#true love exists y’all

[leonsliga]

Mentally I’m here

[pussywiki]

One line in particular that has stuck in my brain aside from the obvious: Prapai’s “please don’t joke with me” after asking Sky what he meant. It’s so desperate but it’s also kinda vulnerable?? Like he wants Sky so bad but there’s something off about this and he needs to pause and the last thing he wants is for this to be some joke. Because that’s mostly what he’s gotten from Sky up until this point: teasing, sarcasm, just a lot of pushback and testing Pai’s dedication to him. He can’t read Sky’s mind and know that he’s falling just as hard, he’s just hoping against hope and just fucking “please don’t let this be another test, please don’t tease me in this way, please don’t push me away if I act on this, please let me love you how you deserve to be loved, how I NEED to love you, please please please”

[trkstrnd]

me: this fic looks incredible! it’s got everything, it’s got angst for my favorite character, life hangs in the balance, hurt comfort looks promising from the description! let’s look through the tags!

the tags: sex, pwp, omegaverse, mpreg, etc.

me:

[wintrwinchestr]

an overture of indulgence (joel miller x f!reader oneshot) 18+

summary: it's been a long time since you've seen joel, and some things have changed, but a lot has stayed the same. namely, how quickly he can still get you on his knees for him, ready to show him exactly just how much you like what has changed about him.

warnings: 18+, smut, post-outbreak, jackson joel, d/s relationship dynamics, pet names (baby, babygirl, sweetheart, sweet girl, etc), body worship, belly kink, talk of weight gain, belly riding, m/f masturbation, lil bit of humiliation kink, lil bit of edging, reader is an adult but age otherwise unspecified, reader is shorter than joel and has hair long enough to grab, let me know if i missed anything :)

word count: 4.3k

a/n: just fuckin outing myself left and right these days huh. idk what came over me with this one. started this late last night and here it is now. belly enjoyers rise!!!!!!! nice comments/reblogs appreciated if you enjoyed <3 you can't kink shame me bc i like getting bullied so now what. also i avoided daddy kink for once in my life please clap. i know i’m spoiling y’all this weekend don’t get used to it.

divider by @saradika

“...Joel?!” you shout, your leisurely walking pace quickly turning into a hurried jog as you leave Tommy behind, making a beeline toward the man you would swear on your life is Joel Miller. A small handful of years ago now, he was kind of your boyfriend, kind of not, kind of something else more complicated and unlabeled, because who can afford to put a label on anything in times like these?

Joel’s head turns in your direction at the sound of his name, and as soon as you spot that crooked scar across the bridge of his nose, you’re certain it’s him.

“Holy shit, I can’t believe it,” you half-cry, throwing your weight into him as you wrap him in a tight embrace. He’s much taller than you, but you still managed to knock him off his balance a little. He envelops your whole body in one of his signature, all-encompassing hugs, and it’s like no time has passed at all.

The two of you had ended whatever it was you had on good terms, no hard feelings or animosity shared between you. It was just hard to maintain any kind of relationship in a world like this, and trying to nurture romance in the Boston QZ was much like trying to grow a rose garden in toxic, radioactive soil. You can put as much care and effort and something like love into it as you have in you, but the circumstances will just never allow it to reach its full potential. The end of your “relationship” was mutual, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Especially when he had disappeared one day without so much as saying goodbye.

When you had stumbled upon Tommy and a group of patrollers in the snowy forest outside Jackson just earlier today, you were alone, tired, and losing hope that this rumored safe haven even existed at all. You had heard crackles through the radio in the QZ about the community, and even though it sounded too good to be true, what else did you have to lose anymore? After months of travel and survival and pain and hunger, you’d never been so happy to meet a bunch of strangers in the woods in your whole life. You didn’t hesitate to get on the back of Tommy’s horse, and let him lead you to the sanctuary they spoke of.

As he was giving you a tour, proudly showing off their electricity, running water, fresh food, and clean houses, you had started to look forward to what the future may bring, for the first time in a long time. You could never have imagined you’d ever run into Joel again, that this is where he had ended up, of all places. And now here the both of you are, bodies pressed as tightly together as possible, breathing in each other’s familiar scents and never wanting to let go again.

Joel is the first to break the embrace, grasping your head in his large hands and frantically searching your face for any sign that he could be dreaming, that fate hasn’t really brought you back together again after all.

“Jesus Christ, it’s really you,” he breathes, and you swear his voice breaks just a little bit as he presses his lips to your forehead, closing his eyes as he does.

When he blinks them open again, he meets Tommy’s gaze, who’s standing quietly a few yards back from where you’re having your sentimental reunion. Tommy gives an understanding nod, and gestures that he’ll be waiting inside the community’s dining hall, gathering that whatever this is happening between his brother and some girl he only just met, he shouldn’t interrupt. Joel is grateful for many things today, one of them being the rekindled bond he has with Tommy, the other being how you somehow miraculously found your way back to him.

Small groups of other Jackson residents follow Tommy into the dining hall shortly afterward, and as the sun begins to set behind the mountains, Joel realizes it must be about time for dinner to be served.

He detaches his lips from your forehead, brushing some of your hair away from your face as he takes you in again. “You poor thing, must be starvin’ I bet,” he wonders aloud, giving you a sympathetic look.

“Kinda always am, just as a rule, but yeah,” you reply, trying to make light of your situation. Though, Joel doesn’t seem to find the humor in it the way you do.

“Long as you stay here, ain’t ever gotta worry about that again, that’s for damn sure.” He runs his tongue across his lips as he finishes his sentence, already knowing that whatever meal they’re serving tonight, it’ll be some of the most delicious food he’s had in a long time. He suspects you’ll feel much the same. “C’mon, let’s get you inside. Get you warm and fed for once in your life.”

–

Your heart, your stomach, your soul, all feel full as you relax into the comfortable couch in the living room of Joel’s cozy home. He wouldn’t even entertain the idea of you staying in an empty house all by yourself tonight, insisting that if you’d like some company while you settle in, you were more than welcome to his. He had let you spend as long as you wanted to in his shower, and he didn’t mind if there was hardly any warm water left by the time you were done. He sure as hell wasn’t paying the bill, and you deserved to feel truly clean. He can remember clear as day how he felt after his first Jackson shower, like he had stripped off a layer of grime he hadn’t been able to scrub all the way clean in twenty years. He had gone to Maria to get you some clothes and underwear while you were bathing, and set them silently on the sink counter for you to put on whenever you were done.

And now here you sit, feeling full and clean and satisfied and comfortable and safe, watching Joel stoke the logs in his fireplace as it casts the whole room in a honey orange glow. You take a moment to admire him while he isn’t looking, and even in the dim and flickering lighting, you can see he’s just as handsome as he was the last time you saw him. He looks older, with more gray in his longer hair and meat on his bones, the latter trait likely due to years worth of the hearty cooking you both indulged in tonight. He looks… good like this.

“It really is nice to see you again, you know. You look…” you start, not being able to help the way your eyes wander to his soft lower belly, the way it pushes taut against his tucked-in flannel shirt and just barely spills over the edge of his jeans.

He turns his head away from the fire to face you. You’re not very subtle in your staring, and he knows what you’re referring to right away. He huffs a light chuckle, trying to brush off the way he thinks you’re poking fun at him.

“I know, I know,” he acknowledges, placing a hand on his stomach. “Been tryin’ to get Maria to give me some more patrol shifts, see if I can get some of the weight off. But hey, you try havin’ three square meals a day for the first time in twenty some odd years, see what it does to you, huh?” He pivots his attention back to the fireplace, and he seems to turn his body further away from you on purpose, so that you can’t see the round profile of his tummy as much.

“No! No, it, um… It suits you. I was gonna say you look good, actually.” You’re quick in your reply, trying to make it clear that you didn’t mean to offend him, without letting too much on. 

He scoffs. “C’mon, you don’t gotta flatter me, sweetheart. I know I don’t exactly look the way you remember–”

“Joel, will you stop?” you interrupt, your voice laced with exasperation. “I’m being serious. Do I look like I’m making fun of you?”

He cranes his neck to look back at where you’re perched on the couch, and gives you a once over. “Guess not… Look a lil’ like somethin’ else, though, if I'm bein’ honest,” he says with a teasing smirk. And there he is again, the same quick-witted Joel you remember from back in the QZ.

You choose to engage in his banter, just to see where he’s going with it. “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”

He shrugs, beginning to mindlessly poke at the firewood again. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you look like you might like it.”

He’s just kidding around with you, trying to rile you up, you’re sure. But when he gets silence in return instead of the sound of you jumping to defend yourself with another playful jab, he turns to face you once more, and is met with your stunned expression. 

“Oh…” Joel looks down at himself, then back to you again, just in time to catch your eyes flitting from his middle back up to his face. “What, you like ‘em big, sweetheart? ‘S that it?”

The truth is, you do, you always have. It was never a requirement, of course, as the guys you’d been with before Joel all had varying body types. But you’d be lying to yourself if you said that your eyes didn’t linger just a bit longer on guys with a little more to them, with wider arms and thicker legs and a softer middle. You’ve never admitted your preference to anyone before, and Joel calling you out on it now has your face running hot, skin feeling prickly as he sees through you like you’re made of glass.

“I-I don’t– I mean, I do, kinda, but not like that… Well, it is like that, I just mean–” You stumble over yourself, fearing you’ve revealed too much, wishing you could rewind the conversation and just tell him it was nice to see him again, plain and simple.

Joel lays the fire poker down on the granite ledge of the fireplace, approaching where you’re sitting and cupping the side of your face with his calloused hand. 

“Sh, sh, stop, baby. ‘S alright if you do, nothin’ to be ashamed of,” he comforts, and it takes all the willpower you have left not to let your eyes drift down to his stomach, so close you could kiss it, if he’d let you.

“It’s just… I missed you. I thought about you all the time, wondered what ever happened to you after you left. Didn’t even know if you were alive until today. I’m just happy to see you… doing so well. To see that you’re healthy, and everything.” You swallow hard, hoping you sound convincing enough that he’ll let this go, forget all about your little admission just now. But of course, Joel is as stubborn as he’s ever been, and he doesn’t plan on releasing you from his trap now that you’re ensnared in it. 

“That’s sweet, baby, ‘s real sweet,” Joel says, softly, stroking his thumb across your cheekbone as he speaks. “Thought about you too, all this time. Practically every day…” He rakes his eyes over you, noticing the way his touch has you starting to melt already, how you’re looking up at him with your wide, needy eyes. “Why don’t you show me just how much you missed me, hm? How much you love seein’ me healthy, as you put it.”

You’re stunned into silence once again, jaw slack and pupils wide as you search his gaze for proof that he’s just messing with you, making fun of you just to watch you squirm. But you don’t find any.

“O-okay,” you agree in a half-whisper.

Joel smiles down at you, satisfied. “All these years later, still just the sweetest thing, ain’t you? You still just as obedient, too?”

You nod without even thinking, words catching up with your instinctual response a second later. “Mhm, yeah, I am…” You had forgotten how easy it is to submit to him, how good it feels to let the hypnotizing tone of his voice carry you somewhere far away from yourself, when you need it the most. Whether it was after a shitty day of working for shittier rations in the QZ, or after a harsh trek in harsher weather to a forested oasis, Joel always knows how to make you feel like submission is your most natural state. 

“Good… Kneel for me please, sweetheart,” he commands, and you obey immediately, his hand slipping from your face as you slide from the couch onto the woven carpet beneath you. Like second nature, your hands automatically fold themselves on your lap, remembering how you were never to touch Joel until he permitted you to. He takes note of this, and praises you accordingly. “Look at that, didn’t even have to ask. Such a good girl.”

He’s so enamored with you, he almost forgets where he was going with this until he watches your eyes flash to the growing bulge in his jeans, then back up to him. “Not tonight, sweetheart. Was thinkin’ you could put that pretty mouth to use on somethin’ different this time, hm?”

You knit your brows together, not sure what he means, but he doesn’t let you wonder for long. Slowly, he starts to unbutton his flannel shirt, starting at the top and working his way down. He tosses it onto the ground, then pulls his undershirt off over his head, adding it to the other discarded clothing. Without the confines of his slightly-too-tight button-up, you can see how much he really has filled out. Everything about his upper body is just a little more plush, with petal pink stretch marks adorning the soft skin in various places. You want to make it your personal mission to kiss each and every one of them, commit their exact coordinates on his body to memory.

There's a deep scar, you notice, to the left of his belly button, that has almost successfully disguised itself as one of those pretty marks. It’s definitely new since you saw him last, and it looks like it hurt, especially with the evidence of how crudely it had been stitched back together.

“What happened?” you wonder aloud, worried eyes glued to the healed injury.

He has to peer over the curve of his belly to see what you’re looking at. “Long story. Happened on my way out here, after I left Boston. Nothin’ for you to worry about, sweet girl, hardly even hurt. Forget it’s even there, most of the time,” he answers, still with a dominant edge to his voice that does a mostly good job of convincing you it’s the truth.

“Can… Can I?” you ask, waiting to receive his permission before you move your hands from your lap. 

“Yeah, baby, go ahead,” Joel allows. 

You reach out a small hand to gently trace over the raised scar, then press your lips to it with your hands splayed out on either side of your head, just barely pressing into his belly. He releases a soft groan, cradling the back of your head with one of his hands, applying the lightest amount of pressure to let you know this is where he wants to keep you. 

“Why don’t you keep goin’, sweetheart? Gimme some more lovin’ like that, know you wanna,” he encourages, and you think you get the idea now, what it is he wanted to put your pretty mouth to use for.

With his explicit permission to continue, you don’t need telling twice. You move your face to hover just in front of his belly button, admiring the dense salt and pepper happy trail that sprouts from where his jeans push into his soft skin. You drag your tongue along the hair, nipping at the soft curve of where it disappears into the divot in his stomach. He makes a noise in response, half pained and half pleasured, but he doesn’t stop you. Just for good measure, you place a kiss to the little blushing mark where your teeth had scraped him.

Almost of their own volition, it seems, your hands begin to knead at his stomach as you make good on your promise to yourself to kiss every single one of his stretch marks. You allow your tongue to dart from your mouth on the last one, and Joel sucks in a breath.

“Oh, fuck. Forgot how good that wet lil’ mouth feels on me, sweetheart. Keep goin’,” he says, voice coming out strained. His fingers curl tightly into your hair, and he begins to maneuver your face around his belly. You lave your tongue over his skin as he does, slicking him with wet, sloppy kisses. “Yeah, baby, you fuckin’ worship it, show me how much you like me like this.”

It’s a little humiliating, but just enough that you like the feeling. You’re breathing hard and fast, letting out little whimpers as your fluttering cunt begins to soak your underwear. He brings your face to a stop at the most tantalizing part of him, the part that truly evidences how much more he’s allowed himself to indulge since settling in Jackson. The ample curve of flesh that just barely conceals the waistband of his jeans, the part you’ve wanted to get your mouth on since you first saw how it strained the lower buttons of his shirt. You latch onto it, massaging the skin around it as you use your teeth and tongue to suck a mark into him.

A growl rumbles from deep in his chest, and he curses under his breath. “Like it that much, huh? Fuck, naughty thing, look at you.”

You’re so fucking turned on, you’re shivering, rocking where you kneel and squeezing your thighs together in an attempt to get some kind of relief. You let one of your hands drift to the hard shape in Joel’s jeans, and it seems he’s enjoying this as much as you are. He spots your pathetic little squirms as you rut against nothing, and then he’s using his grip on your hair to pull you up from the floor.

“Got an idea. Up,” he commands roughly, and you detach your lips from his belly to obey his order. “Get these off, there we go.” He pulls down your sweatpants and underwear, helping you step out of them. “Christ, you’re soaked,” Joel teases, eyeing the sizable wet spot in your panties as he tosses them aside to join the other forgotten clothing. He reaches a hand toward the apex of your thighs, teasing your wet pussy and gathering some of your slick on two of his fingers. You let out a tiny yelp, but let him play with you, and then he’s bringing his fingers in front of his face and examining the sticky strings of your arousal when he spreads them apart. “All this just from lettin’ you worship all this, huh?” he taunts, patting his stomach once for emphasis. “Who’d’ve thought? Not that I’m complainin’...”

He quickly rids himself of his jeans and briefs, then reclines onto the couch with a quiet groan, stretching out his body along the length of it. Your mouth waters at the sight of his cock, hard and leaking as it bobs against his belly, his precum adding to the dampness still there from your tongue. “Come sit, sweetheart,” Joel says, softly, motioning with both of his hands for you to come closer.

You grip a hand onto the backrest of the couch to balance yourself while you move to straddle him, prepared to sink down onto his length for the first time in way too fucking long. “Uh uh, not there, baby,” he instructs, smirking when he sees how you hesitate in confusion. “Take a seat right here for me.” Again, he pats that most tempting area of his lower belly, and you just about fall apart at the sight of how his flesh ripples in the wake of it.

“Yeah, there you go, good girl,” he praises, both hands gripping your waist as he helps you settle your weight onto his soft abdomen.

“I dunno, don’t wanna hurt you–” you start, but he cuts you off swiftly.

“You won’t, baby. I’m a big man, ain’t I?” he teases, flashing you a devilish and knowing smile. “Go on, sweetheart, ride it.”

You inhale a shuddering breath, then place both of your hands on his shoulders to hold yourself up. You start an experimental buck into his belly, and that trail of dark hair tickles your clit so perfectly. It takes a few tries for you to get the positioning and pressure just right, and then you’re truly riding him, using his full stomach to get yourself off while he watches. 

“God, that’s good. Use it, baby. You love me bigger, love that I’ve been eatin’ so good, prove it to me, c’mon,” Joel goads, and it spurs you on to grind against him harder, faster, as incoherent mumbles and curses tumble from your lips.

“Love it, Joel, you look so good, fuck. So fucking–mmh–so big, makes me so… so–”

“I know it does, sweet girl, I know. Makes you fuckin’ soaked is what it does, god damn. You gonna get my belly all messy, hm? Gonna rub your lil’ cunt all over it, get me all fuckin’ wet?”

“Uh huh, yeah, gonna… I’m gonna–” you whine, eyes shutting tight as your hips pick up their pace. You move your hands from his shoulders to place them on his stomach instead, grabbing at handfuls of his tummy in an effort to create something more solid to rub yourself against. 

You’re already embarrassingly close, the humiliating edge to your earlier worship having gotten you most of the way there on its own. So swollen and sensitive it almost hurts, you won’t need much more to reach your high.

“Not without me, you ain’t. Gonna be right there with ya. You remember how we used to do it?” Joel asks, as if you could ever forget. He’s referring to your many late nights, early mornings, in his bed or in a back alley or wherever in the QZ, where he liked to make sure you both finished at the same time. You’d always be the first one to reach the edge, because he’d focus all his attention on getting you there before him, just to make you wait. It was never something punishing, just something he liked to do as an extra bit of control and dominance, and he knew it always made your orgasms that much more powerful and satisfying when he would finally permit you to let go.

With your eyes closed, so focused on your own pleasure, you hadn’t noticed that he had reached behind you to start fisting his cock some time ago. But you can hear it now, the wet schlick of his hand moving up and down his shaft as he works himself. “Hold it for me, sweetheart, I know you can. Keep rubbin’ your pretty pussy against me, jus’ like that, almost there…”

You mewl, screwing your face up as you force yourself to slow down your thrusts, muscles tense as you try to keep your orgasm at bay for as long as you can. 

Thankfully, he must be worked up enough from seeing you fall apart for him so easily for the first time in so long, that his permission comes just a few minutes later.

“Come for me, babygirl, soak my fuckin’ belly, c’mon,” Joel growls, and you fall forward immediately, twitching and spasming and crying out into the soft muscle of his shoulder as you ride out the shuddering shocks of your orgasm. He groans next to your ear as he comes, and you can feel the warm ropes of his own release as some of them land on your lower back. You’re both wet, heaving messes, as you embrace each other for the second time today and work on catching your breath.

So exhausted from the day you had, you must’ve fallen asleep against his chest as you laid there, because then you’re being woken up by the dull scratch of his fingertips against your scalp and his familiar voice working its way through the thick fog that clouds your tired brain. 

“You alright, baby?” he asks, and you can hear that he’s smiling, amused at this sleepy little thing he’s got clinging to him.

“Mhm, jus’ tired,” you answer, a barely-there mumble of a sentence.

“I’ll bet… You wanna get cleaned up? Get all tucked into bed?”

You shake your head against his neck, and he chuckles.

“No? Whatcha wanna do then, hm?”

“Jus’ lay here. Missed you. Don’t wanna let… go…” 

Your sentence drifts off into silence before the temptation of sleep allows you to finish it, but Joel gets the idea. He smiles to himself, kissing the top of your head, and hugs you closer. Both of you are still sticky and damp, but satisfied. And together again. And that’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

So he agrees, and you stay like that for the rest of the night. Joel doesn’t worry about whether or not he remembered to set his alarm clock for his extra patrol shift the next morning, or if he’ll even hear it all the way from his bedroom upstairs, because it doesn’t matter anyway. He has you, and you made it very clear tonight just how much you like him exactly the way he is. 

Maybe, your rose garden can finally begin to bloom, now that the pair of you have somewhere safe and comfortable and healthy to try your hand at nurturing it again.

tag list: @beefrobeefcal @iamasaddie @rebel-held @dilfgestivo @zliteraturehoe @joeldjarin @kamcrazy123 @hellowoolf @rexamongthestars @stevie75 @luxurychristmaspudding @noisynightmarepoetry @mewantpeepaw @pedritoferg (if your name is crossed out, it won’t let me tag you!!)

[bethereasonyousucceed444]

MY LONG AWAITED SUCCESS STORY PLUS RANT/YALL NEED THIS STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND READ

First things first

I’m tired of being nice

I have took time out of MY day to help you guys

EVERY DAY

I have given tips methods

Advice answered questions

Replied to countless amounts of DMs

Etc etc I’m not providing false hope here I AM trying to help you guys

I’m getting so many different suggestions and asks

Let me say this

STOP

from now on

No more questions

If it’s urgent

Like you really wanna know something

DM me

I WILL respond

No more questions asking how to enter the void

My account is literally talking about HOW TO ENTER THE VOID STATE

Are instructions not clear?????

Get off your butt and fucking do it!!!!

Stop procrastinating stop being lazy stop asking questions you spreads know the answers to

And for the love of God

STOP ASKING ME TO ENTER FOR YOU!!!!!!!!!

I’m doing what I can to help you all manifest

But it’s YOUR job to make it happen

Y’all used my kindness against me and it’s pissing me off I’m tired of people not even asking anymore

Just begging me

I AM NOT A MAGICIAN

I was literally YOU

not too long ago

I am a nice person but I am at my limits

Stop repeating questions

Look at my page for the answers you need

Stop asking me to enter for you

If it’s not happening

DM me for ADVICE

I used to be the kid that got asked by others to do their homework for them

If I didn’t put my foot down

Y’all were gonna drive me insane

Literally

I love y’all but stop depending on me

Just ask

For advice

But stop treating me like a Genie

And I manifested for someone and it doesn’t work

Then what

Am I a liar now???

Am I fake??

Like are you serious

Bruh I’m serious when I say

I’ve had enough

Read this story to see how YOU CAN ALSO

Transform your life

I literally went from

TRIGGER WARNING ⚠️

I went from slitting my own wrists and going in my closet trying to hang myself EVERY FUCKING NIGHT

I used to stare in the mirror

Crying about how my body looked

I used to go to school scared because I was getting abused by guys there and bullied by girls

All my friends turned their backs on me and I literally said

FUCK IT

I don’t deserve this fucking life so you know what I did????

I changed it

It’s so easy it’s insane

I too over complicated it

I too was desperate

But your desires are yours

They just are

Ignore them MF negative thoughts

Matter of a fact don’t even call it that

You are giving your “intrusive” thoughts power by saying they are negative

Don’t label them as intrusive thoughts

THEY DO NOT EXIST

THEY WILL NEVER MANIFEST

And I’m not just saying that it’s true

It’s soooo fucking true

By labeling them as “intrusive” or “negative” you’re giving them power

To take over and control your life

When this is not what you want

Don’t fear your own head

Bitch it’s YOUR BRAIN

It can’t NOT listen to you

Change your goddamn assumptions

You are a bad bitch you’re hot beautiful

You’re THAT bitch

Bad bitches don’t beg we make shit happen

Get off your cute ass and go get your dream fucking life

Bitch you can have it all

You can marry Shawn Mendez

Be the sexiest model on the planet (but you’re only 5’3) OK ANDDDDD

Marissa Rose is the first 4’11 runway model

You mean to tell me it’s not possible???

They have plus size models

Shirt models

Models with tig ol biddies

Models with tattoos models with piercings models with scars etc

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE

You can get a call back from that job

Better yet fuck 9 to 5s

Bitch YOU ARE RICH

You are literally Jeff Bezos

Don’t manifest “small shit” cuz if you can get an apartment and a job

You can also manifest $100 million and 2500 square feet mansion

You can have superpowers

You can be a master manifestor

You can become a celebrity and overnight

You can meet your favorite celebrities at awards shows

You can sit next to Ice Spice at the Grammys

EVEN SHE MANIFESTED HER DREAM LIFE

There’s proof in her old tweets and in your interviews

YOU CAN HAVE HARRY STYLES TICKETS FOR WHENEVER HE DECIDES TO DROP AN ALBUM

YOU CAN BE THE NEXT BEYONCÉ

YOU CAN MEET OR EVEN PERFORM WITH TAYLOR SWIFT

YOU CAN HAVE ALL THE MONEY YOU WANT

YOU CAN SHIFT TO ANOTHER REALITY AND MEET MICHAEL JACKSON

YOU CAN HAVE THE SINGING VOICE OF AALIYAH OR MF MARIAH CAREY

YOU CAN MANIFEST THAT YOUR DOG NEVER DIED OR THAT

YOUR EX STILL MISSES YOU

KANYE WEST MANIFESTED KIM K

TOM HOLLAND MANIFESTED ZENDAYA

YOU MEAN TO TELL ME YOU CANT HAVE

MICHAEL B JORDAN WAITING ON YOU HAND AND FOOT????

YOU CAN ENTER THE VOID MANIFEST YOUR Sp

AND WAKE UP NEXT TO YOUR CRUSH

YOU CAN MANIFEST BEING IMMUNE TO BAD SHIT BEING A GODDESS BEING SO BEAUTIFUL THAT PEOPLE FORGET MEGAN FOX EXISTS

YOU CAN MANIFEST LOOKING LIKE MARILYN MONROE

OR MADISON BEER

YOU CAN MANIFEST TALENT

BITCH ITS ALL POSSIBLE

You OWN THIS SHIT THIS IS YOUR LIFE BOO

Go fucking get it!!!!!!!

SUCCESS STORY

I was tired of own shit so I used the method that I created

I already posted it

Go read it

Here’s what I manifested

1. SP

I manifested a girlfriend because I’m bisexual asf

And I created her on my phone

Just write if list of what she looks and acts like

I manifested my dream career

I manifested platonic SPs

As in friendships

Money

A strong intuition

More knowledge

A better self concept

Immunity

The ability to hypnotize with my eyes(OK I HAVENT TESTED THIS OUT BUT IM EXCITED TO)

Meeting a celebrity

Can’t say who but I manifested it for the future

I even got pets now!!! A puppy two kittens and two snakes!!

I manifested lots of cool talents

I improved my dancing!!!!!!

I was insecure about my voice

So I changed it

Deadass I sound kinda sexy now

I wanted a whispery ass voice😭😭

So I got oneeee

I also manifested a LOT of personal stuff that I won’t share

Unfortunately I’m SUPER protective of my soul and just overall self

And I’m not posting a face reveal

This might seem surprising to most

My passive aggressive behavior but this is literally how I am daily

I really am nice but y’all just make me ANXIOUS

But still

I love you darlings soooo much

Like for real

But please just pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Don’t make me your wish granter

Make your own wishes come true

If it’s cool with y’all

I’ll manifest tonight

That entering the void will be easy for you guys

But you HAVE to do it yourself I can only guide you

You got this babe

If you got offended it’s working

That means you needed this

Take this tough love and go use it for good

I better see some goddamn success stories this month or we gon fight

(Not literally that’s just my humor talking)

Love you bitches

Now go meditate before I appear under your bed tonight and yank yo shit

Love youuuu💗💗💗💗💗

[livmadart]

If Conan was isekai'd into Dunmeshi, would the characters think he's a half foot?

Pffffft i would love to drop conan into dungeon meshi he would be so upset that magic exists. To the second anon: so true i basically drew Extremely Long Conan for chilchuck heheheheh

Thank y’all for your asks! I believe @meitantei-shitpost posted something similar to this :)

[ironunderstands]

Rant about how yall perceive Dr. Ratio bc I’m tired

I really wish people would stop projecting their hatred of debate bros and egotistical college students onto Dr. Ratio. Like yeah, they suck we know we are tired but please he is not a frat boy trying to convince you that 12$ being minimum wage is a good thing actually. The funny thing is that most of Ratio’s haters would probably have him agree with them on a lot of topics, but the problem is people don’t use their brain, hear “ratio is racist” and run with it without ever questioning if it’s true or makes sense for his character. Y’all cannot handle a character being kind but not nice, and honestly I’m so happy ratio isn’t a woman in canon bc oh my lord the misogyny that would happen if he was.

And honestly, I can’t even blame them considering how OOC half of Ratios “fans” write him.

Like please the next time I get hit with stoic, emotionless, unempathetic, uncaring, self-centered, narcissistic asshole (and even racist slaveowner ew god kill it with fire) ratio FROM HIS “FANS” I’m done. Stop, please get your grubby hands off of him. I’d rather read 10 dead dove fics in a row than be subjected to the horrors that is fanon Ratio. Especially mfs who write him this way in Aventio, I despise how a genuinely loving ship dynamic got warped into “toxic yaoi” bc people can’t read and/or be normal about mlm ships ever. I’m genuinely begging for a new popular gay ship to exist so all the weirdos can go run to that one and I can enjoy Aventio in peace.

To everyone who writes him correctly, thank you I love you, begging for more wholesome Aventio and Ratio content in general pls it’s the closest to canon (if you care ab that) I beg

[bless-my-demons]

Redamancy: Chapter Twenty-Seven

Series Summary: What happens when your soulmate is a vampire that struggles to maintain a diet of trying not to kill you? Common sense says run for the hills, nothing is worth your life - but my heart is whispering why not, what’s there to lose?

Warnings: Oh god the FLUFF

Notes: I did this one a little different, I tried sort of a true dual POV and it’s got me fucked up y’all-goddamn. Don’t ask me where the fuck this came from because I have no thoughts, head fucking empty. I just - I can’t, just read it.

Word Count: 1287

Series Masterlist

• March 28th, 2006 • Forks HS •

Reader

I give up.

Striding from my locker, I interrupt Jasper and his conversation with Alice, pushing him towards the familiar small alcove below the stairs.

I breathe heavily, working up the nerve to ask him what’s been on my mind for an ungodly amount of time. Fuck me, I just miss him so damn much.

“Can I kiss you?” I’m weak, weak for needing him so badly after such a short amount of time, I can’t even look anywhere else than the middle of his chest as I make my request.

He surges forward after a heavy beat of silence once I finish my question, he cages me against the wall, “Be mine.”

His words snatch the oxygen from my body, I glance up to his eyes, “What?”

“Come over this weekend,” his gaze is intense - staring into my very soul, “Let me apologize for the last six months. Give me a shot, darlin’.”

“Okay-” I don’t even finish my answer before he moves to grant my wish.

Oh god.

His lips lay themselves upon mine and I swear time stops. It’s a cliche, but everything else in my life no longer exists aside from his lips on mine. Cold and firm, but gentle and steady. A perfect match, non-dominating or in a hurry, but taking his time. As if he were memorizing the pressure, the taste, the way my own lips moved against his.

As if he were coaxing my soul out into the open, to bask in the warm sun that is his love.

Our mouths slotted perfectly together, familiar, the way my body clicked with his. My arms wind themselves around his neck and he kisses me deeper, more - I need more. Two magnets drawn together, two pieces of torn cloth restitched to be whole again, two halves meant to find their place in each other. I move, tilting my head and he responds in kind, an equal in every way despite our differing mortality.

I almost didn’t get this. This-this summation of feelings and butterflies an-and everything between us that’s built up. The lead weight in my stomach from this realization threatens to yank me from the cloud nine his kiss firmly perched me on.

Tears, fat and heavy roll down my cheeks as I grip his shirt desperately and he pulls away just far enough to inspect my face.

“Why are you crying, sweet girl?”

“I never… I never thought I’d get the chance…” My eyes remain closed, unable to meet his gaze.

“To what?” I can hear the crinkle in his brow just from his voice.

“To kiss you again.”

I hear his sharp intake of breath and I know my words cut deep.

I open my eyes, “You left me and it’s all I’ve ever thought about. I-I-”

“Darlin’,” his turn for his eyes to flutter closed, “I’ve regretted every day since that night. I regret my lapse in control, I regret not having a better grip on myself, to handle these urges.”

“Can you?” My lips ghost over his as I whisper my question, the addiction having taken root. “Can you handle it now?”

A shuddering breath exits his mouth and his eyes snap open, a rare display of my effect on the vampire. “No.”

The answer zaps through me, but he stops me before I could pull away. “No? Jasper-“

“You-I-“ a growl pushes to the surface, giving away his flustered state. “I can’t fucking think for god’s sake.”

Jasper

Fuck me, her mouth is pure sin.

I could lose myself in those lips and never care about resurfacing ever again. Everything she does, from how she tilts her chin to welcome me further, to how her body yields to mine and forms against me, it’s heaven. The burning in my throat is secondary to the pure bliss her kiss envelopes me with.

Not to mention her fucking emotions.

Need, happiness, hunger, relief, contentment. They just keep coming, one after the other and I swear it inflates my chest with a happiness of my own, like a thousand butterflies trapped inside the cage of my ribs.

Love.

It feels like two ribbons entwining, dancing in sync, twisting in ways that create a beautiful tangled mess not soon to be unwound.

Love?

This one is different, I’ve felt love before - it’s shines from Esme’s face on a daily basis, it seeps from the smile lines around Carlisle’s mouth, and it passes through me with every one of Emmett’s hugs. But this? This love? This love is flowing straight from her heart into mine, breathing life into something long cold and dead. This love is meant only for me, only to be shared between mates, this kind of love is meant to be secreted away and only examined in moments of vulnerability between two like souls.

I love her and she loves me.

The thought rocks me to my core and I cup the back of her head as she leans back a little, allowing me to deepen the kiss.

A wetness begins to trickle down her cheeks and it startles me from the trance of her delicious mouth, tears?

I pull back far enough to catch the tear tracks from her tightly closed lids, “Why are you crying, sweet girl?”

“I never… I never thought I’d get the chance…” She trails off, still hiding those gorgeous eyes from me.

“To what?” I furrow my brow, not quite following.

“To kiss you again.”

I inhale quickly to try and soften the blow her words deal straight to my chest. She’s yearned for this moment for months, just like I have.

She finally opens her eyes, “You left me and it’s all I’ve ever thought about. I-I-”

“Darlin’,” it’s my turn for my eyes to flutter closed, “I’ve regretted every day since that night. I regret my lapse in control, I regret not having a better grip on myself, to handle these urges.”

“Can you?” Her lips ghost over my own as she whispers her question, stealing the very thoughts from my brain. “Can you handle it now?”

I exhale a shuddering breath before my eyes snap open, “No.”

“No? Jasper-“

“You-I-“ a growl erupts before I could stop it, frustration at my own thoughts bubbling up. “I can’t fucking think for god’s sake.”

Will this girl ever learn that she controls me? That I bend to her? She has me wrapped securely around her delicate little pinky and she has no idea.

“I need to hunt before this weekend, but I will pick you up Saturday morning at your house.” I promise her, my nose gently rubbing against hers in a soothing motion.

“Okay.” Her breathless reply damn-near brings me to my knees.

“Darlin’?” I question her, slightly amused.

“Hmm?” Her eyes are closed, her emotions are just emanating absolute bliss.

“We still have half a school day to get through.” I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince, her or myself.

“I’m not sure you can convince me to go.” Fuck.

“Darlin’, you gotta help me out here.” I scratch the base of her skull lightly to get her attention and it was definitely the wrong thing to do, her grip tightens on my shirt and her bliss burns a little heavier, almost suffocating me.

“Now why would I do that when I could just kiss you again?” Her eyes crack open, but I’m already in motion.

How could I argue with logic like that? My lips are on hers again before that beautiful pink mouth could part even a fraction.

Love, oh I could get used to this.

Next

Taglist Part 1:

@aoi-targaryen @min-jianhyung @pbbsl @timelordhunterandmysterysolver @sheerangermany @clearwater-hoe @Blackbluerose666 @ivy-plays @random-human02 @delightfulbluebirdstarlight @steh-lar-uh-nuhs @gaymazinglula @l3ejm @angelfuzzy2 @losa12308 @thekinkpopstandsforkrackheads @flyawayprincess @ropickle @catbusloki @deviat3dsn0wf0x @lovesanimals0000 @unrevived @h-naec @cutesnakemum @zudooms @itsmytimetoodream @stinkii-boii @acoolnight @anothercoffeeblogx @irishblend10 @from-now-on-im-switzerland @kyraslife2 @naolvshan @kiiwiigii @rosedpetal @kiaraandrea @foolsgoldxo @heartfilia01 @azuredgalaxies @geekysimmerthings @graciereads @ramen-girl-2424 @0hmydekiru @creeqvealley @cherriebat @whichwitchisthebitch @dragon-rider-with-a-book @secretfairytailpetscookie @psychobitchsthings

[farfromstrange]

Interview With The Vampire | Vampire!Matt Murdock x F!Reader

-> Main Masterlist

Pairing: Vampire!Matt Murdock x F!Reader (she/her)

Summary: You are the first journalist to interview Hell’s Kitchen’s resident vampire vigilante after he requested you personally to tell his story. He’s offering you a way out of your miserable job—to make your voice be heard. You’re desperate and curious, so you decide to take the risk. Most people only know him as Daredevil, but you are about to learn who’s really behind the mask. How hard can it possibly be? As it turns out, interviewing a vampire is a lot more complex than you expected it to be, and Matthew Michael Murdock has set his mind on ruining you for any other man to come.

Warnings: SMUT (18+ MINORS DNI), alternative universe, blood play, marking, scent kink, slight Dom!Matt, unprotected p in v, oral f!receiving, biting, vampirism, angst, religious imagery & symbolism, Catholic guilt, mentions of violence, allusions to suicidal thoughts, lots of plot, age gap

Word Count: 12.2k (this is a beast)

Other Characters: Vampire!Elektra (mentioned), Ben Urich (mentioned)

A/n: I finally got this one edited. This is a beast, y’all! I drew inspiration from Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire, but particularly the 2022 AMC series (I fell in love with it then and there), but it’s not based on it, so I just played around with the idea and this came out. It’s a lot, but it wasn’t enough for a full-blown series, so you’re getting a big ass One Shot instead. I used my usual Smut tag list, but since this is slightly Dead Dove Do Not Eat, heed the warnings and proceed with care! Don't read it if you don't want to. Anyway, I hope you like it!

Read Me On AO3!

The sun has long set over the Big Apple. Artificial neon, cars, and ceiling lights burning in the highrises along the riverfront cancel out the darkness that has befallen the country’s east. Noise melts into a flood that rolls over people’s senses, but most in New York City have grown numb to the city that never sleeps. 

Sirens follow cacophonies of screams. Teenagers get into clubs with their fake IDs, adults get drunk in bars or go to work the night shift at their underpaid jobs, and the other half cry themselves to sleep, knowing they will have to get up in the morning and go through the same hell all over again. 

Life has become a miserable existence, and it leaves human beings wondering, ‘How much longer do we have to endure this before we all finally drop dead?’

The system fails them. The law fails to protect them. All they can do is lie down and wait to die. And they will die sooner or later. That’s inevitable. 

In Hell’s Kitchen, in a penthouse with a view of the Hudson through colored windows that gloss over during the day and show the city throughout the night, resides someone who most of the city only knows by an alias—Daredevil. 

If anyone crosses him, he will suck them dry. It’s not a metaphor, I’m afraid; his reputation precedes him. Criminals fear the red eyes that come with fists and a sharp set of teeth that will surely run them into the ground. The rest of the city feels a little safer with him, but so far, no one has dared to question his nature. 

Fear is known to work as a paralytic. And this man living in the penthouse by the Hudson is the personification of what one might consider fear-inducing. Without the fear of others, he would not be thriving. 

An apex predator like him lives for the thrill of the kill. When the adrenaline spikes, it makes the prey start running and the blood taste so much sweeter. It is to a creature of his kind what a good glass of century-old red wine would be to a human being; he savors every last drop of it.

Two years out of your Master’s degree at Columbia University, you have become one of those hard-working adults who fall into bed later than they should, and you lie awake at night, wondering how much longer you have to exist before you can live.

You interned at the Bulletin; you ran the true crime and mystery column for over a year before the newspaper shut down. A billionaire from downtown Manhattan bought it to start his own magazine, and you were the only employee he didn’t fire. Instead of relying on your top-tier education and experience though, he has banned you to the lifestyle and beauty column. He’s a beast if you have ever seen one. 

On a Monday in June then, after the sun has risen and is now falling again, you find an envelope on your desk. You glide your fingers over the fancy paper. The letters are written in handwriting that resembles the old letters from the 18th century you had the pleasure of using as research material for your Bachelor’s thesis.

Your heart skips a beat. Could it be…

It is no secret that vampires exist.

Over two decades ago, scientists published papers on the existence of blood-sucking creatures after years of valuable research, and now governments around the world have set out to burn the inhuman species out before they can cause any more damage. Vampirism though is older than humanity itself and unless law enforcement has evidence of homicide, vampires have the right to exist amongst humans. 

They are excellent at hiding their true nature, that much is true. The lore that has been passed down since the beginning of time is only partly true. They know how to adapt and rise from the ashes like elegant phoenixes. The misconceptions surrounding their existence stem from fiction, horror, and fear, but they persist. 

And a rule has been established in society ever since the truth was revealed: don’t talk about vampires! 

Don’t talk about them unless it’s in a fictional context. Don’t put your research out there. Don’t fraternize with them. Don’t risk becoming prey. Don’t be fascinated by them, and God forbid, don’t you dare write articles about them for the public records. If you want to know about vampires, you have to dig, and you have to do so quietly or society will deem you crazy and a freak. 

The worst thing to be is not a flying android or a super soldier with a shield; the worst thing you can be, in this day and age, is a vampire. 

You were a curious child who turned into an even more curious adult. At times even a bitter one because she couldn’t get the answers she yearned for and had to do it herself. So, of course, the We Don’t Talk About Vampires rule came across as rather absurd, learning about it back when you were merely a teen. 

You started researching, and you found out more than you thought you would—more than you thought you could. You wanted to cover the issue in the Bulletin back when you still worked there, but since humans were raised to fear the very mention of vampires in the real world, no longer romanticizing the concept but rather running from it, the truth shall remain hidden. Again, that seemed absurd, but you had to accept it to get ahead. 

You kept researching to the point you convinced yourself you could be one of them if you tried. You felt like you understood them, but nothing could ever fully answer all of your questions to the point it felt truthful. Honest. Real. 

Growing up, everyone told you dead things aren’t supposed to walk. They aren’t supposed to breathe and exist among the living. They are cruel, and vampires are killers that leave trails of bodies the government is hiding from us. Greediness exceeds common sense. The human mind tends to get sick and twisted, and those who don’t fit in hardly ever stand a chance.

Hell’s Kitchen is particularly quiet on the issue. Rumor has it that the vigilante chasing criminals at night and leaving the worst of them dry at the shore of the Hudson while, at the same time, surrendering those he deems worthy of rehabilitation to the authorities, is one of those vampires. 

They call him Daredevil; the savior of innocents and the downfall of the vile. Only a handful of people know who he is. The truth is caught in a spider web of lies, unable to come out unless someone were to tell his story for the world to hear. 

That Monday in June when you open the mysterious envelope on your desk, everything changes. 

He addressed you personally. Your name resembles a masterpiece, the letters swirling at the edges. 

You don’t know me, but I know you.

It’s strange to read your name out of the mouth of a stranger.

I must admit, Miss, I’m a big fan of your writing. And I’m not talking about the lifestyle and beauty column Mr. Doherty of the ‘Silver Lining’ has confined you to.

No, I am a big fan of the work you used to do for the New York Bulletin. I remember your name headlining many articles on crime here in Hell’s Kitchen—a column my late friend Ben Urich used to call his home.  

It’s a shame that the paper was shut down. I tried to prevent it, but the disappearance of half of humanity and Wilson Fisk’s irreparable damage to the city’s foundation tied my hands. 

The token female journalist reporting on unsolicited beauty advice and lifestyle choices no one is going to follow in the days of social media and fake marketing. It must be frustrating, right? Not having a story to tell. Not getting recognized for your impeccable talent. The Bulletin gave you a platform, but Mr. Doherty and his goons took that away from you.

What I’m asking myself is, are you satisfied? You were probably imagining a different future for yourself. A woman of your caliber must want to be more than a mere object used to make a bottomless magazine look better on the market. 

Excuse my overstepping. I read one of your essays on the magical and the mythic—lore versus reality—the other day, and it inspired me. My life has been taking quite a few turns lately, so I required some new… let’s call it insight. 

You don’t know me, but I am one of those creatures you are fascinated by. I’m the kind of creature people have been telling you not to write about because the weak minds of the public would not receive it well. The Catholics, the church, the fragile and fearful human beings that can’t imagine anything in fiction being real and want to remain the superior species—trust me, I know what it feels like to be backed into a corner. To be abandoned. To be underestimated. Not quite like you, I admit, but I have a few years of experience in and with this world to show for myself. 

I imagine you’re tired of your position. I imagine you’re dissatisfied with human idiocy. You crave answers to your questions. Questions you have been asking yourself ever since college failed to answer them. My kind is being censored—partly for good reason—but that doesn’t sit right with you, does it? To live life in a monotone line with no clear way out of this boring rhythm you have had to fall into? 

I can offer you a different path. A story. Answers to your questions. And the unfiltered truth of a 242-year-old man. 

You are going to find a card with my address attached to this letter. I can assure you, sweetheart, we both want the same thing. I will wash your hands if you wash mine. Think about it, and come find me when you have made your decision. Preferably after the sun has set. 

Yours sincerely,

M.

The paper crumbles in your hands, but only at the corners. Your eyes are glued to the lost drops of ink, the blue blood of an old fountain pen caving under too much pressure. 

He chose his words carefully. Every paragraph circles around your head. You breathe in, and it suddenly feels as though the whiff of the unknown is an inhalable drug, twisting your brain inside out. 

The pull threatens to submerge you in a stormy ocean. You’re flailing your arms around helplessly, but there is nothing for you to hold onto. All buoys have drifted into oblivion, leaving a sea of utter emptiness behind, and in the midst of it, there you are, drowning.

In a moment of clarity, you fold the letter back down on the desk. It lands with a thud, and you look around frantically, checking if anyone is watching you. They aren’t. 

M. That’s all he’s giving you. And the fact he is over two hundred years old proves the rumors to be true. He’s standing by it, but only to you. He wants to reveal himself to you, show you his true face for a story, but he’s a vampire. 

You’re alone. You can wash his hands, but is just showing up enough for him? You don’t even know him. 

You’re in trouble. This time though, you didn’t even do anything. You did your job, and he caught an interest in you. How does that work? 

Your heart skips another beat. It should not, but it does. The danger is exciting. It shouldn't be exciting. You hate what your body is doing, but how can you make it stop? You can’t. You can’t do anything but take it.

This stranger has got you in a chokehold, but in his hands, you might as well surrender to your certain demise. You don’t consider vampires inherently evil, but there is a reason people warn you not to walk alone at night in Hell’s Kitchen. He’s dangerous, no matter his nature, and he is not supposed to lure you in the way he does.

But you’re a curious kitten, and he is offering you the holy grail of answers to questions you have been grappling with for years. He hit the nail right on the head. And it doesn’t even scare you how well he knows you. 

This is a gold mine. Realistically speaking, telling a vampire’s story could make or break your career as a journalist. If you do it for the magazine, you’re done before you can even bring your words to print, but if you do it individually and you do it well, people will certainly eat it up. The question is just, are you going to play your entire life safe, conforming to your boss’s view of you until you get the freedom you crave, or are you going to take the risk and fly? 

The answer is as clear as day, but it takes you a moment to process. It’s as though someone is in your head, steering you in the direction of whoever this M is. Daredevil. This vampire who wants you to interview him, and for what? That’s still an open question you don’t have the answer to. But you do know what to do.

You scramble for your laptop, your notepad, and the letter in the envelope. The clock strikes four. You have another two hours on the clock, but you can’t be bothered to stay. 

Upon hearing the sound of your shoes hurriedly scraping against the linoleum floors, one of your colleagues turns in her chair. “Where are you going?” she asks.

“I, uh, have somewhere to be,” you tell her as you brush past her.

“What, now?”

“Yeah. I forgot I had an appointment.”

“What about Mr. Doherty?”

You stop on your way out, looking back over your shoulder. “If everything works out,” you say, glancing through the window to his office at the other end of the hall, “He’ll have my letter of resignation by the end of the week.”

She gasps softly. “You’re quitting?” her voice is barely above a whisper.

Almost sinisterly, you chuckle. “That’s the plan, yeah.”

“But—”

“Tell your daughter Happy Birthday from me. I gotta go.”

Your steps echo for minutes still, but you are long gone with the wind.

Silver linings are considered an advantage that comes from an unpleasant situation. The name has proven to be entirely unfit for the magazine that replaced a big piece of Hell’s Kitchen’s history. The Bulletin had cultural value as much as it was laden with decades of the city’s stories told to the average person. 

Wilson Fisk was the dynamite that sent New York alight. The Bulletin’s destruction was mere collateral damage in the fight to get the city back on track. You have had so many reasons to leave presented to you, yet you never took them. If you had, maybe you wouldn’t be here, making bad decisions on what started as just another Monday in June. 

The fact is though, you didn’t leave, and you are here now. Facts are what matter. They count. Your hypothetical past, present, and future have no place in this reality because you can’t travel back or forward in time. Vampires may exist, and the Avengers time-traveled to save the world, but things aren’t quite as easy once you look at the bigger picture. You are not a superhero, you’re just a journalist chasing the kind of story that will finally make her voice be heard. 

You know that Ben Urich, at least, would be proud of you.

His address weighs heavy on the small card you pulled out of the envelope earlier that evening. You passed it on to the cab driver, and he began to navigate the dark streets of Hell’s Kitchen. The luxury condominiums in this part of the city can be counted on one hand. You know exactly when you’re there. 

The sun has once again set over New York City. You’re wide awake, not quite sure though if you’re ready to face what you are walking blindly into. Even your driver refuses to take you past a certain point, and that is how you know that you’re not dreaming. This is real, and it’s supposed to be terrifying. 

How come you’re not scared then?

You slip twenty dollars to the cab driver, then climb out of the backseat. The salty air from the Hudson River a few blocks down wafts around your sensitive nose. In the distance, you can hear waves crashing into the docks as the wind picks up in speed. The boats must be moving wildly by now, swaying from side to side and possibly even making the fish in the depths of the water seasick. You would be if you were them. 

With every step, you grow closer to your target. On second thought, maybe you should have brought more than just a pathetic bottle of pepper spray and your precious laptop. You could have brought your grandfather’s cassette recorder, at least that would leave a mark if you hit someone over the head with it. 

Do vampires get concussions? That is another question you can add to the seemingly endless list in your mind. It’s a confusing place as of late, and the weird sense that someone is playing with the controls won’t leave you alone. Either you are overthinking, or you are worse off than you originally thought. 

The apartment complex the card directs you to stretches high above you. You look up, seeing not a single light on. That’s odd, you think, but then again, you are meeting with the city’s most notorious man. If he is who everyone says he is, and if the rumors are even true, that is. 

As you are about to approach the entrance, your fingertips start to burn. A gasp escapes past your lips. Staring down, the cubical piece of paper goes up in flames. You are mere feet from the door, nowhere near close to an open source of fire, and the card starts to burn like a wildfire. 

You pull back, your heart hammering against your ribcage. The ashes fall to the ground, but before they can hit the asphalt, they vanish.

“What the–” before you can finish, the doors before you swing open toward the inside. The lights turn on. Someone even has called the elevator for you. 

Another step forward, and a voice stops you. “Fourth floor, down the hallway, first door to your right,” the voice says through the speaker. Only then do you notice the lack of a doorbell. 

Everything in you is screaming for you to run, but you are rooted in the spot. He dragged you here with a mere letter, and you were more than ready to jump. Desperation was the only thing that drove you here. Your brain seems incapable of rational thought.

What if that is what he wanted all along? To get you complicit by playing on what you so desperately need, which is a story and a way out of this boring everyday life that is threatening to slowly kill you.

He’s like a siren, luring you into his deadly trap, but even knowing all of this, you still can’t find it in yourself to run. 

The second you enter the building, the door shuts behind you, and your only way out is officially locked. You made the decision; you have dug your own grave, possibly quite literally, and now you have to lie in it. It’s better to die chasing a good story than dying at a desk in an office that doesn’t respect you.

You are a disgrace, you can hear your father’s voice in the back of your mind. He always warned you not to be too reckless or your bad decisions will eventually catch up with you. He always taught you not to trust strangers, and to stay the hell away from those who disgrace God, but you have never cared much about being a good girl. 

Your thoughts are as morbid as your obsession with the walking undead. It is time you embrace what people are already saying about you.

The elevator ride feels like an eternity. It goes up and up and up until it finally stops on the fourth floor. The walls smell like nothing but a faint hint of bleach. It’s clean, parquette not carpet, and the walls are kept in a shade resembling a mixture between crimson and maroon, and it is blending into a sort of marble.

The metal doors slide open. Again, you hesitate. A sweet whisper echoes in your ear, dragging you toward the edge. You breach the border between the elevator and the hallway that waits behind it. The voice is distant, and it doesn’t sound human—it reminds you of a siren’s song, calling for you. He is calling for you, and a fog settles over your mind. You’re not in control anymore, he is. 

You imagine him to be an old man, possibly middle-aged. Vampires stop aging when they’re turned. Their mind doesn’t. You’ve read the research plenty. They are wise beings, more intelligent than human beings could ever fathom. That makes them dangerous. 

Their venom rivals the intoxicating feeling of heroin, you’ve heard, and it heightens your senses to the point all you can feel is the one who bit you. Research suggests it’s a million times stronger than an orgasm, for both the vampire and the human being. 

Part of you has always wanted to try it. Part of you wants to know what it feels like to be sucked dry. You want to know what it feels like to be carried into a new dimension by someone who knows how to play the human body like a fucking piano, eliciting the sweetest melody through your very essence and the symphony of your moans.  

This M—Daredevil—is inherently dangerous. He’s as mysterious as they come; a man in a mask lurking in the dark corners of Hell’s Kitchen every night, turning the fight for justice into his hunting ground. 

It’s as though he curled his fingers, and you followed. 

You walk the dark hallway down to the door on the right. Paintings litter the walls. Masterpieces, blotches of white, red, and color. You recognize the red marble as a decorative theme on the wallpaper. Tracing your fingers over it, the rough drywall scratches at your skin. 

You reach out a shaky hand toward the golden knob. Before you can turn it though, the door already flings open. It must be witchcraft. 

Red appears to be his favorite color. At least judging from the hallway, that is true. When you step into the room with a pounding heart and blood pooling in your cheeks though, the inside of the room is a lot more… human. You wouldn’t have guessed it from the gloominess surrounding you on your way there.

A leather couch and armchairs stand in the middle, facing toward the window front. Colored windows, as you have gathered from the rumors. They are see-through now though, showing the city skyline and the moon up high. The chandelier on the ceiling is the only piece of furniture you would consider old. Browns meet hues of blue and dark green, a forest at midnight, and you suck in a sharp breath. The apartment is beautiful. 

You look to your left and see a bookshelf stretching the length of the wall. You can’t help but run your hand over the backs. You would have expected original editions from the 18th or 19th century, but when your fingers trace over the bindings, you are met with the bulging of Braille underneath the elegant golden writing of the titles. None of them seem to have collected dust. It surprises you to only find a mere handful of classics that haven’t been transcribed in Braille and a realization you did not expect starts to crawl its way forward.

“I stole that one from a library in Paris.”

Your racing heart stops beating. The book you’ve been holding falls to the ground, its worn-out leather cracking further around the spine. The thud is deafening. You gasp, turning around. Your shoulders fly up as the tension ripples through every last muscle in your bone. Your bones ache just from how stiff you’re standing, but you can’t move.

The man before you moves as quietly as a mouse. You didn’t hear him coming. The moonlight reflects off his dark brown hair, making it appear almost ginger. He’s wearing a simple suit without a tie, and the white of his shirt is as pristine and clean as the cut of his beard. You can see chest hair poking out from underneath the two open buttons, as dark as the locks on his head. His jawline is irresistibly sharp, leading up to a pair of plump lips he is wrapping around the brim of a crystal glass filled with rum.

Your heart remains frozen. Not a single drop of blood pumps through your veins, yet your cheeks burn brighter than a bonfire on a pitch-black night. 

But his flawless appearance is not what catches your attention the most. Looking up into his eyes, wanting to know whether they are as red as those set into the devil’s mask, you find nothing but your terrified reflection staring back at you. It’s as blurry as the picture of your face in a still ocean’s water, your wide eyes staring back at yourself. 

The red glasses are all you can see. Round with a black rim. Silver would have looked better on him, or maybe even gold. The black reminds you of an endless pit, a sinister embrace of vampire stereotypes, but you can’t look away from the maroon that won’t allow you even a glimpse into his eyes. They are shielding him from the world, and his eyes from curious, stupid humans like you.

He nods toward the ground. “You gonna pick that up?” he asks. His voice reminds you of rumbling gravel. 

He looks like a man. He talks like a man. If you didn’t know better, you would say he is human. There seems to be blood in his cheeks and air in his lungs. 

You have to pull yourself together. Clearing your throat, you bend down and pick the book back up.

“Thank you,” he utters your name. “It’s been a while since I’ve received visitors that don’t work for me.”

You put the book back on the shelf. Your lips are sewn shut; you can’t find the words. Every time you open your mouth like a fish on dry land, you close it again, and it is embarrassing to be standing in front of him with your guard down. 

“Welcome to my home,” he says. You wish you could see his eyes to know if he’s mocking you. “Do you want a drink, or do you need another minute to process?”

He is mocking you. His tone is gentle, as is his voice, but he smirks like a smug motherfucker, and your anger boils to a tipping point. The candle is about to burn out. 

“I–” you stammer. Internally, you curse yourself for being such a fool. 

“Another minute it is then.”

You don’t need a minute though. “You’re blind,” you blurt out. 

The beautiful—deadly—stranger nods. “Yeah.“

“How?”

“Accident when I was a kid.”

“But you’re…” you leave the missing part of that sentence hanging in the air like a noose. 

“Say it,” he murmurs. You want to say it sounds like a growl, but you’re not sure. He isn’t asserting dominance or trying to force you into submission by scaring you away, but he is toying with you regardless. 

You take a deep breath. The word, the truth, numbers your tongue and your lips with its weight. “A vampire,” you say, your voice barely above a whisper, matching his. 

His smirk broadens. He pushes his tongue against the inside of his cheek for a moment, then releases it as it darts out to wet his bottom lip. “I’m a blind vampire, yes,” he answers. “We’re rare, but we do exist.”

Blind vampires. In all of your years of fascination, that has never crossed your mind. You used to believe that they had healing abilities that far exceeded your own. You were wrong. He lost his eyesight before he got turned into a vampire. He lived as a blind human being and didn’t regain his most crucial sense when he died. 

He came back to life, but he died. It is surreal to stand across from him. He’s not just letters on a piece of paper, he is very much real. And he’s blind. 

“Oh, my God,” you curse.

That elicits a soft chuckle from him. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t come,” he says. 

“I was considering not to.” 

He sees right through you with those empty glasses. “That’s a lie.”

“How would you know?” you counter. 

“I can hear your heartbeat. The blood pumping in your veins…” His head tilts ever so slightly in your direction. You take a step back. It’s an instinct. “Your pulse picks up when you lie, or when you’re nervous, or both,” he states. “When you first saw me, your heart skipped a beat. It did again when you lied to me.”

Your eyes trail down to his thick thighs perfectly fitted in his tailored trousers. His thick digits pat the rhythm with his fingers on the fabric. Thud-thudthudthud-thud. You place a hand on your chest. He wasn’t wrong; your heart is racing. 

His smirk turns into a smile, but only briefly again. It’s a glimpse of humanity he doesn’t want you to see. “I like that sound,” he says. “Has anyone ever told you that you smell good? Sweet, sour, and a little salty. Natural. You don’t use a lot of artificial perfume, but you like cherry chapstick.”

You swallow, taking a whiff of your arm. Besides your deodorant masking the scent of your nervous sweat, you smell nothing. How good must his nose be? His hearing? His sense of taste? 

“Right now, sweat is dripping down your back, and your muscles are tense enough to strain against your bones every time you breathe. Your heart just skipped a beat again. You find it weird,” he muses. “I can’t turn it off, but I get it must be strange for you.” 

“You–” The blood has collected in your head, pushing the temperature in the room to an all-time high. “Get out of my body!” you snap. 

He laughs. “That’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear.”

“And I never thought you would ask for an audience with me, but here we are.”

“Here you are.” 

You want nothing more than to wipe that smirk off his face. He looks so smug, standing there with his drink, wearing a suit too fancy for his own home. He’s fully in his element. It’s scary how alluring he is, too. You don’t want to think that way, but as soon as your eyes gaze upon him again, your chest contracts, and you forget how to breathe. 

He’s a wolf, and you’re a lonely little sheep that doesn’t know any better. That lonely little sheep just wants to be a part of something bigger, even if that means surrendering herself to the big bad wolf. He wants a taste of her, and the sheep would give him that in a heartbeat if he just asked. 

You blink. There is a voice in your head, and it isn’t your own. Far from it. You don’t want to be associated with this stranger. She thinks she knows you. She thinks she knows what you want—the sheep in the eyes of her natural enemy. This voice is the most irrational you could be, and you need to stop letting her win.

And yet you—not just the voice of the lonely sheep you appear to be—would follow this man anywhere, even to hell if he asked you to. 

Your eyes drill knives into his skull, but they are also full of curiosity. Can he hear your thoughts? Your heart beats in your throat. You can taste it on your tongue. If you bit your lip, you would bleed, and he would probably fall into a frenzy. Still, your teeth dig into your bottom lip. What if he can hear your thoughts—hear how fucking needy you are? You’re pathetic. What he must think of you, standing across from him, smaller than human life itself. 

You want to read him, but he is far from an open book. He’s not Braille you can run your fingers over, and even if he was, you don’t know how to read it. He’s an enigma. His face is set in stone; an iron mask you can’t penetrate. 

His chest heaves with another chuckle. He sets the crystal glass down on the coffee table, taking a step forward. “No, I can’t read your mind,” he says. 

You flinch. “What?”

“Your breathing pattern. The way you look at me. I can sense that you’re thinking about something.” He adjusts his glasses. “It’s just… Most humans ask me if I can read their minds, you know. I can’t. Some vampires can, but my senses are the only heightened ability I have.” This time, when he chuckles, a hint of bitterness dances in his voice. 

“At least you’re not in my head then,” you say. 

“No.”

“Good.”

A pregnant pause follows. You clutch your bag to your chest, your fingers digging into the frame of your hidden laptop. 

“Can I offer you a drink?” he asks, pointing to his empty glass.

You wave him off. That’s the last thing on your mind. “No, thank you.”

Sometimes at night, you fantasize about diving into the abyss of darkness. It looks and sounds a terrifying lot like him. You want to know him. You need to know him. When it comes to him and this—whatever this is—the lines between want and need are blurring into an unidentifiable mess. It’s an ocean of emotions with no land in sight. A total eclipse of the heart, if you will. You’re losing your mind.

“What you can do–” You straighten your shoulder, hoping it will add height to your beaten confidence. “You can tell me your name. Sir,” you say. 

He nods. “I suppose it would only be fair, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, it would.”

“Matthew. My name’s Matthew.” The softness of his features as his lips move to the rhythm of his words takes you back anew. His eyebrows raise slightly, and you catch a glimpse of a pair of beautiful, unfocused hazel eyes that steal your breath away. 

Matthew. It is a name that easily rolls off the tongue. It suits him.

You repeat his name aloud. “That’s an odd name for a 200-something-year-old man,” you point out. 

Matthew scoffs. “My parents were both Catholic.”

“I suppose you’re not?”

You hit a sore spot. His head dips, fingers running over his nails and tongue tracing his teeth. “Not anymore,” he says.

God died for him a long time ago, and all churches burned down.

Your grip on your bag loosens. “Then why Daredevil?” you ask. 

His lips part. “I, uh, have the Bulletin to thank for that one. After centuries of existing in this world, and being despised for no matter what I do, I’ve decided to embrace it. I am Daredevil, not even God can stop that now.”

Matt grabs his glass, turning away from you. He doesn’t use a cane to navigate from the couch to the mini bar on the other end of the room. You carefully follow his movements. One of his hands remains at his side, snapping his fingers as he navigates the familiar terrain of his home. 

He uncaps a half-empty bottle of Whiskey to pour himself another glass. 

“You know, Matthew,” you prompt, daring to step forward an inch, “as big as your reputation is in this part of the city, Silver Lining is not the kind of magazine that would cover your story.”

“You still came,” he says. 

“I could lose my job if anyone knew I came here.”

“And yet you’re here and not where you should be.” He turns his head over his shoulder. “You wouldn’t risk losing your job if it wasn’t important to you, would you?”

You stammer, “I–” He’s got you. You’re a fish with a hook in her mouth. 

“If Silver Lining Magazine won’t cover my story, why are you here?” Matt turns back to you, leaning back against the shiny Mahagoni of his minibar. It offers a beautiful contrast to his strong physique and the slight paleness of his skin. “Could it be because you’re fascinated by the mythic?” he asks, teasing. “By werewolves and witches and vampires?”

It’s your turn to scoff. “I won’t confirm or deny. My boss wouldn’t let me write a vampire vigilante exposé even if I begged him to.”

“And that’s why Mr. Doherty doesn’t deserve you.” Your body visibly recoils when he pushes forward, moving just an inch toward you. “Your curiosity is a virtue,” he purrs. The moonlight sets your reflection in his glasses alight. 

“Is that why you lured me here?” you ask him. “Because my curiosity is a virtue and you consider yourself better than the people in my life?”

“I didn’t lure you here, and I think you know that. That’s not what this is.” The distance between you starts to shrink, backing you into a corner. “I believe you came here because the thought of interviewing a vampire and sharing your findings with the world on your account excites you,” he says. “You want to be heard. You want to be taken seriously as a journalist, and you want to make people happy.”

The only way for you to come out of this with your pride and dignity still intact is to put up walls before the already existent labyrinth of walls keeping your heart guarded and your soul safe. “Again,” you ask, “why me?”

“Why not you? As I stated in my letter, I’m a fan of your work.”

You roll your eyes. “Yeah, about that. How did you write that if you’re blind?”

“I didn’t, my secretary did.”

“Of course.” Of course, he has a secretary. “I… I just don’t get it,” you say. “You’ve been hiding for so long–” 

Matt cuts you off with an urgency you didn’t expect, “Things have changed. Circumstances…” he trails off. 

“Wouldn’t it be a suicide mission?” 

His answer is silence. You let out an exasperated sigh. “If you want me to interview you, you have to be honest with me.”

“I’m not on the record yet.”

“Right. Maybe you can answer this though—off the record, of course—how can you be certain I didn’t call the cops or the FBI before I came here?”

His eyes crinkle. “I’m not stupid, sweetheart,” he says. 

He’s amused. You’re amusing him. 

“Don’t call me that,” you growl. 

He’s spreading you open, holding up a mirror for you to look into. It’s your miserable self in all its glory, and he knows you better than you know yourself. 

You ignore the sharp pain in your left ribcage as you pull the arrow out of your heart. “Unless someone holds up a sign that they are pro-vampirism, how would you even know I’d listen to you and not just refer you to the Journal of Psychiatry?” 

“Are you telling me you don’t believe in vampires?” Matt quips.

“That’s not… Answer my question!”

The sound of your heartbeat must sound almost like the rapid firing of a machine gun, that’s how fast your pulse is racing. Your veins threaten to burst with the excess blood. It’s a heat like no other. You’re a witch at the stake, and Matt is holding the torch to your gasoline-doused body. 

He clears his throat. Your face falls at the words that tumble out of his parted lips, and the rapid firing turns into a deafening silence and a monotone line on a heart monitor. 

“After what I’ve learned from reading Dr. Rice’s research on the phenomena of vampirism, I can confidently say this species is no different than an animal like the great white shark or the Homo sapiens sapiens—our kind,” he recites. “Vampires are a medium of fiction and propaganda to induce fear, but they are also a widely misunderstood species that is being silenced rather than heard. Our species, the human species, likes to consider themselves superior, even when we’re in a position of being someone’s natural food source. Dr. Rice’s research is based on a comprehensible set of facts, and isn’t that what we have been relying on ever since the beginning? Our psychology makes it possible for us to change the narrative in our favor, and more often than not, we ignore the very facts deemed by humans as an intellectual importance to spread the message of an entirely different agenda. Dr. Rice’s research only proves that egotism and humans themselves will be humankind's certain downfall.”

“My investigative journalism essay,” you breathe out. 

“Published by Columbia University.” 

Your heart restarts with a rush of adrenaline. “How… how do you know all of this?”

“I may be blind,” Matt says, “but I know how to read between the lines.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

The alcohol in his drink seems to have little effect on him. “I know you have questions, and I’m willing to answer them if you promise to publish a detailed report somewhere other than Silver Lining Magazine.”

You look down at your bag, then back at him. “Ben Urich could have told your story in a way that would’ve made people listen,” you murmur. “I don’t have an impressive career like him.”

“Yeah,” he smiles, “but you could have easily written ‘Attack on NYC’. Ben was a good man, an even better journalist, but he could not have written your college essay. And he could never have been you.” 

Your name rolls off his tongue—not a pretentious nickname that makes you want to vomit but your name, and it flicks a switch within you. 

You glance around the spacious living, pulling your laptop out of its confines, and you bridge the distance between you, finally. You notice he smells of sandalwood cologne and scentless soap. “Okay,” you cave. “Where do you want me to set up?”

Session 1.

The spacebar clicks underneath the tip of your index finger. The white of your screen fills with a series of red sequences as the microphone takes in every little sound around you. Except for the two of you and the fading footsteps of one of Matthew’s assistants though, the world has fallen silent in the dead of the night. He’s sitting across from you, legs crossed, head tilted; your life is about to change.

“So, Mister Murdock,” you begin, “tell me. How long have you been dead?” 

His mouth opens in a wide grin. “242 years,” he answers. 

“And what happened the year you died?”

“Well, it was 1782. I was a good few years out of law school. I was a good lawyer, but I wasn’t successful. That year, I met a beautiful woman at a banquet. I wasn’t rich—trust me, I was beyond penniless—but she had been adopted into a wealthy family, and that made her one of the richest women in the room. Everyone wanted her, but when I sensed her across the hall, she only had eyes for me. And she was the first woman to not see me just because I was blind.” He chuckles sadly. “I thought she was the woman of my dreams, the love of my life, but a few weeks later, after letting her into my life, I realized that she didn’t look at me that night because she was interested. She was hunting me. El— Miss Elektra Natchios…”

The year 1782 becomes apparent before your inner eye. As he tells you about the night he met her, you can see the dark-haired beauty making her way across the ballroom. Red lips and a gown to die for. Her dark eyes were full of mischief, but the passion in them could have knocked a grown man off of his feet. And that is just what she did to poor Matthew. 

“I was going to marry her,” he tells you.

He went to church regularly. His knees were bloody from praying, his senses already heightened before he died. God’s soldier, that is how he puts it. He was told that the accident that left him blind happened for a reason, and he had to fight a war that went beyond the country’s fight for independence. 

That summer, Elektra drained him. He didn’t know what she was. She fooled him. He was obsessed with her. Her dark eyes he couldn’t see lured her in, and it was the venom in her blood that became his downfall after she dug her teeth into him.

Matt tried to beg his priest for forgiveness, but he didn’t even make it past the marble stairs before the doors locked. He knelt in a pool of blood—both his and that of the first human he ever sucked dry to survive as a newborn vampire—offering an eternal sacrifice to Catholicism, but God abandoned him on his doorstep. 

The church walls would have been set on fire if he had touched them from the inside. 

You look up from your notepad to find him now standing at the window. He’s not looking out, of course, but he seems so deep in thought, the memories that aren’t your own but his start to dissipate, and you’re brought back to the here and now.

Matt poured his heart out to you. You expected answers, but not this kind, and certainly not of this magnitude. You see him in an entirely different light. He’s vulnerable, fragile, and human. He has endured trauma that killed him, but he couldn’t die because the woman he loved made him immortal. It’s a bigger curse than growing up with the belief that an accident made you God’s soldier. 

He lost everything. For centuries, he has had to live with that. It’s killing you, feeling his pain, the pure agony that radiates off him. 

Your voice is quiet when you ask him, “What was it like?” You don’t have to say it out loud for him to know what you are referencing.

Matt chuckles, the sound a mere breath in the atmosphere. “Like she took my soul from my body, setting fire to my belief system and already heightened senses,” he says. 

You swallow. “That sounds… overstimulating.”

“It was. Is. My heart stopped, but when that happened, something else awoke inside me. The hunger… the hunger was the worst part. It’s insatiable. One hour passes, and you feel like you’ve been starving for weeks.”

“Like you’ve been possessed by a demon?”

“Like I am the demon.”

“But you’re not.” You should stop the recording. You’re not on track; you’re incorporating your feelings into Matt’s story, but you can’t help it. The words tumble out of your mouth without a second thought, a train that cannot be stopped. 

He raises his eyebrows, you can see it in his reflection in the windows. “Are you religious?” he asks.

You shake your head. “This isn’t about me.”

“Are you?”

The veins on the back of his hands bulge as he balls them to fists at his sides. Your throat is a desert, and your heartbeat resembles a storm that burns right through it, sending the sand flying in all directions of the horizon.

You adjust in your seat, crossing one leg over the other. He takes a whiff. He’s smelling you, and that doesn’t help the speed of your pulse to calm down. 

Tapping your pen on your notepad, you watch the red sequences fill the white space of the recording program. It moves with the sound of your voice when you finally dare to answer. “It’s a complicated question because there is a difference between believing in God and believing in the church,” you say.

“Do you believe in God then?” Matt asks. It’s as though he’s trying not to seethe at the mere mention of someone he used to worship. You make a note of that.

“There is so much bad in this world. So much cruelty. I can’t…” You take a deep breath. “I don’t know how to believe in a God that would let the things humans do to each other happen. If God existed—if he was as merciful as Christians like to claim, he wouldn’t let this happen. And I’m so sick and tired of people using their faith, and their beliefs in God and the church as justification to be disrespectful. I don’t understand it. How can anyone? Why is someone who has to drink blood to stay alive—someone who didn’t even choose this life—worth less and the devil’s breed when humans do worse things to each other? Why would God allow us to start wars that kill innocent people? Children? It’s just not fair that we treat ourselves and others as though we are already in hell, and we’re just supposed to accept that God doesn’t care—” You stop yourself, the tears burning behind your eyes. 

Matt turns back around. You can’t look away. “When I was still human,” he murmurs, “I used to believe everything that happened to me was God’s will. The accident, God’s will. Me going blind, God’s will. I went to confession, prayed until my knees were bloody and bruised. I tried convincing myself that every scream I heard from down the block, every person who lost their life or their innocence was my responsibility. God made me this way for a reason, right?” The scoff is as bitter as the liquor in his glass. “I fell apart, you know. I was a kid, so I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand what was happening to me,” he tells you. 

You hold your breath. The glasses slip from his eyes as he takes them off with shaky fingers. You are met with the most beautiful pair of hazel eyes. Emotions dance a heated tango in a tornado. If you look closer, the green specks bring life to his eyes. It’s human nature in the purest sense of the word. 

Your reflection stands in his irises, his unmoving pupils, and the tears glisten in his eyes. They’re as red as blood, watered-down crimson essence. You want to reach out and stroke his cheek, but that would be crossing a very big line that you can’t bring yourself up to touch. 

“I studied law because I thought it would change something,” he continues. You listen. It’s the only thing you can do—listen. “It wasn’t enough. Nothing I ever did felt like it was enough. I lost my father. Jack. I didn’t know my mother until it was too late. Maggie. I had no one. No money, no prospects, just me and those voices in my head, telling me I was supposed to be God’s soldier.”

“You’re not,” you cut in. 

He shakes his head. “I prayed; I crawled up the stairs of the church, and I spent hours repenting for my sins. I bled myself dry for Him. I sacrificed myself. I sacrificed my youth, my heart, and my soul, and I got nothing back. I begged for help until my voice was sore, but nothing… God, nothing was ever good enough. Until Elektra came around,” he says. 

“She changed everything for you. It makes sense. She turned you into a vampire, but she also loved you.”

“She did love me, in her own twisted way.”

“It’s what you deserved,” you say.

He isn’t yours, but the pang you feel in your chest is treacherous. Your heart cracks like a porcelain vase, jealousy creeping in like a parasite of toxic waste.

In response, Matt only chuckles bitterly. “She made me believe again, then took my soul and crushed it in her hand.” The correction makes your shoulders slump. “Instead of feeling like my world ended though, I felt at peace when she sucked the blood out of my veins and fed me her venom,” he says. “It’s sick, I know. I was aware I died that night, that she turned me into a devil who could only survive if he drank the blood of others. The Catholic in me struggled to accept it, but I had no choice but to embrace what she made me.”

“And where is she now?” you ask.

“Gone.” The light in his eyes has fully disappeared now. “I stayed with her for a while until she died in my arms. She showed me what love is, and she showed me heartbreak. She made me hungry for blood, awakening the devil I’ve been trying to tame. She taught me how to feed, how to hunt, and how to chase. But she also cursed me,” he says. “I only exist for myself now. I only bleed for myself. No God, no church, and no more religion. I’m not Jesus, I’m Judas, and I retired the cross the day I was crucified.”

You have run out of questions to ask. Too overwhelming is the sight of his walls crumbling down, this stranger you now know better than any living being seems to. You no longer see money in this, or a story to chase, you only see Matthew, and the halo above his head he still believes is a pair of horns. The world broke him. His faith in God broke him. It crushed him, and he lost everything. How broken he must be. 

“Not such a pretty story when I say it out loud, huh?” He scoffs.

The spacebar clicks again. The recording comes to a sudden halt. One hour and fifty-eight minutes, the first session of your interview with the vampire. You need to put a halt to it now because what you are about to say or do as you reach your hand out to brush his cold, dead skin is not something that should be found on a record. And you won’t ever tell.

Matt pulls away when your warm fingertips brush his. You’re standing across from him now, so close he can smell, hear, and feel all of you at once.

Your touch is the holy water that burns his skin, but the fire sustains him and shoots straight to his core the same way the blood rushes to yours.

“It’s not a pretty story, no,” you say, your voice barely above a whisper, “but it did tell me what I already knew.”

“And what’s that?” he asks.

“That you’re not evil. You’re not the Devil. You’re misunderstood. You’ve been beaten; you’ve been abandoned, hurt, and broken. That doesn’t make you a monster. Trying to make this city a better place does not make you a monster.”

“If you only knew the things I’ve done…”

“I know the rumors suggest that you were the one who fought Wilson Fisk and got this city back where it needed to be. You’ve saved countless women from the worst of fates. You are the reason the innocent people of Hell’s Kitchen feel safe. By picking up that mask, you became a hero, not a villain, and that is the story I want to tell.”

In lightspeed, he has moved you from the window to the other end of the room. Your back hits the wall. 

Matt towers over you in all of his intimidating glory. His eyes spark red, but you hold his unfocused gaze. He has such beautiful eyes. This pull between you is far from human; it’s unhealthy, and it is exactly where he wanted to get you. You’re trapped, pinned underneath him like a deer caught in headlights. 

Exhaling, your breath strokes his cheeks. He closes his eyes, savoring the taste of you. Every particle in the air, he inhales. His tongue darts out to lick his lips. Oh, what you wouldn’t do to suck that tongue into your mouth. 

Your pheromones play his head like a puppeteer pulling the strings of his marionette. He growls. “Do you have any idea how dangerous I am?” 

The moonlight catches his sparkling white teeth. This time though, you come face to face with the sharp edges of his previously concealed fangs. Your jaw drops open. He’s ethereal. 

“I could snap your neck—” Matt places his hand on your neck, “I could make that heart stop beating, take the air from your lungs. I could eat you…” He traces the vein in your throat from your jaw to your collarbone. “I could bite you and suck your blood until you’re empty. I could kill you, sweetheart. My kind is your natural enemy. You shouldn’t be here.”

You shudder. His nose brushes the sensitive skin below your ear. He’s so close you can smell him. On inhale, and his scent consumes your senses. He is all you can feel now. You reach out to hold onto his arms, his muscles tensing under your teeth. He’s big and strong, and those hands have a mind of their own as they begin to wander but never where you need him most. 

You shouldn’t be here, yet you came. He asked you to him, and you complied. Is this your fate now? Chasing after your big bad wolf like the helpless sheep that you are?

Your walls clench around an agonizing emptiness, your swollen clit brushing against your soaked underwear. Whatever he is doing to you, it’s the cruelest form of torture. 

A strangled noise breaks out of the back of his throat, rumbling in his chest. “You have no idea how badly I want to taste you,” he breathes. 

“Do it,” you beg. “Taste me.”

He utters your name again. “Stop.”

“Please.”

Your tone shatters him. When he kisses you, finally, fireworks explode in the universe around you. All the stars seem to finally align. Your heart opens, and it sucks him right into you. Your soul yearns for him. He’s so close yet so far away. 

The moon stands between you, but you cross even that ocean as you push against him, forcing your tongue into his mouth. He takes like heaven and hell; he’s the apple Eve bit into and cursed her for all eternity. But he’s also the snake, the one who compelled you to take this journey of bad decisions and jump right off the cliff’s edge. You melt into him like a broken candle. 

He pulls away. Those fangs are alluring, as sharp as a knife’s tip. You want to know what it would feel like gracing your skin, digging into your as he thrusts his cock into your tight cunt. The thought alone sends your mind into a spiral.

Your lips are swollen, but he has yet to draw blood. Matt looks as though he wouldn’t dare, his eyes darting around in a darkened conflict he feels might cost him more than your dignity. You are begging for it, as is your body, but he’s holding himself back. He’s the one who tied himself to an invisible pillar, keeping his hands locked behind his back. But that is not the Matt you want. 

You lean your head to the side, exposing the length of his neck. All control has slipped from your fingers. It’s in his hands now—you are. He cups your head gently. A mere few inches lie between your fountain and his lips.

You press a kiss to his calloused palm—a desperate and needy kiss, tracing your tongue over the lines that tell his life’s story in a way no interview can retell—and it is then he is forever done for. He’s doomed, and you are the second woman to pull him under the pits of hell. 

Saliva drips from his fangs. You hold your breath. He hisses, a weak admission of surrender; the words die miserably on your tongue when his lips close around your pulse point with all his might, and his teeth drive home. 

You moan aloud. Your fingers tangle in his hair, forcing him deeper as he sucks the dark red essence out of your vein. The sensation is more than you bargained for. It’s a drug that wrecks your system. The synapses in your brain backfire with all their might, and what follows the initial explosion of pleasure shooting white hot through your being is complete and utter silence as this God of a man feeds on you. 

The invisible string between you glows a bright crimson. It slings around you, tying you together like the roots of a tree. It’s an eternal sacrifice. You are giving your all to him, the very core of your existence that is now flowing into his mouth. You swear you can hear his thoughts mingle with yours. Yes, more, please. You taste so good. Your knees buckle, but you remain standing strong. He makes sure you don’t fall. Don’t slip away from me. I need you. 

A tear rolls down your cheek. You could sob. It feels so good—too good to be true. In that moment, you become one. There is no telling where one begins and the other ends. The coil in your stomach tightens, and the only pain you feel is the pleasure threatening to overwhelm you. He’s taking everything as you give him everything, but it is not enough. It has never been enough. 

When your body struggles to catch up with the lack of blood, he pulls away. His fangs drag out of your neck agonizingly slowly. You whimper at the sudden loss.

Matt catches you as you stumble into his arms. “You okay?” He cradles your face, brushing the hair out of your face. Your blood stains his lips. Blinking up at him, the force of your metaphysical connection slaps you awake. 

You cease to exist in all solar systems but his. 

He pokes the tip of his index finger with the sharp edge of one tooth, sliding it over the two holes that are pulsating with the work of your heartbeat.

“I shouldn’t have—” he begins. 

“No,” you say. “You did exactly what you should have.”

“I couldn’t stop.”

“But you did.” You wipe the blood from his mouth. “And I felt you. I only felt you.”

The living room passes by you. Before you know it, your back lands on something much softer than a concrete wall. He’s not a monster, that one, but he surely is an animal. 

You taste your blood on Matt’s luscious lips as he devours your tongue. It tastes of copper and a little bitter, but that is what makes him moan. That sound is the last thing you could ever grow tired of. 

His palm rests on your chest. Your heart pounds against his palm. “You’re so alive,” he says.

You cradle his face in your hands. “And you’re more human than you think.”

If he wanted to pull your heart out and hold it, you would let him in a heartbeat. 

He leans you back. He strips you bare. He kisses down your body like you are a fucking masterpiece for him to explore. That is how he sees you. 

Your head falls back. The kisses wander from your hips to the inside of your thighs. Every kiss brings his breath closer to your center. Matt pulls them apart. He opens you up to him. Your scent clouds his senses, and he groans, but he doesn’t touch. 

His fangs graze your skin. “Mine,” he growls. 

You gasp. He bites into the sensitive flesh. Hard, passionately. Your legs wrap around his head, trapping him there. He sucks, and he sucks, and he drinks, and the wetness pools out of your cunt in an obscene amount. This is foreplay to him. It drives you toward the edge leading to an abyss you are afraid you might never be able to crawl back out of. There is no bottom, it is just a pit, and he’s pushing you closer and closer, and—

Your back arches, but he pulls away before the coil can snap into a million butterflies. He pries your legs away from his head, spreading them further on the mattress, as far apart as they will go. 

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner have been served on a silver platter. He breathes in. The scent of your soaked pussy sticks to the hairs in his nose. It isn’t enough. He breathes in again, your arousal sweeter than fiction. You’re everything and more. He wants to taste that part of you more than anything, suck up the slick that is soaking the sheets—and you didn’t even think that was possible—but he waits because he needs to savor it. He doesn’t want it to be over too soon. neither for him nor for you. 

The blood is still dripping from his tongue and his fangs, and the raw inside of your thigh. He runs his finger through it. The sting runs from the wound to your folds, then back down. Still, he doesn’t touch. He plays with the blood, sucking on his fingers until they’re clean, and then he dives back in for a taste. He doesn’t bite, he kisses and sucks, but he doesn’t push it further. He doesn’t hurt you. 

You’re his saving grace; he has to worship you. Pain only has a place in pleasure. 

“Matthew,” you moan. 

He chuckles, kissing where his fangs left deep indentations. “No one will ever touch you again,” he purrs. “I’ll make sure of that.” 

You try to protest, but the words die on your tongue when he leans in, capturing your clit with his hungry mouth. The wound on your thigh closes. The blood from his lips mixes with your juices, and you cry out at the intensity of it all. 

He eats you with the ferocity of a man starved for weeks. He eats your pussy like he ate your blood, savoring every drop but still feasting for the taste to spread out in his mouth like wildfire. Sour, sweet, and copper. He sucks your sensitive clit into his mouth. His tongue drags through your folds, up and down, and then the tip slides inside, tasting your walls. He grows bolder as your moans accelerate. 

Matt cradles your thighs. He forces your hips back down to the mattress, stronger than the average human man. You have to endure his beard scratching and burning, and the pace he has set.

The orgasm creeps up on you. Before you know it, he has plunged his tongue into you, and your body convulses around him. You scream into a pillow as you come. 

You are each other’s forbidden fruit. No prayer in the world could keep you apart. 

Faintly, you can hear him say, “Good girl.” Your legs quiver. He pulls away, then comes right back like a boomerang. 

He’s warm now. He was cold before, but when he kisses you this time, he’s warm. He’s hot. You run your hands over his bare chest, the scars that lie under the dark strands of hair. You tug at it, and he moans. You can tell he is a little insecure, but by pressing your lips to one of the cuts on his shoulder, he relaxes. 

What he must have endured, what he must have lived through before he died and was resurrected in the same breath, just without a beating heart—you don’t want to think about it or you will break, but you can still feel him through the crimson tie that holds you together, and you know that he has suffered enough for more than two lifetimes. You wish you could take it all away from him. You wish you could have saved him before it was too late, loved him more than the woman who turned him, but turning back time is an impossibility. You are both acutely aware of that. 

“Hey.” Matt tilts your head toward him. “Where did you just go?” he asks. 

“Thinking about you,” you murmur. 

“Me?”

“You.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to be your salvation.”

You. His salvation. He kisses you, softly this time. He pours gratitude into his lips and bleeds them out in poetry as they slide into your mouth, and you swallow every last drop. 

If someone had told you a week ago where you would see yourself on that particular Monday, you would have laughed at them. And if someone had told you a week ago that you would be making love to the devil, you would have called them crazy. But it’s happening. 

He thrusts into you without a warning. His thick cock fills you like nothing and no one ever has before. Your cunt has been molded to fit him, you’re sure. You take him in, and you moan at the stretch. It’s a pain so delicious you could fall apart right then and there just from the feel of him inside you. 

Every thrust drags the tip of his cock along your sweet spot. Every added sensation drives you closer to your death. 

Your body tingles. He explores your face with his lips rather than his fingers, moving to your neck again. You cling to him, oh-so-desperate for him. He likes you like that, and you like him like that. 

“You’re fucking with my head,” he tells you. “Offering your pussy to a vampire. Letting me drink your blood. Begging me to fuck you. You’re in my head, baby. Can’t get you out of my system. Fuck.”

You are his downfall, his salvation, but he is all of those things to you as well—all of those things and more. If he could read your mind, you would tell him that. Words can’t do justice to how you feel. Not right now, maybe not ever. 

“Bite me again,” you beg.

His thrusts falter. He searches your body for any sign of regret. His fangs come out, and he buries them deep in your jugular vein. The floodgates open wide. Your walls clench around his cock, your clit pulsates, and the wave crashes into you. 

You come as he devours your neck and your blood. You transcend into another dimension, far away from everything and everyone but never him. Never Matthew.

The sensation of you wraps around him like a weighted blanket. His balls tighten, your blood unfolding its taste on his tongue. You are all over him, inside of him, everywhere at once. He falls head-first, dragging you down with him. 

He comes with a shout that is only muffled through his teeth buried in your flesh, his cum spurting into you and filling your cunt to the brim. Your eyes roll back. You’re flying and falling all at once. 

Oh, how good it feels to be consumed by him. To be fucked and sucked dry. You would have never expected this to come out of your week, let alone your life, but now that it has happened, you are floating on cloud nine. 

Dizziness threatens to take over, but before you can pass out, he forces himself away, allowing your heart to catch up with the lack of blood in your system. He collapses on top of you. His cock softens, but he stays inside. You need him there. You want him there. And that is the only place he wants to rest tonight. 

He heals the wounds on your neck. “You have a mark,” Matt rasps, tracing your skin with his finger. 

You choke out, “Yours.”

“Yes, you are.” He kisses you there. Once, twice, even a third time. “Mine,” he says.

You’re his. He’s yours. It doesn’t get any better than this. 

The minutes tick away on the obnoxious clock on the wall. Matt pulls out eventually, wrapping you up in a blanket. He coaxes you to drink, but you’re barely lucid. Only when he begins to stroke your hair you start coming back to yourself. You thought you might regret it, but as you look at him, his almost guilty eyes staring back at you, all you can do is reach out for him. 

“Session two tomorrow?” you ask.

He chuckles and retorts, “Have I not scared you away?” There is some truth to it though.

He’s covered in your blood. It sticks to his lips, his hands, and his chest. It’s sickeningly intimate, in a way.

You shake your head in response. “You could not possibly.”

He listens to your heartbeat. You’re as honest as they come. 

“Okay,” Matt says. “Session two tomorrow then.”

That night, you fell in love with the Devil, but he also fell in love with you, his angel in the form of a reckless journalist, and the only blood he ever wants to taste again until the end of his miserable, cursed days. 

Matt Murdock (Smut) Tag List: @shouldbestudying41 @theradioactivespidergwen @cheshirecat484 @1988-fiend @acharliecoxedfan @gpenguin666 @linamarr @mcugeekposts @itwasthereaminuteago @norestfortheshelbywicked @yarrystyleeza @littlenerdyravenclaw @etanordoesbullsh1t @thychuvaluswife @harleycao @schneeflocky @imjustcal @pipsqueakkitten @merlinbtch @sya-skies @amberritonicole @ravenclaw617 @pigeonmama @bohemianrhapsody86 @a-girl-has-n0-name @winkev1 @callsign-ember @chittaphonstar @buckyyyismahhlife

[babydollmarauders]

VEGAS, TOKYO… — JACK HUGHES (MEDIA MANAGEMENT: SUMMER EDITION)

notes: i’m aware that i haven’t finished the playoffs parts- i apologize- but i wanted to spit out a quick summer edition to remind y’all that this au exists!

y/ndevils00

liked by dawson1417, jackhughes, and 110,381 others

y/ndevils00 you can catch me in vegas, catch me in tokyo… 🤠

tagged jackhughes and _alexturcotte

jackhughes babe…

y/ndevils00 what? we’ve been to vegas and tokyo this past month, just letting everyone know 😇

nicohischier why are you like this?

y/ndevils00 just the way i was born, i guess!

nicohischier is there any way to change it?

trevorzegras @/nicohischier there is not. trust me, i’ve tried

user74 y/n is the most unhinged WAG and i’m in love with her

user10 how is she unhinged with this post? i’m confused

user38 @/user10 her caption is a song “you can catch me in vegas, catch me in tokyo, catch me on the d*ck tryna ride like a rodeo”

user10 @/user38 oH OKAY

dawson1417 GO BEST FRIEND (3) THAT’S MY BEST FRIEND (3)

y/ndevils00 you’re my only true supporter in this sea of fake fans 🤧🫶

dawson1417 i’ve got your back best friend!

john.marino97 you make me question things. like our friendship.

y/ndevils00 and how amazing it is?

john.marino97 among other things…. like why it exists

lhughes_06 I DIDNT NEED TO KNOW THESE THINGS! NOBODY DOES!

y/ndevils00 oh smush, as if you don’t live with us…

lhughes_06 i’ve decided to move in with John next season

y/ndevils00 no <3

lhughes_06 well, i tried

trevorzegras thriving and diving!

y/ndevils00 🤿💦

jackhughes what do these even mean?

y/ndevils00 @/jackhughes idk, i’m just rolling with it. i just assume you guys never know what your own comments mean either

user27 y/n calling hockey guys out on their weird comments 😭 she’s so real

_quinnhughes have you been watching edits again?

y/ndevils00 i don’t have to answer to you

_quinnhughes so yes?

y/ndevils00 yeah 😔

jesperbratt miss you! hope you’re having fun!

y/ndevils00 i’m gonna die for you. it’s no longer an “i would”, it’s an “i will”.

jesperbratt i would like you alive when i get back, please!

y/ndevils00 if you insist 😔

jackhughes you know my mom has this app, right?

y/ndevils00 ellen said i should post these pics! she said you look handsome!

jackhughes you concern me

y/ndevils00 that’s my job as your work wife

jackhughes you know you have a real title of my girlfriend?

y/ndevils00 i like this one better. it has the word “wife” in it

jackhughes i give up

colecaufield i don’t get a feature but ALEX does? what kind of friendship is this?

y/ndevils00 i’m so sorry, teddy bear! i’ll do better next time 😔

colecaufield thank you, bubble!

_alexturcotte damn, i look hot

y/ndevils00 does nobody care about how EYE look on MY OWN post?!

_alexturcotte you look great, honey bun

y/ndevils00 THANK YOU! FINALLY!

jackhughes you in that dress 🤤

y/ndevils00 if i remember correctly, me in that dress didn’t last long 🤭

jackhughes what can i say? it looked better on the floor

trevorzegras GET A ROOM, NASTIES!

y/ndevils00 @/trevorzegras i’m gonna flush your zyn down the toilet

[toorumlk]

Hi I'm so freaking obsessed with your twitter.

Also what's your favorite Romione moment in the books and why?

ohohoho thank you, friend, i’m quite proud of some of the stuff i’ve posted on there B)

and as for my favourite romione moment in the books, when i read the question i first blanked out for a couple minutes, thinking of a bunch of smaller, sillier scenes. but then i remembered that i do have a favourite and it’s from chapter 11 of DH, when remus visited the trio at grimmauld place and filled them in on he goings on of the war -including the implementation of the muggle-born registry. ron’s response upon hearing this (after his immediate outrage) was

and it’s not just the hand holding and the “‘you won’t have a choice’ said Ron fiercely” that played out so vividly in my head like this:

but this scene demonstrates so perfectly the political weight of this pairing (muggleborn/blood traitor) which i think is the immovable narrative foundation of romione. all of their silly moments and idiosyncrasies aside, there is genuine narrative purpose behind this love. ron has always had an astute understanding of the blood supremacist politics of the wizarding world (need i remind that he was ready to curse shitco at the ripe age of 12 for calling hermione the in-universe slur) and just how wrong it is. ron is a pure-blood wizard and by design has so much privilege in this society bc of it, but by virtue of having parents like arthur and molly, he’s grown up knowing the importance of fighting against blood supremacist ideology. always.

so, after hearing about the completely horrifying muggleborn registry ("People won't let this happen," said Ron. "It is happening, Ron," said Lupin.), he immediately turns to his muggleborn best friend and love of his life and says “i’m making you a family member, i’m going to use the protection my family-name has and use it to protect you from the awful injustice of our situation, no you won’t have a choice but to let me help you”

i remember having such a… visceral reaction while reading this scene like holy shit .. these kids, THESE KIDS!!!!! this is the bone-marrow-deep love that makes me feel insane. this dynamic of the blood traitor/muggleborn always there, from CoS all the way to the epilogue. We get to see that romione is the story’s pure blood/muggleborn that finally made it (rip jily and tedromeda :(). we see it in hermione keeping her muggle last name after they get married (oh my god these two actually got married) and we also see it in the hyphenated Granger-Weasley (granger being first!) in their kids’ last names (oh my gof these two had TWO kids). they are a true symbol of change and progress in their world.

also this is one of those moments where i’m so glad that our only window to romiones relationship development is through harry’s narration because it so brilliantly shows the readers this blossoming love story instead of just telling us about it because harry obviously doesn’t have access to the inner thoughts of his two best friends, he can only witness them fall deeper in love. showing the audience acts of love is always more powerful and my god is this an act of showing your love to your beloved.

(and not to go on an unrelated tangent, but this is exactly why i could never ship my girl hermione w any DE or DE-adjacent character. no fucking way. not when the concept of a muggle-born registry exists in this universe, not when the antagonists in this story wish to eradicate people like her from their society. idk about the rest of y’all but im going to keep taking the narrative seriously bc the worldbuilding obviously has real world ties/implications and i like engaging with the canon. tangently to the tangent, i saw someone (a ron basher) on twitter say that ron, OUR RON FROM THE ABOVE EXCERPT, was “one bad day away from becoming a death eater” ohhhh ohhh i ought to beat you with sticks bc HUH? this is the same kid who said he would’ve boarded the train back to kings cross if he got sorted to slytherin, the house notorious for birthing DEs, at the tender age of 11)

anyways, all this to say is that romione is incredibly, realistically, materially romantic and i love them and i love their love <3

[queer-reader-07]

crowley and aziraphale being sexy is not mutually exclusive from them being asexual. y’all do realize that, right?

i’ve seen people say “i just want them to be ace icons, they’re an old gay couple they’re not meant to be sexy!!” and while that’s well intentioned and i can see where you’re coming from, i have to disagree.

don’t get me wrong, i don’t necessarily want a sex scene in canon. i did and still do read both of them as ace. the wanting them to be ace is not the issue.

i take issue with the reasoning some people are providing. let me put this bluntly: old people can and do have sex. old straight couples have sex, old queer couples have sex. being old is not synonymous with someone not being sexually active. and it says a lot about how you all view aging and old people when you act like old people can’t get it on.

secondly, aziraphale and crowley can be sexy and also never have sex. ANYBODY can be sexy and never actually have sex. because sexy is vibe, it’s a state of mind, it’s about your physicality and the way you carry yourself. you can think someone is sexy and never want to fuck them, you can think you yourself are sexy and not go any further than that.

so yeah, crowley can look hot and sexy in his turtlenecks and waistcoats. and aziraphale can look sexy in his waistcoats and button downs. you can look at david tennant’s jawline and be enamored and you can look at michael sheen’s nose and think it’s beautiful. and they never have to actually have sex with each other for any of that to be true. sexiness does not necessitate sex.

not to mention, every time i see the “they’re an old gay couple they don’t need to be sexy!!” argument it feels very much like sanitizing queer relationships and love for the sake of cishet comfortability. too often queer people are not allowed to be sexual, or for fucks sake, not just sexual but physical with their significant others. because physical manifestations and displays of queer love make the cishet world uncomfortable. and not allowing that kind of physical love to exist in media only serves to further perpetuate the issue.

queer love and queer people don’t have to be palatable to a cishet audience. queer love should get to exist authentically and queer people should get to exist and present in however way they see fit.

and in the context of good omens i think that means letting aziraphale and crowley be sexy even if they never have sex. that means letting them be physical in their love. because queer people deserve that, especially old queer people

[jagibee]

Call Me Luna

(Stray Kids x Reader)

Chapter 8

5,994 Words

A/N: A bit of a longer chapter as an apology for taking so long but also bc it was originally supposed to be two chapters and I just couldn’t find a good split point😭, and I did change the story title bc I got bored with Stray Pack but this is the same story and plot, and I’m sorry but my taglist is at its limit (which I didn’t even know existed?) so if I didn’t tag you on this post, it will be on the reblog!

Also, Happy Birthday to the love of my life who isn’t in this chapter nearly enough, but will be in the next chapter. Bang Chan, you have brought me a light and inspiration that I haven’t felt in a very long time and even if you have no idea who I am, you will always be the one for me🖤

Also

Nobody:

Me with the foreshadowing in this chap:

Let’s get started!

TW: references to sex, mentions of spanking (not necessarily sexual but could be interpreted that way)

…

You all settled down so that they could get through recording. Felix was sandwiched between you and Hyunjin, just as a small precaution in order to prevent any more growling. On your other side was Jisung and Seungmin sat on Hyunjin’s other side, providing extra padding against alphas. Chan and Changbin were both at the sound table and Minho was currently being recorded, so you didn’t have to worry much about them getting too close anyway, at least, not at this exact moment. Jeongin himself was settled at Felix’s feet like a trusty guard dog.

You, Chan, and Felix had all taken off your scent blockers as well, which helped to calm Innie down.

Minho was the last one recording, so everyone was a bit subdued. Changbin had paced around a bit while being sure to keep enough space between him and Jeongin. When the youngest alpha had recorded, everyone in the room held their collective breath, but he seemed to be doing fine.

Next to you, Jisung had leaned down so he was laying down on the couch with his feet splayed out in front of him, body posture indicating that he was zoning out, but one look at his eyes told you that he was paying rapt attention to what was happening in the recording box and at the table.

On your other side, Felix leaned his head against you and pulled out his phone instead of watching the older boys.

He pulled up Twitter and started scrolling through. You wanted to give him some privacy, but curiosity got the best of you. It’s not like he’s actively turning his phone away, you told yourself.

Once the word ‘caretaker’ caught your eye, you gave up the pretense and shifted even closer. The movement caused Felix to notice and he tilted his phone so you could see it more easily. “They’re sort of all over the place with the caretaker news.” He told you, deep voice soft as he tried to not interrupt the others. “Some people are really supportive of it but of course there are some people who think that either caretakers are sasaengs who manipulated the system so that you could be close to us, or that you’re going to steal our attention away from our fans.”

“Both of those statements are true, also, did I forget to mention I’m a spy from Dispatch meant to expose your secrets?”

Felix giggled and you let your eyes scan over the comments.

Maybe if y’all stanned TXT this wouldn’t have happened🤷‍♀️

tell this random weirdo to stay away from my lixie!!!!!!!

YALL IVE CONNECTED THE DOTS THE CARETAKER IS THE ONE IN FELIX’S BUBBLE POST

Reading over the last one, you bumped your shoulder lightly against Felix. “What exactly did your bubble post say?”

He frowned. “It just said ‘lunch with a new friend’ with a yellow heart emoji. It’s kind of impressive that they did actually connect the dots.”

You hummed thoughtfully. “Well, at least people probably won’t recognize me out on the street just from my hand.”

Felix smiled and went back to scrolling, giggling at a semi-professional debate about what Lee Know would give up for the rest of his life between pudding or butt hunting.

Said pudding lover and butt hunter then finished recording, striding out of the recording box as Chan spun his chair to face the rest of the room. Changbin rolled his own chair across the floor until it stopped in front of Minho, who grabbed it and spun it so he could sit in Changbin’s lap. Changbin squeaked in surprise but didn’t make any signs of protest when Minho brought the younger’s arms to wrap around his waist.

“Alright,” Chan began, “I think it’s pretty much a free day from here on. I know Jisung has a vocal lesson and Hyune wants to talk to Y/N, but other than that, I’ll be in the studio and Minho is going to be going over choreography so if anyone wants to join either of us, feel free.”

“But not too free, I need a break from you degenerates sometimes.” Minho retorted from where his head lay against Changbin’s shoulder.

You missed what Chan said in response as you leaned across the back of the couch behind Felix to consult Hyunjin. “You wanted to talk to me?”

His wide eyes met yours then quickly moved to Felix’s hair as Hyunjin started twirling it nervously between his fingers. “Yeah. Chan-hyung said we should talk about my h-heat. Especially since it comes so quick after Felix’s that we might not have enough time between our heats to properly talk.”

You could hear the other members join Chan and Minho’s discussion, but your focus remained on Hyunjin. “That’s a good idea,” you murmured, “But you don’t want Chan or another member to sit in with us?”

He shook his head, glancing back at you and biting his lip. You didn’t want to push him when he was so clearly nervous so you nodded and turned back to the others.

Right next to you, Jisung was declaring that “this group is not a democracy, hyung”.

“Sungie, you are the one person in this room that has a strict schedule today.”

“Don’t you start with me, Kim Seungmin-”

“Okay, okay!” Chan raised his hands. “I think that’s enough. So, Han will go to his lesson, Jinnie and Y/N will talk, Seungmin and Felix will come to the studio with me, and Bin and Iyen will go with Lino to the dance studio. Wait.” He paused and turned to you. “Is it okay to have Innie with the two members he’ll be aggressive towards?”

You considered it for a moment. “I think it should be fine. It might actually be better, hypothetically, since Innie won’t have to deal with either of them getting too close to Felix, so I think he’ll actually be less aggressive.”

“If my aegi-alpha gets too aggressive, I’ll just give him a good spanking.”

Chan turned to Minho and stared at him, narrowing his eyes while his knuckles turned white from his grip on his chair arms.

Instead of retracting his statement or apologizing for it, Minho simply basked in the attention, leaning back against Changbin and crossing his arms with a smirk on his face.

You glanced at Jeongin to see his reaction, but he was a bit preoccupied with Felix’s fingers running through his hair. Innie’s eyes were shut as he leaned his head back in between Felix’s knees.

You felt like you were intruding on a special moment, so you looked up and your gaze met Chan’s. He had a soft smile as he glanced from you to the two boys.

He blinked as if coming out of a trance and cleared his throat. “So, everyone know where they’re going?”

“Wait, hyung!” Jisung’s hand shot up in the air like he was a student eager to be called on. “I know you told us that we can be comfortable around Y/N-noona, but exactly how comfortable is that? Like, is it the same level as we are with our managers, or our makeup noonas or what?”

Chan smiled at him and swiveled his chair to face him more directly. “Since Y/N’s job actually involves a little more… familiarity with our group, especially when it comes to our emotional and physical health, I figured that we could be a little more open with her. She knows about our relationship and everything. The company did ridiculously thorough background checks and she’s signed several NDAs, so we can be as honest with her as we want.”

Han scooted forwards until he was barely on the couch and gestured with his hand for Chan to come closer. When Chan rolled his chair over, Jisung leaned to whisper in his ear. Whatever he said caused Chan to giggle. “Yes, we can kiss in front of her.”

“Oh.” Jisung blinked twice. “Well, in that case…” He grabbed Chan’s collar, pulled him close, and planted an obnoxious, cartoon-level, lip-smacking kiss right on the alpha’s lips.

Chan sputtered and his ears burned as he pulled away. “I meant- why did- you didn’t have to kiss me now!”

“Nope.” Jisung wiped his mouth with the back of his hand theatrically. “But I enjoyed it.”

…

Once everyone had reapplied their scent blockers and straightened themselves up, you followed Hyunjin out of the recording room.

Instead of going to the small meeting room like you did with Chan and Felix, Hyunjin led you in the opposite direction you had come from.

He fidgeted with his hands as he walked you rode down the elevator. First, they fiddled with his jacket buttons, then his rings, then tapped against his thighs.

It was obvious he was nervous, but you didn’t want to make him even more so by pointing it out.

The two of you made your way into a room and you realized that it was the same small dance studio you had met Hyunjin in.

He stopped in the middle of the room and frowned at the wooden crates you had all sat on last time. “I guess we could move them so we sit across from each other, that seems the most professional,” he murmured while rubbing his bottom lip with his thumb.

Your mind blanked for a second before you refocused. “Well, this doesn’t have to be super professional. No one is grading you,” you joked. “Here, we can even chill on the floor if you want.” You brought some cushions from a stack in the corner of the room and brought them to the middle of the crates.

Hyunjin smiled at you and adjusted one of the cushions before sitting down on it.

You placed your own cushion on the ground across from him and pulled one of the crates over so you could use it as a back rest.

You sank down and Hyunjin smiled at you politely. “Where should we start, noona?”

You pulled your bag over and pulled out the file on him and his bandmates. Handing it over, you told him, “What Felix and I started with was going over the information the company gave me so that you know what I know and you can tell me if there’s anything wrong or anything big that the company doesn’t know or didn’t share with me. I don’t want to be overly nosy or creepy or anything, but as a caretaker, it’s important that I know things that relate to both your physical and mental health. Also, client confidentiality applies in my job, so I couldn’t tell your company anything even if I wanted to, unless it involves you hurting yourself or others.”

Hyunjin blinked at you wide-eyed, the file bending slightly in his tight grip. Then, his eyes narrowed and his lips pouted slightly.

You felt your own fists clenching around the straps of your bag at the sight, but you collected yourself when he started to speak.

“I thought you were hired by the company. Doesn’t that make them your client?”

Your smile widened at him. “What a smart question!” At this, you could see the corners of his mouth flicker up. “The company is my employer, but they hired me to be a caretaker for you, not for the company. If I had to be a caretaker for everyone in this entire company, I would scream.” You raised your eyebrows playfully. “Could you imagine if I went up to JYP and asked him to tell me about his sex life?” You shuddered theatrically.

Hyunjin let out a startled exhale which quickly morphed into full-on cackling. He threw his head back and clapped, leaning backwards and almost falling over which only caused him to laugh harder. You giggled along with him, relieved that the slight tension was dissolving.

Once you two managed to mostly calm down, he looked at you with his hand hovering in front of his mouth. “Oh my god. “‘“Oh my god”’”. Eugh!” He scrunched up his face and stuck his tongue out in disgust, which just set off another round of laughter for both of you.

You took some deep breaths and noticed Hyunjin doing the same. You both smiled at each other and he ducked his head as he went to pick up the file he had dropped when he started clapping.

He flipped through it and got to the page with his information. As his eyes scanned the page, his smile slowly faded.

“Not particularly possessive of my nests? The only reason I’m not possessive is because they’re my pack! My m- my band! They’re always welcome in my nests! I may not be as protective as Felix but it’s not like I would let just anyone in!”

Noticing his distress, but most notably, the lack of a distressed scent, you realized that you both still had your scent blockers on. You took yours off and allowed your calming scent to sweep the room. It wouldn’t be as potent to Hyunjin while he had his own scent blockers on, but you hoped he could sense it nonetheless.

You didn’t want to touch him without his consent, so you gently pushed the file down, away from where it covered his face, gaining his attention and making it easier for him to see you.

You smiled at him. “Hey, Hyunjin. You want to take a deep breath for me?”

He blinked at you twice before nodding and inhaling. He held it for a second before his cheeks puffed out as he exhaled.

“Good job! Now, I know that you’re probably upset since the company is making these assumptions about you based on limited information. I would be, too. But, since you aren’t exactly inviting your managers into your nests, does it really matter what they think about you?”

His eyebrows furrowed as he considered it. After a minute, he shook his head.

“No, it doesn’t matter. And the ones whose opinions you do care about know that you keep the nest open to them because you trust them and love them. I promise you, they don’t think any lesser of you because of the way you keep your nests.”

Hyunjin’s tense eyes softened around the edges. “I guess… that makes sense.”

Your voice took on a more teasing tone. “Do you not believe me? I could call Chan right now, and I’m certain that he would march on down from his studio just to tell you how wonderful your nests are. And I’m certain that your other packmates would be right behind him.”

Hyunjin smiled shyly as he traced a shape on the ground that vaguely resembled a heart. “Yeah, they would.”

You tapped on the file still in his other hand. “Now that that’s settled, is there anything else you want to tell me?”

Hyunjin put the file down on the floor and rested his hands on top of it, like he was trying to press it into the ground. He turned his head to look at the wall of mirrors next to you and you could see him swallow. His eyes flickered back to meet yours and you could see the pure vulnerability in them. “Since you’ve been so upfront and honest with all of us, I figure I should return the favor. I… In Korea, male omegas- or, just, omegas in general, I guess, are sort of taught to hide their heats? Or, not hide them exactly, but it’s not something you really talk about? Not even with other omegas. We’re pretty much taught that heats are signs of weakness or that they’re gross to talk about, so you sort of pretend that they don’t exist, even when we would get a week off of school or work.”

He paused to look down at his hands and you waited while he took a second.

“When Felix first came over, obviously there were a lot of cultural differences between Australia and Korea. He would casually mention how he was nervous about spending his heats here. Channie-hyung and Minho-hyung helped him the most, not just because they’re the oldest, but because Chan could sympathize with the change in culture and Minho… had a lot of omegan friends back in Gimpo when he was growing up. Even when Felix got used to spending his heats here, he still never really stopped talking about them. Of course he didn’t say anything when we went out in public or anything like that, but he never tried to hide it around us.” Hyunjin’s mouth curled up at the corners. “There was this one time when we were in the dressing room and he was complaining about his pre-heat cramps loud enough for all of the staff to hear. Changbinnie-hyung’s face was so red,” he snickered.

Suddenly, his face sobered up. “I really wish I had been there for him more. As the other omega in our pack, it should have been me, but at that moment, I just felt… all I felt was shame. Shame for him, for letting other people know that he had heats, shame for me, for being the other omega and being afraid that people would think that I would talk about my heat in the same way, shame for the poor staff members who had to listen to that,” Hyunjin took a deep breath. “But then, one of the coordi-noonas came up and recommended a good painkiller brand, and one of our managers told Felix that they could buy some ice cream on the way home, and I… I was so amazed. Talking about anything related to heats was supposed to be this horrible, embarrassing thing, but instead, Felix just got sympathy and support.”

Hyunjin looked back up at you and stared deep into your eyes. “I know that I don’t like to talk about my heats, even after seeing that and being with Felix all this time, but I know that you’re here to help me and my pack, so I’m going to do my best to not be ashamed anymore.”

You took Hyunjin’s hands in yours. “Thank you so much for telling me. I really-”

You were suddenly interrupted by his stomach doing its best impression of a whale song. His eyes widened before he hid his face in his hands. “Talk about embarrassing and shameful. I guess we forgot to eat lunch.”

You cackled and stroked his shoulder in what you hoped was a soothing way. “Well,” you giggled, “should we get some now? I’m pretty hungry, too, now that you mention it.”

Hyunjin’s hands slid from his face as he looked back up at you. “Hmm. I’m kind of craving something sweet.” He turned until he was lying on the floor with his face turned towards the ceiling.

As you scooted over to lay down beside him, he sat up and stared at you with his eyes lit up. “I have a genius idea! Have you tried any good Korean snacks since you moved here, noona?”

You thought back to everything that happened since you got off the plane. “Uh… not really? There were some chips or something in the hotel room but I didn’t want to spend the company money on ridiculous stuff like that.”

Hyunjin waved his hand dismissively. “Even if you did eat them, it wouldn’t really count. Expensive places always overcharge for mediocre things.” He set his hand back on the floor and turned back to you. “Do you know what this means?”

“That I need to order more of my own snacks from home before I run out?”

“No!” Hyunjin rolled his eyes, but you could see a hint of mirth in them. “Well, yes, noona, you should definitely do that. And order some for us to try. But we should raid the vending machine and have a taste testing! I even stole Binnie-hyung’s credit card this morning, so we can use that!”

You giggled at his enthusiasm for both having a taste testing and using his member’s money to pay for it. “I’m up for it if you are, but if Changbin finds out, I’m pinning everything on you. He’ll probably go easy on you, anyway.”

Hyunjin shrugged, his expression somewhere between fond and smug. “Yeah, he’ll definitely go easy on me. Especially when I tell him our pretty noona coerced me into it. He’ll understand. How am I supposed to say no to that? Anyway, we could also get some snacks to drop off at the dance studio after we’re done with our taste test, I’m sure that Changbin-hyung and Innie would be glad for a snack break.”

“I- okay.” You stuttered, trying not to fixate on the phrase “our pretty noona”. “Let’s do a taste testing. Lead the way to the vending machines.”

After reapplying your scent blocker, you both made your way down two flights of stairs and down a long hallway before you came to the vending machine. Hyunjin explained that there was one closer to the room you were in, but that this one had better snacks.

You stopped in front of the vending machine, a little surprised at how high tech it looked. You were more used to ones with sticky buttons that refused to take your dollars more often than not and that you would occasionally have to shake to free your snack. This one had a whole mini snack elevator.

“Let’s see, Innie likes these cheesy crackers, Changbin-hyung will cry if he finds out we used his credit card and didn’t get him anything, so let’s get him the barbecue chips, and this is Lino-hyung’s favorite pudding…”

You couldn’t help the smile on your face as you watched Hyunjin mutter to himself about his bandmates’ snack preferences. “You’re so considerate of your packmates,” you told him.

He blinked at you in surprise, like he had forgotten you were standing there with him. “Ah, well, it’s really more of a survival tactic. I have had one too many pudding lectures from hyung, so if I show up with the wrong one, who knows what he’ll do to me?”

Back in the studio, you spread your bounty around the two of you, like you were preparing for hibernation. The three snacks for the boys in the other dance studio were carefully set off to the side, so that neither of you would mistakenly eat them.

“So,” you started, “I know the nest thing sort of threw you off, but is there anything else you think I should know before your heat? It can be anything, things you like to avoid, your favorite things to nest with, things you like to eat,” you asked, shaking the bag of chips you were currently eating from. They were a bit different than what you were used to, but still pretty good.

Hyunjin hummed around a ring-shaped gummy. “Well, I like to do laundry before my heats and then get my members to scent my stuff. I just feel a bit icky when I’m not sure when the last time I washed something was. Felix likes to bake during his preheat, which is sort of perfect because I eat more than usual during my preheat, so I can just eat whatever he made and put in the fridge. But I don’t like eating during my actual heat. As for the stuff in my nest… I have this scarf that Seungminnie bought for me once when we visited Paris. And Lino-hyung gave me a scrunchie that he drew a bunch of Jureumis on that I like to wear on my wrist. Also, Jisungie got me a dumpling plushie that also has a hot water bag inside. I have some other things from the members, too, but those are the first things that come to mind. Most of the other stuff is pillows and blankets. Felix likes fluffier blankets in his nest, but I like the smoother, silkier ones. And I love having my members in my nests with me. Also, I have at least three fans going on at the same time because I hate how hot I get. I do react a bit… dramatically when my members accidentally move something in my nest, which sort of confuses me a bit because that really only happens during my heats.”

You quickly brought out your notebook and pen and scribbled down all the information Hyunjin had given you. As you wrote semi-legibly, you did your best to talk to him at the same time.

“Well, that’s definitely a heat-brain thing. Do you only feel anger or annoyance at your pack when they move your nest around or is it something else, too?”

Hyunjin stopped chewing and set down the bag of candy. “I guess… it does hurt a bit. At first. And then I growl or nip them or something like that.” He shrugged dismissively.

“And that hurt, could it be that your anger is sort of a way to get around it or cover it up?”

He looked up to meet your gaze and squeezed the plastic package so it crinkled. “That… it could definitely be that, I suppose. I think… my brain is sort of telling me that my packmates are changing my nest because they don’t like the way I arranged it.”

You nodded and set down your notebook. “Well, I know that no matter what I say, during your heat, your omega is still likely going to react like that because you don’t have the same level of brain processing power as you do when you aren’t in heat, but maybe, hopefully, you’ll feel less guilty about it afterwards. Hyunjin, you know that your members love your nests. They don’t want to move it or change it, and from what they’ve told me, they always try to move carefully so that they don’t offend you. They also understand that you’re protective of your nests and that you react, as you put it, dramatically. They know that that can be a risk to stepping into your nest, but I am sure that it’s worth it to them. Even if they get nipped or growled at, they made the choice to enter your nest and they obviously think that it was worth it if they come back again and again.”

Hyunjin watched you with wide eyes before his face broke out into a soft smile. “Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. Plus, Lino-hyung bites the others enough that they should be able to deal with me if I bite them once or twice during my heat, even if I bite them a bit harder than he does.” Hyunjin rolled his eyes and leaned backwards until he was lying down. “I can’t believe I’m in a relationship with those losers.”

You smiled at him, glad that he could go from serious topics to more light-hearted ones. You grabbed another candy bag and a question formed in your brain.

“What exactly does the company know about your relationship?” You asked, tearing open the packet, this one with cartoon purple lizards advertising how “de-liz-cious” the gummies were.

Hyunjin hummed, popping a chocolate-covered cracker into his mouth. Once he chewed and swallowed it, he passed the bag to you.

“The company knows that we help each other through our heats and ruts, that’s why they had you sign a bunch of NDAs,” he told you, “but they don’t exactly know about the actual relationship between us. They know Hannie and Lino-hyung go out together, but they don’t know they’re actually going out together. They know Binnie-hyung flirts with me, but they don’t know that I flirt back when the cameras are off. They know that Chan-hyung and Felix sleep together a lot but they don’t know that they sleep together a lot.” He paused. “And I mean a lot. Honestly, most of the time, sleeping seems to be the last thing on their minds. Horny losers.” He shook his head fondly before refocusing. “The company tells us to play things up for the camera a bit for fan service, but what they don’t know is that we’re actually toning it down.” He finished with a smirk.

You grinned. “Wow. So they don’t know you’re in a relationship at all?”

“Nope. Just our families and some of our friends know. And now you, noona.” Hyunjin rolled over and stretched his arms out. “I guess we are pretty affectionate towards each other around our staff, but I think the whole 8-members thing actually throws them off. Poly packs aren’t as common as they used to be, so it probably hasn’t even occurred to them. They likely assume that some of us are together, just in couples, but they’ve never asked us outright, I think they’re fine with acting ignorant as long as we don’t let them or the public know anything.”

You had collected all of the empty snack bags and were about to throw them away while Hyunjin stretched his arms above his head. “So, is there anything else you want to tell me? I feel like we covered a lot, but just let me know if there’s something else.”

Hyunjin had moved on to stretching his back but paused to smile at you and shake his head. “No, I think we talked about everything we needed to, noona.”

“Okay.” You collected your notebook and bag before shoving the extra snacks in there as well. “Do you think now is a good time to interrupt the dance practice?”

Hyunjin stood up gracefully and sighed. “It’s always a good time to interrupt dance practice. I think Changbin-hyung and Innie will be eternally grateful to you.”

“Not you?” You questioned. “You picked out the snacks and it was your idea.”

He waved his hand dismissively as you made your way out of the dance studio and into the elevator. “They’ll be grateful for about five minutes until they conveniently forget it. Or they’ll ask me why I didn’t come and save them earlier.”

The elevator ride was silent, but much more comfortable than when the two of you had been in the same elevator earlier. You stepped out into the hallway, following Hyunjin until he came to a door on the right.

He peeked in through the window and smiled before gently opening the door.

The song and dance they were doing weren’t as intense as some of their other tracks and routines, it was a B-side they recorded earlier that day, and were still dancing to the guide version, but you could see that they were putting in the exact same amount of effort, no matter what the tempo or sound quality was. Their moves were soft, almost floaty, but they were still very deliberate and precise.

You saw Minho’s eyes glance at you and Hyunjin in the mirror from where he was at the front of the formation, but he gave no other acknowledgment of your presence.

I.N and Changbin also noticed you, but they were less smooth about it. Changbin faltered in his movements and Innie fell behind rhythm.

“Yah, finish up the song, brats. Then we can take a break.”

At Lee Know’s words, the other two seemed to come alive, dancing with more energy than before. The song wasn’t much longer, and their positioning for the ending pose almost made you laugh out loud. Of course, the dance was meant to be for eight members, and there were quite a few missing, so there was Minho and Innie posed together on one side of the studio and Changbin all alone on the other side. Evidently Hyunjin shared the same thoughts as you, but didn’t keep quiet about laughing, even as you two clapped politely.

“Oh, my Binnie-hyung, are you lonely over there?” Hyunjin teased.

Changbin unfroze from his pose to flop down on the wood floor, all splayed out and breathing heavily, but focused on Hyunjin. In a high-pitched voice, he called out, “Yah, Hyunjin, I’m always lonely when I’m away from you!” He wriggled on the floor in a way that you guessed was supposed to be cute, but his obvious lack of energy made it seem more like a fish flopping around on land.

Hyunjin giggled and walked over to Changbin, squatting and grabbing the alpha’s outstretched hand as he murmured something you couldn’t hear.

Innie had flopped down as well, almost mirroring Changbin as he took deep breaths. Minho had walked over to turn the music off, and then sat on the couch with a water bottle.

Seeing that he was mostly okay, you turned back to I.N. “Hey, little alpha. Do you want me to bring you your water bottle?”

Jeongin let out a loud groan that echoed around the studio. “Oh my gosh, noona, you are seriously my new favorite person. Yes, please. It’s the green one.”

You walked over to the wooden counter and retrieved the green water bottle. You spotted a blue and pink water bottle next to it and, deducing that it was Changbin’s, you handed it to Hyunjin to give it to Changbin before you headed back over to I.N.

You squatted next to him just as a loud groan pierced the air. “Y/N! You are welcome to stay with our group for the rest of our lives! I’m going to produce a song about you and sing it at every single concert and award show!”

You smirked at Changbin’s words as Innie thanked you for his water. “Just for brining you your water bottle? At least wait until you see what Hyunjin and I brought in my bag for you.”

Changbin sat up like he was possessed. “What do you have?”

You walked over to your bag and unzipped it, pulling out the barbecue chips Hyunjin had picked out. You tossed them over to Changbin, whose eyes widened as he caught them and read the label. “Yah, Y/N, how did you know I liked these?”

You shrugged as you made your way over to Minho, pudding in hand. “A certain omega packmate of yours might have told me. It was actually his idea, so make sure to thank him.”

Hyunjin had fully sat down next to Changbin, but now, Changbin tackled him onto his back and wriggled the two of them around like happy earthworms.

Minho smiled and thanked you as you handed him the pudding before peeling it open and lying down on the couch. You weren’t entirely sure how safe it was to eat the pudding like that, but he seemed confident in his abilities, like he had done this before, so you left him to it and walked over to Jeongin with the cheese crackers in hand.

Innie had been staring at the other two members, his expression one of disgust, but you could see the fondness sparkling in his eyes. “Gross,” he stated, as Changbin started kissing all over Hyunjin’s face.

“Hopefully, you’ll find this a little less gross,” you told him as you handed him the crackers.

His eyes lit up as he took the packet from you. “Thanks, noona.”

You zipped up your bag and threw it to the other side of the room. “You should be thanking Hyunjin, he picked them out for you.”

Jeongin frowned as he ripped open the snack package. “I don’t need to thank him. If anything, this is what I deserve as compensation for dealing with him.” His eyes wrinkled with his smile as he stuffed a cracker in his mouth. “Oh, thank you, noona! I’ve been extra hungry all day for some reason.”

You smiled and were about to respond when you were interrupted by Hyunjin flopping down next to you, wrapping his arms around your waist and resting his head on your shoulder. “Yes, thank you, noona. I’m really glad that you’re our caretaker. We haven’t known you for long, but I can tell that we’re going to love you.”

…

Sorry for any mistakes, I edited this and posted it in my college’s parking lot😭

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[coolestzed]

Alright, I’ve been holding this inside for years but I’m finally gonna say it.

Misako haters are actually fucking annoying at this point.

They always were to me, but now, they’re just OBJECTIVELY an annoyance. And they need to STOP.

They take literally ANY chance to slander her, even when it’s completely unwarranted. Like, I’d just look at a picture of her on Pinterest, and there’d be multiple comments going "the world’s worst mother". Or I’d see content about Koko and there’d always be comments comparing her and Misako and going like "Koko way better fuck Misako".

I’d even see a fucking meme and people would slander Misako. Like they couldn’t resist.

And that’s not even mentioning his people constantly make her seem way worse than she actually is. Im not gonna quote everything, but basically they act like she never does good things for Lloyd. That she doesn’t care about him at all! And it’s just- so WILDY out of character!! And it’s the same vice versa! I saw a funny Ninjago video the other day with a "your mom" joke and someone in the comments was like "jokes on you, Lloyd would never call Misako mom". I’m just?????? Yes he DOES????? ALL THE TIME???

People just act like their relationship is nonexistent! Like they don’t care about each other, or that Misako doesn’t care about Lloyd! Which is OBVIOUSLY not true!

People claim that she disappears every other season but the only seasons she was absent in are 12 and 13. Also, she has a job. She goes on expeditions. Obviously she’s not there 100% of the time. And she and Lloyd clearly spend time together off screen.

People don’t even acknowledge the reason why she left in the first place. They act like she dropped him off at a boarding school and dipped to take a vaycay. She was literally trying to stop her husband and son from having to fight to the death. You ever think about that? You ever think about how SHE felt in the situation? With her husband being consumed by evil and later being banished, and learning that he and their son would have to fight each other? She was HORRIFIED and GRIEVING! Ultimately she did it to save her family. It doesn’t make leaving Lloyd right but it’s understandable.

But apparently not to almost all of the fandom.

Most of y’all, completely ignore that, and everything else that came after season 2.

Misako constantly being worried about Lloyd in Tournament of Elements and Possession.

Both of them spending Day of the Departed together.

Her getting/building the Destiny’s Shadow as a birthday gift for Lloyd.

How she supported, fought beside, and risked her life for Lloyd in Hunted.

How she wanted to stay and fight with him during MoTO but only went inside because Lloyd urged her to protect the civilians.

Not to mention just their general interactions. THEY’RE ALWAYS HAPPY TO SEE EACH OTHER!!! Do you know how many times they hug?!

And this dialogue here:

"Aren’t you going to kiss your mother goodbye?"

"Mooom, we've-we've talked about this-"

WHAT MORE PROOF DO YOU NEED?!

Lloyd and Misako have a good, healthy and loving relationship. Misako has long since made up for her mistake and they’ve moved on.

Yet THE FANDOM REFUSES TO!!!

EVERYONE, TO THIS DAY, STILL TREATS HER LIKE THE FUCKING DEVIL!!!

I CAN’T EVEN COUNT THE NUMBER OF TIMES PEOPLE HAVE HAD OVERDRAMATIC TANTRUMS FROM HER JUST EXISTING.

IT MAKES ME SO UNREASONABLY ANGRY.

AND THE FACT THAT I’VE SOMEHOW BEEN SEEING EVEN MORE MISAKO HATE DURING AND AFTER MOTHERS DAY IS ACTUALLY APPALLING.

NOT EVEN FUCKING ENDEAVOR FROM MHA GETS THIS MUCH HATE AND HE’S DONE MUCH WORSE TO HIS FAMILY.

IT. HAS. BEEN. OVER. 16. SEASONS. AND. A. MOVIE.

GET. OVER. IT.

*deep breath*

Look, she’s not perfect. Obviously. She fucked up. But who in this series hasn’t? She came back, and she’s made sure to be a better mother to Lloyd. He forgave her, and they have a good relationship now. They’re close.

She wouldn’t be as hated if the writers didn’t do her dirty. Her introduction wasn’t handled the best, and having her and Lloyd have a more in depth discussion would’ve made the reunion and forgiveness feel less rushed and forced. That love triangle with Wu and Garmadon certainly didn’t do her any favors either. 😑

Regardless, her character’s gotten better over the seasons. Again, she and Lloyd and close and have a good relationship.

But hardly anyone acknowledges that, almost everyone in the fandom hyper fixates on that one mistake from years ago. They don’t pay attention to anything else. Like how she’s a better mother, or how she’s just a generally good person.

You aren’t supposed to judge characters or irl people solely on their past mistakes. Especially when they’ve already made up for them. Thats why the "Misako’s a horrible mother" statement is always bullshit to me.

Seriously, Misako’s been a part of Lloyd’s life longer than she’s been absent from it at this point.

The amount of passionate, unforgiving hate she gets is so undeserved and over the top. Too many people are projecting their own issues onto her. Or just being plain hateful. It’s not fair to define her entire character on a single mistake that she’s long made up for.

And it’s definitely not fair to people that actually like Misako. Often times on the few positive posts about her, there’d be Misako haters in the notes or reblogs complaining about her or insulting her, or just stating they hate her but love the content. And that is completely uncool and rude. It’s so unnecessary. You don’t do that, that’s so shitty. The again Misako haters have a habit of spouting unnecessary hate. Like it’s a terminal condition they have.

So, please, for the love of god, COOL IT. Stop and think, try to ACTUALLY look at her character without the veil of blind hatred.

If you still dislike or hate her, fine! But if you’re gonna detest her, at least hate her as she is and don’t make her worse than she actually is to justify hating her more.

And PLEASE stop bashing her at every turn, it’s annoying, upsetting, unwarranted, unnecessary, and just not good.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[foliosriot]

Vinny As Your Boyfriend

NSFW headcanons under the cut — 18+ only MDNI or i’ll block you

@concretenoah for you pookie <3

SFW

best cuddler known to man

for sure runs a little warmer than most

he likes to put his hands up your shirt while you’re cuddling

just wants to feel you closer to him

buries his face in your neck as you play with/run your fingers through his hair

sweet lil kisses to your neck too hehe

funniest little fucker

does not have to try very hard to get you to bust out laughing and or smile

y’all have so many inside jokes it’s not even funny

he makes you laugh like no one else ever has

(he tweeted one time that he exists just to make his friends laugh, and it remains true when it comes to you like holy shit)

if you have bad anxiety or you’re stressed (or anything like that), he lets you play with his rings/hands bc he knows how much it calms you down

tries to teach you drums but his chaotic energy usually does not make him the best teacher

still tries to teach you regardless

NSFW

vocal as hell

sometimes you have to tell him to shut the fuck up bc he’s being too loud

but it’s ok you just feel sooo good he can’t help it

nowhere near a brat tamer but he will take out his frustration on you

like if he’s trying to practice or is streaming and you’re annoying/teasing him then he’s gonna get pissed and make you pay for it

loves the way his hand looks against your throat

won’t apply a ton of pressure or anything, just can’t help wrapping his ringed hand around your neck and feeling the way your throat constricts beneath his palm

leaves love bites on you everywhere

plus: if you get needy before a show, he lets you give him as many hickeys as you want cuz he’s gonna be painting his skin in a few minutes anyways so why not

he is also obsessed with the knowledge that there are definitely countless bite marks and hickeys under the black paint and no one will ever know

LOVES having you ride him

like- if you aren’t going the pace he wants he’ll just use his drummer strength against you and force you to sink down onto him in a way that is mind numbing for you both

loves just making out with you as you’re riding him

it’s what eventually sends you both over the edge and he will never get over that

aftercare king

[12thhausveen]

More astrobservations:

Aquarius placements and always being the sore thumb in the family- what is that? A lot of the time family doesn’t up approve of what their into/ up to and they’re usually very ok with that. At some point they just stop trying to impress their parents and I’ve noticed some just go off the deep end and it seems like it’s spite driven + their urge to not conform rising to the occasion

When water suns are attracted to you those eyes will do all the talking first especially with pisces suns like… are you gonna say something orr 😭

With sun opp moon in synastry the sun can have a fondness for the moon that i think comes from noticing the similar modality they operate with and respecting the moons unique approach to things since the sun is a creative energy as is, once the moon knows they aren’t being stepped on and have their own space to exist these two are some peas in a pod

The dynamic when there’s attraction between a water sun male and a fire sun female in the beginning stages has the most awkward interactions… he could be the most outgoing person (rare) til he gets around her then it’s SILENCE and the weirdest attempt at flirting I’ve ever witnessed ensues. Lmk your experiences with this dynamic if they exist

Cancer placements may not want children or to be a mother but there’s this weird urge to mother or PROTECT more so… i don’t know what it is but we all have our Thing we protect, for me im oddly protective of animals and when someone becomes apart of my crew and my life there’s that urge to protect them from the world 😶

Leo sun (+ cancer placements bonus points) have this rich protectiveness that reads a bit aggressive at times, if they perceive there’s a threat they won’t hesitate to get loud and defend who they love either

Jupiter in the 12th/pisces could enjoy getting drunk/ high/ not being sober while traveling… it’s strange and very true for me

Mars conjunct pluto and hating men… it’s usually not for no reason either

Also men with aquarius placements… why are so many skinny/ lanky?! The amount aquarius placement men/ individuals built like that needs to be studied… also always got some kinda geeky swag and a eccentric beauty either eccentric weird or just oddly charming without trying (see harry styles, ashton kutcher etc and those are just aqua suns)

Libra moons are literally a mirror of their environment… we’re not sweetie pies or moody we’re literally just you 😭 (especially right when we meet new people). Also it’s hard for us to be blatantly mean for no reason, the kid to say ‘guys let’s just stop’ while playing ding dong ditch

No one’s gonna read you on your flaws like a virgo sun/ moon/ (possibly venus)… if you pass the visual test or they don’t stoop that low it’s what about your life is lacking they tend to call out passive aggressively or during a fight and they do love themselves a verbal spar… also I’ve noticed they love to talk about their day and how it went with their person at the end of the day

Also aries venuses (with a fire mars bonus points 😵‍💫) what is it with y’all making rash/ impulsive decisions to feel something or for some kinda validation then regretting it later… and this is coming from a sag mars y’all need to calm down 😭 the energy and zest is nice but channel it into something you KNOW will benefit you in the future

> Just stuff I’ve gathered if you have other experiences lmk i like to learn

+ thank you for the interactions on my prev postッ