#yes i was right. yes i love him. i contain multitudes

[celestie0]

gojo satoru x reader | fake marriage au [18+]

in holy matriphony ch1. he said yes!! congrats!!

ᰔ pairing. fake marriage au - neighbor&realtor!gojo x nurse!reader (ft. choso x reader & suguru x reader)

ᰔ summary. gojo satoru is your extremely annoying next-door-neighbor who you're pretty sure is the most insufferable man you've ever met. given the fact that you exclusively work the night shift at a chaotic emergency dept, just got broken up with your boyfriend of seven years, n have been taking care of your sick mom ever since her multitude of diagnoses, yet somehow your neighbor is the main source of stress in your life should speak volumes. but when your mother's medical bills start to skyrocket more than you can manage, and you learn that said neighbor of yours has the best private health insurance in the country, you ask him to enter a matrimonial agreement with you for the spousal benefits all in the name of saving a few hundred thousand dollars. but you'll have to see if suffering cohabitation w him is worth any amount of money.

ᰔ genre/tags. fluff, smut, angst, enemies to lovers (sort of), annoyances to lovers (that's more like it), small town romance, fake marriage, next door neighbors, lots of bickering, suburban shenanigans, slow burn, mutual pining, gojo likes to play house but you don't, hatred for the american healthcare system, gojo always forgets to mow the lawn, jealousy, an insane amount of profanity; btw gojo in this fic is in his mid 30s n reader is in her late 20s

ᰔ warnings. reader in this fic has a sick mother w alzheimer's & cancer so there is secondary medical angst!!

ᰔ chapter. 1/x (probably 10)

ᰔ words. 7.8k

a/n. hellooo omg welcome to this debut chapter!! tysm to everyone who wanted to be on taglist for this!! i was gagged at the amount of people!! yall are amazing omg n thanks for supporting my works :''') hope you enjoy this chapter and i will see all you lovelies at the bottom <33

nav. ch1 :: ch2 :: ch3 :: ch4 (pending)

Love thy neighbor.

Cherish thy neighbor.

Tolerate thy neighbor.

Peacefully coexist with thy neighbor. 

Fuck thy neighbor? No, wait, not that one.

It’s murder thy neighbor. That was the phrase you were looking for.

Murder thy neighbor so gruesomely that you’d leave no trace behind. Murder him and bury him somewhere no one could ever find him, so that even in millions of years from now when some other highly advanced mammalian species overtakes the planet and embarks on journeys to acquire fossils, thy neighbor will still never grace the atmospheric oxygen of the earth ever again. It’s the punishment he’d deserve for thoroughly pissing you off at the worst times possible and in the worst ways possible. The smallest of prices to pay.

“SATORU!!!” you yell, storming up the sudsy driveway of your next-door neighbor’s house at eight in the morning, clad in your dirty scrubs from the hell of a night shift you just endured working at the hospital, glass containers inside the lunchbox you were holding hitting painfully against the poor joint in your knee but you just don’t care. Anger is all you can see right now.

Your neighbor (derogatory) stands there in his pajamas with a spray nozzle in his hands, passively spraying water across the top surface of his car, and when he sees you, he pulls his left airpod out of his ear and looks you up and down once. You’re pretty sure there’s steam coming out of your ears. “Uh, do you mind? I’m trying to wash my car.”

“How many fucking times do I have to tell you not to park your stupid boat in front of my driveway?!” you yell at him, voice hoarse and nails digging into the skin of your palms by the clench of your fists.

“Hm?” he leans back a little to glance past you to his boat. “Oh, you mean my 2023 Boston Whaler 220 Dauntless with low profile bow rail welded stainless steel, Mercury FourStroke hydraulic power steering and, not to mention, a platinum gelcoat hull? That silly old thing? It’s not even parked in front of your driveway.”

“Yes. It is. Are you blind? I can’t move my car into my garage, hence why it’s running idle on the fucking street right now. Your boat’s on my property.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes. It is.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Uh. Yuh-huh.”

“Honey. I’m a real estate agent. You don’t think I’d know where my own property line starts and ends?”

“Park. It. On. Your. Drive. Way.”

“I spent a lot of money on that boat,” he sighs, “I intend to show it off on the street. Stop acting like there isn’t more than enough room for your tiny prius. It’s not my fault you have the motor skills of a toddler and don’t know how to pull into a driveway,” he pauses for a second and tilts his head upwards in thought, “Oh. Motor skills, haha, get it? Fuck, that’s funny. Hold on, I gotta jot that down,” he pulls his phone out of the pocket of his cotton plaid pajama pants, “my niece would love that. She gets all giggly about puns these days. It’s her birthday next weekend, by the way, turning five.”

“Oh, right,” you scratch the top of your head (been too busy to wash your hair), and realize the ponytail you threw your hair up into at the beginning of your shift last night is now barely hanging on for dear life, “I forgot to tell you, but my cousin said he can’t rent that pony out for her birthday party anymore. Apparently it died.”

He stares at you. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Damn.”

“Mm.”

He shrugs. “That’s fine, thanks anyway,” he swipes up on his phone, “they had crazy hair day at my niece’s elementary school yesterday, wanna see a picture?”

“Sure.”

He turns his phone to show you. “My sister let her cut her hair a little shorter this time since she wouldn’t stop asking. I guess all her friends at school were cutting theirs short too so they wanted to be matching.”

“Aww,” you pout with a small smile when you see the picture, “I think it suits her. That’s a lot of glitter though, y’know that stuff’s really bad for the environment.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, turning his phone screen back to face him, “anyway. I was halfway convinced you just came from some crazy hair day when I saw you stomp up my driveway just now.”

“I’m gonna guillotine your head off with the trunk door of my car. Now move your boat.”

“Hold on one sec,” he says, holding a finger right up to your face, and you flinch backwards slightly before going cross-eyed to stare at it, and then you’re glaring at him again. His phone is ringing in his hand. “I gotta take this.”

“Wha–” you try to interrupt him, but he just says shhh and shakes his finger in front of you, which makes you want to bite it off.

“Hi, Donna!” he exclaims into his phone, “so good to hear from you. Oh, no, not at all, you caught me at the perfect time. I’m just washing my car. Nah, you’re not interrupting anything.”

The urge to smack him consumes you.

“Oh okay, cool, I’m glad you took some time to think about it. Let me know when you want to meet again, if you’re still interested in the house, we can make an offer. Uh huh. Yeah. Sorry, what’s that? Oh,” he pulls his phone from his ear to look at the time, “yeah, that’s fine. Is that the one on 6th street? Sure, I’ll see you then. By the way, how was little Tommy’s soccer game yesterday?...Aw, that’s okay, he’ll get the next one. Hm? Yeah, what’s up? Oh, you know that I’d love to, and there’s no one that enjoys your green bean casserole more than I do, but I’m actually busy tonight! I know! Bummer! Maybe some other time? Alright. Yeah, thanks, you too. Take care. Bye.” He presses the end call on his phone, and there’s an awkward silence as he narrows his eyes at the screen in concentration for a moment while typing something onto it, and then the corner of his eye catches sight of something in his periphery, that something being you, and he jumps a little.

“Oh fuck,” he places a hand on his chest and exhales, “I didn’t know you were still standing there.”

“I’m seriously going to whack you across the face with my lunch box right now.” 

“That gigantic industrial lunch box you carry around for your 12-hour shifts?” he points at your hand, “you’d have blood on your hands. I’d be dead.”

“Yeah, that’s the goal, idiot.”

“You’re so fucking violent, jeez, I bet the inside of your head looks like the inside of Jeffrey Dahmer’s. How do you sleep at night?”

“With fifteen milligrams of melatonin, blackout curtains, a satin sleeping mask, and in the mornings.”

“...that didn’t make you sound like any less of a serial killer.”

“Whatever, at least I don’t have a complex for elderly divorced women. You know that what you do for work isn’t any better than prostitution, right?” 

“Okay. Now I have to hear where you’re going with this.”

You cross your arms across your chest, and your gigantic industrial sized lunch box with the millions of glass containers inside of it hits your hip painfully, enough to warrant a wince, but you keep a straight face as to not show any weakness. “You flirt with vulnerable women who have just gotten out of probably extremely heartbreaking marriages from their cheating country golf club husbands, and pretend to care about all their drama, just so that they’d buy a house from you. I literally heard you say to a lady the other day,” and you do your absolute best to mock him in the most insulting way possible, “‘it’s okay Lorraine. If you’re still struggling to fill your new house with someone new too, then you know where to find me.’”

“Yeah. She wanted to rent out her guest bedroom. I was gonna help her look for tenants.” 

“O-Oh,” you stutter, but stand up straighter, “doesn’t matter. You still pimp yourself out for a sale.”

“So what if I do? I’m hot, why wouldn’t I take advantage of that? You could’ve done the same thing too, but you didn’t, and now you’re stuck working miserable nursing shifts that are probably taking years off of your lifespan.”

“You’re the one taking years off of my lifespan. Now move your fucking boat.”

He sighs and slips his phone back into his pocket before walking past you to your car, that still had the driver’s side door open and was idle in the middle of the street.

“W-Where are you going?” you ask.

“I’m gonna park your car in your garage for you,” he says, waving his hand up in the air dismissively because he knows you’re about to protest, and then he ducks his head into your car, reaching his arm in for the lever that moves the seat backwards, and adjusts it all the way back before he’s able to take a seat at the wheel. And your yelling is a pestering he pays no mind to as he shuts the door.

“Wait– I didn’t give you permission to–” you shout as you step into your driveway, holding your arms out because you’re scared he’s gonna chip off your side mirror on the stern of his boat, but he deftly pulls your car into the driveway. He also almost runs you over in the process.

When he gets out of your car inside your garage, you storm right up to him and yank your car keys out of his hand. “You almost flattened me over my own driveway.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have been standing there,” he easily retorts and leans against your car before crossing his arms over his chest. “Also, case proven, there’s more than enough space to pull your car in. You’re just piss poor at parking.”

“I swear to fucking god. If you’re ever in a life-threatening emergency and wind up at my hospital, your emergency isn’t going to be the thing that kills you, it’s gonna be the cocktail of deadly meds I inject straight into your veins. And I’ll have it charted like it was a death of natural causes.”

His brow furrows and he frowns, but it’s in that sarcastic way that tells you he’s not threatened by you, and the idea of using the taser in your purse on him is briefly entertained in your mind, “I’ve got Kaiser, hun,” he says, “I wouldn’t go to just any regional hospital for healthcare. Put some damn decorum on my name, Jesus.”

“How is it you’re stupid, an asshole, have a sick fetish for elderly women, and also somehow classist at the same time? Can you pick a struggle please?”

“Stop saying I have a fetish for elderly women,” he hisses at you, “especially with that loud obnoxious voice of yours. Our neighbors are gonna think I’m a creep.” He pretends to shiver.

“But it’s true. I bet you lost your virginity to a fifty-year-old cougar the day you turned eighteen. And to one that was probably grooming you even before then, too.”

His eyes widen. “Damn. How’d you know.”

“That you’re a victim?” you ask, tone derisive, “your entire personality is living proof. Please seek help.”

He rolls his eyes. “I was never groomed, and I didn’t lose my virginity to an elderly woman,” he corrects you, “...although said woman was a little older than me.”

“I’ve literally got no fucking interest in this conversation anymore. Get the fuck out of my garage,” you practically spat at him, “the last thing I need to deal with after getting off of a 12-hour night shift is coming home to your stupid face out on the street.” You push past him, making sure to nudge him with your shoulder but he hardly budges, and you lose balance from your own attack, and now you’re doubly pissed off before you make it to the door with your keys jingling in your hand to find the right one to unlock it.

“Good night,” he calls out to you, and you click the button on the garage door so that it starts closing, and watch him as he panics before ducking his head underneath it to make it outside before you can essentially lock him to rot inside of your garage, and then you shut the door behind you, finally inside the comfort of your home.

Ah. Silence.

But it was never a comfortable one. 

“Mom?” you call out as you open the door out of the laundry room to make it into the living room, and your eyes scan the floor. You don’t see her in the kitchen, or on the couch in front of the TV, sometimes she spends time in the pantry room but she’s not in there today. You round the corner over to where the front entrance of the house is, and you see her standing there, peering out of the window to the other houses on the streets. She holds her hands loosely behind her back, and she’s so still she could be a statue.

“Hey,” you say to her, softly, so as not to startle her. “I’m home.”

She looks over her shoulder at you, and you realize her line of sight was set to next door, where you see Gojo has resumed the wash of his car. “Why are you yelling at that sweet boy across the lawn?” she asks you, “he helped me fix the air conditioning last week.”

Your eyes widen slightly, but then you sigh. Typical Gojo getting involved where he should really just mind his own business. “I’m pretty sure by fix you mean he just pressed a bunch of buttons on the thermostat until it started working again.” 

She doesn’t respond as she continues to stare out onto the street, tilting her head slightly while deep in thought, like she’s trying to make sense of what she sees. 

“Mom,” you gently tug her sleeve, “I think you should get away from the window and get some rest. You look tired, and I need to take you for chemo in the afternoon.”

She gently pulls her elbow away from your grip of her sleeve and turns to look at you. “Mom?” she repeats after you, “why are you calling me ‘mom’? Who are you?”

Your blood runs cold from her words, but you don’t have the time or the luxury to react in the way that you want to, and so you suck in a deep breath. It was one of those days. But it’s cruel that she’ll remember your neighbor and not her own daughter. “I’m your daughter,” you gently reintroduce yourself, to the woman who gave you life, “I know that might be a little weird to hear right now.”

“No…” she says, “I think that makes sense. I’m sorry, dear, I think I have a bad memory these days.” She looks at you with concentration, studying the features of your face. “My daughter, yes. You look…oh, dear, you look like you should sleep.”

You nod slowly, releasing the breath you were holding. “Yes. You too, mom.”

You place your gigantic industrial lunch box on the kitchen counter, and come back to hold your mom’s hands as you lead her to her bedroom downstairs. By the time you fix her a small meal in the kitchen, bring it to her and make her eat so she can take her pills, she’s ready to take a small nap and you know that you’ve earned some sleep now too.

The upstairs master bathroom beckons you the second you get upstairs, and even though you’ve been using the master bedroom & bathroom in this house ever since moving your mom downstairs four years ago since she had trouble getting up the stairs, it still feels odd to stand in front of the sink without a stool underneath your feet, like what you had to when you were a kid and your mother would braid your hair. You’re a grown woman now, and as you stare at your reflection, you’re not sure if you can recognize yourself anymore. But rather than dwell on if it was because of any profound reason, you figured you just needed a shower and to get some sleep before you have to wake up again in five hours. Exhaustion is evident on your face, and you swipe under your eyes to get the smudge of mascara off before it tattoos your skin forever. 

Hot water on your skin does little to help your drowsiness, but at least now you feel clean of your shift, and then you remember there are blood stains on your shoes from the stab wound patient that rolled in at 2AM last night, and you should really let them soak for a few hours while you sleep, but you just can’t bother right now. Instead, you slip into something comfortable, draw your curtains back to mimic the dead of night in your room as best as you can, grab the bottle of melatonin sitting at your nightstand and pop a few tablets, feeling feverish as you slip into your sheets. You pull the comforter up over your eyes, a decision that is less ideal than using a sleeping mask since you’ll be breathing your own carbon dioxide until you fall asleep now, but it’s okay. It’s cozy under your blanket. Just this once. And you count sheep to make you sleepy. At least until the melatonin beats you to it.

—

“You’re looking better,” Dr. Johnson says to your mother as he accesses the port on her chest, “were you able to get a good rest?”

Your mother nods and points to you. “My daughter made me take a nap.”

“That’s good,” he coos, “it’s good to get rest before chemo. Your daughter really cares about you.”

“I know,” your mother smiles up at you, “I’m so lucky.” You return her smile with one of your own.

Dr. Johnson starts to push the line of chemo into your mother’s port as she sits on the chair in the treatment lounge, and then stands up from his rolling chair before the nurse quickly moves to twiddle with the drip of the IV bag. 

“Ready for consult?” he asks you.

You grip your binder to your chest. “Yeah.”

You walk into the doctor’s office, one you’ve more than familiarized yourself with over the past couple of years, then take a seat across from Dr. Johnson’s desk as he clicks through his computer before handing you a copy of your mother’s recent lab work.

“Her tumor markers are rising,” you say as you sift through the papers.

“They are, we’ll likely switch to monitoring them every four weeks going forward. But it’s okay, not to worry,” he says, “tumor markers can raise for all sorts of reasons unrelated to cancer.”

“She had a cold last week,” you say, “maybe it’s the inflammation?”

Dr. Johnson lets out a small laugh. “I’m sorry, y/n, sometimes I forget you’re a nurse.” He hums to himself as he pens down something on the notepad in front of him. “When was your mother’s last PET/CT scan?”

“It was in February,” you say, “she’s due soon. I was going to ask if you could order one for her.”

“Yes, I will, I’ll do it right now,” he says as he types something into the computer. “You still have the standing orders for her routine lab work, correct? Do my MAs need to send you the scripts?”

“No, that’s okay, I got them already. Good for six months,” you reassure him.

“Alright, perfect.”

There’s an awkward silence that settles in the room as you shift in your seat with the binder in your lap, full of all of your mother’s medical information and emergency department discharge packets and recent lab work and imaging. You mess with the plastic cover on top of it nervously.

“It’s good she remembers you today,” Dr. Johnson comments, “I remember last week you were upset she didn’t.”

“Oh,” you say, “yeah, I’m sorry. Sometimes it’s hard.”

His eyes leave his computer screen for a second to look at you. “Are you doing alright?”

You nod slowly. You had to be alright, you had no other choice. “I’m fine, thanks,” you say, “um, actually, doc, I just wanted to share with you that I’ve been keeping track of my mom’s Alzheimer’s progression.” You open your binder in your lap, pulling out a packet of papers and placing them on his desk, turning some of them towards him but he doesn’t really spare a proper enough look. “I’ve just been noticing she’s progressively worsening a bit faster than her neurologist had projected.”

“Okay,” he says, sounding curt, and that nervousness comes back. But goddammit, you’re a nurse, you know how to deal with stubborn doctors. And it’s for your mother. There was no one else left to advocate for her except you.

“I was just wondering if we could also order a brain MRI for her?” you ask, “just to rule out anything…her brain fog has been bad, worse than usual, and I’m just really worried about metastasis, especially if it’s a glioma, I’d just want to catch it as soon as possible.”

You have sympathy for oncologists, really, you do. They must deal with paranoid family members all the time, but how could someone blame another for wanting what’s best for their loved one? You don’t think that’s an empathy that anyone should ever lose, regardless of how long you’ve been practicing medicine. 

He sighs. “There’s no indication for that right now, not with her response to treatment as well as her lab work. I’d suggest we just wait on her next PET/CT results, and we can go from there. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?”

“I know,” you say, “but her next scan isn’t for another couple weeks, plus the week it’ll take to have it read, it’ll be far out, so…if we could just order it now?”

He interlocks his fingers and places his hands in front of him on the desk, looking at you with a stern face, but he glances down at the paperwork you’ve sprawled in front of him with scribblings of all the detailed notes you’ve been taking of your mom’s responses to her Alzheimer’s treatments, with time stamps and descriptions of her mental state, and his furrowed brow relaxes slightly. He breathes in deep. “Alright. Fine, I’ll order one. I highly doubt we’ll find anything, though. But since there’s no clear clinical impression warranting a brain MRI right now,” he mentions as he directs his attention back to his computer, “I don’t think insurance will cover it for you with the diagnoses I put in.”

“That’s okay,” you quickly respond, “I’ll pay for it.” 

You collect your imaging orders from the medical assistants at the center of the oncology floor. The chemo nurse, Mai, informs you that your mother still has about two hours left before her treatment is done, and she gently suggests you go eat something while you wait. You tell her it’s okay, that you want to wait with her, but she tells you the hospital cafeteria is serving tater tots today for tater tot tuesday, and those tater tots are to die for. But before you go downstairs to the cafeteria, you find a few minutes to cry in a one stall bathroom.

—

“God damn,” you hear your coworker, Hana, dreamily sigh as she leans on the handle on your standing mobile nursing work desk, and you trail her line of sight to the tight asses of the EMT men that walk by while rolling a stretcher. “It’s like being hot is a part of their job requirement.”

“Uh-huh,” you agree mindlessly as you try to catch up on charting for the rounds you just ran on your patients around the emergency department beds.

4/20/2024 0200: patient notified of the importance of taking ibuprofen. Attempted to give pt the medication. Pt responded “suck on this, bitch”, gestured to his general groin area, then threw ibuprofen tablets at RN. pt upset and requests narcotics instead. Informed MD of pt’s behavior and request. MD will not order narcotic pain medication at this time. Will continue to monitor

“How’s your mom doing?” Hana says, interrupting your typing as she turns to face you now.

“She’s okay,” you say, continuing to punch keys as you stare at your monitor, “she has a PET/CT soon. It’s always nerve wracking when the next scan is coming up.”

“Have you given hospice any more thought?” she asks.

You stop typing and stare blankly ahead at your screen as your heart sinks a little. You have given hospice more thought, and you came to the decision about a week ago that you would go through with it. It’s becoming so increasingly difficult taking care of your mom at home, more than you can manage with all of her doctor’s appointments, radiation appointments, chemotherapy appointments, all of which happen during the late mornings or early afternoons so you can’t even properly rest on most days that you come home from night shifts. Even though you only work three shifts a week, you can’t remember the last time you got a full, uninterrupted eight hours of sleep because of how messed up your circardian rhythm has become. You were practically a walking zombie, and you hardly felt like a person anymore. You’re not going to switch to the day shift, because that would make it difficult to take your mom to her appointments, and also because you get paid extra with the night shift differential, and above all other necessities, what you really needed right now the most was money. Forget the fact you’re still in debt from nursing school, but you co-signed on the medical loans your mother had taken out for treatments, and five years of high acuity medical bills was a living nightmare. And you were living that nightmare. 

“I did,” you say, “I’ve been looking into hospices, but a lot of them are further away than I’d like.” You glance down at your keyboard. “I…I’m going to miss having my mom home. Even though it’s hard to deal with her mood swings and stuff sometimes, I just think the house would feel really empty without her.”

“Aw, my dear,” Hana sighs and rubs her hand up and down your arm soothingly, “I’m sure you’d love to have her home, but I think it’s becoming too much for you. I say this with love and care, but I can’t remember the last time I saw you genuinely smile.”

Your eyes widen slightly from her words, and you release some of the tension in your shoulders, tension you didn’t even realize you were holding onto during this conversation.

“It’s too much for just one person,” she continues, “while I understand you want to spend more time with your mom, the quality of time you’re spending with her could be so much better if you had some weight lifted off your shoulders, where you’re not worrying about her medication schedule or doctor’s appointments or blood draws and all that.”

You nod slowly and manage to give her a small smile, then place your hand over hers that was still soothing over your arm. “Thanks, Hana. I know, I appreciate you looking out for me. I…I think I’ll look more seriously into hospices. It’s just they’re really expensive, too, so I have that to consider as well.”

“Hmm,” she withdraws her hand from you and juts her bottom lip out as she looks up at fluorescent emergency department lighting. You hear a patient cough in the distance as your senses take in the ambient environment once again. “Y’know, there’s this really great new hospice in town that functions as a general facility and also helps manage a lot of chronic diseases too. They have nurses there that do blood draws and everything, and they also transport patients to their affiliated hospital for treatments, like dialysis and chemo and stuff. My friend’s mom has breast cancer and was recently accepted into that hospice,” she tells you, pulling her phone out and looking through some of her messages, “I think it’s only a fifteen minute drive from your house.”

You tilt your head at her with interest, wondering why it didn’t come up on your provider search through insurance, but regardless, it sounded too good to be true. “It’s probably really expensive. My mom’s under the state insurance right now, but I’ve explored government insurance plans too and they’re still really pricey. I just can’t afford it, not with all of her cancer treatments, and adding her under my insurance isn’t really going to be any better either.”

She groans. “I know. What’s with our healthcare plan? You’d think as a hospital, they’d choose better plans for their employees,” she sighs, and then stops to read some of the messages on her phone, “but my friend said that her husband was able to add her mom as a dependant, and his insurance covers 90% of it. I’m sure it depends on the illness, but they only pay a few thousand per month out of pocket.”

You blink at her. “Really? T-That’s insane…do you know what insurance her husband has?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a Kaiser facility.”

“Oh,” you sigh, “well, they wouldn’t accept state insurance. That’s a private HMO.”

“Shoot,” Hana looks at you apologetically, “I’m so sorry, love, I forgot about that. Sorry to get your hopes up.”

“That’s okay,” you smile at her, “thanks for trying. I’m glad it worked out for your friend, at least.”

Hana glances at her watch and realizes her break is over, so she heads back to her side of the emergency department, and you’re left standing at the nursing station with thoughts running through your head now, and still catastrophically behind on charting.

Hmm.

Kaiser.

You swear someone mentioned that to you recently.

Or maybe you were just remembering another one of those ads you see on television at night. No, no, you’re pretty sure it came up in conversation with someone, but you can’t remember when or why or what or where or who. Hmmmmm. Kaiser, Kaiser, Kaiser. 

Nope. Nothing.

Oh well, maybe it’ll hit you later.

—

It hits you in the form of an intrusive memory when you wake up on a Thursday afternoon in a cold sweat after having a hallucinogenic melatonin dream where you were getting chased by a giant rabbit (don’t ask). 

Kaiser.

Gojo said he has Kaiser insurance. 

And the idea that comes into your head after that is so ridiculous, so absurd, so positively bonkers that you have to slap the sleepiness off your face for a second to make sure you’re still not in some dream state of living, and the harsh sting on your cheek proves that you’re not. And the idea still persists. And now you’re swinging your legs over the edge of your bed, and grabbing your laptop, and opening it, and inputting your pin, and then spending a good three hours researching if this little idea of yours actually has any good level of merit to it, if it could even succeed, if it was even legal? You even find yourself on the phone with insurance representatives, and you stare at the tens of thousands of dollars of debt on your Excel spreadsheet where you keep track of your finances, and you feel the exhaustion in your bones, and you also remember how fucking annoying Gojo is. And yet still, the idea persists. 

And when the pieces of the plan start to unfortunately fall into place, you say, fuck it. What was worse than potentially getting into six figures of debt? It’ll be fine.

But you can only hope he says yes.

.

.

.

[reading commercial break]

hello!! this is ellie, the author. so sorry to interrupt, there is still a bit left for this chapter, but i just wanted to jump in here real quick to explain for some of my readers that may not be american so they may understand reader’s desperation to financially cover the costs of her mother’s healthcare bills. this story is set in suburban america lol, where the healthcare system is so messed up honestly, and this excerpt from the book the body by bill bryson kinda explains:

“Where America really differs from other countries is in the colossal costs of its health care. An angiogram, a survey by The New York Times found, costs an average of $914 in the United States, but only $35 in Canada. Insulin costs about six times as much in America as it does in Europe. The average hip replacement costs $40,364 in America, almost six times the cost in Spain, while an MRI scan in the United States is, at $1,121, four times more than in the Netherlands. The entire system is notoriously unwieldy and cost-heavy.” p360; “...America spends more on health care than any other nation–two and a half times more per person than the average for all other developed nations of the world. One-fifth of all the money Americans earn–$10,209 a year for every citizen, $3.2 trillion altogether–is spent on health care.” p359

unfortunately, a lot of how much you end up spending at the end of the day, depends significantly on the health insurance that you have. it could make the difference of spending a few hundreds to a few thousands to a few tens of thousands and beyond, just based on the insurance plan, even if the illnesses/treatments are exactly the same.

but yeah, just wanted to provide that context lol!! so you must understand reader’s desperation to save a buck!!! 

ok back to regularly scheduled broadcasting!! 🧚‍♀️💕✨

[end of reading commercial break]

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—

You’re sitting at a table outside your favorite cafe in town, leg bouncing up and down underneath the surface impatiently and nervously, and you glance at the time on your phone for the fifth time within the past five minutes because you’re unable to alleviate any of the anxiety you’re experiencing right now. You hear the jingling of the cafe door behind you and then you’re a little startled when someone emerges in your periphery by your side.

You look up and see Gojo standing next to you, and you see he already went inside and grabbed a coffee to-go for himself.

“Hey,” he greets you.

“Hi,” you say with a small wave.

He takes a seat across from you. “What did you want to talk about?” he asks while he settles in and smooths down the fabric of his suit jacket. He’s not wearing a tie, and has a couple of the top buttons of his shirt undone to reveal some of the skin at his collarbone. Probably to seduce the divorced single moms, you think. “And if you called me here to try and convince me for the millionth time to pitch in for that fence you built six months ago, I’m just gonna say no again. I didn’t even want that fence built in the first place. It fucked up the roots on my avocado tree.”

“It’s a joint fence. Neighbors usually pitch in for that kind of stuff, asshole. At least normal neighbors do. You know I talked shit about you to everyone in the neighborhood when you refused to pay and all of them agree that you’re being a stuck-up prick about it?”

“You know that I also talked shit about you to everyone in the neighborhood and they said the same exact thing about you?”

“Wha–” you gasp, blinking a few times from the betrayal, then mutter “...those two-faced bitches” under your breath.

“So,” he pulls his sleeve back to glance at his watch, “what did you want? I’ve only got thirty minutes to talk before I need to head to an open house.” He brings his cup of coffee to his lips.

“Oh. Right. Just a favor,” you say, “I was wondering if you could marry me.”

He almost spits out his coffee.

“E-Excuse me?” he croaks out, exasperated, and he’s coughing a little bit as he hits his chest with a fist to alleviate the irritation in his throat from some hot coffee that went down the wrong pipe.

“I mean, if it’s not an issue, I’d really appreciate it if you could marry me,” you attempt to clarify, but you realize you probably should’ve thought a little more about how you were going to ask him this, and now you’re too deep to backtrack, so you just hope you’ll find the conversation along the way.

He’s looking at your like you’ve got six heads, brow furrowed and mouth hanging open slightly with that what the fuck? face you see him wear sometimes. But then he sits up a bit straighter, expression morphing into a curious one as he studies your face, head tilting a little in his scrutinization. Then, his face relaxes entirely. He has this knowing look as he nods up and down slowly, like he just figured something out, and then he sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose in some type of faux frustration. And you don’t understand why you’re already seethingly angry about what he’s going to say next.

“Oh god,” he sighs, “I knew this day would come.”

“Huh?” you squeak out.

“Listen,” he says as he crosses his arms, but one of his hands comes out from where it was tucked in his elbow to waive around in the air as he articulates his words, “I know that I’m very charming, and handsome, and chivalrous, one might say the modern knight in shining armor–”

“Satoru.”

“–and yes, I’ve seen the way you look at me,” he dramatically sighs, “when I’m taking the groceries up the driveway…when I’m out mowing the lawn…when I stretch on the sidewalk before I go for a run. I feel your eyes on me like a hawk. Quite frankly, you look at me like I’m a piece of meat, and I feel very violated by it sometimes–”

“What the fuck are you talking about???”

“But I get it. Really, I do. There’s no need to be embarrassed about it–”

“I’m not embar–”

“It was really only a matter of time before you would do this. So overcome by your feelings for me that you just had to go against the grain of centuries of matrimonial standards and swallow your gigantic pride to propose to me.” 

“Oh my god, what the fuck are you saying–”

“But,” he says, collecting himself now, and taking in a deep breath, “my answer is no. I mean, I shouldn’t have to explain why. But I will. First of all, where the hell is my ring? Secondly, why aren’t you on one knee in front of me right now? Also, in a cafe? Really? I thought you would’ve known I’d have liked something a little bit more romantic than this. Y’know, private, but also where my family’s somewhere around the corner. Maybe by the beach–”

“Can you stop talkin–”

“–while the sun is setting, and I’m wearing a nice dress, and there’s bubbles in the air and rose petals on the sand, and you tell me how enamored you’ve always been of me, and how you can’t wait to spend the rest of your life with me,” he indulgently sighs, “I mean, it’s every guy’s dream. But nooooo, of course you’ve got no taste or sense for romance in any capac–”

“OH MY FUCKING GOD, FORGET THIS,” you stand up out of your chair, fast enough to where it almost falls backwards, and you grab your purse to sling over your shoulder, “I cannot believe I actually thought this plan would ever fucking work.” You’re about to walk away from the table, because you’re realigned with the wisdom of exactly why you can’t stand this man, when his hand reaches out quickly to grasp onto your wrist, to keep you still, and you jump a little from the contact. You look down, his hand unrelenting in its grip as his knuckles flex slightly, and you’re not sure if he’s ever touched you from how foreign the sensation feels.

“Wait,” he says, and when you look at him, his eyes are a little wide like a puppy, “you’re being serious?”

You yank your wrist out of his grip, but the warmth of his touch still lingers, and you wrap your own hand around it to distract yourself from it. “Why would I just ask you to marry me out of nowhere if I wasn’t being serious?”

He gives you a look like the answer to your question is obvious. “Uh, to fuck with me?”

You’re still holding onto your wrist, protectively pressing it against your chest with your back turned away from him slightly, and you look up at the sky for a brief second. Hm, perhaps you could have brought the favor up a bit better, and you realize it might’ve sounded insane on his end, and you’re also still thinking about the tens of thousands of dollars you could save if he said yes, and so you hesitantly open your body language up to him again.

“Just sit,” he sighs.

You take a seat across from him again, hands finding the warm coffee cup in front of you and you purse your lips together before tucking your bottom lip under your front teeth. You take a deep breath before speaking again. “I…I’m being serious. I was wondering if you could marry me as a favor, and not because I think you’re some type of irresistible man candy, god, where do you get your gigantic ego from?”

“I–”

“Rhetorical question, shut it.”

He blinks at you. “What favor are you asking for that’ll be satisfied by me marrying you?”

You twiddle with your thumbs. “I want to put my mom in hospice,” you say, eyes flickering down slightly because you’re worried you’re about to tear up from the words, but when you realize you’ve got enough conviction not to, you look back up at him, and his eyes on you are a little too observant, “most of the hospices in town are further away than I’d like, and really expensive, but I heard there was a Kaiser one nearby…and that a lot of the costs are covered by insurance. So, if you married me, I could send my mom there. And also, under your insurance, the care network would be better, so I could get her a new oncologist and neurologist, and I’d know she’s being taken care of. And…” you clear your throat, “well, it’ll be a lot less expensive, so I can start to catch up on…well, whatever, you get the picture.”

His eyes narrow at you in thought, and he glances at your hands on the table that are nervously fidgeting, and then his eyes meet yours again. “I’m not sure if you can add a…spouse’s parent to a healthcare plan?”

“You can,” you say, “I already called to ask.”

“Oh.”

“Mhm.”

Gojo hums to himself, laying his palms flat on his thighs and rubbing them back and forth on the taut fabric a few times as he thinks with his gaze set off somewhere in the distance. It seems like he’s running through some algorithm of thoughts in his head, and then he slowly nods to himself when he’s made a decision.

“Sure, I’ll do it,” he says.

“Y-You will?” you ask him. You’re uneasy at how easy it was to convince.

“Yeah. I like your mom. She’s a sweet lady, and I want to see her get better.”

His words touch you. And not from the distance of a ten foot pole like you’d usually allow, but more intimate somehow. And you get the feeling you should thank him, but you’re still pissed off from when he almost ran you over on your own driveway earlier this week. 

“Really?” you make sure, almost like you’re hoping he’ll change his mind because now you’re suspicious as to why he agreed so quickly. And you realize he’s already making you paranoid.

“Yeah. I’m saying yes to your proposal, y/n,” he says, “I mean, a marriage is just a legal agreement. Not a big deal. I’d want a prenup though, for obvious reasons. In case you’re a gold digger.”

You roll your eyes. “You’re too cheap to even pitch in for a fucking fence. You think I’d believe you’ve got any gold to dig?”

He sighs. “I said in case.”

“Well, anyways, we can work out logistics and paperwork or whatever later,” you say, and you extend your hand out for him to shake it.

He raises an eyebrow at you. “Um. You’re going to make me shake your hand over this?”

“Yeah,” you shrug, “it’s the diplomatic thing to do.”

“Yes,” he says, “for a diplomatic agreement.”

“Precisely,” you say. “That’s exactly what this is.”

He hesitantly brings his hand up to shake yours, but you quickly withdraw yours at the last second. “Nevermind. I don’t want to touch you.”

“Okay,” he easily accepts, “not how I expected to celebrate getting engaged, but whatever. By the way, when’s the wedding? Are we doing, like, a shotgun destination type vibe? Or something a bit more grand?”

“Just be at the courthouse at noon on Sunday.”

“What?! This weekend? That’s too soon,” he panics, “I need time to pick out a dress, and I need to figure out who my bridesmaids are going to be, and–”

“Satoru. Seriously. Just–...just shut the fuck up. Before the headache that you’ve already given me gets worse.”

You two sit in silence for a moment, him just mindlessly staring at a butterfly that landed on the plant at the center of the table, and you just staring off into the void past him while contemplating every life decision you’ve ever made. But that’s how it always was between you two. As much as you hated to admit it, you were jealous of him in a lot of ways. In every way that you were fucked up, he was nonchalant without a care in the world. You wish you knew what that sort of peace felt like, and you wondered if he could show you. Maybe someday when he doesn’t piss you off.

“So,” he interrupts your thoughts, “are you gonna take my last name?”

“Fuck no, I’d rather die.”

“Alright, jeez, I was just asking.”

.

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[end of chapter 1]

a/n. yayy!!! he said yes!! omg congrats on ur engagement!! haha this was a lot of fun to writeee :'') i've got sm fun ideas for this fic. yea this chap was supposed to be longer lol there's still some groundwork to lay w the side quests, but will def cover more of that in the next chapter!!! tysm to everyone that wanted to be on taglist omg i hope that you enjoyed <33 love uuu guysss smmmm also my bad if some stuff doesnt make sense i'm tryna be less perfectionist when i'm editing so that i don't go insane 😍

➸ take me to chapter two!

taglist: @tremendousbouquetflower @cowgirlcujoh @joemama-2 @shinypearlywhites @sykosugu @lovebittenbyevans @luqueam @bloopsstuff @horisdope @alwaysfreakingout @crammingqueen @rideofthevalkyriess @lavender-hvze @gojocock @ceni707 @jxvajxy @catobsessedlady @madaqueue @bbyxxm @gojostit @nixie-19 @cheezitcracker @polarbvnny @cactisjuice @sleepyyammy @lysaray @k4tsukiis @kortanasworld @megumisthirdog @slut-4-gojo @drakenswifeyy @njoxuzi @elernity @jujutsubaby @secretmoneybearvoid @bunny-lily @strawberrygirl0 @httpxxg @bsdicinindirdim @v4mpieres @nanamis-baker @therealestpussyeater @air3922 @13-09-01 @marija4674 @whereflowerswenttodie @geniejunn @bakuhoethotski @ricaliscious @77uchiha77 @hellowoolf @tobaccosunbxrst @possumwho @nvrgojover @kittygrimm88 @samistars @shiin-ye @billiondollarworth @mmeerraa @fjorjestertealeaf @reinam00n @semra4 @st4ryki @new-weather47 @coltsgf @meownuuuu @strawnanamilk @lees-chaotic-brain @ironhottubstranger @spindyl @aise-30 @dunghirse @r0ckst4rjk @44ina @4y3sh4 @lindyloomoo @sweetpo1son @levisfavoriteteashop @delfiiii @fushitoru @gojosimp26 @beabadobeee @astrokenny @horisdope @muchlov3ashley @geniejunn @the-dark-creature @gojonegs @ritzes28 @mo0nforme @drownedpoetss

hope yalls fries never get soggy ever 💕

[bumblesimagines]

Headcanon:

Being Oberyn's lover

Request: Yes or No

Pronouns: They/Them/Theirs, GN!Reader

~~~

Oberyn is an infamous man for several reasons, some of which include the rumors of his usage of poison during duels and an interest in the dark arts. Posion-laced swords and dark arts aside, one of the most notable things about him is his multitude of lovers. From men to women, nobles to brothel workers, Oberyn is no stranger to sex and hardly a stranger to love. He may have a wandering eye but his heart remains fiercely loyal to his lovers/paramours and his many daughters whom he deeply cares for despite their bastard status. 

As such, it is no surprise that you catch Oberyn's eye during one of his trips with Ellaria throughout Westeros. He needs little convincing to speak to you and is as smooth as butter when he begins flirting. While he enjoys giggling maidens or blushing lords, his interest spikes when you come off as indifferent to his charm. He is a Dornishman and Dornishmen love a challenge, especially when he notices your eyes linger on him for far too long to be uninterested. 

Of course, Oberyn mentions his interest to Ellaria, for she is essentially his wife and the mother of many of his daughters. Ellaria provides her approval and encouragement, even going as far as befriending you and acting as some sort of wingwoman to her lover. You quickly put together her involvement in Oberyn's plan to woo you and while it's unusual at first, you learn that it's not so odd in Dorne. A cat-and-mouse game ensues and Oberyn's interest becomes all the more clear to others.

Oberyn's main love languages are gift-giving and physical touch, although he'll provide every other love language known to mankind. Since Oberyn's interest extends past sex, you'll be properly courted by him and this will include countless lavish gifts. He is a prince, after all, and his wealth knows little bounds. You can expect a variety of gifts, from clothes to brooches and anything you can think of. You mention wanting something? Expect that very thing sitting in your room the next day. Oberyn is also very handsy with his lovers and always has a hand on them or has them sit on his lap. He's still a prince and gentleman, however, so he will keep his hands to himself until you are comfortable enough with him. Once he has that green light, expect to find his hand resting on your waist or back, and don't be surprised if it wanders.

 You nod along to the lord as he speaks, absentmindedly listening to the conversation about lands and such. None of it really interests you as you're the thirdborn in your family and the likelihood of you ever needing to know much of what he spoke of was slim. The conversation shifts onto his children as he recalls a funny story and then begins the prodding.

"I hear you remain unwed." The Lord hums thoughtfully and strokes his beard. "We've been searching for someone to wed my second eldest-"

"My Lord," A familiar voice greets from behind and sends a welcomed jolt up your spine, unable to contain the smile before it breaks out on your face. Oberyn steps up beside you and his lips curl up in a genuine smile for you, the palm of his hand pressing soothingly against your lower back and slowly creeping to wrap his fingers around your hip. He holds eye contact, even as he speaks to the man. "I'm afraid I'll have to steal this one from you, My Lord." He simply states and without waiting for a response, he sweeps you away from the sputtering lord. 

"Oberyn," You laugh softly and send an apologetic look over your shoulder right before Oberyn leads you fully out of the room. He spins around on his heel and cups your face, his warm skin pressing against yours. His eyes lack their typical sultriness or grumpiness, instead replaced with a fond look that makes you want to look away. He leans forward and kisses you gently. 

"How are you, dearest?" 

Once Oberyn manages to convince the head of your family, you find your belongings packed and ready for Dorne. Oberyn and Ellaria show great excitement and contentment over this, talking about all the things they wish to show you and the people they want you to meet. Dorne is a hot, desert and mountain-covered region but Sunspear is a gorgeous castle surrounded by the ocean and the shadow city. Oberyn's family is welcoming, if not a bit exhausted with him, but they're still warm and kind to you. Though Doran is semi-distant at first, his children are much friendlier and happy to get to know you. After Doran and his children, Ellaria introduces you to the Sand Snakes, Oberyn's countless daughters. Their reactions vary and some are more welcoming than others but all are accepting of their father's decision to take you as a serious lover.

While eager to show you his home, Oberyn first gets you acquainted with your new bedroom and the bed. Oberyn is a versatile lover, although he enjoys being the one in control most times depending on his mood. You can expect to spend a lot of time in bed with Oberyn, and sometimes even with Ellaria. Oberyn is a giver and he'll often have you pinned beneath him until you can take no longer before peppering you with kisses and cooing gentle words in your ear. 

Oberyn is a thoughtful and dutiful lover who ensures you'll never feel left behind or cast away. However, you must be fine with sharing him with others, and even if you find this difficult at times, Ellaria will provide soothing words of advice and comfort. Oberyn will ensure to push away any worries or insecurities and he'll even encourage you to seek out your own lovers, just as long as you always return to him. 

If you are a lady, you can surely expect to fall with child soon after arriving in Dorne. Ellaria, who basically becomes your sister, tends to you and helps you through the process of pregnancy and labor. Oberyn will grow protective during this time and you'll often find him resting his hand over the bump or speaking to it. He'll ensure you are being treated with the utmost care and by the very best. Whether son or daughter, Oberyn will love his child, and the Sand Snakes will be incredibly protective of their newest sibling. 

Oberyn is one of those lovers that still courts you well into the relationship. He continues providing gifts and trying to make you swoon all over just because he feels like it. Getting with Oberyn means having a thoughtful, open-minded lover, a kind sister, and countless deadly stepdaughters willing to fight in your honor if they have to. 

[kayentokk]

Easy Peasy Sukuna Squeezey(Part 2);Fuck It.

Pairing;Sukuna x Fem! Reader

Summary;Sukuna has found a solution? Kind of, one hint though. It’s not ice cream.

Contains;fluff, little argument, not an adult way to deal with problems, cussing, chef Sukuna, totally not feelings(that Sukuna doesn’t have for you), life is ass sometimes, soft Sukuna 

Wc;1,719

A/N;Okay, so I definitely went heavy on the chef Sukuna.

Prev. Series M.list Next

“I hope you’re hungry for pasta ‘cause that’s what m’makin,” he lowly grumbled walking into the kitchen.

“Yeah pasta is fine.”

You’ve watched Sukuna cook a multitude of times, and each time he looks so comfortable. So at peace, well when he’s not cussing out the stove for taking a long time to heat up. 

“Y’want garlic bread?”

“With cheese on top?”

“Are ya askin me?” He teases.

“Sukuna-,” you started to retort with an irritated tone. 

“Ask nicely, y/n.”

You just mumbled out a low “can you put cheese on top?”

“What’s the magic word?”

“Oh my Go-“

“It’s just one word, sweetness.”

You rolled your eyes at the saccharine nickname coming from his lips, “Sukuna you’re seriously on my last-“

“Hmmm?” He feigned innocence while cutting you off again.

You let out a defeated sigh mixed with agitation and said, “please?”

“Seeee? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Oh yeah, so glad it amused you,” you replied rolling your eyes once again.

“It did.”

Sukuna turned the stove up, the small notches making little tick noises each time the setting changed, and began to boil the pasta. 

He was always meticulous about the way he cut up the vegetables and such, one time you even asked him why it mattered and he grumbled something about how eating ugly vegetables is gross. You weren’t exactly sure how one little crooked square would make it ugly since it’s all going in the same pot, but to each their own right?

“You should be a chef,” you blurted out.

It wasn’t a bad thought, just an inside one. But who wouldn’t want to see a chef Sukuna? The lean but buff figure putting garnishes on top of things and his triceps and forearms flexing each time he stirred a pot or chopped a veggie. His forehead collecting little beads of sweat from the steam of the pot he just opened to taste the contents. His fingers cupped underneath the spoon, and his cool breath blowing on the spoon causing his lips to purse-

“Y/n,” he says snapping his fingers to pull you back to planet Earth.

You immediately refocused your attention on the present moment and nervously asked, “yes?”

“Are y’gonna taste this sauce? Or just keep staring off into space?” 

Then you noticed the wooden spoon in front of you and hastily tasted the sauce. 

“It’s good!”

“Yeah,” he replied, “but as awesome as this tastes I was telling you, before you went all spacey on me, that a chef isn’t exactly the job f’me.”

“What,” you said with a pout, “why not? You’re so good at it. I could even be like your sous chef or something.”

“It’s just not, I dunno, it doesn’t feel like my thing.” 

“But-”

“I’ll cook for you all y’want mkay? So don’t complain, cause you basically get a lifetime of free meals. I don’t think Yuuji even gets as many meals as you do.”

“That’s because I’m always at your apartment, and you’re always cooking.”

He just gave a gruff hum in agreement with your statement. The truth is, Sukuna had never thought about what he wanted to be after college. Being a chef wouldn’t be all that bad but he’d have to cook for everyone, not just you. Which, for some reason, didn’t sit right with him. 

When the food was finished he plated it and set it in front of you with a glass of water. You gave him a low thanks and began eating. You hadn’t noticed before, but you must have been starving because you were scarfing his food down. 

“Let me know if you want seconds with that,” Sukuna said while playfully grinning. 

“Oh shut up,” you said chuckling. 

There it was, your laugh, your bright smile. He loved seeing that. To Sukuna, sadness didn’t fit you. It just wasn’t an emotion he would associate with you. To Sukuna, You’ve never truly been sad, well besides the little petty things you’d get upset over. To Sukuna, those were way different because they were fixable.

That’s why thinking about the current situation made Sukuna’s jaw clench, and even worse it made him scared because what if he couldn’t fix it this time?

Once you both finished eating you had decided you wanted to talk about it. You just needed to get some things of your chest. 

He was washing dishes when you started to speak, “I just don’t understand.”

At first he was about to ask, “understand what?”He had forgotten about the problem, and for a moment so did you. But he knew that you’d open up eventually so he just listened. 

You went through a rundown of exactly what happened. You told him about the tip-off from the mutual friend, the obscene sounds you heard, the trail of undergarments leading to the bedroom, and your little exit. Sukuna was pissed to say the least. He just didn’t understand how some ugly narcissistic asshole could throw away everything. What an idiot. 

Sukuna focused in on what you were saying again, “I mean, I think I was a good girlfriend…I thought I was anyways. People say it happens sometimes though….I just never really imagined it happening to me.” 

You continued on, I mean I probably should have seen it coming.” You scoffed before continuing, I mean just look at me-“

“Stop that.”

Sukuna hated that. He hated it, that you could feel so doubtful towards yourself. Like you weren’t good enough for that sack of shit. 

“You could find someone else, t’treat you nice and stuff.”

You laughed at his response, “That is only gonna happen in my dreams ‘Kuna.”

He just shrugged as if saying, “you never know.”

“I thought that when I went over there I’d be fine, I briefed myself and I knew what was going on. I was prepared for it. But now I’m just confused, and-“

“Angry?”

“Y’know, not everyone feels anger as an immediate emotion when something wrong happens to them ‘Kuna?” 

“Really? So it’s just me?” He said sarcastically, letting out a short chortle.

You rolled your eyes and continued, “I am angry ‘Kuna. So angry, okay? But I- I can’t just punch someone like you do-“ 

“I mean you could,” he mumbled under his breath  barely loud enough for you to hear. 

You just ignored him and continued with a sigh, “I also can’t just cry and ball my eyes out over it. I won’t let myself, it’s already pitiful enough. Crying about it won’t help.” 

He didn’t have a witty, snappy response to that one. “S’not pitiful,” he said gruffly while drying his hands off on a towel and moving closer to your spot in the kitchen.

“Have you ever been broken up with Sukuna? Actually scratch that, because you ‘don’t do serious relationships.’ You ever been rejected?”

“Y/n, that’s not the same-”

“It is! It’s proving my point. You can get any girl you want, Sukuna! You’ve never experienced anything like that, I don’t even think you could comprehend it at this point,” you said laughing dryly. 

“Y/n, you know that’s not the same, we’re not the same.” He said, beginning to think you were being a bit unreasonable, “and m’not sure what this has to do with me, but all I’m saying is that there’s nothing wrong with feeling angry or sad about the situation y/n. It’s perfectly normal to want to punch a guy who cheated on you,” he said escalating, “You should feel betrayed! Hell you should-“

“Don’t tell me how to feel,” you mumbled.

He paused, calming himself before speaking again. “I get it, okay y/n? You’re hurt, and I-,” he pauses in frustration, running a hand through his hair to push it back out of his face, “I wasn’t trying to tell you how to feel. But comparing and contrasting our lives isn’t gonna help.”

Sukuna was offended. his life is different from yours, way different. And if he’s being honest, it’s not one you’d want to live anyways. Sleeping with random people, there’s not a difference from any of them. Half the time he can’t even remember them, or they’re blowing up his phone. 

It’s just a distraction for him, for what he hasn’t exactly figured out yet. Well, deep down he knows but he’d never let himself admit it. And with all the “relationships” you’ve been in. It’s the only way he stays sane at this point. 

“I know, I know, sorry for ‘comparin,” you said knowing you were wrong. 

He sighed not liking the way the conversation had taken a turn, “y’dont hafta say sorry Y/n. I just wish y’would channel your inner me or something.”

“What? You mean act crazy and go beat my ex up or something Sukuna?”

At first, he was just joking with that comment. Trying to bring the light back into the heavy conversation, but he thought about it and seeing a more crazy side of you wouldn’t be so bad. Not that he’s crazy, but thinking about seeing a more loose side of you intrigued Sukuna.

“Well, while that is a me thing to do it’s not exactly what I was thinking.”

“What were you thinking?”

“Fuck it.”

“Fuck it? That’s what you want me to do?”

That is such a Sukuna thing, but only with hookups. Make no mistake, Sukuna is an adult, and he does have responsibilities and priorities that he has to take care of now. So ‘fuck it’ is only for situations where he doesn’t have to care. 

“Yes. I want you to say fuck it to this whole situation, hang out with me the whole weekend and not contact him,” he says while crossing his arms. 

“Even if he calls me?”

“Especially if he calls you. I’m sure he’ll get the hint. Since you left your spare key there and made quite the exit,” he said deviously. 

You rolled your eyes and huffed out a, “fine, let’s fuck it.”

“With pleasure,” he stated. 

You were actually excited for this weekend, sure this wasn’t a very adult way to handle things. But if you were being honest, you didn’t want to handle it, you just wanted to act like it never happened. Not ideal, but it’s fine. Besides, some of your best life experiences were with Sukuna, what could go wrong?

@/cafekitsune for the divider

[neoneun-au]

CAN’T HELP MYSELF; CHAPTER I: BADBADNOTGOOD

―PAIRING: wonwoo x fem!reader, mingyu x fem!reader ―GENRE: love triangle au, fluff, mild angst, romantic comedy, suggestive, smut (later chapters) ―CHAPTER WORD COUNT: 5.8K ―CHAPTER WARNINGS: break ups, angst, mild language ―STATUS: ongoing

―SERIES M.LIST HERE

i: badbadnotgood

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“It’s literally fine,” you state, voice edging on manic as you take another sip from the iced coffee clutched in your (only slightly trembling) hands, “I’m literally so fine.”

It’s a Thursday afternoon in September and you find yourself once again sitting at the counter of your friend’s day job, taking advantage of her waning generosity (i.e. free coffee) while avoiding doing any of the multitude of things you should be doing at this moment in time. The aforementioned friend, Seulgi, stands in front of you–lower half obscured by the fake marble counter–clad in a coffee-stained apron and fixing you with an expression of open concern. “Are you sure you’re okay? Because you look…I don’t mean this to sound insensitive, but you look a little insane. Are you developing a twitch?” 

“I think I might take up running,” you drown the manic edge in your voice with another sip of iced coffee–groaning in disappointment when all that greets your lips is faintly coffee flavoured melt water from your ice cubes. You shake the container to check the contents and with a wave of bitterness confirm that it is, indeed, very empty. 

“You should consider taking up drinking water as a hobby first,” she says, snatching the cup away from you and tossing it into the garbage can under the counter behind her, “and then maybe we can go from there.” 

You heave a sigh and turn to stare out the window, deepening the cliché of the afternoon. A forlorn widow at a bar draped in pearls and fur.

Thursdays were slow, so you always took your time chatting with Seulgi and sipping whatever drink she was gracious enough to make for you. Today had been a “three iced coffees in a row” kind of day and due to extenuating circumstances (read: an incredibly recent breakup) she was being patient. For now. If the steel in her gaze was anything to judge by, her patience was beginning to run thin. 

“I just think that this is the perfect opportunity, Seulgi.” She keeps her eyes trained on your face–steady and unblinking–as you continue to ramble off your tired-but-wired thoughts. “I have so much free time now to do whatever I want, be whoever I want. I haven’t been single in over three years. That’s so long.”

“It is long,” she nods cautiously. A glass of water is set down on the counter in front of you, condensation dripping down the sides, and without thought, entirely on autopilot, you raise it to your lips and take a sip. A small wave of relief ripples over Seulgi’s face as you do.  

“I’ve been living with Wonwoo for two of those years, as well,” you choke the name out despite how it still stalls in your throat, threatening either tears or a coughing fit or both. You’re too bolstered by your false sense of optimism in the present moment to let it stop your monologue in its tracks. “Not going out, only cooking at home, spending more time playing video games and watching Netflix on the couch than I ever have in my life. I don’t have to think about what he wants to watch anymore, I can watch what I want. I can go where I want. I could watch Glee!” 

“Do you want to watch Glee?” She narrows her brows in suspicion but you wave the glance away with a breezy hand gesture. 

“It doesn’t matter what I want to watch,” you shake your head in frustration, “the point is that I can.”

“Right,” she nods, “you’re single now, which was sort of the goal of breaking up with him in the first place. So…live your life.” 

“Yes,” you nod, mentally shoving the words ‘breaking up’ into a small closet in your mind. Not to be opened until you were sufficiently under the influence of a massive amount of alcohol. “Yes, I can live my life.” 

The bell over the front door of the cafe rings out clear through the air, drawing your attention towards a young couple striding in from the windy day outside. Seulgi pushes herself off the counter in front of you and heads to greet them and collect their order–leaving you to continue to stew in your own thoughts. 

Breaking up with Wonwoo had never really been a part of the plan. Two years ago when you moved in with him, you were certain that it was going to be the last relationship you ever had. The hopeless romantic in you had hitched your wagon to him and he made it so easy to build a home around. Your relationship existed as simple domesticity; in simple romance and simple companionship. It was comforting and easy. And that was what scared you the most, in the end.   

Maybe it was too easy. Maybe you were settling. Maybe there was something more out there that you weren’t seeing because you were too content eating the same meals and telling the same stories. Part of you started to ache for a break in routine–some excitement and adventure that he wasn’t able or willing to offer–and after months of turning it over in your mind you finally figured what you had to do to make that happen.

“Have you found a place to stay yet?” Seulgi’s voice calls to you–yanking you unceremoniously out of your brain-stew before it hit the boiling point. The young, beige clad couple had settled themselves into a corner booth and Seulgi had come to take up her spot leaning on the counter across from you once more. 

“No,” you sigh, shoulders falling. The one sticking point in your resolve to leave your boyfriend (ex-boyfriend now, you suppose) had been the apartment. Aside from it being the home you had made together, you didn’t really have any idea where else you could stay. For the past week you had been sleeping on the couch and disappearing as fast as possible before Wonwoo could wake up. Avoidance became key to your survival. 

A few friends had suggested you keep the apartment and he could move back in with his old college friend Jihoon, but you already felt too bad breaking up with him in the first place to then subsequently kick him out of an apartment that he also had every right to live in. So, maybe somewhat foolishly, you volunteered to leave. 

“What about Jeonghan, didn’t you say he had a room free at his place?” Seulgi nudges the now lukewarm glass of water towards you as she speaks and you take another sip, wincing at the mention of Jeonghan’s name. 

“He did,” you reply, setting the glass back down on the counter with a satisfying thud. From the moment he heard about the break-up he had offered as much accommodation to you as possible. You had been roommates for six months in college and it went as smoothly as it possibly could have at that age, so you knew you could live with him in a pinch. Although you suspected the main driving force behind his offer was to keep his own rent at his massive condo as cheap as possible.  

“And his place is a bad idea because…?” 

“He has like three other roommates already,” you groan, dropping your head into your hands. That was the only catch to rooming with him–strangers. All sense of optimism and bravado vacated your body at the thought of having to get to know new people. You no longer wanted to change your life for the better, you wanted to dig yourself into a soft pit in the earth and sleep for 1000 years. 

“So?” Seulgi asks and you groan deeper at her blatantly missing the source of your frustration, “you’ll have your own room. Besides, haven’t you been friends with him for like…ever?” 

“But they’re all dudes, Seulgi,” you whine, splaying your arms out across the counter. 

“You’ve lived with a dude for the past two years, what’s the difference?” 

“I’ve sworn them off,” you state as if it’s the most natural thing in the world and she just stares blankly back at you. 

“Dudes?” 

“Yes.” 

“You’ve sworn off…all dudes?” 

You nod, grateful she finally gets it, “yes.” Her steady gaze bores into you as you straighten your posture and readjust your hair before finally coming out with the question you had been meaning to ask since you stumbled into the cafe three hours ago, “can I move in with you?”

She barks a short laugh, shaking her head–her bright orange ponytail waving behind her as she does. You sit, patiently waiting for her response and ignoring the pit of vipers in your stomach biting at your nerves. After a moment she sobers up and brings her expression back to one of practised neutrality, “oh, you’re being serious.”  

“Why wouldn’t I be?” 

“You know I live with my parents, right?” 

“Yeah, but they know me. I’ve met them.” 

“You’ve met them once,” she clarifies, stressing the last word. “I don’t think they really want to have another body in our house. It’s not exactly palatial.” 

“That’s fine, I don’t need much room,” you shrug and she heaves a sigh. 

“_____, you need to find a place that is a more permanent solution than crashing on my parent’s couch. Just look around online for some roommate ads, you can find plenty that are female only.” 

“Yeah,” you sigh, gathering your bags to leave. “You’re right, I should just do that.” 

“You’re leaving before close today?” She asks, slightly taken aback at the sudden shift in routine. 

“Yeah, I mean I don’t want to keep loitering and distracting you from your customers,” you nod, slinging your purse over your shoulders. Seulgi takes a cursory glance around the cafe–eyebrow cocked. The singular couple that had been occupying a table in the small space had already left, leaving behind a wayward glove as the only sign they had been there in the first place.

In an effort to avoid as much contact with Wonwoo as possible, you had been doing all of your work (read: moping and avoiding your actual job) from the safety of the cafe walls on the days Seulgi worked, and the library on days she didn’t. It was a nice cafe but with the university students not yet back for the start of fall semester, it wasn’t an especially busy spot this time of year. 

“Besides,” you start, pushing yourself off the stool and stretching out the kink that had developed in your spine from leaning dramatically over the counter for the past 3 hours, “Wonwoo is usually working late Thursday nights so I can have some time alone to browse through rental listings.” 

“Oh okay. Well good luck,” Seulgi waves you off and you think she might look slightly relieved as you push open the door of the cafe and step out into the fresh air. 

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Wonwoo, as it turns out, was not working late this Thursday night.

Instead, as you walk into the apartment at a quarter past 5 in the afternoon, you find him leaning against the kitchen counter waiting for a pot of water to come to a boil. 

His back is turned to you, head bowed forward as he scrolls through his phone. You freeze in place, bag swinging at your side, for a moment–staring at the back of his head as he remains blissfully unaware of your presence. 

If you were still dating, you would have snuck up behind him and wrapped your arms around his slender waist, tucking your face into the space between his shoulder blades. He always smelled like the faint remnants of his cologne–softened with wear throughout the day–and a strange combination of mint and coffee that you could only ever describe as ‘Wonwoo’. 

If you were still dating, he would have laughed softly–silently–at the sudden intrusion while twisting around the pressing his lips to your forehead, mumbling a quiet “hello,” against your skin. 

If you were still dating, you would have taken half of the ramyun he was cooking and sat together eating on the couch while chatting about your days, or watching whatever TV show had been in your rotation at the time. A comfortable stillness would have settled over you as you sunk back into each other as you so often did. With ease and flow. 

If you were still dating you wouldn’t be standing like a deer in headlights, staring at the back of his head. Waiting for the pin to drop. You wouldn’t be frantically trying to think of an exit plan before he took notice of your presence in the room. Your muscles tense to bolt at the slightest movement from him.

If you were still dating you might have known what to do when he finally did notice you there. When he turned to face you and you could see, even in the dim lighting of your small apartment, the redness in his eyes. But you weren’t still dating, so instead of instinctively knowing what to do you just waved at him with your pathetic, useless hands. 

“Umm hi,” you stutter the words out as you let your bag slip off your shoulder to the floor, kicking it to the side of the entryway. “I didn’t think you’d be home until later.” 

“Took the day off,” he replies, turning back around to add two packs of noodles into the now boiling water. You nod and slip off your jacket, feeling distinctly like an intruder inside of your own home. 

The obvious bags under Wonwoo’s eyes didn’t help with that feeling.

In fact, the more you watch him out of the corner of your eye, the more you start to feel like at your core you were actually a very evil person. Here he was, standing unkempt in the t-shirt you had bought for him last Christmas while you stood on the other side of the room from him alive and breathing and like you hadn’t broken his heart only days prior.

The tense silence from moments before is replaced by static in your mind as you let the guilt consume you–raging like a fire through your thoughts and burning everything it touches. ‘Evil, awful, terrible, horrible, bad, bad, bad person,’ it chants–over and over twisting and turning inside of you. A mantra for all the things you’ve done wrong. It buzzes inside of your head so loudly that you hardly notice Wonwoo speaking to you until he clears his throat in question and calls to you by name. 

“Sorry,” you start, putting a lid on the buzzing in your mind, “I didn’t hear you. What?” 

“Are you hungry?” he repeats himself, already setting out two bowls of ramyun on the small kitchen table before you can muster up a response. You take a seat without a word, wincing at the sound of the chair scraping against the vinyl flooring, disturbing the silence like nails on a chalkboard. 

“Thanks,” your voice is sheepish. He nods in acknowledgement and begins to slurp back his noodles, eyes trained on his phone screen as he avoids meeting your gaze. 

For a few minutes, the only sound in the room is the occasional clinking of chopsticks against the sides of your bowls. You sit, watching Wonwoo and waiting. Waiting for something to happen to break the stalemate. To cut the tension and alter the current status quo. 

You want him to scream. To yell at you, to throw something. Anything more than just…sit. In silence. Looking at his phone. ‘If you get mad at me I will get on my hands and knees and beg you for forgiveness,’ you think to yourself, telepathically sending him the hint you so desperately want him to pick up on. ‘Give me some emotion, for the love of god.’ 

The sticking point in your relationship had always been his introspection. Sometimes it was a boon. He went inwards to see things you often couldn't see on the outside. It was nice, having someone so thoughtful. Someone who sat back and observed; taking note of everything, never reacting blindly. 

But as the days ticked ever onward, and you remained in that same place of ease and comfort, you began to wish he would. React. Make any move purely on emotion. Share his ugly, dirty, messy thoughts–even if they were never fully formed, even if they were retracted a second later. 

Instead he remained–steady, stoic–and the desire inside of you for passion and change burned brighter and brighter until you couldn't stand it anymore. Until it nearly blinded you with its intensity. 

Even during the break-up, when you sat across from him at this same kitchen table, with a combination of tears and mascara running down your face, he sat still and calm. Listening. Observing. You sat there with your heart bared blood red on your sleeves and your feelings spilling out before him from the open wound of your mind–more vulnerable than you had ever felt in all your years of dating. And you watched, splayed open, as he retreated further and further from you, locked his emotions and heart back up into himself. He remained even as you pleaded for him to give you something–anything–other than that. 

So you left. 

And then came back an hour later because you didn’t know where the hell you were going in the first place and besides you had left your wallet and phone behind and what were you going to be able to do without those aside from sit on a park bench. You snuck back in through the front door and expected to see him in shambles on your bed or wailing dramatically along to a comfort film. Instead you found him three games deep into an extended Overwatch session. 

Now, days later, you find yourself once again hoping against hope for him to give you something. Something other than the (mostly) cold-shoulder you had received for the past few days when you did accidentally bump into him. You needed it. It might feel less painful if it felt like he cared more. More than hiding his tears behind whatever wall he had built inside of himself.

The silence bites at you again as Wonwoo gathers the bowls to clean up–checking yours first to see that you’ve finished, the way he always does–and you trail behind him into the small galley kitchen. 

“So, umm,” you start, unsure of what you’re about to say but unable to stop yourself from saying whatever it was anyway. If he wasn’t going to talk, you would. “How’s work?” 

“Same as usual,” he shrugs, setting the bowls into the sink. You can see his shoulders tensing under his shirt as you talk, and that monster of guilt peeks its head up inside of you for a split second before you shove it aside and continue. 

“I think I might have found a place to live,” you say suddenly, surprising even yourself.

“Oh?” His hands still in the sink, and he turns towards you–fully facing you for the first time since that night. The eye contact makes your breath catch in your throat–you can see more clearly now the redness in the whites of his eyes, the dark rings encircling them. Guilt rears his head once more. Regret. And a small–incredibly small, but still present–flush of victory. A reaction, finally. 

“Yeah,” you nod, spurred on by nerves and a desire to keep the tense silence at bay for as long as possible, “umm, Jeonghan offered me a room at his place.” 

“Jeonghan?” 

“Yeah, you remember him. Blonde guy–well I guess he wasn’t blonde when you met him, I think his hair was like…long and purple, or maybe blue–?” you catch yourself rambling, Wonwoo stands–hands poised still over a bowl–clutching a dripping dish rag. 

“I remember him, yeah,” he turns back to the dishes, scrubbing at the bowls but you can tell that you still have his attention. 

“Anyway, he offered to let me move in there. I just need to let him know when and then the room is mine,” you finish the thought and nod as if signing the lease agreement with your words despite this being the first time you’ve even seriously considered the offer.

“Doesn’t he have a bunch of roommates already?” Wonwoo shakes the water off the bowl–from a set of dishes you had bought together shortly after moving in–and sets it gently in the drying rack off to the side of the sink before moving on to the next one. 

“Yeah, like three,” you state, watching his forearms flex and unflex as he scrubs at an old stain in the grey ceramic, “but it's a five bedroom condo and one of his old roommates–Dino, I think was his name? I only met him once at that one murder mystery party they were throwing,” you catch yourself rambling again and take a quick breath to rearrange your thoughts, “anyway he just moved out so now they have an empty room.” 

Wonwoo nods, the way he always does when he is considering what to say, and you wait. Silence creeps back in for a moment–the only sound is the water whirling through the drain–before he turns back to you with one eyebrow slightly raised, “do you even want to live with that many people? You like having your space.” 

“I mean,” you hum, “I don’t really have many other options.” 

“You could stay here,” he says after a breath–voice barely above a whisper–and you feel your heart stutter in your chest. Is this it? Is this the moment he breaks through his walls and fights for what he wants? Fights for you? Wonwoo clears his throat, and you wait, breath held, for him to continue, “at least until you can find something better.”

The hope you had built–a delicate house of cards stacked on his words–crumbles and you can feel yourself physically deflate. “No,” you shake your head, “thanks but…I think this will be good. I feel good about it.” You’re not sure who you’re trying to convince more with this statement.

“Well,” he nods once, slowly, one eyebrow raised in suspicion, “as long as you’re sure.” 

“I am,” you try and offer the most assuring smile you can muster despite how entirely unsure you feel about the snap decision, only letting it fall from your face once he tucks the last bowl away and slips into the dark of the bedroom. 

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“Okay,” Jeonghan grins, taking the seat across from you at the kitchen table, “house rules.” 

After your last interaction with Wonwoo you had tried in vain to think of any possible reason you could back out of the spontaneous declaration of your new living arrangements. Even going so far as to dig through the personal ads on numerous websites, seeking any even remotely attractive alternative that you could use to move into immediately and hide your shame before it grew big enough to swallow you whole. 

It took only two hours and 10+ ads seeking “female companionship for free room and board” with blurry attached photos for you to give up and just message Jeonghan. To which he promptly replied with an ‘I knew I’d hear from you ;)’.

The move had been relatively simple after that. Jeonghan had roped one of your new roommates, a guy called Seungcheol, into hauling nearly all of your stuff down five flights of stairs to the moving truck you had rented for the occasion and then back out of the moving truck and into your shared condo. Two days and nearly twenty boxes later, you sit across from Jeonghan in the condo you were now going to have to call your home for the foreseeable future.

“Rule one,” he begins, holding up a finger to emphasize the number as if it wasn’t abundantly clear, “wash your own dishes. If the dishwasher is full and clean, empty it and then add your stuff.” You open your mouth, poised to speak, but he stops you with a dismissive wave of his hand, “I know you will, I’m not worried about you, I just have to be excessively clear on this point after the last incident we had.” Jeonghan ends the sentence with a somber shake of his head and you decide it’s probably best not to ask what said “incident” was.

“Second, the movie The Notebook is banned from this apartment.” 

“What? Why?” 

“The last time we watched it it took three hours to peel Mingyu off the couch,” he shakes his head, “trust me you don’t want to see a six foot tall man in that extreme of a state of distress. It’s…hard to watch.” 

“Okay…” the worry you had felt prior to moving your stuff into the apartment metamorphosizes now into pure confusion. You weren’t sure what exactly to expect living with four adult men, but suffice it to say this was not it.

“Rule three is simple: no overnight guests on Sundays.” 

“Why Sundays?”

“It’s the Lord’s day,” he explains, face showing no hint of a bluff as you flounder for a response, mouth agape. “Kidding, it’s really just because if we didn’t have a set day there would always be someone here with the amount of people that live in this condo. It’s just for my own peace of mind. Not that Dino was much of a concern with that and considering…circumstances you won’t be either.” 

“Got it,” you nod, ignoring the sleight and wondering if you should have brought a notepad. 

“Honestly, that’s pretty much it for the hard rules. Everything else is just…be conscious of the people you live with. But I know I don’t have to worry about that with you, you lived with Wonwoo,” he laughs but stops himself as your expression falters, clearing his throat with a cursory cough. “Anyway, we’re all really excited to have you here.” 

“Yeah,” you sigh, feeling the weight of the world settle back on your shoulders. You can’t remember ever being so tired. “Thanks again, Jeonghan, for letting me stay here.” 

“Of course,” he smiles, patting your folded hands in a gesture of comfort, “this is your home now, and we’re happy to have you.” 

You glance around the room, trying to place that word in with the surroundings you find yourself in. Trying to make it fit. “Home”. 

The kitchen is a good size, with more than enough space for multiple people trying to cook at once. The fridge is relatively new, stainless steel, and equipped with a water dispenser which was something you definitely did not have at your apartment (Wonwoo’s apartment, now, you remind yourself). The dishwasher is also a welcome addition, and you're happy with the prospect of not having to hand wash every dish you use. 

The apartment in general is in good condition. It is clear, despite your previous assumptions, that everyone here puts some level of care into their living space and you appreciate that. It makes you feel a little better about living with a group of men who (beyond Jeonghan) you barely know. 

But still, despite the relative cleanliness and general coziness of the space, it is still hard to envision yourself ever being able to fit the word ‘home’ here in these four walls. Home is still a word that until recently had only made sense in one place–in the arms of one person. And you had destroyed that. Chopped it's head clean off like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Maybe you don’t deserve the word anymore. 

“So,” Jeonghan begins, offering you a wide smile, “we were thinking pizza for dinner. Something fun and easy to welcome you into the place. Mingyu wanted to cook but I talked him out of it, it’s too formal. Mingyu and Vernon will be home later. I think you might have met them once before. Seungcheol you already know, he’ll be back later too, he spends a lot of time at the gym. If you ever need a gym buddy I’m sure he would salivate at the opportunity.”

You nod, unfocused. You’re following his words but your mind is a million years away. Jeonghan, tuned in as ever, notices you drifting and stops in his tracks. “You must be tired,” he concludes, a knowing glint in his eyes, “why don’t you head to your room and I’ll leave you be for a while. Let you get settled in. Feel free to come out and join us whenever.” 

“Thank you,” you breathe, already halfway out of the kitchen.

“I’ll call you out for dinner later, if you like,” he turns to you, a soft encouraging smile painted over his lips and you can’t help but return it in kind before disappearing down the hallway. 

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Five minutes alone and you dissolve completely. 

Every emotion you had been holding back behind the dam of your desire to keep a straight face for the sake of everyone else around you floods forward as you unpack your first box and you fall onto your bed in a what can only be described as a fainting spell interspersed with waves of crying and not uncharacteristic wheezing. All thought to your roommates completely ignored in the midst of the hysterics. 

Somewhere in the middle of the wailing, you think you hear Jeonghan call your name through your door but you’re too all consumed by your sadness to reply to him. Instead you bury your head into your pillows like a flamingo in the sand to muffle the sound of your crying until you fall asleep with your tears drying to a crust on your cheeks.

When you finally come to, the sun is gone and your room is lit only by the light pollution of the city seeping in through your blinds. Your face feels swollen and puffy from all of the tears and your throat is sandpaper–for a brief second you’re afraid you might have lost your voice. A dull headache pounds through your entire skull. You feel as miserable as you’re sure you deserve to feel at this point in time. 

With a sigh you slide off your mattress, letting your feet fall to the vinyl floor with a thud and reach to grab your phone from the nightstand that Dino left behind when he moved out. 

A single text notification sits unopened on your phone. 

[jeonghan] there’s pizza in the kitchen if you get hungry. introductions can wait until tomorrow.

So they did just decide to leave you alone for the time being. Good. Considering your current emotional state, you didn’t think meeting new people was a good idea. The first impression was already shot since you’re sure they heard you wailing through the thin walls of the apartment. 

You consider just going back to sleep without any dinner, but your stomach answers the thought with an insistent rumble that you don’t think you’d be able to stave off for too long before it gets cavernous. You push yourself from the bed and pad out into the hallway–cautiously stretching your head out first to see if anyone else is wandering around. 

Three slices of pizza sit wrapped on a plate in the fridge, illuminated in the dark of the kitchen and you feel your sour mood lift slightly at the sight. You eat them cold, standing in your bare feet and wrinkled clothes alone in the kitchen.

The dishwasher is clean when you go to place the plate inside, but considering time you decide it would be worse to unload the whole thing for one measly plate so you run it under the tap for a few minutes–scrubbing at one stubborn spot of hardened cheese with the sponge. 

“I think it’s clean,” a voice calls out behind you and you startle–nearly dropping the dish in the sink at the sudden intrusion.

“Wha–! Fuck,” you exclaim, inhaling a sharp breath to slow your heart back down to a normal pace. 

“Sorry,” the voice chuckles, low and easy, and you find yourself praying that if you pretend he’s not there he will leave before you have to turn around and face whatever man the voice belongs to. “Did I scare you?” 

No dice. “No, it’s fine I was just thinking about something–” you pivot slowly on one foot and are immediately grateful that you’re lit only by ambient lighting, “–else.” 

Immediately upon turning around you come face-to-face with a dripping wet and uncomfortably bare torso. You snap your gaze up to his face, avoiding further eye contact with his nipples, and the knot of nerves in your stomach tightens. 

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he laughs again–casual despite his state of undress and your clear distress. You feel your head shake no without your permission, betraying you and forgiving the hidden apology in his words. “Not a great first impression, I gather.” His smile is bright, but a little lopsided and bashful. It conjures up images of your childhood dog when he would track mud in through the house from the backyard, eyes big and wet and brown and sure that any sleight would be forgiven immediately based purely on his cuteness.

“It’s fine,” you clear your throat, words finally returning to you, and glance around for a possible exit strategy while still trying to avoid staring directly at his (admittedly very well built) chest. 

“I’m Mingyu,” he smiles, extending a hand to you and you take it briefly, feeling the warmth of it on your own like a shock. Not an entirely unwelcome one. 

“Mingyu?” you ask, partly to clarify and partly to give yourself a chance to regain your thoughts. You notice his hand is still in yours and you drop it, letting your own hand fall back to your side–flexing the fingers as if to shake off the warmth of his.

“Yeah,” he laughs again and you wish he would stop. 

“You live here?” 

“I do,” he nods, still smiling. “That would be why I am standing in the kitchen at 1:00am.” 

“Oh, umm…yeah of course. Yeah,” you slide sideways against the counter behind you until you’re no longer parallel to him, preparing to bolt back to your bedroom at the slightest provocation. 

“Anyway, sorry we had to meet like this, it’s not really ideal.” 

“No,” you shake your head–thoughts numb from hours of crying and the shock of his arrival in the kitchen. 

“We can re-do our introductions in the morning, hey?” There is a hopeful lilt in his voice and you can't help but agree–feeling a little like a nervous rabbit being placated by clumsy hands. He steps aside and you slip past him, grateful at being on the other side of the kitchen and not trapped between his body and the counter. “Sleep tight.” 

You feel his eyes lingering on you as you shuffle back to your bedroom, but you resist the suffocating urge to turn around and check. The door closes behind you with a soft click and you lean all of your weight against the wood, unsure of your legs' abilities to keep you upright for more than a second longer. 

“Fuck,” you whisper into the darkness and are answered by sirens as they race by outside of your window. “This is not good.”

© 2023, neoneun-au. all rights reserved.

[puddle-nerd]

Precious

Summary: Your time with your muntxatan was rare and precious but you wouldn’t change it for the world. (Tonowari/Female Na’vi Reader)

Prompt #7 (Under the Blanket) for Avatar12DaysofKinkmas2023.

Story Tags: No use of Y/N, Under The Blanket, Female Reader, Metkayina | Reef People Clan, Established Relationship, Vaginal Fingering, Biting, Begging, Creampie

Na’vi Translation: Muntxatan — husband | male spouse Olo’eyktan — Clan Leader Sa’nu — Mommy / mum Sempu — Dad / daddy Tìyawn – love

AO3 Link

Your husband had always liked waking you up with kisses as soon as you two started sleeping next to each other – not that you were complaining in the least. Absolutely not. Especially not now when you rarely had time to be intimate with him, what with two little babies always crying and demanding attention on top of all of your tribal duties. Usually, you both were kept busy during the day making sure the village continued to thrive, him as the Olo’eyktan, you as one of the best divers / fishermen and weavers of the tribe – no, you were not the Tsahìk, not even close, but that was okay. Ronal, who was the Tsahìk was very happily mated to her wife, Rytxa, one of your best friends. But anyway, with your multitude of talents, you were usually up to your eyeballs in constantly fixing nets or the underwater crossbows or someone else’s clothing and someone not of the tribe would be surprised how busy that kept you. Add onto that a toddler and an infant? By the end of the night, at least one of the two – most of the times both of you – were always exhausted so then there was no time to be intimate like you had been before both Ao’nung and Tsireya had been born.

So, these moments where Tonowari woke you up with kisses like when you had first gotten together? They were rarer than you would have liked but all the more precious.

“Mmm, that feels wonderful, ma’muntxatan,” you purred once you recognized what he was doing, stretching your turquoise limbs beneath the blankets as his mouth moved from your back to your shoulder, then up to your neck, over your cheek, and finally settling upon your lips as he leaned up on his elbow and he coaxed you to turn towards him. You kissed him back lazily at first, just enjoying the simple, wonderful, gentle familiarity of it all.

“I have missed you,” he rumbled with a grin.

You grinned, replying, “Well, I am right here,” you poked your head upwards and saw the two other hammocks in your mauri pod containing your two younglings, “and the children are still asleep.” Tonowari smirked and kissed you again while his free hand groped one of your breasts, kneading it greedily. “Ohhh, yes, that feels nice, Wari.” A rumbling purr broke out of your mate’s throat and he nibbled and sucked upon the side of your throat possessively, determined to leave his mark for the clan to see. You whimpered as his hand moved from your breast down between your legs, fingers delving between your lower lips to dip into your slickening hole, the blanket hiding his movements from view. “Oh, yesss… Oh…” You pushed your hips into his touch, sighing at the pleasure skittering along your nerve endings as he plunged two of his three fingers in and out of you, his thumb rubbing over the bundle of nerves just atop your slit. You shuddered, humping into his hand eagerly.

“Are you ready for me, tìyawn?”

“Yes, please,” you begged. “Been too long. Need you now, ma’muntxatan.” He removed his fingers from your cunt and shifted to grab your thigh, lifting your leg up so you could reach down and wrap your hand around his rigid girth, grunting in pleasure at your touch. You guided him to your entrance and he pushed inside of your wet heat. You whined in delight, burying your face into your pillow to smother the noise and avoid waking your children, as your channel stretched to accommodate his thick, textured girth. “Yes, Wari. Just like that, please.”

He rumbled in agreement and began to drove his shaft up into you leisurely.

Again. And again. And again. You whimpered, meeting his thrusts as best as you could with both of you lying on your sides. “Yes, ma’muntxatan,” you gasped, pleasure building up within you. He shifted your leg carefully beneath the blanket that was barely covering you now and sank himself deeper within you, the textured ridges stroking your inner walls in the way that made your blue eyes roll in absolute carnality. You whined even higher, rocking back onto his cock in desperation. “Just like that. Please don’t stop,” you keened. “Wanna cum on your cock. Please make me cum, Wari.” “As you wish,” he grunted, fucking into you like a machine, picking up his speed and causing that familiar coil deep within your lower stomach to start tightening as you began to near your climax, hot pressure building like an ache while your breath came in short pants and your mind was going blank. It felt like the explosion of a star within your body as your orgasm smashed into you like a raging akula. Your cunt clamped down on his length like a vice, gripping him so tight that your mate had no choice but to slow the movements of his hips while your body squeezed him like a vice. Tonowari stroked within you, grinding the tip of his cock up into you one, twice, three more times before he gritted his teeth and released a rumbling snarl as he finished within you while trying to keep quiet and not wake the children, his warm seed spurting deep within your depths. Finally, the two of you still and lay there, trying to catch your breath as you both revel in the afterglow. You hum, feeling Tonowari kissing your shoulder once more. “That is a wonderful way to wake up, ma’muntxatan,” you purr, leaning back to catch his lips in a lazy kiss. “Thank you.” He chuckled, happily sipping on your mouth. The sound of tiny patterning feet upon the woven floor of your mauri pod had you and your mate freeze for a second before you both scrambled to cover yourselves up with your blankets as your now awoken toddler appeared at the edge of your hammock, big blue eyes peering up at you. “Sa’nu! Sempu! Up! Up!” Your time with your muntxatan was rare and precious but you wouldn’t change it for the world.

𖥸 · ─────── · 𖥸 · ─────── · 𖥸

Originally Posted: 20 December 2023 Word Count: 1,017

AO3 Link

[where-the-water-flows]

character asks—hit me up with your hottest jiao liqiao takes

JIAO LIQIAO my best beloved nightmare failgirlboss. she cannot malewife for very long but by god can she manipulate and murder.

favorite thing about them honestly I love that she has a goal and she fucking goes for it, zero hesitation. is it a good, reasonable goal? well no. she would have been better finding someone to fixate on who was not somewhere on the utterly asexual to entirely homosexual spectrum, but y'know, can't win them all. A+ dedication, F- execution.

least favorite thing about them the laugh the laugh I know it is like, the most standard trope signifier thing but the high pitched ahHAHEHEHA laugh is always so jarring in a 'pulls me right out of the narrative' kind of way, I know it is petty but also oh my god please. please you sound like a second rate cartoon villain. please. On a more character less shallow note, bestie babygirl please stop playing with your food. it literally never works out for you, for the love of god. please learn your lesson after the eighth time it bites you in the ass. (also like on the one hand, I would love for her to not have a plot centered around how she is deeply unhinged for/about a man. but on the otherhand, like, idk, I think she's fun. terrible awful etc, but also, she's putting the fun in extremely dysfunctional <3)

favorite line look I love so much every unhinged word out of her mouth, especially the argument she has with snow master when he's like 'girl that man is gay/ace the magic incense amnesia did not make him suddenly not gay/ace he is Manipulating You' and she is like 'lalalala not listening he loves me also we both know that man can't/won't lie to save his life, also also if he is lying I'll mutilate him and keep him like a purse pet <3 but he's not lying. because he loves me.' I recognise that is not a line but like. you know what I mean.

brOTP uhhh I don't really know that she... has... bros. like I guess granny blood (rip), who is basically always full 'yes girl get your man he will def love you this time' in the manner of someone who knows that her friend is lusting after a guy who is 1)not ever going to be interested even if he wasn't 2)very gay/ace and is 3)probably mid at best in bed no matter how much her friend is like SEX GOD. like the most 'yeah girl go get your man!!!! (why that man though have you considered any other man literally there are so many other men) oh no, def the red lipstick, he'll love you in that (but why him for the love of god just buy a vibrator)' that said, I do think the wildly divergent au where li xiangyi ends up 1)aware of nanyin bloodline like. Early On 2) jinyuan alliance aligned, he and his cousin jiao liqiao would be a hilarious pair of nightmares. absolutely ends in disaster for everyone, including them and definitely including di feisheng, I have an entire stupid au vaguely plotted out about this, it is purely nonsense. compels me though.

OTP no<3 that said, like, obviously I do not want the boys to be mmmmm torture mutilated noncon wifed as the otp of my heart, but also, I think jiao liqiao deserves a harem of moderately to severely brainwashed/mutilated/etc malewives! as a treat! god forbid women do anything. I contain multitudes, the dirty joke here is left as an exercise for the reader.

nOTP shan gudao. I just. I think it would be a mess, and not even a fun one. like as an actual relationship I mean, not proxy fighting spy vs spy manipulation But With Sex kinda bullshit, that's fine and fun, but they are not romantically compatible except as a triad where the third part of it is the idea of the man they are individually personally psycho/sexually obsessed with. which I guess makes it like. a weird poly U, with two theoretical ends. weird poly u with them mostly egging each other on in their dysfunction, 100% fine, any sort of Actual Healthy Relationship, no. also, therapy. I think therapy would only make her worse, but on the off chance it did not, I don't want that for her. she's a nightmare! again, god forbid a woman do anything.

random headcanon she was literally never expected to take the throne, nor expected to be the primary way that her particular fork of the nanyin royal line passed down. which means she likely has at least one sister and probably a brother. I don't know if this is backed up or contradicted by canon, but also, she was raised knowing she was nanyin royalty (??) but also was allowed to just fuck off into the jianghu at age [mlc timeline is nonsensical]. like if that is your single heir of the bloodline you have been carefully keeping alive and aware of how they were The True Imperial Family, you are not letting said heir go out and get their ass killed playing with swords. therefore. youngest child jiao liqiao. no further questions, you know in your heart I'm right. less world logistics based, I think she absolutely can't fucking cook, but, crucially, feels that she is fucking aces at it. does she cook? irrelevant, also no obviously not, she is a lady of rank, we have servants for that. but, crucially, she feels in her heart that she is a great cook. not that she cares about it. but again, she is great at it. this is never challenged because 1)di feisheng, the one person I can see her lowering herself to actually cook for, does not pay attention to the taste of food unless he has amnesia, and thus he's certainly not going to be like 'you suck at cooking, ew'. 2) if you are not di feisheng are you going to challenge fucking saintess on her bad cooking? no! she will stab you in the eyeball with a chopstick.

unpopular opinion honestly I don't know that I have that many unpopular opinions on her. other than that she's fun. a nightmare and like, deeply uncomfortable as a character with how incredibly rapey she is, obviously. but fun! she is a problematic queen. terrible woman who really sort of stands out as one of the few of the main cast who uh...doesn't really seem to have any reason behind the terribad decisions she makes other than there is something Wrong With Her, but again, god forbid, etc.

song i associate with them Girlfriend, by Avril Lavigne; the early 2000s angry brat pop is just. so on brand. see also, so much for my happy ending. (also, this has given me the image of idea of early 2000s scene kids jinyuan alliance, which is the funniest fucking thing in the world to me. I don't know what sigu sect would be, but it's just so fucking funny.)

favorite picture of them quick and nasty screencap bc this response has already taken me two days, but like. the whole turn on li lianhua when he's in chains and she's like 'oh you're dangerous to talk to', I just. I feel so abnormal about it. she is so hot and scary.

[z-and-the-space-child]

my head is all currently midnight burger podcast so here's everything i like about this wonderful piece of media:

it's pretty fun and very funny!! i smile like an idiot on public transport and on my way to class at least once a day listening to this.

the characters are so. idk how to describe them but theyre so full of life and you can tell that they are loved greatly by the creator(s)

the WRITING. i could seriously pluck a quote from damn near every episode to carry me through the day. i don't need affirmations i need gloria to talk me through my problems.

i was doing a lil analysis of the themes in this show and i came up with "the best thing you can ever do is the best thing you can do right now" and it is FUEL, babey.

The el triste monologue. also just gloria being a POC and being proud of herself and her culture. there's a lot of cultural mish-mash in podcasts, so this is very refreshing.

It's very, very sweet and heartfelt. kind of like wolf 359 if they communicated more instead of dodging their issues until they came to a peak (love them for it.)

the PHYSICS of it all. i'm a physics/astrophysics major because i think space and looking at the stars is my lifeblood so i won't shut up about it. i don't want ava and leif (certainly ava) to shut up about it ever. HOW much reasearch did they have to do to get this kinda grasp on it. im in awe, i'm LEARNING actual things from them. i could go on. the gravity waves, the stellar nuclear fusion, the time dilation of it all. and all without using over-flowery language!!! i can actually follow a good chunk of the time. are we sure ava didn't take one of those science communication seminars. maybe 5 phds does it. when she and leif talk i vibrate like an electron in a lazer. wonderful.

star sequencing??? stellar nucleosequencing??? right up my alley. thats my kinda stuff. the romanticization of space, i've seen. the romanticization of physics, however, is not something i haven't seen in such a beautiful modern fashion. (Ie, not oppenheimer or even richard feyman)

and it's not too science-y to the point that they think they can't have fun. yes they discuss the implications of gravity waves and wax poetic about space and pulsars. (it beats for you, berts) but they have FUN! they meet their parents because they can. they get a plant drunk. there's an atmosphere(?????) around the diner that allows them to fly around and mind-numbing speeds and look at the curvature of spacetime and also sit on the roof. (I imagine the entire place is the temperature of a summer night.) they have a whole wild west planet. leif builds things inexplicably. how? where does he get the materials??? shhhhh don't question it just let him have the gravity wave detector. nobody actually knows what engineers do, not even engineers. let him be. also time crystals??????

ALSO ava being a woman in stem and being so blunt yet covert about it. she's been dealing with it for so long. why are all (recognized) physicists a)white b) men c) both. it's such a sucky thing to work into because of the outward appearance. ava is a proud mad scientist which i aspire to so much. i am keeping her in my little arsenal of people to think about when i don't want to study. (picture the do it for her meme but it's pics of ava) I don't think i aptly put how much i love her. i'm not all the way finished yet but i've heard she was forced to marry someone? i think it would be a thing for sure if she cheated on him. so many physicists cheated on their spouses (wives ): ) and i think ava should also do it. as a treat. if that's what she'd like.

when people have done bad, bad things but show/are capable of redemption upon reflecting on their past/current shortcomings is just something that gets me so much directly in the heart. the hiddenness of people. the tragedy. we contain MULTITUDES and this show demonstrates that so well. how they support each other! they are everchanging and that's good for them. Leif the engineer the ex criminal the diner cook.

leif exploding a man in cold blood. if i could draw i'd draw that. maybe i will anyways.

food as a form of affection/way to bond. grief. doing your best. making amends. using the time you have. death is inevitable but that's okay.

And if time and tide roil you too harshly, or diurnal courses leave you with no safe havens, just remember we’re out there, somewhere, lookin’ for ya’

they open at six

[forgedbondspod]

Day 4 of crowdfunding means it's time for another cast shout out! We started with Hephaestus which means it's only right that we talk about her best friend Dionysus. Our Dionysus is being voiced by the incomparable Mike LeBeau! Before we get to Mike, let's meet Dionysus

Dionysus is the god of wine (along with other things like theatre, revelry, madness, all the fun stuff). His mother died before he could be born so Zeus sewed his fetus into his thigh and gave birth to Dionysus himself. Greek mythology! It's wild! The inspiration for Di in this show was the idea of having a god who is fun on the surface but is lonely underneath it all. That's why he gravitated towards Hephaestus; all of Olympus thinks they know them without ever truly knowing them. I also wanted to explore Dionysus as aroallo which was very fun to write

Mike LeBeau is probably best known for his role as Tim Stoker in The Magnus Archives (which inspired me to make a podcast). He's also been in both The Town Whispers, Tiny Terrors, and Soul Operator, some of my favorite podcasts. He is ridiculously talented and so fucking kind. Mike was my immediate pull for the voice of Dionysus when I started writing and then @totcoc0a encouraged me to actually reach out and ask him. I'm still shocked to this day that he said yes, but he really is the perfect voice for this character and the multitudes he contains. Getting to work with Mike is one of those 'holy shit is this real life' things and I'm so excited for y'all to hear what he's doing.

If you would like to support the show and the incredible work Mike is doing, you can check out our crowdfunder!

And to Mike specifically: thank you for putting your faith in this show. It's small but mighty and your voice is absolutely perfect for Dionysus. I can't wait for everyone to hear you in this role and am so glad you said yes to being our god of wine💜

[junk-culture]

thinking about becket or the honour of god by jean anouilh 1961 again and like. yes henry's romantic love is blatant but the sort of. parental themes of it all are interesting too? like it's abt the inherently fucked up dynamics of royal families. the loneliness of being king etc.

(not to mention henry's subsequent lack of affection for his own sons ... he's never breaking the cycle etc).

like it's a case of henrys mommy issues/lack of any genuine parental love and how he seems to find that/wish for that in becket. there is constantly something familial abt their interactions, from their outward appearances as the childish king and his older, wiser chancellor, to everything else abt them.

the way henry is always saying that becket taught him everything. ("every thought in my head came from you" is quite something.)

the "gently, as if to a little boy" and the rare use of henrys name is especially insane here because this isn't actually becket speaking, it's from henry's imagined conversation as he kneels by becket's tomb. but it's there in their real interactions too.

+ this bit below which i went crazy over because it's an extra little moment that wasn't in the film: when henry falls asleep in becket's bed after gwendolyns suicide, he wakes again with a nightmare, and becket soothes him back to sleep like a child:

+ there's other stuff i could point to but yeah basically yes henry was insanely in love but their relationship genuinely contains many multitudes.... ruler and subject. older brother and little brother. friends. best friends who go out hunting drinking wenching sharing the same girl's bed etc. enemies. norman conquerer and conquered saxon. man who is deeply in love with the man who cares for no one and hates to be loved. father and son. the church and the state. the king and his right hand arm/man/confidant/silly rabbit. evil old men yaoi boys. etc etc etc etc etc etc

[queenofbaws]

top 5 favourite until dawn characters to WRITE vs top 5 favourite until dawn characters in general (if it's different)

it is such an important distinction med, and i thank you endlessly for letting me get into it 😏

WRITING

1. flamethrower guy/the stranger/jack: this one likely shocks no one. there's just. a joy. that comes with writing an unhinged, monster-hunting hermit. he kicks doors open. he lives in a burnt out hospital full of Creatures. he's larry fessenden. he's alive in canon for roughly 5 minutes. he's the light of my life. 2. mike: probably slightly more of a surprise because i don't write him OFTEN, but i love writing mike. lovelovelove writing him. mostly because, of the ud kids, i think he's the character who talks...the most...like i do irl??? similar speech patterns, i mean - same tendency to just. say things. that do not make sense. or things that did not need to be said. 3. EMILY: again, probably a surprise because i don't write her much, but my GOD there is a freedom to writing in emily's voice asldkfjdskf she's smart. she's mean. she always has at least three insults locked and loaded in the chamber. she's also the only character in the franchise to say "understand the palm of my hand, bitch." she contains multitudes. 4. dr. hill: gotta be honest here. i went through. a lot. of schooling for psychology. okay. like. however much you think that means? it was like. twice that. and i spent a lot of time - a lot of time - listening to professionals in the field talk in circles and say absolutely batshit things while sagely nodding and giving everyone around them knowing looks, and if i didn't have alan j. hill to channel all that lingering angst into, i might've exploded by now 😫 hehehehehe. i'm only sort of joking. 5. beth: what did supermassive give her? nothing. what does that mean? she can be anything i want, and i don't have to worry over whether or not it sounds believable in canon 😎 lmfao. in much the same way i looove writing jack because we get like. 10 lines and A Vibe from him, beth's a hoot to write for because, like. we know who her siblings are. we have an IDEA of what her home life must've been like...and everything else is up for debate!!!

JUST, LIKE, TO LOOK AT

1. ashley ashley ashley: they could never make me hate you bb. did she handle some things poorly? yes. does she make some questionable decisions? sure. would i give her the world if the opportunity presented itself? of course. look, i just think. she should get to do...whatever she wants. always. as a treat. :)c 2. matt: i am so. intrigued. by matt's whole deal. every second of it. he's a huge part of the prank but he's also hugely sympathetic. he has that incredibly cute moment with ashley right as they get to the lodge but seems pretty chilly (if not downright disinterested in) chris and josh, her best friends. he helps jess through the mines. he holds his own with emily. unless you play him a v certain way, he seems the most interested in smoothing things over between everybody. HE LEAVES. THE FUCKING. HATCHET. AT THE BASE. OF THE FIRE TOWER. i would love to live in his brain for just like...ten minutes. just really figure him out. (i need to write more with him too 😭 he has bewitched me, body and soul) 3. flamethrower guy/the stranger/jack: look. look i'm not subtle. i just. love that weird old man. i just love him so much. if supermassive said 'hey here's a dlc where you go through one (1) calendar day as jack fiddler, it costs $60 and is roughly 1 hour of gameplay,' i'd fold immediately. idk why. 4. josh: there is no one - NO ONE - in this, or any other, game who's so willing to commit so fully to the bit. my man had BLUEPRINTS. my guy had DEAD PIGS. bro sourced knockout gas and fake newspapers and real blood and made voice recordings and an alter ego and rigGED HIS WHOLE FAMILY'S VACATION HOME WITH BOOBY TRAPS, THREW A PARTY ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF HIS SISTERS' SUPPOSED DEATHS, AND EVERYONE STILL FUCKING SHOWED UP. say whatever else you want about him, josh had SOMETHING figured out, man. 5. jess: again. did she make some questionable decisions? sure. do i agree with everything she did? no. but after everything she goes through, after all the tragedy and agony and terror she is put through, this girl still has the wherewithal to grab a shovel and beam a guy in the head with it, and you know what? i respect that 🙏🏻 plus she wore hiphuggers to a party on a mountain in alberta in the dead of winter, and i just want to study her under a microscope.

[oatmealcrisp-freak]

Yuuri Katsuki has Bullied Kid energy.

Yuuri : Don't you dare see me as weak or perceive my vulnerability. Please comfort me and reassure me. I'll be constantly afraid of your reaction if I inconvenience you. Nothing scares me more than the people I trust lying to me. I'm more competent and at home in the face of people's scorn than in the face of their genuine love for me. The idea that anyone could see me as desirable is baffling. The world sees me as little more than dirt and I don't disagree with them. I am going to make them eat their teeth with their words or so help me I will set myself on fire trying. Just watch, I am the most beautiful woman in town and you will rue the day you underestimated me. How you like me now?

Victor, thinking he'd been dumped by the first person who'd made him happy in a very long time : I see this, I respect this, I am going to use the hell out of this. Hey. Hey fatty. Watch me pry the thing you love and use to cope with your feelings right out of your fingers until you lose weight. kinda reminiscent of what you did to me :) kinda sorta you know just a lil bit. You don't know what eros is? Okay, now you're just making fun of me.

Victor, after Yuuri had his katsudon eros realization : ...JFC he actually literally doesn't know. I. Uh. ...Huh. Well. Uhm. Okay. Maybe that means he doesn't get OTHER things too. He. He genuinely doesn't know what he did to me. He probably didn't even do it deliberately. Okay. Okay? Okay. I can work with this. THINK OF THE JUICY SUCCULENT PORK, BABE. ...I can't fkn believe this.

Victor, several episodes later when Yuuri reveals he literally doesn't remember the banquet: ...Well shit. The past year of my life has been a lie and I might be an asshole. Hm.

I've read some fics where after Yuuri's ED gets triggered and he crashes hard Victor looks back at all those early comments and goes 'I didn't mean it that way babe you're hot when you're fat and you weren't even that fat it was just that it could be unsafe for your joints to skate in that condition' and sure okay I get wanting to minimize the blow and Yuuri is adorable AF when he's heavier and i still enjoy those fics for the most part but

I disagree with that fully and completely cus nah, Victor's a petty lil bitch who can be cold and ruthless and isn't afraid to hurt people. Is he also warm and kind and loving and doing his best? Yes. He contains multitudes. But he was absolutely aiming to hurt, because he was hurt.

Yuuri, meanwhile, who's been bullied for a great majority of his childhood but has complete faith in Victor and unwavering confidence in his honesty - especially when that honesty fits his world view - that he has an entire Victor shaped blind spot : Eh? Pfft. He wasn't bullying me, what are you talking about? He was literally telling the truth. :/ I mean really, he was taking care of me.

Victor, falling to the ground and clutching his stomach with a groan because ooouuugghhh guilt-nausea : Y-....Yuuri.....

Yuuri : I mean Yurio can be a bully but that's just how he shows he cares so :3 Nah haha, I've had waaaay worse, trust me, lol

Yurio : ....I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative, one that I have never asked to be a part of?

Victor, convulsing :

I think Yuuri can absolutely pick up on when Victor is being dishonest with him and poking his sharp little fingers into the sore spots, but more on an intuitive level that he doesn't know how to make sense of logically, so he just accepts it and moves on largely without comment a;dlkf he'll probably figure it out like fifteen years down the road when he's older and wiser and one day he squints at his husband and goes "...huh, okay" and then never does anything about it anyway because he loves Victor and forgives him and also Victor's hot when he's being mean so

[fiveredlights]

the oversharement of the author: a completely unnecessary post containing my multitude of thoughts on takes one to know one

everyone has been so kind and wonderful about TOTKO so here’s a very, very, very, long author’s note which is me just rambling about anything and everything as a thank you for all the love 🫶

background

for those aware of the fiveredlights lore you may remember in april i had to pause updates because of some weird arm/wrist pain... so that was carpal tunnel syndrome and idk what i did to invoke it this july/august but it came back with such a vengeance that i did not think i was physically gonna be able to write this. but maxiel would not shut up in my brain so i got my hot water bottles and got to work.

this whole idea began after i saw travis kelce go on stage on the eras tour and i went... max and daniel absolutely possess the right type of insane to do something like this.... you can see the original thought post here

the albums

i thought making the albums would take me like a day. literally right up until i hit publish i was still making changes to Sidelines, and i had convinced myself they were real tangible albums with the amount of times i hit albums instead of the playlist button on spotify.

Second Place

the easier album, finished this is a day. cut songs were killer by phoebe bridgers and loml by taylor swift. i was gonna do a whole thing where i was gonna be like “oh the relationship killed him so much he abandoned the guitar to sing a sad piano ballad” and then i realised moon song is rooted in piano. so uh that was cut.

there also was a whole thing where his ex was personified as fire — “can the killer in me tame the fire in you” (killer) with “our field of dreams engulfed in fire” (loml) parallel that i really enjoyed but unfortunately never made it in. also loml has a lyric “the coward claimed he was a lion” which is fun with max adopting the lion as his symbol….anyways

the titled second place comes from another SMAU i used to write for a different fandom (on twitter so it is long gone, rip), where ironically it was also a singer/famous au and i was clearing out my spotify playlists and found the fake album and was like huh. i like that name. luckily for me it worked for the album storyline as well so good times!

Sidelines

this album changed at least fifty times. for the first three weeks of me writing it was called 3 (THREE) because I’m annoying like that, but the more i looked at it i could not convince myself daniel would call it that. because yes, it is his max album but calling it thirty three is a tad too much (in my opinion anyway). sidelines was always on the album, but i was going through my tik tok maxiel folder and saw a daniel edit to sidelines and was like okay yeah that's a better name.

out of 11 songs, only 5 of the original tracklist made it in. cut songs included:

call your mom by noah kahan

apple pie by lizzy mcalpine

orange juice by alfie jukes & nell mescal

orange juice by noah kahan

ivy by taylor swift

science by niall horan

who we are by hozier

with ivy there’s a lyric “and i’ll drink my husband’s wine” which would’ve been the way max and daniel would’ve been like “we’re married lol” but it was cut because to ME ivy is about sapphics cheating on their husbands with each other and i just can’t rewrite ivy like that. here’s some deleted scenes on that:

jeanie 🤠 @/COTADANIEL · i’m sorry daniel WHO’S WINE ARE YOU DRINKING????? driccrodeos [Video: Daniel on stage singing the lyric, “And drink my husband’s wine,” looking offstage to Max, before turning back to the audience and smirking, continuing to sing.] category five event has hit the maxiel towers noah @/ricciardanielo · this album has actually killed me. like i’m not on this earth anymore. why? ivy: “And I’ll drink my husband’s wine.” peace: “Give you my wild, give you a child.” @ max and daniel do you have something you want to tell us or??? ric33stappen if you attend the next race with a ring on your finger and a baby in your arms i swear to god max and daniel i will fuck you up (politely) #like i respect their privacy or whatever but also what the fuck #you know what i mean like what the fuck

in sidelines almost every single song (except for you could start a cult) has a daniel3.jpg post pertaining to a lyric... i realise maybe i should've had someone in universe point it out because i now realise it's quite difficult to spot. whoops.

daniel’s sidelines: live from red rocks is inspired by phoebe bridgers punisher tour (she flicks through the pages of a storybook), taylor swift era’s tour (the lover house) and noah kahan (we’re all be here forever tour; watched live from fenway park specifically on how to write his concert). the whole concert idea was also written literally 5 hours before posting because i originally had a max and daniel article but i could not write it.

easter eggs

i feel incredibly pleased that so many of you picked up on the easter eggs like i get why taylor swift is so insane about hers because it's just so much fun! (spoilers for the rest of my fics...)

blue sweater (thank you to ataraxiaa on ao3 who commented because I didn't realise i had done it) -> glitter on the floor maxiel's communal blue sweater

matthew (rriicciiaarrddoo) & callan (callonmax33) daniel would make a great TP -> old habits die screaming

jake 3(3)81racers Can Max Verstappen fight? -> glitter the floor chapter 3 & 5 recurring plot line

daniel's july 2 2025 post (Photo 2: Max and Daniel sitting in front of a fireplace, the person taking the photo is behind them. Max has his arm around Daniel’s waist, whilst Daniel has his right arm giving the middle finger to the photographer and head turned to the left with an annoyed expression. Max has his head tucked into Daniel’s neck, laughing into his shoulder.) -> inspired by glitter on the floor's 2024/6/7 monaco dark laneway posts

rriicciiaarrddoo "are george and alex married" -> a future easter egg for the glitter on the floor galex sequel

daniel's august 10 2025 post:

 A vase filled with tulips on a table with a white table cloth. -> glitter on the floor, last daniel3.jpg on 2023 has a vase full of flowers, was meant to signify that they got married

Two kookaburra garden statues, next to a rocking chair on a balcony. -> gary and steve from glitter on the floor

daniel's caption: The rumours are true, I am now in possession of half of Max’s WDC and they will be going on auction next week. -> fool me once

things five forgot to include because i have horrible memory but they canonically happened (this will absolutely be updated when i remember new things)

daniel ricciardo broke his hand whilst karting when younger which is why he gave up racing-> lyric in forever "broke a bone that never healed in my hand"

he gets into singing because grace and joe ricciardo put him in choir as a way for him to get out all his yapping and talking at least once a week so they can get a little peace (but it doesn't work because now he sings around the house)

real life references

sometimes i like to use a little reality so that the universe doesn't feel too far away and here's all the real life things i pulled from:

hair tuck max in f1tv japan interview: 2023 honda thanks day

daniel looking like darth vader in austin rain: 2023 monaco boat race

daniel wearing max's hat: 2017 baku podium

checo fought his way to finish p9: probably any race from the latter first half of the 2024 season

daniel ricciardo international relations expert: 2024 post belgium gp

twitter realises daniel ricciardo is hot actually: 2022 abu dhabi gp (the outfit)

daniel playing max's GP in his concert -> i saw adele pause her concert for the olympics womens 100m final so that's how that got in (also i did so much time zone math in order to make sure it was actually the right timing)

max and daniel escaping in a helicopter -> post 2024 belgium gp

[moonisneveralone]

I'm not trusting y'all again. I got my beef with Kendrick. He's a good artist, but he's still got some hotep tendencies that I can never really accept. HOWEVER. Y'all really had me believing Auntie Diaries was this embarassing no go, when it really wasn't.

I can totally accept that it's jarring. It is. It's like most black people are tired of seeing black people suffer on screen right? I distrust most of these movies, but once in a blue moon you will get a Moonlight or a Get Out. For people who staunchly dislike black suffering on screen (because of real life obviously) it will still be a jarring and uncomfortable watch, but both movies are amazing and well done. They nail their subject matter.

And so did Kendrick. Auntie Diaries is not a song for trans people in that sense. It is pro trans, but again it is not there to meet trans people where they are (ahead of us cis people). Which is why I'm not trying to speak over trans people or telling them they have to like it. It is about meeting cis people where they are. And arguably black religious cis people.

It is also about Kendricks own journey to understanding his family members who have transitioned and how his behaviour harmed his relationship with his family members. Yes he uses slurs, but critically towards the end of the song he stops doing that and censores the slur as "F-Bomb". Because the song is supposed to symbolize his learning curve. He also turns it around and says we can all use it together, but only if we say using the n-word is okay. Something that he has experienced himself. At one of his shows he asked a white fan to not use it and gave her the mic she then proceeded to censor it once and then say it thought the verse.

The end of the song is him saying he chose humanity over his religion. He wants to love his family and that he also wants to stop being a hypocrite.

My personal assesment of him is that he is a hypocrite. But humams contain multitudes right?

He just really isn't a hypocrite about this.

But I also just followed whatever the hell people on here were saying and never confirmed shit for myself so who am I to judge?

Again I'm not saying he deserves flowers for this. Even though I'm very sure this could have been and interesting conversation to have. I also think anti blackness and maybe just a valid general distrust of cis straight men (and to white people the fact that he's black) played into this incredibly uncharitable reading of this song.

And I guess today I'm extra mad about it, because I saw someone come for Megan the Stallion about her not actually being bisexual. How is openly dating a woman as a famous person the standard? How many lesbians who are famous only really go out with their partners when it's long term? How many famous white lesbians can you name that are out in town with women they aren't married to? Yeah, do you think that it might be because the scrutiny is draining and scary? Do they need to show up with a girl so you can tick it off in your little who's really gay box?

I really can't help but feel white LGBTQ+ people don't want us to be a part of the conversation at all. And if we are a part of it it has to be in a demure and simple way. There is no room for complexity or to bring up issues. Truely in a glitzy glam respectability era.

Also stop acting like y'all grew up super unproblematic. I know some of y'all were straight up acting like demons because y'all couldn't accept yourself. If we can hold space for that complicated journey why not for a man who struggled to understand and accept his family members, because of all the conflicting messaging he was getting, but then found his way to love them and put them above his religion?

[squash1]

I think you've already posted about this but I finally actually got to read the dreamer trilogy and it is wild to me that both Niall and Mór agreed to split up and go off with dream copies of each other. Like I know the raven cycle and dreamer trilogy contain multitudes of crazy stuff but. When I read the opal short story where someone broke into the barns and cursed the picture of the lynches with Aurora I thought it was Mór (in hindsight it could've been Niall's mum but I didn't think that at the time). I knew beforehand Niall had been married and they'd split and he'd dreamt a new "perfect" wife/mother and I thought that in itself was insane. But not only did they plan this together, dream altered versions of themselves to go off with - they didn't even use different names. The (new) fenian? Aurora and Mór Ó Córra? Two full grown adults and the only person against infanticide is a 5-year-old. They walked so Ronan and Hennessy could run. Still managed to have time to traumatise Declan though, even dreamed-to-love-you mothers congrats guys

no you’re so right and actually it’s lowkey kinda tragic that both mór and niall were like “i can’t be who you need but i do want you to have that person” like. it’s hilarious bc it’s like what fresh hell WILL maggie come up w next but also it’s just…sad

also yes declan being the only one to protect ronan but doing it by being like. he’s not scary he’s just sad (so true) but poor declan eldest daughter (i know) burden of the parentified child i love him so much

[palfriendpatine66]

Writing Obi-Wan I got an amazing ask that has prompted your Pal to go on several rants so I’m breaking it into parts for readability.

An anon new to writing fanfic asked about characterizing Obi-Wan. They asked about his most important traits to include to really nail his characterization and most importantly:

"In particular, I'm confused about reconciling the (chaotic, dramatic, 10/10) Clone Wars happenings with the way he appears in some other stories (more, well, civilized)."

Well anon: ask and you shall receive. Find your pal’s beginner's thesis below, keeping in mind that there are many others in the fandom who are way more accomplished authors who are much better about characterization in their own works and are way more qualified to speak to this. I'm going to do my best!

I love this ask! Characterization is so important in fan fic as we take familiar characters in place them into different scenarios that we haven’t seen how they react and respond to, and yet want it to feel authentic. The best is when you read a chapter and think of course that’s how Obi-Wan would deal with this.

The first part to nailing characterization is voice. Not even the motivation aspects behind “he would not fucking say that” but I literally ask myself: can I imagine the character’s voice actually saying these things? If I can’t hear Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan in my mind speaking the lines of dialogue I’ve written, I know it’s not right. This isn’t something specific I could give you a How To on, it’s 100% based on vibe and feel, BUT. Listen to the dialogue in the movies/tcw/kenobi series. The words he uses, his cadence, his tone. Even if he's being written in an alternate universe speaking about something that canon Obi-Wan has never experienced, and never will, it should still *sound* like him. If I had to summarize his voice: civilized yes, and more mature or refined than Anakin’s speech patterns, but with the ever present threat of sass. Underlying almost everything he says is a sense of I can and will destroy you if you piss me off, so tread lightly.

That brings me to your point of reconciling the different parts of Obi-Wan. There’s a line in Stover’s novelization of Revenge of the Sith which (I'm paraphrasing) says: he’s a Jedi Master who deep down still feels like a padawan. To me, this is why he can be the cool, calm logical Jedi Master one moment and then impulsively launching himself out of windows to hang from a speeding droid the next.

He is the expert of Fake it Till You Make It. He was suddenly thrust into all these roles of responsibility before he was prepared for them, but has taken them on and is Doing His Best. He literally went from being a padawan to having a padawan overnight. He had no time to experience being responsible for himself before he was responsible for someone else. He’s the youngest member on the council and despite, you know, not being trained in the military he is like The Highest Ranking Jedi and in command of a frighteningly huge portion of the GAR. He *is* incredibly competent and good at what he does, but he feels like its a role he's acting. He is playing the part of the wise Jedi, modeling himself after everyone he respects and looks up to and thinks is doing a better job than himself, when a lot of times his personal instinct isn't to react with measured patience but rather Yeet! or Read This Bitch!

Always remember: this man contains multitudes. There is no One Right take on his personality. That’s why he’s so fun to write! And also why there’s so many different versions of Obi-Wan in fan fic, and yet most are able to feel right if they hit the voice. Authors lean into the different sides of Obi-Wan they want to bring out. Some are more into his Big Dick Energy, being a BAMF, having the answers, and being in control General Kenobi. Some relate to the more the anxious padawan desperate to prove himself. Some see the man tossing back shots in the Outlander and think to themselves “this ho has slept with half of Coruscant”. Any and all of these can feel true to the character when done from a place of love and understanding for our main man Obi-Wan Kenobi

[owmylasagna-blog]

oh nooo i'm sorry you're sick lasagna :( i'm glad your skates came though that's exciting!! i'll still hit you up for some headcanons if you feel like sharing 👀 id love to hear more of your lore for the eds' parents and perhaps bro...

i'm trying to think of my own indulgent headcanon to share that i haven't already told you 🤔 i will say that your use of shania twain in lps made me hc that edd would secretly be a big fan of hers. i know it's kinda ooc but it's really funny to me. he's a sap and her songs can be pretty sappy. there's also a lot of pedal steel in her music which automatically makes me think of him.

oh also will ed and may's wedding be included in lps?

Thanks! I appreciate the message ❤️ I’m so jazzed the skates came! I immediately did a little shimmy around my tiny ass apartment and might take them for a spin on my street once the rain clears up.

Hmmm time to rack my brain for some other headcanons for the Eds’ parents. Let’s see:

I wrote this in like me still but I think Edd’s parents get a divorce once he’s 18. I sort of hint at this but in my mind his folks are more amicable colleagues than romantic partners: not that they don’t care for each other, but they know pretty early on after having Edd that they are more friends than husband and wife. They do a lot of things out of obligation and respectability.

While I imagine most of the parents in the cul-se-sac to know one another (possibly even have grown up together - we love intergenerational beaf), Edd’s parents are an enigma and literally never socialize. This rubs most of their neighbors the wrong way, really pisses off Eddy’s parents, especially his mom, who takes it super personally (and probably rightfully so).

Sort of a popular one, but I also like the idea of Ed and Eddy’s dads being business partners selling used cars. Or actually, Ed’s dad sort of being Eddy’s dad’s superior 👀.

I think Eddy’s parents (I come them Eddy and Carmela, or Lina for short) are middle school sweethearts. Eddy Sr. threw rocks at Lina during 7th grade recess and she beat him with a fence post and the rest is history.

I imagine Ed’s parents having a pretty big age gap, with his dad being like 10 years older than his mom. We all agree Ed’s mom is a miserable housewife, right? And that his dad is a shellshocked vet? Yes?

Okay this is gonna start out sorta dark but stay with me: in college I read this book called Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings which informs a lot of my headcanons on Bro. No I don’t think he did anything THAT drastic, but the book outlined more the conditions that cause kids with mental illness to be ignored for the sake up upholding the community appearance if that makes sense? Sweeping concerning behavior under the rug to not raise concern or point fingers at the parents or adults for failing. I sort of see peach creak as a similar town.

@gettingfrilly wrote this too and much more eloquently I might add but I always thought both Bro and Eddy have undiagnosed ADHD.

I could go on but I’ll stop there for everyone’s sake. I get more into Eddy’s family in the next chapters of Ed is Thicker than Mud (;

Hahahaha no I love Edd being a Shania fan 😂 sometimes headcanons that are a little ooc add to the world building. Dude contains multitudes. I also like to imagine Edd’s taste in music being a strange mix of experimental obscure + borderline cheesy (I was just listening to the OST for Xanadu by Olivia Newton-John/ELO that makes me think of Edd for some reason). But I’ve never thought of connecting the pedal steel guitar in Shania Twain’s music with Edd. Maybe he can serenade Eddy… 😛

Yes! The EdMay wedding is meant to be the last chapter *cough* I mean. The thrilling conclusion. Heh. Though I imagine at least 4 more chapters between where I’ve left off and the end of the fic.