#so little harm is done and the person is now sure of how they should proceed

[aashi-heartfilia]

The hypocrisy of Jinshi and MaoMao

*light novel spoilers*

I just love how hypocritical MaoMao's nature is. She yells at Jinshi for being a 'Masochist' and yet we see that she's no different. Now, by definition Masochist is a person who drives sexual gratification from their own pain and humiliation, plus it relates to Jinshi's tendency to do self harm (like burning his skin with a brand)

And what is MaoMao's most favourite thing in this world?

POISON

She literally takes pleasure in consuming it and no one can convince me otherwise. Plus she uses dangerous plants and animals and snakes whatnot in the name of her so-called experiments. Her dad may call her a 'mad Scientist' but that is a direct indication of self harm.

And she calls Jinshi a Masochist.

I mean, think about it! The amount of anxiety she gives to Jinshi! She came prepared with a vomit inducing medicine but even she had no idea whether it would work or not. She was just hoping it would work in the salt chapter.

And the same goes for her hand, on which she has conducted countless experiments. One flower even burned her skin and its marks never left her skin. She said it was all for her hobby. What kind of weird hobby is that? Maybe, our little adorable mad scientist is just like that.

One brands his own skin, while the other takes heavenly pleasure in consuming poison.

So my point is, Jinshi and MaoMao are not that different as one might think they are and that's why their dynamic works so well.

Let's look at the excerpts from volume 5:

She didn’t know how long they sat that way. All she knew was that Jinshi was looking down at her with a faintly triumphant expression, as if he saw that the breath had reached every corner of her body now. He wiped away the tears that had sprung to her eyes as she struggled to breathe. It was then that Maomao felt a flash of intense anger. “I said that if you were going to kill me, you should do it with poison,” she told him. “I refuse to let you poison yourself,” Jinshi said, his fingers tracing her lips. “You can’t pretend you didn’t know that you were one of the candidates. As much as I’m sure you’d like to.” He wasn’t done, either: “Who was that man, anyway? I’m sure you’re not a dancer.” So he had been watching them! “I was just paying for my drink,” Maomao said. “It didn’t cost much.” She tried to look away, but with his hand on her head, she really couldn’t.

Jinshi just choked her and yet he refuses to let MaoMao poison herself. A lot of people misinterpret this scene, and don't like it all that much, saying it was just fanservice stuff but this is how I see it: Jinshi wasn't trying to kill MaoMao, he was just trying to make MaoMao submit to him for once (even if the way he did it was very wrong, but guess he's kinky like that). MaoMao is actively trying to harm herself and Jinshi loves MaoMao a lot, he cannot just let her kill herself.

It was more about him trying to exert his dominance in their weirdish - complicated relationship and that also backfires on him as we see in the next volume that MaoMao escapes Jinshi's grasps using Pairin's techniques.

And then they both continue to avoid each other in the entire next volume! Because they both realised that they have crossed boundaries.

They both are hypocrites.

And they both refuse to accept their feelings.

In one of the later volumes, she gives Jinshi a piece of her mind on how he should tell her everything clearly, unequivocally, what he feels, and he literally declares that "he will make her his wife", which is nice and all but look at the wording MaoMao used here....

Excerpts from LN Vol 7, chapter 19 called "A man and a woman play the game"

"You’re forever telling me I need to use my words, Master Jinshi, but are you in any position to criticize? Everything you say to me, everything you do, it’s like it’s calculated to save you from ever having to actually say what you mean! To make me figure it all out! You know, you remind me of someone. You act exactly like a man who used to come by our brothel all the time. He was in love with one of the girls, but he would never just come out and say it. He thought it should be obvious from the way he acted. He was so sure he had a good thing going with this woman that he never sent her so much as a letter. I remember how forlorn he looked when someone else swooped in and snatched her away! He kept coming to the brothel after that—to get drunk and whine to the ladies. Well, in my opinion, he could have avoided all that heartbreak if he’d told the woman how he felt. Clearly, unequivocally, so that she knew where they stood. It was the least he could have done!”

Everything came out in a torrent. She felt like she’d said it all in one breath. It was strange, she thought, to hear so many words come out of her own mouth. She was mystified. Jinshi was no less startled, but the shock soon left his face, replaced by something else. He got up off the bed and stared down at Maomao.

Shit. Now I’ve done it. She’d given him a piece of her mind, and he was about to give her one back.

“So I should be clear, should I? Unequivocal? I should say what I mean? If I did, would you actually listen to me? Is that what you’re telling me? I’m going to hold you to that! Right this minute. I’ll say it all. Don’t plug your ears—listen to me!” He grabbed her hands as she was in the process of trying to put her fingers in her ears. He took a breath. He was looking at Maomao, but somehow he seemed almost embarrassed. Finally he managed, “Now listen to me, y—I mean, Maomao! Listen close! I am going to make you my wife!”

It's one heck of a chapter and I suggest you give it a go! The title of the chapter says "A man and a woman play the game" as if to emphasize the very fact that both Jinshi and MaoMao are playing the game.

Jinshi has never confessed his true feelings before this chapter and only implied that he wanted to make MaoMao his wife.

The implications were heavy though on Jinshi's part, and as smart as MaoMao is, anyone would have guessed that MaoMao was one of the candidates for Jinshi's consort. Even the clothes she received (the ones she wore to the banquet) were also provided by Jinshi along with the hairpin. It is never stated outright but seeing as the hairpin was from Jinshi, the clothes are also implied to be the same.

More or less she's always deliberately ignoring the possibility of having anything to do with him, that is more than professional. Some may call it denial, I call it dense. Maybe, to some extent, she herself is not aware of her feelings because she never lets herself feel anything.

Even Suiren pointed it out pretty early in the manga, that maybe it's MaoMao's way of being reserved. We need to keep in mind that MaoMao is an unreliable narrator and it's more of what she does, rather than what she says that makes a difference.

Even in the chapter that I have quoted above, she had every reason to leave Jinshi, she wasn't working for him after all. But she stayed to make tea for him, even after the fact that she had a long day too. She was almost just as exhausted as Jinshi and yet she was there preparing medicinal tea, so that he could get a better sleep.

Maybe she herself is yet to realise just how deep her feelings run. Till vol 12 she seems to have accepted them, but she still is yet to acknowledge their depth. Maybe it's because of her childhood.

It's not a traumatic backstory but MaoMao had a sad childhood nonetheless....

She was raised by her grand uncle and her real father was eccentric, who scared her. Her mother must also appear to be kind of demonic to her, since she was desperate enough to cut MaoMao's Pinky finger and send it to Lahan. So it's safe to say that MaoMao never received proper parental affection. And adding to the fact that, a brothel is not exactly an ideal place for raising a child.... especially when the birth of MaoMao was the one thing that brought the brothel to its knees...even if being born wasn't her choice.

Plus MaoMao stated it herself that when she was a baby, no one would come to sooth her until their work was finished, implying that even if MaoMao and her brothel sisters are close, they are not that close. A mother's love is different and she never received it. No one can love you more than your mother and MaoMao was deprived of that. She soon realised that no one was coming. Life is hard and she has no choice but to face it!

So, she got interested in poison.

Maybe she doesn't love herself or her life as much as she says / pretends she does. She's always like "yeah, I would very much like my head to be with my body" and "if I stay low profile maybe I can survive here" etc but maybe deep down that's not the case. Maybe that's why she loves poison so much. The implications are crazy.

And to break MaoMao's shell, Jinshi has no choice but to be a bit more forceful at times? At least that's how I interpret that choking scene. Jinshi was angry at MaoMao because she deliberately suggested him to marry consort Rishu and danced with Rikuson.

Even if Jinshi never said it outright, he was giving hints the entire time.

But well the tables turned and MaoMao topped him instead, lol (vol 7) and later we even see that our little stray cat has accepted Jinshi and she's ready to be in a relationship with him (vol 12).

Plus she is intrigued by the process of birth (she wants to eat her baby's placenta, it's kind of uggghhh.... but anyways, that MaoMao we're talking about, she's just weird that way)

Maybe not after too long she'll realise that if she has to give birth, she can only have it with Jinshi and no one else.

~Sunshine

[deebris]

The Misteryous Visitor 6

Batfamily x batsis (platonic!)

Synopsis: Being alone with Damian after so many years didn't lead to the ideal conversation you two should have had, but every little word seemed to have helped you two get closer at least a little bit. However, the chaotic turbulence of the night returned when your mother decided to leave.

Warnings: Family discussion; mention of kidnapping; maternal possessiveness;

Word count: 4k

Note: I wanted to post this and part 7 together, because they are the last two, but it didn't turn out as planned. I hope you like it.

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6

Damian walked to the end of the hallway and turned right, heading toward the living room. His only goal at the moment was to find you and try to prepare you for the catastrophic revelation he knew would come at some point. He was already tired of seeing you so unaware of everything; you weren’t an idiot and didn’t deserve to be treated like one.

But it seemed he didn’t have to try too hard because as soon as he turned the corner and walked a few meters, he abruptly stopped upon seeing that you hadn’t disappeared. In fact, you were there, sitting on the floor next to an old portrait of Martha, your grandmother, curled up as if just waiting for someone to come and get you. Someone who wasn’t your brother, apparently.

“There you are.” He took a few steps back and made no effort to crouch to your level; instead, he stood staring at you with a reproachful look that made you pull your legs even tighter to your chest. “Get up, quickly. The floor is for rats.”

He was trying to ignore the tension, but you were giving him the silent treatment, which made him uncomfortable, though he would never admit it to himself. You had done this to him many times before, but it was always over silly reasons, so he never minded.

You also could never hold a grudge for long, and when you were younger, within an hour, you would have forgotten any disagreement between the two of you and would then come to annoy him again. But now you were older, it wasn’t a tantrum anymore, and the reason was much more complex than any other. You weren’t ignoring him because you were simply irritated, and he feared it was different now.

Damian couldn’t ignore the irritation he felt seeing how ashamed of yourself you seemed since he first saw you. He hated that trait of your personality, always very aware of everything and everyone around you, though it was contradictory to your incredible ability to do unthinkable nonsense.

From where you both were, he still had a view of the bedroom door. The boy couldn’t help but glance over there, curious about what kind of discussion your parents were having. At the same time, he was contemplating various ways to say something or maybe try to fix the awkwardness between you two now, but your guilty voice caught him off guard:

“I didn’t mean to cause harm.” You sounded hoarse, and you two stared at each other, and unlike his sharp eyes, yours were wavering. He gave you a hard expression, but not because of the aversion you thought he had for you, but out of confusion.

It was a pity that Damian’s feelings weren’t easy to read, so you thought he was angry because that night you found out Bruce was someone very important to your brother now. “I didn’t mean to hurt Mr. Wayne. I really don’t know what I did to make him like this. I’m sorry.”

So you thought you had done something wrong to make your father that way, Damian concluded. He hadn’t reflected on how you might feel that way, and fighting against his own callous nature, he made an effort to relax his posture and crouched down in front of you. Damian didn’t dare sit the same way you were, balancing on his toes and leaning his torso forward.

“It wasn’t anything you did.” You’re not sure, but you risk saying this was the first time you heard your brother so soft in your entire life. Damian had always been very loud and was almost always yelling or offending someone, but now, combined with the gravity his voice had gained with puberty, it was tender.

He was going to say something else, but suddenly a strange noise sounded. It was muffled, but it seemed like something had fallen, and you both could feel the ground vibrate. It came from the bedroom, which made you become alert. You started to get up, worried, but your brother’s firm hand on your shoulder stopped you.

“It must have been nothing. Don’t worry about them.” The tenderness had been replaced by harshness, but it wasn’t directed at you.

Sliding your back against the wall again, you rested your chin on your knees while admiring your own shoes, and just like always, you couldn’t maintain your silent treatment with Damian for long:

“I think I bothered Mr. Wayne by coming here. Mom will be mad at me for this later, I know she will.” You were obviously nervous, seeking refuge in Damian as you always did when you had to face her. Your mother didn’t have a good relationship with Batman, and now having to deal with you for disturbing his evening would make her furious. The little relief you felt earlier had vanished, suspecting she had only been affectionate before not to show Bruce.

“Mom is mad all the time.” He tried to calm you down. It would be unbelievable for someone who knows Talia only through her assassin image to hear such a thing. She was a cold and calculating woman, but you both knew when she was upset. She didn’t express it in a conventional way, and Damian had already gotten used to it. Your mother’s mood didn’t concern him much, but it was still scary for you.

“You were mad…” Your statement made him sigh because it was true. A few minutes ago, he had reacted that way, but there was context he couldn’t immediately explain to you. “Maybe I can apologize to him? If he forgives me, I promise I won’t do it again, and then mom-”

“Y/n.” Your brother cut off your frantic speech sharply; you were almost hyperventilating. “No one is mad at you.” He said it as a statement, leaving no room for you to contest him.

“He was calm.” you started to ramble, picking at the fabric of your clothes with your nail. “He read something he took out of his pocket and started feeling sick, I was trying to help…”

Damian frowned. He had seen Dick give a small piece of paper to his father downstairs. That idiot wouldn’t have been stupid enough to write on it that you were his daughter, right? What a wonderful way to tell something like that.

“Idiot.” Your brother muttered aloud without meaning to, feeling immense anger at the thought that Dick had done that. And only after he blurted out the word did he realize you were still beside him, listening. “Not you.” He tried to explain hastily, still with a furious expression on his face.

It was strange for him to talk to you that way. He had called you an idiot many times during childhood, and you used to call each other much worse things, as siblings do. But your relationship now was delicate, like a strand of cotton candy, since that intimacy you once had was lost.

“By the way, Bruce is just stressed about Strange.” Damian analyzed your reaction at the mention of the name. To you, Strange was just another enemy of Batman, never suspecting that the man who appeared at your house years ago could somehow be him.

The League of Assassins had many enemies scattered across the globe; at that time, you thought it was just another one of them. You also never asked or wanted to talk about it, which was unusual for how chatty you could be sometimes. For you, Hugo Strange and the person who kidnapped you back then had no connection.

“There must have been something about our investigation there. I’m sure it was Dick who gave him that card. You didn’t do anything.” He said.

Your heart returned to its normal rhythm, but it grew heavy again as you understood the facts. Damian was blaming Dick for that thing Bruce was holding onto, but it was you who had given it to him in the first place. Bruce became distressed when you mentioned the gift and quickly pulled it out of his pocket. That must have been the object Strange gave you.

“Dami.” He heard the nickname leave your lips, and a flicker of hope hit him. There was still a certain closeness between you there. “I was the one who brought the card here; it’s not Dick’s fault. Strange gave it to me to give to Mr. Wayne.”

Damian abruptly stood up, returning to an upright posture. “Strange did what?” Neither Tim, Dick, nor Jason had mentioned this. They said they were telling the whole story, but none of them mentioned any kind of message. Was that why Tim had been acting so strange when he arrived? He remembers seeing him throw a box in the trash and getting all nervous when Damian got irritated and asked what it was. “Was it a small gift box, by any chance?”

“Yes, the same size as the card.” You made a square with your thumbs and index fingers, trying to show the shape of the object. “Just like this. But Mr. Wayne didn’t let me read it; I acted badly by trying to see what was in there too. I shouldn’t have been nosy.”

So Bruce didn’t let you know on purpose? Maybe he just didn’t want you to find out this way. He should have told you. Damian was about to open his lips to take the initiative, but the sound of someone approaching stopped him.

Alfred paused for a moment, finding it odd to see the two of you here. He had returned to make sure you were okay once more and then leave you alone until later in the day. “Master Damian,” He said the boy’s name as a form of acknowledgment, “I thought you were asleep.” The butler added, addressing both of you.

“Alfred!” You got up and walked over to him, who rested a hand on your head expectantly. He saw the way you looked hesitantly at your brother, seeking some kind of approval before returning your attention to him once more. “Something bad happened to Mr. Wayne; he wasn’t well.”

Alfred's eyes widened, looking at Damian for an explanation or just confirmation that it was true. He was obviously tense and speechless for a moment but quickly composed himself.

“What happened, dear?” He asked, and once again you sought your brother’s approval, who took the initiative to explain in your place.

“He…” Damian began, trying to find a way to say it. “Bruce discovered something about Strange.” He said with a suspicious tone and the butler quickly understood the underlying implications.

“Where is he?” Alfred asked, worried.

Damian wasn’t planning to answer, knowing Alfred’s aversion to Talia, but you jumped in: “He and my Mom are talking.”

The butler was obviously displeased and furrowed his brow. He had planned to tell Bruce privately about his supposed daughter, but apparently, things had moved ahead of him. But Alfred knew Bruce well and understood that despite his instability, he would handle things as rationally as possible. Or at least he hoped so.

It was unsettling how a simple night so suddenly turned into yet another Wayne family drama.

“Well,” he sighed, “It seems it’s too early for breakfast, but also too late to go back to sleep.” He gave your hair a gentle tousle with the hand that still rested there, and you appreciated it. Indeed, the sky was already beginning to lighten. “How about some tea to start the day, miss? Or maybe coffee?”

“That’s fine.” You said, accepting that he would guide you through the mansion once more, but stopped when you realized your brother wasn’t making an effort to follow. “Damian, aren’t you coming?”

Your hopeful tone made him huff and approach to follow you. “Let’s go then.” He joined you, heading downstairs.

Damian was deeply irritated by how easily you let your emotions come and go. To him, it was inconceivable that you weren’t resentful, even hating him, as he had presumed you would be just moments ago. The way you let your emotions dissipate so easily bothered him, and he couldn’t understand how you could forgive so simply.

This behavior had always been the target of Damian’s criticism, as he didn’t have the same ease with forgiveness. What ate him up inside, however, was the certainty that even if you found out everything he and Talia had done, you would still be able to forgive them.

Damian suspected that this readiness to forgive came from a lack of options. Throughout your life, you had only him and your mother, and breaking away from either of them would be devastating. Perhaps that was Talia’s greatest fear; even if she tried to convince herself that she kept you hidden for your own good, away from the League and Batman, Damian knew that deep down, she wanted to ensure a safe harbor, someone who would always be emotionally supportive.

Although you might appear to be an very naive girl, your morals were unwavering. And incredibly, Talia managed to keep you loyal to her. Both of them knew that you secretly hated criminals and dreamed of a perfect justice that would never exist, at least not in Gotham City.

Damian knew that his mother’s real fear was that you would find someone else beyond her, people with whom you could connect, not out of obligation or lack of other options, but because you genuinely wanted to. This emotional dependency, nurtured by Talia, made you more spoiled than Damian, who in turn always confronted Talia with stubbornness and resistance.

“Do you like any fruit?” Pennyworth asked you, who were with your arms crossed on the counter, while your brother sat at the end of the table, just keeping watch over your figure.

“All of them.” You replied, and Alfred laughed contentedly. It was nice to hear something like that, especially as he opened the kitchen cupboard and saw the colorful cereals inside, all from Tim’s never-ending stash of treats.

“Master Damian?” The butler asked the boy.

“No, thank you.” He declined with a grimace.

You watched with curiosity as Alfred grabbed a bunch of colorful fruits and began cutting them. There was some kind of dough resting in a container nearby, which you noticed when he moved a cloth to check, and it smelled so good. It was comforting to see him there in the kitchen, even doing something as simple as cutting fruits.

Talia was a very busy woman, and cooking definitely didn’t suit her elegant demeanor. Housework was not part of her routine, so you often ended up eating at expensive restaurants. That’s why every move Alfred made captured your attention, and he noticed.

“Do you want to help me, miss?” He asked, intrigued.

“Can I?” You asked back, already moving to stand next to him with excitement. The butler nodded and instructed you to wash your hands in the sink on the other side of the kitchen.

You were distractedly scrubbing soap on your hands and far enough not to hear Damian whisper: “Bruce isn’t going to let Mom take her home.”

Alfred looked up, not at all surprised by the news. “Does your sister know, Master Damian?” He kept his voice at the same low tone as the boy’s.

“No, Pennyworth. That’s why I’m telling you.” Damian checked to see if you were still far, seeing you drying your hands and hurrying: “When they both come out of that room and Mom leaves, she’s going to make a fuss.”

“What should I do?” You came back, interrupting their conversation and asking for instructions.

Alfred set you the task of removing the stems from the strawberries until a noise from upstairs alerted all three of you. It sounded like glass, and it didn’t take long to hear Talia’s voice calling for the butler, who moved to go to her.

“I’m leaving,” Talia said with a firmness that disguised well the inner turmoil she was facing behind her attitude.

You were stunned, and a rising panic took hold of you. Alfred hadn’t noticed you had followed him until you heard: “I’m going to get my shoes and coat.” You declared. Your mind was spinning with the idea that your mother was angry with you, seeing how she was acting.

Talia turned slightly to you, but the look she gave was impassive. “You’re not coming,” she said. The coldness in her voice wasn’t unfamiliar but struck deep in your chest. “You’re going to stay here with your brother.”

“But…” You tried to process what was happening, needing to look at Damian next to you for a moment until reality hit you back. “Why?” You asked with a trembling breath, already approaching her and grabbing your mother’s hand in desperation.

“For heaven’s sake, Y/n. Isn’t this what you wanted?” She rolled her eyes and looked at you with impatience. “You and Damian will get to spend time together again.”

“But what about you, Mom? Why can’t we all be together?” You clung to her hand even tighter, trying to keep her there forever, but all you received in return was the look she gave when you upset her.

“I’ll send your things with someone. Be obedient.” She said, but her real desire was for you to be rebellious, especially towards Bruce. Your mother crouched to your height and pinched your cheeks with her hands while whispering so the other two wouldn’t hear: “But remember, you’re mine daughter, understand? Your mother will always be here for you. I’ll get in touch.” She gave you a strong kiss, leaving a perfect lipstick mark, and grabbed the coat that was already in Alfred’s hands with haste.

“I want to go with you!” Talia felt your arms around her waist and sighed.

“You're old enough to be acting like this, Y/n. Let go.” She tried to wriggle free on her own, but your grip was so strong that her fingers barely moved. “Y/n, enough!” She shouted genuinely furious, and you jumped back in fear. The sight made her wilt, but she still suppressed it and opened the door.

You were in shock, never imagining that your actions could have led to this. It was as if she hated you for it, and you felt a pressure on your forehead, unsure if it was from the anger you felt at how your mother treated you or from the desperation.

“Don’t go after her,” Damian ordered, knowing you would do it anyway, which is why he held you in place.

You couldn’t accept it. The idea of being left behind, the feeling of being rejected by the only family you knew, was overwhelming. “Mom!” You shouted, struggling to free yourself from Damian’s grip in fury, the sadness totaly replaced by a burning rage. “Don’t leave! I’m sorry for disobeying! I didn’t mean to do anything wrong!” you screamed. “Why are you like this with me?!” You shouted louder, not caring about making a scene.

Talia’s feet were already buried in the snow, trying to hide the pain she felt, but your muffled voice didn’t help. The sound of the door closing was like a final blow, and her heart sank even further. She didn’t care whether Bruce was right or not; she hated him like hell now.

You were sobbing and gasping, the pain of rejection still present in your chest. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disobey. I didn’t want you to leave…” You murmured lower, feeling your throat ache.

As she took more steps towards her own car, her thoughts raced. She knew that sooner or later you would need to know the truth, and deep down, she wished the news had come from her.

She tried to keep her mind clear during the brief walk to the car, passing by a snow-covered tree where ravens had gathered to rest. She was so distracted for a few seconds that when she felt an arm pull her back, she instinctively threw the stranger away, who hit the trunk and caused the birds to start flying erratically while cawing discordantly.

“What the hell is this!” She shouted furiously, shocking the boy who immediately began to apologize while getting up, feeling pain.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Scare me?!” She was outraged by his assumption. As if she would be scared by a kid like him. “And which of Bruce’s little pests are you?”

“My name is Tim.” The boy assumed a serious tone now, abandoning the polite courtesy he had before.

“And are you going to stand there like an idiot, or are you going to tell me what you want?”

Despite her hurry, Tim stared at her and looked back, checking if there was anyone outside the mansion and taking a few seconds to do so. Talia’s arrogant look didn’t intimidate him, and he spoke firmly:

“A few years ago, in that alley…” The phrase made her eyes widen, but she still took a deep breath to compose herself. “It was you.”

Talia never thought she would have the opportunity to face that boy again after that day. When Strange fled, she followed him and caught up with him. She remembers how she grabbed the man by the collar when she didn’t see you there. After wringing the truth out of that pathetic man, Talia had to let him go as she rushed desperately to where you were, but not before leaving a beaten face as a gift. But that night, that boy... Tim, had heard your call for help.

“So, you were the Robin.” She let out a curious laugh, looking Tim up and down. “And so what if it was me?”

“You tricked me. Pretended to be a helpless person.” He frowned while narrowing his eyes at her. “I remember the little girl I saved; it was her.” Tim turned his face towards the mansion again, as if to point at you.

“You just had the luck of arriving before me. And what did you expect me to do? Tell you who I was?” She took her gloves out of her pocket and began putting them on. “Do you think you could have caught me, kid?” She laughed sarcastically this time, belittling him.

“You could have told me the truth. You had the opportunity to tell Bruce about Hugo Strange all this time. We could have protected her.” Tim’s eyes moved around, trying to process. “After I left there, Bruce and I continued on patrol and found him passed out. If we had known who he really was, he might be in jail now.”

“Spare me your laments, kid. She’s going to stay here, isn’t she? So what else do you want?” Talia said, and Tim wasn’t surprised by the information. He had already assessed the scene while waiting to approach her outside. He had jumped through the bedroom window, having not been able to sleep after recognizing your face.

Tim remained silent. It seemed that Talia had a very concrete idea about everything, and it made no sense to try to circle her with assumptions about how things could have been. He couldn’t help but feel foolish, realizing that you had been so close to him at some point, and he couldn’t do anything for Bruce since he didn’t know.

“Listen.” Talia’s surprisingly soft voice caught him off guard. “Thank you for helping, even though I didn’t exactly need it.” Despite trying to be understanding, she couldn’t help but emphasize. “She means everything to me, you understand? Put some sense into your father, or I’ll find a way to take her back, and I promise you’ll never see her again.”

Tim swallowed hard at the mention of Bruce but snorted indifferently soon after. “He’s not as bad as he seems.”

“I noticed.” She murmured with irony and turned to walk away, with Tim not interrupting her this time. The boy watched her go to the car, but suddenly she stopped at the gate. She ran her fingers over the electronic lock, and suddenly some loose wires became visible. Tim found it strange, and Talia looked at him with a smile, which even from a distance, he could see.

“I think you’re going to need someone to fix this.” She shouted for him to hear, and for a moment, Tim thought if she had done it, but only now did he wonder how you had gotten past the front gate. It seems that your innocent face hid some skills. “Don’t pamper her, and tell your father and Pennyworth not to let her eat too much sugar.” She let the wires go while grumbling, slamming the car door, and driving away.

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@lafrone @sylum @mileskisser @belowbreadcrumbs @riddle-me-im-sirius @rafa-the-beautiful @shehrazadekey @fairuzwhat @bedeater @arianapjs @idonthaveanameforthisacc @azulawayne @nciolisa @lovelywritersgarden @spideybv28 @faimmm @cherry-peach-flavored @godknows-shetried @randomrosie01 @whatsupstark @paastaboi @m3ntally-unstable @masterradd-28 @justanormalpersin @6000-fandoms @fennecspage @homan-oid @fluffy-strawberries @animegirlfromvietnam @tamsyien @ari-sama21 @kataraluvr @boatempollstriper @lokisgoodboy @enjisthings @thereeallink @lumalesa-kadichizho @fyodorssimp1 @shintax-error @lara20aral @sulatsadark @notahappystan @nebuluma @thetiredtoad0-0 @tmt-alexis @anuttellaa @strawberrymangoes @lorastone-000 @starryhiraeth @worldussysblog @urminebutidontwantyou @herondale-lightworm @nyra-42 @ohnoivefallen @an-introverted-nishinoyasimp @ellie-x0xo @blkmystery @formula-space @sparks0918 @cosmicqueenieb @rukia-uchiha-98 @leeleecats @camilo-uwu @phoenixgurl030 @rosegardenpatsu @nickey-diano @wpdarlingpan @xxrougefangxx

@m4chine-girl @kellyyn02 @urminebutidontwantyou

[youraverageaemondsimp]

Metanoia ;

Aemond Targaryen x Transmigrated!Strong!Reader

>> Chapter III : The Pandemonium.

Summary: Aemond conjures up a plan to get his revenge on you but he faces an obstacle; his own self.

WARNINGS: Violent thoughts, plans for revenge, Aemond in unhinged, a little graphic but not too much + not proof read.

A/N: divider credits to @cafekitsune

<- prev // masterlist // next ->

How could he be so foolish? How could he forget what has happened? Was he willing to put his differences aside all because you woke up? No. He couldn't. He can't.

He despised you for what you had done, sure he may have liked you when he was young, sure you were the only one that was ever kind to him but it did not change the fact that you were the reason why he is blind in one of his eyes.

You chose to protect your brothers over him, of course you did, what did he expect? You were a bastard too just like them.

He remembers the way his mother was humiliated in front of everyone, all because of you.

It was your fault.

You.

You.

You.

He scoffed, was all he could think about is you? Now that he noticed it, you had never really left his mind, you had always been in his thoughts one way or another, infiltrating his body like a parasite, taking control over his mind.

He did not understand himself, why does he hold such sympathy for you when you had done nothing but hurt him more than anyone could ever imagine.

Had it been luke that took his eye out, he would've fed him to his dragon, so why does he excuse you? Should he feed you to his dragon? Vhagar could definitely use a meal.

Yet the thought of losing you terrifies him, he would never admit it, but he cannot imagine a life without you, it was as though your existence was granted just for him by the gods, if that were true, why were they so cruel? Making you be the one that did such a harm to him?

He gritted his teeth.

He felt uneasy.

He felt nauseous.

What is happening to him?

The night began to fall slowly, the sun retreating down, out of vision, he paced the room anxiously, all of his thoughts were driving him insane for the past few hours, the same question bothering him over and over again, he itched to do something.

Was it truly your fault? You were the one that encouraged him to go pursue vhagar, yet you were the very same person that he had to lose an eye to for the sake of gaining a dragon.

How ironic.

He hated it.

Perhaps you were worried that he would've actually hit jace with that stone, he wasn't going to, it was just to scare them off, yet you weren't able to tell, nobody was able to tell, he wasn't as cruel as everyone paints him out to be.

You should've known this, you knew the most, so why didn't you understand him?

The cut of betrayal and heartbreak was more painful to him than that of his eye back then, his stomach churned while the master stitched him up, while you stood there in horror as you watched his eye be taken out.

He remembers your expression clearly of guilt and horror.

You deserved to feel that way.

For what you had done to him.

He kicks the table in front of him in annoyance, making all the contents on it crash onto the floor with a loud thud, he breathes heavily, not wanting to recall any of the incident anymore.

His hands trembled, he stared outside the balcony, watching the sky turn dark blue.

The blue almost mocking him as the colour stood for justice and he got none.

He wanted justice.

He turns around, facing the room once again and sees his dagger laying on the bed.

He mouths quirks up into a smirk.

He knew what he was going to do.

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

You paced around your room, wondering what the earlier incident with Aemond was, questioning why he had suddenly changed his behaviour, almost wanting to poke your eye out.

Besides, you realise how your own body gets extremely anxious when he is around, it's as if your body is extremely afraid and threatened by his existence.

The dinner was tonight, the infamous dinner where Aemond implies that your brothers are bastards in front of everyone, that essentially ends up with a fight.

You wonder if it would be different since he is betrothed to you now, maybe out of respect he wouldn't do that toast?

The maids get you ready for the dinner, dressing up in more comfortable clothes for the evening and you stay put, hoping that everything will go smoothly.

You were dead wrong.

You realised as you watched Aemond push Jace.

Why would he do this?

Alicent murmurs something to him, grabbing him but he yanks his hand away from her, “I was merely expressing how proud I am of my family mother, hmm.”

“Though..” He pauses and turns to look at you.

“It seems my niece and nephews aren't as proud as theirs.” He taunts openly.

“What the fuck.” You voice out loud and Aemond is shocked at your words, “I appreciate you looking out for my family uncle, even though you are missing an eye.” Those words of frustration leave your mouth.

And the entire room falls silent.

Alicent turns and glares at you, and Rhaenyra hushes you.

What?

“Oh shit, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it.” You quickly realise what you said, you lost control of your body once again, Aemond takes a deep breath before storming off.

Fuck, you messed up.

How could you make fun of him for such a sensitive issue?

You immediately rush after him, chasing as he strides through the hallways quickly, “Aemond! I didn't mean it!” You yell out, the passing by servants staring at you confused as you run quickly.

You grabbed his forearm, halting him.

He yanks his arm harshly away from you.

“Don't. Touch. Me.” He grits his teeth, you blink, taken aback, feeling guilty of bringing up such a sensitive topic. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean it.” You apologise once again, looking down.

He stays quiet before letting out a scoff.

“You-” The servant passes by, bowing to you both before leaving. He realises that this place is too public and pulls you to the side. “You're ironic, considering what you've done yet bring it up so insensitively.” He whispers, voice laced with anger.

“What?” You're confused.

He grabs your cheeks harshly, pushing them together. You stare at him wide eyed. Your eyes are beautiful.

He notes.

His mouth quirks up into a smirk, reminding himself of his plan later.

Your body begins to shiver out of your control, the feeling of anxiety gnawing in your stomach.

Surprisingly, Aemond pushes his lips against yours, capturing yours with his, you were confused, he was mad at you a moment ago, why was he kissing you now?

It's not like you minded it, but it was out of character, but you’d rather take this than to have him kill you cause you offended him.

His hand left your cheek and wrapped around your throat pulling you further into the kiss. He was being rough, teeth clanking against yours as he devoured you.

You kissed him back, trying to match his rhythm so the painful grazing of his teeth against your lips can be less impactful. The hallways fill with the echoes of your smooching, the wetness popping everytime Aemond pulls back to breathe.

Aemond wasn’t kissing you because he likes you or anything, or it wasn’t like your lips were distracting, he is doing this so he doesn’t end up hurting you now, yes definitely, that must be the reason; or at least that's what Aemond convinced himself to believe.

“Y/N- Oh my goodness!” You immediately pull away upon hearing the voice and turn to look at the direction the voice came from, feeling embarrassed when you see Rhaenyra standing at the end of the path alongside Alicent. They both probably rushed out of the dining room to check in on their respective children. Well only to find them practically devouring each other's faces.

Aemond looks annoyed, feeling upset that they were interuppted.

Wait, why was he feeling upset?

He coughs, leaving immediately, forcing you to face both of them alone.

“Uhm i-” You stumble over your words and Rhaenyra furrows her brows, “Good night mother, and your grace” You bow to both Alicent and Rhaenyra and leave hurriedly as well, none of them make an effort to stop you. Instead looking at each other in awkward silence before bidding goodnight to each other as well.

You rush to your chambers hastily, face feeling like it's on fire after the moment you just shared with Aemond, the anxiety still existed in your gut but you felt weirdly comforted by the kiss. You open the door, rushing in and face planting onto your bed before squealing into the sheets, gripping them tightly.

You kissed Aemond Targaryen.

You just kissed Aemond Targaryen.

You began to giggle like a woman gone insane, punching the sheets to get the excited feeling out of you while rolling on the bed.

You tried really hard to fit into the world, not wanting to make a big deal out of anything, keeping yourself fan behaviour within, contained and locked so you don't seem weird, but you couldn't contain the excitement now. This single handedly made you forget what happened moments prior and focus on the moment itself, you touched your lips feeling how warm they were and you couldn't hold back the smile that bloomed on your face at the thought.

For as long as you can remember you loved Aemond as a character, being his biggest fan. You got to experience something that nobody ever will. Should you be thankful? You didn't know, but whatever it was, the encounter left you feeling all giddy.

Your eyes begin to close automatically, unable to keep open, you shift into a more comfortable position and let the sleep succumb you.

In his room— Aemond grabbed the dagger, shoving it in its sheath before sliding a mural to the side, revealing the hidden passages in the red keep and descending down the stairs and to your room.

He pulled the wall of your chamber and it opened instantly, he looked around the room, checking for another person, making sure he was alone before stepping out of his hiding and into the room itself.

He walked like a predator towards its prey, staring at your unconscious body that was sleeping soundly, he stood by your bed studying your frame as he loomed over you.

Your hair fell messily onto your face, a strand getting stuck to the corner of your lips, his hand came up to your cheek and tucked the strand away and onto your ear. He caressed your face fondly for a moment before snapping himself out of it.

What was he doing?

He quickly pulls his hand away as if he touched fire and grabs the dagger instead, taking it out and pointing it at your eye from above. Your eyes were closed shut, eyelashes brushing your cheekbones as you took gentle breaths. You were fast asleep, stranger to the threat lurking in your room.

He lowered the dagger slowly, planning on whether to shut, stab it from above or slice it upwards your face; leaving a scar just like his. He tilted his dagger deciding he was gonna do the latter and pressed the metal to your skin.

He didn't put pressure yet.

His heart pounded heavily, his breath going out of control as he couldn't breathe, his head began to spin. He didn't want to do this.

What?

Why did he not want to do this?

He clenched his eye shut, scrunching his face in anger wondering as to why both his mental and physical state of his being betraying him. Why did he not want to hurt you? Was that not what he was after?

He planned meticulously for this moment, he might not ever get a chance to do this, so he should seize this moment immediately. Yet his heart ached as visions of your shared youth flashed in his memory. He exhaled, body visibly shaking, resisting from digging the blade deeper into your skin.

He yanks away the dagger from his hand, throwing it sideways across the room, it lands in the corner. He stares at his own hand wondering why his body acted out of his accordance.

Or maybe he was the one acting out of accordance to himself. He grabs his chest, his heart aching at the mere thought of wanting to hurt you himself, what is happening to him? He steps back from his place, staring at your still sleeping body.

He feared this.

He had always feared this would happen ever since the incident.

Hating you was easy when you weren't in front of him, but he could not anymore because you were in front of him now.

You were something precious to him, no, you are something precious to him, he couldn't bring himself to hate you or hurt you, it felt conflicting, he felt weak, he felt like a hypocrite, he felt disgusted at himself, how can he forgive you? How can he ever forgive you? What you did to him was irreversible damage so why is it that he feels guilty about hurting you?

Perhaps he already knew the answer.

That is correct.

He doesn't need to forgive you.

He had already long forgiven you.

Just the mere seconds after you slashing his eye out, as he fell to the ground clutching it in pain, blood seeping through his fingers, regardless of the excruciating pain he felt;

He forgave you that instant.

He didn't want to admit that to himself, for it would make him look like a moron.

He was a moron. A moron in love.

A moron still in love.

He turned on his foot, immediately leaving the room, closing the wall loudly behind him in anger as he rushed back to his own chambers.

After a few moments, you woke up sweating, immediately sitting up as you processed the dream you just had, unaware of the fact that Aemond was ever in your chamber, but rather waking up because of the dream.

No, it rather felt like a memory.

Is this a memory of this body?

Your eyes widened, now realising why Aemond had lashed out at you, why Alicent glared at you, and why Rhaenyra hushed you.

It wasn't Luke who took his eye in this universe.

It was you.

You felt so stupid.

TAGLIST !!

@intheheartoftheking @dracaryxzs @ladyoffandoms @spear-bearing-bi-witch @myheartfollower @jom3leo @zoleea-exultant @saturnssrings @uniquecutie-puffs @aleemendoza2425-blog @marvelita85 @feelingfaye @anaya-rhys @visenyareads @sylvievil @cypherpt5fttaehyung @ttysmfwna @void21 @technicallystrangereview @feyresqueen @evergreen9083 @mirandasidefics @org12 @blorbo-brainrot @thisishwrworld @shadowqueen09 @watermel0nsugarhigh @cottoncandyclouds-stuff @madislayyy @the-hufflebird-girl @hiatuswhore

[hardlyinteresting]

Love, Guilt and Other Wounds

Aaron Hotchner x female reader

When Aaron and his partner are taken hostage, he has to break her heart to save her life.

Warnings: angst, hurt/comfort, a little bit of domestic fluff, mention of blood, injury (non-graphic), hostage situation, knives, cannon-compliant themes of violence, non-detailed discussion about religion (Christianity), themes of childhood abuse, please let me know if you want me to add anything else.

Word count: (less than I expected, sorry) 3.7k  Request here! | Masterlist

"Of course, I’ll hurt you. Of course, you’ll hurt me. Of course, we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence". - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Aaron isn't sure if he believes in a God or a higher power. He was taught to read scripture; and spent Sunday mornings perfecting his posture in church pews-- starched shirts and neckties pulled too tight. The preacher's sermons left him wanting-- wondering how this man of God could stand over his congregation preaching every week, and not see all the lies they were holding back. How could he not see the secrets Aaron seemed to read so clearly? At just fourteen Aaron knew who was having an affair and with whom. He could see which children feared their fathers. Every pew had another story, another family growing together, or falling apart. The hypocrisy of it all drove him mad, and he imagined standing from his seat to shout it, overwhelmed as he realized he had unintentionally become the keeper of everyone's secrets. He learned that everyone in that church was a liar in their own right, and he hated it. But, when he left for college, his mother called to ask if he was still going to church on Sundays, and he lied and said yes. 

He should have paid more attention. Maybe then he'd understand how he ended up here. Perhaps it's some sick retribution. A cosmic evening of the scales; his penance for his sins. He just wishes you weren't here with him. How dare he think he could love someone when all he's ever done is punish those who love him? His hands are stained with blood; he taints everything he touches. 

Very early on in his career, Aaron learned he couldn’t take cases personally. As devastating as it was to have another victim show up while hunting a killer, it wasn’t a personal failure. Compartmentalize. Use logic. Move forward. He repeated the process again and again. Logically he knows that he is not responsible for the actions of the aggressive sociopath who is now holding the two of you hostage; but, he blames himself for not keeping you safer, for bringing you with him, and for putting you in harm's way. He knows he will not recover if you don’t make it out of here. He won’t forgive himself. 

The profile said this man would be anti-social. Physically, he’d be small in stature. It was clear he’d been sneaking up on his victims. He had been taking couples, knocking out the men with a blow to the back of the head, and then the women. It’s a method that the team had seen before, common for UNSUBs without the social ability to lure their victims, or the physical strength or confidence to attack head-on. But they had not profiled that he would escalate to taking out his targets with a taser. 

After six days in San Diego, the team finally had a lead on two rental properties in the UNSUB’s comfort zone. One was an old tyre factory, listed as a multipurpose warehouse and storage space; the other was a large storage facility in an industrial neighbourhood. Both units had been paid for in cash, both offered the privacy and space required to hold and torture two people for days at a time. The team split up, Hotch and you arranged to meet the owner of the factory space to find out more about who the renter was and gain access to the property. With no response from the owner of the second property, Morgan, Prentiss, and Rossi headed over to check it out. 

The two of you had only been on the property for five minutes before Aaron had been incapacitated and taken out. He had foolishly made his way into the building while you ran back to the SUV to grab your jacket. Out cold, there was nothing Aaron could do to stop you from meeting the same fate. 

It’s not his fault. But he feels like it is as he watches you shiver from across the room. He can’t be certain how much time has passed, but it feels like hours. He can only hope that you’re being kept in the building you were attacked in, that the team will connect the dots and come and get you, but until then you’re stuck. He watches, nauseated as your eyes flutter open, and then shut again. You’re concussed, he doesn’t need to be a doctor to know that. His ears are ringing, and he’s sure the blow he took to the head has at the very least temporarily worsened his hearing. 

“Doesn’t the FBI have rules against fraternization?” The UNSUB wonders out loud, waving a knife around as he walks towards you. 

“What makes you think we’re a couple?” Hotch asks, as he tries to work his hands free from the rope that binds them behind his back, “She’s just a colleague”. 

It’s a lie. But it needs to be said. Compartmentalize. Use logic. Move forward. Buy time, shift the UNSUB’s interest away from the two of you. Ruin the fantasy.

“I think I’ve been doing this long enough to know a couple when I see a couple, Aaron,” the man taunts, obviously proud of himself. He’s feeling emboldened having taken two FBI agents, but that works in your favour. He’s getting cocky, too full of himself. It’s a level of confidence he isn’t used to having, it just gives him a higher height to fall from. Compartmentalize. Use logic. Move forward. “I think it’s time we wake your girlfriend up,” the man says, his hand gripping tightly at your hair, your head tugged back without remorse. 

Aaron resists the urge to cringe as he hears you groan, your face twisted with obvious pain as you’re rudely awakened. “She’s pretty. What’s she doing with you?” 

“I told you. She’s a colleague”. 

Your eyes are unfocused, scanning the room trying to make sense of what is going on. 

The man raises the knife, holding it to your throat. This time Aaron blinks, desperate to control his expressions and micro-expressions. In this scenario, the less he cares about you, the safer you are. 

It’s the burden of being tied to him. Time after time his love destroys people. 

The blade presses closer to your throat. Aaron controls his breathing. 

“Impressive agent Hotchner. But I’m still not convinced,” the UNSUB moves the blade but pulls your head back further. Your eyes meet Aaron’s, “Do what you’re going to do, he doesn’t care,” you say. You’re speaking to the man with the knife in his hand as much as you’re speaking to Aaron. He weighs his options, his heart pounding as he watches you hold your breath, willing the tears to leave your eyes. It’s the permission he needs but doesn’t want.  Compartmentalize. Use logic. Move forward. He knows you’re doing the same, telling him to break your heart to save your life. 

“Please, Hotc--”. 

He doesn’t let you finish, “Just shut up for once. Please,” he thinks the words cut through him more than they cut through you. Knowing his cruelty is a lie does little to soften the blow, and it breaks his heart to be the one throwing it. 

But this is all he’s good for, isn’t it? Letting people down. Surely it’s not just coincidence that so many of those who have dared to love him end up damaged. One way or another he destroys people. Who is he to say that he’s the one who is suffering when it’s he who does all the damage? 

Even as a child, he couldn’t help it. He thinks perhaps he inherited his sharpened tongue and lack of patience from his mother. She loved him in her own way but could never show it without first tearing him apart. Her biting words, and regular beatings. Prentiss had been right when she once said he was distrustful of women-- unfairly so. Not all women carry the hateful, spiteful heart his mother had. Very few had ever turned their rage at the world and their shortcomings into a personal and violent rage against him. He grew weary nonetheless. Better safe than sorry.

 At a young age, it became clear to him that there were few things, if anything, as important to his mother than appearances. On Sundays, she fussed over his clothes and his posture. She lectured him on table manners from the moment he could hold a fork. His room had to be spotless. His grades had to surpass average. Long before his brother was ever born, he learned how to live up to her expectations. But still, there was always something she could find him lacking in, an excuse to take her open fist or wooden spoon to his skin, a reason to send him to bed without dinner. He remembers crashing into the china cabinet trying to escape her one night. She was mortified on Monday when he had to walk into school on Monday with a cast around his arm. “Make sure they know this was your fault,” she told him. Perhaps I was built to fail, he had thought. She loves me and I embarrass her. I will only ever let her down. God, how disappointed she would be to see him now.  

Seconds feel like hours as the UNSUB leers expectantly. The man's mouth twists into a smile when he sees the tears forming in your waterline again. Aaron watches your fist clench presumably to distract yourself from the migraine that matches the pounding in his head, just as much as it is to pull your attention away from the hurtful lies he's about to weave. 

“You were supposed to have my back,” Arron spits with faux vitriol. “You had one job and couldn't even manage to do that”. Compartmentalize. Use logic. Move forward. 

“From the moment you showed up I knew you'd be a problem”. 

He continues to try to work his hands out from the binds. He can feel the knot loosening as he continues to buy the two of you time. “Aaron,” you beg, tears slipping down your cheeks now. 

“Following me around with some school girl crush. Look where we are now,” Aaron breathes. 

He can feel his father’s rage resting on his shoulders, as heavy as his hands were when he used to pat him on the back. It’s a quiet burning, far more silent than his mother’s anger, but it’s there and threatening him all the same. A silent shame; a fear induced by the knowledge that he’s failing but not being able to stop it. His father lived like a ghost in their home, just as Aaron has learned to haunt his life. He only ever raised his voice when he drank, but even then his hatred was self-directed. A sorrowful self-pity. A cry for help. The affairs, the gambling, the drinking; the man punished himself, stumbling home to a house with a vengeful wife, a silent boy, and a crying baby. It was a heart attack that finally killed him, but Aaron never doubted his father had stopped living long before that. 

Aaron breaks his own heart as he delivers each verbal blow. He hopes you understand. He prays that just maybe your concussion might leave the memories of this moment blurry. Selfishly, he begs you to forgive him, because he won’t forgive himself. 

He can see the way your wrists strain against your restraints. The UNSUB adjusts his grip on your hair as you struggle to distance yourself from him. Your eyelids flutter and he knows your vision must be swimming but you don’t give up. With a sadistic grin, the UNSUB wipes at the tear stain on your cheek with fake sympathy, grasping your jaw roughly he forces you to look straight at Aaron, “Poor girl… guess boss man doesn’t care about you after all. What a waste,” he sighs his breath heavy against your cheek, as he moves to hold the knife to your throat again, “She’s so pretty,” he directs his commentary at Aaron this time. 

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’ve slept with her. How couldn’t I when she was practically throwing herself at me?” The words taste bitter on his tongue as he speaks them. His stomach churns as he continues, “But what we have certainly isn’t love”. 

It couldn’t be further from the truth. Aaron grounds himself choosing to remember the quiet morning you two had shared only a few days earlier. Waking up without an alarm but with Jack sneaking in to jump up on the bed. As he watches you cry now he recalls how you had smiled so brightly at the little boy, ruffling his hair and cuddling Jack into your side. He had watched with a smile of his own as you bargained with his son, promising pancakes in exchange for ten more minutes of sleep on your shared day off. 

You crept into his heart so slowly he had hardly noticed. Until one day, he looked up from the bright pink sticky note you'd left on your recent report, reminding him not to work too hard; he knew, without a doubt, he was in love with you. 

For so much of his life, Aaron conditioned himself to expect a fight around every corner. He learned to make sacrifices from his happiness in fruitless attempts to keep peace. For the first time in forever he's been feeling like maybe, just maybe, he's enough. You’ve been more than patient with him; understanding his hesitance to open up to people again. You don't get upset with him for working late, but you scold him for not getting enough sleep and skipping meals. 

He smiles more. He cracks jokes the way he used to. You've helped him see the forest from the trees--  healed parts of him he didn’t know needed mending. He's tried to do the same for you. He's watched you open up and trust the team more. He's seen the way your confidence has grown and he can't take credit for your growth, but he's enamoured by the transformation just the same. 

You deserve better. You deserve better. You deserve better. The thought echoes in his head the same as it does most days. But now, it’s louder. The voice in his head matches the volume of the ringing in his ears, and the rushing sound of his pounding heart. Compartmentalize. Use logic. Move forward. He fights to remind himself, but the UNSUB is laughing now. Taunting you and your emotions, and there’s nothing Aaron can do but sit there and watch. He struggles to feign indifference, watching as you continue to make yourself smaller. It’s only then that he notices that you too are working your hands out of the rope that restrains you. The UNSUB was stupid enough to tie your wrist in front of you.

Aaron’s eyes focus on the bandaid wrapped around your index finger. You cut yourself making dinner last week. He could have sworn his heart melted when you turned to him holding your hand out, blood beading already. “Aaron, where do you keep your first aid kit?” you’d asked. Your brows furrowed, and your lips pouted. “In the bathroom, the cabinet under the sink,” he’d answered with no intention of letting you go off and tend to your wound alone. Instead, he guided you down the hall, his left hand looped in a gentle hold around your wrist, his other hand on your waist. 

Once you were sat on the countertop he took great care, making sure the wound was cleaned before he bandaged it. “My hero,” you teased, leaning in for a kiss. 

A simple cut he could manage to fix. Jack promised you could use as many of his Star Wars bandaids as you wanted while you healed as well. A little love and patience could make it better, a philosophy he adopted to heal Jack’s scraped knees, and schoolyard bruises. But the sight before him now is far worse than any kitchen mishap could be. 

Your nose is still bleeding. Bruises have already begun to form, red marks turning deep purple with every passing minute. He knows that your concussion is something you'll recover from. The contact burns from where the taser touched your skin will become new skin someday soon. The cuts and scrapes will scab over and then disappear. 

Aaron worries the damage he's done can never truly be ameliorated. Your compassion is unmatched. It’s what makes you a good agent, a good partner, and someone Jack can turn to. You are forgiving. God knows you've excused enough of his behaviour. But, he doesn't deserve to be absolved of this guilt. He will carry this day around in the darkest corner of his heart; the same place he holds the memory of Haley and how he failed her. The words “what we have certainly isn't love,” will linger uneffaced by time or kind words. 

The squeak of an old door opening piques Aaron's interest. The UNSUB doesn't react. Seemingly only interested in tracing the tear tracks on your cheeks. Your eyes are closing again. It's over now, he wants to tell you. He wants to hold you; comfort you; to apologise because you deserve to hear it anyway.

“Paul Simpson. FBI,” Morgan’s voice booms, “drop the knife and put your hands where I can see them”. Prentiss and Dave come to stand next to Morgan, their guns trained on the newly identified perpetrator. Aaron bites his tongue so hard he can taste blood-- it's all he can do to stop himself from bursting into a fit of bitter laughter. We win, he wants to say. 

Disarmed and handcuffed, Paul is escorted outside by Morgan and two members of the local police. Prentiss and Rossi make quick work of untying you and Aaron. 

“Aaron?” he can hear you mutter, breathy and quiet. 

“Yeah, I’m right here,” he promises kneeling at your side. Your eyes are glazed and unfocused as you nod and tip forward. Unconscious, your entire body falls forward into Prentiss’ arms. Aaron’s voice joins Rossi in calling for a paramedic. 

The doctors assure him that you’ll wake up soon. They dealt with his injuries quickly. Bruised ribs are the worst of his injuries. A cut at the back of his head and the taser burns were patched in only a few minutes, though he’ll readily admit he was far from a good patient. Too anxious to keep still much to the nurse’s dismay. 

You’re still asleep. A major concussion will have you out of the field for much longer than he knows you’ll be happy with. He makes a mental note to start setting aside some extra paperwork for when you inevitably start hounding him for something to do. With the lights in the room dimmed, and a comfortable silence settling he allows himself to indulge in the illusion that everything might be alright between you. 

With your hand in his, he breathes deeply trying to focus. He prays to a God he’s not sure he believes in. And when the quiet starts to get to him, he speaks out loud, as silly as he thinks he may look. He tells you about the phone call he had with Jack earlier and lets you know that Jack has a new painting he can’t wait to show you when you get home. Your hand squeezes his, encouraging him to keep talking.

“Aaron?” your eyelids flutter as you adjust to the light. The nurse had them turned to the dimmest setting but it’s still far more than you feel immediately capable of coping with. 

“Yeah, honey,” he affirms. You release the breath you’re holding your brow relaxing.  

“I love you,” you tell him. Your voice is steady and steadfast. Your resolve is impressive, unwavering and determined as you focus on making eye contact with him. “It’s not your fault,” you promise. He’s sure you don’t expect the weight on his shoulders to lighten instantaneously. You’ll tell him every day that he’s not to blame; intent on chiselling away at his guilt, shrinking it down before it manages to consume him. 

“I love you,” he swears. He knows it won’t squash any of the doubt he’s planted. Aaron knows there will soon be days that the niggling insecurity threatens to break what you’ve managed to build together; when the worry that you aren’t enough seems louder than it ever has before. He won’t blame you if you decide it isn’t worth the pain of staying with him. But, he’s hell-bent on loving you through it. He can only hope that it’s enough. 

[onefunctioningbraincell]

John hated to go on a mission right after a big fight with his girlfriend. She was so young and temperamental, and to make things worse, she was also stubborn as hell. Sure, he wasn’t without fault either, but he was older and wiser, always doing his best to mentor her, teach her how to be more patient. So when he was facing radio silence on her part, he began to lose his calm little by little.

At first he only noticed the rapidly declining amount of his beloved cigars. Then he became irritated, snapping at people for no serious reason. Simon knew what was eating him. He always knew when they were fighting at home, as if he had a sixth sense for this thing. The lieutenant was sneakier than him as he always suggested bypassing his girlfriend and talking straight to her parents.

They loved John. Maybe because they were closer in age compared to her previous boyfriends, or maybe because he was in the military and they knew he would do anything to protect their daughter from harm. Either way, this trick usually worked, and as if he was a lucky charm because it was his idea, Simon had to sit there and listen to the conversation.

“I’ve been trying to reach her, but there’s nothing, she doesn’t even read my messages,” he complained to the couple. His friend gave him a thumbs up then he rolled up his balaclava to his nose before lighting a cigarette. “Have you talked to her? Is she okay?” John pressed on, trying to sound extremely worried.

In reality, he wasn’t worried. He knew she was okay because she was always okay. She was just acting like a brat, a behavioral trait that he would have to correct once he got home. He listened to her parents explain how she had just visited them the day before, and how her mother would immediately call and scold her for making him so worried about her.

“You don’t need to, I’m sure she’ll reach out eventually,” he told them, sounding as relieved as he could.

They said their goodbyes and he tossed the phone on the desk. He looked over at Simon who flashed a Cheshire Cat smile at him before saying, “Told you they would know. They always know,” he added with a laugh.

“I can’t believe this woman. Just because we get into some stupid fight over something as trivial as who will pay for our trip to Italy, she goes no contact with me,” John said before letting out an exasperated sigh and sitting down on his chair.

“What was that fight about exactly? She doesn’t wanna pay?”

A scoff left the captain’s lips. “The opposite. She received a hefty bonus at work and now she wants to pay for the trip,” he told him with a shake of his head.

But Simon only tilted his head to the side as he blew out some smoke. “What’s wrong with that?” the lieutenant asked, genuinely curious about the answer.

John shook his head. “Nothing, I know that, but she should save that money. I always tell her to be reasonable when spending it,” he replied. “I want to take care of her. Am I a bad person for this?”

“No, you’re not.” The captain opened his mouth to say thank you, but Simon was quick to raise a hand and stop him. “But you should let her treat you every now and then. She wants to do something nice for you, John. Don’t take this away from her.”

With a sigh, John picked up his phone and began to type a message in the app you used. When he put it back down, Simon raised an eyebrow in question. “I sent her a text where I admit she was right and I won’t interfere in her plan,” he informed his friend.

“I’m sure she will be very happy to read this.”

She might be happy to win this battle, but he sure as hell wasn’t about to lose the war. He just needed to put a little more effort into the process of making her his pretty little housewife. Once he was done, she would have to do nothing but stay at home and wait for him to go home to her.

Soon after Simon left the office, John’s phone beeped twice. He took a look at the screen and noticed it was a message from her. With a smile on his lips he opened it, only to find a photo of her in nothing but a set of brand new lingerie with a short sentence under it.

I bought this for you. I have something special in mind for the day you come home 🎀❤️

[itsbeeble]

I Think He Knows

SUMMARY: You've been in love with Joshua for as long as you can remember, yet you've never been able to tell him. Fortunately or unfortunately, you're pretty sure that he already knows.

GENRE: smut, fluff

PAIRING: Joshua Hong x afab!reader

WC: 4.9k

SERIES MASTERLIST

PERM TAGLIST: @winterchimez @juyeonszn @flwoie

SERIES TAGLIST: @captain-brie @nobraincellmode @anthropologymajorkpopmultistan

18+ MDNI AGLESS BLOGS WILL BE BLOCKED

WARNINGS: uhhh, best friends to lovers, Hoshi being a snitch, p in v sex, brief oral (fem receiving), ddry humping, a bit of spanking, brat tamer!Joshua, brat!reader, tiny bit of angst if you really really squint, consent is IMPORTANT, tiny bit of alcohol, horrible flirting, multiple orgasms, idk this isn't my best work. It's also not edited so uh....good luck lol.

A/N: heyyyyyy 🥰. I'm not dead clearly, but my god has it been a minute. part of me is wondering if this series will ever be done but i'm doing my best. school sucks, work sucks, life is a bitch, and I burnt myself out. Anyway, thank you to Brie and Ally for betaing, much love kiss kiss. ALSO HAPPY VALENTINES DAYYYY

Your heart pounds ferociously in your chest, butterflies tumbling through your stomach uncomfortably. You feel like a teenager again, sitting in front of Joshua who has a boyish grin on his face. One of his hands traces along the bottom of his champagne glass, the other resting on the table and playing with the cork of the expensive bottle. You wonder if he knows how he makes your head spin with just a little smile and a glass of champagne. The thought doesn’t linger for long, and you let your gaze lower back to the practically empty plate before you. A few roasted vegetables remain on the plate, and you pick at them with your fork to avoid looking at your friend. 

Friends. That’s what you are. Nothing more, nothing less. As you always had been. 

Friends that took each other out to expensive restaurants, bought expensive drinks and expensive meals. Friends that—

“Soonyoung told me something interesting today,” he leans forward, dipping his head down to try and catch your eye. You glance up at him, but the fluttering in your stomach returns and forces your eyes back down.

“Oh yeah?” You murmur, thanking god for the dim lighting around you.

“Mhm. He mentioned you, actually.” 

Pause.

Kwon Soonyoung was the only person in the world who knew about your years-long crush on your best friend. If you could even call it a crush at this point. You’d admitted to yourself long ago that you were in love with him, admitted it to Soonyoung a few months back. You should’ve known better than to trust the mouthiest person in your friend group. 

“Now I’m curious,” you lift your head again, steeling yourself against the onslaught of nausea at what your mutual friend could have said. 

“He said,” Joshua shifts in his seat, running his tongue over his lower lip. “That you have feelings for me.”

Damn you Kwon Soonyoung. 

You nod slowly, lowering your fork onto the ceramic plate in front of you. The pounding in your chest has returned, hitting so hard against your ribs that you fear your heart will pop out and land right on the table in front of Joshua. 

“And…do you believe him?” You ask, failing to control the fear in your voice. Joshua smiles, and for a moment you let the fear wash away. Joshua Hong is the last person that you should feel afraid of. He was kind, he would never intentionally harm someone whether emotionally or physically, and he understood you better than most other people. You try to keep this in mind as you make eye contact. 

“I would be lying if I said that I didn’t at least hope he was telling the truth.” Joshua sits up, lacing his hands together and resting his elbows on the table. A spark, and you find the corners of your lips lifting. “Otherwise, my plans for the evening are a bit…a bit ruined, I guess.”

“You had other plans?” The champagne burns against the back of your throat as you down the rest of your glass. 

“Depends on how you respond to my question.” His eyes burn into yours and suddenly the table for two feels a lot smaller. 

“What question is that?” I already know, and I know my answer.

“Are you,” Joshua slides his glass to the side, “in love with me.”

“Yes.” You respond without hesitation, ripping the band-aid off and shocking both of you. Never had you been this forward with Joshua. You were always somewhat reserved with…everything, really. Past relationships, struggling with a subject, a pet passing away. You never wanted to let Joshua in and it made his heart swell that you did now. “I’ve— I’ve been in love with you since the day we met.”

Joshua sucks in a sharp breath of air, leaning back in his seat and smiling thoughtfully.

“I answered your questions,” you drum your painted nails on the table. “Now you get to answer mine.”

“Ask away.” Joshua waves his hand. 

“What sort of plans did you have for us?” 

The question was innocent— at least to you it was— but as you watch Joshua’s eyes darken with lust, you realize that the implications…may not have been as innocent as you had believed. You think he knows where your mind has derailed to, knows what thoughts have begun to plague you. 

Joshua tips back his glass of champagne, and you watch him carefully. You allow yourself to admire the way his neck cranes, the way his jaw is hit by the light. He drains the golden liquid in two long sips, wiping away the excess that rested on his lips with a delicate swipe of his thumb. 

“We’ll get to that,” he emphasizes the word, watching you tilt your head down and bite at your lip. “I have some other things I’d like to do before anything else.”

He flags down your waiter, calmly asking for the bill. You shift uncomfortably in your seat, disturbed by how the mild flirting had already gotten you worked up, but wait patiently for Joshua. You wouldn’t deny the fact that you were eager to see what he had in store for the two of you, what he’d planned on such short notice. 

“You ready?” He taps the table with one finger, already beginning to stand. 

“As I’ll ever be.” Your lips twist into a smile as he helps to pull out your chair, grabbing your jacket before you even had a chance to reach for it. “Aren’t you just a gentleman?”

“You should know by now that all I’m doing is the bare minimum.” He scolds, and you don’t pretend you don’t notice his eyes flicking from your eyes to your lips. 

“Best friends don’t pull out chairs for each other.” It’s a joke, both of you know it. You’re fully aware that after tonight, neither of you will ever be best friends again. Whether he asks you to stay with him or not, at the end of the night nothing will be the same. This doesn’t, however, stop Joshua from scoffing and tugging you by the waist to come closer to him. You stumble, nearly falling into his chest had his hands not been right there to catch you. 

“I think you know,” his voice is a quiet rumble, “that we’re never going to be best friends again after this, Y/N. You’re mine now, and I don’t think I’ll ever let you go.”

You have to fight everything inside of you to not yank him down by that dark hair of his and kiss him in the middle of that crowded restaurant. Thankfully, it looks as if Joshua is fighting that same urge, one hand dropping down and the other sliding to the small of your back to guide you toward the door. 

You’re mine now.

It’s a wonder that you make it to the car without jumping Joshua’s bones, but it seems you have more self-control than you’d given yourself credit for. The whole ride to…wherever it was that Joshua was taking you, you somehow managed to keep your hands in your lap, rubbing at your palm with your thumb. From the corner of your eye, you can see Joshua. He has one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting on the center console. He glances at you periodically, scanning your side profile.

“You’ve gotten quiet,” Joshua comments, drumming his fingers while you wait at a stoplight. Your eyes flick to his, and you purse your lips. “Are you…did I make you uncomfortable at all? Do— do you want me to bring you home?” 

“No,” you tell him quickly, shaking your head. “No. I want to stay with you.” 

The response soothes him, and he lets his hand drift to your thigh. He lets it hover over your exposed skin, waiting for you to push him away before he finally lets it rest on you. His hand is warm, his touch sending sparks through your body. You swallow hard, leaning back against the seat and staring at the road in front of you. Would it be wrong to tell him you want him to touch you more? To bring his hands just a bit higher, to—

Joshua’s hand squeezes a bit, drawing you back to reality. The light is green now and your body jerks as he presses on the gas. He lets his hand drift a bit higher, grazing underneath the fabric of your dress before stopping. Heat begins to pool in the pit of your stomach and you contemplate grabbing his hand and putting it right where you need it if he doesn’t move faster.

“You’re a menace.” You click your tongue and Joshua looks at you with a mocking pout.

“I didn’t do anything!” 

He’s right. Technically he hadn’t done anything. You, however, were on the verge of doing something very…inappropriate if he didn’t knock it off.

“I’m sure you didn’t.” You let your hand fall to his, tracing the back of it with your pointer finger, and watch the veins pop as he squeezes for the third time. You’re approaching a very familiar street with some very familiar houses. “Are we…are we going back to my place?” 

Joshua smirks. “Small change of plans.”

The giddiness inside of you returns, your head spinning as you think of all the things he could (and likely would) do to you. Your fingers lace through his, your heel-clad foot tapping against the floor protector in his car as he pulls into your driveway. He puts the car into park but leaves the engine running. For a few moments, neither of you says anything. The air between you is thick with tension, tension that grows when he tugs you toward him. 

“Tell me now if you don’t want this.” Joshua breathes out, his lips mere centimeters from your own. If you tilt your head just a bit, you’ll be able to kiss him— something you’ve craved since the day you met him. “Tell me now and I’ll walk you to your door and say goodnight.” 

“And if I do want this?” Your eyebrow arches, a playful look in your eyes. “What then, Joshua Hong?”

His eyes flutter, exhaling heavily as he tries to keep his composure.

“You’re going to be the death of me, I think.”

When Joshua kisses you, it isn’t as rough as you’d imagined. No, he’s gentle with you. His kiss ignites a fire inside of you, the flames swirling through your veins and heating your body until you fear you’re burning up. He cradles your jaw in one large hand as if you were glass and you would shatter if he held you too roughly. His lips move softly against your own, parting the slightest bit to catch your lower lip with his teeth. It’s a delicate dance, almost playful, and you couldn’t have asked for anything more. Your head tilts, allowing you to kiss him deeper, and a quiet groan leaves him. You smile a bit into the kiss, Your hand sliding up his chest to curl into the fabric of his shirt and pull him closer to you. Both of you ignore the fact that your body is halfway across the center console, your thigh resting on the seat between his legs keeping you propped up when his hands become distracted by the curves in your hips

The two of you only stop when you feel like you can’t breathe, your chest tight with the lack of air. 

“You taste good,” Joshua murmurs, his nose nudging yours as he gazes at you with heavy eyes.

“You think so?” Your lips press against his jaw, and he smiles tightly.

“Mhm.”

“You should turn off the car and take me inside so you can find out what else tastes good.”

That must have been the right thing to say, because Joshua’s eyes darken in an instant and then he’s shutting the engine off, slamming his car door shut, and walking quickly over to your side. When he opens your door, you don’t wait for him to outstretch his hand before you practically spring to your feet, grabbing him by the sleeve and yanking him after you. He laughs as he stumbles along behind you, tugging his arm out of your grasp and squeezing at your waist over the fabric of your dress. Your hands are trembling, the heat in your stomach growing more intense by the minute.

“Struggling, pretty girl?” 

His breath against your ear and his lips on your neck sends chills down your spine and you inhale sharply as his hand wraps around yours to help you guide the key into the lock. Your eyes are starting to flutter, your feet stumbling into the foyer of your home. Joshua presses you onward, one of his hands on the small of your back and the other flicking on the lights. You spin around to face him, your hands coming to his chest and curling around his tie to pull him down to kiss you again.

“At least let me get you upstairs,” he mumbles against your lips, grinning when you whine in protest.

“Can’t wait that long,” you deny, already fumbling with the buttons of his shirt. He grins, backing you through the doorway to your living room. 

He stops your movements to spin you away from him. You face your window now, curtains drawn and the windows to your neighbor's house across the street staring right back at you. “All your neighbors will see us. Is that what you want?” He’s kissing down your neck, hands trailing to the back of your dress to undo the clasp. 

“Let them see.” You hold your head high, hands clenching into fists as the fabric slides down your body and hits the ground with a soft thump, leaving your body completely bare except for a thin pair of lacey panties. “Let’s put on a show for them.” 

“Interesting.” Joshua seems entirely unaffected by the statement, but the way he pulls you back against him to grind against the growing bulge in his pants is saying something entirely different. “Didn’t take you as someone to like being watched. I’ll have to explore that another time.” 

You mean to respond, words forming at the tip of your tongue but never escaping your lips as Joshua pushes at your shoulder, slowly guiding you to the ground. Your knees fold beneath you, your eyes wide and filled with stars as he moves into your line of vision and then away from you. You watch as he lets the curtains fall and cover your windows, and then he turns back to face you and continues to unbutton his shirt, loosening his tie until it hangs loosely around his shoulders.

“What are you doing, Shua?” Your voice is weaker than you’d wanted it to be. 

Joshua smiles coyly, leaning down until he’s at eye level with you. “I said that I would explore that at a later date, pretty girl. Not tonight. Tonight, you’re mine.”

“Yours?” Your hand rises to cup his cheek similarly to how he held yours just a few minutes ago. 

“Mine.” 

His knees hit the ground on either side of you, leaning over your body until you’re forced to lay back. Your legs stretch out to make his position a bit more comfortable, your knees rubbing together in anxious anticipation for what’s to come. 

You expect him to kiss you, your lips starting to pucker and your eyes fluttering shut as he lowers his face to yours once again, but nothing happens. Your eyes open to find him mere inches from you with that same smirk playing on his lips. 

“What are you smirking at?” You ask him, but he doesn’t answer. He shifts further down your body, laying a soft kiss on your collarbone that has your breath hitching briefly. Another kiss, this one closer to where your heart lays pounding underneath your ribs. Your hand twitches, aching to run through his hair, but the second you move to act on this urge he’s pinning your hand to the ground and glowering at you. 

“No touching.” Joshua commands, mouthing at the soft flesh of your breast. “Not until I’ve tasted every last inch of your skin.” 

He slips further down your body, leaving trails of soft kisses in his wake. The only sound in the house is the soft pop as his lips leave your skin and the heaviness of your breathing. 

When Joshua reaches the hem of your panties, he stops and trails his finger along it. The brush of his skin on yours is so subtle, yet you’re addicted to the feeling of it. So many nights you had cum to the thought of him tugging your panties down your legs, his eyes boring into yours as he lowers his mouth to your glistening cunt, imagining how it would feel to have him licking and sucking nipping at your folds. So many nights, and yet nothing comes even close to how it really feels. 

The second he runs his tongue from your hole to your clit, your back is arching off the ground and a loud gasp is echoing throughout your home. Your hands fly to Joshua’s hair despite his prior instructions, but he doesn’t seem to care as he drags his tongue and teeth across you. Your legs try to squeeze around his head, attempt to trap him against you, but he doesn’t let you. His large hands pry your legs away from him, squeezing harshly at your thighs and pinning them to the ground on either side of you.

He mumbles into your cunt with loud and drawn out sounds that reverberate through your body and have your legs jerking with pleasure. 

“Shua,” you gasp out, your eyes rolling as he sucks particularly hard at your clit. “Shua, fuck.” 

A loud smack rings out, and your thigh begins to sting. Your eyes widen, your head lifting off the ground at the same time that Joshua’s pulls away from you, his mouth dripping with your arousal. 

“What the fuck—” 

Another smack to the side of your thigh, and you yelp. Joshua raises an eyebrow. 

“Want me to keep going?” You can’t tell if he’s insane or not. You can’t tell if you want to smack him or beg him for more. You don’t get the chance to retort before he’s smacking your thigh again, harder this time. “That wasn’t rhetorical, pretty girl.”

Your teeth grind together, and one of your feet comes to his shoulder to shove him back. Maybe he lets you push him back. Maybe he wants you to fight back. Maybe he was waiting for it, because when you lean your body over him, he’s grinning maliciously at you.

“Who do you think you are, smacking me like that?” You hiss, and he pouts.

“Like what? Like this?” His hand comes down again, this time directly on your ass and sending waves of pain and pleasure through your body. 

“Joshua Hong,” you snap, but there’s no real anger behind it as you begin to grind your lower body into his clothed cock. His hands come to rest on your waist, watching as you try to form words and pleasure yourself at the same time. “If you keep pulling shit—”

Smack

Your body shudders and an airy moan pushes out of your lips despite how you fight it. Joshua grins again.

“What were you saying, pretty girl? If I keep pulling shit…what? What are you going to do, baby?” 

You can’t answer him, your hips rolling into his harder and faster as you approach your high. 

“Oh, baby.” Joshua coos, his voice shockingly stable despite how you’re practically riding him over his pants, effectively ruining them with your juices. “You’re a little desperate, aren’t you?”

“Oh shut up,” you whine, folding forward until your mouth is right next to his ear. Your moans and whines are right in his ear now, intentional on your part, and his grip on your waist tightens. “Feels so good, Joshie.”

“Yeah?” He’s quieter now, a low growl in the back of his throat as he fights to keep his hips on the ground. Fights to let you have your little moment, your little bit of control over him. “How good, baby?”

“Gonna cum,” your lips find the skin beneath his ear, sucking a mark into his flesh as your hips begin to stutter. “F— god, Shua, please!”

“It’s okay, pretty girl,” Joshua coos, a bit of pride welling in his chest at how fast you learned. “You can let go. Go ahead and cum for me, pretty girl.”

Almost as soon as he says those words, you’re letting out a loud, near pitiful moan and your body begins to shake over his. A wave of arousal soaks into his pants, seeping through and beginning to wet his boxers, but he doesn’t mind. Not when the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen is cumming for him, moaning his name and no one else’s. 

Joshua can’t stop his hips from jerking into yours, pleasuring you even as your orgasm begins to ebb away. When he sits up, he cradles the back of your head in one hand, his eyes boring into yours in such a way that has you whining for him, clinging to his shoulders and turning away. 

“So pretty when you cum,” Joshua murmurs, lifting the two of you up and giving you a second to wrap your arms and legs around him as he loops around your living room to the couch. “Gonna fuck you now, okay pretty girl?”

“Okay,” you nod, but your eyes aren’t focusing and neither is your mind. It feels like you’re on cloud 9, and Joshua hasn’t even taken his pants off yet. 

He peers down at you, mild concern showing in his delicate features. 

“Y/N,” his hands are caressing your sides gently, pulling you back down to focus on him. “You good?”

“I’m fine,” you promise, smiling lightly at him. “I just…it’s hard for me to actually, like, believe that you want me how I want you.” 

Joshua smiles. “And how, exactly, do you want me?”

“Wholly. I want everything. I want all your love, all of your problems, every doubt, and every moment— good or bad.” His eyes soften as you speak, and for the first time that night he’s the one that’s gone quiet. “I want you carnally, I want you to crave my touch and my taste as much as I crave yours. Every kiss, every intimate moment. I want them all.”

“And you’ll have them.” Joshua promises, and then he’s kissing you again. It’s a deep, lingering kiss. His lips part against your own, your tongues dancing together but not dominating each other. Your hands cup his neck, holding him close to you, and in that moment you don’t hear the clinking of his belt or the sound of his zipper sliding down. 

“You promise?” You pull away from him, your lungs burning from the lack of air. Joshua smiles at you, and his lips press against your forehead. 

“I think you know the answer to that, pretty girl.” 

And you do. 

He would never have to say it, you always know. Joshua Hong, in all the years you’d been best friends, had never once told you something if he didn’t 100% believe it, if he wasn’t absolutely sure that he would or could hold himself to it. He didn’t have to promise you, you could see it in the way he looked at you. Soft eyes, pretty smile, that little wrinkle in his nose. You knew the answer. 

“I’m gonna start pushing in now,” Joshua murmurs, aligning his cock with your entrance, shuddering at the seemingly never ending flow of arousal. “Let me know if you need me to slow down or stop.”

“Okay,” you nod, draping your arms over his shoulders and forcing your body to relax. 

He pushes in slowly, but the stretch of him filling every little crevice inside of your cunt stings and causes you to let out a whimper. 

“I know,” he whispers, “just take it all, baby. Take it all for me like a good girl.” 

Your body shudders at that, and you let your head fall back onto the cushion below you. Inch by painful inch, he slides into you until your body begins to convulse and try to force him out. 

“Baby,” Joshua grinds out between gritted teeth, “You gotta stop clenching like that.”

“I— I can’t.” You moan out, your back arching off the couch. “Hurts so good, Shua.”

“That so?” Joshua grunts and shoves the last few inches into you, relishing in the pretty little wail that escapes you. “That’s another thing I’ll have to make note of, huh?” 

He doesn’t give you much time to respond before he’s hauling your legs up and around his waist, one hand gripping the arm of the couch and the other planted beside your head. A silver chain dangles above you, glittering in the low lighting of the living room but capturing your attention just long enough to tell Joshua to start moving. 

“Can’t,” he tells you breathlessly. “Fuck, clenching so tight I can’t move.”

“I don’t care.” You whine. “Just fuck me, please Shua, please, please, please fuck me—”

He cuts you off with a sharp thrust of his hips, shoving his dick just that tiny bit further into you that has you gasping as the air is punched out of your chest. 

“You’re lucky I love you.” He groans as he slowly pulls back, his dick practically drenched in your arousal, and then thrusts sharply back in, sheathing entirely inside of you. You cry loudly, a tear slipping down your cheeks and your legs tightening around his waist. Joshua repeats the action again and again, drinking in the way your head lolls to the side, your tongue practically hanging out of your mouth. 

Then he begins to fuck you, just as you asked. He thrusts into you with hard, deep strokes that have you wailing and thrashing against the couch cushion. Your body is convulsing beneath him, and he can only watch like a god watching his worshippers, as you beg for him to fuck you harder, faster, deeper as if he isn’t already going hard and fast and deep to a point beyond your fucked out mind’s comprehension. The couch shifts slightly on the ground, scraping against your hardwood floor, but the sound is drowned out by the combined volume of your cries and moans and whimpers along with his grunts and little moans. 

“Close,” he grunts, his head dropping to your chest to bite and suck at one of your tits. “Fuck, I’m so close.”

You clench around him in response, your back arching off the cushion to get closer to his mouth, relishing in the pleasure he’s providing you. “S—so good, Shua. Fuckin’ me so good.”

“Yeah?” He pulls away from your chest, a sheen of sweat covering his forehead as he stares down at you. “Gonna cum for me? Gonna cum all over your best friend?”

Your body shudders in response, and suddenly your vision goes white. You can faintly hear your own voice, your own pleads and screams of Joshua’s name as he pounds into you, forcing your juices out of you and giving you no time to recover from your orgasm before he’s shifting his hips and driving his cock into a spot inside of you that has you seeing stars. Your hand clamps down over your mouth to muffle the animalistic sounds that pour out of you, but Joshua rips your hand away, pinning it down on the couch.

“Don’t you dare muffle a single sound that comes out of you,” he hisses. “Not a single one.”

You don’t have the strength, will, or energy to respond to him. Not as his cock begins to twitch inside of you and another orgasm threatens to wash over your body. One of Joshua’s hands, the one that had been pinning your hand to the couch, moves over your hip, and his eyes stay on you as his thumb begins to rub hard circles into your clit.

“Oh my—” your voice cracks. “Fuck, oh my god, Shua!”

“Cum for me,” he grunts, forcing his orgasm back so he doesn’t cum before you, despite you already having done so twice now. “Now, baby. God, please cum for me.”

And you do. 

It crashes over you like a rockslide, rough and strong, and crushing everything in its path. Your cunt clenches around Joshua so tightly you fear you might break him, but he only moans out your name and begins to spill white-hot cum inside of you. The combined fluids from the both of you are forced out as Joshua continues to fuck into you, slowly now compared to before. Soft, deep thrusts that carefully bring you down from the edge until both of you have finished, laying spent on your now ruined couch. 

“That…” your voice is raspy. “Is that how you’re gonna fuck me every night?”

“Is that how you want me to fuck you every night?” Joshua’s tongue laves over your skin, pressing gentle kisses against your neck. 

You think he knows the answer, but you tell him anyway with a sly grin on your face.

“You promised.”

© itsbeeble. do not steal, claim, or repost.

[bucketsofmonsters]

Deep Water - Part 4

cw: the ocean, animal carcasses, rotting, malnourishment, more tags to be added as the story continues

merman x fem reader

Word count: 3k

read on ao3

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

You woke up disoriented on an unfamiliar floor, the steady sounds of snoring filling your ears. 

You turned to see Finn, still fast asleep as you rose from your little spot on the floor. He was bundled up in blankets, his head just barely peeking out of them enough to breathe. 

You didn’t want to bother him. He’d done so much for you, the last thing you wanted to do was to disturb his rest. 

In your attempt to begin to get ready without disturbing him, you managed to get your feet tangled in the loose blankets below you and tumble back to the floor.

You quickly righted yourself just in time to see Finn begin to shift, waking fitfully. 

He groaned, eyes barely peeking open to look up at you. “Is… Oh. I forgot you were here.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

He tried to wave dismissively but in his half-asleep state, it looked more like he attempted to clumsily swat a fly out of the air.

He rose from the bed slowly, a little unsteady on his feet.  “I’ll find you some clothes.”

You took him in as he moved to the drawers beside the bed. He was a little scrawnier than the average man working on the docks and only a few inches taller than you, but still, you were sure that his clothes would fit you awkwardly, if at all. “You really don’t have to do that, my clothes are mostly dry now.”

“Nonsense, I have just the thing for you.”

And then he pulled out a dress, a practical one with reasonable skirts and allowance for movement. A dress you’d seen before. 

You reeled back a little as you asked, “Why do you have my sister’s clothes?”

It came out harsher than you’d intended it to. Maybe the shock was to blame, you weren’t certain. 

He deflated at your words, crumpling in on himself, his shoulders slumping as his face fell. 

“I should have told you,” he said, visibly mortified. “I know I should have. You just… you look just like her.”

The realization hit you instantly. “You two were…”

“I wasn’t trying to replace her,” he said, rushing in to cut you off. “I mean, I couldn’t replace her even if I did want to. It was just… it was nice to see you. I could almost pretend, just a little.”

The more he tried to justify it, the more your heart sank. “How long were you together?” you asked, your voice flat and distant.”

“Years. She was everything to me.” His voice was low and sad, sadness that you were sure was for her and not for you, standing betrayed in front of him. Why would it be for you? How selfish could you be?

You almost wished he’d yelled at you. Then maybe it wouldn’t make you feel so bad. He seemed devastated and apologetic and all the things he could be and yet now that you knew you could just tell. You could see him looking at you like you were her, with faux, unearned affection in his eyes behind the heartbreak. 

It made you furious. You wanted to throw something, to shout at him, to demand to be seen as a person, to be removed from her shadow. 

But he was grieving, just as you were. Probably more. 

The least you could to was be kind. 

So you gave him a half-hearted, soft pat on his shoulder and tried to paint as much sympathy accross your face as you could manage.

“You didn’t mean any harm,” you said, and you knew it was true. 

It still stung. 

And then you took the dress from his hands, his grip softening as you reached for it, and you left. 

You found an empty room to change in and went off to work as quickly as you could.

The next few weeks passed quickly, settling into an easy routine. Without Finn hovering over your shoulder as you worked, you were free to move quickly and mindlessly, doing your job exactly as intended and no more. 

You stopped by to see Simon almost every day. The days you couldn’t, held up late at the docks, he no longer threw a complete fit. There was huffing and pouting but he hadn’t kindaped you again and you considered that progress.

In fact, after the stunt he’d pulled, he seemed hesitant to even get near you, like even his presence was tainted now. He was more careful than he’d been, asking before he did anything. 

You supposed it was preferable over the alternative. 

You and Finn had grown distant. He was clearly trying to give you space but you couldn’t quite breach that gap and bring yourself to talk to him so instead you let him fade away, sharing quiet polite smiles when you saw one another and nothing more. Your only real friend here now gone. Other than your monster that you still caught glimpses of below the docks, no matter how many times you warned him that it was ill-advised.

You didn’t mind going to see him. There was very little understanding between you but it felt nice, having him so eager to meet with you every day, shifting uncomfortably in shallow water that he braved for you. 

It had been a bad day. 

Nothing had happened, not really, but that awful ship was back. Every time you saw it, a wave of nausea overtook you, brought back to you kicking and screaming on the deck, inhaling rain as you huffed in breaths. 

Finn had shot you a concerned look or two as he apparently read your nerves off your face, but he had kept his distance, respectful and stomach-churning. 

You wanted him to come check in on you, something he clearly wanted to do, but you still refused to go speak with him first. You couldn’t do it, couldn’t return to him like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs, offering yourself as your sister’s replacement if he’d just speak to you.  

So instead, at the end of an awful day, you scurried off the docks to your spot, content that you’d at least get to see your siren. 

On the shore, where you usually sat, lay the tail end of a sea lion, bloody with bones sticking out, looking almost rotted.

You looked into the water to find amber eyes staring back at you, wide and expectant. 

You knew instantly he’d brought it here, though you couldn’t fathom why. It wasn’t a fresh kill, instead looking like it had been pulled off a beach somewhere where it’d washed up. 

A sense of shame flickered in his eyes, fighting back a grimance as you noticed it. 

“Do you want it?” he asked, head nodding towards the carcass.

“No,” you said, and he reeled back, not looking surprised but seeming upset all the same. 

“It’s the best I could do,” he said, eyes downcast. “I’ve been trying to find something better but I’m not built for this.”

His voice was tinged in a sense of bitterness and frustration and you wished you knew what he was talking about so you could comfort him. Or at least understand why he was upset. 

“Built for what? Why is this here?”

“It was supposed to be food,” he said with a huff. “I have nothing for you. I can’t provide you anything.”

“Provide me… You don’t need to provide for me, I can get my own food.”

“You shouldn’t have to. I want to… I want to show you I can keep you safe but I can’t. Couldn’t even keep you fed.”

As he spoke, you really took him in, sitting behind a rotting carcass that wasn’t fit for anyone to eat. 

What had he been eating if after weeks, this was the best he could bring you?

And then it struck you, the way he’d begun positioning himself in the shallows, stomach carefully down, arms in front of it, shifted away from you. 

“Come here,” you said, trying to keep your words soft. 

He looked like he was about to cry but he shifted forwards all the same. 

You fought back a gasp as he finally let you get a good look at him. 

He looked emaciated. Where soft, plump skin used to be, it instead had begun to pull taught over ribs that looked sharper than the human ribs you were accustomed to. 

With the new context, you could see it in his face too, his full cheeks beginning to bow in.

“What happened to you?” you asked, cursing yourself that you could have missed this, could have let him keep his distance and hide this from you so easily. 

“I’m not good at hunting,” he said, rufusing to meet your gaze. 

“You were fine before, what changed?”

He shifted and you could see a war waging inside his head, the conflict written accrosss his features. 

You waited, owing him patience at least. 

Finally, he seemed to come to a decision and he spoke, still sad and low but with a sense of finality rising behind it. 

“We’re not hunters, we’re not built for it. Not fast enough or sharp enough. We’re built to lure in prey but… you’re a person. If I hadn’t stopped to talk to you, you’d just be gone, drowned and devoured, and I wouldn’t even have known that it hurt, let alone… I can’t do it anymore,” his words had shifted from sad and low to frustrated and sharp. “I can’t hunt so I can’t eat fish but I can’t do it anymore. Every time I look at them I keep just seeing you.”

Tears pricked at the corner of your eyes at the thought that you had done this to him. The revelation that he’d been eating humans fell by the wayside at the sight of sad eyes on a gaunt face that used to be warm and soft.

And you couldn’t even do anything about it. You didn’t have the resources to get him fish, not after the measly few weeks you’d spent here. You had barely managed to find yourself lodgings in a grimy old inn, barely eating enough to keep up your strength. 

But you had to. You couldn’t just leave him to this, in this situation that you’d dragged him into when you’d gotten thrown off that ship. When on the worst day of your life, he saw easy prey in front of him and decided to be kind. 

And then an idea came to you. An awful idea, sure, but the only one you had. 

You muttered a quiet “wait here” before you stood up and sprinted back to the dock, knowing you had to catch him before he left. 

Finn’s face lit up when he saw you nearing him, relief pulling the tension out of his shoulders and bringing a soft smile to his face. 

You grabbed his hand and with a soft noise of confusion escaping him, you dragged him down to your isolated little spot on the beach. 

The whole time you pulled him along, as he followed you without question, you tried to think how to explain any of this to him. 

You kept moving as you wracked your brains, needing to solve this, needing to know it could be fixed, and you came up with nothing.  

Anything would be better than just bringing him in blind, a fact you realized seconds too late, arriving at your spot on the shore. 

You saw the panic in Simon’s eyes seconds before disaster hit. Right before Finn noticed him, he was being snatched into the water, pale arms hooked under his armpits, holding him down in the shallows. It seemed mainly like shock and confusion that kept Finn down. Submerged in deep water he wouldn’t stand a chance, but here, in the shallows, against a malnourished and emotional siren; he could’ve taken him easily.

But he didn’t, instead thrashing a little with eyes wide and he tried to take in the simultaneous facts that sirens were real and that one had just dragged him into the water. 

“He’s here to help, drop him,” you snapped, shooting a harsh look at Simon. 

“I didn’t even do anything wrong,” he said, a grouchy look crossing his face as he let Finn go, drifting nervously back into the water. You recognized it for what it was. He was preparing for his escape, just in case. 

You didn’t blame him for the instinct. To be honest, it was a good one. Blind trust like that in anyone could get him killed. 

You hoped this wouldn’t be one of those times. You hoped you’d prove him wrong. 

Your hand snapped out to grab Finn’s wrist as he tried to stagger away, eyes wide and frightened.

“Finn,” you said, keeping your voice measured and level. “This is Simon. He’s a friend.”

You didn't think you'd ever seen such panic and betrayal in his eyes, his face normally light and happy. He was breathing heavy, eyes darting between the two of you like he couldn't quite believe he wasn't about to get pulled back in.

Finn looked down at your hand encircling his wrist. He tested his strength against yours, almost pulling away before deciding to let you keep him there. Ever patient, he didn’t take the out, he didn't run. He waited, by your side, nervous but steady.

His breaths slowed, taking stock of Simon in the water.

You weren’t sure who looked more frighted, both sizing one another up, ready to bolt should the need arise. 

You left them to it, terrified that any sudden movement would shatter the tentative peace that was forming between them. 

He nodded slowly, eyes not moving from Simon, shivering slightly in newly wetted clothes. “And why exactly,” he began, eyes locked onto Simon, “did you want me to meet this friend of yours?”

“Um. So he wants to stop eating people,” you said, wincing as you heard yourself and the reality of what you'd just said sunk in.

“He eats people?” Finn asked, his voice spiking up in panic as his head whipped towards you.

“And he would like to stop. If we can’t help him, what do you think he’s going to start doing again?”

“It’s not my fault!” Simon huffed from the water. “The fish don’t hate you for eating them, why do you get to be mad at me?”

“The fish aren’t people,” Finn insisted, arms wrapping around himself as he shivered in the cold air. 

“And you aren’t sirens. I thought you were stupid anyway, like fish.”

“You thought we were like fish?”

Simon shrugged. “Not like fish. But the difference from you to fish is like the difference from you to me. Or… I thought so. We might have been wrong. I don’t know, I just eat.”

He seemed uncomfortable with having to explain himself, shifting in the water as he glanced at you every few seconds. 

It took a moment for you to realize what he was looking for. It was approval, you could see him searching for it in your eyes. 

You weren’t sure you could give it to him. Your stomach churned at his words but you could feel how earnest he was, could hear the confusion and distress in his voice.

He hadn’t thought he was doing anything wrong. Why would he? He was just doing what sirens had always done and now he wasn’t so sure about it any longer and his whole past was filled with deaths he didn’t know if he could justify anymore. 

How would you feel, you wondered, if you met a fish one day and that fish told you it was afraid? If it told you that it told stories to its young about your kind and how they’d snatch it up and cook it over an open flame. 

Would it be your fault? Would those deaths be on your conscience?

Would you ever have the presence of mind to see a fish, alone in strange waters, and save it? Could you even do what Simon had done, take that first step?

Your heart hurt for him, alone in his crisis, with no one to talk to about it. His only options were his kind that depended on these horrible deaths to survive and you. And his prey. 

Finn pulled you aside, far from out of Simon's earshot but it seemed to settle him a little bit to at least feign privacy. 

“What do you want me to do here?” Finn hissed.

“I want to help him. He saved my life and… and even if he didn't, is this not for the best? He wants to do better, we can't just not help him.”

He nodded, hesitant but willing. “Okay, so what now.”

“I don’t know. He can eat fish, we know that for sure. Maybe other food too? Do you think he can eat human food?”

Finn pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I don’t know. How would I know? I guess I can get him fish, we could sneak a couple out and buy some before we leave at night. Would that be enough?”

You shrugged. “I have no idea.”

He sighed. “Great."

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this, I just didn’t know anyone else I could go to.”

He gave you a soft smile. “It’s the least I could do. Now, I’m going to go scrounge something up, you keep your little siren company.”

You shot him one last grateful look before settling down on the beach, water lapping at your shoes. 

Simon pulled himself out of the water a bit, trying to get closer to you.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice barely audible over the sound of the waves. 

You took his hand from where it lay, shifting nervously over some rocks, and gave it a gentle squeeze. 

“I know.”

[freyito]

ꜰᴀᴅɪɴɢ ꜱᴛᴀʀʟɪɢʜᴛ

✭ pairing(s): argenti x ftm reader

✩ inspo: Watch What Happens by Chris Montez

★ summary: Argenti adorns his boyfriends fading scars with hundreds of kisses and all the worship he can show.

✧ a/n: this (and the second part of this fic) may be my most self-indulgent fic yet... uhmmmm this is (in essence) kind of a more 'serious' fic then i write. still fluffy of course just definitely some heavy undertones, so please be careful if anything in the cw triggers you. also before anyone asks YES i am a person with scars and YES this is my form of healing. and also YES it does get better... just so you know :)

🗒 cw: ftm reader, hurt/comfort, mention of self-harm, sh scars, mention of suicide attempts, depiction of depression, mention body dysphoria, proofread

✎ wc: 1.3k

You are beautiful, plain and simple. You can’t remember how many times Argenti has told you that, in all his poetics and knightly glory. So beautiful that he had broken his vow of asceticism. Even with how disheveled you look in the morning, when your hair is unruly and hard to tame, when all you can do is yawn and stretch and ask for ‘five more minutes’. Even when you don’t want to look in the mirror in fear of looking like someone else entirely. Even with the raised skin that peppers your skin from the blades of the past.

Argenti makes sure you know day in, day out. Even when he’s away, his words take hold in those moments that you feel lost. Melancholy holds no place in your home, he makes sure of that. Any tears that dare to fall he kisses away, he chases off nightmares so diligently, and leaves no room for doubt, in yourself, or in him. Everything he does is not only an act of love, but an act of devotion, bordering on worship.

He is afraid of losing you, of course. As most mortals are afraid of losing what is close to them, the fear always lingers. But it is not because of your scars, or your body. He is simply afraid. He treats your scars as if they are the most beautiful brush strokes of a painting, your body is a work of art and he’ll be damned to not enjoy it.

Tonight, he is showing his devotion once more, holding your hand with his lips pressed against your palm, your head in his lap. Your hands aren’t necessarily the softest, skin picked and chewed around your fingertips, your nails bitten, all sorts of small cuts decorated your fingers, some covered with bandaids, some scabbed over. Argenti doesn’t care, he simply presses another kiss to your palm, mumbling something about how wonderful your hands are, something you don’t quite catch. His eyes are half-lidded as his gaze meets yours, that small shimmer of admiration shine back at you within those emeralds, making you blush ever so slightly.

His lips move from your palm to your wrist, another chaste kiss pressed against the first scar of many. It’s a little ticklish, is all. He has never looked at your scars with pity, his gaze never lingers for too long. He never frowns when he sees them, only gives you that soft smile, and maybe even a head tilt.

Before, when he had met you, the scars that decorated your wrists and shoulders were scabbed over, and he looked at you all the same. As if he had recognized it. Not as if he had pitied it. Of course he was worried, who wouldn’t be? But he never pushed the topic, not that he was silent about it. The more days you were sober, the more praise he showered down upon you. He never admonished you if you had relapsed, he never gave you anything but a reassuring look. And he’s kissed the scars, bandaged or otherwise, all the same.

By now, your scars are fading, albeit, slowly. Neither you nor Argenti can tell if you… like it. It is jarring to watch those reminders of what you’ve done fade, disappear as if you had never taken a blade to your skin. You know you should be glad, and be proud, because you had made it past all those nights where you could barely breathe, where your vision was blurry and the only thought on your mind was ‘i want to die’. Some of those times, Argenti would come around, sweep you out of that mind space, lay down and trace over your scars before you had the chance to open them. Those had been the only time he gazed upon you with anything other than reassurance and love. The most clear expression of worry, when he wiped away your tears, the way he was ever so hesitant to leave you alone when you wanted space.

However, it is a celebration tonight, despite the precarious feelings about these marks fading. Every scar Argenti pays homage to, a fleeting kiss pressed to it before moving onto the next. You both stay quiet, the only noise filtering into the moon-light washed room being the soft, wistful sighs of the wind. It is a tender moment, the knight’s eyes focused on your skin, thumb running over the scars he had kissed as he moves onto the next.

Every kiss feels like a new beginning, your sins against your own humanity, your own being, etched into your skin as a haunting reminder to the void of Nihility that had built itself a home within the hollow of your heart. Yet, his kisses, his attentions, even those small, sweeping glances, and the even smaller huffs that you translate to soft laughs, they are the most perfect repentance. A feeling of whole, perhaps even happiness wells within your stomach as Argenti’s kisses become more frequent, fluttering and ticklish. You hold back a snicker, trying not to disturb the tranquility of such a tender, meaningful moment.

Yet, the knight takes notice, of course. His normally content half-smile breaks into a full-on smile, his eyes crinkling slightly as he takes in your laughter and doubles it. He leans down, urging you up by your hand. You meet him half-way, his lips gracing yours in a slow kiss, one that would last longer if you hadn’t let a giggle slip through. You feel Argenti’s smile widen against your lips, and he breaks the kiss, nuzzling his nose against yours.

Despite how close you had been to him for about the past hour, his cologne washes over you now. It’s light and airy, carrying the faint scent of petrichor and vanilla, and an even fainter scent of leather. It is a scent that brings back vivid, winding memories. Your first dance under the stars, how Argenti was so confident as a lead, laughing as you stumbled over every other step, how close he was to you, hair cascading around you two like a veil everytime he dipped you. Another memory, the way his eyes softened when he first saw your scars, yet there was no judgment passed from him. All he did was smile, his eyes showing no pity, no words exchanged, and kissed your cheek.

His rumbling, oddly giddy laugh brings you back from your nostalgic daydream, pressing a chaste kiss to your cheek once more. His hand releases your wrist, coming down to help you properly sit in his lap, thumbs caressing your waist. Those sweet, gentle eyes stare into yours, nothing but devotion glaring back at you. It’s enough to make butterflies blossom in your stomach, your cheeks heating up like it was your first date, despite being with him for a year and some change. It’s a wonderful feeling, really. Soon your own laughter joins his as he begins to pepper your face in kisses, one on your nose, on your cheek, your lips, under your eye, and so forth. The only words that dare to break the comfortable feel of the atmosphere come minutes later.

“I’m proud of you.”

No monologue follows after as you are used to, and the sound of Argenti’s smooth voice echoes through your mind. You blank for a second, relishing in those words. It’s as if sunlight draped over you on a spring day, and suddenly there’s no need to feel… melancholic. There’s no need to feel guilty over your scars, there’s no need to feel scared, sad, or anything else but happy that your scars are fading.

All chapters end, you know this. There has always been something somber about finishing your favorite book, your favorite show, your favorite game. Perhaps you have a sequel, or even a prequel to get to. But it has never been the same as the story before, left with some sort of mark of the past, and that was it. Scars.

Perhaps you are okay with your scars fading.

After all, even stars fade. They explode, really, become supernovae, and shine even brighter than they once had.

© freyito, 2024 | masterlist | queue | kofi | star header by roseschoices DO NOT REPOST AS YOUR OWN OR USE FOR AI/AI CHATBOTS.

[mothwingwritings]

Hrnnnngh because the whole Yujiro stepdad mindset will never leave me, I keep getting possessed with this thought: What if Baki and Jack had misguided feelings for their little step sis just like their father does???

(Warning for stepcest and noncon mentions, proceed w/caution)

Baki would be in deep denial over it. His feelings over you are natural. He just wants to protect you. That’s why he fantasizes and plots about luring you over and caging you in in his underground training room. He knows firsthand how threatening the outside world is, how much danger lurks around each corner, and now that Yujiro is seeking you out specifically, that just makes everything THAT much more dangerous.

You’re so pretty and kind, trusting of people even when they don’t deserve it. He was an absolute idiot for not seeing the dangers that put you in earlier. Living with him you would be safe and cared for, gluing himself to your side to personally assure that. He could barely contain himself when he thought of you nestled in his arms each night, snuggling close, so incredibly thankful to have such a loving and strong brother to protect you. With how much you revere and care for him, surely you’d have no objections to his hands roaming your body, or his lips stealing a kiss as a small show of thanks. You’re so sweet and he loves you so much that all he wants to do is give that affection back to you tenfold, even if you struggle to accept it.

Jack is much more cognizant that his feelings towards you are abnormal, but he warps it in his head to fool himself into believing that his intentions towards you are just that of a loving (albeit overprotective) older brother. Though not by blood, you are still his little sister. It’s natural for you look to him for protection and guidance, and truly that is all he is trying to provide. And as your elder brother he knows best, so you really shouldn’t be questioning just how much he hovers and inserts himself into your personal affairs. How else would you have known that that guy you were crushing on was a complete asshole, or those friends of yours were talking about you behind your back? No need to hurt yourself further by looking into his claims, just believe what your big brother says. He would never betray you like that.

He loves you and would never want to cause you intentional harm or discomfort… But when he thinks of another man touching you, holding you, kissing you, fucking you it sends him into a spiraling rage of all consuming jealousy. No one loves you like he does, no one can protect and provide for you like he can, and he’ll be damned if he lets someone else try and take you from him. The world isn’t deserving of the light you bring to it, and he’ll do whatever it takes to lock you away from the cruelties of the world, even if that makes him an even crueler person in the process.

And when Baki and Jack find out what Yujiro had done to you, how he had staked his claim and had his way with you while they remained none the wiser… Enraged doesn’t even cover it. How DARE he assault you, their precious and perfect little sister? How dare he ravage you, rip you apart in a torrent of carnal desire, violating you and forcing you to the brink of unwanted pleasure… It made their heads spin, their skin crawl.

There was no doubt that the sins their father had committed against you made them furious, delirious with hatred over how he had hurt you. But more than anything the distress they felt stemmed from the single sickening belief they both shared-that instead of Yujiro that night forcing himself inside you, fucking you to oblivion, it should have been them.

[fleur-a-whump]

Overloaded (#1)

Preventative Measures

so like. this is a thing. been toying with this little guy in my head for a few weeks and like, almost nothing is concrete but I'm hoping I'll turn it into a series.

content: ex-villain whumpee, hero/leader whumper, manipulative whumper, just like a LOT of manipulation, collars/collaring, referenced electrocution, low self esteem, subtle threats, guilt trips

I've never done this before, let me know if I missed something!!

masterlist | next

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Villain has finally been given a chance. A chance to prove he's more than what the whole city has always thought of him, more than what his father raised him to be. He wanted to do good in the world. The heroes were finally giving him a chance to be more than they've always thought of him. 

...or so he thought.

He gulps as he stares at the shock collar in Team Leaders hands. It's a small thing, sleek and unassuming. But he knows exactly what it is because Team Leader had shown him how it worked.  The man is currently speaking to him nonchalantly. Villain should really be listening to the hero that holds the key to a better life. But that collar... shakes Villain's faith in Team Leader. Just a little.

"Villain," the man says shortly. Impatiently. Shit.

Villain jumped to attention, nerves only growing worse. 

"Sorry, sorry! I'm just-just a little confused. I thought... I was a part of the team..." He tries to keep the heartbreak out of his voice. He doesn't quite succeed. 

"If you'd listen..." the Team Leader sighed deeply. Villain was going to throw up. 

Team Leader began again, speaking slowly as if to a child. Or a stupid person. Villain thinks he fell into the latter column. "I was just saying this will help you better mesh with the team. I'm sure you've noticed people are a little nervous with you around."

Hostile. Villain would use the word hostile.

"Given your past, everything you've done," the man drawled. Villain can't hold back a wince. 

"So, to ease their worries, and allow them to see how great I know you can be, this is just a little precautionary measure. A bit of a show."

Ryan swallowed thickly.

"So... It wouldn't be used..."

He tries to keep himself from thinking about electricity burning the sensitive skin of his throat as it shoots down his spine and into his skull to paralyze him. He's familiar enough with the feeling; he doesn't need to imagine it.

Team Leader gives him an easy smile. "As long as there are no issues, of course not."

"...Issues?"

"Oh, stuff that'll never happen. Just breaking any of the rules."

Villain arched his brow, slightly dubious. "Rules.”

"Yeah, like, follow orders, don't fraternize with any of your old contacts, don't leave our level, don't work unsupervised, don't harm the team. Stuff you've been doing this whole time."

"Wait, don't leave the level?

"I mean, that's pretty obvious, bud. If we can't see you, we can't know that you're following the rest of the rules."

He nods mutely, gaze wandering. this whole thing just. He didn't know. It hurt.

Team Leader gently tilted his head up. "Villain, I'm only doing this because I trust you. I know you'd never do anything that could jeopardize your place here."

He doesn't trust that Villain is a hero though, obviously. That he's good. Because Villain could never be good. Not now. Not after all he's done. 

No, he can only hope to do good. And the only way he'll be able to do that is with the team. If this is what it takes to ease his team into working with him, if this is what it takes for him to stay, then he'll do it.

"O-okay."

"Atta boy, Villain! I knew you could do it, man."

Villain nods, trying to give him a smile.

Team Leader moves towards him all too quickly, and he can't help the flinch. The man doesn't seem to notice—or at least he doesn't acknowledge it—and is soon once again gently tilting Villain's chin up from where it had fallen. 

Villain fights the urge to lean into the touch.

While he's distracted, Team Leader swiftly brings the collar, already disengaged and bent open at the hinges, and presses it to Villain's skin. 

Villain jolts at the cold metal and fights to swallow as it's closed around his neck.

The locking mechanism clicks right up against his spine. He can't help the shudder that trickles down his back at the finality of the sound.

"I'm so proud of you, bud," Team Leader says with a big smile and a ruffle of Villain's shaggy curls.

The tightness in his chest eases, just a little. A little part of him flares in anger at how easily he's comforted. He doesn't deserve the comfort.

But he's trying. The collar now fit snuggly around his neck, like it was made for him, is proof of that.

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ps ex-villain whumpee on the hero team but whumped by the hero team is my all-time favorite trope and it is so hard to find I have finally hit the point of needing to produce my own story to scratch the itch

[annabelle--cane]

there's a lot going on in the mag 58 supplemental, this one little scene does a lot of heavy lifting to set up martin and tim's arcs for the rest of the show, but I want to focus on these lines particularly because of how therapy comes back as a symbol in s4/s5.

broadly, in the context of the meta plot and not the individual statements, seeking therapy in tma is representative of trying to improve oneself and get out of a bad situation. later, when taking melanie to therapy, georgie suggests that jon should get some as well but, when asked, says she wouldn't be willing to escort him like she does with melanie, showing how she does wish the best for jon in theory but doesn't think he actually wants to get better, or at least that she's not sure enough to involve herself with him.

that view of jon doesn't come from nowhere, because here we have an instance of him rejecting that same offer, symbolically rejecting help in favor of digging himself deeper on his own (obligatory disclaimer that irl therapy is a very personal thing and says nothing about one's overall character, this is just an examination of a motif in fiction). the word choice of "he just says no" imo implies that martin has suggested this multiple times and jon keeps giving the same answer, continually reaffirming that he does not want outside assistance to pull him out of this spiral.

the fact that martin's the one advocating to go soft on jon despite repeated refusals for more sympathetic help is interesting to me, because I would guess that this conversation was instigated by jon aggressively confronting martin about trevor herbert two episodes earlier. we know he was stalking all three of his assistants, but that is the biggest and most threatening outburst we get from jon in this period, and in this conversation it is still martin being defensive and apologetic vs tim being frustrated and pissed off.

I've said recently that I'm pretty sure martin believed jon was self harming and/or suicidal at this point, so I can see why he would be particularly willing to give jon slack and try to prevent any big conflicts, but that still contributes to his current narrative role of "guy who is treated the worst but ignores it because he's also the guy who cares the most." in that way, he's a foil for georgie; she cares, sure, but not enough to ignore (perceived) risks. martin pushes for jon to get therapy even as he lashes out and rejects help, and georgie won't involve herself when jon asks if she'd be willing to help him see a therapist.

this motif comes back around for a final complication in s5, when laverne, melanie's therapist, winds up as part of her cult. melanie's effort to get better and get out did have lasting effects, she is separated from the watcher/watched system and is coping a whole lot better than she would have before, but those personal efforts still weren't enough to fully get her out of the whole mess. no amount of individual action could remove her from this structural problem, her therapist helped her a lot but also now thinks she's a prophet.

which also comes back to the above scene. tim and martin both write off elias as useless in this situation, so they start sniping at each other and talking about how to stop jon from doing what he's doing without even really lingering on how the guy who is actually in charge and has power over them all is making it worse by neglecting his managerial duties. I'm sure jon could have done with some therapy at this point, but that would have only dealt with, like, 10% of the archive gang's current problems.

[fastlikealambo]

Connubium.|| Coriolanus Snow x Black Fem Reader

Chapter One

table of contents.

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Summary: Stealing from The Capitol is a deadly offense, yet you’ve done it more times than you can count but when you do something you should not have done, Volumnia Gaul decides a fate for you that might just be worse than death.

Notes: This takes place post The Ballad of Songbirds And Snakes and Coryo is in his last year at The University, studying under Dr. Gaul. This might not follow canon, I’m not an expert on all the lore so I apologize if I get things wrong.

Disclaimer: You know Coriolanus is a POS, I know Coriolanus is a POS, please don’t yell at me because this is just a fun little story, something for thee hotties, and  if you feel that strongly against President Snow, please let me know if you’d like me to sign you up for tessarae.

This is a quick sample chapter to test the waters and see what people think! If you’d like to see more, please comment, reblog, or like!

The streets of The Capitol looked different during the day. 

You were used to the shadows, two feet in the dark at all times kept you secret, kept you safe, hiding was not cowardly, it was instinctual.

But you weren’t hiding now, a coward in high heels and stockings dark enough to hide the  purpling bruises that kissed the back of your legs, a high collar dress and coat the color of fresh blood concealed the rest that served as a reminder of how you got there in the first place.

Somewhere, a clock struck noon and as if on a timer of his own, Coriolanus Snow emerged from the university doors, chiseled face even more sculpted in person and  you took your place on the opposite side of the road.

You stepped off the curb, turning your face ever so slightly towards a camera and a tucked curl behind your ear signaled the car Gaul had waiting to come barreling around the corner and down the street.

A few capitol citizens jumped back onto the sidewalk but not you, you had your nose in a book, seemingly oblivious to the car that would surely end your miserable little life if this plan did not work.

You did not know Coriolanus Snow, but you did know men. 

Peacekeepers who’d do anything to relax after a hard day, Capitol boys who wanted to know if district lips tasted like treason or honey wine, they were all the same when the lights were off and pockets went unattended.

You tripped and dropped the books, loud enough for Snow to look up and see the car mere feet from you now as you bent down to retrieve the books,  silently cursing everything and everyone that had led you to this moment.

It occurred to you now that perhaps the madwoman in the lab had no designs on Snow that required you and this was an opportunity for her to kill someone in a fun, if not slightly convoluted, way.

You were going to die.

And then, you weren’t.

The lean body of Panem’s golden boy crashed into yours before the car did, strong arms around your middle and sent you both tumbling out of harm’s way. That pretty face of his blocked out the sun and the whole world went still, freezing the pair of you in a tableau of heaving chests and scraped hands.

Beauty made men blind and you had made a blind man of Coriolanus Snow.

And now, the games begin.

[stellasworks]

Smoke Headcanons 🌪️

(A/N: i love tomas sm he’s literally one of my favorite characters and since I don’t see that much content of him I wanted to do him some justice.)

18+ MDNI

Warnings: fem reader, afab anatomy, dom!tomas, unprotected sex (stay safe), size kink, biting/marking, breeding kink, creampie, public sex(?)

Sfw

🩶 Tomas has always been such a kind soul and when you’re with him you feel nothing but safe, he’s always doing what he can to keep you out of harms way.

🩶 If you’re shorter than him than he fully admires the height difference between you two. He loves to hug you from behind, having your small frame in his arms is always so comforting to him.

🩶 He loves kissing your neck and face to wake you up, moving your hair out of your face or away from your neck to press soft kisses onto it.

🩶 He’s tall, not taller than his brothers but obviously taller than you. He’s about 6’2.

🩶 He loves when you lay your body between his legs and lay your head on his chest.

Nsfw

🩶 In bed he’s super attentive to your needs, he takes notes of all of your sweet spots.

🩶 If you have a sensitive neck or back he makes sure to be kissing it or leaving hickeys on you, and a couple bite marks here and there if his brothers or anyone else get to touchy or flirty with you.

🩶 He’s not super loud in bed but he does groan and he gets real breathy when he’s close.

🩶 He’s big. He’s around 8 inches, it’s thick, cut, and stretches you out so good. He also prefers to keep it clean shaven down there, once in a good while he’ll let it grow a little bit but that’s only if he’s away on a mission with his brothers.

🩶 His favorite position is missionary, he loves seeing your face as he fucks you, seeing your eyes roll in pleasure, or seeing how you look at him begging him for more with your expressions could make him cum right then and there.

🩶 Do not let his sweet personality fool you, he is very dominant and does not tolerate you being a brat.

🩶 If you start acting bratty in public, he’ll excuse you both and bring you to a private place like a bathroom and wrap his hand lightly around your throat, his grip will get tighter if you look away from him.

“You’re pushing your luck princess.” Tomas in a warning tone. You smirk as you grabbed his hand and guide it to your lower region, as you both sat at a table during a gathering hosted by the Lin Kuei.

You were wearing a black silk dress that went down to your mid thigh and you thought it was a great idea to not wear panties.

Boy were you wrong.

Tomas gets up from the table and excuses you both, leading you to one of the many bathrooms in the Lin Kuei temple. He locks the door behind him before lifting you up onto the counter and wrapping his hand around your throat.

“Do you take pride in being disobedient princess?”

A second of silence goes by before his grip on your neck became tighter, forcing a whimper out of you.

“Answer my question.”

You shake your head no. But Tomas isn’t buying it. He’s smarter than that he knows you get off on the thought of him putting you in your place.

“Now you’re lying? I expected better from you my love. Maybe I should let everyone here know how much of a slut you can be.”

With that being said, he wasted no time pulling you of the counter, turning you around and lifting your dress up only to reveal how soaking wet you were.

“Already this wet and I haven’t even done anything. You seriously got this turned on from my hand being around your throat?” He says taking one hand and wrapping it around your throat again, while the other plays with your pussy, rubbing agonizingly slow circles on your clit.

“Oh f-fuck.. T-Tomas please..” You begged him, wanting him to go faster but you knew you wouldn’t get that being so disobedient towards him.

“Please what.” He wants to hear you say it. He wants to hear you beg for him.

“P-please.. need you.. need your fingers” You pleaded.

“Good girl.” He happily gives you what you want. Plunging his fingers inside your heat, curling them in and out of you.

“S’to much! To much Tomas plea- Ah!”

He bites your neck softly, leaving hickeys and bite marks up your neck as you moan in ecstasy. His fingers don’t stop, keeping a consistent pace as you whimper for him to let you cum.

“F-fuck! I’m close- fuck I’m so close! T-Tomas please! Do-don’t stop!” You beg only to feel his fingers stop. You whine feeling your pleasure wash away from you, but then he speaks.

“I want you to cum on my cock. Can you do that for me pretty girl?” Tomas asks sweetly, you nod frantically before he stretches you out with his thick cock. You whine at the feeling, he gives you no time to adjust before thrusting into you at an ungodly pace. He rests one hand on your hips while keeping the other on your throat.

Your unable to form words, all your mind can think of is him. You didn’t care if anyone heard you moaning like a whore.

Getting so close to your climax, Tomas bites your neck, his thrusts become more erratic and sloppy.

“Cum for me, be a good girl and cum for me.”

He demanded, and you did just that. With a few more thrusts you cum on his cock, coating it in your slick. Thrusting into you a few more times just to make sure you’re all good and fucked out.

But you soon realized something.

He was cumming inside you.

“Tomas! I’m not wearing panties how am I-“ He cuts you off, kissing you sweetly.

“Not sure. But I don’t want a single drop leaking out of you. If it happens I’ll just have to fuck you again won’t I?”

He said with a menacing tone and a sweet grin on his face.

You were in for one hell of a night.

[fatesundress]

⭑ life of the party. tom riddle x reader

summary. when one game is ruined, another begins.

tags. explicitly fem afab reader, smut with as minimal plot as i can physically allow myself, minors SCRAMMM, loosely implied hogwarts university au as always, flirting via mutually assured jealousy, impeccable communication skills, established relationship, the guy the reader is talking to gets annoyed she doesn’t want him but he doesn’t do anything, religious undertones that might have accidentally become overtones, party setting (background drinking & general degeneracy), probably the meanest tom i’ll ever write and i still tried making him nice because lots of heavy jealousy tropes are misogynistic icks fo me, fingering, piv, a little degradation but that's life, fawwwk the weeknd but the song this is based on is so sexy, etc

note. Me writing this: nightguard: ON, religious themes: RIFE, shame: ABOUNDING. i am so embarrassed by this. have i mentioned smut doesn’t come naturally to me? i don’t even know how i got here. i’m on heelys at the proverbial skatepark and everyone else apprenticed under tony hawk. Do you understand? ok.

word count. 4.5k

request. yes!

He is what he is. Stoic, sacred, silent and then verbose. You knew he had his fixations before you knew him at all — no one made top of every class without a shadow of obsession to contrast the glint of their excellence — but you could not anticipate how that obsession might translate when applied to a person. You’re not sure he had either.

He is what he is. The muggle world taught him religion and in it he learned only the tenor of devotion. When his fingers take your jaw, trace slow at the stripes of your thighs, steady your hips from under you and hold tight, there’s reverence in it. His kisses don’t wane with the months gone by; they soften with purpose. They rouse with hunger. His eyes don’t waver. Should a good man gaze upon his altar? Should he smile like sin when he gets on his knees? 

He does.

Tom Riddle is what he is and you solemnise in equal part.

You don’t come to these things often, taken aback by the sight of the Slytherin common room in ribbons and banners tattered within the first hour of the night. Bottles glow green in the lake-light on every available surface, scattered about the place and spilled in sticky puddles. 

You’re a wallflower tonight, though not for lack of options. You observe from a comfortable distance the drunken antics of new adults, free to carry their liquor in hand rather than hidden away in pockets and pillowcases. There’s something vaguely entertaining about it, intoxicating where someone else might mind their business and actually get intoxicated, but you see no harm done. Whispers fall on your ears before the rumours make their rounds, couples slink away in the darkness where someone in the crowd might not notice, and the night’s first instance of someone hurrying up the stairs in tears comes barrelling right past you. You invent a story for why to keep yourself busy. 

It’s all just buzz.

Now, if you don’t come often, he certainly doesn’t.

Tonight, he has, and for reasons explicable but few, you’ve found yourselves on opposite sides of the room.

It began on the green couch by the window with a chess set spilled across the velvet — a bet you made with him upon arrival; you find wizard’s chess trite, Tom finds it feckless, but it makes for a good challenge. 

What else could convince a man so perpetually controlled to pour himself a drink? And you imagine, from his perspective: what else could convince a woman so determined to outwit him?

It’s for no nefarious reason — to slight him or see him stumble — but because you love the fractions of relief that colour him, soften him, temper him. It’s because he loves you in every shade, in every pliancy, in each and every fervour. But mostly it’s because you love kindly to best him, and he loves mirthfully to best you.

So you play. The game is slow and teasing, hard to see in the ripples of the lake, and toppled over in the final moves (which you’ll insist you were winning) by the same swaying body that spills its drink down the front of your dress. And so you’re up, brushing your index finger over the corner of Tom’s sudden scowl. You whisper like a joke not to kill anyone but he’s so quick to look like he might that you consider repeating yourself with more conviction.

You poke at the spot where his jaw is tense. “I’ll be right back.”

Drying liquor from lace is a matter of precision even with magic, and this is half-gelatinous like someone raided the kitchen’s supply of jelly and steeped it in something offensively alcoholic. You utilise the clearer light of the Slytherin girl’s lavatory, wetting your dress before evaporating the water from it. There’s the matter then of transforming the stained fabric back to its original colour, and you huff in the mirror at having a game you thought you didn’t care much for ruined so close to its end.

You care about Tom, though. The omphalos of your issue resides there.

(It is fair to say most of your issues reside there.)

With only minutes gone by, the common room crowd looks doubled when you return, and though you wade through you’re pushed back like debris caught in a tide, the bodies more stubborn rubble than you. So you retreat, stand flush at the wall with your arms crossed, and wait for Tom’s eyes to land on yours. To, perhaps, open your mind and let him in, tell him exhaustedly from afar that the game is at rest and you’re ready to leave.

But even he’s hard to find in the bodies unified in breath, flux like a big set of lungs —  and nothing about Tom blurs into the background.

So you wait. You wallflower. You pour yourself a drink.

The moment stretches on longer than anticipated, and after many detached observations of the room, someone else finds you instead. He’s tall, blond to Tom's inkwell black, kissed by summer sun even as autumn soothes its blister. Your gaze wavers back to him a few times though his own is uncertain for all its focus. He seems to be waiting for you to stop, perhaps for the silhouette of someone else to slip by and prove you were looking at them instead. When no one else comes, he traverses the crowd with a straightened inch of pride, stepping through new colours until he’s close enough to you that the light settles emerald-black and you can see the great chasm of his beauty up close. 

His freckles are carefully dusted, his structure strong, all squarish, rugged lines and shades of August.

The chasm is not a lack of allure, per se, it’s just a lack of him. One man’s August to your adherent’s December, the intention of his warmth, a thing that does not come to him like everything else but that he makes and makes and mends when it lapses because he does not want to see you cold. The singular reward of a rarity like that.

“Hi," you say, glancing over a broad shoulder.

“Evening," he responds. He takes you in with a look of (unappreciated) appreciation. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“No, we haven’t.”

He extends a hand. “Oliver Belby.”

“Pleasure.”

You don't offer much in the way of conversation. He’ll vie for your attention regardless of how much of it you offer. So you lean against the wall where the buzz of sound prickles your hair, let him talk, let his hand come up to rest beside your head, and you find Tom.

He’s right where you left him, a new clearing in the crowd making space for your eyes to meet.

His are ice even at a distance. As if you proselytise — as if you could — kneel for another man or let one kneel before you, all of your trysts together faithless.

They aren’t. He must know they aren’t.

But you put yourself here and standing at the target of his gaze has never been marred by the severity of it.

You decide then; when one game is ruined, another begins.

In truth, you can’t deny the element of theatrics in the way Tom denies everyone but you: his soft, penitent smile, the apologetic cant of his head, how his eyes can find you in any crowd and whoever is clinging onto his every word that night will follow his gaze and deflate when they discover you at the end of it. Sometimes it’s harsh. Final. He lacks the patience of pretence. 

Sometimes, the week is dull. Sometimes, the whoever is undeterred. Sometimes you’ve pushed him here. 

No — You’ve never done that before. This is new.

So it’s one of those weeks, and one of those whoevers, on an anomaly you may as well have directed the encounter yourself, and Tom is half-indulgent as he forces his eyes away and you force yours to stay. 

You watch him from across the room as the woman drapes herself across the arm of his chair. There's a furious blush on her cheeks even in the dark, a pretty disarray to her shoulder-length hair, skirts pleated over knees she faces toward him. She smiles and offers him a glass of something, and you know for certain Tom understands this game because he accepts it, eyes flicking back to you as he swirls the glass in contest. 

To that you take an inappreciable sip of your own.

“ — Which is why no one has even attempted to kill one in decades. And capturing one is another thing entirely. My mother works with the Greeks on occasion, and the nearest she came to a den was in the twenties. If she had gone any nearer I wouldn’t be here.”

“Hm?” You look back at the man in front of you. His lips glisten with having licked them between every phrase.

“The manticores,” he says, undeterred.

“Right. Five-X beasts, aren’t they?”

“That’s what I said. I heard from one of my mother’s colleagues that — ”

The woman is whispering something in Tom’s ear, her hair on his cheek. He’s looking at you as if you had said the words. You don't shy away when Oliver leans in to whisper too. It's a strange, fractured language. Too intimate while too detached. Whispers from across the room, desire from another in the place of desire for each other. But the strangeness should not surprise you anymore. This is Tom: beautiful and wicked and the one you chose.

“ — And Nundus are worse. Deadliest creature there is — ”

She’s laughing about something, the woman. Half-reserved, she’s angled toward the party despite her leaning on his shoulder and the dissipating inches of distance.

“ — They stalk in silence. Think of the size of one, right? They’re apex predators… so commanding and still they could be in front of you one instant and gone the next.”

You engage with detached interest. “Really?”

And now Oliver barricades your view, his other hand coming to rest on your other shoulder.

“Do we have any classes together?”

You blink up at him. “No.”

“No, right,” he says, eyes darting to your lips. “I’d remember you.” 

His hand comes up to cup your cheek, and you wonder if for some men one-sided discussions of class five beasts qualify as foreplay.

You place a hand on his chest, eyebrows raised and half a startled smile curled. 

“You’re not going to kiss me," you inform him.

His face falls, but with it, at least, does his hand.

“Did you hear me?"

“It’s loud,” he decides suddenly. “Can we go somewhere else?”

You’re not sure you believe that. 

You duck under an arm and search the crowd again. The woman is on the arm of the chair looking thoroughly dismayed, and for good reason —

Tom is gone. 

Your breath is caught.

“This isn’t… You’re not going to…?”

You flash Oliver with a glare. “So you did hear me.”

He makes a pathetically sad face, and you think: it’s a wonder he made it this far when his courtship evidently hinges on the subject of his affection not listening to a word out of his mouth.

“Goodnight, Oliver,” you say tersely.

“What was that for, then?” he asks, and it comes out practically whined.

“That was talking.”

“But you’re —”

“Belby.”

He is what he is. It shouldn’t surprise you when he appears beside you all fatal rage on a quiet lead, narrowly fixed to you. 

Tom’s cold is his median temperature, yes, but in moments like this it’s as much for you as his handmade warmth. He’d pluck the fingers off a boy like Oliver. The digits would string eaves like icicles.

Oliver is looking between you and Tom like something terrible has dawned on him, hands urged to his pockets to soothe the flames your unveiled ties to a man seemingly singed him with.

“Riddle — Mate, I didn’t… I didn’t know she was…”

Tom’s voice is flat, edged with something that makes his monotony sound merciful. “Pity. If only you knew as much as you talked.”

Oliver’s mouth opens and closes and opens again, but wisely he settles on silence instead of excuses, and wastes no time fleeing slowly into the crowd. 

The instant he's stolen by the wave Tom's eyes are on yours and they’re molten. You move to say something but his patience was for show — he’s dragging you by the arm out of the common room and into one of the dungeon's empty classrooms without giving you the chance.

“Tom —" You start to protest, mouth twisted in a scowl. “Tom, you're being —"

He shuts the door behind you and locks it with such delicacy your breath catches at the question of how badly he's holding himself back right now.

“I'm being what?"

“You're…" It's hard to formulate an answer when he's like this. “It was a game. Don’t pretend you weren’t playing too."

Tom inches in, chest rising with angry breaths. “A game, was it? Did he know that?"

“Did she?” you hiss.

“It certainly became apparent when she was discarded so that I might retrieve you.”

“It was as apparent to Belby, judging by the way he was left gawking.”

“And with great restraint I let him. A mercy I didn’t take his eyes so he was left without the ability.”

You roll your eyes. “Oh, now I understand; the problem wasn’t the game, it’s that I played it better than you.”

He looks at you for a long time before casting a silencing charm on the room.

Oh.

Oh — your heart barrels off somewhere. You’re without it for a moment, breathless in the wake of the implication of a spell like that.

“Tom," you say politically, “It was hardly a matter of rescuing.”

He nods imperceptibly. “No, it wasn’t.”

“So we’re in agreement.”

He hums a non-answer.

Each step he takes forward, you take back. It's a peculiar way to have a conversation, but part of the game, you suppose.

Interesting he’s still playing.

You still gasp when you inevitably hit the wall, hands going to the carved edge of a windowsill.

“You’re terrible when you win,” he whispers. His lips brush your ear.

You shudder, mouth dry as you press against his shoulder. “You’re worse when you lose.”

His mouth drags down your jaw but he refuses to kiss you, still withholding something, still holding back in some terrible, electrifying way. Instead one of his hands starts to dip down your side. You shiver as he grazes the skin of your breast, exposed by the cut of your dress, and continues down your waist. His mouth traces your bare shoulder as his tongue makes a slow pass, skin beneath leaping at his careful ministrations.

With long, slender fingers he's pulling your dress off button by button, torturously slow, and you feel mocked to have cleaned it earlier. You feel foolish to have left knowing the night would have ended like this regardless.

“Tom,” you say. His name is followed by staggered breaths. Your fingers are clutching the windowsill.

The air is thick as he watches you, flesh exposed by each undone catch. And still he will not kiss you, even as his lips trail along your collarbone and you start to tug instinctively at his belt. He makes the barest sound of disapproval and spins you to face the window, your hands urged on instinct to press against the glass.

“Tom...”

He hikes your dress up your thighs. It clings to your hips, a meagre two buttons left attached to keep it from falling.

Your wand clatters as his fingers work the clasp of your bra and his teeth skim your shoulder, leaving little bites he laves at softly with his tongue. You shudder, arching into him, searching for friction. His touch traverses the shape of you and stops feather-light between your legs.

“Tom —”

“Quiet," he admonishes, a little tut.

Your skin jumps at the caress of his fingers tracing deceptively timid up your thighs, like he hasn’t done this before, like it’s care and not punishment. His favourite oxymoron: the gentlest torture, the cruelest succour.

His index draws upon the lace of your underwear and tugs it aside with a tenderness that makes you gasp. Is there a way to press harder to the glass without breaking it? Is there ever enough to grab onto when he gets like this — so singularly focused on ruining you? 

One of your hands latches onto the arm half-disappeared in your skirts instead, clinging steadfast to the white of its sleeve, your body swaying as if at sea. He keeps you steady, but this is his crown achievement: that he is all there is that can do it when you’re so singularly focused on being ruined by him.

The sinews of his forearm work imperceptibly under your fingers as he appreciates the newly unfettered flesh, two digits sliding between your legs, and he makes a satisfied sound against your shoulder at the wetness he finds there. 

You’re swallowing air with a moan stuck in your throat; too dry, you realise, and feel like you’re choking when he starts to move, gripping his arm somehow tighter.

As a rule, you know how much he loves this, but it’s tenfold under his jealousy and you think deliriously, probably wrongly, that for how much he enjoys pushing you you enjoy pushing him to get here. You’re his and he’s yours, there’s no doubt in it — but what he can reduce you to — this desperate creature, writhing and panting, trying in vain to satiate herself with a simple finger — this is the translation; the fruition of his fixations put to a person rather than a subject. This is what it is to be his.

Tom’s mouth opens in a smile at your throat, and there it feels more like bared teeth, a smile that is as animal as it is pretty. 

And still he whispers with all the affection of a lover, your name peppered between kisses.

His fingers inch inside you and curl. You’re wedged in the perfect balance of his discrepancy; your disciple and your devil. He worships you in white. He ruins you in it too.

Now his name comes out in a babble, wet, half-drooled. A nip pinches the little space beneath your ear and you clutch impossibly harder to his wrist, your free hand squeaking down the window pane as you grind on his palm. He crooks his fingers against a spot that has you seeing stars, thumb pressed to your clit in a subtle motion, and you feel yourself tip off into an unknown he aquaints you with often. In a blurry, flickering moment, the light gleams somewhere beyond the stained hues of the window. And that should be it. The edge is at your heels and you should be falling. But the sinful press of him at your back commands you to lurch against him, and when you moan for more he pulls his fingers free.

You stumble weakly into his chest, startled.

“What… What?”

“Ask me for it,” he says, his voice hoarse, markedly wanton in spite of himself. But there is hunger and there is greed. There’s a sacrificial lamb and there’s a hunted one— there’s religion and there’s Tom. He invents something that demands greater devotion.

And the sound of leather rasping serge and metal clinking metal reels your conscience in. There are no stars. There’s just him. His belt is coming undone.

“Tom.” You swallow. “I told you —”

“And I want you to ask.” He cups your jaw in his hand, thumb tracing your lower lip. “Nicely.”

Your mouth opens for him and you shiver, pressing further back for contact he doesn’t allow. Instead another small tut is whispered at your neck, relinquished to a kiss.

His finger brushes your teeth when you speak. “I want you.”

You feel him shake his head and you all but whine.

“I want you inside, Tom — need you — please.”

“Please?” he echoes mockingly.

“Please,” you say in an uneven voice, and when your tongue grazes his thumb he eases it further into your mouth with an appeased hum.

And so his zipper comes down and you hold your breath with the weight of your dress at your hips.

He pushes inside you with minimal pause, slow still, to relish the way your little pants hitch, stop, and shudder out in a broken moan; the way your breath is guided by his rhythm, how you’re shaped by him, fitted around him. You careen forward and your palms flatten on the window, trembling at the first thrust. Your fingers quiver down the glass.

Tom pulls you into him on the second, patience abandoned. His lips chase your pulse. His grip on your jaw tightens as his thumb pops free with a string of spit. He nudges deeper at a new angle, your body forced as far as it can lean back, gasping heavenward when your head falls helplessly onto his shoulder.

It’s profane. Your ears almost dull to the sound of his hips snapping against yours, the obscenity of your skin on what he offers of his, but you waver between earth and something else, brought back to him by the torturous sight of the edge he stole you from. Always brought back to him. 

He’s gripping your jaw in one hand as he pushes deeper, and your fingers are lost for purchase on his forearms, trembling to hold onto something.

When he pulls out of you at your brink again, you practically cry out. But you understand when he spins you around again, hiking you up against the windowsill, your shoulders hitting the cool glass with a gasp you barely register in the fog of your desperation. His eyes are dilated to midnight rings. The weight of his desire is frightening. The insistence to claim you better yet.

He wastes no time before slamming into you again, pausing at the hilt to watch your eyebrows wrench together before resuming his pace. When your mouth falls open, he swallows the noise that tries to come out of it.

It doesn’t feel like a kiss. It feels like the prolusion to a bite.

His fervour is all the reminder of how you got here in the first place; the teeth, the force, the grip on your waist. There’s a rough sound he makes in your mouth that you taste more than you hear. The vibration of him is everywhere. You’re too hot and it only occurs to you because your fingers are clawing at fabric instead of skin that he’s fully dressed and your last button has finally snapped, lace pooled on the classroom floor as he fucks you. The thought is consigned to oblivion as quickly as it came. It doesn't matter.

You're clutching at his shoulders, the nape of his neck — trying to kiss him back, but you feel torn in two by the intensity of his ministrations, a low, immolating pressure building in your abdomen. He’s proving something with you, and his is a relentless, unending appetite. You don't really stand a chance. You think you've known that from the start.

Tom is all-consuming. Tom is a force of nature, a whirlwind that sweeps over you. He leaves you breathless and somehow needing more as he wraps his hand around the small of your back and seizes you in place.

Still you find yourself wanting to be held tighter.

“T-Tom —" you sob through the kiss but he doesn't give you enough air to do it. He pushes harder, a rasp at the back of his throat, some carnal thing. He’s not withholding your release now; he’s spurring you towards it.

When he withdraws his lips from yours, his brows are furrowed in concentration. There’s a fine lustre of sweat on his forehead, stray curls pulled across dark, wicked eyes. The sight of him alone is condemnable, but it isn’t for you.

He likes to watch you like this. When your moans dissolve to the torn syllable of his name, again and again. The veneration. Your choked litanies.

You give them to him.

Sleeves drawn up by your body’s baser instinct for skin, you’ve carved a canvas of praise into his arms, marked up to his elbows where your fingers had jerked upward to rake at his back. This time, when you find the cliffside, nothing stops you from teetering off its edge. Flames dance across your skin in an explosion, your collar damp and bitten, your waist in Tom’s vice-like grip. One hard thrust and you’re falling.

The stars are blinding. You decide then they were made by him.

Your head lulls back as shocks of pleasure course through your body, the coil snapped, the hard shape of him inside you demanding impossibly for more. You stumble through the light, vision blurred, praying and praying and praying. His grip comes to find your jaw again.

You keen, addled through the ecstasy, barely conscious of the way his panted breaths hitch at the sight of you in his hands, soft-eyed and puddy.

He always comes apart soon after you, but it happens rarely that your body is so taut on the wire of rapture that his twitching inside you takes you with him. 

This time it does.

You sink against him, thighs numb and wet, one hand slipping dumbly from his figure and swiping across condensation-foggy glass. The second orgasm is an aftershock of the first. It’s slow. It feels like being caught from the last fall. You land in Tom’s arms and they’re holding you through whitened knuckles. His eyelashes flutter, ink-dipped twines of quills, and he steals the shaky sigh from your mouth by pressing it to his.

You kiss lazily and softly. The room feels sheeted in static. The electricity lingers on both of you.

It’s hard not to fall against the window when he slides out of you. You slump on quivering legs into his chest instead, heaving, spend trickling down your legs.

Tom holds you close, adjusting his trousers before sinking down to settle you on his lap. He wipes the sweat from your face and presses his lips to the feverish skin it plastered. Forehead, cheeks, nose, chin, whispers of your name down your jaw like a prayer answered. Your eyelids flutter shut and he kisses you there, too. His lashes tickle.

You love him more than you worship him. You think he likes that more.

He grabs your forsaken dress from the floor and slips it over your bare shoulders, summoning the snapped button back in place before he begins to meticulously clasp the rest together again. His mouth leaves a path at the skin under each one before it closes, and you hum in dizzy gratitude.

“That was,” you say in a very worn voice, “a terrible way to reinforce not making you jealous.”

He glares at you from one of the lowermost buttons and you giggle sleepily, curling a hand into his hair. “Don’t look at me like that. You liked it too.”

He leans back up at that, tipping your chin with his fingers, gaze darting over the wrecked state of you with a pleased gleam in his eyes. “You liked it? What a modest interpretation.”

Now it’s your turn to glare.

He is what he is — pursuit of buttons forgotten as you’re laid down on the moonlit floor to be reminded just how much you liked it.

taglist. @lyis @indimoss @poddzi @esolean @d1anna @maripositanoctruna @mentally-in-northern-italy @ronniemaximoff1234 @moobell55 @jaerang @ramayantika @saltwaterbythesea @acube07 @togenabi @adazito @kitcat334 @blaurghhh @shutupfinn @jaymeeshayden @lilu842 @leaosee @garfunkelworld @definitely-not-captain-america @multiplefandomstan @mangoesareorange [ note: inexplicably, a bunch of my tags aren't working. i tried to fix it but if you didn’t get a notif i’m sorry! ]

[stop-talking]

Breakdown of the @joshsbimbo controversy.

@mike-schmidtten already made a detailed list of every reason why people are upset with you, "lamb", but I'm going to quickly go over it all anyways because you obviously didn't get the memo.

Extreme trigger warning for this entire post, I'm going to be talking about rape, SA, assault, violence, abuse, incest, stepcest, pedophilia, substance abuse, and probably a lot more.

First of all, you tagged this fic where Mike literally rapes the reader as "cnc". That is not correct.

I mean, if we look at the definition of CNC, it says "this type of scene does not encourage ACTUAL rape. All proper scenes are done after much negotiation between of-age, consenting adults."

But I don't need to explain that to you, do I? You know what CNC is. You said yourself MONTHS ago that you tagged your fic incorrectly and NEVER went back and fixed it.

Mike's next point was that you make it impossible for people to "steer away" from their triggers when you don't tag your posts properly.

And as an example he used this post of straight up incest porn between Mike and his little sister. All completely out in the open, tagged under "#mike schmidt" and "#mike schmidt x reader" for all to see.

He followed it up this this. A plea for you to, at the bare minimum, tag the major triggers in your posts and hide it under a "read more" section.

Let's take a look at how you responded to that very reasonable request.

Oh. You DM'd him the word poop and blocked him.

Instead of reblogging to respond, you actually deleted your origional post so your followers couldn't see the criticism of you as easily. I wonder why? You made your stance clear, though. "I should have put more warnings on my work, but it doesn't matter anyways because it's all fictional." But then, immediately after, you started relogging an account that makes photoshopped foot fetish content of male celebrities for some reason...?

(I censored the feet myself because its just weird) Oh, and weird AI pictures of him, too.

There were worse ones, but I didn't screenshot everything, and you deleted these posts just a few hours after reblogging.

You followed it all up with this now-deleted post about how you wish you could make your notes private. Again, I wonder why? If it really is OKAY to sexualize incest, rape, and abuse just because it's fictional, why would people be scared to support you? Why is no one willing to publicly like your posts, or speak out in your favor? Even some of your biggest supporters (@leah-hutcherson @teenagedreamsss @cuteskunkz @renaissancebewbies) who continue to like (some) of your posts, still haven't come to your defense. If writing about fictional rape, abuse, and incest really and truly wasn't harmful, why would you need to hide?

Once other people started catching wind of what was going on, you responded in some... interesting ways. Like here, in response to this ask (from a person who is a minor BTW). You switched up your story from "I should have tagged my work better" to "everyone hates me now because I forgot to put warnings on ONE story" (which was just blatantly false, as you had been posting other triggering things at the time with no warnings whatsoever.)

It was absolutely ridiculous of you to claim you put warnings on your work when I could scroll down two posts (back before you deleted this) and see a post about Mike beating his kid.

Like... please show me where exactly the warning is?

Then, when this person, (another MINOR, btw!!) posted after reading Mike's breakdown of your behavior, your responded by DMing them a slur.

I don't even know what to say to that. A minor. A slur.

But as much as you like to INSIST your work isn't for minors, you sure seem to interact with them a lot.

This person who reblogged your masterlist? They're a minor.

^^ You can't say you don't want minors to read your work without actually taking all precautions possible to prevent them from seeing it. (Tagging your content, blocking ageless accounts, NOT REBLOGGING MINORS!!!)

Yes. This person is also a minor. Which makes, what, the 4th minor you've interacted with in the past few days? At least from what I can tell.

They also hate you btw so I don't even know why you reblogged them.

FINALLY, this user commented under one of your posts in an attempt to get you to AT LEAST tag your posts correctly if you're going to write triggering shit. (Which was the same think Mike asked you to do, if you remember, but he got "poop" and reblogs of foot fetish posts as a response.)

But then it looked like you either blocked them or removed their comment, so they tried again.

You ignored this message, then apparently posted this?

So they tried again (being much nicer that I would have)

And you finally responded (and still got blocked anyways because your posts are DISTURBING and GROSS)

I doubted you'd actually fix your page, because again, you ignored the same request when Mike asked, and in the past admitted you tagged your fics wrong but just never bothered to change it.

But surprise surprise, you actually went through with it and added trigger warnings to your content.

Though, I'm still not sure "non-serious" is an appropriate tag for a post where mike beats you to death...??

Look. I appreciate that you're at least TRYING now, but it was a fucking FIGHT to get you to do the bare minimum. What I, and apparently 84% of people actually want you to do is delete your account.

(This is from @mike-schmidtten's breakdown post from a couple days ago)

I know you want to PRETEND that just because something is a work of fiction, it doesn't have negative real-world effects, but that's just not the truth.

A lot of people were hurt when you posted things without trigger warnings.

And even now, as you continue to post fetish content for rape, incest, and abuse, people are still being hurt. MINORS are still being hurt.

Yes, obviously, if you post something on the internet, you can't completely 100% control who sees it. But you don't even seem to TRY.

(Dming minors slurs, letting minors reblog your masterlist, letting ageless accounts interact with you, reblogging minors, answering asks from minors, etc)

People, minors, CHILDREN, are raped and abused by those closest to them every day. It's disgusting and horrifying to think about, but it's the world we live in.

You aren't "helping people cope" by writing these stories. You're normalizing abuse. And allowing the most vulnerable people to read it.

You're taking actual things that have happened to real people, and sexualizing it for others to get off to. It's immoral, disturbing, and disgusting.

To my followers, if any of you support this kind of content, you are NOT welcome on my page. Please unfollow or block me and go seek help.

And to you, lamb, I hope you come to your senses and either delete all of your rape & incest fetish content or delete your account entirely.

At the end of the day, you KNOW you're in the wrong. Or at least some small part of you does, or you wouldn't have been afraid to reblog Mike's post and respond defending yourself directly. And you wouldn't be afraid to reblog mine either, which you undoubtedly will.

I know you used to follow me, so maybe you'll take this all to heart. But probably not.

I won't block you. (for the next few days, at least). I'll be here if you want to try and have a civil discussion. But just know I will NEVER agree with the sexualization & glorification of violence and abuse.

[redflagshipwriter]

Halfa Cass 9 part 3

Masterpost

TW for canon-typical violence under the read more, minor character death

Unfortunately, there was so only so much Danny could stretch out his production process when Brick started hovering over his shoulder. Brick didn’t seem that bright, if Danny was honest. But he was clearly on the lookout for foot-dragging. 

That meant Danny was mostly done with the outer casing on the second cannon when Brick looked up abruptly and cursed. Brick pulled a gun out of his pocket and pointed it at Danny.

Danny was still busy soldering metal and it took him a few seconds to parse that he was supposed to be under threat right now. He blinked at Brick. “...Sorry, what?”

“Sack of shit!” Brick cursed, lip curled up. His silly little mustache rotated and stuck out at a weird angle. His eyes were wild. “Who did you tell?”

Danny shrugged awkwardly. Should he like, pretend he was afraid of the gun? Should he defend himself? He looked down at his soldering gun. Um. He probably, uh, shouldn’t… use that on Brick, right? It wasn’t like the guy could do anything to him.

Brick jabbed the gun further into Danny’s personal space. Brick’s head exploded with red mush.

Danny blinked.

Brick slumped to the floor. The gun clattered away. Blood gushed furiously across the floor and immediately ruined Danny’s shoes. Fuck. Brick’s soul sputtered in consideration of evolution. It pulsed, once, twice, and then harmlessly dissolved, passing onto the next life without all the drama of becoming restless dead.

…Lucky.

Danny turned off the soldering gun and pushed up the protective eye mask he had on for work with a disgusted grunt. Between that and the breathing protection, there wasn’t much of Brick on him except in his hair. Oh. No. He made a face and wiped at his forehead with the back of a sleeve before anything could get into his eyes. Brick was dripping down his forehead, nasty!! 

A gun cocked. “Yeah, yeah,” Danny acknowledged. He huffed and leaned over to grab at a shop rag. “Ugh!” He did his best to clean up. “This is gross. Just plain gross,” he bitched.

Footsteps walked down the metal stairs. “You work for me now,” said someone else that Danny had never seen before. Bigger guy. Older, ugly. He was balding and slightly gone to seed. Danny wasn’t exactly charmed.

Danny grunted. “My rate is 70 an hour,” he said. It had been 50 for the last group, but clearly his reputation had gone around enough for him to be recruited.

The gun pressed up against his forehead. “No, it’s not.” 

“Yeah, it fucking is, and I need $14 right now to go to the laundromat.” Danny made a gimme gesture. He ignored the gun to his head and jutted his chin out, ready for an argument. “You’re going to get rid of that, right? I do not do body disposal. I don’t have relevant expertise. That would be a sucky reason to get caught by the cops.”

The thug laughed. He put his gun back in his pocket and casually kicked at the recently emptied body. “I like you, kid,” he said genially. “Sure. I’ll tell the boss your rate. And I can get your laundry done. Don’t want your Mom to see you covered in blood?” He laughed again, like the thought of a teenager having to hide their criminal involvement was somehow funny.

Danny shrugged, not quite willing to lie that the feeling was mutual. This guy seemed like a dick.

“What’s this?” The new guy started nosing through the worktable, getting his grubby hands all over Danny’s beautiful new bazooka. He hefted it up and pointed it at Danny with a mean little smile. “What’s this do?”

Danny tried very hard not to go stiff. For the very first time, it occurred to him that he might be walking a little too close to the fire by making weapons that he could be harmed by. “Matter displacement tech,” he said casually. “Works on shit like doors.”

“Doors, huh.”

“Yupp.” 

At this range, it would displace most of Danny’s torso. He tried not to calculate how many days it would take him to regenerate from a hit like that.

The man lifted his eyebrows, but he put the bazooka back down. “You’re pretty unflappable, kid,” he commented. He rifled through Danny’s odds and ends with a careless hand, messing up the neat organization. “Once you’ve finished that, I’ll come back and pay you for it… How many work days is one of these things?”

“Takes about two days to do one solo, can get two done in three days,” Danny said tonelessly. 

His new contact grunted. “We’re going to need weapons from you next,” he said, as if it was just a fact.

“I don’t do weapons,” Danny said. He shrugged. “Sorry, it’s just not my specialty. I can get you the list of specs for what I can do, though, I–”

“You can do weapons,” he got cut off. The older man gave him a disdainful look. “Your girlfriend’s a co-ed, yeah? Cutie. Gotta work like a big man to keep her paid up.” He clapped Danny on the shoulder. “Be smart. I'll send someone to clean up.” He turned on his heel and left.

Danny stood there, taking a few moments to buffer that bullshit. The penny dropped.

‘Ew. Jazz?! They think I’m dating Jazz? That’s nasty.’

…Wait.

‘Oh, fuck. He knows about Jazz. They’re threatening Jazz.’