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taechaos · 3 years

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Your Boy, No?

pairing: bully!Jungkook x nerdy!fem!Reader

genre: drabble, smut, college au

synopsis: You can't stand seeing Jungkook with another girl, so you give him a piece of your mind in a stranger's bedroom by becoming his outlet of sexual frustration.

warnings: losing virginity, riding, degradation

a/n: jungkook's character is not exactly submissive, so i added my own twists to this request. i hope you don't mind @madygswich c:

word count: 2.5k

You can't stop pouting. Holding back tears when seeing a woman perched up on Jungkook's lap while they make out has proven to be difficult, but you're trying. It hurts your heart; hell, you're aching everywhere. It doesn't take a genius to know he's doing it to get a reaction out of you when his eyes are throwing daggers at you with his tongue down another girl's throat.

Following Jungkook around like a lost puppy isn't ideal, especially at a frat party. He never gives you the time of the day if it's not out of menace, but you aren't willing to give up on him. It's just not possible when you are so in love with him, and so fucking jealous.

More than Jungkook, you're mad at the girl. You want to rip her heart out, make her suffer for ever touching the love of your life. You're becoming irrational, mentally cussing her out for being a whore while you stop yourself from breaking down in a house filled with horny young adults. You don't know a single person here, and you have to deal with your pent up emotions all by yourself.

You choke out a sob when Jungkook starts kneading the girl's ass shamelessly with her skirt hiked up to her back. They're being so inappropriate in the kitchen of a stranger's house, while you can't even take a sip from your spiked drink in the bustling living room. You abruptly stand up and throw away your plastic cup when Jungkook's hand disappears elsewhere, and you have an idea of what he's about to do. You march over to him, looking absolutely tiny next to the overbearing college students and you don't notice Jungkook's sinister smile as he watches you fume.

"Let go," you sound hoarse, and not at all intimidating when you push the girl off of his lap. She stumbles at the force, but you pay no mind to her confusion as you pull Jungkook up by his arm to drag him away. You think it's the anger and adrenaline giving you so much strength, but it's Jungkook amusing himself by allowing you to take him upstairs.

"This isn't a therapy session, little girl," he yells over the music, "I didn't come here to listen to you cry."

You huff and let a single tear slip before harshly wiping it away. When you reach the hallway, you enter the first bedroom you find. It's occupied by a foreplaying couple, but you're driven as you hiss, "Out!"

They leave at your demand, and you're confusing a lot of people tonight. Jungkook is surprised by your sudden aggression, but he doesn't stop with his remarks, "the chihuahua's gone mad."

"Shut up, Jungkook!" you whirl around angrily to face him. "How could you do that to me?!"

He quirks a brow. "Do what to you? I'm sorry, am I the one who forcefully brought you here? Am I tripping or are you?"

You push at his chest, "you're a fucking whore! Tonguing a girl in front of everyone, in front of me?"

His shoulders shake in silent laughter and you cross your arms when he starts cackling loudly. The music is drowned out and muffled behind the door, but it's nothing compared to how hysterically Jungkook is laughing.

"What's so funny?" you ask lamely. He throws his head back as he clutches his stomach, and you're starting to get annoyed. You push him on the bed, but he's still laughing. "Quit it already," your voice wavers, but you don't back down as you smack his chest. You place your knees on both sides of his hips to limit his movement and cover his mouth to shut him up.

His crescent eyes turn intense instantly as he glares at you under his hooded lids. He exerts only a tiny bit of his energy into pushing your hand away and you weakly collapse on him. It's foul play to compete with his muscles, and you realize he can snap you in half if he wanted to regardless of your rush of adrenaline.

You sit back up as he lowly speaks, "The fuck's it to you? I wanted to fuck her, and I was going to until you stepped in as if you're my girlfriend. Tell me why I shouldn't go back to her right now." He clasps his hands under his head, making himself comfortable with your weight pressing against his crotch.

"You know why," you huff with a frown, and you look so cute in the dim lighting with your baggy knitted sweater bunching up on the sleeves, sitting on his bulge with so much innocence in your expression. He's smitten, but it doesn't show in his cold stare. "I'm your girl, and I won't tolerate you messing around with other women. It's slutty!" You slightly bounce for emphasis, but your knee-length skirt hides your actions. Jungkook feels it with you, and his eyes trail down to your lower region.

"My girl?" he parrots with a raised brow. He gazes back into your eyes. "You do my homework."

"I don't care. I love you," you plead pathetically, "please say you love me back."

"Wasn't I a whore just a second ago?"

"You were! Apologize to me," you harshly yank his head back by his hair. He doesn't react in the slightest, so you softly add, "please."

"Oh little girl," he sighs, "are you really trying to dominate me right now?"

"I am dominating you. Promise me you won't kiss another girl like that again. I won't forgive you a second time."

"Yeah? What's my loss?"

"Well, you're lazy in school," you bluntly state, "and no one loves you like I do. No one would try to cater to you like I do. I'd do anything for you, Kookie." You tug down your skirt to take it off and plop back down on him before saying, "Including sex. You can only use me for your sexual needs."

He's enamored by your words, but he doesn't dare share it with you. Instead, he thrusts upwards and you yelp when you jump. "Go on then," he says nonchalantly. "Show me how much of a slut you are."

"U-Um, okay," you stutter and start unzipping his black denim jeans. You've seen a lot of porn videos to make sure you were prepared for the next step with Jungkook, but you have no experience with penetration.

And he realizes that rather quickly when you're so meek with your actions. With a groan, he asks, "You're not a fucking virgin, are you?"

"I've been saving it for the right guy," you answer with offence. This is a special occasion, and you want him to take it as seriously as you do. But it's definitely not a good idea to be snarky with him when you can barely remember the steps for safe sex. "Do you have a condom?"

"It's in my pocket," he grumbles and points at his front without taking it out himself. You're excited and nervous as you tear the wrapper and take out the preservative. You have no idea how to put it on, but you're topping so you clumsily push down his briefs. Jungkook is surprisingly throbbing under you, and you blush at the sight of his erection.

He stops himself from teasing you and saying that the girl from earlier gave him this boner, but he doesn't want to be cruel yet. It's your first time, and truthfully, he jacks off to thought of you too often anyway. He can handle being somewhat nice by staying quiet, but that doesn't mean he would teach you how to put on a condom.

You slip it on with little struggle, and don't waste any time in positioning his cock in your entrance. Before he can stop you, you sink down on his length with a painful moan. He wants to tell you that losing your virginity in this position is the most painful, but instead he groans, "Holy shit, how are you so fucking tight?"

It hurts so fucking bad. Your tear ducts are like clockwork as they water instantly, but you lower yourself down to the hilt anyway. You're quite literally sitting on his cock as you try to catch your breath because God, you're in so much pain.

"Fuck, are you okay?" he asks, but he's more worried about controlling himself from fucking into you before you can adjust. It's difficult, but he's trying.

"Jungkook," you whimper quietly with your eyes screwed shut, "it hurts."

"You're so fucking dumb for doing this, but you feel so fucking good," he pants as he holds your hips.

"Thank you," you muster out in a breath. A few seconds pass until the pain starts to numb, and you move against him very slowly. Your walls are stinging, but it feels like Heaven for Jungkook who you clench down on.

"Go up and down," he instructs with a bit lip. He tries to move your hips, but you're resisting in fear of another shock of pain. "Come on!"

"Can you wait?" you hiss through clenched teeth.

He's trying to rile you up when he says, "Sana wouldn't take this fucking long."

And it works, because you bounce once. "Don't say her name!"

He groans at your tightness, and he can't believe how wet you are. You're dripping on him, and he curses himself for holding back because of your hopeless romance. He can't entertain your conservative way of going on about this any longer, so he continues, "She would have made me cum by now, but this prissy princess can't even get a move on."

It's almost pathetic how one push from Jungkook makes you start moving, and it feels less uncomfortable to hop up and down against his pelvis. The filthy sound of slapping skin mixing with the generic radio music is making you feel so slutty because it's so stereotypical, but when Jungkook moans, it brings heat all over your body. You take your sweater off when sweat begins to cumulate on your temples, and he commands, "Take off your bra too."

He's thrusting into you as you unclasp the black material, freeing your breasts as he finds his new eyecandies. You are so pretty, your nipples are so hard, and your cunt sucks him in so perfectly. It almost upsets him when he realizes how much pleasure he's deprived himself of; the amount only you seem to be able to provide, because it's beyond physical intimacy.

"Good girl," he exhales and gently slams into you with his hands fondling your tits. You smile coyly through your tears, and he asks, "Does it still hurt?"

You contemplate for a second, because you don't feel the best yet, but you don't want to disappoint Jungkook either. "I-It doesn't," you lie.

Jungkook mentally rolls his eyes; he really wants to believe you so he can chase his high, but he sees right through you. He slaps your tit without mercy and chastises you, "don't lie. I thought this was your little moment of control."

"I'm sorry," you pout as you slowly ride him.

"Another lie," he slaps your other tit more harshly and you yelp.

"I'm not lying!" you plead and hasten your pace, desperate to sell your lie. It's working, because you're starting to feel a knot in your stomach the more you adjust.

He moans with you, and you lose yourself when he stills your hips and begins to fuck you himself. It's rough, loud, and the pain is your pleasure. His balls slap against your skin as he easily slides in and out of you with the help of your arousal. Your love dawns on him when you're so turned on for him without any foreplay, and he's on cloud nine because nothing can compare to being inside you.

The setting is so unlike you, fucking in someone's bedroom with a bunch of people behind the unlocked door who can barge in at any given moment, but he finds it so sexy. You only care about being with him, and you really do look like his slut now.

His hands start holding onto your ass, kneading it until it turns red with his fingerprints, and he demands you to kiss him. You're out of it, your ears are ringing and you can only moan out his name, but you can't bear to ignore him. Your lips fall on his, and the kiss is sloppy with his tongue all over your mouth. You can't keep up, but your chest swells with pride when you realize how needy he is for you. He goes as far as to spit in your mouth, and you swallow it without hesitation.

"You want me to play with your clit?" he murmurs against your lips, and his voice sounds so airy and melodic to your ears. "Hm? Want me to make you feel good, little slut?"

You whine without a clear response because his lips feel so soft and wet, and that's the only thing you can focus on. All you want to do is kiss him and he doesn't stop you from doing so, but you're even more overwhelmed when he starts touching you while penetrating you. "No," you whimper, "I'll cum."

"A slut can take it," he grunts and rubs your clit faster, and you come undone all too soon. You moan loudly as you tremble, shaking as he rides out your high with a pinch to your clit. You're numb when you collapse on top of him, but he's relentless with his thrusts. He's using your body as you intended, and he's vocal with his pleasure and teasing climax. It's remarkable how he holds you up when you've gone limp and still fucks you just as hard.

You want to record his voice when he starts to whine pathetically, but you have no energy left within. He's panting in your ear, and it's not long before his hips fall on the mattress with a sigh. He's surprised by how powerful his orgasm was, as he fills the condom with his release instantly. His cock is still nestled inside you as both of you recover from your climax.

"Get off," he taps your thigh, and he pushes you off when you don't obey immediately. Your spell has worn off as he starts to dress himself. "I'm going back to the dorms." You listen to him with your mind in a haze. "Unless you want to get raped on your way without me, get the fuck up now."

"Can you carry me please?"

He shrugs and swings your arm over his shoulder, picking up your body with ease. He collects your clothes in his hand, but doesn't hand them to you as he steps out of the room.

"W-Wait, Jungkook, I'm naked-"

"You're my girl, no? Be a good slut and shut the fuck up."

Dangling off his shoulder with your bare tits pressed against his back, you close your eyes and drift off on the way to campus.

Boyfriends typically drop their girlfriends off anyway, right?

#bts scenarios #bts jungkook #jeon jungkook #bts imagines #bts x reader #jungkook x reader #bts smut #jungkook smut #jjk smut #jungkook imagines

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yandere-wishes · 4 years

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⭐Yandere Joestars⭐

(Parts 1-7 + Bonus Charcter: Joseph and Johnny’s characterizations are based off @dear-yandere ‘s interperations) I tried to write this mostly in the Joestars' POV. Their respective darlings resemble lifelike dolls rather than human beings to further illustrate how out of touch with reality the Jojos have become.

Warnings: Gore, kidnapping, dehumanization.

Edited: By the amazing Peri!! (@tealyjade-libran )

⭐Jonathan Joestar is possessive. ⭐

It's only when you lose something, that you start to cherish it...

It's an old saying, one that Jonathan remembers from an antique storybook his mother use to read him. It didn't mean anything back then, when he was still an infant too young and new, to fully comprehend what "owning" and "losing" was. But as the years ticked by faster than any clock could keep track of, things started to change. What had once been a passing quote in a chivalrous story about knights and dragons, soon turned into the epitome of Jonathan Joestar's life.

Soon love wasn't about saving a princess or impressing the neighborhood girls with his boxing skills. No, all too soon love became about own and guarding.

There may have been a time -long before "Jojo" and Dio met- when Jonathan was just like any other gentleman. Tender and sweet, flirtish at gatherings and charming in ladies' companies...but that was a Jonathan from a could-be-past that had been demolished the minute Dio Brando stepped foot onto the Joestar estate. From then on things depleted all so quickly. Everything Jonathan had come to unconsciously cherished had been so easily stripped from him by his beloved new "brother".

Everything he loved had been killed, destroyed, or broken in some inhuman way. His friends had abandoned him, his lover had distorted him, his father didn't even notice him...

"It's only when you lose something, that you start to cherish it". The second time he hears that phrase, it freezes him to the pavement, his body star-struck like he just received a message from the heavens. Although it's rather peculiar, why "heaven" would convey a message to him in such an unholy place.

With Dio having practically kicked Jonathan out of the mansion and countryside. Jojo had no other place to go but the back allies of London. Sure he still tried to be home for supper and bedtime and any other time his father may get an inkling of his absence. But when there was no need to 'appear' Jonathan took to the London streets away from Dio and his lackeys.

In fate's bizarre game, it's in a backstreet that reeks of days old licker and rotting flesh of paupers that no one has bothered to bury. That Jojo hears that life-defining idiom once more. His dulling sapphire blue eyes follow the mist of those melodious words. Staring until they're practically itching to cut through his sockets and run after those little words. But they stop right before they can leave their eyelets, they stop and stare at the figure that strolls out of the shadows, in such a way, that would make Jojo's father slap him across the face for being "barbarous".

It's luck or fate or maybe even destiny that leads the heir of the Joestar legacy to meet his darling in the slums of England.

"How my heart resonates when I lay my weary eyes on your enchanting face..."

There's an odd sweetness about the naivety that surrounds his little friend. A sort of innocence that comes with not knowing about the hell that he's gone through. It's charming in a moderate way, his darling can't come to despise him if they haven't got a clue who he is. Keeping both his worlds as far apart as possible is really the only option left. Dio and his friends can't hurt his new friend? Lover? Companion? In actuality, Jonathan really doesn't know what you are to him. At first, you're merely a distraction from his crumbling, lonely shell of an existence. A sort of invisible pillar holding up London's bridge before it collapses into the River Thames. Sure he views you as another person, unlike the other noblemen Jonathan has no desire to treat you as anything less than a respectable young lady despite your social statutes.

Dio can have the noblemen and ladies, he can have all of George's affection and favor, Heck Dio can have the whole goddamn world for all Jonathan cares. So long as he has his darling, his sunflower, his only means for living, then he will be content.

Jojo lost everything he once loved, but he swears it to every star in the night sky that'll preserve his darling from the wickedness that runs this cruel world. He'll cherish her while she's still in his arms...

He'll protect her, just like the knights did in the old bedtime stories his mother would tell him.

"...I swear on my honor as a Joestar that I shall never lose you to the likes of anyone, I'll be a true gentleman, a true knight and I'll protect you from any who wishes cause you harm."

⭐Joseph Joestar is Protective and all so patronizing.⭐

Why must Love hurt so much?

It's solitude, pure utter solitude that attracts Joseph to his darling. Oh sure, he must have known them from an earlier time in his life, back when the words Hammon and Ripple just sounded like fancy dessert names. Back when he was still a naive kid wishing on every goddamn star that he could just meet one of his parents for a fraction of a second. Back when life was easy when everything made sense. That's when he first met his darling. Although all so many years ago he probably just thought of them as the little sister he never got a chance of having.

There's a numbness growing inside him now that his life has slipped off its axes, hurling into unknown darkness that plagues him in the form of Pillarmen and red gems.

Everywhere he looks there's a reminder that nothing's going back to the way it used to be. No waking up to Granny Erina's voice calling him down for breakfast, no running around chasing Old Man Speedwagon. Everything is gone, replaced by Lisa Lisa's brutal training and Ceaser's endless taunting.

Day by day nothing changes, but once he looks back every little thing is different. Ruptured and mangled into something unrecognizable.

But then there's his darling. Someone -or rather something- that's still the same. Just like before. Her smile is still the same as ever, bright and cheery as she runs up to him wrapping her arms around his abdomen muttering about how much she missed her "Dear Big Brother".

(Y/N) is a comfort, a familiarity in a strange new world. She's something so frail and vulnerable, not to mention naive. Thrusted into a world where horror writers don't dare venture into. It's so likely that she'd be captured by one of Kar's zombie vampire things or -even worse- charmed by Caesar’s silver tongue.

It's thoughts like these that haunt Joseph at night, keep him up and wandering into her room just to gaze at her sleeping form. He's lucid enough to know how it might look. Like he's the bad guy trying to take advantage of a defenseless little girl. But he can justify his actions, he's her big brother, he has to watch over especially when she's at her most vulnerable. If Ceaser ever tried anything or some vampire freak snatched her away in the dead of night, Joseph would never forgive himself!

But what does he get for all his efforts? What does he get for all his sleepless nights and hours upon hours of worrying? Just a small smile and a fleeting kiss on the cheek. No sincere, "Thank you big brother," or, "You're my hero Joseph!" Nothing, nothing worthwhile anyway.

Now it's a competition, a battle to the death if it has to be -funny how he takes this more seriously than his match against Wamuu.- He's competitive by nature and he's willing to do anything to earn his darling's affection once more. He doesn't care who he has to beat within an inch of their life so long as he can have his darling back in his arms.

There is an aftermath to all of these, once all the fighting has ended and the battle's won. Once Joseph has finally claimed his prize. There's a certain way his darling has to act. She’s got to smile and play the role of the dotting little sister once more. Just so Joseph can justify his actions...

"And your next line is, 'I love you more than anything else big brother Joseph!'...at least I wish it was."

⭐Jotaro Kujo is cold and sadistic.⭐

Never learned how to love...

A lover by Jotaro's book is nothing more than a walking, talking doll. Someone who cooks meals, irons clothes, and kisses him on the cheek before he leaves for the day. Sure they have other uses, in flares of passionate moments, they're something to hold onto, another pair of limbs to get tangled in. Something hot and solid, someone to push down, to weigh his force on.

That's it, that's all there is to it...

A lover and a convenient toy are one of the same.

He knows it's wrong to think about someone that way. To deprive a living thing of all their thoughts and feelings just so it's suitable for him. But at the end of the day who wants to hear idle chatter and gossip or go outside for walks in crowded areas. All too social, it's all so troublesome. All Jotaro wants is a closed-off life, away from the scums of the earth...away from people in general.

It's such an inconvenience to seek out a lover, to hassle through dates and meetups in hopes of finding someone that clicks. Jojo would even go so far as to call it wishful thinking. So it has to be a pure accident that he even meets his darling. They're just someone who gets tangled in with the crusaders. A perfect living perception of 'wrong place, wrong time'. Someone who's life gets blown to bits and shambles just because fate decided to play a cruel joke on them.

And that's what piqued Jotaro's interest. The desperate, depleted look of pain cemented over their face. The sparse dying gleam of determination that blazes within their eyes. Oh, what Jotaro wouldn't do to snuff that little ray of hope. To watch as what little purpose they have is ripped from their arms. What he wouldn't do to see them in pain...

Pain is submission, that's really all Jojo wants. A darling submits, not out of their own free will, but because every little thing they've ever loved has been slaughtered, all that they cherished has been stolen from them.

But it's not enough

It's never enough

Although Jotaro adores the looks of anguish that decorates his lover's face. There's something more satisfying about maltreating them. About leaving marks all over, about leaving bruises that never lose their violet glow. He's claiming his darling, physically and mentally. Not a single day goes that Jotaro doesn't remind his lover who they belong to. From verbal taunts that plague his darling's mind day and night, to punches that break bones leaving them paralyzed on the floor begging for help, to cuts that are just a little too deep to ever heal properly.

Even when his darling is behaving, even when the poor little thing does everything her lover tells her to do, there's still going to be some sort of violence directed at her. Some backhanded remark about how useless they are just because they couldn't follow his mother's recipe. Some sort of blow just for greeting him 'too late'. Trivial things morph into punishments, just for Jotaro's sick amusement.

At his core, Jotaro is an unresponsive man, one with no regard for how others feel. He's distant, it's a trait he can't change. He likes how he does things, how there's no room for slip-ups when it's only him. Even his darling isn't someone he'd consider opening up to. Their opinion of him doesn't matter and their feelings are irrelevant. Most days he's gone until the last possible moment, leaving his darling an endless amount of time to mull over every word and scar.

But here's the catch.

As the clock ticks by, as the nights and days begin to merge into an endless existence, as all hope burns in the pits of hell, darling's mind is also going to stray. Ever so slowly losing its perception of reality.

'Maybe' spiders begin to spin webs of doubt through darling's empty cranium. The isolation begins to bite at her skin like the razor-sharp fangs of frostbite. They start to crave Jotaro's harsh touches, they start to miss the venom-like words. Every insult and slap to the face is welcomed, all the misplaced anger and death threats start to feel like sweet kisses and flowery touches.

Poor darling no longer sees big scary Jotaro as a monster. They've lost the ability to see him for what he truly is.

And what happens when Jotaro does finally come home? Oh, how little (y/n) will ravish in the gut kicks and loathsome words. How she'll take every beating with a sweet sugar-coated smile.

Cause this is her life now. A meaningless existence that revolves around Jotaro and his bleak personality. A life that's only worth living when Jotaro is around.

Is it even a life?

"Yare yare daze you're such a hassle, be glad I keep you around...”

⭐Josuke is obsessive with delusional tendencies.⭐

Maybe I'm the one you'll fall in love with next...

Just like his "father" Joseph, Josuke is stuck in a perpetual state between diaphanous and phantasm.

There's something all too wrong with Morioh nowadays. The narrow streets and verbose buildings have started to feel like a transparent cage. The town has always been small, barely reaching a population of 3,000 despite all the new families that keep moving in.

Nevertheless, everything has dulled, faded, and withered into a monochrome collage. The layers of repetitiveness had finally begun to pick at Joskue's nerves...

And yet somehow, by some diabolical twist of fate. In the mists of the oceans of familiarity, Josuke’s eyes grab onto some shimmering pearl lounged into between the crowd of familiar faces.

Sure he's seen this girl before, but he's never actually seen her. Never stopped to look at the odd way their eyes twinkle like newborn stars or how their skin shimmers with the glow of a thousand suns.

One second is all it took, a fleeting compliment as you passed by Jojo in the peppermint flavored afternoon. Your hair flowing like a tapestry of the galaxy as you disappeared in the crowd of dead pulsars. Not a care in the world, not for him, not for anyone.

Destiny was definitely up to its old cruel tricks again.

He's not stalking. Josuke will swear on his grandfather's grave that he'd never "stalk" a harmless little girl, like some distorted maniac. He just happens to bump into you at the beauty parlor when he's picking up a new brand of hairspray. And it's totally an accident when he meets you out in the abandoned fields! Honest! It's not his fault fate wants the two of you to keep meeting, it's not his fault that you guys are meant to be!

It's not technically a friendship that you two start to build up, it's far from one. Friends don't dream about sugar-filled kisses behind school walls. Or about ice cream that tastes like scandalous touches and candy induced moans. No, Joskue isn't your friend, he NEVER wanted to be your friend. He knows that! He knows what he wants...but with each passing day, he's beginning to doubt that you know that.

He'd never realized he's been so sensitive on you. So entranced by your out of tune voice that muttered rather than spoke. He's seldom been so eager to throw a punch and crack his knuckles on someone's skull, just for saying you looked "lovely today".

Whenever his eyes don't land on you, a rage-filled volcano bubbles in the pit of his gut, uncontrollable anger that festers inside of him, like lava waiting to spill out and burn anyone that wanders too close. His palms itch with the need to hold you, to feel your soft skin rubbing against his.

The jealousy is always there, pricking at his skin like rose thrones. Until they inevitably cut through his flesh and make him lose his composure. He's ready to kick and punch and hurt and kill anyone that comes too close to you, anyone that saunters off their orbit and makes a beeline for you, disturbing the balance of solitude that Josuke so eagerly sets you into.

Sometimes in the dead of night, when the world has finally dozed off, Joskue's mind begins to wonder. He thinks the way he feels about you is the same way an addict feels about his drugs. Maybe to him, you're even more addicting than heroin and ecstasy...and yet he can't quit you, he just doesn't want to quit you. Nothing in this world could compare to your sweet voice that tickles his ear when you lean in, to whisper a secret, or the may your full lips move when you throw another honey-filled insult at him.

He prefers when you're alone when he's the only one you talk to.

Sure there are exceptions like everything in life, although in the end

there's a sort of backhanded irony.

It's those exceptions that are going to hurt him in the.

Josuke trusts his friends, he knows that Okuyasu and Koichi would never do anything to hurt him...

But you're not on that list and to be fair you're surely the only one who can truly hurt him.

You fall for a friend of his. Not him, not the boy that's been driving himself insane just to earn a smile from you, not the boy that let you get away with insulting his hair and poking insults at his look, not him never him, it just can't be him.

"You're like an older brother to me"...Did you wash your mouth with acid before you spat those words at him? Did you intend to lace your words with knives and blades and rubbing alcohol before you stabbed him? It's figurative, sure. But it might as well be literal. No pain, no cut, no punch from any stand would ever hurt so much! You really don't know what you do to him, do you?

"I'm happy for you," it's a lie, blank and simple. Automatic words that he's practiced in the mirror a thousand and one times. He'd rather watch you suffocate on your own blood than in the arms of another man. He'd rather break every bone in your body than watch you kiss one of his friends.

How on earth had he ever come to love you? Someone as cruel and cold. Were you even human? You resembled some ice stand more than a flesh and blood person. HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO HIM.

He really hadn't meant for it to become an addiction, he hadn't meant to get all so used to the crunch of bones beneath his foot, and the bloodied lips quivering, shuttering out apologizes for having the gall to utter your name in his presence. But there's only so much a teenage boy can take, only so much torture that he can bury inside with a moonlight smile.

Addictions really do funny things to semi-sane people, huh?

It's a split-second decision, done in the heat of an all so regular moment. It's just a simple half-hearted punch when you beat him at another videogame. Then another

And another

Then a crack, another and another, and before either of you knew it you're on the floor screaming out in pure agony.

Josuke vows he's not being cruel when he breaks your bones so delicately. He can justify every crack, every fracture. Although it's rather repetitive and in certain cases borderline petty.

Five broken bones on your left leg just for "kissing" your new boyfriend. Your right leg is bent at an angle you're sure it's not meant to be. All because you hugged said new lover before going to class.

Josuke's once liquidy blue eyes that held the softness of clouds have been dulled over by a sort of thick mania. His once soft touch is nothing but nails digging into already bruised tissue. His lips wobbling as stray tears flow past his eyes. Muttering apologies and stuttering curses at both you and himself.

It's not really like his darling can leave after that incident. Josuke is known around town as the boy with a diamond heart. There's no way in hell anyone will believe what he did to you. It's just better, safer, to stick close to him, to swallow the indignities and paint a loving smile over your face when you gaze into his depraved eyes.

It's better to pretend to love him, rather than have another limb broken...

"Come on (Y/N), it's just a little crack. If you promise to give me a tiny kiss I'll let Crazy Diamond fix you right up."

⭐Giorno Giovanna is sneaky and manipulative. ⭐

Sono pazzo di te. Sei la cosa più bella che mi sia mai capitata...

There's a sleekness to Giorno, a cunning that's hidden behind layers of charisma and charm mimicking that of his birth father's. It's so easy for him to fool his darling into believing that he's a charming prince from a storybook. He's the good guy trying all so damn hard to make his dream a reality. He's admirable, he's noble, he's Giorno Giovana, the golden boy.

It's not like he ever intends to hurt his darling. He'd never dream of laying a hand on them, he's all too familiar with the wounds that come from endless beatings. The bruises and phantom pains, that get worse as the days slip by. He knows real pain, and unlike all so many others on both sides of his family, Giorno doesn't want his lover to experience an uncia of it.

He'd never repeat what his stepfather and mother did to him. He's going to try and do everything he can to make sure that his darling is safe...

Because isn't that what's important? To make sure the one you love is safe. To make sure they don't get swept off their feet by some masquerading drunkard or taken advantage of by some fanciful sadist.

Giorno will do anything to keep his darling safe, even if it means tampering with their mind a little. Nothing too serious, he'd never even considered changing anything about them. Although isolating them isn't completely off the table and a few verbal threats are fine from time to time. Just for precaution...

Giorno is a rather determined boy, he'll go to any lengths to isolate his lover. Scaring away friends by letting Gold Experience give them a small out of body experience. If they're persistent then he can't guarantee that that out-of-body experience will simply remain an experience much longer. It's not out of malice, but it's what must be done for the sake of his darling, the only other thing he cares about.

There's a shift, a difference between the young naive Giorno Giovanna, the golden boy with starry eyes, and the new boss of Passione, the Mafioso who holds the whole country in the palm of his hand.

Oh sure, as a simple Soldato Giorno was dangerous in his own right. But Don Giorno? He's the sort of monster written about in the grimmest fairy tales. Wearing the appearance of a true king but underneath the luxury suits and priceless watches, he's just another greedy, fire-breathing dragon.

As the Don of Italy's most influential gang, Giorno's manipulation tactics have gotten rather ....hazardous. He doesn't have time to waste getting rid of every single person that poses a threat to his darling. If someone looks their way, he'll send some goons to take care of them.

Although it's so much easier to keep his lover locked away, he even has the perfect excuse now. He's the head of the mafia, he has all so many enemies who jump at the opportunity to hurt him in some way. So he has to keep his defenseless little lover locked away in some mansion that's all so far away.

He's also a bit more violent now. Giorno's more physical, ready to break a bone just for a wrong word or a cracked jaw from a punch for even asking to go outside. He blames it on the stress of running an organization...although it's more likely that all the power from passion has begun to rinse away Giorno's caring side.

"Cuore mio, Resta con me per sempre"

⭐Jolyne Kujo is clingy and obsessive and delusional.⭐

I can't stay away from you...

Jolyne is a rather condescending yandere. Her rough ragged exterior does little to hide the clingy neediness that writhes inside her shattered heart.

She's soft, dependent, desperate at best. Wanting her darling to approve of every tiny trifling thing she does. Needing their words of praise and approving smiles to have the courage to live another day.

At times it seems like the only thing keeping Jojo alive is the "good girl!" and "I'm proud of you!" her darling throws her way. Chanting the words of praise with closed eyes and fluttering smiles of anxiety.

It's difficult to make her sweetheart realize how virulent this relationship is, far too hard to call Jolyne a Yandere. The derogatory term applies to someone who ceases all control from their lover, who locks them in a basement, and throws away the key. It applies to murders and

stalkers and lunatics that roam the streets in the dead of full moon nights. It applies to those who were thrown into Green Dolphin for a reason.

Not to some girl whose life has been demolished over and over and over again.

Not to the girl with a star birthmark that follows her darling around like a lost puppy in the freezing rain.

But even Jolyn has her limits. She's been let down time and time again, abandoned and framed by those she thought she loved unconditionally. From friends to boyfriends to even her own father, everyone leaves, they take what they want, and then they leave.

Flesh like strings, stitched into a web of antithesis and distraught moods, act as a solid, interchangeable reminder of who really holds the power in this relationship. Of how Jolyne can go from needing her darling to controlling her darling in just a fraction of a heartbeat. She loves them, she swears she does...but they need to stay close to her, they need to only think about her.

Her addiction gets worse as the days tick by. It's less romantic, less loving. Morphing into a dependency, a compulsion. Rotting thoughts of her darling suddenly leaving, plague her every waking moment. The once semi pleasant conversations between her lover and her friends, get cut off like a severed limb.

Even Hermes and Foo Fighters aren't "good enough" to be around Jolyne’s lover. She's all so, scared they'll try to take them from her. Stealing the ONLY good thing in her life.

There's a certain degree of control that Jolyne's willing to give to her darling. A sort of freedom to make, revolting appalling choices, so long as they include her. A freedom to boss her around and make her submit. Her darling is free, so long as that freedom revolves around Jolyne.

"(Y/N)~ don't look at them! You should only focus on me! I'm supposed to be your world!"

⭐Johnny Joestar is sadistic and manipulative.⭐

Arrogance disguised as affection...

It's all degradation, all harsh words that sting worse than bullet wounds. Glares from dull wicked blue eyes that might as well kill, cause it's better than the alternative. Smirks that make being alive so damn distasteful. Kisses that engrave the lingering taste of rotting lead into your tongue.

Johnny isn't sweet, he doesn't smile at his little sweetheart. He doesn't pat their head and kiss their temples while uttering sweet nothings into their blushing ear. No, his lover doesn't deserve a honey-coated life. They don't deserve to have what was stolen from him by his so-called "loved ones". Instead, he uses them as a living dart board, for both his acid-laced words and bullet-like fingernails.

There's no love when it comes to Jojo. He doesn't want to waste time on something so frivolous as a "significant other". But he does like having someone -or rather something- to play with, a form of entertainment that bends at his will. Not a pushover, not someone who's too proud either. But a living doll that can take a few verbal spats and survive an armada of fingernail bullets through the stomach.

Oh, sure he wants to break them, having a toy that's so conflicted, that questions their own sanity is so much more fun. But it's the intervals that count. Johnny wants to be the one to break his darling. To engrave the helpless look of distress into his memory. He wants to preserve every scream, every tear. That's the whole purpose of even keeping a darling.

Johnny rarely lets his darling out of his sight. It's so much easier to play with their mind if he's the only one they ever talk to. They'll become so easily dependent on him if he's their only companion. Although sometimes Gyro can get a little too touchy and friendly. And there will be occasions when Hot Pants start to pry into the darling and Jojo's personal life. But the incidents are few and far between. Not like Johnny minds, if anything these minor secondary "meetups" are useful to the paraplegic jockey. They refill his darling with the most precious thing..." Hope". Just so Johnny can beat it out of them all over again.

There's a darkness that resides deep within Johnny. A toxicity that laces his actions. His life is miserable and he's damn well sure it'll always be that way.....

So why not take his lover down with him?

"Don't you love me darlin' ? Cause I certainly don't love ya."

⭐Jorge Joestar is delusional and obsessive.⭐

What if we lost our minds, together?

A love story better than his parents, that's all Jorge wants. Flower field dates, and quick lingering kisses before midnight. Something sweet, that doesn't have a macabre end. A romance without body-snatching vampires and zombies that shed their flesh. Something normal, gentle, lovable.

Although with the family he's been born into and the kind of things that keep finding him. Jorge doubts he's ever going to get such a hopeful love life. He's all so desperate to carve a life for himself outside of his family's shadow, but in the end, it's simply eager wishing.

He's not exactly sure what he's even looking for in a lover. Someone sweet but strong-willed, an average answer. Someone who bears a sort of resemblance to Lisa Lisa. Not physically but rather mentally, he's not a coward, he swears he's not, but he just wants someone who can protect him. A fair exchange in his eyes. His lover will guard him against the bullies and freaks of the island and in turn, he'll protect them from the grim ghouls that run amok through the world. Although when push comes to shove he isn't sure if he'll really be 'protecting' his lover or running away and hiding somewhere with them.

He just wants to fall in love and not go insane, a reasonable request, if he hadn't seen the worst that the world has to offer. It's just wishful thinking, sweet dreams for a boy designed to attract trouble.

He doesn't want to have conversations with his dead lover's head. He doesn't want to wear their skin and waltz around town. He doesn't want any of that creepy, supernatural stuff that destroyed his parent's love.

He just wants normal. But as the years slip by Jorge's grip on "normal" slowly begins to decay.

Normal is something, but what that something is has become a blur. Normal isn't vampires and zombies and ghost clowns that throw nooses around people's necks...Yet on the other hand maybe it is?

He's so far gone that he can't even differentiate between methodical and irregular. His brain's capacity to understand the difference has gotten so altered and broken.

Once he finds his darling he does try to act like the ordinary people of the Canary Islands or England, depending on where he's residing at the time. He tries to follow the mode, just to impress his lover. It's a façade, a bloody masquerade that's bound to deteriorate once he and his lover have settled down.

Although a poetic, domestic life had always been Jorge's dream, he soon comes to learn that it just doesn't suit him. Jorge's paranoia starts to increase. It's comical at first, the way his eyes dart to closed doors, half expecting a killer to emerge. Although the same paranoid tendencies can become rather smothering at times. He's all so certain something is going to jump out of the shadows, some creature with sharp fangs and knife-like claws is going to rip his lover's body to rags.

He's gotten rather umbrageous now that he's the one who's married and living in the Joestar estate. His tendency to run away from any form of conflict has morphed into a rogue-like sense, much similar to a rabid dog barking at anyone who gets too close to its territory. He keeps his darling locked away inside, triple-checking the locks to make sure no one or thing can get in. He avoids the probing disquieting neighbors who still speak ill of his widowed mother and murmurs about the "curses" bestowed on the Joestar bloodline. Sometimes even getting physical when the insults shift towards him and his new lover.

Punches are thrown.

Insults exchanged.

And then the door and windows are locked once more.

Leaving both Jorge and his darling in the chilling company of the semi alive shadows.

It's safer in the basement. It has to be safer down there. After all his mother kept his father's severed head down there for decades before anyone found it. So it's only sensible that his lover will also be safe, tucked away in the darkness of a brick room some few meters under the earth. He's not acting like his mother -and deep down he prays that this isn't something his late father would ever even consider doing- It's a thin line of justification, but he can reason with himself so long as he knows it's not something his other family members have ever done. He does try to keep his darling comfortable down there. Buying them the most luxurious furniture and comfortable bedding. Constantly bringing them new forms of entertainment.

Keeping them in this preserved state is what any reasonable person would do. Not just another insanity driven Joestar.

"It's for your own safety" he's repeated that phrase an umpteenth amount of times, although every time the sculpted words leave his tongue, Jorge becomes less sure of who he's really trying to convince.

Jorge is all so sure that he's doing all of this for both his lover's safety and to erase whatever misfortune follows around the Joestars, like an airy plague. Even his enrolling for the great war is done with this mindset...

Even though in the end it's also this mindset that gets him killed. Leaving his darling a wide window to freedom.

"Darling, what do you think when you look at me?"

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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everythingsinred · 3 years

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Let's Talk About NatsuMikan: Natsume (pt. 25)

Hi there.

According to Wikipedia, the term "star-crossed lovers" refers to a couple "whose relationship is thwarted by outside forces". Furthermore, "such pairings are said to be doomed from the start". Often, the tragic end of these pairings can be seen from a mile away, even though the audience may hope and wish desperately for things to be different. In fact, the relationship between Romeo and Juliet is immediately revealed to end tragically, with both of them dead. It's just a matter of watching the heartbreak unfold.

The same is true here. Natsume and Mikan are "doomed" from the start. You hope and wish desperately that fate will be kind to them, that certain things will be different, that they can be happy, but it's not to be and you know it, deep down. All you can really do is watch the specific way it all goes up in flames. Now that we know they're both romantically involved, star-crossed to be separated, we're about to see a tragedy unfold. Let's suffer about it.

Chapter One Hundred and Forty

The school was being invaded, and the only one of Shiki’s conditions that the ESP could not accept was Mikan being out of his reach. In order to save the school, Mikan allowed herself to be put into the ESP’s custody under the condition that she cannot be harmed or manipulated.

But Chapter 140 doesn’t start by checking in on Mikan or even showing the others’ reaction to her absence. Not yet.

Just in case you didn't know how this would end to begin with, Higuchi will let you know now. It will not end well!

The chapter starts with a monologue from Ruka about the lengths Natsume would go to for Mikan, but also pleading for him not to go anywhere. This is unsubtle foreshadowing. We see a glimpse of the future, of Natsume’s presumably dead body, and the misery his death brings. We can see more evidence of what we already knew: Natsume thinks so little of himself that he’s willing to sacrifice anything for others, never considering that his absence will cause utter despair in the people he leaves behind.

At this point, it becomes even more obvious that the story will end with tragedy, and Natsume's probable death will be part of it.

We finally get to the real start of the chapter. It’s winter again. Ruka is musing on life at the academy without Mikan. They all talk about her often, even after months of not seeing her. They don’t even know where at the academy she is, or what she’s been up to.

Just for a glimpse. ;-;

He recalls Yuka’s funeral. The children were instructed to leave the area, but it was the last time they’d see Mikan, so they all stay. Natsume doesn’t even have an umbrella despite the rain. Mikan was then escorted from Yuka’s grave by the ESP. Her classmates want to know where she’s going, concerned that she’s in trouble. When the ESP threatens Shiki for not disciplining them, Mikan smiles and promises to see them again.

Fate does not smile upon them.

Natsume watches, and although they’re all surprised and concerned, he seems more so than anyone else. The last time he saw her there was a lot left unsaid. She had confessed her requited feelings telepathically and he’d had to say goodbye over and over and over. But Mikan hasn’t used up all of the telepathy stone quite yet, so he’s able to promise her that he’ll do everything he can to find her. She smiles, tears in her eyes, and that’s the last image of her he has for a while. He will find her. That’s his new mission, his new reason for living.

Back in the present, Natsume finally appears to join the group. He’s been missing, looking for Mikan. He spends most of his time running around campus trying to find her. The telepathy alice stone is the only tie they have to each other now. It’s all he has to go off of.

He smiles upon joining the group. Mikan isn’t there, but he’s still smiling. It might not be entirely genuine. He’s smiled like this before, to make Ruka feel better before the Z Arc. He has to have hope, too, because he can’t die before he finds Mikan. Submitting to the misery will only mar his chances.

Ruka knows that Natsume’s long absences are due to his search, that he spends hours and hours looking for her, calling for her, waiting for a response.

Yes, Shiki, and as a minor, he CANNOT consent to being a member of a group that has "war potential" because that's against international law and you should be charged with human rights' violations. Also, since he's a child, even being a criminal wouldn't justify this kind of punishment either, on account of him not even being a teenager yet.

Natsume is still a Dangerous Ability type. Shiki urges him to transfer out, but Natsume can’t. He has to stay, because as a DA type he can search in more areas that are off limits to normal students. In general, the DA class is more comfortable now that they’re under the management of the Middle School, not the ESP. Still, it’s described as a group “with war potential” and he wants to feel like he’s doing something to protect the people important to him rather than simply standing by. Natsume’s mindset of always having to protect people, to the extent that when he cannot protect people he feels useless and worthless, is damaging. He thinks he has to do these things, and although the narrative paints the DA class choosing to remain as them choosing to protect people, it’s kind of ridiculous that a school would put such a task on students’ shoulders in the first place. They’re the ones who should be protected, not the other way around. No matter who is in charge of the DA class, sending kids on dangerous missions where they could get hurt is still child abuse and endangerment.

In any case, he’s told it’s useless to try and find her, that the barrier hiding Mikan is too powerful, but he won’t listen. He won’t let anything anybody says get in the way. Just like he said when he first rebelled, no matter how much somebody tries to convince him not to, he’ll do whatever it takes to protect her.

Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Two

Tsubasa is also opting to remain in the DA class. It’s easier to be in on the action that way, for one. He also wants to help Natsume because he’s concerned about his alice shape. Natsume and Misaki both tease him for this, and Tsubasa chases after Misaki. Natsume watches them wistfully. Tsubasa doesn’t even seem to realize how lucky he is. He can hug Misaki, tease her, apologize, talk to her, see her. Natsume misses Mikan and he’s jealous that Tsubasa is able to have with Misaki what he’d love to have with his own girl. So, naturally, he sets his hair on fire.

God, Tsubasa, have some sensitivity!

Back at the dorms, Yuu laments that Mikan won’t be allowed to attend the Christmas Ball, and it’s unlikely she’ll be allowed to graduate with them either. Hotaru comes up with the idea of sending Mikan Christmas presents, and everyone is immediately on board. They all try to come up with present ideas, but Natsume’s a step ahead, already making another alice stone for her.

Hotaru notices and immediately tears him apart for it. He knows the stone won’t make it through the examination, and the fact that even making alice stones takes a toll on his body will only make Mikan worry. In addition to all that, Mikan already has his alice stone, so there shouldn’t be any worries on the “love tradition” front.

Hotaru is Mikan’s best friend, someone who knows her pretty well and whose opinion Mikan cares about. This criticism wouldn’t hit as hard if it was some random person, or even just another kid in Class B. Because it’s Hotaru, he has to take it seriously. Hotaru is calling him out and he’s embarrassed and defensive, but she’s a step ahead of him, having thought of a much better present.

Natsume's like, "I'll be her prince!"

She gives him a story book, about Rapunzel. The story is similar to Mikan’s--a girl is trapped in a tower with no way to escape. She found a prince and they were able to escape together and live happily. All Mikan needs is to find her prince and the story would fit perfectly.

Natsume likes this story a lot. He wants to be Mikan’s prince. He has to be her prince. He doesn’t have a choice but to save her, because that’s all he’s living for. And letting Mikan know that a prince is on the way seems an important enough mission that everyone wants to help get Rapunzel through the examination. They will all send story books to make Rapunzel seem less suspicious. Of course that doesn’t stop Hotaru from claiming that the prince in her story is actually more useful than the one in Rapunzel, implying that Natsume is a subpar prince as well.

Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Three

It’s time for the Christmas Ball. Mikan isn’t there, so Natsume is morose. Just like last year, he finds refuge in the tree. Last Christmas was pretty nice, all things considered, because he got to kiss Mikan.

It's just not fair. All he wants is a smooch. And to save her and keep her safe but. The kiss too.

At the time, he’d thought it was a one-off, his only chance. He was just going to kiss her real quick because he was convinced Ruka already had, and then when it was done he would run away and never do it again. She wouldn’t want to kiss him over Ruka anyway, right? But apparently Mikan loves him too, something he had never even considered a possibility, so maybe she’d want to kiss him again?

Except that Mikan isn’t around and the only way he can see if she wants to kiss him again would be if he found her.

How come everyone is calling him out so boldly lately? You guys DO realize his days are numbered, right? Not even double digits? So cruel.

Sumire is talking about dancing with him this year, but he’s only thinking about Mikan. Koko calls him out for it, saying there’s someone in the tree thinking about kissing. It was such a strong thought that it took Koko by surprise, even.

There’s a present exchange and Yuu again expresses sadness that Mikan isn’t with them, wondering if she’s spending Christmas all on her own. This spurs Natsume to get the hell out of there. He can’t sit around for too long, after all. He wants to find her and he won’t find her at the ball for sure.

He’s out looking for her, just like he does every day and every night. Shiki might be a hopeless romantic, or feeling guilty for having Mikan watch the ball on TV, so he loosens the barrier on Mikan enough for Natsume to be able to find her.

Shiki is also a NatsuMikan shipper... You a legend for that one, fam.

He hasn’t seen her in months, not even after searching every corner of the school over and over again, but tonight he has finally found her.

Conclusion

Although in many ways, Natsume's story was set up to be tragic from the beginning, these chapters establish for good that something horrible is coming, and we know that to be Natsume's death, in about a week. I'll talk more about the star-crossed lovers aspect in the upcoming parts. It's an aspect of their relationship that I find very interesting.

Thank you for reading this far!

Y'all have caught up to where I'm at, more or less. I won't post tomorrow because there'd only be a chapter of content to post and that's no fun. I'll spend the weekend getting ahead a bit and then on Monday I'll continue. In no time at all, we'll be wrapped up! It's all so exciting!

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oikawaplssteponme · 4 years

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peach scone - hobo johnson

pairing: Kuroo Tetsurou x fem! reader

genre: angst, unrequited love

ratings/warnings: sfw, swearing, reader has a crappy boyfriend

word count: 1,327 words

synopsis: “he falls in love with a girl, girl already has a boyfriend, she kinda loves him back, but not really, they're just really good friends, and that's fine, he understands, it's rational”

a/n: this is kinda a song fic, kinda not. i just love this song and wanted to write something kinda related to it. i’ve been writing a lot for bnha so i thought it was about time i get back to Haikyuu :)) reblogs are super helpful <3 fic under the cut

•

Kuroo Tetsurou was indefinitely, undoubtedly, incredibly, in love with you. He was. He was in so deep. Deeply in love with his best friend. Kuroo certainly didn’t plan to fall for you, sometimes these things just happen. He just so happened to look at you differently one day and come to terms with all the suppressed feelings from his childhood. Seeing you as more than just the girl who would bandage his scraped knees after falling off of his bike. Seeing you as more than just the girl front row of all his volleyball matches. Seeing you as someone he loved. Not the friendship kind of love. The kind where you want to wake up next to this person every morning. The kind where you want to be with them through good times and bad. Kuroo wanted that with you and you alone.

He could look at you for hours. He could listen to whatever nonsense came out of your lips and believe it to be the most interesting thing he’s ever heard. He tried telling you. He did. You thought he was joking most of the time. How cliché of him to fall for you. You disregarded every time he called you pretty, assuming him to be messing with you. He loved the thought of just being with you. Maybe it was just better than being alone though.

You had asked Kuroo to meet you at your favorite bakery. The bakery where you two would always go. It was your spot. The spot where you would sip chai lattes and he would try his best not to fall for you even more.

As Kuroo approached the bakery, he spotted you instantly. You were talking to someone. He had never seen this person before. Maybe they were a stranger, asking for directions. Maybe they were a relative? Kuroo simply walked up to you, hoping the man would leave you alone.

“Hey Y/N! Is this guy bothering you?” asked Kuroo. You laughed.

“Oh Tetsurou you’re here! Oh no not at all! Good that the two of you can finally meet now,” you cheered. Kuroo raised a brow.

“Y/N who is this?”

“Kuroo, meet my boyfriend…”

Kuroo’s world seemed to have crumbled into a million tiny pieces. Boyfriend? You had a boyfriend, and it wasn’t Kuroo.

“It’s nice to meet you, I’ve heard a lot about you.” He held out his hand for Kuroo to shake. Kuroo stared at his hand, still rattling from the shock he just endured.

“Yeah it’s, uh, nice to meet you too…” Kuroo reluctantly shook his hand firmly. The two of them made uncomfortable eye contact.

“Why don’t we head inside and grab something to eat? I’d love for the two of you to get to know each other!” You smiled. Kuroo couldn’t believe it. The little bakery was your spot. Just for the two of you. Not for the two of you plus your new boyfriend.

“I actually just remembered that I was supposed to meet Kenma for something. I’ve, uh, I’ve gotta head out,” stuttered Kuroo. You titled your head.

“Are you sure? You can’t stay for a bit?” You asked. Kuroo shook his head.

“Yeah I’m sure…”

“At least let me buy you something to eat before you go,” you insisted. You grabbed Kuroo’s arm, pulling him inside. He couldn’t say no to you.

The three of you stood in line of the bakery. Your boyfriend’s arms wrapped around you as you kissed his cheek. Kuroo’s fists were clenched so tightly he could probably turn a rock to dust. Your boyfriend looked back at Kuroo.

“You alright man?” He asked teasingly. He was doing it on purpose. He knew damn well that Kuroo had to like you for more than just a friend, and he would use that to his advantage.

“I’m all good.”

You placed your order at the bakery register. You handed Kuroo his treat.

“Well I wish you could’ve stayed longer. Maybe next time?” You sighed. Kuroo nodded.

“Yeah…”

Kuroo headed for the door, before getting pulled back by the boyfriend. He had grabbed the back collar of Kuroo’s shirt.

“Watch it.”

He let go of Kuroo. Kuroo didn’t reply, simply rushing out the door. Kuroo looked back at the bakery, seeing you and your boyfriend sitting at the table you and Kuroo always would.

He looked down at the small bag you had handed him. He opened it up. A peach scone. Kuroo chuckled. He had mentioned to you once that the peach scone was the last one at the bakery he had yet to try. He took a bite of the pastry. He sighed. He was sure it would taste better if he were sharing it with you.

During the weeks that followed, all Kuroo heard about was you and your boyfriend. How your boyfriend wouldn’t answer your texts. How he would go out partying without you. How he made you mad in every possible way.

Kuroo laid in the grass of his lawn next to you. You were word vomiting every possible pet peeve that you had towards your boyfriend. Kuroo listened, knowing he would be a much better fit for you.

“...what do you think?” You finished off your rant. Kuroo turned to look at you.

“Your boyfriend made you mad the other day, and you’re asking what I think? Well he was being mean at that part...but I’m sure he’s gonna turn around at some point…”

“Tetsu I’m serious. How do I fix this?”

“You break up with him.”

You sat up, crossing your arms as you looked at Kuroo.

“I’m not doing that.”

Kuroo sat up as well, annoyed now.

“Why the hell not? Your boyfriend’s a bitch Y/N.”

“Kuroo-”

“He’s a total jackass and doesn’t deserve you one bit! Why do you stay with him!?” Kuroo was visibly upset, raising his voice slightly to get his point across.

“Because I-I…”

“See! You can’t even give me a good reason! God damnit Y/N I’m sick of hearing about your boyfriend who is the human embodiment of garbage-”

“-Why are you with him when you could be with me!?”

Kuroo didn’t realize what he had said until after he said it. Your eyes forming tears in the corners.

“Kuroo…”

“I’m not gonna take it back. I’m serious. Y/N I am so in love with you and it kills me to see you with him!”

Kuroo took hold of your hand.

“I’m not trying to get into the way of whatever two of you have because if you truly love him then who am I to get in the way? Cause that shit happens once in a lifetime but you are my once in a lifetime Y/N. So please, if it weren’t for him please tell me it would be me.”

Your tears poured down your face. You couldn’t give Kuroo the answer he wanted.

“I-I do love h-him…”

“Do you really? Or do you just not love me?” pleaded Kuroo.

“Kuroo of course I love you-”

“Y/N do you love me in the way I want you to?”

Kuroo honestly didn’t want the answer. You honestly didn’t want to give it to him. You kinda loved him back but not really. Not in the way he wants.

“No…”

The sound of your voice saying ‘no’ became an echo in Kuroo’s brain. He wasn’t sure what was worse: you loving him and staying in your relationship or you not loving him at all.

“Okay.”

Kuroo crossed his arms and laid back down on the grass. He sniffled, holding back any tears. You put your hand on his arm.

“Kuroo I’m sorry-”

“It's fine Y/N. I should’ve known better.”

Kuroo Tetsurou didn’t stop loving you that day. He simply couldn’t. He would love you for a lifetime, even if you didn’t love him. Maybe one day you would change your mind, but not today.

•

[general taglist (form in masterlist) : @lealofsblog @iwaisa @bakugousmymassa @evivn1 @tetsoleil @bokutory @vangoghmusings @moonlightaangel @complimentaryhugsgirl @marajillana @sopesmin @alaina-rose13 @shotoful ]

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bulkyphrase · 3 years

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Everybody & the Avengers Team

I've got a new fic rec list for you!

The stories in the "X & the Avengers Team" tags focus on one person's relationship to the Avengers team as a whole. Courtesy of AO3's tag browse and Excel, here's a ranked list of the top 20 most popular pairings:

Tony Stark | 2470 total, 240 OTP

Peter Parker | 2255 total, 85 OTP

Steve Rogers | 602 total, 56 OTP

Loki | 387 total, 26 OTP

Natasha Romanov | 308 total, 35 OTP

Clint Barton | 268 total, 46 OTP

Bruce Banner | 244 total, 15 OTP

Thor | 209 total, 7 OTP

Avengers Team | 174 total, 24 OTP

James "Bucky" Barnes | 156 total, 7 OTP

Wanda Maximoff | 143 total, 4 OTP

Phil Coulson | 105 total, 9 OTP

Darcy Lewis | 91 total, 6 OTP

Matt Murdock | 60 total, 8 OTP

Sam Wilson | 53 total, 5 OTP

Nick Fury | 41 total, 5 OTP

Harry Potter | 40 total, 0 OTP

Pepper Potts | 31 total, 1 OTP

Vision | 29 total, 2 OTP

Stiles Stilinski | 25 total, 0 OTP

In chart form, if you like charts:

Notes:

The numbers after the names are the number of stories tagged with that ship. OTP means the number of stories where that is the only relationship tagged on the story. Numbers are accurate as of July 2021.

Story Recommendations

For your reading pleasure, included below is at least one fic rec for each pairing except the crossovers from non-Marvel fandoms (apologies to Mr. Potter & Mr. Stilinski). Most are gen fic, and even in the ones with a romantic pairing, romance is not the focus.

Tony Stark

As Subtle As Cognitive Recalibration by petroltogo (Teen, 8949) tumblr: @tonystarktogo

Standing inside his penthouse, listening to Rogers, Barton and Banner explain to Fury how they just happened to stumble over the Tesseract on a routine security check of Stark Tower’s roof and wouldn’t you know, they’ve managed to fight off the looming alien invasion before it could really start and secure the missing overpowered nightlight is one of the most surreal situations Tony has ever had the displeasure of experiencing.

Peter Parker

the worst field trip ever by shrill_fangirl_screaming (Teen, 3420) tumblr: @i-am-having-an-emotion

"We're on a field trip," Peter said. "To here. And Tony decided to be our tour guide and absolutely embarrass me, so can you please help get him under control?"

Which is how Peter Parker, architect of his own destruction, ended up with not one but two superhero pseudo-dads being annoying on his school field trip.

Steve Rogers

Do You Remember Being Happy? ('Cause I Sure Don't) by GalaxyThreads (Teen, 11022) tumblr: @galaxythreads

That seems about right. He doesn't know how he knows that, though. He does have vague memories of an annoyed fondness at finding peanut butter in some sort of jam. Thor's doing, because he doesn't see the point of using two knives when one works just as fine. He knows that. How does he know that? He knows all those little details, though, almost innately. How can he know these strangers so deeply?

Everyone else below the cut!

Loki

Proprietary by TheThirdMarauder (Teen, 7639)

No, Loki simply wants the Avengers conquered. The details of whom, how, and when matter not. Unless, of course, said details interfere with Loki's plans. Then, well, then none can fault him for protecting his own interests.

Loki has always been exceptionally good at lying to himself.

Natasha Romanov

What Girls Are Made Of by enigma731 (Teen, 4613) tumblr: @enigma731

She rolls her eyes but does as he’s indicated, using his shoulders to leverage herself up onto his back, her arms around his neck and her legs hugging his waist.

“You know,” he says blithely, “this isn’t really what I tend to picture when I think of a hot girl riding me.”

Natasha groans, deciding that if his sense of humor gets them arrested, she’ll kill him herself. “Just go.”

Clint Barton

Dear Clint Barton (circa age 7) by pollyrepeat (Teen, 4221)

With a normal person, this might count as blackmail material, but a) this is a case of mutually assured destruction if ever there was one, and b) Fury is immune to embarrassment. Not just in the regular, Tony Stark way, either, oh no. Things that could possibly end up being embarrassing to Fury get somehow warped and changed until they go from mortifying all the way over into useful and/or good for his image. It’s like a superpower.

Carrying Clint’s small child self around on his shoulders more than once has probably already hit the interagency rumour mill as an example of Fury’s innate awesomeness: good with rocket launchers and small children.

Also available as a podfic!

Bruce Banner

They're Not Wrong by Trumpeteer34 (Teen, 10163)

As Tony began to pace around the hole in the road to keep himself from shooting repulsors at the nearby buildings in a fit of rage, Thor began to study the nearby area. There was no sign of either the Hulk or Bruce Banner beyond the crater. The surrounding area, aside from the rubble of the fight, held no clue as to their friend’s location.

“Guys, he’s gone,” Tony growled into the communicator on their private line, drawing Thor out of his darkening thoughts. “Someone tranqed him and took him. He’s gone.”

Honorary mention goes to the Responsible Science series by @letteredlettered - the stories don’t have the "Avengers Team & Bruce Banner" tag, but they could, and they are amazing. The best Bruce Banner writing I've ever come across.

Thor

Fortunately, I Am Mighty by onward_came_the_meteors (General, 3062)

Steve was the first one to speak. “Are you okay?”

Thor nodded. Which was a bad idea, as it turned out, because now there were little gray lights flashing in front of his eyes. “I’m fine.” Absolutely everyone narrowed their eyes, and he added, “But, uh. Could we possibly not get back in the car just yet?”

Avengers Team

Civil Wasn't by onward_came_the_meteors (General, 7123)

"We're having an ideological conflict here," Tony stated with disbelief. "Are you telling me you still want to go out to dinner?"

"It's a standing engagement, Tony," Rhodey reminded him.

"Not you too—"

"We already had to reschedule from Friday when Natasha was..." Rhodey frowned. "What were you doing?"

The question was directed toward Natasha, who shrugged and said, "Spy stuff."

James "Bucky" Barnes

You Know How I Feel, aka, The Adventures of Bucky and Muffy the Dinosaur by ifeelbetter (Not Rated, 4511) tumblr: @ifeelbetterer

“As you may have heard, Bucky Barnes, a.k.a. The Winter Soldier, recently rescued a tiny part-robot dinosaur during the Avengers’ battle with Dr. Doom in Antarctica,” the other newscaster explained. “Pictures of Barnes and the dinosaur were posted on twitter by fellow Avenger, Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye, and immediately made Barnes’s new pet America’s sweetheart.”

“Her name’s Muffy,” said Steve."

Wanda Maximoff

and the woman was young again by Mira_Jade (General, 3669)

Tony Stark called them the Cap's Kooky Quintet, and sometimes the term amused her – causing her to lift a sardonic brow where someday a smile would truly smile. She enjoyed the presence of comrades – true comrades – and she enjoyed the way their minds wove and bound together about each other to fluctuate against her senses as one. There was something soothing about being in their midst, and even when their loud and brash ways – their painful Americaness - rubbed her raw and drained on her, it was ever the knitting of their minds that soothed those moments over, and made them inconsequential.

Phil Coulson

Coulson's First Day of School by storiesfortravellers (Teen, 3055)

Coulson looked up at him. “I like drawing pictures with Mr. Rogers. I like having tea parties with Ms. Potts. I like it when Dr. Banner reads me books, and I like it when Natasha teaches me things. And I like when you play with me. You do really good voices when we play action figures. And you’re the only one who lets me do stuff like jump off the high diving board at the pool or eat three cupcakes or play tackle with kids at the park.”

Clint didn’t realize that. He was pretty sure that meant that he was doing something wrong.

Darcy Lewis

Beginner Yoga for Dummies (Darcys) and Sad Hobos by chailover (Teen, 3434)

Darcy had a theory: crazy attracted crazy, working kind of like gravity. It was pretty much her explanation for her life after Thor. And if she had thought the type of crazy Thor attracted was bad, be it Loki or the Warrior Three and Sif, or the dark elves and the Convergence, it was still nothing against what the Avengers manage en masse.

Matt Murdock

Double Blind by smilebackwards (Teen, 2381) tumblr: @smilebackwards

Stark snaps his fingers. “You can’t see half of my inventions. This explains so much about you and why you’ve never been properly impressed by me.”

“Does it?” Matt says, ambiguously.

Sam Wilson

Bystander by scribblemetimbers (Teen, 52029)

“I just want you to know,” Sam says loudly, cautiously raising his hands, “That I’m very poor and very sleep-deprived and literally the only thing you can kill me for right now are my notes.” He pauses. Wait. On second thought: “Please don’t steal my notes.”

“I’m not—I’m not a mugger,” Not Mugger rasps out, and for all that he looks about to keel over and die, the man actually manages to sound offended.

Nick Fury

Bedtime Story by dixiehellcat (Teen, 2532) tumblr: @deehellcat

Fury snorted. “I have to check in with the duty officer. I’ll be back in, let’s say twenty minutes. I expect all of you to have whatever your pre-bedtime routines are completed, and be in here pajama’ed and ready to be read to.”

He tapped the book under his arm, then left with the usual dramatic swish of his long coat. Bruce scratched his head. “Did…he just say be ready to be read to?”

Pepper Potts

Pepper and the Avengers (Which She Knows Nothing About) by rebelmeg (General, 6696) tumblr: @rebelmeg

The Avengers, that mismatched group of hurt and heroism, was one of the most important things in Tony Stark’s life. So, naturally, Pepper had made them an important part of her life too.

Vision

039. Intoxicated by aimmyarrowshigh (Teen, 100) tumblr: @aimmyarrowshigh

It might be nice to fit in, just this once. To lose a bit of composure.

Vision floated over to the refrigerator and, with some timidity, pulled off a magnet. He stuck it to his forehead.

#marvel fic rec

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jacscorner · 3 years

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Pokemon All-Stars: A Fan Region/Game/Alternate Universe Idea

I like watching and rewatching Original Pokemon Game/Region videos. Like Mr. Buddy's "What if X was a Pokemon Region" and stuff like that. I wanna make-or, I guess, write-my own. Since Regions are kind of a character all their own and I'm a Wannabe Character Artist, I wanted to try and make one my own.

I've got no skills in coding, pixel arts, or anything, so this will forever be just some kind of dumb fanfic that sometimes incorporates Game Mechanics to justify things if it were able, for some Godforsaken reason, 'stolen' for a game. Cause, in 2021, no idea feels too big or too dumb. And, uh, trust me, this'll be a dumb fanfic of an idea. So be aware for the subpar writing talents of some wannabe writer who doesn't know shit.

Small disclaimer though:

>This region is being made with the intention that every extra feature will be available in it. Z-Moves, Regional Variants, Gygantamax, Mega Evolutions, and maybe some things I've forgotten. This probably won't matter cause it's just a dumb fanfic plot bible with mechanics peppered in. Competitive balancing be damn! Pokemon Fans can create their own balance! That's what the Battle Simulator is for! In fact, if this was a real game, then it'd have a Battle Simulator like Showdown built into it.

>This is an open source Fanfic Bible. You can take this idea and run with it if you want. You can omit all my bad ideas even!

>I won't be making my own Fakemon. I don't like a lot of Fakemon that exists out there and, trust me when I say this: I am no better than them. In fact, I'm fucking worse.

>If this WERE a game, it probably WOULD still have to cut some Pokemon. I doubt that kinda, and I won't get into why I think dexit was dumb personally, cause it doesn't really matter. But, like, my fan game/fanfic will have a lot of shit going on in it. So, like, realistically, there would probably need to be a cut, if not for data, than just cause there's a lot of work to do as is. But, like, again, under the context of a fic, this wouldn't be an issue.

>With THAT said, I'd want this game to have a Gen 2 Sprite aesthetic. My fangame, don't care if ya'll don't like that.

>I'm probably gonna copy a LOT of stuff from other Fangames I've played. My shit memory probably won't allow me to remember what I'm biting from what, so be free to call me out whenever. Cause if I stole the mechanic, I probably liked it the game. And if not, well, I'd like the recommendation.

Fuck, this was long already. The rest is under the cut, so, like, if you're already turned off, you can stop reading. I understand. I'm kind of a windbag.

Okay, so how many of you guys have seen this picture on the internet? It's a picture of a ton of Pokemon regions all...basically stitched together, since not only could this never be canon, but this goes beyond the size of even most open world games today. But this was the inspiration for this project. The map probably wouldn't, and probably couldn't, look like this, but it perfectly sums up what I'd want out of this game. Thus, it'll be our placeholder.

Our hometown of Capricorn Town is home to Professor Chestnut, and you, her faithful assistant, are about to set off on a Pokemon adventure of your own! The Professor is encouraging you to see the region of Sidus for yourself and is even willing to give you a Starting Pokemon!

Starting Pokemon

Now, if I'm not making new Pokemon, which Starter will it be? Well, the game will have the data for all the starters and will randomly select a Grass, Fire, and Water Type for you to choose from. Those will be your starters, with the option of also choosing Pikachu, Eevee, and Riolu, the two mascot mons...and Riolu, who is kind of a mascot mon, but a lesser one.

Let's say for this example, your options are Torchic, Piplup, Rowlet, Pikachu, Eevee, and Riolu. And, uh, get used to the words 'random' and 'generator', those are our keywords.

Anyway, once you get your pick, there'll be some kind of tutorial mission the Professor will send you on. This will introduce you to two very important things;

1. One of your Rival.

2. An Evil Team Grunt.

Rivals?!

Now to start getting into why this game might still be pretty big still be big despite the sprites on modern consoles.

Each of your Rivals would be one kid from each region of the 8 Mainline Games from Kanto to Kalos. How this'll be decided is that each pair of kids will be plugging into a generator and will pick between either the boy or girl version.

Ex. Brendan and May both cannot be in the game. Instead, they'll be plugged into this generator. Let's say the generator fell onto May. She'll be one of your Rival. Repeat this process 7 more times until you have 8 Rivals sprinkled throughout the world, each one given a defined personality and better AI to make them harder trainers to fight.

May will have one of the Hoenn Starters, sans Torchic. Regardless of whether or not Protagonist-San picked Torchic, May will either have a Treecko or Mudkip, again, chosen at random per kid. Whichever Starter you picked, your first rival will have a starter that beats yours. So, let's say moving forward, May has a Mudkip and you a Torchic. The other kids will have random starters of the various regions they originally hail from.

Anyway, your rivals will wander the overworld. If they see you, they'll battle you on sight. If they lose, they'll be gone after the next time you turn the game off. They won't battle you again until they respawn, but you can hang out with them. In fact, you can even recruit them to be in your party for a few days and they'll follow you around and just generally be your friend. It'll make every battle a double battle, but they'll battle you again before their timer runs out, so be prepared!

BANG! BANG! ENTER! Team Wild!

The two of you will have to face off against Team Wild! They have a Cowboy theme to them, using a mix of Ground and Steel-Types, with a few Pokemon being added in for good measure like the Ponyta Lines, Cacnea Line, and Remoraid. Cause...it's a gun.

They're an outlaw gang, they're rough and tough (or, at least, a mild threat) and will always throw down when they spot ya. Something I'm just sniping from JelloApocalypse is that they'll appear sporadically and act as Timed Events across the map.

You and your new Rival beat them and send you packing. I'd imagine May and the other Rivals would mostly be friendly, but I'm sure there's one or two that'll just be jerks to you. Regardless of personality, they'll be pretty tough and programmed to skill with you. Your strongest mon you have on hand when you fight them will be the level their entire team.

With your tutorial done, the world is opened up! Your mom gives you your running shoes, some Pokeballs, and your...I don't know, PokeCelular or something, just the regional gadget that does a bunch of stuff. From holding your map to holding your VS Seeker.

The PokeCelular will also give you notifications on where Team Wild are! You can choose to ignore the events, but if you do, then they'll start to appear in the overworld know and will get progressively stronger.

A Balancing Act

This game will be an open world, 8-Bit Sprite Game for you to explore after you leave Capricorn!

So how do we balance that?

Well, we got our Rival out of the way already, so let's move on. Gym Leaders will have a pretty linear progression. However, regardless of which Gym you tackle first, they'll all be at the same level.

It doesn't matter if you decide to go across the map and battle the Bug Gym, he'll stay at Level 10, just like the Normal Gym. Whe you get the second badge, they'll all jump to Level 15. NPC Trainers will follow the same progression; the higher your badge number, the stronger the number of Pokemon they'll be.

Wild Pokemon will also get stronger. The more badges you get, it'll attract stronger wild Pokemon because they'll see you're stronger and will come out more.

The overworld will also have various dungeons in them that'll be Level Locked. Say, you go through a forest and you're just trying to reach the end of a maze. The Trainers and Pokemon will function the same as I've mentioned before. But, you can decide to go deeper into the dungeon. These Pokemon will be level locked, usually something of a high level, because this is a more dangerous part of the dungeon. But, there'll be some goodies down there, like rarer Pokemon and some kind of really rare and good item like a TM or something.

How will you traverse? Well, first of all, HMs? They're semi-back. BUT, instead of having to deal with teaching Cut to a Pokemon, you just need the move Cut and a Pokemon that can use the move and you'll be able to use Cut. A few other Pokemon that are reasonable candidates, but don't get cut, will be allowed to do this too. Like, Gallade can use Cut. It can't learn the move, but just holding the HM will get the job done.

Controversial opinion, but I think I've always liked the idea of HMs. On paper, they give you a reason to explore the world and go back to areas you couldn't before for goodies and make for a good way to get off dungeons until you get the needed item. Even something like Cut can be used to open up new areas for exploration for your squad of mons.

BUT, well, HMs suck. As moves, they suck save for, like, 2...MAYBE and they're only for, like, a handful of areas. You either hand them out as evenly as possible, forcing mons to take moves you don't wanna use, or you just get an HM Slave or two to use 'em all. But like they, they serve their function and all you need is the Pokemon in question and NOT teach them the move. If you need a Move Deleter just so people aren't stuck having to use Rock Smash for three towns, then there's a problem with your RPG. Imagine playing Final Fantasy and you had to give your Fighter the Bronze Axe to get through a forest and still had to fight with it, even though you got a +12 Silver Sword! It's no wonder people hated these things! But I don't think getting rid of them and introducing Rental Pokemon was a good solution either and adds a different, albeit less intrusive problem.

Gym Leaders

So, how do Gym Leaders work?

Much like your rivals, they'll be randomly generated. Let's say, hypothetically, there's a pool of 60 Gym Leaders and Elite Four members. The game will randomly generate 16 to be Gym Leaders. The generator will have some kind of complicated math (at least, too complicated for me) so that you don't have more than 2 gyms of the same type. (Example: Misty and Nessa might be Active Gyms, Siebold can't be selected for a Gym cause the Water Slots are taken).

As a trade off, some Gyms might have special conditions before you can challenge them. Like, if you got stuck with Koga as a Gym Leader, than he'll only let you in if you complete a nearby dungeon and help his daughter out cause he doesn't trust her to make it back on her own. Or, like, Claire's a Gym Leader, but she won't battle you unless you've collected 7 Gym Badges prior at least.

The Gym Leaders, as mentioned before, will get progressively stronger with each badge obtained. After the 8th badge, you can go and climb Victory Road, face the E4 and confront the Champion! You can keep hunting Gym Leaders, but just remember that the E4 will always be 10 Levels above the strongest gym you beat. And they'll just get stronger with every one you beat until all 16 are slain.

Another handful, let's say 8, Gym Leaders/E4 Members will be wondering around as NPC Trainers. The justification is that this big super region is in some Alternate Universe Pokemon Game that has all the Pokemon and other important trainers in it, hence why we can have a game where Roxanne and Lenora are hanging out at a coffee shop. They're not Rivals, more like stronger NPCs you can rematch and wonder the map. They're not here to be the very best like no one ever was.

I mean, I'd like, like, 10-20 instead of 8 extras, but let's not get TOO greedy...yet...

Elite Four

And now, it's time to flip the script. Cause if E4 members can be Gym Leaders, then who are the Elite Four?

Easy. The Rivals.

All the Rival characters will be put in a random generator as well. The four that are chosen. You can have an Elite Four made up of Wally, Marnie, Hau, and Barry and you gotta deal with it.

This is excluding Brendan and May, Blue, and Calem and Serena. Anyone else is fair game.

Champion

So, the Champion. Who would it be in this? There was a funny idea I had, but this is a Pokemon Game. So there would be two versions. We'll call them Pokemon Dawn & Dusk. The difference between these games is the game Champion!

Benga would be the Champion of Pokemon Dusk, the grandson of Alder! His final Team will include Volcarona, Garchomp, and Dragonite, Pokemon he used in Black and White. I'd also include Scrafty, Rampardos, and Golurk, Pokemon used against you in White Treehollow and Black Tower areas.

Meanwhile, the Champion of Pokemon Dusk will be Zinnia, the Lorekeeper! Her team would include the Goodra, Tyrantrum, Altaria, Noivern, and Salamence she used in her original team, with her plucky Whismur sidekick becoming an Exploud and her ace.

You would've met them in the beginning of the game and would've showed off a bit by helping you with Team Wild before. They'll pop in and out throughout the game, at first amused by your tenacity, but not wanting a rookie like you to get hurt. But if you keep bonking Team Wild, they'll be impressed with how strong you are.

The show up to chat again when you beat 8 Gym Leaders, and will pop in if you White Out to give you some advice. White Out three times and they'll feel bad for you and give you an egg. Benga will give you a Larvesta Egg and Zinnia a Bagon Egg.

EXTRAS

So I don't got a lot of ideas for the Post Game, but there is one idea I thought would be cool if, if after you defeat the champion, they give you a call. They'll tell you that there are strong trainers wondering the Overworld and to be careful.

Because dotting the overworld will be Champions passed and proper! Cynthia, Blue, Lance; all of them are rocking Lv 100 Teams and are out for blood. They won't challenge you, but if you talk to them, there will be no backing out of the battle! You come with your A-Game!

sI'm not exactly in love with the idea of Team Wild. Maybe the Evil Team should go full fanservice and just be Team Rainbow Rocket. Or maybe go half-and-half; having past Evil Team members and leaders walk around in cowboy gear and acting as Team Wild executives.

I'd also would love Tournaments. Like, maybe that could be a weekly event in some town, they'll how tournaments and the characters that aren't designated as Gym Leaders and such will attend. Maybe there's a cash prize, maybe you'll win Pokemon Eggs of rare, guaranteed shines, or maybe you'll get some kind of important quest items.

Yeah, I want quests! All sorts of side quests! And can't forget what I'd do with Legendairs;

If you know Bengal's team, you'll know he's got the Lati Twins. I don't like that personally and would prefer Legendaries to be Super Bosses. Like, you gotta do a lot to find them. And when you do, their stats are boosted and they become an Uber Boss! You catch them in a cutscene after you beat them!

There's also just a ton of characters I didn't get around to or really have a place for. Emma, Looker, N, and the Stat Trainers all come to mind. Overall, I'd want them to pepper the world as well, but don't have anything to say except this: Pokemon has made a lot of memorable characters. Both good and bad. And this is probably my dream Pokemon Game; one where you can hang out with your favorites

#Pokemon #Pokemon Dawn and Dusk #Fan Game #Fanfic Bible #Plot Bunny #JAC Notes

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subarubi · 4 years

Text

Desert Days

Pairing: Sam Wilson x Reader

Summary: “If this war ever ends-- and he assured you that it will eventually-- you’ll tell Sam Wilson you love him.”

Warnings: 18+, profanity, angst for days, extreme injury and death (blood), mentions of PTSD, implied smut

A/N: 9.6k word count, goddamn. This is a very Sam heavy one-shot. Also, I tried to make the reader as gender neutral as possible!

2001.

A colossal mountain of mutilated steel and concrete rubble sits, smoking, in the center of the world. Lower Manhattan. Financial District. Eight blocks that make up ‘Wall Street’, some elusive playpen for the invisible but potent power of ‘stock’. Destroyed. And with it, lives, hopes and dreams. 2,606 bodies buried there in the debris. An illusion of invincibility crushed in too. In the flames that lick at ruins of the Twin Towers, an Indian summer. The warm September haze forcefully burrows itself in the guts of New Yorkers, Americans, the world. It’s fear, not flush. It’s anger.

How could this happen? To us?

The news outlets evoke the memory of a vastly different war. They call it a day that will live in infamy. Which, it will. Undoubtedly. Yet, it’s hardly the same as Pearl Harbor. Perhaps, the only thing comparable, but dissimilar all the same. Since the greatest generation created generations of their own, the pastime of waging war happened elsewhere. On other lands. In other homes. To other people.

September 11th, 2001 burst the bubble of willful ignorance. War is happening. And there is a debt to be paid for crimes. All crimes. Even American.

Sam Wilson is only twenty when it happens--

--waking up next to a girl from English class that he’d been playing footsie with in the library the day before. Her cellphone, pink and bejeweled, rings at 7 am drawing them both from slumber. Sam rubs the hangover from his temple as she unwinds her limbs from his, both sticky with sweat. Through tears she turns and tells him.

Four planes hijacked. Two crashed into the World Trade Center. One at the Pentagon. Another in a Pennsylvania field.

Sam’s from New York City. Harlem. He’s stood at the bottom of those towers before-- a kid with a skateboard carving lines over all five boroughs. But he hasn’t been back to the East Coast in years. No reason to. Mom was laid to rest next to Pops and Sam ran away to the other side of the country not long after. The news isn’t any less devastating.

He’s at UCLA, majoring in philosophy of all things. It all seems so pointless then. Studying knowledge, reality, existence, when the rest of the world is bleeding.

Everyone is in pain.

Soldiers. Doctors. Accountants. Car Salesmen. Kindergarten Teachers. They demand their pain be spread. They want revenge. They want blood. War is now felt by all.

In October, the US invades Afghanistan.

Sam enlists in November.

2003.

“Superman School” is what it’s called. Sam thinks it should rather be called simply, “Hell”.

Indoc is easy. Sam has always liked the water and it’s just nine weeks of basically swimming. But what follows is two grueling years of vicious emotional and physical exertion. The events, the ache inside that led him there, are practically forgotten when the training starts. In Combat Dive School, he’d panicked the first few times an oxygen tank was strapped to his back and a regulator shoved in his mouth. In Paramedic training, he’d slipped and stabbed his fingers practicing sutures so much that he lost feeling there for a week. During SERE, Sam lost a toe nail; that hurt like a motherfucker. It was probably the most physical pain he’d ever been in at the point of his life. The guys, other PJs in training, don’t let that one go for a couple of months. At least.

The best part, perhaps the only remotely good part, is Army Airborne and Military Free-fall Parachutist training.

“It’s not exactly flying, but it feels like it,” Sam speaks animatedly into the receiver after chow on a Tuesday night, “It feels like fucking flying and you always imagine that flying is cool but then you do it and, I swear--”

He spends the next fifteen minutes going on and on and when his girlfriend, Lisa from English class with the pink bejeweled phone, finally hangs up, Sam feels like there’s so much he still hasn’t gotten to say about it.

In a different life, I might’ve been a bird, he says during a poker game later that night.

They're all chasing their own highs after the first jump, but no one’s as dumb with it, as corny about it as Wilson. They give him shit for it. Sam is too hopped up on finding his first love to care.

It’s easy to forget why they’re there and what they’re working toward. Graduating. Deployment. War.

Afghanistan is a long way from Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. But with every day, every training course completed, Sam Wilson closes that gap with flying colors. And eventually, in May of that year, he found himself in Nevada with the 58th Rescue Squadron. Impossibly, closer now to Afghanistan.

There, he’s given a maroon beret and dubbed a “Guardian Angel”. Small consolation prizes for the news he’s being deployed.

2004.

It’s hot in Afghanistan, he’s heard. Sam had never expected it to be so bad; it’s summer, everywhere’s hot in the summer. The hottest place on earth is the Lut Desert in Iran. Barren, sparsely vegetated, open scrub. 70.7 Celsius recorded. That’s about 160 Fahrenheit. But nowhere, not even the hottest place on earth, is as sweltering as Bagram Airfield in July. With fatigues stuck to his back with sweat, stomach coming up on ‘E’, split red knuckles being bandaged: 40 Celsius feels like 5,000 Kelvin. Dry heat with nowhere to go but through him. It adds ten pounds at least to the weight in his shoulders.

Sam made one comment. Just one. But a scathing reply from his least favorite Squadron member was enough to unravel him.

This is the land of your peoples, Wilson, stop bitchin’.

Sam flexes his fingers on his bouncing knees, sitting and waiting stoically; internally, he’s burning.

When he enlisted just three years ago in a fervent bout of passion and patriotism, he didn’t anticipate the racist pieces of trailer park trash he’s supposed to call brothers. The amount of self-control it would take to not punch the asshole square in the jaw. The fucking heat.

Three years after waking up that fateful morning, turning on the news with Lisa taking calls non-stop, flames and smoke reflected in his brown eyes and he’s stuck waiting in a tent for disciplinary action. At least it’s reprieve from the merciless Afghanistan sun.

The tent flaps rustle softly, heavy boots command Sam reflexively to stand at attention. It gets his knee to stop bouncing. It’s in his face when he sees you. The faltering expression in his eyes that he tries to hide behind a stone slate. You’re not his CO there to NJP him, he’s never seen you on the base and he’s sure he would’ve remembered your face had he, but the patch on your chest dominates him anyway. A stray bead of sweat tickles Sam’s temple underneath your blank stare. You’re not, but you look ten feet tall over him. He’s never been someone so easily intimidated, but you? You are formidable.

He wonders which part of you gets to him the most.

It might be your impossibly straight posture, one that he could never fully get right much to the ire of his commanding officers. Or maybe it’s the sharpness to your eyes, dissecting him piece by piece before he even hears your voice. Or, it could be, that you’re really fucking hot.

Christ, are you.

But that last one might be skewed by the fact that he’s been on tour now for a couple of months and his girlfriend, not Lisa, now Kerry, has been giving him blue balls. Sending letters so salacious, they’ve found home in the john for everyone’s personal use.

He’d remember you if he saw you. He’d never be able to forget.

Another body entering the tent brings a breeze to save him from the downright oppressive warmth of your stare. A man, another Sam has never seen around, stands much more relaxed and close to your side. He’s tall and blonde and somehow pale even after hours spent in the sun.

You look at him and smile. So nice and pretty without any trace of your previous hardness.

“So, you’re Sam Wilson?” he asks with a hint of a smirk in his voice, “Heard a lot about you.” There’s laughter playing at both of your smiles and Sam’s fists instinctively clench. Are you making fun? He’s not in the mood. It’s hot and sticky, and he might be fighting down an embarrassing and painful semi.

“Yes, sir.”

The man at your side laughs, digging his elbow into your side, “You hear that? He called me sir!”

“Fuck off,” you roll your eyes, flicking his ear so hard it draws a hiss. The first words he hears spill from those lips, twisted now in a smirk, don’t match your silvery voice.

Fuck off, so rough and yet said in dulcet tones with affection.

Sam’s hot again when you step forward, away from your partner-- the breeze was only fleeting. Nowhere is as hot as in that tent on Bagram AFB, you, just five feet from him, hand held out with a soft smile to introduce yourself. Warm and sweet, but somehow it burns.

God, he needs to get laid, like, yesterday.

He didn’t even realize he shook your offered hand until he misses the feel of it as it slips from his own. “And this is Riley, he got dropped on his head as a baby,” straightening beside the man in question, Sam catches an all too short flash of white as you laugh.

“So, what did he say?” Riley asks. At the quirk of Sam’s head to the side, he gestures to the wrapped right hand, “I mean everyone’s talking about it. You’re gonna be on latrine duty for weeks!”

“Riley,” you sigh, smacking his chest that shakes in laughter with the back of your hand. A comforting smile when you turn back to Sam, “We have business to do.” The file you hand him, which he had not noticed was in your hand until it was heavy in his, it changes everything.

Why me? Sam doesn’t let the question slip past his tongue, but it’s there.

You shrug, as if you’d heard him, “You’ve made quite the reputation for yourself, Sam Wilson.” A soothing smile, big and easy. Like the one you sent Riley. He’d like to see it his way again.

And you’re not lying.

9 months in Afghanistan and word carries of a PJ falling from the sky like some vengeful archangel of salvation, laying suppressing fire steady as breathing, healing hands flipping the bird at death. Sam Wilson, orphan boy from Harlem, amateur philosopher, provider of quality spank bank material, was made for this.

The first time he sees it, Sam doesn’t know what the hell he’s looking at.

Like a big black horseshoe crab, washed up dead on the shore, metal back shining slick with sea water. Three of them, laid out on a table in a hangar removed from the rest of the air base. Engineers rattle off all sorts of specs, some Sam understands, some he hasn’t the slightest idea the meaning of. He looks to his right, at you, then Riley. The pair of you, grinning at each other, bouncing on the balls of your feet like children. Always so lively with each other. Always overflowing with enthusiasm-- in each other, something you now extend to him.

All happening so fast. Too fast. Sam’s queasy from the whiplash.

A month ago, he’d only just gotten used to the cycle: Jump. Find cover. Fire back if need be. Don’t mind the blood. Do what he can. And if he can’t, say a prayer. Swallow his vomit. Back to camp. Brush his teeth. One. Twice. Rinse. Repeat.

How did the saying go? ‘These Things We Do, That Others May Live’. Sam’s swallowed enough of his own vomit that the taste doesn’t even phase him anymore. Partially because he’s scrubbed his tongue raw and numb with toothpaste.

Then, you and Riley ripped him from it.

Bought him dinner in Kabul. Offered him a cold beer. Which, he hadn’t had one in a year and fuck if it wasn’t orgasmic on his tongue. You two wined and dined him, told him he was special, he was meant for more. Made him feel good. Reminded him he wasn’t just some cog, some tool in a war that was quickly losing support. That he had a chance to do something important. Christ, he was surprised there wasn’t a good old fashioned fuck at the end of it. He’d put out on the first date.

EXO-7 Falcon. In a different life, I might’ve been a bird. He maintained a year out that jumps were everything.

But wings? Actual wings?

It’s unbelievable. No. Fucking insane. He can’t fathom it. Not free-falling and convincing himself its as close to flying he’ll ever get, but actually flying without the disappointing fact that eventually he’ll have to pull the chord.

It’s just a prototype, don’t blow your load too soon, you laugh, hand on his bicep, for now, we just get to ogle them looking all nice and pretty.

He doesn’t have the balls to tell you he already has. In the showers. Numerous times. Your smile flashing behind his eyelids.

It’s just a waiting game now for the prototypes to be approved.

Sam finds his stride again, much quicker than the last, in this new routine. He suspects his easy adjustment has everything to do with you and Riley. PT at 0600. Showers at 0800. An emergency non Falcon rescue mission about two, three times a week. Chow together in the mess at 1730. Sometimes, the three of you eat MREs outside instead, watching the sunset like a bunch of cornballs.

You guys talk a lot, typically always over a meal. And Sam, who usually speaks a mile a minute, is slowed and forced to take a breath. Between the three of you, the fight for air time is intense.

Everything is learned and shared in that small circle of three, sometimes too much.

In some sleepy Georgia town, five houses away from each other, you and Riley spent your entire childhoods not meeting until basic.

Kismet, Riley grinned between mouthfuls of a macaroni and chili MRE that he traded for. That green sucker had no idea what he was getting into with Riley’s chicken a la death.

The pair of you, southern belles, you’d joked. Attended the same Sunday service, learned how to ride a bike on the same stretch of asphalt, enrolled in the same high school but different years. Riley lost his virginity to your older sister in the back of his dad’s wood paneled station wagon. You remember she complained about a cum stain on her favorite skirt around that same time.

Too much? you ask with a widening smirk at Sam’s grimace.

The two of you are so close, Sam can only be grateful for how easily you’ve let him fall into place by your sides. As welcoming, as kind and as warm as you are, in those early years, Sam can’t help feel an outsider sometimes.

You and Riley are so so close.

He’s sure he’s only seen you guys separated by bathroom breaks and sleep. An inordinate amount of time side by side. Fond smiles come often and effortlessly. Only ever fully at-ease in each other’s vicinity. You’re left handed and Riley’s right handed and your elbows always knock when eating. Which seems purposeful because once, when Sam suggested you just switch your normal places at the table, he was met only with blank stares and shrugs. And when the three of you walk across the airfield together, Sam naturally has to fall back slightly because he’s pretty sure you and Riley are tethered together with an invisible string, footfalls in sync. Your right leg in time with his, strides equal.

He’s not sure he’s met a pair of friends ever more suited to each other.

So, are you guys, like, together? Sam asks Riley hesitantly one night when you’ve gone to speak with some other officers. The pair of them lay on their backs on the rocky ground, gazing up at the clear expanse of stars. The new addition to your little merry band of friends tries to appear casual when asking. But really, it’s been nagging at him for months now.

It’s a valid question.

You and Riley are almost abnormally close for two people that have only known each other for a couple of years. Sam’s never seen anyone, not even his disgustingly in love for 30 years parents, so attached. If he were honest, sometimes it’s scary. Uncomfortable.

Mostly, because it’s never been defined. And Sam is, by nature, curious.

Partly, because the things he thinks about you... well, he doubts Riley would appreciate him thinking about his significant other that way. Especially a friend thinking that way.

Riley’s bellowing laugh draws angry hushes from surrounding PJs trying to sleep. He cackles so hard with hands clutching at his abdomen, he practically rolls.

You’ve got it bad, Wilson, is his only reply before getting up to go take a leak.

2005.

Euphoria. That’s the only word Sam can use to describe it. Like sex. Maybe, even better. Up there, in the clouds, where everyone below are just little black dots, his stomach lurches and flips and folds itself over and under. Actually flying, not free-falling and biding his time until he eventually must pull the chord. He’s shaky with it at first. Like a baby on fresh legs, wobbly and awkward. Even still, he’s fucking flying.

Back on the ground, him and Riley gush with it. Joy. Freedom. Ecstasy.

They talk a mile a minute, even though their burning lungs are screaming for them to just breathe. They brush off the medical staff urging them to put on oxygen masks for a few minutes. Can’t, Riley rejects it, too fucking wired.

You’re up next, burning with the need to get yours too.

It all moves so fast. Sam and Riley each in one of your ears, telling you how amazing it feels. How much you’re gonna love it. They watch, chests heaving, hands on hips, as you’re strapped in, take your place 50ft away and nod along to all of the instructions given. Giving you pointers like they’ve been doing this for years. You roll your eyes. The pricks only have an hour of experience each. Though, that’s an hour more than you have, so you listen despite your pride.

You fail. And just as everything you do is, you fail brilliantly.

Sam and Riley watch helplessly as you crumble in the clouds, tumbling in the wind, barreling towards the hard rock and sand beneath their boots. The limp wings thrash in the wind, punching sharp welts into your sides. Your blood curdling scream rips out above, echoing in the valley. They can see you scrambling, panicked brain searching for a fight or flight response. But you can’t do either.

Can’t fly.

Can’t fight the merciless pull of gravity.

You get ahold of yourself long enough to pull the emergency chute at the lowest possible altitude. A heap of nylon lines and cloth on the ground, your impact striking up a cloud of dust.

Their feet can’t move fast enough, rushing to your side, hearts in their stomachs and stomachs in their asses.

Don’t fucking touch me!

Riley’s hand that gently grabs your bicep swiftly retracts as if you’d burned him. You won’t let them help. You just lie there, forehead pressed into the sand, body shaking with adrenaline, pained wails vibrating behind your grit teeth.

Silence except for the sick sound of your brokenness.

More than the acid cuts on your palms and cheek. More than a cracked rib. More than the ugly smattering of red and purple that will appear on your torso later. You mourn what is lost in your failure.

Back on the ground, you gush with it. Wrath. Anguish. Woe.

Sam feels sick beside Riley. Watching you there is the hardest thing he’s ever done. He reminds himself of the careful routine. Don’t mind the blood. Do what he can. And if he can’t, say a prayer. Swallow his vomit. He remembers the taste now.

The prognosis is: you are a no-fly zone.

You barely hear the flurry of words thrown at you, in front of you, around corners when you’re not supposed to hear. Cracked rib. Major contusions to the trunk. Sprained wrist. Can’t handle it. Right side too weak. Six weeks recovery, then return to regular duty. Maybe, you can work on it in PT and try again in 6 months. Not likely. Third prototype destroyed. Only two Falcons.

Weren’t supposed to hear that.

The next few days are eerily quiet. Filled with silent tension, Sam and Riley sending worried glances your way, forcing down winces at your every labored movement. You’ve abruptly walked off at seemingly random points of conversation. You’ve lashed out at Riley when he tries to help a little too much, pushes back against your attitude a little too hard. You’ve retreated. No joking around, no smiling. They have, at least, the clemency to avoid any mention of the Falcon jetpacks in your presence.

When they train, you avoid it like the plague.

The crowds they draw. The hooting and hollering cheers of the other PJs as Sam and Riley defy all odds in the air. The time will come soon, for them to employ the EXO-7 Falcons in an actual rescue. You pray that you aren’t healed by the time the first mission comes.

God, whomever, hears your pleas whispered into the tough canvas of your cot.

Four weeks after your failed flight test, an Apache helicopter goes down in Taliban infested territory. You haven’t been cleared.

Sam walks up on the Chinook, dressed for the first time in his full suit. It would feel so gratifying, had you not been standing there with Riley, heads bowed lowly in short whispers underneath the raucous whirring of the engine.

You haven’t talked to Sam in more than a few words. Only Riley. You only really talk to Riley. Sam has walked in on an abruptly cut off conversation a few times now. Shut out. It burns at him in the middle of the night, keeps him from drifting off in much needed slumber. You and Riley are his people now. Confidants. Friends. Comrades. Family. He wants to be there for you both, but you don’t let him. Just, give her time, she’s upset, Riley had supplied a dejected looking Sam when you stormed away at his advance for the third time.

Now, at his careful approach, you look up and force a tight smile across those lips he sees in his dreams. An awkward, heavy hand on his shoulder that makes his heart clench, Good luck, Wilson.

He’ll still feel it burning through his fatigues hours later.

When they successfully return with the entire crew safe and sound, the base is alive with celebration. A friendly football scrimmage is thrown together by Riley in amber skies of late afternoon, their focused play-calling set behind 50 cent blaring on the boombox.

You’re noticeably absent.

Sam stands outside of your barracks with his hands stuffed in his pockets, uncertain if you’ll even speak to him. You haven’t before. Why would you now? When everyone is happily relishing in something you can no longer be a part of. His boots scuff in the sand as he debates leaving. Letting you alone for the night to surely lament in your loss.

“Shouldn’t you be out there kicking ass, superstar?”

Your face, a familiar smile there that he’s been desperate to see for weeks, evokes an overwhelming sense of guilt in his gut. It was you and Riley from the start. Always you and Riley. The two of you had recruited him. And now he’s taken your place and they’ve left you in the dust.

His return smile comes out more like a grimace without his permission.

The large tent, usually filled to the brim with airmen stacked atop of each other, is empty. Everyone’s either getting chow or at the makeshift field spectating or playing. It’s just you sitting on a makeshift bed on the ground, softly closing the book you were reading when he entered. Sam doesn’t think the two of you have actually ever been alone together. Not like this. No Riley, no one milling about in the background, no rescue mission. The closest thing might’ve been the first time you met. And even then, you hadn’t said anything to each other until Riley joined.

“Honestly,” Sam swallows hard, shaking his head in what looks like a humorous gesture, but really, he’s trying to find his footing again. “How does Riley have so much energy?”

You smile wider and his heart, it fucking aches. For you.

Knees pulled up tightly to your chest, ignoring the sharp pangs in your ribs at the action, you tilt your head softly up at him, “It’s all sugar and tai chi.”

Sam nods, a ghost of a chuckle humming from his throat. He sits on the ground next to you, knees bent, forearms hung over them. Tries not to make the hitch in his breath known when your thighs brush against each other ever so lightly.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks.

You shake your head at the ground, sighing deeply in defeat-- as if it would magically ease the pressure in your temples. “I think I forgot, it’s so easy to forget. But I dunno, all this self-pity and for what? Because I don’t get a cool pair of wings?”

“You’re allowed to be upset,” his hand hovers over your back. Half afraid of hurting you, half afraid of you rejecting him.

Eyes like the cosmos lift to his and you lean back to close the distance for him. The press of his palm over your shoulder is warm, his fingers flexing slightly in the contours of your back. Gooseflesh fanning out from where they indent your skin, hidden beneath the fabric of your shirt.

“My last rescue op, that kid whose lower half was blown to shit?” Sam nods solemnly, he remembers. How could he not? “He couldn’t stop crying about how his girlfriend was gonna break up with his dickless ass. And then he broke into a whole other fit because he didn’t have an ass either,” you laugh humorlessly, “I’m alive and in one peice. I’ve got a sweet ass and a fucking elephant trunk of a dick swinging between my legs.” Sam snorts, can’t help the gap-toothed grin that makes his cheeks ache.

You pause, licking your lips. Sam’s got a smile is like the sun. All warm and bright. The way it feels to bask in it’s glow, a personal beach day, you don’t think you’ve ever been so content to just be looked at.

“I guess, I just-,” brows furrow, struggling to find the words. “You spend months preparing for something, with your best friends, you’re all excited about it, mostly because you’re doing it together. Me. Riley. You. Demented three musketeers,” you smile sadly, a cracking phantom of a thing Sam has come to love. “And then it all goes to shit. So easily slips through your fingers.”

There are tears that you’ll never let fall, but you trust Sam enough to let him see the way your eyes shine with it. The glossy finish of your glum and how it paints you blue.

“I’ve been with Riley since basic. Never been an op where I haven’t had his back and him mine.”

You know. You know you’ll never fly again. No one’s said it outright, but they look at you like a kicked puppy enough for you to get it.

“Will you promise me something, Sam?”

Sam. Sam. Sam. He’s heard his name said a million times in a thousand different cadences, but never like that. Never so soft and honeyed and certain. All at the same fucking time.

“Anything.”

“There are going to be ops for just the two of you that the rest of the unit, that I can’t go on. Will you look after Riley?” You’re so close, practically whispering. Sam could count your lashes if he wanted to. “I love him, but he’s a fucking idiot. Just doesn’t think sometimes.”

Without question. Fervently. For you, “Absolutely.”

And you just listen to each other breathe. In and out. So steady and sure. Content in just the sweet sound of each other, living.

2007.

Hands, calloused from fast-roping down from a helo, splayed out on the contours of his shoulders. Hot and urgent, everywhere and nowhere at once. The emotion in them permeates through his skin-- flooding him, filling him to the brim. Had he always been so empty before? Or had that space always been carved out for your touch? Your eyes are above him, searching, pleading. Lashes fluttering down at his face. Lips falling open in soundless utterances, mouthpiece of the gods. Breathless. His ears are ringing, eyes blinking away that white hot blindness licking at the edges of his consciousness. You’re so beautiful there, rays of sun peeking out behind you, he might pass out.

Wilson, can you hear me?

And then a laugh. Loud and boisterous and Holy shit! You just got your world rocked! Riley beside you, his face a picture of delight, buzzing with adrenaline.

Along with the rapid pops of gunfire and cracks of an AK returning, gentle jingling of hot casings hitting the ground, steady lines of communication running down the line of airmen, Wilson, I need you to confirm that you are okay.

He nods dumbly at your insistence. Remembering suddenly how to breathe when you grab him by the vest and yank him up off the ground. He’d been blown on his back by the sheer force of a screaming mortar impacting the earth nearby. Your smack on his helmet is enough to refocus him, and all attention is back on the vic, packing the wound, applying pressure. You radio in controlled and calm-- GSW to the leg and shoulder, hoist out exfil necessary, popping green smoke on our location.

Helmand is hell. But you grin and bear it so well.

Things have levelled out. The three of you adjust to yet another new routine; much remains the same. The months are filled with morning PT, showers, any and every conversation under the sun shared over chow, a game of Slapjack or Bullshit after the sun’s gone down. Standard combat search-and-rescue, thankfully, for your sake is unchanged. But you have to get used to watching Sam and Riley soar through the sky like it’s what they were born to do. You stick to field medicine when they become something altogether different than PJs. Though, they were never just PJs. And you pretend it doesn’t just ache the tiniest beat when they leave you behind for some confidential mission.

Being the failure is hell. You grin and bear it to keep the pain from spreading to them.

Hours later he finds you pelting the metal floor of the HH-60 Pave Hawk with an unwavering jet stream of water, diluted blood dripping from the sides.

“Any special plans for when you get home?” Sam watches your face as it remains focused on lazily hosing down any memory of a bleeding young Corporal laying slack in your helping hands from the bird.

Six weeks. His tour ends in six weeks. He plans on sleeping-- sleeping hard, sleeping in, sleeping around. Riley joked about Sam burying himself in alcohol and puss, ‘it’s a toss up which addicts anonymous circle he’ll end up in’. Sam laughed and cheered in good fun, but the scent of JP-8 stung his nostrils. You and Riley have three more months left in this tour. Sam doesn’t like to think about the fact that he’ll be home, smelling apple pie and boob sweat, and you’ll be stuck here, sniffing jet fuel; that’s the smell of freedom, airmen say.

“Might take up yoga,” he quips.

Your eyebrows raise slightly, lips spreading into an easy and knowing smile, “Bet you would, you horndog.” Yoga pants, nylon and lycra second skins that hold everything just so, are all the rage all of the sudden.

Sam laughs, leaning against the side of the helicopter with a cheeky smirk. That smirk you know so well now after three years. You count on that smirk. Pray on it. How something so small can bring you so much comfort, impossible to say.

“If you come to LA, I can take you to all the studios. You’d love it.”

Sam Wilson’s always been a social butterfly. The lifeblood of every party. The guy that gets along with everyone. The funny, effortlessly cool guy. He thrives on meeting new people and cracking jokes.

But really, if Sam could do anything when he gets home, it would just be to see you. And Riley, of course. He wants you to come to LA, go to a bar, hide in some corner and just talk. Like you always do. Except, in civvies and heavily lubricated. He’d wait that excruciating month and a half before you’re back stateside too. He’d wait, not so much as think about alcohol, if it meant the three of you could share that first cold one together. You and Riley, you’re family. The first he’s had in a long while.

He can’t help himself. “Will you? Come to LA?”

You smile, so nice and pretty, big and easy, like the one you’d once reserved only for Riley.

2008.

Hands, softened with shea and two months R&R, fisting the back of his shirt so tightly he fears the fabric might disintegrate. Feverish and needy, fingernails digging into his warm skin, leaving ardor shaped crescents in wake of their campaign to conquer his back. Scorched in the spots first touched, soothed by the soft sound of sliding skin.

Panting. Clenching. Burning.

Your eyes squeezed shut, tears pricking at the edges. Lashes, all 359 of them -- he’d counted -- fanning his cheeks. Sweet wetness. Trembling fire. Mouths, hot and urgent, moving against one another. Whiskey tongues, sliding together, worshipping every inch. Lips numb. Teeth clanging. Both chests heaving, humming with moans too gentle and too desperate. You’re so beautiful there, in a bar’s dark and dirty bathroom stall pressing chest, groin, thigh, and leg against him.

Gushing with it: joy, freedom, ecstasy. Overwhelmed by what he swallows from that heavenly spout: wrath, anguish, woe.

You’re so beautiful he might die-- without question, fervently, for you.

2009.

The world works in strange ways. People will pay a 1,000 USD for a mattress that perfectly shapes to the curves of their spines. Commercials demonstrate you can balance a wine glass and simultaneously jump like a giddy kid in a hotel room without any risk of stain-- and for good measure, in the event it does stain, some special formula ensures it’ll come right out. Such strange desires of men. Sam sighs into his pillow-- zero cost, no secret formula. Sand, his mattress covered in 1500 thread count egyptian cotton; rock, his feather pillow that corrects his posture; a heavy coat of dry heat, his comforting New Zealand sheep wool blanket. Riley snores soundly beside, drool dribbling from the right corner of his mouth, chest spluttering in his exhales-- his white noise machine.

He’s never been more comfortable. And in strange ways, he’s glad to be back, just starting his second tour at twenty-seven now, another successful Falcon mission recorded with the capture of Khalid Khandil.

Sam’s almost disgusted with himself. He’s so stupidly content to be there, in the middle of the Afghani desert, sleeping on the ground. As if it’s not a fucking war.

Well, as the world turns.

Do you ever think it’ll be over? you’ll ask one night, a whisper on his lips as soft as the dripping beside you. Never defined, never talked about, but most nights, when sleep evades you, you’ll slip from the barracks to the empty showers. And you’ll sigh in pleasure in time with the echoing splash of leaky faucets.

And Sam has to bite his lips from saying the words ‘God, I hope not’ into your neck.

Stateside, he has a joke of a life. The year in between tours was almost unbearable. He’s supposed to call that land home? It feels more foreign to him now than Afghanistan. A place where people create mattresses with different settings on two sides for maximum comfort.

Strangers see him in uniform and either say ‘thank you for your service’-- which always feels hollow-- or looking like they want to spit on him. Suffocating. He could only breathe the three times you visited him in Los Angeles and the five times he came to Virginia for you. Only felt comfortable there with his face in your thighs, heart and breast in his hand, lips in his teeth.

Here, he has structure. Purpose. Brotherhood. You. In war, he’s important. He’s helping people, not in any misguided, easily skewed fight for freedom and self-righteousness. He’s actually helping people. ‘These Things We Do, That Others May Live’. It’s what PJs do.

In Afghanistan, he gets to fucking fly.

In the US, his wings are clipped and everything feels so dull in comparison.

Eventually, it has to, he’ll murmur back to spare you from his terrible thoughts. You’re so soft and sweet under him, and Sam knows just how much this war tears you apart.

The guilt that plagues you because not everyone can be saved, but everyone should be. You’ve said before that the PJ credo implies death yourself. ‘That Others May Live’. But you’re alive and so many have died beneath your palms despite best efforts. Those trained fingers that sometimes feel useless apart from bringing Sam to bliss.

If you knew how he truly felt, how even if he’s a good man he harbors such selfish thoughts, it would only hurt you more.

So he keeps it to himself and kisses your worries away. Soft pecks at your eyes that never cry but are always on the brink; the tip of your nose that’s become immune to the overwhelming metallic scent of blood; the crease between your brows that screw together in torment; lips, that despite all of the above, smile for Riley and for him.

He’ll hold you so tenderly with strong steady hands, that it’s easy to forget the two of you are pressed together in a shower stall. You seem to have a habit of getting into compromising positions in bathrooms with Sam.

A soft moan of appreciation escapes your lips, just to see that charming gap-tooth grin it draws from him. A taste of his light. So wanting, so desperate for that warm glow that emanates from Sam Wilson, you peel the shirt from his back sticky with sweat. Fingers scrambling to run across the smooth, hot skin there, chasing that tranquil day at the beach that is him even in the middle of a goddamned war. Greedy hands draw silken lines down the length of Sam’s spine, smiling in his mouth at his shuddering. How he leans into your touch reflexively.

You’re drawn tight against him, his arms snaking around the base of your back, your hips flush against his, heels digging into his hamstrings. So close you become almost indistinguishable from him, simply a heap of warm skin and desert camo bracing the shower walls.

A single kiss, languid and saccharine, suddenly turned quick. Sam is urgent in unfastening your top, splaying it open to lay you bare and panting before him. Each snap undone, a breath more labored. Your own hands, fumbling for the belt at his waist, mourning the loss of kissed raw lips against you. Hurried, as if at any moment one of you will perish. And the other, having tasted a body so divine, would simply crumble into dust-- there could never be another that they craved the same. Disappear forever in this desert, to perhaps be stamped down by another set of lovers’ boots. Here, in the sand soaked with your blood, Sam’s sweat, Riley’s tears

A vow taken in the sighs of pleasure quieted by amorous mouths.

If this war ever ends-- and he assured you that it will eventually-- you’ll tell Sam Wilson you love him.

2010.

He’d wished for this, hadn’t he?

To live in War. This ungodly, disorienting flurry of chaos that feigns a sense of order. Mayhem, no matter how many hours ripping apart his muscles to put them back in place in accordance with military regulation, how much firepower there is to decimate enemies. A messy, merciless machine, endless. Running on the energy expelled from eating-- young men chewed up and spat out, shoved back into the hungry mouth, and chewed and spat again. And again. An emulsified puddle of blood and sweat leaking from the bottom.

This, is war. Not fucking in the showers, watching the sunset while playing cards, and trading MREs like it’s elementary school.

Structure. Purpose. Brotherhood -- all of the things Sam craved. It all means jack shit once someone steps on an IED, the distinct crisp sound of AKs firing off, or staring an RPG straight in the eye.

Sam can’t stop looking at the way the blood squeezes through his shaking fingers. Thick and scarlet and slippery, bubbling through the cracks, seeping into the lines of his skin. Unyielding to Sam’s hands desperately clasping at the ripped flesh, trying and failing to apply pressure to the wound. No matter how much pressure he applies, the blood persists. Gushing, oozing, turning black under his palms. Because it’s everywhere and he only has two hands. Why did God make man with only two hands? Why?

Come on, man!

It’s a pathetic sound, the way it rips from his throat, raw and pleading. His arms, trembling so hard they shake the body beneath him too.

Sam removes one hand to pop a yellow smoke outside of the ditch he’d pulled them into, using his teeth to pull the pin from the canister.

He’s whimpering, choking down the sobs he so desperately wants to let out, communicating in broken sentences through the radio. Deaf to the return chatter.

His eyes refuse to leave his bloodstained hands when the Pave Hawk is hovering above, his team of six fast-roping down, quick and methodical in employing care under fire protocol. Four of them stationing themselves at a pole just outside of the ditch, laying suppressing fire.

You’re there, he can feel you rushing forward with your pack already slung over and onto the ground at their sides. But Sam won’t look at you, can’t-- if he sees your face, he’ll lose it.

Moving, but nothing feels like it’s by your own volition. Rather, muscle memory. Flipping up your NVG, your eyes flit over the scene fast, thinking, but not feeling. And somehow, you’re thankful you’re numb at the sight.

You’ve never seen it quite so... he doesn’t look human.

It was just supposed to be a standard op. A marine stepped on an IED, and no one had metal detectors so the normal PJ unit couldn’t land. They were supposed to fly in and out, barely even touch the ground.

And it all got fucked. How had it gotten so fucked?

Helpless. Nothing he could do. Like he was up there just to watch. Squint in the dark night for a body barreling towards the ground. So much like your first flight test. That sickness churning his gut.

Sam. Sam. Sam!

His eyes flit to meet yours wide and white in the dark and just can’t bear it. He careens over to the side, retching this morning’s powdered eggs ugly and loud. Emptied, body too spent, the sobs finally overtake him.

Quickly, you cut open his top, pulling the tattered fabric from where it tangled up with his body. Your hands take up the spot where Sam’s once pressed, pulling out combat gauze with your teeth. Deperately packing until you run out of gauze. It does nothing. The white is quickly stained so red that it just resembles more mutilated strings of flesh.

“Okay,” you breathe, but it does nothing to return the oxygen to your lungs, “okay we need to stabilize the wound, tourniquets”-- the wound, he’s more wound than whole-- “and I need someone on chest compressions.”

You’re met with stares. Seven red-rimmed eyes, just staring as the very fluid of his life drains from him, body going cold under your hands warm, soaked in his blood. The only thing holding him, all mangled chunks of burnt tissue, together is you.

“But-”

“But what?”

But, it was an RPG. So what? We’re fucking PJs, aren’t we? But, he’s lost too much blood. We’ll do a transfusion. But, he’s dead.

“Just do it!”

No one has the heart to stop you.

You work over Riley’s corpse for the entire ride to the hospital. They have to rip you from him on arrival. Because he’s dead. And you’ve just spent an hour elbow deep in a mess of blood and guts that feel like your own, exhausting yourself-- keeping nothing alive but your own sanity.

Riley’s a pair of boots, an M16, a helmet, and two shiny dog tags clenched in your fists.

That’s it.

The rest of him was put back together as best they could, shoved in a pine box shrouded in stars and stripes, and sent off to Georgia. He’ll be received by his parents, two little brothers, three nieces, and his dog. They’ll write about him in the paper, a hero he’ll be called-- when really, he was a dumbass that got dinked by a rocket.

He’d enjoy the fame in your small town.

Idiot.

Dropped on his head as a baby.

As you squeeze the dog tags hanging from his M16, so do you squeeze a tear from your eye. A warm thing running down your left cheek that feels just like Riley’s blood in your palm.

Sam’s behind you, head bowed low, maroon beret in his hands. The amount of times he’s said sorry, some blubbery, some frustrated, some murmured in your hair, some screamed at you.

You’re both raw.

Hands scrubbed with soap, but stained Riley red.

Those showers have been tainted now with the fresh memory of pink streams circling the drain. Where once you found yourself lost in lust, now, in misery. Riley in your hands disappearing into the pipes, into nothing forever.

“My tour’s up in three months,” Sam watches you carefully as you release the silver tags imprinted with Riley’s information. You stand and face him, wiping away that traitorous tear. “I’m going to leave active duty.”

When he was twenty, and the world was bleeding fresh scarlet, he’d hardly imagined he’d be retiring at thirty. But twenty seems so far now, just as the aftermath of 9/11. Now, the blood has caked into a mountain of pain, dried brown. Revenge, and then some.

He enlisted for patriotism, duty, selflessness. He stayed for you and Riley, for flying.

He can’t stay anymore-- can’t see you die too.

"You’re retiring?” your cloudy stare, brows pulled together, eat at him, “Okay.”

Okay. Sam never tried to guess what you’d say, but ‘okay’ somehow seems like the only thing that would ever make sense on your lips. So soft and simple. You. Always supportive, always sure.

You nod with a gentle smile, and while he doesn’t know where you’re headed-- somewhere that’s not Riley’s makeshift shrine-- Sam trails closely behind. Partially because he has more to say, but mostly, because he’s bound to you now. His chest is tethered to yours, feet instinctively falling in line. He heels, like a dog. For you.

The barracks are empty for chow again. Neither of you are hungry. Meals are different without Riley.

So familiar, the two of you sitting side by side on the ground, knees bent, forearms resting on them, thighs brushing. Alone together.

Sam has ocean eyes. Warm brown eyes that look like the ocean. They’re still on you but they move. You’ve never noticed. How they swell and glimmer, so constant yet always in motion-- pure in how he allows himself to live so freely. Going with whatever flow his heart takes him: dropping out of college and enlisting; punching ignorant airmen; and giggling like a girl at the feeling of flying. Making promises you both know he has no control over. Kissing you in a bar because he can’t take the longing for a second more. Leaving the Air Force because it’s getting in the way of his light. Even if it means giving up flying.

Sam slips his hand in yours, so warm and soft, his squeeze, a plea.

“Come with me.”

You’ve never met a person who lives like him.

You laugh, fondly. Sam Wilson is so earnest in almost everything he does.

“Can’t.”

So tempting. You remember now, how close those words once were to falling from your tongue. I love you. It seems pointless to say now, he’s leaving, you’re staying.

“Come on, don’t be a martyr.”

Like Riley, he says without ever needing to flex his vocal chords that way.

Morbid as it may be, you’d be glad to die like Riley. He always believed in the cause more than either of you. He was dumb and goofy, but he truly believed in it. All of it. You’ve never been so bound by an unearthly force like that-- religion, ideology, patriotism.

Must be nice, Riley mused, not having to answer to God. No, it really isn’t. It’s... lonely. You want to try your hand at it now. Might do you some good. You’re looking at another two years, or whenever your tour is up, alone now. Why not fuck around and find some higher power? God, the PJ creed, macaroni and chili MREs. You’ll figure it out.

“Eventually, it has to end. Right?” It’s his own words. You knew he never believed them. And neither do you now, really. “So I’ll see you then.”

Or in a pine box.

Ocean eyes are wet with his sorrow. You are so lovely. Love. He loves you. He thinks he might’ve loved you from the moment he first heard your velvet voice. Fuck off. So lovely. Sam kisses you, and the waves have come to drag you out to sea. If he could, he’d beg you to come home in his riptide.

Wherever that is.

2012.

A Goliath building with tall glass windows that turn sunbeams into rainbows with rows upon rows of fresh tulips surrounding. Brilliant yellows and oranges-- like poppy field sunsets in Afghanistan. In the center of the free world. So much meaning there now behind what it means to fight for freedom. No place knows it quite like this house of warriors. This is a place of healing. Of mending brains put in a blender, frozen in some eagle shaped mold, and then thawed out with guns in their hands and a burning vendetta to satisfy.

Sam Wilson is thirty-one now, and remains a man of routine.

He wakes to darkness. Unfolds himself from the tight ball he’d curled into at some point. On the floor. Again. Sam gives himself just five minutes to lay blinking at white walls painted 5 am blue, bleary eyed birds just starting up their morning songs.

And then he’s up. His teeth are brushed, sneakers laced up, keys thrown into the pocket of his shorts. Sam runs along the Potomac with the familiar soft pink aura of dawn crawling along the horizon. Around the Washington Monument, past the Lincoln Memorial, down Pennsylvania Ave.

He feels so small among those giant monoliths of the land of the free. Not purple mountain majesties, but the marble Hill.

Sometimes, he feels you and Riley running beside him, like all those years ago bright and early for 6 A.M. PT-- wearing ankle high socks, grey t-shirts with white wings splayed across the chest and those little navy shorts Riley complained crushed his balls.

God, he misses Riley.

He misses you too.

In college, Sam was a philosophy major of all things. He studied questions of human nature while picking up ‘cerebral chicks’.

A decade later, the questions he once pushed away have all come up again. It all seems so important now.

When he closes his eyes he sees your smile, yes, but he sees fire and smoke too. Like the rubble of the Twin Towers, his memories of war are shrouded in destruction.

Sartre said, Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from defeat.

So much cost, tangible and not. Cities riddled with bullet holes and missile craters, conquered and hailed as a successful operation so long as it forces the Taliban back. Beautiful landscapes marred with IEDs and shrapnel which will make the Americans wish they never step foot in Afghanistan. Invisible things too, like a mass grave of men, women, and children-- some military, some civilian. Glass shards of minds, not broken, but cracked.

Sam is bleeding. Veterans are bleeding. Everyone is bleeding.

The puddle of blood and sweat at the bottom of that machine, fathomless.

He ends up in D.C., staring up at that Goliath building with the scent of fresh spring tulips in his nostrils-- Department of Veterans Affairs. He needs help and he needs to help. Post-traumatic stress disorder is such a big name, and he never fully understands his meeting. What he does know: sleeplessness, irritability, paranoia, numbness, waking nightmares.

Healing is a process, but Sam’s doing it now. Himself, through others.

Things are getting better.

He’ll never be completely whole, but the circle helps. ‘It’s a toss up which addicts anonymous circle he’ll end up in’, Riley joked. Sam laughs up at the sky, his dumbass friend was probably sporting a smug smirk wherever he is.

This morning Sam is chipper, today is a good day. He smiles wide at the girl at the front desk; she’s pretty and shy and always tucks her hair behind her ear when he’s flirting. Sam snags a classic glazed from the box of free donuts from Astro and it hangs from his mouth as he goes about setting up for a meeting. Unfolding chairs, he arranges them in a comforting position. In a circle, everyone is equal-- no one is alone or an outsider.

And then he waits with a welcoming smile as everyone filters in. Some are regulars and he’ll exchange ‘how are you’s. Some are new and uncomfortable so he gestures to an open chair and says ‘Welcome’ with that beach day grin. Soothing, calm, comforting.

Sam listens so well.

For as much as he likes to talk, listening is sometimes better. He only speaks when he’s sure they’re done and comfortable, offering what has helped him best.

Adjusting to civilian life is hard. No one expects how hard it truly is, because it’s never talked about it. They’re supposed to push themselves to the extremes of human experience and then come back as if any of that was normal. As if they didn’t just come from a war, that still persists. Even if by a different name, in a different place, against a different group, it persists. And no one ever tells them how hard it is to just sit there, surrounded by friends and family where you’re supposed to be happiest, and act like it’s not burning you from the inside out.

But it’s important to remember the good things too, he’ll tell them. When the dark shadow threatens to swallow them up whole, there is always light. It’s important to know that and make sure they stay separate.

Like Astro donuts and playing soul music all the time and showering without a dozen people next to you. And the freedom of getting to do whatever the hell they want.

Sam tells them, if it makes them happy: do it.

“You’ve made quite the reputation for yourself, Sam Wilson.”

He’s seeing you, looking just the same as the last. With that smile, that’s only his now-- nice and pretty, big and easy. You are beautiful, so beautiful Sam wonders how he’s survived so long without seeing it.

His own smile falters when his ocean eyes travel from your face.

You are exactly the same, except, you’re missing a few pieces.

Your left arm, which he expects to lead down to those calloused hands somehow impossibly soft, is cut off abruptly, cruelly, above the ghost of your elbow. The left hand, your dominant one, that he had known the comforting feel of on his shoulder, burning through the cloth of his uniform, gone. The hand that breathlessly trailed down his torso, tickling and seducing, leaving goosebumps in its wake, missing.

He’ll ask another time. You’ll tell him of more casualties of war, this one visible, and of others invisible.

But for now, he’s rushing at you, and it’s still not fast enough to quiet his screaming heart. He grabs you, doesn’t care if there are still people lingering from the end of the meeting, and really kisses you. And your right hand still finds its way to his torso.

I love you, breathless. It was never pointless to say.

No, the war is not over, maybe not even eventually, but you’re here in D.C. wrapped in his waves, alive.

He’ll never be completely whole, but you get him damn near close to it.

#sam wilson #the falcon x reader #sam wilson x reader #falcon #marvel #fanfiction #reader insert #one shot

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takamakisu · 5 years

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『♥🖤Akira X Ann: Why I Support It.🖤♥』

In honor of the upcoming ShuAnn week, I have decided to contribute by writing a long post about why I love these dorks so much. I haven't seen a meta for them yet, so I figured I'd try my hand at it. (Which will be updated and expanded as I find more content) Without further ado, let us begin! Tagging the wonderful @shuann-week for this one.

1. The first encounter.

In media, the first interaction that two characters have with one another, regardless of relationship; lays the groundwork for said relationship and therefore is absolutely vital. When Akira first meets Ann, he's casually texting away on his phone and not really paying attention to much, but when she walks by he looks up. Already his curiosity is piqued, as is the player's; and then when she removes her hood, even then we don't get to see her face. But we DO see Akira's reaction, and he seems absolutely dumbstruck.

This is when things get interesting. Ann takes a few moments and sort of surveys her surroundings, and then she senses Akira's eyes and turns to him. And he doesn't look away, or get flustered; Akira keeps looking at her with that flabbergasted expression. He doesn't even blink. He is so taken aback by her he can't even greet her, and Ann just smiles at him and looks away- but even then, he doesn't break his gaze, and he never does until she actually leaves: Ann leaves him absolutely spellbound. And the music that plays during this encounter is exclusive to this encounter and this encounter alone. It never plays before this scene, nor does it ever play again after. There are heavy romantic undertones in this encounter, from the body language to the background music, and only Ann receives this treatment. It screams "attraction at first sight", and now with the groundwork laid, the relationship can begin to blossom.

This is very important. Even before we get to see Ann's face, we already know from Akira's viewpoint that she must be pretty, at least in his eyes. And when we finally do get to see her face, she is indeed beautiful.

2. Her closeness to him.

First off, she's with you from essentially the beginning of the game, so you get a lot of time to get to know her and become closer to her. Ann is the third member to join your party and the first female member and therefore the first available romance option as well! (That's pretty big.) She's also your classmate, so you get to see her literally every day and there's a sense of familiarity that is built on from the beginning.

Ann was the first to see Akira for who he truly was, and she looked past the rumors of him and got to know him for herself. Because she understands being an outsider and being mistreated, there's a level of understanding Ann has with you that the other girls simply do not. That's not to say they're bad, but Ann just connects better with the protagonist on that level. Let it also be remembered that before she met Akira, and by association the rest of the Phantom Thieves; Ann didn't have any friends, besides Shiho. Due to being a foreigner (and a very pretty one, at that) and the rumors surrounding her with Kamoshida, no one talks to her. While having a two-parent household, they are rarely home; and so Ann's lonely as well as bullied. Akira saving her from Kamoshida and then giving his genuine friendship then allows her to open up and be vulnerable to other people and that's very healthy.

Another interesting interaction is during the Kamoshida arc, Makoto will ask you in essence what's the relationship between you and Ann, if there's something between you. If you say "there's nothing", her reply is "Didn't seem that way yesterday" and if you tell her you're classmates she'll say "But do friends get that close?"

3. How she falls for him.

For these reasons, I support these two. Lemme know in the comments what won you over to this pairing and any other moments that get your heart warm and fuzzy!

In addition, Ann gets an on-screen kiss with the protagonist; a luxury only two other Persona girls have received (from 3-5, Maki kisses Naoya in P1): Margaret and Marie from Persona 4. The fact that Ann gets an explicit kiss (and possibly an implicit one as well because in Rank 9 her reaction to Joker hugging her hints he MIGHT have kissed her too) screams that while she's not 'canon' (nobody is) it sure does seem Atlus is sneakily pushing her towards Joker. They even match costumes in the dancing games! Oh yes, and Ann doesn't go home on Valentine's Day + Sojiro literally just "ayyyy" when she walks in- XD

Her Confidant has the protagonist and Ann getting closer as friends and also helping Shiho recover and you get to be a part of a few of Ann's interpersonal relationships. Shiho, as stated before, was Ann's closest and only friend before she met the player; and so earning her trust and helping her heal is significant. Suzui also hints to the player Ann seems to be attracted to them, talking about how her best friend talks highly of you and then the blonde gets flustered.

Her confession shot me through the heart. With Ann you don't have to increase your Knowledge or your Guts; just Kindness. To her, it doesn't matter if you get the best grades in the class or how brave you are, she just wants a friend who'll be there for her when she needs them, and that's what Ann falls for in the protagonist: his genuineness and his willingness to stick by her side. She falls in love with you for who you are and it feels the most natural and realistic. Something that's also very interesting about Ann's rank 9 event in Japanese is instead of saying “I guess we’re more than friends now...” she actually says, “I just realized it,” referring to her feelings for him (when she said “I love you”) in the original dialogue. And this is so so important. This hints at a love that developed slowly over a friendship and Ann wasn't even really aware it was there at first, until the only friend she'd had moved away and she felt alone and abandoned again. Akira being her pillar in that moment was the paradigm shift from platonic feelings to romantic ones and that is absolutely beautiful. But she ALREADY loved him, did you catch it? She just realized and became aware of it in that situation. Ann's been in love with the protagonist for who knows how long before she even confesses. And at the end of her confidant she calls you her light.. that just speaks volumes to me. The protagonist basically saved her, and because of that she wants to become stronger and encourage other people as well. It's beautiful.

5. Other characters reactions to them.

There's a specific scene where the protagonist is in the bathhouse with Ryuji and Yusuke, and Ryuji will ask you what you think of Ann. If you admit you think she's pretty, he gets extremely excited ("Ooh, you straight up said it!")

Another very interesting thing that's different in the original language is when Akira gets home from interrogation. In English, Ann just chirps "Hey there!" No big deal, right? But in Japanese, she says, “okaeri”, which means “welcome home”. This greeting is said amongst family or couples in Japan, hinting a deeper level of closeness than the translation.

(It's also something of note that when Ann got locked out of her room in Hawaii she went to Akira's room first. )

Additionally, after the school festival; Ann will talk to you about how she thinks about your future together! And if you tell her in another instance that you'd like to get married, she gets extremely excited whereas some of the other romance options become all flustered and blushy; a cute and interesting contrast.

A Mementos conversation also has Ann absentmindedly talking about how coffee goes well with sweets, to which Ryuji immediately replies 'Joker always smells like coffee, doesn't he?'

Now, I may be looking too deeply into this, but this could possibly be Ryuji "hint hint-ing" he thinks Akira and Ann are a good pair for each other. Ryuji also flat out refuses to date Ann during a scene in the gym when she offers to let him take her out. I don't know about you, but if I had a crush on somebody and they offered to let me go out with them, I don't think I'd turn it down as quickly and explicitly as Ryuji did (He tells her 'hell no, quit acting like you're some sexy anime character'). Personally I think Ryuji supports Ann with Akira and so he tries to gently nudge her over like "Okay, this guy? He's a good fit for you." Sakamoto's a great friend for Ann but I personally believe he's better as just that: a friend.

4. Their personalities blend well.

Ann's bubbly personality contrasts wonderfully with the protagonist's more introverted, reserved side. They're sort of like Robin and Starfire, just to less extremes. Ann is very pleasant and tender and she's got a big heart and it shows; consistently. She's a great friend to Ryuji and Shiho and big sister to Futaba, while at the same time tolerating nonsense from absolutely no one, regardless of status. I now want to cast attention to Meyer-Brigg's personality types. These are headcanons, but after analyzing Akira and Ann's characters Joker seems to be an ISTJ, while Panther is an ENFP. These are abbreviations for Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, Judging (ISTJ) and Extroversion, Intuition, Feeling, Percieving (ENFP) respectfully. Ann, at her core; is the heart of the Phantom Thieves honestly. She is very sensitive to others' emotions and feelings, and very emotionally intelligent. Being an extrovert, Ann also needs interaction and validation from other people: it energizes her and fufills her. And, in return she's a caregiver; Ann wants to support others and help them become stronger. She's a wonderful sister figure and just a comforter in general, and very amiable and chirpy. Contrast that with Akira, who makes decisions based on facts and logic rather than feelings and intuition (although in the Metaverse he seems to throw caution to the wind, quite frankly) and analyzes situations from a logical rather than emotional angle; (and there are exceptions to this like helping the woman Shido was assaulting and chasing Ann down to talk to her) and they seem on completely opposite ends of the spectrum. However, their differing personalities balance one another. While Akira keeps Ann grounded logically, she keeps him grounded emotionally and the bounce off is extremely healthy.

In Yusuke's Confidant, saying Ann is the definition of beauty nets the most points.

Atlus seems to like putting these two together as well, from giving them matching songs and outfits in the dancing games to putting them together in advertisements. It's pretty cute and though it's subtle, it's a nice little nod.

#✨; otp; you are my light (akirann)#shuann week

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oumakokichi · 8 years

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Hi! I've been seeing posts saying Ouma said 'I love you' to Himiko, and that they're hinted to have feelings for each other in the game? I've read your metas about them so I know about Ouma being gay and Himiko /possibly/ having feelings for Tenko, but are there actually events in the game that actually hint on romantic feelings between them? Though I believe in letting people ship w/e they want, I'm not exactly fond of the pairing, especially because one of them is actually confirmed to be gay.

Hmm, this is a difficult question to answer. I don’t want to come across as condemning any ships or putting my foot down as though my opinion on shipping is the only one that matters, because that’s definitely not the point of this blog! As long as it isn’t unhealthy or there isn’t a huge power imbalance between the characters, I’m pretty okay with most ships.

That being said, it’s true that there are some that just aren’t personally my cup of tea. That doesn’t make them bad ships necessarily, it’s just…there are certain factors involved when it comes to my own personal preference. If it comes to talking about it from that perspective, I don’t mind. I just don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea and assume that I’m trying to act as though I’m some kind of shipping authority when that’s definitely not the case.

With all that said, and understanding that these are just my personal opinions on the ship so please take this with a grain of salt, I’ll go a little more in-depth about this under the read more. There will be spoilers for Chapter 5, so be careful!

The main reason for people shipping Himiko and Ouma from what I’ve seen stems from the Chapter 5 trial. The two of them interact occasionally prior to this; in Chapters 2 and 3 in particular Ouma is quick to accuse Himiko as the first suspect in both trials despite knowing who the real culprits are ahead of time, generally to defuse the suspicion from her and move on to the real topic instead.

In the post-trial for Chapter 3, his most notable interaction with Himiko is that he confronts her very specifically about her feelings for Tenko: he calls her out on the fact that she’s still not being open and honest with her emotions even after Tenko’s death, and says that she’s only lying to herself. Even though he’s a liar, he says that at least he always tries to be honest about his own feeling for himself—and puts heavy emphasis on the fact that appreciation can only be shown for people while they’re still alive. He comes down hard on her, but his speech is what prompts Himiko to stop holding back her grief and start crying, and ultimately she becomes much more straightforward about her emotions from this point on.

I feel like because he could tell that Himiko was such a poor liar, and because even though he refused to trust anyone fully he could still tell that she posed relatively little threat to the group, he intentionally pushed her here because he knew that she had potential to grow and develop the way that she did. And I feel like it’s very telling that he specifically talked about her feelings towards Tenko in that scene, the same way that he often targets Maki’s feelings for Momota later on, or even Saihara’s feelings for Kaede. Ouma, as perceptive as he was, knew very well that Himiko’s regret and her feelings about Tenko were the very things necessary to push her to become stronger.

Only in Chapter 5 is there any discussion about Himiko and Ouma’s feelings towards each other, and it’s this scene which prompted most of the push for it. Throughout most of the trial, Himiko spends the whole time getting easily flustered by pretty much everyone because she was lying about bringing the crossbow to Momota in the machinery bay. Her lies are transparent and super easy to poke holes in, and the more flustered she gets, the easier it is to get her off-topic in the trial discussion.

When asked why she was definitely seen going to the machinery bay, and while she desperately stammers out excuses about checking on Momota to see if he was okay and says “What other reason would I be going for?!”, “Ouma” in the Exisal responds like this: “Because you like me~.” And Himiko gets even more flustered and embarrassed by this, assumes that “Ouma” is messing with her and of course tells him to stop lying and messing around, to which he responds, “It’s not a lie~, I like you too~.” And Himiko proceeds to get pretty noticeably embarrassed and fond at the idea of someone having a crush on her (Tsumugi calls her “a young maiden in love at some point” when telling “Ouma” not to mess with her, haha), and this kind of interaction is I think why most people decided to start shipping it.

The thing is, it’s not actually Ouma in the Exisal, it’s Momota. However, he is following a script that Ouma wrote (a multi-branch 300-page script, give or take, that could predict almost perfectly how everyone would react during the trial). He does say that “some parts were his own ad-lib,” and asks the group if they can tell “which ones,” but there’s no real way to tell the specifics exactly. Personally I’m inclined to think the “confession” was something Ouma himself wrote—because this kind of teasing behavior is definitely in-character for him and I have no doubts he definitely liked to see Himiko get riled up. He’s undeniably a prankster, and Himiko’s quick temper later on made her a pretty easy target to tease in a very mischievous way.

That being said, it’s not something I exactly ship per se because…well, it’s not something that ever seemed to me like it was intended seriously. Himiko reacts to “Ouma’s confession” about the same way that she reacts to Monokuma suddenly saying that he’s their friend now and he’s going to help them theorize in the school trial—she’s indignant at first, then falls for it completely and even gets sort of shy and flustered and says she wants to give Monokuma a big hug. And when Monokuma goes back to giving absolutely no shits about any of them in the post-trial, she’s super shocked and outraged and even says “Y, You bastard, even though I loved you…!”

This kind of behavior isn’t anything new or out of the ordinary for Himiko. She admits in-game to enjoying soap operas and cheesy, clichéd twists. Her line to Monokuma feels very much like a child imitating a soap opera line they once heard, in my opinion. And I feel like her enjoyment of these pastimes is what led to her very much liking the idea of being in love or someone having a crush on her, but without it necessarily being a serious thing.

After the Chapter 5 trial, there’s never again any indication that Himiko had particularly deep feelings for Ouma, or vice-versa. When discussing Ouma’s “true character” and what his real objectives and feelings are, in fact, Himiko is one of the characters who believes in him the least. She assumes that he was lying about absolutely everything, because that’s easier than accepting the alternative—that perhaps they were too hard on someone who was actually trying to help the group all along in his own way. She does not accept the fact that he was never quite the villain he played himself up to be; even when they all know for a fact that Ouma was not the ringleader, she goes as far as to say “he wasn’t someone who could shed real tears.”

Considering how much of Ouma’s character requires a deep understanding of the fact that he was not completely evil and not actually a horrible person, the fact that Himiko pretty clearly doesn’t believe there was even the slightest chance that he was telling the truth in Chapter 5 just…doesn’t really appeal to me from a shipping perspective. As part of my own personal preference, I just don’t really like the feeling of a dynamic where one character doesn’t ever really understand the other and thinks they were a horrible villain the whole time.

There’s also definitely the point that you brought up, about gay characters when it comes to these kinds of ships. Ouma is definitely, undeniably confirmed gay, and Himiko is at least open to fan interpretation and qualifies as what I would at least consider gay-coded. But it’s true that there’s no outright confirmation that Ouma was only interested in guys, and as Himiko definitely expresses interest in guys on multiple occasions, I would say it’d be perfectly plausible to headcanon her as bi or pan.

And while it’s certainly not confirmed that Ouma was only interested in guys, I do feel as though there’s at least room to read into him having a preference. When it comes to his interest in guys, he only uses phrases like “my beloved ___” with Saihara and Amami specifically—both of whom are guys. And rather than teasing Maki or Himiko, he asks Momota constantly, “Oh, Momota-chan, could it be that you’ve fallen for me?” These are phrases that he doesn’t ever use with the female cast, and in my own opinion, it just feels to me as though Ouma has much more of an interest in guys than girls.

What grabs my attention with Himiko and Ouma though is this: even though one of these characters is canonically confirmed to be gay and the other one can at least be read as such, I’ve seen many, many people in the fandom trying to deny that fact. Even though being gay is not only a fact about Ouma but also an essential, plot-related factor (because he would never have taken as much interest in Saihara as he did if he hadn’t fallen for him), I’ve seen many people since the game’s launch questioning whether he “really was in love with Saihara,” saying it felt very forced or random even though there were plenty of hints to it all the way from Chapter 2 and onward.

It reminds me quite a lot of people’s reactions to Juzo prior to the actual reveal about him being gay in dr3. Even though it was clearly foreshadowed and very noticeable hints that anyone could pick up on were dropped the whole time, many people wanted to deny it—or even ship Juzo with Chisa instead, even when it was very clear he didn’t feel that way about her. And being gay was so essential to Juzo’s motivations and character, just like it is with Ouma. Trying to gloss over the fact or ignore that there’s a canonically gay character when we so seldom get this kind of confirmation in canon, ever, just feels… Well, it’s not something I like very much.

This is all just a matter of my personal preference, once again. People can certainly ship these things if they’d like to! As long as there’s no gross or unhealthy basis for the ship, I don’t think it’s right to try and tell people to just stop shipping something, moreso if it’s something they clearly enjoy and are having fun with. Shipping is by and large a matter of people’s personal tastes and desire to see more development, interactions, etc. between certain characters, and I think if people want to take Himiko and Ouma’s interactions and expand upon them or read in a certain way, that’s perfectly fine!

But I do think it’s also true that it’s important to try and think critically about why we ship certain things or why certain ships seem “more plausible” than others. There were quite a few people who were willing to believe a “love confession” from “Ouma” (who wasn’t even actually Ouma, no less) that was mostly brought up for the same kind of comic relief as Monokuma joining the group in Chapter 5. However, I noticed considerably more people raising objections or questioning whether Ouma was “telling the truth” when he confessed in Chapter 4 that he “had fallen in love with Saihara-chan” even though he was speaking to an empty room where he had absolutely zero incentive to lie.

I feel as though it’s important to occasionally ask ourselves this: “Why do I want to ship these characters? What do I enjoy seeing the most in their interactions?” When provided with a canonically gay character or a gay-coded character, it’s important to try and evaluate whether we’re actually shipping those characters in non-gay ships for a certain reason, or if it’s just because it “seems cuter” or “more plausible.” And if it’s the latter, that’s a very dangerous mindset which can and does have real-world implications, because media is so full of the assumption that heterosexuality is the norm, and I just think it’s good to be careful of trying to fall into that same assumption.

Anyway, I really hope I didn’t offend anyone with this, because it’s not my intention at all. I’m not against other people enjoying this ship, and I can see why people would think it’s cute! It’s just not something I myself ship, and again anon, I can understand your feelings and your hesitation.

#ndrv3 #drv3 #new danganronpa v3 #kokichi ouma #himiko yumeno #ndrv3 spoilers //#my meta #okay to reblog #anonymous

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