#or someone who wants to stick with you no matter what happens

[moonsaver]

Moon.. I've come back for the 3rd time...

I came across someone who said that Sunday's wings are clipped, and it got me thinking. A bird with clipped wings usually has impaired flight. So what does this mean for Sunday?

He could have done it to himself as a form of self-restraint to stop him from getting distracted by temptations and to stick to getting towards his goal. However, that.. It wouldn't make sense, not for me anyway. For a man who wishes that he could fly with his sister, it would be a rather acontradictory action.

No, wait. He certainly could have done it due to his self-destructiveness. He feels as if he himself does not deserve the privilege and the freedom to be able to fly because he does not matter. All he is supposed to do is reach his goal and make the people in penacony not have to be burdened by the harshness of reality, all of that for the exchange of himself. If this were true, then in the end, he became the very bird he wanted to cage in order to protect.

hhgKHQH but then there's Mr. Gopherwood.. according to research, there are some bird owners and trainers who choose to cut primary feathers to inhibit flight. So what if Sunday was forced to have his wings clipped because of the dreammaster, to control him, to ground him?

It could take months or even years for a previously clipped bird to heal, depending on the severity of the clip and how long its wings were clipped. Even then, if the birds wings were cut incorrectly, it may never be able to fly ever again. Perhaps this is why he said, "We were supposed to fly into the sky together," followed by him saying, "If only I could.", because he meant it both literally and figuratively.

In the end, no matter the reason, Sunday is still a bird trapped in a cage, unable to spread its wings and fly.

Hello nonnie! Always happy to have returnees, haha.

Also, this is very neat. Heartbreaking of course, but very neat.

I personally don't believe Sunday's clipped wings came to be as a form of self-harm. But I could be wrong? Majorly, I believe it would mainly be attributed to more of a symbolization, and some "incident" that would happen that follows it.

The analysis about gopher wood doing to to sunday seems more plausible, although that's also a bit conflicting in my opinion. If gopher had directly clipped sunday's wings, I feel as though sunday would have much more built up resentment towards him, despite as a reverent dreammaster. However, at the same time, sunday was highly manipulated by him, so perhaps he never did anything about it. In the end, I dont think gopher would have done it himself, at least not directly. Perhaps it must have been a form of punishment? A sort of "sacrifice" to be tethered to his responsibilities as the Head, instead of Robin who chose to become a singer? Maybe an accident? Who knows. But there's huge symbolization about him being the bird that can't fly, versus Robin soaring the skies, as they envisioned with the Charmony dove. It's also a huge thing with "staying safe and being taken care of in exchange for freedom" vs "risking everything in order to pursue what you want", it's a sort of condensation of their personal ideals.

Regardless, that's just how I feel. I could be wrong, because I don't think I'm that good at analyzing or such, lol. Anyways, this is very interesting to ponder about.

[halliestinks]

Not enough butters appreciation smh 😔 since ny sweet boy deserves better can I pls get headcanons of a reader who has like a MASSIVE crush on him and is super affectionate and sweet with him and he's not used to it

Butters x Reader who has a Massive Crush on him

a/n: YES PLS MORE BUTTERS REQUESTS!!! I agree 100% he doesn’t get enough appreciation and he’s literally one of my favourite characters (apart from clyde) 🙁🙁

• you’ve always been head over heels for butters, the way he’s so sweet and genuine to others and how he never has any underlying intentions when he’s being friendly to you always gave you butterflies

• he of course is completely oblivious to your crush, assuming you just think of him as really good pal

• butters isn’t used to someone being so openly affectionate towards him, so when you start showing him affection he gets confused and unsure how to react

• he often blushes and stammers, not knowing how to handle your overwhelming sweetness

• is soo confused, like somebody actually likes being around him???? AND they’re not just using him?????

• despite his confusion you are super patient. you know that butters may need time to adjust to your affectionate nature, you simply enjoy making him feel appreciated

• you despise how everyone uses him, constantly finding yourself sticking up for him even when he doesn’t realize he needs it

• you get so defensive whenever somebody exploits his naivety, though often times he reassures you that it’s okay and he is willingly helping whoever is taking advantage of him. (he doesn’t understand he’s just being used)

“butters just think about it before you agree, please? for me?”

“w—well alright…”

• it sometimes ends with you stopping him, while other times you aren’t so lucky. you make sure to tag along just in case something happens anyways

• complimenting him throughout the day is a must, it will successfully leave him feeling giddy and majorly boosts his confidence

• the first time it happened probably went like this;

“your smile is really cute :)”

“aw gee!! thanks y/n!!! you have a cute smile too!!!”

“☺️”

“…wait”

• takes a minute for him to realise what you just said. he literally NEVER gets compliments so it catches him off guard

• immediately goes red and fiddles with his thumbs as he usually does when he gets shy

• his reaction made you want to compliment him all the time, it irks you so much that he’s never really had much affection towards him

• you usually suggest places to hang out, like at an arcade or a restaurant, etc. he will agree to go no matter where it is, he’s just happy to have somebody who genuinely wants to be around him

• chilling at home together is equally as fun, watching movies while either you play with his hair or he plays with yours

• his parents adore you, they constantly ask if you want to come over for lunch/dinner. they’ll even make an exception for you to visit whenever butters is grounded

• one time you actually got grounded with butters for doing something silly, so you had to stay in his room for the entirety of your stay. you ended up having alot of fun that day, and you got closer to butters so you decide it was worth the grounding

• butters will sometimes surprise you with homemade gifts, or he’ll save up his money to buy you something you’ve mentioned wanting a few times

“do ya like it?? I made it ‘specially for you!!”

“…this is the nicest gift anyone has ever gotten me 😖”

“a—are you crying?!”

• your heart practically melts, it baffles you how somebody can be so pure and yet doesn’t get the love he deserves from others

• it doesn’t take long before he starts to realize just how much he enjoys your company, your sweetness and affection leaving him with a funny feeling in his stomach after hanging out. and he finds himself falling for you too

• I feel like he would probably confess to you almost immediately after he realizes his feelings for you

• you would be hanging out at his place playing a board game, until he can’t hold it in any longer and just straight up confesses

“I—I really like you y/n! like… I like— like you… do you uh.. like— like me too??”

“of course I like— like you too butters!!! I have for ages, I thought you already knew??”

“really?!? I had no idea!!!”

“and here I thought I made it so obvious.”

• the two of you start dating afterwards and nobody is surprised, almost everybody thought you were already a couple so!!

• anyways, he tries his hardest to be the best partner ever. and you do the same, making sure he knows how much you love him everyday <3

[aiscapades]

touchstarved m5 as tgwdlm songs

more starkid x touchstarved !! npmd here

leander — what do you want, paul?, you tied up my heart

vere — not your seed, let it out

ais — cup of poisoned coffee, join us (and die)

mhin — the guy who didn't like musicals, inevitable

kuras — show stoppin' number, america is great again

brief explanations:

leander

what do you want, paul?: this song makes me think of leander & mc's first meeting, him asking why mc is in eridia, probing them for answers but keeping his own secrets safe. "so, what do you want, paul? / a man so vague can't be trusted." leander also wants to convince mc there's hope if they stick with him, just like how paul's boss is trying to get him on the hivemind's side. also the "i want you to choke me" part. i'm not going to further explain lol you tied up my heart: once again, a song with sex stuff relating to leander ("you can tie me up if you want to") because of course. but even without that, this song has leander written all over it. your half-dead, shitty boyfriend manipulating you into freeing him? that's him alright! "i'm tied up / tied up with you / you understand me / now hand me those keys." there are also some lines that can read as leander dismissing all his escapades in an attempt to make you feel special. "all the booze and harlots / they didn't count / they couldn't break me / you're the one who caged me" + "will you ever forgive me? / i'll crawl on my hands and knees." we know you will, leander. whore.

vere

not your seed: this song makes me think of vere for very particular reasons. firstly, it's a song of rebellion. "it's not my fault anymore / no more curfews to be late for" + "not your seed / i'm not your perfect teen." no, vere isn't literally a rebellious teenage girl, but maybe metaphorically.... okay listen. he certainly doesn't like his position with the senobium. their relationship is like a parent-child dynamic in an extra fucked up kinda way. that kind of "we own you" parenting some of us know all too well (me; i'm projecting). "you left me out of your sight for one second / and look what happens / nightmare time!" this is absolutely vere finally rebelling against the senobium; i can totally see him singing this as he corners his handler, intent on giving them what they deserve. let it out: toying with, torturing someone and asking them to reveal their deepest desires is sooo vere. "what's in your soul? / is your heart so damp and bleak / that you won't give us a peak of your soul?" he likes to play with his food.

ais

cup of poisoned coffee: firstly, i know ais drinks tea, but i have this headcanon in the back of my brain that he also serves the seaspring's red water in teacups to people desperate for help. the seaspring tea/blue goo coffee parallel is a huge reason why i love this song for ais specifically. "get your cup of poisoned coffee, your toxic cup of joey / we'll make a twisted cup of java" the voices in ais's head totally sing this jingle way too often. join us (and die): this is super obvious. whether you're drinking from the seaspring or the blue goo coffee, you will die and join the hivemind. you will no longer be an individual, merely one of many. "we tried to convince you with soliloquy / but now we'll kill you with more than harmony" this gives me "well, we tried to get you to drink by convincing you it'll cure your life-threatening illness/injury... but since that didn't work, guess we'll just have to use brute force!" like ocudeus!ais forcing mc to drink from the seaspring. "we're gonna kick your ass / then we're gonna / fucking kick your ass!" this line has ais written all over it lol. he's going to beat your ass man! my guy's gonna fight you!!!!

mhin

the guy who didn't like musicals: mhin could sub in for paul for this entire musical and it would still work. they're both matter-of-fact, grouchy, buzzkills (affectionate). "in the tiny town of hatchetfield / lived an awful grinch named paul / ... not singing and dancing with us all / should we kill him? should we kill him?" i imagine this is vere's train of thought when it comes to mhin, like "they're no fun. should i just kill them? :3c" next, the lines "the words will come to you / we swear we will teach you / what it means to love / what it means to obey" read to me like the senobium's power over eridia, and specifically over mhin if they become enslaved much like vere. inevitable: all the ts love interests are capable of betraying mc, but i love thinking of the implications of mhin betraying mc. they are a monster like everyone else, but they are trying so hard to hold on to their humanity. giving in to their true self is the last thing they want to do, so mhin is particular is very interesting to think about in this lens. this song is the "after everything, after all your efforts to survive and save the world, to save the person you love, you have LOST" message that rounds up the musical. "what if i told you i made it / and this is the life that i chose? / would you even believe it?" this gives mhin's bad ending vibes!!! also the juxtaposition of these two songs for mhin (tgwdlm + inevitable) is just perfect. they are total opposites, and given mhin's very black-and-white thinking (monsters BAD!), i think it's extra fitting.

kuras

show stoppin' number: okay HEAR ME OUT. kuras as professor hidgens. this guy who has been waiting for the end times, planning for it. giving in to the apocalypse. using it to serve his own purpose. in a way, hidgens and kuras are similar in their guilt; hidgens has survivor's guilt (workin' boys) and kuras is repenting for whatever fucked-up humanity-wrecking shit he did once upon a time. only, kuras helps humans as a doctor, and hidgens... writes a very homoerotic musical. "a ditty to make the chorus girls swoon / it'll unify humanity in a thundering chorus" + "an aria to rule them all / the world will come crumblin' down" it's really giving biblical apocalypse. angel trumpets or whatever. america is great again: much like show stoppin' number, this song makes me think of kuras being complicit in & enjoying the apocalypse, though instead of just going along with the ride, kuras is actively causing it. "there's only room for right and wrong / it's me or you or you or me" + "it's a charted course at the whim of our own evolution / singularity had through a pre-destined self-destruction / so that we may rebuild and experience a new construction" definitely gives god's great flood to rid the earth of sinners, only kuras is the god in this case.

bonus: la dee dah dah day this is all of us dancing n singing together <3

[shenzi-hemlock]

Do you ever listen to a podcast and you hear some of the coldest takes you’ve ever heard in your life (I’m talking colder than the heat death of the universe) and the little devil on your shoulder says you should start a podcast to just tell these poor souls why they are so disgustingly wrong about every topic they chat about but the little angel on your other shoulder tells you to just move on and hold strong, to not give in to the desire to make a podcast??

Is that just me??

[funshinebf]

having a friend with a shitty partner is really hard cause its like i understand better than most what its like to care about someone even when they mistreat you and how easy it is to blame yourself when it happens. but sometimes i just want to grab my friends by the shoulders and shake them while shouting "YOU DESERVE BETTER!!!!!!!"

[llycaons]

'oh jc can't do warm and fuzzy stuff, he's bad at emotions, he's prickly, he's abrasive, this is so hard for him' okay, well if it's too hard for him to treat wwx with respect and consider his feelings then he shouldn't be in wwx's life. it's as simple as that

[snekdood]

me and my boyfriend were having a conversation earlier about how creepy my dad is and how he 1 used to spy on my mom w binoculars in his car across the street after their divorce (she got a restraining order luckily) but also 2 i remember him threatening to kill my mom and her current husband and i said something about how "i used to be scared i'd see him outside of my window watching me, even though he would probably just go after my mom i was worried he might try to kidnap me-"

and then it all clicked for me. the reason zero is the way he is is bc of my dad. the reason my comic is the way it is is bc of my fucking dad!

[unproduciblesmackdown]

knock on wood but already had the thought about how the potential What If winstuk of ostensible post-7x03/WDE could just be....boisterous. effulgent. vibrant.

[vroomvro0mferrari]

LN4 | Panic at the Disco

Summary: When you call your brother to pick you up from the club, it's his best friend who answers.

Lando Norris x Fewtrell!Reader

WC: 1.3K

Warnings: Maybe slight panic attack, insinuated sexual harassment/assault

Part 2

Masterlist

You rush through the club in a hurry, bumping into God knows how many people as you search for the exit. The hot, stuffy air makes it even more difficult to breathe as you keep pushing through the crowd. You can feel the wetness of your tears run down your cheeks as you reach the exit, nearly running into the bouncer checking IDs outside. You stand close to him as you wipe your cheeks and sniffle, trying to calm yourself down while you rummage through your purse in search of your phone. Taking a deep breath, you call your brother.

You wait impatiently as the phone rings. He doesn’t answer, so you call again. And again. Eventually, after three tries, the phone is picked up. 

“Hello? Max?” You say rushedly.

You hear some noise on the other side. In your frenzy, you don’t realise it’s not your brother, not from the mere grumpy hello the phone is answered with.

“Can you come pick me up? Please?” The sheer panic you’re experiencing is clear in your voice. Lando can even hear your sniffling through the phone as you wipe your hand under your nose. 

“Y/N? Is that you? Are you crying?” He asks, much more awake now as he sits up from his position on the couch.

“Who’s this? Lando?” You realise now that you hear him speak; it's your brother’s best friend – to your frustration.

“Yes”

“Why are you answering my brother’s phone?” You ask annoyed.

“We were just hanging out, he fell asleep and-”

“You know what – it doesn’t matter. Can you tell him to come pick me up please?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m not sure, uhm, it’s called Palace, I think.” You sniffle, “You’ll send him to get me?” You ask hopefully.

“I’ll come get you myself. I’m just putting my shoes on, I’ll be there in a bit.” He says, putting your brother’s phone on speaker mode and stepping into his shoes.

“Lando you don’t have to come, just tell Max to come pick me up, please. I need him right now.” You say, frustrated that Lando wants to come. He’s not who you want and need at this moment; you need someone who you can trust, who’ll protect you and make you feel safe after what just happened. You need your brother, a close friend, or maybe even your father, but not Lando. Why can’t he understand that? You can feel your tears welling up again in frustration.

Lando ignores you, however. “Are you safe right now? You should try to find a group of people or something, stick to them until I get there, okay?”

“Lan-” He cuts you off, in a rush to get to you. 

“Do you want to stay on the phone? I’m getting in the car right now, I’ll be there in, like, eight minutes.”

“Lando, just send Max, please.”

“I’m already in the car. Do you want me to stay on the line, or not?” You hear the car revving in the background.

You sigh. Nevertheless, you’re relieved he’s on his way and you don’t have to stay here much longer. “That’s not necessary, Lando. I’m with the bouncer right now. Just come quick, please?” You’ve given up on the idea that your brother might come, Lando’s very much set in his ways.

“Of course, I’ll be right there.” Lando says firmly before hanging up.

Although you and Lando aren’t the best of friends, you get along well enough. Regardless, you get caught up in discussions quite regularly; both of you are passionate and stubborn in your opinions – it rarely happens that you and Lando do not end up being separated by your brother or a mutual friend. However, that you know exactly how to push each other's buttons doesn’t mean Lando doesn’t care about you. In fact, the opposite is true. Although he would never admit it, Lando has liked you for quite a while and cares for you deeply, even though he doesn’t generally show his feelings. And so, when you call him (well, not him specifically, but that doesn’t matter) crying and upset, he worries about you. He could’ve woken up your brother, who you obviously would have preferred over him, but he wants to be the one who’s there for you. He wants to be the one who protects you and keeps you safe – better yet, the one who makes you feel safe, if he could ever accomplish such a thing.

Lando exceeds his own expectations when he arrives at the nightclub in under five minutes. Already spotting you standing with the big, bulky bouncer, arms wrapped around yourself in an attempt to keep yourself warm in the cold, late night (or early morning) breeze. He carelessly parked his car on the side of the road, barely turning on the hazard lights before exiting the car. 

“Y/N! Are you okay?” He jogs towards the club entrance, concern showing on his face.

You lifted your head at the familiar voice yelling your name. Quickly thanking the bouncer who kept you company, you rushed over to the familiar boy. You had never been so happy to see Lando.

He pulled you into his arms as soon as you were within his reach. Cradling your head and brushing your hair with one hand, while the other pulled you closer by your waist. Although you initially wanted your brother to come, this was good too – you’d even go as far as to say you were enjoying it. Despite your differences, Lando’s presence (more specifically, his strong arms holding you tight) made you feel at ease and calmed you down. He relieved the tenseness of your body and you relaxed in his hold. Hiding your face in his neck and fisting the fabric of his shirt, you nestled yourself comfortably in Lando’s body and exhaled the breath you had been holding.

He buried his nose in your hair on the top of your head, breathing in your scent and smiling at the feeling of you snuggling into him. It felt right, so right, to be holding you like this. He whispers, “Are you okay?” You merely nod your head, not wanting to leave his embrace. “Do you want to tell me what happened?” He questions further.

You stay silent, enjoying Lando’s strong hold on you. It makes you feel safe. Safe enough to share what happened in the club. “There was some random guy who thought he was entitled to my attention.” You mumble into his neck.

“He didn’t touch you, did he?” He continues, already fearing the answer.

You let a silence fall before answering, “He did,”

Lando squeezes you tighter at the revelation. He’s not surprised a man ruined your fun night out.

You continue quickly, “But there were some girls who helped me, and I think they kicked him out. I’m not sure though, I left as soon as I could. Then I called Max, but he didn’t answer, and now…”

“I’m sorry,” Lando says, a pained expression on his face. “Men are shit.”

You let out a small laugh and Lando can barely avoid shivering at the feeling of your warm breath hitting the sensitive skin of his neck. Nevertheless, he smiles in accomplishment when he hears the sound, glad he could cheer you up.

“You want to go home? To my place, I mean, Max is there…”

“Yes,” You say into Lando’s neck, sighing before distancing yourself from him.

He kisses the top of your head before letting you leave his hold, “Let’s go then.” He says, pulling you along to his car, still tucked into his side.

– – – – –

Part 2

[etherealkissed88]

applying the law while experiencing the 3d

why do you accept the neutral 3d as true?

“she texted me saying she doesnt want a relationship”

“i got a rejection letter from my dream college”

“i still dont have my ideal appearance”

“my bank account says i only have $2.45”

-> “i cant manifest” “what should i do now?” “it didnt work”

why are you accepting these as true? why are you adding negative meaning to the neutral 3d and then accepting that you “cant manifest”? why accept that as true? whatever happens in the 3d is always neutral. meaning does not come on its own - you add meaning when you judge it and decide its something negative. you are the only one in power and you have the option to choose what to assume and accept as true and youre accepting that she didnt want to commit? youre accepting that youre broke? it doesnt matter what happens in the 3d because the real stuff is happening in imagination. the 3d is always a neutral illusion. as the only one in power, you chose that she wants you in imagination so stick with that. dont use the 3d as validation when it only follows you.

you always get to choose the meaning

3d -> she sent a text saying she doesnt want a relationship

person A: shit, she doesnt want me. now what? i failed at manifesting

person B: *knows that is only neutral & still knows she and her sp are already in a relationship in imagination*

the fact that you can look at something in the 3d and decide what it means (or stick with the fact that it has no meaning), means you have power over it. you always have power over the 3d. if you didnt, how does law of assumption even exist? how is it possible that a homeless woman can manifest wealth while living in her everyday 3d homeless life? because the 3d never matters. ever. the only thing that matters is who you are being in imagination because that is what constantly is molding the 3d every second.

“but what do i do if the 3d is always in my face?”

1. remember that the 3d is always neutral so whatever happens, doesnt mean anything. it doesnt mean, your getting failing at manifesting. get used to seeing things as neutral. even getting your manifestation is neutral. you are the one adding positive meaning to it. there are even times when “negative” things in the 3d become the actual thing that leads people to their manifestation. an example is a lady’s success story: she was manifesting a better job and in the 3d she lost her current job but that lead to someone recommending her to a higher company since the person knew she lost her previous job. so she experienced something that is usually seen as negative (losing her job) but it caused her to get exactly what she wanted (the better job). this is why we always say: stick to the end, no matter what happens, stay true to what you want in imagination.

2. now that you know everything is neutral, remember that your only job is to assume your desire is fulfilled in imagination only! theres no reason to assume you have it in the 3d if it clearly isnt there. the 3d is neutral and a therefore a dead world. assuming you have something in a dead world is just useless. especially since you know imagination changes the 3d. that means the only goal is to assume its done in imagination and leave the 3d alone! live your normal life in the 3d while knowing its already done in imagination. using the lady’s success story about getting a better job, when she lost her previous job, she had to find another way to pay the bills, but she still stayed true to imagination and remembered she already has her upgraded job. do whatever you need to do in the 3d, feel whatever emotions you have, because the dead world doesnt matter. emotions, actions, etc in the 3d dont matter and remember feelings (angry, depressed, etc) dont manifest. your only job is to know its already done in imagination. since imagination = 3d, of course, by law, the 3d had no choice but to obey imagination where she already had her better job. thats why the 3d reflected that.

kisses, jani ☆

[yeyinde]

when your need grows teeth | John Price x f!Reader

John's the type of man to lock his jaws around what's his, preferring instead to ruin things, puncture it full of holes, and litter it with scars, rather than let it go. It starts when you ask him to pick up your birth control—like dangling a piece of bloody meat in front of a starving dog.  Of course he's going to take a bite.  He thinks you ought to have known this by now. 

SMUT 18+ | gratuitous smut; HEAVY breeding kink, breeding; Dom!John Price; p-in-v sex, unsafe sex; rough sex; mentions of spanking; mutual manipulation; this is roughly 10k of John Plotting and fucking you; John is: unhinged, obsessive, possessive, and Scheming. mentions of birth control tampering but nothing is followed through. No. He’s going to knock you up the old-fashioned way—by making you beg for it.

AO3 MIRROR

John has always had this desire—this awful, instinctual drive in the back of his head to knock someone up. Get them fat, swollen with his child. His. 

And maybe that's the crux of it. Possession. To have something of the most rooted kind. To irrevocably change someone—their anatomy, their body, the chemistry in their brain, their status in life from them (single no dependents) to mother (mother of his child), their very atoms—and create life from the combined parts. 

It's this almost fantastical beast, this unreachable dream for him. 

It's his Shangri-la. His castle in Spain. 

He's not under any disillusionment that this idea of fatherhood, of parenthood, is slightly skewed. That most men who want children don't feel this overwhelmingly greedy desire to fundamentally alter someone in such an irreversible way. It's not quite ownership, but it's the same ilk. A bastardised, unwanted child of it. 

And it's not just this idea of claimation—to forever be the father of their child, even if neither of them stays together; a piece of him will always be there, parasitic, no matter what—but something deeper. Something a bit less—egregious. 

This is, and always has been, about yearning. 

John's the type of man to lock his jaws around what's his, preferring instead to ruin things, puncture it full of holes, and litter it with scars, rather than to let it go. 

Marriage, he finds, is breakable. Divorce, separation. He's always on his worst behaviour in the initial stages of dating, so it's never something he has to entertain since no one ever sticks around long enough for it to be on the table, much less the menu, but the idea of it—of signing papers, of hashing out the split, of being known as ex-husband—leaves a bitter tang between his teeth. It won't do. He needs permanence. Perpetuity. 

Nothing says forever quite like a child, does it? 

And sure—he’s aware that countermeasures exist: custody orders, sole custody, shared; allotted visitations; divisional lines in this new age that keep the parents from ever interacting—but while you can get divorced, you can't unmake a child, can you?

The child would never write him out, either. 

Where deadbeats exist, it's important to note that their counterparts do, too. The ones like him who will gouge their eyes out of their skulls before they ever let what happened to them growing up trickle down and impact their child, polluting the pool. 

Simply put: John Price knows he'd be the best dad there is because he's stubborn that way. 

It helps, he supposes, that he really only has so much love to give out to the world, and greedily, he stashed the entirety of it away in a box to give to his would-be wife and their child. An overwhelming deluge that promises happiness should it ever be unlocked. Pandora's box, perhaps—down to the very essence because if John Price were to ever love someone, then it's probably in their best interest to run from it, this gaping, needy chasm. 

Not that it would ever be a possibility, of course—he’s much too good at compartmentalisation, in taking out his anger, his viciousness, on the ugly world he drenches himself in, the one his hands have a tangible cause and effect principle in place that will forever feed that starving beast inside of him.

Ergo—he’s a staunch supporter of the theory: happy wife, happy life. Though where those men think in a box stuffed full of emotional intimacy, flowers, chocolate, maintaining love, all-consuming and enduring, he takes it to extremes that would have them cowering a little bit. Maybe a lot.  

But that's fine. He only has to make sure his family is happy. No one else matters, save a select few who have a seat at his table during Sunday dinners. 

The rest, though? Spare parts. 

(The ice-cold resolve in those two words is apodictic, brass bound, and he's sure if his higher-ups knew about it, well—

His chest candy would be a hole in the ground. Put the rabid dog down before it has a chance to bite.)

But that all-consuming, devouring, obsessive love he has to give, that begs to be let free, is the reason why it's so tightly leashed. Locked up in a box. Untouchable. Inaccessible. 

It's why he isn't married. 

Ghost once asked him why the women he dated were older. Much older. Menopausal (always). And he'd said something to the effect of it being his type. Older women who wouldn't cower away from the acrid burn of him, who wouldn't hurt their delicate little hands on his gritty surface. 

But the real reason is because he knows better. 

He's a starving dog, and it's just bad form to dangle a piece of meat in front of it. Especially when the hand holding it is his own. 

Don't bite the hand that feeds you, and all. 

(The keen look in Ghost's eyes told him that, perhaps, the man already knew the reason when he asked, and was just satiating himself with kinship—the dark, awful look on Simon's ugly mug after the dredging the underbelly of Price’s rotten, mouldering mudfloor of things unsaid spoke volumes. 

They'd both nodded. Content, then. And promptly ordered a shot of whisky to drown the salivation, the hunger, from clogging their throats. Killing the urge to bite.

A pair of packless, stray dogs.)

But then he found you, and all his careful planning, all his distance, blew up in his face. 

It's always been on his mind since then. Lingering in his periphery—this fevered, tantalising vision of you, round and swollen with his child. 

It's unattainable, of course. A fantasy. 

Though, this—you throwing up in the washroom of his penthouse, undoubtedly knocked up by his machinations—is probably because he kept that desire too close to where he hides his questionable mortality, the one that allows him to throw innocent people to their deaths, and send mothers and fathers to an early grave just so he can rip his fists apart on their bastard offspring in his own brand of catharsis that always bites back when they grow up, hankering for revenge. 

He's always been good at snatching dreams out of the air, clenching them tight in his fists. Taming chimerical wants, whims, until they were docile, domesticated. Making realities out of fiction. 

And really—he’s just not a good man.

He thought you'd have known this by now.

He remembers the first time he growled the words into your ear as he came, your cunt clenching around him like a vice. Desperate for it, he teased after, fingers fucking into your sloppy, leaking hole. Pushing his spend back into you. Half-drunk on the taste of you still clinging to his beard, but mostly just mesmerised by the sight of you—pretty pussy all ruined, swollen from the vicious, hateful pounding he gave it, and dipping with his cum like a faucet. 

(It pissed him off—still does, really—when you waste it like this.)

Gonna fill you up, he snarled, low and wrecked. Gonna make it take—

It was a fantasy. Still is. But the way it took root in the garden of your bedroom, like it belonged—native flora, he thinks, a touch mad with it—had something ugly, oil slick, rearing up from that untouchable place in his head. 

He could really blame you for it—and does. The way your ankles locked tight around his thighs, hands reaching, grabbing at his waist, clawing at his asscheeks to press him in deeper, deeper still, as he came inside of you, cock lodged right against your plug, had that untameable beast cocking its head in consideration after you danced too close to it, waking it from his long, restful slumber. 

You wanted it. Ached for it. He could feel it in the way your walls tightened around him, practically starving for it. Your pretty, glossy eyes rolling back into your head. Drool running down your chin. A litany of pleas spilled from your kiss-bruised lips, begging him for it. Please, John. Please. Please—

Who was he to deny you? 

Even if you made a big, flustered show of waving it off—not something I've ever imagined for myself, you know? and–and your lifestyle, what you do—is something like that even possible for us?—he saw how it curled around your shoulders, dipping its silver tongue into your ear. Germinating. 

He let it. Encouraged it. 

“Something to talk about later,” he indulged, reaching over for a cigar just to smother the urge to breed you stupid. To tie you to his bedposts and keep you full until your belly was swelling with more than just the absurd volume of his seed he pumped inside of you. 

And, oh—

The uneasy smile on your face reeked of disappointment. 

Fuck. Fuck—

John went to the washroom after that, heart pounding out of his chest, and jabbed the lit end of his cigar into his thigh to kill the fever in his veins. To rewrite the desperate, ugly howling in his head with pain instead. 

It worked. Works—

Until you came to him, all watery-eyed and worried, and told him to please, please stop falling asleep with a lit cigar because you think you might just go mad if you lost him to a cigarette fire. And doesn't he see how silly it is, these burns look so bad, John, and I worry—

His teeth ached. He smiled, but it felt like a grimace. A dog holding back the instinct to bare its teeth. 

“Sure, love,” he'd said, and started taking out his anger on your cunt instead, fucking you deep, and stupid. Getting you all cockdrunk, and hungry for the dream that spoiled so badly in the back of his head, he's sure a proper man would call it a nightmare. “Anything you want.”

(Brassbound. Apodictic. You know that, he knows you know that, so imagine his surprise when you come to him, all soft and tender, and ask him to pick up your birth control as if he hadn't spent the better part of two years grumbling every fucking time you took it and wasn't on the verge of tossing the damn bottle out the window, and fucking you until it took—

But—you do know that, don't you? 

Well, then. Whatever his lady wants, right? Right.)

“Can you stop by the pharmacy on your way home tonight?”

He hums, fiddling with the belt of his slacks in front of the mirror. “Sure, love. You feelin’ sick?” 

“No,” you murmur, sliding behind him on your way to the washroom, wearing nothing but a towel tucked under your arms. “I need my refill. For birth control.” 

His hands still. A gnarled, rotted tendril curls over the edge of the cesspool, murky, ink black water splashing all over the place. “Oh, yeah? Still taking that, hm?”

You fluster. Hands waving, chock full of nervous, emotive energy you can't seem to shake off. “Well—yes. I mean, obviously.”

And he'd leave it there, let the spillage dry on the hot pavement, if you hadn't glanced back at him, all damp keenness, slightly skittish, and asked, feather-soft and utterly fragile, “right?” 

Right? A question, he notes. Not a statement. 

He licks his teeth. Tastes something rancid in the gaps. 

“Mm. I suppose so.” He leaves it vague, but drenches it in the heavy weight of his disappointment. Anchors dragging it down. You flit around the space like a house-locked bird, slamming into the walls and ceiling as you try—blind and panicked—to find an escape. Any escape. 

He finds the whole thing utterly charming. Especially when you realise he pitched himself in front of the only exit, thick, heavy hands curled around his belt, cock outlined against his slacks, already thickened, drooling in his pants. 

There's gasp—wet, and sharp—as you take him in. The liquid of his eyes as his want bleeds out of his skull. The flush on his cheeks, the twitch of his cock at the mere mention of you not taking your silly little pills. 

John lets it sit for a moment, taking in greedy lungfuls of your unease as you glance everywhere but at him, as if looking in his direction, breathing in this toxic miasma will give you a contact high. Infectious. Gnarled. 

The little seed that started germinating blooms. 

He fights back the urge to grin, all teeth. Madness staining them black. 

“It's—it’s on—” and fuck, he's never seen you so unsure before, this nervous. You handle him like a wrangler, wrassling his brutish dominance until it's putty in your hands, splitting his head into pieces and galvanising the madness inside until it's scripture for you to peek at whenever you need guidance, insight into him, his essence, his being. 

Your dyadic has always been built on permeance. 

John doesn't think there's a single person alive who understands him as much as you do. The only person who seems content to gorge yourself on his rotted marrow like it was a delicacy. 

Seeing you like this rents his resolve in two. 

“It's the pharmacy near the, uh, the school. The kindergarten.” 

He chokes on a groan, and thinks he tears something in his throat with the strain of keeping it down. There's blood, ash, in the back of his throat.

“Alright, love. I'll pick it up.” 

You smell it, and shiver. 

It's giving meat to a starving dog, and saying, dog, don't take a bite. 

And so, of course he does. 

John picks up your prescription, tossing it in the passenger seat like it personally offended him. And it has. Does. It's what's standing in the way between what he wants, what he craves, and there's a distinct thrum of irritation welling inside of him. One that started when he had to bark out your name at the counter earlier, and the pharmacist looked at him, and calmly, kindly, explained what it was he was picking up. 

Make sure she takes them once a day. Preferably at the same time. This brand of oral contraceptive can be taken with or without food—

Fuck off, he thought—thinks, even now, glowering into the tinted window of the pharmacy. 

He grips the steering wheel tight until his scarred knuckles bleach white under the strain, and sits in the parking lot, staring, unseeingly, at the shops. Pensive. Thoughtful. It gnarls over his expression until he's the picture of that grizzly-like intensity you often accuse him of. All furrowed brows and a pinched, angry twist to his lips. 

There's a series of complex equations running laps in his head. He's no stranger to this process, needing to make life or death decisions in less time it takes someone to snap their fingers, or tentatively stammer out his title. 

This one is more linear than the rest. One plus one, so to speak. But the weight of it is profound. Heavier, even, than deciding between the success of his mission and the life of an innocent bystander. 

(But he thinks he's just selfish like that.)

In his head, he debates the ethics of replacing all of these silly little tablets that stand in his way with sugar pills. 

It would be the quickest path to the end, but the risk-reward ratio ebbs and flows the more he considers things without the miasmic influence of that abomination throwing itself at the walls of its enclosure, howling in an endless cacophony of do it, do itdoit—

A better man wouldn't even have such a temptation. He supposes that's what you deserve, but he already had this particular crisis a few months after he met you, and realised that the things he wanted to do to you would undoubtedly put him on a list. Slapped so hard with a restraining order, his ears would still be buzzing. 

That something about you made his jowls twinge, and his teeth ache, and no amount of stay away from her, Price; she deserves better than you was going to keep his dirty hands from curling around your throat, leaving soot-stains on your skin in the shape of his fingerprints. Brandishing ownership in burst blood vessels; a pretty collar for you to wear because as much as you like to pretend otherwise—

You're a dog just like him. 

In any case, he's the best choice for you. The only one who'd burn the world just to keep you warm, and that's what you really need. Protection. 

And fuck—you toy with that particular urge that has always been etched in fine lines within the walls of bones; dipping your fingers into it, and spreading it over the apples of your cheek. Everything about you prickles along his hindbrain. Renders him from a modern man with modern ideals to an animal who can only speak in growls, snarls; pure primalism, all instinct. 

You're made for each other down to the bone. He's sure he could split your head apart and find that your cranial sutures are perfectly mirrored. Made in the same image: you were grown from his missing rib, and he always meant to be cradled in the brackets of your thighs. 

So, crisis of worthiness aside—because there are none, not anymore—he plots. Plans. Schemes. But his machinations keep catching on the soft fibrils of your wants. 

John doesn't know what he'd do if you changed your mind. 

(Or, rather, he does but that's another madness to unravel with his personal therapist.)

It's with this—the slight brandishing of his uncertainty in your certainty—that he gives up the idea, pocketing it for a later date, and drives home, back to you. 

He doesn't toss the bag on the counter, but sets it up perfectly, placing it as close to the edge where the bin sits under it. All it would take is a breath of wind for it to fall into the trash. 

That doesn't happen, though. You stare at the white, crinkled package for a moment as he sips on his tea, quietly contemplative. With your expression hidden from him, he has no idea what might be going through that pretty head of yours. Disappointment, he can only hope. And then you're reaching for it, fingers gripping the bag tightly in your fist. He hears the paper crumble. It sparks something inside his chest. A bloom of hope that you might just throw it out. Toss it in the bin—

You turn to him instead, knuckles white. 

“Thanks,” you say, and the matter is dropped. 

He goes to tuck that want back where it escaped, leaving slick trails of putrefying rot behind, but—

John peeks in the vanity later that evening, but where he expects to see the little rectangular package sitting in its usual spot between his aftershave and the mouthwash, he finds nothing. Just an empty spot on the ledge, spotlit by the lack of dust. A clean square of white paint, undisturbed. 

His jaw twinges. He wonders if you're hiding it from him, keeping it safe from his machinations, but then he finds it shoved in the drawer with his shaving kit, and the box of condoms he bought when you'd first started dating (for show, naturally—John had no intentions of using them and learned persuasion was your Achilles heel; that and you tended to get a little glossy-eyed whenever he growled filth in your ear, the smell of your cunt heavy on his breath). 

The package is crinkled like you squeezed it tight in your little fist before you tossed it in. 

You're always meticulous in the way you put things in their places. Even the junk drawer is organised, all neat. 

This speaks volumes, but he's not quite sure what it says. They are still here, though. Accessible. One is missing from the pack. It dampens his mood. 

He picks up his toothbrush, and runs through those calculations again to see how he can convince you to skip the one you're meant to take tomorrow. And the next day, and the next, and the next—

He stays awake as you sleep beside him, looking into how many days you can miss before your brand of birth control stops being effective. 

Seven pills in a row. 

He files it away, lost in thought. 

The next morning, he leaves his phone open on the bedside table with the article pulled up. He kisses you awake before he leaves to shower, humming something soft under his breath. 

When he returns, he finds you sitting up in bed with your knees drawn to your chest. There's something pensive about the look on your face. Paper soft, as though it would all blow away at a mere whisper. 

You regard him almost cooly but something raw, fractured splits over the ravine. A waterfall of midnight black sludge rains down. 

(He wonders if it tastes of the same rot, the same madness, as the basin of the untouched recesses of his head—)

“I'm working late tonight,” you murmur after a measured beat, and he can't place your tone. “Maybe we can watch a movie when I get home.” 

John nods, and your eyes drop, scaling down his bare, broad chest as he breathes in the flint staining the air. Your gaze is white-hot when it bludgeons into him, feverish. 

It doesn't take much beckoning at all to have him crawling toward you, towel ripped from his hips and thrown somewhere in the aether. 

As he steals the madness from your tongue, his eyes flicker to the phone still sitting on the table. It looks perfectly untouched. The screen is off. 

That, too, he files away. 

John comes to the succinct conclusion that the only means he has in his arsenal to get what he wants—legally, and somewhat morally, anyway—is persuasion. 

There's no recourse if he can water that burgeoning plant inside of you, make it seem like this is something you want, too. A family. With him. 

(Only him.)

He knows that you see things quite similarly to him. Wherein love is desire. Desire is hunger. And there's nothing more profound to you than to eat the person you love alive. Consumption of every part—the good, the beautiful, the bad, the ugly, and the rotted: skin, fat, muscles, blood, and bones. All of it. 

So, even if somewhere down the road you think you hate him for this, it'll be fine. He'll just consume that, too. 

John Price is a tenacious man. Stubborn. 

(Bullish, he hears around the barracks. Fuckin’ stubborn prick, too.)

It helps that this line of work is perfectly suited for such a peremptory drive to the finish line, no matter the cost. Utilitarian to a fault, despite his rather recalcitrant disposition. It's how he gets his way more often than not. Brutish dominance. Loutish suppression. 

But a near reckless, suicidal loyalty that attracts the sort of beasts this line of work needs. 

But that's work, not this. Not trying to convince you, his sugar-sweet (and viciously diabolical) lover, to bear the burden of giving him a family because society says it's uncouth (and illegal, morally reprehensible, villainous) for him to chain you to his bed to keep the darker parts of himself that want to rip into anyone who had the pleasure—pleasure that no longer belongs to them—of looking at you. 

That's all for him. 

(Nasty old bastard.) 

And, of course, because he's ready. Everything clicks. Locks into place. There's no one else out there for him. 

Really, though—it's your fault for prodding that beast in the first place. For letting inside your house, your bed. For thinking it could be tamed. And so. You should accept responsibility for it. 

(Nasty, nasty—)

But just as much as you know him, he knows you. You'll give him a litany of reasons why this shouldn't happen, and none of them will be because this isn't what you want. It'll be filled with reasons why you think he doesn't. 

And that simply won't do. 

So, he plots. Plans. 

The thing is. No one ever taught him how to hold things in his hands without crushing it. 

He doesn't think he can be delicate. Gentle. There's no way to gently nudge you into this. No. 

He'll convince you to yield the same way a tsunami convinces a house to move out of the way. 

Buried to the hilt in your cunt, he growls gospels into your ear about this beautiful Shangri-la, this sprawling castle he has in Spain until you're clenching down around him tight, conditioning your body to come at the thought of swelling with his child. About letting his seed take root, letting him knock you up. 

It's a crass image that he spits into your head—fuck you until it takes, love; breed this pretty cunt every day until you're fat and swollen—serves as the positive reinforcement to his classical conditioning. He'll turn you into one of Pavlov's mutts, salivating at the sound of him groaning into your ear as he fills your pussy up to the brim. He'll reshape you, change your wants until you only come around his cock when he's spitting his release against the plug of your womb. 

And when you make to get up, letting all his spend slip from your sloppy cunt to take your pill, he pulls you closer under the guise of wanting to feel your body on his, murmuring diabolical compromises he has no intention of letting you see through. 

“Later,” he rasps, pulling you closer. His mouth slots across your temple. “Just take it later, sweetheart. Later.”

“But—”

“It’ll be fine.” 

And, as if you'd been waiting for that reassurance, you melt into his hands, wet putty. 

(you take the bloody pill later, and he adds that to his mental calendar, adjusting the maths. He supposes he’ll just have to try harder next time.)

John's desire for you is overwhelming, all-encompassing, and he schemes around his wandering hands, bullying into your messy cunt only moments before your alarm is meant to go off, reminding you to take your pill, reinforcing that irritating little wall that keeps his come from reaching your womb. 

It goes off, but he hardly hears it over the roaring in his ears, the sweet, sweet litany of moans that slip out, staining the pillow with your pleasure. He just keeps fucking you through it, growling mindlessly into your ears about how badly he wants to come inside of you. His warnings, threats, about how close he is intertwining with your desperate begging for him to come, come inside me, John is the most beautiful harmonisation he'd ever heard, and it sews itself into his marrow, polluting the ugliness inside with a new, fresh hell for him to torture himself with. That delicious pleasure-pain that drives him mad—

He fills you up, palm pressed taut to your lower belly as he spits his virile release deep into your cunt. He can feel the heavy outline of his cock against your skin, stuffed full of him, and it's this—the way he moulds your body around him, cock visible through your flesh—that makes his eyes roll back into his head. Makes the urge to fuck, to breed, to claim bludgeon into him, shattering reason, logic. He wants to change you, irrevocably. Forever. To mar you with his touch, his essence. 

“Mine,” he chokes out, ugly and raw. It's a mangled mess in his throat. A threat. “All fucking mine, aren't you, love? All mine—”

His words seem to throw you into another climax, cunt clenching greedily down around him as he softens inside of you, plugging you up. You liked that, he notes, purs. The notion brands itself across his resolve, reshaping it into something that would make anyone else recoil in fear, disgust. 

But you preen at this creature that bares its fangs at you, snaps wicked teeth against your jugular. Fingers threading through its hair, shushing it, soothing it, as you pull it back into your embrace, head tucked against your chest. You lull it into complacency with the heavy thud of your heart, your sweet, earthy scent. 

What a pair, he thinks, and clamps his hands around your wrist when you murmur something about taking your pill now. Need to take it before it gets too late, John—

He makes his move, distracts you with his mouth, his tongue. 

“Just take it after,” he murmurs into your pussy, thighs bracketing around his head. His hands pull your waist down, pressing you harder against his mouth. “Later, love. It'll be fine—”

“But, John—”

The protest dies, turns to ash, when he grunts, sealing his lips around your clit, bullying it with the rasping press of tongue until you're arching your back, riding his face. Thoughts of your silly pill are gone, swallowed by him as you gush, drenching his mouth in your slick. 

And after, when you make to get up again, he pulls you close instead, voice curling around you like smoke when he tells you to take it after. 

“No, love. Stay in bed with me,” he peppers kisses to your cheek, your jaw, chin, sweetening his words, and folds you into the tight embrace of his arms. “Take it in the morning. It'll be fine to miss a day.”

You level him with something that shadows the ravines in your gaze with pure, unadulterated scepticism, but as he scouts the canyons, the valleys, the pretty craters that make up the composite of your eyes, he finds no discernible trace of wariness, uncertainty. The terse line in his shoulders ease. 

But while fossicking around he unearths something else. Something a bit more enigmatic, calculative, than doubt. Equivocal, slippery, it runs from him when he tries to give chase, tucking itself back into the harsh tenebrous that shades the landscape. 

He hums, wanting to ask, but you sigh in quasi-acquiescence, and burrow deeper into his embrace. 

“Fine,” you huff, but he tastes a purring sense of satisfaction in the air. “I'll take it tomorrow instead.” 

“Good girl.” The praise slips out, low and gritty, perfumed with his heavy greed. 

You shiver against him. The hitch in your throat is quiet in the bedroom, but to him, it sounds like a gunshot. 

John keeps meticulous track of the empty pill slots, and notes with a sticky, resinous sense of glee that the numbers are becoming muddled, skewed. Later becomes tomorrow, and your soft acquiesce has days skipped. Missed. 

You can't double up, you huff to him, mournfully slinking into the bed. It's nearly one in the morning. Technically, a brand new day. I absolutely have to take it tomorrow, John. Make sure you remind me—

There's something pointed in your tone. Something oil-slick. He nods, bites back a grin. 

“Sure,” he pulls you close, breathes in the sweet, loamy scent of you—sweat and sex and the lingering remnants of your perfume, your soap—and lets it stain his lungs. “I can do that.” 

You say nothing at all when he doesn't bring it up until well past midnight the next day, offering little more than an exasperated groan, and a huffy roll of your eyes, as if this was just a missed dinner with friends and not a life-changing misstep. 

(The beast purrs. He places his hand over his chest, and feels the rumble under his skin.)

“Need to be more responsible than this, John,” you say, squirming in his hold to try and rush to the washroom to take that pesky little pill. 

“Sorry, love,” he offers, and means none of it. Clings tighter to you. “Got a bit carried away today, is all.” 

“It's not your fault—” something curls out from a dark crevasse when you look at him. “I've been so—off lately, you know? Must be the new batch. Maybe I should call my doctor.” 

He stills. Body tensing, coiling. John tries to speak, but the words are ash on his tongue. He clears his throat. 

“Could stop taking it.” 

It crackles in the air. Hangs heavy like a stormcloud. 

You blink, stunned. But it's artificial, hollow. Pulled from a wicker basket where you keep all your different skins. 

“You mean—what? Stop it all together—?”

You flit in the space once more, but it's less of an injured bird searching for an escape, he realises suddenly, and more of—

A boomslang. 

One rearing up, searching for the perfect place to strike. 

Wishful thinking, though, because you're flustered and skittish once more, a small prey animal he isn't sure what he wants to do the most—sink his teeth into you, tear you into pieces, and devour you whole, or hide you away from the world. 

“I can look for something else in the meantime,” you sound shy, hesitant, and it prickles across his skin. “But we'd need to be careful, you know. Otherwise you might actually get me pregnant.”

He tries to swallow his groan. Chokes on it instead. 

“Sure, sure—” he hacks into his palm. “Of course, love. We'll be safe. I'll pull out—”

Naturally, he doesn't. Makes no effort to even try despite promising you he is. 

“Not my fault your pussy won't let go of me, love,” he grumbles, hand cupping your weeping sex in his palm. The heat of you is searing. Blistering. He thinks he could happily melt inside of it for the rest of his life, and leans down to whisper his devotion into your come-slicked folds, the bitter tang of you, of him, admixing on his tongue. An elixir he could drown in. 

You huff at him after, all glossy-eyed and sex-drunk, and tell him to please try harder, John, I'll have to get plan b tomorrow—

You don't, but the threat of it, the possibility, lingers in the back of his mind, souring his thoughts. 

Next time, and I'll have to, John, you say, featherlight, lips pressed against the head of his cock. A warning, a goddamn tease—

His voice is strained, pinched. “Of course, love,” and he guides your mouth back to his cock, letting the matter fall into pieces when you suck on the sensitive head, tongue licking, coy and kittenish, over his frenulum. 

It's only later, when watches you swallow down his come, that the beast slinks out of the shadows, pocketing the fragments. 

You're off birth control—barely any scheming words of whispered concern needed—but the idea of you taking a little pill to wipe away his efforts has him pulling back. Recalibrating his plans. 

He decides on a different route to the same end. 

Damnation at your own hand. 

John, for his credit, does begin to pull out after that—albeit, with a great deal of agonised reluctance—and instead comes all over your pretty face. 

With thick ropes of his pearlescent spend dripping down the apples of your heated cheeks, he doesn't think he's ever seen a sight more beautiful than this. 

And one with more opportunity.

Slowly, he swipes at it with his thumb and then promptly brings it down, hard, on your clit. You flinch, mewling at the overstimulation, and the threat he brings so close to your raw, unprotected sex. It's dangerous. This thin line he dances along could snap at any moment. Could rain hellfire and fury over his broad shoulders, unmake all the progress he'd steadily built up. 

He walks the precipice, anyway. He pulls his hand away, and brings two fingers up to curve over your cheeks. His thumb, stained with your slick and his come, slides across your bottom lip. 

The pout you give him—all wet-eyed lachrymose—has his spent cock twitching against his sticky thigh. “Fuck, love. Gonna send me to an early grave if you keep starin’ at me like that.” 

“You're cracked,” you slur around his thumb. In retaliation, he digs it into your tongue, and preens—full of nasty, gnarled satisfaction—when your eyes flutter, rolling into the back of your head at the taste. 

With this brief distraction, he drops his come-stained fingers to your mound, and rubs along the swollen rim of your hole. Just touching, pressing. A tease, a whisper. 

You tense. “John—” it's muffled around his thumb, and he isn't sure if it's a warning or a plea. 

He pushes the tips in, barely to the first knuckle, and just pets around your rim. 

It's a battle of wills, now. “No more than this,” he promises, and the undercurrent of his threat rents the air. Makes you bristle. 

You always loved a challenge—especially coming from him. 

“Just the tip?” You tease, spittle running down your chin. Your eyes are dark—midnight skies, ink black—and he's struck by the afterimage of himself in those pools. Made in the same image. 

He grunts, slides into the first knuckle, and scissors them apart. 

“John—” it's breathless. Your teeth spear his thumb, tight around his bone. He wants nothing more than to have you bite down hard, scar his bones with the gnawed meteors of your desire. Your desperation. “Fuck—please—”

You give in so prettily, and he barely has a moment to think about how quick it's been when you angle your hips, hand falling to grip his wrist tight as you slide down his fingers, all the way to the last knuckle. 

You clench around him like a vice. A pretty bow. He fucks you with his fingers, meeting your shallow thrusts with ones of his own, slamming viciously into your pussy as he coos adorations into your ear. 

With his other hand, he reaches down and fists himself over your bare mound, pressing the tip against your clit where it weeps prespend over your flesh. His thumb sweeps across what spills out, dragging it back down to your sopping hole, pushing it inside. 

It's probably not enough to reach your womb, to get you pregnant, but he clings to that tantalising fantasy as he drills his fingers into you until you come, breathlessly begging him to fuck you harder, to fill you up—

He isn't even fucking you with his cock, and you still beg him for it. 

John pushes the tip into your slit, fingers still buried deep inside of your throbbing pussy, and groans with the force of his release. It makes him dizzy, almost nauseous with it, filling his head with nothing but the sweet, wounded sound of your moans filling the room, and the wet squelch of his fingers pulling out of you. 

When he catches the threads of cognisance in his fingers once more, he leans back on his haunches, chest heaving, and brands the messy sight of your pussy fluttering, clenching around nothing, as his spend drips down your slit, over your hole, and pools in the sheets below. 

He's not sure if heaven exists, but he knows the sight of you, breathless and whimpering on his bed, is the closest a man like him will ever come to seeing it. 

The push-pull of this little game stretches on. 

Price likes to see just how far he toe the line before you're whimpering into the sheets, telling him don't, John, don't come inside me, I'm not anything, John—and he's ripping himself away from the tight clutch of your wet, hot cunt, and coming all over you.

The illicit tease of barely pulling out in time, and then scooping up the mess he makes on your face, your breasts, your belly, your ass, lower back, thighs, and spooning it into your pussy until it's a fixture in your bedroom ritual. 

And maybe it's the threat of it all, of playing such a dangerous game, seems to cudgel under his skin the most, ripping apart the thin veneer of that man he once pretended to be—righteous and good—shedding it off with each hiccupped gasp you make when he presses his come-slicked fingers inside of you, murmuring guttural words of affection in the shape of impish mockery (want it bad, don't you, sweet thing; so fuckin’ greedy for it, love—). 

He likes it the most when he can fuck you stupid on his fingers. Cockdrunk, and come-starved (because you are, of course; he hasn't come inside of your cunt in weeks, and doesn't miss the mournfully pitiful whines you give when he pulls out, depriving you of the pleasure of feeling him come inside you), you're too blissed out, swimming in pleasure, to think about what he's doing. 

In fact, he doesn't really give you much of a chance to think at all. 

The next few weeks are filled with him fucking you each night brutally, viciously, snarling low in your ear about how bad he wants to come in you, stuff you full, and then keep you plugged up all night with his cock that it takes, and then pulling out right before, committing the sight of your betrayed expression to memory where it'll sit like a trophy when you finally break. 

You make an appointment with your gynaecologist, and circle the date on his calendar. 

John notes it down. Tucks it away. 

And then he amps up the pressure.

John's fingers root behind your knees, pushing your thighs apart as he settles between them. His gaze drills into your bare cunt, slick and wet, and so ready for him. Eager for it. 

He'd counted the days, and knows that if there's ever the absolute worst time to have unprotected sex, to come inside of you, is now. 

Which, of course, means he has to. The clause in that is ironclad. Apodictic. 

“Bit dangerous,” he rasps, and lifts your leg up, resting your ankle on his shoulder. You fluster beneath him, panting and pretty, and fuck—he’s not pulling out of your pussy tonight at all. “Should I pull out?” 

It's a tease. A test. 

He reaches down as he says the words, gripping his cock and bringing it down against your wet heat. The bare, blunt head of his cocks slaps against your clit, and you arch, keening. Nails bite into the thick muscles of his biceps, and he leans into the sharp sting. Letting it ground him. Centre him. 

This will be your cacoëthes. 

He's been depriving you for weeks, and John knows that you're wanting for it. Desperate. The little twitches your hips give, as if begging him to fill you up, are proof enough of how much you want this. 

This. The dream he dripped into your ears, hot oil congealing over your frontal lobe; infectious and thick. You can try to chisel it off, but the pollution is already damning. Ruining. 

You want this. He wears the axiom like armour. 

And you beg for it—eyes shaded in gut wrenchingly beautiful lachrymose—and John snuffles closer, inching the weeping head of his cock into your tight, warm heat. 

The sight of splitting you open is something he never grows tired of. Something that, without fail, makes his balls ache. His chest thrum. Blood turns to ichor. To wine. He's drunk on the contrast made between you—a garish chiaroscuro of your pretty pussy, soft and sickly sweet—almost nauseatingly so—swallowing down the fat, girthy length of his cock. The thick streams of veins running along the flushed, heavy shaft against your puffy, soft folds is almost hideous. Sinful. He can't equate it to anything else except corruption. The horrific beast sullying the princess. 

And fuck—

The thought alone makes him throb. 

He's sullied you plenty, he reckons, and yet you always look so sweet. Especially now, when your rim is stretched taut around the thick of him, pussy squeezing, clenching around him in a vice, as if you weren't sure to push him out or pull him deeper. 

John decides for you. Opting instead to push your knees down to your chest, nearly brushing your ears, and follows with the bulk of his body until he feels your breath rush out of your lungs. You struggle for a moment, gasping wetly into his ear as his weight—every bearish pound of it—rests on you in the perfect mating press. Your bite into his biceps, keening prettily into his ear as he bullies the full length of his cock into you. Spears you open. Splits you apart. 

He can feel you gush around him, drenching his groin and thighs with your slick. 

Like this—chest to chest, forced to breathe in the same air, the same madness—he likes to just stare at you, taking in the heat simmering under your skin, the sweat beading along your temple, the pinch in your brow as you struggle to adjust to the sheer width of him cudgelling you open. A battering ram you're forced to make room for. 

He takes it all in, each flicker of emotion, each heaving gasp. Burns it into his memory. Lets it soften the iron around his heart. Keeps it there, nestled in the cradle of his limited love, held aloft by indelicate, bearish hands. This sweet thing. 

He can't wait to ruin it. 

If these weeks leading up to this were lovemaking, fucking, then this, this, is mating. Animalistic. Primal. He pushes in as deep as he can, until the tip kisses the ripened seal of your womb, and grinds his hips cruelly into the cradle of your thighs. 

Your nails leave bloodied indents in his flesh. A scar he'll proudly bear the mark of. A tattoo of the time when he turned you into something new. 

His balls are soaked. The sheets, too. He mocks you for it, a rasping growl lodged deep in his throat, taunting you about how fucking wet you are for him. How badly you need it. 

“Gotta plug you up, hm?” He grunts, and sets a pace that serves only to accentuate the sloppy, messy squelch of your cunt. 

His cock pistoning into you, alternating between deep, full thrusts that knock the air from your lungs, and heavy, slow plunges meant to badger the blunt head of his cock against your walls. 

You seem to like it best when he shifts his weight between each thigh, content to just grind into you. Make you feel every inch of him. You cling to him, yowling in his ear about how good it feels, how much you love this, love his cock—

The thick bed of wry, umber curls on his chest, stomach, and groin grow slick with sweat from the intensity of it all, from the shared heat. Pressed tight against you, he feels every quiver. Every flinch. Each moan is made known in a slight reverberation across his skin before he hears it. 

Drenched in sweat, glued to you as he fucks you into the mattress, John feels very much like the beast making a house out of a twisted whim in his head. Feverish, sick, he drives into you with the single minded goal of filling that home up with three. Then four. Five—

As many as you'll let him.

And he almost loses himself to that thought alone. Dancing sugar plums that make his balls tighten. He stems the flood by pulling out of you, letting his heavy cock slap against your sticky, soaked cunt as he heaves into your hairline, sucking in the heady loam, the humus, of your scent. 

The whimper you make when he pulls out of you sounds like a wounded animal, and the noise tickles across his hindbrain. His jaw aches. He bites down on a snarl as you thrash against him, mindless with the need to have him inside of you. It brings a nasty, vicious curl to the ends of his mouth, and he doesn't even bother trying to tamper it down. John lifts his head and lets you see his foaming muzzle, drooling with thick globes of saliva. 

“Stay still,” he growls, low and dangerous. It's as much of a warning as it is a command, and the way you react, tensing, coiling tight—the flash of unease. Shock. And then the need. Achy, heavy. He feels it against his jugular when you shiver, moaning his name into the space between you where it reeks of desperation. 

To soften the submissive tremble in your jaw—and maybe to temper down the challenging talons sharpening in your gaze—he nuzzles his cheek against yours, peppers wet kisses to your skin. He licks across your jaw, bites down on your flesh. 

He tastes salt and sin on your skin. 

(His eyes roll so far back into his skull he thinks he might get lost.)

“Gonna cum on your pretty cunt if you don't stop squirming, love.” 

And John loves you most for your waspish intelligence—the ire smouldering in your throat. The way you bite back just as hard, never afraid to bear teeth when he snarls. He doesn't think he could ever love someone too soft—not without tearing them to pieces. To shreds. 

But you wear plush, tender conchoidal skin over jagged, rough obsidian. He'll ruin himself if he ever tries to rip you apart. 

Like this, though—you melt. 

All that keen, vicious intelligence snuffed out. His scheming Cleopatra tamed on his cock. 

Your heels dig into the back of his thighs, urging him closer to your sex. “Come on, John, just fuck me, fuck me already—”

(Tamed, though, perhaps being a misnomer.)

He huffs into your neck. “Impatient little quean.”

It gets him a sharp bite to the tip of his ear, and the floor roars so loudly in his veins, he gets dizzy from it. 

“Fuck—”

He's pressing back into you again, into your warm, tight heat, and it's nirvana kissing his nerves. Liquifying his spine. He rolls into you with a weighted groan, buried to the hilt once more. 

But even with the respite, he knows he won't last. 

John needs you fucked stupid, docile and soft just for him, and sets out to do just that. Pounding into you with a spiteful twist of his hips that he knows will leave you a little sore, and tender tomorrow. But the idea of spreading your puffy, achy folds apart and soothing the slight hurt with his tongue for hours until you're sobbing into the cushions quells any hesitation that rears, begging him to slow down. 

Go easy on your pretty cunt.

(As if.)

John batters into you until your eyes glaze over, and your chin, cheeks, smear with drool. Until the challenge in midnight black melts into submission. Docile, and malleable. Perfect for him to mould. Shape. 

Reshape.

He glues to you, touch starved and tactile, and basks in the liquid heat that blooms from deep within you. 

“Gonna cum soon,” he snarls, broken by the heave in his chest as he fucks into you, starved. “Gotta pull out, love—”

You're gripping him tighter, anchoring him to your body. You haven't come yet. Something he dangles in front of you like a threat. 

He watches the slow crawl of realisation crest over your messy face, and thinks he falls just a little bit more in love with you at the sight of your little pout. 

Loves, even more, the way it breaks apart when he pounds into you harder, viciously, watching drool dribble off your chin, and reason leak from your ears—

“Please, John—” the sound of your whimpering has him grunting, head dizzy with the saccharine sweet taste of it on his tongue. “Please, please—come inside me. I–I want you to–to fill me up—”

“Yeah?” He taunts, mean and breathless. “Want me to come inside your sloppy cunt? Dangerous, ain't it? Jus’ might take, sweet thing. Is that what you want?”

You're howling a litany of sin into his ear, desperation drenches each clamour of his name, each orison uttered, begging him to come, to fill you up, and then—

“Fuck—I want it so bad—” his head is filled with static. Whitenoise. “Want it to take, John—”

He comes inside of you, cock pulsing so hard it feels like a sob. Filling you up. Wishing on all the stars that it takes—

As a reward for your good behaviour, he spreads you out over the sheets, and growls his approval into your sopping pussy, drenching himself with the taste, the smell, of you, promising to wear it like a perfume so everyone knows how good you are for him. Him, alone. 

(His, his, his—)

When you come, you nearly smother him, and he thinks he sees a glimpse of nirvana in baby soft yellow before he's pulled back by your shaking hands brushing the hair off his sweat-slicked forehead. 

“Are you okay, John—”

He rolls you under him, fucking into your drenched pussy like a man starved. That tantalising vision glues itself to his hindbrain, so close he can scent the fresh dew of fresh milk, and warm bread in his nose. Feel the bump of your stomach. 

He's almost angry about it, about being ripped away from that dream, and takes his aggression out on your sloppy, leaking cunt. The way his come trickles out, staining the mattress below and the back of your thighs has him growling darkly into your nape. 

“Keep it in,” he snarls, words sharpened on the whetstone of his need. “Keep it all inside, love.” 

“Ah, John, John—” something falls from your split-slicked lips, and his fingers bite into your hips. Punishment for the slurred backtalk. 

“I'll spank your ass if any of it leaks out—”

It does. Of course it does. 

He bends you over his knee, and slaps his broad, rough palm over each cheek ten times before deliriously shoving two thick fingers into your sloppy cunt, stuffing his come back inside your tender, swollen hole, rough and mean, as you howl, squirming in his lap about how you promise you'll be good next time, John, please—I'll keep it all in, I swear, I—

“You fuckin’ better, love.” He groans, and thinks about cumming on your messy face, all slick with sweat, and drool, but decides against it. A waste, he thinks, and leans over you to shove the thick, twisting length of his angry cock inside you to the hilt just spit his release against your seal once more. 

“That was…” You're still panting against his chest, eyes dazed, and body laxed. Melted wax over his chest. “Intense,” you settle on after a beat. 

There's a hiccup in your breath when he hums, chest rumbling with the sound. 

“Mm, but you liked it, didn't you?”

Of course you did. Of course. The evidence of it is drying, tacky and slick, on his groin, his thighs. 

You burrow into his side, peeking at him from over the thick bed of wry curls that clot over his chest. “You're fucking me like you haven't in years, John. Makes me wonder if you have an agenda.”

He considers your words. The weight of them. Wonders just how much you've clued into, but huffs when he catches the same look in your eyes as the one reflected in his own.

Cheeky little—

“Can't I just want to fuck you? Not everything has to be about schemes, love.” 

The oil of his lies, the sticky resin of his evasion makes you huff into his skin.

In all his meticulous planning, he'd picked up several books on this particular topic, and scoured every available, reputable, site he could find. John knows what to look out for by now, and keeps a keen eye on you—one that very quickly dips into obsessiveness, but you're kind enough to call it overbearing. 

Jesus Christ, John, why are you asking me how many times I pissed today? 

He just needs to wait things out. 

But rather irritatingly, he's called away overseas for the next week. 

Ah, well. He'll have to try harder next time. 

He arrives in Heathrow mid-morning, and follows Laswell into the office. There's a mountain of reports to fill out—things that, rather irritatingly, require his signature—and resolves to spend the rest of the day hunched over at his desk, even though there's an itch in the back of his skull demanding he go home. 

It is always like this, though—both the post-mission ritual of banal paperwork that seems almost comical considering what he'd just done, and the undeniable urge to flee back into the sanctuary of your shared home. 

His bones ache for it. 

Laswell huffs when he lingers by the exit, and he swallows a groan. 

While he was away, you'd been silent. Moreso than usual. 

Where he'd have expected an update on what was going on—the mundanity of your life that he clings to when the beast in his head whets its talons a little too sharp, digs into a little too deep—you’ve gone silent. Not radio. Not completely. But the information you give is sparse. Cagey.

You don't tell him about the visit to the gynaecologist, offering nothing but a quiet hum into the receiver, all blase and nonchalant, and a simple, equivocal: “good.” 

He tucks it away, lets the matter drop. 

If he timed things correctly—barring your impish prevarication aside—then something will begin to show soon. You would have mentioned something. Some nominal change to your physical well-being, but when pried, pressed, you huff. 

“I'm good, John. When are you coming home, anyway?”

He raps his knuckles on his desk, still smarting from the punches he'd thrown recklessly this past week, too keyed up to let his anger simmer instead of boil, and thinks. About you. About this. 

A week isn't a lot of time—he’s been called away for months in the past—but this feels like it's lingering. Time stretched and distorted. Elongated. And a part of him feels chipped, fractured after touchdown. 

It wasn't as if this particular assignment was any more, or less, dangerous than the ones he went on before. If anything, it was comparatively mild. Muted. He honed into his training, and did his goddamn job. And yet—

Yet. 

You lived in the spaces he occupied. The air he breathed. The water he drank. 

He brought you with him, something he's never, ever, done before. Perched pretty on his shoulder, he heard your voice in his head with every step he took, every radio call. 

But it was hallucinatory. Chimerical. You weren't there, you were here, but the problem lies in the lack of a divide that usually bifurcates the world into two fractions: his job and you.

It eats at him. 

He brought you where he's never taken anyone before. Never let them in. 

His thoughts were asunder. Pulled in all directions, but the centre was always you. His compass pointing north. He wants you. Needs you. His whole being has been recalibrated with the needle aimed toward you. 

An alert on his phone shakes him from his reverie. 

He reaches for it, slides his hand across the lockbar. The notification pops up. A message from his bank. 

His card—the one he gave you, the one you've used all of once to buy a chocolate bar when he gruffly, surely, complained about you not spending his money—has been used. 

Curious now, he opens his app, eyes scanning the threadbare purchases—all mostly interest fees and service charges, bar one. It was recently used at a drugstore for under twenty dollars. 

He doesn't know what this means, what you're playing at. He makes to text you, but he gets an email next. 

Thank you for your purchase; here is your e-receipt. 

His heart does something strange in his chest. Turns in on itself. Goes all askew. 

Not only are you using his card, you're using his account, too. He clicks it, eyes scanning through the purchases (only two), and blinks. 

A card, and—

His want takes the shape of a hand, presses against his jugular. 

—a pregnancy test. 

He knew when he started this game that this was, of course, the inevitable outcome, but having it here, right in front of him—in that sneaky, noncommittal way you always do things; behind his back, and in the dark, like you enjoy watching him try and sniff out the truth—has his belly knotting up. Churning. 

A pregnancy test. 

Fuck—

(and out of all the ways to tell him, you cheeky little—)

He's up out of his chair before he's even aware that he's standing. 

“Laswell,” he gets out, and can't be sure how his voice is so measured when his head is being shredded into pieces. “I'm out for the rest of the day. This whole bloody week, too—”

“Something bad happen?” 

His hands shake when he pulls his jacket on, slips his car keys into his hands. “No. Quite the opposite, actually. I'm going to be a father. A bloody dad—”

It's on that sentiment when his voice breaks. Shatters. He clears his throat, blinks furiously. Fuck. Fuck. It's happening—

Shangri-la sits in his fist, taking the shape of an e-mailed receipt. 

In his periphery, he sees Simon's head come up. Watching him. Measured. 

Laswell, too, eyes him with a degree of wariness. He supposes to them this means the end of everything. 

She breathes in. “Tuscany would be my choice.”

“Oh?” He tears his eyes away from the screen, gracing her with a steady, unflinching look. “Was thinking something a bit more local. Liverpool.”

It gets a scoff, one full of disgust. “She'll divorce you within the year.” 

“I'm having a baby, Laswell. Not getting married.”

“Oh, no?” It's a challenge. “I seem to recall something about someone being a proper gentleman, or was that just the lie you told your unofficial missus?”

“We'll get married. That's not up for debate—” an intern makes an alarmed face, like perhaps it ought to be. Had he not been holding nirvana in his hand, he might be a bit more cautious with his madness. Too bloody bad. “Wherever she wants—Tuscany, Udaipur, fucking Siberia. I don't care. What I’m a bit more concerned with is my expectant wife.” 

“Soon-to-be,” she volleys, just because she knows it's the sort of thing that will itch under his skin. 

“Already is, Laswell.” He gripes, flat. “Or damn near close to it.” 

“If she knows what's good for her, she'll say no.”

“Lucky me, then, that she doesn't.” 

Lucky him, indeed. 

On his way out, Ghost utters a heated congratulations to him, and John can see his gaze is absent. Turned inward, mind whirring. Reeling. He can hear the gears grind from where he stands, and if the ink-black madness in his lieutenant’s drifting, pensive eyes means much of anything, then John sends a silent hail mary to whatever unlucky person was misfortune enough to unleash the muzzle on that particular dog. 

Well. It's not really his problem. Until it is. Until it becomes one. But since it's not something that'll impact him in the next five minutes, he tucks it away. “Thanks.” 

He doesn't linger. Doesn't, really, even remember the ride home, head buzzing with thoughts that keep twisting around themselves, driving him mental. Things like, is it real? what if you were joking. what you weren't? 

Oh, fuck—

You better not be. 

But you wouldn't. You're conniving and wily, but you're not cruel. 

This is happening, then. 

You've been playing house with matches inside of a tinderbox. He shouldn't be surprised when it all goes up in flames, in smoke, but as he walks through the door, and glimpses the pregnancy test perched innocently on the counter beside a card—congrats, daddy (and the caricature of a man in a pinstripe suit nearly makes him gag)—he feels all the maligned pieces inside of crack. 

It shifts—

You walk out, hand cupped protectively over your lower belly. Eyes gleaming like a wild cat crouched low in the tussocks surrounding the savannah, watching him an eager sense of anticipation, excitement, and just the slightest edge of what he can only imagine the unfortunate mate of a black widow sees before it's consumed. Spare parts. 

It thrums inside of him. Ignites this wicker basket he calls a heart until it's cinder. Ash. Soot. He breathes it in. Tastes you on his tongue. 

John doesn't have the words. Can't think beyond the steady brag of his burning heart. 

His. His.

—and then it all falls into place. 

Yours.

He dotes on you with an almost unhinged devotion, murmuring stilted, gruff words of muted affection into the shallow bump on your belly. Ones that you, politely, pretend not to hear. 

A new bedtime ritual, one he adheres to with an almost obsessive need. 

Until it becomes too much. 

“Go and get my prenatal vitamins from the washroom, please. I just need five minutes without you smothering me, you stupid bear of a man.”

“You love it,” he grumbles, but acquiesces, giving your small, barely there bump a pat. “I'll be back soon.”

“Oh, no… please take your time.” 

Despite the prickle in your tongue, your eyes are soft. Warm. Melting him just a little more. 

John pulls away, and doesn't even pretend the reluctance to be apart is feigned. 

“It's in the drawer,” you call, voice stretched. Echoing. “Next to your shaving cream.” 

He pulls the drawer open, scanning the contents briefly, before finding the purple bottle in the back. Why you chose here of all places to put the bloody things—

His knuckles knock against the old box of condoms, tipping it over. There's a strange rattle as it falls, and his brows furrow at the noise. 

Curiously, he reaches for it. Shakes it as he picks it up. The same sounds spill out. He pops the flap of the box open, peering inside, and—

A gruff chuckle crackles in his throat. 

Inside the old box of condoms—the ones he never bothered to throw out, or use—is an accumulation of all the pills you'd meant to take. 

His jowls ache. He rubs at his jaw with his hand, and feels the skittish patter of his heart thudding out of his skin. Madness in his veins. 

John closes the drawer with his knee, and then tosses the box of condoms in the bin, leaving it for you to find later when you're inevitably wracked by another wave of morning sickness. A little shred of vindication for this little game you made him play. 

Though he supposes turn-about is fair play, and the number of pills in the box is less than the months he spent scheming for this vision of his.  

In the back of his head, the beast purrs.

“Do we need to play these games again for the next one,” he rasps. “Or can I just fuck you until it takes.” 

You blink at him, wide and owlish. Full of faux innocence as you coax the beast out of hiding. “I don't know what you're talking about, John.” 

More games, then. He thinks he might crack open your ribcage and rest his weary head on the frantic beat of your heart. 

“Mm, don't know what I'd do without you,” he says, guns aching. He reaches for the pack of gum (no smoking around the baby or you'd toss him off the balcony), and pops a spearmint into his mouth. “Might live longer, I reckon, but—”

Your elbow digs into his side. “You sure about that?”

He just kisses your crown in response, and places his heavy, scarred hand over the curve of your belly. The beast inside purrs, content for now. Satiated. 

When he looks into your midnight eyes, he finds your own beast slumbering away. 

A match made in a tinderbox, he guesses, and kisses you until you're dizzy. His very own Shangri-la sitting pretty inside his bed, nestled in the castle in Spain you helped him build.

Will help him fill. 

[teamatsumu]

do you? i do. (akaashi keiji x reader)

summary: you lose a bet, so now you have to confess to your crush. for my valentine’s day event - theme: confessions.

word count: 1461

tags: @nishayuro @kitas-tapioca @kakashineedstotouchgrass @amisuh @avis-writeshq @samanthaa-leanne @akaashi-todorki @sp1ng @kur0obaby @bleach-your-panties @pinkiipeachiikeen @keiva1000 @msbyomimi @sleepyxxhead @kindnessspreads

event masterlist

Turns out, promising to do ‘anything you want’ wasn’t something Konoha Akinori took lightly. Especially not when you add Bokuto Koutaro to the mix. Konoha was a sly opportunist, while Bokuto wasn’t embarrassed by anything, so it was a deadly combination.

You didn’t know why you let yourself be talked into making a stupid, silly bet with the two boys. Konoha had a talent to goad, and he managed to successfully goad you. So when you lost the bet (really, why did you think having a physical competition with two volleyball players was a good idea), it was like Konoha had his winning prize ready. The request fell from his lips like he had been practicing it for days.

Which he probably had. The menace.

So here you were, hands shaking violently as you put away water bottles and towels, cleaning up the club room and taking all the time in the world to change back into your uniform. The other managers had offered to wait for you so you could walk home together, but you encouraged them to go on, saying you had some stuff to organize before you left so it would take time. You didn’t need them to stick around to see you horrifically embarrass yourself when you confessed your silly crush and got rejected. Already Konoha was making all the boys stay behind to witness the moment. You couldn’t bear to have your closest friends see it too.

You locked the club room behind yourself before slowly and painfully making your way to the gym. You could hear the thuds of volleyballs and squeaks of shoes as the boys noisily cleaned up. They were talking and laughing amongst themselves, and you felt your nerves tighten even more. This was the worst possible place and time to confess. The chances of public humiliation were sky high. But Konoha had made his demands clear. And you weren’t one to go back on your word, no matter how dire the consequences.

You smoothed your skirt when you reached the gym doors, standing in the doorway and watching the scene before you. Despite the net slowly being lowered, Bokuto was still bounding towards it.

“Akaashi, go again!”

The boy in question was already in position, setting the ball high towards Bokuto, who spiked it hard over the half-up net. Washio was yelling at them to stop and it was enough for the day.

You watched Akaashi wipe the sweat off his forehead and kneel to tie his shoe, breathing slightly labored from the exertion. Your feet remained frozen, eyeing him silently and dreading how your relationship with him was about to change forever. While Akaashi wasn’t someone who harbored ill feelings, you weren’t sure how he was going to react to a love confession and subsequent rejection. What guarantee did you have that this wouldn’t affect your friendship going forward?

“Oi, look who’s here!” Konoha’s voice was filled with glee, and all eyes turned to look at you when he pointed at the door. You fought the urge to roll your eyes and deck him across the face. Violence was not the answer.

“Do you have something to say?”

Okay, maybe violence was the answer.

You gave him a large, fake grin, before nodding jerkily. You could feel the edge of your face and your ears turn burning hot, hands already going clammy as you tried to clench and unclench them.

“Akaashi-san, may I talk to you in private?”

Akaashi seemed surprised, blinking twice before nodding and standing up to walk towards you. No one else was caught off guard, of course, grinning faces looking between you two, knowing what was about to happen. You wished the ground would open up and swallow you whole so you wouldn’t have to do this in front of the entire volleyball team. But a bet was a bet. You had brought this upon yourself.

Whenever you had lain in bed and fantasized about confessing to Akaashi, you had pictured just you and him. Either outside the gym, or in the school grounds, nice cool air blowing through your clothes and hair. You had imagined how he would smile and return your feelings, which was a long shot but anything was possible in your imagination.

Akaashi was…. dignified. Organized. He was crazy smart, perceptive to a fault. It was almost impossible to not like him. Two years since you had started managing the Fukurodani team, and your crush on him had only grown. The more you learned about him, the more you liked him. And he was leagues above you in every sense.

That was the reason you had always believed Akaashi couldn’t return your feelings.

He stepped out behind you, following you only a few steps away from the gym doors. Konoha had explicitly said that you had to stay within earshot. A childish, immature request but part of the bet reward, so you couldn’t exactly refuse. You turned back to the boy, unable to meet his eyes and instead staring at your own hands as you fiddled with your fingers. You had rehearsed in your head over and over how you would take Akaashi’s rejection, what you would say, how would you tell him it wasn’t a big deal and you didn’t expect him to return your feelings. That you hoped you could still be friends. But now, standing before him, you realized you hadn’t really thought about the actual confession. You were completely blank.

“Is everything okay?” Akaashi’s voice was laced with concern, and he tilted his head a bit to catch your eye. You stared at him for a good minute before blinking and vigorously nodding.

“Yes! Completely fine. I’m fine.”

Embarrassment was already beginning to crawl up on you. There was a bout of silence. Behind Akaashi, you caught sight of multiple heads peeking through the window. You felt annoyance build up in you.

“Screw this,” you mumbled. “Akaashi-san, I like you. A lot. Not as a friend. And I was never going to tell you, but I lost a bet to Konoha and he thought this would be the perfect way to humiliate me. By making me confess. So….. here I am. I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”

Akaashi watched you unblinkingly for a few moments. You glanced at Konoha who was scowling, probably because you name dropped him. But that wasn’t one of his conditions, so you didn’t care. You felt a twinge of satisfaction at having bested him even in your current circumstance. Good. He deserved to feel even a fraction of the anxiety and embarrassment you were feeling right now.

“Why would that humiliate you?” Akaashi finally spoke.

Your eyes met his dark ones, and you felt yourself freeze. Of all the questions you thought he would ask, this was not one you were prepared for.

“Uh-” You tried to come up with an answer that didn’t sound equally as embarrassing as the confession. Because you will reject me and they will all witness it?

Akaashi sighed and toed at the ground a bit, mouth pursed in thought. You stared at him wide eyed, waiting for him to speak. To say something. Follow up on his unusual question.

“This isn’t exactly how I imagined this moment to go.” He muttered, and you wouldn’t have caught it if you weren’t already looking at him. Your breath hitched, eyes so wide you were sure they would pop out of your skull. You tried to process the sentence, tried to think of any reason he would say that without getting your hopes up.

Akaashi peered around, as if searching for something, looking left and right before he finally caught the floating heads behind him. There was a yelp as they disappeared from the window suddenly, followed by thudding and a curse. You bit back your laughter. Akaashi rolled his eyes.

“I would like to talk about this more. Where others can’t see us.” His voice was as calm and quiet as ever. You felt your heart race. Your limbs felt jittery. Did this mean….?

“Akaashi-san, do you-”

A smile that made your heart leap. “I do.”

You felt a smile stretch over your face, feeling giddy at the thought of something you had considered so impossible materializing in front of your very eyes. You could still hear faint bickering from the gym, and you were sure Konoha had not seen this coming. Somehow, he was the least of your concerns now, in the face of Akaashi’s quiet smile and the way he was leaning towards you. You leaned forward too, realizing you had never been this close to him before. You basked in the moment.

In ten million years you could not have wished for a better outcome.

[vaspider]

Look. A little advice.

Once you get to a certain amount of Known on the internet or a subsection of it, or even in a subsection of a RL group of people, there are going to be people who will make up a version of you which exists only in their heads and which has absolutely nothing to do with who you are. It might better resemble who you were twenty years ago or it might never have had anything to do at all with who you were then or are now.

You cannot stop this. You cannot prevent this. Once you get a certain number of followers or a certain amount of attention, that's going to happen: people will make up stories about you which either look through a fun-house mirror at some small aspect of who you are and twist it and blow it up until it doesn't resemble you at all, or which just have absolutely no basis in fact whatsoever.

This is just another kind of parasocial relationship; it's the kind which really sucks to deal with, because it's so negative and so pervasive. It's very real, and the frustration you feel about it is very real. Nobody wants to be known incorrectly.

But. You can't control this. It's gonna happen. No matter what you say, no matter how precisely you say it, the people who want to misinterpret you will find a way to do so. This doesn't mean 'don't pay attention to what you say,' or 'don't be purposeful and precise with your language,' but it does mean 'don't obsess over the people who are determined to get you wrong.'

You can be the most anodyne, run-of-the-mill, unremarkable human being, and the people who are determined to hate you will find something that they can point to and say 'ha ha! I told you that Spider danced with the devil at midnight! I witnessed it myself!' (It will not help the situation if you are, say, self-admittedly stubborn as fuck, long-winded, and sometimes kinda fucking obnoxious, but please realize that in the end, it doesn't really matter. This is gonna happen no matter what.)

The people who matter will look at what's being said, wrinkle up their foreheads, and say, 'uh, man, it looks like Spider was actually playing with his dog at 9 am?'

That said, if you don't have elephant-thick skin from being a marginalized-gender human being who's been on the internet since before the web had pictures, there are some things you can do to make it easier when people making things up about you starts to get on your nerves:

Establish protocols for when it becomes too much: have someone read your messages, turn off your notifications, have time where you purposefully disengage.

Establish protocols for how you interact, period: "I will block people without guilt if they engage positively with the people who spread untruths about me." "I will answer everything in public so people can't lie about what I said, because it's right there in public." "I will not answer work-related stuff in DMs, that has to go to the work email." Whatever it is, create some boundaries for yourself. Stick to them. The people who push you to bend them aren't doing that for your benefit but theirs.

If you get someone who really hits your Weirdo Alarm, trust it. Yeah, block and report, but also, take screenshots and store them somewhere that isn't easily erased. I have an 'Internet Weirdos' folder, which makes it a little easier to deal with when people start doing things like 'making threats of physical harm to me and my family.' Don't fuss, just take a screenshot and chuck it in the folder. Having that record makes it easier to just forget that it ever happened, because you have a paper trail if anybody starts doing something Real Weird.

Spend time offline, with people who do actually know you.

Don't get lost in the version of you that someone else makes up in order to make up for the shit that's missing in their own life. You aren't required to play the part that someone else is trying to script for you. It is never to your benefit, only to theirs; you gain nothing by standing in that role for them, and you lose precious seconds of your one irreplaceable life.

You could be using those seconds to look at this video of how to pick up a duck, which I think we can all agree is a better investment of your time.

[mcflymemes]

PROMPTS FOR THE GRUMPY VS SUNSHINE TROPE *  assorted dialogue for that great dynamic between a guarded character and a warmer character, adjust as necessary

GRUMPY CHARACTER

do you ever stop smiling?

life sucks. get over it.

no one ever listens to me. at least, not until you showed up.

i didn't ask for your opinion.

there are more important things i should be dealing with.

i don't talk about my feelings with anyone.

that was a little uncalled for.

i didn't mean to talk your ear off.

i work better on my own.

what did you say to them to get them to listen?

i don't want to talk to you. in fact, i don't want to talk to anyone.

can you just leave me alone?

i never said i would help you.

you can't just talk your way out of problems.

everything was fine until you showed up.

now if you'll excuse me, i have better things to do.

what's so great about this place, anyway?

my opinion doesn't matter anyway.

i don't have time for "fun."

i just want to get this done and go home.

that's never been up to me to decide.

do you stick your head into everyone's business, or just mine?

if it's all the same to you, i'd prefer to be alone.

no one asked you to get involved.

i don't have a choice. it's my duty.

you're interrupting me again.

can we talk about this another time?

you've been listening to me talk for an hour now.

how do you stay so positive all the time?

i'm perfectly content just the way i am, thank you very much.

can't you see they're taking advantage of you?

SUNSHINE CHARACTER

i wish you would just listen to what i have to say.

i have to try and stay positive. it's the only way we get through this.

nothing good can come from constant negativity.

i believe in myself because no one else will.

i've seen what happens when the bad outweighs the good.

we just have to stay strong.

you never know what someone is going through.

i am capable of more than you give me credit for.

i don't think you're a bad person.

there's so much more to life than this.

you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

have you tried being nice to them?

a compliment goes a long way.

i choose to be kind.

i just don't see the point in staying silent.

i'm just trying to look out for you.

there's no need to be rude.

we could work together as a team. did you ever think about that?

if you need my help, i'm here for you.

you should smile more often.

i wish you would just be yourself.

for what it's worth, i like who you are now.

we don't have to fight all the time.

being soft is not a weakness.

i want to make this work between us.

despite all that, i'm still here for you.

if you ever want to talk, i'm here to listen.

you're not as bad as you make yourself seem.

i've never seen you that way.

i've come to care about you.

[rboooks]

Child Support Part 2

Tim watched the other young heroes as they tried to look around the watch tower without seeming like they were. He's been here plenty of times, but the rest of the Teen Titans and a few of the Young Justice hasn't.

Much was due to the older heroes leaving the younger ones alone. Some not taking them seriously enough to welcome them at the big HQ as much as that made his blood boil.

They were taking the same risks. They were fighting the same good fights. Why was their age the main reason they weren't treated equally?

Some teenage heroes weren't part of a team per see, but they always answered when a call was sent. For example, Cass and Steph were present, speaking softly to Static Shock. Damian was standing next to Jon and his little friend Colin who was just getting into the swing of the hero business.

Bruce almost bit through his tongue when Damian told him Abuse would be joining Robin on parol, and he could do nothing to stop them. (Tim felt like he was watching Damian tell Bruce a paraphrased version of "But Daddy, I love him!" and it kept him smiling for weeks)

It was wild to see almost every young hero in one place. He doesn't think this happened since the last time Justice Leauge got mind controlled and almost destroyed the whole world.

"Any idea why we're here?" Kon asks to his right, lowering his shade to stare at the Outlaws. Jason's team stood to the side chatting iddly while cleaning over thier weapons.

Kon's always like their punk point of view, and he knows his best friend wants to go over there to talk to them. If it wasn't for the issue of the clone still being mad about what Jason did at the Teen Titans tower. Almost murder was hard to forgive for people outside the Bats.

"None. All I know is that John Constantine sent out a message to every teenage superhero group calling for a meet-up," Tim responds.

Bart whistles with a grimace on his right. "Must be bad if that guy is asking."

"I heard Hawkwoman tell Superman that she was worried and wasn't sure she wanted anyone of us mixed up in Constantine's mistakes." Cassie chimes in from where she leans on the couch. The three turn to her as she lowers her voice, attempting to keep the others from hearing. "Batman told her off for it."

"Batman did?" Tim asks, surprised.

Cassie shrugs, throwing a bit of her blond hair over her shoulder. "As much Batman can emote anyway."

Yeah, that sounded about right. Though it must have been something Bruce found disrespectful. His dad usually never reprimanded strangers unless they were saying something or doing something that sounded far too much like bigotry to him.

But to apply that to Constantine? Someone, Bruce generally disliked communicating with because the man tended to backstab his contacts? Yes, Constantine wasn't evil, but he wasn't pleasant either.

If Bruce had magical issues, he tended to contact Zatanna first.

Just then, the watch tower's zeta beams activate. Everyone who gathered turns to the teleporting pads where Constantine appears looking, for lack of a better word, absolutely exhausted. Even Tim knows that his eye bags aren't that bad, and he's usually going hours without sleep.

"Oh good, you all made it," Constantine says, sipping from a mug and wearing nothing but sweatpants and what looks like a nightgown. His signature trench coat was nowhere in sight. "I'm going to be quick about this. I need a team of young heroes willing to accept my son into their fold."

The room is dead silent. Constantine sighs. "Look, I've tried everything, but it's like Danny is allergic to laying low. He fought with a demon the other day over a child's doll- which you all know happens. People get haunted! But Danny refused to do it the right way, and now I had to beat off the demon's marriage proposal at least ten times. Not to mention his lack of social skills! No matter which one I stick him in, he can't seem to make friends in school. He got shoved into a locker on his first day! I thought that was an American exaggeration of the telly!"

Constantine pauses and takes a large gulp of whatever he's drinking before continuing his rant. A hand runs through his already messy hair, leaving it in bigger disarray as he speaks. "He's behind in terms of trends and technology cause his other father raised him outside of the typical timelines, so sometimes it's like talking to someone from the early two thousand, and other times it's like he's a modern Victorian era lad. His powers are also all over the place because the ectoplasm in our world is thicker, so when he breathes it in, he losses his control. Just the other day he accidentally made himself fly through our ceiling and almost reach the atmosphere before I was able to bring him back down."

A few of the fliers in the room wince. Jon nods and whispers under his breath, though his voice carries in the silence. "Yeah, been there before. Flying can be scary if you don't know how to come down."

Johns glances around at all the young people, eyes showing a tad bit of desperation. "He's sad all the time now, and I don't know how to help. If working with you could help him make friends, I would be grateful. He's a great kid. He just needs to adjust."

Tim had no idea what to do with this information; how do you respond to arguably one of the strongest Justice League Darks' heroes asking for a play date for his son?

"How old is the child?" Damian's voice rings out. Colin's hand is attached to his sleeve, a slightly nervous smile on the boy's face as he attempts to hide from the staring heroes behind his brother. Tim bets that if he wasn't wearing the domino mask, they would be able to see slight tears in Colin's eyes.

Damian's other hand goes across his body to cover Colin's hand, and Tim fights a shit-eating grin. His eyes lock with Jason, and the two send each other knowing grins. Looks like Bruce did have to worry about Damian having a secret boyfriend.

He can't wait to tease Damian later.

"He's fourteen....or well, physically?" Constantine answers eagerly.

"What does that mean?" Kon asks this time.

"Okay, so he's half human, half ecto-being. He sired him with his other father, Clockwork, which was only four years ago in this dimension, but since he was raised in the Infinite Relemas, times move differently there? " The British man says, and Raven goes rigid.

"Clockwork, as in the most powerful Ancient?" She asks, looking horror-struck when Constantine nods.

Before anyone asked what that meant, the zeta tubes activated again without permission. Someone had hacked into their systems which were ten levels bad. Everyone naturally fell into a fighting stance, only to blink when a teenage boy stepped out with a loud excited screech.

"We're in space!" The teenager runs to one of the windows, pressing his hands and face up against the glass. "This is amazing!"

Tim only relaxes his muscles once Constantine clears his throat. "Chum...what are you doing here?"

"Oh. One of your curse rocks things started proposing to me again, so I ran out of the House of Mysteries. Thought I see what you were up to." The teenager says, turning around with a smile and utterly freezing at the sight of the gathered heroes.

He had dark hair, wide blue eyes, and the most adorable face Tim had ever seen. Not as sexy as Bernard, of course, but darn close. Judging by the looks of anyone attractive to males, most heroes thought the same.

"Um...hi?" He says, offering the Godsmack teenagers a helpless little shrug. "I'm Danny Constantine."

"It is a pleasure, Constantine." Damian marches over to him with all his little twelve-year-old authority. He barely reaches Danny's chest. "I shall look forward to working with you. Are you formally trained in combat or strictly magic?"

"Um...oh, I can throw a punch or two? I'm mostly self taught. I rely on my powers a lot?" Danny fumbles to answer throwing a desperate look at his presumed father.

"No matter. I shall have you begin training. My Beloved also needs to work on his form. There is no shame in this" Damian nods, and Constantine lets out a large sigh of relief. He jogs over to place a hand on his son's shoulder, giving him a one-sided hug

"Yes, Danny, you will join Robin, Superboy, and Abuse on missions. They agree to help you settle and get used to your ghost powers." Constantine smiles. "I'll give me time to discourage all those idiots from trying to trick you into marriage."

"Oh...okay. It's nice to meet you all. Please call me Phantom on the field. Um, are you the team leader?" He asks Damian as the three youngest boys lead him further into the watch tower.

Constantine watches them go with the brightest smile he's ever seen on the man's face. He looks back to the group, who were barely starting to pick their jaws off the floor and makes a shooing motion with his hand. "You lot are dismissed."

Then the man vanishes in a green portal.

There is a ringing silence until Barts blurts out. "I'm pretty sure this is where the Phantom Fan Club first formed. A historical moment."

Tim wants to take a nap.

( Part 1 )

[kbspangler]

This is the public statement from @alepresser and myself which went up at Webtoons tonight.

Now for some ranting. Just from me, not from Ale—she's innocent of the art crimes I've committed in the past, and boy howdy have I committed art crimes.

This is the first page of my first webcomic, A Girl and Her Fed. I started this thing back in 2006. (I don't actually need a head count of those reading this who weren't yet born in 2006. I'm sure you're delightful and I wish you well in college.)

And this is the last page I drew in early 2020 before I turned art duties over to Dr. Beer. It's better, right?

Well, these days, A Girl and Her Fed has pages like this:

I drew this comic for fourteen fucking years because it's a story I wanted to tell, and I thought webcomics were the perfect format for it. I didn't know how to draw. I got better through sheer obstinate perseverance and sticking to deadlines as best I could for, again, fourteen fucking years. I sought out a replacement artist when I ran into time constraints and couldn't do art plus writing anymore; I'm a much better writer than an artist, so I had no problems whatsoever kicking art to the curb.

The first time Ale sent me art that would go up on the website—art I hadn't needed to draw myself—I literally cried in relief because I had been grinding myself down for, yet again, fourteen fucking years.

So when I read comments from people who say they want to make a webcomic but can't draw themselves and therefore need to resort to AI, that little line between my eyes gets dangerously deep.

This isn't like I'm some old dude who's bitching over student loans getting cancelled after making regular payments. This is me, someone who threw raw art onto the internet like a monkey hurling fresh poo, because I wanted to make a webcomic and the art is part of the process of storytelling via webcomics! I could've (arguably should've) hired an artist right out of the gate, and that would've been part of the process of making comics, too: a partnership between an artist and a writer is also something which grows and develops over time.

For example, after Dr. Beer and I spent two years working on AGAHF, we decided we enjoyed our partnership so much that we set out to make another webcomic! It's great! It's got wonderful art and consistent storytelling! You should read it!

But turning art duties over to unaltered images generated by AI because you want to make a webcomic but "just can't draw" is, frankly, a bullshit excuse. I'm not talking about persons who are physically unable to draw due to disability—I'm talking about people who say they want to make webcomics but simply don't wanna do the art part.

Friends, if you don't want to show your entire ass in front of God and country, you don't actually want to make a webcomic.

Do the thing yourself.

If you're scared, don't be. Take the plunge. Set a goal of twenty strips and do the thing yourself. If you can already draw but can't write? Great! Write twenty strips, write forty panels, etc. You might surprise yourself. If you can write but can't draw? Great! Draw twenty panels and see what happens.

Whatever comes out of it, it's a thing you've done yourself. It's something new you've given to the world, no matter how big or small. Be proud of that. And if you need to partner with someone else to make your comic dreams work? You can do that, too! It's still a thing you've done yourself, and many projects are stronger when done together.

...but maaaaaaaaaybe hire that partner before you've busted your own ass for fourteen fucking years. That one's on me.