#like the prose is very on the nose

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

my college roommate (who i was rlly close with at the time until she dropped out to get married to The Worst Man In The World) wrote a novel about a group of people who were close in college and drifted apart and there's a couple in it based on me and my spouse

[shebsart]

Im sick with flu so naturally I picked up my newly bought copy of Howl's Moving Castle which includes DWJ interviews in the back.

And im in love with the way she tells these stories feels like a part of her books.

And my favorite:

The magic in the mundane :)

edit: I'm copying the ID by @princess-of-purple-prose below, thank you!

[ID: Excerpts of printed text which read:

I suppose there's also a biographical element in that Sophie is the eldest of three sisters, and so am I. The idea for Sophie grew out of the time I discovered I had a very severe milk allergy. I almost lost the use of my legs and had to walk with the aid of a stick. I was moderately young, but because of this I suddenly became old.

I had to wait until I knew what Wizard Howl was like. I began to discover Howl about the time when one of my sons took to spending several hours in the bathroom every morning and I got really, really, really annoyed with him.

Where were you when you wrote it? I wrote the book the way I write everything, stretched out on the big sofa in my sitting room, in everyone's way. This often annoys my husband rather a lot.

which made me burst out laughing. I laughed and laughed at the seven league boot, and when I came to the bit where Sophie accidentally makes Howl's suit twenty times too big for him, I laughed so much that I fell off the sofa. My husband was really irritated by this time. He snapped, "You can't be making yourself laugh!" And I gasped, "But I am, I am!" and rolled about on the floor.

Are any of your relatives or friends included in the book? Yes, well the thing that started me off writing the book was a friend of mine who never does her laundry. She has it around the place in huge bags for often as much as a year. When she does tip it all out and try to wash it, she discovers all sorts of clothes that she has forgotten she had.

Which is your favourite part of the book and why? I like the book all over, but I suppose if I had to choose a bit, I'd choose the place where Howl gets a cold. It so happened that when I was writing this bit, my husband caught a bad cold. He is the world's most histrionic cold catcher. He moans, he coughs, he piles on the pathos, he makes strange noises, he blows his nose exactly like a bassoon in a tunnel, he demands bacon sandwiches at all hours, and he is liable to appear (usually wrapped in someone else's dressing gown) at any time, announcing that he is dying of neglect and boredom. So all I had to do was write it down. End ID]

[stylesloveclub]

Prose (part 4)

In which Harry and y/n like going to used bookstores together and kissing (in secret).

+++

Harry’s coat is soaked, his curls matted to his forehead and his eyes squinting from how rainy it is. He barely had time to pack up his stuff, let alone grab his umbrella, before darting out of the Literature building. His boots splash loudly in the puddles, wetting the hems of his trousers as  he runs across the street.

“Y/n!” he calls out, his his chest rising and falling heavily. After two weeks of ditching his office hours and running away from him after lecture, he’s finally caught up with her, “come on, we need to talk.”

A quiet rumble of thunder shakes the air around them, and y/n reluctantly turns around. She’d been avoiding this conversation – didn’t want to be lectured by Harry about how bad of a decision it was and that it never should’ve happened. She knows that already, and she doesn’t need to hear it again from him. It would hurt even more, coming from the same lips that she’d been so excited to kiss. 

“What’s there to talk about,” she mumbles, her eyes downcast to the floor, watching the rain splatter against the pavement. Her hair is wet, drops of water dripping down her forehead, over the slope of her nose, and landing on her pretty lips. They get caught in the dip of her cupid's bow, and Harry watches painfully as she licks it away. 

It’s a painful experience, to have to remain so composed and put together, when he wants nothing more than to lean forward and kiss her again. His eyebrows are pinched, and his lips part as if he’s imagining what it’d be like to feel her lips between his again. He can’t help himself from staring down at her lips like a puppy yearning for a treat.

“We– we can’t just… ignore what happened,” he says, pushing his wet hair out of his face. He licks his lips nervously, and his fingers twitch at his side. 

“Yes we can,” she responds quickly. “Listen– I know it was a bad idea. You don’t have to like… lecture me about it. We can just move on."

“But– wait, no. I don’t want to just move on.” Harry blinks quickly, half because of the rain and half because he’s confused. 

“I’m not gonna tell anyone,” she says quietly, toeing at the ground and wishing it would open up and swallow her whole. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about.” She looks like she’s about to cry, and he doesn’t know what to do. He can’t lean forward and hug her the way he wants to, he can’t even rest a hand on her arm. He watches sadly as she just wraps her arms around herself, a pathetic cardigan wrapped around her frame – as if that would do anything to protect her from the rain. How could this girl be so smart when it comes to school, he thinks to himself, but so utterly stupid when it comes to rainy days. “Let me drive you home, and we can talk about it.”

She shakes her head, “I don’t think that’s a good idea–”

“Come on,” he pleads. “It’s pouring, and we’re both getting soaked. Just let me drive you. Please.” His eyes are wide, and his hands are lifted up halfway, resisting the urge to reach out to her.

Thunder crashes loudly again, and y/n gives a silent nod. She follows him quietly to his car.

+++

“Did you regret it?” Harry asks at a stoplight. 

Y/n shrugs quietly. Not really an answer, but she doesn’t have the heart to vocalize her feelings. Of course she doesn’t regret it– she’d had a crush on him since the very beginning of the semester. But she knows that he probably wishes it never happened. So a shrug suffices. 

He sighs heavily. Her reluctance to talk to him is eating away at him, and he doesn’t know how to handle the situation. “Well I don’t,” he announces loudly. “I think you’re pretty, and kind, and sweet – and I enjoyed kissing you.” He peaks over at her through the corner of his eye, but she shows no outright reaction to his declaration. She just stares down at her fingers, tangled in her lap.

Okay, well now he feels silly for saying all that. 

He turns back to face the road, and the two of them are suffocated in the silence. The rain patters against the roof of his car and the windshield wipers rhythmically clear the glass. Y/n watches a single raindrop’s path down her window, following as it slides down and collects all the other drops of water on its way. 

Then she asks quietly, “You aren’t worried about getting in trouble?”

His eyes flicker to her. “S’not as big of a deal as you think it is, bunny. S’not like I’m actually your professor. We’re both still students.”

She’s silent again. Harry pulls up in front of her apartment, but she hesitates to unbuckle her seatbelt. He looks at her quizzically.

“So it’s not against the rules?” she asks once more, nervously.

Harry shakes his head. “No school policies against it.”

Her voice is quiet. “...and you don’t regret it?”

“Not at all.”

Silence again. She sits in his passenger's seat thoughtfully. They are both still very much wet from the rain. 

“I’d invite you up–” she suddenly says. “But, I have a roommate. And, um… if anything else were to happen… I still wouldn’t want anyone to find out. Even if it’s not against the rules.” She turns, her eyes wide and glimmering hopefully. She’s suddenly filled with excitement and confidence.

Harry nods understandingly. “Nobody has to know.” 

She still doesn’t leave his car, staring at him. “So… if we were to do anything else, it’d have to be off campus. And not at my apartment.” 

Harry’s lips part, and he nods again, slower, “I see… so, if we wanted to do something else… we should probably go to my apartment instead…” 

Y/n only realizes how much she missed the dimple in Harry’s cheek when he smiles at her for the first time since that day in his office.

His tone is teasing, “And… if I wanted to kiss you… then I should probably wait until we get to my place?”

Her eyes sparkle, “exactly.”

+++

On the way to his apartment, he warns her that it may be messy, and he also warns her about his precious little cat (a pretty white haired kitty with piercing blue eyes named Princess, because that’s the name the shelter gave her and he didn’t have the heart to change it) who would probably be meowing at their feet as soon as they walk through the door. 

Y/n doesn’t have much time to look around his apartment and assess the messiness though. As soon as they get out of his car and into the elevator, she finds herself unable to stand more than three steps away from Harry. She follows closely behind him, grabs onto his firm bicep as he types in the code to his apartment. He turns to her with a smirk – it’s endearing how eager and affectionate she is, looking up at him with stars in her eyes. She’s got a look on her face, like a kid on her way to Disneyland for the first time – except Disneyland is actually just Harry’s bed, and the rides involve a lot less clothes than Splash Mountain. 

He tests the waters. He spends a few seconds staring in her eyes, reveling in the palpable tension between them, and then he flickers his gaze down to her pretty lips. He dances between her eyes and her lips for a bit, his hand still on the doorknob but too distracted by her to turn it all the way. Instead, he leans forward, his eyes fluttering shut and his lips pressing against hers. It’s so nice to kiss her again, it’s everything he could have ever wanted.

She’s ready for it this time, eager for his kiss and not caught off guard on the floor of his office. She leans up on her tippy toes immediately, puckering her lips against his and kissing that boyish smirk right off his face. Her hands hold onto his biceps, and slide up to his shoulders, and she tilts her chin upwards to kiss him properly. 

Harry lets his tongue slip out, sliding it between her soft lips and grazing it against hers, warm and slick in her mouth. It makes her breath catch in her throat – he’s just so hot, and his tongue is in her mouth right now, and it’s all just so perfect. Harry actually lets go of the doorknob, forgetting that they’re still in the middle of his hall, and turns his entire body towards her instead of just his head turned towards her. The hand that had been on the door makes its way to her hip, and he towers over her, leaning forward and backing her up against the wall right next to his door. It feels like he’s a foot taller than her when he’s kissing her like this, pressing her against the wall and sliding his fingers into her hair to manually tilt her head back. 

He bares her throat to himself and tilts her chin upwards, all so that he has easier access to her pretty little mouth. Sliding his tongue against hers erotically, nipping at her lip and squeezing her hip tightly. He’s so soft and gentle and romantic – but he’s also taken full control, leaving her at his mercy. He tilts her head whichever way he wants with his grip in her hair, scratching at her scalp so she’s weak in the knees. It makes her whimper and keel, her heart racing in her chest like an overexcited little bunny. 

Harry smiles into their kiss when she feels him pawing at her, her frigid fingers pressing against his firm abdomen and gripping the fabric of his shirt, still partially wet from the rain. If she’s getting handsy, he better open the door and get her into his bed. But he can’t bring himself to break their kiss – so with his eyes still shut and his lips still tangled with hers, he uses a hand to blindly twist the doorknob and push the door open. They stumble in uncoordinatedly, and y/n doesn’t even have the chance to see if Harry was lying about having a messy apartment. She’s just trying to kiss him as much as she can, get as close to him as physically possible. She’s forgotten about how uncomfortable her wet jeans are, or how cold her fingers are after spending so long in the pouring rain. All she wants is to get into Harry’s bed. 

He guides her towards his bedroom, and peeks a nervous eye open to make sure that his room isn’t a horrible, gross mess, a sigh of relief leaving him when he confirms that it’s in an acceptable state to show this pretty girl. He’s tugging off his coat and letting it plop wetly onto the floor and undoing the buttons of y/n’s cardigan, when his sweet little kitty finally makes an appearance. 

A simple quiet meow is all they hear, followed by the gentle scratch of her claws tugging and pulling on Harry’s trousers. Harry giggles, and pulls away from y/n to stare down at his cat, who’s sitting ever so politely at his feet with one paw raised to rest on his trouser. She’s the cutest little cock blocker and she’s also his little baby. “Hi princess,” he coos. 

Y/n, with swollen lips and bated breath, is honestly a little jealous of how this cat must get so much attention from Harry, and how sweetly he just bent down to pick her up. She wants Harry to do that with her – to coo at her and lift her up and press a kiss on her forehead. She then scolds herself for being jealous of a cat.

The kitty, all fluffy with hair as white as snow, gives a big yawn and a sudden shake of her head that makes her collar jingle prettily. Harry smiles. “Let me just go get her some food n’then she won’t bother us,” Harry says to y/n. The implications of not wanting to be bothered makes y/n’s heart flutter, and she nods eagerly with wide eyes. 

He runs back quickly, and shuts the door behind himself, so that even if Princess finishes her food, she won’t be able to wander in randomly. Then he’s pulling the cardigan off of her, throwing it on the floor, and unbuttoning her jeans, all while re-initiating their kiss. He walks them backwards slowly, until the backs of her legs meet his bed and she’s falling backwards with a soft laugh. He smiles into their kiss as he tugs her jeans off – a slight struggle considering that the denim is all wet and sticking to her thighs, but he just laughs with her at the awkwardness of having to peel off each other’s wet clothes. With her jeans also on the floor, she’s left in a basic and plain pair of light gray underwear, and the white baby tee that had been underneath her cardigan. Her shirt has ridden up, revealing her ribs and her soft stomach, and he wants to just lean down and kiss all over her body. Her thighs, her belly, her neck. He can see her pulse racing in her neck, and wants to rest his lips over her chest and feel her heart pounding right against his lips.

She pushes herself up on her elbows, her legs spread at the edge of the bed with Harry standing between them. He’s smirking down at her, taking his time as he undresses himself, making her ache. His hair that had been soaked in the rain has dried up a bit, his curls fluffier and messier than usual. It’s his natural hair, the curls that form when he’s straight out of the shower and hasn’t had the chance to style them with his curl cream. It’s endearing. His fingers, so thick and long and manly, are insanely slow as he finds the buckle of his belt and undoes it. The sound of the buckle clanking makes y/n swallow thickly, and the sight of him standing at the foot of the bed, towering over her with a belt in his hand is so arousing for some reason. Her eyes flutter, but she forces herself to keep her eyes open as he buttons his trousers and steps out of them smoothly. Neither of them are saying anything, despite there being so much they want to say to each other. They just take in the moment, take in each other. There’s a tattoo on Harry’s thigh that y/n never would have expected, a tiger that looks so intimidating and regal on him. His thighs are thick and strong – it’s head spinning to finally see him undressing in front of her when she’d accidentally done it in her head so many times in his office hours. It was never an intentional decision to sit in his office hours and imagine what it’d be like to see him undressed – to imagine what he’d look like if she ever got the chance to suck him off, or how he’d sound. But it always ended up happening… he was just too hot. 

His fingers now undo the buttons of his shirt, another white button up (his work uniform, apparently) that he slowly opens to reveal a broad chest, filled with tattoos. Y/n’s mouth drops open. Never in a million years did she expect her sweet, smart, and flirty TA to be covered in ink, a sleeve of black drawings lining his left arm and decorating his abs. It’s insane. He is so hot. Harry just smirks.

Her eyes are wide and she looks dumbstruck, mouth open as she just stares at him, her chest rising and falling heavily. She feels herself clenching, her eyes roaming all over his body… his chest and the swallows on his collarbones… the butterfly on top of his defined abdomen… the ferns on the hard lines that lead down into his briefs. Her eyes flicker up, and she flushes knowing that Harry’s been watching her drool over him for the past minute. She can’t be embarrassed about it though, and finds herself staring at the hem of his briefs… and then just a little lower at the bulge. Her mouth waters without her consent. His big hand cups the bulge and he squeezes himself. She nearly passes out. 

She sits up fully so that she’s no longer half lying on the couch, and instead she’s face to face with his cotton covered cock. Not even trying to be hot or sexy or minx-like, she looks up at him through her lashes, silently asking for permission. She’d never admit just how often the thought of sucking Harry off had crossed her mind. Sometimes when she was in his office hours, she’d zone out while he was talking to her and just stare at his big hands – dreaming about feeling them at the back of her head, pushing her down to get his cock further down her throat. And other times, in class, when Dr. Richmond was lecturing on and on about god knows what, she’d find herself staring at Harry, sitting politely in the corner of the room, his legs spread naturally. She’d feel so dirty in class, imagining what it’d be like to sit between those thighs, rest her cheek on his leg while pumping his cock, when he was doing nothing to prompt such sexual thoughts. All he’d do was sit there, and she’d be thinking about laving her tongue around his cock-head, tasting him as he’d cum down her throat. 

“Go on then,” Harry grunts, tucking a piece of y/n’s wet hair behind her ear. She’s eager, licking her lips like she’s about to have some dessert, her eyes glittering and darting all over his face. She tucks her fingers into the hem of his briefs and pulls them down, revealing the bottom half of the ferns and a dark tuft of hair. She pulls down further and further, exposing his shaft, and pulls some more until she frees the head and his cock comes bouncing out of its confines. It’s large and nearly smacks her in her face, and she’s like a confused little bunny staring at it swinging in front of her. He can’t help but smile down at her fondly, his hand cupping her jaw. “You want t’suck me off, bunny?”

She nods, hypnotized but unable to make a first move. She’s too intimidated by his size, and how he’s towering over her, speaking down to her with his low, raspy voice. She just stares up at him with wide eyes. 

He grabs a hold of himself, wrapping his fist around the base of his cock, and just the feeling of his own hand gets him twitching and leaking precum already. She’s the sweetest thing, looking up at him with those big eyes, nibbling at her lips nervously. He pumps himself a few times, spreading his slickness down his shaft and all over his head. She’ll be able to taste him all the way down, feel him coating her tongue and spurting down her throat. 

He guides the tip to her lips, muttering a soft, “open up.” She’s so eager and obedient, parting her lips without hesitation and even going so far as to stick her tongue out for him, the precious little thing. He’s grinning like the joker, dimple in his cheek at the erotic sight in front of him. Gripping himself, he taps his head against her tongue softly, and traces a circle with the tip of his cock around the flat of her tongue. He does this a few times, his own fist sliding his cockhead over her tongue, the rough texture of her tastebuds heavenly on his sensitive tip. He feels smooth and slick on her tongue, and she sits there like an angel, tongue out and staring up at him sweetly as he does whatever he pleases. His cockhead is ruddy and red, so incredibly sensitive to the touch, and he groans through his smirk. Do you know how attractive it is to see a man moaning with a smile on his face? Y/n feels her panties soaking, and worries that it might be seeping onto his bedsheets. 

It’s honestly been a while for Harry, since he’s hooked up with anyone. He hasn’t dated anyone in a while, and it’s hard to find someone that he trusts enough to be himself with. He wouldn’t feel comfortable enough to trace his cock on any random person’s tongue, wouldn’t be calling a stranger “bunny” or whispering for them to open wider so he can push himself further in. 

“Come on bunny, show me what you can do,” he murmurs, encouraging her to grab a hold of his cock herself. That little taste of him from when he traced himself over her tongue has made her insane – she’s addicted to how he tastes and wants him further in her mouth. With his encouragement, she circles her tongue around his head. Tentatively at first, but when he groans out and bucks closer to her, she starts swirling more and more eagerly. She’s drooling for him, her mouth filled with saliva and just watering for his taste. She’s breathing heavily and small little whines are leaving her chest as her tongue slides from his head down his shaft. God. It’s addictive. She wants to lick up and down his cock for ages, just feel him on her tastebuds, but she also wants to wrap her lips around him and feel his cock fill up her mouth, but then she also wants to just jerk him off with her hand while she sucks his pretty balls into her mouth and roams her tongue around each other – oh the options are all so enticing, she’s overwhelming herself. 

Spit is dripping down the side of her mouth from how drooly she is over him, and she stops licking up and down his shaft and all over his head for just a second to swallow thickly. And then she’s immediately back on his dick, this time closing her lips around his head and sliding herself down his length, feeling the underside of his shaft against her tongue and his head tickling the back part of her throat. She wants to take him further so badly, wants to feel him fill up her throat, make her throat bulge with his thickness, just suffocate on his length – but when she pushes herself forward she has a teensy little gag, and has to pull off to catch her breath. “Oh, bunny,” he groans, biting his lip, “fuck.” She looks up at him teary eyed, her lips slicked and her chin covered in her spit and the copious amount of cum he’s already leaked into her mouth. It’s a sight that he’ll be dreaming about for days, every single night with his fist wrapped around his cock before he goes to sleep or when he’s jerking off in the shower before going to class. She wraps her lips around his cock again and bobs up and down eagerly, pushing herself forward so that his cockhead reaches the back of her throat, and then pulling back quickly so that his cock almost falls out of her mouth. She does this over and over again, her  tongue still lick at him as much as she can, flickering her tongue at his pretty tip and trying to lap up as much cum as she can, steadily leaking out of his slit. He’s so yummy and hot and she just wants to taste him and swallow him and feel him filling her throat – she tries to deepthroat him again, but disappointingly fails again. He’s just too big for her. 

She pulls off with a cough, huffing upset. She looks up at him sadly and he hushes her, delicately tracing a finger on her face, “S’okay bunny,” ((her heart races and does a few backflips every time he calls her bunny)), “we’ll work on it.” And oh, she can’t wait for that. Can’t wait for him to train her throat, get her adjusted to his size so that he can push himself down, fuck her face and stuff himself down her throat until he’s spurting long streaks of white cum into her mouth. Or maybe she’d tell him to pull out just in time so that he could coat her face. Or maybe she’d make him wait until she got his cock inside of her hole and he could fuck into her and cum right inside of her, pressing his balls up to her ass so that he could get it as deep as humanly possible. 

If she can’t get him down her throat today though, then she makes up for it by wrapping her lips around his balls and stuffing her mouth full of them. Her tongue circles around them, tonguing at the spot right between the two, and she makes sure to give each one a bit of their own separate love as well – sucking their roundness into her mouth, feeling how full they are. All while tugging at his cock and looking up at his red face, his flushed neck and the veins bulging in them. 

“Sweetheart,” he cries out with a loud moan. His fingers ball up into fists at his sides and his abdomen is clenching and fluttering erratically, “gonna make me cum. Where d’you want it, hm?”

She pulls off of his balls with a loud pop. “In my mouth,” she whines, as if it’s obvious. She’s been lapping at his slit, suckling out the yummy precum so desperately – she wants it all now. 

Fondling his balls and sucking harshly at his tip, she pulls the final trigger. His hips thrust forward and he groans out, his hands tightening in her hair as long spurts of white cum shoot out of him, coating her tongue and trickling down her throat. Her mouth overflows, stuffed full of his cock without enough room for all the cum that he’s spurting out to fit – so it trickles down her chin instead. She takes it so well, swallowing it all and suckling at him gently until there’s nothing more for her to suck out, and his cock sits limply against her tongue, worn out and sucked dry. 

His chest is red and heaving, and he’s weak in the knees. His sweet little bunny, so quiet and gentle in class, was the dirtiest little minx he’s ever had. He saw stars when he came, his ears ringing and his vision going white. It was a trip to heaven. 

He’s gonna have fun with her, for sure. 

+++

The used bookstore that Harry and y/n walk into is a thirty minute drive from campus. The store is dimly lit, fairy lights lining the shelves and small tables filled with books from local authors between the rows of books. There’s a cafe next door where Harry and y/n each get a hot chocolate to warm their numb fingers (it’s raining outside, again), and the smell of roasted coffee beans lingers on their clothes and follows them into the book shop. 

It’s warm in the book store. Not as warm as the cafe, but still warm enough for y/n to shed her raincoat and for Harry to unwrap the big, fuzzy scarf that he’d tied around his neck. His oversized gray sweatshirt is lightly stained with raindrops, y/n having convinced him that they didn’t need an umbrella, that they could just race out of the car and into the bookstore and only get a little wet. Either that, or he’d have to carry around a wet umbrella all around the bookstore, which meant that he wouldn’t be able to hold her hand while they shopped. And that simply wouldn’t do. 

With her fingers laced with his, they walk around in the fiction aisle, saying nothing. Y/n’s eyes trail over the multitude of used books, the ones with the colorful covers and bubbly fonts standing out to her the most (it’s hard to not judge a book by its cover!). Harry sips quietly from his hot chocolate and stares at y/n every few seconds, before averting his eyes to the floor. Or to their joint hands. He suppresses a smile to himself. 

It’s hard for him to contain his excitement. Since they started their relationship, it’s all been very hush hush. The only time he ever gets to touch her is when they’re at his apartment. He’s not allowed to hold her hand when they’re walking around campus, not allowed to stare at her for too long in class, even though he wants nothing more than to just watch her read and write her notes. Sometimes on Friday nights, when campus is empty and everyone has gone home, she’ll close his windows and lock his office door and let him give her a few kisses in the privacy of his office – but other than that, no PDA. It’s too risky, too scary, she whispered to him the night that they made it official, under the shield of his comforter. She didn’t want to have any rumors or whispers circling around, even if their relationship wasn’t explicitly against the rules. He, of course, would do anything for her. 

He was good about it. Kept his eyes off of her, didn’t praise her too much in class, kept his hood up whenever he went to pick her up in the middle of the night. But he’s an affectionate kind of guy – he’s the kind of boyfriend who wants to wrap his arms around her when they’re standing in line at the coffee shop. He wants to put his hand on her thigh when he’s driving her home from school, send her off with a kiss everytime she leaves his office hours. So being able to come to a bookstore in another city, where they wouldn’t see any of her classmates, and hold her hand while she looks for books… it’s such a special thing for him.

Her hand is warm and soft, and she wears these delicate little rings that clank against his bigger, clunky rings. Her nails are painted a dark burgundy color (courtesy of him, who whipped out his stash of nail polish and painted her nails after she whined about her hands being too shaky to paint her nails herself), and he rubs his thumb over her painted fingers lovingly. 

She untangles their fingers to reach for a book, and Harry’s hand feels cold and lonely. He tries not to visibly pout, and stuffs his hand into his pocket to maybe recreate the feeling of being held by her hand … but it’s not the same. He takes a step forward so that his chest is pressed against her back, and rests his chin on her shoulder, looking over at the book in her hand. Y/n smiles to herself – her boyfriend is like a puppy that can’t go three seconds without being pet or loved on. She tilts her head towards him and gives him a little kiss on the cheek, right on the spot where a dimple forms three seconds after she kisses him. His nose wiggles as he slowly says, “I actually have that book, if you want to borrow it.”

“Oh, really?” she hums, putting the book back. “Was it any good?”

He nuzzles his face closer to hers so that their cheeks are touching, and he can feel the chub of her cheek as she smiles. “4.5 stars.” 

His hand not holding his hot chocolate finds her hip as she spins around to face him, and he stares down at her with stars in his eyes. His dimple softly pinches his cheek and his lips quirk up to one side in a lopsided smile. She looks soft and sweet and cozy, in a white long sleeved top, a lacy trim at her collar, and a bow pinning her hair back. A heart shaped pendant rests in the center of her chest, a gift from him, and her eyes are bright and wide as she stares back up at him. She puts a hand on his shoulder, and her fingers tangle in the back of his hair.

She giggles as Harry just stares down at her and says nothing. “What?” she laughs, not understanding why he’s looking at her like one of the stars in the sky.

“Just so pretty, bunny,” he murmurs quietly. He leans forward, his nose nudging against hers for a kiss. She struggles to kiss him back through her own smile, but her painted nails scratch at his scalp while his fingers dimple her hips. His lips are sweet like the hot chocolate he’d been drinking, and she wonders if she tastes just as yummy and chocolatey – or if he’s just licking into her mouth because of how lovey and affectionate he’s feeling today. Her back presses against the bookshelf and his hips press into her front subtly, but it’s not in an insanely horny way, and more of a desperate attempt to press his body as close to hers as possible. To feel her chest against her chest, and feel her stomach against his. 

He loves kissing her, loves her pretty lips and her pretty face, her warm cheeks and her soft eyes. He sucks and licks and nibbles on her lips with quiet hums, and pulls off only when her giggles get too strong and she’s not kissing him back anymore. “Stop laughing,” he huffs, skimming his lips against her jaw. 

She giggles some more. How can he just casually call her pretty and kiss her in between bookshelves and not expect her to burst into a fit of shy, love-struck giggles? It’s too much for her, and the only way she can rationally react when she’s so happy and giddy is to giggle it out! “Sorry,” she smiles bashfully, her giggles still prominent, though, as the stubble on his upper lip tickles her cheek. “More kisses, please.”

He can’t help but smile at how sweet and polite she is, asking for more kisses. He puckers her lips against hers again for a quick kiss and starts a path up her cheek and all over her face too, which just sends her into a fit of even more laughter. He huffs out a chuckle of his own, and shakes his head, checking around them to make sure that they’re still alone in this aisle of books. 

“Wanna go to the sci-fi section?” he whispers to her. (He’s a bit of a sci-fi nerd himself and has turned y/n onto a few of his favorites, so now they’re both sci-fi fans). 

“M’kay,” she hums, her fingers untangling from his hair and sliding down so that her hand hooks into his arms. “Maybe we can see if they have that Andy Weir book you were telling me about, and go read it together in the cafe? M’hot chocolate is almost done and I want a cheese danish.”

And nothing sounds better to Harry than that. 

+++

hope u guys looveddd it !!! such a fun story to write and i really loved this couple. thank u for reading and dont forget to send me an ask or rb so that i know u guys liked it and if u want blurbs and stuff!!!!

Prose Masterlist

[sukunasweetheart]

after learning that sukuna canonly speaks in an elegent and poetic way and uses old japanese terms (that sadly gets lost in translation) i can’t stop thinking of him being a literature or terminology professor😖 like this man would say romantic things to you out of nowhere and you’re like “what?🥴” and he says “what? what’s the big deal🤨”

no bc picture sukuna with glasses and a coffee in one hand, wearing an awfully smart outfit, his passion for jujutsu replaced with passion for literature, a tall mf who has an unapproachable aura in every way possible

his classes are by no means, for the weak. high demand, but high results. meaning, if you successfully endure and manage to grit your teeth through his assignments and harsh, but reasonable critique, you will have attained something very valuable from the experience, because this man expects nothing but the best from students who sit through his classes and want to learn about the art of literature + poetry

so many college students develop a crush on him, despite his difficult personality...

his lovelife is rather stagnant, however. literature professor!sukuna is too careful about who he brings into his life, being mostly uninterested in romance and the turmoil it brings to a person. he isn't fond of the idea that he could be potentially swayed so easily by one singular person. how awful would it be that your entire mood could depend on one individual? he was pretty content with spending the rest of his life as a single man, so be it.

but really, nobody is immune to the nature of falling in love... it can be something that happens at the snap of one's fingers. or it can be gradual, like a slow but firm tug that pulls you in closer towards someone. it can occur almost violently, and you might find yourself thrashing frantically against the net that you've gotten tangled up in. or, it can occur in a way that is as elegant and gentle as how one handles their most beloved books, flipping through each page without leaving as much as a crease behind...

for sukuna, all the boxes can be ticked off. falling in love with you, a fellow professor, was like experiencing all of these at once. the realisation hit like a bolt of lightning, when he caught himself... smiling? when he was reading an email of yours. he had to take off his glasses and pinch the bridge of his nose for that one. there was no way. it happens this quickly?

it's hard to say whether he fell in deep from the start, or if happened more like sinking slowly, helpless, in quicksand. either way, it didn't matter whether he tried to struggle or not, he was only plummeting further.

it only hurt him when he tried to distance himself away. it only hurt him when he tried holding himself back from contacting you. it seemed like everything he did in attempt to quell the thrumming in his heart, only came back to hurt him.

it started off as emails between two professional colleagues. but eventually, it developed into polite follows onto each other's social media accounts. and almost inevitably, personal numbers were then exchanged after much talking in dms. it was very funny, seeing his empty shell of an instagram account, no posts or even a profile picture in place. such clever and well pronounced prose coming from a colourless account.

let's not get into the moment where he first experienced your touch. when handing him a novel, you brushed fingers with him, and sukuna felt a strange tingle that travelled down his spine.

many instances come- where an overwhelming desire to pull you close to him by the waist, grasps him by the throat. the conflicting compulsion and urge to wreck you, but also having the need to treat you like he would a fragile butterfly.

he goes out drinking with you, one evening. already a dangerous move.

in a soft, but a little busy area in maybe a small, cheap restaurant where the two of you are residing. both of you a little tipsy, but not drunk. tipsy enough for lingering gazes. tipsy enough for the little unnoticeable but definitely noticeable touches. tipsy enough to bring out the vulnerability to seep out of yours and his eyes.

you and him, confined in a little cosy and invisible bubble… all and every noise that's made outside of it sounds muffled.

the tilting of your head as you look at him with a flirtatious smile, the reach of your delicate fingers approaching his cheek slowly, but then retracting because you're still unsure, because you're only tipsy.

and he, with his mellow eyes, grabs onto your hand before you can get away. why don't you commit? his searing hot palm clasps over your skin, and it captures you in every way possible.

and you're doing it again. you're batting your eyelashes at him, tempting him into doing something definitively irreversible. now that he's touched you, he can't compel himself to let go. you've done it now. there's nothing he can do to stop this.

your eyes follow as he reaches for his own glasses, still holding onto your hand, grip so firm yet so gentle. sukuna takes them off. carefully places them onto the table. the next order of events should have been so painfully obvious, but it still didn't fail in making your heart pound within your ribcage.

he kisses you so feverishly. he palms your jawline with great tenderness, bringing you in impossibly closer. so enraptured, so infatuated, so sweet. he holds your hand tighter, gliding his large thumb over it.

it brings him an intense amount of joy, touching you like this. it's addicting. and he never wants to let go again. he's a selfish man at heart, already claiming you as his internally, because you enthrall him and induce such pleasure like no one before. oh, how aggravating. but also, simply delightful.

it's time he brought you home. if you've caught someone up in your web, it's only right you take responsibility. will you consume him? or will he do it first?

after this string of events, sukuna is most definitely no longer a single man. having a lover around has its merits, and its disadvantages. but never does the bad outweigh the good, at least when it comes to you.

maybe he'll write an excerpt about you. a little free verse poem. beautifully worded, but incredibly abstract. nobody could guess how it all ties back to you. not even yourself, perhaps. but that's what sukuna intended. he's satisfied with keeping this secret to himself.

you'd think having such a mellow lovelife would also transfer the same softness into his lectures, and assignments. wrong. as a professor, he's still as prickly as ever.

[mortalityplays]

Hi! I really liked and agreed with your post on purple prose, and I was curious what books if any you'd describe as having purple prose. Not even necessarily as shorthand for calling it bad! just examples of it, especially from non-classic literature. Unless the term is entirely subjective lol. Feel free to reply to this ask publicly or privately; I don't mind either way

Have some Conan the Barbarian (sorry about! the racism):

TORCHES flared murkily on the revels in the Maul, where the thieves of the east held carnival by night. In the Maul they could carouse and roar as they liked, for honest people shunned the quarters, and watchmen, well paid with stained coins, did not interfere with their sport. Along the crooked, unpaved streets with their heaps of refuse and sloppy puddles, drunken roisterers staggered, roaring. Steel glinted in the shadows where wolf preyed on wolf, and from the darkness rose the shrill laughter of women, and the sounds of scufflings and strugglings. Torchlight licked luridly from broken windows and wide-thrown doors, and out of those doors, stale smells of wine and rank sweaty bodies, clamor of drinking-jacks and fists hammered on rough tables, snatches of obscene songs, rushed like a blow in the face. In one of these dens merriment thundered to the low smoke- stained roof, where rascals gathered in every stage of rags and tatters—furtive cut-purses, leering kidnappers, quick- fingered thieves, swaggering bravoes with their wenches, strident-voiced women clad in tawdry finery. Native rogues were the dominant element—dark-skinned, dark-eyed Zamorians, with daggers at their girdles and guile in their hearts. But there were wolves of half a dozen outland nations there as well. There was a giant Hyperborean renegade, taciturn, dangerous, with a broadsword strapped to his great gaunt frame—for men wore steel openly in the Maul. There was a Shemitish counterfeiter, with his hook nose and curled blue-black beard. There was a bold- eyed Brythunian wench, sitting on the knee of a tawny-haired Gunderman—a wandering mercenary soldier, a deserter from some defeated army. And the fat gross rogue whose bawdy jests were causing all the shouts of mirth was a professional kidnapper come up from distant Koth to teach woman-stealing to Zamorians who were born with more knowledge of the art than he could ever attain.

Conan is an interesting example imo because it displays a lot of the highs and lows of pulp. Robert E. Howard could also write very punchy, straightforward action, and often did - but part of the selling point for the emerging genre fiction of the era was that it was lurid and lascivious. While the extract above is. Well. Bad. It is worth recognising that within its context it was also kind of experimental.

Howard wrote these drooling, sort of bewildering, sensory passages for the same reason Marvel movies punch you in the face with saturated colours and rapid cuts and a billion VFX. You see it in the work of H.P. Lovecraft too, and I will grudgingly acknowledge that that's something worth recognising about his literary impact. I also think Lovecraft was a pretty bad technical writer, personally, but that's a whole other soapbox.

My point is that a lot of truly purple prose today (in the sense that it is extraneous, distracting, undermines its own function) traces its legacy to this era of pulp where there was a distinct secondary purpose to overwhelming the reader with ornamentation. It was self-consciously indulgent, and strikingly distinct from the more genteel floridity of equally bad literary novelists. For instance, compare the above with the even purpler prose of the famously awful Irene Iddesleigh:

On being introduced to all those outside his present circle of acquaintance on this evening, and viewing the dazzling glow of splendour which shone, through spectacles of wonder, in all its glory, Sir John felt his past life but a dismal dream, brightened here and there with a crystal speck of sunshine that had partly hidden its gladdening rays of bright futurity until compelled to glitter with the daring effect they soon should produce. But there awaited his view another beam of life’s bright rays, who, on entering, last of all, commanded the minute attention of every one present—this was the beautiful Irene Iddesleigh. How the look of jealousy, combined with sarcasm, substituted those of love and bashfulness! How the titter of tainted mockery rang throughout the entire apartment, and could hardly fail to catch the ear of her whose queenly appearance occasioned it! These looks and taunts serving to convince Sir John of Nature’s fragile cloak which covers too often the image of indignation and false show, and seals within the breasts of honour and equality resolutions of an iron mould. On being introduced to Irene, Sir John concluded instantly, without instituting further inquiry, that this must be the original of the portrait so warmly admired by him. There she stood, an image of perfection and divine beauty, attired in a robe of richest snowy tint, relieved here and there by a few tiny sprigs of the most dainty maidenhair fern, without any ornaments whatever, save a diamond necklet of famous sparkling lustre and priceless value.

Christ. Hopefully you can see the depth of the scale here - the Conan extract is muddy and difficult to read, but this is near incomprehensible. Part of the reason this passage is so much worse is that there is even less intent behind the author's use of language. Here, she is working overtime to evoke a kind of dramatic-intellectual style borrowed from writers like the Brontë sisters (imo at least - not an expert, that's just the sense I get as a reader). The further these flourishes get from lending purpose to the meaning of the prose, the harder they are to parse.

BUT my other point is: far fewer writers these days set out to emulate Irene Iddesleigh's arch, roundabout, society conscious voice than they do the hallmarks of classic pulp. We're inured to sex and violence, sin and debauchery in fiction today, so extracts like the Conan example feel even more bloated than they did in their time. And that creates a real pitfall for amateur genre writers: the instinct to pay homage to the stylistic choices of the classics can lead them right into Irene Iddesleigh territory.

Too often, the purpose of these overwrought, leering descriptions isn't calculated to thrill the audience, but to establish a piece in the company of older works the writer admires. And that's what leads to truly purple prose in contemporary genre writing, which makes readers scoff and laugh, which makes authors self-conscious and timid, which leads us here to a point where wordy description is inaccurately identified as the problem. It's not. The problem is excess - and when something has purpose, by definition, it's not excessive.

[seonghwaddict]

★ NEVER SAY NEVER. [ 010 ] the head and the heart.

synopsis. something about the eight most well-known boys of your campus just didn't sit right with you, so you never gave any effort to interact with them. but after a series of... interesting incidents, they can't seem to leave you alone. pairing. college students! vampires! ot8! ateez x fem! reader. genre. fluff, angst, eventual smut, college au, vampire au.

chapter warnings. heavy angst, blood drinking, student/teacher relationship (not pedophilia), gore, blood, murder, manipulation, very intense heartbreak, knives, strangulation, mention of metaphorical suicide. word count. 3.6k rating. mature for violence.

　　　　　　　　chapter ix // chapter v // chapter xi

choi san had always been a loving soul.

growing up in a loving and caring family, he had been taught how to give and receive affection well. always caring for his friends and family, willing to do anything to make them happy. he was quick to forgive and forget, quick to assume the best of everyone’s intentions. to put it quite plainly, for many years of his life, he only saw the best in people.

but being so loving had its consequences.

he fell in love too quickly.

at the age of 18, he was sat in his literature class in high school. the teacher hadn’t showed up yet, the students scattered around the class and chatting idly. his seat was by the window, on the third row. the weather was nice, sunny with a cool breeze. he remembered this day vividly.

he remembered this day so vividly because it was the day he met jang sooyeon.

though, at first he knew her as ms jang for she walked in with the principle, introducing herself as their new teacher. absently, he noted she was very pretty, and awfully young to be a teacher. as she walked between the desks to hand out worksheets, his gaze was drawn to a dainty, silver anklet.

it all started slowly; lingering looks and touches that rested on his shoulder for a beat too long. ms jang somehow always found him when he was alone. sometimes she’d offer a book recommendation in the library, other times she’d ask him to stay behind after class for a little chat. one day he walked in with a black notebook, poems and prose scribbled inside. noticing the little book, she asked to take a look inside. but he refused; looking at his writings felt like looking into the deepest corners of his mind, little scraps of his soul etched on the paper with his crappy ball-point pen.

but, somehow, at some point, she ended up inside it, nose practically pressed to the ink as she made sense of the inner workings of his brain. though the compliments were nice, he didn’t think too much of them. but looking back, he should have known better.

over time, her little actions and words had his heart swelling with an all-too-familiar feeling. he found himself seeking her out and soon enough, they met up outside of class, outside of school. first under the excuse of san needing tutoring (a pathetic excuse as his writings exceeded the skills of many), but soon he found himself spending time with her outside of school just because he wanted to. making excuses in the first place was stupid, everyone around them knew there was something going on.

he let her in, he cared for her and let her care for him, showing her parts of himself no one else had seen before. for that year, all his thoughts were occupied by her. his love for her grew incessantly, in ways one could almost call obsessive. he wrote about her in his notebook, learned how to bake so he could make her her favourite treats. he showed her his sanctuary, a little clearing tucked away in a forest of his hometown.

he remembered laying on the grass beside her, staring up at the clouds swirling high above. they talked but he couldn’t remember about what. when you were with a loved one the subject of conversations mattered little compared to being in their presence. he remembered her sitting up, twisting herself to look down at him with a soft smile.

looking back at that moment, he realised her smiles never quite reached her eyes.

still, he was so infatuated with her that he couldn’t see beyond rose tinted glasses.

time seemed to slow and he felt their surrounding fade away as he looked into her eyes, realising she was slowly leaning closer. hands clenching with anticipation, he hitched himself up on his elbows. but before he could kiss her a small reflection glinted in the sunlight and his eyes were drawn down to her ankle. the silver anklet glittering in the light, taunting him.

he knew it was a bad idea. he knew he shouldn’t have said anything. but he still looked up at her and quietly asked her to take off the anklet. when she asked why, that should’ve prompted him to come up with some stupid excuse.

but he loved her. he loved her so much that his heart betrayed his safety, previously unspoken secrets tumbling from his lips as he told her about his true identity. without hesitation, he admitted what he was. a bloodsucking vampire.

at first she didn’t believe him or, more accurately, she made him think she didn’t believe him. but his face stayed serious as his eyes begged to be believed, so she tossed the anklet in a seemingly random direction. and they kissed and they kissed and they loved and they held each other until the sun bade them farewell and plunged bellowed the horizon. when they got up to part ways, he missed the sinister grin on her face as she retrieved her anklet.

and she knew she caught him in her trap.

jang sooyeon was many things. calculative, determined, possibly a bit sadistic. but a fool was not one of them. from the moment she had set eyes on choi san, she knew she found what she was looking for in that school. every progression, every action, in their relationship had been carefully planned out to get her to where she was now—her back to his chest as he leaned against a tree stump in their little hideout.

she rested her head against the left side of his chest, just over his heart, staring ahead at the blades of grass and fallen leaves that danced in the autumn wind. a silence settled over them before she whispered a questions.

“sannie… would you do anything for me?”

“yes, of course. why do you ask?”

“but how far are you willing to go?”

he should’ve listened to his brain, the warning signals blaring at her words. but his heart—oh, his naïve, foolish, utterly hypnotised heart—begged and screamed for him to draw her closer.

“i’d do anything for you.”

“if someone bothered me, would you… would you kill them for me?”

he paused at that, glancing down at her. an almost hesitant “yes, anything for you, my love,” falling from his pursed lips.

all things considered, he should’ve seen it all coming. everything after that conversation felt like a blur up until his next memory. it was the first time he killed someone.

she had told him this man had been bothering her, insisting to spend a night with him despite her saying she was already seeing someone. though he was slightly irked by the smile that threatened to force itself onto her features as he agreed to take care of the man, he was more focused on the fact that another man dared to even look at her with such little respect.

so, after some digging, he found himself trailing behind the same man on a dark street. hood up, eyes fixated on him, making sure not to alert him. san’s eyes briefly moved to the entrance of an upcoming alley, deciding that would be the perfect opportunity.

ten minutes later, he walked out the other side of the alley. the corpse of the man left leaning against one of the cold walls, smothered to death.

had there been any reason that didn’t involve her, he may have felt some remorse. but he was convinced what he was doing was right, keeping her safe from this potentially dangerous man.

and then she let him drink her blood.

when she offered it, he was surprised and declined, telling her that he never expected anything in return for what he had done. but she insisted, pulling up her sleeve and baring her wrist. what more suitable way to pay a vampire than in blood?

when the first drop of her blood entered his mouth, he knew he wouldn’t be able to enjoy bagged blood ever again.

after that it became a cycle. he’d get rid of someone for her and then he’d go back to her apartment and she’d let him suck a few drops of blood from her. his once pure heart was slowly stained by something darker, despite how justified he was made to believe his actions were. he lost count of how many people he went after, but he knew it was slowly driving him to insanity. and even though she convinced him he was in the right for killing those people, his heart kept him awake most nights with those dark memories.

and choi san always listened to his heart.

he doesn’t remember when he brought his concerns up to sooyeon, but he remembers they were somewhere dark. it may have been during the period where he refused to go home. he had brought her to his house for dinner and as soon as she left, his parents wouldn’t stop giving him warnings and telling them that they sensed something dark in her. this led to an argument, ending with him slamming the front door and avoiding them for a month to move in with the love of his life.

he should’ve listened to them.

the tv illuminated the the room as he sat on the couch. he heard her footsteps before she emerged from the narrow hallway of the one bedroom apartment. a towel was wrapped around her hair and her fresh clothes clung to her body in areas that hadn’t been dried properly. he looked at her, trying not to get distracted by the way she sat beside him and pressed herself into his hold. he inched away so he could see her better, the changing light of the television illuminating her wonderful features.

“listen, i… i wanna ask you something…”

“is there something wrong, sannie?”

he paused for a long moment, trying to gather his thoughts.

“don’t you think all the killing is unnecessary? i mean, you know i love you… i don’t want to have to do all this just to prove that.”

“oh, but, sannie… these are people that deserve it, they’ve hurt me. would you really want someone to hurt me and get away with it?”

“no! no, of course not. that’s not what i meant. it’s just- it’s too much for me. we love each other, don’t we? we shouldn’t worry about what anyone else does. people bother me, too, but i don’t ask you to kill them.”

“you think that? you think we love each other?”

“well, yes…”

a sharp feeling of dread tugged at his intestine.

“i don’t love you, san. you’re a monster. how could i ever love someone like you?”

she said more, but he didn’t hear any of it. he could feel every fibre of his soul being torn apart; could feel his ribcage being ripped open to reveal that naïve, foolish and utterly hypnotised heart of his. a sharp pain in his chest had him tearing up as if she’d dug a knife into his heart and twisted it in his chest. but he knew she was right. he was a monster and it was a fitting punishment for such a monster.

to want someone so much—to have them in your grasp—and knowing they will never love you the way you love them.

the days after that melted together into a dull pile of memories. he returned home but didn’t tell anyone what had happened, locking himself in his bedroom and skipping meals. he sat on his bed and cried and cried and cried and cried until he could no longer feel anything. his heart had nearly gone numb and he came to the realisation that he would’ve much preferred it if she wrapped a silver chain around his neck and strangled the life out of him.

one time he found himself staring into the mirror, terrified at the person she had turned him into. every time he looked at himself, the same words repeated in his head. monster, monster, monster, you fucking murderer. and he knew it was true. he stared at his reflection, wondering if he had changed enough to turn into a new person, enough for it to be considered some kind of suicide of his persona.

he hated himself. he should’ve listened to everyone, he should’ve listened to his brain. not his no-good, useless heart. if it could even be called that anymore.

when the urge to drink blood lured him out of his bedroom, he found himself in the kitchen opening a bag of a-positive. the familiar liquid slipped down his throat and his hunger was satiated, but not for long.

that night they found out about the blood intolerance, sat in a vampiric doctor’s office after he collapsed and was rushed to the clinic. he thought he was dying, barely hanging onto conscience as his father picked up his limp body from the kitchen floor and placed him in the car. he woke up on one of those hospital beds, his parents, older sister, and his doctor standing around him. the doctor explained that if vampires only drank one blood type for many months, in rare cases it could lead to the body being unable to process all the other types.

something clicked inside his mind. she had killed him. killed his heart, killed his body, killed his soul. she was a murderer, too. he was merely just a shell of who he used to be. the scraps left of his heart and soul screamed for revenge. he had already killed so many people, this was just one more. maybe when she was finally gone, he’d be able to live life normally.

he thought it was odd, really. just a week before he loved her more than anything in the universe, and then he was creeping through her hallways with a knife clutched in his hand. a violent end to his devotion.

the floorboards of the hallway creaked as he crept his way to her bedroom. with a random kitchen knife gripped so tightly in his hands his knuckles turned white, his breathing went shallow. he revised his plan over and over and over again, replaying it in his head like a broken record. nothing could go wrong in the next few minutes, he couldn’t afford any mistake no matter how small. a droplet of sweat melted its way down his forehead and got caught on his brow, he wiped it away with the back of his hand and finally stopped in front of the door, open just a crack.

suddenly, he felt as if his throat closed up; one of the telltale signs of his body’s reluctance to commit this heinous crime. he should be used to it by now, but somehow it felt different when it was the woman he imagined a future with. he swallowed repeatedly, praying the dry tightness of his throat would be eased by his saliva. it took him several more minutes to muster up the courage and wrap his hand around the metal doorknob, pushing the door in as slowly as he possibly could and wincing quietly when the hinges whined

she seemed to be fast asleep, light snores resounding through the spacious bedroom. much like how he revised his plan repeatedly in his head, so did his head telling him to stop. he let his disparity take over as he silently shut the door behind him and walked to the bed like a predator stalking his prey. as his gaze settled on her, a fleeting sense of remorse could’ve swept through him had he been able to see her face, peaceful in her slumber. but, alas, there was nothing to be seen except a silhouette dimly lit by the moonlight beyond the windows.

she didn’t make as single sound as the first stab went straight to the base of her neck, blood pooling around the knife as he sliced through the throat. not a single sound gave away the fact that she was now dead.

he pulled out the knife, the blade suddenly feeling so much heavier in his hold as crimson liquid dripped from the metal and stained anything it landed on. the faint smell of iron wafted into his nose and shot straight to his brain, unleashing some kind of primal urge to continue stabbing at the body despite knowing she was dead. he sunk the knife into any part he could reach—her arms, chest, stomach, shoulders.

once his mind cleared and his rationality returned to him, all he could see was dark splatters surrounding him, staining the bed, her body and his own hands. bile rose to his throat but he swallowed down the bitter taste quickly, stumbling back and dropping the dagger, the ringing of the metal crashing against the wooden floor resonating through his ears. tears pricked at his eyes as he gasped for air. the squelching of the blade as he sank it into her flesh would forever haunt him, echoing through the corridors of his scarred mind.

as he looked away from his bloodstained hands and at her body, he found her head slumped in his direction, lifeless eyes lit by the moon staring right at him. san whipped his body around; he couldn’t stand looking at her any longer. the regret crashed over him like a wave, leaving an icy trail of what-ifs. what if she had been awake? would he have still gone through with it? and yet, as he thought through all the possibilities, he couldn’t help but feel a slight weight lifted off his shoulder.

he made quick work of getting rude of the corpse. wrapping a sheet around her and carrying her out of the building. it was just past midnight, not a chance anyone would be awake. he ducked into an alley and rolled her out of the sheet, placing her in the shadows where she wouldn’t be found. even if she did, it would just look like some angry drunk had done it. those cases were often dismissed by the police. he returned to her apartment and changed the bedsheets.

when the news of her death got out, his family moved away so he could finish the last two months of high school away from the pitiful and prying eyes of his classmates. he hated the way they looked at him when he walked in the halls. he wanted to scream at them.

stop looking at me like that!

like i’m a fucking tragedy.

stop it.

stop fucking looking at me.

after all of those events. he was sure life would never return to his numb limbs. until he met jung wooyoung and kang yeosang in his first year of university. he had pushed them away at first, but upon finding out they had something in common, he accepted their friendship.

with their friendship came five others; kim hongjoong, park seonghwa, jeong yunho, song mingi, choi jongho. they proved him wrong, he could feel alive again. at least with them. it was a rather quick bond, considering themselves a little clan. but as much as he adored them, he knew he would never love some like he had loved sooyeon ever again.

until he was proven wrong yet again. from the moment he met you, he came to the conclusion that there was a reason that old saying—never say never—came to be. don’t get him wrong, it wasn’t love at first sight. but he felt something, a warmth in his heart that he hadn’t felt in years.

he wanted you for his own safekeeping. he wanted your hair to slip through his fingers. he wanted that voice of yours to whisper in his ear, under the bluish moon. he wanted you to rip out his heart and carry it with you in a little box under lock and key.

and as he looked at you now, sitting on the couch with wooyoung and yunho as you laughed and squealed as you played some game with them on the tv, he wondered. he wondered if you’d hold his tainted fingers and kiss his lips. he wondered if you’d love him and his scars and his sickening skin. if you’d love his weak heart and guilty soul. would you love a monster?

when you left, he felt his insides light on fire as you pressed a fluttering kiss to his cheek when you passed him in the kitchen, when no one was looking. since that night in your bedroom, he knew he was doomed.

seonghwa joined him in the kitchen to wash the dishes. san but his bottom lip, trying to desperately swallow down a question that lingered on his mind for weeks.

“you want to say something,” seonghwa spoke over his shoulder, a smile evident in his voice, “say it, sannie.”

“do you…” he sighed and leaned against the counter. “will we ever tell her?”

god, he wanted to know how you’d react. would you embrace them and tell them it’s okay? he wanted to be loved by you so badly his hands trembled.

the question made seonghwa pause, glancing at him and turning off the sink. he took his time drying his hands, eyes turned to the ground. he sighed, walking over to san and placing an affectionate hand on his shoulder, giving it a light squeeze.

“she’s special, and i think she’ll come to know about us. but we can’t risk rushing anything. all in due time, san, all in due time.”

with one more squeeze, he dropped his hand and left the kitchen.

[ lilo’s notes ] i apologise for what i have written, though i do hope you all enjoyed it. i also apologise for the long wait, but i really wanted to write something of high quality for my dear readers!! happy new year, please take care of yourselves well <;33

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[verysium]

『01』 到着: arrival

ft. rin itoshi, sae itoshi

summary: the forces of nature abide by a single law: all cataclysms are creators of their own collapse. in the wake of such destruction, rin tumbles his way down to earth, and along the staircase of heaven, a new star is born. cw: mild swearing, childhood nostalgia and growing pains, rin being embarrassing, social anxiety, sae being somewhat parental, sibling dynamics, kamakura and japanese culture, spanish lessons, very dense prose (cus i suck ass at dialogue), star analogies, orange peels and other fruit metaphors, fluff but bittersweet.

word count: 6.4k

series masterlist || next

The first word Rin learns is star.

It is spoon-fed to him in glittering globules of milk fat, dense and pooling around the gums. Stars are what he senses when rough hands slip around his torso, stuffing the nib of a plastic bottle into his mouth. He is only a week old and can't see yet, but he already knows the set of eyes he is staring into. There are tiny pinpoints of blue-green light, reflective and shiny, a mirror to his own.

The world is blurry but somehow Rin finds his own image. His newborn legs are scrunched inside a wad of cotton blankets, poised and ready to strike. Rin doesn't like being confined, but the four walls of the hospital room offer him no reprieve. He cries and bawls and screams to go back. Only the silence answers.

Rin hates this place. The world out here is a different state of mind: too bright, too loud, too much. Anything and everything has been etched into a single frame, time scorched into untouched skin. It is to the point his senses cannot handle any more.

Every morning the shadows of nurses gorge themselves on daylight, waistlines growing by the minute as they enlarge into his field of vision. They pry at the wires of his crib, brushing off invisible dust as they try so hard to make his heartbeat sync with their incessantly beating machines. His body refuses to obey. They should've known the moment he was born that he'd always be one step behind.

Rin wants to screech his head off again. This time he babbles that the milk tastes like car grease, that he'd rather die free than live in pain, but a firm hand stays the bottle between his lips, insisting on its delicacy. Rin blanches. He isn't hungry. He tries to pull away. But his mother's voice cuts through the silence, a warning.

"Sae-chan, be careful with your brother."

The two-year-old grunts, lips twisted in annoyance as he tries the balancing act of feeding a newborn with one arm. His gaze is ancient, too piercing for a child. Rin's fingers crawl up Sae's face, clumsy and blind as they grope for his nose bridge. There are stars in his older brother's eyes, ones Rin cannot reach no matter how hard he tries.

Rin ends up spilling milk on himself, crying as he drools white rivulets down his chin. If Sae could swear, he most definitely would’ve called Rin an ungrateful little shit. But Rin knows it is an honor to be born where he was. He is a legacy to someone else’s dream, both a spare and a second chance at living. He butters himself up in their nasal tongues, machinating his lips in tandem. 

When his brother offers him another drink, his mouth is already open.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

It turns out life outside the womb is actually far greater than it was inside. Rin learns that real people walk and talk and grow up to find something called a purpose. He doesn't understand why the adults deem it complicated though. How could something so simple take years to discover? After all, his brother has already figured out his purpose, so why couldn't he?

"Rin-chan, you must find something to do with your life," his grandmother mentions over dinner, smoothing her weathered hands down the locks of his hair. The family is gathered around the table for tea, sitting like a portrait on the zabuton. Rin tries his best to emulate, his three-year-old spine drawn taut with practiced humility.

"Your brother has already paved the way. You can do the same, can’t you Rin-chan?"

Of course he can. Rin's heard these words a thousand times before. Sae isn't called the family's star collector for nothing. His nii-chan has already amassed tens of thousands of these five-pointed shapes, a few of which sit in a glass trophy case Rin isn't allowed to touch. He’s seen this all play out before.

A fortune teller once read their futures, thumbing her way along his brother’s palms as she spilled the very same oracles. Rin still remembers that day clearly: a morning visit to the shrine, the image scattered like water. The torii unfolded like a vermillion tongue, moseying its way down Komachi Street. He had been dressed in his little navy blue hakama, toes tucked politely into his tabi, his round eyes reflecting the world like a fisheye lens. There was much to observe from the hustle and bustle of life. Peculiar squiggly lines danced along the signage of shops. Candied lacquerware displayed themselves behind glass windows. Rin even stopped to point out the goldfish hanging in their crystal bags, giggling when the force of nearby windchimes sent each fish for a tumble. One soba stop and two taiyaki ice creams later, his small feet had grown tired from the hours of excursion, and his mother carried him on her back for the latter half of the trip home. 

It was then that he spotted her. 

An old lady sat in a booth by the wayside, framed by colorful curtains. His father had told him that she could foresee the future with the mere touch of her hand. Sae had gone first, holding out his palm with assured poise, as if he already knew the outcome. Rin wasn’t surprised when he heard the verdict. The old lady claimed Sae was destined to become the world’s greatest star, to bring glory to the nation of the sun. Rin didn’t doubt it if this was true at the time. His brother’s existence was proof enough. Sae’s certainty was a lesson Rin learned before object permanence, before any preconventional stage of development. Nii-chan is always one way and not the other. He is on track to do something important, and nothing can sway him from it. 

That was the first truth Rin learned of this world.

Even now at the family dinner, he doesn't even need to look to know that his brother is sitting with near perfect posture, the precision of still life running through his veins. Sae is an adult before he is a child, a handcrafted figurehead for the Itoshi name. Rin lifts his chin a little higher, his toddler hands raised in firm conviction.

“I’ll follow Nii-chan! Follow him to the end of the world!”

His grandmother nods, seemingly satisfied with the answer. Rin doesn't say anything else, quiet for the rest of the night. He doesn't understand the words she exchanges with his parents, nor does he try to. Adult talk still isn't his strong suit, especially not when it concerns the future. But his mother's eyes shine wet and proud, and his father chuckles more than usual. Rin decides his purpose right then and there.

He wants to be a star too.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

The day after starting kindergarten, Rin shows off his first masterpiece, cradling two sheets of rice paper as he runs up to the front door. By the time the fusuma slides open, he has already uncrumpled his work, dramatically revealing a bold shock of color. It appeared to be some sort of assemblage, painstakingly inked in blue crayon and pieced together with painter's tape.

"That's a pentagon, Rin."

"No, it’s a star! See? 1…2…3…4…5 points! Star!"

Sae isn't amused. Rin does not know why. His brother’s eyes are hardened slats of light, the still water of an abandoned lake. There are no mouths to swallow the light, no twinkling ripples at the surface, not even the gasps of glimmering excitement. There is only the mirrored slate of the sky: one shade of blue bleeding into the next. Rin feels his stomach plummet into its depths. This isn’t the soft look of pride he wanted to see. Not in the slightest. 

At first he thinks about crying, his bottom lip already curled with the onslaught of a pathetic sob. But spite unfurls in his lungs, so instead he turns his nose up with huff, trying to seem unaffected. He would be very proud of his star. And it most certainly was not called a pentagon or whatever stupid name Sae learned in his stupid math class. But apparently his older brother always had something else to say.

"Just come here and erase it. I'll show you how to make a proper star."

"But I don't want to! It's my star. It's perfect!"

Rin can hardly utter another word before Sae's glare nearly freezes the living daylights out of him. Nii-chan is scary, especially when angry. He doesn't even have a choice when he sits down at the chabudai, pouting in reluctance. Sae works out his magic on paper, crafting ley lines within the grain of paper. Rin does his best to follow, licking his lips as he guides his crayon through the dotted lines. It gets increasingly difficult though when Sae's hand echoes warmly around his own, gentle but firm in its direction. Rin tries to avoid his brother's eyes, but Sae's kindness is as disarming as his gaze. Had Nii-chan always had that crease between his eyebrows? The slight upturn of his lips when he bit his tongue in concentration?

Rin tries to trace the lines, but he ends up tracing Sae's face instead. His focus isn't even on the paper when he scribbles out a mess of incomplete pentagons, some geometric concatenation he cannot translate into real-time. Sae would have pinched his cheek, scolding him in disappointment.

Sae never did.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

The next time Rin traces a pentagon, it is on the surface of a black-and-white ball, shot like a meteorite through a football goal. His brother becomes a comet, light on his feet as he thunders down the field, weaving seamlessly between defenders. Rin can only stand on the sidelines, drowned out in his second-hand hoodie, face smushed up against the fence as he tries to get a good view. The team's been at it for hours, and Rin's pretty sure he now has the diamond imprint of chain links burnt into his cheeks.

"Somebody stop him!"

"Get after him!"

"Mark Sae Itoshi!"

There will always be someone up to the challenge of his brother's prowess, but no one ever comes close to toppling him. Rin doesn't think Sae would ever miss a single step, not when he's so far ahead. His brother is strong and calculated, absolutely unwavering in his ascent to the top. The only way Sae Itoshi could ever fall is if he buckled under his own weight, caving into himself.

Rin's eyes follow the reporters as they trail after Sae, and his nose wrinkles in disgust. They were no better than a pack of bloodhounds, desperate for a small taste of his brother's victory. How dare they? His Nii-chan outshined everyone at everything. Rin wasn't the smartest boy, but even he knew that a star could never be caught. They didn't even belong on Earth in the first place.

"Let's go, Rin."

Rin doesn't complain when his brother calls him to return home, oblivious to the media's chagrin. Like Sae, Rin is utterly indifferent to their plight, side-stepping one of the reporters who dry-heaves on his shoes in exhaustion. It was definitely their fault for failing to outrun both an eight-year-old child and his kid brother, let alone try to feast on their glittering remains. If they couldn't catch a star, they ought to eat the dust left behind. After all, that was how the world worked according to Nii-chan.

Only the best could succeed. All the rest would implode with the universe.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

It is the summer before his tenth birthday when Rin takes back every single one of those words. He is that reporter now, completely humiliated and exhausted as he collapses on the sidelines. The afternoon workout had just entirely rearranged his guts, so much so that he's foaming at the mouth, the remnants of his hasty breakfast speckled all over his cleats.

Out of every star in existence, the sun has to be the worst one. A pool of sweat trickles down his back, melting into a sticky discomfort along his nape. It’s too far up his jersey for him to do anything about, and he might just die from the sweltering heat.

Perhaps it was true that sports stars had to suffer in order to burn bright, but Rin would never wish this fate upon anybody. Sae is shouting at him from somewhere outside his periphery, insisting that the sun has never stopped revolving, that Rin has to never stop practicing if he ever plans on keeping up. But at this point, he could care less about a goddamn metaphor, let alone rub two brain cells together to interpret it.

"That shot was shoddy, Rin. Redo it."

"But it's so hot, I can't—”

"It's not hot. It's lukewarm. Redo it."

Sometimes Rin regrets ever thrusting himself into the orbit of his brother’s football dream. Playing on the world stage sounded so much easier in his head back then, but now it might as well have been an impossible fantasy. He most definitely wasn’t cut out for this line of work because his legs feel like shit, his arms feel like shit, and his whole body can’t even breathe under the thick, grimy layer of sweat. Blinking his eyes against the burning salt, Rin curses to himself. He should’ve taken that energy drink from earlier. At least the caffeine would have kept him sane. Sae snaps Rin out of his reverie, his thin voice seeping into Rin’s bones. There’s something softer in his tone this time.

“Suck it up and redo it. I’ll buy you ice cream after practice.”

There is silence. Rin stands back up, wiping his forehead as he stares his brother dead in the eye. The field has never been larger, and the goal has never been closer. And just like that, he is off, powering down the turf.

Under the supermassive gravity of his brother's ambitions, Rin becomes a supernova, his body charged with enough energy to last through entire lifetimes.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

In the oppressive sunlight, Sae's cold stare becomes a welcome sight. Augusts in Kamakura are the products of heat waves, the sun so scorching Rin can see a visible mirage above the asphalt. The heat spares no one, and Rin feels his cargo pants stick to the crease of his thighs. Even Sae’s bangs are plastered to his forehead, unusually slick behind the ears. They had just met Sae’s agent that morning, taking the Yokosuka line back from Tokyo. Sae had even left early, planning to evade the weekend’s tourists. But neither of them ever anticipated the harshness of the afternoon heat. After nearly an hour of searching, their only refuge was this 7-Eleven, some tiny microcosm practically stowed away between two utility poles.

The oba-chan at the konbini greets them with a seasoned smile, chirping with polite bubbliness as she rings up Sae’s Garigari-kun popsicles, a total of 70 yen for the original soda flavor. Rin waits demurely in a corner, eyes drawn to his brother’s silhouette. Some oji-san sits himself down nearby, fanning himself with a newspaper as he twirls a toothpick between his gums.

“Trying to avoid the heat, eh? You and your brother come here often?”

The man looks middle-aged, crowned with an artificial toupée and a cracked tooth. His eyes dart between Rin and Sae, a knowing smile plastered on his lips. 

“Nii-chan and I just found this place. We don’t come here a lot.”

“Ah. Is that so? You seem awfully young to be shopping without parents. What’s your name?”

Rin doesn’t want to answer. He hates this man already, even more so his strangeness. There’s a disarming nature to his beady eyes, like he knows something Rin doesn’t. Rin looks down at the floor, his sneakers toeing a shy line across the linoleum tiles. 

“R-rin.”

“Rin-kun, eh? You must look up to your Nii-chan a lot, huh? Your gaze hasn’t left him since.”

Rin feels his throat close up, cheeks flushing with heat of embarrassment. On second thought, he hates everything about this oji-san now, even down to his obnoxious friendliness. The old man winks, bending down in a conspiratorial whisper. Rin wrinkles his nose at the stale smell of beer, feeling embarrassed for even bothering to converse. This man was clearly drunk out of his mind, and Rin secretly hopes no one else is watching him. But unfortunately, the whispers are loud enough to travel across the entire convenience store, right into Sae’s ears.

“Oh-ho? Are you blushing?”

Rin vehemently shakes his head.

“Don’t worry, Rin-kun. Your secret is safe for me. You must be your brother’s little shadow, right?” The man pumps his fist out, his voice distorted in a childish imitation. “Nii-chan's number one supporter!”

Rin’s hands ball into fists at the oji-san’s teasing, his ears red to their tips. Sae is looking at him from over the cash register now, a confused look etched onto his face. Rin clenches his teeth in annoyance. Stripped bare of all defenses, he is now analyzed for what he is. Was his admiration that obvious? Did Sae know about his feelings? He didn’t want to be taken for some stupid, awestruck fool. The old man’s question is barely answered before Rin makes a break for it, the bell on the door ringing with his sudden departure.

The road outside swirls in holographic patterns, a dizzying blend of feet and socks and concrete. Rin has to take a moment to steady himself before Sae comes up behind him, armed with a plastic bag of wrappers and blue ice between his teeth. Rin licks his popsicle with caution, burning away his shame as his tongue freeze dries itself to the candied surface. Sae crunches his ice cream in two bites, an amused lilt to his voice.

“What was that back there?”

“N-nothing! I didn’t know him.”

“You’re too shy to talk to strangers?”

“N-no…H-he was just talking to himself.”

Sae gives Rin a weird look, but he doesn’t question further. Instead, his hand reaches down to slap Rin on the back of the head, ruffling the hair there until it somehow resembles a bird’s nest.

“Next time someone asks you something, just answer. Stop acting like a damn coward.”

Rin’s entire face burns with humiliation at that comment. He wishes the ground could just open up and swallow him whole. The last thing he wants to be is the laughingstock of his brother’s dry humor, but the fact that Sae rarely even cracks a joke makes this entire situation much worse. Instead of replying, Rin follows what he does best and rapidly changes the subject. His voice trembles as he stares at his popsicle handle, noting the hiragana carved into plywood. Atari.

“Ah, look. I won a prize.”

Sae’s eyes widen momentarily, pausing in his step as he looks down to check his own stick. Less than a minute later, he grimaces, tossing it away.

“Tch, don’t waste your luck on something so meaningless.”

Rin knows what Sae means. Only becoming the best matters, and with the sparse amount of luck to go around, he might as well spend it on a real victory. The Itoshis can’t afford loss, not that they’d ever know what it was. A foreign emotion flickers through Sae’s eyes, something akin to uncertainty. Rin brushes it off as a trick of the light.

The trek back home is tinged with a golden hue, the sun milder as it cascades rays down both their faces. Sae's appearance has always been unsettling, even in the mellow glow of summer. Rin recalls his mother used to say that Sae inherited all the sharpness in the family. His mother was definitely right. Sae’s nose is too straight, the slant of his brows too unnatural. If Rin took a ruler to his face, every measurement would come back scientifically accurate. Nothing about Sae is soft. Nothing about him should be comforting. But when his brother looks at him, Rin feels someone’s breath brush across his forehead, the skin still warm from the imprint of their lips.

He grips Sae’s hand tighter, knuckles looped between calloused digits. They tread silently, all thoughts of victory forgotten, the coastal breeze whispering their names into air. Rin can’t take his eyes off his brother, and, despite his lack of situational awareness, Sae notices it too.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing… It’s just… Back at the store… If it were you, you’d never be afraid to speak up, right?”

“Of course. There’s nothing that I fear.”

Sae’s tone is stiff when he says this, his face tilted towards the horizon. Rin almost misses the slight waver in his voice. His brother does everything to keep his word. At least that much holds true. Rin silently wishes that too would never change.

Sae always looks forward, always stares towards the skyline, always plans for the future. Not once has Rin seen his older brother look fully back at him, let alone pivot toward the direction he once came from. One side of Sae’s face is always hidden, not too dissimilar to the far side of the moon. His Nii-chan might as well be some celestial body, cast under the penumbra of his own eclipse. No one could ever know him in his entirety.

Sae’s eyes must be lonely, Rin ponders. They’re trapped on opposite ends of his face, two stars that could align but never cross. He swears to always remember the constellations in his brother’s eyes.

He'd follow them wherever they took him.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Sae has his eyes set on Spain: a land of gold, guts, and glory. The streets are somehow more burnt than its people, and the nation itself flickers with twisting tongues. It is also the only place where Rin cannot follow, and he is inconsolable.

Sae hadn’t even given a week’s notice before he broke the news on a Sunday, stating his plans factually over a family dinner. Rin nearly spit out his ochazuke right then and there, choking pitifully on his tea-steeped rice grains. Who in their right mind would willingly travel to a country that sees the sun for nearly three thousand hours a year? Perhaps Sae was immune to all natural phenomena, but Rin would rather die than train in that hellish heat. And most importantly, what was with the sudden announcement? Did his brother not even care about the people he was leaving behind?

He thought about it hard during dinner and even harder when Sae blow-dried his hair that night. They had both stepped out from the tub at the same time, arguing after their shared bath. Rin complained his brother turned the water temperature up too high every time, and Sae pointed out he was dripping water everywhere, the suds still stuck deep in his scalp. Their fingers had been at each other’s hair, clawing and tugging until their mother finally intervened, wrapping Rin up in the family towel as she knelt down to dry him. Rin stood there, an angry flush on his cheeks and his features pulled into a petulant sulk as he observed Sae clean himself with elegant precision, a quiet look on his face. Life at ten and a half was simply unfair. Rin couldn’t wait until he was his brother’s age. Apparently being a teenager meant Nii-chan could have his own towel, a custom gift embroidered with seagulls on the hem. Nii-chan could dry himself without any help from others, no longer needing his mother’s guidance. He could even leave the house if he truly wanted, and no one would come after him. Rin’s scowl deepens, glowering at Sae as his mother forces his little arms up, tugging the pyjamas over his head. In another life, he would’ve admitted that he was envious of Sae’s independence, the sheer effortless grace with which he carried himself. But Rin was too prideful to do that. A confession of his own failures was equivalent to suicide in his book.

The best he can do is bite his tongue, forcing back the angry vitriol that would have otherwise spilled from his lips. His brother stands on a stool behind him, blow-dryer in hand as he ruffles through Rin’s tresses, the nozzle spewing warm air across his forehead. Sae’s fingers are rough and heavy, riddled with calluses underneath, likely from the months of weightlifting and grip training. But as solid as they are, they are also nimble, delicate as bird wings as they gently comb through strands of hair. The hot air massages around his temples, and Rin feels the tender brush of something against his nape. He cannot tell if it was the blow-dryer or the warmth of Sae’s body behind him. 

In the end, he decides he does not want to know.

By now, the water droplets have cleared from his skin, his locks rusted from a dark olive to a coarse black. Sae turns the blow-dryer to his own head, tousling his hair as he shakes out the excess moisture. Rin watches silently through the mirror, squeezing a fine line of mint paste down the center of his toothbrush. He chews on the plastic bristles as he contemplates, moving his arm back and forth in a repetitive scrubbing motion. Sae had inherited their mother’s hair and their father’s countenance, his visage a perfect combination of both genetic features. His obaa-san once remarked that the kami had accidentally spilled wine on Sae’s birthday, anointing his head in a rich maroon. In Japan, red is the color of all things joyous, a shade Rin identifies with the uchikake at weddings and the rope decorations his parents pin onto doors for good luck. But to be associated with joy, Rin finds that fact highly ironic. He has never seen Sae express any semblance of happiness before, except maybe the occasional grimace he tries to pass off as a smile. 

Still, the connotation of their contrasting hair colors does little to ease the ache in his tiny chest. If Sae is the blood of an early sunrise, then Rin is the death before night. Black is not a marriage but a funeral, the makings of an era filled with fear, violence, and misfortune. In a way, Rin is the end to Sae’s beginning, both the antithesis and the complement.

A soft touch against his chin interrupts his thoughts, and Rin looks up just in time to see Sae retracting his hand, wiping the excess toothpaste off Rin’s chin. And in that moment, he wants to scream. How dare Sae try to leave him? To act like everything was alright. He said the end was another beginning when really it was just the end. There wasn’t any coming back from it. Sae would disappear off to Spain, and he would never come back. At least the version of Sae he was seeing now. 

In the dim lights, Rin’s hair is darker than ever, the inky tendrils plastered around his ears like a vacuum devoid of light. He brings a death omen, a curse wherever he goes. In between the liminal space of bathroom mirror and tile, he divorces memory from mind, separating the flesh until it can last no longer. He’ll kill this memory of his brother if he has to, suffocating it in the most gruesome of ways. He doesn’t want to admit this might be the last time he’ll ever see Sae. 

And most importantly, he doesn’t want to admit that he just might miss him.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Rin resolved to give Sae the silent treatment after that night, avoiding him throughout the house and acting like he was repelled by some nameless force. But his plans sadly never seem to work. The more he turns away, the more he is reeled back in, as if cast on some invisible fishing line. Now he’s here in Sae's bedroom, forty-eight hours before D-day, trying to mouth out words that aren't his own. 

His brother has somehow convinced him to adopt a new language, something about how he needs to be bilingual to play in different countries. Rin didn’t understand most of it before he complied, letting himself be dragged onto his brother’s bedspread. His English flashcards sit opposite to Sae’s Spanish ones as he crosses his legs, mouthing the shapes on his brother’s lips.

Manzana. Banana. Naranja.

Translation: I am undoing everything that has ever made me whole. 

In the middle of their lesson, Sae hands his brother said fruit, as if to accentuate his point. He peels the orange in a perfect spiral, thumb under the calyx as the spongy white fiber separates from ochre flesh, the pulp inlaid like jewels beneath skin. He cracks the segments hexagonally and tosses Rin the larger half.

“Naranja.”

“Naranja.” Rin repeats, curling his tongue around the foreign vowels. He catches the fruit with ease, shoving the flesh into his mouth until juice pools between teeth and his mouth is bursting with flavor. The language trickles down his throat, settling into the hollow of his larynx.

Naranja.

He looks down at his own orange, a half-imitation at best. His fingers are still stuck inside the skin, the liquid squirting into his right eye. It is sour, acrid even. The flesh has gone bad, wrinkled like soft cherries. A tangerine blooms saffron yellow beneath his nails, zest building up under the cuticle. He makes a mental note to wash his hands later.

Mi media naranja.

Unlearning, Rin decides, is a very difficult process. It makes him feel like a child again, an estrangement from his old self. Sometimes two halves aren’t enough to make him whole, and other times it is a section too much. There are many things in this world that elude his grasp. One day perhaps he will know them all. In another life, he would have been able to tell the difference between an apple and an orange, to draw the line between his half and Sae’s half. But for now, he is still discovering, still plucking and choosing, still floundering in a body he has come to hate. Rin picks up another flashcard, right next to the yellow one labeled starfruit, named estrella for each of its five points.

“What’s this one?”

“Desastre. Spanish for disaster.” 

"Dis…as…star?"

"It's disaster. You have to enunciate the r."

"Dis…as…ster? What the hell even is that? Another star?"

Sae deadpans, and Rin mentally braces himself for another harsh remark, probably a brutally honest insult about his own stupidity. But this conversation has long evolved past fruits and colors and my half and your half. His brother’s eyes soften with shadows, as if bruised by something far deeper. A contusion forms beneath the surface, purpled and pained. Rin’s mind fills with confusion when Sae suddenly stares out the curtains again, his gaze strangely wistful. The room is so quiet he almost misses Sae’s answer.

"Yeah...it's a star.”

Disaster is a bad star.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

The day before Sae leaves, Rin wishes on a bad star. He wakes up at an unlucky hour of dawn, slinking past a sleeping town as he goes to find his brother on the embankment near the sea. The streets bend around this corner of the peninsula, gaping like a mouth, lips pried apart at the seams. Located between a rock and a hard place, the coast of Koshigoe Beach oscillates between two types of constant turmoil, battling the erosion of natural forces from the east while facing the gentrification of construction in the west. During early mornings, the tide is sometimes low enough to expose the rocks up to the seawall, the desiccated seaweed forming fishing nets along its edge. Occasionally, the imprints of a stranger's footsteps leave behind small pockets of water, each one a home to an assorted array of abalone and oyster shells. Rin remembers the family vacations he spent here, the storm-cloaked skies. He had been so excited to go clamming after watching every episode of Chibi Maruko-Chan. In his red bucket hat and plastic shovel, he raced to the water’s edge, his little cheeks puffed out in exertion. He had anticipated sunny weather and clear skies, the glitter of rainbow sea glass, maybe even the golden sands he had seen in many of Sae’s travel brochures. But his first impression had been one of utter disappointment. 

The sand was a dull, drab grey: a single expanse of color that stretched on forever across the horizon. There were no clouds, only the stinging brittle of salt stuck inside his lungs and nestled between his toes. And to make matters worse, there weren’t even any clams in the first place, no sparkling bits of the golden treasure he had been so desperate to bring home. He felt his spirits dampen with ocean spray, his little feet coming to a sudden halt as he stared crestfallen at the waters.

Rin learned two major lessons that day. One, Maruko-chan was a big fat liar. And two, he should never believe anything that he sees on screen. Unfortunately, his folly cost him a hefty price: one tantrum on the car ride home and zero pretty seashells to add to his collection. Looking back on it now, Rin feels a strange sense of comfort in his disillusionment. In all four directions, his home is still the same greyish wash of color, unchanging as the sea and as unforgiving as its waters. At least that is something he can rely on. Nowadays, the constants in his life can be counted on a single hand, and the number of childhood remnants dwindles down to even fewer. 

Still, he can recall one memory clearer than the rest.

While Rin had been busy lamenting the lack of clams, Sae had tugged him by the back of his shirt, pulling him to the wayside as he stuck his fingers into the earth. Obviously, Rin was too caught up in his misery to notice, but his sniffles soon died down when he saw the faintest of bubbles lurk beneath the sandy surface. Sae taught him how to dig, how to plant feet into the ground, how to scavenge for survival. And Rin followed without question.

Soon, a cast of translucent crabs spilled forth from the pits, scuttling in massive red tides. Rin scooped some out with bare hands, sectioning them into segments: the ruby shells of a pomegranate, dividing and dividing again. He held a hermit up to the light, a look of gleeful amazement on his features. Was it their shells that determined their shape or the tender bodies inside them? Rin could never tell. All he knew was that these crabs were a different sort of treasure, ones that he cradled gently with bare hands and shielded from the foraging gulls. They were creatures meant to be loved.

The waves now break across concrete fortifications, crashing upon cubic breakwaters. By the time Rin reaches the paved promenade near the shores, Sae is already there, feet drowned in the freezing Pacific, the shirasu swimming between his toes. He doesn’t even turn when the sand crunches with footsteps, and Rin silently curses his brother’s superior senses. 

“I thought I told you not to come, Rin.”

“I know....But I still wanted to.”

In Rin’s mind, it doesn’t matter if Sae didn’t want him to be there. It doesn’t matter that he should’ve never come. He’d always keep chasing this dream if it meant he could stay. In fact, any ill omen would be better than this sinking pit in his stomach, this feeling that something was about to change forever.

The twinkles of light in the sky ripple across the sea, and Rin can’t help but see the view reflected in his brother’s visage. Sae’s eyes are like the ports of Sagami Bay, hardened with the carapace of cold comfort. Absence, Rin believes, would be his brother’s ultimate paradox. Sae could do everything and nothing all at once, and he would still be both the empty hole and the overflowing home. If eyes could be waves and faces could be stars, Sae would be the coldest, but he would also burn the brightest. Right now Rin just wants some of that warmth.

“So...you’re really leaving?”

“Yeah. I’m going ahead of you now. You better catch up.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll do my best to become scouted like you.”

“Right. And then onto the world. The two of us will become the best there is.”

A silence hangs between them, loose as a thread. The wind whistles across the boardwalk, stirring up small spirals of volcanic sand. Sae notices Rin’s contemplative expression, following his gaze until he finds the moon still in the sky, lit up by the fading light of Polaris. Rin prays silently, knees tucked into his chest as he clasps his hands tightly together. His soft whispers are frequently interspersed by distant murmurs of the sea.

Please let Nii-chan be safe. Please don’t let him forget me.

The sunrise is about to start, one more hour until the day fully begins. Sae has to put an end to this, or else he'll never leave.

“Stop praying, Rin. They’re just stars. They'll die before your wish can come true.”

Rin peeks an eye open, unfurling from his tucked position. He looks to the stars then back at Sae, a familiar prickling in his eyes. Sae doesn’t even need to check to know that he’s crying.

“I just...” Rin’s voice wavers, “I think I’lll miss you, Nii-chan. At least send a message home?”

“Maybe. When I have the time.”

“Oh...okay.” Rin looks down awkwardly, staring at his feet before perking up again, “Do you think our dream can be achieved in a few years? I’ll come visit you in Spain! Maybe we’ll even play for Royale together.”

“You better. Don’t slack off just because I’m not here.”

“I know. I won’t.”

Rin had never been particularly good at farewells, let alone his first one. His voice is watery now, as if liquid and unable to be contained.

“Hey...Sae?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you really think we’ll make it big?”

There’s a pause in the conversation, the length of it too long for Sae’s liking. For once, certainty does not come to him as easily. But Rin already knows there is a fundamental difference to the depths of his brother’s greed. Sae’s eyes harden into flints, his voice crashing across the sandy beaches, unrelenting in its harshness but still shapelessly soft.

“We have to.”

Rin doesn’t have anything to say to that. Neither of them do. If killing himself meant living forever, then Sae Itoshi would have died a long time ago. 

He would have died and become a star.

© verysium 2023 / please do not translate, repost, or plagiarize any of my works

[junkissed]

gentle

member | jun x reader genre | fluff, sooo much fluff, est. relationship, suggestive at one part so 18+ mndi word count | 0.9k words synopsis | jun's way of loving you is gentle. warnings | descriptions of female anatomy (only at the nsfw part and it's not very detailed), brief mentions of sex, this is soooo gross and domestic and sweet and that in itself is a warning notes | this is a super informal drabble & more of my weird romantic sappy prose bc i literally cannot be normal about him ever. i hope this makes somebody cry or like throw their phone against a wall in agony or something bc that is how jun makes me feel! pls feel free to scroll past if poetry-style stuff isn't your thing. or not. idk you're the reader i just write whatever the hell i want and right now i want to give jun a big fat sloppy smooch on his gorgeous forehead

jun loves gently. he loves by making sure your coffee or tea is ready every morning before you wake up. he loves by organizing your shoes at the door so you don't trip on them when you walk by. he loves by holding the sharp edge of a table when you walk by so it doesn't hurt you.

his kind of love is when he runs his hands along your body, along every part of you and making sure not a single inch goes without feeling how much he adores you. his love will always be there, cradling you against his chest and letting you hold him as tightly as you need. his love is clingy, because he wants to make sure you know he loves you every single second of every single day.

he loves gently by kissing your forehead while you sleep, kissing your cheeks when he makes you flush with his flirting, kissing your neck while he makes love to you, kissing your back while he's showering together with you, kissing each one of your fingers when you hold his hand, kissing the tip of your nose because he loves the way it always makes you giggle. he loves by kissing you every time like it's the first time, like he's finally won the honor of being called yours and he gets to celebrate it with a kiss to your lips.

he loves intimately, with kisses all over your boobs, holding them in his hands and pushing his lips against your soft skin and grinning with a lust that temporarily conceals his overwhelming love for you, but never overshadows it. he loves with kisses between your legs, ones that make you shiver and arch with pleasure and push his head away in desperate attempts to make it stop, though you want nothing more than for him to keep going. the same lips he uses to kiss your forehead and your cheeks and your neck and everywhere else; the same gentle, messy lips he uses to eat you out with whenever he begs you to sit on his face.

he loves gently in the way he likes to hold your hands during sex, the way he likes positions that face each other so he can look into your eyes and see how much love is contained inside them while he's inside you. he loves by switching positions without you having to ask, because he can tell you're getting tired in this position but he can tell that you're trying to hold on for him; he doesn't want you to. he wants everything to always be comfortable for you, satisfying for you, pleasurable for you, perfect for you. everything he does is always for you.

even when he's loving you roughly, you can always tell he loves you gently. a harsh slap to your ass, always with a warm palm caressing your stinging skin. a hand wrapped around your throat, always with fingers that never tighten past the point of discomfort. a grip on your hips so tight that it brings tears to your eyes, always with a careful hand to wipe at your cheeks. a vulgar name called out meant to degrade, always with a soft voice whispering in your ear how beautiful and perfect you are.

his gentle love is always nearby, even when it's not the focus. sometimes it lingers in the background, waiting quietly for the chance to wrap its arms around you and keep you safe when you need it. like a warm blanket on a cold night, or a cool fan on a hot night, always making everything just right, no matter the conditions. jun's love is like a warm bowl of soup when you're sick, never fully realizing how much you need it until you do, a spoonful cooled off to the perfect temperature so you don't burn your tongue, hand-fed by gentle hands that want to see you well again.

his love can be rambunctious, when he gets so excited he can't physically contain all his happiness and it pours out into the atmosphere around him. but even then, his love is still gentle, wrapping you up in his excitement right along with him.

his love can be childlike, innocent in the way he holds your hand and drags you along to show you something he found. his love is gentle in the way he stops to meow at every cat he sees, like they're long lost friends he hasn't seen in years and he's telling them that they need to catch up sometime over coffee and catnip.

his love is there in every big, toothy smile, every scrunch of his nose, and every fit of hysterical giggles.

his love is soft like the cover of an old book, worn thin from being used so much by loving pairs of hands. his love is like a book passed down throughout the decades, one that you were always told to handle delicately— you have to love him gently, too.

he loves you until the word love itself is worn out, lost its meaning from being repeated hundreds of thousands of millions of times, and even then it's still not enough to express everything he feels. he loves you in every language, in the ones he understands and the ones he doesn't, because even an infinite amount of words couldn't come close to describing his love. but, if you had to choose only one, you'd start with this:

his love is gentle.

i hope you enjoyed this!! if you did, consider reblogging or leaving a comment or an ask :) it shows me this is something people want to see more of, and knowing people like this makes me want to write more of it! thanks for reading!!

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[sgiandubh]

Security or minder?

Of course, the Disgruntled Tumblrettes across the street had to pitch in and croak. Extensive report of my post - oh, dear, must I hit a nerve.

For the idiot who accused me of not posting a reel I have abundantly linked to, here it is. Still not very bright, ever since I called her out for having no knowledge of business world and no street smarts:

Taken from Shelby Thimons' TikTok account. I never hid anything and marathon pics, whatever that was, well.. it was waaay before I stepped in here.

I am also told Meokeob, the woman who singlehandedly fabricated an entire Wikipedia evidence history about S allegedly being gay, thinks my 'prose is reminiscent of Puffy'. This is just about the credibility that person should have in the real world and life, I think. Zero. For the record, here is my debunk - we now know it was her, all along, she should stop the ugly inanity right now: https://www.tumblr.com/sgiandubh/729380092203122688/autopsy-of-a-gay-lie-the-wikipedia-trail

Back to the minder/security situation. Look, in all honesty, I can't be sure. But I took some intriguing screencaps:

He does have an earpiece he is not wearing and something that looks like a badge attached lower than the usual attire.

For comparison purposes, this is how a security team member looked like, last year, in Minneapolis. Not the same country and not the same continent, but the guy made world headlines for being fired: he sang along with the crowd and asked a fan to take a pic of him in attendance, neglecting his job:

[Source: https://en.as.com/videos/security-guard-at-taylor-swift-concert-fired-for-asking-fan-to-take-photos-v/, August 24th 2023]

Many posted about Steve the minder from the Australian OL tour, this spring. This is Steve, back in March, on stage with S in Sydney, courtesy of SHW (https://www.tumblr.com/samheughanswife/744265708912951296/the-question-is-missed-but-its-about-claire-and):

Same attire. Same person? I think so, but I stand corrected, as always. After all, the participation of the cast was orchestrated by *** all along, no doubt about it.

Anyhow, pursed lips are also an old reflex:

[EIFF Festival, Edinburgh 2015, first public appearance of You Know Who]

Oh and uhm, I have got more. But right now, exit polls in ten minutes in my country, excuse me for hyperventilating and being an involved citizen, right?

[Later edit]: Here is a close-up (thank you, you know who you are 😘. You be the judge, but the resemblance is eerie. Nose, cheeks, moustache, forehead. Very strange:]

[bradshawsbitch]

‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎↠ 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐞𝐧 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 - ⅸ ↞

⁘ bradley bradshaw, the notoriously ill mannered head chef at the small franchise pub down the street, is quite content with his fast paced job. no commitments or obligations outside of his kingdom of sharp knives, pots, pans, prep work and a shot of jäger after a double. that is until a new waitress is hired, and suddenly his strict and rigid rules of no obligations or commitments starts to waver. . .

› pairing; bradley bradshaw x f!reader

word count; ~ 3.2K

× chapter warnings; swearing, see general story warnings, mature content, mentions of food

disclaimer; first of all, thank you!! for being so understanding and amazing about this story. i am so overwhelmed with love for all of you who keep being excited about my surly chef, even after all this time. second of all, i am sorry for it having been an 'all this time' - your support means everything to me. thank you again ❤

this chapter was super hard for me to write, which is why it's a little shorter, and perhaps more of a filler and a thank you to my readers. please be aware that the prose may be a little rusty as i am slowly getting back into writing again ❤

tagging some people who i know have waited; @roosterforme @hangmanssunnies @mak-32 @laracrofted @pisupsala @cherrycola27 @gretagerwigsmuse @seresinsweetie @ryebecca @lewmagoo

otherwise you can follow @bradshawsbitch-library and turn on notifications ❤

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Soft little sighs, muffled by muted green sheets fill the room as rays of the morning sun turns harsher the higher it rises in the sky. Noon is approaching, unbeknownst to the two laying still in bed. A Monday, which for many means the start of a new week, gone is the restful weekend and labor is nigh. For the two forms in bed though, the pace of mere mortals were not applicable. A waitress and a chef could sleep in, for their holy day was indeed Monday. Most restaurants were closed, or very slow come Monday - which gave those weary souls a day to rest. 

Turning slowly, the woman burrow deeper into the sheets, a small smile tugging on the corners of her lips as she heard Bradley’s soft, sleepy grunt as his arms tightened around her naked midsection. He hasn’t awoken yet, and neither had you, not fully at least. Sleepy eyes were slow to open, blinking rapidly to adjust to the light that surrounds the two of you. 

Waking up next to Rooster’s warm form sent a pleasant shiver down your spine. Seeing the way his eyelashes flutter, the way his lips are ever so slightly parted - his cupid’s bow defined so prettily beneath that lovely facial hair of his… the way freckles dot along the bridge of his nose… tan skin so beautiful, ridges, freckles and spots that adorn his skin. Sleepily, you let your finger trace over those shapely shoulders, where, much like the stars the freckles dot all the more frequently. 

“Bambi…” Rooster grunts, voice raspy and breathless - the mere mention of your nickname makes those fluttery wings of butterflies flap helplessly within your chest. His hold on you tightens again, drawing you in towards his chest. One arm embraces your form soothingly, as the other gently tucks your head into his chest, a large thigh suddenly nudging its way in between yours to rest. This position he also adjusts, letting the hand that had rested in its embrace slide slowly down past your bottom, ghosting over your thigh before gripping just above your knee - drawing it up high on his thigh. 

A content sigh leaves his lips as his thumb draws soothing circles on the bare skin that’s still in his firm hold, pleased with how he’s molded you into his form. You fit quite nicely here, he reflects as you start to place small kisses against Bradley’s sternum - he’s warm from sleep, radiating calm and safety as he holds you near. 

“Getting enough air in there, sweets?” he rumbles after a few moments of your face buried in the dip between his pecs, lips ghosting over his sternum every now and then. Nodding, you let out a soft ‘mhm’ in reply as you trace your hands over the ridges of his hips and waist, gently letting yourself explore his adonis belt and lower abdomen. 

Bradley lets out the softest of noises, a choked moan that seems to catch in the back of his throat as his pubic hair tickles the back of your hand as you leave feather light touches closer and closer to where he needs you. His grip on you has tightened, and his nose and lips are pressed tight against your hair where he inhales deeply. His palm is flexing, tensing and kneading where his palm is spread on your thigh - he hesitates for only a short moment before he uses his strength to pull your leg further over his hip.

A small gasp and a pathetic whine slips past your lips as your lower body joins where your hand had been exploring just seconds ago. Drawing your hand back, you feverishly grasp at Bradley’s neck, shuffling to tilt your head back up to catch his lips with yours, your body fluid and ever moving against his large form. Pressing, pushing, pulling– the leg Rooster had pulled closer now draws him in to you, the whole length of your naked body pressed against his sturdy one. 

“Fuck, Bambi…” he groans as you grip the short hair at the nape of his neck before your lips chase his, you whine again as Rooster’s palm slides up to grip the flesh of your ass, kneading and grinding you against his hardening cock. 

“Bradley!” you gasp as you feel his warm, soft skin run along your sensitive clit. Another whimper leaves you, clinging on to his shoulders, drawing him in with all the strength your sore muscles can muster. You need to be closer, need to have him surrounding you in every sense. Bradley hums deep in his chest as his lips stray from yours to leave chaste kisses along your neck, his hot tongue laving over points he discovered you were responsive to yesterday. 

Bradley’s hand drifts from your waist, up to tease at your nipple, pinching, pulling gently before letting his palm envelop your flesh, kneading and drawing out soft little moans from you before he traces his fingers down your stomach, down to where you’re rutting against his upper thigh. 

“What’s my needy little baby want, hm?” his raspy morning voice reverberates in your ears, and as he speaks he lets the rough pad of his index finger press against your clit, slowly drawing languid circles in time with your desperate movements. 

“Need you…” you whine, frustrated that he thought now was a good time to tease you. His soft chuckle in response draws the least intimidating little growl out of you, and Bradley can only smile as he places a soft kiss to your lips 

“Relax,” he whispers “we’ve got all the time in the world, sweetheart,” as he says this, a single thick finger gently eases back and forth over your slick folds before pushing inside. Bradley slowly moves in and out of you, lips attached to the junction of your neck and shoulder, drawing small moans out of you as he works you open for him. 

If yesterday had been frantic and explosive, today Bradley was savoring you. He wanted to memorize every sound you made, every move of your body as it reacted to his touch, every mewl of his name falling from parted lips. As he worked three fingers into you, he could hear your breathing pick up slightly, your grip on his bicep tightening and loosening rapidly, and he couldn’t help the smirk that grew against your salty skin. 

“You gon’ cum for me, sweet little Bambs?” he muttered, and you could only nod as your moans turned high pitched, Rooster never slowing or altering his movements as your body shook against his own as you tipped over the edge on his fingers. Bradley moaned low at the sight of you. 

“Look like a fuckin’ angel cumming on my fingers…” he murmured “Fuck, darling, you make me so fuckin’ hard.” 

Pulling his fingers out of you, he used your slick to coat his cock, languidly stroking himself as you came down from your first high. Panting, you nudged your nose against his, lips connecting in a fleeting kiss before you felt the nudge of his swollen tip against your puffy entrance. “Please,” you whispered softly against his lips, fleetingly catching a glimpse of those amber eyes. They were so intense, but you couldn’t look away if your life depended on it. 

At that first gentle push, your breath stuttered against Bradley’s parted lips. His cock was slowly inching into you, and even if he’d made a point to carefully prepare you for him, that initial stretch felt otherworldly - had he been this big yesterday too? 

Grunting, Bradley’s eyes fluttered shut. Gripping his bicep, you inhaled sharply, pressing your forehead against his as he stilled. “You alright, baby?” he murmured, his hand moving to soothe up and down your back, making your chest flutter with emotion. 

“Yeah- just… were you this big last night?” you moaned, and Rooster couldn’t help the small laugh that left him, before he reached up to cup your cheek. Moving away a little, he let his adoring gaze roam over your face. The cute scrunch of your nose, the thin sheen of sweat making you glow, eyes alight with lust and… Bradley blinked, taking in the way your chest heaved, the way his body was molded against yours, your warmth and your trust - it made him dizzy. 

“More… please, Bradley,” your voice was soft, and you slowly moved closer to his chest, nuzzling your face into his neck where your lips flitted over the skin of his throat, along the long line that went across it, up to his jaw and back down to gently suckle at the skin near his collarbones. 

Letting his strong arms wrap around you, Bradley moved against you, one hand slowly ghosting over your skin to grip your thigh as his cock slid deeper and deeper into your core, finally bottoming out as he gently pushed at the small of your back to tilt your hips just right. Small little noises reverberated against his warm skin, and he felt your lips leave wet traces as you occupied your mouth with his neck and shoulders. 

“You okay, Cookie?” he murmurs against your ear as he rocks his hips slightly against you. The soft mewl you let out fills his chest with pride, and something like a fierce need to protect you, to make sure you’re taken care of. 

“So good, Roos’” the words were slightly slurred against the naked skin of his shoulder, and he grunted softly as he yet again used his strength to form your body against his. His large palm resumed their hold right above your knee, drawing it upwards as he pressed your bottom down against himself. Almost as if he was rocking your body against his instead of the other way around. 

“Sound so pretty for me, darlin’” Bradley murmured, gently nudging your chin with his nose, lips hovering over your skin - he needed you to look at him. Needed to see the way those sweet eyes betrayed adoration, betrayed lust and need and want and… trust. He needed to see how much you depended upon him - how you’d given yourself to him to cherish. 

As with every other thing, you were so responsive to him. To his voice, touch - it was dizzying, truly. Your glittering eyes held his, and he moaned low in his throat as he felt the way you squeezed him as you caught sight of his face. He could feel his heartrate picking up, could feel the way his breath were coming in shorter bursts, and it fucking turned him on to no end that that drew the softest of little mewls from you - made your brows pinch in that cute little needy fashion he’d noticed only once yesterday. 

“You okay, my little Bambs?” he murmured softly, letting his lips brush against yours lovingly “I’m so okay,” you whispered against him, your hands slowly running across his muscled chest, nails leaving soft little tendrils of pleasure as they went. 

“You’re so beautiful,” Rooster confessed breathlessly, grunting softly at the end as his cock slid, if possible, even deeper into your heat - as your hips started rutting against his movements. The soft moan of his name made him groan, fucking into you more languidly - slow, steady and deep. The hand that wasn’t gripping your thigh, keeping it hitched high over his hip, returned to squeeze and knead at the flesh of your breast. Fuck, he loved your tits. Loved your body, loved– his breath hitched in his throat, heart almost doing fucking double time… 

Blinking, he let out a shuddering breath before letting his mouth leave a wet trail down your throat, before his lips enclosed on your nipple, his tongue teasing and flicking against the nub. At the sensation of Bradley’s hot tongue on your sensitive breasts, you let out a high pitched moan, pushing your chest against Bradley’s face as your hands flew to his curls, gripping tight as you panted wildly. You were so sensitive, and Bradley’s cock was stretching you, pulling and pushing so so slow - and yet he made it feel so fucking good. You could almost feel every ridge and vein as the drag of his cock made wetness drip from your core, down his length, making a mess of his pubic hair… He was fucking you so incredibly, right there in his bed, that you’d both shared that night. 

You cried out his name again, ending almost on a sob as he pushed his cock deep inside just as he let his lips latch on to your flesh, giving it a heady suckle - his facial hair scratching just hard enough to bring tears to your eyes from the pleasurable sensation. That pressure was building again, deep in your core, building and getting more and more tense. He was everywhere, just like you’d wanted. Filling you, tasting you, gripping you… his smell was surrounding you, the feel of his hair, the warmth of his body, his sweat glowing like a halo around his body in the morning sun as the muscles in his back rippled and moved. 

“Bradley!” you sobbed pathetically, clawing and clinging to him, he must have felt how close you were. Your pussy was pulsing around his thick dick, your arousal dripping down his balls at this point. He was grunting and moaning against your flesh, and you desperately tried to rut your hips, needing more, more more– but he kept his slow, deep pace. His cock barely left your cunt before he pushed deep, each stroke of his cock hitting that spot that you hadn’t been sure if it existed or not. 

“That’s it, baby,” Bradley’s voice sounded wrecked and broken as he released your now glistening nipple. “Can feel you squeezing my dick,” he sounded almost smug - you hated that it almost turned you on. His large hand was still palming at your tit as he nipped and kissed gently at your jaw, your hands still tugging desperately on his hair.

“N-need more,” you gasped, pleading with him as you looked down on him. Those amber eyes of his were shadowed by heady lust, and he just smirked softly before shaking his head ever so slightly “No,” he muttered, kissing your chin as you cried out, the tears that had burned behind your lids slowly running down your cheeks.

“Fuck,” he gasped, his cock twitching deep within your pussy “so pretty, darling, crying for more of my cock,” he whispered, you couldn’t do more than nod and keen, letting out small cries and whimpers as you felt your core clench around him harder, chasing that high so desperately. 

“You’ll cum from this, baby.” he rasped “You don’t need more.” he decided- It felt like he was cradling your body in his hands, molding and shaping, pushing, pulling, playing with you as if you were only made for him. And he was right. As he spoke those words, a shocked gasp tore through your throat as you cried and sobbed, white hot pleasure rolling through your body in waves as you shook and shook, convulsing slightly with every thrust that Bradley’s swollen tip hit that sensitive spot deep within your core. 

“Fuck–” Bradley moaned loudly, “atta girl,” he praised, voice breaking slightly as your hips rolled and shook in his hold “Fuck, Bambi- I’m gon’...” his chest rose and fell rapidly, his shoulders and back muscles rippling as he fought to hang on to see you through your high, not sure if he could–

“Cum in me,” you whined softly, needing him. Needing him everywhere. At those words, Bradley shattered. He couldn’t hold on if his life depended upon it. With a long, low moan of your name, his hips stuttered, once twice, stilling deep within you as he gasped and his warm release filled you, over and over as his cock pulsated through his high. 

“Jesus, darling…” Bradley gasped and moaned low as your cunt throbbed around his still hard dick, milking him of the last of his orgasm. “So good… so fuckin’ beautiful… soft ‘n pretty,” he was murmuring now, kissing his pretty words into the skin of your chest. He finally released his grip on your thigh, palms gently smoothing over the area, ghosting over your skin as his strong arms wrapped around your waist, keeping you close to him as you both caught your breaths. 

“Bradley,” you murmured lovingly, nuzzling into his warmth, it was hard to describe how you were feeling - but it felt weird. Good, but a little jarring. You’d never experienced sex in this fashion before - not entirely sure you’d even experienced any other partner giving you two orgasms, let alone while they were actually inside of you. Your heart was fluttering fast and hard, and the tears that had run down your cheeks had all but dried, but it felt as if the high was lingering - clouding your mind and making you feel so utterly vulnerable. 

Perhaps he could sense it, perhaps he could hear it in the smallness of your voice, but slowly he’d ushered you to rest against the broad expanse of his chest as he softly shushed and murmured against your skin. “You’re alright, darlin’ - did so good.” in the fluffy state your mind was in, you hadn’t really gathered that you were whimpering and making noises as Bradley held you. 

“There you are, baby… you’re alright, you’re safe - I’ve got you honey… fuck - that was incredible… you’re incredible,” he let out a small laugh as his strong hands moved up and down your spine, the other gently stroking over your hair as he murmured praise and soft words of encouragement in your ear. Tilting your head back, you took in the tenderness of his brown eyes, and you smiled softly up at him. 

“That’s it, there’s my beautiful Bambi,” Rooster murmured before placing a small kiss on your nose. “Gave unsteady legs a new meanin’ huh?” he rasped, grinning as you swatted at his chest, although you couldn’t help the amused smile that stretched on your lips. 

“Do we have to get up?” you murmured, pouting softly at the thought of leaving this heavenly moment. You didn’t want to walk out into the harshness, the cold, the bitter. You wanted to stay here, in Bradley’s arms where everything was okay, everything was safe and covered in a thick layer of fluffy soft clouds. 

“Not right now,” Bradley murmured against the top of your head “I have to get up to cook you something of substance to eat in a while, but you don’t have to worry your pretty little head about that just yet,” he smiled, placing a reassuring kiss against your hair. You smiled softly at the thought, a content sigh making your form rise and fall gently in his hold.

“You never stop working, do you?” you teased.

“Well, hate to break it to ya, Bambs - but people will unfortunately always need to eat,” rolling your eyes, you felt the head chef had earned another light slap against his chest - the only answer was a rumbling sort of laughter that made his chest vibrate slightly against your touch. 

“And cooking for you isn’t a job,” he said casually “it’s something I love doing.”

For some reason, those small words sent a strong wave of emotion through your body, awakening the flutters of butterfly wings again. This time they were not only contained to your stomach, but seemed to flutter and spread warmth and overwhelming, nearly suffocating emotions all through your body. Choked up, you merely squeezed Bradley as tight as your muscles would allow it before offering him the most sincere

“Thank you.”

[pluviophile-imagines]

you are, undoubtedly, not the only person whose blood boils at the mention of alhaitham, but you think you might be the person who gets under his skin the most.

he bickers with many of his fellow scholars, certainly, yet you can’t say anyone else makes him so angry he can’t even speak the common tongue. every time you storm off after an argument you leave him muttering angrily in some unknown language.

still, he enjoys provoking you, especially on occasions where you’ve become so lost in your work that you haven’t seen him in days. this time you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole researching an ancient language, one renowned for its prose and eloquence and, most interestingly to you, romantic confessions of love. it’s been nearly a week since you’ve encountered anyone but the librarians; the subject is fascinating.

you return to the library one morning, however, to find that he’s taken the very book you’d put on hold—using his position to undermine your claim—and though the bait is obvious, you still rise to it. the spat which ensues is predictable, fast-rising and heated within the span of a few words. it ends in the pair of you nose-to-nose with him holding the book up out of your reach and your finger prodding angrily at his chest. when you turn and storm off, he sinks back down into the chair you’d found him in.

this time, however, when he begins to curse you under his breath, you understand it.

and it makes you freeze.

you hadn’t realized until this moment but the very language you’d been researching is what he spits at you after every dispute. and now that you have researched, you realize that what he has been muttering under his breath for many months now is a bewildering kind of confession.

“you drive me insane,” he growls, only just loud enough for you to make out the words. there’s a temptation to dismiss it, vague as the accusation could be, yet the next statement is far less ambiguous as he mutters it beneath his breath. “i can barely think around you, you vexing, brilliant thing, yet when you’re gone i can’t stand it.”

it freezes you in your path. you straighten and whirl about, eyes wide, mind a blur of surprise and warmth blossoming in your chest. warmth, which only increases when you catch another grumbled sentence, spat out like the insults you thought he’d been calling you, accompanied by an icy glare down at the very book he’d stolen.

“one day,” he snarls, entirely oblivious to how you’ve caught on, “i’ll shut you up by kissing you.”

“do it, then,” you’re saying before you can stop yourself, the words rushing out more confident than you truly feel.

he startles, head snapping up to meet your gaze, eyes just slightly wide enough to betray what he’s feeling. “what?”

if you didn’t know him so well you might mistake the near-invisible expression on his face for one of anger, but it’s shock. fear, even, if the man before you is even capable of being afraid. he watches, frozen where he sits with book in hand, as you stalk back towards him until you’re even closer than before, up against his chair; until you push even further with a knee upon it, sinking the plush of the cushion between his thighs.

leaning down is the obvious next step, bracing yourself on the arms of his chair, each hand a hairsbreadth away from brushing his forearms. looming over him like this is an odd kind of invigorating—he’s so tall and broad that this position is perhaps the only one that would allow it. and he stares up at you, somehow seeming even more frozen in place, that nearly imperceptible emotion on his face sliding smoothly into something you might be so bold as to call enrapture.

“kiss me. shut me up.” you cock your head and watch those striking eyes drop to your lips just as you add a final word, goading: “coward.”

a bulky arm slings itself around your waist, tugging you down roughly onto his lap and knocking that damned book from its perch. his lips are on yours before it can hit the ground.

[moondirti]

tender / and what’s left

Joel is a man of blunt lines and frayed edges, and though he seems especially bronze at this time of day, you know you can't touch him to feel the sun.

But you’re not looking for warmth.

pairing: Joel Miller x f!Reader rating: explicit (mdni) word count: 4.3k summary: what gentle has come to mean warnings: smut, canon typical violence, angst, mild gore, mentions of death, very little plot, blowjobs, fingering, joel is not nice - not necessarily. tumblr please don't tag my shit notes: yeah... yeah. i don't know how i feel about this one. i tried something different with the style. that is, i cut down on the purple prose, so let me know what y'all think about that. also, can you tell i struggled with joel's characterisation? idk, it's a mess. but anyway - enjoy!

You’ll never get used to the smell. 

Granted, the contrary was a lie you told yourself once things had gone to shit. A painkiller – your harsh reality sliced into digestible portions and force fed through a dry gullet. Mother earth will reclaim what spoils – like putrid carnage buried behind a thick cover of dirt, perfuming crisp air. That nature, prosperous again, would wind itself around humanity’s faults and embellish your end with a lush green. 

And maybe it will, one day.

But it takes a while for bodies to burn. You’ve come to accept that’s all you have to look forward to in your lifetime. So, you focus on the scent of sulphur-doused charcoal and try to ignore how flesh sizzles when you throw another corpse into the flame. 

Once the weight is offloaded, you trek back over the beaten path to the truck, your fingers tense with the frigid wind. A storm had come screeching through last night, mewling its sombre song while spewing out a flurry of ice onto the decaying buildings of the QZ. The sterility had lasted all of about an hour before the powdery white turned sludge and jaundice-yellow stains popped back up along the streets. 

The only salvageable thing about winter, tainted with piss. 

Huffing to yourself, you curl your hands to dissuade the frost gnawing on your knuckles and square your shoulders for the next haul. A quick scan of the cargo hold tells you you’re nearly done. There must have been ten or so infected cadavers when the unit had been dropped off – piled atop one another, heads wrapped in bags and arms still bound behind their backs. Joel had divided the work between the two of you – sectioning the heavier builds off for himself – and you’d made quick work disposing of the majority before the stink of death could cling to your blouse. 

As for him–

He brushes up behind you, stunted to a slower pace, carrying a body twice his size. You tune in to his laboured breaths, the grunts he makes with each step, muffled behind the bandana he wears as a mask. In your peripheral, you think you spot it slipping – slicked with the sweat that shines down the curve of his nose. His hair is much the same; speckled grey, glistening with sebum and a gruelling day's work. 

(You recall what it feels like, clutched in your tight grip. You like pulling at it, borderline violently, whenever you can. Whenever he lets you–)

You stop yourself. The tangent has a viscous momentum you’re all too familiar with. Reeling it in, you tuck it near your gut before it can get away from you. Instead, you choose to single in on the way his back rolls when he throws the weight into the pit – the penultimate corpse. Then, back to the task at hand. The trailer stands empty now, save for the last; a smaller frame, curled in on itself, clad in embroidered jeans and a dirty, purple sweater. 

He kept the child for you. 

What’s left of one, anyway. 

Two seconds pass. You crouch to tie your shoelaces. 

(You got them for free – traded off a FEDRA agent with a dependance on oxy. You don’t think you’ll get as lucky with gloves. Winter clothes run like cigarettes here – the theft of your last pair indicative of that fact.)

When you stand back up, the body is still there. 

The chain to the trailer latch is tangled. You decide to undo it before you move.

It won’t disappear.

Just deal with it.

It might be the cold, or the sore patch on your palm, singed from hovering too close to the flame. Food poisoning, credit to poorly cooked rat jerky, or the flu. You tell yourself it’s anything apart from what it is. You know he’s staring – can feel the laden look, sparking the frayed nerves along your shoulder. Just deal with it; the sentiment swimming in dark eyes. Deal with it; his rough voice nails into you.  

It’s not a kid. Not anymore. Not since a network of fungal threads wiggled their way into the gummy recesses of its brain. 

(But its skin is soft. Not one scar on those delicate hands.)

You let your gaze slide across the courtyard. His presence tips the scales of your consciousness, crushing with its force, and you find his brow quicker than you can blink away the wariness in your expression. He’s leaned up against a wall, twisting a spare rag over his fingers. His dry study is indecipherable. 

Your jaw clicks. 

He steps the slightest bit forward. 

With a sharp tug on the body’s ankles, you deflect his intervention and position it so that you can easily heave it onto your bent arms. It’s heavier than you thought it’d be. That, or, it’s the rigour mortis, its joints stiffened to intractable peaks. 

Keep your back straight and use your knees. 

(Joel taught you how to lift anything. He said it’d come in handy, one day. You still can’t tell what he’s preparing you for.) 

When you flip the child into the fire, the bag flies off its head. Its hair is the same shade as yours.

He takes double your shift. 

You were a florist, before, operating right outside Boston. It’s easy to forget what it was like: cramped in that two hundred square foot shop, up to your elbows in thorns as humidified air pooled beneath your pits. There’s the vague picture of a book, fatter than your forearm, always propped open on the register counter. Floriography, a guide to the Victorian language, with watercolour illustrations and an empty page dedicated to your scrawled notes on customer orders. 

And, there is the memory that accompanies it. 

An infatuated friend – no, assignment partner – in your mycology requirement. He’d gifted it to you on your birthday and you’d given a complaisant smile back before going back to the video your professor put on. It didn’t interest you at the time. You were a botany student, desperately clinging to the last shred of your sanity before the end of term, and you did not care about the outdated science of some epidemiologist in 1968. 

Perhaps you should’ve.

But–

You remember the flowers.  

Post-grad. You’d bring them in from wholesalers in Columbia. Dahlias and daisies by the dozen – thriving boscages, nursed in minerals, tepid water. It was a blend of powdered femininity, a reification of the artificial scent you’d practically bathe in as a kid. Soil a pillow for nectar and dew, their roots still branched in the nourishing mix. And it was marginally obsessive, the way you’d drink all of it in. Like divine ambrosia, hung in a drunken stupor of all-natural proportions.

In the mornings, you’d separate their petals with a gentle hand. You felt as though you could sit forever in that quaintness. It did not feel like a job.

Joel takes double your shift, because you cannot wait to get away from shit-clogged sewers. 

He comes back disgruntled, just as the afternoon sinks below the horizon. 

The room soaks in an orange tint, a deluge of evening light spilling in from outside. Scotch whiskey burns a trail down your throat, irritatingly concentrated, and you wonder where he got it from. Not many drinks nowadays pool as deep in your belly, are warm enough to strike your inhibitions. You blink, tipsy – malt and smoke clustered on your tongue – and can’t help but smack your lips, the taste reminiscent of the musk you lick from in between his legs.

He comes up behind you, pulling the bottle from your cradle before you can take another swig. You’d set a dirty tumbler out for him too, lipstains smudged against the annealed glass. He pours two fingers worth, then sits back with a weary sigh. It rumbles from somewhere in his chest, hampered with the deep baritone of his own voice. 

You don’t speak. Neither does he. 

This is what life consists of. Busy work and silence. 

Anything is better than clicking. 

You observe him in your free time. 

It’s not often you’re granted the luxury of running your fingers down his face. You have, once, after coming home much too late to see him knocked out, practically blitzed on hydro. You’d discovered his skin – that it matched the way it looks; rough, sun-worn like old leather. It folds up along his forehead, between his brows, etched in a permanent look of exasperation. He’s marked in wrinkles you don’t think will ever go away. 

(You’d tried smoothing them out. It was a stupidly sentimental action, founded on the sudden spout of emotion that plagued you that night. You had just been beaten an inch from your life, and wanted to find comfort in the fact that – if anything – he was peacefully at rest. But he looked tired, even in his sleep.) 

His eyes are far away, too. His lips, pursed. The way his hair twists on his head suggests that it’d been curly, once upon a time – flipping like waves crashing towards an isolated island. Uncoordinated. Devastating. And his beard is all but an extension of that brutality – patchy and abrasive, particularly when it smooths along your thigh. He’s ruinously handsome; weathered and dry and dark and so, so goddamn handsome.

Joel is a man of blunt lines and frayed edges, and though he seems especially bronzed at this time of day, you can’t touch him to feel the sun. 

But you’re not looking for warmth. 

You slide off the chair, onto your knees. 

You’ve been around long enough for him to sense what’s coming. His shoulders slouch, slack posture buttressed against the back of his chair, and the movement allows his legs to spread, just so you can slot between two beefy thighs. They ripple with restrained strength when you run your hands along them, muscle apparent even under the cover of his jeans. 

“You’re tense.” You remark, slowly ironing closer to the bulge at his crotch. 

“Long day.” He responds with a torn exhale.

The unfurling of his zipper puts an end to the short conversation. You ruck his pants to his pelvis, then scoop his cock out from behind his boxers. It’s semi-hard, heavy in your clutch, pulsing as though it aches. You slip to the base – nested in a bush of wild, auburn hair – and tug it until he swells to become velvet-covered iron. He thickens, brims with arousal, head darkening to the colour of a day-old bruise. 

It’s when it’s like this– 

When you’re on your knees, or back, or stomach, his flesh smelting your insides like you’re metal over brimstone. Your lips wrap around him – stretching taut at cracked corners, your tongue rolling over his frenulum. You will yourself to sink further, to let him touch your tonsils and the enveloping heat there. Your breath hot, your mouth even hotter – sweltering, you suck him in, coating his length with a film of saliva, which aids you when you pull back up. Still, he’s too big for you to fully take, so you wrap what you can’t reach and twist it in tandem to your bobbing head. 

Spittle pools at your lip, globbing out to splatter on his boxers. You can’t control the gags his girth elicit. It doesn’t matter. His large hand cups your temple, guiding you lower. You hollow your cheeks to accommodate the bludgeoning rhythm of his cock, choking on the smell of sweat and denim. He’s heady, potent with brine.  Blurring heat corners your eyes, tears cropping at the sheer indulgence of it all. You don’t know whether he notices as they slip down your cheeks, whether he goes harder because of them. 

It’s in these perennial moments, pearlescent prespend seeping down his shaft – a beautiful compliment to his skin – where you’re simultaneously selfish and selfless in a world that is kind to neither. That he feels more alive than ever. Pumping, pounding, like the fibrous sinew of a still-beating heart.

He’s not gentle as he takes. You don’t discourage it. 

(You believe he’s forgotten how to be. There’s a certain severance you have to make to survive; a detachment from humanity. You don’t doubt he was a good man, once. You hear it in his cadence, that southern twinge that speaks to days of gentleman-like civility past. It’s excusable. You understand. You can’t complain of the strain he puts on your throat. You too have lost your touch. 

But it cannot reduce the red on your ledgers. Gore binds the very books together.)

Cum covers your palette when he spurts his end – a hot, febrile concoction; the ocean lapping up on a beached log, like sand in every crevice. He holds your head down until you swallow, knees spasming against hardwood floors.

You splutter for air when you finally draw away, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand. Joel shifts forward, picking an unknown material off the table above your head. You can’t discern what it is – not until he brings it down to your chin. 

Your washcloth. Threadbare and thinning still. 

He doesn’t let you speak as he helps you clean the evidence of his sin.

Lilies for restored innocence. Carnations for pure love. 

You cycle through your mental index of funeral arrangements as carmine ichor spills from your front. 

The operation hadn’t gone according to plan. 

Joel said it’d be a quick pillage of a newly empty warehouse; an apparent treasure trove for supplies, left abandoned after a firefly attack drove FEDRA security off its perimeters. Lined wall to wall in crates of salvaged items; he’d heard wind of it through a contact in the agency – some son of a bitch by the name of Liam, trying to pay off a withstanding debt. Easy gains, he’d smiled, you can take your pick of the loot.

The knife lodged in your gut begs to differ. 

(You posit another smuggling ring got dealt the same deal. They had come in behind you. Jumped fast, fought dirty – took all the ammo and cigarettes they could carry and left you for dead. Naturally.)

Where the fuck is he?

Vignette shadows edge your vision, throwing everything off kilter. You can hardly process every aspect at once: the pulsing wound, the surge of blood. Nausea encroaches on the site, convulsing in around the jagged blade, cramming your intestines for space. It blazes a fiery path up to your lungs, where your breaths escape in short, shallow increments. Oxygen dwindles. You’d skipped breakfast. Still, you heave as fluorescent lights blink in and out of existence above you. 

The concrete floor is unforgiving. 

Gladioli, perhaps. For someone who’s proven their strength. Tears glue your lashes shut, and you imagine being buried out in a field of their long stems. Swathed in peach, pink, babydoll colours untainted by grime. You wonder if Joel knows a place. 

(You never asked for his favourite flower.) 

The stab festers, broiling over with an impassioned heat. It must be hell overturning your system, bubbling up in pus, swaying you from making your peace. All those lives you took. The thorns you’d clipped. Your head is lifted onto a twitching lap. It’s soaked in carnage and smells like him.

Thank god. Felt like it was gonna explode.

“B-Bout– nghn, time.” You cough. You’re able to discern his silhouette through the fog, cloudburst heavy on your lids. It’s sticky, disorienting.

“Hey. Hey, stay with me now. We’ll get t-this fixed. We’ll get this fixed, okay?” He chokes, wrestling with a roll of something. “I gotta take the knife out, baby. It’ll hurt. It–” 

“It–It’s okay.”

“No, no. Up, open your eyes, c’mon.” 

You were hired to supply a wedding with its finery, back when you first opened shop. It was the gig that promised to put you on the map, insisted upon by a childhood friend who had the money to blow on imports from Holland. You’d spent days fine tuning the arrangements – fussing with leaves, waxing petals, trimming roots. Your cuticles were red, raw by the end.

The next week, all the flowers had wilted. The paraffin you used was the wrong type.

Joel’s voice cracks like a spoiled floret. You burn at the knowledge that it’s your fault. 

He doesn’t give you the option to grieve it, twisting the blade out of your abdomen. You lurch forward, thrashing with a warbled scream. Borderline animalistic, the pain tears through you with harrowing intensity. 

His hand smooths your hair back in the meanwhile, brushing across your sweaty forehead, winding between the tresses. You shudder under a wave of hypoxia and come to a sobering revelation. 

It feels nice.

Something shifts. 

He was quiet before. A man of very few words; upon your first meeting – a partnered smuggle run, arranged via Tess – you recall tallying the hours until he spoke. It hit three, prior to your suggestion of something so bewilderingly stupid he just had to pitch in his discontent. You’d smirked it off. It hadn’t been personal. 

(Possibly the one insight that allowed you to continue working with him.) 

But since your close call, he’s funnelled down to occupy a fraction of his previous presence. You suspect it has everything to do with how you bled out in his arms.

He leaves and returns during your small bouts of restless sleep. You don’t hear from him, or see of him – aside from the rare occurrences when your days intersect; when he comes back, tarnished and tired, to crash on the couch before his next job. You would haul him to bed if you could, yet your gut throbs in barely-healed rage with every exertive move. So, you spend your limited time with him as you’ve grown used to doing – watching.

His nightmares have gotten worse. 

You used to experience them in pyretic transitions, suspended in a state of hypnagogia, your consciousness bleary and flickering like old film set ablaze. You’d feel his tremors, could hear his whispered pleads filter in on your own dreams. But they existed as secondary – something to be acknowledged in that post-apocalyptic, apathetic way. I get ‘em too, bud. He never mentioned them, so you wouldn’t ask. 

To see him unravel is another thing entirely. 

Like corduroy twill being picked apart at the seams. A material made to be durable, to tough out years of erosion. He quivers, forearms contracting over his chest, his brows creasing. Something about Sarah as his hands rub together, clawing at his palms. 

You wind your limbs around your middle. It’s frightening, you realise. You’ve come to know this man in the snarled face of adversity – he’s never so much as stuttered, carved in resilient rock. But it had to have come from somewhere, and if not vomit, if not viscera, if not fungi–

Whatever it is that torments him, you pour a glass of water and wait for him to wake. 

He doesn’t look at you when he does. You don’t blame him; you’re practically pellucid, yellowing undertones an effect of the lesion that marks your stomach. The only thing you’d gotten out of the warehouse were medical supplies in abundance. You credit only them with your continued survival. 

“I’m going back.” Joel says, tapping his index on the glass. You blink, nonplussed at the sudden noise. You recover in half the time, though, and open your mouth to protest. “We left some valuable shit behind.” He interrupts.

“You can’t go alone.” 

“You’re staying behind.” 

“I’m fine,” You start, then wince with the movement.

He stares at you, incredulous. The silence punctuates his point. 

“Tess has a few men holding it down. It should be simple.” And with how he grits it, the words hissed through clenched teeth, it’s evident he means it as an end to the discussion. But doubt maturates, wheezing in the way punctured lungs do, sore under the pierce of cracked ribs. Tension swells from the afflicted site. You can’t control the disillusion in your tone. 

“That’s what you said last time.” 

Nothing erupts. 

Not how you expected it to, anyway. It takes a moment for the blame to meet him, to find its honest meaning. In that time, it hangs between you, echoing, precariously balanced on seething eye contact. Then, his gaze flickers down to your abdomen. 

“I’m not the idiot who almost got herself killed.” 

It carries all the malice you wished for, and more. 

(Whatever tenderness he had left must have bled out with you on that floor.)

He doesn’t die. But then again, that wasn’t what you were concerned about. 

Joel makes his first appearance three days later. The return is sporadic, and divided upon many, each time with a small bag of supplies he stuffs underneath the floorboard. The sacking was successful, then– 

(He throws a bottle of antibiotics onto the kitchen counter, his jerking shoulder a rough indication that it’s meant for your injury. But when his face catches the light, you’re thrown with the inkling that he might need them more than you.)

–though, nothing is without its faults. 

Eggplant purple and violent red blend in a mottled contusion across his cheekbone, painted down to his neck – beyond his collar – hidden to your wandering gape. You’re no stranger to bruises; the world collapsed in on humanity a good twelve years ago, and burst capillaries have become a constant under the macerating weight. Yet it’s another layer stripped, a sheet of titanium snatched off the manifold complexity that is him. You’d never seen the evidence of his pain so clearly illustrated atop his skin. 

“Joel–”

“Leave it.” He snaps. 

You bite the inside of your cheek, pushing yourself up to sit by the sink. It’s futile to beckon him over, so you wait his pacing out by dousing a rag in leftover alcohol. 

“Was there anything even left?” You accuse. He unzips a duffel bag atop the dining room table, ruffling through a layer of bandaids. 

“Yes. The rations’ll last us two months, if we sell to the right people.” 

“Thrilling.” 

Your sarcasm lingers until he finally finds what he’s looking for, pulling out a jar of ground coffee from behind a box of detachable blades. When he walks over to fetch a mug, you grab him by the wrist and wrench him closer. 

(You wouldn’t have been able to, had he not let you. You know his strength trumps yours.) 

When you touch the makeshift wipe to his face, he doesn’t so much as flinch. 

“What did this?” The question stretches, losing its structural integrity under your elemental concern. This is all novel territory – you don’t make a habit of licking another’s wounds clean. But his desperate pleas hold possession over you; the restrained distress, the wavering timbre. Stay with me now. We’ll get this fixed. 

“Gun.” 

Your hand falters over his jaw. 

“Butt end.” He adds. “FEDRA was on the scene.” 

“Right. Do I even have to say it?” You whisper. ‘Told you so’ titters on the tip of your tongue.

“No.” He concedes.

The two of you sit like that for a long while after, locked in a begrudging dance that pulls you off your feet. Winter has nearly melted to its end, now; the howling gale tapering to a draft that crawls beneath window sills. Somehow still, it penetrates you, even colder than before. 

(Joel crackles like a fed furnace, biting at the firm coals of your desire. You unconsciously veer closer, wiggling your hips until your legs cage his. He holds you in place with one large hand, the other gliding beneath the hem of your jeans.) 

“You’re hurt–” 

“So are you.” He settles. His fingers press up against the plush of your cunt, finding that electric centre. It’s debilitating, overstimulating and likewise, not enough; a defibrillator to your core, one that cannot revive you. 

Your arms wrap around his shoulders, finding purchase in his broad build. It does nothing dampen the needy moan you make when he pushes your panties to the side, toying with your swollen folds. He spots you, clenching around nothing, soaking the calloused pads of his thumb. It takes place on your clit, then, index and middle inching towards your hole to plug you full.

“Needy fucking thing.” He groans, shoving his tongue down your maw. It’s not a kiss. Far from it. He doesn’t try to match the pace of your gaping surrendering, preferring to devour you instead. You pant up into his mouth, gyrating with the back and forth of his pumping digits. 

He claws out in you your tender-most spots. 

(But that’s just it, isn’t it?

He might not be gentle, in the worn definition of the word. The touch that peels petals, reverent, finding delicacy in the finest bits of creation; gold leaf and concentrated fragrance. What you spent so long holding onto – the beauty that’s become obsolete in a post-fungal land.  

But you cannot kid yourself. 

He’s raw, uninhibited. You’ve seen it – that supplantation of humanity, a measure to rise above the monsters that hunt you. A sore bundle of mortality and death, left unhealed, yet just as capable of flaring when you reach out towards it.  

Like stepping up when you buckle under the horror of your own reality. Wiping your chin of filth. Shaking with you, fading out on his lap, his best efforts centred in on your mutilated centre. The nightmares that plague him, seeking out whatever weakness lies dormant. 

If you had to choose, you’d say he favours sunflowers.)

“Joel,” You whine, sinking your face in his neck. 

“That’s it… C’mon, baby. Cum for me.” 

That night, he pulls something out of his bag, tucking it in your pocket as he joins you in bed.

“Hm?” Murmuring, you reach to wrap your hand around his. The fabric in his grasp is thick, knitted. 

Gloves.

“Noticed you’ve been cold.”

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[skbeaumont]

"I Remember Everything" | Joel x Reader

Part 2 of Play it Again, a new series where each story is a oneshot, but all are shaped around country songs.

Song: I Remember Everything, Zach Bryan ft. Kacey Musgraves Summary: Ten years after outbreak day, you and Joel try to find a way to forget. In the process he finds things to remember, too Tags/Warnings: Angst, hurt/comfort, fluff if you squint, references to sex, alcohol and drugs, sex but not explicit, trauma, grief, just expect emotional damage basically Word Count: 1.2k

A/N: This ended up being both very angsty and quite sweet. Once again it was written with lyrics from the song pulled into the prose, so do listen as you read. If you've got any song recommendations for this series, let me know!

You were begging me to stay 'til the sun rose Strange words come on out Of a grown man's mouth when his mind's broke Pictures and passin' time You only smile like that when you're drinking I wish I didn't, but I do Remember every moment on the nights with you You're drinkin' everything to ease your mind But when the hell are you gonna ease mine?

The bar is crowded when you enter. Heaving with writhing bodies, hot in a way that has your shirt sticking to your back within moments of entering, a hazy, sharp tang in the back of your nose, a mix of moonshine and sweat.

Ten years today since outbreak day, and it seems everyone in the QZ is in here to forget.

Technically, there aren’t supposed to be any bars in the QZ, but as you squeeze between the crowds you spot two women you know to be FEDRA officers. It’s amazing what they’ll turn a blind eye to when it benefits them. One of the women looks pretty far gone already, leaning against the other with a placid, washed out grin on her face. The moonshine here is cheap, strong, and a poor imitation of anything that would have been served in a bar ten years ago.

You order two double whiskeys, watch the skinny youth behind the bar pour it out into a chipped mug, take it from him and hand over a creased, dog-eared ration card. A small price to pay for an evening of forgetting. You down the first double at the bar, then turn and push yourself on tiptoes to find an empty table, or a quiet corner to hole up in where you won’t be disturbed.

Instead, you find your gaze passing over a familiar figure at the back of the room. Joel’s recognisable even from behind – broader than anyone else in the room, the sloping lines of his shoulders pressing against the frayed seams of the denim shirt he’s wearing. It’s been a few months since you last saw him. You’re not sure where he’s been, maybe off on his smuggling runs; the two of you have never really kept a consistent line of conversation, your meetings generally consisting of a quick catch up and then a long, slow evening using each other to try to forget the hell of life in the QZ and your respective pasts. Unhealthy, probably, but it works for a few hours.

Joel turns where he’s stood and the dim lights in the bar illuminate the side of his face, the strong line of his jaw. He’s wearing a lopsided half-smile, leaning against a shelving unit filled with bottles, talking to a woman with dark hair. He’s clearly drunk: he only smiles like that when he’s drunk. It’s an impressive feat, considering how much you know he drinks on any normal day.

You’re still watching him, sipping your own drink, when he turns his head, eyes locking with yours. You don’t look away. The buzz of the whiskey is starting to sink through you, warm and familiar, and Joel’s eyes are just as intoxicating.

It’s always the same. There’s something about him that has you gravitating to him. It’s attraction, certainly, but it’s deeper than that. There’s so much about Joel you don’t know, so many unanswered questions and unexplained mysteries. But you know he’s like you. You know he’s lost people. You know he’s broken, and lonely, and so fucking angry that it scares him sometimes.

Joel watches you down the rest of your whiskey, eyes flicking to your lips as you lick a stray drop. He’s drunk, far drunker than he should be considering he has to be up at the crack of dawn in the morning for sewer duty.

He only got back into the QZ early this morning, spent rest of the day trying as best he could to get some sleep without resorting to rotgut whiskey to ease his mind. A lost cause, of course. He hasn’t slept without some kind of pill or booze in ten years. Eight hours in and he’d given it up as a bad job, downed a few bottles of home-brewed cider and headed to this hot, loud bar, hoping to distract himself from the date and all that its memory brings.

He hadn’t expected you to be here, and something uncomfortably like gladness settles in his chest as he watches you make your way towards him. All day he’s been on edge, wound up so tight he’s felt like something in him is going to snap, but the sight of you has it retreating, loosening his shoulders more than the piss-poor whiskey has.

He wonders for a moment what this thing you have – this relationship that isn’t a relationship, this love story that definitely isn’t a love story, just a way to forget for a while – would be like if the outbreak hadn’t happened. Would he sing you love songs, buy you flowers, take you to the beach and let your sand-covered hair blow into his face on the drive home?

Ten years since outbreak day, and he’s mostly wondering if you’ll help him forget in a way that the booze and pills he’s been knocking back since this afternoon haven’t managed to yet. Two whiskeys in, and you’re wondering if he’ll ease your mind like the liquor’s eased your tight muscles.

It’s this that carries you both out into the alley behind the bar, has him pressing you into the rough brick wall, hands roaming your body like you’re a route he’s trying to memorise so he can sneak back when the curfew falls. His mouth is hot on yours, his breath tinged with booze and counterfeit cigarettes.

It’s easy where it shouldn’t be; easy to let him lead you through the back streets to his apartment, easy to let yourself fall inside, easy to ignore the empty cider bottles that litter the apartment, the pill bags and loose cigarettes.

The sex is unrushed – it could be called romantic, if you were both other people, if it you weren’t both doing it to forget. The memories of ten years ago retreat for a while as he undresses you; the pain eases as he lays you back, slots himself between your legs and presses himself into you.

The movement of it is calming, familiar. Joel’s strong back under your hands, his muscles shifting and tensing as he thrusts into you, the harshness of his breath at your ear. He’s quiet, usually, hardly lets himself make a sound when he’s inside you, and then leaves before you’ve had chance say goodbye. Tonight, though, he doesn’t. When you’ve finished he rolls himself off of you and pulls you to his chest, wraps a strong arm around your waist and lets you rest your head on his shoulder.

“I missed you,” he whispers into your hair, and the words are so strange that you freeze beneath him, twist back so that you can look at him, see the truth of it on his face.

His eyes are dark in the half-light of the apartment, hazy with alcohol and something else, but they’re serious, his eyebrows furrowed, the creases that have started to deepen over the time you’ve known him lining his forehead.

Because the thing is, you make him forget. But when he’s with you he remembers, too. He remembers what happiness can feel like, the way that joy can take root in your chest and spread into something ethereal, something that Joel Miller doesn’t deserve to feel, hasn’t felt since the world ended ten years ago. He remembers every moment on the nights with you.

He wishes he didn't, but he does.

[truly-a-snitch]

sub ranpo smut 🙏

oh my god u have no idea how fucking excited i am for this ask OHHH MY GOD !! i love sub ranpo so much

tags: smut, sub ranpo, blowjob, mild body worship sort of ?, praise in prose

wc: 300ish

---

NSFW UNDER THE CUT

oh, doesn’t he always look just perfect like this, laying against the bed, propped on his elbows and eyes following your fingers in a way that's already hazy? such a desperate, needy thing, your perfect boy, but his words escape him the moment your mouth is on his neck, his chest, his stomach. the way he whines oh so deliciously at the feeling of your palm pressing rather firmly over the front of his boxers never fails to make your stomach flip. (the way he rolls up into your hand is even better.)

the nails on one hand dug into your scalp as you pressed kisses to his thighs, leaving behind hickies that would remind him of this for days to come, and he was panting already as you pressed a quick kiss to a particularly sensitive spot right over his femoral artery. he always was very sensitive.

and when you pressed kisses up the length of his dick, he somehow grew redder. you pressed the flat of your tongue against the sensitive spot just below the head for a moment, then took him almost fully down your throat.

it never takes long before he's a whining, begging mess, warning you that he isn't going to last much longer. (not that that's going to stop you, of course.) his hips jumped to meet your mouth erratically, lazily in a way only ranpo could accomplish without coming off as disinterested.

his moans are so pretty, too- high pitched and bordering on whines as you use your tongue on him. his breath stuttered then broke off into a low groan as he pulled you as close as he could. your nose brushed up against his pubic bone. he came straight down your throat.

your perfect boy indeed ♡ (how could he ever be anything else when he takes everything you give him in stride?)

[00127am]

signed with love and forever yours, chenle

postage. zhong chenle & gn! reader, cursing, mentions of kissing, very brief mention of sex (only in name, no details) cost to ship. 625 words

i can't seem to get you out of my mind.

you stick to my skin like glue that i just cannot seem to wash off. it's annoying, really. having to exist in each and every moment with the preconceived fantasy of you playing in my head with every word and every breath and every movement (all dedicated to one more second spent with the vision of you in my head). i hate how much i think of you, nearly as much as i hate being away from you (though the latter proves to be much worse).

i haven't been able to stop thinking about you since before any kisses of ours. and before the first time we fucked (does the use of the word fucking ruin the letter for you? i can practically hear you nagging me to change it to "making love," or something equally as stupid). you've haunted my mind since i before felt your touch on my skin and before you flashed that strikingly pretty smile in my direction. i can't tell you when it began. when you made your permanent home in the forefront of my every waking moment. but i wouldn't be surprised if you were always there, from the moment we first met.

i know i say that i don't remember it. and i don't, not your version of our initial meeting. and maybe i avoid the topic to hold myself from the embarrassment of admitting that i've been aware of you for much longer than you've been aware of me. or perhaps because if we did talk about it, and you pried (like you always do) then i would be forced to admit that i've been utterly and incomprehensibly in love with you from the moment i first saw you. a memory which i revisit nearly as often as i fantasize about you.

it's not revisited enough. at least, not enough to burn off the remainder of your lingering presence in my mind. something i doubt i'll ever be able to truly remove, though i'm not sure i'd ever want too. but if i did, if i had to move on from you, i doubt that i would ever be able too. both a matter of lacking the courage and the simple fact that i'm afraid that i will not ever be able to love anyone as i have loved you. because you, in every essence of yourself, are love to me. more so than any textbook definition and scientific measurement.

i can't seem to get you out of my head. so do me a favor and come to me in person instead. please.

about chenle's love letters.

all of chenle's letters are never meant to see the light of day, much less your gaze. he writes them on whatever is in his reach in the moment, the spare napkin laying on his desk and the back of the cardboard box from his most recent purchase. his words are lovely and kind, filled with an adoration that he expresses to you in touch rather than prose, filing the letters away in the bottom drawer of his desk. they'll reach your eyes some day, just not now, not when he feels like his heart may burst at the mere thought of you.

he often writes his letters in an irritated daze, bottom lip caught between his teeth and eyes set, furrowed, upon the bridge of his nose. the grip of his pen is tight, ink pushing harsh into the paper. all of his letters are written with love, despite being tainted by the faint impression of vexation. an aggravation stemming from the fault of feeling too much. loving too much. something chenle finds easy to blame upon you for all intents and purposes.

your mailbox

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🧾 © 00127am 2024

[nanaminokanojo]

THAWING ICE QUEEN (part 12)

–one night of fooling around with the annoying campus king gojo satoru (he thinks so), turns into...well, something else more long term

CHARACTERS: gojo satoru x you | geto suguru | jjk characters

GENRE: college au | eventual smut | smau | smau + prose | everything in between | ons | fubus to lovers | aged-up characters | idk where this is going

⚠️ TW/CW: strong/mature language | 🔞 | mentions of alcohol, smoking, etc. | this will most likely have narrations | god-awful pet names | will add more if something arises

MASTERLIST | CHAPTER INDEX

<<prev part 12 next>>

NOTE: This has narration in prose.

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Gojo Satoru was one persistent man, you gotta give him that. When he said your wish is his command, he delivered, so you don't really have any excuses to further refuse him. He took your opinion on the contract seriously, passed it by you without fail and exceeded expectations. You had the choice to stop whatever madness the two of you were cooking up, so you had that as a buffer to see how things go.

It's a very different situation for the both of you. Neither of you had been in bed with the same person twice. You thought that was convenient, spares you from that awkward phase of having to deal with the messy things that come along with commitment. But regardless of how much you and Satoru reiterate on the point of having no strings attached, it was still a form of commitment. You didn't know yet whether you liked the nature of that bond regardless if it was limited to the physical aspect.

But it was convenient. You could admit at least that. If it's just sex, then you wouldn't have to go through the motions of meeting people, getting to know them enough to say they're not psychos and establishing that mutual agreement of never seeing each other again. Satoru was familiar ground for once, and you more or less knew what to expect from him with the security of a written agreement adding to your supposed security.

Now it was a game of waiting to see who is gonna crack first, but that's a problem for future you. It's arrogant to think that there are no consequences to what you are about to involve yourself in because there will be, and you knew neither of you are stupid as to deny that. Accepting that fact is the first step. You'll deal with the mess later.

Or maybe you two were really stupid to be considering it at all. Either way, you didn't really care about the intricacies of it as much as you were annoyed over the fact that Satoru was taking away what you wanted to be a peaceful afternoon. Tolerance sure wasn't his strongest suit as expected of a rich brat who didn't know how it feels to be denied and done have the slightest understanding of the word no.

"You're gonna make me neighbors think I got into a tangle with loan sharks, Gojo," you said the moment you opened the door for him, unable to help it but ogle him. He was clad in gray sweats, a black shirt that fit him so damn well, his platinum hair mussed under a white, Balenciaga baseball cap.

He looked at you from under his cap, those gloriously blue eyes twinkling as he broke into a grin. "Well, you do owe me kisses, sweetheart."

Rolling your eyes, you cocked your head to the side, inviting him in, prompting his next comment: "I see how you're related to Sukuna when you move like that."

You chuckled. "I know how you think he was raised by brigands." You looked over your shoulder with a smirk. "You can opt out of our arrangement now."

Satoru caught up to you, blocking your way to the living room. He bent down to your height, booping you on the nose with his index finger. "Is that a roundabout way of saying you want out? You haven't even signed yet." He waved the file he was holding in front of you. "Ammended and reviewed as you've requested."

You took it, pushing past him and plopping down on the couch. You patted the space next to you as you opened the file, startled when he jumped right onto the spot, also making you bounce on the plush seat.

You momentarily glared at him but he just scooted closer, pointing at the sheaf of papers. "The things you wanted added are highlighted in yellow."

You quietly read the things he indicated, rifling through pages with your eyes. All the while, you could feel Satoru's blue orbs on you, his fingers toying with the tips of your hair. From your periphery, you could see him breaking into a soft smile, so different from his cocky, mischief-filled cheshire grins. Your planned glance turned into a sidelong stare as you whipped your head to actually look at him.

To your dismay, his expression was replaced by surprise, making that smile disappear as if it hadn't even been there in the first place.

"What?"

You shook your head, thinking you probably just imagined it. "Where do I sign?"

You made quick work of that after Satoru indicated where you were to sign, handing him the pen and also watching him do the same.

"And that's a done deal!" he declared, slapping the pen on the coffee table before twisting on his waist to look at you. "Congratulations, I'm exclusively yours."

"Thanks for saying my line for me." You shrugged, feeling the awkwardness of the situation now that your "giggle fits" about the whole contract, as Satoru had termed it, had died down. "So..."

"May I kiss you now?" he interrupted your thoughts, invading your space as he leaned forward, his eyes shifting slowly from your eyes and your lips.

You didn't fail to notice how he emphasized on asking for your permission this time instead of asking whether he was capable of it. "If you're always gonna choose your words like this..." You knocked his cap off his head with one hand while the other glided up from his shoulder to his nape. You pulled him closer, your lips just millimeters from his. "...instead of being such a tactless bastard all the time, I might actually enjoy this more."

He looked at you with hooded eyes. He wasn't one to be distracted from his goals. "So, may I, sweet cheeks?"

"Yes, you mmph –"

Satoru's plush lips were on yours in a split second, pressing gently yet the fact that he was holding back was evident in the way he gripped onto your waist as if he was trying to tether himself to you. He moved his lips against yours in languid motions as if he was testing the waters. You let him although you wondered at that knowing how hungry and all-consuming his kisses can be from experience.

You didn't dislike it, even the way he would pull away in the smallest fractions to nip at your lips before he would give them tiny kitten licks. It was enticing watching him take his time, making you reciprocate in the same small actions but mostly letting him have at it. Satoru's large hands moved from where he was keeping you steady on your arms up to the sides of your neck, his thumb brushing against your jawline.

Just then, he wrenched his eyes from intently paying attention to your lips to meet yours, blinking slowly and absently licking his lips. Satoru looked at you as if he couldn't believe you were in front of him, again breaking into that genuine smile.

"You're so pretty, sweet cheeks," he mumbled, looking absolutely out of it.

You were tempted to snort at his compliment but at the same time, you couldn't, unable to extricate yourself from the moment. This was a new side to him you're seeing for the first time. "That's one kiss today, Gojo."

At that, the spell seemed to have broken as he placed his forehead on your shoulder, chuckling. "You're keeping count?" He blindly fished for something in his pocket before taking your hand in his and pressing something onto your palm.

Before you could look and ask what it was, his lips were on yours again, less experimental this time. He licked at the seam of your mouth, pushing his tongue into it and seeking yours. You gasped when he finally found it, groaning when you responded in kind. Your ears were ringing, your head filled with nothing but the way he tasted in your mouth and the way he was possessively holding you against his taut form while his fingers drew circles on the small of your back.

And just as you were getting used to him and what he was doing to you, he pulled away, your lips parting with a wet sound. You swallowed hard, startled by the sudden loss of contact, and quite frankly, pissed off as well.

He wrapped your fingers on the thing he put in your hand, realizing it was some sort of card. As if he read your mind, he said, "Your key to my private place in the city. I'll text you the address."

With one last peck to your lips which were slightly parted from being flustered, he stood up, putting on his cap. And then he turned to look at you. "Sorry, sweetheart. I have class in half an hour with Yaga." He grinned. "Don't look so disappointed now. I'll make it up to you tomorrow."

You scoffed, also standing up as you regained composure. "Who says I am?" You shook your head, catching sight of the contract on the table. "Take those with you. I don't need Yuki or Iori finding those here."

Satoru laughed, taking your hand and twining his fingers with yours before raising it to his lips and winking at you. "See you tomorrow."

-

~*~

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© ORIGINAL WORK BY nanaminokanojo. CHARACTERS ARE INSPIRED BY GEGE AKUTAMI'S JUJUTSU KAISEN. [20230720]

PHOTO/IMAGE/GIF/FANART CREDITS TO THE RESPECTIVE OWNERS.