All the bashfulness, the shame, and coated yourself with an armor as thick as the new callouses on your fingers - you still remember the first time you’ve went topless around Namjoon, and neither of you flinched.

Frankly, you’ve forgotten how to be anything else but this brought you to your new role in the new world. You’re no longer a girl, or a woman - you’re a survivor.

And with your old life etched in the sinew of your muscles, of your arms and your legs, you became a valuable member of the group. Along with Jungkook and Hoseok, you carry the front, bashing heads of zombies left and right, clearing the way to a new possible food source and haven.

It was a tiring existence, the type of tired that can’t be washed away by sleep. If that’s what you can call those pockets of peace you have when you’ve finally trusted them to watch your back.

It took long for you to finally drop your guard around these boys that you now call your family. Understandable, given that men didn’t really have a great track record for women to trust them even prior to the apocalypse. But you’ve met them in a tight circumstance, that had them trusting you before you even bothered to try.

(It was Jimin who first reached out, somehow unchanged by the cruelty of the new world. Always soft, always yearning.)

The seven of them had been friends before shit went down, and you were just a lucky one to be part of their orbit.

You remind yourself of this now that the new world has began.

This is the longest you’ve stayed in one place since two years ago, and it’s starting to feel like a place everyone could plant their roots in. The town’s largely untouched by the apocalypse, its strategic location in the mountains and quick response had them building trenches and walls, to keep the hoard from closing in.

It’s an extra precaution thoughtfully made by a self-sustaining community. For once, isolation brought forth more benefits than mishaps. They’ve barely lost people, largely untouched by the terrors of the world outside theirs. Innocent. Their lives went on. No nightmares, nothing.

The first time one of the pleasantly-dressed girls approached you with what could’ve been friendship, you flinched.

The boys were taken to it so easily, perhaps being as weary as you are didn’t make them jaded as it has made you.

Namjoon was swept away by the village committee, his brains and leadership evident with how he led you to safety. Jin and Jimin’s apprenticed under the village doctor, Yoongi’s turned to farming along with Taehyung, while Hoseok and Jungkook’s muscles are put to test building houses at the craft shop.

Everybody’s found a place except you, because while this town’s been untouched in all the good ways, it’s also been untouched in a sense that it kept to all the antiquated ways of the old world.

And, you hate how much you resent it in your deepest of hearts.

It’s as if they thought that putting you in a dress will wash away all the blood in your hands, as if you didn’t shed as much as all the boys did if not more. You’ve been turned away from all the things you could do, and are now being forced into things they want you to.

It’s suffocating, being torn with the desire to put your foot down and the fear of being perceived as ungrateful.

“They don’t understand, do they?”

You blink out of your thoughts and turn to a familiar face making himself comfortable beside you.

Jaebeom’s pushed away the unfinished basket to the side and pulled up one of his long legs to rest his elbow on.

By his side is his gun, locked and loaded, always ready even after months of quiet. You didn’t even hear him come in, but instead of being unsettled, you’re a slightest bit relieved to know that at least someone hasn’t gotten rusty.

The scar on his eyebrow stands out underneath the moonlight, and on  the porch of your little house way’s away from the center of the town, you two make a fine pair of outsiders.

“No, they don’t.”

Even in times of peace, loss is inevitable.

Namjoon mulls over this as he looks at the list of names up for the next supply run. Two names have been crossed, and two funerals were attended last week. One had a body, another didn’t.

Old man Jungho died of a heart attack after his son died outside, and along with the grief, Namjoon could feel the pressure placed on his shoulders by a community unused to “unnatural” losses.

He’s developed a cycling procedure that makes it slightly fair to everyone who volunteered. Marked with blue ink are the ones who were in the previous run, those in black are the ones who are up for the next one.

With the latter list down by two, Namjoon turns to a different corner of his notebook to see your name. Until now, he’s had every excuse not to put you out there but now…

“Fuck,” Namjoon sighs and rubs his face with his hands. He doesn’t know why you’ll want to do this again. He’s tried asking you but somehow, you’ve grown farther and farther away.

When he tried to find you in the village garden with Yoongi, suddenly you’re out getting water. When Seokjin did your monthly checkup, you’re as impenetrable as the walls, when Hoseok tried to approach you with improvements for your home, you brush him away saying you’ve dealt with it with Jaebeom.

Jaebeom.

Whom you’ve only met a month in after you’ve settled into town. Who somehow’s been rumored to visit your house after dark, when the boys you’ve spent two years with haven’t even gotten the chance to step into your home.

Namjoon lets out a shaky breath. You’ve been so unreachable it’s made him cry out of frustration when the nights are dark and the seven of them feel your absence the most in their own quaint home.

They miss you, so much. Even Yoongi who’s as taciturn as they come has tried reaching out to you, working endlessly hard in his own little garden at the back of their house to produce strawberries that you love so much.

“Who’s on the list?”

Hoseok steps in the kitchen and jolts Namjoon out of his longing. He’s wearing his “fight” pants and boots, his gun taken out of the secret cellar and empty go bag slung on his shoulders.

Namjoon pushes his notebook towards him and watches as his friend’s face grow dark at the sight of your name.

“No.”

Namjoon sighs at the conviction in his friend’s voice. It draws in Jungkook from the living room, wearing the same pants and same tension in his shoulders every run.

It’s different when it was just the seven of them, now, they have to lead a bunch of unseasoned people outside the walls just so they don’t go in blind when - not if - shit hits the fan. The loss of the Youngho weighs heavily on Jungkook. They were of the same age, but not the same life experience and ultimately, that was what killed him.

“No, what?”

Jungkook takes in the tension of the room and glances down at the open notebook. “Oh.”

He mouths your name silently, treasuring each syllable. How long since he’s called you? How long since you two talked? Back outside, he liked to believe you and him had a special bond born in the midst of danger and trivial common hobbies from the old world.

He still has that photo card of an old gaming character you two loved.

“I can’t play favorites.” Namjoon states, teetering between duty and keeping you safe inside the walls. If you knew, you’d probably hate him for this, but you don’t.

“You can - you have!” Hoseok slams his hands on the table, the sound echoing inside their house. Everything falls silent followed by footsteps from the second floor.  “What makes it different now?”

“The difference is the fact that we lost someone!” Namjoon bellows, his anger and stress rolling off him like waves but Hoseok doesn’t stand down. He knows its selfish, but the only thing that has him going now that you’ve pulled away is the knowledge that you’re safe.

“We always lose someone—“

“It’s not just us anymore, you know that, Hobi.”

Hoseok bites his cheek at Namjoon’s use of his nickname and he could feel the rest watching him like a hawk. All at once the fight goes out of him. It’s true. In exchange for safety, the get a community - for better or worse.

A hand lands on his shoulder and he turns to Taehyung, who in turn offers a strained smile. “At least, she has two of you to keep an eye on her out there. Like old times.”

Hoseok never thought he’d feel nostalgic about the times they’re elbow-deep in zombie gut but — “Yeah, like old times.”

Except, it isn’t like the old times.

Jungkook’s always been an awkward guy around girls, especially pre-apocalypse. He was all long limbs and Bambi eyes, not quite steadfast on what he was as a man and easily shaken by every attractive girl’s attention.

And although he’s grown a bit, confident in his looks and skills in this new world, he still hasn’t mastered the art of rejecting someone.

(He’s never had to, not when it was you.)

And so, he’s stuck at the last meeting with his back against the wall and one of the town’s remaining daughters - Hyerin-  crowding his space as opposed to being beside you across the room.

He doesn’t even know that Hyerin signed up for the run, especially with how he’s told her that it’s dangerous and that she hasn’t had the proper training to go out there. It rankles him all sorts of wrong when she said that her father said that “it isn’t as dangerous as they made it out to be” as if they’re lying about the dangers they’ve faced.

And sure, they’ve cleared out a large space around the town of zombies but things can always go wrong, and if there’s anything Jungkook has learned is that things have a habit of luring you to a false sense of security before fucking everything up.

Hoseok’s giving the briefing to their small group of ten, and he could see his friend’s eyes linger a second too long whenever it passes you. You with your hair pulled back and back straight, it almost brings him back.

But then you smile at something Jaebeom says and Jungkook feels his chest tightening on cue. You haven’t smiled nor even looked at him since the start of this briefing. What had he done wrong? What have they done wrong that drove you away?

“We might encounter people on this run, and I want you to remember - people are more dangerous than zombies.” Hoseok reminds the group, “They can think, they can plot - and are much harder to predict. We’ll need someone to bring up the front before we flank the space—“

Before Jungkook could raise his hand, yours shoot up along with Jaebeom’s.

“I’ll do it.”

From the back, Jungkook could clearly hear the murmurs of the men in the group. Someone, someone stupidly brave enough speaks up, “I think you should let the men handle this, darling.”

Jungkook sees you put your hand on Jaebeom’s arm before turning to where the voice is. It’s one of the older folks, large and burly with eyes alight with mockery.

You smile sickly sweet, “Oh? I’m not the one who puked on the side of the road during the last run, am I?”

The man sputters and laughter erupts around him, his friends who were equal parts terrified at the sight of a half-torso crawling towards them last month. It’s easy to laugh when it’s not your ass on the line.

Before he gets another word in, you remind him, Hoseok, Jungkook and everyone in the room how dangerous you were on the outside. And how dangerous you still are here.

“And for the record, could you stomach killing a man when you can’t even finish off a zombie? I can,” you pause the silence being answer enough, “So, no, I’m not leaving this to the men.”

“Antagonizing them isn’t earning you any points.”

Keeping your eyes on the road helps you steady your nerves. Outside, you could see the remains of pushed over cars as your caravan makes its way away from the forest and down the mountain.

According to the last team’s run’s intel, there were traces of people loitering down the town proper and so Namjoon’s sent a team before you get caught unawares.

Hoseok coughs, “Y/N. Are you listening?”

“I didn’t know there were points to earn.”

One line, and its scathing but, Hoseok thinks, at least you’re talking to him. He was afraid he’s forgotten your voice.

He may have abused his power a bit to split you up from Jaebeom but it still makes sense, given that you two have worked together longer outside. You with your speed and him with his agility, you make a pretty good team.

And with your pretty face, people tend to underestimate you until its too late.

Hoseok pauses and mulls over your statement. Adjustment is hard, he knows, pandering to people who don’t know how hard it is on the outside but it’s needed. He doesn’t understand where your dislike of it comes from, so much so you’ve decided to ostracize yourself not only from the people in town but also from them.

(He’s a man. Of course he doesn’t understand. Old or new world, men can only touch the surface of what damage the world has done to women.)

“Y/N, it’s just so we could live with them peacefully. No trouble.”

You finally turn to him and he shivers from the coolness in your eyes. “When have I caused them any trouble? I help out, don’t I? I’m a functioning member of the community - is it required to be all chummy with them?”

Framed like that, Hoseok doesn’t have any answer but a semblance of the truth lying in a question, “Why don’t you talk to us anymore?”

Outside, the caravan reaches its destination and people pour out of the old trucks.

“Is there anything to talk about?”

Of course, of course there is, Hoseok wanted to say. But job calls, and  when the sight of tracks greet your group, everything goes back to the back burner.

By the looks of it, there were at least four people about. All with large feet which most likely mean they were males.

Hoseok made a executive decision and sent back all of the group except you, Jaebeom and Jungkook. Given the situation, your group had too many people for this run turned reconnaisance and moving that many people will slow down any retreat you might need to do.

So he sent them back up with a message to Namjoon about the situation. He’ll get a lashing later but he’s sure the guys will understand. A small group is more manageable, but a group with established trust and dynamics (at least with the three of you) is more than ideal.

Your tracking leads the team to one of the larger convenient grocery stores in town. It’s long been looted and cleaned out, but somehow, one of the older craftsmen in the village figured out how to run the generator. Now, it’s store room is being used to hold and freeze any meat and fish you can’t afford to salt. How long you’ll have it running with the generator, who knows?

At what previously was an aisle for chips and snacks, you and Hoseok tread lightly, guns cocked and hands steady, your ears straining to hear any off-beat step as you get deeper into the store. Somewhere across the room, you know that Jungkook and Jaebeom are doing the same, closing off the larger exit.

It’s four on four, the odds may not be on your favor if it comes down to it but it’s not on theirs entirely either -whoever they are.

The morning light filters through the broken glass windows and reflects on your gun as you step forward to the large space at the end of the aisle. At the corner of your eye, you see Jungkook, -free of that girl hanging off his arm- tilt his head towards the large freezer ahead of you.

Behind him, Jaebeom moves to the right, taking position for a surprise attack while you three continue to advance. The freezer’s door is slightly ajar and you could almost make out the conversation and the shadows moving about inside. There’s unfettered laughter and guffaws, pulling you into a false sense of familiarity.

That laugh…

You were so in your head that your next step crushes a stray glass and echoes in the store. For a moment, it rings in the air, suspended like Hoseok freezing to look at you, before suddenly everything just- drops.

Out the door, someone tackles you to the ground, grabbing your gun and tossing it under the shelves. Your head bounces against the tiles and it steals your breath in pain but without missing a beat, you drive the heel of your palm to the man’s chin, hard enough to unbalance him off your waist.

The man rolls to the side and tries to grab your foot before you break free and kicks it to his face. With satisfaction, you hear him grunt in pain before grabbing at you again.

To the side, you see Hoseok trying to reach you, his gun similarly tossed away by the paler and taller man clutching his shoulder, slumped against a turned over cart. You’re ears are ringing, and you might’ve hit your head but vaguely you could hear someone punching someone at the other side of the aisle.

Everything happens so fast - and ends so quickly.

Your vision clears up as a cock of a gun rings clear, pausing everyone’s movements.

In front of you is a face you’d never thought you’d see again. He’s darker, with what seems to be a permanent five o’clock shadow on his jaw, but his eyes light up at the sight of you and a smile stretches on his lips, his hands up but uncaring of Jaebeom’s gun against his head.

“Y/N, long time no see.”

You gasp, frozen on the floor. “Jackson.”

End Notes: Hearts are appreciated but comments are gold. Let me know what you think and if you want to be included in a tag list!

[twenty-one-froggy-pilots]

Yeah I'm honestly a bit surprised by how passionate and vocal people are about hating twenty one pilots? It's kinda upsetting that when I try to interact with content about them I'm always a bit worried in the back of my mind because I'm a pretty sensitive person and it's hard not to let stuff get to me.

I don’t know why it’s always felt like twenty one pilots has gotten a ton of hate for no reason? I’ve been into them since 2013-2014 so pure unadulterated vessel era, I’m a very old fan of them and their music, like one of the oldest picture in my phone is this

(This picture isn’t important I just love it, plus something fun to look at with a not so fun subject material)

(Long history as a fan rant incoming lol)

I’ve been an emo kid for a really long time, back when all of the emo bands were big, when seeing another kid wearing a panic! shirt always meant you talked to them in the mall, I still remember when I would wear the one twenty one pilots shirt I could afford outside, that anyone who knew who they were would come up and start a conversation with me

And it’s like through the years the hate has changed to be... somehow worse

Back in the early days tøp used to get called not a true emo band because they didn’t have anyone playing the guitar so everyone hated them because they weren’t emo Enough

Plus there was the whole ‘emo trinity’ ‘emo quartet’ infighting nonsense but that’s so long past idk if anyone even remembers it lol

Then blurryface rolls around and fans are being made fun of for dressing funky and going through that one fandom phase where everyone was calling the boys smol beans it was great and cute, we were all really close, we called each other frens, told each other to stay street it was great! So what people made fun of us or whatever we were absolutely vibing

Twenty one pilots felt like the coolest secret gang of fans, we were absolutely huge, more so than most people would think, and man it was awesome!! If you saw a tøp fan you knew that you were cool with that person and that person would be cool with you!! It was amazing!! Sometimes I do miss this vibe!!

But then Stressed Out ended up on the radio...

I feel like it really all changed here, all of the sudden the old fandom things were cringy, the boys were sell outs, and every family member you knew was suddenly the biggest fan despite only knowing stressed out

I remember being upset around this time because of strangers invading my space, this was my group, filled with people who understood what the lyrics meant and knew and understood how much they meant to all of us, and suddenly it was filled with people who didn’t belong

I didn’t blame the pilot boys, obviously they can’t control what’s on the radio, I’m fact, there’s plenty of pilot songs that mention never being played on the radio because of one reason or another, so my problem was never with the boys, it was with the influx of new people, and by new people I don’t mean new fans, I mean news outlets and tv show host, and with that influx came the people who didn’t get it, you know? That were rude and outright nasty and refused to understand anything about the genre and effort put into the story and why it mattered to us

(Tw for suicide mention, and uncomfortable themes involving people making fun of themes involving it, tw for mentions of school shootings)

All of the sudden we were the fans of Tyler Joseph the man who ‘Glorifies Suicide’ and actively is supposedly encouraging that behavior

We were the cringy fans everyone knew in high school and hated who were described as being ‘JuSt So QuIrkY 🤪’, instead of the mentally ill kids we all were, by people who hated us

We were the fans of those ‘white boys who look like school shooters’ (this one honestly rocked me to my core, it still hurts to even see??? Like idk why but it almost makes me want to cry)

At the same time a lot of the old fans were turning their back on the pilots, they didn’t want to be involved anymore, they hated ALL of the new fans whether they were respectful or not

It was a REALLY hard time to be a new fan, very few people were open to having them involved in anything, I think this is when a lot of hatred happened in the fandom not only fan-fan fighting/hatred but also fan-band sentiments weren’t great either

The more songs that ended up on the radio the more the hatred grew, in fact this got so bad Tyler did this

Here’s a transcript in case it’s hard to hear

Like... this was the state of our fan group.... it was suddenly cool to hate all the songs that ended up on the radio so much it affected every part of our music journey

There was a lot of infighting, it was an awful time to be a fan, new or old

Then came silence era, in which every tøp blog I followed except like 2, became kpop blogs and I’m not sure any of them ever came back lol, I actually really disliked kpop because of this for a bit in like a jokey kind of way in my own head lol (ahh how the turn tables have turned... kpop and tøp are the only things I listen to now haha, actually because of all my tøp mutuals becoming kpop blogs I vowed to myself to not change this blog to another group so I have two music blogs now, which makes me laugh but also shows how important music is to me so it makes me happy anyways you know?)

It was kind of a sad way to have the fandom disappear, everything was strangled, the boys were gone, and no one kept up with the fandom, it felt really lonely

When Trench era clues started back people started coming back, the mood was different, we had something to do and it was fun to work on something with others, we had the Clancy letters, and all the clues, and the tower of silence and the vultures!! It was great! It started to feel like we had rebuilt something from the rubble of what we had been

The fandom started calling Tyler stinky and he called us b*stards it was great, sometimes people were a bit meaner than I think they thought they were being, but it worked you know?

When the album released we had more people come back and things slowly started fitting back ok again, more songs ended up on the radio and a lot of older fans said the same things they’re saying now, but it wasn’t that bad, it was mostly very positive

And then we got to the over the summer drama, which........... is a sensitive subject, but I legitimately do not understand how it was Tyler’s fault that people assumed he was talking about something when he wasn’t talking about it at all... especially when people have been begging him for years to talk more about mental health, he wanted to introduce whatever he was going to do with a joke, I personally never though he was talking about the big issue at the time of the incident, but it blew up like wildfire and the next thing you know he’s canceled because Other People Assumed Something

So now it’s ‘Morally Justifiable’ to hate Tyler because he’s r*cist or something, despite it never being his intention and because people assumed something

It’s literally not even with good reason that people are doing this, but because it blew up when it did and about what it did, no one knows what really happened and people just wanted a morally justified reason to hate them because you can’t just dislike something anymore without it being justifiable I guess? I feel like with all of the years I’ve spent on the internet everything has only become more hateful...

All this to say.... yes, it hurts when people hate the things that you do, I get really sensitive about it as well, especially with how long and how many arguments I’ve seen, and I am extremely sensitive to discourse and hatred, it’s why I don’t engage with much of it online, in fact I was about to delete the post complaining about everyone hating on them before I saw it was really resonating with you guys

I guess my best advice to you anon, would to try to understand where it’s coming from, that’s what’s helped me, I know a lot of people dislike the pilots because of the fact that they became ‘mainstream’ during blurryface era, and people are really upset by that, so understanding that, even when it hurts, I can acknowledge that they feel that way and that it’s ok that I feel differently

It’s easy to take that point and test it against your own morals, ‘do I think twenty one pilots became mainstream, or only makes songs to get on the radio?’ If your answer is no, then you can both say ‘I don’t agree with them but they’re allowed to have their own opinion’ and kind of give yourself a wall and barrier against what they say

I know this isn’t perfect advice, but it’s helped me a lot

I know there are two big arguments against this album, that it’s mainstream and made to have radio singles (the underlying argument here I guess being Tyler and Josh are money hungry and no longer care about the music)

And that it’s no longer lyrically meaningful, but I think this has to do a lot with how involved people are in the Dema lore, if you’re not a fan of lore I would imagine this album being propaganda and supposed to be fake and bright to prove a point would really bug you if you didn’t really get it

To best thing to do is digest an argument (only if you can handle it emotionally of course 🖤) and know it’s ok that think differently than other people, and that the chances of someone being mad at you are very slim

A lot of things I’ve enjoyed have been stolen by the fear of getting hated on for something - while in actuality, the very few times I’ve gotten real hate over something barely affected me

I admit the fear of getting hate bothers me a lot more than actually getting it, but I just want to encourage you to stay strong in the face of it, it will pass, as it all does, but if nothing else in this post resonates with you, PLEASE HOLD ONTO YOUR JOY FOR AS LONG AS YOU CAN! And don’t let ANYONE take it from YOU!!

If twenty one pilots makes you happy, just remember that the only person who can take that true joy away from you is yourself, remove the people who make you feel sad out of your life, I apologize if this is a physical person in your life as this makes it a lot harder, and sometimes impossible depending on the situation, but on the internet unfollow anyone, block anyone, don’t engage and leave them alone, it’s not with your energy or effort, and they’ll never change their minds but they can change yours you know?

Being sensitive in a time when everything is hateful is hard, especially when everyone tells you you’re a bad person if you aren’t engaged, but you really don’t have to be, you get to choose your own destiny you know? Don’t let other people choose it for you

[drartemysia]

I only read the article cursorily, but from now on I'm just going to assume that any not-VGK focused man expressing his opinion on the VGK is wrong: the latest Opinion Piece™️ by Ken Campbell on the team.

[every time I encounter him, he is somehow worse than the last]

A series of increasingly worse quotes:

(1)

Almost as quickly as they went from being the cute and cuddly Golden Misfits to a legitimate Stanley Cup contender, they’ve morphed into the Evil Empire, one of the most despised teams in the NHL. They went from a franchise that seemed to put player welfare as a paramount concern – at one point the players had access to free car detailing at the practice rink – to one that has cast aside franchise icon Marc-Andre Fleury, violated Evgenii Dadonov’s contractual rights by trading him to a team on his no-trade list and gotten into a messy dispute with goalie Robin Lehner over his season-ending surgery.

(2)

It all gives the impression that the success the Golden Knights had early in their existence blinded them to their core values. The perception is players and coaches - remember Gerard Gallant? - are not members of a family, they are commodities to be disposed of when a shinier new toy comes along.

Why am I mad when I am not surprised in the slightest? The garbage opinion expressed in quote no. 1, oh my god, I can't even articulate how troubling is that kind of rhetoric. So, apparently, they Golden Knights were only cute when no one expected them to be good? To make meaningful playoff runs? I was in the trenches that first season, because they had drafted my favorite player from the Bruins (hi, Colin Miller, you basically cost us the final game against Washington but I'll love you forever and ever) and I read all that toxic media wondering how it was even allowed that a team which hadn't suffered through at least a decade of mediocre to bad play could even think about being good. They didn't go through what is perceived to be the 'traditional path' that a Team, A Proper Team is supposed to follow and so you despise them and think they are evil. Ha. Ha. HA.

And quote no. 2, which is nicely connected with the second part of quote no. 1. Please, spare me the platitude of a business worth hundreds of millions of dollars feeling like a family; please. As every single person who has ever worked a job ever knows, the workplaces where you hear the phrase 'we are like a family' are the absolute worst places to work at, because they are going to exploit you, steal from you, and then making you feel guilty because you are not thankful to be treated like garbage. All Bosses Are Evil Bosses, ffs. I would beg Mr Campbell to name me the hockey team who has ever stuck with a player who was bad (or just not as good as they expected) just because they loved him if they had the chance to trade him in exchange for some shiny new thing that would make them better. Just One. Show me an actual NHL team with some loyalty in the face of Shiny New Toys, Mr Campbell, I dare you.

And thank you for making my job easy for me in mentioning Marc-Andre Fleury. Do I think that management was supremely evil with the fanbase with that one? Yes, absolutely. WTF were they thinking. But the gall of all the members of hockey media who have talked about the VGK Fleury trade like it was some original sin and a thing which had never happened before to Marc-Andre Fleury specifically is truly baffling. For all the decades-long memory all these people seem to have, they always forget to mention that Flower had been a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins for THIRTEEN SEASONS and even carrying the team to Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Final in the 2016-17 when Matt Murray got injured before the start of the first playoff game and then what happened? They chose the shiny new goalie in whom they put all of their hopes and tossed old, done, declining [I am being sarcastic] Flower to be picked in the draft. By this logic, aren't the Pittsburgh Penguins the original Evil Empire? (They're not. They're just an NHL team like any other. A business.)

I really want to know what are the 'core values' of these capitalist businesses who have made players isolate from their families for months on end so that they could assign a big shiny silver toy in the summer of 2020; I also want to know what were the 'core values' at play when the majority of active NHL players got infected with COVID this season, when there was a not insignificant risk for long-term cardiovascular and pulmonary issues that would 100% not be covered in the health benefits stipulated within the CBA (I know, I fucking read that nightmare thing!). I really do wonder.

Look, the VGK are not great at respecting their work force, that much is clear, but so isn't anyone else. (I mean, there is more than one team employing men who have been repeatedly accused of SA, DV, and harassment) They are no shadier than anyone else.

And for the love of the hockey gods, keep Robin Lehner's name out of your mouth in this situation. Vegas is notoriously private about players' health issues (understandable, I really like this about them), so whether Robin played while being too hurt to do so is all speculation at this point. And while I do not condone or approve the fact that they made him sit as the back-up when they knew they would never be able to send him out whatever happened to Logan, it was made clear by DeBoer that Robin would not have played in those games, no question. I am mad that Logan was put in a situation where effectively he was all alone without any back-up at all because that is not how it's supposed to work. Is Vegas being extra villainous with Robin? No. Let me remind everyone of the fact that Carter Hart has played entire games for the Flyers while at times barely able to stand because of the pain he was in.

Last HIGHLY troubling statement:

(3)

“It seems as though (Vegas GM) Kelly McCrimmon still thinks he’s dealing with junior hockey players.”

What I am gathering from this is that Mr Campbell thinks it's okay to treat children like commodities, just not adult men. Ok. Great. This is certainly a stance to be taking. Good for you for showing your true colors about the exploitative system that is junior hockey, Mr Campbell, duly noted.

[hainethehero]

The HARRINGROVE War AU that no one asked for...

"Jetty!"

"Oh fuck!"

"Fucking hell man! We're fucking dead-"

"Shut the fuck up Meyers!"

"Andrews! Get the medic!"

"Fuck- my goddamn arm!"

"Tommy-!"

The sounds are still in his head, knocking around his brain inside his skull. His eyes haven't closed in days and he's pretty sure his skin is falling off his bones. He feels sick and dirty and his hair feels dirty and unkempt. It had grown back so fast in the short period of time he'd been here... in Hell.

His body hurts, bones jarring and scraping against each other with every movement. There's a throbbing on the left side of his ribs, and the stinging pain of a festering wound on his right. It's been burning for days. His legs are sore, right leg wrapped up to the knee and oozing thick, dark red. The bandages around his head have started getting sticky with sickening ointment and congealed blood. His lips sting painfully every time he passes his tongue over them. They're cracked and busted in several places, red and raw where the skin's been opened.

God, what had they done to him?

He feels a presence near him and freezes, even though the bombs ringing in his head don't quite stop exploding.

"Hi Ms. Nancy, how's he been?"

"You're always right on time Soldier."

The woman's voice sounds familiar but he can't place it in his hazed state.

"I made him a promise." The man responds, a dark, echoing loneliness in his voice.

"Of course," Ms. Nancy replies, walking closer to fix something very near to his left side.

And somehow, his body fails him and goes stiff, sitting upright with his eyes wide and frightened. His jaw is locked tight and his fists are clenched, knuckles white. Every instinct in his body is warning him to get away- to run away from the danger, as if he'd be torn apart by the bomb Ms. Nancy was currently setting atop the bed. A terrified whine escapes his throat and a solitary tear runs down his pale cheek.

"He's been getting worse huh?" The Soldier asks, not unkindly, just kind of sad.

"So far, we've only seen nine cases of men recovering from shell-shock. It's not promising... one of them died last night."

"Died? Did it spread?"

"No Soldier. He put a gun in his mouth."

There's a sudden silence that falls over them, cold breeze billowing through the over-arching windows of the stone Catholic church they'd set up the triage in. Even the pained and terrified moans and cries of grown men had fallen into the hush, as if God himself were present.

Then Ms. Nancy speaks again:

"There's been a new shipment of iodine and sodium hydroxide today. From the French. We've been ordered to ration it but I think he needs his wounds cleaned again."

"Thank you."

........................

He hates when the nurse bathes him.

Hates how useless it makes him feel. Hates that he'd become so cowardly, like a child afraid of the dark. Her thin but gentle hands wash over him, soothingly passing the clean water over his skin, careful not to disturb the wounds. But he feels so wounded all over.

By the time he's back in bed, the night has taken over for the day, and hundreds of his comrades have already conceded to sleep. But he stays wide awake, terrified and paranoid that a bomb's going to go off in the middle of the night and kill everyone while they rest peacefully. So he keeps his rifle by his bedside, ready for a fight.

"Goodnight Soldier." Ms. Nancy says softly, not to him, but to the man sitting beside him.

The Soldier's been with him since the trenches. He was a good man, and a steady presence of stability in these crazy days. He could recall some kind of kinship between them, comprised of half-hearted banter, terrible jokes and early morning conversations that were for their ears only. Talking to him had made being in those vile and unsanitary trenches a little better. They often talked about being back home, safe and surrounded by friends who loved them. Their families were another story but that was beside the point.

"Got a letter today," the Soldier tells him, drinking out of an aluminium canteen. His finger twitches, almost as if he's fighting to respond but is paralyzed to do so.

"From Maxine."

Maxine was Soldier's sister...

She told me that my Dad and Susan were planning to move out of California. Stupid, right? She said something about Indiana, and starting over in a small town. Who knows pretty boy? They might even move to that good ol' Hawkins you keep telling me about."

Pretty Boy... that's Soldier's pet name for him.

"A letter came for you too. From your father."

He must've gasped in shock because suddenly the Soldier is staring up at him with those unreal blue eyes, lips slightly parted in surprise. He feels the Soldier's hand on his shoulder and it's warm and comforting. It beds down the shock a little bit; shock at the fact that his father had written a letter to him. He may have been in shell-shock but even his mind could recall the time when John Harrington said that he was dead to him. That until he'd made something of himself, he would never be accepted- would never be his son.

"Steve? You with me kid?"

Kid.

The Soldier always called him that, despite being not much older himself. He preferred that nickname to rookie though, since he'd only just started while the Soldier had been on this tour since late last year. He remembers the absolute feeling of dread that had filled his body when the draft had come around and his name was on that godforsaken piece of paper. His parents had been all too ecstatic to ship him off on his merry way. He'd been writing to them, feverishly begging for their mercy. Hadn't gotten a letter back since he'd started writing to them.

"Wh- ...what d...does it say?" he hears himself ask softly, throat shaking with emotion. "Can- ...um, can you read it to me Bill?"

Billy- no longer the abstract Soldier in his mind- sighs and leans over in the chair, elbows resting on his knees. He's holding a piece of paper in his hands, fists closed tight, his knuckles white.

"Please Bill..."

"Hold on pretty boy," Billy whispers as gently as he can, blue eyes staring hard at the neat, professional penmanship of who must've been John Harrington, Steve's father. It was concise and void of any kind of human emotion.

"Steve,

Stop sending us letters. It upsets your mother and I'm much too busy to sit down and write replies."

Billy feels his heart break into pieces for the poor kid and he doesn't have the heart to put him through such harsh words. He folds it up quickly and clears his throat.

"Y'know what? I brought Max's letter by accident."

"W- what?"

"Must've left it in the command wing. It's fine, we can always get it some other time."

Steve looks at him, big brown doe-eyes confused and sad at the same time. "What if it's an emergency?"

Billy scoffs. "Trust me, they ain't fighting a war back in ol' Hawkins. Your folks can wait. You on the other hand, need to get some sleep."

A soft smile creeps up on Steve's pretty face and he blushes soft pink. "Well at least tell me what's been going on Boss."

That was his pet name for Billy.

"Where's Tommy?"

Billy's expression suddenly changes and he's no longer pained. Just angry. And lost and so fucking confused. War brought out the worst in men, and it was always hard to fight alongside the corpses of men he'd spent weeks, months in the trenches with. They were all family, and losing even one of them was the worst pains Billy had ever faced.

Steve's hopeful expression turns ever so slightly and now he looks awfully worried.

"Bill? Billy where's Tommy?"

Billy glances up into the kid's eyes and sees nothing but hopelessness there as realization dawns upon him. Steve bursts into wailing tears and crashes back onto the pillows, hands covering his face. His wails trigger some of the sleeping men and they wake up in a shock, disgruntled yells and curses filling the large hall.

"Settle down Soldier," a tired looking nurse hisses, looking more panicked than mad. She gives Billy a pointed glare and goes about on her way to putting the terrified men back to sleep.

Billy sighs and shushes Steve as gently as he can, petting the boy's soft hair until he quiets. He feels a weariness wash over him and crawls into the bed to lay down next to the kid. Steve wastes no time in burying his face in Billy's neck, silent sobs wracking through his frail body. Billy wraps him up in his arms, a scalding hot wave of protectiveness flaring inside his chest.

"It's okay kid, I've got you. I promise," he whispers in Steve's ear, stroking his back in slow, deliberate motions. The pretty brunette cries and cries until he cries himself to sleep, snuggled into the larger soldier, as if he was the only protection he needed.

Billy just holds him through the night.

[misha-moose-dean-burger-lover]

It's Valentine's day, sam has gone out with eileen, dean and cas are stuck in the bunker without dates or anything to do ...... The air conditioning stops working, it gets real hot and sweaty and they both decide they are wearing too many layers .... and whatever ensues I'll leave it up to you.

here you go, anon: (I had to retype this, and reedit this, with the help of the amazing @3dg310rdsupreme so like. just remember to curse tumblr before you start reading, cause that’s why it took ridiculously long:)

***

“So?” Dean raises his eyebrows at Cas, starting to walk down the stairs with an angel by his side. They’ve just finished waving Sam and Eileen off to their date - which is exactly what it sounds like; he stood in the doorway, and Cas smiled from the doorway, until Sam’s car disappeared down the road. “Dinner?”

“Of course.” Cas nods. 

He’s not going to eat, but there’s a little something called company. Dean doesn’t want to eat alone. And what’s more, Dean’s even going to set up a plate for him. He started doing so a while back, cause otherwise it’s just like Cas is there to watch him.

And be it eating or sleeping - that’s always weird.

Walking all the way to the kitchen feels like trekking towards the centre of the Earth. Dean scrubs his face in annoyance, exhaling impatiently. He’s supposed to get used to it. 

It’s really hot. And they’re underground, in a windowless bunker. A bunker with a broken air-conditioner - it’s ancient; so that’s justifiable, was the general consensus, but Dean’s willing to bet it all boils down to their exceptional Chuck-induced bad luck, and Fortuna just wasn’t a good enough godly mechanic.

Or maybe she never anticipated that heroes could get hot, too. Sweating is for the weak and the transient - or some shit. Dean can practically picture her sneer.

Jesus, he hates her.

“Do you need help?” Cas says, once they’re in the kitchen. Dean turns around to blink at him, while he returns to the present. Cas manages to make it sound like were Dean to say yes, Cas would actually help him prepare food. 

Now, Cas is good for a lot of stuff. Strong, strategic, trustable instincts. Brave. But he isn’t worth shit in the kitchen. Dean isn’t really sure if Cas knows that but he hopes, for his sake, that he does. 

Yet, it’s an earnest question, ridiculous or not, so Dean earnestly shakes his head in response. “I made dinner while the rest of you were busy helping Sam choose a corset.”

It’s the kind of hot where Dean’s automatically surly. Sure, he generally is too - but right now, he doesn’t even have to try. 

“It was his shirt.” Cas corrects, simply, and Dean rolls his eyes at the walls as he turns around to get plates. “My advice was to go with the pecan.”

“Was he wearing a pie?” Dean throws back, dryly. He’s got the plates. Now he puts them on the table, and turns to fetch spoons. Cas is still standing, because of course he is. “Guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Pecan’s a shade of brown.” Cas states for the record, and Dean’s getting tired of Cas not going along with his lines. 

And he’s really getting tired of the goddamn heat. 

“Too bad. Now I want dessert. Way to ruin burgers, Cas.” Dean snaps, and Cas looks a little startled - and would you look at that. Even Cas is sweating. There’s beads of sweat on his forehead, and his coat seems even more uncomfortable than usual. 

Suck it, Fortuna. Real heroes sweat. 

“You know what?” Dean mutters, mostly to himself. He really is trying to be less of a jerk - but he can’t seem to help it. It’s Valentine’s day, and it’s hot. So he decides to stop talking, and takes off his jacket, a deep blue leather utility, and shucks it away on a counter. 

Cas seems to find this interesting, his eyes following Dean around the room; so then Dean does the first thing that comes to mind. 

He walks over to Cas, and holds his hand out. 

Cas stares at it, like he’s trying to figure out the purpose of its existence. Dean helps him, because he’s awesome like that.

“Your coat.” 

Because why the fuck not?

“Oh.” Cas unstiffs - Dean isn’t kidding, that’s an actual thing he can do, okay - and almost rewards Dean with a smile. Just like that, he’s wriggling out of his trenchcoat, the sleeves not clinging to his jacket because apparently that only happens to him. Or probably because the coat classifies as oversized, even after all these years. 

Once he’s removed it, Cas folds it from the middle like he’s never folded a coat before, and hands it to Dean. 

“Great. Let’s sit down.” Dean tells him, putting his coat away on the same slab where he’s deposited his own. When he turns around, Cas is sitting, and has folded his arms on the table. The bunker lights, like his eyes, linger on Cas’s jacket. 

To be fair, he doesn’t usually get to do this - because Cas doesn’t usually take off his trench. Guy’s emotionally attached to it or something. 

But he looks - well, so much better without it. Obviously, Dean’s not referring to the way the black makes him look broader, or the buttons draw attention to the suit’s tapered waist. He just looks a lot more comfortable, compared to before. 

Speaking of. 

It’s still so fucking hot. 

“Dean,” Cas begins randomly, once they’re both sitting. Dean’s about to start eating but he stops at Cas’s voice, soft and unsure. “I need to ask you something.”

For some reason, Dean swallows. “Yeah?”

“It is Valentine’s day, after all.” Cas justifies preemptively, and Dean looks up at him. 

“So?”

“Is this a date?” Cas finally asks, blue eyes boring into Dean’s, something profound in his words.

Dean pretty much stops thinking, as if on cue. “What? No.” He gets up. He shouldn’t have gotten up. He’s already up. “Is this about dinner? Jesus, Cas,” He hopes he sounds exasperated, he’s trying to. “Hell, is this about me taking your coat before you sit? It’s burning up, man, what do you expect me to do?”

Cas stands up too, wordlessly. 

He looks like he’d still like an answer. He looks like he might even repeat the question. 

Before something else - something worse can happen, Dean’s picked up his plate. “I’m going to have dinner in my room. Feel free to…do whatever you want. Apparently, It’s Valentine’s day.” He adds, halfways to a scoff, as he marches out of the room. 

(Remember how Dean’s stopped thinking? Yeah.)

Cas picks up both of their coats before walking away, a few minutes later. There’s something heavy in the air, left behind.

*

Dean’s done eating. 

And because this is his life - his sad, pathetic life- his entire room has somehow grown even more annoyingly hot.

Burdened with misery all the way down to his sweaty socks, he wonders what Cas is up to.

Dude could be in the library, or his bedroom, or hell, even in the kitchen. He could be reading. Or training. (Or, Dean’s mind drifted, waiting.) What could Cas be doing, aside from stewing in this heat, which seems to be all Dean’s doing at the moment?

Except of course, thinking about Cas. But he doesn’t really count that as a separate activity, anymore. In more ways than one, it’s perpetual.

Well, he convinces himself, as he picks up his plate and walks out of his bedroom, arguably hoping to find Cas - he’s got to put the plates in the sink, at some point.

Dean finds Cas in the hallway, walking towards him - or like, in his general direction, and the first thing Dean notices is that he’s not wearing a fucking jacket anymore.

“Hey.” He stops, shuffling his weight on his feet. He takes up a second to imagine what it would be like if Cas didn’t stop, but then he does - so at least Dean’s got that going on for him.

“It’s hot, isn’t it?” Cas remarks, matter-of-factly.

His expression’s perfectly serious, but Dean can swear there’s something else there. He can’t put his finger on it- but there’s something off. It’s the way Cas emphasizes the question tag. Or in the way he says the entire damn sentence.

Or maybe, Dean’s just overthinking words to avoid letting himself think about Cas in his white shirt.

His tie’s still in place, but the suit jacket’s gone, and its left the sleeves all crumpled. That’s a possible reason for Cas to have folded the sleeves up to his elbow, putting on display his forearms. And wrists. 

When Dean forces himself to look up from Cas’s hands, he decides that the shirt fits the best of anything else yet, stretched wide over his shoulders and essentially hugging his chest snugly, on the way down.

And it’s so white, that paired with Cas’s tan and the striped blue of his tie, it looks-

“So hot, yeah.” Dean answers, right before the pause that’d begun after Cas spoke, crossed the line to weird. Dean looks at the plate in his hands. “I’m going to put these away.”

“Good idea.” Is all Cas says, coolly - and on a different note, starts to tug at the knot of his tie this way and that, to loosen it. He’s successful almost immediately too, the collar beginning to widen, and -

Dean really doesn’t need to be here for that, so he hurries along his way, walking with his eyes glued to the floor as if that somehow detaches him from existence.

*

This, a hundred percent, has nothing to do with Cas.

It’s hot, is all it is.

Dean peels off his overshirt, leaving just a black t-shirt on - which is not even one of his best ones; it’s probably the one which got exchanged with Sam back in 2014, judging from the way it goes down past his waistline. Dean doesn’t bother folding it as he drops it on the bed. He’s got more important things on his mind.

Such as scoping out a valid reason to go out of his room again.

*

Almost an hour later, Dean feels like it’d be okay to venture out. Before leaving, for good measure, Dean removes his belt, too. Unbuckling it instantly eases some of the pressure on his stomach, which has kept on building, ever since this evening started.

Ever since Sam and Eileen left for their date, leaving him and Cas alone in the bunker with a broken AC.

On Valentine’s day.

Which, Dean frowns to himself, is a rather inconsequential piece of information to add to that pile.

He warns himself against thinking on those lines again, and strides out of his room. He can sense there’s someone in the War room, so in order to sound like he really needs the thing, he starts speaking from the hallway. “Heya, Cas, have you see the -”

There’s no good explanation for why he stops talking.

Except, maybe there is. 

Maybe there’s the best explanation ever, right in front of him, perched on the corner of a table. Maybe it’s got an unbuttoned shirt, and majorly fucked-up hair. Maybe it’s got abs, and chest hair, and hipbones; and maybe it’s all the reason that Dean Winchester’s ever required, for anything in his life. 

He’d lay down his life for it. Hell, he could probably live for that very reason.

“Have I seen the…?” Cas repeats, his left eyebrow hooked. Has that ever happened before? Just that one, arched perfectly, as if demanding all the finished sentences in the entire world.

Dean clears his throat.

He isn’t sure what he’s thinking about, but he can still tell it’s a mistake.

“Nevermind.” He lets out, in a voice which sounds wrong, even to him.

“Alright.” Cas nods in acknowledgement, and with that, turns back to his book. It’s a giant, musty book- but then, all their books are giant and musty, and Dean cannot decipher what’s written on it, because he’d really rather stare at Cas’s hands holding it.

“Don’t you think,” Dean licks his lips. Even his throat is dry. “Wouldn’t you say it’s getting a little too hot in here?”

“I’m doing what I can.” Cas replies, managing to stuff in a little bit of distressed in there, with the general flatness. “Clearly, so are you.”

In a couple of beats, Dean realizes he’s run out of words to say, and Cas doesn’t look too eager to supply his own to keep this conversation alive, so then Dean chuckles - to say the least, awkwardly, and retires to his room again.

*

He’s going to show Cas how much better he can do.

*

“It’s, so, hot.” Dean grits his teeth, pulling the shirt over his head. Now he’s naked from up the waist, and it feels a lot better.

This isn’t a typically humid area, so it’s not like being shirtless is gonna get him sticky. Or any more sweaty, than he already is. In fact, it feels so much better, that Dean almost manages to convince himself that that’s why he’s doing it.

Almost.

There’s no ignoring anymore, that it’s Valentine’s day. And he and Cas are alone in the bunker, and it’s really hot, but that’s not just it.

It kind of never was.

Dean falls back on the bed, sinking slightly into the mattress. An image of Cas floats through his head, and though he really shouldn’t be thinking about Cas right now - half-naked, and on a bed - he doesn’t want to stop.

It’s evident Cas knows what’s going on here.

(It’s evident Cas knows what he’s doing to Dean.)

And Dean feels a pang of something, when he realizes he’s losing this - whatever this is. He may have started it off by being a dick, but he’s lagging behind now.

It’s really more about how much Cas gets to Dean, than about the number of layers he took off. And who’s Dean kidding? He isn’t getting to Cas at all.

(At least, it hasn’t ever felt like it.)

Dean sighs.

He’s too far gone.

And Cas is leaning on a table and holding a book, with an unbuttoned shirt and his fucking smolder, waiting to tell Dean it’s really hot.

He unbuttons his jeans.

Screw this, it’s over a hundred degrees.

Still thinking about Cas, he undoes his zipper, and pushes them down his legs. It’s only when they’re pooled around his ankles, that it strikes him how fucking gone he is, on Cas. 

The realization doesn’t help at all.

He steps out of his jeans, and clenches his jaw.

*

This isn’t the time to think about feelings, and it’s not the time to ponder his relationship with Cas. It’s time to get out there.

So he does.

He walks fast enough, that it’s ironically not hot anymore. Exposure to air makes his legs feel a lot cooler, and though his boxer briefs cling to his thighs, it all feels somewhat freeing.

When he reaches the War Room, Cas isn’t there.

“Son of a bitch,” Dean swears under his breath, starting to walk down the hallway, but there’s no sign of Cas there either, and not even in the kitchen, and then -

“Dean?”

Dean jerks his neck around to face Cas. For the first time, Cas’s eyes seem to have deviated from their lifelong mission to stare Dean down - instead they’re focussed, oddly, on the only part of Dean which is still covered; and his lips are parted a little bit, but -

But he’s also completely fucking naked.

“Cas.” Dean growls, not wasting more than a second to take in all of Cas - eyes glancing over the parts he’d already gotten acquainted to, and hurrying to ogle his thighs, his ass, his fucking dick - and then, letting out a breath he had no idea he was holding, he’s pushing Cas against a wall, and crashing his lips on his.

He’s kissing Cas.

Cas gives back as he gets, grabbing hold of Dean, and pulling him closer with hands around his neck, as his tongue shoves into Dean’s mouth. Dean groans, but it gets lost in Cas’s mouth - eyes rolling back in his head, as his hip thrusts wilder, shoving Cas against the wall harder and pinning him there.

“Fuck, Cas, I - hnghhh -” He pants, in a raised voice, wanting to explain, apologize, proposition - everything at fucking once, but he breaks off with a whimper when he feels Cas’s dick against the fabric of his boxers, exciting his own dick even more.

Cas seems to be more interested in kissing him than his dick lets off - moving in perfect tandem with Dean, eyes completely shut and eyebrows furrowed like he’s concentrating on this; and he really is. He’s kissing Dean like nothing else matters - he’s kissing Dean like this is it, and he’s right, he’s so fucking right.

This is it.

Sparks fly when they kiss, and there’s current in his veins when Cas holds him. It thunders in his ears when Cas pulls Dean close, and all his walls collapse when he cries out Dean’s name.

This, right here, pushing and tugging, and desperate and breathless - this is them. This is everything their lives have been leading up to. This is truly and utterly it.

When Cas’s arms go around his waist, bringing him in tighter, Dean just has to pull away for breath.

Pupils blown, he grunts, accusing because he doesn’t know what he’d be, if not mad. “You ruined the game - or fucking whatever that was, Cas, you fucking ruined it -”

“I think I won the game, Dean.” Cas declares, jaw squared, and lips returning to that thin frown - but Dean does not want to be subjected to it anymore, so he dives in to tug it straight, but Cas cups his face, and kisses him instead, all the way there but just so soft - and Dean’s never been kissed like this before. He’s never known anything like it.

“Yeah, okay, fuck.” Dean gasps, when Cas’s hand slides under the elastic of his boxers, and takes his dick in hand. “Yeah, you win.” He adds, and they’re the last coherent words he gets out in a long while, as his head falls on Cas’s shoulder, hand on the wall propping him up, and he loses what little had remained of his senses.

*

Their chests still heave and Dean’s still lying half on Cas’s arm, absolutely boneless in the way sex makes people.

Cas turns his head to look at Dean, and there’s something twinkling - so beautiful, in his eyes. “Dean?”

“Yeah?” 

“I’m just asking to confirm, but was this because of the heat too?” This time, he sounds playful. He’s just egging Dean on. 

So of course, Dean refuses to accept anything out loud. 

He just turns to his side, and burrows himself around Cas. He knows it’s probably too hot to cuddle, but when he gently puts his head on Cas’s shoulder, Cas just hooks his chin on it like they’re in a frigging chick-flick. And that’s okay, just because. 

“Fine. Happy Valentine’s day to you, okay?”

Cas doesn’t say anything to that, but when his arm comes around Dean, there’s something smug about it. 

And Dean loves it.

[s-c-r-i-p-s-i]

Castigation

[Dead by Baelight’s Kinktober // Day 2: Trap]

🖤  🖤   🖤  

You couldn’t explain it if you tried, but it was like he was seeing through you.

Right to your guilty, nasty core.

🖤  🖤   🖤

Pairing: Pyramid Head x Gender-Neutral AMAB Reader  

Rating: Explicit

CW: non-con/dub-con, smut, tentacle/tongue sex, reader is a coward and does shitty things, dissociation, canon-typical violence

Word Count: 3,238

You didn’t like what this place was turning you into.

Before the fog you were… you wanted to say normal, but in reality, you’d led a pretty privileged life. Not in the sense that you were rich, or blessed with preternatural wit, intelligence, or beauty, or anything like that. You were just sort of hit with the mediocrity stick. While most people had brushes with hardship at least once or twice in their lives, you’d somehow managed to avoid anything interesting happening in your life ever. Or that’s how it felt, anyway. You never had to discover what kind of person you were under stress. If you’d rise or fall to the occasion. Or the things you would do to save your own neck.

But you knew now.

For the most part, it started small. Hiding in a locker longer than strictly necessary. Letting someone else go for the unhook even though you were nearby. And, yes, sometimes your waffling around got some people killed. Indirectly. But the worst thing they could blame you of was being too cautious. Or, at worst, a coward. And - it wasn’t like they stayed dead.

Then somewhere along the line, things started to get… intentional. Shit you’d have a hard time trying to justify to someone’s face - but on the rare occasion you were caught, you tried anyway because you weren’t about to own up to it. You started to do things like stealing offerings and items from people’s personal piles in Limbo while they were off in a Trial; the place was like a homeless camp, everything out in the open and nigh impossible to secure. Just like in life, you never seemed to find anything special on your own, and it didn’t seem fair. This you tried to justify by never taking any personal effects - Kate’s guitar, Ace’s lucky shot glass; that kind of stuff always went untouched. But if you were being completely honest, it wasn’t out of decency. It was because they were worthless to you.

All you cared about was surviving another day. Or whatever passed for a day in this hellscape. After a while, you didn’t even feel guilty about it anymore. It just became your new normal.

And then you did something kind of fucked up even by your standards.

It was in a match against Myers. Just you and Claudette remained, both injured, both one strike away from death, working on the last gen so you could hopefully get the hell out of dodge. She’d offered to heal you, but it didn’t feel like there was enough time. And sure enough, before you could finish it off, there came that infernal heartbeat.

She reacted faster than you could, quietly slipping into the nearby locker that you’d had your eyes on, but had been too slow to secure for yourself, running to the thing just as she closed its doors.

And it was the only one in the room.

You heard her whisper, “Sorry, sorry!” But it didn’t mean jack to you. Something unfamiliar flashed through you then. Hot, simmering rage.

It wasn’t fucking fair, you remembered thinking. Why did she get a chance to live, and not you? Just because she was a little bit faster than you? Just because she happened to be on the side closest to the lockers? Why did she get to choose?

You even knew where the hatch was, you’d passed by it on the way there. Survival was so close you could taste it, could hear the phantom draft of the open hatch in your mind already. You could visualize it so perfectly. Everything but how to get there.

Then you figured it out.

And something inside you just… shut off.

Myers entered the room. Stared at you. You stared back. And then slowly, deliberately, never taking your eyes off the empty voids staring back at you, you rapped your knuckles against the locker. Once. Twice. Then made a run for it.

You knew when you heard her screams behind you that he’d taken the bait.

She wouldn’t remember, anyway. Not the pain, and not the betrayal. The last few moments were always foggy. Whether that was a kindness of the entity, or just a testament to the human mind’s ability to repress awful things, who knew?

But you’d remember. And you’d carried that guilt with you ever since. In the moment, you hadn’t felt anything but when you saw her back in Limbo, and every time after that, you felt… dirty.

You’d gotten pretty good at justifying your shitty behavior. There was always some excuse. But not this time. You could come up with the right words, yeah - ‘People die all the time. And it’s not like she died died. I was just doing what I had to do to survive.’ But no matter how you sliced it, nothing seemed to fill that black hole of guilt eating you alive from the inside out.

It made your stomach twist just thinking about it.

Part of you wished there was something you could do to make it up to her.

Another part of you wished there was something that could be done to you. You found yourself wishing she would just… react. That she would cry or scream or shout or push you around, just so you could have something. Some kind of consequence for your actions. You did something bad and nothing fucking happened. That’s not how the world was supposed to work.

But she’d never react, never do anything because she didn’t even fucking remember. You were the only one who knew. You hated it. You were miserable.

Little did you know all that guilt was about to make you a fucking magnet for the Executioner.

You were following your usual tactic for whenever a new Killer entered the fog, which was avoid discriminately. (Coincidentally, that was pretty much your tactic for everything.) And it went mostly without a hitch. There was one death, but Nea was looping him in the distance while Steve worked the exit door. You were just kind of waiting, sat in the alcove near the gate watching the chase. You’d managed to avoid him the whole trial, so you felt pretty safe. Impatient to get out of there, but safe.

Then he - it? - just stopped. In the middle of the fucking chase. Turned, slowly, as if just now realizing that the exit gate was almost open and that he was being given the runaround.

Except you swore he was staring right at you. It was impossible to tell with that enormous metal helmet thing on his head, or if he even could see, in the traditional sense, but freezing cold dread swept over you in an instant. You couldn’t explain it if you tried, but it was like he was seeing through you. Right to your guilty, nasty core.

The gate buzzed, doors noisily sliding open, and you, Steve, and Nea, who was just a couple paces behind, were home free. But right before you crossed over the threshold into safety, you chanced a glance back. He was still just… staring.

What did he want from you?

Nea caught up, pulling you through the fog by the wrist, and just like that, you were back in Limbo.

You were shaken up by it for a while. That’s not how killers acted. Abandoning a chase? If he’d kept at it, he probably could have had at least Nea. That would have been two out of four - not bad. So what the hell could he have seen that was more important than that?

You weren’t sure you wanted to know.

But either the Entity had it out for you, or you just had real bad luck these days, because it wasn’t long before you faced him again.

You were doing a great job avoiding him, though. Until you weren’t.

You hadn’t even seen that shit on the ground, but you sure knew when you stepped in it, a wave of pure agony shooting through you the moment your incautious foot planted itself in that bloody trench. A shriek ripped through your throat and you tore away as if you’d been burned. But the damage was already done.

The torment was like a wreath of barbed wire around your heart, constricting tightly as his heartbeat began pounding in your ears, quiet at first, but building cataclysmically. Alerted to your location, no doubt, by your scream, and making a beeline straight for you. Shit.

You weren’t ever keen on being found - that feeling that things were life and death, even when death didn’t mean anything here, never truly went away - but this filled you with a special kind of dread, remembering the way he’d just turned and stared at you before. You still didn’t know what that was about, and you still didn’t want to know.

Frantically, you looked around for a place to hide, you weren’t good at looping like the others, you weren’t good at anything. Fuck, fuck fuck. There were no lockers, no nothing. What were you going to do?

You watched with horror as he appeared in the entrance to the jungle gym and then paused. As if remembering you - or maybe just seeing whatever it was he saw before.

You didn’t wait around to find out. You threw yourself into a sprint for the nearest window, trying to put something between you and him besides distance. But he grabbed you mid-scramble over the sill, throwing you back, your ass skidding along the dirt.

He began stalking towards you, and desperate for space, you hastily tried to crabwalk backwards on your elbows and feet until you were backed up against the wall. Holy shit he was bigger in person - maybe it was just the angle, but he was monstrously large.

Now you could see everything, up close and in high definition. And you wished you couldn’t. Vein-like clumps of flesh clung to his helmet and hung from the edges in meaty strings, the way they just… dangled making you feel sick to your stomach. But his skin was worse. Far worse. Mottled - burned, maybe - flayed chunks of exposed muscle and even bone, you realized, slivers of rib and shin and finger bones glinting in the moonlight.

Despite the obvious damage, it didn’t seem like it was hurting him - or that it was even any kind of hindrance at all. By all means, for someone who looked like they should be falling apart, he was… very put together. He didn’t shamble or limp. He didn’t so much as falter.

You were mesmerized, in some morbid way. Like a train wreck; it was hard to look away. You almost forgot to worry about what he was about to do to you.

The beast seemed to consider you for a moment, looking down at you before his other hand clapped onto the hilt of his great knife, grasping it with both hands. That put your priorities back in check real fast. But before you could even think to shout something out in protest - how would you even begin trying to bargain with something like him? - he drove the knife into the Earth at your feet.

You weren’t sure what happened next. Briefly, you thought it was a sign of mercy. Wishful thinking.

It was as though you were sinking into the earth. Your arms shot outwards, trying to pull yourself up before your face could be swallowed up by the dirt, lungs wrenching in panic at the realization that you were about to be buried alive, and you gasped for breath, thinking it might be your last.

But then you were being thrust back up by an unknown force somewhere completely different, rising, not like a phoenix but a puppet.

Two spikes simultaneously shot through your shoulder blades, suspending you in this metal cage you found yourself trapped in as you howled in pain. It was about as bad as a hook, in terms of pain. Difficult to compare infinities, but, maybe more, maybe less. There were two entry points, but better distribution of your weight.

You treated it like a hook, anyway, slowly allowing yourself to hang, shifting all your focus onto flexing and curling your hands into fists. Open, close. Open, close. Rinse and repeat. That was all you could do to keep yourself from thrashing and hurting yourself more.

Open, close. Someone would come for you. Open, close.

And someone did. It just wasn’t who you were hoping for.

Your eyes rolled closed at the familiar sound of a heartbeat kicking up in the distance. Why? There were three other people he could go after. Why you? You could hear his knife dragging across the ground as he tread closer - not digging, just quietly scraping along. And then it stopped. Tears pricked the corners of your eyes. When you opened them again, he was standing right in front of you.

The bars of the cage moved on their own, magically giving way for him as he stepped forward.

“Why? Why me?” You asked, voice scratchy and reedy and thin from blowing out your vocal cords earlier, barely pushing out anything more than air. You weren’t even sure if he could answer, but you had to know. You weren’t connected by the same universe. You weren’t special. You didn’t even think you were a threat. Why was he singling you out like this?

Betraying, you think, some kind of sentience, the helmet tilted slightly, and for a moment you almost thought it was going to speak. Instead, it leaned forward, and something began to crawl out from the corner of his helmet. There was an opening where the metal was curled back, and a dark, blood sausage-like tendril was slithering out. Cringing, at first you thought it was a parasite - or some kind of symbiotic thing that lived inside his helmet - and you were that convinced whatever it was, it was about to murder you. It reared back like a snake, and you flinched, expecting it to strike. Instead, it touched your neck - not… gently, exactly, but not with the violence you were expecting, either. Almost like it was feeling at you. And that’s when you realized it was part of him.

You weren’t… completely celibate. Knew a tongue when you felt one. Even if it didn’t really look like one. Frustratingly, your body seemed to think it felt familiar, too, and you had to tamp down some… inappropriate, knee jerk reactions as it traced the curved of your neck, sweeping down to your clavicle.

It felt like there had to be a logical reason for this, it wasn’t sexual, you were just thinking with your human brain. Maybe it was trying to… taste something out. You didn’t know. But he must have made some kind of decision about you, because he made a low, groaning vocalization that was almost like a hum.

Then he started grabbing at your clothes, huge, grotesque hands pulling and ripping into them as easily as tearing through gauze. You tried kicking at him, but pain shot through your shoulders where you were still impaled, and you couldn’t -… You just couldn’t. You were trapped. There was nothing you could do. What was left sat on you in tatters, skin exposed to the cool air.

His hands roamed over the curve of your waist, over your hips, shaking you by them briefly, as if testing them out, while you croaked at the way your shoulders protested to even the slightest movement. What was he doing? Why didn’t he just kill you already? His tongue dragged down your stomach and your muscles fluttered, heat pooling in your loins against your will. You tried to push down the obvious reaction your body was having as it continued to travel down, down down, before it began curling around your erection.

“Oh fuck,” you wheezed hoarsely, “No, please.” You’d had a good half-chub since he started licking you, but you didn’t want this. Inhaling sharply, your eyes fluttered back, pinching closed as it started to move, experimentally jerking you off despite your begging. The feeling was unreal as it was unwelcome, unlike anything you’d ever felt before. But it didn’t last long, and you panted in relief as the tongue unfurled from around you. You hadn’t even realized your whole body was tense until you felt it deflate.

You didn’t understand why this was happening to you. This was no accident, he’d chosen you.

You weren’t allowed to dwell on it long. The respite was short lived, the Executioner’s hands hooking under your thighs without warning and hoisting your legs up.

This, oddly, was actually more comfortable in the sense that it hurt a lot fucking less, the support relieving almost the entirety of your own body weight off the spikes. You were still skewered in two places, that couldn’t be undersold. But at least now it didn’t feel like gravity was going to rip them through you like a heavy earring ripping through an earlobe.

But it was a whole lot less comfortable in the sense that you’d seen enough hentai to know what was coming next.

Whole lower body twitching as his tongue probed your backside, it swept over your entrance and prodded, testing it’s resistance before punching through it anyway, a broken cry purling from your busted throat as it forced you open and began violating you. Past the pain, you could still feel with perfect unholy clarity the alien way the muscle squirmed against your walls, stars and red-orange flashes dancing behind your eyes every time it fucked in and out of you. In need of something to hold, to ground yourself, your hands flew up to grasp at the spikes on one of the bars behind you.

You couldn’t even begin to think clearly, even as the motions slowly just turned into noise. But maybe- maybe you deserved this somehow. For what you did. Maybe the universe, or the Entity was finally throwing you your comeuppance. Or maybe you were looking for reason where there wasn’t any. Maybe everything was chaos and nothing mattered. But you’d take it. You’d take it, and maybe you’d come out on the other end feeling pure and exonerated.

You didn’t know how long it was before he withdrew and pulled you off the spikes- you thought you heard a generator ping on the numb fringes of your consciousness once or maybe even twice, but eventually you felt the slide of them leaving your body. Or rather, you leaving them.

He manhandled you a bit, and you confusedly let him, trying, somewhat, to cooperate but you were disoriented and slightly less helpful than dead weight. But that was fine. He had full control of you, turning you around and pressing down between your shoulder blades so you were face down, ass up, jerking your hips up so you were just how he wanted you, and if you rocked on your feet a little, it didn’t matter much.

You didn’t have to look behind you to hear the scrape of fabric as he moved the loincloth aside. Haggardly, you pulled up your head, vision obscured by tears and a veil of your own sweaty, stringy hair. Staring forward, you grabbed onto the spikes, one hand, then the other, fingers tightening around them as his tongue began snaking around your waist.

You deserved this.

🖤  🖤 🖤

Thank you for reading!!!

🖤  🖤 🖤  

Notes:

A Cage of Atonement is kind like a trap, right? 😉

Thank you to Pugge as always, for beta'ing and being my hype man. (Also the entire server, they’re so supportive!!!)

Thank you to Null/Gabe/Slaandere for answering my every question (I’ve never played a SH game in my life) and enlightening me about the existence of PH’s tongue. This one’s for you, bb. 💖

This piece was written for Day 2 of the 🔞 Dead by Baelight 🔞 Discord server’s Kinktober.

Anyone over 18 is welcome to join here.

[tehri]

Here’s a birthday gift for you, @panpervinca! Story from this post, I had a lot of fun writing this!

Also it got much longer than I thought it would be, but that’s me being wordy as hell...

Working for an airline would never get Salvia anywhere in her life – at least, that’s what her family always told her. In their eyes, she could have (should have, even) done a million other things. She could have been a lawyer, a doctor. An astronaut, even, if she had just put her mind to it. She could have gone into politics, though her grandfather had looked her right in the eye and said very seriously that if she became a politician, he would find the clue to immortality so that he could tell her off for it.

But no.

No, Salvia hadn’t precisely had the luxury of choosing. Finding a job after she was done with her studies was rather akin to hoping to scuba-dive to the bottom of the Mariana trench. When she’d gotten the offer of a job working at the ticket counter for an airline, she’d quite frankly jumped onto the possibility, leapt onto that train before it could leave and never looked back.

It wasn’t easy. It absolutely wasn’t. But it was worth it. It was a job, it paid the bills, and it wasn’t too far from home. The hours could be hell, she hated the uniform and hated how her boss had taken one look at her the one day she didn’t wear makeup and said she couldn’t show herself to customers like that. But it was worth it, to keep the apartment. To avoid having to move in with her parents again.

Then, of course, there were the days, the little moments, that made everything even more than worth it.

 It hadn’t been an overly busy day. Flights came and left, of course, but there were few people at the counter, and Salvia could breathe easily and could focus on other aspects of her work for a while. So when an old man, perhaps in his late seventies or early eighties, approached the counter and said he had a question that needed answering, she didn’t think twice about it.

He was rather tall, she noted – taller than her, at the very least, though she came from a family filled with people under five feet and six inches. But this old man, broad-shouldered and without a back bent by his age, had to be pushing six feet. His hair was white as snow, though she could spy a few streaks of a faded copper red here and there, and his eyes were a brilliant green that seemed to stand out a little from his olive complexion.

“I’m supposed to meet someone who came with the last flight from Spain,” he explained. “From Barcelona – the flight number was BA475? But the plane landed an hour ago, and he didn’t show up. Do you keep records of passengers on various flights? I just need to know if he was on it and I missed him somehow…”

“I’m terribly sorry,” Salvia answered, giving the old man a kind smile, “but I’m not allowed to give out that kind of information, sir.”

If he had looked somewhat worried before, it was nothing to how his expression fell now.

“I understand. Thank you, either way.” He smiled back at her, though it fell quite some miles short of being anywhere near cheerful; if anything, he looked almost like a kicked puppy. “I’ll go and have a look near the baggage-claim area, maybe he’s there…”

Maybe it was his expression. Maybe it was simply that he was an old man who shouldn’t have to be waiting for someone like this. Whatever it was, Salvia couldn’t just let him walk away like this without at least trying to find some other way to help.

“Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, could you tell me what happened?” Curious though she was, she kept it from her tone. Knowing the background, she thought, would only help her make a better decision. “Were you supposed to pick them up, maybe?”

Though she had perhaps expected him to decline to answer and walk away, she was pleasantly surprised; he did indeed stop, and some measure of joy crept back into his expression when he looked back at her and smiled again.

Happiness, Salvia decided, absolutely suited him better.

“I fell in love,” the old man sighed, and something in his tone had Salvia’s own heart fluttering wildly in her chest. “That’s the gist of it. But well, see, it’s the circumstances that are a bit odd. But I don’t want to keep you from your work, miss, you’ve better things to do than to listen to an old man babble about such things.”

“It’s a really quiet day,” Salvia shot back. “And it’s not like I’m here all alone. Please, I’d like to help somehow, and maybe if I know the circumstances I can think of something. Please?”

Throwing a somehow doubtful glance at her co-worker, busy helping another customer, the old man took the few steps back to the counter.

“If you’re certain,” he said slowly. “Just… Do tell me if you’ve had enough, I know I can start to drag on at times.”

It took several promises to convince the old man that it was quite alright and that she would absolutely tell him if it grew too longwinded. But soon enough, he was telling her everything that had happened, and it sounded to Salvia’s eyes almost like a modern fairy-tale.

“See, I’ve known this man for some time already,” he explained. “My eldest daughter – I have twelve children, she’s number nine – she’s just married this man’s eldest son, and they married in Canada, of all places. Canada! I don’t understand why they chose that, really, though I’d wager it’s my daughter insisting on it. Anyway, I’ve been to visit them, and so had he, and we happened to be on the same flight back and had managed to get connecting flights through Spain. Odd choice, I know, but last minute booking and all that, I’m sure you know how it gets.”

Salvia did indeed know. It was simply insane how some bookings were handled; to get a flight from Canada to Spain connecting to a flight to Birmingham in England seemed more than a bit mad. But whatever got one home would work, right?

“You know, it’s strange. We’ve known each other for years and years already – friends in the same circles, and such, but we could never stand each other before. Something always felt off. But now, on this flight, something happened.” The old man’s tone changed again, something wistful coming into it that reminded Salvia of how her grandfather would sometimes speak of her grandmother. There was such warmth in his voice, something so gentle and wonderful, that she felt almost as though she were just a little girl again asking her grandfather about how he met his wife. “We sat next to each other. And one way or another, we started to talk. I mean, it’s a long flight, almost eleven hours. What else were we going to do, pretend the other didn’t exist for that whole time? We just started talking, about our wives, our children, our homes, our friends, anything. And I’ve never seen him like that before, and something… something just melted, I suppose.”

And his dimpled smile widened and warmed, so much so that Salvia couldn’t help but think that he was quite handsome; had he been younger, she would perhaps have tried for him herself, just for a smile like that.

“I fell in love,” he repeated. “Just during those hours, I fell in love for the second time in my life. Never knew I could love anyone but my wife, but here I am now. And as luck would have it, he feels the same way.”

It took an incredible effort to keep herself from letting out an audible squeal of delight at such words, but Salvia managed and said:

“Oh, that’s incredible! It’s so sweet!”

“Sweet as honey,” the old man agreed with a laugh. “Ah, he’d hate hearing me say so in public, but it’s true!”

“But what happened, then? How come he’s not here?”

“Well, see, we had different connecting flights, so I got here earlier. But we agreed that we would meet here, and I’d drive him home so we could spend a bit more time together.” In a flash, his smile was gone again, and he sighed deeply. “I wonder why I didn’t see him. I might’ve missed him, I suppose, but he must’ve been on that flight, unless he missed it.”

Maybe it was simply that there hadn’t been much to do that day. Maybe it was her love for a good story, especially sweet ones. Or perhaps it was Salvia’s memory of her own previous fling with a girl from school. Whatever it was that compelled her, she found it quite difficult to keep her hands away from the computer’s keyboard and to remind herself of the company’s policies.

“It really is very sweet,” she said, her heart weeping in her chest, “but I’m afraid I really can’t give out information about passengers. But you can try to have him called out, I think, and maybe that would work? Or you could call him?”

Her poor heart broke just a little further when the old man shook his head and explained that he had already attempted to call, but had received no answer. This sweet old man didn’t deserve such treatment – that is, if he had in fact been ghosted. Salvia had been through that a few times, and had no wish to see a sweet old man going through the same thing.

“Wait a moment,” she cried when the old man said a soft-voiced goodbye and turned to leave. “Wait just a moment! Look, I can’t give out any information, and I’m very sorry about that, but tell you what – how about you leave your number here with me, just in case? Maybe he is here, or maybe he was moved to another flight and is late. Either way, if he comes looking, I could call your number and let you know. Would that be alright?”

He hesitated, gave her the same thoughtful once-over that her own dad had given her on occasion – as though attempting to figure out if she was asking because she genuinely wanted to help. And finally, just as Salvia was sure that he would kindly refuse and walk away, taking this sweet story with him, he gave her a small smile and stepped back towards the counter.

“That would perhaps be a good idea,” he agreed. “So long as it won’t interfere with your work – I know it can get busy at an airport, I’d rather not make things worse for you.”

“It’s customer service.” Salvia grinned back at him and quickly grabbed a piece of paper and a pen for him. “I’m meant to help customers, and this kind of falls under that, right?”

Just a short while later, the man had left, and Salvia was curiously eyeing the name and phone-number on the paper. It was an odd name, she thought; not one she’d ever heard before. So many people had common surnames like Johnson, or Smith. Who ever heard of a surname like Took? And the first name sounded like something out of a story. The old man had laughed at her initial surprise and told her that most in his family had somewhat odd-sounding names, and that Gerontius was not the worst of the lot.

Well. At least he had been very nice. Which she made sure to point out to Mike, her co-worker, when he tried to tell her that it was a lost cause.

 Around lunchtime, Salvia retreated to the back room in order to eat what she had brought from home. It wasn’t much – a sandwich and an apple, really, but it was better than nothing. She wouldn’t have time with more than that, her break was too short. But at home, she had a container of leftover takeaway food waiting in the fridge that would make a wonderful dinner; it would make up for what she was missing earlier in the day.

She hadn’t been sitting there for long, however, when she heard Mike greeting a customer. At first, it seemed to be the usual stuff; someone who needed a bit of help, that was all. But then came the words that caught her attention and had her putting down her sandwich and rushing to the door.

“I was supposed to meet someone here,” said a man’s voice, a steady and relaxed tone that somehow reminded her of an older teacher she’d had in school. “He was meant to arrive from Spain, but I think he should have gotten here before me.”

Mike, bless him, caught on just as quickly as Salvia did and turned his head to call for her, smiling when he saw her peeking out from the back room.

“I think my colleague here might be fit to help you, sir,” he said, waving for Salvia to come out. “Though it’s her lunch-break, and-“

“Never mind the lunch,” cried Salvia as she came up to the counter. She gave the customer a bright smile. “Sir, you said you were waiting for someone meant to arrive with a flight from Spain? Did you by any chance just come from there too?”

He was quite short, she thought, much shorter than the previous man. If she were to take off her heels and step around the counter, she was willing to wager that she’d find him just around her height, if not a tad shorter. His dark skin was wrinkled, his hair was iron grey, but his grey eyes were bright and sharp – less shuttered than his expression, which reminded her equally of her old teacher. And he looked back at her, brow furrowing ever so slightly, and nodded.

“I did, yes. How did you know?”

“Call it a hunch.” She grinned and shuffled through the papers at her computer. “Hang on, give me half a moment.”

Still fixed with a somehow equally confused and annoyed sharp stare, Salvia dug out the paper with Gerontius’ number and pulled her work-phone towards her. This, she decided as she picked up the receiver and swiftly dialled the number, was by far the highlight of her day – no, of her entire time working there. This made everything worth it.

One signal.

Two, three, four.

Just as her heart began to sink just a little in her chest, the dial-tone broke and gave way to a slight crackle and a familiar voice:

“Gerontius Took speaking.”

“Hi there, Mr Took,” Salvia said blithely. “There’s someone waiting here for you by the counter you were at earlier!”

If not for the background noise over the line, she would have thought that he’d hung up by how silent he was for a moment. She kept her eyes on the old man on the other side of the counter, whose expression now was one of astonishment and a budding relief and joy.

“He’s there?!” cried Mr Took suddenly, and by the sound of it, he must have started to run. “He’s really there?!”

“He is, I promise! Here, I can hand the phone to him for a moment, I think he needs to hear your voice.”

She held out the receiver to the old man. Later on, when she was recounting the story to her family and to her friends, she would swear on whatever she could think of that he had tears in his eyes as he smiled at her, an action that transformed his face just as the sun transforms a landscape after a rainstorm.

“I’m here,” the old man said finally. “I’m here. My flight was full, I got transferred to another, and I couldn’t reach you when I tried. I know, I should have checked sooner… But you, you dolt, where did you go? Why didn’t you wait here? No, no, I don’t mean to snap at you! Please, just hurry, love, alright? I miss you. I miss you very much.”

Exchanging a look with her co-worker, Salvia felt almost close to tears herself. The softness in the old man’s voice when he professed to miss Mr Took was almost too much for her heart to handle.

A few more words exchanged, and finally the old man returned the receiver with a relieved smile.

“He just said what you did for him,” he said softly. “I can’t thank you enough. Stars know what I would’ve done if I’d arrived here and found that he’d already left.”

Smiling and feeling heat rush to her cheeks (though whether from pride or embarrassment she couldn’t be certain), Salvia replied:

“He just made the whole thing sound so sweet and romantic. I couldn’t just tell him I couldn’t do anything, you know?”

“Oh, that. He does that.” The old man’s smile widened as he spoke. “At least he can’t have made the whole thing sound too ridiculous.”

 They had time, Salvia thought to herself as they continued to talk. She could keep him company; if any other customers came, they could speak to Mike. This was a story that she wanted desperately to see the end of.

His name was Mungo Baggins, she learned as they spoke. Another very odd name – but he laughed at her surprised expression and told her that where he lived, names such as that were quite common. He told her his side of the story in short terms, explained how the eleven hours spent on a flight with Mr Took had changed quite a lot in his life.

“I used to find him so arrogant,” sighed Mr Baggins. “Insufferable lout that he was, he was always acting as though he owned whatever establishment he stepped into. Loud and brash and impulsive. I couldn’t stand him before, even if our fathers were quite close – did he tell you that? Anyway, I had to deal with him sooner or later, when my son fell in love with his daughter. And this flight was… It was ideal, I suppose. I mean, I love my wife, of course I do. I adore her. But he’s… Gerontius is just…”

“He’s just different?” Salvia filled in with a smile. “You know, there’s a word for that. For loving more than one person, I mean. Polyamorous.”

“Oh, I know, I’ve heard. It just isn’t something that I had associated with myself or with him before. It’ll take a bit to get used to it.”

Ten minutes passed, and still they were chatting. And suddenly a call rang out not very far away, and as they looked, Mr Took came rushing towards the counter. Mr Baggins, seeming to momentarily forget all about the conversation with Salvia, left the counter and hurried to meet him, and Salvia couldn’t help but give a small squeak of sheer joy when she watched how Mr Took pulled the significantly shorter man into a tight hug.

“Got your happy ending, huh?” Mike asked with a laugh.

“This,” answered Salvia, “just makes it worth working here. It’s like a film!”

When had she last been thanked so profusely by a customer? Never. She was quite sure of that. But Mr Took and Mr Baggins were beyond grateful, and there seemed to be no end to their words of thanks. And when it was time for them to leave, they left hand-in hand, looking quite happy. It was more than enough for Salvia to see them smiling at each other.

 Even in the car, Gerontius wasn’t willing to let go of Mungo’s hand, no matter how the man tried to tell him to focus on keeping the car on the road.

“It’s an automatic,” the Took said firmly in the end. “I can damn well steer with one hand and hold your hand with the other, there’s no worry about that.”

“The gears aren’t a concern of mine,” Mungo sniped back, without any real heat in his voice. “I only want you to live long enough for this-“ and here he gestured between them “-to actually be explored.”

It certainly didn’t have much effect on Gerontius, other than making him a little misty-eyed. Mungo wanted this, just as much as he did; it still didn’t seem quite real.

“That lass really was incredible, wasn’t she?” he said instead, hoping to push his mind away from any second-guessing. “Very sweet one.”

Mungo laughed softly and gave the older man’s hand a gentle squeeze, unknowingly chasing away any worry and second-guessing.

“She was, yes,” he agreed. “Though I do wish we could have given her something more as thanks.”

“A chocolate bunny was about what we could manage.” Gerontius smiled, his thumb rubbing small circles over the back of Mungo’s hand. “We’ll see if we can’t find a way to send some flowers later, eh? She helped more than she knows.”

[magpie-scribbles]

Incarceration: Rappa x OC

Okay lovies this is 100% N//S//F//W please do not read if you are under 18.

I needed to write some good Rappa smut content because I’m starving so have some Rappa x OC FILTH!!

Rating: E

Warnings: Smut, size kink/difference, masturbation, public sex, mild daddy kink 

Pairing: Kendou Rappa x OC (Hoshi Sakuretsu)

2 weeks…It had been 2 weeks since he and the other bullets had been carted off to Tartarus. From what he could tell he wasn’t in the highest level of security; and at least he didn’t have to share a room with anyone; which was fine by him, the room was already damn small with just him in it. Probably would have used his roommate for a punching bag anyway by now, he was so pent up; his blood sang and his bones rumbled; body aching for something more than being held up in this dog pen.

3 weeks… he had heard that if he was on good behavior he might be able to go out in the yard and mingle, and take lunch in the dining hall. He thought they were stupid when he first heard that ‘cause he’d probably just go batshit at the first smell of freedom; fuck he was starting to grow crazy in here. He had already made a few decent sized holes in the wall on the far side of the room, his knuckles hardly bled and his attitude only soured when it did nothing to relieve him.

There honestly wasn’t much to do, until he got to wander on good behavior; just eat, sleep, shit, and jack off. And jacking off he did a lot of, and it only seemed to make it worse, fuck it wasn’t the same.

He put another hole in the wall after one particularly aggressive session that left his cock feeling raw; cum splattered across his stomach and chest in thick ropes. Still he was hard and aching, twitching in the stale air of his stupidly small cell. 

He fisted his own hand in his hair and tried again, trying to pretend the hand gripping at his mane was exceptionally smaller. It wasn’t the same…

This time his knuckles bled a little more when they bit into the wall but it wasn’t in the least bit satisfying. He wondered what Hoshi was doing, if she was going as crazy as he was…well if she was cooped up she’d probably be going even more crazy than him. The idea of her going feral in her own cell, tipping over the bed, ripping pillows and sheets out of sheer boredom and stir craziness had him pumping his cock again. He missed it, fuck , missed her near manic energy, her scrappiness; missed her nails digging trenches into his back and chest, missed her biting mouth and wild eyes. 

He missed the sounds she made; her sighs, her coos, her screams; he missed the way she could barely take him but would always ask for more, more, more. Missed the way she made him feel, what she made him do. He missed the way she owned him. 

He wondered if she was laying away on her cot, whimpering out, hands down her panties, fingers pressed into her tight, wet pussy. He wondered if she was calling out his name as she desperately tried to get herself off.

“Rappa, Rappa,…Kendou”

He snarled as he painted his chest again, this release a little more satisfying than the last but still no where near close to what he needed.

He grumbled into the quiet air, still unsatisfied, still pent up and now covered in his own mess. He could hear the material of the scratchy sheet around his knees strain when he tugged at it, balling it up, wiping himself down before throwing it on the floor. It didn’t fucking matter if he didn’t have a blanket anymore, this place ran too hot anyway; he hated that too. 

He settled back down, god these beds were comically small! At least the pillow still had some fluff in it as he folded it under his head. 

He decided to not even bother pulling his pants back up; the fuckers could have a nice view when wake up call came the next day. At least it would provide him some entertainment.  

______

4 weeks… 

Finally, FINALLY he was getting to stretch his legs, though he really wasn’t sure he had been on any good behavior at all; they had probably just gotten tired of him breaking shit and cleaning up his messes. Didn’t matter, finally he could walk more than a few yards without hitting a wall.

The restraints biting into his shoulders weren’t exactly pleasant, though he guessed it could be worse, at least his arms still had some mobility…If the were smart they would have bound his arms completely. Still he wasn’t completely stupid and he really wanted this brief moment of freedom even if it was just going to the dining hall to get some grub.

The two escorts at his side were armed with nothing more than rubber bullets and stun guns, he had laughed when he saw them. He had made a snarky comment on how “that’s all they give ya’? Fuck it’s like they want ya’ to get pummeled.” They didn’t say anything as he laughed at them and their puny defenses. They had tried to act all nonplussed about his statement but he could see the apprehension in their eyes; and maybe…a little fear. That definitely brightened his mood some.

He had tried to make small talk as he was escorted but the two guards wanted none of it and ignored him for the most part, not that he really minded, they were probably boring anyway. 

The dining hall was a lot bigger than he had expected, and certainly much brighter than his cell, it nearly hurt his eyes when he entered, despite the air being filled with the smell of prison food, it somehow smelled fresher and less stale than the cell-blocks. He found himself breathing deeply.

“Don’t cause a ruckus.” 

He turned to the escort to his left giving him a hard sideways glance.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” he rumbled, flashing his teeth.

By the quick retreat and bristled expression of the guard, he knew he had scared him off; good.

“What’s his problem yah?” he turned to the other guard, his grin widening when the other man turned and left much the same way as the other. That’s right, fuck right off.

It was nice to finally move around, even though he knew he was being watched like a damn hawk, at least they weren’t all up in his face about it now. He struggled, the restraints becoming mildly irritating and moved to get a tray for some grub; the food was shit here but he’d had worse before, and it wasn’t like he was some sort of culinary expert. He just need calories, and a lot. When he got out of here there was going to be a lot of bulking he’d need to take care of.

For the most part people moved out of his way when they saw him coming, the few that didn’t see his approach to the line ended up on the ground; it wasn’t even like he body checked them, just elbowed them out of the way. His size and strength of his stride being enough to knock people over. 

At least the line wasn’t awful when he joined it, he wouldn’t have to wait too long to get some grub. 

“Woah you’re mega tall.” 

He looked in front of him and down. A woman stared back up at him apprehensively, grip on her tray trembling.

She wasn’t short, normal height, if anything maybe a little on the tall side, but he was a behemoth; he grinned menacingly.

“Ate my vegetables as a kid.” he replied snarkily.

“Ah…” she gave him a nervous smile and turned back around, clutching her tray closer to her chest. 

Fearful after just talking to him, pathetic, was he really stuck in here with such cowards?? 

A light bulb suddenly went off in his head and he glanced back down to the woman in front of him; puzzled for a second before looking around. It seemed like this was a co-ed dining hall; After the moment of curiosity he shrugged and supposed it didn’t matter, with everyone having some sort of quirk they were all on somewhat even ground.

He turned back to face the front of the line, bored now that his curiosity was satisfied. 

Then a flash of pink caught his eye, exiting the line ahead. All his attention zeroed in and his blood ran hot.

Hoshi

He hardly even registered the sound of pain as he dropped his tray directly on the head of the woman in front of him before making long strides towards the petite woman exiting with her food.

“Hey dude! No cutting!” someone grabbed his shirt. 

“Wait in line like everyone else h-” the fucker didn’t even finish his sentence before he was grabbed by the back of the head. He brought his knee forcefully up into the man’s face, a sickening crunch as the his nose caved like a house of cards, blood pouring out over his face and onto his pants. 

He felt his blood pump even hotter as he watched the now unconscious man crumple to the cafeteria floor.

Around him there were soft gasps, a few groans and ‘ew gross’ but once again all his attention was on the woman, who was now looking straight at him, eyes bright and face glowing with a smile.

“PUMPKIN!!” she screamed, throwing her tray and all the contents over her head in her excitement.

And he’s running to her, bulldozing anyone that got in his path, even pushing a few dining tables out of the way in his mad rush. 

She reached out to him, bouncing on her toes as he closes in.

By now security is probably trying to figure out what the hell is going on but fuck she’s right there, and he’ll be as bad as he wants to be. 

She jumped in anticipation and he scooped her up, hauling her up into his arms, grip most likely bruising as he squeezed her thigh in one hand and roughly cupped the back of her head. He stumbled, taking a few more steps before falling onto one of the dining tables; knees connecting uncomfortably with the attached metal bench, it didn’t fucking matter, nothing fucking mattered. She was already clawing at him.

He crashed his lips against her, growling loudly as he shoved his tongue into her mouth, his teeth clacking against her own in an animalistic display of dominance. She’s already making such pretty sounds for him and they’d barely done anything, she’s missed him and fuck he’s already so fucking hard.

He budged her further up the table, fully kneeling on the bench, which groaned under his weight. 

She bit his lips and pulled at his hair, and he can hardly stand it, it’d been a fucking month; he could feel himself leaking, the taught fabric over his dick becoming painful. He couldn’t stop himself, his hips already subconsciously humping the air, clothed dick rubbing against the cool metal table.

He doesn’t want to stop gripping the soft flesh of her thigh, but he wanted to know how much she missed him, just how sopping she already was for him. He removed his grip and pressed two fingers roughly against the crotch of her prison pants; she’s already soaking through them and he groans lowly.

“Fuck, lil’ sparkler, ya miss me? You’re fuckin’ soaked .” he growled against her mouth, before backing up a bit to see her expression. He’s embarrassed to admit he almost came right then and there when she looked back up at him, lips bruised and slightly bloody, pupils blown wide with lust. 

Her hand moved to his wild mane and she wound a chunk around her fist before yanking, bringing a lustful whine from him as she viciously tugged him back down.

“Don’t be so meeaannn. Rappa, please, no teasin’ be faaiirrrr.” she arched into him. 

God, she’s practically delirious for him, his cock twitched, and he humped against the table a few more times. 

He smashed his lips against hers again, drinking in her squeals as he ripped her pants from her hips and shoved a large hand into her panties. She practically screamed into his mouth when he pressed a finger into her tight heat.

“Fuuuuccckkk, dunno how ya can still be so tight aftr’ I’ve wrecked ya so many times.” he snarled against her lips, shoving a second finger into her and her back bowed in a pretty arch. “Look at ya take it.” 

He began to piston his fingers in and out of her, swallowing up her wails as she coated his hand in her slick. He knew he was going to have to be quick about this, to be honest he was surprised no one had done anything yet to to stop them, probably too scared, or maybe they’re getting off on this too. He growled at the idea, wanting to stake his claim even more.   

Hoshi scrabbled against his chest at the crook of his fingers and he felt her clamping down like a vice, he couldn’t help but let out a shaky laugh; fuck he missed that feeling.

Barely allowing her to come down from her first high he pulled her closer, further beneath his huge form; using the hand that was already covered in her essence he ripped her ruined panties down her thighs before pushing his pants down (pleased that he had decided not to wear boxers this morning) just enough for his cock to spring free.

He looked down at her small trembling form, her bright eyes honed in completely to his dick that was now bobbing between them.

“Yesyesyesyes pleasepleaspleaseplease.” he heard her chanting under her breath, fuck she was practically drooling at the sight of him; his head swam and he grabbed her hips harshly.    

“Fuck, sparkler, you’re gagging for it ain’t ya?” he pressed the tip of his dick up against her. 

“Rappaaaa, Kendou.” she squirmed in his hold, trying to impale herself on him, and it takes all his remaining brainpower to not just shove inside her.

He leaned in further, lips brushing against her ear almost tenderly. 

“Have ya been a good girl?” he rumbled, lustful grin splitting his face.

He felt her turn and then she whispered back.

“No.”

The sound that broke free from his chest was a feral laugh as he leaned back slightly and plunged his cock into her completely.      

She screamed in delight, and probably a little pain, but fuck he knew she loved it, and he quickly started a brutal pace, pleasure and heat zipping up and down his spine nearly immediately.

“Fuck, missed ya Hoshi; missed your mouth.” he gave her a biting kiss. “Missed your fucking tits.” he tweaked her nipples harshly. “Missed your pretty. little. pussy.” each word punctuated with a harsh snap of his hips. “Missed watching ya barely being able to take me.” he watched how her stomach bulged each time he bottomed out in her heat.

He leaned close again, one hand fisting in her hair, the other reaching up to grip the lip of the table; he yanked her head back sharply, causing her to arch and show her pretty neck.

“Missed everything about ya.” he growled licking a wide tongue up the expanse of her throat. 

The sound she made, he promised to burn into the back of his brain for the rest of his life; and then she was coming around his thick cock, soaking him and milking him for all he was worth. At this point he’d lost all control and he savagely pounded into her, using her as his personal cock sleeve, chasing the pleasure building and crackling along his spine.

Three more harsh thrusts and he’s coming, holding her down, balls deep inside her, as he throbs. The sound that bubbles up from his chest is more the sound of a beast than a man.

He can hear her moaning and giggling as he filled her to the brim, pulse after pulse of his hot seed until it’s dripping out of her and onto the table. 

His body hummed, flushed in utter pleasure, but he already knew it wouldn’t be enough, even before he came off his high.

“More.” he growls lowly and fuck if Hoshi didn’t wiggle excitedly on his still hard cock. 

He huffed, exasperated and in absolute adoration of her eagerness; ready to flip her over and mount her like an animal. But he was suddenly being restrained, thick cables slingshotting around his biceps, forcing his arms to his sides. Even in his lust filled mindset he could figure out what was happening and he couldn’t help but laugh; the cable tightening, he could hear what he assumes are the guards finally getting their shit together with a few ‘what the fucks’ and ‘fucking christs’. The cables tug at him and he took a step back, slipping out of the petite woman, he’d rather remove himself from her; it would be gentler than being forcibly pulled away. 

“Looks like our fun is over Hoshi.” He grinned. 

Two guards appeared at his sides and he sensed there are more behind him. Two more guards and a few nurses round the table and bundle up next to Hoshi. He bristled at the idea that they thought they’d need to bring medical support; he’d never hurt her, not in anyway she didn’t want.

“Oh but daddy we were just getting started.” she whined, coy smile on her lips, she was still laying on the table completely ravaged by him. He can see the nurses recoil for a moment, unsure of how to respond to this tiny woman who had just been fucked an inch within her life, asking for more. He knows how.

He laughed straining against his bonds, the guards at his side, readying for him to struggle.

“Well kitten, are ya going to be good for next time or bad?” one of the nurses is helping her to a sitting position while the other is wrapping a blanket around her. The look she pinned him with was enough to make his cock jump again.

“Definitely bad.” she licked her lips, gaze smoldering. 

“Enough! Jesus CHRIST!” one of the guards cursed beside him, trying to shove him into turning around and marching. 

He was in a good mood now, so he turned to face the much smaller man.

“Ya gonna help me pull my pants up, cause…ya know” he flexed his biceps against the cables. “Unless ya like looking at my dick then carry on.” 

He reveled in the man’s sputtering and watched as Hoshi was ushered on shaky legs passed him.

One thing was for certain, he wouldn’t be spending another month in here, and neither would she. 

Besides prison break would be fun.