#i’m tired of people not taking this shit seriously and i’m incredibly angry about it

[snzluv3r]

i actually feel so incredibly uncomfortable and isolated in this space right now and i know that’s silly because of how many people there are just like me who share the same feelings but idk…the fact that people even think this is defensible behavior is making me feel sick

[arvinsescape]

Hey could you please write something with reader's ex leaking some private pictures you two took when you were together just because he's jealous of you and tom, so when tom hears about what happened he is so upset that someone could be this low, he's not even jealous, he is just so mad that he could cry

A/N: Thank you for sending this in, I hope you enjoy! 💕

Warnings: Swearing, mentions of sex, leaking of nudes (this is never okay, I do not condone this behaviour), talks of bad relationships, mentions of stalking (do not read if you are uncomfortable).

You and Tom had been together for just over a year and a half, it had been amazing, you absolutely adored each other and everyone could see it. There was only one negative in your relationship and that came with your ex.

He was an incredibly jealous human being, awful in every way. You broke things off with him after two years of putting up with his behaviour. You'd not been allowed to have male friends, the relationship you had with the men Tom lived with was strange for you at first, at every turn you expected Tom to get angry about how close you were getting. It never happened, Tom adored the relationship you had with the boys and it was quick to reassure you of that fact when you opened up to him about it.

Unfortunately, although he claimed he wasn't in love with you, he couldn't let you go. He was so jealous when he found out you'd moved on that he started stalking your social medias, leaving comments on your posts which led to you blocking him. Of course, this didn't work, he made new accounts in order to find out what you were doing, leaving nasty comments on posts you made to a point where you simply stopped posting as often.

He was tiring and for a while you worried he'd find you, approach you but he never did. You'd been on edge for a short time after making your relationship with Tom public due to the comments he'd leave on your posts. You wondered whether or not he'd ever get over it, let you go but he seemingly wasn't going to anytime soon. It was tiresome, truly but you'd learned to live with it, you continued to block the accounts he made, Tom personally emailing the social media companies in hopes they could put a stop to him but to no avail.

You travelled with Tom a lot, most of the time unless you had family commitments that kept you homebound. This was due to your job and the way it worked, you never needed to be in an office and you could work from anywhere in the world. Book editing meant you had freedom. It made you feel safe, knowing Tom was never far away and when he was filming you could spend time with one of the boys and it brought a huge comfort to you.

You were back in London, in Tom's shared house after a long stretch in the states, you were happy to be back home, have your home comforts. You had been in and out of sleep for the past hour, your phone buzzing like crazy which had resulted in you turning it off, not ready to face whatever it was so early in the morning. That was all well and good until Tom's phone started half an hour later.

"Tom." You lightly shook him in his sleep and he mumbled incoherently in response. "Tom?" You tried harder.

"Y/N, go back to sleep." He grumbled as he pulled you into his chest as his phone started again. You pushed against his chest and his eyes snapped open.

"Tom your phone." You stated and Tom groaned before rolling over and mindlessly fishing for the device, turning it off as well. "It might be important." You said and he rolled back over to pull you into him.

"I'll deal with it later, it's my week off, it can wait." He mumbled into your neck as he sighed out. It didn't take him long to find sleep again as he held you against his chest, his warmth wrapping around you and making you drift into your own sleep.

You're not sure how long you'd been back asleep before you heard banging on your bedroom door. Tom groaning as he squeezed your body and ignored the knocks, hoping whichever boy it was would go away.

"Tom." Harrison's voice pulled you both from your sleepy state. He sounded worried, not his usual calm and chilled out self as he banged on the door again. "You need to get up." He said frantically.

"Fuck off Harrison, I'm tired." Tom shouted back as you sat up and ran a hand over your face. Tom protesting as you sat against the headboard trying to come to. "Darling, come back." He begged, almost childishly, you were about to respond when Harrison piped up again.

"Tom, mate seriously. Get up, it's important." He tried and Tom groaned again before sitting up next to you. "Right, I'm coming in." Haz shouted before opening your bedroom door, phone in hand and face paler than usual.

"Haz what is so important that we need to get up at," Tom started as he checked his watch. "7:30 in the morning."

"You need to check your phones." He said as he threw his phone in your direction. With furrowed brows you picked it up. "I'm so sorry Y/N/N." He said and Tom was quick to grab his phone, turning it on.

"What do you mean? Haz it's early and I've not woken up yet, what's going on?" Tom asked as you scrolled Haz's phone, quiet as a mouse, face dropping. You flicked though the series of pictures that had made their way to twitter, complete and utter disbelief hitting you.

"Her ex." Harrison said as Tom's phone finished booting up, numerous missed calls from his publicist and twitter notifying him that he was trending. "Y/N/N, are you okay?" Harrison asked as he took in your figure.

"How long have these been up?" You asked, eyes not leaving his phone.

"I don't know they were posted overnight." Harrison sighed as he ran a hand through his hair. Numerous pictures of yourself from a couple of years ago staring back at you. Pictures with your ex in very compromising positions mocking you as you looked at them.

You nodded slowly as you swallowed down your emotions, you lifted a shaky hand to run through your hair. The internet had practically seen you for what you were, seen things that were meant for a significant other. Pictures of yourself you'd sent to your ex before things got bad between the two of you.

"Fucking piece of shit." Tom whispered as he himself saw what Harrison had been talking about. You felt like crying, the lump in your throat felt heavy as you tried to swallow it down, tears blurring your vision as you looked at the pictures.

"Sweetheart," Tom started as he took Harrison's phone from your hand and handed it back to his friend. Harrison took it and quickly made his way from your room, he knew you were seconds away from breaking down and you needed your privacy.

"I thought he'd deleted them." You whispered to more yourself than anyone else. "I sent those at the beginning of our relationship, fucking idiot." You said to yourself and Tom pulled you into him as your tears fell, silently crying.

"You're not an idiot. This is on him, not you. I'm so sorry." Tom said as he held you. "He had no right to do that."

"Is he ever going to leave me alone?" You cried and Tom's heart shattered there and then in his chest. This man had been a tormenter for years, too long and he had been cause for your tears numerous times over your relationship.

"He is. I swear to god this is the last time." Tom promised as he held you tight against him. His phone rang yet again and he huffed out in annoyance as he lifted an arm, reaching for his phone. "Hey, I'll call you back." Tom said into the phone, you didn't hear the response. "No, this is more important, I'll talk to you later." Tom snapped before hanging up the phone and throwing it to one side.

You became a sobbing mess, the world having seen parts of yourself you never wanted them to. You wanted to disappear off the face of earth, how were you supposed to go out in public after this? How were you supposed to face the people you knew? Your mind was racing, thoughts embedding themselves as you thought more about what would happen. You only cried harder as you thought about it.

Tom comforted you through your breakdown, reassuring you that it was going to be okay. He was in complete shock, how could someone do this? He wanted to cry as he held you, his heart was broken for the woman in his arms. He listened as you eventually calmed down, breathing steadying as you pulled away from his chest and wiped your face.

"I'm gonna do something about this, I promise." Tom comforted and he watched as a defeated look spread across your face.

"What does it matter? The world has seen them now." You smiled sadly, realising there was nothing you could do. He'd taken things to a knew level, one you would never hear the end of. "It's my own fault, I never should have sent them." You bit your lip as you tried to hold back more tears.

"No baby, don't do that. Don't blame yourself, it's not your fault." He said as he sat across from you, taking your hands into his own. You couldn't look him in the eye, what if he hated you for this? This was something people could use against him now, what if he was disgusted you ever sent them to him.

"Stop it." Tom said softly, he could see you reeling, see your thoughts consuming you. He always knew, he said you had this look on your face and in your eyes, he knew you like the back of his hand. "Don't, I know what you're thinking and this isn't your fault."

"Look at me," Tom encouraged as he took your chin in his hand and forced your gaze into his own. "I promise this is going to be okay." He comforted and the look in his eyes was so comforting, so safe. No judgement, nothing hiding behind them, he was heart broken for you, you could see that in the tears that were slightly welling in his eyes.

It wasn't that you were against sending pictures to your partner, you and Tom had sent your fair share to each other. But you had learned a valuable lesson, you'd deleted every picture between you and your ex because that was the right thing to do, right? But he hadn't, he'd kept them and it made you uncomfortable as to why? Why would he want to keep those pictures? Why would he release them for the world to see?

"One minute." Tom said as he got off the bed and made his way into the en suite. You heard running water and you knew he was running you a bath, the evidence in the smell of flowers filling the room as he added your favourite bubble bath. He reappeared after a while.

"Come on. I've got some calls to make so you have a bath." He said as he held his hand out for you. Your heart warmed but you sighed as you took his hand and stood up.

"This isn't your mess to clean up Tom, it's mine." You mumbled and Tom shook his head as he tugged you slightly into the bathroom.

"If it affects you, it affects me. I'm gonna do everything I can to protect you. I love you okay? This isn't your fault and I'm gonna put an end to his shit, I've had enough. I'm gonna do something about him." Tom said and you smiled sadly.

"Thank you." You said and Tom smiled as he gestured for you to get into the bath.

"I'll be back in a while. I'm gonna talk to my legal team, see what I can do. You just try and relax and I want you to promise me that you'll stay off social media today." He said and you nodded as he smiled in comfort at you, kissing your forehead as he left the bathroom and made his way downstairs, grabbing his phone and putting some sweats on as he did.

"How is she?" Harrison asked, almost as soon as Tom entered the living room. Tom sighed as he turned to his best friend.

"She's upset. Blames herself for ever sending them." He said and Haz furrowed his brows.

"This is that twats fault. I swear if I ever see him again I'm gonna punch the smug look he always has right off his fucking face." Haz said.

"You'll have to get in line. I could kill him for what he's done." Tom said, he was so upset that you'd been put through this. "I want to fucking cry for her Haz, she's devastated." Tom continued as Tuwaine made his way into the room.

"That man is a fucking dick." He ranted straight away, Harry agreeing as he made his way in. "I can't believe the shit he's pulled." He continued.

"He's was so open about it, posting them onto his personal twitter account." Harry said in disbelief.

"I'm hoping that was his biggest mistake, what I can get him for." Tom said as he scrolled his contacts, pulling up the head of his legal team.

"What's the reaction online?" Haz asked carefully and Tuwaine shook his head.

"Half and half, some people are defending her, some are mocking her, others judging. It's a mess, people wanna know how Tom feels about it, some Y/N. I don't know, I tried not to look too much." Tuwaine sighed and Haz gave a tight nod as he grabbed his phone and vigorously started to type.

Tom left the room as he held the phone to his ear, on the phone with his legal team. Disappearing to talk in private. Harrison finally finished his typing as Tuwiane and Harry's phone pinged, Harrison's tweets coming to their attention.

There are no words for what has happened to my two best friends. What this man has done is disgusting and in no way Y/N's fault, please stop circulating the pictures. They were posted without her consent and she is hurting enough without people mocking her. Leave her alone, leave Tom alone. You will hear from them when they are ready.

Harry and Tuwaine retweeting the tweets before adding their own in support of you. You were close to them all, they were like your brother's.

"Do you think she'll be okay?" Harry asked.

"I don't know. This is just awful, I can't believe this has happened." Tuwaine said and watched as you appeared in the living room, you had your pyjama pants on, one of Tom's hoodies consuming your upper half as you looked sheepishly around the room.

"Y/N, I'm so sorry this has happened." Tuwaine said as he pulled you into his chest, squeezing you in comfort. "It's okay, we're gonna get you through this." He promised and your heart warmed as you hugged him back.

There was a part of you that wondered how much the boys had seen, it made you feel strange around them. What if they'd seen the pictures of your intimate parts?

"I didn't look." Tuwaine said, almost as if he could read your thoughts. "I saw enough to know when to stop scrolling, enough to know what had happened." He reassured as the boys voiced the same.

"Okay, he's gonna do some digging, see how far he can take it. See what he can get him done for." Tom said as he reappeared, you instantly leaving Tuwaine's arms for your boyfriends.

"Is it looking promising? That we can press charges of some sort against him?" Harry asked.

"Yeah, he's just said he'll see if he can take more action. He's already contacted twitter and they're trying to put a stop to the sharing of the pictures. The rest of the sites the same." Tom said as he squeezed you tightly, chin resting on top of your head.

Tom's phone rang again and he pulled it from his pocket, sighing as he watched his publicists name flash across his screen. This was the phone call he was dreading because his PR team didn't give a fuck how you looked, it was all about Tom. This wasn't about him.

"Hello?" Tom said as he answered, he couldn't ignore them forever.

"Tom! Finally!" He heard the shrill screech of her voice and he grimaced as he did. He moved you both to sit on the couch, sitting you on his lap as he cuddled you. "Have you seen the internet?"

"Yeah." Tom said, almost annoyed.

"Y/N needs to put out a statement." She said and Tom huffed, anger building in him.

"Y/N doesn't need to do anything. She will address this if and when she is ready." Tom snapped.

"Tom this will make it look bad for you if neither of you address it. Some people are speculating she's cheated." She replied and your stomach dropped as you overheard her. Tom shifted you onto the couch as he got up, placing a kiss to your lips as he disappeared again. You didn't need to hear any of this.

"I don't give a shit to be honest. She hasn't cheated, these photos where posted without her consent. This isn't about me, this is about her." Tom snapped.

"But Tom, you are Spiderman, your girlfriends nudes have been leaked, pictures of her with another man have leaked." She snapped back and Tom's anger hit breaking point.

"I don't care. I just told you that. I'm not going to force her to do a thing she doesn't want. I don't care that I am Spiderman, what happened to her is wrong and I'm gonna stand by her."

"About that." She said Tom's heart dropped.

"What?"

"We think it might be best if you distanced yourself from her. Make it look like a slight break." His publicist said and Tom's anger hit the roof at the suggestion. His publicist had never been fond of your relationship, they wanted him to date other celebrities, he'd fought them for ages on this front.

"Not happening. This is devastating for her, you really think I'm gonna abandon her? You know what? If anyone thinks negatively about me or her, that's on them because what has happened to her is wrong. How do you think that will look? I can just see the headlines. Tom Holland leaves girlfriend after nudes where leaked without her consent. What sort of a message does that send to people? Did you think about that? Or is this just you taking another opportunity to try and get me seen with someone you approve of?" Tom screamed, the house heard.

"I, I suppose I hadn't thought about that." She stumbled out quietly. Tom pinched the bridge of his nose as he tried to calm himself.

"I don't want to hear anything more about this. I'm going to deal with this my way. This isn't about me, this about her and sticking by her, which I am going to do. Whatever you might say. The fact that you hadn't thought about what I've just said makes clear to me that I can't trust you with this one and maybe I should be looking for someone I can." Tom snapped.

"I'm sorry, I'll leave you be. We'll try and do what we can here." She said and Tom didn't even feel guilty for blowing out on his publicist, the team could be the biggest wankers he'd ever met anyway.

"Tom, you'll get in trouble." You said as he made his way back into the room. He sat down next to you, pulling you into his side as he kissed your head.

"I don't care. This isn't about me, they need to realise that." Tom spoke into your hair. He pulled his phone from his pocket as he typed away, minutes later and everyone's phone had pinged, Tom had posted to Instagram. It was a picture of the two of you, one taken over winter in by the fire.

I'm sure many of you have seen what has happened. I'm devastated someone would do this, these pictures were posted without her consent. This man kept these pictures for over two years and then posted them. I ask that you stop judging and just think for a second how this would make you feel, if it was you in this position. She trusted him enough to send those images and he broke that trust, it's so wrong.

I ask that you stop posting the pictures, they are not yours or mine to post. There is no cheating involved, this man has caused enough distress for Y/N and I will not let it continue. I want you to support her and send love, it's what she deserves. She's my best friend and my lover, I stand by her 100% on this, I will not tolerate any abuse sent her way.

Please understand that she is not ready to address this and if she never is that's okay. She doesn't have to, this isn't her fault and she has nothing to apologise for. I love her and I hope to see your continued support of her, much love Tom x

He switched his phone off as he looked at you, he wanted nothing more than to make this go away for you, he wanted to hide you from the world, keep you safe. He had to swallow his tears again, heart aching from what this man has done to you, he couldn't stop himself pulling you tighter against him as he tried to keep his tears at bay..

"It's gonna be okay, I promise. I love you." He said into your hair as you wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled yourself to straddle him. You pulled each other impossibly closer and the boys smiled at the interaction, no matter what was going on the world, the two had each other. They had each other's backs and it was heart warming to see, to know they had all the support they would ever need in each other.

[bubblyhoney]

win for me

warnings: lAnGuAgE, alcohol consumption (both reader and all other characters are of age to drink), marijuana use, Making Out™️, a miniscule Flowers from 1970 reference. PSA: WHEN UR INTOXICATED AND/OR AT A PARTY, TELL UR FRIENDS WHO YOU WILL BE WITH AND WHERE YOU WILL BE AT ALL TIMES. DRINK AND PARTY SAFELY!

tags: sapnap x fem!reader

summary: a collection of moments throughout the beginning of your relationship

words: 5000

A/N: even though this isn’t my most organized or perfect fic this was so incredibly fun to write. and it’s a college!au!! one of my favs. hope you guys like!! let's pretend the pandemic doesn't exist for this one too (please wear ur masks btw)

-

Sophomore Year:

Smells like shit in here is your first thought upon entering the laundromat.

It does, in all honesty. What would you expect a place where college students wash three months of dirty clothes and comforters with vomit to smell like? Urine and just a hint of marijuana, incidentally. The door closes noisily behind you and a guy in a black baseball hat turns his head at the noise. Half of his face is hidden underneath the shadow of his scruff and he says nothing, but you still offer an obligatory polite-stranger smile. The place is pretty deserted, what for it being nearly 4 in the morning. And you’re a rare kind of customer; only a few things to wash and you brought your own detergent.

There’s an empty washer next to an old woman in an acid-trip of a parka, and you sweep past the few other patrons with your mesh bag close. The man in the hat nods at you as you pass, looking up from his phone.

Okay. Dark load in one and delicates in the other, you remind yourself. The quarters get pushed through the slot (not without dropping three and having to scramble to pick them up before they disappear between the machines) and you fill the dispensers with a flowery laundry detergent your roommates hates. Oh, and the clothes go in. Done. You relax into a cracked plastic booth around the corner of the machine, pulling a book of crosswords from your bag.

Somebody yelps halfway through filling out a five letter word (“a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep”) and you jump. Baseball Cap rips open the dryer, fumbling around and supplying a pair of gray sweatpants. You can’t help but watch. He digs through both front pockets, pulling out a wad of dollar bills. He sighs, shoves the pants back into the dryer, and starts it with a hard push.

“Gut feeling?” You ask. He looks around for a second and settles his gaze upon you. Nice eyebrows, you think.

“Yeah,” he laughs, slightly nervous. “Yeah. I wore them yesterday and just remembered I put some tip money in my pocket.” Leaning back onto the shelf behind him, he shoves his phone into his pocket and folds his arms tight to his chest.

“I feel you,” you empathize, and set down your pencil. “I washed a parking ticket with my underwear last week.”

He stutters out a laugh, nodding.

“That must’ve sucked,” he adds.

“Yeah.” You shrug. “I wasn’t going to pay it anyways, but would’ve been nice to keep it for memory’s sake.” Rubbing at your knee offhandedly, you just watch him. He’s cute. And easy to make conversation with.

“Hey, um,” he mutters and clears his throat. “Do you by chance know some guy named Karl? Tall, messy brown hair and a horrible laugh?”

You open your mouth, then close it.

“Actually—,” you start but huff out a laugh. “Yeah, he’s uh, he’s dating my roommate. Why’d you ask?”

Reaching a hand to rub at his neck, his face twists into something sheepish.

“I’ve seen you at some parties this semester. I didn’t mean to sound creepy like that— I just—yeah.” His cheeks flush pink and he looks down to the ground.

“No worries,” you say, barely even thinking. “I think I’ve seen you too. You’re in Delta Tau Delta, right?”

“Nah, nah,” he laughs. “Just got some friends in there.”

“Ah.” You nod.

The conversation falls into silence, but not uncomfortable silence. He pulls out his phone again, and you look back to the crossword in front of you. The old woman between you leaves with a humongous load of blankets and a small family leaves with a cart full of bags; now it’s just you two.

When the washer with your delicates ding you nearly jump two feet in the air. Exhaling, you set your work down and open the door.

“Shit,” you curse as two bras fall onto the tile. You reach down to get a hand on a black lace bra and hide it quickly under your elbow. A sneaker squeaks loud in the almost-empty room and you see Baseball Cap’s shoulders.

“Here.” He’s kneeling as he hands you your pink bra and you accept it, biting your lower lip.

“Thanks,” you mumbles, slightly embarrassed, and step back to shove those bras and a couple pairs of your underwear into your bag. He offers you a small smile and backs off to his own machines, humming an off-key version of Unchained Melody to himself. Your other load of laundry gets shoved right on top of your delicates.

It’s when you’re nearly out the door, bell jingling, that you think to look back.

“Hey,” you start, almost stuttering for no reason. “What’s your name?”

He turns, dark eyebrows raised.

“My—uh… My friends call me Sapnap. You can call me that too.” Rosy cheeks once again; you seem to be making him awfully nervous.

“Sapnap.” You try it in your mouth, pursing your lips. “Okay. I’ll see you around Sapnap.”

He nods, affirming your statement.

“See you around Y/N.”

It doesn’t hit you until you’re buckling your seatbelt and starting your car that you realize you didn’t tell him your name.

Perhaps he knew more about you than you thought.

Yeah, you laugh to yourself. Karl’s got a big mouth.

Junior Year:

It takes you a collective twelve minutes to go talk to him.

It’s quiet in the library, students that happen to come here to study or procrastinate few and far between the scattered tables. Your poison today is a 4 page history paper on Normandy that you’d been staring at the instructions for for days. You’d already written a bunch of, frankly, horseshit for the body, but the introduction and conclusion were throwing you for a loop.

The vibes in Ridgeback Hall were also certainly off, today more than any other day; the main help-desk was empty and everybody had to do the tedious task of locating niche textbooks themselves.

Lifting your head from the wood of the table, you squint and focus your vision on the guy in the white tee and denim jacket that had been the focus of your thoughts for minutes. He chews at the end of his pencil, mouth screwed up into a ball, and shoots daggers at the empty notebook in front of him. You’re surprised it hasn’t caught on fire yet just from his gaze.

“Sapnap!” You whisper-shout, stretching your arms across the table as if it would make him any closer. A person with purple hair jumps at your voice but turns back to their laptop. “Sapnap!” you try again, tapping two fingers on the table. His head jerks up, eyebrows furrowed and an angry expression on his face, but softens at the sight of you.

“Y/N,” he counters, equally as loud but with a smile on his face.

“What’re you doing?”

“Calculus.” He sticks his tongue out, making an awfully tortured face. You laugh and wave your fingers at him, gesturing for him to come closer. He just huffs out a sigh, stacks all his papers in one pile, and gets up. The trek over to your table is short but he takes it so slowly you wonder if he always walks like that. Like a varsity basketball player who just got off a horse.

“You’re so slow.”

“Shut up,” he grumbles and settles into a chair across from you. “It’s 2 pm, give me a break. I need a Redbull.”

“Those are bad for you, you know,” you say matter-of-factly and drop your chin onto your hand. He’s even cuter from this angle, you think briefly. He just rolls his eyes.

“Whatever, Miss I’d-like-some-coffee-with-my-sugar-and-cream,” he teases, pointing to your venti iced coffee. It’s about as pale as the color of a band-aid. You just sigh and close your eyes. “You tired?” He flips his pencil in his hand and leans back into the seat, sighing.

“Yeah,” you mumble. “I haven’t slept yet today.”

“Wow, you’re dumb.” He looks scandalized. You just shrug.

“Perhaps. I don’t really know why I did it actually— just for funzies!” You raise an arm but let it drop back down. “I stayed up playing Sims.”

“Feel that. I play Minecraft with my buddies until like 2 am every night too. It’s nice,” he decides and folds his arms across his chest. Your eyes flit over to his strong arms, admiring the way his denim shirt looks around them. Thick.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“What?” He says too loudly and it warrants a ‘shush’ from another student. He reddens, but looks back down to you. “I—why do you ask?” You shrug, eyebrows raised.

“Just wondering. You’re too cute to not have one.”

“Right,” he huffs, but his cheeks stay pink. You two fall into easy silence, his eyes trained on the notebook in front of him and yours closed peacefully. “Are you dating anyone?”

They snap open not-so-peacefully.

“Nope. You wanna submit a boyfriend application?” A smile cracks your lips and he grins back.

“Maybe,” he replies and stares at your mouth. “I have to say—,” He stretches into a yawn. “I think I’m qualified.”

“Oh, yeah?” Your eyebrow quirks. “And why are you so qualified?”

“Well, first of all, I work at Ace Hardware. That’s where cool people work.” He presses one finger into his palm. Then two. “And I have a bunch of free time because said job at Ace Hardware only likes scheduling me in the mornings. Plus, I’m hot.” He shrugs.

You nod faux-seriously, considering his list.

“Those are very good qualities, sir. I’ll have to get back to you on that.” You pause. “Okay, I’ll schedule an interview. How’s 7 pm at the Chili’s on Main? Chili’s is the designated interview place.” You wiggle your eyebrows. He just smiles at you, shaking his head in disbelief.

“That was smooth.”

“Yeah, I know.” You carefully study your nails. “I’m pretty impressive.”

“Clearly,” he mutters and chuckles. “But I do like their salsa. And margaritas. We got a deal?” He holds out a large hand. You take it, squeezing tightly.

“Hell yes.”

When you see the man called Sapnap a week later, you are very obviously in a different state of mind.

Same state, same college town, but very different blood alcohol contents.

“Sappy!” You shout, raising your arms above your head with a stupid grin on your face. He turns, that familiar look of surprise evident in his expression.

“Y/N,” he laughs and approaches your group of friends in the kitchen. It’s Greek Wedding night at Delta Tau Delta, and you assume Sapnap came to support Delta’s “groom” Alex. You’d gotten uncharacteristically drunk, trading air for sangria, and you were now in the incredible stage where everyone was both your friend and your favorite person.

Throwing an arm around his shoulders, you mash your face into his bicep and giggle.

“Missed you so much,” you try to manage out of your mouth, but it comes out slurred and stuttered. “So much.” You’d gone to Chili’s two days before and promised another ‘interview’ in the next few days, but it felt like two months away from your beloved. Beloved friend, that is. Only one date.

“Yeah?” He places a hesitant hand on your back and nudges you into a standing position. “How much have you had to drink?”

“Oh, shhhh,” you mumble and close your eyes. “Only— a lot.” Blinking them back open, you zero your gaze in on a bottle of Ciroc half-empty and looking very tempting on the kitchen island across from where you’re leaned up against the kitchen sink. He catches your gaze and steps in front of you, pleasant face filling your vision. You gasp.

“You are so cute.” Sliding your palms up onto his face, you hold his scruffy cheeks in your hands and smile all dopey at him.

“Is that your brain or the alcohol telling you that?”

“Uh,” you swallow. “Both. And my heart.”

He just shakes his head and his chest moves with a heavy laugh.

“Glad to hear it.”

“Are you having fun?” You ask, all concerned and furrowed eyebrows. You look like you’re genuinely interested and worried about if he’s having a good time or not, and it makes his expression melt.

“I’m having lots of fun,” he passes over his shoulder as he flips on the tap and fills a red solo cup with water. “In fact, I’m gonna have a nice, cold glass of water right now.” He shakes it like an owner offering their dog a treat.

You eye the cup in his hand, having half a thought that this might be some sort of backwards psychology move. The other half wins.

“That sounds so good right now— can I drink some?” Your eyebrows pull together and your bottom lip drops into a pout. It makes him blink for a second. He remembers the little game you’re playing and just hands it over, smug. You gulp it down quickly and crush the empty plastic into your palm with an exaggerated exhale. “Hit the spot,” you sigh, and pat your stomach fondly.

“You hungry?” Sapnap asks you as he steadies you with two hands on your shoulders. Something pops into your head at his words: a set of two McChickens and an Oreo milkshake.

“Oh my God,” you gasp, and mirror him by placing your hands on his shoulders. “Can we go to McDonald’s?”

He just shakes his head, grin wide on his lips, and shrugs. Perfect teeth, you think.

“I haven’t drank anything, so I’m good to drive.” He pulls his keys from his pocket. “I know you’re smashed right now so—do you feel safe with me?” The question falls from his mouth and you truly consider it, pulling your lip between your teeth.

“Yeah. I’ll take this just in case,” you say, and take a large dinner fork from the counter next to you. It has some red liquid on it that you brush off onto the fabric of your jeans.

“That’s actually gross.”

“Yeah.” You grip it tighter in your head. “But it’ll do the job if you try any shit. I’ll put this in your eyeball.” Brandishing it, a smile stretches onto your mouth. He just shakes his head and heads for the back door, jerking a hand in your direction to get you to follow him.

The cool night air explodes on your face when you step onto the porch and it makes you blink rapidly. Sapnap is right at your side, offering a forearm as you slowly make your way down the two back porch steps. A tall blonde smoking half of a blunt makes a grunt noise as you two pass and your knight-in-shining armor looks up.

“Gonna go get some food. Want anything?” Sapnap stops on the rocky path to the sidewalk, tilted up to hear the blonde’s response. The other guy shakes his head but nods to you in passing.

“I’ll tell her friends where she went,” says the blonde, and disappears through the sliding glass doors.

Your hand falls from his forearm to his hand and grasps it tightly, swinging back and forth as you stumble to his car. You flash him a grin that he just chuckles at.

“Watch your step,” he warns as you yank on the handle of the passenger door and nearly fall off of the curb.

“I’m fine,” you huff, and scramble to get yourself upright into the seat and buckled. He closes your door and jogs to the driver’s seat, climbing in and starting the engine quicker than your head comprehends.

The small space fills with the sound of Letters to Cleo as he’s maneuvering out of his parking spot and he slaps a hand at the stereo button almost immediately. His cheeks redden as he glances at you once.

“I love Letters to Cleo,” you admit, and switch it back on. Ah, Co-Pilot. A classic. “Be my co-pilot!” You sing, loud and sharp. He shakes his head but huffs out a reluctant laugh.

“My older sister loved them. Bit old for my taste, but—you know. Can’t deny that I love a little bit of 90’s angst.”

“Absolutely,” you nod vigorously and pick at your nail. “Oh!” The fork magically reappears at your side and you grab at it. “For my McChickens.”

“And for me,” he adds.

“Yup. You too.” But you drop it onto the seat and lean forward, fumbling with the volume dial until you feel the lead singer’s voice thumping into your heart. “I love this lady!” You shout and rock your head to the beat.

Shaking his head, his shoulders move in an easy laugh. The drive-thru line is kind of busy for 2 am, he notes, pulling in right behind a navy BMW sedan. But it moves quickly, especially when you’re moving in your seat, scream-singing the lyrics to I Want You To Want Me.

“Yeah,” he says, loud into the mic. “Two.”

“Alright.” The voice reports from the speaker, a background clicking joining their bored tone. “Two McChickens, a double cheeseburger—ketchup and pickle only— , a medium fry, and an Oreo McFlurry. Anything else, sir?”

Sapnap chews on his lip, and glances at you. You just give an encouraging thumbs up.

“That’ll be all,” he reports.

“Second window, and your total is $9.67.”

He barely has time to call a “thank you so much!” before the line ends with a click. Rude.

“Jesus Christ,” you moan the second you sink your teeth into your first sandwich.

“Agreed,” he mumbles and pushes as much cheeseburger he can fit into his mouth.

“This,” you start, swallowing. “is the sexiest thing I’ve encountered in all of my years. I thank all higher powers when I consume McChickens…” Trailing off for dramatic effect, you stare down the sandwich before mimicking a dinosaur war cry and practically shoving it down your throat. He just nods in agreement.

“It’s so nice out tonight,” Sapnap comments, swinging a look out his rolled-down window. He parked right in front of the Campus Quad, large bubbling fountain the show to your dinner. And some geese fighting each other for half a rotting hot dog.

“Mhm.” You crumple up your wrapper trash and toss it into the empty paper bag. “Could totally go for a swim.”

He turns and gives you a look. You look right back.

“Should we?” It’s barely a question.

“Um, hell yes,” is all it takes for you to say before you’re clambering out of the car and starting for the fountain. He follows closely after, jogging to catch up with your borderline track-star sprints.

“Wait up!” He calls as you reach the border of the fountain.

“Ugh,” you sigh, impatient. “Hurry up.”

“Mouthy,” he grumbles before kicking off his shoes and bending to fold his pants up over his knees. You just climb straight in and brave the cold.

Squealing, you hop from one foot to the other, shoulders tight as you get used to the freezing water. He laughs and climbs in right beside you.

“Shit,” he curses, and shivers. “This sucks.”

“You suck,” you quip right back and splash around. He stares, disgusted, at the water soaking up your jeans all the way up to your knees.

“You’re gross for wearing jeans in a fountain. That’s worse than wet socks.” He starts to move around as feeling comes back into his toes.

“What, would you prefer me taking my pants off?” A sassy look paints your face and he rolls his eyes.

“No, but you could’ve folded them up like a normal person.”

“I think you forget,” you start, and splash a palmful of water his way. “I’m quirky.”

He gasps, face twisting as the water hits his thighs.

“You’re dead.”

If campus police were patrolling the Quad right now, they’d see two college juniors wading around in a fountain, water up to their knees, having a competition to see who can inflict the most damage. He won, it seems, because your shirt is drenched all the way up to your ribs.

“Okay!” You shout, hands spread to brace yourself. The water in his palm falls. “I’m cold and I want my other McChicken.”

“Fine,” he sighs, and with some difficulty manages to get out of the fountain and back into his shoes. You just make your way back over to his car barefoot, braving the mulch and poorly-sanded concrete.

You both finish your food quickly, discussing menial things like how fast food restaurants always skimp on the pickles and how it’s truly a disservice to the world that so many people don’t know it’s Biggie singing the song Kat dances on the table to in the 1999 classic 10 Things I Hate About You.

When Sapnap pulls up to your house, he shifts the car into park and lets loose a heavy sigh. You whip around, hand on your buckle, and sport a very confused look on your face.

“I’m tired,” is all he says. Head falling onto the seat, he rolls over to give you a half-lidded look. You nod empathetically and climb very carefully out of his passenger seat. Your drunk muscles haven't caught up to your mainly sober brain, which is impairing your ability to look like a functioning human being.

“Thank you for tonight,” you chirp, smiling in at him with your arms folded on the open window sill. The half-drank Oreo McFlurry is lukewarm in your hand. He stares at your flushed lips.

“Anytime you want a drunk McChicken let me know.” He winks. “I have a gift card.”

“You spoil me,” you coo, and step up onto the sidewalk. “I’ll see you sometime soon, yeah?”

He nods, pursed lips fighting a grin.

Cute, you both think at the same time.

Sometime soon, somehow, means the very next day.

It’s breezy yet uncharacteristically hot out, and certainly way too bright for a hungover Y/N.

You’re sat on the porch swing, nursing a hot decaf coffee with lots of sugar and cream. Sunglasses sit comfortably on your nose, but you still have to squint. The pills you took have yet to kick in, so all you have to do is wait and try not to vomit into your mug. Suddenly, your phone lights up and buzzes to life. You press the green button and lift to your ear.

“What do you want?” Your voice is awfully froggy, you realize, and clear your throat.

“Good morning to you too.” Sapnap’s voice rings clear yet husky into your ear. The corners of your lips twitch up into a smile. God, you’re whipped just for the sound of his voice.

“It is definitely not a good morning,” you grumble and switch him into speaker phone. You drop the phone into your lap and stretch out further on the swing.

“Good morning for me,” he chirps cheerfully. “Take anything for the headache?”

“Yes,” you report, sounding like a pouting child and rubbing two fingers into your temple. “Some idiot fed me ice cream last night so this morning I woke up having to both shit and throw up.”

“Aww,” he sympathizes, sounding way too entertained. “That sounds like a you problem.” You stuck out your tongue, but upon realizing he can’t see it, make a ‘hmph’ noise into the mic. “Anyways. I called to see if you wanted to go get breakfast with me. Waffle House, specifically.” You make a face but lift yourself up off the swing, wincing.

“I saw a rat eat an entire piece of french toast there once. But—sure. I’ll pay.” He starts to whine, but you scoff. “Let me love you, bitch. You pay for my McDonald’s and I pay for your pancakes. Easy trade.”

“Whatever. See you in five.” He hangs up right as you twist the front door open and drop your phone onto the couch.

“Who’re you talking to?” comes from the kitchen and you jump, pressing a hand to your chest. A shirtless Karl enters the living room with a bowl of fruit loops in his hand.

“Jesus Christ,” you breathe, and duck into the hall closet for your pair of dirty tennis shoes. “I was talking to Sapnap.”

“Oh,” he says around his mouthful of cereal with a grin. “You guys dating yet?”

You pass him a weird look, bending to tie your shoes.

“Gimme like two weeks. I’ll have him at my beck and call,” you laugh and collapse back into the couch.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” He quirks an eyebrow and exits stage left into your roommate’s room.

The few minutes it takes for Sapnap to come to your house are short but filled with contemplation. Do you really want to date him? He’s certainly cute enough. Nice enough. And smart enough. He seems to like you too—

A honk interrupts your thoughts. Always having to be obnoxious, huh?

“You’re annoying,” you mumble as you buckle your seatbelt. He just shrugs, tiny smile tugging his lips, and shifts into drive. The short trip to Waffle House proves more quiet than lively. He seems awake, actually, so you attribute the silence to your tumultuous thoughts. The music is nice, though. Bikini Kill is perfect for 10 am.

After you two order (three chocolate chip pancakes for him and two regular waffles with a side of hashbrowns for you), he finally breaks the silence.

“Hey, are we dating?”

You pause with your lip on the rim of your orange juice. Your gaze falls from his lips to his fingers wrapped around the coffee mug. Two silver rings adorn both his middle fingers and they glint underneath the fluorescent lights.

“Do you wanna?” You squint back up at him. The tips of his ears flush pink.

“I-uh… Yeah. Yes,” he says simply. You try to hide a smile, but realize there’s no point.

“Okay.” You take a long drink of your orange juice. “I really like you. A lot. A surprising amount, actually; I haven’t really dated seriously since highschool.”

He nods, shuffling his feet on the tile. What else does he have to be nervous about? you wonder.

“I’ve… kindasortamaybelikedyousincesophmoreyear,” he mumbles and you swallow.

“Huh?” Leaning forward, you set your glass down.

“Um,” he starts but doesn’t finish.

“Did you say you’ve liked me since sophomore year?”

“...Maybe.” His coffee becomes the most interesting thing in the world, apparently. “Do you remember that one time during the Summer Carnival where Karl lost his phone?”

“Uh—yes! Yeah, actually. I do remember that. He found it in the porta-potty. What about it?” The waitress sets down both your plates in front of you and you offer her a smile in thanks before she trundles off to the drink station. You pick up your fork and wait for him to continue.

“I left two hours early because you invited Michael from your computer science class.” You pause around your mouthful of potato and he just stares back, trying not to grin. “Yeah. I thought you were hot and left early because you brought another guy.”

“Michael is gay,” you say slowly.

“Yup.” He nods and shoves a forkful of pancake into his mouth. “Isn’t that so stupid?”

“So stupid,” you tease but your cheeks blush pink.

“Anyways. Now I’m dating you, so. Win for me.”

“Ditto,” you murmur, and manage to fit half of your first waffle into your mouth. “This is the easiest it’s ever been to start dating someone.”

“It’s ‘cause we’re cool, I’m pretty sure,” comes from a mouthful of pancake.

“That’s facts.”

The rest of Pancake House is bustling, a few families with young kids and some other hungover college students scarfing down similar breakfast foods and confections. You two barely give any other customers the time of day, too wrapped up in conversation and each other. The waitress gets a heavy tip after an hour and a half of struggling to swallow dough soaked in syrup and chocolate.

Sapnap walks you to your door after breakfast, hand on your waist and pressed to your side. It feels good. Right.

“I’ll see you Wednesday right?” You ask, turning to him with hopeful eyes. How could he resist?

“Definitely. Wouldn’t miss Game Night for the world— I can’t wait to beat your ass at Uno.”

“You’re insufferable, you know that?” You murmur but you’re already slinging an arm around his shoulder and bringing his mouth down to yours.

You taste like sugar, he thinks. His hands find the small of your back easily, pressing you further forward into him. You hum at that, tracking a hand up the back of his neck and into his hair to grip it between your fingers.

He smells both musky and sweet and cool at the same time: heaven. One of his hands slides up to grip at your neck, thumb rubbing at your jaw, and you make a pleased noise into his mouth. There it is.

“Y/N!” Shrieks from inside your house and you jump, pulling away from Sapnap with a smack.

“What?” You yell back, irritated, and he just laughs as he dips to press a kiss to your cheek.

“Stop tonguing your boyfriend and come help me with my photography project.”

“God damn it,” you sigh and drop your hands. His slide down to just rest on your hips, comfortable. “I have to go.” You're annoyed, that’s for sure, and he prays you aren’t too mean to your roommate.

“Alright.” He dips for a quick kiss one last time. Okay, two more times. Maybe three. But he pulls away, grinning. “I’ll see you Wednesday.”

And then he’s stepping off your porch, walking to his car with his hands in his pockets. You watch his back fondly.

God, boyfriend. He’s your boyfriend. Boynap. Sapfriend. You can’t decide on a name, but all sounds perfect.

Perfectly him.

-

A/N: ask or send me some stuff!! requests, rants, anything. :D comments = welcome!

[bcdwhcre]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CM7CwRZivBM/?igshid=1soaxz00n5171 I CAN GET THE LEVI PART OF THIS REEL OUT OF MY HEAD OH MY GOD. Just imagine the reader being part of Levi's squad, and she's talented but think Levi's condescending towards people, especially to her. The others say she's just imagining it and that the captain is always like that but the reader's always getting into spats with him. "I seriously don't like the position of of being his metaphorical punching bag." he hears her say one day and Levi has enough. As soon as she's free, Levi calls her to his office and they talk. Things escalate in another fight and before she knows it, Levi has her pinned against the wall "Do you like this position?" he says as he kisses her, her neck, her cheeks. As they move towards his desk or bed, he keeps repeating "Do you like this position?" He'll teach her a thing or two, if you catch my drift👀😶. How you end it is up to you! And if you don't want to write it, that's okay!

“Positions,” Levi x Reader

Summary: (bro idk how to summarize this pls.) always bickering with your Captain because you don’t like the way he belittles you and it turns into a bigger argument.

Warnings: Smut!!! towards the end.

Levi x Fem!Reader

.

.

.

It had been a rough few weeks for the Scouts after finding out about Reiner and Bertholdt and not being able to catch them in time and after coming back from the expedition where the scouts tried to capture them again, leading in many deaths including the Commander, it made things incredibly worse.

It had been two weeks since that incident and everyday since Levi did not take it easy on his cadets and you had felt personally attacked and picked on everyday from him during training or during exercises.

At first it was small, he would tell you to try harder or do a little more. He would claim you were acting lazy, not meeting his standards and that made you catch an attitude with him because you felt like you were doing more than enough.

You were always grateful and appreciative to be under Levi considering how strong and talented he was, you actually learned a lot from him and everyone had known you as “Levi’s Mini” but that didn’t stop him from pushing you harder.

Many times it had led to you bickering with him, which ended up with you cleaning or doing rough work outs around the base to satisfy his needs on teaching you a lesson but you never learned, you continued having arguments with him from left to right.

One day you had been more stressed than usual and Levi picking on you and pushing you during the early morning training session had irritated you way more than it should have and during lunch, you started to rant to your friends at the table.

“Levi is doing this shit on purpose, last week I was cleaning horse shit for days just because I didn’t meet his standards.” You groaned, taking a bite out of your food and they just nodded their heads.

“Well, you did start an argument with him.” Armin said, making you shoot him a glare and he grew quiet as he ate his food.

“I think he just personally hates me, he doesn’t do anything to you guys.” The weight of getting picked out of all the cadets had crushed down on you heavily, almost suffocating you.

“You’re just imagining it, he picks on all of us.” Eren rolled his eyes, bringing up the times Levi has easily beaten him down and kicked him in the face.

“No, I’m not just imagining it.”

It started to grow quiet again, the sounds of chewing and forks hitting the glass plates as all the scouts had eaten their food and after they were done, they stay seated at the table to talk some more before they had to go do what was assigned to them around the base.

Levi was walking down the hallway, about to walk pass the door to the mess hall until he had heard your voice say his name a few times. It caused his curiosity to make him freeze in place and try to listen to the conversation as you rambled and vented about how he was only bullying you out of everyone.

He had rolled his eyes at you throwing a fit over something you had started. You were always the one to talk back to Levi first and start the arguments and he felt the need to put you in your place to know who was superior- it was him.

“I seriously don’t like the position of being his metaphorical punching bag.” You said loud enough that he heard it through the door and it caused his eyebrows to raise in amusement.

“You’re overthinking it, Y/N.” Armin spoke again, making you huff out a breath and continue on about how you weren’t dreaming or overthinking it.

Soon enough the day had went on as it always did. You went around to do was assigned to you including stupid cleaning chores that Levi always insisted that you should do and it only aggravated you more than before.

He had watched you almost all day, making sure you weren’t having another fit but also to wait until you had some time to come to his office and talk to him about your tantrum you threw in the mess hall. Your words had replayed in his mind repeatedly and he was growing impatient.

So Levi had went outside to where you were finishing up, making a dramatic huff leave your lips when you saw him- automatically assuming he was going to rain hell and assign you more pointless things to do.

“I need to speak to you in my office.” He said plainly, making you fully stop and glance over at him before simply nodding your head.

You didn’t want to say anything or start up another argument, you would honestly hate to do so especially when you were in too much heat already from arguing with him the other day so doing it again would only make matters worse.

After you had followed him down to his office and closed the door behind you, his cold stare had burned right through you which made you a bit uneasy inside, afraid what he has plotting inside of his head.

“Honestly, Y/N, I’m getting real sick and tired of your shit.” He wasted no time to say to your face, making you furrow your eyebrows in confusion.

“What the hell did I do this time to have you hate me?” The tone in his voice had already struck a nerve, instantly making you angry.

“You stomp in here and act like you run things when you’re nothing but a cadet. You need to watch that filthy mouth of yours before I tell you to pack your shit and leave.” He practically spat in your face, his words were harsh and brutal but nothing you’ve heard from him before.

“You pick on me every single day and torture me while the others get to do what they want. How the fuck is that fair?”

The bickering between you two had gone back and forth for minutes, the two of you shooting daggers at each other through words and it only made things heat up in seconds. Both of you were fed up with each other and it was evident that Levi wanted to kick you down on the floor and remind you who is the Captain and who is the Cadet in the situation.

He never grew so frustrated over a cadet before, he’s taught plenty of people and had plenty under his team but you were something else. He looked at you as some spoiled brat who thinks they can get want they want in a blink of an eye.

He sighed under his breath, bringing up his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose and soon stood from his seat. You stood across the office, angry and upset again over something so small and stupid- just because your Captain felt the need to remind you of your position.

But this time Levi had enough of your attitude and your bickering and complaining, it was tiring to hear it every single day over the smallest things and it was clear that cleaning and doing harsh exercises wasn’t going to teach you a lesson you needed to be taught.

He had walked over to where you stood, the both of you the same height so it was easy for him to look straight ahead at you and stare right through you, making you grow uneasy again but on the outside you kept that cold look like he does.

He was quick to shove you against the wall behind you, his hand grabbing a hold of your chin and keeping you in place as a soft unexpected gasp left your lips from the impact. You were a bit stunned for a second, your wide eyes staring into his dark ones and a small smirk had appeared on his face.

“Do you like this position instead?” He mumbled, referring to what you had said earlier in the mess hall and it made you realize he had heard your pointless rant.

He didn’t wait for you to answer his question, instead he smashed his lips on yours. The kiss was rough at first, Levi wanting to show dominance and teach you a lesson or two about talking back and bickering with him constantly.

When you tried to move your hands up to wrap around his neck, his hands were quick to grab yours and pin them against the wall above your head. He wasn’t going to let things slide so easily and let you do what you want in this specific situation, not on his watch.

“Or do you like this position?” His words were muffled against your swollen lips, almost whining in his mouth as he practically devoured you.

He was still pissed off at you, he was mad to the point where he knew after this- you probably wouldn’t be able to do chores or training tomorrow. Eventually he had pulled back from your mouth, licking his own lips and yanking you off the wall while remaining a tight grip on your wrists.

His feet had moved, pulling you with him all the way to his desk and threw stuff off to bend you over it, pressing the side of your face down on the hard wood. He was over taking it easy on you and over trying to reason with your sour attitude everyday. A simple few kicks to the face worked for Eren yet with you, no matter what happens, you always continue to fight with him.

He had looked over at the uniform that you wore, grabbing the waistband of your pants and tugging them down in an instant, letting it pool around your ankles for the time being as he kept one hand holding your wrists behind your back and the other hand hovering over your ass.

“Or do you like this position, brat?” He said quietly, his eyes shooting down and looking at yours as your face began to get flustered.

“Levi,” You had started to say but once his name had slipped out of your mouth, he instantly raised his hand and brought it down on your bare skin, making your body jolt against the desk.

“Try again.”

“Captain.” You barely managed to stutter out, your skin burning from the impact but he was rubbing his hand over it, soothing it over.

You were stunned at what was happening inside of his office right now. Just a moment ago you two were arguing and just an hour ago you two hated each other and you were stuck doing chores because you had talked back to him and now you were bent over his desk.

You weren’t really complaining but it was hard to wrap your head around it when you two have always bickered and fought with one another over the smallest things.

Levi’s sudden actions of pulling you up off the desk and forcing you to face him, his hand grabbing your chin and forced you to connect eyes with him as a small smirk appeared on his face at how red and flustered yours was.

He didn’t even say a word, instead he reached up to undo the tie around his neck and removed it, his eyes never leaving yours and soon enough he was ripping your uniform off your body until you were bare and naked in front of his eyes.

“All that crap you were talking earlier today about how I put you in a position of being my personal punching bag and now...” He trailed off, the snarky attitude in his voice as his hands grabbed yours and tied them behind your back with his tie.

“I’m actually going to put you in a position where you’ll be my punching bag all night long and we’ll see how long you last, hm?” He had tried to not chuckle or laugh but he couldn’t help the fact that he wanted to.

You didn’t even bother to say a word to him, you stayed quiet as he tied your wrists together and turned you back around and bent over his desk in front of him. He had hummed to himself at the sight of you, something he had been imagining to himself for quite some time.

Levi had licked his lips again, spreading your legs apart with his leg and looked down at the hand print that was clearly visible on your skin from a moment ago and it had made him raise his hand to lay down another smack to your already sensitive skin. You had jolted forward again, a yelp slipping out.

He groaned under his breath, trying to hold himself back from taking you the way he wanted to right now. He wanted to take his time with you and teach you a lesson with the smart attitude you always have but the way you looked, you being completely submissive and weak before him, it made him grow weak himself.

He yanked your body up by the tie around your wrists and tugged you towards his bedroom that was connected to his office, kicking the door shut behind him and pushing you down on the bed on your back. He had adjusted the tie to move your arms above your head and tied to the headboard.

“How about this? Do you like this position?” He mumbled, his lips trailing sloppy kisses from your jawline down to your neck.

His movements had made you squirm beneath his body and soft breaths had left your lips, feeling yourself grow more impatient every minute that passes but Levi didn’t mind taking all night to prove his point to you, everything goes his way.

His fingers had brushed along your bare skin, dragging all the way down to your thigh before he firmly grabbed onto it and squeezed it all while his teeth were biting your neck, leaving multiple bite marks and bruises on your soft skin.

It was slowly starting to get unbearable to handle, the more time passed, the more impatient you got and tried to move your body as close to his as possible even if your wrists were tied up. He noticed your desperate attempts for more of his touch and it had made his big ego grow more, knowing what he was doing to you was going the way he wanted it to.

“Whats wrong? You want more, brat?” He taunted you, teasing you with a big smirk on his lips and you groaned under your breath, your eyes moving away from his but he was quick to grab your chin and force you to look up at him.

“Tell me, do you deserve to be touched after everything you’ve done the last few weeks? Do you deserve to be fucked like a good girl?” His voice was low and quiet but it was clear enough to hear every word he had said.

Slowly, you begin to nod your head, trying to move your hands but realizing they were still tied together and that only frustrated you more but he was set on making you learn and set on torturing you for testing his patience everyday.

“I’ll do anything.” You mumbled, making his eyebrows raise in amusement and curiosity at the same time.

“Anything? Like what, hm?” He was intrigued to hear any offers you had plotted inside your head but honestly, you had none- you just wanted the teasing to be over with.

It grew quiet again, you didn’t know what to say next and he had caught on to what you were trying to do. His hand had let go of your chin, trailing back down your naked body until he had decided to dip his hand between your legs and get a feel for himself, wanting to see just how bad you wanted it, just how far you can go.

It wasn’t long till his rough fingers were rubbing soft circles on your clit, his eyes burning into yours while his tongue had brushed over his dry lips. He could feel just how desperate you were and how badly you wanted to be touched down there, it fueled something inside of him to take it further but he wanted to test your limits.

You had roughly tugged at the tie that was around yours wrists, the headboard creaking in the process and he started to chuckle under his breath, pressing his fingers against you more firmly, making sure you felt every little touch. You had tried to pry your legs shut, that only made Levi push them back open as he settled between them.

“I want to hear you beg or else I could do this all night, pleasuring you to the brink of cumming and pulling away till you’re in tears.” You couldn’t believe just how casual and soft his voice was, the amused look on his face had turned into a more serious one.

A lump had started to form in your throat, stunned and not knowing what to really say. You were so far into your own thoughts that you didn’t realize he had gotten down to bury his face between your legs, his tongue licking a stripe up through your folds, making a sudden moan slip out of your mouth and his eyes had moved to look into yours when you met his gaze.

“I’m waiting or do you want me to stop?” He tilted his head, sinking his teeth into your thigh gently, making you buck your hips up out of impulse.

The stubbornness you had was glued to the front of your brain, you hated to give him exactly what he wanted- it’ll only feed onto his superior ego more but the way he was working you and the way you were practically desperate for any sort of touch from him, you knew you had to do it his way to get your way. A soft huff escaped your lips, tilting your head down to stare into his lustful eyes.

“Please, Captain.” You started to speak, watching his eyebrows raise and the amusement plastered on his face as he squeezed onto your thighs, waiting for you to continue.

“I’ll do anything just for you to fuck me. Please stop teasing.” The sudden whine that slipped out of your parted lips had made him almost throb, his skin growing hot and his fingertips digging into your skin.

“Hm, I guess you’ve been through enough teasing huh brat?” He slowly started to trail kisses back up your body until he was fully hovered over you again, his free hand caressing your cheek.

“But let’s not forget I’m here to teach you a lesson on talking back to me.”

.

.

,

I made this long enough so I’m splitting this into 2 parts. Here’s the first one. Sorry for being so absent and distant. Everything had gone to hell after losing my childhood dog and school is almost over so finals and all this crazy shit but I’m trying.

I love and miss y’all <3

• Main Masterlist •

• AOT Masterlist •

[lifewithdavefarts]

DaveFarts - Episode 6 “Fart Bet, Easy Bucks” [Episode List] When, rather immaturely, Tim’s friends are doing some random, silly bets, things soon turn stinkier and gassier as Dave joins the game…

Fart Bet, Easy Bucks

The immature, roaring laughter of me and my friends echoed in the living-room as another pal of mine, Jim, took one last bite of an onion, his cheeks turning red, teary eyes, almost puking in front us. We clapped our hands like the drunk monkeys we were, ignoring our friend’s gagging sounds, and we all took another shot of vodka in his honor.

“Well done, Jim!” Adam laughed, as tipsy as the rest of us.

That’s what we were doing in Adam’s parent-free house: really mature bets. At late night, it was almost 3:00 a.m. Our onion-eating friend just lost one of those silly bets we were challenging each other to do. Pretty stupid tasks, like standing on one foot for 3 minutes or reading stuff upside down. Quite mundane, easy, but try doing it after two bottles of vodka-lemon. Each.  The loser had to take a couple of bites of an onion, because as I said, we’re very mature. And clever.

The entire room stunk like that stinky vegetable and alcohol, didn’t help that some of us were also burping loudly and proudly, but we were too tipsy to even notice or even be bothered by that (plus, it’s not like I’m not used to… bad-smelling stuff…). When not betting each other to do shit, we were all sitting on two different couches: Adam, Jim and a couple of other guys were all sitting and burping on a longer couch, while I was on a smaller one with Dave, sitting next to me.

As more laughs roared in the room for no reason, in the chaos, Dave elbowed me and chuckled a bit, bringing to my attention the weird vibrations on the couch: he was ripping one of his big farts, the sound completely muffled by the pillows, his loose dark grey jeans probably making it sound even louder and manlier. I only smiled a bit a took another shot of vodka; my gassy friend did the same, finding my awkward reaction hilarious as usual.

“Tim, it’s your turn!”

I almost chocked on my own drink when I heard my name: Dave’s flatulence usually makes me very absent-minded. I finally realized that Adam was standing in the middle of the room, each one of us, one by one, whistling a song to him: if he guessed wrong, then it’s onion-hell for him. It was my turn to whistle a song then. I think about it for a moment, and then I start to whistle this famous hit from a couple of years earlier, but I was pretty drunk, so I didn’t really realize how weird the sounds coming out of my lips were, but my friends laughing should have been a wake-up call.

Eventually, Adam ran out of time, because he couldn’t guess the song I was “singing” to him. He was mad, almost furious, but it was the alcohol talking.

“Tim, you’re an idiot!” he was understandably angry, because it was my fault. “That wasn’t even a real song, you asshole!”

Didn’t help that we were all laughing at him, but my friend didn’t accept defeat, and he actually had all the rights to.

“I’m not going to eat those fucking onions!” Adam shouted. “Tim made me lose: he should be the one choking on that shit!”

I wasn’t offended, to be honest. I was actually laughing like the rest of the guys.

“Dude… we’re out of onions!” Jim said, noticing the empty plate.

We all laughed even more after that and I may have given to my angry friend a smug-ish look. I was just kidding, but he took it very seriously.

“Oh you’re going down, Tim. Just you wait…”

He eventually convinced our other pals that I was, indeed, deserving a “punishment”.

“Make him lick your dog’s balls!” someone suggested. “Leave my princess out of this!” Adam replied, offended.

It’s like the entire group stopped being drunk just to decide what disgusting task I should have done. I just laughed the whole time: it’s part of the game, they were not mean-spirited. Even Dave suggested some stuff, like drinking expired milk with my nostrils. Each suggestion was met with a mixture of laughter and disgust.

After a couple of minutes of discussion, I felt Dave once again elbowing me.

“Gentlemen, please!” he shouted, in a slightly sarcastic tone. “Since you’re wasting my time, I propose an entire new bet. Whether the result, Tim will still get his… punishment, trust me!”

He was trying not to laugh, but he did earn some puzzled looks from our other pals.

“If Tim survives to  this  for 5 minutes straight…” he leaned a bit, the couch shaking again under the pressure of his enormous, muffled fart, which lasted 4 seconds. Our other friends laughed immaturely and I started to sweat. “…then you guys are going to give us 20$. Each.”

Dave was insane. Was he really going to do what I think… no, that’s just crazy. It can’t be, come on! There was people watching us! Our friends were a both amused and disgusted.   But also intrigued.

“But if he gives up, then Tim owes Adam… let’s see… 200$” “What?!” I thought, the money-part being the only thing I disagreed with. The thought of Dave face-farting me was amazingly distracting as usual.

As our friends discussed Dave’s proposal, my gassy friend just patted my shoulder. “Come on Tim, that’s some easy bucks, right?” he whispered, chuckling a bit. My fetish was just a weird, fun game to him, and I couldn’t have been happier. But in front of our pals? That was too strange even for my standards.

When I turned to my gassy bro, however, he was already leaning on his back, his legs cocked up, his loose dark grey jeans forming that well-known “barrage” made of denim, a really familiar sight for me. I heard my friends laugh, Adam getting closer to me, his hands on my shoulders.

“Come on Tim… I want to see your face turn green!”

He was trying to sound threatening, but he couldn’t help but laugh; I know Adam: he’s just a friendly dork trying to act tough and I knew that he was actually finding the entire situation immaturely hilarious. But he had to look mad, it’s part of his… character.

I heard Dave sucking some air in his ass, his jeans now sagging, exposing a bit of his red underwear (interesting color, that’s for sure). The weird sounds coming from my friend’s butt were the only thing I could hear, despite my friends laughing. Every time Dave farted was like a dream coming true, but this time we were not alone. I stopped thinking about how risky the situation was for a moment, knowing that my friends would never suspect what was really going on between me and Dave, and just listened to the chorus of “Sniff it!”.

I gently buried my face in that soft, denim pillow, his legs slowly wrapping around my head, as if he was hugging me, trapping me in his gas-chamber. With my nose touching his underwear-covered anus, I could still feel the air being sucked in. A moment of silence, and then I felt his butt-muscles relax, and a first fart began.

It was so loud it’s hard to describe. Despite being on command, it was incredibly gross and wet-ish. The smell was rancid and unbearable, the mixture of alcohol and onions in Dave’s stomach probably produced something that no human would have been able to handle. The fart was so strong… loud, manly: my entire face was shaking, I swear I’ll never get used to his gassy talent. I could barely hear my friends laughing: my ears were devoted to Dave’s immense display of flatulence.

I coughed a bit, pretending to hate the smell, when the truth was obviously really different. This first fart alone lasted almost 20 seconds, one of the longest I’ve ever experienced from him. Our friends clapped their hands in approval, having yet another shot of vodka, a toast to the incredible display of fart-talent they just witnessed, and just kept laughing immaturely.

As they laughed, I saw Dave’s face just above that “barrage” of sagging jeans: as usual, he was laughing, and smiled at me, and then winked: his “plan” was working great. I felt his hand brushing through my hair and gently pushing me even deeper into the denim depths of his ass, this time with my nose almost perfectly aligned with his underwear-clad anus.

Dave’s grip, as usual, felt more like a caress, and the fart that immediately followed was just as big as the first one. And hilarious as well. “This is a natural one!” I heard him say, basically bragging about his gassy-abilities, as the fart kept going strong, our friends laughing again. “Pull him closer!” Jim shouted, then (probably him) pushed me even more “inside” of Dave’s butt (I couldn’t tell if it was Jim, as my face –and eyes- was completely buried in my friend’s fart-shooter). Dave made his butt comically wiggle a bit, forcing some toots out: my nostrils were almost burning, the stench being a mixture of rotten onions and burning vodka-lemon.

“That’s so gay!” Adam laughed. Ironically, he was right, about me at least.

“3 minutes already!” I heard somebody scream. I almost lost track of time: as I said, those farts make me absent-minded. Dave just kept ripping this series of loud rips one after one, without even sucking in. I couldn’t tell anymore whether he was farting on command or not anyway: he was just so good at it that the farts always felt natural (and, 99% of times, they were). “Aww man.” Dave chuckled, lying down slowly. He was tired, exhausted. “Can I turn around?!” he asked. They all simply laughed in response, though I also heard some gagging sounds.

My best friend turned around slowly, adjusting his position, his legs somehow keeping my face planted in his ass, as if he was “wrestling” me down, albeit very slowly and gently. He was now lying on his stomach, his loose-jeans butt looking like a beautiful pillow made of denim, his red underwear slightly popping out.

“Do your longest one, Dave!” Adam suggested. I was both mad and grateful for that.

He then came closer and made sure that my face was buried in the farter’s butt, pushing me even deeper in it. Dave just laughed, while I was trying not to get as red as tomato. I just couldn’t believe how open-minded Dave was about this, going as far as face-farting me in front of everyone else; granted, the bet was a smart excuse, but still, I was speechless. I didn’t even feel embarrassed: it was like a big prank, and friends alway prank each other, but the friendship remains intact, if not even stronger.

“Alright, I feel a good one… ready?” my gassy friend said, but it’s like he was talking to me only, as if we were alone as usual, during one of our fart sessions.

It’s like his butt “hugged” my face even more, right before the explosion that engulfed my entire, defenseless head in a cloud of stench. The fart shook my entire face and part of the couch like an earthquake. The chainsaw-like sounds were as loud as a thunder; the whole flatulence sounded fake, but it wasn’t, at all. 10 seconds, but the fart kept going strong, almost unnaturally.

I caught a glimpse of Dave’s smile as he slightly turned his head around, making sure I was enjoying it, but the rest of our friends didn’t notice that apparently, as they were too busy laughing and clapping their hands. “No way!” Adam shouted, in a mixture of anger and hilarity: as the fart was still being ripped, Dave slightly lowered his jeans a bit, fully exposing the red underwear, the sound getting even louder. I felt his hand again pushing me between his buttcheeks, as he spread his legs a bit more. I was having a close-encounter with his anus, the underwear acting as one final line of defense separating me from the real source of that gas. The smell was unbearable: onions smelt nice in comparison. And it was great.

As a “big finale”, as Dave announced it, the flatulence turned as loud as it was humanly possible, the ear-piercing sound almost destroying my own eardrums. My nostrils were burning, my nose getting wet-ish due to Dave’s sweaty buttcheeks. It was the most intense face-farting that my best friend ever made me experience… and he was straight: imagine if he was gay!

“No fucking way!” Adam roared. “5 minutes!”

Everyone else cheered and laughed, playfully throwing pillows at our angry friend. I slowly sat back, Dave doing the same, tying his jeans belt again. He patted on my shoulder, laughing, while I was doing my best to tame my huge boner, hidden by my own jeans.

“No way! You guys did this before, come on!”

Adam asked, ironically (if only he knew…), now laughing too, as he took a 20$ bill out of his wallet. The rest of the guys reluctantly did the same, throwing money at us, disgusted and amused at the same time.

The entire living-room now smelt like onions and rotten alcohol (if rotten-alcohol existed… does it exist?), everyone moaning in disgust, while me and Dave counted the money we just earned… by cheating.

“Easiest bucks we ever made!” he whispered, handing 50% of the cash to me, elbowing me like he did other times. “Great job!” he chuckled.

We all had another shot of vodka-lemon, and the night proceeded as usual, as Jim found another stash of onions hidden in the fridge. As the really clever betting continued, my gaze landed more than once on Dave… just Dave, sitting next to me, as if nothing happened. He’s like a brother, my best friend. He did that for me, he felt he was really gassy because of all the alcohol… and so farted in my face as an excuse, money or not.

Yes, I bet Dave did all of that for me, not just the money. And that’s another bet I’m sure I’ll win.

End of Episode 6

[lilousmustaches]

Work this out

Jake Peralta x Reader

Warnings: Ladies stuff, i won't say anything else to avoid spoilers. 

Notes: Here i am writing again after 3 years.... a total new fandom. I am watching b99 and i'm so addicted, Jake is the only thing in my mind right now and i had to do this. It didn't go as i planned, but i hope it's ok. It's small and english is not my first language. Expect more of Jake x Reader here, it's my first try and voilá. 

Summary: Jake and the reader have a friends with benefits relationship and suddenly she starts to act strange. 

Another work day in NYPD's 99 precinct. It had everything to be another normal day. Well... normal as it can get down there. But it wasn't.

 Immediately when you entered the precinct, Jake turned his head up from his computer to give you a smile and probably a silly joke provoking you. But his smile vanished as soon as he saw you pass everyone with your head down, no good mornings and going somewhere down the hall.

 "Hey" Rosa called looking between Jake and the hall you just disappeared. "What's up with (Y/N)?" 

 "I don't know." Jake responded confused as everybody else in the room. You were a joyful person, always smiling and greeting every single person that worked there. 

 "What have you done Jake?" Amy asked angry assuming it was his fault since everyone knew about yours friends with benefits relationship that has been going on for a while now. 

 "What? Nothing" Jake answered quickly indignant with the assumption. 

 "No, Amy is right Jake." Boyle said getting up of his desk and coming closer. "(Y/N) is acting weird this days, yesterday she didn't even wanted to eat some of my salmon cookies. She loves that. And coming here and not giving my good morning hug? Definitely something's strange." 

 "Boyle is right on that one." Rosa agreed with her arms crossed. 

 "I don't know ok?" Jake answered frustrated with your strange behavior rising his hands in surrender. "(Y/N) didn't went to my place this last weekend, in fact I had barely seen her for the past days. I really have no idea... maybe she's just trying to dump me and trying to make it easier." 

 "Or maybe she's tired of waiting for you to ask her out on a real date and assume her as your girlfriend!" Boyle pointed raising an eyebrow to his friend. "You should tell her how you really feel." 

 "Yeah, haven't you kept her waiting long enough?" Amy agreed. Everybody that met you and Jake knew eventually you were going to stay together. You had the same kind of humor and the same sassy tone. So it wasn't exactly a surprise when in one of the squad's reunions at the bar, you and Jake got hammered and started to talk and laugh closer to each other. Not a long time after that, you both disappeared going straight to his house. "It's has been months since this 'friends with benefits' thing started." 

 "Look guys." Jake said with a frustrated sigh rolling his eyes. "(Y/N) and I have talked about this. She's not ready yet for a relationship, she passed a hard time with that son of a bitch ex of hers. She needs time and I respect that."

 "Oh here she comes." Rosa alerted and quickly everybody went back to their places and pretended to be working. You came out of the files room discussing something with Terry. 

 "Okay (Y/N), we can work on that. Good job." Terry said with a sweet smile going back to his desk, and you to yours. You sat down in silence still not looking around organizing your paperwork, but notice everyone quiet and you could literally feel their stares burning on your skin. 

 "What?" You finally said looking around to your colleagues and everybody tried to disguise murmuring a lot of 'nothing' 'just working'. Everybody unless Jake. He was watching you intensely trying to figure out what was wrong. 

 Your eyes locked for a second and you could see that he was worried, and that broke your heart even more. This wasn't supposed to happen right now. Your heart was beating fast and nervousness took over your body. You quickly turned your attention to your desk again and took your purse pretending to organize something there. 

 "Good morning squad, today..." Captain Holt started to say walking out of his office but stopped in his tracks when looked over your desk and catch the sight of something inside your purse. He looked back and forth you and Jake. "Oh..." 

 "Oh what? What oh?" Jake asked fast doing his classic bite lip when he was anxious, trying to figure out what Holt saw that he didn't. 

 "Hmm" Holt said looking at Jake like he didn't know what to do now. "(Y/N) please come to my office." 

 Jake watched you get up and follow Holt into his office, closing the door behind you and closing the shutters. He strained his eyes shaking his head in denial. Ok, this was how things was going to go? Fine! He was a detective and he was so on for this investigation.

xXxXxXxXx

 Jake wanted to stay and see your expression when you got out of Holt's office, but duty called and he had to be on the streets all day. He put everyone on the precinct working on the case '(Y/N)'s secret 0.1', and every minimum suspicious movement, they were oriented to send him a message.

 Charles really took it seriously. 

 Nothing useful thought. Man he was frustrated, he solves all type of cases everyday but he couldn't figure out what was wrong with the women he liked? It was driving him crazy! 

 It has just grown dark when Jake entered back the 99, some people from the night shift was already there and he could only spot Boyle from his friends.

 "Hey Jake! Did you read my messages? Did you find them useful?" 

 "Hmmm... Yeah Charles, of course, thank you." Jake said after pondering the answer in his head although It was no useful at all. Charles told him every single one of your steps through the day, Jake wanted to know if you did something strange not your constant need to pee on that day. "(Y/N) already went home?"

 "Actually no, I just send you a text, didn't you read it?" He asked feeling insulted but continued when saw Jake's face. "Ok, she and Terry are still working on that case but (Y/N) got hot, she said she needed some air. She's on the roof." 

 "Hot? (Y/N) is always cold." He said confused but suddenly something clicked and everything started to fall into place inside his head. "I got go."

 His steps were fast to open the door for the roof and he immediately spotted you looking at the city view. You didn't turn but he knew that you knew it was him. 

 "Hey you." He said softly slowly approaching you until he was by your side. "I was worried today, you know?" 

 "I kind of got that.... Charles followed me into the ladies bathroom three times." You said making you both laugh. "So what it was? Like a secret case that everybody worked? How was it called? '(Y/N)'s secret 0.1?'"

 "What? No. I wouldn't go that obvious." Jake answered laughing nervously. Oh man, you knew him too damn well. "But yeah, was definitely working on that case. I worry about (Y/N). You were pushing me away, you didn't even answered my calls this last weekend. Sure, you could be done with our casual thing or whatever, but I know you. I knew it was not it." 

 "Jake, look..." You said with a sigh but he interrupted you. 

 "I was confused as hell this morning, but suddenly everything clicked. Yesterday you didn't want that weird salmon cookies Charles brings. I adore you but those are nasty as fuck, by the way. You didn't drink coffee when you got here today, you always do that. And not greeting anyone? That means something happened yesterday night that got you worried." Jake said and paused waiting for a reaction, but he took your silence a sign to continue his deduction. "Of course you could be suspecting for a while now, and that's why you have been avoiding me. Captain saw your purse when he got out of his office. He saw your tampons, am I right? Untouched. Your usual period date has already passed, and everybody knows when it is because of how much pain you feel. Usually stays only in paper work those days. Constantly needing to pee. But none of it hit me until Charles said you were feeling hot. You're always cold and asks for my jackets. Those are all symptoms of...." 

 "Hit me Sherlock." You said and waited for his right answer.

 "You're pregnant." Jake said finally, his face softening. "It is mine?" He asks feeling insecure but he changed his mind when saw your face. "Dumb question. Shouldn't say that. Of course it's mine."

 "I'm so sorry Jake, I just didn't know how to say it. You're right in everything, I started suspecting since last Friday but only took the test yesterday." You said starting to feel tears in your eyes. "And yes, Captain Holt found out in seconds. I just begged him not to tell you."

 "Traitor" Jake said furrowing his eyebrows. "I'm just confused on how that happened? We always use condoms." 

 "I was thinking that too, until I remembered that night on Gina's birthday that we got really drunk and had sex on the bar's bathroom." You said and he agreed, both smiling at the memory quickly coming back to the moment. "I am so scared. We're not even together and I..." 

 "Wait, that's what is troubling you?" Jake said feeling his hands shaking and his heart beating incredibly fast. "(Y/N) I like you ok? For a long time now. I just didn't think you were ready yet for a relationship, I was respecting your time. But oh god, I'm so in love with you it hurts. Of course it's not the perfect scenario, but we gonna make this work, I won't leave you to take care of this baby alone."

 He said sincerely looking in your eyes and you nodded feeling some tears starting to fall down, you hugged him tight feeling his strong grip on you. Jake kissed your forehead, rubbing your back to calm you down. 

 "I'm in love with you too Jake, so much, I want this to work out." You said softly into his neck. 

 "It will." He said giving a slow chaste kiss. You stayed hugged for a few minutes but suddenly he gasped and started to hyperventilate. "Holy shit! I'm going to be a dad. What if i can not be a good dad because mine abandoned me when I was little? I'm going to be a dad." 

 "Hey" You said to drag his attention back to you, watching his wide eyes staring at the horizon. You knew it was your time to calm him down. "You're going to be a great dad. You are already proving this to me by not letting me be alone. We will work this out remember?" 

 "Yeah..." He sighed feeling calmer looking into your eyes. "We will work this out."

[totallyimagines]

Owari no Seraph reaction to your Periods

I have a whole comforting Masterlist in my drafts and I’ve still got a lot of scenarios and headcannons I want to do..and I have a lot of other Masterlists but it’s actually just to help me keep track of things because I’m super messy..I’ve been posting owari no seraph all week. Nothing is wrong — just got a lot of ideas for everyone in the anime

Warnings: Cowards, Menustration for Da vampires..of course, mostly just these men being afraid of you

That face..is so accurate for this situation — I don’t know what else is. He’s a little lost..but he knows the basics. Seriously, don’t cry around him (I.e dropping food,) — like he would literally look at you like come on..

I can see him being like the one that points out that your on your period because of your mood change or something..like I’m just sure he can tell and then he’s immediately like “oh shit..” If your mood swings are violent or if your just super mad, he’s afraid of you. You scare this man..who knew you had so much power in that small body — seriously, he called you Hulk one time because you got mad at the wall ‘hitting your body’ and started to square up with that wall. If your emotional, *insert eye roll* “you’re such a baby.” You dropped your box of chocolates on the ground? Big deal..don’t cry about it.

If your emotions are in between — anxiety.

Ok, he understands most of your emotional outbreaks though..not emotional — “Sensitive”.. I can see him being like tired of you crying but super understanding — either way..I think he’ll keep his distance if you start crying about something like food or just something that’s really dumb to him.

When your appetite changes: he’s more scared than that then your strength. When he sees you eat foods that I’m sure he wouldn’t dare touch.. just watches in fascination. Like, how do you eat that much ice cream without stopping? Or why are you eating ice cream and peanut butter? He would probably just be so scared of that, watching you eat a full box of pizza by yourself.

Cramps? Holy shit, are you ok? Once you’re bending over in pain, he’s honestly so worried. Although, he may look so unaffected by you doing this. He’s truly concerned. He’s more of the groaner when you have cramps. Because he doesn’t want you to be in pain in the middle of cuddles. But guren holds you tights so I doubt you will be able to really feel cramps during cuddling with him.

*Coward = 1

He’s so quiet when you’re on it..like he doesn’t want to say anything that will trigger you though but he can smell your blood though which also makes him want to avoid you..unless you want to have...No, ok.

He’s scared of your mood swings too, one second you’re crying and then the next you’re squaring up with your reflection for looking like you. If he wasn’t your boyfriend he would say you were crazy..I’m sure any normal person would right? He’s suprised by your increased strength too, you boxed a vampire for some ice cream — and you won, of course. Ice cream never fails to disappoint.

When he wakes up to you with blood in the bed, and it’s coming from you..he thinks he killed you. *violently shakes you awake* when you tell him it’s your blood — which I’m sure you’ll have to explain the whole blood process..you’ll have to change your own sheets because he’s lost. I mean all types of lost, he doesn’t even know what pads are.

Appetite Change? He didn’t notice..

Cramps? He just kinds of nuzzles into you, rubs your stomach and asks if you feel better. If he can’t help he’ll just follow your instructions. The leaning over in pain or you can’t move is really unnerving for him. He just doesn’t really want you to be in pain. Curse these Cramps. Their hurting you. He was probably convinced they were killing you at first.

Would probably want to do Menustration too? Your blood is just super tasty to her, just let her get a taste.

Doesn’t really care about your mood swings, she’s the same way. I’m sure she’ll probably encourage the mood swings making you take it on someone near you. So amusing. The strength that you have in that tiny body is unbelievable. When you fought someone over a box of twinkies and almost broke their nose..what do you humans see in food?

*She probably won’t even care when she sees blood in the bed. Unbothered.

Appetite change, she definitely notices that. Like your so hungry all the time or your barely hungry at all. She’s actually really uncaring about what you eat though, it’s not really interesting to her. Or she just doesn’t really seem to care about how much you eat either. She watched you gobble down that whole box of twinkies with ice cream..she’s impressed.

Cramps? She’ll get some servants to treat you to whatever that you need.

Crowley is probs(*definitely) up for menustration..your blood is tasty to all vampires. Like he’s so hungry for you know, smells your cycle before it even starts. Yes, he’s keeping track. Which is probably a bonus on your side if you have a vampire as your lover.

Mood swings? Crowley knows how to get you really upset to the point where you want to make a dent his face. The strength in that small body of yours is incredible. Crowley tried you one time, never again. If your emotional, he’s just so playful about it. Like, he’ll comfort you just by saying some sweet words and then everything is good again. Well, you stopped crying for now. Win for him. Ice cream and Chocolate and you almost killed a person for that? He fears you now. He’s learned to keep food out of the fights. You’ll go into beast mode for that.

When he wakes up to see blood in the bed..he begs for menustration. Like there’s no better way to clean it up..why not? He’ll pout but let up after like 30 mins of asking. If your comfortable with it, you’ll get the best eating out of your life. He heard sex easies up your cramps? So why not?

Appetite Change? Who’s she? Oh yeah, you eat a lot. Like seriously he really doesn’t care.. sort of just lets you eat whatever because it’s your body. Why not?

Cramps? He chuckles but helps, his laughing is sexy guys.. I think I’ll trade that out for cramps. He’ll cuddle you and rub the spot that hurts you the most. He’s actually so good at this actually. He may stay silent and it may get a little dirty. But his “massaging” is not that bad and it actually easies up intense cramps.

Ferid definitely wants Menustration. If you want oral, this is the way to go. If he gets blood and you get oral. Win - win. So this is actually the best way to bribe him with some oral sex. Well, if that’s if he didn’t already ask.

Mood swings? Laughs the entire time, no it’s not a chuckle it’s him down right laughing. He loves them, you can be so angry and emotional in just minutes and he loves them. You scared him with the strength though. I’m sorry but who fights someone for candy, noodles or just ice cream? And just so you can binge eat it. He finds this really interesting and amusing because vampires do the same. He’s never really seen humans fight for food..like that. Emotional mood swings, nuisance to him. He’ll comfort you but like it’s just not his thing. Finds it weird when you get mad at inanimate objects — it can’t talk..

When he wakes to blood on the bed and your still asleep..yes..he’s going to eat you out. You can’t question it. He just wants to be between your legs lapping at the blood. You’ll wake up to him doing that at least once. No blood is going to go to waste with him around. And yes, he knows when your period comes and goes.. the going part sucks for him especially if you didn’t let him taste it.

Change in appetite? Umm...He notices but chooses not to. He’s practically the definition, I see you but I choose not to. Like, he’ll watch you eat the food but won’t comment on it. As he should. Again, you eating doesn’t really apply to them. They don’t really care what you eat, yeah they may watch you but seriously they aren’t judging you.

Cramps? He can hold you or cuddle you. He’ll run you a bath too, no he’s not getting in. It’s for you. But that’s probably all he’ll do. He’ll read to you if that makes you feel better? Gets your painkillers though he’s not going to let you go without those especially if you have really bad cramps.

Stays....away. Well, half of the time most of the time he’s really comforting and everything. He still keeps his playful additude nothing else.

Mood Swings? He’s scared too, like you’re so powerful. You’ve become so scary, what happened to you.. to him.. you’re a nightmare that’s walking around for a few days and then right after your period you’re a bundle of joy. That’s probably why he’s scared.. you switch moods so quickly that he can’t keep up. You’re battling people for food? Are you crazy? Ok, he’ll count you as crazy if you battle someone for something so simple and small as chocolate. Yeah, but he’s there for the whole fight cheering you on. Emotional — he’ll probably cry with you and it’s probably over a scoop of ice cream you dropped.

When he wakes up with blood in the bed, he’ll go run you a shower first. And ask you to get up so he can change the sheets. He’ll probably join you later and he’ll get you a snack. But sometimes he’s not there so.. not much there.

Appetite change? You’re eating so much Ice cream without stopping. He just stares at you, awkwardly..dumbfounded. Then you’ll probably get on from him staring to much, it doesn’t break his process. In fact, he sits besides you and stares and puts his hand up to his chin. Stares, and Stares..and stares.

Cramps? Knows exactly what to do, you bending over in pain isn’t taking lightly by him. Even if you say you’re fine — he’s going to run you a bath water and make you feel better. Snacks? That he can do. He’s honestly so easy going with this and doesn’t make it such a problem.

Smirks.. ah, it’s that time of the month again. He just corners you until you give into trying the Menustration thing at least once. He’s so tempting. Sorry Lacus but there is way more to it then just Menustration, ok?

Mood swings? He’s not scared but he’ll watch you from afar. Like, you’re not scary from back here but up close — you’re scary. You don’t know wether to take that as an insult or compliment. All that strength though — how come you aren’t fighting battles? He’ll want to battle you over some chocolate, maybe some tug of war? Let’s just say — you won..chocolate beats everything. Emotional, *sigh*.. He’ll just watch you cry like, what else is he supposed to do? Yes, he seems so uninterested in this.

Menustration: Don’t let this boy tell you any different, he loves eating you out while doing this. He’s super lazy — yeah, yeah whatever. But he’s cutting corners just so he can get a taste of you tonight.(my bad, that was cheesy)

Appetite change? Again, doesn’t care. Doesn’t even stare. He might tease you with it.. holding it above his head. Which also didn’t end well, so he stop doing that. He totally call you vicious right after that.

Cramps? Lucas doesn’t really know much on that department. Another teaching lesson. He’s a little worried at the sudden pain honestly. Watching you bend over in pain isn’t what he’ll like to see when he comes home. Other days, you probably won’t even want to get out of bed and Lucas is right there. Asking if there is anything he can do to make you feel better.

That quick? It was just here last week.. what happened? Lost again.. just lost. He just doesn’t understand why you have this. He’s close to crying..

Mood Swings? Stays away..you’re scary. You’re always trying to box something such as the chair that you bumped into. He’s more than dumbfounded, the way that you’re talking to inanimate objects though makes him laugh. You’re seriously cursing out a stool? Emotional, he doesn’t do so good. He’ll comfort you like he’ll usually do. But he may not know how to really solve the problem so say goodbye to that delicious Oreo cookie you stepped on.

When he wakes up to blood in the bed, he’s not as lost because he already knows but he’ll stare for quite a bit before waking you up. And doing what you do when this happens. It’s either because your too embarrassed and he’s says he’ll do it or your on the verge of crying.

Appetite change? Can care less, you’re hungry then eat. He won’t even question you getting up late at night to eat. He’ll just let you leave from the cuddle session to go do whatever you want to. Late night snack sounds good to him, why not?

Cramps? He hates seeing you lean over in a pain every once in a while. He’ll do anything to try and make it feel better. He’ll get you some painkillers. And if your cramps are really bad, he’s not really good at comforting but he’ll do what you tell him. He knows you’re in pain so he won’t push your limits.

[shinsoussimp]

all right, you said it’s fine, so here’s another one 🤍 (yes, i’m addicted to your writings so :0 )

mirio? big yes. hurt/comfort with a gay reader? definitely.

so like, the reader used to study in another school, and had been outed and everyone in his class were very mean and rude about that. so now it’s his biggest fear to be outed again, but he really falls in love with mirio after some time. they spend a lot of time together, and get really close. reader doesn’t know mirio likes him back because for him, every person will be mad at (y/n) for liking boys (because of the past trauma yk). and one day someone from their class accidentally activated their “saying truth” quirk on reader and confession to mirio just slips from his lips in front of him and the whole class. and like, after that he runs away in absolute panic, thinking everyone will mock and hate him again. he starts avoiding mirio just not to see him disappointed, when in reality togata just wants to say he likes him back? 🥺 so one day he just catches him and doesn’t let him to run? 🥺 saying he would love to be his boyfriend 👉🏻👈🏻 maybe a bit comforting from classmates yk? sorry it’s so long again 😞🤍

a/n: sephiii you’re requests are always amazing :) i would never say no to you sending one in! i hope you like it!!

a/n: y/h/n= your hero name, also i said parent (they/them) in an effort to be more inclusive, i don’t know people’s family life. if you have any other ideas where i can be more inclusive, please let me know!

TW: homophobia, violence (shoving), blackmail

a/n: requests are open! (p.s. i’m on a mirio kick right now to let everyone know ahaha)

Mirio x homophobia

becoming a hero was always your dream, since you were a little kid. you didn’t want anything standing in the way of that. so when you finally made your way to shiketsu high, you were determined to never let anyone find out about you being gay. but somehow, it still happened.

“yo, y/h/n!” a second year student ran up to you as you were walking to the cafeteria and threw his arm around your shoulder, “can you do a favor for me?~” he always would get you to help him cheat on exams, but at this point, you were tired of breaking the rules.

“dude i can’t keep doing this. i’m not gonna risk getting in trouble so you can get good grades. try studying.” you huff while shaking his arm off you. he moves to stand in front of you to block your path as you try to get to your table, and he gets visibly more and more angry.

“seriously?” he says through clenched teeth. you could tell he was one of those kids who was too used to getting what he wants whenever he wants it, and he doesn’t know how to handle anything different. 

“i’m serious. we would’ve been caught some day.” you try to move around him but he grabs your arm and starts pulling you to the middle of the cafeteria. 

“fine. then i guess i’m gonna have to tell everyone your little secret.” shit. you had gotten so used to helping him you forgot the reason why you began your little deal in the first place, he knew you were gay. before you could stop him, he had already begun.

“hey, everyone! i have a little announcement that you all would enjoy. y/n over here, y/h/n if you will, is gay.” you weren’t able to cover his mouth without him grabbing your wrists and holding them down by your sides so he could continue talking, “that’s right, he likes dick. do with that what you will~” he shoves you back a bit when he finally lets go of your arms, and waltzes out of the cafeteria like nothing even happened. everyone starts gossiping around you, giving you weird looks as you run off into the bathroom. 

once the bell rang and you needed to go to class, you tried to get there early, so you didn’t need to walk in front of a full classroom. you sat in the back today, but that didn’t mean you were invisible. it started with the girls that sat in front of you giggling, then one of the boys that only had your number for a group project sent you an eggplant emoji. but the cherry on top was one of the most well known boys in your class coming up to you and asking, for everyone to hear, if you were trying to suck his dick. luckily the second bell rang and the teacher came in, forcing them all to back off for now, but this lasted for the next week. it lasted up until you couldn’t take it anymore. you stood up and stormed out of the classroom and never returned. you didn’t go to school for the rest of the year. and with you refusing to return to shiketsu high, you thought your dream of being a hero was ruined. but one morning your parent mentioned the idea of applying to ua. 

even though you thought you had no chance of getting in, you took a chance. you went to the admissions office, sent in your application, did all the interviews, and now it was time to wait. and now after a long summer, you finally got a letting from ua.

you got in.

not only were you thrilled to be admitted to the best school for heros, you were thrilled that you never had to go back to shiketsu. you could start over, continue your hero journey. and hopefully you would not get in another situation like last time. 

your first two months at your new school went great. you were a second year now, and getting to do many new and exciting things with your training. you made great friends and even developed a bit of a crush. this was dangerous territory, since you didn’t want anyone to know about your sexuality, but you couldn’t stop yourself from hanging out with him. the person in question? mirio togata. the cute third year you passed by in the halls and always came in your class to talk about his experience as lemillion. and you got to call him your friend. you two trained together, you hung out with him and the rest of the big three after school, and he always made sure to join you during lunch breaks at school. in such a short period of time, you two became best friends. and you would never risk messing that friendship up. 

but then one day, the unthinkable happens. you thought since things had been going so well for so long, you were in the clear. nobody seemed to know, shiketsu kids didn’t snitch, and training was going incredibly. you and a group of second and third years were hanging out in an empty classroom when someone suggested playing truth or dare.

the rules were simple, pick dare and someone picks a dare for you to do, pick truth and you would be hit by your classmate, asami’s quirk. her quirk was called confession. when in effect, you will be compelled to spill one of your deepest secrets. but you seemed to have a bit of a misunderstanding of her quirk. you didn’t get to choose which secret. so little did you know, your fake secret that you ‘once called your teacher mom in 3rd grade’ was not going to be of use.

“you excited?” mirio plopped down next to you happily. you nodded, because you were. you were genuinely excited to have a friend group and play stupid games like this. 

after a few rounds, mostly of people picking dare, you wanted to be the one to switch it up. so once mirio finished bawking like a chicken and walking all around the room with his arms bent like wings, you prepared for your turn.

“truth or dare, y/n?”

“truth.” everyone dramatically gasps, then all bursting out into a fit of laughing, talking about how you had some balls to pick truth. asami sat down in front of you and took a deep breath to prepare herself.

“you ready?” she smiles. you nod, letting her hand brush yours. you felt a rush of warmth through your body then suddenly your mouth was moving.

“i’m gay. i’m really fucking gay and i like mirio.” your hand slaps over your mouth, your stomach dropping as your whole body starts shaking. that was not what you wanted to say. but there is no going back now, and you didn’t want to be here when everyone started teasing you. you especially didn’t want to see what mirio had to say about it. you didn’t want to see the disappointment that would surely be on his face. you jump up and race out of the room, ignoring mirio’s pleas for you to stop running.

he was sent to talk in your class that day, but he didn’t see you. you had decided to go home early for the day. would you really have to leave ua? you were beside yourself with anger and sadness, having to leave the best school because of a stupid game spilling your secret. you knew when you returned there would be endless teasing. it was possible that your friend group spilled the beans to the whole school and now even the first years knew. your parent tried to take your feelings into account, but they wanted to remind you of your dream, your biggest passion.

“you want to save people. it doesn’t matter if you’re gay, you can still protect people, that doesn’t stop anything.” you keep your face shoved into the pillow you were hugging close to your chest as they spoke. they took a deep breath and placed a comforting hand on your back, “look worse case scenario, they told everyone, and now people tease you. they’ll probably get over it, and if not, it’s only two more years. then you get to live your dream happily, as yourself.” 

their words encouraged you to return to school after about a week. but you still couldn’t face your friend group. especially mirio. so when the lunch bell rang, you left the school building and made your way to the side of it to eat lunch out on a bench by some trees. you figured that mirio or some of your friends saw you, but you prayed that they wouldn’t follow you. sadly those prayers would go unanswered because next thing you know you hear a familiar voice shouting your name. you turn around and see mirio jogging towards you. you turn around and start walking faster in an effort to avoid him, but right as you arrive at the bench you’re stopped by his hand wrapping around your arm.

“would you talk to me?!” he pulls your arm, making you turn around, “you drop a bomb like that and then fall off the face of the earth for a week?!” you sigh and set down your lunch and bag behind you, still not saying anything.

“y/n seriously. what the hell?”

“if you came here to make fun of me, just get it over with.” you finally look up at him, all of your walls up taller than ever before as you prepared to have your heart broken. 

“what are you talking about?” his face has confusion written all over it but it has to be fake. he’s trying to trick you into thinking you’re safe then he’ll talk about how stupid you are to all of your other friends that has to be-

“you really think i would make fun of you?” his voice is soft and even in such a high stress moment, still puts butterflies in your belly. but he’s lying.. he has to be. he’s gonna react how everyone else did.

“y/n, i would never.” he takes a step towards you and reaches out his hand, but you slap it away taking another step back.

“i’m not gonna fall for it! you all are gonna react exactly how all those dumbass shiketsu kids did!” tears start streaming down your face and you realize that you’re shaking again. you sit down on the bench behind you and put your face in your hands as uncontrollable sobs kept coming. mirio knelt down in front of you and put his hands on your knees.

“i like you too.” your head shoots up and you look at him with wide eyes.

“w-what?”

“if you hadn’t ran out the day you said it, you would have heard that i like you too. and i didn’t know if you were gay or not but i really wanted to find out.” you relax a bit as your brain tries to comprehend the idea of something like this happening, “they all said that i was a lovestruck idiot... and they were all accepting.” he held your hands in his as you lifted your head so you could look at him.

“they all love you. and they’ve been worried sick, wondering what happened to you. but most of all me. i thought you left the school i-” he pauses to take a deep breath, “i thought i lost you.” his grip on your hands tightens. suddenly the tears streaming down your face were tears of joy, accompanied by a few laughs. he stands up and pulls you up with him, wrapping his arms around you, swallowing you in a warm bear hug.

“i would love to be your boyfriend, if you’re okay with that.” you giggle into his chest and grip onto the back of his shirt.

“i am okay with that.” he pulls his head back a bit to look at you, for a few moments not saying anything just making a smug face at you.

“i was hoping you would be, i mean you are ‘really fucking gay’“ he teases. you smack his chest as you shake your head, laughing. he explains how you should go talk to your friends and explain what happened, then you two could tell them the good news. he even started planning a date as you two made your way back to the school building, while holding hands of course.

you didn’t know it was possible, but you were going to be okay. you were going to be able to be yourself. you couldn’t wait for what the rest of your time at ua would hold.

[leapingintodisaster]

Leap’s Guide to the Bats

Dick Grayson - flippy boi - circus child - his parents fell from the trapeze it was very sad - first Robin, chose bright colors and no pants - known for his attrocious puns - grew up to become Nightwing, went through several Bad Fashion Choices^TM - tired, just trying to keep the family together and help people - angrier than people give him credit for - 10/10 best big brother I love him so much

Barbara Gordon - the first official batgirl rn (I think) - commissioner's daughter we love her anyways - badass who dated Dick for a while and was generally just amazing - got shot in the spine by the Joker and paralyzed - became Oracle the best hacker on the planet - hacks all the stuff, is in everyone's ear all the time - is still a total badass and will kick your ass to metropolis if you cross her - and then play innocent and blame it on Batman - I love her so much

Jason Todd - tried to steal Bruce's tires, Bruce pulled an uno reverse and stole him - angery boy but also very soft - died =( - and then he came back to life - either because Superboy Prime punched the universe (don't ask) or because Ra's felt bad - was Lazarus Pitted back to life, zombie bat with white streak now - (except DC won't give him the streak 'cause they're rude) - started calling himself Red Hood - spent some time as angsty murder boi trying to fight Bruce - angry that the Joker's still alive - still an angsty murder boi but he's in the family again and sometimes has friends! but dc also likes taking them away - DC is very rude

Tim Drake - stalker extraordinaire/j - figured out Batman's identity when he was 10 - followed Batman and Robin around for years taking pictures - after Jason died Bruce got hella self-destructive so Tim stepped in and was like "I am going to become Robin because you need to stop" - we stan - hacker child. also has zero self-preservation - became Red Robin when Damian became Robin - if you listen to fanon, sleep deprived coffee boi - is honestly downright freaking terrifying when crossed don't do that - seriously this kid frightens me he's a genius who does shit like figure out who Batman is, follow him for years without detection, beats all the criminal masterminds, at one point he managed to create an entire fake uncle to lie to bruce?? long story. - basically he's terrifying and also he needs hugs I love him

Stephanie Brown - became a superhero out of spite - her dad's a villain so she dresses up as Spoiler to Spoil his plans - ends up joining the bats - becomes Robin at one point when Tim temporarily quits - then she dies. except she doesn't. yes I'm confused too - returns (leslie thompkins??) and goes back to Spoiler for a bit - Babs makes her Batgirl - waffle queen. an icon. I love Steph so damn much - she's just so good okay - she is a ball of sass and poor impulse control - but also really smart and amazing

Cassandra Cain - assassin child I love her - easily one of the most terrifying bats - really, really good at reading body language she knows what you're about to do before you do and will stop you - was raised to read body language instead of speak basically it's complicated - killed a man as a child under orders from her father, didn't realize what would happen and panicked and ran away after she did it - Bruce and Babs both kinda adopted her and mentored her and made her Batgirl - she became Black Bat and Orphan at some point but idk what's up with that love her though - has trouble with words - loves to dance - I would die for Cass Cain I adore her

Damian Wayne - another assassin child - this one's Bruce and Talia's bio kid - raised in the league of assassins until Talia brought him to Bruce - had to learn not to kill people and that killing is not how we rise in the ranks here - no you can't stab Tim and become Robin that's not how this works - bit of a brat at first, grows so much as a character - animal lover - Bruce dies and Dick becomes Batman for a while. he makes Damian his Robin - he also loves art and video games and he learns how to be a kid again - when the writers aren't COWARDS - I love Damian so much he needs so much love - grumpy exterior, cares very much but will stab you if you suggest it

Duke Thomas - glowy boi - tried to beat the Riddler and save the city at nine. I love - his parents were Jokerized when he was a teen and he ended up in the foster care system for a while - joined a group of kids called We are Robin and was amazing - I love We are Robin so much it's so good Duke is incredible - look at him go he's leading a group of vigilante kids it's excellent - becomes Bruce's foster son at some point - becomes a vigilante named Signal. only one of the bats with common sense he has a helmet - he can also turn invisible - Duke is the only meta he can see... see light in the past? he can see light patterns a few minutes into the past and into the future - so he can see what you did a few minutes ago and what you're going to do a few minutes from now - also he has x-ray vision - and shadow powers?? now??? - calls his ability to see light stuff ghost vision - I love - honestly best bat he's so good - gets fanonized as the "sane" one. he is not. - once jumped out of a moving police car and off a bridge - Duke is by no means the sane one he's just as chaotic as the others - what a dumbass. it's great - represents light and hope and truth and I just have so many emotions about Duke Thomas

[pumpkinpaix]

** the disclaimer still applies: don’t fucking dogpile, don’t harass using this as a springboard. furthermore, do NOT @ robin about this for fuck’s sake she’s already taken far more than what was warranted and this is not about her **

@daciafelix, out of respect for robin’s request to lay things to rest, I will be speaking to you on a separate post here.

however, I will not be letting your replies on the post in question slide. I’m very angry with you, and I want you to fucking know it. I’ll paste the three replies here.

1:

mirrorofprinces go back under the bridge please. Robin, you should ignore the trolls, they aren’t solitary creature it seems. You apologized and you should move on. I am tired of seeing a good author beaten down by people who don’t seem to understand how nonprofit fictional worlds work, not to mention reality. Dear “Chinese diaspora” , your trauma is real, attacking people is not the way to solve it. This type of attitude is what got Archiveofourown banned in China.

what the actual fuck was this? “Dear ‘Chinese diaspora’“? you have the audacity to tell us not to attack people while mocking us in the same goddamn breath? the lack of self-awareness that takes is stunning. congratulations for lowering the fucking bar once again!

perfunctorily saying that our “trauma is real” means nothing when the rest of your response dismisses us wholesale as “trolls”, insults our cultural identity -- one that we have repeatedly explained is a complex, difficult topic -- asserts that we have no grasp on the politics of fandom, that we’re delusional, and then!! has the fucking sanctimonious presumption to blame us for CCP censorship of AO3 in china. whether or not you intended any of that is irrelevant, because you still fucking said all of it and we still fucking heard it.

you don’t know jack fucking shit about the 227 event and it shows. the lack of respect that you exhibited in this reply is unbelievable. I was fucking there when this went down, I cried for days. I watched my chinese friends having mental breakdowns in private forums, a chinese friend i had met literally two weeks prior on AO3 emailed me in dismay for what had happened -- this is someone who had been working up the courage to send me a message for literal months and we managed to exchange emails just before the firewall went up -- you don’t understand, you can’t understand the sort of devastation that was felt. if you did, you wouldn’t have brought it up like this as a cudgel for sweeping our legitimate pain aside. blaming the victims for the acts of a violent and oppressive government is a fucking shitty look.

2:

Cloudyfromoobsession I have read it [*the chinese diaspora statement], it makes me really disappointed. They treat fan fiction as some deep existential writing, which is not necessarily wrong but they have to acknowledge that not everyone is divining the meaning of life in a mdzs fic or any other fandom. Transformative work as a principle is based in the exploration of alternative visions starting from a canonical point, there is no rule that fan fic needs to appease a certain portion of the fandom or even stay true to canon.

I see that you have shit reading comprehension as well! not to mention a seriously questionable philosophy on the responsibility of transformative work as a whole. once again, you mock our genuine efforts to express something very important to us by saying that not everyone is trying to “divine the meaning of life” from a fic -- we never once said that fandom wasn’t supposed to be lighthearted and fun -- I’m pretty sure we said the opposite in fact! I love that you think that our concerns are a matter of taking things too seriously! you’re basically just telling us hey, it’s not that deep! let it go!

why should i fucking have to let this go when so many people act like you and have in every sphere of my life from the time I was born? why should I continue to bite my tongue, smile and play nice? because it’s not convenient when the model minority kicks up a fuss?

“there is no rule that fan fic needs to appease a certain portion of the fandom or even stay true to canon,” you say, like our race, identity, generational trauma, are just a matter of differing headcanons or taste. this isn’t about fucking appeasement, it’s about human respect and compassion. no, there’s no rule that all fic has to match anyone’s personal taste, but there is a fucking expectation that fic, and any other creative endeavor in this community, has a responsibility to examine its own impact in context. how explicit must the harm be before you put your foot down? if the characters said “ching chong” and chinese diaspora shouted it down, would you still say, “well, it doesn’t have to appease you”? “just look away”? “but I liked it”?

tell me to ignore my own oppression again for your personal comfort, I fucking dare you.

3:

mirror, as the author has asked to put all this to rest I will not engage with you. I’m well aware that Chinese censorship is a more complex issue and larger that a fandom spat, and yes it had nothing to do with chinese diaspora fans, it was the spirit of this type of “poisoning the well” I was invoking.Limited word comments are not good for exhaustive discussion. But being rude and dismissive to someone who apologized(I mean the author) makes you an immature bully. Good day

funny how you think you can act like you’re taking the moral high ground by acting like you’re complying with robin’s wishes to “lay things to rest” when you ignored her requests to stop defending her twice with your asinine bullshit. if you’re going to act like you’ve got the moral high ground, you better make damn fucking sure you actually have it.

I am going to give you. a sliver of the benefit of the doubt and try to believe that you didn’t intentionally try to justify your sinophobia using a turn of phrase with  antisemitic associations (one that was already discussed at length during the previous incident). I know that the history of “poisoning the well” isn’t terribly well-known, so this is just a reminder/to let you know that it’s a loaded phrase and should be used with caution, especially in a discussion that involves antisemitism.

in any case, you’ve already demonstrated an incredible amount of ignorance regarding chinese politics, so I don’t see any reason to believe that you are “well aware” of the complexity that underlies chinese censorship. the fact that you invoked it at all betrays how little sense you have of the history, how close it is, how much very real, terrifying harm has been wrought -- people love to use the CCP as a gotcha! to shut down or derail conversations about sinophobia. it’s an extremely common tactic, whether or not you realized it. do you all not realize that the people who suffer the most from an oppressive government are the people that live under its shadow? why is that so hard to grasp?

i have friends younger than me whose parents were close enough to tiananmen to hear the first shots ring out. the daughter of one of the photographers of tank man that snuck it out of the country is a year older than I am. my mother has been cautioning me for having political views since I was in middle school, citing the red guards of her generation and how they were manipulated and left to die by the CCP. I could tell you about shit that happened in my immediate family that would make your blood curdle. these stories are not unique or rare. keep that in mind the next time you want to whip out the CCP in an argument.

you’ve stated that limited character replies aren’t a good medium for discussion. fine. you’re welcome to pick this up in reblogs if you want. I’ve said my piece. good fucking day.

[magical-girl-coral]

et any more than ten notes, but fuck it, here are the reasons why Entrapta should have been kidnapped instead of Catra :

Catra's redemption would have felt more well earned - if Catra was trying to find a way to help Glimmer and Entrapta, then her change would seem more legitimate. She already showed signs of guilt through her nightmares of what she did to Entrapta. Instead of falling to her old ways like in Prime's ship, she would most likely go through a complete 180 and almost kill herself while trying to prove her worth. Imagine Catra trying to befriend Emily and Imp so they could find a way to save Entrapta, putting aside her past grievances with them so they could signal Entrapta on Prime's ship. Maybe Imp was the one collecting robot bits, so they could give it to Entrapta once they find her. Maybe Emily showed one of Entrapta's old recordings before she was sent to Beast Island for the sake of filling the empty space she left. The possibilities are endless.

Making the princesses look more justified in their anger - The princesses' ableism was handled terribly. There is no way around this. Neurotypicals obviously wrote episode two, and it shows*. However, once you replace Entrapta with Catra, their anger, hostility, and Scorpia's timidness make way more sense. Mermista's rage especially makes the most sense since Saelinas was the kingdom was fell first thanks to Catra and Hordak. Instead of making all of our favorite characters, ableist assholes, this plotline makes them more human. The power of friendship can only run so far, after all, and every single princess is allowed to have a breaking point in trust. 

It would showcase Entrapta's real priorities - For most of the show, both fans and characters see Entrapta as someone who would never care about anything other than tech. Now, if that were true, then Entrapta would have no problem joining Prime's side. But that's not what would happen. Instead, Entrapta would unleash hell on Prime's ship without Prime even noticing. Sending signals to Etheria and new tech designs, helping Glimmer escape and sending her back to the Best Friends Squad, all while showing zero hesitation. Entrapta loves tech unconditionally until it starts to mess with her friends.

It could show ableism correctly through Prime with how he would treat Entrapta - This is my scenario of how Entrapta ends up on Prime's ship (please tell me if you have anything better): Prime, after looking into Hordak's memories, sees a young and brilliant scientist. Prime decided to show her his ship, trying to seduce Entrapta into improving his tech while convincing her that a 'defective, retarded, emotionless' Etherian like her could never truly be great, so she might as well give up now. He would touch without her consent and shame her for turning his "affection" away. Instead of falling to his manipulations, Entrapta realizes that he is afraid of her. She's biologically different then most Etherians, and Prime doesn't know how to control her. That gives her the final push of courage she needed to have to go behind Prime's back and rescue Glimmer. By making Prime ableist instead of the princesses, the show tells us how ableist is bad and disables people deserve more respect (I know that most of the show's fans are above fifteen, but with how the fandom has been acting, they deserve to be taught like children).

It would give a parallel 'be careful what you wish for' between Entrapta and Catra - At the start of the series, all Entrapta wanted was to see more advanced tech, and all Catra wanted was to see Etheria conquered. They both got exactly what they wanted, and their lives couldn't be worse. 

A chipped Entrapta breaking free from the hive mind because of her autism would be awesome - That's it. That's the pro. I'm incredibly desperate for more good autism rep, and this would be amazing.

Catra and Adora bonding while in space would be excellent for both characters - As much as I love the angst from chipped Catra, it feels more like fanservice now. At the end of the day, it felt like Catra and Adora didn't bond enough to have a solid devolvement in their relationship. This could change if they went to space together with Bow. Instead of spending just half of the last season together, they spend the next eleven episodes bonding in the insanity of their situation. It would also allow more time for Catra to understand Adora's abuse under Shadow Weaver. By forcing those two into a close space in the middle of nowhere, they would have no choice but to confront the other about their issues. And speaking of much-needed bonding time.

Glimmer would get a chance to face Catra about Angella's death - If there is one thing I will never forgive season five for, is forgetting Angella's death.  It was Glimmer's main motivation to take more action against the Horde, it was what almost drove Micah to despair, and it was the final nail in the coffin for Adora, making her stop taking the blame for everything and take Catra's threat to the world more seriously. But then season five happened and they just... forgot about her? She was never mentioned again because if she were mentioned, Catra would look bad, and Glimmer would have a reason to hate her. But if Glimmer were to meet Catra again outside of Prime's ship, with all the trauma she went through there, she would definitely take out on Catra (kind of like how Katara took out her anger on Zuko after he joined the gang).

Hordak would join the Best Friend Squad early after they save Entrapta and would get more devolvement as a result- If you think for one second that Hordak won't abandon Prime after what he did to Entrapta, then you haven't been watching the same show. I don't know how he joins the BFS. Maybe Catra tried to find him to fix her mistakes**, maybe he finds them by accident and remembers some of the past events as a result, or maybe he was one of the clones that witnessed chipped Entrapta and got a wake-up call. Either way, he wouldn't sit back and watch Prime continue to ruin his only friend's life. This would give him more screen time to show his backstory more clearly, give more sympathy for the clones along with a better redemption arc. And finally, the most crucial point.

Catra's growth would be more consensual - Most of Catra's maturity seemed to be out of her control. She helped Glimmer because she felt like no one wants her anymore. She had her hair cut because Prime wanted her to look more tamed. She was buddy-buddy with Glimmer and Bow because the plot says so. Nothing that happened this season seemed to be with Catra's consent, which made me feel extremely uncomfortable. Instead of watching Catra go through glorified torture porn, imagine her changing from her own free will. She cuts her because her hair reminds her of how Shadow Weaver's hair looked wild when she was angry. She changes clothes because she didn't want to wear her crown anymore. She goes to space with Bow and Adora because she wants to do good with her life, and is tired of being the mean old bully she was never meant to be. Doesn't this seem more satisfying?

*here, here, here, here and here are some metas about why Entrapta’s treatment was written terribly. I’m too tired to explain myself, and these posts tell the show’s problems better then I could

** I really like the idea of Catra finding the Luvd crystal and returning it to Hordak as a way apologize for how she has separated them. It would also be a cool parallel to all the times she took the crystal out of Hordak’s suit.

Edit: holy shit, there were so many typos here. Why didn’t any of you guys tell me?

Double edit: soooooo... I may or may have not written a fic...that you can read here...please support me, my brain is begging for more serotonin.

[devaneiosinfinitos]

My thoughts on ACOSF

!!!!MAJOR SPOILERS!!!!

I was really looking forward to this book and Nesta and Cassian’s story and I really wanted to love it, but it fell really short. If I were to define ACOSF, I'd say: Wasted potential.

After finishing it and rereading some parts, my conclusion is: there are some pretty cool scenes, but that's not reflected in the rest of the book. I was disappointed and frustrated with several things. I was angry with others and found that many points in the plot were not really developed.

Here are some things that really bothered me (and this will be long):

ENDING RUSHED

I thought the ending was rushed. There were many things happening at the same time and none of them got a proper conclusion. For example, the Blood Rite and the birth. At one point we’re reading about the Blood Rite and how Nesta was fighting the other Illyrians so Emerie and Gwyn could win. Then, Queen Briallyn and Cass arrive, Nesta destroys her and gets the crown and then Azriel and Mor arrive and take them to Feyre. And that’s it. All that build-up for what? For a few paragraphs of Nesta meeting Gwyn and Emerie after the birth and briefly discussing it. And then of Nesta reminiscing of when she told Cass and Az the details of it and they pointed out what needed to be corrected. SERIOUSLY? The birth scene totally took the focus out of Nesta’s at Ramiel and the end of the Blood Rite and the AMAZING victory of Gwyn and Emerie and how well they did on the rite. There were chapters and chapters building up to the conclusion of the Blood Rite and what could come of it and then it was just over. So anticlimactic. Why spend so much time on it and then not even having one character acknowledging how incredible they were? That not only they survived it but Emerie and Gwyn won it and Nesta got so far and pulled an Enalius at the end? So few Illyrians have ever gotten that far and it has always felt like such a great accomplishment that Cass, Az and Rhys completed it, and then here we have women kicking the ass out of the challenge which has been unheard of and we don’t even get Cassian saying how proud he was? There was a lot missing at the end of that narrative. I wanted Cass, Az, and Rhys making a big deal out of their accomplishment. I wanted the Illyrians reactions about their victory and performance and what that could mean moving forward. I wanted more of how Emerie and Gwyn felt winning it and what it meant for them and Nesta to have accomplished that together. What a waste. 

Not to mention, how rushed the entire thing with Briallyn and the crown was. One moment Nesta is destroying her and there lies the crown. And then, there’s Nesta using all three artefacts to stop time and help Feyre. They didn’t even discuss the fact that Briallyn was gone and that now they had the 3 artefacts. I mean, some people in that room didn’t even get to see the crown (Did they even know they managed to get it in the Blood rite?), let alone discuss the significance of it. One of the main plots of the book was the search for the trove, and then when they have all 3 artefacts, that’s just completely brushed over. Again, SERIOUSLY? All these plots and none with a development/conclusion to match the build up.

NESTA’S POWERS

I don’t even know where to start with this one. Every time I remember that Nesta gave up her powers I get pissed all over again.

Nesta’s powers have been hyped up for a long time. A LONG TIME. Now, we finally have her book where we delve into her journey and where her powers are supposed to be fully explored and WE NEVER GET THAT. Thank you for nothing, Sarah. Her powers are not even fully explored and then she gives them up. We never really get to fully understand her powers and get to see her really using them. THERE WAS SO MUCH POTENTIAL. I wanted to see her wreak havoc and fully embrace her powers and become one of the most powerful and deadly characters in Prythian. I wanted to see more of her being in control of her abilities and being her badass self taking a hoard of bad guys out. I wanted to understand the extension of her powers. But nope, just as she’s starting to learn about them, she loses them. SO ANTI-CLIMATIC (it doesn’t matter that apparently there’s a bit left, that’s not the point). When she was engulfed in silver fire in her room and Rhys came running? That’s what I wanted to read about. Nesta never really used her silver flames and we never got to really understand what they meant. Ok, they were cold rather than hot. WHAT ELSE? Why is the book even called A Court of Silver Flames? Isn’t that supposed to indicate that said silver flames will be significant? The most significant thing about them other than the bedroom scene are the silver flames that appear in her eyes, and that was not even fully developed either. Is it only when she’s about to lose control? Or angry? Or emotional? When the silver flames appear in her eyes it’s always highlighted that “nothing Fae looks through them” (this was pointed out more than once) and Cass even says at one point that that’s the being the Bone Carver whispered about and exalted and feared. We had the Bone Carver, a creature of thousands of years, calling Nesta a queen and saying she was as "ancient as the sea" and we have Lucien saying that maybe some things should not be awoken and "mother spare you all" when he sees Nesta training and I feel like all that foreshadowing never really came to fruition. LOOK AT ALL THIS BUILD UP. 

Nesta’s been hyped up as this powerful Death Queen or as this being with great powers and the culmination of her journey in this book resulted in her giving it all up to save Feyre, Rhys and the baby. Rhys, that up until that point hadn’t really done anything that made him worthy of her calling him brother. Since Sarah came up with this death in childbirth plot (I could’ve gone without this one, seriously), yay for Nesta saving them because it’s not like I wanted them to die (I hope they learnt the lesson with that stupid bargain though). But this entire plot could’ve been addressed differently. AND BETTER. In the end, it undermined Nesta's powers narrative. Why build this plot up so much and include so many things that could be considered foreshadowing if you’re not going to fully develop it in the character’s main book?

IC’S BULLSHIT

Ever since ACOFAS, I was waiting for someone (preferably Nesta) to call the IC on their bullshit and their self-righteous hypocrisy. But it never happened. We had that God awful intervention scene and Mor saying bad things and Amren being gratuitously cruel and Rhys insulting Nesta and Feyre taking her freedom away and none of that is ever addressed again. Ok, I get they were trying to help her with their intervention, but they could have approached that very differently and much better. I felt really bad reading that, and they all got away easily with their behaviour towards her. Sometimes it felt like they were kicking a dog who was already down. Especially Amren. She called Nesta a waste of life and Nesta bloody knelt to apologise to her, holy shit, I can’t get over that. And Amren never apologised. I feel like there was a lot of apologising coming from Nesta, but not enough coming from others. The IC were disrespectful towards her many times (and not only in this book), and that’s it. All swept under the rug. 

Later on in the book, Rhys says that Nesta always has a choice at the Night Court. REALLY, RHYS? Are you not tired of contradicting yourself? Because it sure as hell didn’t feel like she did. They even try to use Elain as a way to manipulate Nesta to do what they want. Not to mention that it feels as they are really pressuring Nesta to get better soon and fast (with the exception of Cass, who says she can take however long she wants), but the IC should look at themselves. Mor and Az are still dealing with their traumas after hundreds of years. Cass himself says that it took him years to get over what happened to his mom and what he did (and he still deals with the fact that he often feels inferior for being a bastard). And they want Nesta to be a happy healthy version of herself so soon? Please. I think a scene where their behaviour is addressed would’ve felt earned. I’m pissed that we didn’t get that. And that Nesta didn’t get that. And that because the IC are never called out on their often toxic behaviour (it happens towards Lucien as well), they don’t learn. 

Also, Rhys and the rest of the IC hiding from Feyre what it meant that the baby had wings was a really infuriating move. So so wrong. That type of thing should not be hidden from the person carrying the baby. It’s her life and her body. To be honest, I didn’t like how the pregnancy plot was written at all. I was already expecting that Feyre would get pregnant, but I hoped it would be later in the series for a myriad of reasons. The way it was done here didn’t really work for me, and I think many things didn’t make any sense such as how the birth would (or wouldn’t) work. I mean, Cassian had his guts hanging out of his stomach and lived, but a C-section is not possible? Come on.

RELATIONSHIPS

I think that by the end of the book there were some key things missing in some of the relationships. For example, the relationship between the sisters. It all appears well in the last scene, but I missed a scene where all three of them ACTUALLY talked and discussed things - their relationship and their parents and their past. You know, a decent conversation where they could explain things and ask for forgiveness or also say thank you where it was due.

I also would’ve really liked if Cassian had said “I love you” to Nesta. I don’t doubt his love for her and I know he has loved her for a long time and he has shown that love with attitudes on several occasions, but I think with Nesta, who had never really said “I love you” to anyone (she said it to Feyre for the 1st time in the birth scene), it would’ve meant something to her to hear those words, especially after thinking so little of herself for so long and not feeling worthy of affection and thinking everyone hated her. I think it would’ve felt nice to close that part of her journey with him saying it as well. Also, I kind of missed soft/tender moments between Nessian thoroughout the book. Yeah, they have an angsty relationship and Nesta was in a healing journey and the smut was great, but I think there could’ve been more sweet moments in the middle, you know? Because they only truly recognise the bond at the end, so the fluffiness is mostly focused in the last pages, and I wanted a bit more of that here and there. Not a lot that would change the dynamics of the relationship, but just a bit more that would balance the smut and angst a bit and make me sigh. Sometimes I thought there were too much smut and angst and not enough relationship growth through conversation and softness.

HIGH KING 

I really dislike the High King idea and I have a feeling that’s exactly what Sarah might do. Not long ago, the IC was shitting on Vallahan for wanting to conquer other territories and then there’s Amren saying Rhys should become High King and rule over the entirety of Prythian. Where did that even come from? That entire conversation and everything Amren said was just mindboggling. Not to mention that according to what she said, Rhys would become High King using the weapons that Nesta created. Same weapons that Amren said nobody should use (but it’s ok if it’s Rhys, right? *Eye roll*) and that no one should tell Nesta she could create. Not to mention that the entire idea of all the courts submitting to one ruler/court (in this case, to Rhys) sounds very imperialistic. They should all be aiming to coexist peacefully and harmonically and find ways to work towards that, not using this High King idea as a solution.

Plus, Rhys cannot even unite all of his own court (There’s rebellion building with the Illyrians, there’s the Court of Nightmares and all the problems there…), and Amren wants him to rule over Prythian? Also, something about the Court of Nightmares that I often wonder about. Is Mor the only decent person to be born there? Because I have a hard time believing that there is not another single decent soul in that place. Maybe someone that dreams of going to Velaris and escaping the Court of Nightmares but that just finds themselves trapped there because it’s not like Rhys and the IC give anybody a chance to get away. Do they even look for people that might be suffering there without deserving to? I mean, Mor came from there. Don’t they think there might be others? Even with the agreement they have with Keir in ACOWAR, it’s not like they are open to the idea. And it’s completely fine to want to protect Velaris from the evil and cruelty that exists in the Court of Nightmares, but again, that shouldn’t mean they shouldn’t even contemplate the chance that there might be people there worth of being in Velaris. That doesn’t earn Rhys any points towards the High King thing.

Moreover, that stupid bargain Rhys and Feyre made also doesn’t get him any points. Since learning the baby had wings, Rhys knew the chances of Feyre dying were very high. If she died, he’d die as well. You’d think a responsible ruler would make plans in case that really happened. You know, like talking to the IC and making plans about their next moves and discussing how they should proceed and just analysing the options after his and Feyre’s powers go to who knows who (If it went to Keir… Shouldn’t they prepare for that?). I mean, imagine the chaos that would ensue should Rhys and Feyre die, and it’s never even addressed that Rhys is considering these things. He didn’t even tell Amren, his second in command. Honestly, what a mess. I’m glad Rhys was categorically against it and that it doesn’t seem like he wants that, but it sounds just like Sarah to come up with a plot that the High King title would just fall on Rhys’s lap or be the only way out of a situation and that by becoming High King he’d be saving Prythian of something worse. I’m rolling my eyes just thinking about it.

So… These are just some of the things that bothered me. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t nice things in the book. Like I said in the beginning, there are some cool scenes and specific things that I really liked (such as Nesta, Gwyn and Emerie’s friendship, for example. They are just wonderful. And Nesta and the House of Wind. And Nesta and Azriel (I wanted more of this relationship). And Cassian’s support. And the Valkyries inspiration), but the book in itself? More potential than any other thing. It was a let down.

[thesewordsareallihavetogive]

The Couch - Stiles x Reader

(gif credit: obriensource)

Summary: Stiles forgets something really important and y/n doesn’t take too kindly to it.

Word count: 1300

Warnings: angst, cursing

a/n: hi! here’s my first little Stiles fic. i might write a part two if enough people are interested. i hope you enjoy :)

part two | masterlist

It was their anniversary. Their fucking anniversary. But y/n was sitting at home alone, at 8:30 p.m. on a Tuesday night. She had been dressed up in a floor length silk red dress with a thigh high slit, complete with black stilettos and curls, but had since changed into an old sweatshirt and leggings. Their dinner reservation had been scheduled for 7:00 p.m. at a new Italian restaurant downtown. It was now, she checked the clock, 8:32 p.m. She hadn’t heard from Stiles since they both left for work that morning. Not a single phone call. Not even a text message. Normally she wasn’t too annoyed (or livid, as she was now) when he worked late, she actually admired the fact that he was so dedicated to his work. But this? Standing her up on their anniversary? She didn’t find that cute.

A few minutes later Stiles walked through the door, hair sticking in a thousand different directions as though he’d run his fingers through it a hundred times. y/n raised her near empty wine glass in the air as he slipped his shoes off and set his briefcase down in the hallway. 

“Stiles Stilinski, the man of the hour,” she hiccupped out with emphasis on their shared last name. She’d admit that she had a slight buzz going from the glass or two of wine she’d had, but she was nowhere near tipsy enough to forget what had happened. He walked into their living room, untying his tie as he approached her. He quirked a brow when he sensed that she was pissed, so much so that she refused to look at him as she swirled the remainder of the alcohol around her glass. He decided to pretend as if things were normal and began a casual conversation. Rookie mistake.

“Sorry I’m late, we finally got a solid lead in the case and I didn’t realize what time it was until Scott texted me and asked what we were doing tonight. Weird, right?” he explained, clearly clueless. The fucker had forgotten about their dinner reservation. y/n let out a small laugh as she looked to the ceiling and downed the rest of her wine in one gulp. “Weird, right?” she mocked mentally. Yeah, weird that I texted Kira half an hour ago after waiting around by myself all dressed up for over an hour before realizing that you weren’t coming and there’s no way we’d be able to get a seat in the restaurant now anyway. Weird that she probably was looking out for your dumb ass and she probably told Scott, who I’m surprised didn’t go to the FBI field office himself and smack some sense into you. y/n shut her eyes and shook her head, willing her tears of anger to dry up. Stiles turned his head to the side in confusion. She was never this quiet or vague, even when she was angry. He turned his head to the side in confusion. 

“What is it, babe?” he questioned sincerely. Stiles was still so oblivious that it hadn’t dawned on him that y/n might be angry at him.

“You seriously forgot,” she stated matter-of-factly, letting out a dry laugh.

“Forgot wha- oh shit. Oh my Go- oh God I’m so sorry babe,” he fumbled, eyes wide. He immediately recognized that he was in deep, deep shit.

“Save it,” she cut him off. She leaned forward to grab the wine bottle from the coffee table and poured herself another glass. “I went out and bought a new dress, spent an hour doing my hair and makeup, and for what? For what, Stiles?! We scheduled that reservation two weeks ago. Two weeks! So here I am in a sweatshirt and leggings, a full face of makeup on, well on my way to tipsy, just for you to say ‘I’m sorry’?” she finished with a long sip from her glass.

“I-” he started to apologize again, trying desperately to make things right when he stopped short. y/n had gotten up from the couch and set her glass down before she walked down the hall towards their bedroom. He was about to follow her but he saw her come back out as soon as she’d walked in, except she was now holding his pillow. The one he couldn’t sleep without. She stopped at the linen closet in the hallway, pulling out a blanket, then dropping the items on the couch. His face dropped as he realized what she was doing. “Babe, can we just talk? I’m so incredibly sorry and I promise I’ll make it up to you,” Stiles pleaded, stepping towards her to gently grab her arms but she stepped back. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples before finally looking him in the eye for the first time that night. 

“I can’t do this right now. I’m tired and I don’t want to say something I’ll regret. There’s chinese takeout in the fridge if you want to reheat that. So please, for both of our sakes, sleep out here tonight,” she tried to be gentle despite her bubbling rage. She could tell he genuinely felt sorry and she almost pitied him for a moment. His Adam's apple bobbed as he nodded and rubbed the back of his neck. 

“Uh, yeah,” he cleared his throat. “Goodnight, I guess,” he offered sheepishly. The poor guy looked like someone had kicked his puppy.

“Goodnight, Stiles,” y/n replied with a false calm tone. Once she had shut their bedroom door, Stiles turned around and kicked the couch, likely scuffing his black derby shoes. He pulled out his phone as he slumped down on the couch and began typing out a message to Scott.

8:45 p.m.   I fucked up, man. 

8:46 p.m.   No shit, Sherlock.

y/n tossed and turned in bed for about an hour and a half after she’d washed her wasted makeup off and slipped under the sheets. She glanced towards her nightstand where the numbers on her alarm clock shone a bright blue. 10:25 p.m.

“Fuck me,” she groaned as she turned to her back and stared up at the ceiling, unsuccessfully willing sleep to wash over her. After a few more minutes of her mind running wild while her eyes were screwed shut, she huffed and sat up in bed, throwing the covers off. “Fuck this,” she whispered as she got up, grabbing a blanket. She tiptoed down the hall, peeking around the corner to see Stiles laying down on the couch, staring straight up at the ceiling with his hands clasped over his chest. y/n took another step forward, wincing as the floorboard beneath her creaked. Stiles quickly propped himself up on his elbows and looked towards the source of the noise. A sad smile made its way across his face.

“Hi,” he said quietly.

“Hi,” y/n returned shyly. She didn’t quite know why. She wasn’t the one in the wrong but she still found herself feeling guilty.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked softly. y/n shook her head. “Me neither,” he looked down towards his lap. He raised his eyebrows in surprise when she made her way into the living room and crawled into the space between his body and the back of the couch. She draped the blanket she’d brought over both of them and snuggled into his chest as he laid back down. She wrapped an arm around his torso and tangled a leg in between both of his. Stiles leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. 

“This doesn’t mean I’m not still mad at you,” she reminded him.

“I know,” he replied with a small smile on his face.

join my tag list!

taglist: @linkpk88​

[decayandfanfics]

The great book of sayings

PAIRINGS: Tomura Shigaraki x FemReader

SUMMARY: He looks at you, his scarlet eyes fixed on yours, burning a hole through your head, every bit the predator he is, but you are as tough as it gets, so, against your better judgment and any well-founded logic, you answer his silent threat, the animalistic look he gives you with nothing less than a fearless smirk, irises burrowing into his pupils.A clever girl. He thinks, finally labeling you inside his head, cursing himself in the very moment he allows his brain to think of you as more than an asset. He is sure (he knows himself enough to know) he’ll think of this moment many times from now on.A clever pretty girl.

Reader is a typical college student until she gets herself tangled with the league of villains.

WARNINGS: Unhealthy/complicated relationships, violence, Tomura being Tomura, mentions of murder, heroes’ abuse of power, smut.

A/N: I’m trying so hard to write crusty boy here really in character. At least after AfO is taken. Any misspelled words, english is not my native language so i’m trying Helen.

As always, let me know what you think!

_____________________________________________________

Chapter 11 / Chapter 12

Out of sight, out of mind (interlude)

I

They disappear one night the same way they appeared.

Without a word.

It feels like waking up after a long dream. The way the sunrays enter your little kitchen, splashing your space in golden light looks almost ethereal, no longer their figures staining your white walls, standing out of place in the middle of your living room.

It feels a lot like the mornings after some heavy rainstorm.

It’s over. You think, breathing heavy and tired.

The apartment is quiet and cold, foreign to you. It reminds you a little they way you feel in hospitals. Places without personality, places without any personal touch. Even when everything is in place; the blankets are neatly folded in the closet and your toothbrush is the only one in the bathroom (Toga surely took her time tiding everything up) but you cannot feel at ease in it.

Maybe you are no longer the same person that use to live alone in this place, because it doesn’t feel like you belong inside the four walls that began to close too tight around you now, and even when you know you should run to the next police station and ask for help and protection because you’ve been hostage in your own home for weeks, you can’t get yourself to do it. It feels like a betrayal, somehow. Even when they held you captive, even when they’ve threat you and berated you. Even when there is no guarantee they would not be back to end the job after what you did to Dabi, after what happen with Shigaraki.

He looked like he wanted to hurt you last time.

Sorrow soft and silent start to rise, your heart breaking slowly with realization, smothering you, drowning you gently as you stand alone in the middle of your home, because they will never be back.

He will never be back.

It’s fine…I’m…safe. I’m safe.

You feel the jarring stab of grief, your heart cracking open under the pressure and the loneliness you’ve been trying to keep under control all this time, so you let out a shaking sob, finally admitting to yourself the ugly truth.

This is more than a little crush.

More like falling in love.

And your sweetheart has red eyes like jewels and a starved need for ruin.

So, you curl in a corner of your couch, hugging a pillow that smells way too much like soap and leather, finally allowing yourself to cry because this is painful, the kind of infatuation that can get you killed, that can destroy your life and ruin you. Him never coming back is a gift made of grief and poison, but you’ll take it because you know this is what you get in exchange of an attachment like this for a man who does nothing but harbor resentment inside the dark pit that is his chest.

You cry your eyes out, you cry desperate and lonely, holding tight to the pillow that still smells like him, no longer trying to suppress the nasty wound his gaze carved into your heart the moment his eyes met yours.

You cry because you think he hates you, because he didn’t just decide to go. Shigaraki choose to run away from this just to spite you and your infatuation because he wanted to stab you back. Because that’s the kind of man he is, that’s the kind of man that you allowed to hold grip onto your heart.

So, you stay curled in the corner of your little couch, sobbing and weeping over the painful mess you’ve made, wishing for the kiss you didn’t get the chance to steal and swearing that if you ever see him again, you’ll squeeze that devious grin out of his sharp face with your bare hands because if he wanted to hurt you by leaving without a word, then he should be fucking proud.

_____________________

II

He wasn’t joking when he asked her if she could handle rough.

“Oh my god” she sobs, inked tears staining her cheeks.

She looks like a mess, but he prefers it that way. He favors that she’s different, a complete opposite with her heavy makeup and revealing clothes, her smudged lipstick painting her chin and her breasts bouncing heavy, scaping her torn little dress. A perfect depiction of ruined and lewd. 

She gags when he squeezes her neck hard, his index fingers curled as he yanks her body against the brick wall, too angry to care for his companion. No. He just wants to thrust into her as fast and rough as he can so he can get off the soon.

“Oh my-” she pants trying to hold herself against the wall, but he pulls her neck to him, pressing her back to his chest and then he yanks forward and bites her hard in the shoulder, his teeth leaving a purple mark on her skin.

“Shut up.” He grunts maddened when she sobs and squirms against his body, her smell entering his nostrils, making him gag instantly because he cannot stand the cheap perfume mixed with cigarettes, sweat and sex.

He cannot stand the smell of her hair, nor the shape of her body, or the height difference.

He cannot stand her lewd screaming.

So, he covers her mouth with his hand and shut his eyes tightly closed before resuming his brutal animalistic pacing, trying not to think in the salty flavor of her skin in his mouth. He just needs his release; it’s been a while since he gave himself to this kind of pleasure and for all things he’s ever done, he never fucked this angry before.

Tomura thinks he’s not particularly sexual on a daily basis. He doesn’t go walking around thinking about the next time he gets laid, not when he’s never been that interested in girls anyway, because he just…doesn’t like things nor people. So, his approach on sex is more like a task to be filled if anything else (like eating), rarely relying on another body since he doesn’t want to be touched at all. Now, of course he’s done it now and then, sometimes paying for it, sometimes a nightstand after some vodka in a seedy bar, but always quick to dispatch the person involved.

For Tomura, sex is about him wanting something and obtaining it the easiest way possible to just keep on with his life.

Or at least that’s how it was, but some reason he’s been feeling incredibly starved for it lately, and after being in a heck of a terrible mood and some heated lash out at his crew out of nowhere, he decided to pick his anger and put it somewhere else before killing one of his comrades.

Now, the woman is drooling all over his hand with all the choking, making him feel nauseous so he lets go of her and just digs his fingers on her hip keeping his index up, his long nails clawing at her skin, making her whine, squeezing him tight in reflex.

She tries to catch his wrist to move one of his hands to her breast, but he yanks away to pull her hair, growling a curse against her ear, swallowing hard.

This feels so wrong.

It’s not the right cup size.

It’s not the right smell.

It’s not the right height.

It’s not the right woman.

The mechanic friction is finally working its wonders because Tomura feels his low abdomen tighten before finally getting off.

No, he doesn’t see stars, nor grunts in feverish pleasure. He doesn’t taste her neck nor smiles when he cums. As soon as he releases, he shoves the woman as far away from him, removing the condom with disgust and decaying it (the thought of feeling her bare wet cunt against his naked skin revolving his guts).

He adjusts his clothes before throwing the woman some cash and just walks away, concluding that this was the most unsatisfying fuck in world’s history.

Tomura looks at his hands, feeling the sticky sensation of her saliva and her sweat, troubled because his face it’s super itchy but he feels so disgustingly dirty, that he doesn’t even need to smell them to know that her musky tacky perfume now lingers on his palms.

Maybe if I rub my hands, I can decay it away. He thinks, trying his hypothesis to no avail. ‘kay, that was pointless.

He manages to rub the fabric of his sleeve against his brow until the skin begins to show red dots of blood as he thinks seriously that he could kill for a hot shower, even when he’s not the cleanest guy around (he showers when he can. If he can’t do it, then he just doesn’t think about it), but he can’t stand the way the prostitute’s scent remains on him like a sin, and the thought is so ridiculous, because he’s done plenty of horrible disturbing shit in his life to now feel all guilty and nasty for a “less-than-mediocre” fuck.

So, he walks away, utterly unsatisfied. His anger dragging behind him, leaving a bloodied mess of chaos and longing for something far brighter than a rough fuck behind some lost alley, because he wants more than that. He wants the name, the body and the holy spirit that inhabits the girl with dangerous gaze and healer hands. He wants her violence, her anger and wild bravado, all for him to feaster and be consumed by it.

A violent delight that he can’t afford, not when he’s busy surviving until he finds the doctor or his master’s weapon, so he repeats himself that his infatuation, this sickness will disappear eventually, he just needs to get his priorities straight and focus.

He’ll do it, time will get everything in place again.

Cold creeps into him, the city lights filling the streets between car noises and people returning their homes. All of them busy minding their own lives, completely unaware of the hooded serial killer walking by, quietly sneaking into the fire escape of some old building.  

_____________________

III

Internal medicine is one of those courses that drains every bit of life out of you. Arguably the hardest in a career full of hards, you now live under the constant threat of failure because this shit is a monster, and you know the statistics too well to not being aware that this course has the highest rate of reps in all the damn faculty.

So, you enter your uni mode; sugar-rush based diet and coffee like the world is ending to keep your brain functioning like is a nuclear reactor, sleeping four hours at nights and barely dreaming. Of course, it’s not just that class, is that you have three more besides that one, all of them of high difficulty for you to rejoice in your misery, so yeah. You live like a zombie.

I’m going to be rich; I’m going to be rich; I’m going to be rich… You repeat to yourself every morning after showering, watching your body in front of the mirror, admiring the sharp angles and purple eyebags that already began to claim your face.

Oh, and the hair loss due to stress is just the cherry on top of the cake, really.

Yes, your brain is at the brim of collapse right now, but classes start again, and your friends are there to suffer with you and it makes you feel accompanied and secure. Is just another semester of tears, panic, pizza and everything that implies to be a twenty something student, so you are thankful nonetheless, because you don’t have the time to think about the other thing…

You don’t think about it.

You don’t really think about it.

You don’t even think about it.

And you don’t say the name either, you refuse because you’ll do anything to forget about him, anything to erase the memory of his dark figure like a shadow against your white kitchen, too clever and insolent for your own good.

But it’s okay, you don’t think of him, or his slender fingers taking the bishop to strike down your king, and the way his dry lips curve upward before some smartass remark. You don’t think of his lean body towering over you, touching yours in so many places but none at the same time.

No, you don’t think of him while awake, but sometimes he visits your dreams to terrify you with his cadaveric hands and his face hidden by his hair. Ready to strike you down, a hand extended in motion to decay you into oblivion.

Sometimes he hovers over you, kissing your neck while ravaging you, incredibly close and raw and intimate, his mouth snarling dirty words you’ll never dare to say out loud. Dreams where his warm chest press against your naked body and your lips sings lewd lullabies just for him, welcome him to feaster on your skin with your face nuzzling against his scarred cheek, covering your face with his silver hair.

Sometimes he just sits in your kitchen as the sunlight reflects over his milky locks. His hand holding his cheek over the table in serene expression, calling your name to play again as the black king spins between his delicate fingers.

___________________

IV

Tomura has a meeting with this new allied Twice found, like three days from now.

He’s not particularly excited about it, surely, it’s just another capo wannabe with grandeur delusions, but it could be worth it. Maybe he could get some money out of it since the league is completely broken after his sensei’s incarceration. They are in desperate need of a hideout, now more than ever since Kurogiri vanished and he’s sure the heroes must have captured him. (Thinking about this is pointless anyway because he doesn’t have the means to get him back)

Minding his own business, he walks with his hoodie on, passing between civilians like he’s one of them, completely invisible when he sees her.

It catches him by surprise. His heart stopping dead on its tracks, wide eyes and tight lips, uncertainty filling him all of the sudden, but he’s accustomed to make hiding spots out of nowhere, so he gets behind some store sign where he can watch her safely.

She stands outside a coffee shop, animatedly talking with some guy who wears the same clinic uniform that she has on. A school mate maybe? She’s an intern in a hospital so, they are probably on shift. Another doctor like her.

She looks tired and paler, but beautiful, nonetheless. The way her lips move give away she’s talking about something clinic, because her face has that firm expression she always does when she’s being professional.

She already looks like a doctor and God knows he’d gladly be sick every day of his life if she’s the one to treat him.

His feelings betray him. He was sure after a month she would be completely out of his system by now, this stupid illness already cured, but shit just doesn’t go away.  It pisses him off to no end because she’s not worth the aggravation. C’mon, she’s just another boring normal civilian, she doesn’t do anything important or interesting. She’s not remarkable in any way that serves him, because not even her quirk is truly useful. Not when it threatens to kill her every time she uses it.

And looking her objectively, she’s not even that pretty, but somehow, he’s torn between his desire to make her see him and get as far away from her he can.

Searing jealousy pierces him, hate raw and jarring dripping from between his ribs when the man leans over and whisper something that makes her laugh and for a moment, he seriously thinks he’s going to kill him right there, no quirk needed because he would just love to gut him out in plain view for her to see what he thinks of her stupid friend.

He hates the man, but he hates her more because she dares to laugh, she dares to enjoy life and people meanwhile he crawls hungry and cold between ruined places.

Like sensing his glare, she suddenly turns her head with her eyes directed to the spot where he hides, her expression changing from joyful to confused in seconds, making him laugh because even when he’s sure she cannot see him, she knows he’s there and it feels like she’s tied to him somehow.

Her face gives away disappoint when she fails to catch him and the thought of her grieving after he left delights him, but he’s sworn to let her behind, so he rejoices for a moment in this little victory of his pettiness over her charms, before turning away from her, fully believing that this is the last time he thinks of her.

Chapter 13

__________________________________________

Hey lovely readers! since English is not my native language and writing Shigaraki is kinda hard because he changes and grows, and because he usually says many things about himself, but then he goes and do completely different things (like when he says he hates everything, but CLEARLY he’s fond of twice and stuff like that) so much in manga, it would be lovely to know what you think of this! I think it’s the only way to be better at something really, So, any questions, comments and concerns, please feel free to comment!

[horansqueen]

Stuck With You - Chapter 16

Chapter 16: I Think I Love You

🡪chapter 1  🡪chapter 2  🡪chapter 3  🡪chapter 4  🡪chapter 5  🡪chapter 6   🡪chapter 7  🡪chapter 8  🡪chapter 9  🡪chapter 10  🡪chapter 11 🡪chapter 12 🡪chapter 13 🡪chapter 14 🡪chapter 15

College Enemies To Lovers AU

characters // masterlist // instagrams // mood board

This morning I woke up with this feeling I didn't know how to deal with and so I just decided to myself I'd hide it to myself and never talk about it And did not go and shout it when you walked into the room I think I love you (I think I love you)

I think I love you so what am I so afraid of I'm afraid that I'm not sure of a love there is no cure for

I think I love you isn't that what life is made of Though it worries me to say that I never felt this way

I don't know what I'm up against I don't know what it's all about I got so much to think about

click here to be on the update list

NIALL

                                                       I woke up in a bed I didn't know and blinked a few times, trying to get my thoughts back into place. When we got there, Lewis was asleep with some random girl on the floor and he said we could sleep in his room. I was too tired to argue and I could read in Devon's eyes that she couldn't wait to lay down and sleep either, so I just decided to accept. The whole evening came back to my throbbing head and I groaned low with a frown. The goal was to get drunk and I could seriously tell it was achieved, but ending up with Devon in a bed after a claustrophobic crisis and an intense make out session was not what I had expected.

I rubbed my eyes and turned around to look at her. She was asleep and snoring, all cuddled up in the blanket and slowly, I sat up, holding myself with one of my hands on the mattress. I think we both fell asleep as soon as we lied down in bed and that was a good thing, or I had no idea what could have happened between us had we been sober. If I wanted to be honest with myself, though, the few times I had allowed myself to imagine having sex with Devon, we were sober and definitely not in one of my best mates' bed with a bunch of drunk people only a few meters away.

I looked down at her, her lips parted and her hair hiding half her face, and just blinked a few times. Of course, I wouldn't have sex with Devon. It was not in my plan. The first time I saw her, waiting in front of my room, I knew I was fucked. It was not love at first sight, and it was not lust either. It was just an undeniable connection that I couldn't explain and I hated it. Immediately, I knew I had to stay far from her because it was obvious that this girl was going to do something to me that I didn't want to live. I knew she was going to make me feel things I didn't want to feel. It was also very hard to explain. It had nothing to do with her body or her face. It was not that heart-jumping-palm-sweating kind of feeling. It was also not that I thought she was extremely pretty, or that I imagined shagging her all over that room we shared. No, it was something deeper than that, something unfathomable, something visceral. It was a soul thing that made no sense, something I had never experienced before. Immediately, I hated it, and I hated her.

If it was what soulmates were all about, I certainly was not interested. In fact, I was ready to spend my life alone anyway, devoid of any romantic feelings and as far as possible from any heartache, because I knew exactly what it felt like to be betrayed and heart-broken, and there was no way I was willing to go through it again. Nothing was worth that, not even the promise of eternal love, because nothing lasts forever.

Devon turned around in bed with a whimper, ending on her back, her cheek falling on the pillow and her face turned my way. I noticed she was wearing my shirt and I didn't even remember giving it to her. It was tight on her, way too tight, and my eyes traveled on her breasts before I shut them tight and raised my nose up. What the fuck was wrong with me?

The more I spent time around her, the more I was convincing myself that perhaps, it was just lust, and that as soon as I'd get her in my bed, it would leave. Okay, maybe she didn't look like the kind of girl I normally went for but it didn't matter. There was no one I wanted to touch more than her. She was different than the girls I usually go for, that much was true, but she was better, and I couldn't explain it, I couldn't explain why. The moment I realized that it was not just lust was that time I found her spying on me when I was writing a song. I had ran after her and had noticed blue paint on her cheek. After she left, I walked to the painting class and searched for that specific shade of blue on a canvas. The more I looked at her art, the more I realized that what she was saying in her paintings was what I was saying in my music, and that certainty was scarier than anything I had felt before. Her art was incredible and emotional. It was real and raw, and it seemed to pull something right from my guts. I felt pulled towards her art, the same way I was pulled towards her... like a magnet, like gravity, like something I had no control on. And I fucking hated it. I hated her even more. Who did she think she was to make me feel so deeply? How did she turn me into this weak and pathetic excuse of a man? I had worked on myself so much, I had made sure I would never fall in love with anyone ever again. But with only one look, one smile, one stupid painting... she made me feel so much I could fill a whole year of emotions.

I started writing more songs because these feelings had to come out one way or an other, and I knew I should thank her for that. I knew I should be grateful to her for helping me create some of the best music and lyrics I ever wrote, despite herself... but I couldn't. I was pissed at her. I was angry at her because anger was something I could somewhat control, and it was better than that stupid four letter verb I promised I'd never feel again.

I had tried to hurt her with my actions, with my words, and with my disinterest. I had ignored her for days and I knew what I was doing, I was very good at that game.

"I'm so sorry, Devie." I breathed out with a sigh as she turned again on her side.

I brought my hand slowly closer and moved a lock of her hair away from her face before shaking my head and closing my eyes. Why was I getting so weak suddenly? I had to make things clear with her, and it was urgent. I kissed her a few times in moments of weakness, and she had kissed me the night before to stop my claustrophobic crisis, but it was over, now, and it wouldn't happen again. I repeated it a few times in my head, trying to convince myself, and finally got up, searching through Lewis' stuff to find sweatpants and putting them on quickly.

I got out of the room slowly, making sure not to wake up anyone, and noticed all the people asleep on the couches and the floor. I even saw a couple in the tub when I went to pee and just shrugged. Most likely, these two were going to sleep for an other few hours and I didn't even bother pulling the curtain.

Walking back slowly to the kitchen, I yawned and passed my hand in my hair, scratching my head before making some coffee, in hope it would help with my headache. I tensed when two arms wrapped around my waist from behind, squeezing me tight for a few seconds.

"Hey, morning." Mandy whispered as one of her hands reached down to my pants.

I grabbed her wrist right after her fingers brushed on my cock and turned around to face her, noticing she was only wearing a t-shirt that didn't belong to her and panties.

"Mornin'." I replied, raising my eyebrows, not at all in the mood to have a chat.

"Where did you sleep? I missed you." she explained with puppy eyes, raising her bottom lip over her upper one and tilting her head. "I thought we were going to get high and fuck, last night?"

"You know smoking makes me feel like shit, Mandy."

"Mm, yes, but it makes your dick very very hard." she whispered with a smirk, reaching again for my pants.

I moved back a bit and grabbed her hand before she reached me, raising my eyebrows. "I prefer alcohol, and it doesn't stop me from getting hard."

"Say that to the last two times we tried to fuck." she pointed out, losing her smile and getting angry suddenly. "Maybe you should see a doctor."

"Weed doesn't make me hard, and alcohol doesn't stop me from getting hard." I explained low and with a frown. "My cock is doing very well, thank you. Have you thought that maybe you're the problem?"

I thought she was going to yell or slap me but after a few seconds, she just scoffed. "No, not a chance."

I rolled my eyes and when I looked up, I noticed Devon, standing behind Mandy, her arms around her chest. She looked shy or embarrassed and Mandy frowned and turned around as I kept starting at Devon.

"Nice shirt." Mandy let out a bit rudely, walking past Devon only to disappear in the hall.

Devon didn't answer and we just stared at each other for a few seconds. I knew she was thinking about what had happened in the elevator. I knew because I was thinking about it, too, and I could read it in her eyes.

"Good morning." I let out in a low tone, sending her a smile.

"Good morning.."

I turned around and poured some coffee in a cup before turning back to her and handing her the mug. She glanced at it and looked back in my eyes, taking a step closer to grab it from my hands.

"Thank you." she just said, licking her lips before taking a sip as I poured more coffee in an other mug for myself. "What.. were you two talking about?"

"Oh, Mandy was talking about how hard I get when I smoke." I just shrugged, taking a long sip of coffee and burning my tongue.

"That's... stupid. Pretty sure weed has the opposite effect."

"Weed's got no effect on my cock." I mentioned. "Alcohol doesn't either."

"I know."

Her answer made me look up in her eyes and I sent her an amused smile but decided not to answer. She smiled back but tried to avoid my eyes and I chuckled. We drank in silence for a few minutes but I couldn't stop my eyes from roaming on her.

"I was about to bring you that coffee cup in bed." I admitted, putting my now empty mug away. "What woke you up?"

She looked down and started nibbling on her bottom lip. I could even swear her cheeks turned a soft shade of red but I didn't mention it.

"I was... cold."

I had to remember that I was not supposed to befriend her, because I knew where it could lead. I couldn't keep on flirting with her either, or I'd definitely get in trouble. I had to go back to my old way of ignoring her, being rude to her, I was well aware of it, but when I looked at her again, something twisted in my stomach. I hated that I had to hurt her in order to stop myself from hurting. The whole process seemed heartless and that was not the kind of person I wanted to be.

"Let's go home, what do you say?"

She nodded, her lips curling slightly on the left, and I took a step closer, staring down at her. It was so hard to be mean to her, so hard to keep pushing back everything she was making me feel.

"I'm gonna need my shirt back." I whispered, tugging the bottom of the shirt she was wearing. "I'd like it back now, please."

This time, she chuckled and shook her head. "No, I think I'll do that in the bathroom."

"I wouldn't recommend." I pointed out when she took a step back. She frowned and I smiled more. "There's more witnesses in the bathroom than here, trust me."

She frowned more and her eyes got smaller. I could read curiosity on her face but after a while, she grabbed the bottom of her shirt with both hands and I held my breath. "Well, if you say so then, I guess I have no choice."

My eyes fell on her hands and I waited but after a few seconds, she started laughing again. "Just kidding."

I emptied my lung, feeling my lips curl slightly and shook my head. "Go in the room, I'll wait here." I leaned my butt against the counter and watched her as she tilted her head, staring at me.

My eyes fell on her lips and the way she licked them before biting on her bottom one did something to me. I wanted to hate her, I wanted to feel any sort of way for her except the way I was feeling. It would be so much easier if it was only lust and I knew it, but turning this feeling into something as basic as lust was impossible. The emotion invading me every time our eyes met was much more complex and I didn't know how to live with it or tone it down.

When she came back, I was still lost in my thoughts and blinked a few times as she handed me my shirt. I put it back on as her smell reached my nose, overwhelming me and making me slightly dizzy. It was a mix of her rose perfume and her own scent and I remembered smelling it that time I lied down next to her in her bed... the very first time I kissed her.

"Thanks for giving me your shirt to sleep, by the way." she pointed out, bringing my attention back to her. "I can't even remember how I ended up with it."

She chuckled and I took a step closer, my lips curling into a smirk. "I can't remember either."

Her face changed suddenly and when her lips parted, I thought about kissing her again. "Wait, we didn't.. did we?"

This time, I laughed and shook my head, amused by the look on her face. "No! We just slept!"

She let out a relieved sigh and closed her eyes. I let my eyes roam on her face again until she opened hers to look at me.

"Would it be that bad if we had?" I asked with a chuckle, trying to turn it into a joke. The truth was, I was genuinely curious of what she would answer me. I wouldn't have sex with her, perhaps because I was scared of where it would lead us, but I was wondering if she would give in if I tried.

"No it's just... I prefer to remember when I have sex with someone."

I nodded a few times, my lips curling to the left, and turned around to put our two empty mugs in the sink. "That's how I know we did nothing." When I turned back to her, she was frowning and I just smirked again. "If we had sex, Devie, there's no way I'd ever forget about it."

This time, she rolled her eyes, but I noticed that the way she smiled was more embarrassed than annoyed and I liked it. It was so wrong but I liked knowing I had an effect on her, whether it was on her mood or on her libido, and although I knew it was not healthy or fair, I wanted to get a reaction out of her all the time.

We left in silence and walked to my car without saying goodbye to anyone. I could feel her gaze on me the whole time I was driving and when I parked and turned around to look at her, her head was leaning on the bench, turned my way. I wanted to say something smart or funny but nothing came to mind and when her gaze moved down to my lips, I knew she was feeling the exactly same thing than me,

"I'm still tired." she admitted in a low tone

I stared at her, debating whether I should kiss her again or not, and after a while, I just sent her a smile. "Then let's get back to our room, that way you can snore for a few more hours."

"Do I snore that loud?"

I laughed with a nod. "Yes!"

She let out a groan and made a grimace as I laughed some more, and we walked side by side until I closed the door of our room behind us. She immediately searched through her stuff for more comfortable clothes and I just sat on my bed as she disappeared in the bathroom.

I closed my eyes, trying to remember the conversation I promised myself I'd have with her, but it was not an easy thing to do. I knew it would be bad to be rude to her and even though I was aware it was the best way to make her hate me, I was not sure I wanted to do it.

I heard the bathroom door again and opened my eyes as she walked past me to sit on her bed. We just stared at each other, facing each other, for a few minutes and it surprised me how much I preferred to see her with my clothes instead of hers. It was just hitting me at that moment. And then, I let out the very first thing that came to my mind.

"I'll talk to Lewis about it."

She frowned and her lips parted but she finally understood. "Oh." she whispered, looking down at her hands. "You want me to move out?"

It was not only in her eyes that I could see sadness. I could also feel it emanate from her and invading the room.

"I don't know why he said I'd be mad, it's cool with me." I shrugged as if my heart hadn't completely sunk in my stomach, ignoring her question. " Lewis is cool."

"I know." she breathed out, blinking a few times and clearing her throat. I could swear she was about to cry and I was not feeling really good either.

"That way, you won't walk on Mandy and I having sex again!" I let out a small laugh, shocked that I could fake it so well.

She looked up in my eyes and her lips parted. "You-You're gonna keep having sex with her?"

I shrugged and raised my eyebrows at her, feeling like a complete asshole. "Of course I will, why wouldn't I?"

She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, quickly wiping the side of her face on her shoulder before turning around and laying down in bed, her back facing me.

"You okay?" I asked, knowing very well that she was feeling like shit if only because I was feeling like that too.

"Yea, just a bit tired." she whispered, grabbing her blanket and pulling it over her body.

I looked at her for so long I forgot everything else. I remained motionless, the words I had just thrown at her playing over and over in my head. By saying them, I knew I would hurt her, and I felt like a shithead for doing it anyway, but the end justifies the means, right? Besides, it was better for both of us. If I was so convinced of this, though, why did my entire being wanted to join her under the covers, if only to hold her against me? Why did saying those things to her felt like the most wrong thing I had ever said in my life?

After a while, she started snoring and slowly, I got up, walking up to her bed to look down at her. I grabbed the blanket and pulled it gently over her shoulder before once again taking a lock of hair out of her face.

"I'm so fucking sorry, Devie."

[hypnoticwinter]

Down the Rabbit Hole part 35

Just looking at Makado makes me realize how incredibly tired I am. “Makado,” I say, trying to put a little bit of that weariness into my voice, “please, I just want to get Elena out of here.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Makado tells me. “Take your helmet off.”

“Makado,” I start, but she raises the gun and coaxes a threatening-sounding click out of it.

“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, and reach up and pop the helmet open. 

“Now take it off slowly and drop it.”

The helmet thuds to the floor with a dull clunk. I keep my hands open, bent at the elbows, roughly shoulder-height. I guess it’s a testament to how often this has happened to me lately that I’m not particularly panicked or flustered, even though she has a gun on me. I look into her eyes; they’re about as kind as a brick wall, a far cry from the Makado I knew - well, that I thought I knew. I don’t think she’ll shoot me but I don’t want to push her. 

“Makado,” I try again, speaking softly, “I know that you’re upset, but -“

“Upset?” she laughs. “That is a big understatement, Roan.”

“As if you have any right to be upset at me,” I snort. Makado’s eyes flash but I press onwards anyway. “You’re the one who was trying to literally fucking frame me for all the illegal shit you were doing -“

“You got Peter killed,” she says. My mind goes blank for a moment before I nearly laugh. I choke it back down; if I started laughing, either out of terror or nerves or just pure exasperation, I know I’d never stop, and I know Makado would probably shoot me.

“Makado,” I say, stammering a little bit, “I didn’t - there was nothing I could have -“

“Then how come you lived and he died, huh?” she says. I think I hear a crack in her icy demeanor and I look at her - really look at her. She glances away after a moment or two, and when her gaze swings back and hits mine whatever I thought I might have seen, whatever small vulnerability, has already faded away. “How come you lived?” she asks. 

The barrel of the gun trembles gently.

“Mak,” I start. I want terribly to be angry at her but something about the way she’s acting is just making me sad instead.

“Don’t call me that!” she yells. She slips her finger inside the gun’s trigger guard and I feel my breath catch. Maybe she really will shoot me; if she’s mad enough, if she thinks that somehow I caused Pete to get…to get leeched, or whatever the hell…

“Peter was the only one who ever called me that,” she murmurs. I know I’ve called her ‘Mak’ before and she never made a fuss about it but I guess this is special circumstances.

“Pete is - was - a fully trained ranger with dozens of expeditions under his belt, he might have - “ Makado licks her lips and tries again - “he might have gone a little downhill after 2007 but he was still sharp. He would have gotten out of there no problem. But he dies and you live?”

“Was that the plan?” I ask. If I can keep her talking maybe I’ll be able to pull something, but deep down I doubt it. “You send me down there hoping I’d die in an accident or something?”

“Of course not,” she says. “But if I had to choose between you and Peter…”

“That’s cold,” I tell her. She starts to say something, but I continue before she can. “But I get it. You loved him, huh?”

“Of course I loved him,” she says, sounding mildly scandalized. “You wouldn’t understand, I’m sure.”

“Why, because I - ? Oh, whatever,” I grunt. “Whatever, Makado. Just shoot me and get it over with.”

“I don’t want to shoot you.”

“Right, of course,” I snarl, putting as much venom into my words as I can. “You want to hand me over to the feds so I can suffer for your sins, right? That’s the endgame here, right?”

She has the good graces to flinch, at least. “I don’t -“ she starts, but I shake my head.

“Whatever,” I tell her. “What happened to Elena?”

Makado looks round, her eyes resting briefly on the wreckage of the autodoctor unit. “I don’t know,” she says. “When I got down here it was like this, and Elena was gone. I was going to -“

“Kidnap her so you’d have some leverage?”

“Bitch, will you stop fucking assuming the goddam worst of me? I was planning on tracking her down and getting her out of here.”

“I don’t believe you,” I tell her, my voice flat. “How did you even know she was here?”

“Because I heard the two of you sopping all over each other on the radio,” she tells me, her voice hard-edged with disdain. “Soon as I heard she was here in DUSA, I split off from my team and rushed up here. Guess I was too late.”

“Goddam it,” I mutter. My cheeks are burning a little from the knowledge that we’d been overhead; I guess I could have assumed, but it still had felt like it had been something private, something special we had shared. Maybe I wouldn’t have broken down quite so hard if I’d known Makado had been listening in. “It must have been the Leechman,” I mutter, glaring at the gaping hunk of metal torn away from DUSA’s hull. My eyes are stinging and I wipe them hurriedly, not thinking, and when I take my hands down Makado is glaring at me very seriously over the sights of the pistol, and I realize that the quick motion nearly made her shoot me. My stomach does a backflip and I stammer out the beginning of an apology before she mutters a curse and takes a length of rope from her suit pocket.

“Hands together,” she orders me, and with a sigh I slap my wrists together and hold them out to her. She comes to me with the rope and hesitates for a moment; I know it’s because she’s only just realizing that she will have to put the gun away to tie me up. 

“I’ll hold that for you,” I offer, and in spite of herself she laughs.

“Turn around,” she says. “Hands behind your back.”

My heart is thumping heavily in my chest as I do. I am trying very hard not to imagine the Leechman bursting into here like a demon straight out of a horror movie and swallowing Elena up into its swollen leechy body. I can feel my hands trembling as Makado takes my wrists and lashes them tightly together. The rough synthetic fiber cuts into my wrists and I grunt. Makado steps away from me and I flex my hands experimentally but it’s no use, she’s tied me tightly enough that I’d never be able to free myself unless I had a knife. She’s already taken mine from the sheath on my belt and tossed it casually to the dusty, oily floor.

Elena’s dead. I can’t stop the thought from echoing around my skull, increasing in severity with each impact. She’s dead, she’s gone, I was too late. If I had just been a little quicker, if I hadn’t stopped to sleep, if I hadn’t…

“Hey, what are you - oh, Jesus Christ,” Makado grumbles. I sniff and look away from her. I try to keep it down but a quiet sob bubbles out of my throat.

“Goddam it,” I mumble. I can’t even wipe my eyes. My shoulders are shaking with the weight of it, with the weight of knowing that -

Makado sighs behind me. “You didn’t kill her,” she says. “If she’s even dead. We don’t know.”

I let out a terribly mirthless laugh. “You didn’t kill him,” Makado continues, begrudgingly. “I know you didn’t, it’s not like you put a gun to his head and shot him. I just…”

“Don’t want him to be gone,” I suggest, and out of the corner of my eye, through a veil of tears, I can see her nod.

I feel as though I might rip in two the next time someone touches me, but in spite of everything I do want to reach out and touch her, brush my thumb along the knobby edge of her wrist, feel her warmth near to me. Maybe it’s pathetic and stupid, maybe I should be spitting and cursing and swearing revenge but I can’t bring myself to. I want to just curl into a little ball and cry. 

Makado is rustling around behind me, and then I hear the click and crackle of a radio. “Peterson, Rodriguez,” she says, enunciating clearly. “Status check, over.”

A moment passes and then the response comes burbling up through the airwaves. “Peterson, checking in. I’ve got Rodriguez here with me but he’s carrying the crystal so he couldn’t call himself. Everything’s good down here. ETA 20 minutes to DUSA. Over.”

“Thanks. You were able to disable the specimen? Over.”

“Hard to say. It backed off but Emmanuel is hurt pretty bad. One of those leeches, it got into her suit and chewed the hell out of her leg. We’ve got her on a stretcher and we’re bringing her back but I don’t know if she’ll make it. Is the autodoc functional? Over.”

“Negative,” Makado says. Her voice is tight and fraying. “Negative, it’s smashed. It looks like the Leechman got here before we did. Over.”

“Shit. Well, Emmanuel is fucked, then. Do we have support from topside? Over.”

I hear Makado mutter a quiet curse below her breath. “Give me a second,” she says. “Out.”

I sniff hard and duck my head down into my shoulder, try and wipe my eyes against the rubber of the ranger suit. Makado is tapping at the pad in the arm of her ranger suit; she’s put the gun away at this point, tucking it into her holster at her hip. I could make a run for it, I reflect. Instead I fold my legs beneath me and sink into a huddle on the floor a little like a gazelle bedding down for the night. Makado glances over at me and then back at her screen. “Who’s Emmanuel?” I ask. My voice creaks partway through it, and when I clear my throat it comes back thick and congested.

“None of your business,” she tells me, a little absently. “You’d better stop crying,” she adds. 

“Fuck you,” I tell her, but I can’t put much heart into it. “Fuck you for trying to walk all over everything and try to do it your way. You walked all over me, you walked all over the team, you walked all over Peter -“

Makado looms over me, ruddy bolts of fury sparkling behind her eyes. “You have no idea, you have no idea -“ she starts, but I roll my eyes at her.

“Do you have any idea how many people are dead because of you?”

That catches her, and I get a vicious little thrill out of seeing how it impacts, how she absorbs it, how her eyes grow even wearier. She starts to say something but I start listing off names.

“The Sergeant. Peter. Slate. Erica and Marcus. Klaus. Crookshank. Euler. Ellis. Emmanuel, whoever that is. And El - Elena,” I say. I have to swallow hard to get that last name out but I manage it. “They’re all your fault, Makado. If you hadn’t gone off the deep end because of this stupid fucking crystal none of this would ever have happened. Does it really matter? Does it really matter this much? Is it worth it? Tell me. Please. Do you even know?”

“They knew the risks,” Makado tries to say, but she isn’t meeting my gaze. “You wouldn’t understand,” she says, a little bit of strength returning to her voice. “You don’t know what it’s like to -“

“To have an obsession take over your life?” I finish, and she blows a breath out.

“I’m the only one trying!” she yells. “I’m the only one fucking trying to stop all of this! That crystal is the only thing that we have that we know can shut down the Pit if it wakes up again. Getting it back should be our top priority -“

“And the last time one of those crystals was used,” I point out, “it infected - I’m sorry, how many people? - with a fucking personality-destroying disease that spreads when you feel emotions and forces you to crawl into the Pit to die.”

“We know better now,” she says, hands on her hips. “We know what we did wrong. If we don’t shatter the crystals -“

“How do you even know? Aren’t you just guessing?”

“You have no right to tell me how to do my job,” she tells me. I can see her knuckles whiten with rage. “I’m doing what needs to be done. If the Pit woke up and became fully ambulatory, it’d be the end of the world as we know it. If you think that isn’t something worth stopping by any means necessary, then you’re either stupid or insane. Maybe both. If I -“

“Okay, Makado. Whatever,” I tell her. I feel as though if I shut my eyes I’d be able to fall asleep in about a minute. My heart hurts. 

Makado glares at me and for a moment, just a moment, I think she might be about to draw her leg back and slam the hard edge of her boot into my gut, but instead she spins on her heel and walks away, fishing the radio out of its holster on her belt and talking quietly into it.

I think for a while about struggling to my feet and just walking out. I don’t think Makado would shoot me, I really don’t. I think she wouldn’t have the heart for it. Maybe she’d just let me go.

Elena’s dead. You haven’t seen the body, a little voice whispers in the back of my mind, but I don’t need to see the body. If the Leechman got her, I’m not sure I want to see the body. I would want my memory of her to remain clean. I want to remember her in the tent smiling down at me, I want to remember her hands on my body, the way her lips felt when she kissed me, the way my heart felt when she kissed me. 

I spend the next twenty minutes or so agonizing myself before the clunk and hiss of heavy machinery, burbles glutinously up from outside the rent in DUSA’s hull. With a little difficulty I manage to sit up and look outwards, and I see three orange figures in ranger suits marching up out of one of the vents leading to this organelle. Two of them are carrying a fourth on a stretcher, and the third…

My mouth drops open. The third is incredibly bulky, far more so than a normal person in a suit, and as they come closer and step into range of DUSA’s flickering floodlights, I realize that they are wearing something like a white enameled arthropod over their arms and legs, a squat mechanical spider perched on their back like a backpack. Its limbs extend along the ranger’s arms and fill out into armored gauntlets encompassing their hands.

And in their hands, hefted with an assurance and strength borne, I imagine, solely from their armor’s assistance, is the crystal, green and spiky and menacing, with an ugly luminosity flaring somewhere deep inside of it. I think again that I can see something moving within its murky depths.

Makado rushes out to meet them, leaving me forgotten, and again I consider getting up and just walking away. I think I’ve missed my chance, though; if it was just Makado, she might let me go. With everyone else here, all of these other rangers, there’s no way I’d be able to get away with it. And who knows if she’d have any compunctions about letting someone else shoot me.

Makado, to her credit, only paused briefly to tell the ranger with the crystal where to set it down before rushing to the ranger on the stretcher. Even from a distance I can tell that she’s hurt badly; her orange suit is splattered with blood and there is an enormous hole in her side. I think I can see teeth marks. One of the rangers shows something to Makado; it looks a little like a very thick, dark length of rope, and I realize with a horrible twist in my gut that it’s a dead leech. It looks to be about three or four feet long; it’s head has been torn off and it trails a thick, foul-smelling ichor behind it in a long oozing trail. 

The huddled conversation over the wounded ranger continues a while longer before the group breaks apart. The ranger with the exoskeleton carries the crystal into DUSA, moving with almost exaggerated care through the hole in the wall. He looks down at me as he passes, craning his neck around the crystal to make sure he isn’t going to bump into me. “You alright?” he asks. He has a thick Texan accent that makes me smile in spite of myself.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Do you think you could untie me?”

He pauses. “You’re tied up?” 

“Yes,” I say, rolling halfway over and waggling my fingers at him. “See?”

“Why are you tied up?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You’re Dzilenski, aren’t you?”

“I, uh. No.”

“No? What’s your name, then? I haven’t seen you around before.”

The weight of the crystal doesn’t seem to be troubling him at all. He cocks his head at me.

“Merriweather,” I tell him. “I’m new.”

He waggles a finger at me; the servos of the exoskeleton make little whining noises as he does. “Nice try,” he tells me, but I can tell from the shape of his voice that he’s grinning. I shake my head a little and give him a halfhearted smile.

“Can’t blame a girl for trying,” I suggest, and he laughs as he stomps off towards the stairwell, the crystal glowing malevolently in his arms. 

A few moments later someone is taking me roughly beneath my armpits and hauling me to my feet. I stagger a little but keep my balance. I look over and see Makado glaring at me from a few inches away, but it seems as though her temper has died a little; there isn’t quite as much venom in her gaze as before. Without uttering a word to me she marches me out of DUSA and towards one of the rangers, standing on a small, bulgy lump of flesh with their hands on their hips. I feel a spike of fear in my stomach. “What are you going to do with me?” I ask her.

I can see Makado’s lip curl out of the corner of my eye. “I’m not going to kill you,” she tells me. “Peterson there is just going to take you up to the surface and give you back to the feds, that’s all. Then this whole stupid thing can be over and done with.”

“So that’s it, huh?” I ask, breaking out of her grasp and turning to face her. “You’re just going to throw me to the wolves? You really think that you can get away with this?”

“Roan,” she groans. “Do you think I want to fuck you over? Do you think I want to do this?”

“Well, from the way you’re acting -“

“This thing is bigger than you or me,” she says. “And I’m - I’m sorry,” she tells me. To my immense surprise I actually believe her. “I’m sorry, and I don’t want to ruin your life like I know I’m going to, but I - I have to do this. I’m sorry.”

Before I can say anything Peterson takes me firmly by the arm. Makado swallows hard and nods to him. “Take her up. There should be a contingent of FBI agents somewhere up there, I know it’s a mess but they should still be hanging around, probably yelling at Admin. Let them know she’s Roan Dzilenski, they’ll take it from there.”

“Right,” he says. “Come on, then.”

I stare back at Makado all the way over to the vent leading up to the passage out of here; she refuses to meet my gaze.

“I’m sorry about all this,” Peterson mentions, adjusting his grip on me to push a hanging fold of flesh out of the way.

“If you’re so sorry, let me go,” I tell him. He has a quiet, apologetic tone.

“I’m not that sorry,” he explains, and I can’t help but roll my eyes. “Look on the bright side,” he suggests. “You’ll be out of here soon. I’m sure that will be a relief.”

“Yeah,” I snap, “I’m sure that -“

Something falls onto my shoulder and I let out a shriek. It rolls off and slaps onto the ground with a wet, meaty thump and slithers away.

“Are you okay?” Peterson is asking. “What was that?”

I look up, knowing what I’ll see, but the Leechman actually comes at us from the side, the leeches boiling out of the fleshy wall with a noise like a million hungry mouths gnashing and chewing and slurping simultaneously, leaving the wall pockmarked and collapsing. Peterson blurts out a surprised curse and lets me go, his hands darting to his holster, but the Leechman is faster. It reaches out with a massive, dripping, writhing paw and fixes it around his head, lifting him bodily off the ground. Rodriguez screams and I hear commotion from behind, in the main organ housing DUSA, but his screams quickly become muffled and gurgly and thick. His hands and legs are shuddering and jolting like he were being electrocuted, and then my stupid, shell-shocked nerves finally, finally kick into motion and I stagger backwards. My foot catches on something and I fall; the ground comes slamming upwards to meet me and the breath whooshes out of my lungs just as the Leechman drops Peterson. The helmet of his suit is bent and crushed and although he lands on his feet, his body sways gently back and forth like a wind were catching it. The Leechman stomps past me and I cringe away from it, but it ignores me entirely. Its footsteps resound through the meaty floor and rattle my teeth in my jaws.

I am so scared I think I might throw up. Every fiber in my body is screaming at me to get up and run away, but I can’t force myself to move. “Hey,” I whisper, as the Leechman ducks its broad, wormy head and pushes into the organ. “Hey, uh, Peterson, are you okay?”

Rodriguez turns and looks at me and I scream. His face has been eaten away to nothing and his jaw is hanging from a few stringy tendons on the left-hand side of his skull. He shambles towards me and I scream again, and I hear my screams echoed from back behind me in DUSA’s chamber. It’s only a few moments later that the gunfire begins.

I kick my feet and try and push myself away from Rodriguez’s corpse. As I watch a leech crawls out of his mouth and plunges its snub-nosed head into the wreckage of his eye. The body lurches closer to me and into the light and I get a better look at him; my stomach nearly turns. I scream again and try to kick at him but he just catches my leg and drags me closer. The bone of his skull and the scraps of meat and flesh on his face are stained a dark, inky black with a dripping, noxious ichor. Without any preamble the body straddles me and shoves its fingers into my mouth. I choke and cough and try to kick and bite but it’s simply too strong. My eyes are filling with tears but I can still see the body’s cavernous mouth yawning and yawning and the body of an enormous leech slowly struggling up Rodriguez’s pitted, masticated throat. Though it has no eyes or face I imagine it leering at me, and though I redouble my efforts to get away, my throat convulsing in anticipatory terror, I can do absolutely nothing to stop what is about to happen to me. At the very last my courage fails me and I just squeeze my eyes shut and wait for the leech to barrel down my throat, wait with an anticipatory cringe to feel its needle-sharp teeth dig into my insides.

Instead I feel more than hear a horrific, bone-shuddering crunch from just ahead of me, and when I snap my eyes open it takes me a moment to comprehend what I’m seeing. Jutting from Rodriguez’s chest amid a thorny cluster of broken ribs is a bulky mechanical hand absolutely slick with gore and ichor. With a harsh mechanical whine it makes a fist and withdraws from the grapefruit-sized hole it made in Rodriguez’s chest and then seizes the body and flings it off of me. The body lands against the side wall of the vent with a wet crunch and then flops to the floor and lays still. 

“Joker,” I breathe. The robot’s blocky, flat-panelled head is staring down at me with what I imagine to be a rather odd expression. It’s pitted and stained and rusted and every couple of seconds sparks burst from its torn left arm socket. Its armored torso is battered and dented and it moves with difficulty, but it still leans down over me and with incredible gentleness tucks its blood-drenched hand beneath me and brings me lightly to my feet. A moment later it has untied my hands and I can feel the blood rushing back into them with a clustering ache of pins and needles.

I can scarcely breathe I am so relieved but I still manage to reach up and put my hand on the machine’s metallic chest. “Jesus Christ,” I tell it. “I am so fucking happy to see you.”

But before I get any more out, a tall, blonde-haired blur slams into me and wraps me up in long, strong arms and lifts me off of my feet and nuzzles her face against mine. “Oh god,” Elena says, and before she can say any more my greedy, bruised lips find hers and for a moment, just a moment, amid the gunfire and the screams, I feel completely okay.

* * *

When we finally break apart and Elena sets me down on my wobbly, weak-kneed legs, I reach up and take her face in my hands. I still can’t quite believe that she’s here, that she’s alive, that she’s okay. My heart is beating so quickly that I almost feel nauseous and I don’t trust myself to speak. Elena’s eyes are wide and slatey; they flicker over me, dancing like roulette balls, just as she runs her hands over my arms, my legs, my sides and back. “Are you okay?” she asks. Her voice is shaky. I try to speak a few times but I can’t get any words out so instead I just nod. Elena leans in and kisses me again, briefly this time, and then, with her lips brushing my ear she murmurs, “I was so scared, Roan, I was so scared that I had lost you, I thought -“

“It’s okay,” I tell her. There’s another scream from DUSA and we both jump. I grab onto her desperately as she starts to pull away. “Listen, are you alright? The gunshot -“

“I’m okay,” she tells me. “I promise I’m okay. Jesus Christ I thought I lost you. Let’s get out of here.”

Next to her, Joker shifts on his damaged heels and creaks forward further down the vent, towards DUSA. Elena curses. “Hey, wait. Stop. We have to go.”

Joker ignores her. “Elena,” I ask, “what the hell happened? Why is Joker -“

“Whatever the Leechman did to him down in the barrows jarred something loose or damaged him somehow, he’s operating completely autonomously.”

I stare at Elena. “You’re not controlling him?”

“No,” she says. “He - I think he heard our conversation on the radio, that’s how he knew to come to DUSA to get me. It’s a good thing he did or Makado would have gotten me. He burst right in through the wall, it was fucking terrifying.”

“Joker did that? I thought it was the Leechman, I thought you were dead -“

“No, no, it was Joker! Oh, god, baby you must have been so scared -“

“I’m just glad you’re okay. Where did he take you?”

Joker looks back at us, then returns his gaze to the scene inside the organ ahead. The screams have largely died down now, but I can hear Makado shouting something, and a high-pitched electric whine that sets my teeth on edge.

Elena shakes her head. “He must have been monitoring Makado’s transmissions, I think he has to have a radio receiver in there somewhere. He grabbed me and brought me down to a little organelle maybe a mile away and we just sort of hunkered down there for a while.”

“Did he hurt you? If he -“

“No, no, he didn’t, it’s okay, I’m okay. Joker!” she yells. “We have to go!”

Joker ignores her. There is a curious sense of animation about its pose and its motions, quick and precise and birdlike. As I watch, its fingers flex tightly enough to dig deeply into the fleshy wall it rests against. Again its head swivels and glances back at us and I think I can feel its nonexistent gaze resting on me. “Elena, if you’re not controlling it, then who is?”

“I don’t know,” she says, glancing over at me. “I think nobody.”

“But how could it -“

“Roan, listen, forget about that for a moment.” Her lips are tugging upwards in an irrepressible smile and I can’t help but mirror her. I want to hold her and kiss her and - “there was something I needed to tell you, something I needed to tell you face to face,” she says. My stomach swoops upwards in a surge of delight and I reach out, take her hand in mine. 

“Yes?” I ask, trying to sound innocent and oblivious.

“Roan, I -“ she starts, but before she can get more than a few words out, there is a whipcrack of thunder in DUSA’s chamber, and Joker bolts forward like a sprinter off the starting line, and we both scramble into action and chase after him.

DUSA’s wet, fleshy cavern is in utter disarray. Dead leeches are littered everywhere and there are massive stains of ichor and blood splattered all across the cavern, as though someone upended buckets of paint and flung them. A crushed, distended corpse in a black-stained suit has been driven so deeply into the flesh of the floor that it has nearly been snapped in two. Of the Leechman there is no sign, but as we watch, Makado and three other rangers come storming out of the other vent and take up defensive positions around it, hunkering down and training their weapons on DUSA’s hull. Makado is carrying a long grey brick of a rifle, bulky and supremely un-ergodynamic, with what looks like a lens in place of a barrel. I wonder about it for a moment before a sickly green glow floats into view and the Leechman emerges from DUSA, ducking its titanic head, with the crystal beneath one of its arms, held as casually as one might carry a basketball. It pauses there for a moment, peering out at the four small figures opposing it. 

Makado looks scared; her face has paled to a sickly white and I can see the rifle shuddering in her trembling hands.

I can’t see where Joker’s gone; I catch Elena’s eye and frown, but she nods upwards a little, and I see the robot just above us, clinging to the ceiling like a monkey. It seems content to wait for someone to make the first move.

Behind the Leechman an orange-suited figure takes a juddering, unsteady step into the light, and I can see the limp exoskeleton clinging to its limbs like a length of sodden rope. Another figure follows, and then another, and even in the dim half-light, lit by strobes and flashlights and headlamps, I can see their bodies bulging and throbbing with the gallons and gallons of leeches seething beneath their skin.

My stomach betrays me and I bend double and vomit, trying furiously to wipe the image from my mind, but I can still see the man’s distended belly glistening beneath the orange ranger suit, pregnant with its load of parasitic cargo, and the thought sends a wave of furious revulsion scurrying up my limbs, coaxing rank, cold sweat out of my pores.

The Leechman takes a deliberate step forward and Makado pulls the trigger on her rifle. A  coruscating lance of blinding white light jolts from the barrel with the same deafening whip-crack we’d heard before and spears the Leechman through the core of its body, blowing a meter-wide hole open clean through it and filling the air with the smell of burning leeches. The Leechman staggers back a step or two and reaches out to steady itself, dropping the crystal; it clunks to the floor with a strangely musical tinkle and I can see a few of the spikes shatter and fall to pieces.

Makado rises to her feet, a little color returning to her cheeks, and fires again. This bolt catches the Leechman through the head and forces it down to its knees. It puts one massive hand forward to catch itself and Makado burns it off. She advances on the Leechman, firing again and again until the thing is just a pile of writhing, dying leeches, slowly burrowing into the ground and the walls and the ceiling, trying to escape. The bodies of the parasitized rangers shudder and twitch but they hesitate, standing still as though bereft of any governing intelligence.

Finally Makado pulls the trigger and the gun hisses a loud, screeching complaint and vents an enormous gasp of steam from recessed ports in its side; through them I can see the gun’s innards glowing white-hot, and Makado tosses it aside after glaring down at it in disgust. She draws her pistol from her holster and trains it one-handed on one of the rangers, squeezing one eye shut and glaring down the sights.

I open my mouth to suggest to Elena that it might be time to leave, but before I can get a word out the Leechman charges past us, out of the mouth of our vent, forcing a shriek from my mouth, and bowls into Makado headlong, sending her flying. She slams into the wall on the far side of the organ so hard that I can see a Mak-shaped bruise forming in the Pit’s flesh when she flops to the floor, limp and helpless, either stunned or unconscious or dead. 

The rangers open up on the Leechman but if the laser wasn’t enough to kill it, bullets clearly aren’t going to be enough either. The three parasitized rangers surge forwards as well, wading into the fray, but the Leechman is doing the heavy lifting. I cringe back against Elena as I watch it pick up a hapless, screaming ranger and pull him in half, a spray of gore and guts flooding from the man’s cleft torso and legs. I clutch at Elena, trying desperately to get my legs beneath me, and she pulls me up and steadies me.

“We have to go,” she says. I can hear a note of hysteria in her voice. I take a shaky step backwards into the vent and feel a leech writhe and squirm beneath my cleats. Another one leaps at me and thuds into my back. I can feel its jaws working to pierce the thick latex of the ranger suit, and I hop frantically, trying to reach backwards and dislodge it. Elena brushes it off of me and crushes it beneath her boot just as the Leechman vomits a tidal wave of blunt, wriggling bodies into the pried-open chest of another ranger, struggling weakly in the creature’s squirming grip.

More leeches patter against us, driving us unwillingly out of the vent as we crawl and duck and dodge, trying to avoid them. A nerveless, exoskeletoned paw swipes at me clumsily and I scream and throw myself out of the way. From my vantage point on the ground I see Elena shove the infested ranger back and unload the entire magazine of her pistol into his gut, but the body staggers towards us still. I can see Elena’s teeth bared, a mad glint in her eyes, and I know that she is about to charge the thing and I know that it will kill her, but I haven’t enough breath to tell her not to.

Deeper in the chamber, the Leechman plucks the head off of a ranger’s pinioned, struggling body as easily as separating an apple from a tree and fling the chunk away like a bloody comet. It slaps wetly to the ground only a few feet away from me and I roll back from it, nearly mad with terror. I can see the Leechman slowly turning towards us and I am so afraid I think I might die just from fear alone.

“El - El - El - “ I try, again and again, but I can’t breathe, I can’t speak, I can’t think -

Joker drops from the ceiling directly onto the parasitized ranger, landing with a sickening crunch and a whine of servos. Its head snaps upwards and regards the Leechman with a calculating stare, and the Leechman, impossibly, stops. It seems to cock its head at Joker, and then it takes a step forward, heavy and inevitable and menacing, but before it can go any further Joker launches itself at it with a scream of straining metal and whining pistons. I struggle to my knees and brush the leeches off of Elena, checking her suit for holes or punctures.

Joker is losing. The Leechman has torn its other arm off and tossed it aside, and now it’s yanking at Joker’s leg. Joker is lurching spasmodically back and forth, trying to get free, but the Leechman has too strong a grip on it. The leeches are flowing over the robot’s metal form and in a few more moments it looks as though it’ll be enveloped entirely. I can see Joker’s head turn with what seems like a titanic effort and peer back at us, and then it disappears beneath the surface of the Leechman.

I tug Elena to her feet and take a few faltering steps back towards the vent before there is a colossal wave of sound and light and heat from behind that bowls me over and knocks me face-down in the sopping, bloodstained flesh. Elena falls over me with a scream and for a while all we can do is cling to each other and pray that whatever the hell happened is over quickly.

A moment passes, then another. I roll over and, with more than a little trepidation, sit up. 

It looks as though a bomb has gone off. There is a bloody, charred crater in the floor, and all that remains of Joker are a few metal fragments, embedded like shrapnel in the floor and walls and ceiling. The parasitized rangers have all been cut down, most of them separated into small pieces of flesh, both leech, and human, smeared across DUSA and the organelle like daubs of lumpy paint.

Of the Leechman there is no sign, and when I glance over at it, I realize that the crystal is gone as well.

After another few minutes of utter stillness, Elena and I look at each other. “Are you okay?” she asks, and I glance down at myself.

“Somehow,” I say, “I think I am. Are you?”

She pats at herself cautiously, peers down at her legs, wiggles her foot. “I think so. Did Joker - ?”

I point to the crater. “He must have exploded. Either there was some kind of self-destruct or whatever engine or motor it used was damaged, or…”

“Jesus,” Elena breathes, getting shakily to her feet. She offers me a hand and helps me up and for a little while all we can do is survey the carnage. I feel as though I want to cry and laugh and throw up all at the same time. 

I squeeze Elena’s hand. “What were you going to tell me?” I ask.

“Is now really the time?” she smiles, and I bite my lip to keep myself from grinning back at her.

“At this rate, if you don’t say it now you’re never going to.”

“Roan,” she says, putting a hand on my cheek, “I -“

There is a groan from across the cavern and we both snap around. Over there, on the far side of the wall, Makado is starting to sit up. She looks shaky and shell-shocked and terrified. She sees us and tries to get to her feet, but her leg buckles beneath her and she falls back to the ground. Elena’s eyes narrow and she lets me go, starting towards Makado, her hands curling into fists. I have a knot in my stomach.

“Elena, wait,” I call after her. She spins and stares at me and then shakes her head.

“Don’t look,” she tells me, and for a moment, just a moment, I think of going after her and stopping her from - from doing whatever she’s about to do.

But instead the coward in me wins out and I avert my gaze, squeezing my eyes shut, my insides tensing in anticipation of a gunshot. I hear Makado cry out weakly, and I shudder.

There is a loud, satisfying smack, as of fist on jaw, and then a flopping sound. I look up and see Elena wringing her hand, cursing beneath her breath, before she flips an insensate Makado onto her stomach and, folding the woman’s hands behind her, begins to lash her wrists together with a length of paracord. She looks up and sees me staring, registers the expression on my face and gives me a laugh.

“You thought I was going to kill her?” she asks, and I blow a breath out and try to calm myself before I answer.

“I didn’t know what you were going to do,” I say, truthfully.

“I’m not a killer,” Elena tells me, hefting Makado’s slim frame onto her shoulders in a fireman’s carry. “Jesus Christ,” she adds, adjusting her load a little. “This little shit is heavy.”

I kick at a piece of wreckage, a folded metal panel, bent from the force of the blast, and then reach down and with difficulty pull Joker’s battered torso out of the crater. Elena sets Makado down none too gently and comes over and squats beside me.

There’s something that looks a little like a car battery, jammed into a slot in the torso. I tug at it, using my foot to hold the hunk of metal steady, and it breaks free with a hiss like a seal being broken. “What is that?” Elena asks. I shake my head.

“BCPU - Property of Anodyne Berlin,” I read. “Mind Impulse Unit - B. Walken.”

“Walken?” Elena asks, incredulous. 

“No,” I say, “this can’t - no, that’s ridiculous.”

“What is?”

“Burt Walken was Erica’s husband,” I tell her. “B. Walken, Burt Walken. She told me he died from the psychic illness from 2007, that Anodyne had never returned his body.”

The top of the box is translucent plastic, but it’s too dark to see inside. Elena reaches down and grabs her flashlight and shines it onto the box, and we both squint at it. When I comprehend what I’m seeing I nearly drop it - for there inside the box, soaking in a briny, gelatinous fluid, festooned with wires and covered in metal electrodes and circuits, are the ridges and folds of a clearly human brain.

* * *

“What were you going to tell me?” I ask Elena again once she gets off the radio. She’s spent the last fifteen minutes begging and cajoling and cursing someone on the surface to try and get them to send someone down to get us and finally, finally gotten a begrudging affirmative. I can slowly feel my spirits rising, and Elena even gives me a secret little smile as she comes to sit next to me, sinking down against the wall of the vent with a groan of relief. I lean my head on her shoulder and she kisses me gently on the forehead. A wash of warmth floods down my arms and legs and I have to restrain myself from seizing her and clutching her to me.

“You sure I shouldn’t just leave it a mystery at this point?” she asks, and I elbow her lightly in the ribs.

“Tell me,” I insist.

Elena leans back and takes my chin gently in her hand, inclining my face upwards to her. I can see her studying me, see her pupils dilate as they flick from my eyes to my cheeks to my nose to my lips. “I love you,” she says, and my heart jumps in my chest as though struck by lightning. I can feel myself grinning madly, and then our lips brush and then fit together as though they were made to do so.

And then, when our breath has finally grown short enough to force us to break apart, we slowly rise, Elena’s hand in mine, scarcely daring to tear our eyes from each other, and begin to gather our things for the long journey up.

Continue with the Epilogue

Back to Table of Contents