#there are threads that explain this better but anyways... | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

batsovergotham · 28 days ago

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tangled threads pt 2

"You've got the costume. You've got the power. You're Spider-Woman. Act like it."🕷🕸️

Main!Mark Grayson x Spider-Woman! Reader

warnings: more smut guys i cant be contained, mentions of cheating, shit abt to go down next chapter, jealousy, reader is lowkey an overthinker

w/c: 14.5k

a/n: prepare yourselves mentally for the next chapter. anyways yummy possessive mark smut

The city’s not much better.

It’s too loud, too active, too much for your supercharged brain. But you don’t stop moving. You locate the first dark alley you can hide into, tear open your rucksack, and pull out your suit, your actual one, the one sewn together with clumsy hands and determined pride. The one that smells like perspiration and city filth and freedom.

The mask goes over your head, and it’s like switching a switch. You’re not that foolish, humiliated girl anymore. You’re someone else now.

You mount the side of a building without thinking, fingers grasping the masonry so tightly your knuckles ache. Your body understands the moves better than your head does by now. Up. Up. Up. Until you’re sitting on the edge of a rooftop, the whole city spreads out below you in a sprawl of blinking lights and restless automobiles.

You draw in a breath, the cold scorching your lungs. Your injured eye throbs behind the mask, a dreary reminder of your failure from yesterday, of the stupid Flaxan who got a fortunate shot in while you weren't paying enough attention.

You were so cautious to cover it up this morning. Concealer, foundation, powder. You tried smiling in the mirror without wincing. Practiced pretending you were OK. And for a while, it even worked. Mark gazed at you like you were the only person in the room. Like you were something exceptional. And God, you wanted so hard to believe it. To believe you could have both lives, the awkward girl who got to kiss a boy in his dorm room, and the masked threat who raced over roofs and kept the city safe.

But now… now Mark's probably sitting there wondering what the hell is wrong with you. Why you fled like he attacked you instead of just talking. Why you looked afraid. Why you couldn’t just tell him.

You can’t explain it to him. You can’t explain any of it. Because you’re already living a lie. And the second he knows the truth, that you’re out here every night risking your dumb, irresponsible neck, he’s going to look at you differently. Worse. He’s going to worry. Or he’s going to leave.

You can’t survive any of those.

Your fingers quiver restlessly at your sides, yearning for anything to do. Something to punch. Something to mend.

You throw yourself off the rooftop without thinking, web-slinging into the night.

The city slides past you in streaks of neon and steel. You chase it like you can outrun the mess you leave behind. Like you can patrol yourself clean.

You fall into rhythm, swinging high above the avenues, your heartbeat matching with the rise and fall of your body through the air. For a little while, you forget. You forget Mark’s expression when he noticed the bruise. You forget the pain of humiliation in your chest.

You’re just motion and impulse and persistent gravity-defiance.

Somewhere deep inside you, though, you realize you’re running afraid. You know that the second you stop moving, it’s all going to fall down on you again.

You land on the side of a building, hunch low, and search the streets below. Your muscles throb with residual adrenaline and worry, making you jittery. Jumpy. You hope for something easy tonight. A mugger. A carjacker. Some tiny, manageable bit of badness you can punch and web up and submit neatly to the cops, like a student turning in overdue homework.

But the streets are silent. Too quiet.

It allows too much area for your thoughts to spin.

You think of the way Mark’s hand had hovered, barely an inch from your face, like he wasn't sure if he was permitted to touch you. The way his voice had softened when he pronounced your name.

You should’ve stayed. Should’ve explained. Should’ve trusted him.

But how could you, when you don’t even trust yourself?

Your chest twists horribly, and you thrust off the building again, swinging into the darkness. You patrol until your shoulders hurt and your fingers grow numb and the bruise behind your mask throbs in tune with your heartbeat. You patrol until you nearly forget why you started.

But you don’t go back to Mark’s dorm.

You don't even let yourself think about it.

You’re not ready to confront him. Not yet.

You don’t notice him at first.

You’re too busy slithering upside-down along the underside of a fire escape, peeking down into the back alley of a convenience store. Some shady-looking guy is putting candy bars and half-melted ice cream into a backpack, his eyes darting around like he’s expecting the cavalry to storm in at any second. You’re just about to drop down and deliver your best “friendly neighborhood menace” performance when a blast of wind hits you in the face so hard you almost lose your grasp.

“What the-?”

You swivel around, ready to rip out whichever idiot thinks it's hilarious to buzz a rookie mid-patrol, except the words die in your throat.

Because floating there, seeming as casual as someone waiting in line for coffee, is Invincible.

Invincible.

In the flesh. Well, spandex. Tight, somewhat scuffed spandex, but nevertheless. You’d know that awful yellow, black, and blue color scheme anywhere. And the goggles. God, the goggles.

He hovers like it's nothing, arms folded across his chest, head cocked slightly. Studying you.

“Oh,” you blurt without thinking. “It’s you.”

It comes out odd, far too breathless, like you’re some twelve-year-old meeting a boy band member. You wince behind your mask and instantly attempt to rescue it.

“I mean, yeah. Cool. Cool-cool-cool. No doubt. Just chilling out. Y’know, standard Tuesday night stuff. Vigilante things.” You finger-gun awkwardly, forgetting you’re clutching upside-down on a metal grate.

The finger-gun backfires catastrophically, and you slide, legs flailing.

Before gravity can finish humiliating you any more, a strong hand wraps around your wrist, steadying you. You glance up (down?), at Invincible, who's fighting the world's most blatant smile.

“You good?” he says, his voice light, playful. Exactly the type of voice you’d expect from a guy who shows up late to class because he was too busy rescuing a busload of nuns.

You clear your throat, heat crawling up your neck behind the mask. “Yeah. Totally. Good. Great.” You manage to right yourself and plummet down to the earth, landing with a somewhat less embarrassing thud than you imagined.

He glides down after you, landing down with that unfair type of easy grace that you’re pretty sure is forbidden for anybody under twenty.

The person shoplifting pauses when he sees Invincible. He dumps the half-crushed Twix bar he was carrying and promptly runs.

You respond on impulse. Your wrists flick, a flawless shot, well, mostly perfect, trapping the guy’s legs mid-sprint. He hits the earth face-first with a pleasurable “oof.”

Invincible whistles quietly beneath his breath. “Nice shot.”

You can’t help it. You shine under the mask. “Thanks. Been practicing.”

He crouches down to web-guy, taking the backpack off him and checks inside. “Man, I hope this guy likes melted Snickers,” he adds, tossing the bag aside.

You laugh, a real one, a snort you’re too exhausted to disguise. And suddenly, the knot that’s been hanging in your chest all night loosens, just a bit.

Maybe it’s because he doesn’t look at you like you’re fragile. Or broken. Or some charity case in need of rescue. He looks at you like… a coworker. An equal.

Like someone he’d patrol with.

You fidget a little, shifting your weight from foot to foot. "So... uh. You patrol around here often?"

God, you’re horrible at this. Worse than horrible. You sound like you’re talking during a funeral.

But Invincible only laughs, tossing the unconscious burglar over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes. “Sometimes. Kinda depends. I generally have, well, other stuff going on too."

He says it lightly, but there’s something behind it. Something fatigued. Like the ‘other stuff’ is heavier than a bag full of candy bars.

You know the sensation.

“Yeah,” you murmur gently, scuffing your sneaker on the dirt. “Me too.”

He glances at you a bit closer now, like he’s really seeing you for the first time. You wonder what he sees, a scruffy beginner with a homemade outfit? A kid playing dress-up?

But he doesn’t sneer. Doesn’t patronize.

He merely nods, like he gets it. Like maybe you’re not so different.

He adjusts the man on his shoulder. "You want come with? Drop him off to the nearest precinct?"

Your heart stutters so hard you’re frightened it’s audible through the suit. Patrolling with Invincible. This is the type of stuff you used to daydream about in between studying for physics exams and face-planting in the cafeteria.

You manage to play it cool, somehow. "Yeah. Sure. I’m not doing anything. Just, you know, rescuing the planet one gas station at a time."

He chuckles beneath his breath, and you follow him as he climbs into the sky, you swinging alongside with webs that surely do not reach the target the first time. Or the second.

He notices. But instead of laughing, he hovers back a bit, waiting calmly every time you have to rush to get your footing.

You should be humiliated. Mortified.

But you’re not.

Somehow, with him, it’s good not to be flawless.

You settle into an effortless rhythm, floating through the air, you swing between skyscrapers with a bit less elegance, a little more heart.

He chats as you travel, and you’re almost astonished by how normal he sounds. He complains about calculus. About how crazy expensive laundry detergent is. About how his best friend keeps ruining TV series without notice.

You laugh till your ribs ache.

And somewhere, swinging across the city under the sky, you nearly forget about the bruise behind your mask. About Mark, waiting back in his dorm room, wondering why you ran.

Because now, right now, you’re just you.

You don’t know it yet.

But the man hovering a few feet away, the one laughing at your foolish jokes and matching your uncomfortable energy beat for beat, is the same boy who called you beautiful just hours before.

You’re both wearing masks. Both hiding parts of yourselves.

And somehow, without ever knowing it, you’re finding each other anyhow.

The two of you travel together through the night, and for a short while, it nearly feels simple. Natural. The wind blows about you both as you swing from a telephone pole, just barely catching it with a web as Invincible floats leisurely alongside you, like this is simply a nice evening walk and not death-defying gymnastics a hundred feet over unforgiving pavement.

You're sweating behind the mask, partially from the patrol, partly from worry. The more you're near him, the more the odd buzz in your chest intensifies. He’s easy to talk to. Scarily easy. Like you’ve known him longer than just... now.

Maybe it’s the costume. People say foolish stuff when they feel anonymous. Like, you could give him your whole life story right now and it wouldn’t even matter, right? He wouldn't link it to your real life. Your normal life. Your messed-up life.

So when he says, absolutely casual, "You been doing this long?" you find yourself replying before you can think better of it.

“Not really," you say, swinging a bit lower than you wanted to and overcorrecting with a cry. He laughs beneath his breath and adjusts his flight to match you. "I mean, I've been, um, trying to figure things out. Still quite new.”

He gives you a grin that's all understanding and a bit empathetic. “Yeah? You’re doing quite fine for a rookie. Better than I was when I started, anyway.”

You snort behind your mask. “Seriously doubt that. You probably weren’t crashing into walls every five minutes.”

“Oh, no, I definitely was," he responds, deadpan. “And trees. And busses. I almost took out an old lady’s car once because I couldn’t figure out how to stop mid-air."

You yell out a laugh so loud you almost drop from your webline. "Dude, I nearly crashed through a Starbucks window last week trying to land. I thought I was being so slick, too. Like, 'Hey everybody, look out the awesome new superhero,' and then bam, straight into a frappuccino sign."

He laughs with you, not at you, and somehow that makes it easier. You push off another structure and swing a bit closer to him, heart racing in your chest, not only from the exercise.

“Honestly?” you remark after a beat, voice lowering quieter. “It’s... a lot harder than I thought it’d be.”

Invincible glances over, brows coming together slightly behind his goggles.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s-it's great. Swinging around, rescue people, all the stuff. It’s everything I ever dreamt of when I was a stupid kid reading comic books and scribbling costumes in the notes of my math homework.” You breathe out a breath, your momentum slowing a little as you grip onto a ledge and halt. "But the... the reality of it? Getting hurt. Messing up. Worrying whether someone’s gonna figure out who I am... if I'm putting people at risk just by existing, it’s, like... far heavier than I expect it'd be."

You expect him to say something quick. Something comforting, maybe. Something superhero-y. "You'll get the hang of it." "You're stronger than you know."

But he doesn’t.

He just floats there, staring at you like he genuinely hears you. Like he knows.

And you realize, he probably does. More than you even want to guess.

You gaze down at your feet, scuffing them on the rooftop gravel. "It’s not just about me, either. I-I have a boyfriend. He doesn’t know. About any of this."

You wave a hand vaguely at your mask, your outfit, the entire jumbled mess that your life has become.

Invincible’s stance alters a little, but his voice stays nonchalant as he says, “You guys serious?”

You grin behind your mask, a bit sad, a little fond. “Yeah. I mean… I guess so. He’s sort of dorky. Kinda sweet. He says dumb stuff when he’s worried, like, really dumb stuff. And he has this awful habit of, like, forgetting how words work when he’s stressed." You chuckle a bit, the memories coming alive in your chest. "But he’s... he’s good. Y'know? He helps me feel like I’m still a human. Not just... the stuff I can do."

You realize you’re babbling, and you lock your lips shut before you blurt anything further damning.

Invincible’s quiet for a second, hands pressed into his sides like he doesn’t know what to do with them.

"Does he treat you well?" he says finally, sounding almost uneasy.

You tilt your head, observing him. It’s such a normal question. Not something you'd expect from a guy who can punch holes through skyscrapers.

"Yeah," you say. "He does. He's... he’s trying, at least."

You think about how Mark looked at you earlier tonight, when the makeup fell and the bruise was revealed naked beneath the terrible dorm light. How he didn't flinch or accuse or attempt to suffocate you with pity.

He just... saw you.

And maybe that’s what worried you most of all.

Invincible exhales gently, kicking at the air under his boots. "That’s good," he replies, his voice lower now. “It’s... it’s hard. Balancing both. Being... who you are, and being who you’re supposed to be. Sometimes it feels like you're two people. And both of them are messing it up."

You blink at him, surprised. It's like he split up your chest and dragged the words out himself.

"Yeah," you whisper. "Exactly."

You sit there for a second, just breathing, the city buzzing quietly around you.

Then he clears his throat, voice brightening just slightly. "Anyway. You’re doing good. Seriously. You’re already better than, like, half the people I’ve met wearing masks."

You snort. “Wow. High praise. Better than the man who nicknamed himself ‘The Incredible Skater’? He fought criminals on rollerblades.”

Invincible bursts out laughing, loud and uncontrolled. You catch yourself smiling behind your mask, the type that makes your cheeks ache.

He glides a bit higher, indicating onward. "C’mon. Let’s finish patrol together. I’ll even race you to the next rooftop."

You grin, electricity flashing in your exhausted bones.

"You’re on," you say, shooting a web and flinging yourself into the air.

You don't think about Mark.

You don't think about the bruising behind your mask, or the lie stretched thin between you and him.

For now, you just swing ahead, pursuing Invincible across the night sky, the wind in your hair and the stars above you, and for the first time in days, you feel like maybe you’re not fully alone in this after all.

You pursue him over the rooftops, and for the first time all night, you forget about the pain beneath your eye, the guilt twisting in your gut, the way you ran from Mark like a coward.

Here, up in the air, you get to think you’re just a hero doing hero things. Nothing complicated. Nothing messy. Just the pure, basic rush of wind in your hair and laughing between two individuals who understand what it’s like to carry too much and grin nonetheless.

Invincible stops at the top of an ancient water tower, launching off it mid-air and flipping lazily backward like he’s showing off. Which he is, clearly. You make a face beneath your mask, because okay, yeah, rude, but also, gosh, that was actually very great.

You web up after him, landing a bit less smoothly on the ledge. Your feet slide across the metal, arms pinwheeling till you restore your footing.

“Show-off," you huff, breathing hard but beaming.

“Hey, you’re the one who said you almost crashed into a Starbucks," he jokes back, lingering only a few feet away. He’s got that silly, lovely grin on his face, the one that’s all fangs and mischief, and it’s dangerous. Not because he’s Invincible. Not because he could lift a bus with one hand.

No.

It’s perilous because, for a second, you forget.

You forget Mark.

You forget real names and real injuries and the whole ugly existence waiting for you down there on the dirt.

Because it would be so easy to just stay here.

To drift closer, to let your hand touch his shoulder, to lean in

You notice he’s hanging lower now, like he’s welcoming it. Like he’s thinking the same thing.

You’re both breathing harder than you should be, adrenaline vibrating between you. His gloved hands slide to hover near your hips, not touching, but almost. Your mask is still on, but your lips separate without thinking, heart thumping in your chest loud enough that you’re sure he can hear it.

And then-

He tilts toward you, slow and cautious, the way Mark once slanted toward you for your first kiss, when he was so frightened he could mess it up.

Your pulse lurches terribly because for a heartbeat, for a blink, you want it.

You want to tumble ahead, to feel something nice again, to forget how difficult everything’s gone.

You want to pretend it’s okay.

You want it.

But it's not okay.

And it’s not fair, to you, to Mark, to the man hovering in front of you with his heart open and his hands longing to grab you if you only let yourself fall.

So before you can do anything stupid, before you can break something you won’t be able to fix, you jerk back.

Your feet scrape loudly on the metal, and you lurch away a step, hands raised defensively between you like he was the one ready to strike.

“Whoa, hey,” Invincible replies swiftly, palms raising in surrender, his voice tinged with concern. “Sorry. I didn’t, uh, I wasn’t trying to-”

“No, no, it’s not-” you rush to protest, waving your hands frantically. “You didn’t. It’s me. It’s absolutely me. I just-"

You swallow hard, the words twisting in your throat.

“I have a boyfriend," you blurt out, voice trembling on it.

Invincible stops midair, like you hit him with a stun pistol.

You can see his whole face twitch, like he’s trying to play it off, but it doesn’t quite land. He chuckles, a bit uneasy, touching the back of his neck. “Right. Yeah. Totally. Of course. You mentioned him before. Duh."

You nod too fast, too hard. “Yeah. He’s…he’s a lot. And I’m... I really love him.”

Your voice softens a little at the end, since you’re thinking of Mark now. About the way he breathed your name like it was something valuable. About how soft his hands were, even when you could sense how desperately he wanted you. How afraid he looked when he worried he could injure you.

God, you miss him.

You miss him even if you just ran from him.

Invincible clears his throat, drifting a few steps back to give you space. "No worries," he answers, faking a casual tone. "Seriously. I get it. You're loyal. That’s... good."

You stare at him, really look at him, and for a second, you think there’s something familiar about the way his shoulders fall, about the way he attempts to grin through disappointment.

But it’s gone before you can grab onto it.

You muster yourself a faint grin. "You're pretty cool, though," you add, since you mean it. Because he deserves to hear it.

He shrugs, a bit sheepish. "Takes one to know one."

For a minute, the discomfort stretches between you like a wire ready to break.

And then, luckily, a vehicle alarm blares someplace below, yanking you both back into action.

"Patrol's not gonna finish itself," you joke, leaping off the water tower and swinging into the darkness, pretending like your heart isn’t still in your throat.

Invincible follows, a bit slowly this time.

Neither of you discusses the almost-kiss again.

But somewhere deep in your chest, nestled between the anguish and the shame and the exhilaration, you know

You don’t want almosts.

You want Mark.

You just hope, when you eventually get the strength to go back to him, he'll still be waiting.

The rooftops blur beneath your feet as you swing, the chilly night air stinging on the skin under your suit. It should be refreshing. It should make you feel alive. But all you can feel is the heavy thudding in your chest, the way your stomach tightens tighter with every passing second you spend up here, pretending.

After that moment at the water tower, the almost-kiss you halted before it had actually started, you and Invincible had settled into an easy rhythm. Comfortable. Like none of it ever occurred. Like the unspoken things between you might be washed away just by going on.

And for a little while, it works.

You fall awkwardly on the rooftop, the pebbles slipping a little under your footwear. You catch yourself, stumbling into a squat, but if Invincible sees, he doesn’t say anything.

He’s already standing there, arms pulled tight across his chest, jaw set hard enough you can see it even beneath the shadows thrown by the moonlight. There’s something odd about him – something rigid and barely restrained, like a dam poised to shatter.

You stand up slowly, dusting off your hands on your slacks, attempting to dispel the peculiar feeling crawling up your spine.

For a few seconds, it’s silent between you. Just the faint buzz of the city and the wind tugging at the fringes of your outfit.

Then, out of nowhere, his voice rips through the night

"You ever want to break something because you're so pissed off you don't know what else to do?"

You blink at him, caught utterly off-guard.

Invincible doesn’t normally talk like this. You’re used to silly jokes, lighthearted banter, easy grins. Not... this.

Not this tight, subterranean wrath quivering under every syllable, like he’s barely clinging onto it.

You shift your weight uncomfortably, pulling at the edge of your glove. "Uh... depends," you say thoughtfully. "Are we talking, like... lost your WiFi kind of mad, or... full-on, Hulk smash?"

He huffs a breath, not a chuckle, not really, and scrapes a hand through his shaggy hair. It appears like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Like standing motionless may kill him.

"It’s my girlfriend," he replies eventually, the words crushed out between his teeth. “She…someone— She was hurt. When I saw her.”

You feel your stomach lurch, but you force yourself to keep motionless. Stay casual.

He doesn’t look at you. He simply stares out across the city like he wants to burn everything down.

"She tried to hide it," he continues, calmer now, but the wrath below is evident. "Smiled. Pretended everything was OK. Like she thought I wouldn’t notice."

His hands tighten at his sides, the knuckles of his gloves groaning from the effort.

"And when I asked..." He fades off, inhaling hard through his nose, like he’s battling with himself. "She laughed it off. Said it was nothing. Nothing."

He chuckles once, harsh and nasty, and you shudder even though you know it’s not meant for you.

"I wanted to ask who did it," he mutters. "I wanted to find them. I wanted to..."

He shakes his head violently, like he’s trying to rattle the violence out of himself.

"But I couldn’t," he continues, voice coarser now. "Because I didn’t wanna scare her. She doesn’t know-" he stops himself off abruptly, swallowing the remainder of the statement. His whole body is virtually vibrating with the effort it’s taking to keep quiet.

You don't know what to say.

You don’t know who his girlfriend is, or what happened.

You just know, standing this close, you can sense how much he’s holding back.

You know he would burn down the whole city if it meant protecting her.

You shift a bit closer, voice faint but steady. "You love her."

It’s not a question. You know the answer before it leaves your tongue.

He squeezes his eyes shut for half a second, stress radiating off him in waves. And when he opens them again, it’s like something raw is leaking through the gaps.

"Yeah," he says simply. "I do."

Your heart twists terribly in your chest.

Not with jealousy, not even close.

You think about the man waiting for you back at school, the man you ran from because you were too terrified to tell him the truth.

The man who kissed you like you were something breakable and delicate and strong all at once.

The man who would probably react the exact same way if he saw a bruise on your face.

You clutch your knees deeper to your chest, voice barely a whisper. "She’s lucky. Having someone like you."

Invincible breaths out hard, shaking his head. "I don’t feel lucky. I feel like..." He fades off, pressing his hands hard into his sides, like he’s attempting to physically keep himself together. "Like I’m meant to protect her. And I failed."

You swallow hard, blinking fast behind your mask.

"You didn’t fail," you remark, voice a bit firmer now. "You can’t be everywhere. You can’t stop everything."

He doesn’t appear persuaded.

So you add, softly, "Being there now? That’s what matters."

He eventually stares at you, the tension in his jaw loosening just a touch.

And for a short while, you both simply sit there, the city pulsing below you, the night stretching out like a paused breath.

It’s absurd how simple it seems, sitting next to him.

How natural it feels to start talking.

So when you blurt out, "Can I tell you something kinda dumb?" it surprises even you.

He doesn’t even hesitate. "Yeah. Dumb’s sorta my thing."

You laugh, a bit breathless, poking at the tearing seam of your glove.

“I... kinda freaked out today,” you explain, cheeks blazing behind your mask. “I saw my boyfriend talking to this girl. She was stunning, model perfect, and they were laughing, and... I don’t know."

You shrug hopelessly.

"My brain just flipped out. Started thinking all this nonsense like, ‘he’s gonna realize she’s better,’ or, ‘he’s going to leave you,’ even though he’s never given me any reason to think that.”

Invincible listens calmly, without interrupting, simply observing you with that same peaceful patience that’s strangely easier to trust than anything else.

You drop your head against your knees, sighing. "It’s so ridiculous. I know he cares about me. I know he’s not like that. But I still-"

"You’re scared," he adds gently. "It doesn’t make you stupid. It makes you human."

You peek up at him, shocked.

He offers you a faint, crooked smile. "Love’s messy. It screws with your head. It makes you see something that isn’t there. But it also... it makes you fight for it. Even when it’s scary."

You blink frequently, the heat behind your eyes increasing worse.

"You think?" you croak.

"I know," he says.

You let out a chuckle, wobbly but true. "You’re weirdly good at pep talks, you know that?"

He chuckles, a real one this time, a warm, rumbling sound that eases some of the strain knotting your chest.

"You’re gonna be fine," he adds. "He’s lucky to have you. Anyone with a brain would be scared of losing you."

You smile behind your mask, heart thumping a bit steadier now.

"Thanks," you mumble. "Really."

He brushes his shoulder on yours softly. "Anytime."

You sit there for a bit while, the city breathing about you, the night softening at the edges.

And for the first time in a long while, you feel...ready.

Ready to quit running.

Ready to go back.

Ready to discover the boy who makes you feel courageous even when you’re terrified out of your wits.

You’ll tell him everything.

You’ll stop being terrified.

Because you love him.

And you know he loves you too.

You didn’t intend on arriving here.

Not really.

Which is precisely why you find yourself here after patrol, standing like an idiot in front of Mark Grayson's dorm room, your hands sweaty, your heart thumping against your ribs like it’s trying to break out of you entirely.

You knock before you can chicken out.

And quickly regret it.

There's a thump from within, like something being dropped. Then Mark's voice, fast, breathless, laced with panic "Uh, yeah! Hold on!"

You flinch. You don't know why you flinch, but you do.

Maybe because he sounds guilty. Maybe because some dreadful part of you already knows.

The door opens after a few seconds, and Mark pops his head out, his hair a wild, sleep-mussed mass, sticking up in a way that would ordinarily make you grin. His blue eyes expand the instant he sees you, almost if he’s astonished you're here.

You open your mouth to speak something.

Anything.

But suddenly the door opens wider and the words die in your throat.

Because there he is, standing in nothing but low-slung sweatpants and a towel slung over one shoulder, and your stomach sinks right out of you.

Not because of how he looks (though, god, he’s handsome in that dumb boyish manner of his, all strong shoulders and lean muscle and that same awkwardness he’s never quite outgrown) But because of the bruises.

Clusters of small, dark bruises blotch across his skin faint fingerprints ghosting along his collarbone, scattered across his shoulder, pressed into the slope where his neck meets his chest.

They’re deep.

Fresh.

Ugly in a way that screams pain and yet, somehow, stupidly, you know what they look like.

Hickeys.

Messy, thoughtless ones, like someone had grabbed him hard enough to leave marks. Like someone couldn’t keep their hands off him.

You hate the way your stomach twists just looking at them.

And suddenly the floor feels shaky below your feet.

Mark doesn’t appear to notice the way your hands curl into fists at your sides. He only smiles, apprehensive, his hand scratching the back of his neck the way he usually does when he’s taken off guard.

"Sorry," he replies, voice hoarse. "I wasn’t expecting you. Just got back from, uh, working out."

You blink at him. Slowly. Like you’re attempting to absorb the words through a veil of white noise.

"Working out," you echo, your voice empty, strange to your own ears.

He chuckles a little, an odd, bashful sound, and shrugs. "Yeah, y'know. Gotta keep in shape somehow."

You don’t answer.

You just gaze.

At the marks.

At him.

Was it Eve?

Your chest squeezes cruelly around the thought.

You’d seen them talking on campus not long ago. You convinced yourself it was nothing. That Mark loved you. That he wouldn't… But now...

He moves beneath your look, uncomfortable, like he can feel the weight of your silence weighing down on him.

"Are you okay?" he says, concerned now. "You’re acting kinda weird."

You nearly laugh. Almost.

‘I'm acting weird?’

You cross your arms tightly over your chest, curling yourself up like it may hold all the parts of you together.

"Rough workout, huh?" you say, the words clipped, too harsh.

Mark's brows knit together. He moves forward slightly, and you automatically step back, wanting distance before you say anything you’ll regret.

"Hey, seriously," he adds, gentler now. "What’s going on?"

You can’t do this.

You can't look at him, can’t stare at those bruises, can’t pretend you're not seeing his mouth on someone else’s flesh. Imagining someone else’s mouth on his.

You’re Spider-Woman, the angry voice in your brain hisses. You should be tougher than this.

But right now, standing here, you don't feel tough at all.

You simply feel...small.

So heartbreakingly tiny.

"You know what?" you say, attempting a chuckle that sounds more like a sob choked in your throat. "I shouldn’t have come."

Mark’s whole face collapses. His blue eyes, those warm, caring eyes you fell for, widen, devastated. "Wait, what? Why?"

"Maybe because I thought..."

You stop yourself short, biting down hard on the words trying to slip forth.

You thought you mattered.

You thought you were enough.

You shake your head. "Forget it. It's stupid."

You try to go, seizing the doorknob, but Mark’s hand flies out and softly clamps around your wrist, not forcefully, but enough to make you hesitate.

"Hey, hey, talk to me," he says, his voice low and anxious, tinged with bewilderment. "Please."

You press your eyes tight, willing the tears back.

You can't look at him. If you do, you’ll break.

"Let go, Mark," you whisper.

He does. Instantly.

Because of course he does.

Mark Grayson would never hurt you.

Not on purpose.

He’s still the man who stumbles over his own feet trying to hold the door open for you, who kisses you like he believes he’s the lucky one.

The man who would rip the world apart if he felt someone was attempting to injure you.

But right now, he’s also the man standing shirtless in front of you, covered in bruises you can’t explain. Bruises you’re positive he didn’t receive while fighting someone. Mark doesn’t fight.

You step back.

You force yourself to walk away, even if everything inside you is screaming to remain.

To fight for him.

To demand the truth.

But you don’t.

Because somewhere, deep down, you’re frightened you already know the answer.

Mark yells after you, your name breaking on his lips like he can feel you slipping away.

You don’t look back.

You can’t.

Because if you do, you’re frightened you’ll fall apart.

Right there in the corridor, with the whole world looking.

You don’t know, You couldn’t possibly know, that the bruises aren’t from someone else, and not romantic.

That they’re from a battle.

While you were out there getting your heart shattered, Mark was getting manhandled by spare Flaxans after the invasion, tossed through walls and slammed into concrete because he couldn’t not be a hero.

Because he’s trying so hard, so hard, to be better.

For you.

You don’t know that he’s Invincible.

And he doesn’t know that you’re Spider-Woman.

And it’s killing you both, from opposing sides of a lie neither of you meant to speak.

You walk down the hallway, the door slamming shut behind you with a quiet click that sounds much too much like goodbye.

Mark stands there in the center of his room, looking after you, his heart thumping against his ribs, his gut twisting uncomfortably.

He doesn’t grasp what just happened.

But he knows… He knows he’s losing you.

And he doesn't know how to stop it.

Mark doesn’t think.

He just moves.

The second the door slams shut behind you, he feels it, an ugly, gut-punch terror gripping his chest, squeezing the breath right out of him. His hand is already on the doorknob before he knows what he’s doing, jerking it open so fast it smacks into the wall.

"Wait!" he yells after you, his voice harsh, urgent, booming down the practically empty dorm corridor.

You’re nearly halfway up the stairway, your stride fast, your shoulders drawn up about your ears like you're trying to make yourself smaller, vanish into the linoleum and shoddy plaster. You don’t turn around. You don’t even hesitate.

Mark’s heart lurches terribly.

You’re walking away.

You’re walking away from him.

He leaps after you without thinking, his bare feet pounding against the chilly floor. He’s still shirtless, still wet from his quick shower, still an awful mess, but none of that matters. None of it even enters his head.

All he can think of is you.

Don’t let her leave.

Don’t lose her.

"Hey!" he yells again, louder this time. "Please—just—stop!"

Maybe it’s the way his voice breaks around the word. Maybe it’s the way he sounds like he’s seconds from breaking. Whatever it is, you linger at the staircase door, your palm resting against the handle.

You don’t turn around.

But you don’t leave, either.

Mark approaches you in a few big strides, breathing hard like he recently raced a marathon. He stops just short of touching you, standing near enough that he could if he wanted but he doesn’t. He doesn’t dare.

Not when you’re so stiff.

Not when you’re trembling so gently he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been watching you like you were the only thing tying him to the earth.

"Please," he replies, his voice low now. Broken. "Talk to me. Tell me what I did wrong."

You laugh, this harsh, dreadful sound, and wipe at your face fast, aggressively, like you’re disgusted with yourself for letting him see.

"You didn’t do anything, Mark," you murmur furiously. "You just… you just proved I’m a fucking idiot."

His stomach twists uncontrollably.

He approaches closer, slowly, like you’re a scared animal that would bolt if he goes too fast.

"I don’t understand," he replies hopelessly. "How—how did I—?"

You eventually turn to face him, and the expression in your eyes nearly sends him to his knees.

Because you look shattered.

You look like he ripped your heart out and didn’t even realize it.

And Mark—Mark Grayson—is a lot of things.

Stubborn. Impulsive. A bit reckless, a little too anxious to save the world even when it costs him everything.

But he is not the sort of guy who wounds the person he loves without battling like hell to rectify it.

Your eyes wander down to his exposed chest, to the marks scattering his flesh like accusations, and you laugh again, broken, empty.

"Was it Eve?" you ask, your voice trembling midway through her name.

Mark blinks.

"What?"

"Don’t lie to me, Mark," you murmur, your hands squeezing into fists at your sides. "Please. Don’t make this worse."

Realization smacks at him so hard he actually staggers back a step. ‘You think— You think the bruises-?’

His lips opens, then closes again, and for the first time in a long time, Mark Grayson doesn’t know what to say.

Because the truth, that he received those injuries while being tossed and manhandled by a spare Flaxan on patrol as Invincible, is one he can’t tell you.

Not without telling you everything.

Not without unraveling the one area of his life he’s battled so hard to keep away from you, to keep you safe.

He scrapes a hand through his hair, his heart thumping so hard he can scarcely hear himself think.

"It’s not-" He stops. Swallows hard. Tries again. "It’s not what you think."

You shake your head, your jaw tense, your eyes blazing with hurt.

"Then what is it, Mark? Huh?" you exclaim, your voice shaking with rage and grief all knotted together. "Because it sure as hell looks like-"

You cut yourself off, biting down so hard on your lip he believes you could draw blood.

He wants to reach for you.

Wants to hold your face in his hands, wants to explain, wants to solve this, needs to fix this.

But he doesn’t know how.

Not without lying.

And he can’t lie to you.

Not you.

"It’s not Eve," he adds, his voice hoarse. "It’s not anybody. I promise to you, there’s no one else."

You gaze at him like you want to believe him. Like part of you is clinging to the thought that maybe, maybe this isn’t as horrible as it seems.

But then your gaze dips to the marks again, and he sees it, the instant you shut yourself off.

The moment you quit allowing yourself hope.

You move back, grabbing for the door to the stairway again.

Mark panics.

He closes the space between you, his hand grasping your wrist, not firmly, but enough to halt you.

"Please," he pleads again, desperate now. "Don’t go. Don’t walk away from me."

You gaze up at him, your eyes glossy with unshed tears.

"I don't know how to stay, Mark," you say, voice tearing wide open. "Not when it feels like you’re already gone."

He feels it, then.

The entire weight of it.

The dreadful, helpless feeling that you’re slipping through his fingers and he doesn’t know how to cling on without hurting you more.

Mark’s not adept with words.

Never has been.

He’s a fighter. He acts first, thinks afterward.

But this, you…you’re the one thing he wants to do right.

So he drops your wrist.

He lowers his pride.

He drops everything.

And he adds, brokenly, honestly: "I’m not gone. I swear to God, I’m right here. I’m still here."

You gaze at him, your chest rising and falling too rapidly, your whole body shivering.

For a moment, just a moment, it looks like you might believe him.

But then the stairway door swings open.

And you’re gone.

Leaving Mark standing there, shirtless and battered and bleeding in ways he doesn’t know how to mend, gazing after you like he just lost the battle of his life without even firing a punch.

And for the first time in a long time, Mark Grayson doesn’t feel Invincible at all.

You push through the staircase door and take the steps two at a time, not caring how reckless you seem.

Not worrying about the dampness distorting your eyesight.

Not worrying about the bruise developing uncomfortably on your eye.

You have to get out.

You have to move.

Because if you don’t, you’re going to break down right there in the corridor, and Mark—Mark Grayson—is going to witness it.

And you can’t manage that.

Not when every part of you feels like it’s splintering into jagged bits.

Not when you still smell his soap on your sleeves.

Not when you still hear his voice, raw and desperate, reverberating in your mind.

You stumble out into the chilly air, the late afternoon light falling low, painting everything in long, bleeding shadows.

The chill stings at your flesh, yet you scarcely feel it.

You keep your head down, your hands stuffed deep into your jacket pockets, and you just walk. Fast. Blindly.

You go toward May’s house, your house.

The place you grew up.

The spot that always seemed safe.

You’re almost at the end of the street when you hear it, Heavy footsteps thudding behind you.

Faster than any reasonable person could run.

"Wait!"

Mark.

Of course it’s Mark.

Of course he didn’t stay behind.

Of course he didn’t let you leave.

He never does.

You clamp your eyes tight for a second, like you can somehow filter him out if you simply don’t look.

But the sound of his bare feet hitting on the pavement won’t allow you.

"Will you please just slow down?" he calls, his voice cracking on the final syllable.

You don’t.

You can’t.

But Mark’s fast.

He’s always been fast.

And within seconds, he’s right there, sprinting to keep pace with you, his breath fogging in the frigid air, his hair still damp and adhering to his forehead.

He’s still shirtless, still a mess, still staring at you like you’re the most important thing in the whole damn planet and he’s seconds away from losing you forever.

"Please," he pants, falling in stride beside you. "Talk to me."

You tighten your jaw, gazing straight ahead.

If you stare at him, you’ll crack.

If you stare at him, you’ll fall apart.

"There's nothing to talk about," you manage to mumble, your voice harsh and brittle.

"Bullshit," Mark lashes out quickly, no hesitation.

He doesn’t hide when things go bad.

He fights.

Even when he’s terrified.

Especially when he’s terrified.

"You’re pissed," he says, keeping up with you like it’s nothing, like he doesn’t even feel the chill, the embarrassment, the hurt you’re almost radiating. "You’re mad at me, and I don’t even know why."

"You know why," you snap, your voice snapping like a whip. "You just don’t want to admit it."

"Admit what?" Mark demands, virtually stumbling over his own feet in his desperation. "That I’m an idiot? Fine! I’m an idiot! But I didn’t—I didn’t cheat on you!"

You eventually turn on him, stopping dead in the midst of the pavement.

He skids to a halt too, chest heaving, eyes wild and frantic.

"Then explain it!" you yell, your voice rough, the words bursting out of you before you can stop them. "Explain the bruises, Mark! Explain why you’ve been distant, why you’ve been sneaking around, why you look like someone’s been all over you!"

Mark flinches, just barely.

But he doesn’t back down.

He never backs down.

His hands are shaking at his sides, fists clenching and unclenching like he doesn’t know what to do with them. Like he’s barely keeping himself together.

"I can’t," he replies finally, voice cracking. "I want to, but I can’t."

You laugh, a shrill, unpleasant sound that tastes like blood in your mouth.

"Right. Because there’s always some reason, isn’t there? Always something you can’t tell me."

Mark stares at you like you just punched him.

Not physically. Worse.

Deeper.

Because you don’t know it, but Mark Grayson would tell you anything. He would rip himself apart for you. He’s dying to tell you everything about being Invincible, about the bruises, about how every foolish secret he maintains is because he’s trying to protect you, trying to keep you safe in a world that's uglier and bloodier than you ever deserved.

But he can’t.

Not yet.

Not without jeopardizing everything.

"Please," he pleads again, and his voice is raw, stripped down to nothing but anguish. "You have to believe me. There’s nobody else. There’s just you."

You look at him, breathing hard, your whole body vibrating with adrenaline and sadness and wrath.

"You don't trust me," he adds, quieter now. "Not really."

Your throat burns.

Your hands tremble.

Because he’s not wrong.

Not entirely.

And that kills you.

You take a trembling breath, your eyes blazing. "You made it hard, Mark," you mumble. "You made it so hard."

He takes a step closer, his shirtless chest rising and falling with every strained breath.

He looks so young like this.

So lost.

So real.

"I know," he adds hoarsely. "I know I did. And I'm sorry. I swear—I’m so sorry. But-"

He breaks off, his hands raising aimlessly before lowering again.

"I can’t lose you," he says.

And it’s not just words.

It’s not some cheap line.

It’s Mark.

Mark, who has never learned how to disguise how he feels. Mark, who loves so naively, so furiously, so honestly it aches.

He drags a palm over his face, irritated, raw.

"I’m not good at this," he mutters, partially to himself. "I'm not good at—at explaining shit. I just—I screw up, and I don't say the proper thing, and you’re standing there staring at me like-"

He cuts off, his voice low. "Like I’m not the guy you used to love anymore."

Your heart aches so deeply you can scarcely breathe.

You look at him, really look at him, and he’s just Mark.

Your Mark.

Flawed. Stubborn.

Messy.

Good.

You blink rapidly, your eyesight blurring again.

And without thinking, without planning, you murmur, "I love you."

Mark’s breath hitches like you punched him.

His eyes become wide, his mouth opening in a shocked, broken noise.

You nod, blinking back tears.

"But I don’t know if that’s enough," you add, and the honesty tastes like poison on your mouth.

Mark doesn’t hesitate.

He lunges forward, cradling your face in his enormous, calloused hands, so kind it makes your chest hurt.

He bends down, pushing his forehead to yours, his breath warm and unsteady across your skin.

"I’ll make it enough," he whispers forcefully. "I'll fight for you."

And you believe him.

God help you, you believe him.

But you’re still terrified.

Still broken.

Still standing at the crossroads of who you were and who you’re going to have to become to survive loving someone like Mark Grayson.

Because loving him has never been simple.

And it never will be.

But it will be real.

It will be yours.

Even if you have to battle like hell to hang onto it.

You close your eyes.

You let yourself lean toward him, just for a second.

Just long enough to feel his heart thumping against yours, fierce and urgent and alive.

Just long enough to recall why you started liking him in the first place.

And Mark, Mark simply holds you there, like he never means to let go.

Mark doesn’t move straight away.

He simply holds you there, his forehead pushed to yours, hands caressing your jaw like he’s trying to memorize the feel of you, the way your breath stutters on his skin.

Like he’s terrified if he lets go, you’ll disappear.

But after a second, after his heart calms down enough for him to think, he draws back just enough to actually see you.

And that’s when he notices.

His thumb glides softly over your cheek, searching, recalling, and you tense reflexively because you know what he’s thinking about.

"You’re mad about the bruises," he mutters, almost to himself. "But you never let me ask about yours."

You glance at him, confused, thrown off by the sudden shift in his voice.

It’s not pleading anymore.

It’s not soft.

It’s something darker.

The memory hits you both at the same time, the night you showed up at his dorm, smiling too broadly, your sweatshirt pulled down low, makeup caked awkwardly beneath your eye.

You assumed he bought the deception.

You wanted him to buy it.

You didn’t want him worried about you, not when you couldn’t even tell him the truth.

But Mark had seen it.

He just didn’t know what to do with it.

Until now.

His jaw clenches noticeably, hard enough that you can hear his teeth grind together. His thumb slides over your cheekbone, slow and delicate, and you can feel the restraint vibrating under his skin like a live wire.

"You had a black eye," he continues, voice harsh, low. "You tried to hide it from me."

You swallow hard, your hands curling into the sleeves of your jacket. "It was an accident," you lie, the words feeble even to your own ears. "I…I tripped."

Mark’s eyes darken instantly.

That same burning rage he gets when someone innocent is injured, when something bad happens right under his nose and he feels like he should've prevented it, it lights up behind his eyes now, aiming firmly at the notion that you, you, could’ve been wounded and he didn’t even know about it.

"Bullshit," he says.

He rips his hand away, pacing a tight, angry line in front of you, raking both hands through his hair like he doesn't know what else to do with the wrath seething under his skin.

"You think I’m stupid?" he snaps, spinning back around to face you, his voice shaking under the pressure of attempting to hold it together. "You think I didn’t notice? The way you winced when I held you, the way you kept turning your head away so I wouldn't see?!"

You recoil, but not because you're terrified of him.

Because you know he’s not actually shouting at you.

He’s shouting at himself.

At the helplessness.

At the knowledge that someone, somewhere, injured you and he hadn’t been there to stop it.

He draws a palm across his mouth, his shoulders rigid with the exertion of keeping himself back.

His voice, when he speaks again, is guttural.

"Who was it?" he says, coming closer, filling your space but without touching you.

"Tell me. I’ll-"

He cuts himself off, tightening his hands at his sides.

"I swear to God, I'll make them wish they never touched you."

You shake your head swiftly, heart beating in your chest.

"No one, Mark," you say, imploring now. "It wasn’t anyone. I swear."

He simply stares at you, breathing hard, like he’s trying to decide whether to believe you or not.

Because everything about him is made to fight, to protect, and right now you’re standing there, looking breakable, and it’s driving him insane.

And God, you can feel it. You can see how desperately he wants to go off right now, find whoever he believes injured you, and rip them apart with his bare hands.

Not because he’s mad at you.

Because he loves you.

Because he doesn’t know how else to defend the people he loves when he’s not there.

Before any of you can say anything else, before Mark can make a decision he might regret

The front door swings open with a loud creak.

"Ahem."

You both freeze like kids caught sneaking back beyond curfew.

Standing there, arms crossed and wearing a thick knitted sweater with a cartoon turkey on it, like she strolled straight out of a stupid Thanksgiving special, is Aunt May.

Her look is half unimpressed, part sincerely pleased, and she taps her foot against the porch, lifting an eyebrow.

"Well," she adds dryly, eyeing Mark up and down, "either you’re trying out for a very exclusive Chippendales show, or someone forgot how clothes work."

Mark blinks at her.

Then glances down at himself.

Still shirtless. Still barefoot. Still literally shivering in the cold.

And somehow, despite everything, despite the wrath still blazing under his skin, despite the horror still clawing at your heart, you nearly laugh.

Mark becomes hot red instantaneously.

Like full-body shame.

He scrapes the back of his head, shuffling from foot to foot like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"I, uh, I didn’t really think this through," he mumbles.

Aunt May snorts. Loudly.

"Clearly."

Her eyes soften when she sees your face, the tightness still coiled in your shoulders, the way you’re standing like you’re ready to run at any second.

"Come inside," she says, kinder now. "Both of you. Before you freeze your butts off."

Mark hesitates for half a second, flashing you a look, a query.

Are you still mad?

Are you still leaving?

You sigh, letting the last of your fury drain away like a popped balloon.

You nod, just once.

Almost unnoticeable.

And Mark, being Mark, catches it quickly.

His whole face relaxes, the strained tightness flowing out of his body like he can finally, finally breathe again.

You shuffle inside, Mark trailing close behind you like some enormous, wet dog, towel still thrown awkwardly over his shoulder.

Aunt May slams the door behind you both with a warm click and mutters, "I’ll find you a sweatshirt, Mr. Abercrombie."

Mark chuckles under his breath, an odd, half-broken sound, but when you peek at him, he’s already staring at you.

Soft. Fierce.

Like you’re still the most important thing in the world to him.

And maybe he’s angry.

Maybe he’s reckless.

Maybe he’s messy and too much sometimes.

But he’s yours.

And you’re not ready to let go.

Not yet.

Not when he’s still standing here, battered and shirtless and eager to battle the whole world if it meant keeping you safe.

The second you step inside, the warmth strikes you, dense, cloying, smelling like baked apples and ancient hardwood floors and a thousand small memories you didn’t know you were still carrying about.

Mark hesitates in the doorway, moving uncomfortably on the mat, towel still draped over his shoulder like some kind of sad, shivering gladiator who misplaced his armor on the way to the battle.

You hear Aunt May clatter around in the closet down the hall, grumbling something about "boys these days."

Mark stares at you again, his blue eyes wide, hesitant. You can sense he’s not sure if he’s allowed to follow you farther inside.

Like he fears if he makes one wrong move, you’ll toss him out.

Like you’re delicate glass and he’s already shattered you enough.

You only groan and jerk your head toward the stairs.

"Come on," you mumble.

His whole body seems to slump with relief as he pads after you.

Still barefoot.

Still shirtless.

Still absolutely Mark.

You guide him up the little staircase you virtually grew up on, the aged banister silky under your hands.

It’s almost muscle memory, going down the hall, halting at your old door, a bit bent now, still plastered in fading stickers and old comic posters.

You push it open.

The bed nestled beneath the window.

The desk packed with old notebooks and half-dead pens.

The images tacked to the corkboard, a lopsided collage of a younger you, May, a few friends from high school.

And now, Mark stands awkwardly at the doorway.

Big.

Real.

Bruised in more ways than one.

You fold your arms across your chest, suddenly wondering what you’re even doing.

You just know you couldn't leave him standing outside.

Not when he stared at you like that.

Not when you loved him so strongly it made your chest ache.

Mark stands there for a second, scratching the back of his neck, and then eventually, gently says, "Can I sit?"

You nod stiffly.

He wanders up to the bed, sits tentatively on the edge like he’s worried the ancient frame would collapse under him. You sit too but not next to him. At your desk chair across the room, putting an ocean of carpet and hardwood and heavy quiet between you.

For a minute, neither of you say anything.

You just sit there, looking at each other across the little room, surrounded by old ghosts.

Mark breaks first because of course he does.

Because Mark Grayson has never been adept at holding back when it comes to you.

"You scared the hell outta me," he says, voice low, hoarse, the words dragging out of him like they physically hurt.

"When I saw that bruise on your face…" He trails off, fists clenched in his lap. His knuckles get white.

"I should've said something right then," he mutters. "Should’ve made you tell me."

He glances up at you, and there's a wild, impotent wrath burning in his eyes, not at you, for you.

"It doesn't look like an accident," he says, and there's this deadly edge to his voice now, the same one you’ve heard when he’s fighting someone larger, stronger, someone harming people who can’t fight back.

"You ever get hurt like that again and try to hide it from me-" He cuts himself off, breathing hard, raking both hands through his hair like he’s trying to literally pull the rage out of himself.

You look at him, astonished by the raw power of it, the way he’s barely keeping it together because of you.

"I’m not mad at you," he adds, quieter now, glancing down at his lap.

He sounds younger.

Lost.

"I’m upset because I’m supposed to keep you safe. And I didn’t even know."

Your throat burns.

You stare down at your hands, twisting them in your lap.

You don’t know what to say.

Because he’s not wrong.

And because a part of you, a terrified, obstinate part, knows you’d do it again.

Lie.

Pretend.

Try to defend him.

Because you’re not simply a woman anymore.

You’re Spider-Woman.

And you’re frightened of what he’ll think if he ever finds out.

You gnaw on your lip, hard enough that you taste blood. "I can take care of myself," you murmur.

Mark’s head whips up, fast enough that you flinch.

He looks devastated.

Devastated.

"I know," he replies, voice breaking. "I know you can. You’re tough. You’re smarter than me. Probably stronger, too."

A broken chuckle seeps out of you, feeble and sad.

"But I still wanna be the guy standing in front of you when shit goes down," he adds, ferocious now, the fire back in his voice.

"I still wanna be the one you call when you need help. I want be-" He breaks off, shaking his head like he’s upset with himself for being so damned lousy at this.

"I just wanna be yours," he adds finally. "All the way."

The words strike you like a fist to the chest.

Honest.

Unpolished.

Messy.

So horribly Mark.

You’re blinking rapidly again, your heart thumping against your ribs. You open your lips to say something, anything.

When there’s a knock on the door.

You both leap approximately a foot.

Mark nearly slips off the bed.

You swivel around to see Aunt May standing there, holding up a faded Yankees sweatshirt and a pair of worn pajama bottoms with small cartoon hotdogs on them.

She raises an eyebrow.

You don't miss the little, knowing smile pulling at the corner of her mouth.

"I come bearing gifts," she says dryly, entering into the room. "And a reminder that doors stay open under this roof unless someone’s bleeding or on fire."

You feel your face become nuclear.

Mark lets out a choked grunt that may be laughter, dread, or both.

May merely tosses the clothing on the bed next to him and touches your hair like you’re still ten years old.

"I’ll leave you two to your crisis or whatever this is," she replies, already retreating toward the door.

"And Mark, honey?" she says, sticking her head back in.

He glances up, eyes wide.

"Next time, shoes. And a shirt. Preferably before chasing my niece through traffic."

She winks and goes, leaving the door a crack open behind her.

You and Mark just sit there, blinking at one other, a mass of tangled emotions too huge for the little space.

But nevertheless, somehow, you feel like maybe you’ll be okay.

Maybe you and Mark will be okay.

Even if it's going to take a lot of bruises, and a lot of honesty, and a hell of a lot of fighting to get there.

You sit there, breathing him in the wreckage of him, the wonder of him and it hits you how much you almost lost. How much you still could. Your chest aches with it, a deep, twisting thing that feels too big for your ribs to hold. Mark watches you like he’s drowning, like you’re the only thing keeping him above water, and something inside you tears loose.

You don’t think. You just move.

Your mouths crash together, hard, heated, breathless, the air between you snapped away like a rubber band stretched too tight for too long. Mark Grayson doesn’t kiss you carefully. He doesn’t know how. He kisses you like he fights, like he flies, like he lives with his whole soul pitched forward and no plan for what happens if he falls.

He’s shirtless still, the smooth heat of his chest flush against yours, skin sticking where you're both too warm, too keyed up to care. The faint scent of his soap clings to him, clean and sharp, and underneath it, the wild, electric smell of boy and adrenaline and Mark. His heart slams against your ribs, fast and ragged, matching the frantic pulse hammering inside your own throat.

His hands are everywhere at once, greedy and unsure, sliding over your waist, your hips, up your sides like he needs to touch all of you at once but can’t figure out where to start. His fingertips tremble when they splay across your back, dragging you even closer, until your bodies are mashed so tight together you can't tell where you end and he begins.

Mark’s lips work against yours hungrily, mouth open and messy, breathing you in between sloppy, gasping kisses. His teeth catch your lower lip, a rough, unthinking scrape, and when you whimper against him, he growls low in his throat a sound so raw and instinctive it sends a jolt of heat spiraling straight through your core.

His bare feet shift against the floorboards, pants dragging low on his hips, hanging loose like he couldn’t be bothered to tie them properly before chasing you down. The thin fabric brushes your legs as he moves, grounding you in the frantic, shivering reality of it, Mark, barefoot and half-dressed, kissing you like you're the only thing keeping him from spinning off the planet.

His fingers slide up your spine, skimming the arch of your back, finding every spot that makes you shudder. He doesn't stop to think. Doesn’t stop to breathe. He just devours you, tilting his head, deepening the kiss until you’re drowning in him, gasping into his mouth, nails digging helplessly into his bare shoulders.

Mark doesn’t pull away.

Not even for a second.

If anything, he clutches you tighter, like letting go would tear him in half. His hips press into yours, unthinking, seeking, and you feel the hard, desperate proof of how much he wants you, even through the thin cotton barrier of his pants.

And still, he keeps kissing you. Fierce. Sloppy. Endless. Like this moment is the only thing that matters, and he’s never, ever letting you go.

Mark kisses you like he can erase it, erase the doubt, the ache sitting low and awful in your chest, but it clings to you both like a shadow neither of you can outrun.

When he finally rips his mouth from yours, he stays so close his breath fans across your lips, ragged and desperate. His hands tremble where they frame your face, thumbs stroking useless little circles against your cheeks.

"I didn’t—I would never—" His voice breaks, raw and jagged at the edges. He swallows hard, like the words hurt going down. "I’m not cheating on you. I swear. God, I swear."

You just stare up at him, silent, feeling your heart thud painfully against your ribs. Almost four years. You know Mark. You know the shape of his soul better than your own reflection. But the bruises, the exhaustion, the way he flinches away from your questions, it guts you. It makes you feel like there’s a glass wall between you and him, and no amount of love can shatter it.

He squeezes his eyes shut, forehead pressing into yours, like he can physically force you to believe him. "You’re the only one," he says, voice cracking on the words. "You're the only one I even look at."

You can feel him shaking, the raw tension under his skin vibrating into yours.

"I’m sorry," he whispers again, broken and frantic. "I’m so fucking sorry. I just-" His hands drop to your waist, gripping tight, like he’s scared you’ll vanish if he lets go. "I can’t tell you. Not yet. Not because I don’t trust you. I do. More than anyone. It’s me. It's me being a goddamn idiot."

You turn your head slightly, the smallest movement, but Mark feels it like a slap. His whole body stiffens, stricken.

"I’m not...I'm not lying to you," he says, voice lower now, almost pleading. "I’m not sneaking around. I’m not...I'm not pulling away because I don’t love you. I do. God, I do."

Your silence hangs heavy between you. A living thing, pulsing, breathing.

Mark leans in, kissing your cheekbone, your temple, desperate little presses of his lips like he can stitch the broken pieces of you back together if he’s just gentle enough. His hands slip up your sides, slow and reverent, tracing the outline of you like he’s praying.

"I’m sorry," he mutters again against your skin, each apology quieter, sadder, like he’s running out of ways to say it. "I’m sorry I’m making you doubt. I'm sorry for every second you don't feel safe with me. I'm so goddamn sorry."

You blink up at him, your throat thick and burning, your hands limp against his bare sides.

You trust him. You do. But trust doesn’t stop you from hurting.

Mark cups your face again, forcing you to meet his wide, agonized eyes. "I’ll fix it," he vows, fierce and small all at once. "I’ll tell you everything. Just... just don't stop looking at me like that. Please."

You don't speak. You can't. Your chest aches with all the things you don't know how to say.

Instead, you reach up, threading your fingers through his messy waves, pulling him back into you.

And Mark kisses you like he’s breathing for the first time in days, messy, shaking, pouring every apology, every promise he can’t find the words for into the desperate, aching press of his mouth against yours.

Mark kisses you like he's starving, like he’s afraid if he stops, even for a breath, you’ll vanish into smoke. His mouth is frantic against yours, wet, open, dragging small, desperate sounds from both of you. His hands tremble where they clutch your waist, his thumbs brushing bare skin under your shirt in uneven, pleading strokes.

You can feel it in every ragged gasp he exhales, every clumsy grind of his hips against yours, he's unraveling, fast, and he doesn't know how to stop it.

"I didn’t mean to hurt you," he mumbles against your lips, voice shaking so badly the words smear into your mouth, "Didn’t mean to make you doubt me—fuck, I hate that you even think for a second I'd ever-"

He cuts himself off with a guttural, broken groan and presses his forehead to yours, shuddering from head to toe. His hair, damp with sweat, brushes your skin in sticky waves.

You don’t say anything. You don’t have to. The hurt clings to your chest like a second skin, invisible but suffocating.

Mark swallows thickly, hands sliding up your sides, finding every dip and curve like he’s memorizing you all over again. Like he’s terrified this will be the last time you let him touch you. His palms span your ribcage, fingers trembling as he strokes you with a reverence that’s almost painful.

And still, you feel the chasm yawning wide between you, his bruises, the secrets he won't tell, the weight of everything he carries alone.

You don’t pull away. But you don't melt into him either.

That tiny hesitation makes Mark flinch like you slapped him.

He tries to speak again, tries to explain, but the words catch in his throat, strangled by panic and guilt. His body bows over you, chest heaving, and for a terrifying second you think he might break apart right there in your arms.

So you do the only thing you can think of.

You touch him.

Your hand slides down his heaving stomach, fingertips tracing the shallow dips and ridges of muscle, following the faint trail of hair that disappears into the loose waistband of his pajama pants. You feel the sharp clench of his abs under your palm, the way his whole body tenses as you slip your hand beneath the soft, worn fabric.

Mark gasps, sharp, helpless, the sound punched straight from his lungs.

Your fingers find him hard, aching, thick and burning against your palm. His cock jumps in your hand at the first brush of your touch, and he makes a broken, pleading noise low in his throat, his hips jerking forward before he can stop himself.

"Fuck, baby," he whimpers, so raw it makes your chest ache. He’s shaking, trying not to thrust into your hand, trying so damn hard to stay still for you even when every instinct in his body is screaming to move, to take.

His hands fist the bedsheets on either side of your head, muscles straining, veins standing out stark against his skin. His forehead stays pressed to yours, damp and trembling, his breath ghosting across your face in ragged, uneven bursts.

"You don’t have to," he pants, voice breaking apart, but he doesn’t try to stop you. He couldn’t if he tried. His whole body is arched over you, vulnerable and raw, yours, completely and utterly yours.

You stroke him slowly, deliberately, feeling every twitch, every needy throb, every shudder that rolls through him like a wave. You want him to feel it, your trust, your forgiveness, your promise that you're still here, even if the words are still locked in your throat.

Mark whines into your mouth when you kiss him again, softer this time, slower, a kiss that says ‘I'm hurt, but I'm not leaving you.’ His hips buck once, sharp and uncontrollable, and you can feel how close he already is, strung so tight it’s a miracle he hasn’t snapped yet.

"Please," he whispers against your lips, a broken prayer. "Please don’t go."

You kiss him again, and this time, he shudders apart in your hand, gasping your name like it’s the only word he’s ever known.

Mark clings to you like you’re the only real thing left in the world, and maybe you are.

The kiss deepens, slow at first, molten, almost tender but it heats fast under the press of his mouth, the tremble of his body. His tongue brushes yours in a wet, messy slide, and when you make a soft, breathless noise into his mouth, he groans like the sound is physically dragging him under.

The bed creaks beneath the shifting weight of you both, the thin cotton of his pajama pants rasping against your bare legs, your own pants still twisted low on your hips where his hand slipped beneath. He kisses you like he's starving, like he’s been waiting for this moment without even realizing it, and now he’s afraid if he blinks it’ll be gone. His hand, warm, callused, reverent, slides slow and steady inside your pants again, stroking over the sensitive skin of your inner thigh, thumb grazing feather-light over the tender, slick heat between your legs.

Mark jerks at the feeling, breaking the kiss with a sharp, needy breath that fans hot against your swollen lips. His forehead bumps yours, clumsy and sweet, and his voice is wrecked when he whispers, "God, you're so wet."

You shiver under him, gasping softly when he drags the pad of his thumb through your slick folds, not pushing inside you yet, just touching, exploring, like he can’t believe you’re letting him.

"You-" he starts, but his voice cracks. He tries again, brow furrowing in concentration. "You still want this? Want me?"

The fear in his voice, the raw, pleading edge, cuts through you sharper than any accusation ever could. He’s not cocky right now. He’s not Mark Grayson the superhero. He’s just Mark, bare and scared and still so stupidly, stubbornly good.

You kiss him again, slow and deep, threading your fingers into his messy hair, tugging just enough to make him gasp against your lips. You don’t say yes, you show him. The slow roll of your hips up into his hand, the whimper you let slip into his mouth, the way your thighs fall open wider beneath him, offering yourself without a single word.

Mark groans, a sound full of awe and disbelief, and you feel the careful way his hand slides lower, his middle finger gliding against your entrance, just barely breaching you before retreating again, teasing, testing your readiness.

"You’re, fuck, you're perfect," he mutters again, almost under his breath, kissing you sloppily, biting at your lower lip like he can’t stand to be separate from you even for a second.

He finally presses a single finger inside you, slow and careful, feeling you stretch around him. You gasp, clutching at his back, nails raking lightly down his spine, and he moans into your mouth at the feeling. He’s bigger than his hands let on, thick, his finger filling you slowly, gently, pushing deep before pulling out almost all the way just to slide back in with maddening patience.

He moves against you, panting, hips rocking gently like he can’t help himself, the hard length of him straining against the soft barrier of his pants, brushing against your thigh. He’s not asking for more, he’s focused entirely on you, on the tiny, breathy noises he’s pulling from your mouth, on the way your body pulses greedily around his finger.

He curls it experimentally and you jerk beneath him, gasping his name so sharply it punches the air from his lungs.

"Shit, baby," he mutters, forehead slick with sweat where it presses into yours, his voice all tangled up in guilt and adoration and fierce, possessive need. "I wanna make it better. Wanna make you feel good. Wanna be good for you."

You arch up into him again, helpless, chasing the slow, grinding rhythm of his hand. You feel the wet slickness coating his palm, hear the filthy, wet sounds filling the tiny space between your bodies, and it only drives the ache in your belly sharper, hotter.

Mark kisses you harder, almost frantically now, his free hand sliding up under your shirt to cup your breast, thumb flicking over your nipple in rough strokes that make you gasp into his mouth. He works a second finger into you without warning, thick and slow, and you cry out softly against his lips, your hips stuttering up to meet him, your whole body tightening and trembling around the intrusion.

Mark curses under his breath, the low, filthy sound vibrating against your mouth. "So tight," he breathes, voice reverent and wrecked. "So fucking perfect."

You whimper, thighs trembling around his hips, your nails digging into his skin, leaving shallow, pink crescents behind. Mark rocks his hand faster, dragging his fingers deep inside you, curling them just right, hitting a spot that has you gasping and clenching and arching up into him with desperate, needy little sounds.

And all the while, he kisses you, over and over, sloppy, hungry kisses that say everything he can't ‘I love you. I’m sorry. I’m here. Please don’t leave.’

Tears prick at the corners of your eyes, not from pain, but from the overwhelming, crushing weight of how much you love him. How much you want to stay.

How much you want this.

Want him.

Mark lifts his head just enough to look at you, his lips swollen, eyes wide and wild and full of every broken, beautiful thing he feels for you. His fingers slow inside you, stroking sweet and steady, coaxing you toward the edge with patience he barely seems capable of holding onto.

"You’re everything," he whispers, voice rough and shaking. "Everything to me."

And for the first time in what feels like forever, you believe it. You believe him. And you let yourself fall into him completely, gasping his name against his mouth as your body tightens and shatters around his hand.

Mark catches you when you break, kissing you through it, whispering soft, broken promises against your lips, his hand steady, his body trembling, his heart pounding wild and sure against yours. Mark’s breath fans hot and uneven over your face, his body pressed so tight to yours you can feel every shiver, every tiny tremble running through him. His skin burns where it touches yours, sweat-slick, feverish with the force of how hard he’s trying to hold himself together and failing.

The thick head of his cock nudges at your dripping entrance, making you gasp, legs trembling with need. He grabs your hips hard enough to bruise, holding you wide open, exposed, helpless under the weight of his hunger. You feel him push forward, a slow, brutal stretch that steals the air from your lungs, forcing your walls to part around him. Inch by inch, he drives deeper, deeper, until he’s fully sheathed inside you, the heavy press of his balls against your soaked folds sending a helpless whimper from your throat. Your nails dig into the sheets, your body arching, shuddering, already desperate for more.

He’s still inside you, deep and thick and pulsing, his cock twitching slightly every time your hips shift, your bodies locked together so tight it’s impossible to tell where you end and he begins. Every inch of him feels desperate, wired, alive like if he stops moving, if he lets you go even for a breath, the whole fragile world between you will collapse.

Mark’s face is close enough that your noses brush with every shaky exhale. His blue eyes, wide and glassy, search your face like he’s memorizing you like he’s terrified you’ll flicker out of existence if he blinks too long.

"You scared the shit out of me," he says again, but quieter now, the words punched out of him like he’s still grappling with the fact you’re here at all. His voice wavers, and it guts you, because he’s not trying to guilt you. He’s not trying to be cruel. He’s just hurting in a way so pure, so Mark, it makes your chest feel too small to hold your heart.

You trail your fingers through the damp waves at the back of his neck, soothing without thinking, feeling the way his whole body flinches, like he wants to lean into you but doesn’t trust it yet.

"I know," you whisper, throat raw, "I’m sorry. I panicked. I was scared too."

Mark groans low in his throat, a wounded animal sound that vibrates against your skin. His hips rock against yours, not hard, not rough, but slow and insistent, dragging the thick, aching length of him along your sensitive walls. The friction is maddening, perfect, just enough to make your legs shake around his waist, just enough to keep you gasping into the space between you.

"You could’ve talked to me," he mutters, voice thick and choked, every slow thrust punctuating his words, grinding deep like he’s trying to drive the point into your bones. "You should’ve fucking talked to me instead of running."

He leans in closer, chest pressing you deeper into the mattress, mouth brushing your jaw, your cheekbone, your temple, tiny, broken kisses that taste like apology and anger and aching relief.

"I know," you breathe, your voice catching when he grinds in particularly deep, his cock nudging the sensitive spot inside you that makes your toes curl. "I’m sorry, Mark. I’ll tell you. I swear. When it’s time."

He stops moving for a second, chest heaving against yours, forehead pressing hard into your temple.

"You promise?" he rasps, so low you almost don’t hear it. "Promise me."

"I promise," you whisper.

Mark pulls back just enough to look at you again, and this close you can see everything, every tiny flicker of emotion crashing through his wide, wounded eyes, every freckle, every faint new scar that you somehow missed until now.

And something in him, something brittle and too-young and too-big for his body breaks.

"Good," he says, voice shaking, barely more than a mutter. "Because if you run again, I’m not letting you get away that easy."

His mouth crashes into yours before you can even answer, all messy tongue and bitten lips and shaking hands. His thrusts speed up, not punishing, but relentless now, driven by something he can't name, something too big for words.

The bed rocks beneath you, the thin mattress groaning under the force of Mark's body driving into you again and again, slick sounds filling the hot, heavy air as your bodies slap together. He grips your hips harder, grinding you down into the bed, his cock dragging against your walls with brutal precision, like he’s trying to brand himself into your body, mark you from the inside out.

You gasp into his mouth, clinging to him, your nails scraping down his back, feeling the way the muscles in his shoulders jump and tense under your touch.

"You’re mine," Mark pants between kisses, voice low and rough. "You're fucking mine."

"Yours," you gasp back, and it’s not a surrender, it’s a declaration. Because it’s true. You’re his. You always have been.

He growls low in his throat, something animalistic and wild, and shifts his angle, thrusting harder, deeper, making you cry out against his lips. His hands are everywhere, cupping your ass, sliding up your sides, fisting into your hair, touching you like he needs every part of you to believe you’re real.

"God, you feel-" He breaks off, slamming into you with a sharp grind of his hips that leaves you gasping. "Fuck, you're perfect."

You can feel yourself getting close again, the heat building low in your belly, the tight, coiling pressure threatening to snap with every brutal, perfect thrust.

Mark feels it too, feels your walls clenching around him, your gasps getting higher, sharper. He drags his mouth down to your neck, biting gently, sucking a mark into your skin like he can make you his in every way that matters.

"Come for me," he says against your throat, voice guttural and commanding in a way that makes your whole body shudder. "Wanna feel you. Need to feel you."

It doesn’t take much more, the steady, relentless drag of his cock, the rough heat of his breath against your skin, the way his voice shakes when he says he needs you, and you’re breaking apart under him, crying out his name as your body tightens and spasms around him.

Mark curses, a sharp, broken sound, and he’s coming too, slamming into you deep and hard, his cock pulsing inside you as he gasps against your neck, body wracked with shuddering, desperate spasms. He doesn’t let you go.

Even after the world goes hazy and trembling and you're both gasping for breath, Mark holds you tight, still buried inside you, still whispering your name like a prayer, still kissing every inch of skin he can reach.

He’s still scared.

You’re still guilty.

The world is still messy and broken.

But here, in this bed, in his arms, you’re still his.

And he’s still yours.

ִ ࣪✮🕷✮⋆˙

current taglist: @adeptusxia0 / @moonjellyfishie / @ladynoirx321 / @moraxussy / @saturnalya / @the-good-kooshe / @atomspidyr / @iansimpsforeveryone / @luvvcharxo / @jiyeons-closet / @weponxwrites / @xzmickeyzx / @heiankyonoeiyuukun / @edgycatx / @oxymorondemon / @bluerrie / @swtheartz / @maxi-ride / @nightmarewasteland / @hot15936 / @rotinginmybed / @deleted-1-800 / @thehumanradio17

#invincible #invincible x reader #invincible fanfic #invincible season 3 #invincible angst #invincible x you #mark grayson x reader #invincible smut #reader insert #x reader #mark grayson x you #mark grayson #mark grayson smut

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breelandwalker · 3 months ago

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I'm starting to question how much the "old" pagan costumes and festivities were indeed about fertility, sex, etc.

Ronald Hutton claims that there is no evidence in history that the maypole was saw as a phallic symbol, for example. And there are other possible meanings. But you usually just read in books as a matter of fact that it was a phalic representation and the dance around was about fertility etc

I recently read the witche's bible because I was curious about traditional wicca rituals and there is suuch a high focus on how every single costume or holiday was about fertility and sex that honestly it makes me wonder, how much it was indeed about those things and how much is just the interpretation of modern people like Gardner making it about those things

You're hitting the nail on the head without even realizing it, Anon.

SO much of what we think we know about "old pagan customs" comes from books written by Victorian-era occultists. And if there is one thing to be said about Victorian-era occultists, it was that they were horny as FUCK. (And the Edwardians weren't any better.)

These people went around rubber-stamping FERTILITY in big red letters on anything to do with goddesses or springtime or even the most passing reference to pregnancy, childbirth, midwifery, or babies. Literally any excuse for ritual nudity or a sacred orgy. And no, that is not satire. Or a euphemism.

The other thing that can be said about Victorian-era occultists is that quite a lot of them were history buffs and very prolific writers. (If you look at the roster of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and their regular guests, it reads like a Who's Who of the writers of fantastical fiction and poetry at the time.) So the result of that is a whole lot of literature about folklore and "ancient pagan customs" written by people who were filtering what little historical information they had at the time through the lens of their own opinions and those of their colleagues.

(It's worth noting that that "lens" often consisted quite heavily of free-associated ideas not supported by history or things they completely pulled out of their own asses. Leland's "Aradia" is a good example of the "Ancient Sacred Text Given To Me By A Real Witch Who Totally Exists And I Definitely Didn't Write This Myself And Make Up This Claim For Clout" genre.)

Quite unsurprisingly, a lot of these beliefs got absorbed into the roots of the modern witchcraft movement a few decades later, since those were the popular resources available at the time and the same generally-prevailing opinions and biases were still present. So this started WELL before Gardner and his coven were on the scene. They just picked up the thread.

And as we all know, once there's a generation or so of removal from the founding beliefs of a movement, people tend to take the older texts as gospel, regardless of how flawed they might be.

See Also: We Still Have To Talk About The Witch-Cult Hypothesis Because Margaret Murray Wrote The Encyclopedia Britannica Entry On Witchcraft And It Wasn't Updated Until The 1960s.

See Also: We Still Have To Explain The Difference Between Historical Fiction And The Historical Record Because Of The White Goddess And The Mists Of Avalon.

See Also: We Still Have To Talk About The Burning Times Myth Because Raymond Buckland Made That Stupid Fucking Documentary.

See Also: Why The Hell Is Anyone Still Recommending Silver Ravenwolf.

Anyway, the short answer is that yes, your impression is correct, and I'm glad you're reading Hutton and forming that practical context for the witchcraft/pagan literature and media that you encounter.

Keep honing that bullshit detector and best of luck!

#A. Nonymousse #witchcraft #witchblr #history of witchcraft #pagan #pagan problems #Bree answers your inquiries

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chlorinecake · 11 months ago

Text

「 𓍯𓂃 I KISSED HER FOREHEAD AND NOW SHE'S 𝒢IVING ME CRYSTALS ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ 」

𝐢𝐞. super Y2K crush scenarios with 𝐍𝑒𝕨 𝐉𝚎𝐚𝕟s

── ✰⋆⁺ 𓊆ྀི . . path to bookshelf ◍ 𓊇ྀི 🔮 虹 . . . 𝔸ᶰĎ 𝒴𝐨𝕌 ?. . .

❖︎ pa𝓲ring .ᐟ 뉴진스 x female!reader

❖ g𝓮nre .ᐟ fluff, comfort, wlw, friends to lovers

❖ 𝒘𝗈𝗋𝖽 count .ᐟ 𝟏,𝟎𝟒𝟏 total ✩ ✩ ✩

𝐊𝐈𝐌 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐉𝐈 ── ❝ You smell pretty today... ❞

“You too!” You blurted out, right before realizing you'd gotten your words mixed up, “Wait- I meant to say you look pretty, but... I guess I mean both? Gosh, does that even make sense?”

A tiny smile spread across Minji's features at your adorable timidness, her boot-clad feet taking a few steps towards you before pulling you close, gracing your frame with a tender hug, “It makes perfect sense, weirdo… thanks...”

Her voice was calm and soothing as usual, despite the way it made butterflies swarm in the spot where your heart should be. You couldn't really explain it, but something about Minji's energy always had a way of making you look and feel like a lovesick geek by time you got a proper sentence out—

“So,” she began again, breaking from the embrace and looking you straight in the eye, her hands resting at your shoulders, “when were you gonna tell me about this little crush you have on me?”

Your eyes widened like you had seen a ghost, a nervous chuckle slipping past your lips as she tilted her head at you, just as you muttered a distracting, “Right after I told you which Victoria's Secret fragrance I'm wearing?”

𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐈 𝐏𝐇𝐀𝐌 ── ❝ Crystals? As a gesture?... ❞

“Pfft, of course!” Hanni replied matter-of-factly, “just like how you gave me coins for that gum-ball machine we passed earlier… but who's keeping track of all that stuff anyways?”

“You, apparently...,” you said as a gentle laugh escaped your lips at her quirky reply, “but touché, Hanni Pham... what should I do with these?”

“Hmmm,” she hummed, cupping your right palm in her own as the colorful stones glittered beneath the mall’s sunroof, “you can put them under your pillow at night!... o-or maybe even stash them in your purse so you can think about me wherever you go!”

“As if I'd need a crystal’s assistant with that,” you teased, ruffling her hair slightly with your free hand. “These are cool, though,” you went on, heart warming at both the feeling of your hand in hers and at the unique gift, “very sweet of you...”

“Eh, I tryyyy,” she replied smugly, right before blowing a tiny pink bubble with the gum she chewed, only to spit the leftover candy into a napkin and ask, “wanna close your eyes and guess what flavor you taste on me?...”

𝐃𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐒𝐇 ── ❝ I like your sweater… ❞

“Oh, this old thing?” Danielle asked with her warm Australian accent, taking the colorful sweater’s hem in her fingers to examine it's loose threads, “My nana knit this for me like... forever ago...”

“Well it's cool to see she was a step ahead of fashion trends back then,” you smiled, letting your hand brush over the soft yarn of her sleeve... That's when a certain question arose in your head:

“Random, but by chance, are you any good with using chopsticks?” You asked, wanting to keep the conversation going.

“Oh, for sure! I’m basically a pro at it,” she boasted, flipping her curly locks in a cartoonish manner.

“Sweet! I have two coupons for two different places. One for a craft store, and another for a sushi bar… only thing is that they both expire tomorrow,” You went on, hoping that she'd catch your drift without you having to state any specifics...

“Oh? Well it'd be a total bummer to let them go to waste,” she shrugged, hooking her arm in yours before tugging you along with her, “we better get going quick before they run out of sashimi… or yellow yarn…”

𝐊𝐀𝐍𝐆 𝐇𝐀𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐍 ── ❝ Can I come in please...? ❞

You heard a gentle voice call from behind your bedroom door, face buried into the largest pillow you could find given the sob-fest you had earlier…

“The door’s unlocked,” you sniffled, turning over on your bed to face her as she peaked from behind the door, her bright smile not even fading at the sight of you.

“I brought some heartwarming treats and DVD’s!” She began, voice just as pleasant as it always was. Haerin made her way to sit beside you on the bed, opening one of your favorite candy bars and handing it to you.

“How’d y’know I was upset?” You asked before taking a bite of the candy, chuckling a bit at the way she watched you so intently while doing so.

“I didn’t,” she went on plainly, “… I already wanted to surprise you today and just got lucky that it ended up being at a time where you needed it most…”

“Awww,” you pouted, dropping the candy bar to pull her into a hug, “you’re literally the best friend I could ask for, Haerin… thank you for coming to see me…”

“Of course,” she whispered, mind lingering on the word friend for a moment, even though she was certain you meant something a little more than that…

“So,” she began again, breaking from the contact and reaching for the TV remote, “Wanna rewatch Mean Girls or Clueless first?”

𝐋𝐄𝐄 𝐇𝐘𝐄𝐈𝐍 ── ❝ Can I touch your hair? ❞

You asked the question for one reason: You were bored out of your mind from waiting at the bus stop, and playing with Hyein’s hair seemed like a fun way to pass the time…

“Oh, sure!” She chirped, immediately straightening her posture on the park bench as you scooted closer to where she sat, taking her wavy locks into your grasp.

Hyein’s round eyes wandered to the sparkly pink Juicy Couture purse you wore over your shoulder, compelling her to ask, “What’s in the bag?”

“Oh- just some barrette’s and hair clips I got from Claire’s yesterday,” you replied, pausing to click open your purse and show her the different kinds, “Thought you might be interested in some extra bling, so…”

“You know me far too well then, ____,” she smiled, scanning each package with her eyes before suggesting that you decide which hair-clip style she would wear, and vice versa.

You let out a simple “Okay” at her offer, reaching for the pack of silver shooting stars for her hair while she held the pack of butterfly clips beside your face, a satisfied look spreading across her features.

“These are gonna look gorgeous on you,” Hyein smiled, right before opening the pack of butterflies clips and popping a few different colored ones in her palm, “This is too fun already, hehe… I can decorate your hair first, right?…”

ʚ 𝐀𝒰𝐓ᕼ𝕆𝐑'𝐒 𝐍𝕆T𝐸: I decided to explore the wlw genre for a change, and I have no one other than @jwanniie to thank for inspiring me to experiment on my platform in such a way through her works... I've always wanted to write for my fav GG's just like how I write for my fav BG's, but simply never found the courage to until now ~ Hopefully you guys enjoyed what I came up with! ɞ

❖ 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐦 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 ( 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 💌 ) @squoxle @nikisvanillaccola @wonbinisbabygurl @ashgonedash @yourmomscuntis2tighy @addictedtohobi @ot7sevenlvr -> if GG content isn’t your thing, pls lmk and I’ll refrain from tagging you in such posts moving forward :3

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hivemuthur · 1 month ago

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Hi!!! Everything you write is so beautiful and so fun to read, and it never fails to make my day <3

I don’t know if you would want to do my request, maybe it’s a little bit too specific… Anyway, since I’m struggling with my PhD (it’s in literature, and I have no clue what I’m doing), I was thinking if Viktor, being an academic weapon and also the sweetest boyfriend ever, would be so kind as to give the reader some advice, or at least some consolation

Hiya! I never got to PhD so I admire you insanely. Here's some hype man Viktor for you to get you back on track!

Persistently Holding Dearest

viktorxgn!reader general - fluff! Viktor supports Reader through the PhD struggle by being a pookie.

word count: 0,6K

author’s note: art by @petitesieste of course!

—

Despair might be a touch overdramatic, but you are inching toward something adjacent. Lodged somewhere between exasperation and resignation, you feel like a complete fraud—staring at words you don’t even remember writing, with no idea what should come next.

The table is strewn with books: annotated margins, half-finished thoughts, too many tabs, too many highlighted lines that used to make sense. Your laptop hums beside a mug of tea long gone cold, a dark ring of residue clinging to the rim. The cursor blinks, maddeningly, on a sentence that refuses to finish itself.

You sigh, rubbing your temples. “I think I’m going to die before this chapter is done.” A soft shuffle behind you. Then a hand, warm and familiar, lands gently on your shoulder.

“Statistically unlikely,” Viktor says, tone far too calm for your unravelled nerves. He leans down to press a kiss to your temple, the corner of his mouth curving. “Though I suppose we could dramatize it for effect.”

“I’m serious,” you murmur. “I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. I read one sentence and immediately forget the previous one. What if I’ve lost the thread entirely? I’m losing my mind,” you whine, flattening your face in your palms.

His arms come around you from behind, folding you into the kind of embrace that steadies things without asking them to stop spinning. “Then we find it again.” A chuckle, then—“Both the thread and the mind,” he explains.

You laugh, quiet and bitter. “It’s not that easy.”

“No,” he agrees. “But it’s not impossible either.”

You turn slightly in his arms, meeting his eyes. “How do you do it? All the theory and analysis and structure—and not feel like a fraud every time you put something down?”

Viktor tilts his head, considering. “I do feel like a fraud. Often.” He brushes a knuckle over your cheek. “But then I remember—doubt is not a weakness, it’s proof that you care. That you’re thinking deeply. It’s the arrogant who stop questioning.”

You breathe out, slow. Something in your chest unknots. “You really believe that?”

“I believe in you,” he says, firm now, no softness in that conviction. “And that’s not blind faith. I’ve seen the way you work. How your mind builds connections no one else sees. It’s beautiful.”

Your eyes sting, and you lean into him fully. “I’m not sure what I’m doing.”

“That’s alright,” he murmurs. “Let’s figure it out together.”

He nudges the chair beside you with his cane. “Show me what’s giving you trouble. We’ll wrestle the sentence into submission. Like real academics.”

You huff a laugh and reach for your laptop. He settles beside you, eyes bright, posture relaxed, like he has all the time in the world just to help you find your words.

It gets better, then worse again. Then better for a while as you find your rhythm, empty cups mounting around the both of you. Then, inevitably, worse again as exhaustion sets in, and you slump against the chair, groaning.

“PhD,” you scoff. “More like perpetually heading downwards.”

Viktor hums, nudging your foot with his. “Perhaps, holding determination?”

You snort. “Perishing horribly, daily.”

A soft chuckle escapes him as he leans forward, wraps his arms around your waist, and rests his chin on your shoulder, breath fanning your cheek. “How about,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss just beneath your ear, “persistently holding dearest?”

“Persistently holding dearest, preventing perishing horribly, daily?” you offer, downright sold on his option.

Viktor hums a soft laugh and mutters somewhere into the space between your ear and mouth, “I can accept such a compromise.”

#my writing #viktor arcane #viktor fanfic #viktor x reader #viktor fluff #viktor x reader fluff #viktor x gn!reader #viktor x oc #arcane #arcane fanfic #ao3 #ao3 fanfic #viktor nation #requests

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asexualbookbird · 3 months ago

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OH! The "flatten" feature seems to do what I want for now! I'm sure there's an easier way but this will work for now!

there is something im trying to do but i dont know what the technique is called and im having trouble finding it online

in inkscape, an adobe illustrator dupe, im trying to take shape A and use it to delete a portion of shape B. so say i have overlapping circles, i want the overlapping bit of whatever circle is on the bottom to be deleted. Does anyone know what this is called so i can search for it or how to do it?

#bookbird babbles #YAY!!#im trying to make a rainbow just to test the embroidery function lol #its been three hours #well okay i made an ace flag first and then thought hm i dont want to explain that to my mom better be safe and do a rainbow LMAO #idk why im such a baby about it #i dont have ace pride thread anyway

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beneathashadytree · 10 months ago

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FELINE AFFECTION - XAVIER SHEN X READER

Warnings : Xavier absolutely gives off “I’m terrified of my spouse” vibes here because he has 0 financial responsibility, reader is gender-neutral!

Genre : tooth-rotting domestic fluff <3

Word count : 1.0K words

Additional notes : My head is simply full of thoughts of that new pose of Xavier in the Glint photobooth, where he’s cuddling a cat… and the brainrot birthed this. I’m so in love with him.

Tip jar!

Masterlist

“Xavier.”

For a few beats there was no reply, and then a very hesitant, “Yes?” came from the couch they were staring at so intently—and for good reason, really. His innocent expression did not erase the truth of what they were seeing.

“What’s that in your arms?” they very patiently asked, as though the calmer they said it, the more inclined he would be to answer honestly. A futile attempt at coaxing, when Xavier knew better than to ignore the signs of an oncoming scolding.

“Nothing,” he quickly replied, sky blue eyes darting away before they could meet theirs. A very telling sign, if anything; Xavier was weak to them and would always give in with a single piercing glance shooting straight for his heart.

They arched their brow as they set their keys down on the coffee table, before crossing their arms against their chest. “So you’re saying I’m seeing things?”

A trick question. He swallowed thickly, carefully contemplating his answer and then quietly saying, “I didn’t say that.”

“A contradictory claim.” Their expression was cool, but the challenge in their eyes was anything but. “Answer this then, are you holding a kitten right now?”

He stayed silent for a few moments. “Well… no.” Not very convincing—especially not when there really was a pudgy tabby cat swaddled into his soft sweater and lazily swatting at the hem’s loose threads, and his own fingers were busy gently trailing across its head.

A strangled noise left them at the sight and his continued denial. Pinching their nose in exasperation, they shut their eyes for a second. “Care to explain, then?”

“Technically, she’s a little over two years old, so she’s a cat, not a kitten,” he mumbled, half to himself, hoping that they would just drop it. It seemed he wasn’t in the mood to be very upfront today. But he certainly looked like he was in the mood to tickle the pink paws of his new feline friend and boop her twitching little nose.

“Err… lovely,” they strained to keep their voice level and absolutely calm, definitely not freaking out over this… fascinating surprise. “And what’s she doing in our apartment?”

“It’s hers now too.” A bold statement to make, from a man who looked like—were he a cat too, that is—his own whiskers were standing on end. “If anything happens to her I’ll jump.”

“Knowing your luck, you’d survive the fall anyways.” A tired sigh, and then their shoulders were drooping, their fight dissolving all at once. They collapsed onto the couch beside him, and thankfully the cat seemed to be twice as lazy as her new owner was, because she made no indication of having gotten startled, save for a slow blink of her eyes (that was admittedly rather adorable). “Fine, have it your way.”

That sweet smile of his graced his soft features, and for a moment their heart thundered in their chest, reminding them that no matter how much they would try to deny it, they really were weak to anything he wanted—as long as he gave them that smile, of course. “She’s very content like this,” they pointed out as the cat in question yawned, leaning into his finger deftly stroking her forehead.

“I know we’re often on missions, and I didn’t want to risk negligence. So I searched for the lowest maintenance kitty to adopt,” he softly said, voice trailing off at the end and an endearingly tender look in his eyes as he continued to pet her. Glancing up at his beloved, he flushed a little at the amusement on their face. “Sorry. She’s just very fluffy.”

At that they chuckled a little, reveling in the way he let himself get carried away. “It’s fine. I was honestly just worried about precisely that. Pets are a huge responsibility, but she’d be perfectly compatible with us.” They looked down and watched as she stretched her fluffy limbs, before curling back up into Xavier’s chest, a content look on her adorable face and her tail swishing a little in her light sleep. The resemblance finally became clear. “She’s… an awful lot like you.”

“Really?” he mused, a thoughtful expression on his face as he furrowed his eyebrows a little. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Kind of hard to ignore once you see it,” they snorted a little, though they lowered their voice after they saw how the slumbering cat twitched in her sleep at the sound. “You got all the stuff she needs, though?”

“I may or may not have used up this month’s salary at the pet store.” Xavier sheepishly gave them a half-smile, though he didn’t look apologetic in the least at the prospect of having wasted a ludicrous amount of money on things that the soon-to-be-spoilt kitty may never even use.

Seriously, had he always wanted a cat this bad?

Well. There was no use in admonishing him when he seemed so enamored by the ball of fluff in his arms. In fact… maybe a small part of them fell a bit more in love with him seeing him so content with the (admittedly rash) decision he’d made, and perfectly happy with staying cuddled up forever on the couch.

“Did you name her?” they asked, curiosity lacing their words as they peered at her tiny face nuzzled against his chest. “It’s only fair you get the chance to when you brought her in.”

Really, it wasn’t such a bad idea after all, now that they thought about it. Cats are rather independent, and they knew without a shadow of a doubt that they’d definitely shower her with unconditional love and all the care that she needs. Kind of hard not to, when she was this sweet-looking and lazy all the time.

Xavier nodded, a small flush on his freckled cheeks. A look akin to pride on his face, he smiled up at his lover, slowly cradling the happily dozing cat, and said—

“Her name’s Meatloaf.”

…

“Absolutely not.”

Taglist: @verynormalstuff @angry-and-yandere @nxx-jordiepord @honestlyjustablog @dawnbreakersgaze @tartartagliaboo @lucis-noctiana @riinari-sa @reika-desu @tikitsune @roll-of-royces @lemonsupernova @loveyoutodeep @belovedof @obiwanmcprobie @kalatipunan @eurekazz @bifedebruxa @thescribeswife @mysticangel123 @xenasolos @jvnluvr @dann-acalle @rin-sv14 @yololesgo @an-ever-angry-bi @semi-orangeapple @lavanderbliss @myturnwhen @winterlvod @carsonology @respitable @stellisangelicus-world @kvsqkiii @bitchynightmarepost @snoozeflare @spotted-salamander @cindywasneverhere @ladyparamount @sncrly0urs @huntersmoon1 @musiclover2119 @girl-who-lives-in-delusion @milktsukii @fromdeepspace-withlove @flavoredhappy @ay-chuu @granddearduck @skriblobz @nadinefromwhere @thatbaepizzalover @imhere2dosomething @saerotonins @cantescapethevoid @teewritessmth @lovra974 @straykidz143 @reishuus @xinnn6 @vyntagei (more in replies!)

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melrosing · 23 days ago

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ok so over the years I have had a LOT of asks about whether I really believe that Jaime's story is a redemption arc and I don't humour them as much as I used to bc apart from having made most of the pertinent points many times over, I do think it's just self-evident in the text, and indeed in GRRM's own statements in interview.

plus, it is an extensive and detailed arc - it's like being asked over and over again to explain why I think Arya's arc is about identity. there are any number of answers you can give, but just how long is an exhaustive answer, who has the time, and isn't it obvious anyway???

and the thing is that when ppl come to u asking you to contradict an 'anti-redemption' take, what they're generally asking u to argue with is like. a carefully curated twt thread of quotes that, sure, compiled like that can look like an argument.... but honestly, you can make any argument you like in that way. and such 'arguments' are exhausting to disagree with because you'd have to carefully re-contextualise each and every quote, which ofc, have been deliberately de-contextualised, and frame your argument around each. and I think that just brings me to the plainer point that these people are not writing real analysis of the text. they're running through a book with a highlighter pen, which is really only the prep for an actual analysis.

you cannot make a point about a character's arc by isolating lines to say 'quotes that show X being Y, therefore foreshadowing Z', or, for example, 'quotes that show Jaime thinking about Cersei, therefore foreshadowing that he will romantically return to her' or whatever. this doesn't work because what this style of 'analysis' completely fails to do is account for the structure of the story they're reckoning with.

I think a lot of ppl like to pretend with ASOIAF that structure does not work the same way here as it does in another narrative, because GRRM likes twists. and I disagree. for example, something people like to say about ASOIAF is that you can never consider your faves truly safe, but I think that's been vastly overstated. we know Arya isn't dying before she returns North, because fundamentally we know how stories work. we know Arya's story points back to Winterfell - that her story is about the long journey home. we know she's not dying in Braavos because: we just do. there's a reason that if you poll people on who is surviving this story, Arya will rank pretty highly, along with Sansa and Bran. people sense the structure behind the Stark kids' stories - they somehow know, without being told, that the story is not building to their deaths.

because all of us have grown up with stories, we have an innate sense of their rhythm, and how they're supposed to go. they can surprise us, but if we've learnt anything from Game of Thrones, I hope it's that the twist cannot come from nowhere. ASOIAF succeeds because GRRM pays close attention to these rhythms. even as he's making it up on the fly, he is clear about what beats go where. they may last longer than in a different story - in another book, Arya would probably be home by now - but we still understand what each beat plays in a broader arc.

and an arc is SUPPOSED to broadcast itself. sometimes it's subtle, other times it's not, but generally it is not something that you can only recognise has taken place at its very end point. even though Arya has not yet fully reclaimed her name, we know she will. likewise for Sansa. even though Bran has not come into his powers, we know he will. we DO actually understand that.

so when people say that Jaime is not redeemed yet and his prevarications in the Riverlands means he never will be, they're either 1) consciously or subconsciously denying the arc they can sense GRRM is writing, or 2) they're just not that media literate. it's there, it's obvious, it's broadcast clear as day. Jaime starts bad. we get to know him. he proves himself capable of better. he decides to pursue better. he is constrained in his pursuit of betterment. he breaks free of that constraint to pursue betterment properly. and yes, this probably is a tragedy where Jaime's best efforts will still cost him dearly, and there's a strong chance he does die! but your baby trebuchet quote collection is not accounting for the clear narrative beats of a redemption arc, which the baby trebuchet actually feeds into if u were paying attention! this arc has not been painstakingly set up for a rug pull. Arya is not being set up to go 'fuck it actually I'm no one and I'm staying in Braavos'. that is not satisfying. that is not what stories are for. that is not what GRRM is doing.

so when GRRM tells you that this is a story about redemption: believe him! he knows what he is writing! the struggles of some twt user who hates Jaime should not be concerning you! and as we've said 100 times: it IS up to you whether you forgive Jaime, same as it's up to you if you forgive Sandor, or Theon, or Zuko your spiritual king! that choice is yours! but your feelings do not change what trajectory this story is taking! so yes MY GOD it is a redemption arc now let me die

#jaime lannister #asoiaf #following that one from last weekend or whenever it was a few of u are still asking so. i hope this helps

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netegf · 2 years ago

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Hate It When You Leave

pairing: f!reader x rafe cameron

plot: you are trying to cope with the fact that you're hopelessly in love with your best friend. he's trying to cope with the fact that you don't go after the things you want... including him.

warnings: 18+, best friends to lovers trope, use of Y/N, mentions of alcohol and past drug use, non-graphic references to violence, some angst & jealousy, fluff and smut (public sex, teasing, oral female receiving)

word count: 6.5 k

There are parts about wearing your heart on your sleeve that no one ever talks about.

For instance, that it's hard to fix your face when the threads keeping that heart together feel like they're getting tugged, cut, and re-bunched into an ugly knot.

The water bottle you're holding hardly has any life left. Even Kelce comments as much when he rounds his kitchen island, limbs swinging and loose thanks to the red Solo cup in his hand. He takes one look at the tight smile on your lips and tilts his head to the side, fingers twitching upward to your chin as he turns your head to face him.

"What's going on in that pretty head of yours?" He asks, voice a little slurred, but thick with concern.

That was Kelce. Polarizingly good at getting to what someone was hiding underneath.

But appearances went a long way for him. And he was so agreeable, it made him easy to lie to. Especially when he and Topper had practically begged you to come to this party, his first one since graduating college. Everyone would be there, he'd said.

And he was right, they were.

"Nothing, Kels, it's just my stomach being a little funny." You tell him with a renewed sense of enthusiasm. You gaze at him warmly and quirk a brow, smiling genuinely. "How do you always know?"

"We've known each other our whole lives!" He barks in a laugh. "There's nothing I don't know about you."

You feel your heart squeeze again, like there's a too-tight belt around it. But you humour him with a sweet giggle and convinced nod, and it's all Kelce needs before he's walking away to mingle with another.

How shocked he'd be to know that there was something you were hiding.

You keep the water bottle you're holding close to your body as if it would fall straight out of your hands otherwise. When you watch the brunette seated next to Rafe on the couch squeeze his bicep again, you think it might just fall anyway.

Some things don't change.

The sun goes up and down. The moon makes a nightly appearance. Kelce never dresses for the weather. Topper claims everyone else is cheating when he loses.

You love Rafe Cameron.

"Fucking sucks, doesn't it?" A voice rings next to you.

You slowly turn your head from where you're sitting on the kitchen island to see a familiar face lounging on one of the high-chairs.

Topper, apparently, had always had an inkling.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Top." You grumble, casting your eyes away from the blonde protagonist of most of your dreams. Some of your nightmares, too.

You watch as Topper rolls his eyes without so much as glancing at you, a small scoff escaping his lips. He takes a hearty sip from his cup of brown liquid. Tracking his eye-line, you're unsurprised to find that he's staring wistfully at the very same blonde's sister.

Sarah Cameron is dancing in the corner of the room with John B., her boyfriend.

A Pogue at a Kook party... the thought still makes you skeptical.

Not because you didn't like John B., or more accurately, like him for Sarah. But because a few short years ago, all this seemed entirely impossible.

Nonetheless, Sarah was important to all of you.

And, like she'd said, Rafe listened to you better than he did anyone else.

When you explained to him how smitten his sister was with the boy, and considering how their relationship had endured far past those murmurings of 'young love' to, what was at this point, years together, he'd begun to understand that John B. wasn't going anywhere.

Much to Topper's devastation.

He promised he was over her, and he dated like it, too. But there were those moments where he had a few drinks in him and it made you think otherwise.

"Oh, okay. My fault." Topper replies sarcastically, downing what's left in his cup and finally turning away from the couple he's burning holes through. "I thought we were being honest."

"I am being honest."

He glances at you sharply.

"Uh huh. Hey, don't freak out, but, your nose is like, growing really long. Never seen anything like it before. It's like in that movie! What's it called, again? Puppet boy? No, that can't be right..."

"Very funny, Topper." You say dryly, but the hint of a smile on your lips sells you out and he chuckles next to you.

"I was thinking Pinocchio." He fake recalls, nudging your elbow.

This time, you laugh with your chest, and when you lift your head up to take it all in again, your eyes meet familiar blue ones from across Kelce's living room.

By now, you know how to mediate the warmth that blooms at the base of your spine and consumes you completely.

There's a comfortable silence between the two of you before Topper starts speaking again.

"You know he would do anything for you, right?"

You chew on your bottom lip, still holding eye contact with Rafe who gives you a crooked smile. The girl next to him leans in to whisper something in his ear. He keeps looking at you.

"Yeah, I know." You mumble half-heartedly. "I just feel like I might need to cut my losses at this point."

Topper frowns for a moment, then stands up from his seat.

"Well, you suit yourself." He pinches your cheek affectionately. "Because I, for one, want to crash and burn."

You snort at Topper's words and just as quickly watch him round the kitchen counter to grab another drink.

Preoccupied with the way he extends that gesture to you, fixing some gross concoction of different sodas for you to sip on, a shiver rolls over your skin when it feels like Rafe's smouldering eyes are still lighting a fire on your face.

Aron Andersen is a douche, but he means well.

At least, that's the excuse you aways placate Rafe with when Aron inevitably runs his mouth, the blonde's fists tightening nearly every time in conjunction.

Typically, you opt for the pacifist approach because blood is a bitch to clean, Rafe whines when you clean him up with saline, and frankly, Aron isn't worth it.

But tonight, he seems to enjoy testing your threshold for patience like no one else before him.

You suppose he's not entirely to blame. Kelce makes his drinks strong, and half of Figure 8 is sucking up all the oxygen in the room.

Maybe that was why Rafe had almost swung on John B. only a few minutes prior, claiming the younger man was feeding his sister lies about him. Perhaps it was just one of those nights.

Still, you sigh when Aron drunkenly makes his way over to your new spot in the backyard, and press your lips tight together when he shoves a beer in your direction.

"I'm not drinking tonight, Aron." You tell him plainly.

Aron haphazardly plops down into the lounge chair next to you with his glossy, red eyes narrowing.

He grudgingly pulls the beer back from you and takes a sip that pools around the sides of his mouth, then drains down his throat slow and loud.

"That sucks. You're more fun when you do." He scoffs.

Your mouth falls open as the words leave his lips, head spinning to meet his annoyed gaze. The faraway look in his eyes makes you gulp.

In no particular mood to be berated, you have half a mind to scoff back and get up to leave. But there's something about the way he speaks completely unadulterated that keeps your body locked in place.

Like you're dying to know what someone really thinks of you.

"Why not?" He presses, gesturing with his finger accusingly.

"I'm driving."

He continues to stare at you blankly.

"I'm driving." You reiterate, irritation seeping into your tone. "And drunk driving is illegal, Aron. You do know that, right?"

Unintentionally, your eyes flicker to a slightly rowdy and staggering Topper across the room. Aron zeroes in on that and rolls his eyes emphatically.

"Now it makes sense. You're taking your boyfriends home." He pitches the word in a scornful taunt, squinting over your shoulder. "Where is Cameron, anyway?"

You feel your heartbeat rage in your chest, tongue numb and mind in disarray.

"Don't be a dick, Aron. They're my friends." You bristle. But he seems unfazed, lazily quirking an eyebrow.

"Please don't tell me you're that stupid, Y/N. Friends?" He laughs obnoxiously. "I get you're in love with the guy, but you run around for them like a maid. You ask me, the least you should be getting out of it is a good fuck."

Your fingers twitch at your side as you shoot up from your seat, really and truly considering that pouring his beer over his head might be the best option.

Given that Aron routinely takes up two parking spots to park his Range Rover and cheats on his girlfriends, you think it might be a long time coming.

His words hurt for more than one reason. Of course, because he'd sooner die than recognize that you very much could maintain a healthy, platonic, and meaningful relationship with your friends of over a decade.

But also because, when it came to Rafe, he was goading you with a kind of intimacy you knew you'd never be able to access. At least not in the way you wanted.

When a firm hand grips Aron's shoulder strongly and whips his body around, you soon realize you don't have to resort to such a physical display.

While it was true that Rafe's face didn't make him look particularly kind, he'd only been seriously pissed off, to the point that his stomach felt like caving in on itself, a few times. Like in those months right after he'd graduated high school and felt like a big question mark. Every time his dad looked at him disapprovingly, it affirmed that sinking feeling in him, and he learned that he sometimes articulated his sadness in anger.

These days when he's mad, he mulls the feeling over a few times in the interest of scraping for another feeling underneath.

Now, though, all Rafe feels when he meets Aron's arrogance with an intensity of his own, is unbridled rage.

"What the fuck did you just say?"

Rafe speaks at a low register that makes your breath quicken. His movements are a little clumsy, blue eyes slightly glazed over, and his dirty blonde hair kisses his forehead that's speckled with sweat. Cheeks dusted red in that way that you love, more prominent when he's inebriated.

His fingers are still pressing harshly into Aron's shoulder, pressure concentrated and steady if the way he winces is any indication. For a second, his eyes flit over to you and the frown on your face, and they begin to soften. But then Aron is sputtering and stealing his attention and he hates him all over again for it.

"My bad, bro." Aron offers lamely, hands jutting upward in surrender. He attempts to step away, but Rafe keeps him locked there.

"Yeah, it's your fucking bad, bro." Rafe sneers.

He roughly shoves Aron backwards as he lets go of him and the man quickly scurries away knowing that if he sticks around, Rafe will probably force him through clenched teeth to apologize to you.

You feel your heart hammering in your chest for a different reason.

Your mind is trapped in a loop, repeating every word you said to Aron over and over again, wondering how incriminating they were, and debating how much exactly Rafe had heard.

And if he had, if he was coherent enough to either dismiss or believe the accusation that you loved him. No, not love, you shudder... in love. Aron had said, verbatim, that you were in love with him.

"I would've handled it." You mumble with your arms crossed over your chest.

Rafe sighs as he turns his body to face you, rubbing a hand over his jaw, now partially relieved of the tension it was holding. He chews on his bottom lip cautiously, like it'll help break the fall of the words bound to spill out of his mouth, a little too unrestrained in his drunk state for his liking.

"I know that." He nods slowly. "I just wanted to help to help you... handle it."

He stumbles a little as he moves toward you and you instinctively wrap an arm behind his torso, holding him against your body as a human splint.

"Plus, I kinda have a reputation going for me. No one's losing their shit if I fight a guy."

"Or two." You say pointedly, thinking about his almost altercation with John B. earlier in the night.

Rafe buries his head into your shoulder, groaning loudly into the bare skin as it heats up and vibrates.

"Fuck, not you, too."

He lifts his head up to continue, and you lug his body towards the living room where you spot Topper talking with Kelce and some others. Without speaking, Topper seems to understand what you're saying, nodding then pointing to himself followed by the stairs.

He'd driven you to Kelce's and you promised to stay sober and drive him back home. But now, it seemed like the plan was going to shift.

Topper would stay the night at Kelce's and take his car back in the morning. You would take Rafe's truck back to his place and walk the rest of the way. You were practically neighbours, anyway.

"If she wants to talk shit about me to her boyfriend, that's one thing. But him, talking shit about me, to her? What's he trying to do? Turn my own sister against me?"

"I get it, Rafe. I really do." You nod, an amused smile on your lips as you tug him out of the front door and towards his truck. "But you promised Sarah you'd be nice, remember?"

"I am being nice." He protests with his hands tapping at his chest. "I didn't even fucking touch him."

You scoff lightly as you strap Rafe in his passenger seat, noting the way his eyes begin to flutter shut. Humming softly, you poke a cold finger at his cheek and watch as they blink open again.

"I'm taking you home, okay?" You murmur gently.

"No!" He objects, large hand circling your wrist. He rubs his forehead with the other one, trying to remember something. "Got a meeting in the morning. Ward is gonna flip if he thinks I've been out all night fucking around."

You look at him uncertainly, waiting for the thing that you don’t want him to say, but know he will.

"Your house? Please?"

There was a time when sleepovers with Rafe were a common practice. Sometimes, after parties like this, with Kelce and Topper.

Other times when you convinced the boys to binge a new movie or TV series, usually ending with at least two of them falling asleep. Rafe made a habit of grumbling his critiques of the things he watched, but always stayed up with you.

For a while, when he hit an especially rough patch with his dad and spent more nights than he would've liked getting high out of his mind.

As much as he'd tried not to pull anybody else into it, he found himself seeking comfort in the warmth of your bed. It helped that you always received him with open arms, even when his early morning phone calls were disorienting and he cried silently into your shirt in the hours after.

Those nights felt so distant, and yet, like you could touch them if you reached out just far enough.

Rafe had girlfriends on and off, and sometimes that version of him felt like a stranger. You felt a strange pity for yourself when you realized that it might've been a good thing. That he was getting better and without falling back on a crutch, even if that crutch was you. Suddenly, him sleeping at your house felt weird and misplaced more than anything else.

"I don't know, Rafe...," you begin to trail off, but the blue desperation in his eyes makes you reconsider. He's still holding tenderly at your wrist. "Fine. But if you puke on my sheets, you're done. Do you hear me?"

Whether or not Rafe hears you is unclear, but you take the delirious smile forming on his lips as a non-verbal affirmation. He huffs out a long breath as if he can feel himself finally relaxing. His eyes start to close again, too, as you start his truck and drive the short way to your house.

"Don't even think about falling asleep on me, Cameron. I am not lugging you up the stairs."

"You're strong." He reasons smoothly, lids still shut as he smirks. "You were about to deck the shit out of Aron Andersen when I found you."

Getting Rafe up to your bedroom goes better than you'd imagined, now with a few years of experience under your belt.

You get him to sit down on your bed, and he fiddles with the items on your nightstand while you rummage through your armoire for an old pair of his pajamas. He complains when you throw him a pair of sweatpants and a sports t-shirt he used to wear in junior high, claiming that it'd be too tight over his arms and chest.

Plus, he'd added, it was far too hot to be wearing a shirt, anyway.

"I love these."

Changing into sweats of your own, you exit the bathroom to find Rafe sitting up in your bed, part of his bare torso obscured by your white sheets. His attention is fixed on a small group of rings on your bedside table, silver and gold hues reflecting under the dull rays of your lamp.

He slowly picks one up.

"Yeah, I'd hope so." You snort, tentatively slipping into bed next to him and painfully aware of the sorry excuse for space between you. "You got them all for me... kook."

Rafe cracks a sleepy smile, rolling his eyes playfully.

"You wouldn't tell me which one you wanted." He shrugs like it's the simplest thing in the world.

He sets the ring back on the table and switches off your lamp, blanketing the room in a stroke of darkness. Rafe lies on his back and you opt to turn to your side, facing the wall.

Looking at his face only a few inches away from yours, when he's about to sleep in your bed, feels like it will be too much.

"Asking for what you want is weird, Rafe. Nobody likes it."

You chew on your bottom lip in the dark.

"I do." He says in a scoff that turns into a yawn. "How else is anyone gonna know? People don't usually stop you and beg to find out."

You swallow roughly. That was true enough, they didn't.

But Rafe did. He always did. You revered him for it.

There's a long silence between you and all that echoes against the wood framing of your bed are the heavy and sometimes irregular sounds of your and Rafe's breathing.

Against your better judgement, you think he might've fallen asleep and almost turn around to check.

"Is it me?" He asks quietly, voice scratchy with exhaustion. "... what you want?"

You feel your shaky breath hitch in your throat.

"Because if it is... you don't have to ask."

His words linger in the air for as long as it takes your wildly beating hard to calm down.

By the time your body regains some feeling, the sound of Rafe's soft snores pierce the oddly crisp air clouding your room, and the choice to unpack what he said right now, or in the morning, is made for you.

A shiver runs down from the nape of your neck to the tips of yours toes.

Rafe is gone by the time you wake up.

The harsh but comforting sound of rain clangs against your roof, and you stretch your limbs to the thought of a cloudy and obscure summer day.

It's better this way, you think. The absence of Rafe's warmth next to you would feel worse if the sun was shining, teasing.

Your fingers play underneath your comforter to locate your phone. Scrolling through your notifications, you frown seeing that none of them are from Rafe.

In his defense, it was only about 9AM now, and he'd probably just had enough time to take a quick shower, get himself the smallest bit presentable, and still barely make it to his meeting with a client.

The used bathroom towel in your hamper and flannel pajama pants hastily thrown on his side of the bed are compelling indicators.

In his defense, he was drunk, and there was no telling if he remembered anything about last night.

Drowsy proclamations of desire and confession, included.

You wrestle with the idea of calling him and letting it all spill out.

Kissing him on your front lawn, in the rain, with dewy blades of grass nipping at your feet. Hands threading through his wet hair and tugging, hungrily, because you're starving and happy, and these are liberties you can afford in imagination.

But you settle on seeing him later tonight, in person. It's your dad's charity after all.

"I just wish you would have told me earlier." Your disappointed words hang in the air for a few moments as you play with the hem of your silky baby blue dress.

Your father had mentioned to you once before that his new business partner had a son about your age, newly graduated from UC Irvine.

He hadn't mentioned, though, that this mystery guy would be attending the charity tonight, and he'd offered you up as his own personal tour guide.

Your father hadn't used the word date explicitly, but that's what it felt like when you were handed an odd-smelling bouquet of flowers, standing awkwardly next to the brunette who you were apparently to keep the company of all night, though he might as well have been a stranger.

Daniel was nice enough.

He complimented your dress and your makeup, smiled and pulled out your chair before you sat down at your assigned table.

But it felt weird accepting praise and chivalry from him when your heart was busy beating erratically at the simple thought that your dress matched Rafe's eyes.

The venue is extravagant like it always is, what with it's elaborate crystal chandeliers, ice sculptures, and floral center pieces larger than your head.

At your table, you note your and Daniel's name cards labeling your seats. Next to them, are Topper, Kelce, and Rafe's. There's a sixth seat that has no label and you tilt your head to the side thoughtfully, considering that Topper or Kelce must be bringing a date.

"This place is incredible. Your dad is so impressive." Daniel says in awe from the seat next to you. His eyes trail around the room, wide in amazement, reflecting back all the vibrant lights in the brown of his pupils.

You smile weakly at him, tucking a strand of loose hair behind your ear that always seems to take flight despite your attention to detail.

"Yeah, he's really something. Likes to orchestrate a big show. You should see him at the winter ball. Live doves, and everything."

Daniel nods, moving on to say something that starts to sound unintelligible when something else piques your interest. Someone else. Multiple someones, entering the banquet hall.

Craning your neck, you make out Topper and Rafe. And a girl.

No. Topper... and Rafe and a girl. She has her arm tucked around Rafe's as he escorts her in the direction of your table. He's wearing the grey tux you like, the one he wore to Rose's sister's wedding with the ornate thread detailing. His smile makes the two halves of your heart squeeze together.

"Hey, you okay? You're squeezing that wine glass pretty tight there."

Daniel likely means well, eyeing the way your fist clenches around the stem of the glass you've yet to take a sip from. You shoot him an embarrassed smile and release your straining fingers.

An emotional support water bottle sounds like it would be really nice right now.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just a little nervous... my dad always gives a speech at these things." You explain.

As the trio begins to approach, you realize it's Shelley Thompson gripping Rafe's arm, a sweet girl you knew from the Kook Academy.

Even now, she always waves when you run into her at the Island Club, and she has a swing on the golf course like no other.

She's a good match for Rafe. You hate to admit it, but it's true.

When Daniel speaks again, you can barely hear him.

"I'm sure you have nothing to worry about." Daniel chuckles. "I have a hard time imagining that your dad would be bad at anything..."

Topper, having heard the tail-end of your conversation, plunks himself down in the chair across from yours and rubs his forehead tiredly. You shudder at the way he smiles empathetically at you. Like there's something to be consoled about.

"Hangover?" You ask, shoving the shaky feeling down and shooting him a teasing smirk.

He groans loudly and buries his face in his hands.

"That's the understatement of the year. Feels like I'm getting my skull bashed in." He mutters through the skin, then he peels his head away and grimaces at the screechy music being played. If there was one thing your dad was bad it, it was decent music taste. Topper laughs heartily, shaking his head. "Then again, maybe I am."

The lightheartedness is interrupted for a moment as Rafe and Shelley pull up to the table, taking their seats accordingly. Rafe rakes his eyes over Daniel for a few seconds, but otherwise stays silent and it makes you frown. You look at him, desperately trying to uncover if he remembers any details from last night, but his expression is unreadable.

Shelley, on the other hand, grins at you enthusiastically and starts to chat with you about the time she interned at your dad's company.

You find yourself glancing at Rafe every so often, each time catching him staring blankly ahead or at his lap, and always fidgeting with his fingers.

"Who's this?" He asks suddenly, nodding his head at the man next to you.

"Oh." You swallow. "This is Daniel."

Finding that insufficient, Daniel takes it as an opportunity to formally introduce himself.

"That's me." Daniel waves sheepishly, gently squeezing your shoulder with his other hand. "Y/N's been showing me around. Well, her and her dad. I really love what Mr. Y/L/N's been doing with his company. He does some incredible work out here. It's not often that you see-,"

Topper snickers when he cuts him off.

"Maybe he should've been your date."

Daniel laughs it off, blushing slightly and concealing it in a short cough. But you kick Topper under the table in retaliation, ignoring the way he holds his shin and groans out a soft "Ow!".

After that, Shelley, Topper, and Daniel divulge into conversation, shifting from topic to topic and at some points, sharing boisterous laughs together.

Rafe keeps his lips pressed together and his words concise. While you fiddle with your utensils, you feel his eyes on you, igniting heat under your skin.

He stares at you hard, like he's waiting for you to say something. Begging, even, with the way his forehead tenses and his brow stays quirked.

But you didn't know what to say.

Or maybe you didn't know how to say it. Especially not here. Especially not when he had a date.

Rafe rolls his eyes and chews on the inside of his cheek, standing from the table abruptly, the movement making the cutlery tremble.

"Hey, I have an idea." He says while tugging on Shelley's hand. "Let's dance."

You watch as Shelley squeals with excitement, jumping from her seat to follow Rafe towards the center of the large room where the music is playing.

"Couldn't pay me to get closer to that band." Topper mumbles offhandedly. You're sure he's trying to make it sting less, but some pains don't have a perfect antidote.

Daniel sends you a look, silently asking if you want to join them.

"Maybe later." You reply quietly.

Watching Rafe wrap his arm around Shelley's waist, you feel your heart sink slowly into your stomach.

In the middle of Daniel's rambling and Topper's occasional acknowledging hums, you rise from your seat and stumble into the courtyard for some fresh air.

Surely, your heart would keep sinking if you saw any more, and your heels were too tight to fit anything else.

The courtyard is a beautiful mix of greenery, fairy lights, and concrete statues, but it does little to ease the ache in your chest. You sit on a stone bench and try to control your breathing with your head between your knees.

Though it's turbulent and shallow at best.

"What's wrong?"

You know it's Rafe without looking up. Sighing into the palms of your hand, you slide them down from your face and lift your head up. Surely, your makeup is smudged, and the thought makes you more miserable.

"Nothing." You say more sharply than you intended. "Nothing's wrong. Just go away, Rafe."

He looks at you completely scandalized.

"Are you... mad at me?"

You let out a deep breathe, averting your gaze to the ground as you collect yourself. "No, I'm not mad. Why would I be mad?"

Rafe scoffs, entirely unconvinced. He rakes a hand through his hair in frustration.

"Well, fuck, if this is 'not mad', then I don't want to see what mad looks like."

"Can you just drop it? Please, Rafe? Drop it?" You beg, sniffling slightly as you stand. You hadn't noticed when your cheeks started to get wet. Likely too much in denial.

Despite the way it's honoured you in the past, crying was offering no release at this point. It's not like any of this was Rafe's fault. Even if he had gotten your hopes up last night, he wasn't obligated to act on drunken pillow talk. Maybe he hadn't meant it in the first place and was only trying to make you feel better.

"You won't talk to me." He says sadly.

You bite down on every explanation you want to give him. Chest pain heavy and unrelenting.

"Just... go back to Shelley, Rafe. She's probably waiting for you."

Rafe looks puzzled when the words fall weakly out of your mouth.

Then, he nods, like something finally clicks for him. He meets your eyes with fervor as he presses his lips together.

"So, this is about Shelley?" He asks.

Your head hangs and silence intensifies between you. It speaks for itself.

"The same Shelley that's been fucking Kelce on and off for the past two years?"

He watches your mouth fall open and eyebrows furrow, continuing as you stare at him.

"Kelce promised to take her out on a real date, but then he got caught up at work... asked me to keep Shelley company until he showed up. We didn't come here together, together, Y/N. I thought you knew that."

Your mind buzzes as he speaks, bottom lip wedged under your teeth.

So, he wasn't here with Shelley. And he probably did remember both what he heard and said last night if he could recognize that you were jealous.

Jealous. It makes you squeeze your eyes shut. The feeling was always two-fold. A person would feel jealous, then humiliated that they had. You don't know which one is worse.

You peak an eye open, chewing through your words. "Why couldn't Topper do it?"

"Have you met Topper?"

That was a good point.

Still reeling from the new information, you look down at your lap pensively.

"But you did." Rafe begins after a few beats of silence. When you frown in confusion, he clarifies. "... come here with someone."

You crane your neck up to look at him. There's something you can't place in his eyes, but it's cloudy and all-consuming. His hair is a mess from the way he's been ruffling through it, and his cheeks are flushed and tight.

"What, Daniel? Are you kidding me? I only brought him because my dad ask-," you begin to explain, but Rafe cuts you off.

"I don’t care why he thinks he can touch you. I just want him to stop.”

Despite the small gust of wind that blows past you both, you feel a warmth at the base of your neck... in the palms of your hands. Maybe it was the beams of light overhead, illuminating your bodies amidst the greenery.

Or, maybe it was just Rafe's words.

The intensity of his gaze. The way he steps towards you as he speaks them, warm hand eventually reaching out to graze over your cheek in a way that makes you gasp in a mixture of shock and excitement.

For a moment, you think about yourself and the many soul-crushing nights spent watching Rafe talk to and touch and kiss other people, the overlapping visuals making you queasy.

"I know the feeling." You say quietly, hot breath fanning over his face.

Rafe frowns a little, soaking up the meaning of your words. He nudges his face closer to yours, until your noses are touching and his lips just barely graze over the pair he desperately wants to taste. He draws back suddenly, suspending all the air in your lungs.

He eyes you cautiously, challenging silently as he licks his lips.

"Not gonna do anything unless you ask."

You nearly cry out in response. "Rafe, please. I... I want you." Ignoring the way your desperation makes your skin feel tingly and your head spin, you shut your eyes tightly, realizing that only really skimmed the surface. You try again, gulping. "I've always wanted you."

"Fuck." He breathes out, eyes fluttering shut. "Never stop saying that."

Stifling the sound of another whine from your lips, Rafe kisses you feverishly.

He moves his soft lips in tandem with yours, swallowing each of your breathy moans. One of his hands traces over the swell of your jaw while the other stretches tenderly around your throat. "Know what I wanted to do when I saw you sitting there next to him?"

You nearly scream in protest when Rafe pulls his lips off yours, but fall silent when he trails kisses down from your jaw to your neck and collarbones, sloppily sucking the skin then laving his tongue over the afflicted areas. Unsatisfied until your pushing his head away from the sensitivity.

"Wanted to knock his fucking teeth out." He murmurs with his head buried in the crook of your neck, inhaling your scent and leaving searing kisses. "But I don't do that shit anymore. So I'll ruin his night a different way."

Rafe moves your body with his until the backs of your knees hit the concrete bench. Your mouth falls open as he sits you down on it, kneeling in front of you. He presses a ticklish kiss to your knee and his bright blue eyes peer up at you through his lashes. When you nod, he parts your thighs and pulls your panties down in a single unbroken movement, committing every second to memory.

He stares longer than he should, groaning at the way your wetness collects on his finger when he traces a finger over your slit, spreading you apart.

"Can't believe," he moans into your mound, running the flat of his tongue over your center again and again. "... you kept me from this pussy for so long."

You throw your head back at the sensation, finding nothing but air and Rafe to support you as pulls you closer to his mouth.

"That," you say in a broken moan at the feeling of Rafe's tongue inside you. "That's your fault, remember? I was always here — shit! Waiting for you.”

Rafe hums against your pussy at that, neither agreeing or disagreeing. His nose nudges your clit as he tastes you greedily. You tug at his hair to dissipate some of the energy building inside your core, but it only makes Rafe work harder.

"Didn't think I deserved you." He admits, pink lips mesmerizing and wet with your slick and his spit. Rafe takes your clit into his mouth and sucks obscenely, the slurping sound sending a flash of heat through you. "Doesn't matter now. I'm good at making up for lost time..."

Your thighs clamp around Rafe's head as he fucks you with his tongue. It's only now, as gasps and high-pitched sounds fall wantonly from your lips that you come to the reality that you're letting Rafe eat you out in the courtyard, and anybody from the party could come here and find you. Still, you moan less controlled than you would have hoped when he suckles at your clit again, drinking at your sopping pussy.

"Hey, have some common decency, huh? There's some very nice people in there trying to enjoy a party."

Rafe smirks when you pull at his hair even harder, mostly at the thought that you think it could be reprimanding when he likes it so much. His teasing does more to turn you on than you'd care to admit and he can tell with the way you gush around him.

"One of em's your date." He adds, laughing slightly as he curls his tongue inside you. Entranced at the way it makes you whimper and writhe like putty under him. He starts rubbing your clit with his thumb at the same time, chasing the crest of your orgasm. "C'mon, baby. Give it to me. Come all over my tongue."

Your release makes your back rise off of the slab of cement you're seated on, thighs slotted over Rafe's shoulders as he licks you through your climax.

The pleasure is insurmountable, your mouth falling open and your eyes screwing shut as that familiar feeling completely overwhelms your senses, the burn of your elbows against the cement keeping you anchored to the ground.

Rafe smiles when you pull him by the belt of his dress pants to capture his mouth in a long and sweet kiss. It helps clean up the residual wetness.

By the time Kelce makes it your father's charity event, he sighs tiredly into the crown of Shelley's head, pressing a wet kiss there in greeting. On his way in, he got trapped in a conversation with your father and some guy he'd never seen before named Daniel who was more inclined to kiss your dad's ass than he was to breathe.

Finally taking his seat next to a very drunk Topper, he squints his eyes at the sight before him. You and Rafe, unable to keep your hands off each other, giggling at nothing in particular. And when not giggling, kissing.

"Are you seeing this shit?" Kelce asks Topper, gesturing towards his two closest friends shoving their tongues down each other's throats. Shamelessly, at that.

"Dude." Topper groans, sighing like this was no surprise to him. "Where the fuck have you been?"

a/n: thank you for reading! comments/reblogs appreciated!!

#rafe cameron #rafe cameron x reader #rafe cameron smut #outer banks #outer banks fanfiction #outer banks x reader #rafe x reader #i love writing completely ridiculous and unhinged side characters #topper too i always make him so weird LMAO #this is a lil rough around the edges but !! whatevrrr

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elodieunderglass · 3 months ago

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this feels like a strange question but in light of your info about how jockeys don't usually know or train with the horses they race on - what are jockeys..... for? what is the jockey doing that the horse couldn't be trained to do independently? does a good or bad jockey make a significant difference to how well a given horse does in a race?

Right?!

In a way, asking what the jockey’s for also asks the question of “why race horses?” Why do it at all, and why horses?

We sort of do it because horses are fast and exciting, and because they do what we tell them, even though it’s not in their nature. Because it’s not their nature, they have a jockey.

I’ve put this under a “Keep Reading” to save your dash.

Horses could be trained to race by themselves to some extent, but it wouldn’t be like greyhound racing - greyhounds are sighthounds, running perfectly reasonable dog software on top of ancient and serviceable dog hardware, practicing a variation of hunting behaviour. Horses wouldn’t do this; they have little desire to chase a mechanical rabbit. they have even less plan than a greyhound about what they’d do if they caught it. (Also, in terms of animal welfare, greyhound racing isn’t widely celebrated; loose animals running around aren’t better off than controlled ones.)

Racing-to-find-a-winner is not herding behaviour, even though some horses do seem to possess a natural interest in the topic. You could train some of them to understand better, and that’s what racehorse training is, but the way we have of training that is to put someone on their back to explain to them what their job is, so it all becomes circular anyway. Why do it? Why not? Why do humans race horses? Why race horses? We could just race snails; it’d be cheaper!

One answer is that when horses just Go, it isn’t super Fun. They mostly Go to pieces.

The jockey is the pilot, or software, who understands the situation and has a goal to achieve. The horse is not an engine, but a thinking animal; they have their own goals and interests, which are often satisfied by just running around in a predator-confusing fashion with their friends for 2 minutes, and then crashing into a car, eating hot chips and lying. Most of them do not really care how long 3 minutes is, what a mile means, what “pacing” is, or what “winning” is. They just have Go, and so they do that for a bit, and then fuck off.

I guess another metaphor would be Mario Kart. There are various combinations of automated and human players in a game of Mario Kart, and if racing was just about going fast, the fastest vehicle should always win. But a decent human player can beat the NPCs even if the human hasn’t bothered min/maxxing a vehicle, just because they can be moderately smart about how to race. An adult can often beat a child at Mario Kart, even if the adult takes a much worse vehicle, because in theory, brains/experience/strategy/planning factor into “who wins a race,” and we LIKE that.

Same with car racing. Why not just race autonomous vehicles? In F1, where they build their own cars, why not include the driving software in the design? Or why not remote-control them? Why bother strapping a poor driver into a flameproof suit? Fans will tell you it’s strategy. The human driver uses tactics and responsiveness and skill - but, below all this, the dark red thread of the human is risking their life and we like that.

In theory, jockeys are more intelligent than thoroughbreds, and have more of a plan: setting pace, knowing what time is, changing strategy, evaluating stamina, conducting the horse safely through traffic and over jumps, and adding a complicating element of human interest. In practice, it’s believed that they have relatively little influence on race outcomes - a bad jockey on a good horse can win or lose a race; a good jockey on a bad horse usually just loses; oh, what the hell, let’s just race snails instead - but without the jockeys, you’d have to change the name of the sport to Horses Wandering Around A Carpark Kicking Lumps Off Each Other.

Here is a bunch of baby steeplechasers practicing the concept of Go in such a way that nobody gets to Go at all. After the un-mounted Snow Dragon wipes out most of the other horses and jockeys, all of the loose horses go faster without the weight of their riders, but after an initial show of interest in the concept, the loose horses all lose interest and focus.

youtube

It was funny (because nobody was hurt) but it wasn’t what anyone really wanted. In theory, that’s what the jockey is for: they’re supposed to be the adult, in a game where you can win by doing that.

But none of it has to be happening, any more than Investments need to be Managed, you know? It would also be fine if we didn’t! Michael O’Sullivan, an Irish jockey, just died racing this very week and there’s the dark red thread again: the human is risking their life.

The consumption of animal and human in an ancient sport is fascinating and visceral and compelling; but you’re right to question it; none of it has to be that way.

As for the second half of your question: a bad jockey can make a good horse lose. A good jockey cannot make a bad horse win. But most people and most horses are not particularly exceptional, or particularly anything at all; they are just workers running in a circle.

Top jockeys on average horses win more often than other people on average horses. Top jockeys and champions exist, with year-on-year records and recorded material evidence of their decision-making and risks paying off, indicating that there’s consistency of winning across skill and experience that makes their success better-than/random; it would be worth doing a study controlling for the fact that top people are offered the best mounts.

It’s a test of horsemanship, too. Achieving flow - nonverbal command of an animal and fellow athlete, and sympathy together, such that they respect and trust you - having just met the animal - is an achievement of many skills, and if you broke a jockey’s skills down into different types, most ordinary people couldn’t do any of them. No core strength, no balance, bad hands, bad posture, no sense of body positioning, no internal timer, no ability to psychically mind-meld with an unhinged animal you don’t know personally… they’re all fairly rare, and it’s something else to make it complex and interesting for people who like that sort of thing.

Personally, I just like Killie’s little problems and the drama around them. The racing industry itself could collapse tomorrow, rendering Killie’s story historical fiction, and I’d be just as happy.

#jockeyposting 🏇

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gayspacepiratesss · 3 months ago

Text

TL; DR: Saving Minrathous allows Neve to hope.

(Saving Treviso allows Lucanis to forgive, but that's another story for another day.)

***

Every companion in DATV hits a character crux during the game, but Neve's and Lucanis's characters -- being linked to the cities they love -- are especially interesting to me.

In particular I think Neve's character is a brilliant navigation of the issues the devs faced in representing the Tevinter Imperium. In previous games, Tevinter is an ancient shadow empire of blood mages and oligarchy; if Ferelden is roughly medieval Britain and Orlais is roughly medieval France, Tevinter is the remnants of the ancient Roman empire, with a hefty number of Nero-like rulers (sadistic, debauched, unchecked) still in residence.

So: how do you make that a place the player can root for? You write the story of the resistance. The anti-slavery Shadow Dragons make sense as Rook's allies, and their work is important. But Neve is how DATV tells the story of Tevinter's losers: the vast majority of regular people, who aren't mages or oligarchs or magisters, but still have to get by in this violent, corrupt place.

Neve has been manipulated and disappointed by institutions her whole life (like, let's be real, most poc and women and lqgbtq+ folks irl). She has enough privilege to protect herself: she's a mage born in a world that prizes magic. But she's not rich, and she's too fiercely ethical to take the shortcuts that would allow her to accumulate power. If you travel with her long enough, she'll tell you about the relatives who were only kind to her because they wanted to use her status as mage, and the uncle who was different. When she's in Lucanis's family home in Antiva, he complains about decorating, and she tells him her entire Minrathous apartment could fit in one room. Her clothes are well-tailored because she knows that looking good is a kind of power, but she'll explain to Bellara that it's not because she actually HAS rich patrons; she just dresses to look as if she might. She knows how to use the theater of wealth, but at the end of the day she's firmly working class, surviving off street food and bad coffee above a second-rate bookshop.

Neve loves Dock Town, sees how badly Tevinter's institutions have failed her community, and is deeply, fiercely protective of the weak and the vulnerable. If you drop a coin in a beggar's plate, she'll drop one too, and ask if they have shelter for the night. Hal insists he owes her free fish, but notice: every time, she says "Sure, next time, Hal," and pays him anyway. She knows he can't afford to give away business, but she'll never embarrass him by pointing this out. This is the same instinct that makes her so sweet to Bellara back at the Lighthouse: her elvhen fangirl is an open book, completely emotionally vulnerable, and Neve is immediately ready to look after her.

(It's also the instinct, I think that keeps her from confronting Rook about [redacted for spoilers] -- how terrifying would it be to fall for someone with that much of a blind spot?? But she's not going to kick Rook while they're down, and she can't help being drawn to them. Like, her fear is justified. It's not a great start to a relationship.)

But Neve is also a realist: she knows she CAN'T protect everyone, no matter how hard she fights. Over and over she's seen bad actors like Aelia slip through the cracks, and good guys like Brom (who ... maybe she had a thing for? some of her notes, idk) get killed trying to make it right. So when Rook meets Neve, this is the open question for her: CAN you make the world a better place? Can you illuminate the dark corners, and lift up the downtrodden, without compromising your own values? Or is it always already a hopeless proposition?

If Rook saves Treviso, and lets Minrathous burn, that's Neve's last straw. She stops looking. There's no way to be better than the Archon or the magisters, and so she'll join the Red Threads to beat them at their own game. Unlike Lucanis, she's still romanceable in this state, because ultimately she's still fighting for the things she loves; she just doesn't really believe in the future anymore. There's a pretty sad version of Neve's story in here, especially if you choose her to dismantle the wards in endgame. It's possible for her to lose everything she ever believed in. I've seen a lot of angry people complaining on the internet that her line at the end of her last companion quest -- "This is MY city now" -- is aggressive and cliché, but these people seem mainly to have saved Treviso and to not understand, as a result, how Neve's character is limited by the circumstances they've engineered. The complaint that her voice acting is hard, guarded, or flat is missing the point: her PERSONALITY is hard, guarded, and flat unless and until you help her believe that gentleness can be rewarded.

If you SAVE Minrathous, I think, Neve's character can have the most beautiful arc -- and her romance makes the most sense here, because as she begins to hope that her efforts in Dock Town might actually make a difference, she also begins to let her guard down. Both these things scare her shitless. Being visible (letting the citizens of Dock Town SEE her fight for them, letting Rook show her some risks are worth taking) is really scary. But if you save Minrathous, Neve begins to hope that there's a future for the soft, sweet, and vulnerable creatures of the world -- and that includes herself.

When her voice starts to crack in the later romance scenes, when her brow crinkles with anxiety and her eyes go wide and soft -- that's the reward for saving Minrathous. That's Neve Gallus with a future.

#neve gallus #datv #datv positive #dragon age the veilguard #dragon age #neve romance #character analysis #my art

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altraviolet · 6 months ago

Note

Oh! I just remembered something about your story I’ve been meaning to ask. I noticed maybe.. 3 times that some bots beginning to explain something to soundwave, and then instead say something like “Ah, you don’t care anyways.” Soundwave always responds in his mind “You don’t know how I feel.” I could be wrong but I don’t think that was ever fully addressed in your story. Like, soundwave just lets it slide. Why exactly? Also even after some people get to know him somewhat they still assume that?

ahhh the "you don't know what i care about" line. one of my favorite recurring threads throughout the fic :D

it's not so much "soundwave just lets it slide," it's that Soundwave Cares About Rodimus, and the three times that line is used, he cannot/will not expose this secret of his to the person he's talking to.

First time:

[Rodimus] “Can I come in?” Soundwave stepped aside. Rodimus slouched on his bed. He looked up at Soundwave. He glanced at the poster of them on Enceladia. His spoiler went down. “You don't care about anything, right?” ?? you don't know what i care about “Well?” “Incorrect. Several... things are important to me.”

Here Soundwave is talking with Rodimus, so he's obviously not going to say anything. It's far too early in the fic for that. The phrase combined with "several things are important to me" is a signal to the reader that Soundwave cares about Rodimus.

Second time:

“That's what I felt during the gray years,” said Drift. He reset his vocalizer. “That's why Rodimus couldn't fix it. He tried so hard to make me happy again. He was so happy when we- I mean, he and I-” Drift's eyes flashed. “Never mind. You wouldn't care.” you don't know what i care about, thought Soundwave as Drift hurried away. His processor chewed on Drift's words, repeating them over and over. “That's why Rodimus couldn't fix it. That's why Rodimus couldn't fix it.”

Here Soundwave is talking to Drift, and he's extremely not going to tell Drift what he cares about.

Side note: these paragraphs tie up the gray years from Soundwave's point of view. The reason Rodimus couldn't fix Drift's hurt is because Drift didn't love him the way he loved Ratchet. The only thing that would've made Drift feel better is Ratchet.

Third time:

Swerve held up the data pad and whistled. “Wow, there's a lot of really specific requests on here. Things I haven't served since...” His gaze moved to a model replica of the Lost Light behind the bar, surrounded by a few dusty, empty bottles. “Since... never mind. You won't care.” you don't know what i care about

Here Soundwave is talking to 0001 Swerve back in the 0001 dimension. He wouldn't waste his time correcting Swerve's assertion. Swerve assumes Soundwave wouldn't care about the Lost Light. He does, but he can't say why without having to answer a ton of questions. Also, shortly after he spots 0001 Rodimus. There's no reason to engage in conversation with this Swerve, whom he will never see again.

Another side note: Soundwave stating openly to himself that he cares about something, in defiance of assured statements by other characters, shows how he's changed since the very beginning.

So this isn't an unaddressed, loose thread. It's a deliberate demonstration of Soundwave's character change and a realistic portrayal of how he would react in those situations: he often defaults to silence.

#flowawa69 #ask #echo garden related

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starberry-cupcake · 1 month ago

Text

I'm still kinda sick and on antibiotics (hopefully getting better) but I needed to recap because I CANNOT BELIEVE the thing I predicted I 👏 AM👏 LOSING👏 IT👏

previously in nona del 9:

this happened

this is the general tag of all the recaps

CHAPTER 26 (fourth house skull for some reason????)

the party is ready to move and pyrrha is carrying gideon like a sack of papas 🥔

I think pyrrha likes carrying gideon because she's like the child she never had

gideon is playing dead and nona thinks she's very good at it

she's had a lot of practice being dead and not quite dead

we suffer almost has a heart attack when yandere chad's body showed up and palmolive had to explain the situation

looking at it from like a totally uninvolved perspective, what a group of people coming out from the club

here's an artistic rendition I made with markers in 3 minutes

I considered, after making it, doing it properly and not putting out there a 3 minute marker doodle that may embarrass me, but I think this captures it well enough and cringe is dead, anyway

If I messed up anyone's hair, I'm sorry, I sometimes fill in the blanks with my imagination of the appearance details I don't remember

we suffer wants to help treat camilla and she isn't very into it but palmolive orders for all the pain meds they can give

I also want camilla to be well and not suffer but let's try to not get her high as a satellite right now

they have to separate them in to vehicles and camilla decides to go with gideon while pyrrha goes with nona, palmolive, coronabeer, judith, we suffer and tsundere pash

nona wonders if she doesn't want to go with palmolive, since they've been attached by the green thread of the queerplatonic bound since he got inside chad's body

I hope chad is very aware that palmolive got into his body, I hope he knows

camilla says she's getting sick of palmolive and parts with a cute little gentle forehead touch

tsundere pash nope-d out of sharing a car with gideon real fast

they position judith on her side, like I do when I'm not feeling well

and coronabeer is worrying for her wet mouse girlfriend

palmolive can't help judith further, while in chad's body

coronabeer says judith has come so far and fought so hard and palmolive says she's gonna have to fight some more

we suffer asks palmolive about the shuttle and he says "secure" which is the understatement of the century, but that's between him and...maybe not god, in this case

between him and nona

we suffer says that the sixth is being moved around underground like some eternal delivery service

few things are more torturing to me personally than to be moved around in a vehicle for so long

I would never cease throwing up

when they're theorizing about the specific location, nona remembers "fucking nuts man, fucking nutter" and little green fruits

pyrrha says it's a classic BOE move "fucking insane, surprisingly effective, relies on a lot of soldiers pissing in a lot of bottles"

tsundere pash is trying not to laugh at that but we all notice anyway

nona looks at how we suffer sits elegantly and thinks she would learn to imitate that if it was another time, but currently what she feels is "some kind of sorrow related to legs"

nobody is taking nona notes anymore but I am in my head

we suffer thinks that unjust hope

(who seems to be in charge of the merv wing)

(who were the ones doing all that shooting in the school, if memory serves)

is not gonna pull any punches if they're found out

palmolive asks if there's any way to make their odds better and tsundere pash is very rude about it

like, extremely rude

it's wild to me that these people are so rude to people they know for a fact could murder them in the blink of an eye if they wanted

but tsundere pash is nothing if not tsundere

pyrrha is looking at tsundere pash with some sort of softness that tsundere pash also feels very tsundere about and nona doesn't know what to do with it

I need to stop using the word, but that's her true essence

palmolive politely apologizes about his insistence because you can definitely take the chad-ness out of the chad if you put a nerd inside him

or whatever

judith makes a sound like she wanted to laugh at palmolive but is falling apart from inside and coronabeer has to soothe her puddle of a girlfriend

nona offers another one of those bombs she drops every now and then and lets everyone know she is aware of where the convoy was earlier that week

remember honesty's terrible gig that got him punched? it's back!

we suffer doesn't quite trust a kid's intel and nona tells her she can ask angel teacher for confirmation

nona says honesty would never snitch to a cop (good!) and that she doesn't think he'd tell her either, since she's out of the gang for being a zombie

it's been a difficult week for nona

pyrrha volunteers to go with nona to talk to him but nona thinks it'd be best for her to go alone and, if all fails, scream like she did before, because that would impress honesty

she knows her kiddos

nona starts sort of disassociating from her body, recognizing sensations but as if she wasn't the one feeling them

which is something to underline in the nona notes

nona gets to honesty's place and honesty doesn't feel well opening the door to her because he knows what went on in the shooting

nona says she respects him for it, because listening to sriracha girlie is top priority

"if you can push a bullet out your head your hair's probably okay"

honesty is always imparting the wisdom of the common man, I'm here for it

they go back and forth about whether to call this a matter of life and death or non-death or how it'd be appropriate to call it

since death is kind of blurry for nona right now, with all the people not quite dead around her

nona tells him that, after, this, she's going away and she wants him to keep her money and also her cleaning rag with turpentine, which he can sell

turns out sriracha girlie is also there and honesty tells her that he wants to help nona because she cares so much about him being an entrepreneur and is looking out for his business

it's all very cute, minus the part where a minor has to sell drugs and weapons to make a living

nona tells them that it's not only her, that other necromancers are also going to leave after this

sriracha girlie doesn't think it's possible but they decide to help nona with the location

sriracha girlie knows the intel isn't for nona to read, so honesty goes to print it

nona gives sriracha girlie some requests before her leaving, including that the next teacher aide should be nice to the tinies because it's not their fault they're small

are we all crying or is it just me??

nona also asks honesty to not do jobs like the one that got them this intel ever again and that there's enough in her savings for him to stay safe

sriracha girlie tells nona the secret of her name, which is that she likes hot sauce because you can put it on anything

makes sense to me

she also tells nona she'll always love her and nona is now also crying

and that she's in the gang again but on eternal kevin bathroom duty because she's a zombie

we love kevin

hope these kids don't die, I really do, but at this point, we're all in danger

CHAPTER 27 (second house skull!! judith time??? pyrrha time??? who knows!!)

with the intel from honesty, we suffer starts back "operation lock and key"

not to put to shame the entirety of BOE but a bunch of kids just did a better job

pyrrha is chatty towards we suffer about commander amanda wake and says she likes talking to people who knew her

even if she (and og!gideon) killed her

not the most complicated relationship in this book series, even then

pyrrha also mentions that commander abigail wake had tsundere pash's photo on her

and says wake said "if it wasn't for filth like you, nice kids like this wouldn't have to hold these"

kind of wild hearing her having a mentor relationship to a kid whereas gideon was a tool to gain something

tsundere pash says that commander agatha wake was her aunt

gideon now has a dad, a cousin, a stepdadmom, a title and renown but it's not the way she wanted it

hell of a monkey paw

nona keeps having this sort of disconnection from her own body

a ticking time bomb if I've ever seen one, familia

because it wasn't enough chaos already, they start hearing thumps over the vehicle

so pyrrha goes to look at what's going on and comes back with "Sextus, we're fucked"

not those exact words, but that's the sentiment

turns out varun is an RB? was I supposed to assume this???? I didn't think about this

I'm losing my touch over here

pyrrha thought it was going to remain dormant after killing og!gideon because of how things went for cassiopeia when she died

but turns out nope, we don't have that luxury

palmolive doesn't think it's caused by yandere twin's soul

pyrrha says there are already heralds out there and that they'd need at least three fully capable lyctors to attempt to fight back

judging by the display we saw in the last book, not even a bunch of competent lyctors is enough

although judging a lyctor "competent" can be a bit of an oxymoron at times

judith starts trembling violently and coronabeer is trying to hold it together with stern soothing words

their love language

I think everyone is internally judith right now, though

nona stands up and has the opinion that two feet is the worst amount of feet, which also goes to my nona notes

she didn't originally have feet maybe? I'm wondering?

tsundere pash is ready to point her gun but palmolive asks her to put it down and also asks nona to talk to him

but nona isn't listening and she exits the truck's cover

there are a lot of herald pods dropping, which is the sound they've been hearing, so we're not doing well

nona then shouts at varun "You said you wouldn't do anything weird!"

we can't say she didn't try

she did ask him

also, nona has been listening to a resurrection beast this whole time

in comes judith, though, and starts talking again like that time nona heard her and nobody else seemed to

she says "get him" and "he flees" and nona says she doesn't want to

not!judith says "you asked for help" "all for nothing, only pain" "I gave you blood for blood"

is judith varun's voice? is she channeling him or...??

nona says "not like this, I love this place" and not!judith goes "do you love?" to which nona responds "Did I ever know what it meant?"

you know, I've been wondering about that for a minute

not!judith again talks about the "green thing" and says "Green-and-breathing thing, big ghost, the drinker, transformed, what will you eat now? Where will your body go? What did he do to you, to make you this way? You eat yourself. I gorge on unliving marrow"

nona thinks they're talking about judith and asks them to stop hurting her

I thought they were talking about nona at first, because nona is also killing the body she's in, as far as we know

and if it's ice cube barbie with something weird or whatever idk what she is or she was

so it's up in the air to me what it's really about tbh

not!judith who might be varun's voice for all I know says "I crossed the face of the universe, I poison it to match my grief" which would check out with what we know

maybe it's more like this

not!judith that might be varun says "for 8 thousand unjust bodies I will stop"

8 thousand bodies??? in this economy??????

not!judith that might be varun says they came to help and are made a mockery and "they are coming out of their tower, salt thing. There is a hole at the bottom of their tower. I will pull their teeth. I will make it blank for you"

nona argues that nobody has done anything wrong there to deserve it, except for pyrrha, who did a lot of things wrong, but at least she admits it

and that she's ready to die

nona jumps to them and says "help me do this. I might be different...soon"

judith seems to regain control of her own body, looks at nona and says "Harrowhark?"

nona, who's feeling more and more like her body isn't hers and has to feel the different parts isolated to have sensation, goes "No, and I never was"

JOHN 1:20

"He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, 'I am not the Messiah.'"

nona didn't go to sleep but we've got another johnny boi installment

maybe she passed out

him and not!harrow who might be ice cube barbie are still walking into the building of his past in the post apocalyptic landscape

dr reverend emperor john continues his villain origin story and says that the plan for the first wave exit was still on

he was also still puppeteering the political leader guy, which sometimes led to having to make him say that he had to be stopped

and, while he was at it, in comes mercygirl with some news

the first wave is actually gonna be the only wave because the bazillionares are leaving everyone for dead

wow who would have thought

dr reverend emperor john says he won't let them get away with it

then, they continue the conversation while eating peaches from a can

canned goods take a long time to turn stale but I think these might be expired, johnny man

they decide to alert the government about it, which is a big mistake, it just makes the bazillionares get into a speedrun to get out in space

johnny and the band are really unable to read the room, apparently

cassiopeia asks dr reverend emperor john "can't you do an act of good wizardry?" and isn't that a fantastic question, actually

can you, john? do you want to?

dr reverend emperor john thinks he's limited by the fact that he still can't reach the soul thing

he says there was too much noise around the moment of death in order to pick the soul specifically and retain it

he also mentions that, in case we all forgot, they had a nuke and they might have to use it

he threatens the client government people and says that if they don't stop the ship from going, they're gonna use the nuke they gave them, which would implicate them

meanwhile, nobody suspects the bazillonaires, even if they give the flimsy excuse of "we're just gonna do a test run"

I'd think some people would be rioting on the streets about this, but maybe that's my south american perspective

instead of riots to the government we have cultists turning, though

og!gideon is the one who's gonna take the nuke to the launch

even if pyrrha doesn't want him to go alone

but, before he could go, dr reverend emperor john removed his arm and gave him a new one

because he needed his "material"

"I've got plans for that arm"

and og!gideon was like "alright"

these people are not ok

in the midst of all of this, cassiopeia and nigella get married

btw, I checked back on the dramatis personae in harrowcita to see if I was spelling the name right (since he says N—) and I had totally forgotten for a minute there that Ulysses and Titania the corpses were also a lyctor

fourth house

anyway, they get married like that time there was a marriage ceremony in the courtyard of my uni

dr reverend emperor john makes them a bouquet of roses with teeth

I'm thinking of the awesome fanged flowers by Anastasiya Khramina ( ig @ madame_bloomfang )

I'd screecap them but I've had tumblr block posts from me for similar things before and I don't wanna risk it

when he tells everyone, after the wedding, that he sent og!gideon to his death, everyone goes wild

and he's surprised that they do lmao I hate him

he goes "Guys, it's fine, they're Australian"

is this about that animosity that sometimes comes up between people from New Zealand and people from Australia? I'm sure there's a lot of social and political background about that I'm not aware of

also, to be safe, dr reverend emperor john decides to use his puppet guy to lock himself in with the codes and access the stuff that can blow that whole country to smithereens

everyone thinks this is nuts, except for augustine and mercygirl, who think it's still manageable

I guess it's always those two huh

that's why it bothered him so much that they double crossed him

cassiopeia says "John, your problem is that you care less about being a savior than you do about meting out punishment" "You can be quite the most appallingly vindictive person I have ever met"

this is when the cultists go wild and start killing people

hell of a wedding reception

"I just caught the fucking tooth bouquet at C— and N—'s wedding. What if it didn't matter?"

I want to hurt this man in so many ways

dr reverend emperor john starts using skeletons to fight the cultists but things get out of hand very fast

so he does what he does best, what he did in his bolthole when the beast was coming in, he hid in his room

when dr reverend emperor john and not!harrow who might be ice cube barbie get into the room itself, there's a body in there

the nun goes to ask him to do something and he says he can't find the soul in all the chaos he can sense

the nun is like "brb" and comes back with pyrrha's gun

dr reverend emperor john thinks maybe she wants to kill him, but we aren't so lucky

she says that "fear doesn't help us achieve a state of grace, it deafens the heart", which is very true

she starts praying hail mary/ave maria

and then shoots herself

which like, I want to point out for a moment here, is kind of huge af

considering she was a catholic nun and she killed herself

because she thought that would help him find a way out of this

like, to her beliefs she's knowingly granting him her soul, not only because theoretically she's doing it for him to be able to get how it works, but also because she killed herself

whatever I think about the church's opinion on suicide, for someone who believes in that to knowingly set it aside because they think it might save the world is fucking metal

it's sad that what she did ended up being the catalyst for this douchebag to become what he became

because what she did, for someone with her beliefs, in the midst of chaos, was huge

everyone around this man sacrificed so much for him and he just kept taking, huh

so, he is able to see how it all works and when he touches her soul, he says "I touched you"

"You were so huge and so complicated, and you were screaming. You wouldn't stop screaming. You were so scared. You were so goddamn mad"

remember when I said ice cube barbie could be some sort of earth personification life force thing? should I still put money on that?

DON'T TELL ME

he says that holding a human soul didn't compare to holding "you"

so, dr reverend emperor john exits his room and starts putting souls in bubbles like nega steven universe

augustine and mercygirl are still alive and they hide alongside johnman because the polycule that dies together starts having sex in front of harrow's sopita for distraction together

then he goes "This is the part where I hurt you"

he says he tried to grasp her and that hurt her but he kept trying

the only one alive at that point was og!gideon, so he stopped his heart

he says he ate every single death and that kept hurting her

he also triggered the nukes and the whole chaos that continued erupting further as he went on with the death feast

and that he "helped a hell of a lot of them go before they knew what was happening"

"I put my hands around your neck. I cupped your soul in my hands. I took you into myself and we became one"

he sort of can't keep her inside him though because she (they?) is too immense for that

so he ripped half his ribs and made her out of part of him, sort of eve like

and here he starts describing what he thought about when molding her and he goes "some of Mum's old toys"

no way

"my favorite out of all of them"

NO WAY

"My favorite was her old Hollywood Hair Barbie"

NO FUCKING WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

WHATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

FOLKS

FOLKS WHAT???? I CALLED IT????

ICE CUBE BARBIE IS CANON????????????????

THIS IS CRAZY

ok so, wait, I have a lot to say about this

first of, I had replies saying something like "I can't believe you didn't spoil yourself" and I didn't know what it was about

@lady-harrowhark kept screencaps and I was like "please remind me when I get there" and she said something like "oh, you'll know"

I DIDN'T THINK IT WAS THIS!!!! WHAT????????????

YOU GUYS

I LOOKED UP WHEN I STARTED THE ICE CUBE BARBIE THING

IT WAS BACK IN GIDEON!!!!!!!!!! WHAT???????????

BOOK 1?????????????

I even posted it on april fool's lmao what are the odds

GUYS I'VE BEEN CALLING HER BARBIE FOR OVER A YEAR AND YOU GUYS HAD TO SIT THERE AND WAIT FOR ME TO SEE THAT I WAS RIGHT ABOUT SOMETHING SO INCREDIBLY STUPID

so, here's the thing

I knew there would be a hollywood hair barbie reference somewhere in the books because @lady-harrowhark got one a long time ago, before I started reading, and I have very intense feelings about hollywood hair barbie specifically, so I talked to her about it back then

basically I got her for christmas as a kid, I loved her so much and it got stolen from me during a school camp thing and it was all very sad for me

my mom ruined a contact lens trying to get the hair spray to work in christmas night

anyway, I knew there would be a reference but, in my mind, it was going to be like a mad max thing of someone finding one in some sort of post apocalyptic earth and I forgot all about it

I did not, in a million years, connected that to ice cube barbie

you all know because you've been here but I started calling her that because her description reminded me of the Ghost Barbie from the Haunted Beauty Collection, because my references are very eclectic

this one right here

and then it's history and ice cube barbie it was

if you would have told me this would be what I'd get right in this book, I wouldn't have believed you

this is so crazy and stupid, I love it

I want to thank you all personally and kiss your hands tenderly for having lived with the knowledge of this for over a year and not telling me once that I was right about this

because you guys must have been thinking either I was lying out of my ass and had been spoiled in some way or that I was psychic

thank you so so so much for not telling me about this, I know it must have been so hard

I promise you I didn't cheat, this was entirely a coincidence

I wish I had been right about some cool theory rather than this, but I'll take it

I sent @lady-harrowhark a dm immediately when I read it because I couldn't believe it

is this a common experience???? did you guys call it too or was I just hit by that dodgeball real hard?

god, I miss my hollywood hair barbie

she wasn't my #1 favorite barbie (that was my civil war nurse barbie, long story) but she was in my top 10

I got 3 barbies stolen that day, hollywood hair and swim n' dive barbie were two sad losses

ANYWAY

he puts her into the ice cube barbie body (now an officially approved nickname) to house her in (and trap her, I presume)

and once they were together, he became God

then they went planet surfing

(not sure if this has to do with the houses, I still remember that)

but he couldn't catch the ship of the bazillionaires from leaving

she said, at the time "I picked you to change and this is how you repay me?"

"What have you done to me, I am hediousness"

HEY, THAT'S ONE OF MY FAVORITE CHILDHOOD BARBIES YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT

SHE CAME WITH A HAIR STENCIL AND PINK SPRAY

"Where did you put the people? Where did they go?"

"She said, 'I still love you'" "He said, 'You said that too'"

WELL, THAT'S A WRAP ON THIS PART. I need to marinate these things, I feel like everything that was happening before kind of melted the moment I read I was right about Barbie, of all things. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN. Thank you for sticking around and for being so respectful of the no spoilers rule, you're the best ♥

#luly reacts to tlt #nona the ninth #nona the ninth spoilers #long post #gif cw

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maskedbyghost · 2 months ago

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Um I just got 90 out 100 in my finals and I have never felt like such a failure so can you please right where simon finds reader on the carpet just spiralling into depression and how he hugs them , as the reader cries quietly

Simon finds you sitting on the carpet, knees pulled up to your chest, arms wrapped tight around them. Your phone is face down beside you, the screen having lit up just minutes ago with a number that was supposed to mean something good. But it doesn’t.

He doesn’t say anything at first. Just stands there, watching, taking in the way your shoulders shake even though you’re making no sound. You feel his presence before you see him, and it only makes the lump in your throat grow bigger.

Then, finally, he moves.

The weight of him drops down beside you, and then he’s shifting, pulling you toward him, and you don’t resist. There’s no teasing remark, no offhanded “C’mon, love, talk to me.” Just silence, except for the quiet, choked breaths you can’t seem to control. His arms go around you, firm but careful, one hand pressing to the back of your head, tucking you into his shoulder.

“It’s alright,” he murmurs, voice steady. “You’re alright.”

The words don’t fix anything. They don’t erase the number on the screen, the feeling in your chest, or the weight in your stomach. But they do something else—something that makes your fingers curl into his shirt and your body sag against his.

He holds you like that for a while, his warmth slowly soaking into your skin. One of his hands moves slowly, gliding up and down your back in a soothing rhythm, never rushing, never pushing. Just there.

“Talk to me,” he finally says, voice lower now, coaxing but not demanding.

You swallow hard, your throat raw from unshed tears. “It’s stupid,” you whisper.

His arms tighten around you, just slightly. “Not to me.”

You squeeze your eyes shut. “I should’ve done better.”

Simon exhales through his nose, the sound heavy. “Ninety out of a hundred, yeah?”

You nod, barely moving.

He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “And that’s… what? A failure?”

Your face burns. You don’t know how to explain it—how you’ve been wired to believe that anything less than perfect isn’t enough. That being good at something means you have to be the best. That anything short of that feels like drowning in your own expectations.

You don’t have the words, but somehow Simon seems to understand anyway.

He shifts slightly, just enough to press his forehead lightly against the top of your head. “You’re too hard on yourself, love.”

You let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know how to stop.”

His hand slides up, fingers threading through your hair. “Then let me help.”

The words are simple, but they settle something inside you, even if just for now. You don’t answer; just hold onto him a little tighter, hoping he won’t let go. And he doesn’t.

Not now. Not ever.

The minutes stretch on, and Simon’s fingers keep moving through your hair slowly. Your breathing evens out, though your face is still pressed against his chest, his heartbeat steady beneath your ear.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he urges, his voice softer now.

You hesitate, then murmur, “I don’t want to disappoint anyone.”

He lets out a quiet breath, almost like he was expecting that answer. “You won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

His arms tighten slightly, pulling you closer. “I do,” he says firmly. “One number on a screen doesn’t change who you are. Doesn’t change how hard you work. And it sure as hell doesn’t change how proud I am of you.”

Simon tilts his head slightly, pressing a kiss to the top of yours, lingering for a moment. “You’re not alone in this,” he murmurs. “You don’t have to carry it all yourself.”

The words settle deep, and for the first time all day, the weight on your chest feels just a little lighter. You shift, burying yourself further into his warmth, and he just holds you, steady as ever.

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

hope you like it anon <333

@daydreamerwoah @kylies-love-letter @ghostslollipop

#simon ghost riley x you #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x you #simon ghost riley #simon ghost riley x female oc #simon riley imagine #simon riley

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morgana-larkin · 2 months ago

Text

Part 22 of Just Tired! I've also noticed that I get a handful of comments but not that many likes as compared to the first few chapters of the series and was curious as to why. If anyone knows a reason then let me know! The court session is gonna be next chapter and it's gonna be one where Joe is a big ass (big shocker I know). Not edited in the slightest and I hope you like it!

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26

Just Tired - Part 22

Warnings: Manipulative relationship (Mentioned), LOTS of smut, mommy kink, vibrators, handcuffs and strap on used

Words: 3.4k

Melissa happens to wake up around 1am and looks to see you spooning her. She takes comfort in being in your arms but then she has to get up to use the bathroom. She carefully gets out of your arms and then stumbles to the bathroom. When she gets back you’re still in the same position and she climbs back into bed. She lifts your arm and then nuzzles her head in your chest before putting your arm back around her and falls asleep.

You wake up to Melissa sneezing and you look at the time, 5:16. No use going back to sleep as your alarm is going to go off in 14 minutes. Melissa blows her nose and then lays back down with a groan. She looks beside her and sees you’re awake.

“Sorry, that I woke you up.” She tells you and you shrug.

“I was gonna wake up in a few minutes anyway.” You say to her. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been hit by a truck.”

“So, not any better.” You conclude and she shakes her head.

“Can we have a shower together? Maybe I’ll feel better after a hot shower.” She asks and you shake your head.

“A shower and then it’s right back to bed for you.” You say and she smiles.

You both get up and put on a robe in case you run into Barb or Gerald. You get the water going as Melissa takes her robe off. She then walks over and unties your robe from behind and then slips your robe off before you take your underwear off. Melissa gets you to go in first and then she hops in after you. You put Melissa right under the water and she gets her hair all wet as you put shampoo in your hand. You then push her out of the water and get her to turn around. You then put the shampoo in her hair and begin to gently massage her scalp and you hear her humming. You then pull her into the water and help rinse the shampoo out of her hair. You take your time to thread your fingers through her hair as you love her beautiful ginger locks.

You then put some conditioner on your hand and do the same thing you did with the shampoo. You hear her start humming again and you smile as she reminds you of a cat when they purr. You then get the body soap and squeeze some on your hand and rub it together with your hands to get the suds. You then begin applying it on her back before you get her to turn around and begin applying it on her stomach before you trail up to her chest. You then look up and see she’s staring at you with a smile.

“What?” You ask.

“Nothing, just still not used to being taken care of.” She explains. “It’s nice.” She adds and you begin rubbing the soap on her boobs. You both know you take more time than necessary on her boobs but neither of you mention that. You then put more soap on your hands and get on your knees to rub soap on her legs and feet. You don’t notice Melissa looking at you and her eyes darken. You go to stand back up but Melissa puts her hands on your shoulders and keeps you down there.

“Something you need?” You ask her and she nods. You then smile as you know what she needs and you bring your mouth to her clit and start sucking. She holds your head in place and she moans out as she feels your hot mouth where she needs you the most.

“Oh, cazzo.” She breathes out as it feels so good. She leans onto the shower wall and puts one hand on one of her boobs to give herself more stimulation. You’re holding onto her thighs to keep them spread apart and then you bring one hand to her clit and insert your tongue into her entrance. You feel her legs start to shake and look up to see her trying to control her breathing. You feel her clench around your tongue a few seconds later and then she gasps as she comes. You then clean her up with your tongue before you stand up and look at her trying to catch her breath.

“Feel better?” You ask her and she nods.

“Oh god, you make me so turned on.” She says and you smile.

“Ya?” You ask her and she puts her hands on your ass and pulls you closer to her before nodding.

“Now I want to make you come.” She tells you and you hum.

“I would like that to but I have to get ready for work and you have to call Ava to call in sick.” You tell her. She then does your hair and body exactly how you did it for her before you both get out of the shower. She then brushes your hair as you brush your teeth with a spare toothbrush that she had.

When you’re ready for work, you tuck her in bed before you give her a kiss goodbye. You then grab the lunch that Melissa told you that you can take today and then go to work.

Melissa takes the next 3 days off of work and feels better by Thursday noon. You went to go see her everyday after work to see how she’s doing and see that she’s getting better everyday. By Wednesday her fever broke and she didn’t sound as congested. On Thursday after school, you stop by and she only sneezed a couple times in the 3 hours you were there, as well as her runny nose stopped and she wasn’t congested anymore. She ends up going back to work on Friday, much to the joy of her little eagles.

On Friday after school, Melissa goes home and gets changed to get ready for her date with the girl. She then goes on her date and shows up at your place 3 hours later.

“Melissa? I thought you had a date.” You ask her and she nods.

“Ya, I just came from it but I wanted to ask you a question.” She says and you nod your consent. “Is it possible to be bisexual but lean more towards women?” She asks and you nod.

“Of course, sexuality is like a sliding scale, you like what you like, however that looks.” You tell her and she nods. “Why do you ask?”

“Well I was out with that girl and she just gave me a kiss goodbye and it felt so much better than any other guy I’ve kissed, but I still like sleeping with men. So I was a bit confused.” She explains.

“It could be possible that you don’t mind sleeping with both genders but only want a relationship with a woman.” You tell her and she nods.

“Maybe.” She says with a sigh.

“Something else on your mind?”

“The court date on Sunday.” She says and you nod. “Yesterday I was told that Joe will sign the papers if he can keep the house and we won’t have to go through the whole court thing.” She tells you. “I said he can go to hell but then I remembered that I’ll have to see him again on Sunday.”

“Barb and I will be there for you. Also Joe can go to hell and I have a good feeling that he’s not keeping the house.” You tell her and she nods nervously. “Do you want me to stay over with you tomorrow night?”

“Ya, that’d be nice.” She tells you and you nod.

“I’ll be there.” You promise her and she looks at you with a smile.

“Thank you.” She says and you see her eyes get shiny and can tell she’s thanking you for everything you’ve done for her. You then go forward and wrap your arms around her in a hug and she immediately hugs you back.

“Do you want to come in? Hallie and I are watching Sleeping Beauty.” You offer and she looks to see Hallie on the couch with the remote.

“Sure, I love that movie.” She says and then removes her shoes before you both cuddle on the couch.

You’re saying goodbye to Melissa near her car after the movie finishes.

“By the way, how did you get a court date so quickly?” You ask her.

“I know a guy.” She simply says and you smile. “Well my cousin knows a guy.” She adds.

“Of course, you probably have connections all over the damn city.” You say and she snorts.

“I mean, pretty much ya.” She tells you before she gives you a kiss and then gets in her car to go home.

The next evening you go over to Barb’s house and Gerald lets you in. You walk in and see Barb on the couch and no Melissa in sight.

“She went to the store to grab a couple things.” Barb tells you and you nod. “You can come watch tv with us until she gets back.”

“Thanks.” You tell her and then go sit on the couch. Melissa gets back 20 minutes later and sees you on the couch.

“Hey Y/n, sorry but I was just grabbing some chocolate and candy, might help me calm down.” She tells you and you get off the couch. You both then go upstairs and sit on the bed while she eats the candy as you both talk about anything to keep her mind off tomorrow. “Here, I got you some chocolate as it’s your favourite.” She says and then hands you a bag of mini Reese’s and you gasp.

“My favourite!” You say and take a handful and shove them in your mouth and Melissa giggles.

“You’re adorable.” She says with a smile and you smile back at her.

“I get excited by simple things.” You tell her with chocolate in your mouth and she hums. You take another handful and you see her get nervous. “It’s going to be ok tomorrow.” You tell her and she looks at you.

“What if it’s not, what if he gets everything like always?” She asks you. “I mean he got his dream job, a wife he could manipulate, a house that he picked, and I did everything he asked me.” She tells you as a tear falls down her cheek. You put the bag aside and sit next to her and wrap an arm around her and she leans her head on your shoulder.

“I can’t promise that won’t happen because I don’t know what the judge will decide. But I do know the judge leans more towards women. You’re a woman and hopefully Joe will show how much of an idiot he is by opening his big mouth.” You say and she smiles.

She then pops her head up and cups your cheek before she kisses you. She immediately deepens the kiss and you let her do whatever as you know she needs it. She then straddles your lap and puts the bag of chocolate on the nightstand before she moves her hair out of the way and kisses you again. She then pulls back and looks at you and you nod your consent. She then pulls your shirt off and unclips your bra before she cups your breasts as she sucks on your neck. She pulls back and you go to take her shirt off but she slaps your hand away.

“I didn’t say you could take my clothes off.” She tells you and you realise quickly that she needs to take charge, so you let her.

She gets off the bed and takes your pants and underwear off before she takes her clothes off. She then instructs you to lay on the bed and you do as she grabs something from the nightstand. She goes to straddle your lap again and immediately goes to suck on a nipple. You moan quietly as Barb and Gerald are still downstairs and you put your hands in her hair. She trails her hands up and down the inside of your thigh to tease you and then she switches to your other nipple. You try to buck your hips but can’t as Melissa is straddling your lap. You let out a whimper and Melissa pulls back with a smirk.

“Something you want?” She asks with a low voice.

“Please, please fuck me.” You tell her and she smiles before she grabs something else from the nightstand. She pulls out a pair of handcuffs and she handcuffs your wrists to the headboard. She then grabs whatever she grabbed earlier and goes in between your legs. You then feel something on your clit and then it starts vibrating and you gasp out. She immediately puts her hand over your mouth and presses the speed button and it goes faster. You start grinding your hips and she lays on top of you and then covers your mouth with her hand again.

“As much as I love the noises you make, we have to be quiet.” She tells you with a smile. “This wand has 5 speeds, let’s see how many orgasms I can pull out of you.” She says and you let out a moan into her hand.

You let out a gasp as you come a third time and Melissa already put her underwear in your mouth to silent your noises and so she can touch you all over. She then turns the vibrator off and sticks two fingers in your entrance and you let out a muffled gasp. You start pulling on the handcuffs as the over stimulation is starting to get to you and you look to see Melissa smirking. She’s has complete control and she fucking knows it. You come close to your fourth orgasm and you tense your legs and Melissa lets out a gasp as she was sitting on your leg. You let out gasp as you come again and then she takes her underwear out of your mouth before she sticks her two fingers in your mouth. You let out a moan as you lick her fingers clean of your juices and she starts grinding on your leg.

“You feel how wet you’ve made me?” She asks you and you nod as her fingers are still in your mouth. “You look so good under my control, helpless to anything I want to do to you.” She says in a low voice that she knows drives you crazy. “Help mommy come, tense your muscles.” She orders and you tense your thigh muscles and her mouth is hanging open from the pleasure. You watch as her movements lose their rhythm as she gets close to her orgasm. You continue to lick and suck her fingers as you can’t touch her and Melissa notices. She comes with a quiet gasp and stills her movements as she lets her orgasm wash over her.

She then unlocks you from the handcuffs and grabs tissue to clean you both up. After she cleans both of you, she lays down beside you and you wrap an arm around her as she lays her head on your chest.

“Feel better?” You ask and she nods.

“Thank you for letting me do whatever I wanted to you.” She tells you and you stroke her head and place a kiss at the top of her head.

“It’s not a problem, you’re very hot when you get all dominant.” You say and she chuckles. You grab the blankets and place them on both of you as she gets more comfy in your arms and then falls asleep.

The next morning after breakfast she brings you back upstairs and gets you to put the strap on and lay down on your back. She then gets on top of you and sinks down on the strap, letting it fill her up more and more. She sinks down completely then she starts to move her hips and she lets out some soft moans. She then grabs both of your hands and pulls you up into a seated position. She wraps an arm around your neck and leans her forehead against yours as you have an arm wrapped around her waist and the other one playing with her nipple. You then move your hand from her nipple to her clit and she lets out a high pitched gasp at the surprise.

“Oh god, that feels so good.” She says quietly as she continues moving her hips back and forth. She then puts a finger under your chin with her left hand, that was free, and lifts your chin so she can kiss you. She cups your cheek as she continues kissing you to silent her noises as her orgasm was building. She moves her hand from your cheek to the back of your head and grabs a handful of your hair and she starts kissing you more forcefully. You can tell she’s about to come as her fingers are digging into your skin and you can feel her legs slightly shake. She then gasps into the kiss and you feel something drip on your thighs as she pulls back and you look down.

“Did you squirt?” You ask her and she smiles and nods. “Well that’s a high compliment.” You tell her and she kisses you again.

“Is it really a compliment to you as I did most of the work?” She asks as she pulls away and you fake gasp.

“You little ginger minx.” You say as you wrap both your arms around her and place her on her back on the bed and she giggles. You then align the dildo with her entrance and shove it all in, in one go and she gasps out. You then start pumping in and out of her and she places her mouth on your shoulder to muffle her sounds. You start biting your lip as the dildo is rubbing against your clit and your orgasm is building quickly. Melissa wraps her legs around you and pushes you closer against her. “Are you close?” You ask her and she shakes her head. You slip your hand between her legs and start circling her clit quickly. She bucks her hips and you see her eyes snap shut at the sensation.

“I’m close, so close.” She says as she grabs your shoulders and digs her nails into your skin. You then come with a gasp and you keep going until Melissa comes with a pitched muffled gasp. She lays her head back on the pillow as you pull out of her and she’s breathing heavily.

“I think it’s safe to say you’ve been thoroughly fucked.” You say with a proud smile and she laughs.

“Let’s get in the shower and see.” She tells you before you both put on a robe and go to the bathroom.

You both get out of the shower half an hour later and Melissa is catching her breath.

“You are really determined when you want something.” You tell her and she quirks her eyebrows.

“Are you referring to me trapping you against the shower wall and making you grind on my thigh?” She asks and you nod.

“Obviously.” You say and she hums. “We should get ready, it’s 11:30.” You say as you check your phone that was in your robe pocket. You both get ready and look to see her wearing a green shirt and a nice blazer with one button. “That’s a nice outfit.” You tell her and she smiles at you.

“Well as much as I want to, I probably shouldn’t wear my leather pants and jacket to court.” She says and you nod.

“Ya, probably not.” You agree.

You then both go downstairs and see Barb and Gerald waiting for you both downstairs. Gerald then opens the door and unlocks the car for everyone. Melissa gets in the backseat of the drivers side while you go to the other side with Barb.

“Y/n, as much as it was a bit weird hearing the noises, I’m glad you were able to distract Melissa last night and this morning.” Barb tells you before she gets in the car and your cheeks turn red.

Taglist: @esposadejoyhuerta

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Let me know if you want to be added!

#melissa schemmenti x reader #melissa schemmenti x oc #melissa schemmenti x you #melissa schemmenti fanfic #melissa schemmenti #x reader #fanfic #lisa ann walter #law #abbott elementary

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