#there is something severely wrong with me

[zstartrixxx]

𝐋𝐄𝐓 𝐌𝐄 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐄 '𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐔, 𝐃𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐍'.

ʳᵉᵐᵐᶦᶜᵏ ˣ ᵛᵃᵐᵖꜝʷᶦᶠᵉ ʳᵉᵃᵈᵉʳ

𝐑𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓: 𝐘𝐄𝐒 | 𝐍𝐎

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: If being loved by a vampire means carrying eternity within you, what you have with Remmick is incarnate: his poison lives in your flesh, you are blood of his blood, a creature of his making. And because you are a part of him—a fragment that broke free and passed into you, sometimes even a sliver of his ancient soul trapped inside that dead body—everything you feel, he feels, and vice versa. Fleeing the imminent extinction of these lands, you and Remmick seek refuge in each other once more, bound together. Eternally, for he would never let you sever this tie—unless he were dead. Past and future memories knot inside you. Here, now—all blood and teeth—you fuse with your maker, your sacrament, your eternal groom. 𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒: this particular piece was a deeply interesting and special writing experience for me: not only did i get to explore the hivemind concept, but i also played more freely with language and the essence of remmick as a character. so let me make one thing clear: it’s never my intention to distort the film’s canonical portrayal, but rather—through poetic license combined with the possibilities of fanfiction’s universe, PLUS the way i’ve absorbed and interpreted the character—my version of remmick (at least in my fics) might not be as literal as the original script. that said: here we have this scenario with a wife, which i initially imagine takes place before the film’s events, but the specifics of when, how, and where she was transformed are entirely up to your interpretation (before his arrival in the us in 1911? somewhere between the early or late middle ages? the modern era? europe, asia, or africa... let your imagination run wild ;) i’ve also paraphrased/incorporated certain very specific lines and moments from the film. 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: +16 CONTENT. i think there's a lot of angst here and reader melancholy, so keep that in mind. use of some words in gaelic, i had to resort to good old google, if there is something wrong please tell me. remmik here it's (super) protective, almost toxic; hivemind concept explored, lots of internal dialogue, some gore (explicit description of blood and bruises), vampirism (blood consummation), and a slight sexual innuendo thrown in. 𝐖𝐂: 6k for whoever is going to read it, a great read! <3 likes, reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated :)

𝖱𝖤𝖬𝖬𝖨𝖢𝖪 𝖯𝖫𝖠𝖸𝖫𝖨𝖲𝖳

"turn to me, and love me like you lacerate; just hold me down like i don’t need air." (air, shedfromthebody)

Your skin burned like Hell itself, which was kind of funny to think about: back when you were human, you loved spending your days under the hot sun, lying on the grass in the late afternoon and gazing up at the cloudless sky, where strange shapes would form just for you. You wasted away the days at the lake, naked, floating between water and sunlight, between cold and heat, simply existing.

Now, all you could feel was the searing pain ripping through your skin, sizzling in your ears like meat in a frying pan. Weak, you tried to run, but your legs wouldn’t obey, and your feet tangled with every step across the dry land, scattered with dead corn leaves. The rustle of the leaves irritated you, but what truly drove you mad were the screams echoing from behind, drowning out any coherent thought, merging with the heavy air that entered your lungs that no longer breathed. And that felt like a death sentence: not only the sun was paralyzing you, but also the distorted sounds that confused you, like a wounded animal, utterly disoriented.

You stopped in the middle of the cornfield, glancing around, trying to stay grounded, trying to reconnect the thread of thought between the two of you, searching through the suffocating haze for Remmick’s voice, calling him with panic and urgency, desperate for him to come save you. You looked at your shoulders: raw, scorched, smelling the acrid scent of burnt flesh rising from your own body. You shut your eyes, trying to find him, your voice lethargic: “Remmick… Remmick.”

Your vision began to darken, your body no longer felt like your own—it felt like it was floating, detaching, as if your soul—or what was left of it—was slipping out of you. Just like you’d felt a piece of yourself dying the last time you glimpsed sunlight through your human eyes, maybe ceasing to exist in that land would feel the same. All you had to do was slowly close your eyes, embrace the darkness once again, surrender to the searing fire that would extinguish you—and that would be it. You opened your eyes slowly, staring at the mighty sun before you: scorching, like your mother’s hugs, your grandmother’s kisses. Like Remmick’s grip when you were still human. Your entire body burned, tiny flames piercing through you, tears of blood trickling from your eyes. How long had it been since you felt even remotely human? All you had to do was give in, speak the one name that echoed in your mind, etched into your blood.

Remmick.

In poison and blood, within you. He was you and you were him. Remmick.

‘—Remmick, if you can hear me one last time, know that I—’

“Got you!” his voice came, rough and wounded, behind you. Firm hands grabbed you by the waist, your body partially covered by another, pressed against Remmick’s rigid frame. He whispered against your ear: “You’re safe, mo chroí (mu khree / my heart). Come with me.” He pulled you even tighter against his scorched body, shielding you like a protective shell, guiding you with quick steps into the heart of the cornfield. In the distance, the furious screams of some villagers echoed behind you. But despite the world turning into hell around you and everything seeming like the end, you felt safe in his arms.

Remmick looked back, staggering, using his sharp senses to search for any possible escape for the two of you. His left eye was swollen from the punch he took, combined with the sun’s deadly effect, and even with limited vision, he managed to find a way out from the horde chasing you.

You couldn’t stay upright. The sun’s weakness made it feel like your bones were nothing but dust beneath your scorched flesh. Tears of blood stung your eyes and soul, or whatever was trapped inside that immortal body, sharing a collective mind with Remmick and so many others before you. It longed desperately to escape this life and finally rest. But Remmick wouldn’t let that happen—oh no, let the pagan gods or the Christian God himself punish him with the harshest tortures if he did. You could feel that wrathful pain mixed with ancient rage flowing from him, harshly projected in flames and poisonous blood from him to you, as he nearly threw himself on top of you like a (scorched) leather jacket just to protect you. Madness. The voices grew longer, more indistinct, the hateful chorus fading, as Remmick, with his one good eye, searched for shelter.

Then, as if by magic, fate, or just the luck of some devil who still wanted to see you both wander through God's vast lands, there it was—a house beyond the edge of the cornfield. The perfect shelter. ‘Living food, darkness... —Remmick, don’t get your hopes up.—’ you thought back, replying to your creator’s voice with a sarcasm that didn’t quite match the moment. As always, he laughed—loudly, though the laugh came with dry, desperate gasps. He laughed. Even all fucked up, more than you, sizzling in pain and crying in despair to stay alive, he still found humor in his own misery.

“You’re getting real cheeky, huh, my little thing?”

“You’re the one who taught me to be like this, Remmy,” you managed to say, despite the bitter taste of blood rising in your throat—extremely unpleasant when it was your own blood boiling inside you. Remmick glanced over his shoulder, noticing for now that you were safe. He looked forward again, at what seemed like a mirage of a desolate wooden shack, dark, with the door and windows shut. It looked uninhabited to you. ‘—Love, don’t be so hopeless. Of course, there’ll be someone in there to be dinner. Or rather, lunch, given the time.—’ his voice cut through again, tugging you sideways, his hot and battered hand grabbing your forearm, where deep layers of your dermis were starting to show, making you let out a faint whimper. Remmick gave you an almost hurt look, immediately releasing his grip.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“It’s fine. What’s a squeeze compared to almost melting under the sun, right?”

“You’re something else...” he muttered in disbelief, though his voice was laced with distress and anguish—a soft hint of the pain he was enduring. —If he died, you’d go with him by extension, in the worst possible way.— That was what was running through his disturbed mind, making you wonder whether you’d ever have a happy ending under those conditions. Remmick quickened his pace, and you followed beside him, feeling like the path to the house was more of a road to Hell than a material refuge. You were starting to believe it was a mirage and the Devil was waiting on the other side to welcome you both into his lap. ‘—Pathetic, darling. Pathetic.—’ ‘—Just like you, sweetheart.—’

Remmick ignored your retort, dragging himself up the steps, changing his expression as he began to shout for help. A wounded animal, fatally injured, a hoarse rasp clawing out of his throat, begging for help, pounding on the door with force. The sun’s haze was poisoning him—and therefore you—draining what little strength was left, forcing your bodies to absorb the foul smell of rotting flesh; even if your lungs didn’t breathe, they still had the cursed privilege of smelling. And even as supernatural beings, defying all human logic, you were still condemned to be inside those fragile bodies, exhaling the scent of flesh, blood, bone, thick saliva, venom, and a unique perfume your walking corpses carried. Not decay, but something more… floral? And that specific scent, like night-blooming jasmine in a graveyard or a dried rose in your garden, grew stronger as the mortal flesh imprisoning your immortal soul deteriorated.

Remmick kept pounding on the door and maybe—just maybe—with a little more effort, he’d become the first vampire to break the universal law by forcing his way in without being invited. He looked at you, distressed, his expression one of real pain. You pulled away from him, walking to a window layered in thick dust, wiping it with your palm. The cold, gritty surface scratched your sensitive skin even more. You peered inside and confirmed: ‘—There’s no one. It’s empty.—’ Remmick looked at you, almost dumbfounded, hearing your inner voice. He turned to the door, where simply twisting the doorknob opened it. The air inside was cold and stagnant, dust and mold, old wood and moth-eaten fabric, with an unwelcoming scent—but still, it carried that unmistakable smell of an uninhabited place. No human warmth or familiar energy.

Remmick was so relieved he dropped to his knees, like a devout soul who, tired of resisting sin, finally accepts divine punishment in good faith—arms open, body surrendering as he let himself fall into the house. You stood beside him, watching with a mixture of mercy for the poor wretch who was suffering, and with that sharp pain—hating, in a way, to share with him the memory and the collective sense of it all, because his pain was also yours.

Remmick crawled inside. You followed him, on your feet—weak, but standing. You looked one last time outside, toward the distance beyond the cornfield, where, by some divine mercy, those who had hunted you seemed to have gone. Just above, the burning afternoon sun pulsed like a condemning god, seated upon his sky-blue throne, mercilessly casting down his punishments upon you, poor wicked creatures.

You shut the door with a long groan, echoing the moan of the vampire now lying delicately at your feet—a strange sound between a whimper and the whine of a frightened dog. His hands were stretched above his head, face pressed to the floor, writhing from side to side, somewhere between fragile and furious at being forced into such a wretched state.

Through your mind, you could feel him tearing:

‘—These monsters will pay. As soon as the sun sets, I’ll hunt them one by one, haunt them in their homes, show them my wrath and my cruelty. Blood, blood… blood.—’

Your mind was now lapsing into a time far older than you, to a moment when Remmick’s humanity had been broken by the vampire’s curse—when the strangers came and took his land, his name, his faith. His prayers were converted, and all he saw before him were silver crosses and plaster Jesuses while he was taught the Lord’s Prayer. All of it disturbed you deeply. He clung so tightly to his roots that it made you feel everything: the fire of the scorched land, the spilled blood, the faithful ones he later killed one by one, the lands devastated by plague and by gold.

You closed your eyes, trying to impose your memories over his—to interrupt the bond that was bigger than either of you. You tried to think of blooming gardens bathed in sunlight, lazy afternoons of picnics and reading under trees, nights of endless dancing and joy.

Remmick stopped thrashing. His shoulders stilled, and his whimpers faded as he was slowly filled with his own memories, gradually regaining his strength and sobriety. He propped himself up on his arms—once feeble and lethargic, with bones eroded and flesh still scorched by burns—then raised himself and looked at you, a crooked smile forming on his lips:

“You’re always taking care of me, a aingeal.” (ah ang-yal | my angel).

“I was just trying to make you stop with those nightmares disguised as memories. I’m aching all over.” Your voice was somewhat harsh, despite your weakness, as you leaned your body against the wall, between the door and the window, where dust managed to dimly filter the sunlight. You were safe from the condemnation of the light.

Remmick rested his head. A look of sadness, lit by the darkness in his pupils, stirred something in your heart that no longer beat.

“I can’t let go of who I once was… even after all these years, there are pains that scar between our flesh and our soul, binding us to them forever…”

“I know. I know—” you smiled, somewhere between honesty and levity, trying to stay upright, feeling your body pulse and bleed, crying for healing. Remmick was in considerably better shape than you, even in his sorry state—his cotton shirt filthy with mud and dust, torn and bloodied from burned flesh; his pants tattered, shoes worn through, one bruised eye set into cadaverous skin with a polished hunger. He was enduring. The dark gifts made him far stronger than you. “—I’m just not in the best condition to relive those pains with you, not when mine are a little too real right now.”

Remmick nodded, drinking in your words, staring at you with glowing, coppery-red eyes—dim yet luminous—finally seeing your pain. His face twisted with worry and a flicker of anger as he staggered closer:

“Mo ghrá geal” (muh grah gyahl | my bright love), “they really hurt you, didn’t they…”

Then, Remmick recalled the grim scene when one of the townsfolk had found your hiding place—a house just as old and decrepit as the one you now sheltered in. The two of you were lying there together, side by side, entwined like tragic lovers, waiting for death—and maybe that had been part of the attraction, for just a few more seconds in that eternal rest, and you would have had a truly tragic end. Remmick remembered the moment the light from a blocked-out window was smashed through and the burn that followed. He opened his eyes instantly. You were still locked in your unshakable sleep when they grabbed you by the arms. He had fought men wielding torches and harvest tools. Then you saw it through his eyes: your body being pulled away—a blur. And you felt his fear and desolation as he fought off the frantic villagers to try and save you.

Then the man’s voice rang out again, clear and strong, a wounded hand touching your face with surprising gentleness:

“We almost didn’t make it out of there… If it had been closer to sunset, not a single one of those bastards would’ve made it—”

“Remmick.” His name traced your lips and tongue, thorny like the man himself. “They’re not to blame for acting the way they do—just like we, flawed murderous animals, once acted. They too have the right to want to destroy us. Wasn’t it you who taught me that human truth? That’s how we lived before we perished. That’s how we’ll go on existing, as long as we do.”

“Existing.” He clicked his tongue, and a sudden shadow passed through his eyes. For a second, his mind grew too clouded for you to read, to hear—but the visceral rage boiling in his venomous blood, oh, that you felt, bitter as it burned your dry throat. Dryness began to crack your lips. It weakened your warm body even more and made you feel the dark delusions start to crawl through the corners of your mind; that’s what happened when you weren’t fed—no matter how exceptional your self-control was, and even if you could resist without the human liquor for days, when you were in that state of true death, your body nearly collapsed.

Remmick dragged his pitiful, suffering gaze across your face. Around your minds, words in ancient Gaelic spun like ancestral chants—he was thinking about something beyond you.

His hand slid up to your face, grabbing your hair from behind, gripping it as he gently pulled it back, exposing the soft, burned, but still velvety skin of your neck. The cradle of your sacred blood—from where he had once drawn your human warmth into himself and given you, in return, the venom that turned you into him. And even though your heart no longer beat as before, when he first heard it, and your blood wasn’t warm enough to quench his thirst anymore, it was the vampire’s opium.

Remmick always thought of that comparison when he grazed his fangs lightly against your skin before penetrating it to anesthetize himself in your ecstasy:

‘—Your blood was sweet and warm when your heart throbbed between your ribs. But now, with my lymph and the poison of my being, it tastes better—bittersweet, undead. Our blood.—’

It made you moan and whimper.

Your hands pressed against his chest, palms open, trying to push him away from you:

“Remmy, are you sure about this?” you looked at him uncertainly, trying to find in him the assurance for the act.

Remmick didn’t answer you with words—not the kind spoken aloud:

“As weak as we are, there’s no one here, my love. Either we drink from each other, or we die like strays in this godforsaken place. Feed on my blood before you cease to exist…”

It wasn’t a request anymore by the time he was already pulling you closer to expose your neck, pressing his rough lips and sharp teeth against you, piercing the skin like needles.

Remmick held onto this belief that he didn’t need to ask much of you, because as you were one mind, everything he wanted was what you desired too.

Your eyes closed as you felt your flesh torn by his fangs—hard against your skin, like a stiff piece of leather being pierced by a sharp knife—until it reached where the blood, crawling weakly through your body, began to emerge in thick sobs, filling his mouth with your syrupy, bloody liquor. You were consumed by the burning and the sensation of ecstasy the act gave you, your body floating in the hands of the man who groaned with primal pleasure at being nourished by your life source.

Remmick also held the belief that since you carried his seed—that divine-profane gift of eternal life within your blood—through the consummation of acts and the laws of an ancient soul, you were part of a whole that pulsed with life. His life, yours, and those who would come after you both, all connected through that cursed and blood-stained lineage.

You squirmed restlessly in his hands. His claws were already out, tangled in your hair, scratching your waist as he held you as close as possible, bound to his pleading kiss.

Remmick whispered to you in thought:

“Mine, mine, mo mhianta (muh vee-an-tah / my desire), my life, my blood…”

—like a prayer, a rosary he recited bead by bead, his body burning as he inevitably felt his venom enter you. 

“Remmick—” your voice was pure wine of death, your nose the iron scent of flesh, your mind a stupor of souls that preceded you, strange voices you had learned empirically, faintly recalling the vampire Remmick who crushed you between teeth and acid; “—I think that’s enough, my love.”

Remmick let out an exasperated groan that vibrated against your mark, sucked a final portion of blood vigorously, licked the flesh slowly, then rose, revealing his face intact and free of wounds, his chin smeared with your crimson iron honey, eyes shimmering like copper pearls between iron and bloodlust. He smiled at you—there was heavy panting from paused lungs, a fresh breath, an almost spiritual renewal of his being.

“You are so delicious, blood of my blood, that it’s impossible not to want to drain your last blessed drop.”

He laughed—cursed and amused—raising his wrist to his own lips, biting it as if biting a pomegranate that exploded between his teeth, flesh and juice dripping at the corners of his mouth already stained with your blood; he extended his open wrist to you like bread to the dying, an offering to his god, waiting with generous eyes burning in the insane passion of his soul for yours.

His mouth salivated with the yearning to take it for himself, to drink from that wine that intoxicated you once and every time you drank it—in nights of lust where you feasted on the delights of the flesh, it intoxicated you.

There were sparks in your chest that burned from Remmick’s venom in your body, making you remember when he took you for himself, forever; Remmick appeared like a chorus behind you, chasing you through the darkness of forests and ancient buildings, ruins of nights wandering without meaning, inviting you to let him enter you repeatedly, giving him what he wanted, feeding the beast with your youthful joy, the beating heart—that which he had lost centuries ago, perhaps millennia. Life.

And once, proving that his love for blood and pain was greater than all lust or pleasure given to you, he offered you his ultimate love: he penetrated you with teeth and curses, buried memories imposed on you, suffocating you, watching you die before him, rot like a flower once beautiful and vibrant, now dry and hardened. Watching you rise with bright eyes and his bestial thirst, laughing and dancing with him, celebrating your new self. Or was it a piece of him, while you were trapped between so many layers of the one who created you?

And yet there you were, looking at him with veneration and anguish, taking his wrist with your misshapen fingers, claws that extended in excessive knots, placing your mouth against the torn hole that poured that offering of his flesh.

Oh, Remmick had your flavor too.

Sweet death he exhaled, primal sex and poisoned wine.

Feeding you slowly, bringing through that damned mortal sap your salvation.

You felt yourself revive, whining softly against his wrist, looking with complicity as Remmick watched you with the pleasure of pleasures on his face: parted lips, arched brows, eyes sparkling with desire and ardor. You smiled back, returning that passion, a hiss escaping from his mouth, pleasure bending between the memories shared through blood. His mouth detached from the bite’s embrace, a dull snap of flesh pulling away, the vampire’s blood dripping in sticky, thick drops like a whip on the wooden floor, a small pool of that iron blood separating you both.

He tilted his head back, satisfied, with a jubilation of pearl-ruby teeth, saying full of himself:

“Now we’re better!” He laughed between his teeth, while you felt his blood slide through you, healing the stigmata on your skin, slowly and pleasurably renewing you—him crawling between your bones and flesh, burrowing deeper into you as he pierced you with those eyes.

Remmick drew closer, your hands returned to normal, fingers caressing your now-soft skin, leaning down to kiss your lips with the sweetness of his honey staining them crimson, whispering through your mind:

‘—All we need now is rest, and once night falls, we can celebrate this moment together.—’

Eternal promises. As always, typical of him.

You welcomed him with open lips, tongue caressing his, you and he merging—blood and saliva, venom and the growls from the depths of your thirsty throats, your hands tangling into each other, desperate grips of bodies that loved each other through finite eternity.

…

In your dreams — or in that cathartic state of complete darkness of rest — all you had in your mind were the outlines of dreams of humans who had wandered through the eternities beside Remmick. You were a peasant in Irish lands, an English priest with golden teeth, a mathematician in Arabia, a physician from Prussian soil, a single mother prostituting herself in the streets of Whitechapel; everything and everyone. You were a pagan elder turned faithful parish priest. A hopeful young woman turned the vilest of executioners. Everything and everyone — and him.

Him.

Emerging in red, blue, purple, and black, from the shadows, blood dripping from his chin, stealing souls and stories like a devoted collector, a historian digging through pages and pages for what might fill his own gaps. Remmick pulled you by the hand like a savior — or a beast. That blurred in the shadows and forms, as he brought you into the light.

The light of consciousness, of being awake, of knowing night had finally fallen and you could once again wander among humans.

You opened your eyes with a sharp blink, seeing through a timid penumbra lit by a single candle — who knows where the hell Remmick had found it — exhaling, while he gently caressed your face, the tip of his finger tapping lightly against your nose, a serenity on his face that, under the warm golden light, almost seemed human. You smiled, rubbed your eyes, and let out a vocal exhale — a human habit you’d kept not to feel so detached from your nature — wetted your lips, surprised by the nudity of the man sitting at your side on that old bed, hard mattress, rickety frame that had served perfectly for your rest.

At the window, beyond the drawn curtain, a few wooden planks nailed to keep sunlight out were now opened, allowing the pale-silver glow of a Full Moon to shine on you. Between the bluish-gray mingling with the candle’s yellow-red, his slender and muscular body — shaped by the years when he was just a man of the land, using his bare strength — stood naturally before you.

His face, smiling at you tenderly, was damp, drops of water clinging to his nose, ears, and chin. A scent of dried flowers and soap wafted from his pale skin. His voice was soft:

“Come with me, a aingeal,” (ah ang-yal | my angel), “let’s take a bath to wash off this infernal day.”

Laughter spilled from both your mouths — irony mixed with ease — as his hand gently pulled you up, guiding you barefoot across the wooden floor, echoing down a narrow hallway toward what must have been the bathroom. Remmick nodded toward the wooden bathtub. Beside it, atop a chair, several candles were stuck upright with their own melted wax, casting a flickering light beside the moonlight that poured silver through the window.

“I cleaned it a bit before using, fetched some water from the well, and luckily found some flowers and a dried-up bar of soap lying around. Seems like the people who lived here left in a hurry — there’s still canned food and clothes in some closets. Let me help you!”

He placed the candle on the chair and undressed you, slipping off your dress and tossing it aside, smiling at your nudity, placing his hands at your waist as if admiring a statue sculpted by his own hands — a creation of his creation.

“Sit down. I’ll bathe you...” he said in a velvet tone, guiding your body into the cold water, which wrapped around your skin as he began to rub it with water, fragrant flower petals, and diluted soap.

And there you sat, still, watching him care for you — though you knew well what he was thinking.

‘—The hunt, the revenge against those who inflicted pain on us and—’

“Remmy…”

Your hand found his, pulling him from the depths of his thoughts, gripping the hand that tended to you, “...stop, at least for now. Just think of something else.”

“What else could I possibly think about?”

“In other things, I don’t know, think about music, about dance, about me...”

“I don’t need to think about those things because they’re already in me, darling. It’s almost a pleonasm, as that old professor we ate once said, remember?”

“The one we ate? What an absurd thing to say!”

“Sweetheart, seriously?” Remmick tilted his head to the side, a mischievous little smile playing on his lips. He stopped rubbing the dried blood off his neck to look at you with cynicism. “You, of all people, who loves sinking your teeth into those juicy necks that show up for us!? You, blood of my blood, my own creation, poison of my poison who...” he paused, narrowing his eyes, his voice coming out in a thin whisper, “loves sinking those pretty little teeth of yours into the most unusual places!?”

A daring finger touched your lips, slipping between them, lightly scraping your canine with its nail. You stared at him calmly, studying him in that unashamed nakedness, amused by you. Rolling your eyes, you pushed his hand away from your mouth.

“Pathetic. That’s what you are sometimes.”

“I love you too, my darlin’.” He chuckled through his teeth, returning to wiping the bloodstain from his skin, focusing on the act. Even in that silence made of voices loudly spoken, your minds were speaking through images, memories flowing back and forth in a stream of consciousness, undulating like the water that surrounded your body, tracing that eternal conversation you both had. Deep down you knew he wanted to go out hunting, to get drunk on fresh human blood, and then return to this shelter, take you in his arms and possess you in the most animalistic way possible. But on your end, you still felt his venom lingering through your body, the blood that had served as both nourishment and healing still casting a haze over your senses. Ancient blood from someone who had lived so long it carried stigmas. Strong, dense, defiled, concentrated.

Remmick finished scrubbing you, stood up from your side, and left the room, staying outside for a few minutes, leaving you immersed in the water and the moonlight. Thinking. For a moment, your mind seemed to detach from his, floating through the corridors of your own being—you saw yourself among humans, walking barefoot, feeling that burning thirst in your throat, the bile of anger tormenting you even as your melancholy made you ethereal; sucking foreign blood, capturing life stories for yourself. Remmick reached out a hand to you—a claw—with the ghastly smile of all the dead, always whispering to you: “Mo mhianta” (muh vee-an-tah / my desire), in your mother tongue. Remmick… Remmick. The one who created you and now was you too, part of your desires, part of your life, part of your soul. Would you ever be able to break away from that guiding thread? From the one who offered you both death and life? Would you be able to disconnect and be just… you?

Remmick emerged from the darkness of the house, carrying a bundle of clothes in his hands, wearing a pair of soft-fabric pants, his torso still bare. He smiled with those secrets he could hide from you between his lips:

“No, I believe that if one day you no longer belong to me, I’ll probably be dead.”

“Reading my thoughts again?”

The question was practically rhetorical, laced with a certain bitterness you couldn’t hold back. Standing before you, the vampire handed you the clothes.

“I am them. Even when you try to escape through the corners of your thoughts, I’m there.” Remmick smiled, sharp teeth glinting, a suggestion shining in his eyes like a beast ready to kill.

“Come on, love, the night is a child crying to be fed.”

“Smartass,” you hissed through your teeth, rolling your eyes. When you rose from the bathtub, your eyes suddenly caught sight of two figures approaching in the distance. Remmick didn’t even need to be warned—he was already spying from the corner of the window, his thoughts starting to hiss like a rabid wolf growling, thirsty for blood and slaughter. He turned his face toward you, a sharp smile while his eyes tiled the blood of the defeated. His tongue was a blade between needle-sharp teeth:

“We shall have a special feast, my love!”

…

The house was dark.

Its scent was of dust and stagnant wood, dry and moldy. In the background, you could catch the smell of melted wax. No noise. When that couple stepped into the house, shotguns in hand, eyes wide with fear, all they wanted was to play heroes for the little town—hunt the monsters that had been parasitizing the area and receive applause for their brave deeds. Fueled by fear and pride, they wanted to hold in their hands the heads of those two who had earlier been hunted and, for some reason, had disappeared; and there they were, in that shack abandoned for weeks—maybe months—eyeing each other with unease.

The woman said, glancing around the first room, a lantern serving as a flashlight:

“I don’t think it was a good idea to come here at night…”

“Nonsense, woman—we’ll catch those monsters before they go messing around with anyone else,” the man shrugged, walking toward the hallway, the woman right behind him—until she heard a little noise beside her, at the open door.

The man kept walking, oblivious to his wife, heading toward the back of the house, finding a side room with its door ajar—he pushed it open the rest of the way with the barrel of the shotgun, the wooden door creaking slowly, revealing a bed.

And a woman lying on it, back turned. Naked.

A shiver ran down his spine, his breath grew heavy, heart pounding against his ribs, and beyond all that, a wicked voice called him to approach her—that nest of lust and desire. Ignoring his partner, he let curiosity and depravity take over. He lowered his weapon, step by step, now close to the woman’s body, his hand trembling as it reached toward her, while the other held the lantern swaying noisily at his side, its yellow light flickering across the sleeping body.

“Have mercy on me!”

A high-pitched scream came from deeper in the house. The man startled and turned, dropping the lantern to the floor, where it shattered and sparked into flames. He raised his weapon again, spinning around—only to find a man behind him.

Eyes glowing with an inhuman red glint.

A macabre grin stained with blood painted his chin, his neck, his bare chest.

A rustle behind him made his knees weaken with fear; a cold gust of air fed the fire now licking at the wooden floor. He looked over his shoulder and saw you awake—eyes just as luminous as the monster in front of him, thick saliva dripping from your chin.

As he tried to scream, a hand clamped over his mouth—metallic blood flooded his tongue.

A tear welled up in his eye.

The vampire’s voice in front of him rasped out, bestial and raw:

“Shhhh… Shhhh… Don’t cry now. Didn’t your mother teach you it’s wrong to mess with someone else’s woman?”

And he laughed—demonic—gripping the man’s throat, nearly choking him, as you remained behind, salivating for the living blood pulsing through his arteries. Remmick looked at you from the side, tilting his head, his voice undulating between the three of you like a serpent shaking its venom:

“Darling, your wife was delicious! I hope you taste just as good for my wife!”

The man screamed with all the air in his lungs, while Remmick offered him up like an animal for ritual slaughter—offering him to you. And you took him from behind, draining him with the ease of mortality—no pity, no hesitation.

Remmick watched you with affection and admiration, something growing inside him with the euphoric pleasure of a successful hunt. When you finished draining the man, his corpse now at your feet, he held out his hand to you.

You took it, letting him lead you out of that room to the front of the house, where the open door allowed the silvery light to touch your naked body, your face covered in scarlet—just like his. Remmick cupped your face in his hands, looking at you with his soul reflected in your eyes:

“My girl, how do you feel?”

“Perfect. Just a little… overwhelmed. I think it’s the thrill of the hunt.”

“Good—” he murmured, leaning in to capture your lips in a wet, filthy kiss—saliva and blood, soft tongue brushing pearly teeth. When he pulled away, a string of bloody spit still connected your mouths.

“—'Cause now, you’ll let me take care of you, darlin’. The way you deserve.”

You felt him penetrate you through the soul, his hands pulling you close into the kiss of the dead upon your lips, speaking to you through your minds:

‘—Let me take care of you, darling, let me take care of you, let me show you how good I can be for you…—’

𝐅𝐎𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐒: maybe it deviated a little from the initial concept of the request (idk), but this one was by far one of the fanfics with Remmy that i enjoyed writing the most, it's side-by-side with my fanfic involving priests, religion, Christian guilt, vampirism, remmick and other little things…

[willowser]

sweet as cherry wine—

bakugou katsuki x f!reader wc: 2.6k+ tags: katsuki pov, tough family conflicts including emotional and physical abuse (non-graphic), toxic relationship dynamics (not with reader), bakugou x f!oc, eventual office romance, canon-typical violence, light smut, slowburn emotional growth, mentioned death of a family member, happy ending, tags subject to change.

once again, very big thank you to @kodzu-ken for giving me the opportunity to pursue this idea !! our office romance is coming.....i promise......i just have to give bakugou several different layers of trauma first akhfkahfa

𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍 𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐎𝐑 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐄𝐃 𝐅𝐈𝐒𝐓 𝐖𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐃 𝐁𝐄 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐄 ˎˊ˗

title | part two

When Katsuki is 8, his grandmother dies.

There's very little he knows about death then, but he feels it coming in the months before it happens, before any of the grown-ups sit him down. It startles in his brain at her arrival, sudden and instinctive, like the little animal of him has smelled that something is off.

One day Obaachan visits—and then just never leaves, instead installed into Katsuki's playroom: the "office", once a kingdom of color, overrun with swaths of fabric his father brought home in great bundles, spooled out across the floor.

It takes both his parents and his aunt and even his oldest cousin to complete Obaachan's hostile takeover, and once she's settled in, he's entirely barred from the room. Not even allowed to dig through the scraps of red and blue and yellow, to pull satin over his shoulders or to chase tulle down the hallway.

No, after that, Katsuki can only stand at the door with an eye pressed to the crack, breathing in time to the hiss of Obaachan's machines.

Sometimes she watches him in return, catches him in her cloudy, sunken stare from her final resting place on the futon. It scares him in a way he doesn't know how to translate yet, all her protruding bone and thin, transparent skin, the way her mouth folds in on itself when she sees him. It makes something cold coil in his tummy, something that feels far too big for his little body.

There isn't much she says and that makes it worse, somehow. Her voice is as frail as she is, but there's an echo after she speaks, the same sudden silence that follows glass shattering. Most of the time, he's already on his way out of the room, moving much too loud and much too fast to show his respect and to slow down and listen—

But the one time he does, her words splinter something, hard, inside of him.

"He's just like his mother."

It hits him hotter than his mom's palm, shuts his mouth before another word can form. He's yelling about something, because he's eight and still throws ugly tantrums and because the witch matches him beat for beat, feeds his unruly little fire. It's not the first time he's ever heard it, even that young, how much like her he is, but the way Obaachan says it. Like she's peeling something rotten off the sole of her shoe.

When she looks at him, really looks at Katsuki, it's like she's seen something. Caught him, somehow, doing something he should be ashamed of, even though he's only eight and doesn't know any other way to be.

That night, he lies in bed and tells himself he doesn't care. That she's old and mean and wrong. That his mother is a hag and his grandmother's even worse and he doesn't care, he just doesn't give a crap.

And he remembers it all anyway.

Obaachan's machines go quiet in the spring.

The office becomes an office again, all her things are packed and put away; his mother scrubs it all down herself, and his old man sews late, late into the night for a couple of weeks. Katsuki avoids that room for a while, walks past the door too fast, hears phantom hissing where he knows there is none.

He doesn't cry through the incense and sutras, and he never says that he misses her, doesn't even think it, and yet still—sometimes her voice rises up right behind his mother's, just as sharp.

Time drifts forward in slow, heavy pulses, with days folding into months and months folding into years. By sixteen, Katsuki's more of a weapon than a young man and he fights like violence is the only language he knows. Anger lives in him full-time, pressed tight behind his ribs, radiating out through every word, every action. There are moments it's so strong and he doesn't know how or why, almost like it's not even his but something that was passed down, written in his blood. Like a birthright, or a curse.

He sparks off his mother like dry wood under a match.

It doesn't take much, just a glance, a shift in tone, a scrape of chopsticks a little too hard against her bowl. At this point in his life, they don't even try to talk very much, because when they do, it never ends very well.

And tonight is a perfect example.

Katsuki's halfway through with dinner, voice sharp with frustration and a mouth full of rice, "—busted my ass on the field and still lost points just 'cause I didn't kiss the ground Eraser walks on." He doesn't stop to breathe, doesn't notice how his mother's stopped chewing across the table, only continues when Masaru nods sympathetically. "And class rankings are a joke, anyway. What's the point of top scores if they're just gonna kiss up to who they like better? If they're gonna act like I'm the problem for pointin' it out?"

There's a pause as he stops to swallow, as he glances up at his dad for—something, validation or anything. Since he was a kid, his old man has let him talk himself in circles, cry over the same damn things over and over again, and sometimes Katsuki needs that space and sometimes he just wants—

"You know," Mitsuki suddenly murmurs, as casually as a blade slipped between ribs. "For someone that's supposed to be so smart, you sure run your mouth like an idiot."

The air stiffens, between all of them. Katsuki goes still, jaw tight around the bite he hasn't swallowed, because he wasn't expecting it when he should have been. From her, he always should be expecting it.

"The hell's that supposed to mean?"

The old witch hates when he swears, but she doesn't jump on him for it, doesn't yell, only shrugs like she isn't tearing him right open at the dinner table. "You come home whining about how everyone's out to get you, how the system's broken when it's really just your big mouth that's getting in your way, Katsuki."

"I'm top three in my year," he grinds out. "Ain't nothin' in my way."

"Top three," she repeats, "not top."

Katsuki flushes, immediately. It stings because it's true, because it's the same thing he's been telling himself over and over again every night. Only now is he realizing just how familiar that voice inside his head is.

"All your talk, all your pride," she shrugs again, lazy and offhand. "Not worth a damn if you have nothing to show for it."

The scar on his shoulder is still pink, under his clothes, just like the one near his hip; they're the softest parts of him, a tenderness that had to be torn out and stitched back together.

Some nights he wakes up choking, breath caught sideways in his throat, gagging like he's trying to spit up sludge that isn't there. Some nights he closes his eyes and all he can see is what's left of All Might, brittle and burned out—and it's his fault. Katsuki is the shadow. Katsuki is the reason the light doesn't reach.

"I do have something to show—"

"Then show it." Finally, she looks up at him, lip curled in—annoyance, like this is the stupidest conversation she's ever had, like this is all shit he should know by now. "Quit walking around with your head up your ass, acting like being the loudest in the room makes you the winner." She snorts, one cruel sound. "That's not being the best, that's just your big, fat ego."

Katsuki scoffs, to scratch the itch in his throat. "Yeah, you'd know, huh?"

"Don't get smart with me, kid."

"I wouldn't have to if you knew a goddamn thing!"

"And there it is, Mr. Know-It-All!"

There are so many things he wants to say and doesn't know how to, none of them fit in his mouth. They feel small and tiny and weak, and he never learned how to be that way.

He settles on: "What the hell is your problem?"

That bites. Not deep, but enough to scar, and she blinks, like it's hit something she thought she fortified. Her mouth twitches like she's biting something back and just for a second, he sees it: the edge of guilt, or fear, or some soft thing she won't let live. And then it's gone just as fast, buried like everything else.

"You're my son," Mitsuki says, final and flat, "and I'm not gonna let you turn into some loser just because you don't know when to shut your mouth and listen."

And that—that's what guts him.

Some loser.

It's not the first time he’s heard it, even that young, but the way she says it. Like she means it, like it's already true. Katsuki stares at her and he doesn't know what his face is doing, but it burns—in his throat, behind his eyes, down to the fists he has in his lap.

When he shoves back from the table, the whole thing rattles, even the legs. Plates clink and cups slosh, chopsticks jump. Whatever, he growls—maybe, he doesn't know and doesn't care—and he stalks away with a fury so hot that it takes his breath away, and it's rooted in him, that fire.

Inherited. Thrumming inside his chest like a second heart. Less of something he feels and more of something he just is.

Her voice bites at his heels, trails him down the hallway and past the genkan and framed photos of their family, hung like ornaments, and Katsuki hits the garage door open so hard it splinters all the cracks in the wall even further.

Masaru finds him thirty minutes later.

Katsuki's hands are greasy, buried in the guts of an old Toyota Crown they've been picking at for months; some shitty thing Masaru bought half-rusted out of a field in Noto because he liked the bones.

The old man doesn't say anything, just walks around to the passenger side and leans onto the open hood. Katsuki doesn't look up, still breathing too hard from his nose, fucking hands shaking in small, infuriating ways.

Silence stretches between them, thick and oily, until the socket wrench slips for the third goddamn time.

"Fuck!" Katsuki spits, louder than he should. Masaru won't nag him about it, but that bothers him even more, to just have to sit in the quiet judgement and listen to his behavior echo back at him.

He flinches when his dad raises his hand, and so the old man makes a point to soothe the tension in his neck, to pinch at the muscle above his shoulder until it releases.

"Use the 13 mil," he murmurs, and—

It makes Katsuki's jaw tick, because he knows, he knows what the fuck to use. He just didn't want to.

Still, he swaps the wrench and gets the bolt loose with a hard, angry crack, and the sound satisfies something small and mean in his chest.

They work in that silence for a little while, the kind that feels like it's pressing up against his ears. Half-seething, Katsuki hunched over the hood like a dog waiting to be struck, scowl deep enough to scar; Masaru only hums under his breath, passing a rag and the right socket without being asked.

There's a little radio on the shelf, tuned low to some enka station neither of them have ever bothered to change.

"Did I ever tell you how we met?" Masaru gives Katsuki the chance to answer, but he doesn't, so he doesn't push. "We met at the fabric house. She came in red-hot over a shipment, some dyed silk that came out wrong. She lit into the floor manager like it was personal."

Katsuki snorts. A short, cruel sound. "Sounds about right."

"She was wrong about the dye, but she wasn't wrong about the way they were handling it." He smiles, like it's a fond memory and not an admission that the witch has always been psychotic. "Your mother saw through the nonsense faster than anyone else in the room."

Maybe at another time, he would have tried to picture it: his father younger, wide-eyed, caught in the orbit of a woman like Mitsuki, all fire and sharp elbows, raising hell like it was second nature, like it still is—but the thought tugs at some raw, unnamed thing inside of him, so instead he shoves it down as far as it will go and seals the lid.

"I don't know what caught me first," Masaru continues, soft. "That she was loud, or that she cared enough to be."

Katsuki's frown deepens. "You're both insane."

"Maybe," His father laughs, and when Katsuki glances at him, the apples of his cheeks are red, glowing. Still that young man, still enthralled. "But we know what matters, and we look out for each other."

It burns something deep in Katsuki, hearing that, and he doesn't know why. It feels like disgust, but—that's not quite it. More like disbelief. Furious, bone-deep disbelief, to think that someone as gentle and quiet as his father could ever understand the wildfire that is his mother. To think there is some unseen side of her that he's never met, hidden and whole and that knows how to be gentle back.

"How?" Katsuki stands so fast that bolts clatter, that Masaru looks up at him in surprise. "How the hell do you deal with her? She never shuts up, she never backs off, she gets in everyone's face, always has to win—"

"She's not trying to win," Masaru disagrees, quietly.

"The hell she ain't!" Katsuki scoffs, throwing his hands out, because it's right there in front of his father's face and all he does is frown. "You always take her side! Even though she starts everything, and she's always pushin'—pushin' like 'm some little brat that doesn't know squat, that can't do anything right!"

Masaru doesn't flinch, or argue. Only watches him, silent and steady.

It makes his voice rise, crack with all the heat. "You act like she's perfect or somethin', but I'm not you! I can't—jus'—sit there while she tears into me!"

He’s nearly as tall as his father, but the old man kneels anyway, settling down to meet him, gripping both of Katsuki’s forearms; firm, unguarded, showing no hint of threat.

"She's not perfect, son," Masaru murmurs, voice low, "none of us are. She pushes you harder than she should, sometimes, because she sees the strength in you, even when you don't, because she doesn't want you to ever be unprepared—but that doesn't mean it's always right. That doesn't mean you have to be okay with it."

His face pinches tight, and he squeezes his eyes shut and when his father tries to hug him, Katsuki yanks away. Because he doesn't know any other way to be. The wrench in his hand doesn't shake anymore, but on the inside, something is splitting wide open, a slow kind of panic. Creeping, like rust spreading under paint.

His old man talks about love like it's so simple; patience is just something you give, forgiveness is just something that comes—but Katsuki isn't built that way. His mother isn't, either. They burn too hot, too fast, and leave ash in their wake without meaning to. Masaru will never get it, because he's not wired the same way and doesn't carry the same pressure in his chest, the same sharpness in his teeth.

But his father is right about one thing: just because he is stupid enough to endure the shit, doesn't mean Katsuki has to.

[lacedcompulsion]

SLOW LIKE HONEY

pairing: spencer reid x reader

content tags & warnings: 18+, wc 7800+, smut, bau!reader, friends w benefits, situationship moment, smut ofc, yearning, angst, i think drinking but can't remember idk, small allusion to throwing up but not explicitly, death bc they work several cases but it's nothing more than what we see in the show pretty much, not rlly a case fic but it is an aspect of the story, idk what season this is around tbh

notes: hiii first post!! i had this up on ao3 originally w another pairing but reworked it for this yay ok i hope u enjoy and let me know what u think if u want i guess... no pressure... ok bye!

Spencer’s breath on your neck is hot and partly wet, a well-received pacification as you continue jerking lightly against his hips. He has one hand on your waist, rubbing soothing circles with the pad of his left thumb. The other rests on your throat, not gripping, just lingering. He uses the hand on your waist to tap lightly to remind you to roll over and off him. 

When your head nuzzles into the pillow next to his own, you just stare. It’s a justified sight; you think briefly that the laws of unrequited love are probably older than the laws of marriage. 

“You staying the night?” you ask, voice soft. You try to hide the longing within it, the disappointment should he say no. And he probably will say no — rule number one: no staying the night when avoidable. 

Spencer’s nose scrunches, fingers reaching up to brush a few strands of hair from his face. His fingers twitch and you think, just for a moment, that he might reach out and brush your hair, too. 

“I shouldn’t.”

“Yeah,” you agree, turning your gaze to the ceiling, sucking your bottom lip between previously gnashing teeth. 

Rule number two: no kissing outside of sex. It’s fine when he’s inside of you, you guys established. Not when you’re laying in bed, sweaty and breathing hard and outside of the haze caused by a mutual chase for relief.

You anticipate the weight beside you lifting, the cold air rushing into the bed, the pit in your stomach stretching and widening until you think it might swallow her whole.

What comes in lieu is Spencer’s hand resting on your waist. You almost protest — what about our rules? 

Instead, you slip your tongue back behind your teeth and watch the fan circle, circle.

Rule number three: no lying. 

When you wake three hours later, Spencer is gone. 

✶ 

There are four dead women in Texas — strangled, asphyxiated. You know it will be a long case; the marks adorning the women’s bodies and the lack of posing them speak to a textbook sadist. The bodies stuffed in the forest, that total destruction of evidence, indicate an intelligent one. You breathe in a sigh as you watch Spencer’s fingers flip through the pages of his tan file.

“Guess we’re heading to Texarkana,” Morgan says beside you.

Your stomach turns. This job never gets easier.

What does, though, are Spencer’s eyes on you. The softness rushes through you the same way it did when you first shook hands, but it’s grown more comfortable. Steadier.

The turbulence isn’t bad, but it’s enough to jolt Spencer’s coffee, sending a few drops onto the file spread across his lap. He curses softly — which still sounds wrong coming from him — blotting at the papers with a napkin. Across the aisle, you watch him out of the corner of your eye, a faint smirk tugging at your lips.

“Careful, Spence,” Morgan teases from the row behind, leaning forward. “We don’t need you short-circuiting before we even land.”

Spencer mutters something about the statistical improbability of turbulence causing major spills, but you try your hardest to tune it out. You shift your focus back to the folder in your hands and work yourself to think. To work. It’s what you’re here for. You’re not here for Spencer.

Still, his idle hands fidgeting with the dirty napkin tug at your very carefully placed focus. You think of the unsub, instead. He’s precise, methodical, angry. You can feel it in the patterns carved into the victims' skin, in the sheer rage of the injuries.

JJ’s voice cuts through the hum of the engines as she adjusts herself in the leather couch across from where you’re sitting. “Victimology suggests a personal vendetta. Both women have ties to the same gym, but nothing beyond that yet.”

“So we’re looking at someone in the orbit of their personal lives,” Rossi says, flipping through his own file.

“Or someone who thinks they are,” Hotch replies from his seat at the front, voice grim as always. 

You lean back, head against the headrest. Your fingers tighten around the folder. It’s not the first time you’ve flown into a city chasing a ghost, and it won’t be the last.

You glance up. Spencer’s eyes meet yours for a fraction longer than necessary.

It’s not a comfort you allow yourself to acknowledge often, but here, in the warmth of the plane, it feels as inevitable as the sunrise. Something constant, even when you’re on your way to prevent something that’s already unraveling. 

✶ 

Their rooms are right next to each other, and you watch Spencer disappear behind the door without sparing you a glance. Your feet itch to walk over, but it’s late, and everyone’s all tired, and nothing that bears any resemblance to normal feels moral when you have dead bodies on your hands. You tuck one leg beneath you and lay the contents of the file across your bed, organized in a way only you can tell. 

Right before you turn out the light, you hear a knock breaking through the barrier of the wall behind you.

You smile, raise a knuckle to the space above your headboard, and knock back.

✶ 

The precinct is quiet now, save for the faint buzz of dated fluorescent lights and the occasional shuffle of an officer passing by. The case is closed. The unsub — calm, articulate and utterly devoid of remorse — is in custody. His confession was delivered with an eerie precision that still crawls under your skin.

You stand by the evidence board, absently peeling tape from the corners of a photo. The faces of the victims stare back at you, lives now reduced to a few lines of text and grainy images. You pick up an eraser before exhaling slowly, fingers stilling as you hear footsteps behind you. 

Spencer appears at your side, a cup of coffee in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. He offers the latter without a word, eyes soft in a way that you've come to understand means he sees more than he lets on.

You accept the water, twisting the cap open but not drinking. You say nothing about how he remembers that you don’t drink coffee past mid-afternoon. “We don’t leave till morning. You should go back to the hotel. You’ve been running on fumes.”

Spencer tilts his head just enough that no one should notice — you shouldn’t notice — and a faint smile plays at his lips. “Funny. I was just about to say the same to you.”

“Right.” You gesture with a nod of your head toward the now-empty chairs around the conference table. “Feels strange, doesn’t it? The quiet, after everything.”

Spencer nods, gaze drifting to the board. “Yeah. It always does.” His voice at the edge of his sentence lifts up and you wait for him to continue. He licks his lips and it puts an idea in your head that shouldn’t be there. Still, it persists. “You don’t have to feel so guilty about the ones we didn’t save, I hope you know. There’s nothing you could have done differently.”

You want to deflect, to make some dry comment and move on, but his eyes hold you there.

“I’m fine,” you say eventually. It sounds hollow even to your own ears.

Spencer shifts on his feet and inches closer, just close enough that anyone abruptly walking in wouldn’t force you to jump away. “I will head back to the hotel,” he says finally. “But only if you come with me.”

Like a dog, you trail behind him, tossing the eraser back on the table and ignoring how it rolls backwards until it clatters with a quiet clap on the ground. 

✶ 

“Missed this,” Spencer murmurs, hand lazily running up your leg. He’s kneeled before you, hands on each of your thighs, pushing, spreading.

“This?” you prod. He blows softly between your legs, and you can feel him waiting for you to react. You oblige, fluttering your eyelids, falling backward on the mattress until the sterile, off-white duvet catches you. 

“You know what I mean,” he whispers, parting your legs further like a peace offering.

You’re not sure you do. 

Still, you tilt your head back and use a white-knuckle grip to grab at his hair and convey the things you can’t bring yourself to say by way of word.

✶ 

“Have you noticed you use present tense when speaking about the victims?” you ask once they’ve finished.

He pauses, gaze locking with yours. “Sometimes I… I feel like if we speak as if they’re still ours, still here, we can convince ourselves it’s true. It makes this all a little easier.”

His voice is soft, almost breaking in speech, and his meaning hangs between the two of you, undeniable.

“I can’t stop thinking about the timeline,” you say. “There’s something off. If the suspect left the second location at 8:15, they wouldn’t have made it across town in time to—”

✶ 

You guys go without a case for a month, which should feel like a good thing. It is a good thing. The less bodies out there the better.

You’re nursing a scotch at the bar — you don’t even like scotch, you just felt the need for something strong — and ignore the burning in your lower stomach, the ache between your legs. You sit and sip until the leather stool breathes enough courage into you for you to get up and walk out. 

It’s been a month without the feeling of him rolling into you, writhing beneath him, legs twisting, hips turning, only one name chosen to slip past your lips — all reasons why you don’t even make it to Spencer’s bedroom when you show up at his door unexpectedly.

“How’d you find your way here?” he asks, two fingers rubbing circles on your clit. 

“The b-bar,” you say, hands clutching at his biceps. “Was there, but I left,” you add in a hazy rush.

“Good girl,” he says, then rewards you by slipping two fingers inside. 

It takes him two more minutes before he’s pulling his belt off, slipping himself inside of you, and says: “I needed this.” 

(You don’t get caught up on how he said this. You definitely don’t pretend he said you as you were coming.)

You clear his throat when you both finish, shifting away and pulling a blanket over yourself like you’re trying to make yourself smaller on the opposite end of the couch. You get like this some of the time. Distant. Afraid. 

The space between him and you feels wide, even though you can still feel the phantom weight of Spencer against your skin; the wetness of his saliva still resides on your lower lip, sticky and welcome as honey. 

“I should go,” you say finally, tight.

Spencer doesn’t look at you, doesn’t move. “If you want.”

You flinch, but recover quick enough to grab your clothes off the floor. The silence between you stretches, unbearably so. You press your palms into your thighs, digging your nails into your skin, grounding yourself against the ache clawing its way up your throat.

When you stand you smooth down your clothes with trembling hands. 

“I…” you start, but the words die in your throat. You think you could write an empty book full of things unsaid. 

When he finally looks up, his eyes meeting yours, raw and unguarded, neither of you speak. You wait for him to say your name, to place an open palm on the cushion next to his and ask you to stay. Instead, there’s an untraceable, undefinable look in his eyes that you can’t distinguish from indifference. 

So you turn, footsteps deafening as you walk away. Spencer doesn’t call after you. He stays rooted as the door swings shut.  

The scent of him clings to your clothes like decay settling over a room harboring a dead body.

✶ 

You guys get over it within four days, like you always do. 

You’re both on top of the covers, shoes off but shields up, watching some nothing-show flicker across the TV screen like it has something to say. It doesn’t. Neither do you. Not at first.

Spencer’s got his fingers folded under his chin like he’s solving the world again. You wonder if you’re the problem this time.

“You always do that,” you say, voice low like a dare.

He doesn’t look at you. “Do what.”

“That thing. Where you think so loud I can hear the math happening.”

His mouth tilts, barely. “Sorry. Didn’t realize thinking was disruptive.”

“It is,” you shoot back. “When I’m trying not to.”

That gets his attention. His eyes flick over, sharp and unreadable in a way that makes you want to say something reckless.

“You could always leave,” he says, not unkindly, but with some kind of challenge stitched into it.

You shift onto your side, face to his, a breath apart now. “If I wanted to leave, I wouldn’t be stealing half your pillow.”

He doesn’t answer for a beat. Maybe two. Then: “You always do that.”

You raise a brow. “What.”

“Make it sound like we’re not one wrong breath from kissing.”

There's silence after that. But not the safe kind.

You smirk — because it’s easier than feeling things. “Guess we’re both good at pretending.”

He swallows. Says nothing. The space between you gets smaller in that strange, invisible way where bodies don’t move but everything else does.

On the TV, the fake people keep laughing. You wonder what it’d take to join them.

✶ 

You don’t have a TV in your room, so when the two of you finally catch your breath again, the room is filled with nothing but static silence. The kind that creeps in under the door and settles on your chest like it paid for the room.

You’re sitting up, knees drawn to your chest like armor, picking at the seam of your old blanket like it wronged you. Like if you unravel enough knots, you’ll find the part of yourself that didn’t start caring. Spencer’s still lying back, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling like it has answers you don’t. Like it ever did.

“You weren’t supposed to stay,” you say, tone razor-light. Like it’s nothing. Like it doesn’t matter. Like he doesn’t matter. Except it does, and he does, and the air between you feels like it’s holding its breath.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. “Didn’t realize you were keeping score.”

You snort. “I’m not. I’m keeping boundaries.”

Your voice is too steady. You hate that it’s too steady. It betrays nothing, and that’s the problem.

“Oh, right. The imaginary fence around your feelings.” He says it flat, like a fact, but there’s that flicker — barely a crack — in his voice, and it lands heavier than he thinks it does.

You turn, slow, eyes sharp. “Don't psychoanalyze me just because you're losing your grip on casual.”

His jaw tightens. You watch it happen. Watch him go from soft to steel in half a second. “You think this is me losing grip?” He’s not loud. That’s the thing. He never needs to be.

You don’t answer. You pull the blanket tighter, even though you’re not cold. Your hands won’t stop moving — tucking, smoothing, anything to keep from reaching for him.

“You said no spending the night,” you murmur. “You said that. You’re the one who made that rule, not me.”

You’re trying not to sound like a little kid pointing fingers, pointing out a broken rule, but it’s there, the crack in your throat. You feel it more than you hear it.

“I did. And then you fell asleep on my arm and I—” he exhales, bitter-soft, “—didn’t feel like being alone. Sue me.”

It’s the first time he’s sounded tired. Not work-tired. Not jet-lag-tired. Real-tired.

“You should’ve left.” It comes out too fast, too loud. You regret it instantly. You want to shove the words back in your mouth and stitch your lips shut. You want to rewind five seconds and say please stay instead.

He sits up now, finally, finally meeting your eyes. “Say what you mean.”

The silence that follows isn’t empty. It’s crowded. With everything you’ve left unsaid since the first night, the third night, the one where he kissed your wrist like it meant something.

You clench your jaw. Mean is dangerous. Mean is everything you’re trying not to be.

Once you start meaning things, it stops being safe.

“I mean,” you start, voice quieter now, threadbare, “that I can’t keep waking up next to you and pretending it’s not ruining me a little.”

You don’t look at him when you say it. You look at your hands. The blanket. The space between your knees. Anything but his face.

And there it is. Your little apocalypse, out loud.

Spencer blinks, slow. Like he’s trying to rewind it, parse it, file it under Things To Analyze Later. But he just nods.

“Okay,” he says. “Then I’ll go.”

The words fall like bricks. No heat. No argument. Just resignation, folded neatly like one of his pressed work shirts.

He stands, grabs his coat from the chair, movements stiff like they’re too careful. Like if he moves too fast, he’ll shatter. You don’t stop him.

But you don’t look away, either. You make yourself watch. Like penance.

The door clicks behind him like punctuation. Not a period. Not quite. Maybe a semicolon.

And you lie back, staring at the ceiling, waiting for it to explain how you got here.

It doesn’t.

✶ 

The chill of mid-November isn’t much to speak of in Tallahassee, but the air feels heavy nonetheless. It’s bone dry and still in the cramped precinct, but you’re used to this — the unrelenting silence that builds until it threatens to rupture. The walls are yellowed with age, the lights too bright for such a small space. It smells faintly of burnt coffee and paper left too long in damp drawers. 

You stand at the center of it all, the evidence spread across the table in front of you, photographs and crime scene reports arranged with surgical precision. Hotch’s doing. 

You’re deliberate in your movements, every action honed to keep your mind focused on the case rather than the ache lodged under your ribs.

“Two couples, three weeks,” Hotch begins, more a reiteration to himself than anything.“No apparent connection between the victims beyond the methodology. He’s escalating.”

“Look at the posing,” Spencer says, coming around from the other side of the table to slightly rearrange the photos. “It’s too deliberate. Too symmetrical. This isn’t just about killing. It’s like he’s… creating something. A tableau, maybe.”

Rossi shakes his head. “Could just be obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Order for order’s sake.” Spencer hums in distant deliberation as he sets up a geographical profile on the room’s opposing board. 

You’re not so sure Rossi’s right, but seniority rules. You turn your attention back to the board, adding another photo to the cluster.

Across the room, Spencer hovers near the whiteboard, arms crossed. You’ve barely spoken since you all arrived. You feel the weight of him pulling at your attention despite yourself. You feel too aware of how fragile everything feels.

✶ 

Later that evening, Spencer finds you in one of the precinct’s side offices. The room is dimly lit, the blinds half-drawn, casting striped shadows across the desk where you sit, scrolling through files on your laptop. You feel him hesitating in the doorway.

“You’re avoiding me,” Spencer says.

“You’re not exactly making yourself easy to approach,” you say without looking up, voice flat.

Later that evening, Spencer finds you in one of the precinct’s side offices. The room is dimly lit, the blinds half-drawn, casting striped shadows across the desk where you sit, scrolling through files on your laptop. The screen’s glow makes your face look washed out, otherworldly. Like something pulled from a memory instead of a moment. You feel him hesitating in the doorway.

“You’re avoiding me,” Spencer says.

“You’re not exactly making yourself easy to approach,” you say without looking up, voice flat.

“I wasn’t trying to make it hard,” he says finally, stepping inside like the floor might give out. “I just didn’t want to make it worse.”

You click your pen twice, too fast, like the notes you’re absentmindedly writing matter more than what he’s saying. It doesn’t. But you need something to touch, something to do. “Well,” you mutter, “congrats on that front.”

His breath catches. Just a little. Enough to register.

He walks further in, careful steps over scuffed linoleum, until he’s standing across from you. Not close, not far. Neutral territory. “I didn’t mean to stay that night. Or the time before that. I mean — I meant to leave. I just…”

He trails off. Looks away. Picks at a hangnail like it might distract him from how vulnerable he sounds. “It didn’t feel like a rule anymore. It felt like a punishment.”

You stop scrolling. Not because of what he said — though that hits somewhere low and raw — but because you’re tired. Tired of parsing every glance, every touch, every maybe.

“Then maybe we shouldn’t have made rules at all,” you say. “Maybe we should’ve just let this thing crash and burn from the beginning instead of dragging it out like a slow-motion car wreck.”

Spencer leans against the edge of the desk. His hands hover near yours but don’t touch. Like he’s asking without asking.

“I don’t want it to crash,” he says. Quiet. Steady. “I just didn’t know how to keep it from doing that without breaking something else in the process.”

You finally look up. Meet his eyes. They’re soft and stormy and apologizing in ways his words haven’t gotten to yet.

“You hurt me,” you say. It’s not meant to be an accusation, nor a weapon. Just the truth.

“I know,” he says, and he means it. “I hurt myself, too.”

You blink. Slow. The words don’t fix anything, but they peel the edge off the tension.

“So what now?” you ask.

Spencer shrugs, but it’s the careful kind. The kind that doesn’t want to shake the fragile thing between you. “I stay. Or I go. Your call.”

You scan his face like you’re trying to read a foreign language you only half-remember. But the burn’s still there. Under your ribs. In your throat. 

“I can’t keep doing this,” you say, softer now, but not gentler. “It’s always almost. Always something you almost say, or almost feel, or almost admit.”

He looks down at the floor like it might offer him a script. It doesn’t.

“I didn’t come here to fight,” he says.

“You didn’t come here to fix anything either.”

That one lands. You see it in the way his hands stiffen at his sides, in the way he doesn’t argue.

You glance back at your notes. Eyes unfocused.. “You should go,” you whisper. 

He lingers like he might say something. Might reach out. 

This time, he leaves without closing the door. 

✶ 

Your feet carry you past your own room and straight to Spencer’s once you step into the hotel. It feels like second nature, the way your hand reaches for something you can’t have but can’t get enough of. 

You guys don’t do this — fuck during cases. It’s always after. It has to be after, or else what are they doing? Trading in humanity for a fire that’s always sure to cease once the moment passes?

He doesn’t answer at the first knock, so you just knock harder. It’s a threat: open up or let everyone see me standing here at your door. Spencer chooses the former.

“May I help you?” Spencer says, and it’s a half-joke, but you hear the hesitancy. His eyes dart around the hallway like this is a trap.

“Actually, I was thinking I could help you.” 

There’s a brief moment where a spark filters through his eyes. It’s gone just before you can decipher whether it’s real or not. In its replacement, the door cracks open not even an inch, maybe a centimeter. 

You take it for what she wants it to be. You step in and kiss him hard, rough, like you want to bite him. You almost do. Spencer breathes back into you, hands still at your sides before coming up to pull you in closer.

He pushes your back against the door in what you take to be a feeble attempt at reclaiming power. Instead of letting him have it, you pull his sweatpants and boxers down in one go, kissing as you descend down his body.

“I’m sorry,” you say, then place a kiss above his navel. “I’m sorry.” Another below it. “I’m so sorry.” 

Spencer sucks in a breath after the placement of the next.

✶ 

“Tell me you don’t want me,” Spencer whispers, so low you almost lose it in the sound of your meshed bodies. You’re on top of him, rolling your hips against his like you might die without this — without him.

“What?”

“Tell me you don’t want me,” he repeats, nails digging into your skin. 

Your stomach turns. It feels brittle and hard as you roll the thought of it around your mouth. You distance yourself when you let the words escape you, so far out of your own body you barely notice Spencer coming beneath you.

✶ 

Spencer winds up being right about the story aspect of the case. The killer had dropped out of college years prior, ditching his creative writing major for a subordinate position in his dad’s construction company. The need for a creative outlet came out in a less than favorable way.

You pat his shoulder on the plane, tell him he did a good job. He squeezes your shoulder before choosing the seat across from you. You glance around. No one saw. 

There’s a fluttering in your stomach you don’t want to call butterflies, so you think of them as dull, brown moths.

✶ 

December bleeds slowly as it reaches the end of the month, and Strauss approves a winter break of some sort. One week off, but they have to do a certain amount of file work while at home. Everyone takes what they can get.  

Morgan speaks with pride about the trip he’s taking to New York City — of the liquor and the women. Emily raises an eyebrow and jokes that he’s just looking for trouble. Spencer, predictably, launches into a tangent about holiday traditions around the world, but no one interrupts him. You’ve noticed the others think it’s endearing when he rambles.

You’re quiet, but do your best to not seem unhappy. You sit beside Spencer in the round table room as the team winds down. Your elbows bump occasionally, but neither of you moves to shift away. 

As goodbyes are exchanged, Spencer lingers. His steps are measured, slow, as they both head toward the exit. The cold air waits for them outside, visible through the frosted glass of the door. He hesitates, hand stilling on the strap of his bag.

“You’ve got plans?” she asks, breaking the quiet between them.

He shrugs.

“Come on, share,” you say, but you’re not sure why you’re prying. Not sure you want the answer.

“I’m going to Las Vegas,” he says, then swallows hard. “I’m visiting my mother.”

You make a noise akin to ah, nodding. It’s a good thing, truly. You’ve only met his mom once but instantly loved her, the way she complimented your taste in literature and the smell of your perfume. 

“Tell her I say hi?” 

He nods. “What about you?” 

“Just me and eggnog,” you reply, your tone light, though it falters slightly at the end. “Maybe a movie marathon if I get through the paperwork.”

Spencer laughs gently, the sound brief but warm, like a candle flickering. He shifts on his feet, his eyes tracing the edge of the door before finding yours again.

“Well,” he says, volume dipping into something quieter, more deliberate. “I’ll see you next week.”

“Yeah,” you reply, but you don’t move. The door feels like an end, more final than it should. It’s just a week, you tell yourself, and wills it to comfort you.

Spencer turns toward it, pulling it open just enough to let the cold seep in. She steps halfway through before pausing. He glances back over his shoulder, the light catching in his eyes, and he looks at you like he wants to say something else but thinks better of it.

“I’ll see you,” he repeats..

“Yeah.”.

And then he’s gone, the door swinging shut behind him. You stand there a moment longer before exhaling and pulling your scarf tighter around your neck, then stepping into the cold.

The wind stings your cheeks, but you hardly notice. Something about his words linger loosely long after you’ve begun the drive home.

✶ 

When you rustle around your sheets that night, tossing and turning, you can only find refuge in the movement of your own wrist against you, fingers slipping in and out, in and out. 

“I see you,” you whisper to the empty room. 

When you shut your eyes, you do. Brown hair, hazel eyes and all.

✶ 

There’s a knock at your door. Three short, then one after a beat — like whoever’s on the other side changed their mind halfway through.

You open it and there he is, shoulders dusted in snow like some ghost from a poem. Collar turned up, curls damp, cheeks pink from wind or nerves or both. You blink once, slow, like your brain needs a second to load him.

“I thought you had a flight,” you say, not moving.

“I missed it,” Spencer replies, like that explains anything. Like that doesn’t set your pulse lurching.

You lean against the frame. Not letting him in. Not sending him away either. “Accidentally?”

He huffs a laugh, breath clouding between you. “Only in the sense that I bought the ticket knowing I wouldn’t get on the plane.”

You glance past him — at the streetlight flickering like it’s shivering, at the snow piling quiet and soft on the railing. The air smells like cold metal and unfinished conversations.

“You came all this way just to stand on my porch and be cryptic?” you ask, but your voice gives too much away. It’s not teasing. It’s something slower, more dangerous. Want, laced in denial.

“My mom’s not doing well. I was kidding myself. She—” He looks down, then up again, eyes impossibly warm under all that winter. “She called and told me not to come.

You shift. Bare feet cold on the tile. The heat behind you spilling into the threshold, painting his skin gold.

“Spence—” you start, but the sentence falls apart in your mouth. He’s looking at you like you’re a solution he just solved too late.

“I’m not asking to come in—” 

“Come in,” you say, swinging the door open perhaps a little too fast. 

He brushes past you but pauses when you’re just an inch apart. He pulls his purple scarf off his shoulders, apologizes softly when snow falls to your floor, melting instantly against the heat.

You tell him it’s fine, lifting a hand to his cheek. Then, quieter: “You’re freezing.”

He smiles, small and wrecked. “Yeah.”

You don’t move, but the distance is shrinking anyway, second by second, breath by breath.

“I missed you,” he says, like it’s the first true thing he’s said in weeks. Maybe months.

And something in you thaws, just slightly. Not much, but enough to say enough to say I know and mean it.

When he kisses you, it feels like he means it.

✶ 

He doesn’t stay the night under the guise of paperwork. You know what he really means. He doesn’t text the next day, or the day after that, and for some reason this whole break feels like a complete waste if you’re not with him. 

On the sixth day, you snap. Your chest is burning, hot and cold all at once. You pick up your phone and type a message to him, fingers trembling.

Are you even thinking about me at all? 

The reply comes swiftly: You know I am. After twelve seconds, he clarifies he’s having dinner with a couple friends from college who are in town. You don’t have the dignity to ignore it. 

He picks up on the second to last ring. 

“I’m at a restaurant.”

“I know.” You didn’t have any words planned. So, you say: “Tell me what you were thinking about.”

“I’m in public.” 

“You’re in the bathroom,” you correct. The running sink — which you know is on to hush the sound of your call — audible on the other end of the phone proves your point.

“I was thinking about…” his voice trails off. You can hear him fight it. You will him to lose. “That first time. After that case in—”

“Alabama,” you finish, then slip a hand under the waistband of your yoga pants.

It dissolves into hushed whispers, soft moans, and a slick mess between your thighs. Your back is lifting off the cushion, head pressing hard into the arm of the couch. 

“Tell me you love me,” you hear, and don’t register it’s you saying it until silence lolls on the other side of the phone. “Tell me,” you repeat, destined to what you hadn’t meant to say, dropping your volume to a whisper.

He says your name like a warning he’s not sure he wants to call.

“It’s not commitment, Spence,” you plead. “I won’t hold it over your head.”

A few more beats of silence, and you glance at the phone resting atop your knee to see if he had hung up. He hadn’t. You contemplate hanging up yourself. 

“I love you.” The words come like the burst of flowers in mid-April. You wave between believing him and recognizing that part of his job is lying. Your fingers roll quicker inside of yourself all the same. 

When he repeats it a second time, you come with tears pooling in the dips of your collarbones.

✶ 

Spencer doesn’t text or call you when he gets back home. That familiar pit slides itself open in your gut. You’re not owed anything, you know this. The pit storms down self-poisoning pellets regardless. 

When you see him in the office, Spencer’s some kind of distant, eyes glossed over, devoid of anything you would be able to pick apart. You’re left to analyze the sudden shutout instead. 

It wouldn’t be odd to swing by and catch him by the coffee station, you are friends after all. Still, your arrangement leaves you paranoid and anxious and unsure of how to conduct yourself. 

It’s outside the bathroom where you catch him three hours later, shaking his slightly damp hands as you walk by.

“Hey,” you say, a little too rushed, and you refrain from wincing. “How was your vacation?” It sounds fake even with all you practiced under your breath sitting at your desk, so you compensate by trying hard to not let it show on your face.

“It was good,” comes Spencer’s reply, before he slides past you and steps in the direction of the bullpen. 

“Just good?” you ask. Spencer eyes a person rounding the hallway and into the space you’re both occupying, and you follow his line of sight. 

“Mhm.”

“Okay,” you say with a nod, then grab his forearm to drag him farther away from the restroom and into the stairwell. There’s minimal protest on his end, likely to save face, but you take it anyway. 

Once you’re inside, you drop your voice to a whisper. “Why didn’t you say anything, call when you got back?”

“I got busy.”

“That’s- that’s a lie,” you huff out. “Please. Please answer.”

He gnaws on your lip like it's a final meal. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s not an answer,” you breathe out, on the brink of exasperated laughter. You drop his shoulders as you soften your tone and add: “Don’t be sorry.”

“This is killing me,” he whispers back. “It’s killing me. I—” He cuts himself off, brows furrowing in what looks like distress. “I’m always thinking about you.”

That’s not what he wanted to say, you realize. That’s not what he was going to say. The thought of the alternative words leaving his mouth curdles in your stomach, rises in the form of bile to your throat. 

Someone walks into the stairwell and carelessly pushes past you. You fix your posture while Spencer ducks his head and uses the distraction to walk away. Your mouth opens to say something, but you trade it in for silence. You’re not sure what you’re fighting for. 

You walk into the bathroom and throw up the contents of your stomach into the shiny white bowl. It feels like honey on its way up.

✶ 

“Two victims in the last week,” JJ says, passing them all a file before resting on the beige leather couch of the jet. “Both found in their homes, no signs of forced entry, and no evidence of sexual assault or robbery.” She sighs. “Just... gone.”

“They’re being strangled,” Spencer says. “But not with hands… some sort of ligature?”

JJ nods. “The medical examiner says it’s likely something soft, like a scarf or a tie.”

Hotch leans forward, voice calm and direct. “What do we know about the victims?”

“They’re all married women,” Spencer says, voice low as he flips through the beige file. “Late thirties to early forties, no kids, and their spouses were out of town when the murders occurred. The killer left no note, no message.” He glances up. “Like JJ said, it’s like he just wanted them gone.”

Spencer’s shoulders stiffen almost imperceptibly, but you catch it.

“Could be someone they knew,” Morgan says, his tone contemplative. “If there’s no sign of a break-in, they let the killer in willingly. Someone they trusted.”

“Someone they trusted but didn’t suspect,” you murmur. 

Spencer glances down at you, and your eyes meet for the briefest moment before he looks away. 

✶ 

Your hotel room stays dark. The file lay unopened on your desk. There’s a mini fridge you stare at, like even the presence of unsipped alcohol might just do the trick. You hate that he’s letting this impact your job, which doesn’t stop you from doing so. 

With your back against the mattress, you raise a fist, then knock against the yellow wall. 

No one knocks back.

✶ 

Emily cracks the case — a woman, she realizes, when it all feels too much like jealousy. The unsub, a thirty-something woman named Victoria Ackers, doesn’t put up much of a fight when Morgan kicks down her front door.

“It should’ve been me,” Victoria wails when you put her in cuffs. “How come they got to be loved, and I didn’t?”

You rarely sympathize with the people you lock up. This isn’t an exception.

Still, you place Victoria in loose cuffs, and when it comes to closing the door of the cop car, you close it softly.

✶ 

You go home alone and wait until three. Spencer doesn’t come.

When you finally lie in bed, it feels like a grave. 

✶ 

You’re running on three weeks of sleep deprivation when you decide to approach him. It’s long after work is supposed to be over, and the only person left in the office beside them is Hotch, who can barely be seen through the pile of paperwork adorning his desk. 

Spencer has concerned himself in an online debate forum on the overuse of arguing against the cosmological argument in atheist literature to notice you slipping into his view, pulling Morgan’s chair around to sit in it.

“Hey,” you speak first. You wait for him to invite you into a conversation.

“Hi,” he says, moving his mouse away from his hand. 

“I figured we should…”

“Talk?” Spencer guesses.

“Talk, yeah.” You bite your lip. 

“I didn’t mean to shut you out.”

“But you did.” The words have little bite in them. 

“I’m—”

“You don’t have to say it.”

“I want to.” A beat passes. You allow it. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” you say after several long seconds. You surprise yourself with the sureness behind the meaning of it.

“What do you have to be sorry for?”

You don't respond. You watch his shoulders drop. “Oh.”

“It’s okay,” you assure. “This… isn’t how it’s supposed to be.” Your eyes stall a moment too long on the team photo atop his desk, the only photo he has up. Like it’s instinctive, Spencer fiddles with a file on his desk.

“So… it’s just over.” 

You don’t have anything to say — he hadn’t posed it as a question. You’re not sure where you’re going when you stand, but you stand regardless. You pause as you shove things in your bag back at your desk. “I was lying, by the way,” you say. “In Tallahassee, when I said I didn’t want you.” 

You could stick around to see what Spencer has in response, but you don’t. It’ll hurt at the same rate, whatever it is. 

✶ 

It felt like finality, so you go to bed early. It isn’t an easy feat, and it feels nothing like winning. 

With your eyes shut, sleeping but not dreaming, you aren’t expecting the pounding sound that’s coming from your door, the intensity of it to jolt you awake. Too delirious from a lingering state of hypnagogia, you swing the door open without checking to see who it is first. Spencer stands there, soaked through his long-sleeved shirt. You weren’t even aware it was raining.

It happens fast, Spencer’s lips against yours. He kisses you the way you had kissed him back in Tallahassee, rough and cleaving you open like a god that doesn’t belong. You don’t have to work hard to meet the same level of desire. 

“What are you doing?” you get out between kisses, stepping backward as you head to your room with Spencer still pulled close to you.

“Please don’t ask any questions right now.”

So you don’t. Instead, you let him strip you of your clothes, soothe your surprised body with a palm on the small of your back as he leads you to lie on the bed. 

“You’re freezing,” you mention. A droplet of water cascades down his hair and lands on your cheekbone, then another on your shoulder until your whole body seems wet.

“It’s raining.”

“I gathered.”

You’re wet somewhere else, too, you think, as he dips his hand between your legs and leaves feather-light touches against your core.

“Please,” you whisper.

“Please what?”

“Touch me.”

“I am touching you, honey.” He’s teasing you, you know. He wants you to beg. It’s so rare he gets you at his mercy. In moments like these, you can tell he savors it. Relishes in it.

Instead of responding, you grab at his wrist, forcing his fingers inside of yourself. Spencer lets out something akin to a moan even though it's not him on the receiving end. 

You think he likes you like this, wide open for him. Your lips are parted, like you’re one big portal Spencer can slide into, move his tongue against, curl his fingers in. He takes the opportunity, pushes his pointer and middle into your mouth and lets you clamp around them. You suck, causing him to instinctively up the pace of his other hand like it’s a reward.

“Thought we weren’t gonna show up anymore,” he says. He curls his fingers to reach that one spot he knows makes your pupils blow. You push back the thought that he might’ve found that spot on other women, too. Worse, the thought that someone might’ve taught him where it is. “But you let me in. So what happened to that, hm?”

You mumble something incoherent around his fingers, so he pulls them out and grabs you by the chin instead. “Go ahead.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t what?”

“Keep you out.”

You want him to kiss you then, but don't know if that’s too intimate. You opt for bucking your hips against his hand instead. It takes another calculated curl of his fingers before you tighten around them, legs shutting tight as you ride it out. 

“I wanna do something for you,” you say. Your breathing is slow again but your legs are still shaking a little. Spencer grabs the opportunity to spread them.

“Yeah? You’re sweet.” He pulls you farther up the bed, spreads your legs and slots himself inside of you. There’s a gasp at the connection, though you’re unsure which one of you it comes from. It might’ve been simultaneous.

You watch his eyes gloss over as he allows himself this one moment of selfishness, fucking you harder. You hold him by the face and feel your authority dissipate. The whole ordeal is shrewd and loud and messy, and a drop of sweat collects at the top of your spine and slithers its way down. It feels like a raw kind of heaven; like you’re pulling apart.

Pleasure is a tight coil in the bottom of your stomach, in the tips of your fingertips, in the curling of your toes — some invisible lyre strung with vibrating wire, sticky with the friction of nearness.

When you come, you’re crying. You glance down. Spencer looks impassioned, too, so you kiss him to hush you both. 

When his lips leave yours, pull from yours, you feel the absence as acutely as the touch itself. The tender ache threads like grating twine through your chest. He leans his forehead against yours, breath mingling, shallow and uneven.

The silence between you is its own language, so you don’t speak. You don’t trust yourself to. You focus on the curve of his jaw, the faint quiver in his lips, the way his eyelashes cling together with sweat — or maybe unfallen tears. 

He pulls away first, his hands slipping from your grasp. He sits up, turning his back, shoulders tense in the way they always are after release proves itself to be fleeting. For a moment, you want to reach out, to pull him back into the bed, but the weight in his posture tells you it won’t matter.

“I wasn’t lying, though,” Spencer whispers, back turned to you as he sits at the edge of the bed, “when I said I loved you.”

Your gaze settles on the curve of his spine, the way it rises and falls with each uneven breath. Your hands twitch against the rumpled sheets, caught in the futile instinct to reach for him. You curl your fingers into fists, nails biting into your palms. Your throat tightens, swallows the air before it can reach your lungs. The dim light catches on the slope of his shoulder, illuminating a vulnerability you’re not sure you’re meant to see.

Emboldened by newfound fulfillment of self-interest, you crawl toward the edge of the bed where he sits and kiss his back. 

In a few moments, Spencer will leave. You know this. This time is different, though. 

You know he’s not coming back.

[hellfirebarnes]

Slow-Burns - Part 3

PART 1 PART 2

I split this up in several, shorter parts because I know the feeling when you want to read a fic but don't have the time or energy to get through a 10k+ words one. Also if you hate my writing you can just read part 1 and then leave it. Win-win I guess?

Anyway, this is set after Thunderbolts so if you haven't seen it - spoilers I guess? It absolutely does not follow canon, but yeah better to be safe than sorry.

Summary: Bucky has fallen. Hopelessly. And the only thing more hopeless is his team trying to help him get to the end of this slow-burn.

Bucky x fem!SHIELD!reader

1.7K words

Fluff, ''normal'' violence and descriptions of injuries. For sure out of character stuff, but I am who I am. Your appearence is barely desribed what I can remember, I think your hair and a couple types what clothes you're wearing?

You're referred to as ''Agent'' and ''Sunshine'' in a desperate attempt from me to not use Y/N.

Let me know if there's anything else I should warn about.

Otherwise, enjoy :)

Bucky scanned the briefing file. Intel breach. Corporate sabotage. Medium risk, low collateral. High-tech infiltration. One scientist needed extraction. Half the mission screamed you - cyber-forensic work, silent infiltration, backdoor escape route.

He frowned. “She’s not coming?”

Yelena leaned back in her chair, sipping bad coffee from a novelty mug that read ‘Crime, But Make It Cute.’

“She’s not coming.”

Bucky’s heart skipped. “Why?”

“She has the day off,” Ava answered, scrolling through her own tablet.

“But we need someone who can spoof an encrypted relay system on the move,” he said, voice flat but tight. “That’s her.”

“Relax, grandpa,” John muttered. “We’ve got it covered. Ava rewrote a protocol last night, and Bob is flying overwatch.”

Bucky looked back down at the tablet, annoyed. Not at the team. Not at the mission. At the fact that it felt wrong without you. And he hated how that felt.

“She asked for the day off two weeks ago,” Yelena added, tapping through something on her screen. “She deserves it.”

Alexei, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, suddenly grinned like he’d been waiting for someone to ask.

“Is big day,” he said, voice full of pride. “I set her up with very nice man. Name is Luka. Banker. Hair like lion. Very symmetrical face.”

Bucky looked up, slowly. “…You what?”

“Date!” Alexei beamed. “They go to brunch. Then art museum. Maybe share pretzel. Classic courtship!”

The silence that followed was deafening. Bucky didn’t move.

“Wait,” John said, looking up from his file. “She’s on a date?”

“Yes!” Alexei slammed a celebratory hand on the table. “I make things happen!”

Yelena blinked. “With Luka? From your bowling team?”

“He does not just bowl! He reads books. Big hands. Gentle eyes.”

Ava smirked. “You sound like you’re in love with him yourself.”

“He is very huggable!”

Bucky barely heard any of it. He was still stuck on date.

Something cold settled under his ribs. He hadn’t known you were seeing someone. He hadn’t even thought to ask. You’d always been here, orbiting close. And now, without warning, you were… elsewhere. With someone. Laughing, maybe. Wearing something soft and light. Smiling the way you always did when you were teasing him - except it wasn’t him.

Alexei’s words filtered back in. “—and if it goes well, they go to second location. Maybe fondue. Is very romantic.”

Bucky pushed back from the table. “I’ll be on the jet,” he muttered.

Yelena watched him go, eyes narrowing. When the door slid shut behind him, she turned to the others. “Okay,” she said. “That man is not okay.”

Bob tilted his head. “Is this the part where he acknowledges his feelings and makes a healthy emotional decision?”

John scoffed. “More like he’ll sit alone in the cargo bay and think about how her laugh sounds.”

Alexei frowned. “But she deserves strong man with good face symmetry. Why is Barnes sad?”

Ava deadpanned, “Because he’s been in denial for months.”

Two hours later Bucky sat strapped in, arms crossed, staring out the window like it had offended him personally. Every passing city below looked like a blur of decisions he hadn’t made. He thought about the last time you had touched his shoulder. How you’d laughed at one of Bob’s ridiculous stories. How you always leaned in just slightly when you talked to him, like what he said mattered more than anyone else’s words.

And now you were giving that attention to someone else. Some Luka.

He didn’t even know what the guy looked like, but his brain was helpfully painting the worst: tall, perfect teeth, probably called you beautiful without tripping over the word like Bucky always did in his head.

He wasn’t mad at you. Not even close. But he was angry with himself.

He’d wasted time. So much time, thinking if he just stayed close, you’d know. That he wouldn’t need to say anything. That maybe feelings could transfer telepathically through awkward silences and missed glances.

You were out there living. And he was up here… sulking.

He hadn’t wanted to make a move. He’d told himself he wasn’t ready. And now it might be too late.

Meanwhile, at a café in Brooklyn, you stirred your coffee absently as Luka droned on about crypto trends and some vacation he’d taken in the Alps with his “boys.” His shirt was tailored, his teeth were indeed perfect, and he had zero opinions on whether or not one should put glitter in combat boots.

You smiled politely. But your mind wandered.

To the Tower.

To the mission briefing you could have been part of.

To a certain grumpy super soldier with eyes like storm clouds and the emotional range of a wounded wolf.

God, you missed him already.

The Tower was quieter than usual that night. Post-mission debriefs were filed. John had gone out. Yelena and Ava were holed up somewhere with wine and a true crime doc. Alexei was in the sauna, probably giving unsolicited dating advice to someone over speakerphone.

And you? You were back.

Bucky noticed the moment you walked in. Not because you announced it - you never did - but because the air shifted.

He was in the common room, nursing a drink and reading the same paragraph of a book for the fourth time when he heard the elevator ding and your familiar footsteps cross the floor.

Then your voice. “Hey.”

He looked up.

You were dressed casually - simple, comfortable, but still carried yourself like you had a secret no one else was allowed to know. Except this time, you looked… tired. Not physically. Just disappointed in a way that sat deep in the shoulders.

Bucky sat up a little straighter. “You’re back.”

You sank onto the opposite end of the couch, kicking your shoes off with a sigh. “Yeah. Just got in.”

He hesitated. Then, carefully: “How was the date?”

You groaned and dropped your head back dramatically. “So bad. So impressively bad.”

Bucky’s heart did something traitorous - thrilled a little too much at the words. He worked hard not to show it.

“He was… polite. I’ll give him that. But every time I tried to steer the conversation toward something fun or personal, he’d redirect it back to himself. Or his investments. Or this stupid vacation he took with a group of guys who all wore matching swim trunks and called themselves the Wolfpack.”

Bucky blinked. “The what?”

“Right?” You said, eyes wide. “It felt like a sitcom where the punchline never came.”

A beat passed. He couldn’t help it—he smiled. Just a little.

You caught it. Your expression softened. “What?”

“Nothing. Just… sounds like hell.”

“It was. But the pretzel was good.”

You shared a quiet moment. Bucky’s chest felt warm and strange. He didn’t speak much, but he listened, and for once, he didn’t feel like he was drowning in his own silence. Maybe it was the soft tone in your voice. Maybe it was the way you’d looked at him when you walked in, like you’d missed him too.

He almost leaned in, just a little, like he was going to say something real for once.

And then Bob practically exploded into the room, arms wide, face beaming like a golden retriever who’d just spotted his favorite human.

Bucky immediately sat back, shoulders going tense.

You blinked, then smiled, bright and open. “Hey, Bob.”

Bob crossed the room in three giant steps and flopped onto the couch between you with a whoomp, knocking Bucky’s knee in the process. “You’re back! I missed you! Did you see the picture of Waffles I texted you?”

“I did,” you said, laughing. “The little hat was a nice touch.”

“He wore it willingly!” Bob looked at you with stars in his eyes. “Did you have a fun day off?”

You paused. “It had its moments.”

Bob turned to Bucky, clueless and radiant. “Didn’t we miss her, Buck? I kept saying we needed her on the mission. She would’ve handled that alarm system in two minutes.”

Bucky blinked slowly. “Yeah. We missed her.”

Your eyes flicked to Bucky, and something quiet passed between you again. But Bob, entirely unaware, continued cheerfully.

“I was thinking maybe we could all go get pancakes tomorrow. Celebrate a mission well done and your return. I know a place. They have whipped cream. And seasonal syrups. And they let you mix them. Which is chaos, but good chaos.”

You laughed again, and Bucky felt the familiar ache settle back into his chest. Because Bob wasn’t competition. He was just kind. Bright and open and honest in a way Bucky hadn’t been in years. Maybe ever. And you looked so comfortable around him. So light.

Bucky couldn’t even be mad. Not at Bob. Not at you. Just at himself, for still sitting there, wanting something and saying nothing.

He stood up quietly, draining the rest of his drink.

“Where you going?” You asked, noticing.

“Gonna turn in,” he said, avoiding your eyes. “Long day.”

“Goodnight,” you said softly.

He paused. Then looked at you - really looked at you. And for just a second, he let something show.

“Glad you’re back.”

And then he walked away.

Behind him, you watched him go. And for the first time since the date, you weren’t thinking about Luka at all.

Valentina slid a sleek folder across her desk. Inside was a badge, a keycard, a stack of onboarding documents, and a post-it with “Val we need a hot tub in the tower—seriously” scribbled in Yelena’s handwriting.

“I want you full-time, Agent. No more coming and going. A room and an official seat at the table. The team already treats you like you’re one of them. Might as well make it real.”

You bit the inside of your cheek. Your heart said yes immediately. But your brain, ever cautious, flipped through the mental index of what-ifs and escape routes.

“You sure you want to say no?” Val asked, arms folded, one brow arched.

You blinked. “Did I say no?”

“You hesitated.”

“I blinked.”

“Same thing in spy-speak.”

Then you thought about last night’s mission.

How Yelena had linked arms with you when you walked back into the jet, chattering about snack options. How Alexei had announced proudly that he’d protected “the two best sharpshooters in the world.” How Bob had quietly tucked your coat over your shoulders when you’d dozed off.

And how Bucky had looked at you before you parted ways. Like maybe he didn’t want to see you go.

You smiled softly.

“I’m in.”

[satancheeto]

Because few seem to actually know about this (heavy suppression of covid related news, plus general lack of public interest in staying informed about it):

RFK has gotten the CDC in the US to no longer allow Covid vaccines for anyone not considered “immunocompromised.” Though you don’t get to decide that yourself, there’s certain diseases that qualify and most random rarer ones aren’t going to be on that list. A good pharmacist would give every single person who asked the vaccine, but bad ones and cowards are going to pick and chose, and deny so many this life saving vaccine.

Covid is not only deadly, even in mild and asymptomatic cases you become significantly more high risk for heart attack, blood clots, stroke, brain and other organ damage, developing other diseases like autoimmune and diabetes, and can cause T cell death on levels matching AIDS. And yes that is if they are vaccinated. Unvaccinated has much higher risk for death on initial infection. And if you don’t die from your mild infection, there’s still a huge chance you could become temporarily or more likely permanently disabled.

And no, it is not just disabled/elderly people/ children (aka the “Others”, “well not me I’m healthy”) who this happens to. Obviously many sources say those groups have increased risk, but that means increased on top of the already baseline very high risk. Just because many feel moral superiority for being healthier than disabled people, that does very little to prevent them from becoming disabled even if you “don’t do anything unhealthy or wrong.” (Not wearing a mask is unhealthy and wrong AND immoral though, tbqh).

People are still frequently getting it (watching weekly updates it’s usually around 1-2% of US population), and people are still dying! Just like AIDS, we aren’t reporting so many of these as covid related deaths since it wasn’t the initial infection that killed them. But young people and babies suddenly having strokes is not normal. Or constantly getting sick, or serious infections that used to normally be more mild cases. Even things like increased fatal car crashes can have some influence from the neurodegenerative disease everyone has now had. (neither source unfortunately do not mention car crashes specifically). You may not realize it if it isn’t very obvious and severe, but many people are developing slower cognitive processing and reflex skills (source states study patients didn’t notice the decline before the testing). We can theorize that this may end up showing earlier onset for things like dementia in a handful of years. But none of this will be blamed on Covid, because if you can’t see it, it isn’t real.

Please do your absolute best to get your covid boosters every 6months. If you are in the US, fight as hard as you can. It will feel shitty, but technically obesity is listed as an immune compromiser, and since most people in the US by definition only qualify as obese, you could use that as your reason. Or something common like asthma. Again, there’s already been heavy pushback on some people who are being grilled about what sickness they have. But that is hopefully not the norm at least for the moment. Fight as hard as you can.

Also I highly recommend the new Novavax brand of the vaccine. It uses a different method, and has shown to be MUCH better at preventing transmission (the others are extremely poor at this), and also is less likely to cause significant side effects the day of.

Vaccination is the literal absolute bare minimum you can do to help prevent covid and disabling yourself and family, friends, or even the grocery store employees. Covid stays in aerosols in the air for many hours (exact numbers vary and depends heavily on ventilation), meaning you can easily infect someone who goes into a room hours after you do. Wearing a well fitted N95 or KN95 mask with no gaps is the only sure way to prevent asymptomatic transmission (most cases).

[xoxorory]

I’m not scared !

POV: Fem!Reader Pairing: Damian Wayne x Fem!Reader Genre: Fluff | Humor | Chaos | Domestic Softness Featuring: Dick Grayson,Jason Todd,Tim Drake,Stephanie Brown,Cassandra Cain & Duke Thomas Word Count: 740 .Taglist🏷️: @simpingmyassoff , @shootingstargirl2001 (if you want to be added,comment down below!) A/N: English isn't my first lenguage,enjoy! ! ! A/N 2: UGHHHHHHHHHH i wish i could hide on damian everytime i was scared. . .💔💔💔💔 A/N 3: This was sitting on my drafts for tooooo longggg,and i had to post something A/N 4: It's kind of inspired in how @fromdove (💕💞💓💗💖💘💝) writes damian. . .,please GO CHECK HER BLOG ! ! ! !

“I’m not scared.” “You’re shaking like a leaf.” “…I’m just cold.” “You’re wrapped in three blankets.” “…It’s a cold movie.”

── ୭ ˚. 

It starts with a bet.

Technically, it starts with Stephanie insisting on “Movie Night: Spooky Edition” at the manor and Dick bribing everyone to participate with popcorn and emotionally manipulative puppy eyes.

You agree because you’re not a coward.

(You’re kind of a coward.)

But still. You show up. Hoodie. Blanket. Big mug of cocoa. Confidence almost intact.

The movie is called something ridiculous like “The Possession of Abigail’s Doll’s Ghost’s Mirror” and the tagline is just “Don’t Look Behind You.”

Great. Perfect.

You sit beside Damian. Obviously. On the far end of the couch, pressed between him and the armrest like it’s a strategic fortification.

He gives you a look. Deadpan. Already smug.

“You can still back out,” he says.

You scoff. “Please. It’s just a movie.”

Twenty minutes later, you are fully regretting your entire bloodline.

── ୭ ˚. 

Thirty minutes in. 30,and you were talking,loudly.

‘’Okay but like,why is she even walking towards the sound? Do white people not have survival instincts—?’’

‘’Shhh,’’ came several voices.

You kicked Duke’s ankle. ‘’Tell me I’m wrong.’’ 

‘’I mean,your’re not,’’ he muttered.

── ୭ ˚. 

It’s not even the jump scares—it’s the atmosphere. The music. The whispering voices. The creaking floorboards and demonic whisper-laughs and sudden cuts to porcelain dolls turning their heads. . .

You definitely don’t scream when the ghost crawls out of the mirror.

(You do. Very softly. Like a baby bat squeak.)

Cass catches it. She smiles behind her popcorn.

Tim mutters, “Classic.”

Stephanie whispers, “Bet she hides in three... two��”

And that’s when you grab Damian’s arm. Silently. Like a lifeline.

He doesn’t react. Not much. But his arm tenses. Just slightly. Like he’s holding back a smile so hard it hurts.

You press in a little more.

A minute later—when the creepy doll moves—you full-on bury your face in Damian’s chest.

── ୭ ˚. 

“Comfortable?” he murmurs, lips near your temple.

“You’re warm,” you mumble, muffled.

“You’re trembling.”

“I’m immersed.”

He huffs. “You’re terrified.”

You don’t respond. Mostly because the lights in the movie just went out and someone’s breathing heavily and you are not okay.

But Damian?

Damian’s thriving.

He shifts just enough to pull you closer. One arm wraps around your shoulder—casually. Like it’s no big deal. Like he’s not glowing with quiet, victorious smugness.

Jason leans over the back of the couch.

“Look at you, Little D,” he grins. “Big bad assassin boyfriend. Real chick magnet.”

“I will silence you permanently.”

“You look like a haunted Build-A-Bear,” Steph snorts.

Dick gasps. “You guys are cuddling during a possession scene! That's a romantic horror-core! I love it here!”

“Shhh,” Duke says. “They’re bonding.”

Tim, scrolling through IMDb: “This director’s entire filmography is just increasingly cursed furniture.”

“Wait. That doll just blinked. That doll wasn’t supposed to blink.” Duke mumbles.

Suddenly, the TV flickers. The screen cuts to static. There's a sound like someone laughing backwards.

You flinch so hard you knock your cocoa over.

Damian catches the mug before it spills.

Doesn’t say anything.

But you feel it—the smug radiating off him like a smug little space heater.

── ୭ ˚. 

By the time the movie ends, you're fully in his lap.

Not metaphorically.

Like—his arms are around your waist, your blanket has become his blanket, and your face is still pressed to his chest like the credits might murder you.

“Are you sure you’re not scared?” he murmurs.

You don’t answer. You just groan into his hoodie.

Everyone else, though?

The teasing is merciless.

── ୭ ˚. 

Later that night, curled in your bed, you feel the soft rustle of your window sliding open.

A familiar presence slips in.

“Hi,” you whisper.

Damian doesn’t speak. Just climbs in beside you. Still warm. Still solid. Still smug.

You poke him in the ribs. “You enjoyed that.”

“I enjoyed you,” he says, without hesitation.

You go still.

Then: “Okay. You win.”

He kisses your forehead. Then murmurs against your skin—

“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you from the haunted furniture.”

[rochichan]

My I Can’t Help But Wonder animatic is finally done!

Overall, my goal was to capture the unsaid emotions and dynamic between Odysseus and Telemachus in this song. What would it feel like meeting someone you’ve longed for your entire life but at the same time that person is a complete stranger? It’s an interesting premise!! I really used this animatic to practice character expressions/acting, cause there’s a lot of statements in the song that can be interpreted differently depending on how it’s delivered.

I had many thoughts while working on this one, so going to ramble below!! (Sorry if grammar and thoughts are all over)

Telemachus

For Telemachus, the phrase “never meet your heroes” was something that I thought personally applied to Telly—like imagine the first impression of your father is this random man mercilessly killing several men??? How would you feel? Would your love for your father waver? My personal hc on Telly’s idea of his dad is he LOOOOOVES him, to the point where he blindly thinks he can do no wrong. So when “Odysseus” happens, it’s kinda a breaking point for him—realizing, “oh… he might not be the person I thought he was.”

In “Odysseus”, I wanted a mix of fear and curiosity within Telly. Since there’s so much going on, he’s processing a lot of things, so he doesn’t fully realize that his dad is here. In “ICHBW”, since he’s now processing the fact that this man is 100% his dad, the emotions evolve to fearful vulnerability and curious desperation. Throughout the song, Telly is so eager but at the same time so careful and unsure (he holds his spear tightly cause he’s still scared and only drops it when his dad opens his arm to receive him!)

Odysseus

For Odysseus, the overall thought would be “I worked so hard for this, but do I deserve it?” I wanted a mix of longing and guilt in his actions. It hurts so much more knowing that “ICHBW” opens with the same motif of “Just a Man”—It’s like as an audience we get reminded of like “Hey, remember where we started? As we’re all familiar with the “man vs monster” idea in the musical, I tried to make it obvious that Odysseus is basically fighting himself internally throughout the song (at this point of the story, he is his number one enemy).

Some moments I personally liked:

When he runs to Telly down the stairs to close the gap between them, but shortly after, pushes him away once he realizes the blood on his hands was placed on his son’s face—as an artist, this moment gets me so “hehehehehe >:^)” but also breaks my heart lol

Telly being indifferent to the blood on his face—at first, you can see the initial shock at how his dad carelessly placed his bloody hand, but then Telly lets it pass seeing how quick his dad was like “oh whoops”. It’s a quick moment but wanted to show how Telly’s priority is on the fact that “his dad is here” instead of what “his dad did/has done”

Another moment I really loved when Odysseus opened his arms for Telly. He didn’t want to force Telly in an embrace but instead gave him the choice. It puts Ody in a vulnerable light of possibly being rejected, and also a nice callback to what Polites had taught.

When Athena hopes. During the draft change, I changed the moment in the orb she’s holding. Originally, it was going to be her stopping younger Ody from killing a boar, like a “what if” situation. But I wanted it to be moments that had already happened; so it’s more of a “we could’ve done this differently” instead of “look at this alternate universe”

When Odysseus sees his past with Polities and Eurolychus. I just love callbacks lol. Again, it’s more of a “we could’ve done this differently, but it’s too late now” moment. Also, by passing the responsibility to Athena, he’s accepted the fact that he’s not the same man from before.

Other thoughts

When i first heard this song, it was a progress draft Jorge has posted on TikTok. I cried so much LOL solo vocal and piano just makes it so much sadder.

Man… can’t believe this will be my last one… it’s been 2 years since i got into this musical

ANYWAYS hope u enjoy and thanks for watching/reading :’)

[mysteryshoptls]

SSR Silver Vanrouge - Room Relaxation Voice Lines

I've somehow completed my History of Magic homework. Now, all I have to do is make it through tomorrow's classes.........

Summon: I am ever grateful for this day that allowed me to meet someone precious to me. Also, in response to everyone else's well wishes, I will do my best to give it my all.

Groovification: I should take better care of my appearance, huh... I will take everyone's advice to heart.

Home: I feel even sleepier when I wear my pyjamas.

Swap Looks: I feel as though I may fall back asleep...

Home Transition 1: Ever since I started school here, I've tried to comb out my hair whenever the bedhead was a little too disastrous. From what I hear from others, I still am not doing enough.

Home Transition 2: The toothpaste that I received as a birthday gift from Trey-senpai leaves a rather refreshing sensation i my mouth. It could be useful in keeping me awake...

Home Transition 3: According to my classmates, I am severely lacking in personal effects. I can't say that I've felt any impact on my daily life because of this, or anything.

Home Transition - Login: It is due to the support I receive from my parent and all those around me that I have made it to yet another birthday. I am extremely thankful.

Home Transition - Groovy: It seems as though Ace and Sebek are rather close. He actually learned of my birthday from him... It was a tad unexpected.

Home Tap 1: I am extremely thankful to have been chosen to be a student in Diasomnia. I want to continue to cherish these moments I am able to spend with those most precious to me.

Home Tap 2: Floyd said he would challenge me to a bout as a birthday gift. I'll give my all in response to his earnest suggestion.

Home Tap 3: I'm afraid I startled my roommate quite horribly one rainy day when I decided to practice my sword in our room. After that incident, I have made sure to warn them first before proceeding.

Home Tap 4: At Ortho's invitation, I played a sword fighting VR game. It felt realistic, as if it were truly some sort of simulated combat.

Home Tap 5: Hm? These clothes? This is something my father gifted me. I've made sure to wear it with care even when we were back home.

Home Tap - Groovy: So many people came to the party held at my dormitory. I can't believe there would be so many people who would come to celebrate my birthday... ...I feel happy.

Duo: [SILVER]: Ace, that's a rater upbeat way to celebrate me. [ACE]: I'm gonna raise the roof, Silver-senpai!

Birthday Login Message: [Yuu], thank you for the birthday wishes. As I thought, birthday celebrations are wonderful. What do I wish for? Let me think... I would like a physically fit body, I suppose. What's wrong? Why do you look out of sorts? Sebek and Riddle both asked me the same question earlier, and they also had the same look in their eyes, as well. That's not something you can prepare for me...? I'm not sure I understand what you mean, but I apologize for being unable to give you the answer you were looking for.

Requested by Anonymous.

[the-kings-sister]

The first assignment for the class I TA’ed for was to ask chat gpt a prewritten prompt related to the course, something along the lines of “find me sources about this international research initiative”, and then verify the validity of the sources. EVERY SINGLE ONE of my students reported that chat gpt made up almost all the papers it suggested. The rare “real” sources were also not reliable. AI is not a “tool” and it does not “supplement” your research. It makes shit up. Sure you might get lucky and get real papers out of it, but there’s always a strong possibility that you’ll also get garbage, and then you have to figure out what’s real and what isn’t. If you’re using chat gpt as a starting ground for your essay, you’ll find that you’ll have to put in more effort into proving that chat gpt’s output is real than if you just plugged in your keywords into google in the first place. If you don’t know what keywords to use, read the fucking paper guidelines your teacher took the time to write for you. If you don’t have guidelines, look at what you’re currently learning in class.

In tenth grade, my biology teacher assigned a month long research project on the topic of sustainability. “Is it possible to have a sustainable world?” Vague topic. It was up to us to decide how to answer the question. And I barely knew what the word “sustainability” meant. Fuck, dude, I just started by looking up what the word meant. I asked google what it meant to have a sustainable world. What are the big socioeconomic and environmental challenges that we need to surpass. And I found research topics that I could use to answer the question. Climate change and the thawing of permafrost; pesticides and DDT and the environmental runoff; GMOs and their reception; zika virus protection. I ended up with a report that was twice as long as it was supposed to be, partly because I was an overachiever in high school but also because going into this project with no prewritten prompts or keywords or hypothesis- while initially overwhelming- allowed me to gain information from several issues. And the best part about this is that I learned SO MUCH. Stuff that I STILL remember almost TEN YEARS LATER. After hearing all the scary stuff about GMOs my entire life, I learned that GMOs are actually not bad (for the most part)?? Revolutionary! I went into this project with a mindset and learned that I was wrong! Which is the point! Of! Assignments! Replacing that with AI just doesn’t make sense. If I had asked chat gpt to find me sources, even without asking it to write the essay, I wouldn’t have looked at so many different topics and sources. I would have ultimately learned less.

If your argument is that chat gpt makes assignments more accessible from a financial or educational standpoint, you’re just not using the internet properly. I’ve been citing academic sources in my assignments since high school. Did I always understand what research papers were talking about? No! Hell, even when I was writing my thesis last year I found myself struggling to understand certain papers. But there is a myriad of resources on the internet that explain complex topics in more digestible terms that then make it easier to understand these papers. These papers also almost always have abstracts that summarize the findings for you, and often times they are even written for a lay audience. My own thesis required an abstract, in two different languages at that.

From a financial point of view, yeah, journals are often locked behind a paywall. We see that in the picture of the “Global Warfare” journal article a few reblogs ago. But many universities will give you access to these journals for free (I’m not sure how common that is across countries but my university gave me access to so many journals). Even if logging in with your school email doesn’t work you can probably find it via your school library’s website. And even when journal articles are behind a paywall, the abstracts often aren’t. At worst, make an appointment with your school librarian, they will find the article for you.

Students have been writing essays and lab reports and theses without AI for decades and centuries. My parents wrote their assignments by hand or on a type writer, and they researched with books because the internet didn’t exist. The fact that I can use ctrl+F and backspace when writing assignments, let alone the fact that I have the world’s resources at the tip of my fingers, is so genuinely incredible. I can’t imagine what I would have done if I had to use books and a typewriter to get through school. But my parents did it. So I could have, too. I wrote all my assignments without AI, so today’s students should be capable of it too. If they can’t, then there’s a very real problem with the education system. If students can’t think, can’t think CRITICALLY for themselves, schools and society have failed them.

"what did students do before chatgpt?" well one time i forgot i had a history essay due at my 10am class the morning of so over the course of my 30 minute bus ride to school i awkwardly used by backpack as a desk, sped wrote the essay, and got an A on it.

six months later i re-read the essay prior to the final exam, went 'ohhhh yeah i remember this', got a question on that topic, and aced it.

point being that actually doing the work is how you learn the material and internalize it. ChatGPT can give you a short cut but it won't build you the the muscles.

[irb-pascalito-99]

You Make Loving Fun

Pairing: dbf!Joel Miller x f!reader (No outbreak AU)

Rating: 18+ MDNI

Word Count: 11.1k

Summary: Part three of Father Figure. Boundaries get blurry as you and Joel continue to talk in secret.

Content warnings: dbf!Joel, smut, phone sex, dirty talk, use of pet names, mentions of abandonment, fighting with a parent, parent!Joel, soft!Joel, teasing, mutual masturbation, come play

A/N: Sorry this one took so long to post. Summer is a really busy time for me so I might be a bit slower releasing content. I’ve decided to turn this into a series so this part is quite a bit longer in order to add more context. Let me know if you would like to be added to the tag list!

P1 | P2

Dividers thanks to @saradika-graphics

It’s become a new routine of yours in the month that passed since your first phone call. Before bed every night you slip off your clothes, pose yourself in your underwear, and send Joel a picture.

Joel: You can’t keep sending me pictures in your pretty little underwear sweetheart.

You grin at the text. This is how the conversation always starts. He always starts with something along those lines. A reminder that what is happening between the two of you is wrong, even if neither of you can stop it.

You: You want me to leave you alone?

You bite your lip in anticipation of his next text. The little bubble with the dots appears and disappears several times as he contemplates what to send before a picture appears on your screen.

In the picture Joel’s large hand clutches his bulge over his black boxers. Below the picture is another text.

Joel: What do you think?

And this is where the conversation always goes. It’s inevitable by now, an undeniable draw between the two of you. Around the third time Joel stopped pretending it wouldn’t happen again, no longer ending his phone calls with ‘this is the last time’, because you both know it won’t be.

He seems to be fine as long as it stays on the phone. He won’t acknowledge anything about your dirty conversations in person, but on the phone he lets it all out. You tell yourself that can be enough, for now at least.

You slip your fingers underneath the band of your lacy panties and take another picture for him. There are only a couple of seconds after you hit send before he calls you.

“You really are trouble darlin’,” Joel’s voice rasps the moment you answer the phone.

“You like it though,” you chuckle in response.

Joel makes a quiet sound of agreement before he starts ordering you around again. This is also always a part of it. He likes to be in control, and you are more than willing to let him.

“Take them off.” He growls. You scramble to pull the last pieces of clothing from your body and then bring the phone back up to your ear.

“Ok, I’m ready.” You plant into the phone. Already your thighs are sticky with arousal.

Joel chuckles at your eagerness, and then you hear the sound of his belt jangling on the other end of the line as he takes off his own pants. There’s more shifting on his end as he gets comfortable. You squirm while you wait for his instruction.

“Joel,” you whine, desperate to touch yourself but not willing to do so without his permission. Joel chuckles again.

“Okay sweetheart, okay.” He says in that low gravelly voice that makes your skin tingle. “Start with your breasts baby. Run your hands against them gently.”

You close your eyes and run your hands up to your breasts. You whimper as your fingers gently brush against your hardened nipples.

“That’s it, good girl. Now pinch your nipples for me.”

You whine again as you follow his instructions.

Normally you wouldn’t take this much time with yourself. You tend to get it over with quickly, vibrator between your legs and eyes squeezed shut as you lose yourself in your fantasies. More often than not these days they feature Joel.

“God you make me so fucking hard girl.” Joel groans. He must be touching himself right now. At least you hope he is. “Those goddamn noises you make. So fucking sweet baby. Got me thinking about them all the fucking time.”

“Joel,”

“Go on baby,” Joel grunts, the slick sounds of his hand around his cock in the background. “Bring a hand down and touch yourself, slowly. I want you to feel your body on the way down the way I would if I was there.”

You leave a hand on one of your breasts while you move the other down your torso. You feel the soft curves of your body on the way until your fingers dip between your thighs.

A pool of wetness causes your legs to glide against each other. Your fingers slip easily through your folds. You can’t help but gasp as you feel how wet you are.

“Feel good sugar?” Joel asks.

“So good Joel. I’m so fucking wet.” You glide your fingers up and down your folds again.

“Fuuuck,” Joel groans. “Fucking touch your clit. I wanna hear those beautiful sounds again darlin’.”

You begin to circle your clit, your hips pressing up against your hand in search of more pressure. At this point you’re fighting every urge to scream out in pleasure.

Your dad’s room is just down the hall from yours. If you make too much noise he’s certain to wake up, but God it feels good. Every sensation is heightened knowing Joel is listening to it all, telling you what to do.

You focus on the sounds he’s making. Every grunt and panting breath accompanied by the increasing speed of his cock thrusting into his hand causes your pussy to pulse. You’re doing this to him. Despite his better judgement. Despite his attempts to end it, he can’t get enough. Truth be told, neither can you.

“I need more,” you whine, desperate to fill your aching hole.

“What was that sugar?” You can tell he’s getting a lot of enjoyment listening to you struggle like this.

“I need more, fuck Joel I need-” your fingers rub your clit furiously, but it isn’t enough. “I need-”

“What do you need, baby?” He goads. “Use your words. Tell me what you need.”

”Fuck, inside. I need to put my fingers inside.” You pant.

“Ask nicely sweet girl.” Tears of frustration are forming in the corners of your eyes.

“Please Joel. Please let me put my fingers inside.” You beg. He chuckles at your desperation.

“Good girl, go ahead. You can put your fingers inside.”

You let out a soft moan as your middle and ring fingers sink into your throbbing cunt. You match your pace to the speed of Joel’s thrusts without him asking. The ache between your legs is quickly replaced by a growing tension in your stomach.

The world around you melts away a bit. It’s just you and Joel. Your sounds mingling over the phone line. Your desperation frantic, as you both chase the pleasure just out of your reach.

You’re close to the edge, peering right over that cliff. You can’t hold it back much longer. Orgasm always teaches you quickly with Joel, a miracle considering half the time you had sex with your college boyfriend you didn’t come at all.

“Joel I’m gonna-” You start. Judging from Joel’s groans he must be close as well. You wish he’d let you watch this part. You want to know what he looks like when he releases. You want to see the bliss on his face where there’s usually so much tension.

“Don’t-” Joel growls. “Not yet, want you to come with me baby.”

You whimper, certain that what Joel is asking you to do is impossible. How could you feasibly hold off on release with his grunts in your ear?

“You can do it darlin’. I know you can.” Joel says, noting your apprehension.

“O-okay,” you say between shaky breaths. “I’ll try.”

“Fuck baby that’s it, such a good girl.” Joel groans. You can barely register what he’s saying.

Your body aches for release. You hear him start to fuck his fist harder. Lewd squelching sounds from your fingers struggle to match his thrusts.

“Joel, God. Fuck, I-” You struggle to string your thoughts into anything resembling speech. It’s too much. It’s all too much. Your legs tremble beneath you as you struggle to keep yourself from tipping over the edge. “I don’t think- I can’t-”

“I know, sweet girl.” Joel mumbles sweetly. “I know it’s a lot. You’re doing so good for me, fuck, just gotta hold on a little longer. Almost there.

It’s so good it hurts. You don’t think you’ve ever felt anything this intense before. Everything in your body is aching for release, screaming for the bliss you’re denying yourself.

You can hear skin slapping against skin as Joel yanks his cock even harder than before. Just the thought makes your mouth water. You continue thrusting your fingers in and out. In and out.

“I’m gonna, fuck I’m gonna-” Joel grunts. With your eyes closed you can picture what he looks like right now. The veins in his neck protruding. The sweat breathing on his forehead. His teeth clenched tightly together. “Okay babygirl. Come with me. Fucking come.”

Your orgasm explodes, his command being the last thing you needed. Your entire body feels like it’s on fire. You welcome the burn, let it consume you. As you’re losing mind over every heightened sensation in your body Joel moans loudly in your ear, finding his own release.

Moments later, when your fingers have left your legs, your body is still twitching against your mattress. The room is still spinning around you, but slower. You can finally hear Joel’s panting breaths over the sound of blood rushing through your ears.

“You still alive over there?” Joel teases between breaths.

“Barely,” you joke. Joel chuckles on his end of the line.

This is always the part where the loneliness sets in. The build up is great, phenomenal even. It’s so easy to forget where you are and the circumstances between the two of you in the heat of the moment. It’s the wind down when you really ache for him. If only you could curl your body against his, feel the warmth of him against your skin. If only you could see his chest rise and fall.

“I wish I could see you right now.” You find yourself murmuring into the phone before you can stop the words from coming out.

Stupid. The arrangement you have is so precarious right now. Why would you say that? Why risk what he’s already been so reluctant to give? You hold your breath while you wait for his response. He’s been silent long enough, maybe he didn’t hear it.

“Me too.” He mutters back, so quietly you’re convinced you made it up. There’s a long pause before Joel speaks again. “You should get some rest.”

“M’not tired.” You mumble despite how heavy your eyes have gotten. You hate hanging up every time. It’s nice to have Joel to yourself. The version of him nobody else gets to see is only ever reserved for these late night calls.

“Sure you’re not,” Joel chides. “Get some rest, we’ll talk tomorrow.”

You think your heart skips a beat.

“You promise?” You ask.

“I promise,” he responds. “Now go to bed.”

A stupid grin spreads across your face.

“Fine, good night.” You can’t be certain, but you think you hear him murmur something along the lines of ‘Sweet dreams, sugar’ as he hangs up the phone.

—

Your father drops a stack of papers on the table in front of you as you eat your eggs the next morning.

“Wha-” you start, reaching for the stack with bleary eyes. You’ve only just started drinking your morning coffee, so you’re still very much half asleep.

“Job openings in the area.” Your father sits down across from you with his own mug.

Your eyes shoot up from the papers in your hands to glare at him.

“You can’t be serious.” You say through clenched teeth while maintaining eye contact. He’s like a dog with a bone, your father. This fight gets dragged back to the surface every couple of days. It’s becoming as routine as clockwork.

He says he’s just looking out for you, but the pressure feels enormous. You have a hard time explaining the anxiety that builds within you every time you think of where you want your life to lead. Yet your father remains persistent in his attempts to push you forward. The printouts of actual jobs in the area are an interesting development.

“We’ve talked about this.” Your father’s voice adopts that tone he always gets when he’s laying down the law. There’s a seriousness in it he doesn’t typically have, but something condescending as well. Almost as though you’re still that small child who nearly lit the house on fire when attempting to cook macaroni and cheese on the stove— an anecdote your father still loves to share with anyone and everyone.

“Yeah, we did,” You talk slowly, pushing the papers to the side. “I told you I’d look for something myself.”

“And I’m just trying to help your research.” He responds innocently.

“I don’t need your help.” You say, the exhaustion evident in your voice. “I’m perfectly capable of finding a job myself.”

“I never said you weren’t capable. I just think you could use a little push.” Your stomach clenches as he continues. “I got you an interview for this afternoon. It’s a financial manager position. It makes really good money.”

“Da-”

“Just go to the interview okay? You don’t have to take the job, but at least check it out.” He stands from the table. “I have to get to work, but I’ll be home for dinner tonight. I’ll text you the details for your interview.”

You stew in silent anger as he presses a kiss to the top of your head before heading out the door.

A couple of hours later you find yourself sitting in a chair at the reception desk of a random business awkwardly fidgeting with your fingers. Your clothes feel stiff against your skin. Each movement you make as you wait serves as another reminder that you don’t belong here. You’re about ready to leave when a man in a tailored suit walks up to you and extends his hand.

You stand and shake his hand, which feels cold and clammy as it grips yours firmly. He says his name— John? George? Michael?— but it goes in one ear and out the other as he escorts you through the corporate maze of cubicles.

He rattles off information about the company while you walk. You should pay attention. You should pretend to care, but you can’t help feeling miserable at even the thought of working here. They’ve done what they can to liven the place up. There’s art on the walls, big windows to let the sun in, a fake waterfall between reception and the rest of the office. Still the monotonous walls of the cubicles and fluorescent lights feel like a weight dragging you down the further you enter.

John, George, Michael opens the door to a glass walled conference room where a two of other men in suits are seated at a table. They stand upon your entry and each day their names and positions, none more memorable than the first man you met. You smile at them and shake each man’s hand before taking your seat opposite them.

Things start off well enough. They look over your resume your father must have sent them as they ask you about your degree and past work experience, though you don’t know how relative your experience at Old Navy would be in a place like this.

“And it says here you did data entry in high school?” Man number two asks. You nod, your hands folded on the table.

“Yes, at my father’s company for a couple of summers.” You reply. “He runs an automotive repair shop in town.”

Your father has started out as a mechanic. When you were little he barely made enough to put food on the table, but as you got older more opportunities came up until eventually he became the owner of his own shop. When it came time for you to get a job he offered to pay you to help out with the office work. Most of it was inputting invoices and making a list of parts needed to do repairs.

When you went up to school your father started paying someone else to do the work. Over the last couple of years he’s been able to expand the business quite a bit. He doesn’t often work on cars himself anymore, spending a lot more time behind a desk keeping the company running.

He offered you a new job at his company when you first moved back, but you declined. It didn’t seem right to go back to working for your dad, like you were taking the easy way out. You want to find something on your own, something you can be proud of at the end of the day. You’re definitely not going to get that here.

The interviewers ask you a couple of more questions about time management and organization which you answer with ease. You know you’re a hard worker. You would probably do well wherever you went. You have no problem showing them how confident you are in that, until they ask their next question.

“Why do you want this job?” It’s a simple enough question. You could probably easily find a lie to tell them if you tried. Instead you stare blankly at the wall behind them.

“I don’t.” The words tumble out of your mouth. The interviewers stare back at you, as though uncertain they heard you correctly. “I don’t want this job.”

You stand up from the table and cross the room. They remain seated as you move to the door, opening it before turning back in their direction. “Sorry for wasting your time.”

—

You make dinner and have it ready at the table by the time your father gets home. You’ve thought a lot about what you will say tonight when he inevitably asks about your job search. With how the interview went— and the fact that you didn’t search for any other jobs this afternoon— you’re certain the meal will end in a fight.

You decide to keep him distracted for as long as possible. You ask him about his day and pretend to be interested in what he has to say while eating quickly. It doesn’t last nearly as long as you hoped.

“How’d your interview go?” Your father asks before you’ve even finished half your plate. Maybe if you keep it brief he’ll be satisfied.

“Fine.” You say, staring at the table as you chew. Your father waits for more details. When you don’t offer any he lets out a long sigh.

“What happened?” He asks in a way that says he already knows you messed it up.

“I just wasn’t right for the job.” Your father raises his eyebrows willing you to go on. “I didn’t know anything about the business. I didn’t even really know what I had supposedly applied for.”

“I told you it was a financial manager job.” He starts to yell. “I sent you the address. Why didn’t you do the research before you left? I know you know better than that. Why are you so insistent on ruining your future?”

“I’m not.” You say through gritted teeth.

“You’re not?” He scoffs. “Then what do you call this? I mean I did everything for you, you just had to show up and try and you couldn’t even do that.”

He cannot seriously be getting mad at you for not having the initiative to look into a job he was forcing you to interview for. How exactly did he think that was going to work out? Your anger only builds the life he gets. That interview was humiliating, and here he is trying to blame you for the way it went. You’re over it. You’re over all of it. You’re actually glad you walked out. If anything you wish you made more of a scene.

“You know what dad, fine. I sabotaged your precious interview. I walked in, unprepared, realized I was out of my depth, and told them I wasn’t interested.” Even with your father seething in front of you a rush goes through your body as you continue to rant. “I never wanted that stupid job. I never askedYou to apply to jobs for me in the first place. In fact I told you I wasn’t ready.”

Why can’t he just let you figure things out on your own for once? He’s always been this way, helpful to a fault. Controlling is the way you would actually describe it. He picked where you went to school. He picked what you studied. He picked the dorms you stayed in and rented the apartment you lived in after that. Every aspect of your life feels like it’s been chosen for you.

“I’m trying to look out for you. I want the best for you, you know that. I’m happy you’re in love— and your boyfriend seems like a good guy— but you need a life of your own.”

You drop your fork on your plate and push away from the table despite only having eaten half your dinner. You’re not hungry anymore. You can hear your father following behind you into the kitchen.

“This isn’t about a guy, dad.” You attempt to explain yet again. “We’re not even together anymore. I just need-”

“See, that’s exactly why I’ve been pushing this so hard.” Your father interrupts. “You can’t trust your future to someone else. If your mother leaving taught me anything it’s that you gotta take matters into your own hands.”

You throw the dishes in the sink hard enough that they make a loud clattering sound, but not so hard they break. Tears are forming in the edges of your eyes. You clench your jaw and fists in an attempt to stop yourself from shaking.

Of course he would bring this conversation back to your mother. It’s where he always goes when he wants to win an argument. Everything somehow relates back to her, to him being left raising you on his own. The guilt of being his burden and the fear of becoming your mother are all bundled up in a neat little package he can drop at your feet whenever he needs to.

“I’m going to bed.” You say in his direction, then head upstairs to your bedroom before you can say anything you might regret.

He moves around downstairs for hours. Around 9pm you hear him walk up the staircase and down the hallway. His shadow blocks the light at the bottom of the doorframe. He moves, maybe thinking of knocking, but eventually retreats back to his room.

Once your father goes to bed you push the fight out of your head, preoccupied with impatiently waiting by the phone for Joel to call. He promised he would, and though you haven’t heard from him all day you know Joel to be a man of his word.

While you wait you change into a pair of sexy underwear just in case he wants some pictures. After putting it on you twist in the mirror to admire the way the soft pink lace embellishes your curves.

Another hour passes by and you still haven’t heard from him. Not even a text to check in. You lie sprawled out on the bed staring at your bedroom ceiling. The glow in the dark stars from when you were a child are still sprawled across it.

Your father spent hours standing on top of a chair placing them carefully along every inch of ceiling he could reach. A smile tugs on the edge of your lips when you think of the way you laid side beside on the floor after, admiring his handiwork.

Despite his flaws he isn’t a bad father, you know that, but sometimes you wonder if it would almost be easier if he was. Maybe then you wouldn’t carry so much guilt with you all the time.

Your mind is just beginning to spiral again when you feel your phone buzz against your chest. Immediately you answer and bring it up to your ear.

“Took you long enough.” You smirk as you sit up in the bed. “I was starting to think you were going to flake on me. Was just about to cut my losses and take care of myself.”

“I’m sorry dear. I guess I forgot we had plans.” A familiar voice says on the other end of the line, only it isn’t Joel.

The singsong voice belongs to none other than your best friend Sophie from college. When you returned home after graduating at the end of winter semester she remained at school with the rest of your friends to finish her degree. Several of them, including Sophie, were set to graduate in the spring.

“Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” You mutter and sink back into your bed. You feel the exhaustion from your day settling into your bones and you’re struggling to keep your eyes open.

“And who would that be?” She teases. “You got a hot date or something?”

“It’s nothing.” You flush from embarrassment even if she can’t see you and tug the sheets over your body.

“Doesn’t sound like nothing.” She says, trying to pull more information out of you.

Why is she calling you right now? Even though you’ve only been gone for a couple of months there’s a distance forming there already. They have their lives, and unfortunately now that you live over three hours away you aren’t really a part of it. You haven’t heard from any of your college friends aside from random texts and Snapchats in the last couple of months you’ve been home.

Sophie waits a moment longer for you to say more before she moves on to the real reason she called.

“So, Lucy told me you and Zack broke up.” She says with a soft voice. You sigh and roll over in bed.

You knew this would come eventually. It’s only been a couple of weeks since your boyfriend Zack took the trip from Houston to end things between the two of you, but gossip spreads quickly. It spreads especially quickly when your now ex-boyfriend can’t keep his mouth shut.

By now the whole campus has probably heard all of the devastating details of your breakup. If only you could bring yourself to care as much as they will.

“Yeah, yeah we did.” You state. Sophie gasps at the confirmation.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me! Are you okay?”

“I didn’t want you to worry. It’s really not that big of a deal.” In all honesty the more space you get from it all the more you realize the relationship you had with Zack hadn’t really been built on love at all. Being with him felt like an obligation, something you were meant to do, but there was never much passion there.

He was fine, on all accounts the kind of guy you would want to be with. Maybe he wasn’t the best in bed, but he came from a great family. He was nice, handsome, but you never really had to worry about him cheating. Even your dad seemed to like him at first, but it was comfortable and easy to get complacent.

You liked not having the pressure of having to be perfect, or having a plan for everything. Life with Zack was simple, an unvaried routine you could fall into without much thought. He had a plan for his life. You just had to fit yourself into it. Passion and love were an afterthought.

“It kind of is though.” Sophie responds. “You guys were together for a couple of years. I was sure you two were going to get married.”

“Well, life moves on. I’ll be okay, really. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“I just wish you had told me. I want to be there for you.” She says, sounding dejected.

You can’t help but think even if you were struggling with the breakup you probably wouldn’t tell her about it anyway. It isn’t like you’ve told her anything about your dad’s ongoing job search.

It’s not that you don’t care about Sophie. There was a time where you would tell her every detail of your life. However, lately you can’t help feeling a little hurt at the radio silence.

When you moved back you knew things would be different. Sophie is in the last semester of her undergraduate pre-med degree. Obviously she’s busy. Still you find yourself feeling like an idiot when you keep looking at your phone for a response to your texts only to see her and your other friends posting pictures on Instagram of their various adventures around the city.

Being back home really is like being back on your own little island. The only bright spot in any of it has been your escapades with Joel, but you can’t tell anyone about that.

“I mean I don’t even know what’s going on in your life right now.” Sophie continues in your ear. “I miss you girl, spill. What have you been up to?”

You look out your bedroom window into Joel’s, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. The curtains are open, but his bedroom is dark.

“I miss you too,” You say, pulling your focus back to the conversation with Sophie. “Really there’s nothing going on with me though.”

“Did you find a job yet? An apartment?”

“No, not yet but I’m looking.” It feels even more pathetic to admit your total lack of direction out loud.

Here you are living in your childhood bedroom with no clue what you want to do. Meanwhile Sophie has the next ten years of her life mapped out meticulously. After graduating her undergrad she’s going to med school in Georgia. From there she’ll apply for a residency to train in pediatric medicine. She has a drive, a passion, a purpose.

“I’m sure you’ll find something.” She reassures you. You feel an intensifying sense of unease having the conversation directed at your life, so you turn it around to avoid having to explain anything else about your current life choices.

“So what’s going on with you? How’s Houston?” The question unlocks a plethora of information giving you the perfect opportunity to withdraw from the conversation.

Sophie fills you in on all of the happenings around campus since you left. You do your best to listen, but by the end of it you’re only muttering words now and again to male he think you’re paying attention. She stays on the phone for about an hour before she hangs up to join your other friends at a bar downtown.

After the call drops you look across the yard again to Joel’s bedroom window. The curtain is drawn now, but otherwise things look the same as before. He still hasn’t called or ever texted. You throw your body back on the bed with a sigh. Eventually your eyes become heavy.

You end up nodding off for a bit, only noticing when you’re suddenly awoken by your phone buzzing on the pillow beside you.

“Hello,” you huff, the sleep evident in your voice despite your attempt to hide it.

“Hey,” Joel responds. “Sorry, were you asleep?”

“No.” You lie. You rub the sleep from your eyes and glance at the clock on your bedside table which reads 12:34.

“Oh, okay.” He definitely doesn’t believe you. “I can let you go if you need to get some sleep.”

“I said I wasn’t sleeping.” You snap. “I’m awake. I’ve been awake.”

“Okay, sorry.” From the sound of his voice you can tell he’s taken aback by your mood tonight.

Clearly he was expecting the sexy persona you typically greet him with on these calls. That’s what he would have gotten if he had called earlier in the night, but by now the stress of the day has worn you down to a point where you no longer care about putting on an act for Joel.

“Is everything okay?” He asks apprehensively. You sigh and turn over in bed with your phone pressed against your ear.

“I’m fine.” You state, though the rough edge to your voice remains.

“You sure?” He asks, which only makes you angrier.

“I said I’m fine.” You snap back.

“Alright, sorry,” Joel says softly, like someone trying to talk to a wounded animal. “I just got a little worried when I didn’t get a text from you tonight.”

“You told me last night you were gonna call. You promised, remember.” Did he really forget?

“I know. I just thought you were gonna text me to let me know when you were free.” Joel says. “Didn’t want to call you and have your dad overhear.”

A twinge of guilt twists in your stomach. He had a point. You might’ve been a little hasty with your judgement, but a portion of your rational mind is already gone for the day. It doesn’t help that you can’t stop ruminating on the feelings that came to the surface during your conversation with Sophie.

Hearing about her life was just a painful reminder of how separated you’ve become. Everyone you know has goals and a direction in life. Even Joel has Sarah, the contracting business. You’re more aimless than you’ve ever been before, and your father is more than happy to remind you of that fact. That sinking feeling of loneliness only grew in the time you waited for Joel to call.

“Sorry, that makes sense.” Without the anger behind it your voice just sounds depleted of any energy at all.

“No it’s okay,” Joel says calmly. There’s something soothing about his voice. “We should’ve been more clear on the plan.”

A static sound fills the air as both of you remain silent. You tug at your bottom lip with your teeth. You can feel it already. Joel’s going to hang up. You ruined the mood and now he’s going to hang up. You’ll be alone again. You’re so sick of being alone.

“We don’t have to do this if you’re not feeling up for it.” Your stomach drops. There it is, his segway into ending the call.

“Could you stay?” You find yourself blurting out before he can continue.

You know you should let him go. It’s late. He probably had things to do tomorrow. You know what the arrangement is between the two of you. He doesn’t owe you any emotional support, but you’re desperate to hear his choice just for a little bit longer.

“Of course.” He jumps in without missing a beat. “Of course I’ll stay.”

The line goes quiet again. It’s clear neither of you know what you’re doing. You didn’t expect him to actually stay, so you definitely don’t know what to say now that he has. You both speak at the same time, your words jumbling together into some morphed question.

“Sorry, you go darlin’,” Joel chuckles.

“I was just asking how your day was?” You ask.

“Oh, same old same old. Been pretty busy at work and then everything with Sarah.” You hear the rustling of bed sheets over the phone as Joel settles into bed. “What about you sweetheart? How was your day?”

“Fine.” You lie. You tell yourself that just because he stayed doesn’t mean he wants your whole story.

“I have a hard time believin’ that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I think there’s more goin’ on than a late phone call.” You tug your lip between your teeth again. “If you don’t want to talk about it you don’t have to, but I’m here if you need me.”

“I just,” The more you think about your problems as you try to find a way to explain them to Joel, the more childish they feel. You want him to take you seriously. How is he supposed to do that when you’re whining to him about your father being mad at you and your friends not talking to you as much as they usually do? “I’m just, I’m still adjusting to being back home.”

“That’s understandable,” Joel speaks softly. “You changed while you were gone. It’s not gonna be the same when you come back. You gotta figure out where you fit in now. That takes time. Nobody expects you to have it all figured out already.”

An emotion you can’t quite name tugs at your chest, but you recognize it from the night he pulled the gravel out of your knees. Joel Miller is hot— he makes you feel things you never dreamed without even touching you— but the thing that really stands out about him is his soft side.

He makes you feel special. He listens. He’s protective of you in a way that makes your stomach twist. He sees the vulnerability you try so desperately to hide away. It makes everything between the two of you so much more confusing.

“It doesn’t always feel like that’s true.” You mutter, not to yourself than to Joel.

You think about your father, the weight of his expectations for you. All your life you’ve been ahead of everyone. You took advanced classes. You got good grades. You had your pick of colleges. Even when you arrived at college, while others were struggling being on their own for the first time in their lives you flourished.

It wasn’t until that last semester of school that you really started struggling. The weight of what was ahead of you sat in your chest like a giant stone holding you down. You barely managed to pass your classes. Now you’re here. This is the part where your life is supposed to be ramping up, and instead you’re on a detour nobody expected. So much for potential.

“Okay, even if there are people judging fuck them.” Joel says. “You’re a smart girl. You’ll figure it out. Don’t waste your time worrying about what everyone else thinks while you do.”

“Yeah, fuck them,” you chuckle. He makes it sound so simple. You wish you had someone like him in your corner all of the time. “You know, Sarah’s pretty lucky to have you as a dad.”

Joel’s silent for a moment. You begin to think maybe you pushed it too far. Why would he want to talk about his daughter with you? Your mind races for ways to cover up your blunder.

“Yeah well, I make plenty of my own mistakes.” He says finally. “Everyone does. At the end of the day the most you can hope for is just doing a little bit better than your parents did for you.”

There’s an underlying pain in his voice at the words. It makes you wonder what he’s thinking about. What were his parents like?

“Well, I haven’t gotten pregnant and abandoned my kid so I guess I’m off to a good start.” You joke. Joel doesn’t laugh. That probably hits a little close to home as well. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“It’s fine,” Joel says quickly. “I’m not… It's alright.”

Your heartbeat races in your chest. It feels like each thing you say is the wrong thing, even if Joel seems to be okay with it. What are you doing? This isn’t a relationship. He does not need to know you like this.

“Do you think about her a lot?” Joel asks after a moment.

“Not a lot, but sometimes.” It feels strange talking about her to someone other than your father. To everyone else you typically just say you don’t have a mom. Nobody really wants to ask questions after that. “I don’t really know much about her other than she got pregnant young and then ditched once I was born, so there’s not really much to think about. I guess most of the time I think about what it would be like to have a mom at all.”

Growing up without one you had always been a little jealous of the kids with moms. When you’re little there’s so many reminders about what you’re missing. Mother’s Day crafts at school. Parent events your father couldn’t be at because of work. It gets easier as you age, but you still feel that dull ache from time to time. The ‘what if’ comes back up whenever you least expect it.

“Sometimes I worry about Sarah.” Joel says. “I do what I can, but there’s just some things I can’t fix. I mean, she’s a teenager now. She’s about to experience a whole new set of problems I can’t even begin to understand. Girls at school. Boy drama.”

“Periods.” You jump in.

“God, I’m not ready for that one.” He says. You giggle thinking about Joel struggling through the feminine hygiene section of the drug store, looking for the right kind of pads for his daughter.

“You’re a good dad, Joel. There are some things you won’t be able to change for her. Just listen to her. Show her you’re there. You’ll figure the rest out.”

“Yeah,” Joel says. “I hope so.”

Your heart pounds in your chest. This is an entirely new side of Joel. He’s not one to typically be vulnerable himself. You’ve seen the protective side of Joel. The loving dad. The caring friend. The lusty neighbor, but never this man. How much does he carry alone? You wonder how often he lets anyone in.

“I like this,” You find yourself saying. “Talking with you, like this. It’s nice. I mean I like the dirty stuff too, but it’s nice to get to know you like this.”

Joel laughs.

“Yeah I suppose it is.” He says.

“I want to know more.”

“What?”

“About you.” You continue. “I want to know more about you. Your life, the things you like. I want to know.”

You think you hear Joel adjust in the bed before he responds.

“Alright, ask away.” Joel says.

You feel the stupid grin spread across your face. You tuck your phone between your cheek and your pillow to get more comfortable, wrapping your arms around the pillow and tugging your blanket over your body.

“When you were a kid, what did you want to be as an adult?”

“A singer.” You hadn’t expected that.

“Do you play any instruments?”

“Guitar, but I haven’t played in a while now.”

You make sure to save that fact for later. He continues answering your questions, sharing stories from his life, until eventually you fall asleep.

—

You wake the next morning with your phone still pressed against your face. It must be late in the morning because the sun is shining brightly through your window.

You throw an oversized shirt and a pair of sleep shorts over the lingerie you had worn for your phone call with Joel the night before and head downstairs to make yourself a cup of coffee. As you slowly make your way down the steps you stretch out your limbs and wipe the sleep from your eyes. It isn’t until you reach the bottom of the steps that you hear your father talking to someone in the kitchen. By the time you process the presence of someone else in your house Joel is staring right at you.

His eyes scan over your body at first, taking in your bare legs before quickly flitting up to your face. Your cheeks flush and you look down at your feet. The edge of your shirt is long enough that it brushes the top of your thighs, just beneath the hem of your shorts, giving the illusion that you aren’t wearing any pants at all.

Obviously Joel has seen much more of your body before, but never in person. Over text you had complete control over what you looked like. You sent him the best angles to accentuate the parts of your body you love, and hide the parts that make you self conscious. Now he is seeing you in your most vulnerable state— in your house, having just woken up, your hair a mess, your eyes puffy, in front of your clueless father— you feel an overwhelming urge to run and hide.

You seriously debated turning around and heading back up the steps until your father notes Joel’s silence and turns around to look at you as well.

“Well good morning.” He teases. Apparently he’s decided to pretend the events of last night didn’t happen. “Thought you were never going to get up. It’s nearly noon already. Are you still in your pajamas?”

You look up from the floor, your eyes flitting to Joel and then back to your father.

”Yeah, I was just coming down to get some coffee before getting ready for the day.” You say quietly.

“Alright,” Your father says. “Well sorry I forgot to tell you that Joel was coming over today. I nearly forgot myself.”

“It’s alright.” Joel has stopped looking at you at all, opting instead to stare at the beer in his hands.

He didn’t mention anything last night about having plans with your dad. Although it does seem somewhat weird to talk about him during your calls, even if last night had been relatively tame.

It’s sort of an unspoken rule that neither of you talk about your father. Joel seems to have a hard enough time reconciling with what the two of you are doing. It’s best to ignore the additional implications of doing those things with his best friend’s daughter.

Your dad turns back to Joel to finish his conversation, moving over a bit so you can walk between the two of them to start a pot of coffee. Every nerve in your body buzzes the closer you get to Joel. You take a deep breath, noting his scent in the air and run your fingers haphazardly through your hair as the pot begins to brew.

“What’s that on your cheek?” Your dad asks as you move your hair out of your face.

“What?” You reach up and feel the rectangular indent of your phone pressed into your cheek where you had fallen asleep on it last night. Despite the space between you, you’re certain you can feel Joel tense beside you. “Oh, I was talking to Sophie on the phone last night and I must have fallen asleep on it.”

Your father nods and doesn’t press you any further on the matter which seems to calm Joel a bit, though he still remains silent beside you.

“Well, Joel and I are going to be watching the NASCAR race if you want to join us.”

Normally watching NASCAR with your dad is the last thing you’d want to do, but if it means spending more time with Joel…

“Sounds good.” You say sweetly, shooting your father a smile before he leaves the room to get the TV set up.

Joel is still standing beside you in the kitchen. He sips his beer as he lingers there. Despite not looking in his direction you can feel his eyes moving back to the skin of your bare legs now that your father is gone.

“Where’s Sarah?” You ask with your eyes trained on the counter.

“At home. She wasn’t really interested in coming over to watch the race.” You nod in response before you feel Joel step closer to you.

His chest brushes against your shoulder which causes your heart to skip a beat. You don’t dare look at him, even when he delicately brings a hand up to press his fingers to the fading imprint on your cheek.

“You doing okay?” He asks quietly once the noise of the TV comes on. “After last night?”

You’re shocked he’s actually acknowledging last night in person, with your dad only feet away. You turn toward him, resting your back against the kitchen counter. There’s a softness to his eyes that twists your stomach into knots. He really is genuinely checking in on you.

“Yeah, much better today.” You say with a smile. “Thank you for staying up and talking to me. I’m sorry if I fell asleep on you.”

Joel shrugs and lowers his hand. He takes one step away, still remaining close to you but providing you enough space to pour yourself some coffee along with cream and sugar.

“It was actually really nice to talk to you for a bit.” A grin tugs at the edges of his lips. “Although you do snore.”

“I do not!”

“Yes, you do.” He chuckles. “Not real loud, but you definitely do.”

Your eyes widen and you can feel face reddening. You cover your face with your hands. Maybe the floor will swallow you up so you never have to face Joel again.

“That’s mortifying.” You mumble through your hands.

“It was actually kind of sweet,” Joel says. You lower your hands again to see him better. “I almost didn’t want to hang up, but I started nodding off, myself.”

How long did he stay on the phone after you fell asleep? Was he just listening to you snore? Why would he do that? You want to ask him more questions, but your father calls out to Joel from the living room.

Joel looks in the direction of his friend briefly and then back at you. He doesn’t seem to want to leave the conversation any more than you do, but it would seem suspicious if he stayed.

“I should probably go get dressed.” You murmur. He nods.

You purposefully brush past him as you take your cup of coffee with you to the stairs. He quietly calls out your name just before you step up onto the first stair. You turn your head in his direction.

“Please put on some pants.” He practically groans in that deep voice that only comes out when he’s talking dirty to you. You never did get to the dirty part of your phone call last night.

“Where’s the fun in that?” You tease as you head up the stairs.

You take your time getting ready. You brush out your hair and put on makeup, the redness in your cheek finally starting to fade by the time you do. Despite Joel’s request for pants you opt to wear a short yellow sundress with tiny floral print instead, admiring the way it cascades over your boobs and butt. If you’re going to be stuck watching a NASCAR race you figure you might as well have some fun of your own.

Joel chokes on his beer when you appear in the living room. He quickly looks down and attempts to cover his coughing fit. Your father, sitting in his recliner, is so sucked into the race he doesn’t seem to notice your arrival or his friend’s reaction.

You pretend not to notice the way Joel stares at your thighs when the hem of your dress rides up even further as you sit down on the couch beside him, much closer than you need to given it’s just the two of you on the couch. You keep your eyes on the screen, attempting to keep your expression neutral as you shift a bit on the couch.

“Gonna get another beer, you want one?” He asks your father, tearing his eyes away from you.

“No I’m good,” your father responds and lifts the beer in his hand up a bit.

“I’ll take one!” You smile up at him. He nods, but looks away.

When he comes back from the kitchen he plops down on the couch beside you and reaches out a can. You make sure to place your fingers so that they’ll graze his as you grab it from him. For a split second you think you might be able to see a shiver run through his body before he yanks his hand away. His eyes stay on you.

You keep eye contact with him as you open the can and take a sip. After swallowing the cold beverage you run your tongue delicately along your top lip. Joel’s eyes immediately dart back to the screen.

You continue to sip your beer as you watch Joel throughout the race. You can tell he’s trying to keep it together. His body is unusually stiff Despite grabbing a new beer he barely drinks any of it. Still, his eyes continuously wander back to your bare thighs.

After a while you decide to mess with him some more. You can feel the effect his proximity has on you. You want him. Besides, you’re interested to see just how far you can push him.

You wait until Joel’s eyes wander back to your thighs again, and then you run your free hand up your thigh. You do so slowly, as though you were doing it absentmindedly, although it is very much intentional. When your hand reaches the hem of your dress you grab it between your fingers and move it a little further up your leg until Joel can see the very edge of your lacy red panties.

His gaze shoots back up to your face as you do so. You smile back at him innocently which he returns with a firm stare. You glance back at the TV when he pulls out his phone. Your own buzzes just a few seconds later.

Joel: What the hell do you think you’re doing?

You tug your bottom lip with your teeth as you respond.

You: Nothing, just enjoying the race ;)

Joel reads your text, glances back at you, then toes his response.

Joel: Knock it off.

You: And what will you do if I don’t?

He doesn’t text back. You feel him move closer to the arm of the couch in order to put more space between the two of you. Apparently he’s serious about trying to be on good behavior.

You try to watch the race, but you start to get bored again after another thirty minutes or so. Joel is doing a great job keeping his eyes on the screen after your last stunt, although his grip on the couch arm tells you it’s taking everything in him to do so.

Just one more little push. You move on the couch so you can grab the blanket folded across the back of it. Joel leans forward to let you pull it out without a second thought. You unfold it, dish it across your lap, and then reach over to throw it over Joel’s as well.

He watches you with a furrowed brow, clear that this is another ploy. With the blanket across your lap you become bolder with your actions. You start out with running your foot along his shin. Joel’s body starts tense beside you, but he doesn’t make any effort to stop you either.

You shift closer to him slightly and then move your hand to his knee, slowly moving it up his leg to his inner thigh. You see Joel gulp out of the corner of your eye and grin. You really do have an effect on him. You turn your head to watch him closely when you move your hand up again, your fingertips grazing the bulge in his jeans.

Joel quickly springs to his feet. The blanket that had been across your lap falls to the floor as he does so.

“Gonna use the bathroom,” Joel chokes out. Your father waves him off without looking. He’s only gone for a couple of seconds before he sends you another text.

Joel: Get up here, now.

Yes! You throw the blanket back on the couch cushions, not even bothering to give your father an excuse when you leave the room. When you reach the top of the stairs you’re immediately cornered into a wall by strong hands on your hips.

“I need you.” Joel groans. He pushes his hips against yours so you can feel how hard he is. You whimper and move your hips slightly to feel the friction. “Not here. Not in the hallway.”

“Fine,” You grin back at him then push him back so you can direct him down the hallway toward your bedroom. He grabs your wrist and stumbles behind you along the way.

“Gotta make this quick sweetheart, we don’t have much time before he comes lookin’ for us.” Joel mutters after you shut the door.

You grin back at him, slowly backing away while he stays standing by the door. You can’t help but note how out of place he looks in your childhood room among the pink walls littered with drawings you hung up in high school. Something about it turns you on even more.

He watches with dark eyes as you slide your panties down your legs slowly. You can already feel your juices dripping down your thighs in anticipation.

“Let him find us.” You respond. You step out of your underwear, dangling them on your finger for Joel who moves toward you quickly and snatches them away.

“You don’t know what you’re saying.” He growls.

His face is inches from yours. It would be so easy to close the distance between the two of you. So easy to press your lips to his. Joel reaches a hand up to your shoulder, delicately playing with the ends of your hair with his free hand. Your breath shudders.

The tension in the room is palpable, yet the gentle way he touches you now is so soft you could almost melt. You almost forget what you’re doing altogether, that this is nothing more than a lust filled haze. He won’t even get you off himself. He won’t even touch you where you’re most desperate to feel him, but somehow it doesn’t matter. Somehow the tender brush of his fingers and soft look in his eyes is more intimate than you’ve ever felt with a man before.

His eyes roam over every inch of you, exposed and not, as though he’s trying to commit it all to memory. The crease forms between his eyebrows again when his eyes land on your thighs. You watch his pupils darken at the sight of the mess between your legs.

Suddenly the hand on your shoulder shoves you backward. Your back lands on the mattress behind you. Joel crosses the room again, your soaked panties clutched tightly in his fist.

“Show me darlin’.” He says while he leans back against your dresser. “Show me how wet you got teasin’ me with your day in the room.”

You scoot back on the bed until your head rests against the pillows so you can still see him clearly. Then you shove your dress up your body, leaving it just under your breasts. You watch his reaction as you bend your knees and spread your legs. Joel groans softly.

“Like what you see?” You ask in feigned innocence. You bat your eyelashes at him playfully.

“Enough of that.” Joel growls. “We don’t have time. Touch yourself sweetheart.”

“I want to see you first.” You pout.

Joel’s free hand scrambles for his belt while he keeps his eyes on you, your expression as he pulls his hardening cock out of his jeans and boxers. You had felt the size of him against your body that night in the kitchen. You saw the pictures he had sent you over text. Those were nothing compared to seeing it with your own eyes in person.

Joel is big. The kind of big that makes you think twice about whether or not you can handle something like that, but it’s Joel. There’s nothing you want more right now than Joel’s cock. If he’d let you do it, you would get on your knees for him right here right now, but you know if you did he would stop it again.

You spread your legs more, determined to give him a show, and slowly bring your fingers to your folds. You run the tips of your fingers up your center softly.

Joel watches intently, breathing so hard you can see his chest rise and fall from across the room. The hand with your underwear tightens firm enough to turn his knuckles white. His other hand squeezes the base of his cock. He slowly starts to stroke himself when you begin to draw circles on your clit with your fingers.

Quiet sounds of your mingled moans fill the room. Both of you are panting, but careful not to make too much noise. Your father is still downstairs, only the sound of the TV covering exactly what his best friend and daughter are up to just above his head. Something about the danger of it makes the whole thing all the more exciting.

Your fingers move faster. You keep your eyes locked on Joel. Your body arches into your touch, and you find yourself thinking about his hands on you. What would it feel like if they were his fingers instead?

“Good girl,” Joel grunts. The slick sound of his hand moving up and down his massive dick spur you on. “Put a finger in now. I wanna see how she opens up for me.”

He doesn’t need to tell you twice. You continue circling your clit with your thumb while you move your other finger down to your entrance. It slides in with ease given how wet you are. The sheets beneath you are practically drenched already.

“How’s that feel, sweet girl?” Joel asks. “Feel good?”

It does. You feel so good, but it’s not enough. You’re not sure any of it will be enough. What you really need is Joel.

“More,” You whine. You know he won’t give you what you want, but you can’t stop yourself from pleading with him. “I need, I need more. Please.”

There’s a flicker of something in Joel’s eyes. Perhaps a recognition of what you’re really asking him for. Perhaps it’s his own lust fighting whatever logic he’s so clinging to in that head of his. Whatever it is, it’s gone as quickly as it came.

“Okay babygirl, okay.“ Joel says. He shoves your panties in his pocket before moving closer to the bed so he is now standing at the edge of it. “Give yourself some more. Put another in.”

You push another finger inside your aching walls. You speed the movement of your fingers up and watch as Joel does the same. He matches his pace with yours. A knot forms in your stomach. You feel your climax quickly rise, your body teetering on the edge already while you watch the beads of sweat form on Joel’s forehead.

“Fuck,” You pant. “I’m so- Fuck- I’m”

It would seem you’re incapable of even forming sentences right now, but Joel seems to understand what you mean.

“Go on baby.” You’re confused at first when the mattress dips beneath you, but then you feel his legs between yours. “Come for me. Lemme see.”

It’s the weight of his body on the mattress that sends you over the edge. His figure towers over you. He’s still fucking his hand. His eyes haven’t left your body, but his jeans rub against your knees as your legs instinctively attempt to close in the throes of your orgasm.

You can’t help the moan that escapes your mouth when you finally feel your release. Joel leans over your body, places an arm beside your head to balance himself, and presses his hand against your mouth to silence you.

“That’s it sugar, fuck.” He whispers in your ear. He’s thrusting into his hand so hard you can feel the slippery tip of his cock nudge the bare skin of your stomach. “Fuck darlin’ you’re gonna make me…”

His hips stutter. His words are cut off by a groan. You move your hands away from your body, one grasping his hair and the other resting across his shoulders. As the first string of come spurts your stomach his mouth moves down to your collarbone. The pain of his teeth clenching down on your skin in an attempt to silence his moans only causes your pussy to clench again.

The arm supporting his upper body shakes beside your head until the last bit of his release paints your skin. He removes his teeth, gently pressing a kiss to your collarbone before rolling over to collapse on the bed beside you.

You take a couple of breaths and listen to him do the same. When you look down at the mess the two of you made you can’t help but smile. This was so much better than dirty texts and late night phone calls.

You reach your hand down your body again, but this time use your finger to collect his release from your stomach. You feel his head turn to watch you as you scoop up what you can. You make sure to make direct eye contact with him when you bring your fingers up to your mouth and lick up the remnants of him.

“Fucking filthy,” Joel says, with a hint of a grin playing on his lips. You smirk back at him.

“Want a taste?” You ask.

Your hand is already making its way back down your body, this time dipping between your legs. You collect your release then bring your fingers to his lips. You half expect him to turn away. You have already pushed your luck farther than you should have today.

You’re pleasantly surprised when instead of his hand pushing you away, you feel his lips close around your fingers. His tongue swirls around each digit until there’s nothing left on your fingers for him to taste, his eyes refusing to leave yours until he finally releases your fingers again.

Your hand trails back, but not far. The tips of your fingers brush the soft skin of his bottom lip. You feel him lean into the touch. You glide your fingers down his lips, across his chin and jaw. You rest your hand at the base of his neck and lean closer until his breath and yours are one in the same. Part of you is convinced he will pull away, but he remains steady beside you even when your lips are close enough to feel his brush against them at the slightest movement. You’re just about to kiss him when the sound of your father yelling at the TV jolts both of you back to where you are.

Immediately Joel is on his feet again. You watch the muscles in his back go rigid again. He stays turned away from you while he tucks himself back in his jeans.

“Joel,” you start. You lean up on your elbows, struggling for words.

“I gotta go sweetheart,” Joel says. He turns to face you again, but you can already see that wall forming between you again.

You can’t help but feel that tug of sadness return, a sadness rooted in the vulnerability of being alone after what just happened. Even in person he’s pulling away. Why does that sting?

He reaches forward, one knee leaning into the end of the mattress so he can reach your face. The tips of his fingers tuck a piece of hair gingerly behind your ear. Then they move down to hold your jaw, holding you there so you’re forced to look into his warm brown eyes.

“I’ll call you tonight, okay?” You nod. He gives your jaw a soft squeeze before heading back downstairs to join your father.

@munsonsquinn @ashleyfilm @izzy698 @akah565 @pascal-mynightlyobsession

[bogleech]

@bobipineman , since you're always reading my blog, please, please stop fucking reading my blog. Please get new interests. Latch on to a different creature artist. What is wrong with you. Even when I have you blocked you read everything I post just to screenshot every little thing you find "weird" and share it with a clique of people who rage about me all day.

You seem to think I do something worse or equivalent to that, but I only post about someone being a dick after they have been a dick. And if they explain themselves or they stop being a dick, then I don't keep going. You on the other hand started incredibly bizarre, obsessive behavior in response to the first time I ever blocked you, and have kept doing it for years now even when I was never acknowledging you.

That original block was only because you had already spent several years by then regularly nagging me like this to stop posting "politics" you don't want to read:

....which is already really weird of you to do to anyone. I asked you so nicely so often to knock that off, but you kept at it until I had to block you, and then instead of moving on, you shifted to the skin-crawling new hobby of screenshotting me for lolcow boards. If you don't like someone's posts then you don't follow their blog, that's it, you don't badger them to change and then spend the rest of your life complaining about them to randos when they say no.

Heck, you even recently reblogged a post that says if someone's blocked you, you should stop looking at them at all. You inexplicably intended this for me, but it describes precisely your problem, and the fact that you keep doing that stuff is the only reason I end up having to keep any tabs on you in response. You cannot possibly think I say anything as "nasty" as the guys you're hanging out with; why are you fine with them endlessly insulting me or other people, but me getting the least bit tough in response is so ridiculously upsetting to you? *why?*

[ihavenoideahowtodream]

I have shitheel vision and have for 20+ years.

i wore glasses from 11 on. Middle school as an afab is a terrible time to get glasses in this glasses mean ugly and uncool media world. I know Paulo breaking princess mia's glasses In Princess Diaries was very influential in me despising them. my birth mom refused to let me get contacts cause they cost more and she couldnt get away with only taking me to the eye doc every 3 years. I also had severe untreated adhd and i have no idea how i didnt lose or break them every damn day. my mother made sure I glot metal ones so they could be bent back into shape and they were usually terribly warped by the time i got new ones. a habit i still haven't broken.

my first pay check at 17 yo went directly to getting contacts. I didnt wear glasses for 6 years after that unless something was wrong with my eyes. i was so mad later that year when my contacts dried up my eye while i was getting ready to go to my first school dance i wanted to sob cause I had to wear my fucking glasses with my nice dress and they would negate everything else I had done to make myself look pretty especially my eye makeup, which is how i managed to repress my sobs.

I still prefer contacts but more for adhd reason than self-consciousness. i do usually put a pair in and then sleep in them till they dry out after a month or so and I put a new pair in. also not healthy but the glasses dont get lost, stuck in my shirt, fall off my face, get foggy or dirty, and I can wear reading glasses (i have both near and far vision problem) and sunglasses cause i dont want to deal with swapping glasses with sunglasses or transitions.

However, I also know for a fact that even though im a helluva lot more comfortable with the way I look in glasses the media saying that I dont look Right™️ still heavily influences my contact use.

Put positive and neutral glasses wearers in media and stop teaching kids to hate themselves.

can we talk about how literally 64% of people wear glasses, and yet we NEVER see them in movies/tv unless it's on some nerdy or uncool character? why do we adhere to such a weird beauty standard that subconsciously makes us feel bad for,, not being able to see???

[bigtreefest]

🧚🏻‍♀️✨Bippity boppity bow chicka wow oww! You’ve been visited by the Shameless Hoe Fairy, and now you must share a hoe thot about: CE!babe + “Er is it supposed to make that noise?” 🤣

Not Fast, Possibly Furious

Pairing: Boyfriend! Ransom Drysdale x Reader

Summary: All you want to do is treat your boyfriend to a nice trip, but things aren’t going your way. Ransom thinks he knows just what to do to clear your mind.

Word count: 1,564

Content/warnings: MINORS DNI - 18+ ONLY, smut, swears, kissing, a little bit of an argument and frustrated behavior, probably poor handling of emotions but let’s be real a lot of us would do the same thing, brief depictions of unprotected p in v sex, semi-public car sex, surprisingly soft Ranny, independent reader, me not knowing anything about cars

A/N: It’s been a long time coming! Thank you so much for this prompt, Siri! Comments, likes, reblogs, and asks are so appreciated. Thank you for reading!!

Dividers by @firefly-graphics

Main Masterlist

At least the weather was nice. That’s what you had to keep reminding yourself, and Ransom, from where you were pulled off on the side of the road, scrambling under the hood of your old SUV.

After several attempts of pleading with your puppy dog eyes, you had finally convinced your boyfriend to let you surprise him with a weekend getaway to a place unknown. And boy, was that quite the difficult feat. Especially since he kept pushing back, saying he’d drive, even though you knew that was his sly attempt to figure out the destination. Ransom could never stand being left out of the loop, even when it was for something planned specifically with his pleasure in mind. The way he was going about it now was fun and playful at first, but then the smoke billowing from the engine of your car quickly put an end to that mood.

As you pulled over, you expected to see Ransom’s annoyed, told-you-so face, but instead, his brows were knitted together, mostly with concern. Before he could even open his mouth to suggest a solution, you were already out of the vehicle and investigating the issue.

At this point you’d lost track of how long you’d been working and finally believed you figured out what was wrong. At least you hoped so. A couple more failed attempts and you were about ready to have a conniption.

You peered out from behind the hood and looked at Ransom where he now sat in the driver’s seat.

“Okay, give it a go.”

As Ransom turned the key in the ignition, your hands flew to your hears. Loud chugs and sputtering were followed by a high-pitched screech of something, and then nothing. The engine reached a halt with a hiss.

In frustration, you groaned and looked up at the sky and then over at your boyfriend whose emotions were evidently feeding off of yours. Even through all of this, though, Ransom was trying so hard to make sure he kept his sass in check as to not offend you. He really appreciated the gesture of what you were trying to do this weekend and didn’t want to appear ungrateful or as if he didn’t believe in your capabilities, but before he could even think, the words just slipped out.

“Er, is it supposed to make that noise?”

What a mistake. All he heard was a clank of metal as you threw down a socket wrench onto the asphalt and stomped toward the grassy treeline just off the side of the road. When he got out of the driver’s seat and came around the hood to look at you, your hands were on your head, eyes squeezed shut in frustration, with the faintest glimmer, from what he could only assume were tears, running down your cheeks. Your wet lashes fluttered open and Ransom swore that look could kill.

“Of course it’s fucking not, Hugh!”

The last thing on Ransom’s mind right now was the mud underneath his loafers as he rushed towards you in an attempt to placate and plead for a tow truck.

“Sweetheart, I… didn’t mean it like that. I just mean that we’ve been at this for the better part of an hour and I don’t see your car going anywhere. Physically or repair-wise.”

His hands gently held your arms.

“Let me call a tow truck. I went to school with a kid whose family owned a company. We’ll get a good deal if you insist on paying for it.”

You scowled at him and swatted his hands away.

“I’m independent, Drysdale, not stupid. And I have insurance, anyway. But you touch that phone and you’re a dead man.”

You began storming back to the car.

“But if you just let me-“

Ransom attempted to reach for your hand but you shook it off, whipped around, and pointed a cautionary finger at him.

“Listen to me. This car, I paid for by myself. School, I got into by myself. And this trip, is something I planned on my own. So you saying for me to hand the problems, ones not unlike what I’ve faced my entire life, to somebody else, is not the way I operate. I never had that luxury and I don’t need it. You’re acting like I don’t have this under control and that you don’t believe in me. And that’s the last thing I need from my boyfriend when I’m doing my best.”

Ransom bit the inside of his lower lip and thought for a second, carefully choosing the right words to proceed. If you were anyone else, he would’ve thrown it right back just as hard. He knows you’ve worked for everything you have and he knows he had it easy his whole life. He had to go about this the right way.

“Sweetheart.”

His voice was low, genuine.

“I’m offering to make it easier on you. Not because I don’t believe in your capabilities, it’s just that I want to make sure a moment together for us isn’t wasted. Especially not with you cursing out an old engine when instead, we can be pressed close in bed. Okay?”

Before you could even protest, he had you wrapped up tight against him in his arms. He held you firmly, one hand bracing your head, the other rubbing up and down on your back. You could feel your shoulders relaxing just barely before he tilted your heads back and his eyes searched yours.

“So how about this: you get one more try to fix this, and if that doesn’t work, then I’ll call AAA, have them give us a tow back to my place, and we’ll figure out essentials and take the Beamer. Deal?”

You sighed in his hold, pressing your forehead against his for a second as you thought. When you tilted your head back up, Ransom took inventory of your face, the look of contemplation, still with a hint of frustration running through it. He pressed a warm, tender kiss to your lips that he realized was far too chaste for your liking when you chased his lips and whined as he pulled away.

A gentle thumb brushed your cheek while a smirk slowly took over his face. His eyes darkened, and he smiled with mischief that you knew all too well, but your brain was quickly growing fuzzy, dazed.

“Ah, is that what you need? A little something to work out this pent-up frustration?”

You panted lightly through parted lips and nodded, looking urgently into his eyes as you let out the breathiest affirmation to his question. He nodded in acknowledgment.

“I should’ve recognized it sooner. Get in the back seat.”

Your fingers tangled in his hair, nails running up the back of his scalp until you reached the longer patch of the quiff on the top of Ransom’s head. You gripped firmly and yanked him upwards, met with him face-to-face after pulling him out from where the condensation was gathering against your neck.

His pupils were blown, lips parted in a groan that quickly grew into that smarmy smirk. His one hand continued its work between your bodies, the other bracing him against the seat to hold him above you. You could feel his thrusts growing sloppy, yet holding no less power. He was pushing himself to give you what you needed and it was paying off. He could tell by the way your knees squeezed his sides, making his smile grow even more. He could feel the way you gripped him tighter, your whole body pulling his into it.

“You close?”

All you could do was nod, words eluding you as you used your hold on him to shove his lips to yours in a fervent kiss. Like that display of affection was the final nudge, you tipped over the edge, orgasm ripping through your body with a wave of warmth, your body convulsing as Ransom pushed for a final few thrusts and came with you. The lip lock was broken with the groans of you both coming down from the high, but small pecks kept you close as you pet your fingers over the back of his hair.

You smiled up at Ransom, having almost forgotten your worries in the pleasure he was able to give you. But instead of being in a post orgasmic haze, it was like the storm of anger that had previously clouded your judgement had cleared and your gaze shot wide.

In concern, your boyfriend looked between your eyes, worry etching into his features as he brushed strands of sweaty hair out of your face.

“What? What is it, sweetheart?”

Snapped out of the moment of intimacy, you pushed his shoulders back, finding your shorts to shimmy them back on your body, still partially underneath your boyfriend’s.

Ransom sat there paralyzed on his knees, watching you pull yourself together just enough to go back outside the car, ignoring his inquisition. His bare ass was still in the breeze as you slipped your shoes on, trying not to lose the light bulb that went off in your head, and opened the car door.

You quickly turned back to him for a peck and paused for a second where he thought you might realize how quickly you just left him there, but all you said was, “It’s gotta be the spark plugs!”

Bonus a/n: heheheheh😈 we love a babe who likes to distract you to clear your mind. And when the rich brat gets a good head on his shoulders.

Taglist: @hawkeyes-queen @ronearoundblindly @mercurial-chuckles @steviebbboi @thiquefunlover63

[asktheritochampion]

FOR THE PERSON BEHIND THIS ACCOUNT:

how'd you get started doing this account? also do you have any advice for someone who's thinking of doing a similar account? /genq

As someone who has run many an ask blog in different fandoms over the years, people asking me for advice in starting their own is something that happens pretty frequently.

Making an ask blog for your favourite character is a great way to explore that character in more depth without needing the narrative of writing a fanfiction, not to mention a super fun way to interact with the fandom community!

Ther's no right or wrong way to run an ask blog; but I'm happy to share some of the things I've learned over the years from trial and error for those just dipping their talon into this creative format for the first time.

There's two different ways you can start your ask blog; by creating a side-blog off of your main blog, or by creating a whole new blog. Either works fine, but I personally favour having a full blog - you can make a gmail in two minutes then bash out a full blog just like that. The drawback is that sometimes I forget to log back onto my main blog; but a side blog cannot send asks to other blogs and you have to remember to set everything you post to the correct blog, which can get confusing at times.

While decorating your new blog; make a rules page and write out a list of things you're not okay with people asking. Maybe you're uncomfortable with rude or violent asks - with topics of sexual harassment or racism or homophobia. Maybe you don't want to roleplay, or you only want to interact with people that follow your specific ship. You can put whatever you want on your rules page - but pin that post so that newcomers can read it and know what is and isn't okay to send in.

When you first start your blog, it can be a little tricky to get the ball rolling. I recomend following other ask blogs and active blogs in the fandom and interacting with their posts to connect with other people. Even then however, you might need to either get a friend to send you a couple of asks or send a few anonymous asks to yourself to get started.

Don't be discouraged if it takes a few days or weeks for people to starts sending in asks. It takes a long time to foster people's interest and engagement no matter how popular or interesting the character is.

A big question people often have is; should I post art with my asks?

From my experience, you could be the greatest writer in the world - but posts you make which have a visual aspect will always grab more attention on a social media platform designed for scrolling than just normal text posts. People have short attention spans. Keep text responses short, and add something sparkly to grab peoples attention.

Not everyone is an artist or has time to draw, but that doesn't mean you can't still make your posts visually interesting. You could use gifs or screenshots of your character, you could handwrite your replies to make them look like letters or diary entries (although if you ever do illustrated text, make sure to include it as a caption below for screenreaders to still be able to access), or even just make your reply fonts colourful or large or play around with different fonts to make them stand out from other posts.

If you do want to draw replies I encourage it because it's a great way to improve your drawing skills fast. If you're worried about your skill level, you can always make it part of the theme and say it's the character drawing their own responses.

I'd recomend if you're planning on sketching replies to draw out several different pictures of your character with different expressions and poses and to re-use them. However if you want to be a crazy person like me and try to draw unique responses most of the time; I'd highly recomend choosing a very simplified style of drawing.

Response pieces should take you less than fifteen minutes or you'll burn yourself out pretty fast. I sketch Revali in a simplified way and just do a flood-fill wash of tone so that my drawings are as fast and simple as possible to do - no colour or shading. If I was spending an hour on every response piece, I'd run out of spoons for this by the end of the week.

If you want to run a popular or highly interacted with blog, the most important thing is posting frequently. If you post a few times a day - or even just a few times a week, people will seek out your blog because it will keep appearing at the top of the tags. The key is churning out a lot of asks all the time.

Get into a habit of doin' your posts fast and rough, and don't worry too much about perfecting things. Nobody will notice if your art or writing is a little unfinished or sketchy. On social media, especially in this style of creating, people only look at your posts for a few seconds - so especially when you're first starting out and trying to get noticed, it's okay to choose quantity over quality.

Something I know a lot of people worry about when they first start out is lore and storytelling in their ask responses.

My best advice is to not take anything too seriously. On this blog, sometimes Revali is around before the Calamity, sometimes he's around in Totk times. Sometimes I draw him wearing modern clothes and using an ipad and other times he has no idea what a microwave is. Sometimes I answer an ask one way, then forget about it and answer something else with conflicting information a few months later.

Nobody really pays enough attention to everything you post to notice continuousy errors. These blogs are just a bit of fun and a way for you to play around with your character like a barbie doll. You can do whatever you want with them, and change it day by day. You don't have to stick to one timeline or ensure that every single thing you post is lore accurate.

Saying that; let's talk about something I like to call 'arcs'.

Every once in a while when things are feeling a little dry or someone sends in something interesting, I'll throw in an 'arc' for Revali. Maybe he gets turned into a chick or a Hylian or joins the Yiga Clan - and for a few days all of my ask posts will revolve around this.

While it's a lot of fun to play with arcs, I'd recomend keeping them short and sweet - lasting no more than a week at longest before returning back to a comfortable norm. Newcomers are always drifting into fandom, as are more casual fans, and if newbies or people who aren't as deep into this character's life as you stumble upon your posts while you're doing a crazy arc, they're likely not really going to understand what's going on. Returning to a more 'canon typical' version of your character between arcs is important for coaxing in newer fans and keeping people from getting too lost.

Another thing people often wonder about is roleplay.

I don't really make my ask blogs with roleplay in mind, but the format itself is kind of built for it if the concept interests you. Playing as your favourite character and enacting little scenes with other blogs can be super fun - great escapism and an interesting way to tell a narrative.

There are however some unspoken rules to roleplay; things you pick up over time that aren't always obvious.

First off - not every ask blog wants to roleplay. Some people just aren't comfortable with it - and that's okay. Check out someone's rules page or just pop them a DM to ask, and respect their decision if they don't want to.

When you do roleplay with somebody; it's common courtasy to keep your roleplay to under ten posts. While this isn't as big of a deal as it used to be (truely Hylia bless Tumblr's newly enforced read-more feature when a post reaches a certain length), it's still polite not to clog up people's dashes with tons of long replies. If the roleplay starts to get too long, try to wrap it up and start a new one.

Another important unspoken rule is something I like to call the 'ask blog universe'.

Every ask blog is their own little universe bubble, where you come up with your own ideas and headcanons for your character and others. Sometimes you'll roleplay with another ask blog - and those ideas will clash.

You cannnot force your headcanons onto another blogs universe, so try to keep your headcanons out of roleplay and leave them just for asks and posts. If I'm roleplaying as Revali with another blog, I'm not going to mention within that roleplay that he's transgender or that he's infatuated with Link - because that might not be the canon for that other blog's universe, and it would be rude to make them have to bend their established canon to accomodate me.

You should always have fun acting out your favourite ships and headcanons - but just try to be considerate when roleplaying with other blogs that not everyone will share your opinions, and maybe just avoid topics of debate within the play.

Another thing people often ask; Can I start an ask blog for a character if someone else is already running an ask blog for them.

The answer is yes, of course you can. That person does not own the character - if you want to start a Revali blog like me, go for it! You can bring something new to the table that I cannot - we will inevitably play very different versions of this character and explore things the other has not even thought of. The more fun writing and art for our favourite character in the world - the better.

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Which brings me onto my most important piece of advice.

No matter how you run your blog, inevitably at some point, some sad person with nothing better to do is going to come into your ask box and send something unplesent. Maybe it will be something gross and sexual - maybe it will be a rant about how they disagree with a headcanon you've made and why it's all wrong - maybe they'll just send you vauge death threats because they don't like the character (Revali gets a LOT of those...). This is unfortunatly an inescapable part of being online and creating.

The BEST thing you can do - and I cannot express enough how important this is - block them and delete the asks. Turn off anonymous asks if it starts to really bother you - even if it's just for a little bit.

Do not post them. Do not respond to them. Do not post ABOUT them.

These people are purely here for your attention, they want a reaction from you; and the second you give them that even if it's the most levelheaded response in the world, they will keep harassing you nonstop.

Whereas if you never acknowledge them; they will vanish so fast it will make your head spin.

Now, it's HARD not to post the scary, mean, or ranty asks that people send you for the validation of your kind followers telling you how wrong their harassment is. I get that. What I would recomend is befriending other ask blogs and sharing the woes with them instead. We even have a Legend of Zelda ask blogs discord group that anyone making an ask blog can join - go in there and screenshot post the garbage people send so we can all rant about it and validate you together.

Just never post it publically - it only feeds the wee beasts.

Ask blogs can be really fun to run!

They can also be hard work sometimes - whether it's because you're stuck on difficult asks, overwhelmed or underwhelmed with the amount of people interacting with you, getting mean anons, or burning out from trying to draw every response.

If you ever need a listening ear or a little advice or support, ol' Rahlin is always happy to share what I know. Don't be nervous to shoot over any questions or worries you have and we can talk them out.

I'm no expert in this genre by any means, but I have had a lot of experience with a lot of different issues over the years, and I'm always here to help anyone who is new to the scene and wants to join in the fun!

[cirilla-fiona-riannon]

Sweet Punishment for a Little Lie (Kicho)

Translations may not always capture the exact nuances or tone of the original text. Expect grammatical errors and inaccuracies.

Story Summary: Just before Kicho is set to leave the trading post for a few days on business, you catch a cold. Not wanting to worry him, you hide your condition and act like everything is normal—but there’s no way a lie like that could fool him.

It was already evening by the time I finally wrapped up what I was doing.

Mai: "All done! Gotta say it turned out pretty nice."

I held up the vest I'd made and admired it.

(I wonder if Kicho will be happy when he sees it.)

He has a business meeting and a party with a foreign merchant tomorrow.

Since he'll be showing the newcomer around town, he'll be away from the trading post for a few days.

The vest I made is for him to wear to that party.

(I want to show it to him right now! I wonder how he'll react.)

I stood up, vest in hand, my heart fluttering just thinking about the smile on his face.

[Kicho's Room]

Kicho: "Oh? Impressive. It's quite stylish."

Seeing his face light up as he looked at the vest made me smile.

(I'm so glad he likes it!)

Mai: "I'm happy it suits your taste."

Kicho: "Yeah, I really like it."

Kicho: "And as always, it's beautifully made."

Kicho: "You must've put a lot of work into this. Thank you."

Mai: "Not at all. I really enjoyed making it."

Kicho: "I'll wear it to the party tomorrow night."

Mai: "Great. I hope you have a wonderful time."

Kicho: "If it were up to me, I would've brought you with me."

Kicho: "But the merchant I'm meeting tomorrow is like the Tiger of Kai."

Kicho: "He flirts with any woman he sees, no matter when or where. I can't put you in a situation like that. I'm sorry."

His long fingers reached out and gently caressed my cheek with a tenderness that made my heart flutter.

(So that's why he couldn't take me.)

Mai: "Don't worry about me. Just focus on your work and do your best."

Kicho: "Of course I'm going to worry. I'll be away from you for several days, after all."

Kicho: "When I get back, let's spend some time together."

Kicho: "Will you wait for me until then?"

(I'll miss him too, but being cherished like this makes me really happy.)

Feeling warm and full inside, I gave a firm nod.

Mai: "Yes, of course."

Mai: "Ah—were you still working? Sorry for barging in. I'll head back to my room now."

Kicho: "Sorry I couldn't give you more of my time."

Mai: "It's okay. Good night."

I stepped out of Kicho's room, still a little reluctant to leave.

Mai: "Achoo!"

I sneezed, and a shiver ran through me.

(I feel kind of cold, and my throat's a little scratchy.)

(Could I be coming down with something?)

A bad feeling crept over me as I rubbed my arms.

(I should bundle up and get to bed early tonight.)

Hugging myself to keep warm, I hurried back to my room.

The next morning…

Kicho: "You didn't have to get up this early just to see me off."

Mai: "It's fine. I wanted to send you off myself."

Together with his subordinates and a few maids, I stood in front of the trading post to see Kicho off.

I straightened my posture and put on a smile.

Mai: "There's a party tonight, right? I know it's work, but I hope you enjoy it."

Kicho: "What I'm really looking forward to is wearing the vest you made me."

Kicho: "I'll be back as soon as the negotiations are done."

Mai: "Don't push yourself too hard, okay?"

Kicho: "I'm not pushing myself. I just want to see you as soon as I can."

The way he looked at me—so full of tenderness—made my heart race.

(It makes me so happy to hear him say that.)

Mai: "Hehe, thank you."

Mai: "I'll be waiting, so please take care during your trip."

Kicho: "Yeah."

Kicho: ".........."

His expression suddenly turned serious, and he stared at me.

Mai: "Is something wrong?"

Kicho: "Mai, you don't look okay. Your complexion seems a bit off."

Mai: "Huh?"

(That… hit a little too close.)

Kicho: "Don't tell me—you're not feeling well?"

(H-He's sharp. I thought I was hiding it well.)

The truth was, even though I went to bed early last night, I still ended up getting sick.

(There's been a cold going around, and one of the maids helping me caught a fever. I probably caught it from her.)

(But I can't let Kicho worry about me, especially when he has such important things to handle.)

(It's just a cold. With some rest, I'll be fine in no time.)

I forced a smile and subtly stepped back, putting some distance between us so he wouldn't catch it from me.

Mai: "It's nothing, really."

Kicho: "Are you sure?"

Mai: "Yes. Don't worry, I'm fine."

Kicho: "………"

Kicho's subordinate: "Lord Kicho, it's almost time."

Kicho: "Got it. I'll be heading out now."

Kicho: "Mai."

He stepped closer and gently brushed a strand of hair from my face.

Kicho: "If anything happens, call me immediately. Got it?"

Mai: "Okay."

(Good. I think I kept him from noticing.)

Mai: "Well then, safe travels."

Kicho: "I'll be back soon."

I smiled and waved as he mounted his white horse and rode off.

[Mai's Room]

Mai: "Haaah…"

(My head's pounding, and I feel so sluggish I can barely move.)

As expected, I started feeling worse and ended up stuck in bed.

(I need to sleep this off and recover before Kicho comes home. If I remember correctly, the maid got better in just a couple of days.)

Wanting to welcome him back with a smile, I closed my eyes, trying to give my body as much rest as I could.

(He's probably already there by now.)

(I wonder if the negotiations have already started.)

Even with my head foggy from the fever, all I could think about was him.

(I hope I didn't pass it on to him. I'm just glad I saw him off before I got too sick.)

(If I'd collapsed before he left, he might've canceled the whole trip.)

Mai: ".........."

Just then, a cold chill swept through me, making my body shiver.

A wave of loneliness and unease swelled in my chest, making me yearn for the comfort of someone I loved.

(I want to see him.)

(If only I could see him—even just in a dream.)

Longing for him, I slowly drifted off to sleep.

(Hmm?)

Something cold brushed against me and jolted me awake.

Kicho: "You're awake?"

Mai: "Huh?"

The moment I opened my eyes, the person I'd been yearning to see stood right there in front of me, making me blink in disbelief.

Mai: "Kicho…?"

Kicho: "I'm back, Mai."

It wasn't a dream.

He was really there, looking at me.

Mai: "Why are you here?"

Mai: "What about the negotiations? Wait—did two whole days really pass while I was asleep?"

Mai: "This isn't a dream, is it?"

My feverish, foggy brain couldn't make sense of anything, and the questions just kept spilling out.

Kicho: "It's not a dream. This is real. And it's only been half a day since I left."

Kicho: "I had a bad feeling something was wrong with you when I left, and it looks like I was right."

Mai: "Ah…"

His large hand gently touched my cheek with concern.

Kicho: "I'm glad I came back. I didn't think your fever would be this high."

His cool touch felt so soothing against my feverish skin that my foggy mind began to clear.

(He came back because he was worried about me.)

(I tried so hard to hide it so I wouldn't be a burden, and he still saw right through me.)

Mai: "Um, then, what about the negotiations?"

The fear that I might have ruined everything for him suddenly gripped my chest.

Sensing my anxiety, he looked me straight in the eyes. His gaze softened, calm and reassuring.

Kicho: "If that's what you're worried about… don't be."

Kicho: "I've known this business partner for a while. Something like this wouldn't be enough to mess up a deal."

Kicho: "I explained the situation—told him I couldn't make it to the party and asked to reschedule the town tour. When I said I needed to head back early, he actually encouraged me and told me I should be by your side."

Mai: "Huh? He said that?"

Kicho: "Yeah. He might be a flirt, but he's considerate when it comes to women."

Kicho: "I told you—he flirts with every woman he sees, remember?"

(Right, that's why he said he couldn't bring me along.)

Mai: "Well, I'm glad it didn't cause any trouble."

I let out a quiet sigh of relief.

(Still, we were just lucky this time.)

(If he'd been stricter or less understanding, this could've ended really badly.)

Even though the deal didn't fall through, I still made him postpone his negotiations.

Ashamed I hadn't even taken care of my own health, I lowered my gaze.

Mai: "Still, I made you worry and made you come back."

Kicho: "Sick people don't need to apologize. Just focus on getting better."

He sounded like he was scolding me, but the tenderness in his voice and eyes made my heart skip a beat.

Kicho: "Even if you'd hidden it perfectly this morning, once you collapsed in your room, one of my men would've told me. I would've come back either way."

Kicho: "So don't go blaming yourself for not hiding it better."

Kicho: "If anything, I should be thinking of a little punishment for keeping secrets from me."

He flashed me a smile, and my heart skipped a beat.

Mai: "P–Punishment?"

Kicho: "You told a lie. You should at least expect that much."

Mai: "R-Right…"

(He's right. I did lie. I can't argue with that.)

(But what kind of punishment does he mean?)

Just thinking about it made me feel uneasy.

When I glanced up at him, trying to read his expression, he only smiled.

Kicho: "Well, that can wait until you're feeling better."

Kicho: "For now, stop worrying and rest."

He gently patted my head, his touch light and reassuring.

Kicho: "I'll stay here until you fall asleep."

Kicho: "So close your eyes and relax."

(Ah…)

He softly stroked my hair, and all the tension in my heart melted away.

(His hands are so warm.)

Wrapped in the comfort of his touch, I closed my eyes and slipped into another dream.

The next day…

Mai: "Um, you really don't have to go this far."

I said awkwardly, hugging my sleepwear around me to cover myself as best I could.

Kicho: "That's enough. Just stay still for a moment."

Kicho: "I'm going to touch you now."

Mai: "........."

He gently wiped the sweat from my back with a warm, damp cloth.

Kicho: "Is it too hot?"

Mai: "No. It's warm, and it feels nice."

Mai: "But I can wipe myself and get changed on my own, you know?"

Kicho: "You've got a fever. Times like this, it's okay to let someone take care of you."

Kicho: "Besides, it's not like you can even reach your back."

Since he got back yesterday, Kicho hasn't left my side. He's been looking after me with such gentle, devoted care.

After helping me clean up and get changed, he eased me back into bed.

Mai: "Thank you."

Kicho: "Are you thirsty?"

Mai: "I'm fine."

Kicho: "I see. I'll bring some rice porridge in a bit."

(He's taking such good care of me. I really am grateful. But...)

Mai: "Um, aren't you falling behind on your work? I'll be fine on my own. Maybe one of the maids could—"

Kicho: "This is something I want to do."

Kicho: "And I don't want anyone else seeing you vulnerable like this."

Kicho: "I've rarely had the chance to look after someone before. That's why getting to nurse the one I love and being allowed to stay by your side like this means everything to me."

His eyes softened as he looked at me. That warm, deep gaze made my chest tighten with emotion.

(He said taking care of me makes him happy.)

As I gripped the blanket tightly, his hand gently rested on my forehead. He leaned in, peering into my face.

Kicho: "Your cheeks are flushed. Did your fever go up again?"

Mai: "It's your fault."

Kicho: "Mine?"

He looked at me, confused.

Embarrassed, I pulled the blanket over my face.

Mai: "I-I'm happy you're the one taking care of me."

Kicho: "Is that so? Then I'm glad."

He smiled and stroked my head.

(His hand feels so nice.)

I guided his hand to my cheek and nuzzled into it like a cat.

Kicho: "Don't look at me like that while doing something so cute."

(Cute?)

I blushed, and he chuckled knowingly.

Kicho: "If that's what you want, I'll keep doing it as much as you like."

Mai: "Ah."

He slowly brushed his palm across my cheek, and I instinctively leaned into it.

(It's so comforting.)

(And his scent—even faint—is unmistakably him, warm and familiar.)

Mai: "Kicho…"

Kicho: "Hmm?"

Mai: "Once I'm feeling better… I want to thank you."

Mai: "So... can you think of something you'd like me to do for you?"

Kicho: "I don't need thanks. Like I said… there's a punishment waiting."

Kicho: "To make sure you never try to hide something from me again."

His sultry tone was followed by a sweet kiss pressed to my forehead.

(There he goes again.)

(But if it's a punishment from him...)

Just imagining it made my heart race, and I turned away, flustered.

Kicho: "Were you imagining what kind of punishment I might give you?"

Mai: "Well, yes…"

Kicho: "Right now, you just need to focus on getting better. Go back to sleep."

Mai: "Okay."

His fingers brushed against me with such tenderness, it tickled my skin in the most comforting way. And that warmth lulled me back to sleep.

Over the next few days, he never left my side—showering me with a kind of devotion I never imagined I'd experience.

Part 1 ╎ Premium ╎ Epilogue

[dirtyvulture]

Knight Falls - Part 4

Natasha Romanoff x Fem!Wolverine!Reader

18+ only, read at your own risk

Summary: Your perfect life with Natasha isn't meant to stay that way with the Red Room still looking for her.

Word count: 3782

AN: The final part! Thanks to everyone who supported and read this series and finally encouraged me to finish it. :)

Click here to read Part 3.

“You weren’t quite strong enough, so I guess I have to finish it myself,” Natasha says, eyeing Dreykov’s desk with a little trepidation.

“What are you going to do?” Even he doesn’t have the foresight to predict her plan.

Natasha doesn’t even steel herself with a breath before she slams her face onto his desk, hearing the satisfying crunch of her nose give way before the explosive pain waters her eyes.

“Sever the nerve,” she tells him, but before she can punch the smug expression of his face, the door bangs open. Taskmaster drags you in. You look like you fought a pack of lions and lost. Your previously white shirt is in tatters and soaked in blood, and she can tell something is wrong with your legs by the way they’re awkwardly folded underneath you.

“Y/N!” she calls out, but you hardly seem to react to her. Taskmaster puts a gun to your head. “Don’t!” she says, fearful that you might not survive getting shot again. 

“That is not for her,” Dreykov says, “It’s for you.”

BANG.

Natasha isn’t fast enough to move out of the way and the bullet rips through her thigh. Her leg buckles and she falls, crawling to take cover behind Dreykov’s desk. She sees you throw yourself at Taskmaster to knock him off balance, but you can’t do much more than that and he pushes you off easily, continuing to advance towards Natasha.

She looks at her surroundings frantically for something she can use as a weapon as Taskmaster nears her. Dreykov’s hand slams a button under his desk and he backs away as red warning lights and alarms sound off. 

“Kill them both,” she hears Dreykov instruct Taskmaster.

“You think it’s that easy?” you mumble; Natasha can barely hear your weak voice over the alarms. You shuffle to block Dreykov’s path to the door. “Trust me, bub, I’ve tried a lot of things and I’m not going anywhere.”

Dreykov sighs as if you’re just a simple annoyance. “Kill this one first,” he says in Russian, beckoning Taskmaster over. Natasha wishes she could breathe a sigh of relief as his attention is taken away from her, but she’s worried you won’t survive another fight against him.

You cling onto the wall for support as you drag yourself into a standing position. “Take off your mask,” you say, “I want you to look me in the eye when you kill me.”

“We can kill you as many times as we need,” Dreykov says, snapping his fingers. Taskmaster raises his gun again.

“Good luck with that.” You look beyond Dreykov and Taskmaster to make eye contact with Natasha. Despite that she can’t communicate telepathically with you, she seems to know exactly what you’re thinking as your eyes shift over to Dreykov’s desk and you subtly press your body weight against the wall. 

Brace for impact.

She hunkers down beside the desk, feeling the protest in her wounded leg, just in time as a colossal wave of movement tilts the room almost 45-degrees to the right. Dreykov loses his balance and goes sliding into the window, while Taskmaster manages to hold his balance–but just barely. The room groans and angles back to the left.

“What the hell is that?” Dreykov roars. 

Outside his ceiling-to-floor windows, a large, dark-gray jet lowers into view. When Natasha squints, she can see Storm in the cockpit, and her heart leaps with joy. She nods at Natasha, and the clouds darken and thunder booms. The Red Room’s aircraft jostles again as the jet moves closer.

You’re back to fighting Taskmaster again, slashing at him and forcing him to retreat towards the windows. The sight of the Blackbird has raised your morale, and you surprise yourself when you finally catch a chink in his armor and his blood spills onto your claws.

The Blackbird steadies itself and a ramp lowers, Scott and Jean appearing in their ridiculous yellow-and-blue costumes that you swore you would rather die than publicly wear, but you’ve never been so happy to see them.

You pull Taskmaster close to your face and can hear wheezing behind his mask. “Fuck you,” you spit, shoving him back so hard he breaks through the window. As he stumbles to find his balance on the ledge, Scott blasts him with a pair of ruby-red optic beams. Taskmaster is knocked completely off the aircraft by the force, but it hardly gives you any satisfaction to watch him fall to his death (mostly because it was by Scott’s hand over yours).

Jean levitates her and Scott over to the broken window. 

“Need a hand?” Scott yells out over the sound of the wind.

“I almost had him,” you grumble. 

“Y/N, are you okay?” Jean asks. You know she’s read your mind and the things you’ve thought about in the last hour. It’s more embarrassing than annoying, and you don’t want her worrying about you. 

“I’m fine,” you grunt, even though everyone in the room can tell you’re lying.

“The professor told us to grab something,” Scott says, catching you as you slump forward, suddenly overwhelmed by exhaustion. “Can you get on the Blackbird?”

“Yeah,” you sigh. “Just…one…more thing.” You point to Natasha and Dreykov in the corner of the room. 

“Do you want our help–”

“No. Go.” Jean looks uncomfortable at leaving you, but Scott urges her on and they disappear into the hall. Natasha gets to Dreykov before you can, but you trust she can handle herself. While you are no longer leaking blood all over the floor, you are still not in good shape and all you really want is to drink a case of beer and sleep for a week. 

Natasha looms over Dreykov, and the first punch she lands on him is almost euphoric. For years, she had imagined putting her hands on this man and now she was finally here. After all the pain he had caused her, the humanity he had stripped from her, she wanted him to pay for all of it.

“Please, please,” Dreykov begs as he hunches down, Natasha raining blow after blow on him. She couldn’t believe he was begging for her mercy, after all the times his subjects did the same and he turned a blind eye to them. She didn’t stop, punching and kicking him harder and harder until her knuckles bled and she couldn’t feel her shins. 

In the background, you stagger towards them. You hear footsteps down the hall, glad that Scott and Jean had found whatever they needed so quickly, until you start counting and realize there are far more than two pairs of footsteps approaching. Looking over your shoulder just in time, you see a group of Widows crowd into Dreykov’s office. The lead Widow wields some kind of harpoon gun and you barely move in time to block Natasha from their view as the spear launches out and goes through your thigh.

Natasha hears your howl of pain and turns away from Dreykov, shocked to see the Widows surrounding you. She looks back at Dreykov, crawling away from her, his face a bloody pulp from her hands. The Widows yank you off your feet with the rope attached to the spear and converge on you. 

“No!” Natasha screams, limping over to help you. She doesn’t care about killing Dreykov anymore; she won’t lose you. She grabs onto the first Widow she can reach, throwing her to the side and kicking another in the back of the knees. But they outnumber her, and based on the way you are laying limply on the floor, you’re in no state to help her. 

Natasha will fight for you until her last breath.

She is easily knocked over and stomped on, punched and electrocuted. Her vision swims as she crawls towards you, reaching for your bloody hand. Your eyes aren’t open anymore and she isn’t sure if you’re even breathing.

“Y/N,” she whispers, wishing she had the privacy and energy to say more. “Please don’t leave me…”

BANG.

Natasha ducks down, thinking another gun has gone off. Suddenly, the kicks and punches stop. She lifts her head and sees red powder sprinkling down from the ceiling. The Widows have backed away from her, staring at each confusedly as if they didn’t know how they got here. 

“You’ve all been freed,” Jean says. “Get this ship on the ground and get out of here.”

The Widows look at her as if they each have a million questions on their minds–and they probably do. Even Natasha isn’t totally sure what happened.

“Go now,” Jean emphasizes, and the Widows react stiffly, as if being forced by an invisible hand to turn around and march out of the room like robots. Natasha crawls over to you and nudges you gently. She holds her breath when you don’t respond at first, until finally your eyes crack open. 

“N-Natasha,” you whisper. 

“I’m here,” she says, rubbing your arm. 

“Don’t forget,” you wheeze, grasping for her hand, “That son of a bitch.”

Natasha’s head snaps up to the corner of the room where Dreykov has hunched down, trying to make himself smaller as if that will hide him. Heart pounding in her chest, she goes over to him, snagging a letter opener she sees on his desk.

“You can’t kill me,” Dreykov challenges, although he shrinks down even further. 

“Yes I can,” Natasha says, striking him across the face for emphasis. She would never let another person tell her what she could and couldn’t do. Besides, how many people had she killed while working for the Red Room? She had dreams and nightmares about killing him, and now she finally had the perfect opportunity. She has to do this now, even though the thought of another death on her hands (even Dreykov’s) made her sick to her stomach. 

“You are a failure,” Dreykov says, trying to get to his feet but Natasha slams him back down again. “You never listened to orders. You always hesitated when we asked you to put down a subject.”

“That doesn’t make me a failure,” she whispers, emotion clogging her throat. She draws the letter opener back, aiming for his neck with hesitancy and Dreykov catches her wrist before more than an inch of the blade can sink into his shoulder. 

He laughs. “You can’t even kill me right,” he says. “After everything I did to you.”

“You deserve far worse than this.” Natasha tries pushing the letter opener down harder, but he matches her strength equally. 

“I will not die to your hand, Natalia.”

She yanks her wrist away from him, tears of defeat burning her eyes. “Maybe not mine. But what about hers?”

You suddenly appear behind Natasha, pushing her out of the way as the silver claws slide out from between your knuckles. Dreykov looks at you, the malice in his black eyes dissolving into pure fear. 

“Wait–” he pleads, raising his hands in submission. You descend on him with a snarl, plunging your claws deep into his belly. Dreykov tries pushing you away, but he’s losing too much blood too quickly. His face pales and his final words slow. “No, please–”

“Enjoy hell,” you growl, ripping your claws out and he slides to the floor, gurgling and shaking. You turn towards Natasha and open your arms to take her in a hug. She nearly knocks you off your feet, but having her body against yours is something you’ll never take for granted again. 

“Thank you,” she whispers as you kiss her forehead. “I thought I could, but–”

“You did fine, darling,” you say. 

“Are you okay?” she asks. There’s hardly an inch of you that isn’t covered in blood and you’re ready to fall asleep standing. It’s been the longest day of your life, and it still isn’t over. You look over to where Jean and Scott are, where they watched you kill Dreykov. You’re not sure how they found you two, but you’re forever indebted to their intervention. 

You hold Natasha’s hand. “Let’s go home.”

***********************************************************************

The trees fly by as you jog down a rocky slope, dodging sprawling roots and rocks bigger than your head.The sun that filters through the leaves is almost healing on your skin as you soak in the raw elements of nature. Wind bites at your cheeks but you fully welcome the sting. To you, this is what freedom and peace feels like. 

You finally pause to drink from a flowing stream and take off your sweat-soaked shirt to splash some water onto your body. You crawl up the bank and rest your back against a tree. The chirping of birds and the hum of insects lull you into a trance and you close your eyes, thinking about the whirlwind of the previous week.

The freed Widows successfully grounded the aircraft and you returned home on the Blackbird with Natasha and your team. But it had been difficult for you to celebrate, plagued with flashbacks and nightmares you had spent so many years trying to lock away. Then there was the fact that Taskmaster nearly tore you apart twice in less than 24 hours, and suffice to say, you needed some alone time to process and heal. 

You were still angry at the professor, who withheld the knowledge of how you two would be taken to the Red Room, but he claimed it was the only way and that the two of you would be able to handle yourselves. Even Natasha didn’t entirely agree with him, but it was all over now, and you hoped she wouldn’t drag you off again anytime soon.

A few minutes go by in silence until a twig crunches unnaturally and your eyes fly open. As you turn your head, Natasha’s scent touches your nose and you instantly relax, waiting for her to approach you.

“Lost?” you ask as she appears from behind. She’s wearing workout clothes like you and practically glowing. Her nose is a little crooked still and she has a black eye that has faded into a deep red over the past week. You hate seeing her with injuries, but they remind you of how strong and brave she is.

“No, I’m exactly where I want to be.” Natasha smiles down at you, and she’s so beautiful it makes your heart hurt. “I hope I’m not interrupting. I know you didn’t come all the way out here because you wanted to see other people.”

“I’ll always make an exception for you.” You pat the grass next to you and she sits down. “How did you find me?” The curiosity gets the best of you.

“Jean.”

You smile and shake your head. 

“Thank you,” she says. “For everything you did in the Red Room.” You grunt by way of saying you’re welcome. “I wish I could’ve planned it better, but I’m so grateful you came with me. I can’t imagine having to do all that by myself–I don’t think it would’ve been possible.”

“You did great, darling,” you reply, putting your hand over hers but she withdraws from your touch.

“I feel awful dragging you into something like that,” she admits. “And when I thought I could kill him but I couldn’t–And then had you step in before I’d even asked if you were okay–”

“Nat.” You offer her your hand again, and with some hesitancy, gives you hers. “I’m not losing sleep over him.”

“I know, but then Taskmaster–”

“He’s dead too,” you point out, still miffed Scott had gotten the final blow over you.

“He almost killed you,” Natasha says.

“Well, he didn’t. Most people don’t succeed there,” you add.

“For a second, I really thought I was going to lose you forever,” she says. “And I realized how selfish I had been asking you to come with me, expecting you to protect me, killing Dreykov when I couldn’t–”

“I’d do it all for you again,” you say simply, and it’s not a lie. “But don’t ask me too soon.”

“I love you,” Natasha bursts out, leaning forward to throw her arms around your neck.

“I love you too, darling.” You press her against you and this time she doesn’t pull away. Her weight is like a blanket around you and you lean into her, breathing in her scent and feeling an indescribable sense of calm. Even though she got on your nerves from time to time and often pulled you into her overly ambitious plots, Natasha was your person, your home, and you wouldn’t want to exist without her.

Natasha cuddles closer to you as if sharing your same thoughts. “I was thinking…Maybe we can move out of the mansion and live off on our own?” she asks. “I know that’s the life you’ve always wanted, the life you were living before you met me.” “Yes, but then I met you,” you reiterate. Truth be told, you had warmed up to being at the school. You enjoyed being around the kids, as obnoxious and obtuse as they could be sometimes. “Do you like it at the school?”

“I do,” she says, with a little hesitancy.

“Then we can stay. For now, at least,” you say, and her face lights up. “I don’t think the professor would mind.”

“Are you sure?” Natasha asks.

“Absolutely. It’ll be nice to enjoy some time here before you take me off for another adventure,” you say, kissing her as she blushes. 

The professor had told Jean and Scott about something called Red Dust, which was a kind of antidote that could reverse the mind control of the Widows and Wolf Spiders. They had found a canister just in time before the Widows had almost killed you and Natasha, but even though they had been freed, there were many others still in the world that needed rescuing. You and Natasha both knew this, but you had asked her for some time to rest first. She agreed without argument. 

“We can stay here for a while,” she says, her hand brushing against your abs suggestively. Heat pools in your belly and you’re almost embarrassed at how quickly she can turn you on. The two of you had not been intimate since the night spent in Russia, not that Natasha would ever pressure you, but you knew she had been waiting to spend that time with you again. 

“Were you talking about here or the mansion?” you ask, placing your hand on hers and pushing it down towards your shorts. 

“Both,” she answers, then looks to where her hand now rests on the tie of your shorts. “Are you sure?” 

“Mhmm.” You kiss her softly, then more passionately as arousal spreads through you. She returns your passion equally, and suddenly you find yourself lying flat on your back, Natasha on top of you with her hand down your shorts, fingers teasing at your slick entrance. You shift your legs apart and run your hands up her sides, not realizing how much you missed her touch. “Natasha,” you whine, bucking your hips up. “I need you.”

“I know,” she whispers, kissing your cheek the same time her fingers enter you. Your back arches off the ground as you clench around her. It feels like your heartbeat is between your legs as you throb and pulse for her. “Let me take care of you,” she says, pistoning into you gently. But you want her to take you harder and faster, to claim you and remind you who you belong to. “Let me make you feel good.”

Your head tips back when you feel the pressure of her thumb against your clit, and for a few blissful seconds you focus only on the pleasure Natasha gives you. Not the terrible memories of the past week and earlier, not the fact that you almost lost your life and Natasha’s in the Red Room. The indescribable pain and crippling fear that twisted your stomach and took your breath away.

“Y/N,” Natasha says, bringing you back to the present. “Stop thinking so much.”

“Make me forget,” you challenge, pulling her down for a hard kiss. She presses her fingers deeper into you and your body flexes impressively as you pant and moan beneath her. Her weight starts to rock back and forth and you smell her growing arousal. Instinctively you reach for her shorts, eager to please her, but she pushes you away. 

“Today is about you,” she says, her fingers finally curling into the spot that makes you see stars. 

“Fuck, darling,” you gasp, your body trembling so hard you’re afraid Natasha will fall off. “Right there, baby…don’t stop.” Your hips move quickly to encourage a faster pace and she complies, kissing down your neck and nipping at your collarbone. Arousal fogs your mind as your hands wander under Natasha’s shirt, pushing her bra out of the way and closing around her breasts. 

“Y/N,” Natasha moans, which is like music to your ears. Especially since the two of you are basically in the middle of nowhere and don’t need to mind anyone’s privacy. 

“I love you so much, darling,” you pant. Your bodies rock in tandem, and the closer you get to your peak, the less control you have. Your hands claw at her back, trying not to leave deep scratches, but Natasha has told you she loves it when you leave your marks on her. (Unfortunately, due to your healing factor, she could not really return the favor.) 

“I love you too,” Natasha says, moving her arm faster and feeling the resistance as your walls clamp tighter around her fingers. 

“Almost…there…” you grunt, the heat in your stomach reaching a tipping point. 

Natasha leans down, pressing her chest against yours until you can feel her heartbeat. It’s pounding nearly as hard as yours. “Show me how good I make you feel,” she whispers and you completely fall apart at her words. The endorphins rush through your system, finally drowning out the unsavory thoughts as you finish all over her hand. Your body is buzzing, your breathing frantic, and you don’t even notice her pull her fingers out as she drops down to cuddle on your chest. 

You limply on the forest floor, staring up at the perfectly white clouds that drift through the sky. You stroke the back of Natasha’s head as you catch your breath. No words need to be spoken; you both understand and appreciate each other in a way that cannot be described. You would never regret choosing this woman and consider yourself so lucky to have her by your side. No matter what happened, what obstacles the two of you had to face, you would do it together. 

Forever.

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AN: Another happy ending. :) Thanks so much for reading!!

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