#just some of their scenes and plots are💀

[ghostiewriter]

Jarah is one of the most overated boring and forced couple that i’ve ever seen in a tv show

They were too fast-paced for me to enjoy in season one💀but I think I appreciated them more in season two

[cosmicallyavg]

me: okay i need to get school work done im going to sit down and work on homework i need to finish these assignments theyre all due soon

me, inevitably, every time: 

[paper-star-ships]

Secrets Of Dum//bledore was SO bad y’all 😭😭

[clowningaroundmars]

this lil story i'm workin on about miles42 has gotten out of CONTROL

my first draft is already well over 15k words long now?? 😭😭

this was just supposed to be a quick lil story? bang it out, be done with it?!?!

what is wrong with me

[rystiel]

watched barbarian and. keith is so fucking stupid bro. if the woman i’m staying at an airbnb with comes running from the basement in a panic talking about a secret room with a bed, a camera, and a bucket with bloody handprints on the wall, i would just get the fuck out of there?? i would NOT go down there to check it out myself?? hello????

[retrievablememories]

cherry bomb | part 2 | jungkook (m)

pairing: jungkook x fem reader

summary: after your town goes into lockdown because of the cherry bomb massacre, you find out that the murderer's interest is on you. eventually, you’re left with no choice but to face him.

genre: horror/slasher, angst, smut, college!au

word count: 13.7k

warnings: major character deaths, gaslighting, hallucinations, anxiety/paranoia, grief, trauma, violence (including knife and gun use), torture, blood, gore, descriptions of dead bodies, a funeral scene, fuckboy!JK, oral (fem receiving), fingering, finger-sucking, handjob, cumplay(?), hair-pulling

a/n: this part is quite rougher than the first, so heed the warnings. same notes as the last part—not meant to be entirely realistic since this *is* a slasher. block/filter as needed. i didn’t mention this in part 1 but this fic is not set in present day; more like somewhere in the 2000s? i don’t think this fic would work as well with all this advanced technology/the prevalence of social media now

...also, i had this story all written out and then decided to completely change the plot at the last minute because i figured out a way to write the original plot i had wanted to do from the beginning. 💀 yeah…just leave your thoughts below

taglist is at the very bottom of the fic—for some reason i wasn't able to tag everyone who requested, so please reblog this fic so folks can see it

sources for the fic dividers: one | two

link to part 1

you’re standing in front of some stranger’s house in the early hours of the morning, your body heavy from exhaustion as your adrenaline has run out. this is not at all how you expected your night to end when you left your dorm hours ago. it must’ve taken at least 40 minutes to get to this house, and you’re less familiar with this part of town, which you try not to feel uneasy about. you suppose the farther away from the scene of the carnage, the better.

jungkook bangs on the door, calling out the name yoongi-hyung until the porch light comes on. though it’s illogical, you’re tense with apprehension that the murderer could somehow appear at any moment, and you hope whoever yoongi is lets the both of you in soon. so much for no longer looking over your shoulder.

a man with hair just as long as jungkook’s answers the door, looking disheveled and annoyed. “why the fuck are you banging down my door at nearly 2 am—"

yoongi stops speaking as he eyes the both of you up and down, his gaze going from the bite mark bruises you left on jungkook’s neck to the dried blood on your face to the bullet holes in jungkook’s car. his expression is between surprise and curiosity. “what the fuck is going on here?”

“can we talk inside?” jungkook says, though he doesn’t wait for an invitation before pushing his way past the other man and stepping inside.

“uh…hi. sorry.” you step inside too, glad to not be out in the open anymore.

yoongi takes another look outside the door at the state of jungkook’s car before closing and locking it. “mind explaining this shit? i thought you were going to that party you told me about?

“i did,” jungkook says, his voice full of frustration. “the fucking killer showed up at the party.”

“the fuck are you talking about?”

“you know what i’m talking about. that werewolf-masked freak? he came and just started stabbing people to death. we watched him shoot a fraternity member in front of us, dude. that’s why my car looks the way it does.”

“the campus is probably dangerous,” you add. “that’s why we came here. we just need somewhere safe to stay for the night.”

yoongi goes to the window and draws back the curtain. he peeks out the small holes in the side of the blinds rather than pushing the blinds down to look outside. “and you’re certain he didn’t follow you here? i thought he only killed virgins anyway. why the hell was he shooting at you?” then yoongi turns away from the window and looks at you. “oh. is this why?”

feeling put on the spot, you blurt out: “look, i don’t think that matters much anymore. he seemed to be killing anybody who was in his way.”

“and he was on foot the whole time, so there’s no way he could’ve followed us,” jungkook adds.

yoongi shakes his head and walks away from the window. “whole town is fucked, then. come on.”

you’re relieved to be able to scrub the blood off your face and change into fresh clothes. you initially thought it was peculiar that yoongi had spare clothes ready for you to wear until he alluded to keeping them on hand for any of jungkook’s hookups that he brings over.

“sure—of course.” you’d just nodded and tried not to look embarrassed as you accepted the clothes.

even after showering you don’t feel entirely clean, though. you think it might be impossible to return to feeling anything like your former self after tonight.

the couch has a pull-out bed, so it’s not as uncomfortable as it would be just sleeping on a regular sofa, which you are grateful for. you’re still arranging the pillow and blankets when jungkook walks into the room holding his own bedding.

“i think i should sleep here,” he says.

“there’s no room on the couch for the both of us,” you protest, thinking he means to take your spot.

“i mean on the floor. earlier, you didn’t seem like you wanted to be left alone in here.”

“oh.” you try to take the edge out of your voice; it’s hard to be polite when you’re still so overwhelmed with stress. “that’ll be uncomfortable though.”

jungkook just waves his hand and dumps his pillow and blanket on the floor before going to push the coffee table out of the way. “doesn’t really matter, i think we’ve been through worse tonight than sleeping on a hard floor…”

“thanks,” you say quietly, watching him spread his blanket out on the ground. you want to say something else, but you can’t think of anything.

“it’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

after a few more moments of staring at jungkook as he arranges his sleeping area, you finally ask, “i was wondering how’d you meet yoongi? he doesn’t seem like he’s a college student. i’ve never seen him around our campus, at least.”

“he isn’t. he works as a music producer, so he’s out of town a lot, but this is his homebase. as for how we met—it’s a long story. he and my brother actually used to know each other, so…” you think he’ll explain further, but he just shakes his head. “but he’s a good friend.”

“i see. a music producer…nice. how cool for a little town like this.”

after everything is to his liking, jungkook gets under the blanket. “tonight was a lot, so try to get some sleep.”

you nod and turn the lamp off, though you’re doubting you’ll get any peace tonight. “yeah…you too.”

--

SATURDAY MORNING, NOV 4

you wake up around 11 a.m. on a strange couch wearing strange clothes in a strange room. with your brain’s half-conscious state, your terror reawakens; you think maybe you’ve been kidnapped by the murderer and the car ride with jungkook last night was a dream—until yoongi pops into your mind.

you try to regulate your breathing and settle back beneath the blanket, though you know you won’t be going back to sleep.

you haven’t gotten more than an hour of sleep in total, broken up into 20-minute intervals across the hours. every time you’ve tried to close your eyes and drift off, you see the frat member’s skull bursting apart again, shocking your entire nervous system. you can think of nothing but the piles of bodies and the deaths you witnessed. perhaps it’s better that you don’t sleep; you figure your dreams wouldn’t be any more tolerable than your thoughts.

as you shift around on the couch, your whole body screams with soreness. your arms, your ribs, your sides, your legs, and—to a lesser extent—even between your thighs where jungkook was last night.

you glance over and see that he’s still sprawled on the floor, blanket halfway kicked off. he’s actually awake, his face turned away from you as he blinks slowly and stares at nothing, but he doesn’t say anything and so neither do you. with you spending most of your night awake, you saw that he was able to get more rest than you did. lucky him.

it hurts to move, but you reach for your phone and check for any signs of lorelai. none. there is one text from camille, sent 40 minutes ago.

➤ camille: I talked to Lorelai’s sister. She went to go see about a missing persons report. The police took her information but didn’t seem very concerned about it and said she might have just stayed the night with other friends after the party. Apparently a lot of others had the same idea as you. Campus is a ghost town. They’re still identifying all the bodies, so no word yet.

➤ y/n: so we just have to sit here and wait to see if she’ll turn up alive or dead? that’s useless.

➤ camille: As per fucking usual with the pigs.

➤ camille: She also told me there’s supposed to be a lockdown or something. It’s on the news.

➤ y/n: a lockdown???

looking around the room, you spot the TV remote sitting on yoongi’s coffee table a few feet away. you try to sit up, but it takes you a couple minutes longer than you anticipate because of the pain. jungkook notices the movement from the corner of his eye and turns to look at you. “what are you doing?”

“tryna get the remote.”

jungkook grabs it and hands it to you, and you turn the TV to one of the local news channels.

➤ camille: They’re telling people not to leave their homes for anything non-essential while they search for him. Not sure how long that’s supposed to last. I guess now they wanna get serious about this fucking killer? Too late for that.

you and jungkook watch as the newscaster gives a rundown of last night’s events; to your small relief, it looks like the killer didn’t try to go to the campus after the murders at the party house. the newscaster goes on to announce that the police are instating a citywide curfew, which they’ll discuss further at a press conference in the afternoon. in the meantime, they advise everyone to only travel in groups, shelter in place if possible, and keep all windows and doors locked.

you laugh humorlessly, and jungkook glances at you again. “in groups? we were all packed into one damn house at the party, and how much did that help?”

➤ y/n: are you sure you’re okay at the uni?

➤ camille: I’m fine. My roommate brought some of her friends into our room so no one’s left alone. Either way, my dad is coming to help me move some of my things out and come back home.

➤ y/n: okay, please just stay safe.

➤ camille: You too.

“what now?” jungkook says once the newscast goes off. “everybody just stays holed up for like a month while they hunt for that guy?”

you roll your eyes. “people won’t stay in their homes for that long. i don’t know how any of this is gonna work. we wouldn’t be in this mess now if they’d cared when this first started happening.”

“you think so? students would still be getting killed. the only difference is that a good chunk of people would just be sitting at home freaking the fuck out and too scared to go anywhere while the killer would still be on the loose.”

“…damn. it’s truly bleak to assume we’d still be in the same situation. you’re an optimistic one.”

“better than deluding yourself about it.”

“whatever. where’s your family to freak out over you? somebody should be concerned about your whereabouts by now. didn’t you say you have a brother? speaking of, i’m gonna have to call my sister soon…”

jungkook turns back to the TV, and you can tell he’s become more tense than he was seconds ago. “yeah, but i’m estranged from them. yoongi’s my family.”

wrong thing to ask. you wonder about the reason for it but decide it’s probably better not to pry. “ah…that sucks.”

jungkook looks back at you like he’s irked by that response, but he makes a noise resembling a chuckle. “tell me about it.”

later that afternoon, after you’ve reassured your sister veronica on her work break that you are fine and at a “friend’s” house (because you have no clue how to refer to either of these men), you and yoongi sit at the kitchen table with brunch while jungkook goes outside to examine the damage to his car more closely.

it’s difficult to eat, but you do so anyway; you don’t want to be rude by wasting the food yoongi made. the news station still plays loudly from the living room as you wait for the press conference to come on.

“so, about you and jungkook...” yoongi starts, looking at you from over the rim of his cup of coffee.

“what about me and jungkook?”

“we both know he didn’t get those bites on his neck from a wild animal attack.”

you sit up straighter in your seat, a sudden spike of irritation hitting you. “aren’t we all grown here? who cares?” you try to sound unbothered despite feeling very green about all of this. after all, you’d only had sex for the first time last night.

“look, i don’t care. fuck him all you want. i’m just trying to advise you not to get emotionally involved, because that’s not how jungkook operates. the amount of girls i’ve had somehow coming after my neck when their situationship with him doesn’t work out is starting to get really old. it’d be best if you didn’t do the same.”

you’re simultaneously annoyed at his assumption of you and flustered because you want to prove him wrong about acting the same as the other girls. you hate both feelings. “i don’t want anything like that with him. i just needed something done and i got it. it doesn’t matter anymore.”

yoongi shrugs, and you get the sense he’s heard that before and isn’t convinced, but you can’t be bothered going back and forth with him about this.

the press conference comes on TV a few minutes later. they announce that classes at your university are cancelled indefinitely; parents and relatives will need to come move their students out, and the school will be operating with a skeleton staff and increased security presence for any students who can’t leave the campus. the citywide curfew will be at 8 p.m. every night, by which time almost everyone will need to be in their homes, and it will end at 6 a.m each morning.

“fun,” you say sarcastically. “at least i won’t have to worry about finals and trying not to get murdered at the same time.”

when jungkook comes back inside, you let him know about what he missed from the press conference.

“we should just stay here for now.” when you raise your eyebrows, jungkook says, “i basically live here when i’m not on campus for classes. plus yoongi-hyung lets me bring girls here all the time, this is nothing new.”

“if both of you are gonna be hiding out in my place, we’ll need to go to the store,” yoongi says. “more mouths to feed.”

“…or i could just go home?” you propose, your mind reeling at them already making plans. you feel awkward about staying in a stranger’s house for who knows how long. “i think we only really needed to stay here for the night. it’s fine.”

“will you have people there with you?” jungkook asks. “it’s not safe to be alone.”

you’re surprised he seems to be this concerned, but you answer: “well, i mean…my sister works 12-hour shifts as a nurse and she’s the only one living there, so…” you’d chosen your university because your older sister lived in the area, and because it was a tradition for women in your family to attend that school, but there were no other relatives you could turn to. your parents lived a couple of towns away.

yoongi comes to the conclusion so you don’t have to. “in other words, you’ll be alone most of the day.”

“…i guess. but i’m really not tryna impose on you by staying here.”

yoongi tilts his head, a small smirk on his lips. you automatically dislike the look on his face. “why don’t you take jungkook with you, then?”

you and jungkook glance at each other. “but, hyung…”

yoongi shakes his head. “you already know i can take care of myself. seriously, don’t worry about it.” and then yoongi winks at you. you don’t know for sure, but you take that to mean he’s probably packing heat like camille’s dad.

“if you’re sure.” turning to you, jungkook says, “so, how about it?”

“it’s my sister’s house, so i’ll have to ask her,” you say tentatively. “yeah…uh. let me do that now, i guess.” you pull out your phone to text her about it, though you know it’ll be a while before she gets another work break and can answer. “in the meantime…i think we’ll need to go to the store either way. and then to campus to pick our things up.”

“you’re right. let’s go then,” jungkook says.

the store is full of people panic-buying food and necessities in preparation for the curfew and effective lockdown, which you expected. you and jungkook end up going your separate ways to find the things you need because it’s quicker that way, and because you want to get in and out of the store as soon as possible. the crowdedness is too much like the party, and despite yourself, anxiety begins rising in you due to the claustrophobic atmosphere. you try to maintain even breaths as you keep searching for items. just what you need—a shiny new trauma to make your life harder.

you pass by a man in one of the less-crowded aisles before realizing he’s standing in front of what you need to get, examining one of the food packages. you wait a few moments to see if he’ll finish up soon, and when your eyes begin to wander, you see that there’s a long gray hair clinging to the back of his leather jacket, standing out clearly against the black. you probably wouldn’t have noticed this at all on any other day, except your mind has been on high alert for hours now; you find it strange that this strand clearly doesn’t match the shade or length of the hair on his head, which is short and plain brown. the shade of the hair also weirdly reminds you of something, though you can’t quite recall what; it remains just out of your mind’s reach.

you shake your head. he could’ve come to the store with somebody who has long gray hair, or hugged them before he left home, and a strand stuck to his jacket. it’s the least of your issues right now.

the man must feel your presence behind him because he turns around to look at you. you’re a little taken aback by his gaze; his expression isn’t mean per se, but very intense, as if his entire focus is trained on you.

there’s a second’s pause, like he’s thinking about something before he speaks. “am i in your way?” he asks, never breaking eye contact. his voice doesn’t portray any particular emotion.

“i just have to get something really quick.” he steps aside and gestures to the rows of food without a word. you slip in beside him and grab what you need before moving away again. “thanks.” you think about telling him about the hair on his jacket but decide against it; your decision is solidified when you spot a wolf figurine keychain on his keys, faded from time but still distinguishable. it makes your breath catch.

there’s no way it could be him. it was kind of dark in the party house with nothing but string lights and lamps illuminating it, and everything happened so quickly…but you do remember the colors of that mask. red, yellow, black—and that dark gray for the fur.

but maybe it’s really all just a coincidence; how much sense would it make to turn every person with wolf paraphernalia and random stray hairs into a suspect?

you walk down the rest of the aisle and away from the man with growing unease. maybe it’s time to find jungkook so you can get out of here; you can hardly keep yourself together, and despite your best attempts at logic, you can’t stop yourself from getting more frantic about those two things.

speeding up your walk and weaving through people, you look down every aisle in search for jungkook before you find him, rushing over to him as you breathe heavily.

“whoa, what the hell is wrong? did somebody do something?”

“no, i…”

“what happened?”

“it’s the…well, the…i saw, uh…”

“y/n.”

“i saw—the mask. the fur from the mask. do you remember it?”

“…you mean that stupid ass werewolf mask?” you gesture for jungkook to lower his voice. “wait, you’re saying you saw it in here?”

“no, i saw a man who had a strand of hair on his jacket…” it starts sounding ridiculous to your own ears the more you speak, but you continue. “the strand—it was the same color as that fur. the same length! and he—he had some weird wolf keychain…”

jungkook stares at you for a long moment before sighing. “you’re not serious? a random strand of hair that could be from anybody or anything? that could be from someone’s fucking grandma for all we know. plus a keychain…maybe he just likes wolves, y/n.”

you already know that saying i just feel like something is off won’t be enough to convince him. you sigh with a deep sense of defeat, considering that he’s probably right. maybe your initial assumption was the more sensible answer. “…right. i think i’m just really fucked up right now after everything that happened. can we finish up here?”

“yeah, we will. because you definitely need to lay down soon or something. you haven’t had any sleep all night, right?” the way jungkook eyes you with concern as if you’ve lost your mind annoys you. you’re about to give a smart remark when you notice something in the carrying-basket he has.

“…a baseball bat?”

“if the killer comes after us again, duh. we’ll be prepared this time. or at least i will.”

“good luck with that if he happens to have another gun.” rolling your eyes, you brush past jungkook to go to one of the checkout counters.

in the parking lot, you see that the man from earlier has also come out and is putting the last of his grocery bags into his car trunk. there’s really nothing spectacular about his appearance that would make him stand out in a crowd, with his average height and average looks, let alone incriminate him as a serial killer. yet that familiar unease won’t leave.

he sees you and jungkook walking towards the car together, and his eyes dart to the bullet holes in jungkook’s car. then he makes eye contact with you. you give a half-hearted wave, unsure what else to do with his eyes stuck on you. for a moment, his lips turn up into the faintest smile before he shakes his head and gets into his own car.

--

MONDAY, NOV 6

you’ve spent half of saturday and all of sunday trying to get used to living in your sister’s house with jungkook. veronica had been surprisingly okay with having him stay over, though most of it was her being relieved you finally found “a potential boyfriend who’s actually cute.” you didn’t have the energy to argue with her.

you’ve also been constantly checking on camille (to her eventual annoyance) and seeing if there are any more updates on lorelai. still nothing. your dread grows the further away you get from that bloody friday, but you try to keep your thoughts from straying too darkly.

right now, you, veronica, and jungkook all sit on the couch together in a neat little row, a bowl of popcorn in front of you on the coffee table and some science-fiction B-movie playing on the TV. your sister proposed the idea to distract yourselves from everything going on, but so far, you feel like it isn’t very effective. at least not for you. your mind keeps wandering to other things every 5 minutes.

eventually, veronica yawns widely, stretching her arms and legs before rising off the couch. “okay, i’m getting tired as fuck. i need to go to sleep for work tomorrow anyway. you guys enjoy the rest of the movie, okay?” she pats your shoulder as she passes by you on her way out of the room.

jungkook waves. “oh, sure. goodnight.”

“night, sis.”

when jungkook’s attention goes back to the movie, your sister makes eye contact with you and points her finger at you menacingly. you give her a shocked look while she mouths you know what i mean and swirls her finger in jungkook’s direction. embarrassed at the implication, you roll your eyes and turn your head back to the TV screen. having sex with jungkook on your sister’s couch is not high on your list of priorities tonight.

after your sister is gone, jungkook spreads out on the couch like it’s his own living room, placing his legs right over your lap. you sigh, looking over at him—and hoping that your eyes don’t linger too obviously on the expanse of thigh muscle that’s now on display from his shorts riding up higher.

“…really? i don’t want your big ole legs in my lap.”

jungkook just grins. “you should lay down too, it’s more comfortable this way.” you stare at him, and he tries to egg you on by pulling the sleeve of your shirt. “come on.”

“i’m not laying down on top of you, if that’s what you’re after.”

you do end up lying down, but on the opposite side of the couch so that your legs are tangled together, which really just increases the amount of contact between you either way—but whatever.

this makes jungkook laugh more. “ha, it’s like we’re scissoring.”

“so damn corny.”

you two continue watching the rest of the movie, but by the end of it you don’t remember half of what happened. taking the remote, you flip through the channels and try to find something else to look at. there isn’t much interesting to watch on a random monday night—which would be a school night anyway, if not for the current context.

as you search for a channel, jungkook asks: “what would you do if you found out who the killer was?”

you squint your eyes at his odd question. maybe the obvious answer would be to alert the police. but after days of having your anger stoked like a fire, that’s not exactly the answer you’d choose. “maybe i’d kill him.” the words leave your lips easily, and you hardly think twice about them once they’re out.

neither of you speak for a few long moments.

“does that scare you?” you ask, after the silence starts annoying you. you want to laugh, but there’s nothing really funny about the situation.

“…not really. angry women are kinda sexy. so are dangerous ones.”

you scoff. “i’m not tryna be sexy, you fool. and how many dangerous women have you dealt with? seems to me you only have a thing for the innocents.”

“it’s not like i only fuck virgins. you don’t even know me like that.” he nudges your leg with his foot like he’s also annoyed, but his expression doesn’t show any actual irritation.

“…if you want to go back and forth about it, go outside and argue with the wall or something. i’m in no mood, jungkook.” you shove his foot off of you. “just, holy shit. i wish i could have just one hour where i don’t have to think about any of this shit. my mind can’t even breathe.”

he’s actually quiet for a couple minutes after. you think he’s moved on from the conversation until he finally says, “i can give you an hour.”

your body becomes alert at that. the insinuation in his tone is obvious. you glance backwards as if your sister could hear you from upstairs, though you know that’s illogical. “i got what i wanted from you already,” you whisper.

“so? what if i wanted to give you more? you know you’re allowed to have sex with a person more than once, yeah?” he chuckles.

here he is making you this offer, and once again you feel like you’ve been reduced to the state of a confused lamb in front of a hungry wolf. you realize that the idea of letting yourself get more physically entangled with jungkook scares you. he is not someone you can turn into a boyfriend, who wants to be a boyfriend, and you are only looking to save yourself from any potential hurt. “it would just be sex—right? you have to know i’m not looking for anything deeper from you.”

jungkook smirks. like with yoongi, you don’t know if he believes you. “i know.”

you want to undo almost everything from the past few days. you can’t forget, but for a while, you want to just exist outside of the timeline where there’s a killer on the loose and one of your friends is missing. it’s too much to handle; your body is approaching its limits for the amount of stress it can take. you need a balm to numb the pain and the fear, and you dislike that you are giving into your base instincts to do so. you feel guilty, somehow. but pleasure is easy. at least it has been whenever you sought it on your own—and now you have someone else to give it to you. someone who is in front of you now, proposing it with all the willingness in the world. maybe there’s really nothing wrong with saying yes.

“jungkook…”

“hm?”

“please just shut the fuck up and don’t say another word about the outside world right now. i don’t want to think about anything but your…” you falter, still trying to get used to expressing what you want sexually.

jungkook sits up, his hands sliding up your legs and to your hips. “but my what?”

“um, your…” your thoughts end when he leans down and pulls the hem of your sweater up, planting a kiss on your waist where your skin meets the waistband of your sweatpants. one kiss turns into a second, and a third. the fourth becomes an open-mouthed embrace of his lips on your skin, and you make a small noise of pleasure when his tongue gets involved.

“careful. don’t want veronica to come down here, remember?”

you huff. “that isn’t happening any time soon, believe me.”

his kisses continue as he begins to slide your sweatpants down, revealing the waistband of your panties. once they’re fully on display, he leans forward to nuzzle his face between your thighs, his mouth and nose pressing into the seat of your underwear. his actions take you off guard. you actually give a brief chuckle from surprise, though you are also somewhat embarrassed. “now what the hell are you doing?”

“let me savor my meal before i eat it.” his warm breaths tickle your inner thighs as he speaks.

“ugh, don’t turn me off.”

“that’s funny, because i seem to have an easy time getting you wet.” to prove it, his fingers press into the seat of your underwear to feel the wetness that’s seeped into them; you sigh from the brief pleasure his fingers’ movements afford you before he pulls them away.

jungkook drags your panties down next, his lips trailing down your lower abdomen and across the curls of hair covering your pubic mound. your body fills with anticipation at the gradual pace of his actions and the purposeful, wet caresses of his mouth.

when he uses his thumbs to press your lower lips apart and expose you more fully to him, you have half a mind to be self-conscious about it until he places his mouth on you in earnest.

jungkook eats like someone who hasn’t done so in a while and doesn’t know when he’ll get to do it again. his mouth sucks at your clit like he’s desperate for you to come, tongue rolling over the swollen nub in an unrelenting pattern that has your stomach tensing, and you quickly realize you do have to try to silence yourself even if you know it won’t wake veronica up. you twist your hands into the sleeves of your sweater and lean your head back on the couch’s armrest as you arch your hips up closer to jungkook’s face, uncaring about how vulnerable you feel completely offering yourself up to him like this; right now, all you want is to feel good.

“gonna come quick again? maybe we can set a new record?” jungkook pins your knee against the couch with his elbow to keep your legs open as he slides two fingers inside, diving straight in instead of working you up this time. your body breaks out in a sweat and you know you really won’t last long once he does this, the tips of his fingers aiming for that dreadful, wonderful, and overpowering place inside you. you don’t know how people do this—you feel like you’re going to die when he stimulates that spot, and all you want to do is scream even though you can’t.

“a r-record? fuck off…” you choke out, though you begin to rock your hips into the rhythm of his fingers, needing so badly for him to take you over the edge again.

he chuckles. “i don’t think you want me to fuck off right now.”

you have no words for a good comeback when he buries his head between your legs and slurps at your pussy again and crooks his fingers repeatedly to where your orgasm is unexpectedly rushing down upon you, causing your body to tense as you gasp and stifle any sounds that escape with your sweater sleeve.

jungkook doesn’t stop there and you don’t really expect him to, because you’re beginning to learn he isn’t a one-and-done type of man. he keeps sucking and stroking you right into another releasewhile you push the beanie off his head, fist your fingers into his strands, and tremble over the sight of his pitch-black mess of hair between your thighs. something about the visual is so appealing to you.

after he has made you come for the third time, you watch him sit up on his knees to reach into his shorts and pull his dick out, his darkened tip slick with precum. his long hair falls into his face as he glances downward, using the hand he’d been fingering you with to lube himself up with your cum.

“come here,” you tell him, your voice coming out sharper than you intended; but he doesn’t care, because he follows your request without a word and presses himself into your side. the couch is just big enough to accommodate both of you in this position, but it’s still a tight fit, and your bodies are once again tangled together.

“let me touch you,” you say, your palm pressed to his stomach, feeling the firmness of the muscle.

he raises his eyebrows, like you didn’t even need to ask. “of course.”

“no, i mean…” he realizes what you actually mean as you brush his hand away from his shaft and wrap your fingers around it instead.

“should i teach you how?” jungkook brings his hand to overlap yours, though his breath becomes a bit strained when you slide your hand to the base of his cock and back to the tip again, the pads of your fingers rubbing over the sensitive head. seeing your fingers around him turns him on more than he thought it could, and it’s just a simple fucking handjob.

you roll your eyes. “stroking a dickshouldn’t be that hard.”

“everyone likes it differently, though. fast, slow, soft, or rough…just the tip, or the whole shaft.” you can’t deny that—or the way you find yourself throbbing at his words, his voice husky from the pleasure. which is why you let jungkook close his hand more fully around yours and guide your movements.

it’s captivating to observe his reactions from your hand on his skin—the heavy breaths he lets out and the soft moans and even softer whimpers that come in between the exhales. whenever you squeeze his shaft more firmly or rub your thumb against his leaking tip, you find yourself grinning at the rise and fall of his chest and the tongue that darts out of his mouth to lick at his lips. but mostly, your eyes are drawn back to the sight of your hand working him over, his thighs and stomach tensing sporadically.

eventually, you both look away from your joined hands and at each other’s faces. your eyes dart to his lips and back to his gaze again, and you shift your face forward to signal your desire for a kiss. he meets you there by pressing his lips to yours, and it isn’t hard for him to get lost in the meeting of your mouths and the heat from your palm on his shaft.

your free hand returns to his soft hair to tug on it as your tongues slide against each other. he grunts at the burn of his roots being pulled but doesn’t stop you; on the contrary, his body responds favorably as more precum swells from his tip and his nipples poke against the material of his shirt.

“do you like that, jungkook?” you mumble against his mouth.

“you know i do.” at some point, his hand falls away and he lets you stroke him on your own.

jungkook gives a shuddering moan into your mouth when he climaxes minutes later, thick streams of his cum shooting onto his shirt and dripping down your hand. he tries to keep quiet and doesn’t entirely succeed, but it doesn’t much matter.

you squeeze the few remaining drops of cum from his cockhead, trying to make sure you don’t grip hard enough to actually hurt him. you pull your sticky hand away from jungkook when you think he’s finally emptied, but he grabs your wrist and you look at him questioningly. you watch with shocked eyes as jungkook brings your hand up and takes your messy fingers into his mouth, sucking his cum from them. you know instinctively it isn’t the first time he’s done this—not with the look of pure satisfaction on his features as he licks his own seed off your fingers.

his enthusiastic pleasure is part of the reason why you accept when jungkook gives you a crushing kiss, passing his cum from his tongue to yours. you don’t know what you expected it to taste like, but it isn’t gross like you’ve heard others complain about when sharing their sex tales; despite being salty, the overall taste is neutral. still, it takes some getting used to.

when you pull away from each other, noses brushing and lips wet from each other’s spit, you look into his dark brown eyes and get the sudden desire to say something that’s been buried in the back of your mind for days now.

“why did you come straight to me that night?” you whisper. “like you already knew who you were there for.”

jungkook stares back, his lips curving up slightly. “i just wanted to. or i wanted you, more specifically.”

“that’s not an answer.”

“well, it’s my answer.”

“was i another one to knock off your list?”

“you think i have a list?”

“i’m not stupid. it’s not unusual for guys to have a list. plus, plenty of rumors go around.”

jungkook taps his fingers underneath your chin and kisses you on the lips again, though it is brief. “stop believing everything you hear.”

you clearly won’t be getting a straight answer from him tonight. with the moment broken, you sigh and begin pulling your bottoms back on. “…whatever you say, dude.” once you’re dressed, you climb over his body to get off the couch. you poke him in the chest as your eyes roam over him in his disheveled state, his shorts pulled down and his cum staining his black shirt. “might wanna clean yourself up, huh? i’m going to sleep. and, yeah…thanks for the distraction.”

--

TUESDAY, NOV 7

with the weather being as cold as it is and heading toward winter in another month or so, lorelai is surprised by how quickly the bodies began to smell.

she doesn’t know much of anything about bodily decomposition—because, to her parents’ disappointment, she wasn’t about to be a biology major and have to be around cadavers in a dissection lab—but if this were a movie or something, she would’ve thought it would take longer than just one day. the smell started to hit her the saturday after the party.

but ultimately, this isn’t a movie, and the fact that she’s trapped in a decrepit house in some remote part of town is her present reality.

she doesn’t remember anything about how she got to this house; she thinks she must have been concussed before she was brought here. her head has been hurting badly for days, and not even the simple relief of a painkiller is available.

what she does know is that she’s being kept in a dirty living room on an equally dirty mattress, her hands and legs tied by rope and zip-ties. if there were any miniscule chance of her escaping, it would be impossible to go anywhere considering both her ankles are broken, only adding to the amount of physical pain she’s been in for days.

the living room is mostly empty except for the bodies of some other students from the party, which have been scattered around the room. lorelai tries not to look at them—especially not at the ones she knows—but it’s difficult. they become even more terrifying to her when night falls, turning into dark, rotting shadows in the corners of the room. there has been nothing but the company of these corpses for days, and a couple of visits from the killer.

he's never once taken off his wolf mask or his gloves, and every other part of his body stays covered in all black. she doesn’t have the first idea of what he looks like underneath it all. he has spoken to her a few times, but the voice isn’t one she recognizes. his words when she first awoke inside this house still knock around in her mind, filling her with dread.

he’d crouched in front of her, watching her move around on the mattress and try to orient herself. he had the casual air of someone observing a flipped-up bug struggle on the sidewalk before crushing it underfoot. “you aren’t y/n, but you’ll do for now. we’ll have some real fun later on. you’ll help me give her a good scare.”

“how the fuck do you know y/n?” lorelai had struggled against her restraints, but this only made her newly broken ankles hurt worse. tears began to fall from her eyes from the pain and fear.

the killer had said nothing to that—only tilted his head curiously and stared at her, which was unnerving even if she couldn’t see his eyes.

“you have no fucking reason to go after her, she’s not even a virgin anymore you dumb fuck—” with those words, the killer had backhanded her, sending her already injured head into a fresh wave of agony.

“things would’ve been different if not for that fucking party. you students think you’re so fucking clever, yeah? and look how you paid for it.” it was impossible to see any facial expression, but his body language spoke of anger. “no matter, though. virgin or not, i’ll see this through to the end.”

now it’s yet another morning, and he has returned. he has a lot of debris in his hands—stuff like sticks and dry moss and foliage. he’s also carrying a small bag, the contents of it a mystery. everything he does causes alarm for lorelai, but now confusion joins in.

“ready to have some fun?” he asks. with duct tape over her mouth, she can’t answer back. she watches as he arranges the debris on the ground in front of her, her anxiety mounting as he takes a lighter out of his pocket and sets fire to the foliage.

leaning forward, he rips part of the duct tape away from her mouth with his gloved hand, causing her face to sting. “got anything to say?”

“wh-what the fuck are you doing?”

“i’m gonna stoke a nice fire here…get this knife hot enough to hurt.” he brings out his knife then, and lorelai shrinks away from the blade as he drags the flat of it across her throat—but there’s nowhere else to go, as she’s sitting up against the wall. “then i’ll just cut this pretty little body up a bit. the finishing touch…i think i’ll slice your throat open. how does that sound?” he takes the knife away from her neck to hold the blade over the flames.

lorelai’s breath hitches, and her stomach begins to physically hurt from the outpouring of anxiety flowing through her. she starts to sob, trying to speak through the tears and snot and drool. the only question she can muster up is, “wh-why?”

“this is for y/n—remember? i hope that concussion hasn’t fucked with your memory.” the killer watches the reflection of the flames on the blade as it grows hotter. “and…i’m doing someone a favor.” he doesn’t wait for her to speak again before putting the duct tape back in place over her mouth, leaving her to cry to herself and face her rising distress as he heats the knife until it’s burning hot. internally, she wishes there was any way in the world to get out of this situation.

it isn’t much longer before he’s finished. lorelai screams as he approaches her with the knife, and then at the feeling of the red-hot blade scorching her skin, though the sounds are stifled by the duct tape.

“now, be still while i fix you up.”

--

WEDNESDAY, NOV 8

you go outside that afternoon to check the mail and have an excuse to get out of the house; it doesn’t matter if it’s only for a few moments. you’re not used to staying cooped up in one place for so long with absolutely nothing to do, and you feel like you’re not too far off from going mad with cabin fever. it hasn’t even been a week since everything happened.

you open the mailbox, and there are the usual bills along with something strange: a blank envelope with no return address. even your sister’s address isn’t written on it. flipping it over, you see that the envelope was never sealed. someone must’ve just come up and put it inside the mailbox. but who the hell would do that, and for what reason? whenever any of your neighbors have something to give you or your sister, they come straight up to the house to do it.

inside the envelope is a set of polaroids. their content makes you drop the rest of the mail. your legs grow weak, and you end up sitting down hard on the end of the driveway, some of the polaroids slipping from your hands. the pictures show the bodies of some of the students from your university, their corpses posed in odd positions and some bare of clothing—all dead.

you struggle to breathe as you frantically flip through the rest of the pictures. in the center of all the group photos is lorelai, her neck torn open and her wrists and ankles tied. she’s still dressed the way she was the night of the party, though her dress is stained with dark brown blood. there are open cuts all over her bare skin, their appearance rough-looking and uneven as if they’ve been cauterized.

there are several group polaroids, several of lorelai alone, and several angles of the outside of a house, which must be the same one the bodies are being kept in. one photo of lorelai slips out of your shaking hands, and you see there’s barely legible handwriting on the back of it, which reads, “this is just the teaser, y/n.”

you scream and don’t stop screaming until jungkook comes running out of the house holding the baseball bat, as if the killer might’ve gotten bold enough to attack in daylight. a couple of your neighbors peek out of their houses and make their way over with concern on their faces once they see you sitting on the ground, your exclamations ringing through the street.

there’s a disarrayed group of people around you grabbing at your shoulders and asking what’s wrong, what happened, and then gasps and exclamations of shock when they see the polaroids. you feel yourself being pulled to your feet and then lifted up—maybe it’s jungkook, because it smells like him—but you’re too disoriented to make proper sense of anything right now. you can only think of how much time has been wasted, and how little time lorelai actually had left.

--

SUNDAY, NOV 12

in the main lobby of the funeral home, you sit in a chair next to camille, staring into empty space while the other girl tries to cry as quietly as she can. she cries as if she’s ashamed of it, and you wish you could comfort her, but you don’t know what to say or do. for the past few days, you’ve mostly just felt numb.

you’re waiting for veronica to come back out so you can leave, as she’d stayed behind after the service to talk to lorelai’s family for a little longer.

lorelai’s family had opted to have her cremated after seeing the state of her body. a lot of other families did the same after the events of cherry bomb, not even wanting to entertain the idea of a closed-casket funeral. you can understand their feelings about it if you push through the haze in your mind to consider it for long enough. though the morticians have done the best they can over the past week, sometimes knowing that your loved one has multiple stab wounds and eviscerated organs beneath all the makeup and fancy clothing is too much to handle.

when veronica finally comes out, the three of you walk outside to join the rest of the people who’ve started getting in their cars. some still linger in small huddles, shaking their heads and wiping their faces.

jungkook, who’d driven you and veronica to the memorial, waits outside for you all, leaning on the side of the building. you both thought it was probably better for him not to attend the service considering lorelai was never fond of him and he didn’t know her that well.

“is it finished?” he asks.

“it is.” veronica sighs. “god, funerals are so damn…bleak.”

you notice a man waving at your group from the other side of the parking lot and realize it’s camille’s dad. her posture straightens when she catches sight of him, and she hurriedly tries to wipe the rest of her tears before shoving her tissue into her pocket. “i-i think my dad is waiting for me. i…i’ll see you guys later, alright?”

“okay, camille.” the strange absence of emotion that you’ve been trapped in for the past few days suddenly cracks open when you notice camille’s anxious demeanor as she speed-walks away from the rest of you. intense sorrow overtakes you; you don’t want her to leave, but she has to go.

you are crying before you fully understand what’s happening. veronica puts her arms around you and squeezes you against the side of her body. jungkook reaches a thumb up to wipe away your tears, though you don’t let him get very far before turning your head away and into veronica’s shoulder.

“y/n…”

“how am i supposed to go on?” you exclaim, catching the attention of a few people nearby. “the police said maybe she’s just staying with friends. and now look. plus, the killer knows where me and my sister live now…maybe he always knew.”

“we don’t even have a clue who the killer is…” jungkook mumbles. “there’s no one you know of who might have a grudge against you?”

“no, jungkook. the police already gave me all that questioning. and it doesn’t help me feel any better to think maybe all these deaths are somehow my fault.” you scoff.

“y/n, nothing’s your fault because some freak decided to go around killing people; that was his decision.” jungkook argues.

you nod slightly to his words but say nothing else, not wanting to go further into that topic. you don’t know if you can believe him about that.

the parking lot is emptying out now, so you try to pull yourself together so the three of you can leave. “well…you don’t need to keep staying with us if you don’t want to. we have those assigned bodyguards now, so…” you glance in the direction of one other car sitting beside jungkook’s—inside it are two men the police force appointed after the polaroids of the bodies were planted in your sister’s mailbox.

jungkook looks at you as if he’s trying to gauge your expression; he himself looks surprised, though he attempts to play it off. veronica glances between you both, recognizing the awkward shift in the air.

“you don’t want me there anymore? i mean it is your house—” he glances at veronica “—so that’s fine with me if—"

“what? i didn’t say i don’t want you there, neither did veronica, it’s just if you don’t want to be there—"

“i never said i didn’t want to be there, though?”

you both become quiet, jungkook looking at you and you returning his gaze for a few seconds before looking off to the side. veronica is still standing between you both like she’d rather be anywhere else on earth.

“i just figured that maybe…” why are you being so concerned about me? isn’t this the part where we go our separate ways? is what you really want to ask. you have seen and learned enough from your friends’ and even your acquaintances’ experiences to realize that any other one night stand would not have cared so much. that’s how these things go, right? but he isn’t really a one night stand anymore, either.

you don’t even know if you’re considered friends with benefits, but what would that change? you’d still seen others tossed aside without much thought by their FWBs while in times of need. considering his history, you don’t understand why jungkook isn’t following the same template now, and you don’t think you should ask why for fear of breaking the illusion.

fed up with your own confusion, you decide now isn’t the time to lament on your lack of knowledge about these things. “nevermind. that’s fine. so you’ll stay?”

the corner of his mouth lifts in a brief smile. “i’ll stay as long as you won’t try to kick me out.”

you aren’t in the mood to attempt to smile back, but he seems to understand that. “right, well...good.”

“…now that you two have figured that shit out, can we leave?”

--

FRIDAY, NOV 17

jungkook thought that getting outside a bit more would help you feel better and prevent you from developing a complete fear of leaving the house, which is why you’re sitting in this claustrophobic little diner now with him, yoongi, and camille—and of course, your ever-present bodyguards in the booth behind you all. but this outing isn’t doing anything to mitigate your fears.

nearly 10 minutes in, you have to ask jungkook to switch seats with you so you’re not on the outside of the booth, as you’re afraid that it’s too easy-access if anyone—say, the killer, though you’ve been trying not to think so obsessively about him—were to come in and start stabbing you to death right where you sit. being on the inside calms you for a little while until you become anxious about the window beside you; what if he has a gun again and simply shoots through the glass? all he’d have to do is stand on the sidewalk and aim, his werewolf mask laughing at you with its eternally frozen growling expression, and your brains would be all over the table just like that frat guy’s.

your meal sits half-eaten as you get increasingly lost in your anxieties. the others are talking about something, but you can’t hear what. it’s like some of your senses have shut down or begun working incorrectly. the strawberry sauce in camille’s sundae looks too much like blood and even smells like it from the occasional whiffs you get, and you find yourself staring at the sundae dish and wanting to throw it across the restaurant.

jungkook’s hand touches you on the back, and the tension in your body increases. he feels it and draws away, though he keeps trying to meet your eyes. “are you okay?” he whispers.

“why ask that? she obviously isn’t,” yoongi says, like he’s annoyed with the obviousness of jungkook’s question.

“hyung, i’m just trying to help.”

“it was your great idea to come out here when she didn’t want to, though.”

“y/n—” camille starts.

“can’t you throw that out? it smells like blood.” your mouth feels useless and hard to maneuver, but you manage to say those words.

“what?”

“the…that. that thing.” everyone looks at camille’s melting sundae. yoongi raises his eyebrows.

“blood?”

“do you mean it—looks like blood?” jungkook suggests.

you raise your voice in irritation, not understanding how everyone else is unable to perceive the same scent that you do. “no, i-it does, but it smells like blood too! just get rid of it!”

one of the waitresses comes over to the table. “is everything okay over here?”

“um, we’re fine! i’m finished with this though.” camille hurriedly hands the sundae off to her, trying to keep the situation calm.

“oh, well—the rest of you too? that’ll be it, then?” she gathers everyone’s plates and leaves with a smile that attempts to be cordial but is still colored with unease.

her departure leaves a stiff silence in which you all spare glances at each other but try to avoid directly meeting eyes. camille is the first to break it.

“i’ll ask my dad if i can stay over with you,” she suggests. she suddenly sounds much more tired. jungkook’s eyebrows furrow slightly at her words; yoongi silently glances at the younger man. “just, you know…maybe the extra company would help? he’s been treating me like a kid again, but we should be safe with the bodyguards there, so…”

“you don’t have to do that,” you say, though you’re too exhausted to truly argue.

“you’re in shambles, y/n. and it’s not just for your benefit. i’m feeling pretty fucking alone right now, and it’s hard for my dad to understand the emotional side of it, so…” camille plays with her fingers and doesn’t look at anyone as she speaks; you know talking about her father can be a sore spot for her sometimes. “uh, anyway. not to trauma-dump or anything. just let me do this.”

you sigh. “fine…okay. do whatever you have to. can we just leave?”

as you’re all walking outside, jungkook pulls you aside.

“i still worry about you after that incident at the store, you know?” he admits.

you shrug his hand off your arm and glare at him. “you think i’m crazy.”

“i don’t. i just want you to be able to relax and not feel like you’re being hunted 24/7. i don’t think the killer is constantly waiting around the nearest corner for you, y/n.”

“you don’t know how close the killer could be. he knows where i go to sleep at night. so stop the bullshit, jungkook.”

“you’ll be okay. you have me, remember? i protected you that night…i can do it again.”

you examine his face for a long moment and find that you are too overwhelmed with stress and fear to be moved by his words. “i’d like to trust you…but the killer might just murder you too. then who’ll save me?” you don’t wait for his response before walking away to catch up with the other two.

--

LYING IN WAIT...

it’s strange to see the police bodyguards in veronica’s driveway and backyard everyday. it’s not the same two all day—they switch off so that there are two doing a day shift and two doing a night shift.

the security team at the hospital where your sister works is aware of the situation, so you try not to get too worried about her safety when she’s away from the house—but it’s difficult.

there have been no more kills connected to your university since lorelai. it seems like half the town has forgotten their fears and tried to go back to some sense of normalcy while the other half still hides away and lives in perpetual panic, including you. the former group of people has started muddying the waters for the police, with some teenagers getting brave enough to sneak around in wolf masks and vandalize buildings with red-lettered virgin graffiti just to fuck with the cops. there have even been a few people who turned themselves in claiming to be the killer—only their supposed confessions never matched the details of the case.

reporters have tried to hound lorelai’s family and your family several times for any speculations or answers on the killer’s identity, but none of you are willing to spread misinformation just to give them something to write about. however, that hasn’t stopped other residents of your town from sharing their speculations and even implicating their own relatives or neighbors—whether as a fucked-up joke or as genuine revenge just depends on whoever’s speaking. with all of these false leads, the police are still no closer to finding the killer than they’d initially been.

everyday feels like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, though the chances of any more kills are starting to seem improbable; the university is practically empty. but it doesn’t matter to you if the school is nearly deserted, because the killer has his aims set on you now, and you only wish you knew why.

up in your room, you and camille sit on your bed gazing out the window—the window that must always remain locked now, for fear of unwanted ingress. you’ve never been uncomfortable in your sister’s house, but lately you’ve been feeling like you’re boxed in with every wall pressing towards you.

sitting up from your lying-down position, you have to find the appropriate words for a moment before speaking. “camille—i can’t stop feeling like maybe we aren’t entirely safe,” you murmur.

camille raises her eyebrows. “why not? those guys stay outside all day, and we keep everything locked up day and night. literally, the only time the front door opens is for veronica to leave and come back from work everyday.”

“i don’t know. there’s no particular reason for it…it just seems like we’re waiting for something.”

“…yeah? for the killer to be caught.”

“but he’s made no moves recently. you remember the policeman’s daughter, right? i even texted her and she hasn’t heard anything new that we don’t already know. seems like things have slowed down at the police station. it’s not like that abandoned house was in the killer’s name or anything, so what leads would they have?”

camille frowns and rubs her eyes like something’s in them, but when she looks at you directly, you see her eyes are red from unshed tears. “…i want things to be okay, though. i’m tired of living like this. you know how i had to beg just to get my dad to let me leave the house. he’s constantly on edge.” you feel even more unsettled to see camille so distressed lately, as she’s always been the only one able to pull something funny out of a terrible situation—something enough to distract you from the horrors. “all i know is they’ll have to dig his ass out of some hole in the ground at some point. he can’t hide in this town forever.”

“yeah…i guess you’re right.” you still don’t feel reassured, but you don’t voice your doubts.

--

WEDNESDAY, NOV 22

“i think i might go mad,” camille says from her position on the armchair, her limbs splayed haphazardly across it and one hand stuck in a bag of chips.

you sigh. “you’re the one who wanted to watch this thanksgiving movie marathon.”

“the most mid holiday of the season,” jungkook adds.

“no one cares what either of you think, thanks.” it isn’t long before the program is over and the ending credits are rolling. with an exaggerated exhale, camille gets up from the chair and crunches the bag of chips in her hand. “i’m going to your room, y/n. you two just do whatever it is you do down here, since you hate my movie choices so much!”

“means we can finally turn the channel.” jungkook snatches the remote off the coffee table and does just that.

camille goes into the kitchen to throw out the chip bag and wash her hands. your focus returns to the TV. a few seconds later, you hear the upstairs flooring creak above the noise of the water pouring from the tap.

“what’s up, sis? i thought you were sleeping.” veronica is known to be a deep sleeper, so it’s not common for her to be getting up in the middle of the night. there’s no answer to your question. you glance upstairs, but your sister isn’t standing there; she isn’t standing at all, instead being carried by someone wearing an all-too familiar mask.

you scream as the killer tosses your sister over the stair railing. her torso has been sliced open from collarbone to navel, her body leaving a large splatter of blood on the floor where she lands. jungkook jumps to his feet but is momentarily immobilized as he gazes at your sister’s body crumpled on the floor. you slide off the couch and crawl over to her, still crying out, but there’s no life left to try and salvage.

the screaming brings camille rushing to the kitchen doorway. she can barely vocalize what’s wrong? before spotting veronica’s body and stopping in her tracks. in a moment that feels like it takes forever to pass, the killer pulls a gun from his waistband—you recognize it as one of the guns the policemen carry and realize he must’ve killed the bodyguard posted in the backyard—and shoots her in the chest twice.

“camille!” when you go over to where she’s lying on the ground, she is still alive but bleeding intensely and struggling to breathe. your knees slip in the blood that begins pooling around her. “shit, camille…p-please don’t die…” you press your hand against the wounds, but they’re bleeding so much that your efforts don’t help, and the pressure of your hand causes her more pain.

there’s the sound of a gunshot at the front door as the lock is blown off, and the door is banged open a few seconds later by the remaining bodyguard. he has virtually no time to fire off another shot before the killer is shooting him in the head first.

the killer throws the gun aside, taking his knife in his other hand and making his way down the stairs. “your sister left her window cracked open. i waited for days for a slip-up like that. see how much harm can come from a simple mistake? well, she was collateral damage anyway.”

even in your panic, it’s as if all your bodily functions freeze when you recognize the familiarity of the killer’s voice. camille reacts with a rattling gasp, but her body is becoming too weak for her to utter anything; all she can do is watch as the man stops at the bottom of the stairs and pulls his mask off.

“yoongi…” your voice breaks as you try to speak again, but nothing coherent comes out.

he drops the mask on the floor and brushes a hand through his hair. “i guess you weren’t expecting that. good. we kept it up ‘til the end.”

your lips form around the word we, but your vocal cords won’t cooperate. you twist around to look at jungkook, who is still standing by the couch.

the man who you’d gotten too close to for your own good and done so many firsts with, who’d promised you that he’d protect you and was even there for you on the day of lorelai’s memorial, looks at you now with eyes glowing from the thrill as his mouth twitches into a smile—small at first but growing into a full grin. “i almost can’t believe we staged all that shit and it actually worked. you really believed it all, y/n.

not all of those kills were hyung’s, of course...there’s no way i’d miss out on the best parts. you don’t know what it’s like until you kill a person for the first time. crashing cherry bomb was his idea, though. and lorelai was mine. that bitch would’ve kept you away from me, and i needed her gone for this kill to work.”

through tears, you finally muster up the strength to ask, “wh-why have you done this? that night…y-you mean to tell me none of that was real? being shot at—why would you—” your voice rises until you’re shouting. “you-you’ve killed so many people. what was the purpose?!”

jungkook’s smile fades somewhat as he pretends to think about it, acting like he’s reminiscing on wistful memories. “i realized that killing and fucking aren’t that different, y/n. the real ecstasy of it is in taking someone pure…and doing something to them that has never been done before, and can never be done again. there’s a certain eroticism in killing someone, stabbing them, entering them…it’s like sex in the most profane sense.”

“you’re disgusting,” you mutter, glaring at him through your tears. you can’t help but feel shame to think of the times you’d had sex with him. had he simply been imagining murdering you during those moments? it makes you want to throw up.

yoongi steps closer until he’s right in front of you and camille. “and as for me…i just enjoy it. practice really does make perfect. you wouldn’t believe how entertaining it can be to see someone beg for their life.” his lips turn upwards in a dark smile resembling jungkook’s. “but instead of raging at us, i think you have bigger matters to be concerned with.” yoongi gestures his knife hand to camille, and when you look down at her body, you realize she’s no longer moving.

you lift camille’s head up with your hands as if that could make her return your gaze, though you can find no sign of breathing or pulse. “god, no…” you scream in frustration, your hands slipping in her blood. you check once more and again for any signs of life, because there is just no possible way this could’ve happened, but there are none present. “please—i’m sorry…”

“time’s up.” yoongi grabs your arm and yanks you away from camille, jostling you to try to get you on your feet. you flail around in his grip, fruitlessly scratching at his arms that are covered by his thick jacket, before managing to elbow him in the groin with your frantic movements. “shit!” this causes him to loosen his grip, which is enough for you to scramble away from him, slipping in the blood as you go.

you make it to the other side of the room where the officer lies facedown—though there isn’t much left of his face from yoongi’s shot. you snatch the gun from the dead officer’s hand and point it in the direction of both men. the safety is already off; all you’d have to do is pull the trigger and kill either one of them right now. before you can act, yoongi uses his free hand to pull another gun from his waistband—his own.

“as i said before, i know how to take care of myself,” he says, flicking the safety off and aiming for you, though his stance shows he’s still in pain. “please don’t assume it’ll be that easy. do you even know how to shoot a gun?”

you and yoongi are at an impasse as you both point your guns at each other, jungkook looking on with casual amusement coloring his face. “fuck you,” you spit out. you remain hesitant to fire on him, knowing that even if you succeed, he could fatally shoot you at the same time.

“let’s not do it this way,” yoongi says, his voice low and soft in an attempt to be persuasive, though you just find it disturbing. “you were supposed to be a clean kill. a few stabs and it’d all be over. i’ll even let jungkook do it, since you seem to like each other so much. do you really want to be shot down like a dog like camille over there?”

“you and him can both fry in hell!” you shout.

yoongi glances over at jungkook. they both nod before yoongi hands the knife to him, and the younger man takes a few steps in your direction. you don’t know whether to point the gun at him or keep it trained on yoongi; your head is pounding with a headache that you’ve only just realized you have. “don’t come over here. stay away from me!”

you press your back to the wall as jungkook comes closer, inching towards your right side with his knife at the ready. you slide away from him as you keep your back against the wall. “hand it over, y/n. it doesn’t have to be like this.”

“hand it over and let you kill me? are you insane? you lied to me this whole time, you fucking piece of shit.”

jungkook scoffs and looks at yoongi as if to say can you believe this? “why wouldn’t i lie to you? you were always meant to die.”

he won’t stop coming towards you, and you’re running out of room to slide away from him. you grasp for anything to try to reason with him, though you know it’s futile. “you realize that if you kill me now and you conveniently survive, everyone will know it’s you? you’ve been living here for weeks, you jackass!”

“hyung and i have that covered. it’s not for you to worry about, considering you won’t be worrying about anything soon.”

jungkook lunges for you with the knife, thinking he can catch you off guard and overpower you. you scream and pull the trigger in your frenzied state of mind, shooting yoongi. the next few things seem to happen almost simultaneously:

you hear the crash of yoongi’s body hitting the TV stand and the TV falling to the floor.

you feel jungkook’s knife piercing your shoulder, causing you to fire a stray round into the wall from the unexpected burst of pain.

you hear another gunshot that’s not from you; you see and feel jungkook stumble into you, the knife sliding from his fingers and to the floor.

you realize that he’s been shot when his hand flies to the bullet wound on his lower back; he’d been standing in front of you, and yoongi meant to hit you, not him.

“jungkook!” yoongi’s shout is furious and regretful as he steadies himself on the TV stand.

trying to push the pain into the back of your mind, you clumsily grasp jungkook’s fallen knife and run for the stairs. more shots follow you and most of them miss but one, which strikes you in the thigh.  while you cling to the stair railing and try to regain your footing, you are suddenly staring mortality in the face and understanding with a freezing-cold clarity that you will die right now if you don’t do something.

your nervous system vibrates with fear and adrenaline as you tighten your grip on the police officer’s gun and shoot yoongi with it twice—in the same area he’d shot camille.

these last two bullets finish him off immediately. you don’t think it’s fair, with how camille suffered and bled and died in your arms. for a moment, you’re so outraged that you wish he’d come back to life so that you could kill him again. you’re torn from these thoughts by jungkook.

“you bitch…he was my only family after everyone else threw me away. do you understand? i’ll fucking kill you!” jungkook is nearly writhing in the ground from his upset and from the hurt of his injury; it frightens you that this same man is someone you once thought you could grow fond of.

you aim the gun for jungkook next, but the chamber is empty. either way, he currently has no weapon, which leaves you with a small chance to get away before he re-arms himself. throwing the gun away, you stagger up the rest of the steps while his screams continue echoing up to you.

you give no thought to the blood trail you’re leaving behind as you rush to veronica’s room and to the window yoongi had entered through. you begin squeezing yourself through, keeping your grip on your knife all the while, but your injuries make it difficult to move. a few more tears slip out as you try to balance your injured leg on the tree branch beneath the window, and the desperation of wanting to give up clings to you.

you hear jungkook’s heavy and limping footsteps coming up the stairs, and you attempt to hurry, but you’re only halfway out of the window. when he crashes into the room, it’s unnervingly easy for him to grab your arm and yank your body back through the window, uncaring of how you get scraped up in the process.

he jams you up against the nightstand with one of the kitchen knives to your neck to stop your movements; his harsh maneuver causes the objects on the nightstand to rattle. the nightstand’s edge digs into the backs of your thighs, the pressure causing your wounded thigh to hurt more.

“you want to know why i picked you?” jungkook hisses, the knife’s blade stinging your throat as it begins to break skin. “you were just another choice out of many, but i decided you’d be the first one that i’d fuck and kill.”

it’s painful to hear, but it angers you at the same time. “fuck you!” in your rage, you spit in his eyes. jungkook jerks back and the knife shifts from its previous position at your neck; you take those few seconds to grasp the alarm clock off the nightstand and crash it against his head.

“shit—!” he cries out, stumbling and grasping the side of his head. he tries to grab for you again, but you jump onto the bed and crawl away from him, your stomach lurching at all of veronica’s blood soaked into the sheets. you spot a small decorative glass bowl on the dresser—the one filled with little candies that you’d always teased veronica for, saying she was so much like a grandma handing out treats to her grandchildren. when your feet touch the ground again, you clasp your hand around it like it’s a lifeline and fling it at jungkook’s head as hard as you can, just as he makes it around the bed to your side. the shards cut his face when it breaks, slowing him down further as he grabs his slashed and bleeding face. one of his eyes is blinded from the blood and glass.

this will probably be your only chance while he’s struggling to gather himself. you rush towards him with the knife handle tight in both of your hands and drive the blade into the middle of his chest, putting all your strength into that movement—just as his own knife impales your abdomen.

you are both simultaneously struck from the shock of being stabbed, and it takes you a few long moments to piece your mind back together as the pain radiates throughout your body. jungkook groans when you shift the knife around in his wound as you pull it out, letting his blood flow out freely. his breaths become wet and rattling as he chokes on his own blood, the red fluid staining his mouth and dripping down to his neck. he jams his knife further into your wound in retaliation so that the handle is flush against your body, causing your head to spin.

“i-if i die, i’m taking you w-with me.” jungkook gasps with his remaining effort. his body starts to sag from its standing position as he weakens, his hand slipping from the knife handle. he loosely grasps the comforter with one hand as he collapses to his knees, his torso becoming soaked with blood and his head bleeding from your earlier hits.

you drop your knife and lean against the bed too, shifting your body to find a position that could lessen the pain, but it’s impossible with a knife lodged in your abdomen. you know enough to understand that you’ll bleed out faster if you remove it, though, so you resist the urge. “you can rot in hell alone, jungkook.” you watch him struggle for what feels like minutes before his breaths stop altogether and his body slumps to the floor. he is just a blur of clothes and blood through your tears. you’ve never felt so lonely in your life.

you have a thought to call 911, but you’re becoming more and more lightheaded from the blood loss, and you can already hear sirens approaching on your street. you figure one of your neighbors must’ve called after hearing the gunshots; perhaps the bodyguard sent for backup before he was shot. your rescue has come much later than you would’ve preferred—or maybe everything just happened much faster than it seemed. you can’t tell anymore.

you can’t tell anymore, and you no longer want to look at the carnage around you, and nothing makes any sense. so, you close your eyes to it all; and when you feel someone lifting you in their arms—this sensation is so familiar—and maneuvering you onto a stretcher, you allow yourself to relent to it and empty your mind of everything.

@ihatemen55 @cottoncandyclouds-stuff @yunhofingers @heybabesposts @twilight-loveer @whipwhoops @mrsminho @junecat18 @hoshi-is-ult-bbg @okayiamkassandra @witchbitxhxx @hopefulrascalstatesmantoad @thaiika @goldentea10 @iloverubberduckiez-blog @katie-tibo @ohsweetmimosa @dream-cvtcher @hoseokteardrop @lpgirl2324 @vanillacupcakefrosting @gukiemochi @jkslaugh97 @ahgasegotarmy116 @jeonjklibs @bangtans-momma @screamertannie @kenzietaetae @han-nah-banana @00frenchfries00 @taiwan0618 @laurynne5 @monvante @ynisthatyou @thiccthighs19 @jeonwiixard

[mickyschumacher]

Hi hun

Could you maybe write a smau about Charles x Brazilian!reader and maybe she’s like a famous actress or something?

Thank you 🤍🤍

𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐇𝐈𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 .ೃ࿐

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: after being publicly mistreated by your ex-boyfriend, fans couldn't be more welcoming to a certain f1 driver.

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: mentions of cheating, poor humor, google translated portuguese

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: charles leclerc x famous brazilian actress!fem!reader

𝐅𝐂: bruna marquezine

𝐀/𝐍: i opted for a sm au after getting ill this week so hope ya'll don't mind! i was also stuck between bruna and livia as the fc but i figured my girlie bruna was the best! hope this was okay anon ♡︎

𝐏.𝐒: i don't think there are much plots in sm aus so there wasn't much here lol! also getting danny ric back at this time is kinda crazy. couldn't believe it when i saw it... but i also feel for nick :(

𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓

charles_leclerc posted on his story!

yourusername

liked by masonmount, charles_leclerc, zendaya, and 2,304,093 others

yourusername: cura ♡ healing♡

view all 53,041 comments

leclercs: guYS THE DOG 👀

norrarijimin: they're soft launching 🤧🥺

zendaya: beautiful girl ❤️

yourusername: says you ♡︎

ynauurrrr: i miss her and n tho 🤧

ynbestgirl: bestie no one misses him lmao

f1gossip

liked by leclercs, pierregasly, ynbestgirl and 24,942 others

f1gossip: Rumoured WAG Y/N L/N has been promoting her heavily anticipated show in the Netherlands and seen taking pictures with her fans, a few days before the Dutch Grand Prix.

tagged: yourusername

view all 745 comments

ausnorris1: it just keeps getting better am i right?

ynbestgirl: does she ever have a day off being the prettiest woman in the world?

norrarijimin: no one talking about gasly's like?

leclercs: the drama this man likes to start...

pierregasly liked this comment!

yourusername

liked by charles_leclerc, pierregasly, landonorris, and 3,294,291 others

yourusername: here are some behind the scenes while you wait for the first episode tonight!

tagged: romuloestrela, johnnyomassaro

view all 63,304 comments

romuloestrela: uau… estamos incríveis. wow... we look amazing.

johnnyomassaro: modelos models

yourusername: obviamente... obviously...

ynbestgirl: IT'S GONNA BE SO GOOOOOOD

leclercs: talent with talent... love to see it!

charles_leclerc posted to his story!

[ charles_leclerc: new day, new show recommendation for tifosi! #deusslaveorei ]

[ charles_leclerc: favourite character is caterina ❤️ #deusslaveorei ]

yourusername posted on her story!

[ yourusername: i hope singapore is ready for ferrari! thank you for having me f1 ♡︎ ]

[ yourusername: the singapore grand prix winner doesn't want to show his face... anyways... proud of you charles_leclerc ]

charles_leclerc

liked by yourusername, arthur_leclerc, pierregasly, and 1,203,951 others

charles_leclerc: birthday break with the people i love before the us grand prix! still in shape and ready to win ❤️

tagged: arthur_leclerc, lorenzotl, leclerc_pascale

view all 5,394 comments

danielricciardo: happy birthday mate! hope you had a good one ❤️

pierregasly: happy birthday bro

landonorris: why no invite brooo :(

carlossainz55: ^^

arthur_leclerc: man i look good

charles_leclerc: it's the genes

lorenzotl: you're welcome ♡︎

arthur_leclerc: ...

norrarijimin: WHY DIDN'T U TAG HER AHFSRHEAKRHESIJRB

leclercs: they're still soft launching for god's sake 😭💀

yourusername

liked by charles_leclerc, pierregasly, zendaya, and 5,938,214 others

yourusername: he wins in méxico, he wins in são paulo ♡︎ proud of you, meu lindo. proud of you, my beautiful.

tagged: charles_leclerc

view all 100,392 comments

pierregasly: FINALLY

leclercs: LMAOOOO PIERRE

pierregasly: i thought i was going to die if i had to keep it a secret any longer 🤧

charles_leclerc: a for effort ig

charles_leclerc: thank you, chérie. thank you, sweetheart

ausnorris1: anyone checking up on ynbestgirl?

ynbestgirl: choosing to happily throw myself over a cliff rn.

norrarijimin: room for two?

ynbestgirl: ofc

charles_leclerc

liked by yourusername, pierregasly, landonorris, and 3,283,983 others

charles_leclerc: not that we've been hiding it but this is y/n, the love of my life. say hi y/n!

view all 13,078 comments

landonorris: hi y/n! yourusername

pierregasly: hi yourusername

danielricciardo: hiiiiiii yourusername

carlossainz55: hi! yourusername

yourusername: ...

yourusername: i have mixed feelings about this post

yourusername: what are these photos? 😭

charles_leclerc: what do you mean? they're my memories of you 😄

ynbestgirl: STOP IT CHARLES MY HEART CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE yourusername liked this comment!

yourusername: ^

leclercs: and here lies ynbestgirl. y/n's biggest fan. passed on the 7th of november 2023 due to y/n herself

ynbestgirl: they do say never meet your heroes 😭

yourusername: i–

© 𝐌𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐘𝐒𝐂𝐇𝐔𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑

[bicth-and-in-that-order]

Rambling thoughts of various Yuri manga I’ve read

1. Kase-San and Yamada (Morning Glories sequel series) by Hiromi Takashima

notice how Kase’s name is first, which is representative of her being the main one to cause problems in their relationship

If you asked me what my favorite yuri manga was like 2-3 years ago, I’d say Morning Glories and Kase San everytime. Every avid yuri fan has either read or watched Morning Glories because, at the time in 2010, it was groundbreaking, and I stand by the fact that the original series still holds up to this day. It was cute, sweet, wholesome and only had a few obligatory “we love each other but we’re giRLs😳😳😳” moments. Most of all it wasn’t a pseudo-incest-straight-male-porn-pandering-garbage-fest—also known as “Citrus”. Was it cliche at times? Yes, but they all are lol. Did they add to the dumb ass “blonde femme and dark hair masc” trope? Also yes. But it was adorable and it was my first ever yuri so it holds a special place in my heart.

And it SEEMED like it was only going to get better in Kase San and Yamada, the sequel. The girls would be heading to college and the story could theoretically focus on more mature topics while they navigate their new relationship. Keyword: theoretically. Unfortunately, instead of exploring interesting relationship dynamics and storylines, the plot of each story arc boils down to: Kase is insecure because a man breathed next to Yamada or Kase is being completely insensitive to Yamada’s feelings…again…—> ✨miscommunication drama ✨—>big over dramatic apology scene—>boring makeup sex or other romantic gesture.

Literally that’s how every single plotline goes. Kase is so goddamn dumb and insensitive to Yamada’s feelings and Yamada’s a complete doormat who can only stay mad for 0.2 seconds before getting pussy whipped like a spineless ass bitch. And for all that Yamada sacrifices for Kase; her hometown, her dreams, her apartment, what does she get in return from Kase? Oh that’s right; bare minimum romantic gestures and a neglectful partner who can’t even call her “girlfriend” in front of others:

Like I thought we were over this shit. It’s been THREE years of them together, a whole anime production, and god knows how many irl years and we’re going back to “we love each other but we’re giRLs😳😳😳” WHY???

And then Kase later goes onto bet her entire three year relationship over the ugly bitch in the next panel, so now I’m questioning whether or not Kase even loves Yamada with the amount of bullshit she’s put her through. Which COULD be an interesting plot point, but Kase never gets any consequences for her actions and the creator genuinely thinks this is romantic and full of tension so I’m 10000% positive that this arc, just like all the others, will end with some makeup sex and we’ll be right back to step 1. Sigh.

2. Tamen De Gushi by Tan Jiu

Tamen De Gushi’s problems are interesting but it’s NOT because of the Chinese government💀

So today’s dark haired masc and blonde femme of the day are Sun Jing and Qiu Tong, respectively. Their personalities aren’t anything to write home about, if you read ANY high school yuri romance, then you know exactly what happens in this story beat for beat. But, BUT, however derivative it is, I find their dynamic very endearing and down to earth. Idk maybe it’s just the translation, but other yuri stories often have this very inauthentic “anime” vibe to it. Which is to say the characters act very cutesy, overly dramatic, and have this stilted, caricature-esque acting of how the creator thinks teenage girls are supposed act.

However, I’m happy to report that Tamen De Gushi is a breath of fresh air in this regard. The characters and interactions they have are grounded and feel organic, which makes them feel like real people, not aliens pretending to be human. This really elevates the humor in turn, oh did I mention that Tamen De Gushi is super funny? Because Tamen De Gushi is super funny, here’s one of my favorite panels and it’s all because of Sun Jing’s goofy ahh expression:

Like go girl give us nothing

If you’re wondering why I haven’t spoke much about the actual romantic relationship between the girls, that’s because there isn’t one💀 Which, okay, that’s not a fair assessment, they have a ton of romantic tension and they flirt a lot. It’s certainly building to a great romantic relationship, but it can’t quite get there due to legal/political reasons sadly. 😔

Edit: I received new information in regards to what happened to Tamen De Gushi. While I reached my limit for posting pictures, I want to point out that the Chinese government had nothing to do with Tamen De Gushi getting censored, rather it was a dispute between the author and the publishing company. The prior information I received was false and I prob should’ve looked it up more so sorrrry. The fact still remains though that after their big lesbian kiss towards the middle of the story and maybe a few other moments, that’s just kind of it. You’re stuck waiting for something to develop, but nothing really happens. The comic very quickly becomes a collection of slice of life segments and cute pictures that imply a relationship between the girls, but not really ;) ;).  Now things are just kind of left in purgatory for the foreseeable future and, well, that’s Tamen De Gushi y’all.

Compared to Kase San and Yamada, the characters were much better, which is not saying much, but without an actual romantic storyline, there’s just not a lot for me to comment on to be honest. It’s really pretty though, look at this art :

3. Beauty and the Beast Girl by Neji

my personal favorite and the BEST yuri I ever read

So next on the list is Beauty and the Beast Girl (I’m going to abbreviate to BatBG from here on) , which I already spoiled my feelings on the matter so this will basically be me gushing about this story for several paragraphs straight, enjoy.

Contrary to what the title suggests, it really has nothing to do with Beauty and the Beast’s story except in name. The main girls are Lily Blind, who is actually fucking blind 💀 and Heath the monster girl. Already I’m happy because instead of blonde femme and dark hair butch, it’s blonde femme and of-course-you-have-purple-hair-and-pronouns masc. Lol, all jokes aside, Lily, unlike her blonde femme counterparts is quite assertive and voices her opinions all the time. In fact, she’s the one who pushes Heath to be more open and communicate with her rather than the other way around. This is, in part, due to the story BatBG is trying to tell. I say BatBG is in name only to Beauty and the Beast because Lily isn’t trying to find the “beauty” within Heath or learning to love a beast or whatever, she’s fine just the way she is and her love for Heath is unconditional. Plus the only thing beastly about Heath is her appearance…which I’ll harp on later, but her behavior is in no way different from a regular human except in very rare, specific moments.

At its heart, BatBG is a story about forgiveness (the creator literally says as much) , but it’s also about the cycle of violence that results from being outcasted and deprived of love. BatBG is set in a world of humans and monsters, where the monsters are outcasted and either have to stay away from human society like Heath or assimilate themselves by hiding away their monster like traits, which is a really queer narrative on top of an already queer story. I don’t want to go into too much spoilers, but sometime before the beginning of the story, Heath in-directly hurts Lily before they ever meet. However, it’s not about Lily needing to forgive Heath, or trying to get over the pain she inflicted upon her, rather its Heath learning to forgive herself and in effect, learning to love herself as much as Lily loves her.

Another big aspect of BatBG is disabilities, Lily Blind is in fact Blind lol and while there are times she struggles with her blindness, she never views her disability as something she needs to be ashamed of and never, ever, blames Heath for it or holds it against her unlike what many, many, many, many other stories end up doing. Her blindness isn’t treated like a super power either, it’s a legitimate disability. She just accepts that it’s a part of her and goes onto say that if not for her blindness, she would’ve never met the love of her life, which I found to be an incredibly profound thing to say.

Now that I’ve gotten this far, I suppose I can add a bit of a disclaimer. So BatBG is waaaaay more explicit about the physical affection between the girls than in any of the previous stories I talked about. Heath and Lily are constantly kissing on, hugging, and almost always flirting with each other, and make no mistake, these girls do be fucking. The sex scenes are never perverted or gross, but genuinely super sweet and romantic, which makes it way hotter imo (huh imagine that🤔). And aside from being hot, it also serves a purpose! Lily’s pretty damn horny underneath all her nice girl antics and while it’s not a major part of her character, it does give a slight edge to her personality and, most importantly, balances out the dynamic between Heath and Lily. It would’ve been very easy to fall into that boring trope where Heath is aggressively horny and Lily is the submissive blind girl, but by making Lily be the one to initiate the sexual encounters, it not only compliments Heath’s more reserved nature, but breaks the stereotype that people with disabilities are pure precious being who couldn’t possibly have sex, which is ableist af btw. Many people think the existence of any sex scenes at all is superfluous, but in BatBG, it truly elevates the story, the characters, and the romance in ways that wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying without it.

Now, with as much praise I gave BatBG, there is one criticism I have, but it’s a quibble really, and it can be explained in a single image:

There is a dissonance between the story and the art, the story says: “Heath is a big, ugly scary monster”

The art says:

And like yes, it can be argued that Heath is simply regurgitating the things bigoted people have said to her, but at no point in the story is this ever challenged or brought up in any meaningful way. Lily is blind so she doesn’t know what the hell she looks like and the other characters aren’t any help either. It’s not a big deal or anything, it just would’ve elevated the story if Heath was actually kinda ugly/more monstrous and not incredibly beautiful because right now it’s giving skinny girl who calls herself fat all the time, and it’s like, babe, who tf are you fooling? 😭

Other than that, BatBG is incredibly profound despite its premise being so deceptively simple and I love it to pieces so …yeah! READ IT.

4. Superwomen in Love! Honey Trap and Rapid Rabbit by sometime

Well, at least there are no blondes

So imma just abbreviate to SiL btw

Alright, let’s get started. The premise is that a villainess falls for the super hero girl and then that plotline is dropped in about 16 pages. I’m not even joking, the villainess falls for the hero, loses her job as a villain and then joins the hero all in one chapter. The REAL plot is actually about a council of evil alien-humans who want to destroy humanity because of generic super villain reason #434: the leader of the aliens is sad and misunderstood :( I’m not even going to lie, I had 0 interest in “X” (the generic ass name of the main villain) and her band of useless lesbians. They did literally nothing in the story except be a nuisance and contribute to X’s incel breakdown at the end. Their inclusion actively made SiL worse because the story has this weird tonal problem where in one breath the villains are portrayed as complete jokes and then you turn the page and now they’re shooting children like girl what💀 And these useless lesbians hog sooooo much of SiL that desperately needed to be given to Honey trap and Hayate to develop their relationship.

When the story DOES actually focus on Honey Trap and Hayate, it’s pretty good, even cute at times, there just wasn’t enough time given to them to flesh their relationship out. As it stands, Honey Trap and Hayate don’t have much of a dynamic, or personality for that matter. Honey Trap’s main gimmick is that she’s extremely horny for Hayate and delulu:

Aside from that, she’s a great value version of Heath, but even a watered down character is better than, like, nothing. All I really know about Hayate is that she’s nice, heroic, likes wearing tacky clothes and ….that’s it. She loves Honey Trap because…………they fought together a few times so why not🤷‍♀️ I’d say at least that’s better than Tamen De Gushi, but actually it’s not because these grown ass women don’t even kiss , all we get is a love confession and their gremlin love child and that’s supposed to be satisfying I guess.

And the worst part is that SiL has the audacity to pretend the romance was something that it clearly wasn’t:

Girl…yall were “””enemies””” for 10 panels.

Now, it’s stated they have been rivals for a while, but I guess Honey Trap forgot all of that because the moment she sees Hayate’s face, my good sis is pussy whipped for life. And that’s in spite of apparently being the evilest one out of the evil group because Honey Trap has no grudge or baggage toward Hayate. She immediately turns good with no issues and Hayate is only distrustful of Honey Trap for 1 or 2 speech bubbles and then she’s not. Anything else that happened was off screen, which means it didn’t happen. Ironically, the very next entry on this list will do a MUCH better job at an ex-villain love story, but for SiL, there’s just not much going on.

Another reading of this story is to call it a “parody” but…no, it isn’t. SiL isn’t a comedy, yes there are comedic moments that poke fun of the genre, but the rest of the story genuinely wants you to take it seriously. Except it can’t. X and her league of dimwits are boring as piss and they oscillate between Saturday morning cartoon villains and child murderers seemingly on a whim. So I can neither be endeared to them nor take them as a serious threat. Honey Trap and Hayate are there, but I lament on all the potential lost from what could’ve been an amazing relationship.

5. Yamujiburo/Kianamaiart’s Hanamusa webcomic

This one is kind of cheating, but I also don’t care let me talk about hot MILFs💀

So the final entry on this list is a webcomic series by one of my fave artist: kianamaiart! And it’s right here on tumblr so check it out!

I stumbled upon this webcomic a few weeks ago, fell in love and now I want to talk about it. This yuri pair thankfully has no blonde femme in sight and instead features two popular Pokémon characters: Jessie from Team Rocket and Delia Ketchum, Ash Ketchum’s mom. What I love about this ship and the world Kiana creates around them is that it’s a very unconventional pairing. There’s just not many romances where a single mom falls in love with an ex gang member and the best part is, Delia being a mom is a big part of her character and she doesn’t ignore Ash in favor of her new relationship with Jessie. She has time for both and doesn’t prioritize one over the other, which many ppl fail to do even irl so good on you Delia!

Now, as for the romance it self, Jessie and Delia are a unique pair. Jessie’s overconfident, brash, drama queen personality doesn’t automatically put her in the “dominant” role and Delia’s sweet, motherly personality doesn’t automatically put her in the “submissive” role. Their dynamic in the webcomic actually plays out in the reverse, Jessie is the one who gets easily flustered and Delia’s…intense, to say the least:

(But Tbf if Delia looked at me like that I’d be at her beck and call too💀)

This subversion of these tropes creates a fun dynamic for the couple and it’s super adorable to see how their energies bounce off each other in each new situation Kiana puts them in. I also love how both Jessie and Delia inspire each other to live out their dreams and they become better versions of themselves by being together.

And one last thing, I don’t have any smart commentary to go along with this, I just really like this drawing of Jessie:

no thoughts, head empty

Final Thoughts

Soooo yeah, that’s the end of my dissertation on yuri comics. I know I ended up dragging a lot of popular yuri, but it wasn’t my intention to make you guys hate any of things I talked about. These were just my thoughts as an avid yuri fan, so let me know your thoughts as well, especially if you read any of the yuri I talked about. And even though I’m super picky about the type of yuri I read, I’d still love to hear any recommendations. Who knows, it might dethrone the undefeated champ that is Beauty and the Beast Girl.

[jade-jini]

imagine loser g!p yunjin…

(These pics came to save my writer block)

Imagine? I breathe for every word in that sentence anon😭. You get me too well we should kiss anyway.

Loser Yunjin who made you fall for her with her silly jokes and pickup lines and loud personality😭 Yunjin is part of the loser puppy line (yes with minjeong) so you know she gets excited easily. Girlie is loud. Even at lunch time where is crowded af you can easily tell whose loud ass laugh is that. That kept catching your attention, until you recognized her in one of your classes and for some reason couldn’t stop looking at her.

Oh but Yunjin? No she’s noticed you since day 1. Not only noticed you but she fell HARD. She had Sakura already tired ‘cause of how much she’d talk about you. She has dreamy eyes and a dreamy smile just mentioning something you did, something as simple as “today the professor asked a question and nobody knew. Well, I did, but then- KKURA LISTEN! But then y/n raised her hand really fast! And her answer was even more correct than my answer!”

“How is it more correct if you had the same answer Yunjin—”

“IT WAS MORE CORRECT OK? IT WAS PERFECT! She is perfect :(”. Loser. Loser and simp.

Whenever you walk into the room her friends would tell her and she’d go from playing around recreating this fight scene she saw while playing genshin to just quickly shutting up and be like 🧍🏻‍♀️pretending she was all well behaved and cool but it was too late you saw the whole thing ndkdjdj. She got so embarrassed but you thought it was cute 😭 you’d exchange a few words from time to time but nothing too serious, and she always had either a silly joke or a “pickup line” that was so bad it made you laugh every time. Yunjin in her brain be like: I failed successfully :D!

One day tho some mf saw the way she’d stare at you and told her somebody like you would never even look at a loser like her in that way :( poor baby got so sad that day but plot twist! You started playing genshin ‘cause of her 🥺, favorite character being Yunjin Ofc for obvious reasons (when you told her she blushed so hard ‘cause you winked at her and everything nsjdncjf) and that’s how you started talking to her, asking her questions that you could totally figure out by yourself but shush you needed an excuse to talk to the cute nerdy loser in your program.

I feel like I already talked a lot 💀 so I won’t make it too long explaining exactly how you started dating (here it is!). So now the smut part uhuhu.

Since you bonded well ‘cause of genshin, you’d have a lot of play dates. Sometimes tho, you prefer to watch your gf playing sitting on her lap. At first it was cute, but she moves so much when playing, and you and her dick noticed it before her brain did “... Yun is your mic off?” “Yes baby, why? Hmm? Where are you go—” And before she can process it you’re already on your knees sucking her cock and moaning ‘cause Omg doesn’t it taste and feels amazing in your mouth?? Also thank god you checked if her mic was off because she let out the loudest moan. remember I said she was loud? Yeah it continues here bro. You looked up at her and she was so ready to forget the game and concentrate on only you but you stopped her from getting up and told her to finish playing.

“H-how am I supposed to c - oh fuck ~ concentrate when you’re doing that??…” she said while “complaining” but in the end, obeyed. it was so hard to focus tho, when you kept swirling your tongue around her tip, giving her those hungry sexy eyes that made her whimper every time she looked down at you “Ah! y/n ~ that’s so good baby…”.

She LOVES when you ride her when she’s playing. Being balls deep inside you the moment she wins a match in a game? What’s better than that?! Nothing. “I WON AGAIN YES!” She’d celebrate and get so excited she’d just grab you like you weigh nothing and either pin you against the wall, her desk, the bed Idk anywhere and she’ll fuck you sooo good with the biggest smile. When she gets frustrated or loses tho, you know damn right she’ll grab those hips and make you jump on her dick so hard, relieving her frustration on your pussy (she can use me like this I don’t mind-) and she won’t slow down until the pleasure is bigger than her anger. “Holy fuck Yunjin..!” “That’s for killing me when we were in the same team.” and that’s something you did last week Tf 😭

As I said she gets excited but not only on a daily basis with stuff she likes, she gets hard sooo easily and it’s fun to tease. You’re straddling her, grinding on her lap, teasing her about how hard she got just by kissing and she’d try to come up with something to tease you back but her brain is off because of how good you feel doing that and because she’s a loser “w-well my dick is bigger than yours!” Like ??? Yeah it is bro it is 😭 you just laugh making her embarrassed. “well yes, yes it is baby. And I love it” you’d say and she’d just blush and go back to kiss you neidjdq.

But she’s also so sweet :( you’d tell her you missed her and she’d softly say “I missed you too y/n…” while hugging you by the waist tightly, and leaving a little kiss on your nose. (Random cutie moment sorry I felt like it 🧍🏻‍♀️).

Oh yeah! Yunjin loveeees kisses. She’s always all over you kissing your face, your hands, your neck and shoulders and back when is exposed, and the rest of your body when is just you and her 🙊. She loves praising you by doing this. And she LOVES when you do it back. A sad day gets better the moment she sees you and you leave a kiss in her forehead (istg her tail goes brrr and she shows that perfect teeth smile).

She loves when you go from her neck to her chest to her stomach to between her legs. When you leave kisses and little bites on her thighs, and shower her cock with kisses that come with a little whimper every time. She finds it as sexy as it is cute too. You for sure have several pics of her dick with lipstick prints.

Cockwarming? Yes. But with her, this is a way of teasing YOU. It’s the only way she knows 😭 I’ll explain. Trying to overstimulate her does NOT work ‘cause her stamina and sex drive are HIGH. If you get tired when riding her be sure that she’ll grab your thighs and pound you fast and hard. She can go for hours, in different positions, never running out of cum.

“Yunjin.. please I can’t feel my legs”

“Hmmgh just one more.. feels so good, need to come in your pretty pussy..” she says as if she didn’t come in it so much already that even your floor is full of it ‘cause of how much it’s dripping down your legs. But you cant say no to her :( her cock feels too good you could die the happiest as long as it’s deep inside you <333.

Pussy drunk Yunjin? Uh yes FUCK YES. She can eat you out for HOURS. And not just ‘cause she loveees to make you feel good but it’s for her own pleasure too that woman just loves the way you tastes and how you make a mess in her mouth when you come. You’re the one ending up overstimulated ‘cause her mouth is Fuckin attached to your pussy like she’d die without it. “Just one more, for me baby please~” and ughhh there she has you coming for The Who knows what’th time already. Random but she’s 0 dom most of the time (I’d call her a service switch) all silly 😭

“Good girl, hehe.”

“Shut up and come kiss me.”

Just as she asks for “one more” in bed she also does it after it when you guys are cuddling and resting and pampering each other 🥺 in the morning when you both have to get ready she’d pull you back to bed “baby we have class in 30 minutes” “just 5 more minutes, please~” “I don’t wanna fail class Jen!” “I’ll do all your homework let’s just cuddle a little moreee~” and how to say no to that (the cuddles I mean-) lets bfr you can’t. You just can’t.

I’m genuinely so in love with her like y’all don’t understand. I could fantasize about her all day. Thank you anon I love my girlie so much <3

[leighlew3]

I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THE MARVELS.

But I’ll refrain from direct spoilers for now. It’s mildly spoiler-y maybe but very generalized and I’m gonna talk around some stuff. 😅

The nutshell?

It’s legit SO fun. It’s a fun, funny as hell, really ENJOYABLE time at the movies. I laughed. Got misty. Felt feels. And wow… THE CAMEOS!!! 🔥

This movie is for everybody. Families should have a great time. But fangirls especially will LOVE. Highly recommend for a SMILE. 😸

Cool action. Great music. Lovable cast (I will adore Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan forever). Laugh out loud moments. I loved it. It didn’t unnecessarily waste time nor stretch anything out. It’s just under 2 hours and it WORKS.

Look, yeah it’s blah blah random plot lore lore etc but it opens up for the future while giving a blast of a ride in the present (and nods to the past). 😉

Go. Now. 👍

And stay for the mid-credit scene!

Lastly, IMO, it’s all very queer coded. Baity even. THAT 🎶 scene was the one iffy thing for me. Kinda silly, and really felt like a “no homo” for the straights but a wink wink and super coded for the LGBTQs. “Marriage of convenience” … 🤐💀 Anyway it’s pretty clear Carol and Valkyrie definitely hooked up. And we all know Maria was so totally her partner before, because come on already… Monica is her dang daughter, that “Aunt” shit ain’t flyin’. And Kamala is hardcore CRUSHIN’ on Carol. 😂

Also one of the cameos at the end. Of all characters they chose the one people are also shipping with another female character, played by an actress beloved by the sapphics for her previous queer roles? And the cats?! So many cats. 💀 Plus Valkyrie in a suit? SAPPHICS RISE.

This entire movie was a whole fruit basket but in a way that slides past heteronormative audiences so “families can still enjoy” (🙄) but that’s a whole other ramble (or rant) for another day.

In the meantime… it’s so fun, y’all. Please GO. It’s important to support projects like these or they’ll keep pulling back on women and POC in these things. Even though the strike impacted promotion and the butthurt fragile misogynists are trying to review bomb (as always). It’s legit a fun time and if you hated it I have to just assume you hate fun, so. Go. See it. Spread the word. 🙏

[anonymouscheeses]

Hazbin hotel theory (not circus related 🙄)

So we all know Charlie and Vaggie resemble alot of Lucifer and Lillith right?

Lucifer is a fallen angel and Vaggie is a fallen angel. Both sacrificing so much for their lovers. Both having different ideals and beliefs aside from the majority of heaven, because of that they both end up in hell. Also literal head over heels for their wives. Lucifer still wears his ring and Vaggie has very few scenes outside of Charlie.

Charlie and Lillith are both demons, although I guess Lillith is more human I think. But, they both fit in the other category. They both have fallen angel lovers. It's said in the opening cutscene that Lillith was an activist who sang as a way to influence. Charlie is an activist who sings in "ready for this" to persuade the cannibals to join her fight against heaven.

Personality and design wise though, Charlie and Lucifer are the most similar. Lillith and Vaggie? From what we've seen Lillith seemed loving in her pictures but calm and serious at the majority, if that doesn't describe Vaggie I don't know what does. Also Lillith wears purple and Vaggie is at this point purple coded 💀

It's implied that Lucifer had romantic or at the least smeggsual 🤭 relations to Eve. Sure it could have been a joke/lie, but clearly Adam gets pissed and doesn't say that he's wrong. I'd like to think Lillith and Eve also had romantic ties but there's not enough shown of them to make even an evidential guess. It's obvious tho that Lucifer at least was with the both of them at some point. (Maybe even Eve gave birth to Charlie since Lillith was cursed with miscarriages. At least if Viv still wants to keep that. No. No... Lucifer did NOT give birth to Charlie... youre jst weird... /j)

So... if Lucifer, Lillith, and Eve were once all in a polycule or at least a vee(two date one)....

who would be the one that stands in as Eve since Charlie and Vaggie are Lillith and Lucifer?

Plot twist. I'm a two and half halo shipper. It's Emily yall... 😨

HEAR MEE OUTTT!!!

In this image below, Vaggie is jealous that Charlie is holding Emily's hands(YES. CHARLIE IS HOLDING HER HANDS, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. Charlie is very touchy sshh) which is kind of weird they would include that tiny scene. Sure, it could just be comedic but what's comedy except a person who looks too much into a small 1 millisecond scene. It still puts in a dynamic that at first isn't implied to be romantic but! But, having this one scene still creates a slightly romantic undertone dynamic. Even if it's not heavily implied, Vaggie sees Emily as someone who's taking moves on her girlfriend. (Which could also imply Lillith and Eve's first impression before they got in a polycule.)

What I'm about to say is pure speculation, there still isn't much to go off of in the show at the moment with these six. But I think I have some points that maayyy just be smart for an idiot like me :3. Emily is an angel yes, but we aren't sure what Eve's fate was, where she went or what happened to her after. Maybe she stayed with Adam(after the creation of sin), and if Adam could go to heaven, a man who also ate the apple, then I believe Eve could too, it doesn't matter who started(assuming Adam did eat the apple in the show. Most likely.) What I like to speculate is that Eve went to heaven with Adam, although she didn't feel happy in their marriage and decided to make herself a fallen angel to be with Lucifer and Lillith, her true lovers.

Now the similarities with Eve and Emily? They both are against the ideas of those higher than them in heaven. Emily is against the idea of extermination in hell because she feels its unnecessary genocide. Eve went against heavens orders and ate the apple from Lucifer for knowledge. Oh also look haha their hair is kinda similar in the images below(not actual evidence but still its kinda cool) That's where the current canon similarities end. But ofc the big well known theory is that Emily will become a fallen angel because she goes against Sera's wishes. I HOPE she doesn't but in this show? Yeah, most likely. Currently Emily hasn't taken action, but maybe one day she will, which is the most likely situation. And if I'm right that Eve was a fallen angel then that would also be ANOTHER similarity. (Also. Ya'll.... the woman who picked up baby Charlie in "more than anything" was NOT Lillith. Like okay, maybe she is, but that didn't look like her AT ALL. She didn't have the same slick back mullet. But, in the image below, Eve and the woman who picked up baby Charlie have the exact same hair. Jst another thing I wanted to throw in to further evident that Lucifer Lillith and Eve were in a polycule/vee)

I LOVE TWO AND A HALF HALOS SO MUCH GUYSS. PLEASE FEED INTO MY NAIVETY. LUCIFER'S STOLEN WIVES AND CHARLIE'S ANGELS ARE LITERALLY CANON AND NO ONE CAN SAY OTHERWISE TO ME 😭😭

BONUS!! Adam is Lillith's ex rightt??? Well Lute is basically Vaggie's ex. Sure, you could argue that- no. No girl, they was exes, I know, Viv told me herself smhhh..... not only are both Lucifer and Vaggie fallen angels because they had different ideals from heaven, Lillith and Charlie are both activists who use their voice as powers, Eve and Emily go against heaven, BUT LILLITH AND VAGGIE BOTH HAVE EXES??

Bro, Adam and Lute are also besties like? The polycules kicked them out and then they were like, "nuh uh, now we're gonna date eachother since yall don't want us" 😭

Basically what I'm saying is that Lucifer's stolen wives and Charlie's angels are Canon and no one can say otherwise because I'm so smart. If anyone says they aren't just link them to here and BOOM we got another one added to the small ship. Also. This is so underrated. Ya'll.. the potential is so crazy. And since Charlie and Vaggie are already established it would be so intense and adorable to watch Emily try to impress and date them both. Uggghh so.... hyperfixated..... I hope this isn't my special interest now 😭

[2kmps]

BAD HABIT

hitman!tōji fushiguro x reader | 17k

story summary; tōji wasn't expecting to find himself in the stairwell of an apartment complex after a hit went bad. you weren't expecting to take care of a handsome, wounded man in your bathroom. it was perfect alignment for very bad things to happen, especially once he started getting cozy on your couch and refused to leave. neither of you expected feelings to intertwine. for tōji, it was a waste of time; for you, it'd get in the way of caring for your young nephew. there's a steep price for loving a man like him.

story warnings; dark content, hitman!au, there is a plot, tōji is tōji 💀, implications of past negligence, tōji smokes, gunshot wound, descriptions of wounds, some graphic details, mc is a stand-in guardian for their nephew, mc makes bad choices but tries their best, parental abandonment, mention of institutionalization, tōji hittin' it from behind, implied stalking, guilt tripping, depression, tons of sex, prose + detail heavy, unpleasant names used (bitch, psycho, whore). dividers are used to break up scenes.

thank you, @ceruleansol for the wonderful proofreading. you're always a joy to work with 🩷

read the warnings above. events in this story are not indicative of personal viewpoints. mdni!!

if you enjoyed this piece, please reblog it!!

"Hey. There's a dead guy in the stairwell."

At first, there had been silence when Tōji walked in through a mangled-up door. He wasn't thinking about where it would lead him, only that it was pockmarked all over with indentations from someone's knuckles—a long history of them. He had put his fist into doors like that before. They weren't built as solidly as they used to be and collapsed with enough force.

He realized then, with some wrench of disgust, that the dents resembled the craters in skin. Those deep ones that some of his brokers had—ugly little men who sweat too much and smelled as bad as they looked. The sight of it no longer enchanted him, taking him from his trance to walk inside and look around.

Where he stood was lit dimly yellow, a sort of throwback to all of the sleazy hostels he had afforded a night or two in. A second or two later, contemplating it more as he backed himself into a wall and sunk down the length of it until his bottom hit the floor and knees split open, this murky lighting was just like all those backrooms where he made all his deals.

Another look around—he saw a staircase descending into darkness. The shift from hazy yellow to complete black was not a perfect gradient. The air just simply turned inky. Above him, more staircases climbed into a dark oblivion, perhaps even more ominous than the one that led down.

With spotting a couple of doors on the upper floors, numbers embellished into metal plaques that had lost their luster a long time ago, tarnished with speckles of rust as though water had sat on its face too long, he understood he had wandered into an apartment complex.

"This is fucking embarrassing." His voice reverberated back at him. It sounded as lonely as it did bitter. "Guess that's what I get for pissing off that slimebag."

Tōji had antagonized the wrong man this time, a hit gone awry. The order had been received in the backroom of some dirty bar in Shibuya. After catching an eyeful of some women nursing cheap drinks, some men crowding the billiards table while dropping yen into their pockets, he had made it through to the back at the end of a long hallway.

Whoever was hiring for this kill was too much of a coward to show his face and sent some shifty-looking guys in black suits to conduct business instead. One was broad-shouldered, bald, and wore blackout sunglasses in a scarcely lit room, while the other was a scrawny bastard with bleached hair put into cornrows. It wasn't a good look.

Either way, they said a few words—asking him who he was and who was sponsoring him before being handed a crisp envelope ready to burst at the edges.

With half the money in his hands, he didn't give a shit about any of the other details. He got a name, Morimoto Kazuma, and a couple of rendezvous spots to stake out.

He walked out while they were still talking, and now, after the fact, Tōji conceded they probably had something valuable to say. Because that sweaty jackass ended up coming with an entire army ready to grovel and suck his dick when he snapped his fingers.

What a joke. I can't believe that piece of shit managed to catch me off-guard. Now, Tōji was on the run, sitting in some decrepit stairwell with black and purple blooming beneath his clothes. He cradled thick fingers over his side, blood oozing through every crevice of his hand, filling the seams of his fingernails.

That was when he heard it—a kid's voice stirring life into the ghostly stairwell like the blare of a car horn. It was sharp and sudden, jolting him to attention, dark eyes tracking down the sound of it.

The brat was seven or eight at best, probably around the same age as—

Shit, what was his name? I keep forgetting. Hiromi? Kenji? Yuki? Nah, none of those sound right.

"Oh"—the kid frowned, tongue tutting as though disappointed by Tōji's movements—"never mind! He's not dead! He's just some bum sleeping in the stairwell!"

"Hey, who are you talking about?" Tōji still had enough left in him to put a kid six feet under. It wouldn't be the first time. "Little shit."

Heavier footfalls echoed around him, obliterating whatever semblance of quiet there once had been. Your feet moved hastily down the steps, body winding tight against the railing, hands pulling up flakes of black paint that had come loose with decay.

Tōji only looked at you once you slowed, coming to a stop on the same stair as the kid for a pulse before descending the rest of the way down to his side.

Maybe it was just the blood loss or the fact he hadn't eaten or slept in three days, but you were a sight for sore eyes. The air around him turned cold, a breeze sweeping his bangs around his face as the scent of you wafted under his nostrils.

He liked the way you smelled.

"You've had a rough go, haven't you? Holy shit—" You had scoured his body fast, suddenly keen to the crimson leaking through his fingers. His black shirt had adhered to the wound at that point, doing some little part in stifling the worst of his bleeding. "You need a hospital. You need an ambulance. Hinata, call an ambul—"

Tōji pulled you back to the floor when you tried to get up, large fist wound tight in your clothes. "No. I don't need a hospital. I need a bathroom, some antiseptic, and some food."

You sat back down to pry his dirty fingers off of your ironed blouse, surprising him by your agreeability when you lifted his armpit on your shoulder, waving down Hinata to come assist you.

"We don't need the neighbors calling the police," you said.

"I don't want to be late for school again." Hinata was two steps from the landing, palms wringing his backpack straps.

You sighed. "I'll buy you ice cream."

Tōji watched him lean his head a little to the left, just like a dog attuned to particular trigger words. Had it not been for the gaping hole nestled in his ribs and a surge of hard static filling the inside of his head, it might've been cute.

"I want cheesecake."

It was non-negotiable.

Your back teeth clicked anxiously, unprepared for the attempted bribery to go awry as it had. In the end, you agreed to get him what he wanted while gesturing viciously for him to take Tōji's other side.

There wasn't a lot an eight-year-old could do except use what little weight was in his body to push against Tōji's back. Hinata was average sized, teetering on bigger than his peers, so that leverage propelling Tōji forward kept him from stumbling back down to the beginning when his hand slipped on the crumbly railing a time or two.

"The bathroom is just over here." You grunted, barely able to keep yourself upright with the bulk of Tōji's weight now on you. He walked his palm along the adjacent wall as though it did something to help.

It was better than admitting he was at the mercy of some nobodies in their apartment.

"Hinata! Antiseptic!" you bellowed.

The front door shut and small feet shuffled across wood, a muffled thump, thump, thump following his motions until he appeared behind you with a frosted plastic bottle. "Antiseptic! Can I watch?"

You took the bottle, told him no and he obeyed, staying on the other side of the door that you nudged with your toes. Soon, Tōji was situated on the toilet seat. "Can you take off your shirt?"

He thought about making a comment; you had a nice face, so you probably looked good even when your expression twisted all around. But, instead, he followed your order and let you help slowly peel the second skin off of him. The black fabric had been so tight, gripping to sweat in every curvature, especially to where blood had seeped through and stuck to him like wet paper.

"Just about, just about"—your teeth were on show, gnashing until balls of lint were stragglers amongst a faint tint of red—"okay good. We got it."

He took a breath and picked up a pair of tweezers you had next to the sink. "Mind if I use these?"

Your teeth were dry behind your lips, licking them came naturally. "Is there something inside? Glass?"

"A bullet." Tōji smiled when you winced. "Make me feel better later. You should step out if you don't want to see this."

"I do!" Hinata cried, using his head to push the crack in the door wider. "You got shot?! What did you do? I wanna see!"

A surge of heat shot to your face, amazed by his lack of tact. All it took was a couple of flicks to his forehead and the door was slammed shut by the full force of your foot. "You're getting a day off from school and cheesecake. Chill out."

"Ugh!" he whined, weight folding against the paper-thin door. For a second, you thought it might actually collapse.

Tōji had ignored the exchange between the pair of you, background noise he found somewhat soothing in that moment. The bullet hadn't struck anything vital; that much was obvious from the fact he was alive and not spurting a geyser of rust red everywhere or vomiting it. It still went deep.

"How did you get shot?" You were coming at him with an old hand towel, fingers covered as you held it flush below the hole in his body. It wept blood and something viscous and tinged yellow. "I really think you need to get this looked at."

He kept reaching, face unflinching. "Nah."

After several minutes, the bullet was extracted and abandoned in the sink along with your tweezers. It left splatter against the white porcelain, reaching the drab beige backsplash behind the faucet and rectangular mirror just above that. You didn't want to think about cleaning it up later.

"Shouldn't you get stitches?" You weren't dissuaded yet, keeping the towel secured until it felt heavy and damp.

Tōji didn't like how much you were nagging, but this beat rotting away in a stairwell. "You got a sewing kit?"

"Wha—well, yeah," you hesitated, calling out for Hinata to get supplies from the utility cupboard in the kitchen. His bare feet padded away and returned in seconds; the door pushed ajar so he could wedge the convenience store kit through the slim gap.

"Cheesecake?" Hinata whispered into the slot, arranging his face against it so one of his eyes could peer inside. "Cheeeeeeesecake?"

Tōji took the kit from your hands, digging through it for the largest needle. "Hey, kid, you got any fishing line?"

You stared blankly. "Fishing line? No, he wouldn't—"

"Yeah! I do!" Hinata thrust himself away from the door with his arms, feet stomping all the way across the apartment to his bedroom where a greater commotion made you flinch. You were sure he was turning over totes of things in his closet, ripping them open, and spilling them out onto the floor.

It wasn't something you needed to worry about because Hinata was an impressively self-sufficient child; he liked to keep his space tidy and organized. When he was six, he had already started arranging his dinosaurs and animal toys by species. When he started school, he tucked away everything on his little desk so he could lay out his workbooks and pencils.

"He's pretty handy." Tōji said, impressed, when Hinata trotted back in. He steadied against your shoulders, hand outstretched with a spool of translucent thread that Tōji took and fixed through the eye of his needle.

He tied it off at the end, stopping short of piercing through layers of skin and subcutaneous tissue. You and the kid were observing with quiet anticipation, the whites of your eyes showing, breaths paced.

Tōji didn't think it was possible to be self-conscious, but now he felt the need to draw the shower curtain over himself.

"Weren't you getting cheesecake or something?"

Hinata used you as a launch pad and bounced upright, small fists bunched into the back of your shirt. "Yeah! You promised! I've been helping out all morning!"

"Oh my god, you're so impatient," you drawled, flicking him on the forehead again. "This is why your dad dumped you here with me and took off."

"Well," he said and puffed up, chest and cheeks inflating as he backed out the doorway, "Dad said he almost left me with Grandma and Grandpa because you have bad taste in men!"

He swiveled on his toes and sprinted away before a roll of toilet paper made contact. You had half the mind to chase him all the way into the streets, but you were already nursing a flush of heat in your face and neck when you noticed Tōji leering at you.

"Cute kid." He said, needle unsullied.

You tucked your lower lip inside your mouth, slowly letting it roll back out moistened. "I'll just—I'll just go. Do you want cheesecake?"

His shoulders sank forward, elbows perched across his knees. "Nah. I want real food. You got anything?"

"If instant noodles and fried cabbage are your thing." You expected the weird look he gave you. It wasn't the most orthodox combination to have sitting around, stinking up your fridge. "I work two jobs. I just haven't had the time to go lately. I usually just give Hinata money to grab what he wants from the convenience…"

Tōji twirled the needle between pinched fingers, dark eyes that same kind of lackluster Hinata's got when he had stopped listening to what you were saying.

"Anyway"—you got to your feet and pretended to dust off your knees—"it’s there if you want it."

"I'll take it."

A lull drifted in between you and Tōji. He had nothing else to say to you; meanwhile you were taking in the sight of everything for the first time. One thing you had always lacked in life was a sense of discernment, a simple wiring in your brain to know what to prioritize and what would inevitably put you in a corner. It made more sense to be on your toes, to act first, think as you go, try to haggle with repercussions later.

You still did it, even now, as an adult thrust into the workforce, and bills, and taxes, and looking after a kid who could already do arithmetic well beyond his age group.

A man was bleeding at the bottom of the stairs, and now he was waiting for you to leave so he could stitch shut a gunshot wound. Knowing that you had made a grave mistake by bringing him into your home—with a mouthy boy—was obvious, but now what were you supposed to do to rectify it?

"When you're finished doing that," you said, motioning to the oozing hole next to his ribs when he looked up, "It'd be best if you left."

Tōji didn't feel any conviction behind your words. There was an inexplicable attraction, like gravity pulling you towards him because you were curious—because he was something different, something fresh, something you hadn't seen before.

Life with kids meant getting swept into the endless cycle of mundane and menial things that always aged people faster. Tōji, in these moments, felt grateful he had gotten out of that mess before those kids—shit, he still couldn't remember their names—turned any of his hair gray.

You were ensnared, and all it had taken was a bleeding on your bathroom floor a little bit.

"You want me to leave?" Tōji smoothed two fingers along the length of the fishing line, tip of his tongue peeking out his lips. "Sure. I'll do that."

━━━━━━━━━━━

The whole of two weeks might as well have been consolidated into two days because you felt like you hadn't been able to take a breath. Between the demands of your jobs, and the tribulations following a school-age boy through life, you didn't have the energy to constantly confront Tōji about still being camped out on your living room furniture weeks later.

He rotated through an unpredictable schedule that had him asleep on your couch at odd hours and ambling out the front door right when you put Hinata to bed.

Some days he was a set fixture in your apartment, a lamppost equivalent meant to decorate the space between two seats—except for your couch. Other days, it felt like he had never been there to begin with, a figment you had dreamt of to take up space so you'd feel less alone.

"If you're going to stay here, you need to chip in with chores." It was a reasonable request, and Tōji must've thought so too in spite of a disdainful curl in his lip because he took the mop handle you shoved at him. "Hinata already does a lot because I'm always busy. Earn your keep."

That sort of talk went over two ways with Tōji—either he complied because it kept you from nagging him, and in turn, you'd pick up the odds and ends he asked for, or he tried flirting with you and pouted around all day when he'd be shot down.

"You need to find somewhere else to go, Tōji." At any chance you got, you'd remind him that his time in your home was short-lived, a blessed respite from whatever brought him to you in the first place. "I'm serious. You can't just keep hanging out on my couch. You're gonna make it sag."

He let his head loll sideways, arms sprawled out over the back of it. You were behind him, pinned by his eyes when he lifted his face to see you.

"You have a big enough bed to share." His smile was salacious, cheeky, even, but you doubted there was any real intent there. "It helps having me around to look after the place, right? It's not like I make it into a pigsty."

For how boorish Tōji turned out to be, you would give him the credit that he didn't dirty up things very much. Your bathroom had been an isolated incident, and one evening within the past two weeks, he left a few beer cans on the floor that Hinata picked up for recycling.

His only other offense was hovering like a vulture on the nights you'd cook dinner.

"Can't you make him leave? I want to watch cartoons but he's always hogging the remote." Hinata was telling you during an outing on one of your scarce weekends off. "He watches stupid stuff, too."

You sighed, scraping frosting from your slice of cake. It was a nice afternoon out with your nephew at a cafe some blocks from the apartment. A mellow breeze caressed the back of your neck, whipped around the hair over Hinata's eyes, and weaved through trees nearby, making the leaves whisper and tremble.

It was all beautiful, yet both of you were stuck on Tōji being a wedge in your lives.

"Why won't he leave?" Hinata tried again, fork plowing through thick layers of his strawberry cake. "Have you actually tried?"

You believed that if Hinata were ever tested, he'd probably qualify as a genius—or gifted, at the very least. His mother had been that way too, once, in her moments of clarity: smart and quick, eager to find patterns and problem-solve.

He was everything that his father and your entire side of the family never quite was.

It was hard, sometimes, to keep it in your mind that he was only eight. No matter where he was developmentally, he was still a child and still saw the world through the lens of one—not an adult, not a genius, not a boy with wisdom beyond his years—

A child.

This entire ordeal with Tōji was proof of that. It was hard enough for you to process on your own, let alone explain the complexities of it to an eight-year-old whom you asked to do basic addition and subtraction for you at the grocery store.

All he saw was a bulky, mean man who wouldn't let him watch cartoons—not the intricacies behind why that man had to pull a bullet out of his own body instead of getting help at a hospital.

"I think he's hiding." Hinata surprised you with that comment, teeth bearing down as he smiled around his fork. "I think that's pretty cool. He's like a secret agent or something."

It was an obvious angle. You weren't sure why you hadn't considered it before. "Why do you think he's hiding?"

"Well"—Hinata pulled a piece of his own hair from the next forkful he grabbed. He pocketed the cake in his cheek—"he’s super secretive and if you ask him about stuff, he'll act like he doesn't hear you. Sometimes, I get up in the middle of the night for some water, and he's leaving or standing in the kitchen eating."

You rolled a glazed strawberry to one side of your plate. "It is kinda weird, isn't it?"

"Really weird." Hinata nodded. "Do you think he's a bad guy? Do you think he's part of a gang?"

The one time you had seen Tōji's chest to help cover his wound, there had been no tattoos. It'd be lying if you said you hadn't tried grabbing eyefuls of him when you could. How often was it that you got to see something like that?

"I think we can rule out a gang." Your certainty seemed to reinvigorate Hinata as he slumped into his chair and took more eager bites from his dessert. "He doesn't really have the look or attitude. Whatever he does, I think it's solo."

"Oh, so like a hitman!" Hinata said.

Your utensil went cold as it lay abandoned next to the slice of cake you had barely carved a dent into. This was all some pretty heavy stuff you were discussing with a kid, but the insight he was giving you wouldn't have crossed your mind otherwise.

Tōji was a strange man—strange in ways that made you uneasy, made you wonder whether it'd be worth sticking Hinata into some extracurriculars, lodge him up with friends during longer shifts. That would be ideal, albeit unfair to him.

Hinata liked to play with his own toys, sleep in his own bed, and do things on his terms without your intervention into everything. He'd always been that way.

Some part of you felt so sure that Tōji, whoever he actually was, wouldn't dream of putting a hand on a child he playfully bullied with a television remote.

A week later, that conversation with Hinata still replayed in your mind while lapping your way through a tall can of beer. The door leading onto the balcony was wide, letting the brisk night air gush in, kept within earshot of the happenings inside. It was all muffled television chatter from a show Tōji had grown partial to and an occasional slosh of bathwater from Hinata capsizing ships because he was a kraken tonight.

Your apartment was on the sixth floor, a good spot just above the tree lines, so when you looked out, a glittering nightscape awaited with stuttering neon signage and warm light falling out like slanted pillars from buildings with windows. The tops of trees were thick, black silhouettes dancing fluidly with the wind, and you could hear sounds drift along with it as though ghosts whispered around you.

"Hey." Tōji's voice came with the acrid punch of smoke swirling under your nose. The wind took the smell away as fast as it had come, but you were already alert to him stepping out barefoot onto the balcony with you, the door sliding shut. "You've been out here forever. It's never a good sign if someone's thinking that deep about something."

You took a swig from your beer. "Keeping tabs on me now?"

Tōji had hijacked one from your supply as well, despite all the times you had told him not to. He pulled the tab and let it froth up. "Nope. I kept asking you to get me a beer, but you didn't hear me. Figured I'd see what was holding you up."

Your tongue probed along the back of your teeth in an act of restraint. Tōji was the type that got off on purposely antagonizing you just to see your reaction. He baited you with comments like that in his inflectionless drone—it drove you up the walls.

"How's that gunshot wound?" you challenged. "Healed up enough for you to find your own place soon?"

Tōji's eyes caught the shine off of the white fluorescent kitchen light spearing out through the glass doors, but they were still so dark—abysmal, almost. Two of his fingers were positioned weirdly around a cigarette, pinched like he didn't want the smell to seep into his skin. He kept his fist tight on that beer can.

"Still hurts like a bitch." He gave you an oily smile, a look that fit his face. "You gonna kick out a man still on the mend? That's pretty heartless."

It amazed you that he could unleash clapbacks like that without pause like he had memorized them from a book cover to cover and could recall them on command.

On rare occasions, you could do that too, be dealt a nasty comment about your child-rearing techniques from quiet tongues and sling back venom that was equally as unkind. With Tōji, on the other hand, you never could quite meet him in the middle—you'd sting with a rubber band, and he'd bring out a hammer and make you flinch.

That was how he kept getting away with using your beer to wash away the taste of smoke sticking to the roof of his mouth, how he still commandeered your living room and pantry—

You gave in.

He didn't take you seriously.

"I didn't know you smoked." Gray wisps and bright orange flickers sat right outside the corner of your eye, a good opportunity to change the topic. "Just don't do it inside."

"Yeah, yeah." Tōji's agitation was expelled with the smoke from his lungs. Despite how dark it was on the balcony, you saw the peaks of his chest sink inward as though he had been holding that breath for a while and finally needed to let it out.

Just then, he flipped the cigarette around with more of the brown filter exposed to you. He flicked ashes onto the floor. They dropped near his feet. "Here. You'd benefit from a few smokes with how uptight you are."

He wasn't holding it out to you like he wanted you to take it. You realized he was waiting for you to take a puff from his fingers, put your mouth over whatever he'd left behind.

"I'm good. I have my vice." Beer raised, you forced a smile.

Tōji pressed his lips back around the cigarette and shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Men like Tōji were plenty in the world, used to getting their way, relentless until they did. You knew this because you had already lived it before many times.

Bottom of the barrel, selfish men only looking out for their own interests. They came to you, not unlike gods descending to earth for those sad, wretched, and dying souls wanting to cling onto the fine fabric of anyone who'd save them.

You were desperate to be whisked away from the repetitious everyday grind. Their independence was revolutionary, eccentrism enticing like a starving rat lured to food molded around poison. You believed you could love them out of their egotism, and they'd give you the world because they had promised it.

But, in the end, you could bleed out on the floor while they watched red seep into grout in tile, and they would still demand more from you until your insides were dry and hollow and you were a husk.

"So, what's the story with the kid—"

"Hinata." you corrected him.

Tōji knocked ashes off over the railing. "Sure. What's the story there? He isn't yours, right?"

For a moment, you contemplated whether it was worth dredging up the past like that, especially with your audience of one being Tōji.

He had never cared before, so why now?

"My brother's kid." You said.

There was nothing better going on.

He seemed to want conversation.

Might as well.

"He showed up here one day, all dressed up in a suit with a briefcase. He said he had been promoted to an office overseas, and he couldn't afford to take Hinata with him.

"I don't know how much of it was actually because of that new job, and how much of it was to actually escape his family. Sometimes, people are willing to abandon everything to get away. He had been really good about sending money to me to help out with Hinata—in the beginning."

Tōji was hunkered down against the railing, his hulking size crunched sideways on one arm, cigarette snuffed on chipped paint. "Isn't that how it always goes?"

"Yeah, I guess"—you put your back to the railing and leaned hard—"that money was basically extra. All I had to do was work my regular job, make sure Hinata did okay, and that was it. My brother even made a point to talk to Hinata on the phone almost every night for a couple of months.

"Hinata had just turned six. He was already picking up after himself, getting dressed, making sandwiches when I'd sleep in. He was basically raising himself. I just had to handle the adult stuff." You continued, "I started wondering why a kid his age could already do all those things. Where was his mother? Why didn't he go to his grandparents instead? My life is shit; why is my brother forcing his young kid on me?"

Tōji wasn't looking at you anymore, but unlike other times, you could tell with how he paced his drinks that he was still tuned into the story. That felt good.

"The money stopped coming in about six months after I took over as Hinata's guardian. My brother stopped calling him around that time, too. I haven't been able to get in contact with him at all—phone, video calls, text, email, socials, our parents, his friends—nothing. He just… poof."

"He hardly looks bothered by it." Tōji meant Hinata, about how aloof he appeared to be to something that big looming over your lives.

You agreed. "He stopped asking about his dad a year ago. Hinata's a really smart kid, I think he knows—"

"—Dad's not coming home," Tōji finished for you. "Where's Mom during all of this? She dead or something?"

This time, you shrugged. "Last I heard, she was institutionalized somewhere. I think it started out as postpartum depression that just spiraled out of control after ignoring it for years. I don't know what the final straw was that put her in there, but I do know that Hinata does not speak about her."

Tōji had his cheek in hand. "Ah, another psycho bitch out traumatizing kids."

You didn't like how he said it but let the lukewarm bitterness from your beer settle on your tongue. "I wish her the best. It isn't easy."

"Right." He was staring at you now, a suggestive sort of look crawling up along his face. The sight of it made your stomach bunch and flutter, giving you the need to shuffle your feet around, tighten that area between your thighs to ease how much it ached. "Got any questions for me?"

"Do you have kids?" Clearly, it wasn't what he had anticipated you asking because it cleaned the expression right off his face. "The way you handle Hinata isn't the same as some other guys I've met. You have experience, don't you?"

Tōji settled back into an easygoing smile, confirmation enough.

"How old are they? What are their names?"

"He's around eight, maybe nine now. Lives with his mom outside Tokyo." If it hadn't been for him standing at full height and coming closer, you might have pressed for more. "I had a stepdaughter, but that's a mess I don't feel like getting into."

You considered widening the gap again, a wordless declaration to keep things cordial, appropriate for the sensitive situation he was in. He exuded more than an average man's mediocre confidence—this was power from knowing he had influence over you, having caught your eyes on him a few too many times lately for it to be a coincidence.

Tōji saw your longing and your discomfort sitting with it, a part of yourself you tried to deny for the sake of giving Hinata a good life—a better life than you had led for yourself up to that point. That was the thing about kids: It was no longer just about you and it never would be again. Some people couldn't reconcile that reality.

"Wait, Tōji." You couldn't look at him, the intensity of his eyes simultaneously too much to bear and electrifying. He was setting you on fire like a match to flame. "This isn't a good idea."

He had leaned down to your face, head stooped between his shoulders, lips so achingly near it would be nothing to drag him in. Hot air stirred across your skin, dampening it and smelling of stale smoke.

"So, what?" he said, echoing your thoughts aloud. "Push me away if you don't want it."

You didn't know if you wanted to be ravished by him or to assert yourself and shove him out of your space. One would lead to the ideal outcome, a solid boundary that let him know his place, but the other was what you really had your heart set on. You missed being wanted by someone.

Hinata made the decision for you by throwing open the sliding door so hard it rattled, dressed in clean nightclothes with a towel draped over his wet hair like a massive hood. That motivated Tōji to glance over, but he wasn't out of your face.

"You're not allowed to do that." Hinata said, brown eyes made smaller by a heavy brow and accusatory glare.

Tōji almost grinned. "Oh, yeah? Says who?"

Hinata stomped his foot and blurted, "The police! Kissing is illegal." He, of course, withered at the ridiculousness of his words after the fact.

"Wow." Tōji whistled, loud and slow. "That's a new one to me. You sure you're not just being a brat?"

Hinata simply bunched up his face while tossing his short hair with the towel, pieces of it defying gravity once he was finished.

He wasn't looking at Tōji anymore.

"I set three alarms for you tomorrow because I don't want to be late for school." This was a normal thing with him. Once, he had set six just to make sure you had no hope of getting that extra fifteen minutes. "I packed myself some curry for lunch. Can I get strawberry milk at the store tomorrow?"

He could ask you for water melted from the snowcaps of Mt. Fuji, and you would let your fingers turn frostbitten and black to get it for him.

"I'll think about it. I don't need the dentist to ask me why you're eight with a bunch of cavities."

Hinata spit through tightly cinched, vibrating lips, head hanging dejectedly, and led the way from the patio door and down the hallway to his bedroom. All at once, the arrest he had caused was lifted, and Tōji's weight and warmth pushed the bars of the railing deeper into your back.

His eyes lingered at the open space, maybe anticipating Hinata would come charging back to that spot. "Ballsy kid."

Your entire body flinched from the sensation of his large hand climbing along your spine, fingers squeezing together between your shoulder blades and splaying wide again to cradle the roundness of your head. He reeled your face back to him when you tried to turn away, struck with the same unease and excitement as before.

"What're you gonna do?" He could kiss you now, but your eyes were stuck to the sides, suddenly imbued with all the shyness of someone with far less experience. "Hey, you gonna look at me? You're not gonna tell me you've never been kissed, are you?"

Of course you had, just never by someone like Tōji. Something about his size, his confidence, his attitude—it just made you feel small, made you want to be malleable for him. Useable may have been a more daring word to apply here.

Tōji made a noise in his throat. It rumbled so hard you were convinced it coursed his arm and ran through his fingers on your head.

"It's pretty cute, not gonna lie." And then his lips were between yours. Your eyes shut, hands finding and gripping his strong biceps when more of his body pressed into you. Nothing about how he kissed you was gentle or clean; it was meant for him to convey how he wanted you, and that way wasn't chaste or wound in an embrace.

You let him maneuver your head however he pleased, let the strings of saliva linking your mouths snap and feel cold on your skin before he was back in for more. His tongue carried more of the smoke smell than the rest of his mouth, but you let him in eagerly and felt yourself stirring in your groin from how lewd the sounds were.

It was when your hands started to roam, sinking between your bodies to sneak the tie of his sweatpants loose that he withdrew from you altogether and took all his heat with him. He didn't care that you were cold in the dark without him, only that he was able to finally have your eyes on him, the shine of them gone as though covered by a veil.

"You have to work in the morning, don't you? Better get to bed." The tip of his tongue came out to put a gloss over his lower lip, tasting where you had been. "Don't let me keep you."

You'd never wanted a man so much in your life as much as you wanted Tōji right now. Maybe, after all his patience to kiss you, it was the same for him.

"Tōji"—you watched him turn back around, hands bulging from his pockets—"you never told me your son's name."

His face never changed. "I forgot, sorry."

━━━━━━━━━━━

One particular weekend had initially left you beside yourself in boredom because Hinata had gone to stay with a friend, and you were off from work. You experienced some distress knowing how enmeshed Hinata had become in your life, how nearly every waking thought was of him—where he was, was he having fun, was he eating, getting good grades, taking long enough baths, going to bed on time—everything always was for concern over him.

He had been with you right after turning six, right after you had emerged from the trenches of another relationship where you had been trodden over, proved to be unlovable, lost another job, failed your parents spectacularly, and regressed to every slovenly habit you had struggled to correct for years.

And then, you got a knock at your door and saw your brother standing there in an ironed suit and stiff-gelled hair, a shiny leather briefcase in one hand, and his other resting atop the crown of your very young nephew. You hadn't seen him since his third birthday party, which had quickly erupted into family politics, long-held grudges souring the mood instantaneously.

Hinata didn't care because he had cake. They had taken the feud outside and left you with him. All you did was wipe his face when he got too dirty, and he did the same to your clean cheeks in return, already displaying those heartbreaking signs of self-reliance.

You were sad for him but didn't do anything about it at the time. Because you had turned into the family disappointment who no one believed would amount to much, stuck in that perpetual cycle of self-loathing so debilitating from somewhere so deep within, you wanted to flay yourself alive to make it stop.

"I can't take him." Your brother didn't have much of an explanation at the time. You wished you had been able to pull the wool off of your eyes to see it had been a lie.

He blathered on, "My job won't pay to support him and me. You understand, right? He needs to stay here. I can't lose this opportunity or the money. It'll be good for everyone."

You didn't know his wife had been admitted to a psychiatric unit in Yokohama until much later.

You didn't know it had been because she had a complete mental collapse and wept and screamed until her throat and eyes swelled. She had planned to take herself and Hinata to the Shuto Expressway in Greater Tokyo with determination to find a way onto it one way or another.

You didn't know that your brother would never be coming back.

You didn't know how to take care of a child or how loving one would be so different from loving horrible men.

Six months in, you were so scared you wouldn't be able to survive caring for a broken boy and a broken adult, too. Before, you could get by for days without food in your stomach, weeks barely bathing, haggard and fatigued by doing something as simple as putting together a cup of coffee.

It wasn't the same for Hinata. He needed more than you did, and some days, he had to provide for himself. Something that still made you shudder in shame to this day. He navigated your messy kitchen and washed the dishes, threw away bad food if it looked funny or fluffy to him, tried to wrestle trash bags half his size, and learned your microwave so thoroughly that he always had something warm.

You had lain on the couch—the same one Tōji now occupied—most times, only moving to your bed with those random spurts of energy or when you needed to use the bathroom.

It wasn't like you didn't know what was going on around you because you certainly heard him struggle and cry, drag things across the floor, and break dishware because he had to climb on countertops to reach the cabinets.

You made sure he ate and didn't stink, used the wire transfers from your brother to keep food in the apartment and lights and water on, but not much more than that.

Everything changed when Hinata realized you weren't eating and made a bowl of soup for you (instant noodles). He sat on the floor, on the carpet next to where your head rested on some stacked pillows on the couch. You had been asleep all day and only roused because he called out meekly:

"Are you hungry?" He had hot noodles wrapped around chopsticks. "I can feed you. You're always feeding me."

His perception of what always meant split your heart in half, eyes feeling red all the way around as they burned, and your chin trembled taking those first bites of cheap cup noodles.

He smiled at you, and you cried. It sounded so horrid that it scared him, and he didn't know what else to do but bawl too. That had been your breakthrough moment, what finally made you uncover your eyes and put your arms around him, apologizing with a crackly voice.

Maybe it's what he had needed all along as well because he laid his body on you, holding tight, and only let your quiet shushing while rocking him against you calm him down.

In those minutes of stillness with his little heartbeat feeling less aggressive on your chest, head under your chin, eyes closed, you realized that the world had failed you both, but he was the one worth fighting for the most.

━━━━━━━━━━━

It was that very same weekend Hinata was absent from the apartment that Tōji kissed you again, right there on the couch after bringing you close to him. This time he held you flush for a while, giving you that luxury of melting into his body, hands covering every curve, valley, and peak through his clothes until he started taking them off.

You broke the kiss with him to, one, take in all his bareness and the expanse of him, reveling in the pleasure that he was everything you imagined he would be. His chest and shoulders were broad, so strong you got too wound up thinking he could handle your weight on top of him, on his face. Further down, his abdomen was just as defined, his waist that waspy taper, and you could see the angle of his hip bones offering a tease from under his sweatpants.

Second, you leaned over him to see the wound he had faux surgically closed himself. It was better than it had been, anything would've been honestly, but the fishing line had grown a brownish crust, and parts of the wound itself were thick with scabbing and swelled and red with the profundity of infection beneath the sutures.

Tōji saw your expression change and didn't want to hear about it, so he clenched his fingers around your jaw to steer you back to his lips, to touch him, worshiping how he felt under your fingertips.

"You up for it?" He gave you agency to tell him no, well aware that you wouldn't.

He liked that bashful look of yours, one steeped in inner turmoil and uncertainty, yet unequivocally wrapped in lust. You knew that you wanted him and were fighting it every step of the way. Maybe because of the kid, maybe from something else you hadn't told him about yet.

It didn't really have anything to do with him, so he didn't care what it was. Good for you, however, was that he was patient and had all the time in the world—between now and his next target, at least—so if you wanted to play coy, he'd let you.

"Come here"—Tōji took you by one hip and then through your thighs to hoist you onto his lap to straddle him—"this is a better view for me, especially if you take off your shirt. You've been giving me peeks since we've met, but I wanna see."

The way he spoke to you was unoriginal and reminiscent of recent comments you never believed were honest. He had been easing you into it—how courteous.

You still couldn't muster a full smile. "So, you want a show?"

"Sure do, sweetheart. Want help?" His fingers beat yours to the raw edges of your shirt, lifting it up and over your head without any difficulty. Everything else covering you went with it except your pants. "Much better. I like this."

Parts of sex always felt like a blur, some sort of innate, dreamlike fog that shut down your brain for a while. You liked it because life didn't seem all that bad in those moments when you were focused on the feelings, the pressure, the heat on your skin, and boiling in your veins. Tōji liked it because sex felt good, and he liked when the people he slept with were high off him—any part of him.

It got his mind off of the whole bullshit situation hunting down all of Morimoto's incompetent fleshlights. He'd managed to eradicate more than half of them, dwindling that impressive army down to the protected few that couldn't save themselves for shit.

Tōji fondled your body, led your hips over the rise in his pants over and over until he was hard, and could tell you needed yours off just as much as him by the way you sucked on your lips.

He really liked the sheen your saliva left behind, kissing you again to taste you with his tongue, laying you down on your side beneath him as he worked away those final layers on both your bodies.

"Got a condom?" On second thought, it was dumb that he asked because of course you didn't. That kid was always around, and you were too uptight to drop him at someone's house just to get fucked. "I'll pull out. It’s safe enough if you do it right."

You weren't convinced, not with how your eyebrows flattened out. "Tōji, you have a kid."

He smiled, dismissing you with a shrug. "Second time’s a charm. It isn't something we need to worry about here."

You were easy to convince right now, unusually so, given your history with him over the past few months. The transition had been interesting to observe—your suspicion and distrust of him softening into taste-testing your meals from a wooden spoon, glassy and hot stares from the room, evenings on the balcony with two beers and a cigarette, and sometimes charging him with packing lunch for Hinata in the morning.

Tōji watched you fall apart the second his cock hitched up inside of you. It was cute that you were so moldable for him, doing whatever he asked, holding positions for him like armature for a sculpt. It was annoying that, after this, he probably wouldn't be able to fuck you again until after he showed up on Morimoto's doorstep ready to blast his brains out.

"O—oh, shit, Tōji—" you whimpered from your side, torso twisted toward the cushions to hide your face from him, smothering your moans so you didn't sound like a loose whore getting something good for once. "Fuck—fuck me harder."

"You're into some stuff, aren't you?" He was halfway inside you, too big to fit all the way without rearranging you. "Bet you're the type who likes being tied up? Or do you just like being fucked out of your mind?"

Your noises snagged in your throat; he already had you figured out.

He moved your leg from his arm to the nice little seat on top of his shoulder, opening you wider for him, making sure you felt every bit of his cock stretching you, sinking in until your pelvises knocked together and skin clapped.

After the dry spell he'd had over the months, even before meeting you, this was total bliss to him. He wanted to go wild, plow into your hole so hard that you screamed, maybe cried a little, bruised up where the edges of his hip bones smacked into you repeatedly. It'd be nice to see you wobbling around the apartment for a while, too embarrassed to look at him.

He was halfway to achieving that now, listening to you go from performative, loud moans anyone could get from the streets to hard breaths and panting, your sounds mostly stolen away unless he hit a spot in you that made you gasp and writhe.

Tōji kept a hand on your ankle so you'd stay put, the other gripping the back of the couch hard enough that his knuckles turned colorless, fingertips deepening red. The most important parts were on display for now, giving him a show with how they bounced and your skin rippled when he'd slam you down on him.

That's how he fucked you for a bit—into the couch cushions where he slept, on top of the blankets you let him borrow from the kindness of your heart, sheathing himself so deep inside your body that your jaw looked permanently unhinged from how long you left it hang.

"Breathe." he reminded you, leg now off his shoulder as he took you by the ass and picked you up. His cock slipped out of you, a sensation that made you jolt. "Take five."

Your limbs surrounded him, thighs filling the notches in his hips, hands curtained by tousled black hair that glistened blue in the midday light. Tōji leaned into the little scratches on his scalp, flexing his fingers across your ass cheeks in pulses mirroring the cold static racing parallel down his spine.

He nearly bumped you into furniture trying to navigate your cramped bedroom, kiss full of fervor, spurred on by your own deprived desperation.

"Spread out." He said it to you after putting you on the bed, mattress bending to the weight of your knees as you went down on your arms. "Better bite something. Actually, on second thought, I wanna hear how loud you get."

His cock was a better fit the second time, girth filling you deliciously. It made your entire body shudder when he started thrusting again. There was just something about having a real person fucking into you that toys just couldn't achieve, no matter what shockwave orgasms made your toes curl and eyes roll white in their sockets.

This kind of vulnerability was one you missed, being under the tutelage of someone else's hands guiding you in ways they liked—groping, stroking, testing your body to see how you'd respond. The novelty of a new partner trying to find your sweet spots, what made you moan, drew up goose pimples and raised the hairs in your skin. You loved it.

"Shit—" Tōji's thrusts turned savage and sloppy, a man beginning to unfurl, one step closer to regrasping clarity. He watched the fat in your ass jiggle, muscles in your back clenching to secure you on your forearms. You whimpered at the thick fingers circling your throat, levering you up onto his thighs that twitched under your palms.

He was in your ear, still masking his pleasure and how close he was to bursting with nonchalance. You saw through it; he didn't try too hard to hide it. "Touch yourself. I don't need to see you moping around because you didn't cum."

You weren't fast enough to stroke yourself before his hand was already there. He started to slow, pushing hard so his cock reached greater depths inside of you; the strength of his hips and thighs rolled your body like being aboard a boat crashing through waves. You rode his rhythm, bringing him closer to his orgasm while he brought you to yours none too gently, the glide of his hand slick and wet and rapid.

It was so good, so familiar, so disgusting how all of it sounded together—moist pattering of his palm on you, hips beating you raw until he coaxed out that final moan, a crescendo above all the rest. He kept you seated on his thighs through every lurch, every husky breath, every way your hands pushed down on his when it became too much. His release was a subdued groan against your neck, nose in your skin while hot ropes of him moved in a sluggish stream from your back into the seam of your ass.

"Sometimes I worry if I'm doing a good job raising Hinata." Sober thoughts had returned in full force, and Tōji lay partially covered by the sheets you had burrowed under. "It's scary taking care of a kid on—"

"Not to be a buzzkill, but pillow talk really isn't my thing." He sat upright, thinking about the red and white pack of cigarettes he left on the coffee table. "This is the kind of stuff we save for the balcony."

You frowned. "Then, get out of my room."

Tōji actually rather liked the idea of taking sleep into a proper bed again, secured by four walls and a door that locked instead of being at the mercy of a vengeful eight-year-old who'd probably try to suffocate him to get the television remote. A warm body waiting for him under the covers after a long night had its appeal too.

The tiny slither of fabric fell off him as he stood from your bed, another chance to admire him. He was hewn from marble, articulated and ambulant art that you'd never be able to forget the feeling of. You immersed in sore disappointment when he walked out, tracking his whereabouts through confident heel strikes that made the floorboards vibrate back to you.

He came back a few minutes later, gray sweatpants over an arm, cigarette in his lips, and a lighter ready to go.

Your perking up was diffused by agitation that followed him across the bedroom, just another one of those things he acted like he didn't see. There was a small window you never opened that he did, raising it so his entire hand and wrist could fit through it.

"Why didn't you dump him with his grandparents?" Tōji blew smoke out through the gap. He was asking because it would've made sense to do so, given it sounded like it had been an option before. "You could still do that. Drop him off and walk away. You'd be rid of him, probably be happier."

There was cold indifference in his voice. He wasn't saying it from the mind of a lover but rather a man who didn't see the point in making things harder than they needed to be, a man who had managed to forget his own son's name and showed no remorse for it.

Hinata would be safe. He’d be in a financially stable household, given anything and everything without begging. He'd be loved by his grandparents—

"Because no one loves him more than I do." It was an easy answer. Tōji smiled like you'd given the right one. "If, someday, he says he wants to live with them, I won't stop him. If he asks about his parents, I'll tell him the truth. Right now, I'm all that he needs and he deserves—he deserves a chance to just be a kid."

Tōji flicked off ashes with his thumb, head turning to look out the window with nothing left to ask.

You did, though, stewing in transient silence for all of a few seconds. "Are you a hitman?"

He left a black smear on the outside wall when he extinguished his cigarette, dropping it wherever it landed six stories below before making his way back over to the bed. You tried not to move, not when you caught a whiff of smoke next to you when the mattress dipped and faked not noticing that he was erect again.

"How'd you guess?" Tōji shucked the sheets off of you, not particularly petulant that he didn't tell you first. "That kid's sharp. He's gonna be a pain in the ass in a few years."

The next moment his tongue was in your mouth, one leg hiked up his bicep and jostled your body with every thrust. He figured that fucking you out of your mind would soften the blow of reality—that you were sheltering a hitman, keeping one fed, drinking beers and swapping spit, memorializing how it felt to be split on a murderer's cock.

"T—Tōji, more…"

He put you on your stomach, fist wrapped up in your hair. "Come on, you can do better than that."

━━━━━━━━━━━

Hinata had the run of the living room again by that Sunday evening, an event both jarring and euphoric because it had been impossible to tear him away from cartoons for half the night. He went to school Monday morning exhausted and dazed, a self-satisfied grin stuck on his face all the way down the stairwell and even when he spilled out onto the sidewalk.

Tōji became a frequent guest in your bedroom, usually emerging in the early evenings around the time Hinata's favorite shows aired. Nothing came from it. He never asked, only studied the traffic to and from your door with inquisitive, furtive looks before he was hopelessly entangled by chaos on the screen—bright colors, loud noises, kooky shenanigans, all his favorite things.

"Stop letting him have the run of things after I'm asleep. I got a call the other day from his school." You managed most of what you wanted to say before Tōji's hips lunged from behind, throwing your chest into the wall your bed was nestled against. "A—Ah, Tōji, seriously, listen to me."

He came down onto his arms, using them to hold his weight off of you. The tips of his hair were a microscopic touch and akin to something crawling on your cheek.

"I'm listening." He didn't stop rutting his cock into you, a leisurely smile inching onto his face hearing your breaths splinter, moans suffocated behind the meat of your hand. Sex first thing after a good sleep was always rewarding, especially when there was something at stake—

Like another noise complaint from the neighbors.

"I can't hear you. You're gonna have to talk louder." Tōji said, balancing with one arm and tight core muscles to grope the front of you with his other hand. "You just wanna focus on getting fucked out instead? You've been bitching a lot lately. You could use it."

You weren't going to get anything in wordwise right now, at least nothing that mattered to him.

When Tōji was buried up to the hilt inside you, all he wanted were your moans that hit a certain pitch he liked. The kind that he had to work for, couldn't be fabricated and kept him bricked up for as long as he needed to get it out of your lungs.

His appetite for you like this had started to wane, however, because he couldn't see you. From this side, sweat beaded and slid down the length of your spine like dewdrops after morning fog, your fingers clasped and unwound like a blooming bud, and all your noises might as well have been from some peepshow whore's cunt on the opposite side of the wall.

"Screw this." He put you down on your back, not twisted sideways or thrown onto his shoulders—simply where your thighs could hold his waist while he knelt between them and pushed the curve of his cock back in, studying how your eyebrows sank inward and teeth gnawed color back into your lips. "Now this is what I want to look at."

That had been his unmaking, one of few times in his life where he had experienced genuine regret for something he had done. It had been a bad idea to see the inside walls of this apartment, to kiss you on the balcony back then, and feed false truths to the kid over pints of ice cream at 2:00 a.m. because he had more questions than common sense to be afraid of him.

"You just gonna lay there like that?" It was a different night, one less goon Morimoto could hide behind.

Tōji had showered the carnage off his body, smelled clean climbing into your bed, and pulled down your pants. It didn't take many strokes for him to get hard once he pushed your legs open and felt you kiss him back. "At least make it worth my while and take off your shirt."

It was late. You were both tired, but you registered his request and slipped the airy fabric from your body so you were as bare as him, a curated masterpiece behind velvet barriers that only he could touch, grooves in his pads rising and dipping and bumping textures that felt intentional, belonged there and made up the wholeness of you.

What had happened was he laid down on you with most of his weight, jarring you into greater wakefulness—this sort of closeness wasn't something he did.

He liked a ruthless fuck, a good time, and something nice to look at while pounding into it.

That's what he had believed, that's what you had learned—this wasn't that.

"What's wrong with you?" It could've been a rhetorical question had Tōji not known why you were asking it.

"Does it bother you?" He was on his forearms to look you in the face, still pinning you underneath while languid strokes rocked your bodies in unison. "I'm not really in the mood to bend you over the dresser, but if you need to be dicked down that bad—"

"Tōji, stop." That got a laugh out of you, the sort of sound he realized he was liking more and more as the days went on. "I don't know why, but it's embarrassing. Stop staring, it's weird."

"Nah"—his thrusts picked up speed and depth, finally shaking something good out of your mouth—"just deal with it and lay there."

You used your hands to bring him down to your lips instead, giving him every opportunity to change the pace of things, fuck you how he normally did. It would've been easier for you to deal with than this, an indescribable thing that you were too hesitant to put an actual term to.

"Do what you want." Your lips were wet, smacking every time they met his. "I'm awake now. I can roll over."

"I didn't take you for some one trick pony," Tōji quipped. "Leave that to the professionals."

Nothing else came to mind after that, finding all the tension in your muscles and bones ebbing, mind melting away those apprehensions as you concentrated on how heavy and good he was on top of you. Easing more under him, your arms circled around the width of his back, wondering whether or not to put your nails in his skin or keep them retracted.

You liked the firmness of his muscles against your palms, focusing on how they moved with his hips pushing into yours, joggling your body in a quickening sequence. His face never went away, kisses frequent and deep, taking your moans into his throat, and purposefully angled himself to get more of them out of you.

When he got close enough, he tucked his face between your neck and the pillow, the confined space left a hot, moist film as his breath jerked, and he finished with one last, very jarring thrust.

It made you gasp, feeling a foreign warmth shoot inside of you similar to a hot drink down your throat amidst the coldest December day in Japan.

That was the first time Tōji hadn't pulled out to finish, and his first time making love to you.

More often after that night, he left an arm open for you to shuffle onto, and he'd use it to cram you into his side. Slow, intimate sex didn't become his norm, and he was never particularly gentle, but that sort of mood seemed to strike him more as the weeks went on.

"I wish I could give Hinata more than this." It was weird that you were always ready to dissect the more unsavory facets of your life to him, despite every instinct telling you he probably wasn't the right person for that. "I've been saving money. I could probably scrape together enough to move us somewhere better. But, then, what happens if I do, and I can't afford the monthlies? I don't want to lose him… He's everything to me."

You still hadn't confessed the worst parts of yourself to Tōji for any other reason than he never confided in you about his. There was a looming itch in the back of your head, distant and insistent that everything about this was wrong, and you needed to stop before it happened again—before you were sucked in so deep you were lost without a light, before Hinata had to suffer through something once again.

"Where would you go?" Tōji had an unlit cigarette in his lips, a new habit he started right after lovemaking became his new interest. It was that point of compromise where he still had the feeling of something there, but you didn't have to smell anything.

"I'm not sure," you went on, "just something a little bigger. Maybe a kitchen with more cabinets. Somewhere on a lower floor, I guess? I want—I want him to bring friends over, instead of him always going to them. Not all the time, mind you. I'd lose my mind looking after a bunch of kids. But, maybe, they could study together? Play games?"

"Didn't take you for the type who wanted a cookie-cutter fantasy." Tōji said, dark eyes on the ceiling, cigarette now loosely rolling inside his fingers. "That kid could live in a box, and as long as you were with him, he wouldn't complain about it."

You shifted in his arm, feeling it stiffen around you as though to stop you from leaving had that been your intention. Instead, you flopped toward your stomach, chin digging into one of his built breasts, legs threading.

"Hinata hardly complains, and when he does, it's just because a lot is going on." You looked at his face, trying to gauge something from it. He just kept staring up. "I want to meet your son."

That brought him back around. "Say that again?"

"Your son. I want to meet your son." This was unsafe to say. The implications of it were steeper than just letting him live here and fuck you and occasionally be made to help out with Hinata. "I'd like for him and Hinata to become friends. They're a similar age, right? Kids aren't too different from each other when they're that young. They just go along with stuff."

Trying to integrate a more permanent piece of Tōji's life into yours was exactly what you shouldn't have been doing. You knew it, thought it with painful bursts in your chest, a rush of guilt that felt cold and clogged up your ears like you had dunked your head in a river.

Tōji, to your astonishment, smiled lazily and began with long strokes on your arm. "I don't think his mom is gonna give him up. That is not a mess I'd put myself in the middle of."

You frowned. "That's not what I'm saying, Tōji. I just want them—"

"—To be friends." He flicked away the unmatched cigarette somewhere on the floor, took his arm back, and eclipsed your view of the ceiling with his mass. "I heard you. Now, I just keep thinking about how I'd have to see you and my ex in the same place. That doesn't really get me off."

"I'd really hope not."

There were certain superstitious people there who believed that the longer you focused on all the good happening in your life, taking it for granted and trying to shape it into new normalcy, the more devastating the reverse would be to happen. You hadn't had much luck in your arguably short lifetime, and it wasn't until you picked up your second job that the folds began to smooth a bit, and routine felt less tiresome and less like an assault on your freedom and more like a necessity to keep things in order.

━━━━━━━━━━━

All for Hinata and giving him the best possible chance to get somewhere in life that you'd never been able to—never would be able to. You had squandered enough of yours to know it wasn't fair to do it to him, a child who'd probably had it worse from the very beginning. His path hadn't diverged yet. Meanwhile, yours had a long time ago and by choice, however unfavorable your upbringing had been.

Tōji, sometimes, felt like a test for you—divine intervention as though meant to really try your mettle, rattle your conviction a little bit to see if you'd just cave inward like you always had in the past. Surrendering yourself to misplaced love and lust, losing everything and everyone to the great delusion because it always, always felt so right in the moment to love unfalteringly because it'd be all that mattered on your deathbed.

That you loved fiercely.

That you were loved in return.

You couldn't take the rest with you. Not money. Not prestige. Not even ashes you turned into when you'd be cremated. But those moments of final fading consciousness swathed in arms and warmth and tears—love?

It's everlasting.

But then, Hinata came into your life, and it was no longer about your pain. Suddenly, you had a purpose bigger than yourself, a purpose that actually meant something, not some desperate wish. You had been channeling every bit of your anguish, longing, anger, fear, and love into that dream to help him escape what you never could. Maybe someday, by some miracle, you'd be able to join him.

Tōji hadn't become a wrench but rather a missing oil can that slowed the gears and made them grind a little harder. The effects of him were inconspicuous, gradual, not really anything you'd believe would hinder you. In actuality, he probably had you wrapped up by the first night and completely ensnared by the first kiss on the balcony.

"We should do this more often." Tōji had both hands on your waist, helping you to ride a rough rhythm on his cock. You left prints of your teeth into the thumb-side of your hand, stifling moans so they wouldn't seep through the paper-thin walls. "It's sexier when you're loud."

You'd made it years without any noise complaints, and now you had three. The last one had been delivered not by letter or phone, but in person from property management. It had been a sheepish conversation for everybody that ended with them pointing out that's why people usually went to Kabukichō where love hotels ruled the strip.

Tōji had been standing in the doorway with you, arm over your head with a casual lean. He made sure to tell them he'd been to Kabukichō many times, and the quality there wasn't anywhere on par with what you gave.

Management scampered away, flushed and aroused, and you wanted to fucking kill him. But Hinata was at school and you weren't due for work at your second job for a few hours—so you just fucked again.

Now, you were straddling him, a sack of pudge in his hands kneading your waist, hips, thighs, gripping your ass to control how hard his cock rutted up into you.

He carried one of his hands up your spine, slow and lazy as though it were too much for him to do, circled your nape, and brought your chest down on his so he could kiss you, tease you with the stiffened point of his tongue.

Everything stuttered to a halt when Hinata's scream ripped into your bedroom from the slit under the door and made the walls tremble before you realized it was you and your heart lunging from adrenaline.

Tōji let you climb off of him, clumsily and hurriedly, to throw a discarded robe on the floor around your body and throw open the door without considering that the man was lying naked in your bed.

"What is it?! What is it?!" you tried shouting above the boy's cries. They had turned wild and dissolved into wails. The kind that only happened in response to true terror or pain.

You'd never heard him like this.

"Hinata, what is it?!" It was hard not to take hold of his shoulders and shake him. That was the first impulse, the reaction to quiet something making so much noise. But you simply crouched low, keeping your fingers tight in case he tried flailing. "What happened?!"

He sucked in greedy breaths, still crying in between them and hiccuping. Snot glistened down his nose, lips, and chin, turning the reddest you had ever seen possible in someone with his complexion. With a short finger, he turned and pointed to a brown box on the floor.

It looked like a normal parcel, just like something you'd receive from the post office that had a new toy or school supplies in it. Clearly, he had thought that was the case because he'd found a pair of scissors and opened it, all four flaps spread wide, insides speckled red. Some darker splotches had been absorbed into the tan cardboard.

"What—what the hell is that?!" You couldn't keep the quiver out of your voice. "Hinata, go to your room."

"No!" he hiccuped, wiping under his nose with a fist. "No! Don't make me!"

Your heart pulsed through you like a hammer that sent vibrations ricocheting off your bones and made your intestines squeeze. You thought you could hear the organ squelch in your ears, dampening Hinata's tantrum the closer you got.

The inside of the box was what you imagined red food dye exploding inside a microwave would look like, though darker, blacker like it'd had time to sit and settle into all the layers. In the center of it was something small, just as black as the blood and had that charred, shriveled quality to it.

You had to stare at it for a long time to figure out it was a human ear attached to a flayed chunk of flesh, likely where all the blood had originated.

"Hinata"—everything you had eaten in the past three days was journeying up your esophagus, mouth already salivating—"go to your room."

"No!" He choked through a sob.

Tōji came out of the bedroom in sweatpants and no shirt, having decided that whatever was happening was a big enough deal that he needed to be there.

He asked, gratingly, "What's all the screaming about?"

Anger rushed up your core all the way to your chest, neck, and to every last strand on your head. You thought you could sling the box at him, pick up a chair and gouge him on one of the legs, and filet him with the scissors Hinata had taken from the kitchen.

The funny thing about love is that just as fast as it could be ignited, it could be snuffed just as easily—especially when there was someone to protect, someone you loved more than you ever could him.

You were on fire. "This is your fault!"

With a forceful thrust from your toes, the box made a scuffing sound as it skidded across wood floors to him where he stopped it with his foot and glanced in at the macabre contents. He must've stared at it for almost thirty seconds, the light in his eyes never changing, never once wincing or reeling like he was appalled.

"I made a mistake." Why did it have to take something like this to see it? Why was it always so awful? "I can't believe I did it again. I can't believe I was stupid enough to let you in here."

"Calm down." Emptiness sat behind those words, neither comforting or threatening. It was one of those things you'd probably do in a room by yourself.

Hinata had never seen you flare in anger, so he stayed away but never considered going anywhere near Tōji. You didn't like that he was standing in the open.

"Go to your room." Third time.

He cried. "No! I don't want to!"

"Hinata." You never took your eyes off Tōji, and he never took his eyes off you. "Go to your room."

"No!"

That was the final prod to send your temper cascading, ears burning the hottest you'd ever felt them, and that uneasy stillness within the apartment shook with the sound of your screams. "I said go to your room!"

He shrank and obeyed, feet pounding away on the wood floor to let you know he was going. A door slammed, reassuring you that the only people left in your living room were you and Tōji, an unequal standoff.

"That's a bit harsh, don't you think?" Tōji had shoved aside the box with the ear, standing a little closer to you than he had been before. This wouldn't have a fair outcome—he was twice your size and strength, what could you do? "He's just a kid. He didn't understand what he was looking at."

"You're explaining child psychology to me now? Don't act like you give a shit." you said, walking backward to keep the space. "I should've kicked you out, Tōji. I should've kicked you out when you told me it was a gunshot. I should've kicked you out when you said you were a hitman."

Tōji's pockets protruded, round with his thick hands moving around inside. "Yeah, you really should've. You didn't, though. We're all selfish sometimes."

"You could've left on your own," you continued, "you could've healed and walked right out and left us alone. There was never anything for you to gain by staying here."

"I needed a place to stay." he said, shrugging one arm to his ear and kept advancing on you. "I could come and go how I wanted. Could sleep when I wanted. Free meals. Free beer. Eventually, good sex. Why would I leave?"

It wasn't like you to cry anymore, not like how you used to when there were days getting out of bed was too laborious. A permanent indentation of your shape had molded into the mattress from how long you'd lay there sometimes, dried tears tight streaks on your skin while staring out that little window in your bedroom where Tōji liked to frequent to smoke out of.

Once Hinata came along and fed you cup noodles from the floor, that overflowing well behind sore red eyes suddenly sucked dry, and there was no time for you to wallow, no time for you to try to stop to remember why it had hurt so bad to begin with. You had a sweet, gentle soul who needed strength and reliability.

Something, in the end, you now understood you weren't able to give him because you had relented to Tōji, likened sex as the only way to have love reciprocated. Nothing had changed from the last man you loved to Tōji, except for your desperation making you turn a blind eye to everything he was, all the danger you were bringing into that boy's life.

How utterly, disgustingly selfish.

"You're crying?" Tōji's expression rearranged as though startled, possibly the only time you'd ever seen it. "Is it because of what I said? What if I told you it was only half true?"

Each tear that wetted your face felt like it was burning an imprint into your flesh. "It doesn't matter. I should've put you out the second you finished stitching yourself up."

"That would've been the smart way to go about it, yeah." He smiled, though not confidently. "You love me."

If he had said that to you an hour ago while you were on top of him, stifling moans while being fondled by his rough hands, you would've fallen apart and confessed everything. You would've been stupid enough to kiss him again and again, gasping through raspy breaths that you'd never loved any man more than him.

And that was every bit true even now.

"I do, Tōji, I really do." You wouldn't give the luxury of a shallow smile but rather a dour look with eyes glaring determination through him. "But, I love Hinata more. More than I ever could you. It's time for you to leave."

His head leaned a touch to the left, still unperturbed by it all. "You gonna be okay?"

It was an unexpected response, not one you had an easy time holding a stiff upper lip to. "For him, I'll find a way to be. Goodbye, Tōji."

Once you walked away, you didn't stop to check what his reaction was, if it had even changed at all. Somehow, you doubted he did much besides follow you with black eyes and a swiveling neck, and that was fine. You left no room for him to doubt you this time, no chance to believe that he was still welcome in your bed, your and Hinata's apartment, or your lives.

"I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have yelled at you." To be safe, you locked Hinata's door after you entered and pushed into the floor with your knees to sit on them. "You were scared. I was scared. People who are scared sometimes do things they shouldn't. It doesn't make it okay, but it happens."

His face was completely dry, a damp washcloth twisted in his fingers as he peered down at you from his bed. They were still watery and red, but the worst of his fear had passed. Now, you guessed, he just wasn't sure what was going to happen next.

"Where’s Tōji?" He didn't ask fearfully, more bewildered since you had accused him of the ear in the box earlier. "Is he a bad guy?"

The impulse was there to paint him as the villain of this story, an effortless way to weasel yourself back into Hinata's good graces because children generally understand things were either all good or all bad. However, your nephew wasn't like them and could gather some of those more nuanced things, though still with much less perceptibility.

He would believe you, but your words were not gospel to him. That's the way it should be.

"Tōji's gone. I told him it was time to go." you said. A couple hairs on his head had fallen into a strange arrangement. You wanted to reach out and move them but stopped yourself and sat still. "I love him, so I'm not sure if he's all a bad guy. Tōji lives a different kind of life from us. It’s not meant for us. He's not meant for us."

Hinata put his feet on the floor and came over to sit on your lap. You crossed your legs so he had a spot, fingers already at work on his head.

"But, you love him. Shouldn't he stay?" he asked kindly. You prayed to whatever existed out there in the universe that he'd lever lose that part of himself to cynicism or cruelty. "We keep people we love close, right?"

"Maybe"—you nuzzled him, forehead to forehead, feeling that hot pressure build behind your eyes again—"but I love you so much more, Hinata."

"You're not mad at me?" He asked so hopefully, so brittle that you had to inhale sharply through your nostrils. "I'm sorry if I made you mad because of the scissors or opening the box. I know you said not to touch them."

You let out a laugh equal parts pained and humored, arms coming up to tuck him against your chest, and just cradled him there. He was almost too big to fit against you like that now. "No, baby, I'm not mad at you. I couldn't be mad at you. I just still have a lot of work to do on myself."

His head shifted away from your chin so he could see your face. It was a relief to see him smiling. "You're doing a good job. I'm really proud of you."

It took you a good, long while to stop crying after he said that to you. He fit awkwardly in your arms. Soon, he wouldn't be able to sit like this with you, and, almost as close as that, he wouldn't want you to hold him at all. Teenagers were just that way, pretending to be too jaded to be loved.

"He really left." Hinata walked into the living room with you later on, hand holding yours, a needed comfort at that moment. "Do you think he'll try to come back?"

"Maybe," you said. The possibility wasn't zero. "If you see him, just tell me so I can run him off."

"Okay—" He noticed something on the coffee table a few feet away. "What's that?"

You approached it first, getting a good look before giving Hinata the chance to come up along your side to also see it. On the table in front of your eyes was a clip of ten thousand yen banknotes. Even folded up and clamped with a piece of smeared metal, you could tell that's what they were. They were that shade of light yellow-green that reminded you of vintage photographs from the sixties or seventies with much less yellow and no curled edges or water stains.

"Holy shit!" Hinata darted from your side to pick it up, removing the clip to count through them all, missing a piece of white scrap paper that fluttered off of it. "This is so much money!"

You glanced uncomfortably at him, unsure of whether that money was safe to touch given the only person whom it could've come from was Tōji. But why?

Hinata counted while you looked around the apartment as if taking it in for the first time. The most important thing was that the box with the roasted ear was gone, and your front door was locked with the spare key in the doorknob. A certain look about it was a blow to your chest, crushing your heart in a vise as the finality of what it meant settled over you.

Tōji really wasn't coming back.

It was odd knowing there'd be one less person to pad around the floor, open the refrigerator, or even flush the toilet. Tōji had come into your life with nothing but the clothes on his back and a bullet in his ribs, and he had left much the same way.

"Oh my god!" Hinata's heels drummed into the wood underfoot with glee. Next, the money was shoved in your face. It smelled brand new. "There's two million yen! That's so much money! We're rich!"

"Not quite." You didn't want to deflate his enthusiasm, but this was not something you wanted him boasting about outside these walls. "We should really turn it in to the police. We don't know where Tōji got it, or if it's real."

Hinata spun around to a window filtering in the golden glow from midmorning light. Pulling a banknote taut in his thumbs, he held it up and, sure enough, all three vertical watermark bars appeared. "It's real! We're so rich!"

"I don't believe it…" You looked at the ground after finding a chair to lean on. It was then that you saw the scrap paper below, torn from the corner of an envelope, you assumed, and picked it up. "Did this come off the clip, Hinata?"

He was on your arm, gawking at it. "Uh, I guess? I dunno. What's it say?"

You flipped it to the side with black scrawl on it, finding that you couldn't read it aloud because of a snag in your throat.

Hinata did it for you. "'For the cookie cutter fantasy.' What's that mean?"

It was all you could do not to cry again.

━━━━━━━━━━━

No one ever said that raising a kid would leave you without time to spare forever. For you, that came much sooner than expected, and you hadn't been prepared for it to happen. Hinata was nine years old now, going through a growth spurt, and wanted more to do with after-school extracurriculars with his friends than he did sitting at home or exploring a new town with you.

It wasn't anything you blamed him for. You were old and grounded in reality, plodding through the monotony of adulthood and sticking to things you knew now instead of always reaching out for everything—everyone that was different. People liked to say that, to thrive, you needed variety and change in your life, that next big move to circumvent stagnancy.

The thing about it was that your life had been in such constant motion you never learned how to slow down until the brakes were put on for you and forced you to sit in the unpleasantness of yourself and things from the past until you saw the patterns, the behaviors, and the thinking that always kept the wheels spinning.

Now, you were just lonely and comfortable in an apartment that felt too big for you most days. Hinata was still home every night for dinner, waved groggily in the morning before heading out the door for school, and brought his friends around to play games—it just wasn't the same.

"You should get a boyfriend and stop working so much." he told you during a train ride home from the sea, Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture, a nice weekend getaway to get some distance from an endlessly bustling town and the emptiness of the apartment. "Akio's dad is single. Maybe…"

"He's, like, ten years older than me!" You flicked him on the forehead. "What are you trying to say? I'm old? That I should get together with old men?"

"No! No!" Hinata laughed, leaning out of your reach. "I just feel bad because you're home by yourself a lot. It makes me sad that all you do is work."

There was no simple, cheerful way to tell him it was better than the alternative. To regress into old habits.

"That money isn't infinite, Hinata. It got us someplace nice, but it's my job to keep us in it." you said, briefly glancing at another passenger walking the narrow aisle closer to the front. "I take that seriously. I plan on keeping us ahead."

His chest collapsed with a sigh, feet touching the floor even when he sat back in his seat. You didn't think you'd ever get used to it, nor just how suddenly kids can grow. It was torturous to think that one day, sometime soon, there'd be another adult sitting across from you.

"Whatever, I guess." He looked at you like he had something else to say. You could anticipate what it was about. "Do you think Tōji is doing okay?"

It was inevitable that he'd be brought up when the money was mentioned. Life had improved thanks to him, and in that way you were grateful he had come into your lives. He took a piece of you with him when he left. Hopefully he knew that and treated his memories of you kindly rather than embittered.

"I don't really know, Hinata. It's been six months." Hardly any time had passed, yet the seasons had turned several times, and it felt like years of wear had settled into the knobs of your joints. "What do you think?"

He shrugged all the way to his ears, peering out into the aisle hearing squeaky wheels on a food trolley approach. "Probably good. Oh, can I get a taiyaki? Please? Pleeeeease?"

You smiled at him, opening your wallet for a couple of banknotes so he could pick a few things he wanted. It made you happy to do things for him that made him resonate with such joy.

A six hour train and forty-five-minute taxi ride later, you were handing off a duffle bag to Hinata to take on ahead up the stairs to the second floor where your apartment was. The fact that you had an easy climb up and down from your front door was probably one of the best perks of a new place, slightly second to a fully remodeled kitchen and bathroom.

You had your own bag in tow, plus a few totes with souvenirs and snacks from the sea that made some pretty ugly scuffing sounds, drowning out the echo of your footsteps on the stairs.

Hinata's voice came barreling down to you, incoherent at first but in that high-pitched intonation that kids usually had. "He's back!"

You didn't miss the urgency. "What?"

"The freeloader is back!"

Just then, your heart gave a jolt as if renewed with vigor, thrashing to escape its confines behind your ribs, hurting for all of the five seconds it took to trudge up the stairs with your baggage. You stopped breathing once you reached the next landing.

Tōji stood there in front of your door, a much shinier one with gleaming numbers that caught too much light from fluorescent bulbs descending from above. This was entirely familiar to you yet completely different all the same.

"Hey." His smile was a little bit off and looked so handsome on him, just like you remembered it. A plastic bag rustled at his side as he lifted it into view, bringing your and Hinata's eyes to it. "There's a place here in town that has good takoyaki. Want some?"

"Oh, yesssss!" Hinata snatched it from Tōji, ducking around his large body to wiggle a key in the doorknob and burst inside.

All had been forgiven. All was well to a nine-year-old boy that evening.

Tōji held a hand out horizontally at about waist height, then raised it a few inches higher. Puzzlement moved his face around.

"Did he get bigger?"

You could do nothing except nod. What was the right thing to do here? Run him off or scream for help? This wasn't the kind of place where people turned a blind eye to ruckus. It wasn't an affluent area, just another company concerned about appearances and meeting the standards of everything they stuck in a brochure. They touted a safe and quiet neighborhood.

Tōji looked comfortable in a black sweatsuit several sizes too big, fabric hanging off him in a way that was slouchy but not unattractive. His hands ballooned in the pockets, something else that hadn't changed about him.

When you found the courage to speak, you did so cautiously. "What are you doing here, Tōji?"

"Morimoto's dead, so I decided to take a vacation." He said it like it was the most obvious thing, gave a little shrug in the same way you'd tell someone a friend had gone off somewhere.

None of it made sense to you right away. That name had never made an appearance in any conversation. A few seconds later, you understood that whoever Morimoto had been, he was the one who shot Tōji all those months ago and delivered the burnt ear to your doorstep.

It didn't alleviate all of your anxieties, but the swell of it in your chest abated somewhat. Looking at Tōji now felt less of a daunting task and more of an unwanted interaction between an ex you'd had less than an amicable ending with.

"That doesn't answer my question." The bags on your shoulders were beginning to feel like lead pulling you down into the floor. This needed to end quickly. "Never mind, it doesn't matter. Just get out of here, Tōji."

"I need someplace to stay." he said.

You bristled. "No, you don't. You left two million yen sitting on my coffee table. Stop trying to make me look stupid."

Tōji shifted then, hands still burrowed deep in his pants as he curled his back slightly for a quick peek past the front door that Hinata neglected to shut. He wouldn't be able to gauge much of the inside from that view, but even that was too revealing for you.

"Looks nice. Is that what you used the money for?" His eyes were back on you, his form growing in size as he came closer. "I want to hear about it."

You wondered how much it would stroke his ego if you told him that his money had truly been what afforded you and Hinata this modicum of comfort. A part of you worried that he'd try to weaponize it, use it like ammunition to wedge his way back into your lives.

"It's comfortable. Hinata has a bigger room, and his friends come over to play games." You didn't think it was necessary to tell him anything. It was simply a courtesy. He had invested and wanted to know what that investment went to. "I actually have enough kitchen space for my pans; remember how they'd have to stack on top of the oven?"

His lips were dry, pulling up tight and pale with the easy sprawl of his smile. "Yeah, that was a pain in the ass."

"Do you remember how small the bathroom was at the old place? Your knees would basically touch the wall when you sat on the toilet," you continued, "It's double that size now. Not the biggest, but Hinata and I can brush our teeth at the same time now."

Tōji stood inches away, hip braced against the railing that was made of stainless steel and glowed under all the lights. It was always cold beneath your fingertips, worse in the wintertime.

He didn't seem to notice it, though. "What's the view like?"

"Not my favorite thing about the place, but there's a lot more light that comes in. The patio is pretty small, but I have a folding table out there and a couple chairs. I like to sit out there and drink coffee in the morning, beer at night."

You let the bags slide from your shoulders down the length of your arms. "There's not a lot to see from the second floor, but it's nice to people-watch, I guess."

"It sounds like you got that dream life after all." Tōji reached for the totes on your arm and took them onto the bulk of his. "Good for you. Good for Hinata."

Hearing him use your nephew's name so casually with a sort of softness you had never known from him sent ripples down your spine. It was hard to navigate yourself through the tempestuous storm of thinking of how much you'd missed him this entire time versus reasonably distrusting his intentions with flashbacks of everything that had happened playing like flickering reels of cinema in your head.

"Mind if I come in? That takoyaki was expensive." Tōji had the nylon shoulder strap of your duffel bag wrapped in his hand now. He wouldn't be giving it back.

You told him he could.

The real answer was much more nebulous and complex, filled with uncertainty and waning courage and exhaustion from a life that had just never gone according to plan.

Tōji didn't go inside immediately, instead turning to block it with his body and the bags. You were just now taking notice of a dimming red scar over the corner of his lips, maybe from a knife of some kind. It was new enough to still have color, old enough to be completely healed.

"Ah, I almost forgot. I want you and Hinata to meet Megumi." he said, giving his temple a tap with two fingers. "Should be soon, I think."

"Wait. Who?"

Tōji guided you inside with a hand on your back, door clicking shut after him.

"My son. His name is Megumi."

━━━━━━━━━━━

a/n: alrighty, story notes time:

this was a challenging piece for me for a lot of reasons. the biggest was probably including a child character and giving him actual significance to the storyline. I've written kids in the past, but usually only in passing or very briefly. arguably, most of mc's personal growth came from wanting to give their nephew a better life, but I also believe that hinata becomes somewhat of a coping mechanism for mc. sort of, like, mc drops one bad habit (bad men) for another (obsessed and worried about hinata's wellbeing).

my idea for tōji in this one-shot was keeping some canon elements (forgetting about megumi and his name), but also diverting quite a bit (e.g. megumi's mom is alive and well; tsumiki and her mother are a part of his past, but there's no current involvement with them. the scar on his lip resulting from morimoto and not something earlier on in his life.

I left the ending a bit ambiguous and slightly concerning bc I really wanted to drive home that progress and change are not linear. I think, for a character like mc with their history, being able to think more critically about the decisions they make vs acting impulsively as they had in the past is growth. it's all very nebulous and uncomfortable bc the ending doesn't imply something overly good, or overly bad. it sits in the middle where you know it could feasibly just turn back into a cycle, or it could be a chance at something better.

the door clicking closed could be as damning as a funeral bell, could be as hopeful as church bells during a wedding. it's up to you.

there are, obviously, some morals and ethics that go into this, namely the idea mc should let tōji around at all because of what he does—despite him never once causing (physical) harm to mc or hinata. could even be debated that the money he left for them was a way to keep his foot wedged in the door to get back in when he thought it'd be a good time, that may be giving too much credit to tōji tho lmao.

if y'all enjoyed this tho, please consider reblogging it so it gets around!!!❤️

[ox1-lovesick]

🌿 ; ᝰꜜ ᩠˚ how txt show their love for you ! ⋆ ࣪.

🌱 pairing. txt x gn!reader genre. fluff!! warnings. mentions of food, overworking (?) wc. 100-300 each

🌱 synopsis. how txt indirectly show you they love you!

🌱 a/n. coming out of the writer grave with a headcannon 😻 don't mind the fact that soobin's is longer than the others i just had a lot of thoughts for him 💀 kind of idol txt??? it's implied but not stated

YEONJUN | 연준

♡ you're his priority, no matter what

yeonjun is someone who works hard and loves even harder, he puts everything he has into your relationship and will never give anything less. he's always there, to greet you at the door with a loving smile and open arms, never forgeting to ask how your day was and will be your shoulder to cry on if it wasn't your best. he'll buy you anything that he thinks you'd like, no matter how expensive or random. he lives to see the smile on your face when he gives it to you later that week, his own grin growing on his lips at the thought of it, even if you scold him for wasting his money after. he takes care of you; throwing an extra jacket over his shoulder when you go out on a particularly cold day, scolding you as you shiver—with love of course, for not listening to him when he told you to cover up. he could be in the most important company meeting of his life, but his eyes are glued to his screen because you sent him a meme he had to see immediately, a snicker escaping him before his phone is ripped out of his hands by an angry soobin. he can't help himself, he loves you so much he'd give you the world, because you are his world

SOOBIN | 수빈

♡ he knows everything about you, even when you don't know yourself

soobin could recite you from beginning to end as if you were his favourite movie. he knows your plot by heart, even the small seemingly meaningless scenes are important to him, and he loves them just as much. it wasn't by accident—the furthest thing from it. ever since he first laid eyes on you he's been determined to get to know you, inside and out. he wanted to show you he could take care of you, his kind 'nature' ultimately making you fall right into his trap. and just like the days when his gaze would linger for a bit too long, sometimes you genuinely wondered if he had eyes in the back of his head with how he'd know what you wanted before you could even tell him. his members call it his 'leader instincts', saying he can sense mischief before it happens and that's why they could never get away with anything—when really, he's just observant of those he cares for. he watches from afar, noticing the small habits and routines they have, and you being his partner, are no exception. some days you'd be craving mcdonald's and he'd come home with your favourite saying he thought you might like it; other days he could tell you were upset simply by the way your footsteps sounded, shuffling to put on your favourite movie and set up a blanket fort for the two of you to cuddle in. soobin knows you better than he knows himself, you're his other half, after all

BEOMGYU | 범규

♡ he's unapologetically himself, because he knows he never has to pretend around you

beomgyu is known to be a social butterfly. he flutters from group to group with ease, a seemingly never-ending social circle of friends and acquaintances. you would've never guessed that bubbly, happy, extroverted beomgyu could be so well behaved. the beomgyu sitting next to you is different from the beomgyu you met a few years ago, a new side of him that he only entrusted those closest to him to see. he's quiet—peaceful. a vast contrast to his loud and bubbly demeanor. when he isn't the life of the party, he's a loving, caring and gentle soul, who likes scented candles and vinyl records. his duality is almost scary in all honesty, but it shows that he trusts you enough to let down his guard infront of you. his voice is soft and calm, you wonder how you ever lived without hearing it before, his touches so delicate against your skin, it's almost as if he's afraid you'll break into pieces. you treasure the rare moments when he allows himself to be vulnerable infront of you, you know better than anyone it's not easy to keep up his effervescent and lively image, so when he's had a long day of interviews and variety shows—the only thing he wants to do is wind down with you, head on your chest and wrapped in your embrace

TAEHYUN | 태현

♡ he tells you everything, even when he's not supposed to

taehyun is someone who likes to focus on himself and himself only. he's a hard worker, constantly trying to improve and be the best version of himself that he can; but even those with such high spirits and self-worth have bad days, and no matter how hard he tried to hide it, you could always tell when something was bothering him. and if he was being honest with himself, he loved it. he wants to share every moment with you, as insignificant and small as they may be. you're the first person to come to his mind when he receives good news, and the only person he wants to talk with when he isn't feeling his best. he trusts you with his whole heart and loves that he can tell you anything and everything—and he knows that you'll listen to him, even if it's stupid or unimportant. he adores your late-night talks, the days when you're wrapped up in each other: ranting, venting, deep talks about the universe—saying anything and everything that comes to mind. there's something so intimate to him about this kind of vulnerability, the fact you can have these conversations and it will stay between the two of you, and only the two of you, has his heart racing. you're his safe space, his comfort, his home, and he'd never hide anything from you, even if he should

HUENINGKAI | 휴닝카이

♡ he makes time for you, because you're the most precious moment of his day

kai gets burnt out easily; and with his schedule anyone would. some days he hates his younger self for taking this path when the lack of sleep and rest gets to him more than he'd like to admit. he knew he wouldn't have a lot of time to himself, and he was fine with that, but these days he couldn't seem to take a single breath without there being someone else in the room. it's moments like these that he can't seem to get you out of his mind. he longs for you, your embrace, your scent, your voice, your laugh, and everything else he loved about you. his thoughts tend to centre around what he'd give to be laying in bed, watching cartoons with you right now instead of spending another second in the dance practice room, humid and heavy with sweat. the weekend can't seem to come fast enough, but at the same time the anticipation only gets him even more excited. he doesn't mind working the extra hours—putting in his blood, sweat and tears if it means he has more time to spend with you. he thinks about how proud you'd be when he perseveres through it all, and it gives him the strength to keep going with a smile. it may be draining trying to fit you into his schedule now, but he knows it will all be worth it later. it always is

© ox1-lovesick ── all rights reserved. do not copy, translate, alter, or repost my work without my explicit permission.

[starlightxsvt]

Bloodily Safe | j.ww (teaser)

pairing ➳ psychopath!wonwoo x fem!reader

genre ➳ psychological thriller? camgirl au*, smut (i ain't sure what genre this falls under 💀)

word count ➳ 20k (est)

synopsis ➳ you have a little secret. one if exposed, would ruin you. yet someone in your class has figured it out. now a game of cat and mouse has begun with the mystery man. how do you make it out alive?

release date ➳ 26 May, 2023 (estimated)

loosely based on the kdrama shadow beauty

"Did I ever tell you about how I murdered a man?"

Your body turns into a block of ice as you whip your head towards Wonwoo, who sits with his elbows resting on his knees, an impassive yet slightly smug look on his face. You blink a few times, waiting, just to make sure you didn't hear him wrong.

He tilts his head to face you, a wry chuckle escaping his lips as he shakes his head at your expression. "Come on now, little cherry, don't look so shocked. Let me tell you all about it."

Hello loves! I'm back!

This Wonwoo fic has been cooking for a while and there are still some important parts left to write. Hopefully I can finish it within the 26th. This is a genre I've always wanted to try with Wonwoo so I'm really working hard on it. Hope you guys are excited! 😆

I'm thinking of doing a tag list so let me know in the comments if you wanna be tagged.

Also! I'm open to suggestions/ideas this time. Based on the teaser, if there's any scene you'd like to see or any characteristics you want our psycho Wonwoo to have, you can drop them here. If I like them or if it matches well with the plot I'll try adding it!

Have a lovely day 💕.

[anxiously-sidequesting]

I think I've already said this once before but I really wish there was a feature in Wizard101 where important events, lore, and dialogue in the game were documented somewhere so we can view them whenever we want. like unless we video record the events while it happens, take pictures, or just go through the whole entire fucking plot with another wizard character there's no way to ever revisit those moments and that SUCKS??????? like wizard101 has some of the best lore ive ever seen and I don't wanna have to level up my wizard all the way to level 100 just to see that iconic grandfather spider scene or grind through azteca just to find that one epic fourth wall breaking moment 💀 i want to revisit all the incredible and funny and weird shit we've all gone through Immediately. Like damn remodel the library so that it actually keeps records and dated films of the things we've gone through so it can actually be useful instead of it being Just A Building (rants about this for so long that even Jesus smacks His lips)

[katiapostsss]

its getting close to my annual watch of call me by your name and this is NOT a safe space for it's haters.

if you don't know what it is, it's about a boy named elio, whose father's friend, oliver, comes to live with them in italy, and they fall in love despite the age gap. there's a bunch of sexual scenes and strange additions in there that i feel people take out of context or just don't understand the meaning of. and if you aren't a poet, just say so 😋

"the peach scene—" was a metaphor for sexuality and elio realizing and exploring himself.

"oh but it was badly written, like straight people trying to make a gay movie—" the movie wasn't about the romance. this is how i can tell you've never picked up a pen or pencil to save your life. the whole plot wasn't about the age gap, or the sex, or even the romance. sure, that was what most of the movie was made up of, but in the end, it was elio realizing he got literally groomed by oliver, hence the fireplace scene, where he sat and stared at the fire for the last 15 minutes.

this movie/book advocated for those who have been groomed. oliver made elio believe he loved him, and easily left and married a woman like he never did. it was a story about grooming through the victim's eyes, and it was portrayed so subtly and simply, that to this day, people still question the actual motive behind it, or haven't realized yet. the author/producer wrote the ending in such a way that made the watcher/reader believe oliver truly loved him and this wasn't just some toxic relationship, but a love story.

yes, go watch call me your name.

(i do not support the author btw 💀)