#(and theirs said it still had over 3 days left)

[1phakephan]

plzzzz they’re really not slick 😭😭

and yeah i agree i’m like 90% sure it was filmed the 16th

OK i can officially confirm this couldn’t have been filmed later than friday !!

i have the game and there was an event that ended on the 18th (as in last day was the 17th) that was still going when they showed them using the game

[wolverigrl]

The Beauty and the Beast

Logan Howlett x Reader!mutant!

Soo I've decided to try out writing one shots again. The last time I did that.. oh hell.. definitely some years ago. So please don't judge if it's not a masterpiece. I hope you still enjoy this imaginary! <3

Please let me know what you think about it!

Warnings: Mostly fluff, maybe here and there some swearing, but that's all

‐-----------------------------‐-----------------------------‐---------

It was one of those fun evenings that you could only experience if you lived with Wade Wilson. Today, however, was a special occasion: Wade's house party.

The apartment that Y/N shared with Blind Al and him was filled with many different people - friends that Wade had made over the years. And then there was the new roommate, Logan Howlett, who most people only knew as Wolverine. He actually came from a different timeline, but after they both fought Cassandra Nova, Logan was more like stranded in this universe. According to Wade's brief tales, the Wolverine unfortunately had no future in his world, but he did in theirs.

Y/N, unlike Wilson, was a quiet person. One who rarely said much, but always listened and observed. She was the perfect example of still waters run deep. It was this calmness that fascinated Wade from the very beginning when they met in that cruel experimental camp. They both went through hell and became mutants in the end.

Y/N developed the ability to project the pain and feelings of others onto herself or onto others - a power that was both a curse and a blessing. Wade, with his regenerative ability and wacky sense of humor, had quickly become a steady anchor for her. He was her best friend who understood her like no one else. She lost her memory as a result of the human despising experiments, which is why she still doesn't know exactly who she is today.

They had stuck together ever since they had escaped the camp, and Wade never hesitated to make fun of Y/N's quieter ways - in his own affectionate way.

Lately, though, he found a new target for his jokes: Logan and Y/N. It hadn't escaped Wade's notice, nor Blind Al's, that there was an unspoken tension between the two, even though they had barely spoken since Logan moved in.

Y/N had kept an eye on Logan from day one. It was hard not to. He was, after all, an imposing figure - broad shouldered, muscular, with an prominent face and those eyes that always looked a little melancholy, as if they had seen and suffered too much. His kitty cat hair and beard, which Wade loved to make the target of his jokes, gave him an almost animalistic appearance.

Every morning, Logan and y/n met almost simultaneously in the apartment because they had one thing in common. Insomnia. In the kitchen, Logan prepared coffee for both of them, and she made breakfast or dinner in return. They ate together in silence, but they both always looked at each other when the other wasn't looking. If their eyes met, they both gave each other a warm smile. Sometimes, it was irritating for Logan that he was hardly ever grumpy towards her, but he couldn't even help it.

One evening, Y/n came home after a walk. She took her towel and clothes from her room and walked into the bathroom. To her surprise, she saw Logan standing in front of her in just a towel tied around his hips. His hair was wet, just like his upper body. He turned to her and cleared his throat.

"Sorry about that. I'm almost done." He said in his deep voice.

Y/n felt the warmth on her face. There was a lot of humidity and heat in the room, which made it feel harder for her to breathe properly after seeing him like that. Before she nodded and left the room, she couldn't help but let her eyes wander over Logan's body again. She had to admit that she found him incredibly attractive.

But it wasn't just his looks that attracted Y/N; it was the depth that lay within him, a darkness she knew all too well.

Wade noticed those looks from day one and couldn't help but comment on them every time. At breakfast, Y/N sat quietly, absorbed in her thoughts, when Wade came in, tousled her hair, and said, "Good morning, sunshine! Are you dreaming about our hairy roommate again? Tell me, do you prefer him in flannel or without anything?"

Grinning, he put his head on Logan's shoulder, who was looking into the open fridge.

Y/N choked on her coffee and started coughing like mad.

Logan, in return, roughly pulled his shoulder away and tensed his jaw.

"Bub, you really want to go through the void scenario again?" Logan growled, closing the fridge. Wade just laughed out loud and stood behind y/n.

"Oh please, Logan! You know, well, I'm just teasing you." replied Wade, unimpressed. He started massaging y/n's shoulders and added with a wink: "But honestly, y/n why so shy? Don't be so old school and make the first move yourself. I mean, Logan may look like a wild animal, but deep down, he's a cuddly bear."

Blind Al walked by the open kitchen door and just shook her head and mumbled, "One day Logan's really gonna rip his head off, and I'm gonna fucking enjoy it."

That night, while the party was playing at full volume and Wade was getting into over-the-top shenanigans with the guests, Logan suddenly realized that y/n was no longer in the room. He looked around, but it was as if she had vanished into thin air. His eyes wandered to the window front that led to a fire escape. By now, he knew that it was typical for her to hide in places like this when the crowd got too much for her.

Logan pushed his way through the people and stepped out into the cool night. There, on the fire escape, he found y/n. She was sitting on the metal step, her arms wrapped around her knees and staring off into the distance. The lights of the city glittered before her like an endless sea.

"Are you here to hide from Wade, or are you just enjoying the view?" Logan finally asked, his voice quiet and low.

Y/n smiled faintly. "Maybe a little of both. Sometimes I just need a moment to think, you know?"

He nodded thoughtfully, though he knew she didn't look at him.

"I know what it's like, bub. Sometimes, it's hard to get a clear head when everything around you is so loud."

"Yeah." she replied quietly before adding after a pause, "But you know what I still don't understand? How someone like Wade managed to get someone like you soft."

Logan snorted and gave her a skeptical look. "Soft? That's not exactly the word I'd choose."

Y/n smiled. "Oh come on. You never would have gotten yourself into such a mess if there wasn't something about Wade that made you...let's say, more human."

Logan scanned her face in the dark with a smile and stopped his eyes on her lips.

"Maybe you're right," he murmured with a smile. "Or maybe I've just gone crazy."

He sat down next to her, and the metal creaked softly under his weight. They sat side by side in silence for a while, listening to the distant hum of the city and the muffled noise of the party behind them.

"It's nice out here," Logan finally said and leaned back. He put his head back in the neck, closed his eyes, and breathed in the cool air.

Y/n looked over at him and felt a comforting warmth in her stomach area as her eyes traveled from his profile down to his neck and then to his muscular torso.

Y/n smiled. "I like being here when your own world is a little noisy."

Logan opened his eyes again and nodded as if he knew exactly what she meant. "I understand what you mean. Sometimes, you just need distance."

Y/n looked at the city again for a moment. There was a brief, comfortable silence.

Her voice was soft, almost hesitant. "May I ask what your real story is?"

He looked at her sideways, surprised by her question, but then he looked off into the distance. "I've lost a lot. More than any human should have to bear... and it's all my own fault." He paused as if collecting himself before continuing. "I was born in the early 1800s. Went through all that crap - wars, experiments, the loss of people I cared about. And then I became... what I am today. A man with a skeleton made of adamantium, unable to die." he sighed.

"One night, a group of humans went mutant hunting and attacked the X-Men. I had just tumbled out of the nearest bar and heard the screams of my own people."

He began to play with his hands and became tense before continuing on about how he didn't help his team and let them die.

Y/n listened attentively without interrupting him. Her sympathy for him grew, so she slowly began to project his feelings onto herself. She felt incredibly sorry to see him like this. He had already been through so much and now it was all coming up again because of her curiosity.

She could feel all the hatred and sadness that was deep inside him. With tears in her eyes and a lump in her throat, she looked at her hands.

Logan furrowed his eyebrows and suddenly fell silent. He didn't feel a single emotion when he continued his story. Not like he was used to. He looked to Y/n.

"What are you doing to me?" he asked in a calm voice.

Y/n's head lifted, and she blinked away her tears, smiling. "I'm sorry." She said softly and put her hand on his.

Silence for a moment. Logan stared at their hands and realized what just happened. He looked at her.

"I've learned to deal with it, bub. As best I can."

They were both silent for a while, lost in thoughts. Finally, it was Logan who broke the silence again. "And you? How did you get your powers?"

Y/n took a deep breath before she began. "Unfortunately, I can only remember the day I was taken to the experimental camp. They ran various tests on me there. Wade was there too, at the same time. We got to know each other there."

She paused as the memory of those horrible days overcame her. Logan squeezed her hand lightly, as if to let her know she wasn't alone.

"Wade and I kept each other alive," she continued softly. "Without him, I probably wouldn't still be here. He made me laugh, even in the worst moments. And at some point, we managed to escape. Since then... well, he's kept me on my toes ever since. Eventually, I made a new friend and now have powers that allow me to project the feelings and pain of others onto myself."

Logan nodded in understanding. "Wade may be crazy, but he's got a big heart. Even if he likes to hide it behind his stupid sayings."

Y/n smiled at those words. "Yeah, that's true. He's my best friend. Without him, I don't think I would have ever found my way out of my darkness."

"Then I guess I owe him," Logan said, his gaze soft but serious.

"Maybe," Y/n replied softly. Their eyes met, and in that moment, the connection between them felt stronger than ever. It was as if they understood each other through their shared experiences and the pain they both knew.

Logan looked at y/n, and in her eyes he recognized a pain so similar to his own that it almost took his breath away.

The distance between them seemed to close as they leaned towards each other, as if drawn by some unseen force.

"Logan..." Y/n whispered barely audibly as her eyes slid to his lips.

He didn't answer with words. Instead, he removed his hand from hers and placed it on her cheek. His thumb gently stroked her skin. The world around them seemed to blur as they drew even closer. It was as if they only existed in that moment. Only for each other.

And then, without further hesitation, Logan closed the last few inches between them. His lips met hers, gently at first, almost hesitantly, as if testing to see if she was about to pull away. Y/n's eyes closed as she returned the kiss and her hand finding its way to his neck as she let herself fall deeper into the kiss.

It was a kiss full of unspoken words, full of emotions that neither of them had been able to express before.

The world around them disappeared, there was only the feeling of their lips meeting in a mixture of tenderness and desire. But as beautiful as this case was, it was interrupted with a familiar voice.

"Heyy are you two making out here? Without me?" Wade's voice boomed into the night, accompanied by his trademark wide grin.

"Logan, you old romantic, you really picked the perfect moment to start a fling with y/n. Shall I get the camera? Wait a minute, I need popcorn too - what's on today, 'Beauty and the Beast'?"

Logan immediately backed off, while y/n slapped a hand over her face, half annoyed, half amused. "Gosh Wade..." she began, but he interrupted her immediately.

"What? I mean, I totally get it - Logan is a sight to behold! And those biceps, mmmh! But honestly, Logan! You, the man who usually stares at walls like they're his greatest enemies, are suddenly in the middle of a rom-com moment? What's next? Candle light dinner and a love song in the background?

Tell me you at least have some cool lines in store before you fuck her!"

Y/n reached out with her hand and smacked Wade's thigh, laughing. Her embarrassment was forgotten.

Logan, on the other hand, sighed deeply and rubbed his eyes as if trying to erase Wade's voice from his brain.

"For fuck's sake Wade, I swear, if you-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, 'if I say one more sentence, I'll have your claws up my ass'. Been there, done that."

Wade grinned broadly and winked at y/n.

"But, y/n, come on, I need to know - how does it feel sucking on the lips of the King of grumpiness? Electrifying? Did you feel sparks? Or did he just taste like whiskey and world weariness?"

Y/n couldn't help but shook her head with a laugh and looked at Logan. He scanned her face and you'd swear the corners of his mouth were twitching upwards.

"Wade" Logan admonished, his voice an octave lower, "if you don't get out of here right now, you might not live to see your next birthday."

Wade raised his hands in a gesture of peace.

"Hey, I didn't mean to interrupt you two lovebirds. But seriously, Logan, if you've come this far, do it right! A kiss under the stars? Come on, it's movie material!"

Y/n looked back up at Wade with a smile. Logan just shook his head, but a small smile crept onto his face.

"You're impossible, Wade."

"And that's exactly why you two love me so much! Now get your bums in here before Blind Al starts beating us all with her crutches!"

Wade winked at them before disappearing back into the apartment, still laughing.

Y/n and Logan glanced at each other, and an unspoken understanding passed between them. The moment had been shattered, but the connection they felt remained.

"He really is crazy," Logan finally muttered as they stood up.

"Yeah" Y/N replied with a soft smile. "But he brings out the best in us, doesn't he?"

"I guess he does," Logan agreed before he put a hand on her back, and they both stepped back into the noisy, chaotic world inside where Wade was surely already planning their next escapade.

‐---------------------------------------------------------------------

[genericpuff]

The excessively passive voice when talking about Minthe being intended to have BPD is hilarious. "It was thought to have her written with BPD"? So weird

Honestly, once you start noticing this passive voice in how Rachel writes and talks, it's kind of hard to unsee.

Like, for starters, the BPD example. It's very non-committal, almost as if to sound like she never actually wrote her with BPD, it was just an 'idea' that she could neither confirm or deny as canon. But then you read the episode with the slap and-

It's- it's literally called "Splitting". It's about as subtle as a brick to the face. This entire episode showcases Minthe having an actual literal episode of splitting and it's plain as day to anyone who can read the title card and put two and two together. So for the wording to be so passive around her characterization... it wasn't "thought" to have her written with BPD, she was written with BPD.

Another example that sticks out in my mind of Rachel's passive writing is far later in Season 3, when Demeter reunites with Persephone and naturally expects her to come back home with her.

This line still fucking bothers me to this day. Besides the fact that it's just really poorly written dialogue, Persephone describes her being in love with Hades as if it's just some coincidental thing that happened to her that she can't avoid and not a deliberate choice she's making. "It would seem" my ass, Persephone is a coward for not being upfront and just talking to her mother like an adult by saying, "Mother, I love you, and I understand why you want me to come home, but I'm in love with Hades and want to stay in the Underworld with him." Instead the way it's worded is almost designed to absolve Persephone of any and all agency in her own decisions and active participation in her relationship with Hades by instead making it out to be just some circumstance that she can't get herself out of.

Again, this isn't quite as egregious as the aforementioned BPD scene, but it's still irritating because Rachel writes like this a lot throughout LO. And it's not just the dialogue either, entire decisions throughout the comic are flip-flopped and kept vague by Rachel so she can give herself plausible deniability over the narrative. I could come up with some of my own examples, but I think she managed to speak for herself just fine in the end-of-series Q&A that left both critics and fans of the series massively confused and disappointed:

LO is full of half-committed plotlines because Rachel herself can't commit to her own decisions. So the decisions she does make are left vague enough that hardcore fans are willing enough to fill in the blanks themselves, but anyone who asks her genuinely what her plan was, she just gives the same wordy "IDK it's up to your interpretation!" response. It's like she thinks people are asking her as just another reader who can only speculate, but she's literally the author, so why is she acting like her guess is as good as theirs?

Well, because that's how she wrote LO. That's how she's always written comics, with vague half-finished thoughts and just enough for readers to do the mental gymnastics of making sense of it all just to give her the credit for "smart writing" that she never actually did because she stopped paying attention after the first sentence. And that method of being vague for the sake of audience interpretation is fine for illustrations or anything that isn't trying to be a concise narrative, but LO did try to be that and it really shows how hard it failed in doing so when its own creator can't even come up with something slightly plausible to explain all the questions people had in the end. "There is some backstory there" but proceeds to not actually expand on said backstory. "I like to imply things without outright telling people", so do I, but the difference is that Rachel is using that as a crutch to not answer the questions she setup for her readers and then didn't resolve after five years. There's not wanting to spoon feed people the plot, and then there's literally refusing to explain your decisions when writing said plot, almost because you don't know any more than they do.

The entirety of LO is rooted in Rachel's passiveness, from her inability to answer questions concisely to every little plot point that was established and dropped throughout the comic's run. Writing a story is a series of decisions, deciding what to keep, deciding what not to keep, deciding what has to be changed, etc. and Rachel just... doesn't seem like someone who's ever been capable of making those decisions, especially when she's writing an actual long form story to the end and doesn't have the luxury of dropping it whenever it feels convenient for her like she did several times with The Doctor Pepper Show. Once she was actually held to a standard, once she was actually signed into a contract that expected her to make those decisions, she failed to and it culminated in one of the messiest conclusions to a story I've seen since Game of Thrones.

LO is kind of like Schrodinger's Cat - a plot point can be or not be whatever it needs to be so that Rachel can be either praised for smart writing she never did or absolved of bad writing that she did do. It's equally parts interesting and vague enough that whatever her readers give her credit for writing, she can give them a thumbs-up and go "you're totally right, champ!" and proceed to take all the credit of being a "good writer" from the efforts of her own audience who had to jump through a million hoops to make sense of her own messy writing.

But when she's put on the spot by those very same readers to answer for her own decisions, she can't.

Because she never made them.

Because there was never anything "deeper" going on, that's just what her style of "distraction writing" made you believe. The plot never lets you stop to think about what you just read long enough before zipping away to the next thing and distracting you with a new twist or a new character or a new plot point, and before you know it, you've gone weeks without reading about the last thing that was established you probably haven't even realized that those questions never got answered. Sometimes Rachel remembers to get back to those things and resolves them within a handful of panels, other times she forgets them entirely and just leaves them to rot in the hopes that no one ever calls her out on it. And when they do... she can just pull the get-out-of-jail-free "Welp, it's up to your interpretation!" card and get that credit all over again for being deep and insightful, meanwhile those who are rightfully dissatisfied with that answer are blanket-accused of "getting mad at Rachel for not writing the story they wanted".

To close out this ask that, per tradition, turned into an essay, I'd like to recall the famous words of fictional detective Benoit Blanc: "Look into the clear center of this glass onion... Miles Bron is an idiot!"

[f1fnatic]

100 WAYS TO SAY I LOVE YOU ⤿ l. norris 4

→ ( in which. . . ) it is your and lando's 4 year anniversary and as a gift, you give him a journal of 100 entries of moments during your relationship, here are some of lando's favorite moments.

→ ( type of fanfic. . . ) written

→ ( pairing. . . ) lando norris x sainz!reader (gender not specified

→ ( content warnings/disclaimers. . . ) this is coming from lando's pov, jumps from 2022-2024 at the end

→ ( author's note. . . ) this is my first time with a short summary type of fic, i hope you enjoy! see the end for more

→ ( masterlist )

→ 12/5/2019, the day we first met

it was my first time in the f1 paddock and carlos had invited me to the spanish gp. you accidentally bumped into me, which caused my piping hot, freshly brewed espresso to spill all over the front of my blouse. you apologized briefly before running off to do whatever media duty you had for that day. later, after the grand prix was over, carlos made you apologize the right way and made you buy me a new shirt. p.s that shirt is one of my favorites :)

→ 24/10/2019, the day we hung out 1 on 1 for the first time

we went to lunch and then found this quaint drive-in movie on the outskirts of monaco. they were playing my favorite summer-time movie, grease. i got to see a different side of you that day. you didn't have carlos to bounce off of, it was sweet to see you for you. your presence was so comforting to me. you were so relaxed and laid back. you fell asleep in my lap and that was when your worries truly melted away. i was very giddy after you left, it just so happened to be the first time my heart fluttered at the thought of you. p.s.s sorry for quating grease so much

→ 31/12/2020, new years eve

the day you kissed me for the first time. at first, i was surprised and thought the alcohol was making you act brash and forward. but after you didn't move away, i knew it was on purpose. i do not know what i could have done if you didn't kiss me. carlos got this picture of us and it has become one of my favorites. it marks such an important milestone in our relationship.

→ 23/3/2020, lockdown

when the uk officially shut down their borders and went into lockdown. monaco had shut theirs down a month prior, so i came to live with you until i couldn't anymore. it was hard, i didn't want to leave you and go back to monaco. we were still figuring out if we wanted to be in a relationship and i knew that the time apart would be difficult to navigate. so much uncertainty and change. it helped us grow into the people we are now <3

→ 31/8/2020, the day you asked me to be your partner

it also just so happened to be my birthday. we had been facetiming almost every day/night. i was watching every single grand prix to show my undying support for you. your unofficial home grand prix the day before had gone well, and i remember being so proud of you. you woke me up by surprising me at my apartment door in monaco with a bouquet of my favorite flowers, as well as my favorite snacks. i couldn't help but cry, but then you asked one of the most important questions ever, and obviously i said yes!

→ 8/31/2021, our 1 year anniversary

wow, i could not believe that we had been together for 365 days. one full orbit of the earth around the sun. you yourself are my sun, lando. the light of my life. that night you surprised me with a high-end massage since we were still in lockdown. you do not know how much i appreciated that, work had made me so stressed. it was wonderful to relax. i remember you being upset because we couldn't spend it together and promised that we would never spend another anniversary apart, and so far, you have.

→ 4/1/2022, when i asked you to move in with me

everything leading up to the moment i asked you was so nerve-wracking that i was trying not to have an anxiety attack. i was so scared that you weren't going to say yes, but, obviously you did. once you moved in, my apartment finally felt like a home. it felt so full with you. the happiness that would run through my veins when i saw that your things were next to mine. your clothes next to mine in the closet, our coffee mugs side by side on the countertop, and our shoes piled next to the door, waiting for us to go out together. that was and still is one of my happiest memories <3

→ 14/2/2022, valentines day

our first valentines together in person as a couple! we had such a beautiful ocean view breakfast that you surpirsed me with (it was delicious btw) and then later that night, you took me to dinner and had max decorate our bedroom while we were out. have it on record that that was my favorite night ever ;)

→ 1/7/2022, our first grand prix as a couple

this just so happened to be the day that we confirmed we were dating!! it was such a weight lifted off of my shoulders to finally be able to call you mine in public. the fans were so supportive. i felt so much pride to be able to wear a jersey with your name on it. that whole weekend was bliss.

→ 31/8/2024 our 4 year anniversary

today. that's all i have to say. today has been the best day and everything i could ask for. today you surprised me with the biggest question of my life. today you asked me to marry you. and, without any hesitation, i said yes. of course, i would say yes. lando, you are the best thing to have ever happen to me. you are my world, my everything, my star in a field of black. you have brought such happiness into my life that i can't even BEGIN to describe. i am so unbelievably happy that you bumped into me that fateful day in the mclaren paddock. if you hadn't, who knows where we would be. i love you so much lan, here is to 4 years and so many more.

woww two posts in the span of a week what is happening... i was deciding to add pictures but i could not find any good ones that made sense for the entries. anyways, requests and feedback are welcome! make sure to leave a comment and kudos as well (only if you want :P)

[vanishingstarrs]

decode ( e. kirishima x reader, secret admirer trope )

For weeks all you could think about were the little notes folded up into hearts that you’d been finding in your locker every day.

The first one appeared over a month ago and stated: you look badass in your new costume.

You’d been pretty insecure when submitting in the new design for your hero suit and despite all your friends encouragement you still felt a bit out of place among the rest of your classmates, who always looked confident and powerful in theirs.

You weren’t expecting anything, but the next day another fell out when you went to grab a textbook in between classes and it said— that new move was impressive, your improvement and dedication amazes me each day.

And the next day.

have a great day, gorgeous

And the next.

you were awesome in that training exercise

And more.

that test was rough, hope you did better than i did— your concentrating face is cute btw <3

you kicked bakugo’s ass today (and looked hot doing it), it was great!

you’re so strong and pretty

They continued every day to the point where you had finally called an emergency meeting with your friends, you laid back on Momo’s luxurious bed with a sigh,“I have no clue, who could it be? It has got to be someone in our class with the way they know so much, but…”

“But…?” Kyoka urged you on.

Another sigh left your lips, and you couldn’t help scrunch up your face as you looked at your friends,“None of the boys in our class seem to give off secret admirer potential, what if it’s just some sick prank one of them is doing?”

“For that long?” Momo questioned before shaking her head,“I don’t know, not even our guys seem capable of something so cruel.”

“Maybe you just haven’t given the right one the chance to step up?” Ochaco offered up.

“I mean what are her options?” Mina snorted, she held a list of all the guys in their class.

You guys had gone through and already crossed off a couple that were definite no’s, people like Mineta, Sero, and Kaminari who were self proclaimed “ladies men”. You considered that it might be one of the quieter boys, maybe Kirishima or Todoroki, even Ojiro.

You had reassured Ochaco that Midoriya wasn’t even a possibility, considering the boy was loud and open about his admiration for others and could tell she was relieved when you did.

You shrugged, having gone over any interactions with the boys in your class multiple times. “I don’t know, I’m not really close with any of them… I mean I sit next to Kaminari and Kirishima so I guess they’re my friends? But Kaminari has eyes on a new girl every day and I could swear Kirishima had told me about…”

“Who?!” All four girls sat up impatiently.

“No one.” You smirked,“I don’t spill your guys’ private conversations.”

“Boooo!” Toru threw a crumbled up piece of paper at you.

You opened up your latest two notes.

golden hour looks breathtaking on you

you’ve officially taken up a permanent residence in my mind, i think of you all day long…

“Wait!” Jiro stood up suddenly, snatching one note along with her as she began digging around in her backpack.

“Hey!” You pouted, but she shushed you.

“I know how we’ll solve this mystery.” She pulled out a notebook from class.

“How?!” Ochaco asked excitedly.

You almost didn’t want to know, what if you confronted the person and it went awry?

“Okay, so last week I asked Shouji to borrow some notes for a lecture I wasn’t really listening to and look!”

All five of you leaned forward to look at the notebook and the messy scrawl on the page.

“His penmanship is quite poor.” Momo pointed out and you silently agreed.

Jiro rolled her eyes,“Not why I’m showing you guys this, what I’m getting at is that we can just ask all the boys to write something down and compare their handwriting to the notes!”

“Genius!” Mina shot up,“I was just thinking I was really hungry, we could tell them we’re ordering some takeout and have each individually write out if they want anything.”

“Perfect, we should split up and do it quick.” Ochaco agreed.

Your heartbeat picked up and you anxiously wrung your hands,“Okay, but also can we actually order food? I eat when I’m nervous and right now I’m a wreck. I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Girl, you got this!” Mina turned to you with a big, encouraging smile and you returned it, albeit not as bright as hers. “Let’s find this guy!”

The group quickly agreed and everyone split up to take the class’s requests for dinner.

By the time you all met up in Momo’s room again, you were tense. You each had a note and several options to compare from, a few were easy to immediately knock off. You continued going down your list until you gasped, unable to help yourself as you met the gazes of your friends.

“What?!” Mina’s eyes bulged.

You swallowed,“I know who it is.”

Your friends all eyed the pieces of paper with matching handwriting and by the next day had convinced you to go up to the boy. You could feel their stares on you as you called out his name and beckoned him into the hall during homeroom period, asking if you could get his advice on something. You took a deep breath as you led him to a secluded window further down the hallway, mentally preparing yourself for denial.

“So what’s up?” He didn’t hesitate to follow you and ask,“You okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine.” You shrugged,“I’ve just been a little… anxious, I guess? Good anxious, but still anxious nonetheless. You see, I’ve been getting these notes in my locker ever since day but there’s no name attached to them so it’s just a little weird. I’ve been trying to figure out who it is, racking my brain like crazy.”

“Can I see one?” Kirishima asked.

“Sure, here’s today’s.” You handed him over the crisply folded sheet of notebook paper, one you could now recognize and knew was getting thinner by the pages being ripped out daily. The note read: i wish i could tell you who i am.

You could see him gulp and leaped to take your chance.

“To be honest, I’d just wanna thank the person. I’ve been struggling with some confidence issues lately and their notes every day have really been keeping my spirits up.” You turned toward the window and away from him with a sigh,“They must not think they’re brave enough to tell me, but they shouldn’t be scared of—”

“Y/N…”

You turned around immediately, eyes widening at the fact that he’d used your first name. Kirishima was standing pin straight, holding the note tight in one hand and you almost felt bad for pushing him… but you had to know if your suspicions were correct. Besides, you hadn’t been lying. You really did want to thank him for always making you smile every day.

“It’s… I wrote the notes, I’m the one who’s been sneaking them into your locker every day.” He bowed slightly,“I apologize for not being man enough to sign my name or just say all these things to your face, but I wasn’t sure of how you’d react or what you would think of me.”

“Eijiro.”

Now it was his turn to be surprised, eyebrows raised as he straightened himself up.

You smiled,“I knew it was you.”

“How…?”

You shrugged, smiling slightly,“A lady never reveals her secrets.”

This made him laugh.

“I’m sorry that I pushed you to confess, I just wanted to know if I was right and I’m glad that I was, glad that you were the one, that is.” You smiled at him,“Your notes are very sweet and I’ve enjoyed having them every day.”

As the bell rung and your classmates started filing out of class you realized your time had run out, you smiled at your friends who were giving you questioning looks. You motioned with your hand for them to move along, smiling bigger when Kirishima turned around to find them gone.

You brought his attention back to you when you spoke again,“Anyway, thanks again. I should get going, I’ve got to get to math and start studying, I’ve got a makeup coming up since I didn’t do all that great on the last exam.”

He nodded, seemingly speechless.

You couldn’t really wait for a response regardless as you rushed to pack up your things and head to your next class before the final bell rung.

You did your best to focus on the extra lessons your teacher was nice enough to give for students who’d been confused about the last test, but all you could do with think about Kirishima and whether he’d stop leaving his notes now that you knew it was him. You somehow managed to avoid him for the rest of the day, and when your friends asked about it all you could do was shrug. Nothing happened, you would say, and it was true.

Nothing happened.

Until the next day, that was.

You were headed to your locker a little earlier than usual, eager to get back to your studies when several notes fell out of your locker. Your face heated up as you rushed to pick them all up, opening the first one carefully.

Only a single word was written on the sheet of paper and you worked quickly in order to unfold the remains slips, reading through it several times just to make sure you weren’t imagining it. It read:

will

you

go

out

with

me?

— eijiro

You shut the locker, forgetting all about your textbook in favor of trying to find him instead. Which was made extremely easy because when you turned around, there he stood.

Eijiro Kirishima.

He held a bouquet of flowers in his arms, and you spotted a plushie of your favorite character in the center of the arrangement. You thought his eye might’ve twitched nervously as he gave you his best smile, you quickly returned it.

“I was just coming to find you.”

“You found me.” He chuckled as he took a few steps closer,“Y/N, would you please do me the honor of going out on a date with me?— it doesn’t have to be today, I know you signed up for the makeup exam in math tomorrow, and actually! If you’d like, that is, I can help you study. I think I know the material well now, and I guess what I’m trying to say is I’d love nothing more than to have the chance to be the man you deserve.”

“One condition.” You smiled, knowing there was no way you would’ve ever said no.

“Anything!” He agreed immediately.

You held up the unfolded hearts he always wrote his notes on,“I still get these every now and then, nonnegotiable, they really make my day.”

Eijiro’s cheeks went as red as his hair as he grinned big, nodding,“Every day.”

“Then yes, I would love to go on a date with you.” You accepted the bouquet he was holding out to you before leaning up slightly and placing a kiss on his cheek,“It’s beautiful, Eijiro, thank you.”

“Anything for you, princess.”

Now you were the one blushing, he’d used a nickname and you definitely liked it.

“You’re cute when you blush.” He complimented.

“Oh my god.” You tried to hide your face in the flowers, unable to stop the large smile from taking over your face.

He was quick to take them back out of your hands, as well as grabbing your book bag from you,“Better get used to it, princess, the notes were just a placeholder until I was able to man up enough to confess, but not a day will go by without a compliment from me, I can promise you that. And no more lugging around heavy textbooks when I’m here either.”

“Thank you, Eijiro.” You felt the blush move higher, your ears feeling warm now too.

“So, study date tonight?”

He’d never admit it, but he’d stayed up late last night going over the necessary chapters in order to be able to help you with your upcoming test. In truth, he had no clue how he passed over you, but he’d make sure it never happened again.

You took his hand, intertwining your fingers with his as you agreed,“Definitely.”

This time, he was the one to place a kiss onto your cheek as he led the way to homeroom, smiling— beautifully and unabashedly.

Princess treatment?

You could definitely get used to that.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for putting my roommate’s dirty dishes in her bathroom?

I (20F) have four roommates, Alice (21F), Alice’s bf Jake (26M), Penny (19F) and Hannah (20F).

Penny, Hannah and I share a bathroom, while Alice and Jake share one. There is one kitchen and we do not have a dishwasher. Jake also doesn’t actually live with us he sorta just moved in with Alice. Penny was originally with Alice in terms of the bathrooms but started getting grossed out by Jake’s bathroom habits because he kept pissing on the seat, so Hannah and I let her use ours.

Alice never does the dishes. But she cooks a lot. She’ll pile dishes in to the point where it feels like we’re playing jenga trying to remove any of them to free the faucet. Hannah and Penny outright refused to do any of Alice’s dishes from the getgo, and mostly do their own… when the sink is clear. Jake refuses to do any dishes because he “doesn’t actually live here” (we’re very well aware of that, Jake. He doesn’t pay rent he’s Alice’s “long term guest”) Because of Alice’s dishes in the sink, Hannah and Penny leave theirs on the counter and block up space until the faucet is free and they can wash theirs.

Anyways, for a while I started doing the top layer of Alice’s dishes to free up space so I could wash my own, but I quickly got irritated because Alice would leave them for weeks at a time and not do anything and I was tired of cleaning her dishes for her before I did my own.

I talked to Hannah and Penny and we decided to give Alice an ultimatum, either do your dishes or we will throw them away. Over the course of the year we had to have multiple talks with Alice about doing the dishes that never ended up going anywhere because Alice would fail to follow through on any promise to do them.

Alice was upset about this and said we weren’t being fair because she has to “cook for 2 people” so I raised the point that then Jake should do the dishes because she’s cooking and he does jack shit. She got upset and said we were always trying to do a “us vs them” between me Penny and Hannah vs Alice and Jake. That wasn’t the intention but both of them are being crappy roommates so it seemed that way.

I told Alice then fine, if she left her dishes in the sink for more than 3 days, I’d find somewhere else for them. She said yeah sure whatever. I waited 4 days and then put her dishes in her and Jake’s bathroom. Filled the sink with them and then put the others in the bathtub.

Alice and Jake got pissed off about this because now they “couldn’t wash their hands or shower”. I mean, I couldn’t wash my dishes with their dirty ones in the way, so it seemed like a fair trade to me. The shower and sink would be free if they cleaned the dishes out of them.

Hannah and Penny disagree with what I did but they’re staying out of it because they don’t want Alice to be mad at them. I don’t care I just want to be able to wash my dishes without worrying if there’s weird mold and mildew growing on the plates that have sat there for weeks. We did get cockroaches at one point but Alice claims it was because Penny likes to leave the screen door open to get fresh air, while the rest of us are pretty sure it’s because she kept leaving food in the sink.

Jake tried to shower in our restroom but I told him no, he’s not allowed. He can go back to his own apartment to shower, or clean the dishes in Alice’s bathroom so he went home but not after calling me a “crazy psycho bitch”. Alice got really upset about this because I “chased Jake out” and is still refusing to do her dishes, it’s been 3 days as of writing this. I’m pretty sure at some point she’s used our bathroom to wash her hands but I know she hasn’t showered since then.

Penny offered to do Alice’s dishes if Alice paid her $5 per plate but Alice refused. She dropped it down to $2 per plate and Alice still refused. She has been exclusively ordering takeout the last few days because all her plates are dirty and we won’t let her use ours.

[dearlyfetching]

The Curious Case of Criston Cole

Something that's missing from these discussions about the perception and reaction of Criston Cole as he is characterized in House of the Dragon, is how there's evidence within the source material of Fire & Blood that could've offered a better perspective for why Criston reacted as negatively as he did regarding his involvement with Rhaenyra.

There is an in-universe incident which saw both Jaehaerys and Alysanne discharge one of their kingsguard for not only having sex, but wedding and siring children from 3 different wives! Once the secret was revealed to everyone including the wives and children who weren't made aware of this until it was too late, this man was not only fired and stripped of any prestige he had, but castrated by his former kingsguard members and sent to the Wall. He may not have been executed, but violating his oath had severe repercussions not only for himself but for the women who were involved with him and even their children.

Fire & Blood, pg. 300

Jaehaerys left it to his queen to deal with the three families. Alysanne decreed that Lucamore's sons might join their father on the Wall, if they wished. The two oldest boys chose to do so. The girls would be accepted as novices by the Faith, if that was their desire. Only one elected that path. The other children were to remain with their mothers. The first of the wives, with her children, was given over to the charge of Lucamore's brother, Bywin, who had been raised to be the Lord of Harrenhal not half a year earlier. The second wife and her offspring would go to Driftmark, to be fostered by Daemon Velaryon, Lord of the Tides. The third wife, whose children were the youngest (one still on her breast), would be sent down to Storm's End, where Garon Baratheon and young Lord Boremund would see to their upbringing. None were ever again to call themselves Strong, the queen decreed; from this day they would bear the bastard names Rivers, Waters, and Storm. "For that gift, you may thank your father, that hollow knight."

Oaths aren't just meaningless in Westeros. Look at how often Jaime Lannister is scorned for being a kingslayer, despite the dramatic irony of readers knowing why he broke his oaths in the first place. Jaehaerys had already denied the service of kingsguard who broke theirs to turn against Maegor, stating that he didn't want men who couldn't keep their oaths because he felt they were untrustworthy. So, who was this infamous kingsguard anyway? Lucamore Strong.

Yes, Strong.

A member of the kingsguard from House Strong broke his oaths and secretly fathered children across 3 wives. The scandal led to him being derided as "Lucamore the Lusty" long after he was dead. His descendant, Harwin, would also go on to secretly father bastards on the crown princess of the realm and heir presumptive decades later.

As it stands, Criston has justifiable reasons to feel disgusted and embittered at his situation. He is a lowborn (son of a steward) dornishman who obtained knighthood and was then elected as a member of one of the most prestigious positions outside of a lordship. Breaking his kingsguard oath would've resulted in castration and disgrace at best or execution at worst. Criston knows that if the truth were ever to be reported to the king (who would attack his own brother scenes later for allegedly deflowering Rhaenyra), he would be summarily punished. As Lyonel Strong himself said:

"Your intimacy with the Princess Rhaenyra is an offence that would mean exile and death. For you, for her, for the children!" -Ser Lyonel Strong, House of the Dragon S1E06

Not only this, but Criston is stuck serving a lifelong occupation wherein he must exist in the same proximity as the employer who propositioned and coerced him, and for years witness her committing what is tantamount to treason (if not scandal at the very least) with another man by violating her own marriage vows as opposed to getting them legally dissolved in the absence of a trueborn heir. This isn't even taking into account what might happen to him once Rhaenyra ascends the iron throne. He was forced to confront the horrific realization of being subjected to the whim of a Targaryen and see that all his efforts of adhering to rules and societal standards meant nothing to the people with authority greater than himself. To boil his character down to a "thug" or an "incel" without attempting to understand his motivations or the broader context surrounding them is utterly reductive.

[scary-grace]

Enough to Go By -- a Shigaraki x F!reader fic

Your best friend vanished on the same night his family was murdered, and even though the world forgot about him, you never did. When a chance encounter brings you back into contact with Shimura Tenko, you'll do anything to make sure you don't lose him again. Keep his secrets? Sure. Aid the League of Villains? Of course. Sacrifice everything? You would - but as the battle between the League of Villains and hero society unfolds, it becomes clear that everything is far more than you or anyone else imagined it would be. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8

Chapter 1

You had a best friend when you were little, just like almost everyone, and the two of you were as different as two people could be. He was a boy and you were a girl. You were the oldest of four, and he was the youngest of two. His family was rich because his dad was some kind of business genius, and your family was – not. You and your best friend had exactly two things in common. First, you lived across from each other on the same street, him in a big new house and you in one that had been falling apart since before your parents were born. And second, and maybe most important, neither of you had a quirk.

It was okay for your best friend. He still had time. People in his family got their quirks when they were two or three or four or maybe even six, like they were supposed to. But everyone in your family is born with theirs. Your family’s quirks do different things, but they’re the same type of thing – powering up or watering down or just changing some part of somebody else, and they’re active until the person’s old enough to turn them off.

You hated being home. You had one younger brother who could turn your hearing up and down, one younger sister who could turn your color vision on and off, and twin baby brothers who could make you throw up whenever they wanted to. Going to school, or going across the street to play in front of Tenko’s house with him and his big sister and his dog, was the closest things ever got to normal for you.

Tenko wanted to be a hero. You knew he’d be the best hero, because he was a hero already, even without a quirk. Nobody was every left out when you and Tenko played at school, because Tenko could make everybody feel included, and you spent so much time trying to placate your siblings that you knew how to make sure everybody had fun. But for everybody to have fun, people needed to be there. Tenko was the one everybody believed in, the one who made everybody feel important. When you spent time with Tenko, you felt like you belonged. Tenko was already a hero, even as a kid. You knew he’d be amazing at it when he grew up.

Only he didn’t grow up, your best friend. You walked home from school together one day, said goodbye and crossed to your opposite sides of the street, and when you looked out your window the next morning, Tenko’s house was gone.

A villain did it. That’s what everybody said, and you didn’t know what else it could be, because Tenko’s house was in ruins, like a giant had smashed it with its foot or someone had blown it up from the inside. You raced across the street without your shoes on, right into the middle of what was left, and even though your parents spent money they didn’t have on a specialist whose quirk let them wipe memories right out of your brain, you still have nightmares sometimes about what you saw. Tenko’s big sister Hana was dead. His dog was dead. His mom and his grandparents and his dad were dead. But he wasn’t there, so you made yourself believe he was alive.

And some part of you kept believing, even after the foundations of an apartment building were laid over the spot where Tenko’s house used to be, even after your family moved away. Your youngest younger siblings, a set of triplets born after you moved, thought Tenko was your imaginary friend because of how much you talked about him. And even once you stopped talking about him, you never quite stopped thinking about him. Your best friend, who wanted to be a hero. Who would have been the greatest hero the world had ever seen.

Everyone else forgot him, forgot him so cleanly that you almost wonder if it was a quirk. But you remember your best friend – small things, weird things, like how he’d sometimes get so excited he’d almost cry. His All Might impression, which was so bad it almost worked. His dry skin and the way he’d scratch his neck. You wonder what happened, why he wasn’t found with his family. You wonder a lot of things.

“Everybody loses touch with their neighborhood kids,” Hirono says when you say something about it, while you and your friends are getting drunk in Kazuo’s backyard one weekend. “You’re not special.”

“Don’t be mean,” Yoshimi protests. “Her friend died. That’s different!”

“She just said he didn’t die. She thinks he’s still alive,” Sho says. He whistles and rotates one finger by his ear. “Cuckoo.”

“There should be a podcast about this,” Mitsuru says seriously, and Hirono and Mitsuko laugh at him. “No, there should! Five people confirmed murdered and a kid goes missing – and it’s never solved? That’s podcast material.”

“It’s newsworthy,” Kazuo says, his voice as expressionless as it always is these days. “Have you looked it up?”

“Yes,” you say. Too many times, probably. “The articles don’t say my friend went missing.”

“They said he died?”

“They don’t mention him at all.”

“Ooh. Spooky.” Sho makes a UFO noise, and Yoji, Yoshimi’s on-again, off-again asshole boyfriend, throws in some spiritfingers to go with it. “Maybe he’s imaginary after all.”

“Or maybe you do have a quirk,” Yuichiro, Mitsuko’s latest too-innocent boyfriend says earnestly. “Your family’s all status effects, right? Maybe you made everybody else forget him.”

“Why would I do that?” you ask blankly. You’re a little drunk. “He’s my best friend.”

“I thought I was your best friend,” Kazuo says. Kazuo’s also a little drunk. “You don’t have a quirk. I would know. I know everything.”

The confidence is annoying, or it would be, if it wasn’t true – and if you didn’t know just how badly Kazuo’s quirk has ruined his life. “Maybe not,” Ryuhei says speculatively. “You only know what you know to know, you know?”

You try to parse that for a second, then give up. Mitsuru is wheezing with laughter. “Come on,” Ryuhei says, annoyed. “You know what I mean. Kazuo only knows the answers to questions he knows to ask, right? What if he hasn’t asked the right question?”

Kazuo’s quirk is called Search Engine, and it’s not an overstatement. He can ascertain anything he asks about, and if the questions aren’t hyperspecific, he can take in vast amounts of information. Too much information for even the smartest person to sort through and interpret without going crazy under the strain. He was going to be a hero, but UA High pushed him too hard, and something went wrong in his head. The smartest guy you know, who used to be funny and kind and should be changing the world for the better right now, is instead drunk in his parents’ backyard, still trying to figure out where his emotions went. You haven’t seen Kazuo care about anything in two years.

But you can see him thinking about what Ryuhei said, trying to wrap his mind around a question. “Don’t,” you say, and he looks at you, puzzled. “If I had a quirk, I’d have had it when I was born, just like the rest of my family.”

“Your family has some funky quirks,” Yoji says. You have a feeling you know where he’s going with this, and you’re not wrong. “Isn’t one of your cousins a villainess?”

“She barely counts,” Hirono says. “What could they even charge her with if they caught her? Possession of a video camera and bad taste in men? They could charge Yoshimi with that, too.”

“Hey!”

Sho and Ryuhei join in on the ribbing, and you lean back against the steps. Kazuo rises from his chair a little unsteadily and comes to sit by you. “You never mentioned this friend of yours before.”

“It never came up.” You glance sidelong at him. “Why? Are you jealous?”

“No,” Kazuo says. He hiccups. His alcohol tolerance has always been weirdly low. “I’m surprised you never asked me to find him. Maybe I could.”

“I know.” If Kazuo ever recovers from what UA High did to him, the government will be all over him. He could find anything, anyone – but like Ryuhei said, he has to know what questions to ask. “I think I’m scared of what you’d find. I don’t want him to be dead.”

“Dead might be better.”

You almost choke on the sip of vodka you just took. “Excuse me?”

“If he died, he died,” Kazuo says. No shit. “If he’s still alive, he’s been missing for fifteen years. During my work-study, I assisted in the search for several missing children. Nothing good had happened to the ones we found alive.”

You hadn’t thought about that, what it would actually mean if Tenko is still alive, and your brain supplies you instantly with a list of terrible things that could have happened to your best friend. Your imagination is pretty vivid. Your stomach turns. “I don’t want that,” you say. “I just want him to be okay.”

“Sometimes dead is better,” Kazuo says again. And then he’s quiet.

You try to get back into the mood of the party, but what Kazuo said sticks, and you’re kind of mad at him about it. The old Kazuo wouldn’t have said something like that, or else he would have put it more gently. You miss the old Kazuo. Thanks to a villain fifteen years ago and UA fucking High, you’re now short two best friends.

Kazuo’s a good guy, but you’d be lying if you said you weren’t drawn to him because of who he reminded you of. You have a soft spot for dark-haired boys who want to be heroes. If Tenko hadn’t gone missing and the two of you had gotten to grow up together, you probably would have wound up with a big, stupid crush on him, the supercharged version of how you felt about Kazuo. But a relationship between the two of you wouldn’t have worked out, for the same reason your relationship with Kazuo didn’t work. Being a hero comes first. Being a hero always comes first with guys like them. You probably wouldn’t like them as much if it didn’t.

Getting drunk at Kazuo’s is a typical Friday night pastime among your friends, and usually everybody sleeps over. Everybody usually includes you, but you have to work tomorrow, which means you have to go home. Sometimes you and Kazuo still fool around when you’re both drunk, and you want to avoid that, too. You drink a glass of water and start sobering up while the others are still sorting out places to sleep, and then you tell them all good by and head out, taking three trains in a loop around the city to give yourself even more time to sober up before you have to walk home. You don’t live in the nicest neighborhood. You need to be alert.

When you finally get off the train at your stop, you realize you’ve got another problem. You’re hungry, and you won’t have time to cook when you get home if you want to sleep at all tonight. The all-night convenience store a few blocks up from your apartment is beckoning to you, and you give in without a fight. You’ll pick something to eat, eat it in the store for one last period of sobering-up, and walk the rest of the way home.

You feel a little better with a few bites of food in your stomach, and you’re pretty sure you’re not going to throw it up later. You hang out in the corner of the shop, a good spot to people-watch from if there were any people in here but you and the owner. The TV behind the counter is blaring the news about some villain attack, somewhere – two dumb-ass middle schoolers, one sludge villain, one can of whoop-ass opened by All Might. What else is new.

“Turn that shit off.”

The voice is raspy, and it’s coming from the far corner of the store. So there’s somebody else in here after all. You rise to your tiptoes and peer over the shelves to spot the speaker. They’re wearing a black hoodie with the hood up and browsing for energy drinks, and apparently they have a real problem with what’s on TV – which means the proprietor has a real problem with them. “Got a problem with heroics? Or does seeing real heroes just remind you what a bum you are?”

“Fuck off,” the guy in the hoodie says sharply. “You’ve got more in common with me than you do with them. If you were there, you think you’d run in to help? No. You’d wait for a hero, because you’re useless and pathetic. At least I don’t walk around pretending to be something I’m not.”

Hoodie guy sort of has a point, even if you don’t like how he’s phrasing it. Hoodie guy also sucks at reading the room, because after that little back-and-forth, he yanks an energy drink out of the case and a package of sour candies off a shelf and heads up to the counter. The proprietor laughs in his face. “Get out of here. If you think I’m selling even a stick of gum to you, you’re out of your mind.”

Hoodie guy’s shoulders tense. “You’re so desperate to defend All Might that you won’t take my money? He’s not gonna fuck you.”

You must be a little more drunk than you thought, because you have to clamp your hands over your mouth to stifle a laugh. But there’s nothing funny about the situation that’s unfolding in front of you. The proprietor’s looking increasingly pissed, and Hoodie Guy’s hands are out of his pockets, open and twitching at his sides. You don’t know what either of their quirks are, but you’ve got seven siblings. You know what it looks like when a situation’s about to spiral out of control.

“I said get out,” the proprietor spits. He shoves the drink and the package of candy back across the counter, hard enough that they fall off and roll across the floor. Hoodie Guy’s hands begin to lift from his sides, and you step out of your corner. “You want to start something? Go ahead. The cops will be here so fast –”

“Not fast enough for you,” Hoodie Guy hisses. His hands are all the way up, reaching over the counter.

You scoop the snacks off the floor and duck into the scant space between Hoodie Guy and the counter. You elbow him a bit by accident and he stumbles, swears at you. You ignore him and focus on the proprietor. “Hi. I’m still hungry. Can I get these?”

The proprietor squints at you, nonplussed. Behind you, Hoodie Guy’s gotten his feet under him, and if it’s possible, he’s extra pissed. “Get out of my way.”

“You don’t want this kind of trouble,” you say, ignoring Hoodie Guy. He’s the instigator. You need him to shut up so you can handle this before it escalates. “I know you don’t. You want him out of here and he wants his snacks. If you don’t want his money, mine’s just as good.”

You’re conscious of Hoodie Guy looming over your shoulder. He’s not all that much taller than you, but he’s standing a little too close. You take your wallet out, and that seems to settle the issue. “You’re lucky your girlfriend’s here to help you out. That’ll be ¥1800.”

You pay up and collect the snacks. When you turn away from the counter, Hoodie Guy’s right there, and you get your first good look at his face – or at the life-sized model hand clamped over his face. That’s – weird. You can’t see his expression, but his tone of voice is unmistakable. “If you think –”

“I know, I know,” you interrupt. “You’re not gonna fuck me.”

It’s not a joke you’d make sober, but with the proprietor calmed slightly down, you have to knock Hoodie Guy off his game somehow. It works. He makes a weird, strangled sound, and you grab him by his sleeve and tow him out the door.

He lets you do it, which is a surprise, and you let him go as soon as the doors close behind you. You hold out the snack and the energy drink. “Here.”

You can’t see his face, but you can see one red eye, peering out at you through the fingers of the hand. “It was pretty stupid of you to get in my way.”

“It was pretty stupid of you to go up to the counter. If you’d stormed off he wouldn’t have chased you.” You’ve seen Sho use that tactic before – needle a store owner until they want him gone more than they want to check his pockets. “Just take this, okay?”

He raises one hand and scratches at his neck. There’s something familiar about the motion, and the scarred, scraped-raw patch of skin there. Maybe you’ve seen something similar at work. “Either you used some kind of quirk or you got lucky. Which is it?”

“Neither. I have seven siblings and I’m good at toning things down.” You’ve wished for a quirk that lets you affect others’ moods more than a few times. You had to learn your de-escalation techniques the hard way. “Do you want these or not?”

He’s still scratching, and something’s pulling at the back of your mind, harder and harder. “Seven siblings,” he says slowly. “That’s three more.”

“Three more than what?” you say, puzzled. And then it clicks.

You have seven siblings now. When you lived across the street from your best friend, you only had four. And now you get why the scratching looks so familiar, why there’s so much scar tissue in the place he’s clawing at – because he’s been scratching that same spot for a decade and a half. It doesn’t matter than his hair is grey-blue instead of black, that his eyes are red instead of grey. It doesn’t even matter that he’s got a creepy hand stuck over his face. You know who you’re looking at, and the surge of joy that overtakes you is like nothing you’ve ever felt before.

You’d keep it to yourself, ordinarily. But tonight you’re a little drunk, and you can’t hold it in. “Tenko,” you say, and he freezes like he’s been struck by lightning. “You’re alive!”

Tenko stays frozen until you reach for him, at which point he bolts, and you really shouldn’t follow him – but you’re drunk and it’s your best friend and he’s alive just like you knew he was, so you chase after him. He was a little clumsy when you were kids. You were always a little faster on your feet, but his legs are longer than yours now, and he keeps you at a fair distance until he trips.

It’s sort of your fault he trips. He’s looking back over his shoulder, checking where you are, and he’s not watching his feet. It’s a bad fall. He sprawls out, the hand over his face dislodging and bouncing across the concrete, and you hear him cursing under his breath in a voice that carries a familiar strain. You’ve heard that before. You do what you did back then. You run to his side and drop to your knees, hands outstretched to help. “Tenko –”

“Get away from me! Don’t touch me!” Tenko lashes out with one hand, and instinct tells you to get out of range. The hand he lashes out with looks wrong – hurt, maybe, in the fall. His other hand is up over his face, covering it the same way the model hand was. “Father – I need – where –”

Father. You wonder if Tenko knows what happened to his father – but he’s feeling around on the concrete with the maybe-broken hand, and you realize what he’s looking for. “It’s over here,” you say. “Stay there. I can –”

“No.” Tenko lunges past you, seizes the hand, secures it over his face. Then he turns on you, and the hatred in his eyes sends a bolt of pure terror down your spine.

He knocks you onto your back. You know some self-defense – like any girl, like any person without a quirk – and you kick and thrash, arching your back, trying to throw him off. Some part of your mind is still spinning, because it’s Tenko, your best friend, who wants to be a hero – and it’s Tenko, his forearm coming down across your throat and half his body weight leaning onto it. You cough and sputter, and Tenko raises his other hand, all five fingers outstretched. “Tell me what I want to know and I’ll kill you fast. Lie and it’ll be slow. Who are you?”

You don’t know how he expects you to answer with his arm over your throat. Dark spots are beginning to fill your vision. You shove at his arm, and his hand closes around your wrist. His grip is hot and dry and shaking, and a split second after he’s touched you, the burning starts. It’s like his hand is dipped in acid, like it’s clawing through your skin one layer at a time, and you scream in pain. Or you try to. He increases the pressure on your throat and chokes the sound off. “Don’t touch me,” he snarls. “And don’t scream. Who are you?”

You manage to rasp out your name, and you see Tenko’s expression shift. “We went to school together,” you gasp. “I lived across the street from you. We played together. You were –”

You black out for a second, and the pressure on your throat lifts slightly. “What?” Tenko spits. “I was what?”

“My best friend,” you whisper. Your eyes well up, tears running down your face when you blink. “I missed you so much –”

Tenko stares down at you for a moment longer. Then he recoils away from you, up onto his feet and back five or six steps. He’s cradling his wrist. You roll from your back to your side and gasp for air. There’s a rattle in your breathing that tells you your windpipe’s damaged, and when you blink the tears and spots from your vision to stare at your wrist, you see that your skin is raw, bloody and oozing. There’s the outline of all five of Tenko’s fingers, his thumb and middle finger joined, rotted into your skin.

“Go,” Tenko says. You look numbly up at him and see his face twisted behind the hand. “Now.”

Your wrist – his hair – his eyes – Tenko has a quirk now. An awful quirk. “What happened to you?” you ask helplessly. “Where did you go? Are you –”

“Go!” Tenko snaps at you. “Before I change my mind. Run!”

You scramble backwards and collide with something. The energy drink and the package of candy, which you dropped when you ran to help Tenko after he fell. The sight of them makes you want to burst into tears again. You don’t want to take them with you. You bought them for him. Without looking his way, you pick them up and set them on the ground between the two of you, pushing them towards him so he knows who they’re for. Then you force yourself to your hands and your knees and your feet and run for your life, away from the best friend you now know you’ve lost for good.

You didn’t want Tenko to be dead, and he isn’t. But Kazuo was right, too. Maybe dead would have been better. Anything would have been better than this.

[cloudcountry]

muse of mine (spoilers for book 3)

Genre/Tropes: No notable ones.

Summary: Azul sees you staring at him and scribbling in that stupid sketchbook of yours time and time again, and he doesn't know why. The worst part about it? Jade and Floyd both know and they won't stop teasing him.

Author's Comments: Azul's Overblot form is really pretty. I want to give him a kiss. Also I made reader extremely chatty and very willing to show people their art because I thought that'd be very interesting with Azul because he's so reserved.

~~~~~

You were staring again, and it was really starting to creep him out.

He was used to the piercing gazes of Jade and Floyd when they wanted something from him or found something new to mock him about. This was different because it was you.

You’d been coming to the Mostro Lounge for weeks now, having considered yourself acquainted with Azul and friends of all things with the eel twins. You never brought any schoolwork with you, but you always had a sketchpad and a pencil. You’d order the same drink, show Jade or Floyd (whoever brought you your drink on that day) what you’d drawn most recently, and then stare at him for the remainder of your visit.

Granted, it wasn’t constant. It just felt like it. Azul would look over at you only to find you sketching away. But then you’d look up, make eye contact with him, and he’d whip his head around like he’d never looked at you at all. Jade and Floyd thought this was hilarious, occasionally bragging about what was in your sketchbook that Azul hadn’t seen. He didn’t want to see what was in your sketchbook if it was something the twins found funny—it was probably weird and disturbing anyways.

And yet you wouldn’t stop staring at him.

“I’m going to do something about this.” he muttered to himself as he paced the VIP Room for the fifth time this week.

“Yeah, good luck Azul. I don’t know if you could handle what’s in that sketchbook of theirs.” Floyd hummed, his tone light and teasing.

“Indeed. It’s quite interesting, if I do say so myself.” Jade chuckled.

Azul ignored them. “They’re a paying customer, so I can’t very well throw them out. Should I just confront them?”

“Ohhhh yeah. Totally! I vote confront.” Floyd laughed loudly, Jade chuckling politely beside him.

Azul rubbed his temples, opting to just ask you what you were doing. What was the worst thing that could happen? You could say something outlandish and he could throw you out. He'd be losing some of his profit, but he had plenty of other paying customers, and you were driving him insane. He’d get some sanity back by just talking to you.

“Jade, Floyd. Bring them here.”

Neither of them said a word as they nodded and left. Floyd definitely found this funny if he didn’t complain, which worried Azul even more. Clearing his throat, he straightened his glasses and sat down at his desk. Maintaining his carefully crafted businessman facade, he waited for you to arrive.

A knock on the door almost made Azul jump out of his skin. He responded with the usual “come in,” staring at you over the rim of his glasses as you were escorted into his room.

“Azul, if you’re going to ask if I want a deal, then it’s a no. I’ve told you I’m not interested.” you said, smiling as you stood next to the guest chair.

Azul said nothing, but motioned for you to sit. You sat, brow beginning to furrow in confusion as Jade and Floyd left your side.

“They’re going to begin their shift. Don’t mind them.” he adjusted his glasses again, “Now, I’m going to ask you something and I want you to answer honestly.”

“Okay…?” you tilted your head to the side, still clutching that stupid sketchbook to your chest-

“Why do you stare at me so much?” he gritted his teeth, narrowing his eyes at you, “I’ve noticed. It’s not a constant thing, sometimes you’re staring and sometimes you’re not. Are you planning something? Searching for a weakness? You say you don’t want a deal, but why would you be so fixated if you didn’t want something from me?”

“Azul…actually, wait. I haven’t shown you any of my drawings, have I?” you lit up, scooching closer to the desk, “Here, let me show you-”

“I don’t care about what’s in your sketchbook.” he stated calmly, resting his hand on top of it to stop you from opening it.

“I’m telling you, Azul, it’ll answer your question.” you patted his hand gently, a gesture that made his heart stutter, “Will you let me show you?”

Reluctantly, he pulled his hand away. If this was a waste of time or a deflection, he would just stop you. Simple.

“Okay, so…” you opened to the first page, flipping through a few drawings before you stopped a little less than halfway through, “I’ve been documenting things that I love about this place just in case I go home someday. That way I won’t forget anyone’s faces even though a few years may pass. I’ve got Ace and Deuce and Grim and- well, you don’t care about that.”

You were right, he didn’t care about your Heartslabyul friends. The only time he cared was when they were working for him.

“So…well…I mean, I’ll just show you.” you looked excited as you turned another page and pushed your sketchbook towards Azul.

He blinked, not sure of what he was looking at, until he saw it.

You’d drawn him.

He was standing in his dorm uniform, one hand outstretched and mouth open as if talking to a client. His hat was tilted in his head, his hair curled like ocean waves. Swirling octopus tentacles bordered the page, with little heart doodles that Azul didn’t even want to think about littering the background.

“May I…?” he gestured flipping through the pages, to which you nodded enthusiastically.

He flipped to the next page, surprised to see a drawing of just his side profile this time. There was one of him smiling, him annoyed, him smug…

The next page. Him in his bean camo.

The next page. Him in his Halloween costume.

The next page-

His Overblot.

“I’ve been documenting things that I love about this place…”

“You drew…this form?” he recoiled, dropping the sketchbook on the table as if he’d been burned.

“Azul…” you sighed, staring at him with eyes full of an emotion he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge, “I thought it was beautiful. Not that you were about to die or that I was about to die or that Ruggie and Leona and Jack and Ace and Deuce and Grim and- sorry, you get the point- I didn’t think your suffering was beautiful, I thought you were. You're still the prettiest boy on campus in my opinion. I know you don’t like your merform, and that’s why I was hoping I could really do it justice someday, so that you could look at my art and say woah! That’s beautiful! I love looking at this! And recognize it because if it’s not exactly like you then it won’t be as beautiful as I want it to be.”

“If it’s not exactly like you then it won’t be as beautiful as I want it to be.”

Azul’s face was aflame, and by the look on your face you definitely thought he was upset. Of course there was a part of him that thought you were mocking him, but the bigger part of him knew you weren’t that type of person.

“Buttering me up won’t help you get something out of me.” he mumbled, hoping his face wasn’t as red as it felt.

“Oh, you’re flustered! Not angry. Good, because you turned the same shade of red as Riddle does and I was really worried you were going to blow up at me. I’m glad you didn’t though!” you laughed, but returned to your serious state from before, “I’ll seriously stop drawing you if it makes you uncomfortable. I guess I just got in the habit of drawing things I like and-”

“It’s fine. Draw me as much as you want. Just-! Make sure you show me. Next time. When you draw me.” he refused to meet your gaze, but he saw you light up in his peripheral vision.

“Of course! Thank you so much, I’ll make it even better next time!” you nodded vigorously.

“You may take your leave now. Thank you for meeting with me.” Azul bowed his head as you left the room, humming an unfamiliar tune as you let the door shut behind you.

Azul sat in silence for a few beats.

He slowly took off his hat.

And he screamed into it.

[breezybangtanbebe]

3D: JJK💋 Part 3

A/N: Jungkook is in a closed triad with Janelle, the bubbly brown skinned bookworm with alluring eyes and luscious hips, and Katya , the semi alt bartending vixen with copper toned curls and a silver tongue.

Tags: Jungkook AMBW fic with original characters. Sex, raw and protected. Masturbation. Oral (female and male receiving) Threesome. PMS pampering .Some girl on girl, fluff and mild plot because theyre lovers after all 😌

8.6k words

After stewing in the tub until the water was cold and her fingers were wrinkled, Janelle emerged from the bathroom on heavy feet and trudged to her room wrapped in a big fluffy towel.

Times like this, she was grateful to have her room and the privacy to PMS in peace. To sleep naked and air dry without any disturbances.

It wasn't much, four walls packed from corner to corner with most of her belongings. A lot of which Jungkook begrudgingly helped her bring up the stairs to their 5-floor unit when the elevator was too crowded.

Since Kat joined them, upgrading from their one-bedroom to a three-bedroom didn't seem like the best option economically at first thought.

Jungkook was a freelance tattoo artist, occasionally working security with Taehyung to make ends meet.

Janelle was a student between majors, part-time in a department store when she wasn't studying. To save on tuition, Jungkook moved her in and the two lived happily together once he allowed her to organize and give the space some livability and style.

Things were still tight but they were happy.

And then Kat entered the chat.

She had an apartment that was a train ride away, with a roommate that seemed pleasant upon first impression. But something about her inconsiderate company, the way she left dirty dishes in the sink for days that she only cleaned when said company was over, and the consistent ring left around the bathtub when she was done bathing that Kat just couldn't tolerate any longer.

So when things started between the three of them, she spent the majority of her days and nights with them. Mostly with Janelle since Jungkook would be working late at times.

Janelle and Jungkook had a system that Kat appreciated. Both of them cooked and cleaned, and their apartment always smelled good, a mix of marijuana and incense that she found comforting. For a while, Kat's stuff started accumulating in their storage.

Her clothes.

Her shoes.

Her makeup.

After some months of hopping between hers and theirs, it just made sense for her to live with them permanently.

She surprisingly made a lot from bartending, and could easily cover her part of the rent split three ways if they upgraded. So after a few months of looking and waiting, they found a bigger apartment in the same complex.

Sleeping arrangements were fluid, Janelle usually being the one to float between snuggling under Jungkook's big hard body or big spooning in Kat's bed because she knew Kat liked being cuddled as much as she did.

Even when she acted like she didn't.

And then there were those nights when the three of them piled up on the couches with Janelle sandwiched between her partners, letting the TV watch them until someone started snoring.

Usually Jungkook.

It was a happy little life they shared.

But as stated before, Janelle was still grateful for her bed in times like this. When the silence in her room could allow her mind to drift past her discomfort, her body sank deeper into her Downy-scented sheets and blankets.

Flashbacks of several hours ago replayed in her dreams, the detailed recall of Jungkook's scowl of focus trained on the arch in Kat's back rolling in a hazy slow motion.

The sweat dripped down his chest and over his abs.

The dents of his tight grip on Kat's waist.

The ripples of her backside bounced back and forth on her boyfriend's length as she released a moan of release.

The sound of his name in her voice and rumble of curses in his.

All so erotic and enchanting.

And arousing.

Janelle stands in witness of it all, this time not aggravated by the heat or the ache in her womb. But in awe of them.

In envy of them.

The look in both of their eyes when they noticed Janelle watching them was as lust drunk as they were, and Janelle smirked before she fully entered the room.

Shutting the door behind her...

It wasn't until she heard a random alarm on her phone going off that she realized she'd fallen asleep. Sweat coated her skin in a dewy sheen when she came to, reminding her that she hadn't put anything on after her bath.

Gone was the lustful haze clouding her vision, and back was the canopy of fairy lights warmly illuminating her bedroom. The scent of sex is replaced by her candle warmer and the gruff sounds of Jungkook's and Kat's moans are replaced by her panted breaths.

But one thing that did remain, however, was the slickness gathering between her thighs.

A slickness that in her slumber, her fingers explored and submerged themselves in between her lips.

Janelle's brain takes a few seconds to register what is happening, and she abruptly pulls her hand up from her sex to inspect her hand. She sighs in relief to find her index and middle fingers coated in a clear sheen of arousal before tucking her hand back between her legs.

She sighs again, staring at the ceiling before looking towards the door.

There wasn't much noise in the apartment from what she could hear, so she didn't quite know whether she was alone or not. From their conversation earlier, Janelle still half expected Kat and Jungkook to either be gone or getting ready to go to the show.

A hint of sadness washed over her at the thought despite her encouraging it, but it quickly stowed at the unsubtle reminder of her dream.

Spreading her legs wider beneath the covers, Janelle's brow crinkled as she pressed her slippery fingertips against her clit, rubbing over one side of it slowly until she shivered.

Coasting over her bud, her core tightened like a coil and relaxed with a shuddered sigh at how sensitive she was. Over and over her fingers teased until she felt herself on the brink, and she summoned the memory of Jungkook stuffed deeply inside of Kat to push her over the edge.

Janelle lets out a strained moan and her back arches off the bed, her two fingers going still over her clit to allow the full force of her orgasm to take hold of her.

Her walls pulsed needily, thickening the layer of nectar pooling from her entrance as she finally relaxed.

But as she rubbed over herself soothingly, Janelle realized quickly that she needed more.

It wasn't odd for her to be this insatiable at the height of fertility. Everything was sensitive. Her emotions. Her senses. Her body.

Horniness typically came with the pain of the syndrome and Jungkook, being the doting kind of boyfriend he was, figured out rather quickly how to handle his girl during this time of the month.

Speaking of.

"Baby? You awake?"

His muffled voice full of concern through her door was preceded by a couple of light taps against it with his knuckle. Janelle's eyes widen a little, blinking away the tears from her intense release before clearing her throat.

"Y...Yeah. Come in..." she rasps, pulling the blanket up to cover her nudity as if Jungkook hadn't seen her naked a billion times already.

The hinges squeak and he lingers in her doorway after opening it, tilting his head with an empathetic pout on his lips.

"Are you alive?" he smirks, lifting a brow.

Janelle responded to him with a weak smile and nod, giving his height a full upward appraisal as he stepped into her room and towards her bed.

He's dressed in a faded black graphic tee that hugged his biceps at the sleeves, similar to the way his ripped jeans clung to his quads. The single silver chain at his neck dangled as he leaned down to press his lips against Janelle's forehead, squatting beside her bed right after.

"Well, you look pitiful.." he chuckles, brushing stray hairs from her face. His touch did more to her than it usually did, on top of his scent and the warmth of his proximity, and Janelle found herself whimpering softly when he pulled his hand away.

"I feel pitiful. And you smell really good...Getting ready for the show?" her sad eyes lift to lock with his and Jungkook gazes down at her as if she were the most precious being to ever exist.

Biting his lip ring, he shakes his head.

"Naw. No show tonight. Tae already sold the tickets."

Janelle furrows her brow.

"What? Why?" she asks. His eyes go back to all the stubborn flyaways framing Janelle's face, most of them reverting to their natural state from her sweat and steamy bath earlier. He smooths them under his hand affectionately with a nonchalant shrug.

"Because I told him he could. There will be other shows to catch when all three of us can go. Otherwise, what would be the point? And don't even try to argue. Kat agrees. She wasn't trying to leave you here either.." he smirks at the combative look forming on her face. It fades immediately at the definitiveness of his response, and her bottom lip pokes out sourly.

"I told y'all it was ok though. You didn't have to do that. Now I feel bad..." she whines. Jungkook sighs before leaning back in to peck her trembling lips a few times to shut her up. He stills his kiss to run the tip of his nose over hers.

"Hush," he affirms with his lips still close enough for her to feel his smile.

"Now why the hell would I choose spending my night with a bunch of drunk ass metal heads in a dark smokey ass room too small for the people in it, when I could be here with you? Hmm?"

He punctuates the question with another peck against her lips, humming softly before putting just enough space between them to see her face fully.

"Plus Kat's a pain in the ass when she's drunk and there's no way in hell I was gonna deal with that shit alone. So boom. You're stuck with us."

Janelle giggles at the truth in his statement. For someone who worked at a bar and dealt out hundreds of shots a night, Kat was the LAST person you wanted to fool with when she was drunk.

A story for another time.

"You're right. Silly me.." Janelle wrinkles her nose, only adding to the cuteness Jungkook admired quietly. He leans up after a beat, seating himself on the edge of the bed and facing her. He thoughtlessly rested his hand on the curve of her hips cloaked by her blanket as he sighed.

"No shit. Anyway...I came in here to let you know that I was about to hit up 7-Eleven. Anything special you want or need?" He tilts his head with interest, his large hand stroking over the fuzz draping her curves.

Janelle thought about it for a few seconds, a plethora of things coming to mind that she was sure to want from her favorite convenience stop. But with the taste of her man still fresh on her lips and the memory of his shallow breathing warming them, her thoughts were clouded.

More like a debilitating fog in Jungkook's case. His face, his voice, his smell, his taste, and his touch were all-consuming.

Even now, his fingers spread over the roundness of her ass and come suspiciously close to the slit leading straight to her sex, a part of her that would be screaming his name if it could speak.

No, there was no way she could think of anything she wanted beyond him right now.

She pondered silently as her thoughts jumbled, all while Jungkook watched her warily with mild concern and amusement.

"Is it that hard of a question?" He chuckles and Janelle joins him in a bashful giggle of her own.

"No." She shakes her head.

"I just can't think of anything when I want so many things right now.." she looks away shyly. She reaches

Jungkook inches closer to the bed, dragging his teeth over his bottom lip as he hooded his gaze on her.

"Yeah? Like what?"

"Kisses? Please?.." Janelle whispers against his idled lips with begging eyes locked on his sultry gaze. She pulls her hand from under the blanket to curl around the side of his neck to emphasize her need, pulling herself up to meet him where he was.

Jungkook lets a little growl vibrate between them before going back in to part her lips with his slowly. Janelle moaned softly when his tongue teased hers, compelling her to lean up more to secure her cling to him.

This causes the fuzzy throw blanket to fall from her chest, exposing her nudity to the cool air around them. Jungkook doesn't seem to notice until his hand slides over her ticklish ribs though.

He pulls back in slight surprise at the feel of her smooth skin under his fingers, leaving Janelle chasing his lips.

"Nell..Where yo clothes at?" He breathes, skimming his touch over her side. His thumb brushes the underside of her boob just barely, but it's enough to make her nipples harden under his watchful eye.

A blush floods through her entire body at the way she felt him tracing her curves, and she allows him to discard the blanket completely for further confirmation.

His brows shoot up immediately.

"Oh damn. You naked naked. I at least expected panties.." he chuckles, his hand going to run over her thick thighs.

"It's too hot for panties. I'm all achy and sensitive. You know how I get.." she tries to defend her scarceness pointlessly, making Jungkook's curiosity and mischief mount.

"Mmhmm.." he dismisses her as his hand travels to the dip between her knees.

Her legs remained pressed together as if she were afraid of him to see how much of a mess she already was. She should have known better than to do that though.

With little effort, Jungkook pushes her knees apart, exposing her most private parts to him hopelessly.

His brows lift unsubtly at the way Janelle's pussy bloomed the prettiest shade of pink he'd ever seen. Her clit peaked between her lips, still shiny and swollen, while the rest of her sex glistened in the warmly lit room.

Not that he was surprised by it. After being with her for a while, he had never experienced a woman being so excitable near her time of the month. He wasn't at all squeamish and didn't mind running a red light now and then if she was comfortable with it. But it was the week before that he loved because she was always outrageously wet and sensitive. It drove him insane.

Thoughtfully, he glances down at his attire before shooting up and away from the bed.

She hears him call for Kat from her doorway and Kat responds loudly from across the apartment.

"Kat!"

"Kat!"

Some time ago...

"Kat?"

Janelle stares at herself in uncertainty in the mirror in the bathroom, scrutinizing herself harshly in her mind.

She takes a few steps back to get a full-body view, turning to the side and sucking in uselessly before exhaling loudly and turning back up to the mirror.

"Kat!?" Janelle's voice breaks when she yells this time.

A few seconds after passing the doorway, Kat backtracks and pokes her head in curiously at the sound of Janelle calling to her with lifted brows.

"What, what happened?..... Oooooh sexy mama..." She grins, immediately distracted by the way the low-cut white latex dress conformed to Janelle's curves.

Tonight was the New Year's Eve party, hosted by one of Jungkook's friends on the rooftop of some 5-star hotel uptown. The theme was 'Brand New', calling for all-white attire.

Kat's general disgust was felt at such news, seeing as how white was one of the hues she'd worn the least in her lifetime. But that didn't stop her from tossing together a sexy little ensemble that still showed her edgy side.

She's in her short white body con wrap dress with the sides cut to reveal most of her slender torso. Kat was more on the slimmer side so dresses that showed more always felt less forgiving on Janelle, in her opinion.

Even now in her dress, she felt overly aware of how the little bulge of her lower tummy seemed more noticeable, as well as how wide her hips were.

Janelle accepts Kat's praise with an impish smile that falters the moment she notes how flawless Kat's makeup looks. Her smokey eyes and dark lips, offsetting her bright hair had her looking like a sexy vampire. Totally on theme while remaining on brand for Kat. She looked gorgeous and for the first time since Kat had moved in, Janelle felt oddly intimidated by it.

"Ugh look at you...I suck so much at this "Bad Bitch" stuff.." she huffs. She returns her attention to her reflection and grimaces in dissatisfaction at her makeup. Which by anyone else's standards looked just as good as Kat's but let her hormones tell, she was a potato.

Kat frowns at her expression.

"Um...what?" she chuckles, stepping into the bathroom.

She stops behind Janelle and observes her reflection with her over her shoulder. From what she could see, what Janelle said was far from the truth. Her makeup was perfectly done as it always was. Her skin had an airbrushed finish, highlights, and contours blended seamlessly. Her lips were plump and nude.

"Janelle, what the fuck are you talking about?." Kat snarls and Janelle huffs pitifully.

"I don't know. I'm just not feeling it at all. When I bought this dress, it fit me way differently. Now I feel like I'm busting out of it and nothing else looks right either."

Apart from her disproval of her how her dress fit, and her makeup, Janelle couldn't seem to figure out what she wanted to so with her hair.

She'd blown it out and straightened it the night before and she'd just unwrapped it. Middle part? Side part? Up-do? Half up, half down? Beach waves or bone straight?

She lacked the vision and motivation to obtain one since nothing else about her look seemed to come together the way she imagined it. Kat stood by, listening to Janelle degrade her looks for only a few more seconds before cutting her off.

"Alright. Enough of that. You sound crazy." Kat dismisses her with a shake of her head. She abruptly steps around and grabs Janelle by the shoulders so that she's facing her head.

She assessed Janelle's makeup for herself, deeming it flawless before inspecting her hair.

Her eyes go up and focus on her finger combing through the front of her head to find the natural flow and fall of her delicately cut layers until she's satisfied.

"There..just let it flow like this. Natural and pretty.." Kat comments distractedly as she brushes a stray strand of hair from Janelle's face without disturbing her perfectly shaped eyebrows and the style she'd just created.

As she did, Janelle's gaze fell to her lips. Kat's complexion always reminded me of a caramel macchiato after twirling her straw around a few times. And the cinnamon freckles dotting her face were just visible beneath her foundation, intentional.

But her lips were lined and filled perfectly with MAC Ximal's deep maroon shade that reminded her of a Rubicon Spray rose in full bloom.

"Why are you so pretty Kat?" Janelle asks in a small voice, sounding as if she were on the brink of tears. Kat's expression hardened at the tremble in Janelle's tone.

"I ingest the souls of my enemies. Oh and sunscreen. What's your secret?" she deadpans, going back to playing in Janelle's hair as she laughs.

"Hmmph...maybe I should give that a try." her laughter tapers as she turns her head to examine her reflection. Before she can say anything negative, Kat nudges her cheek to bring her attention back to her.

"Don't start that. Now what's going on with you? How do you not know how fucking beautiful you are Belly?"

"Belly?" Janelle scrunches her nose at the new nickname in amusement. Kat nods.

"Yeah. Short for Jelly Belly. I've been calling you that in my head for months, it just finally slipped out." she shrugs, and Janelle's head tips back as she lets out another round of laughter.

"Oh? Because I'm chubby?" she jokes but Kat doesn't join her laughing. It wasn't a secret to anyone that Janelle was feeling a bit fuller than usual tonight, PMS bloating being the culprit. But no one minded it as much as she did.

And damn sure had nothing to do with the pet name, even though it ironically sounds like it did.

"No...jelly beans are just one of my favorite candies. And you are undoubtedly one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Your vibe, your face, your body is perfect to me.."

"So I remind you of a jelly bean?" Janelle could not help but laugh, picturing the curved round stubby little morsel of sugar in her mind.

"More or less. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw you for the first time. You were dressed so bright and bubbly, I said to myself 'This girl is way too sweet looking for a place like this...' "

"Funny...I thought the same thing when I saw you." Janelle perks her brow, bravely reaching for Kat's slim waist and reciprocating the possessive hold she had on her. Kat's mouth forms a grim line of disagreement.

"Yeah yeah...Anyway.Stop calling yourself fat. It's annoying. Id die for a body like yours." she pouts, stroking Janelle's curves appreciatively over the slick material of her dress.

"And I'd rather have yours. You look so good in whatever you wear, Kat. Meanwhile how I look depends on whether my uterus hates me for not being pregnant." Janelle mirths.

Kat laughs at that, relating to her pain all too well. Although since having her IUD, she hadn't experienced the same pain and discomfort that came with womanhood in a while, she still empathized.

It might have been true that what she felt wasn't all in her head and the way her white dress hugged her every curve didn't ease her insecurity. But as far as Janelle's body looking any less perfect to her, she disagreed wholeheartedly.

"Are you kidding? Janelle, your body proportions are perfect. Dead serious. This ass? You know how many people stop to watch you walk by out in public? I do it here and I know Jungkook does. Hell, whenever I see you walking around in those Tweetie Bird shorts, I just wanna stop you, bend you over bite it. It makes sense why Jungkook can't keep his hands off you."

Janelle starts to deny Kat's claims but remains silent when the ginger's eyes fall to the heavy globes filling the designated cups of latex in her bosom.

Kat's hands lift slowly from her waist, cupping the shape of her breasts tenderly.

"Or these..." her thumbs coast over Janelle's responsive nipples, and they harden on contact right before her eyes.

"They're so fucking pretty, I just wanna hold them in my mouth until you melt..." she mouths distractedly, still rubbing over Janelle's nipples in a mini trance. Janelle watched her hands work, squeezing her tits until she couldn't hold back her little restrained moan anymore. Among other parts of her changing body during this time, Janelle's nipples were at their most sensitive now.

Kat releases her at the sound, her bold hands returning to hold Janelle's waist. She shakes her head sheepishly.

"Sorry...that was kinda gay.." she jokes as if everyone didn't already know how 'gay' Kat was. So gay in fact that the index and middle digits on her dominant hand were always the only nails she kept short whenever she got them done.

Janelle noticed that immediately.🌚

"It's ok.." Janelle rasps, clearing her throat and they both share a laugh that fades out the moment they lock eyes again. Janelle is first to look away shyly, shaking off her emotions and releasing them with a sigh.

"Thank you...no one has ever said anything like that to me before." she lifts her eyes slowly, meeting Kat's incredulous expression.

"I doubt that. Your mans over here says all kinds of nasty stuff to you, I'm sure."

"Yeah but..it's different with you. Men will say anything for a chance to get a woman's pants. Jungkook doesn't have to sweet talk me but he knows what it'll get him if he does. But you...I can tell you mean that."

Janelle didn't consider herself a lesbian or bisexual early on.

Never had been and never desired to be one when being with men felt like enough. Sure, she found women attractive, often finding herself staring at the ones she found most captivating. But never did she think of herself as a woman that was into women.

Until she saw Katya.

Spotting her working the bar with such skill and confidence, dancing freely with other bartenders, and flirting with patrons, there were things about the slightly androgynous personality with soft feminine facial features that made her the exception.

Still stroking Janelle's temple affectionately, Kat smirks.

"Hmm...and can you tell how much I wanna kiss you right now?" The tip of her tongue peaks and curls out the side of her mouth salaciously, tilting her head with interest.

"What's stopping you?" Janelle breathes after a beat, her lips remaining parted in anticipation of Kat's next move.

Leaning in, Kat's dark lips press over Janelle's nude and glossy pout, both of them sighing in tandem.

Kat sucks on the fattest lip softly, staining Janelle with her lipstick before opening her up to explore her with her tongue. Janelle's lashes fluttered at the way Janelle made her feel dominated in the way kissed her, parting her lips wider for her to deepen her dive. Kat slides a hand over Janelle's neck and locks her in place, making Janelle moan softly against her.

The two stood there for what felt like a while, kissing and exploring each other's curves with tentative touches, tuning out anything that wasn't between them. Even the heavy sounds of footsteps echoing in the hallway.

"Hey, Yall almost ready?...Whoa..." Jungkook pauses mid-step in the open bathroom doorway, unbuttoning the cuff of his crisp white denim jacket's sleeve.

Jungkook's take on the theme was very true to his nature. He wore an all-white Calvin Klein set, jacket, and jeans, with a loosely tucked white v-neck. His silver chain and rings accent the outfit with a pop of glitz that's offset by his overall monochromatic aesthetic. Simple and sexy.

But damn all of that. He just walked in on two fine-ass women tongue-kissing in his bathroom.

Kat pulled away from Janelle's lips to turn around, leaving her kissing partner's head spinning and eyes fluttering as she came back to earth. Noting Jungkook's astounded expression, Kat smirks devilishly. She licks her lips before shooting Janelle a glance.

"What was that Kook?" she asks him, knowing full and well, she'd heard him.

Jungkook blinked distractedly, replaying the image of bliss and pleasure on Janelle's face when Kat licked passionately at her mouth. Blood rushes in his veins excitedly, most of it gathering just below the elastic of his CK boxer briefs, pulsing in time with his heart.

"I..was just asking if you two were..ready," he responds, smirking at his pause when Janelle blushed behind Kat, looking away guiltily.

"Yeah, almost. Was just helping Nell with her makeup..." she says smoothly, cheekily turning back to Janelle to make her blush even harder.

"Why? Did you need something?" she tosses back to him, insinuating that he was interrupting.

"Nope." He shakes his head, not making any moves to leave. Seeming as if they were now at a standstill, Kat turned to him, her shoulders squared as she folded her arms over her chest.

"Ok..well?.." she trails off, her eyes pointing beyond where Jungkook was standing, a challenge clear in her frisky glare.

Jungkook's brows go up again and the corners of his mouth droop as if he were genuinely impressed by her bold attempt at dismissing him.

Janelle wasn't far off when she said he and Kat were just alike. While they got along well enough over the past few weeks of her living with them, Jungkook did notice that when it came to Janelle...

They had a bit of a territorial streak he knew they would need to work out.

He wasn't invasive nor was he a creep, but he did start to understand the appeal of seeing his partner being loved on by someone else.

Someone he didn't have to compete with.

Someone who was beginning to be as frustratingly attractive the longer she was around.

But one thing Kat wasn't about to do, no matter how sexy she looked with Janelle, was run him off in his own apartment.

"Well... no need to rush perfection. Carry on.." he states, propping his shoulder against the door frame with his thumbs tucked in his pockets, getting cozy and showing he had no intention of leaving them to it. Kat smirked at his stubbornness, finding it more amusing than anything as she scoffed.

"Anyway...how long till the car pulls up?" she asks and Jungkook lifts his wrist to examine his watch.

"Uhhh...less than an hour."

Kats nods in understanding, turning back to Janelle.

"Alright...You got it from here or you still need my help?" she asks, knowing she implied more than just aiding Janelle in getting ready for the night.

"I...I think I got it." she stammered with a shy smile, having its usual effect on Kat as she nodded again.

"K...well, you know where to find me." she winks, patting Janelle's booty before turning away.

When facing Jungkook, Kat looks him up and down before giving him a muted look of disgust that makes him grin.

"You look nice.." he complimented her as she squeezed past him.

"Shut up." She poked Jungkook's side with her pointy nail as she passed, making him cough and clutch his rib protectively, sticking his tongue out at her back childishly.

Janelle chuckles breathily and rolls her eyes.

"Yall should just bang and it over with. Put me out of my misery..." she smirks and Jungkook wrinkles his nose.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Mmmhmm...Ok, what do you think?" she does a little spin for him, masking her former insecurities well enough for the question to just sound like a question. When she stops, she's back facing the mirror, that look of uncertainty still in her eyes.

Jungkook regards her softly for a moment before approaching slowly, appraising her from head to toe with his lip tucked between his teeth. He joins her at the mirror, stooping to rest his chin on her shoulder and wrap his arms around her waist from behind.

His hand widens over her belly, stroking the little pudge affectionately as he locks eyes with her reflection.

"I think you're perfectly gorgeous. Like always. This dress is sexy on you..." he remarks, kissing her shoulder.

"Really?" Janelle lights up at his compliment and he nods.

"Mmhmm..You look sexy in white." he looks up at her suggestively, pressing himself against her plump ass for emphasis.

His hands were sneaky at first but the unsubtle feeling of him rolling up her dress just enough for him to be able to cup her sex with his fingers stroking the seam of her lips through her panties.

She was wet and it was evident in the way her panties barely shielded her from the friction Jungkook's steady hand caused. Janelle's back melts against Jungkook's chest, her head falling against his shoulder as she gasped.

"Do you feel sexy?" he murmurs, kissing her shoulder again. His fingers continued to rub her mound, focusing on the little hill of her clit that was hardening and beginning to poke through the seam of her lips. Janelle shook when he rubbed her harder, a whispered 'yes' coming out in a soft moan that only Jungkook could hear.

He smirks, nosing through her hair until he's able to plant a kiss on her neck. He tucks her straightened tresses behind her ear carefully to gain better access to her skin, suckling and nibbling until the evidence was just barely visible if anyone looks hard enough.

Soon after, his mischievous hand abandons its tease to begin fixing her dress. The latex-like material rolls back down her thighs with a little 'snap' of confirmation.

"Good. Hold on to that feeling. I'll take care of you when we get back home.." Jungkook straightens up, placing a careful kiss to her temple before leaving her standing at the mirror with her core clenching and sexually, keyed up from the way both he and Kat had just handled her.

Like putty.

Janelle exhales, shaking off the arousal and regaining her focus on finishing getting ready. She scans the counter littered with makeup products and the flat iron that was still warm from styling her hair. She then looks back at herself in the mirror with keen eyes.

Despite being flustered by Kat's intervention and Jungkook's gentle teasing, her makeup and hair were well intact.

Well, apart from that dark rouge tint blending with her nude-toned lips, and the way Jungkook had tucked her hair behind her ear to expose the faint love bite he'd left her. Flaunting the marks of both of her dates tonight would dispel any insecurities she felt several minutes before. It made her feel sexier than ever feeling so claimed and desired by both of them.

As if they'd done what they did on purpose, a collaborative effort to make sure she felt just as good as she looked.

If so, they worked well together.

Back to the present...

"KAT!"

"WHAT?!"

"C'mere!" He yells, still leaning out of Janelle's bedroom doorway. Cool air from the hall seeped into the room, pricking her skin with goosebumps. She pulled the blanket back up to cover herself, blinking curiously with a frown as she watched Jungkook.

Seconds later, Kat appeared in front of Jungkook, dressed in only a beige Nike sports bra and black sweats rolled up at the waist. Her wild mane of fire sat on top of her head in a messy ponytail, her glare fixed on Jungkook.

"What?" She huffs again, visibly irritated and Jungkook leans in to whisper something to her. She looks to Jungkook warily but doesn't stop him from speaking. Janelle's brow crinkled at them.

Gradually, Kat's scowl fades the longer Jungkook's mouth moves at her ear and her eyes go to Janelle midway.

Then she smirks.

Not just a normal smirk either. There was a hunger in her expression that sent a frenzy of excitement to bloom between Janelle's thighs just from the way Kat's gaze scanned her lounging body shielded by her blanket.

Kat's bottom lip tucks between her teeth when Jungkook pulls away from her. He gives her a knowing look with lifted brows.

"You got it?" he says and Kat looks to him reluctantly, nodding and nudging him on the shoulder.

"Yeah, I got it."

"You sure?" Jungkook doesn't budge, being the brick wall he was, and Kat sighs.

"Yes! Would you just go? I got it.." she tips her chin to point over his, emphasizing his dismissal with another shove at his shoulder and muscular arm. At her eagerness for him to leave, Jungkook chuckles. Shaking his head, he glances back at Janelle.

"I'll be back baby. Text me if you think of something."

"Ok," Janelle responds softly, still tucked shyly below her blanket with longing eyes that move from him to Kat slowly.

Jungkook leaves them alone, the jingling of his keys fading to nothing as the front door shutting sealed the women in their apartment.

Kat approaches Janelle's bedside, taking Jungkook's place by squatting at the head of her bed. She reaches out to cup Janelle's cheek, rubbing her bottom lip with the pad of her thumb.

"Hey Belly..." Kat all but whispers, her sexy rasp pulling all of Janelle's attention to her touch.

"Hey.." she sighs and Kat smiles softly.

Her hand moves to remove the elastic band from Janelle's hair gently, pulling it until her dark brown waves fanned out over her pink satin-covered pillow.

"Your hair is curling back up." Kat remarks observantly, brushing her fingertips over Janelle's hairline.

"I know...I was sweating too much today." Janelle whines and Kat shakes her head.

"I don't know why you bother straightening it in the summer. You should just wear it curly," she says, running her fingers through her hair, her nails gently detangling the curly and straight strands as she spoke.

"Your hair is so thick and healthy. A break from the heat wouldn't hurt at all.."

"Mmhmm.." Janelle hummed, relishing in her girlfriend's touch. It differs greatly from Jungkook in ways she couldn't explain, but it affected her the same.

Janelle sighed as she got lost in Kat's doting touch, leaning into her hand while she played in her hair.

She wondered vaguely what Jungkook said to her before he left but her mind was too jumbled by hormones to ask. She whimpers at the soothing feeling of Kat's fingernails scraping her scalp, her eyelids drooping.

"Kook says you're still hurting pretty bad..." Kat's sultry rasp strummed in Janelle's ears like a Spanish guitar. She nods wordlessly, her brows inverting into a pitiful expression as she opens her eyes. Kat's gaze warmed over her, her lips pouting.

"Want me to make it better?" She asks, despite having received clear instructions from Jungkook on how to take care of their girl.

Her other hand curls over the dip of Janelle's waist, gently tugging at the blanket covering her upper body. Janelle gasped as she is slowly revealed to Kat, whose eyes glazed over with lust the moment they made contact with her skin.

Janelle laid on her back with her hands resting over her breasts, thoughtlessly playing with her nipples as Kat scanned her body.

"How.." Janelle begins but her question halts the second Kat scoots closer to her on the bed, leaning over her. She licks her lips, her attention falling to Janelle's dainty fingers toying with her stiffening peaks.

"Kook told me he used to help you when you were in pain like this all the time." she exhales, one of her hands wrapping around Janelle's wrist to pull it away from her chest. Kat pins it to the mattress.

"He did...but you don't have t.." Janelle stammers, going silent at the sudden press of Kat's lips against hers.

"Hmm? What did he use to do?" She asks uselessly against her lips, eliciting a soft moan from Janelle. The sheets and blankets rustled as she pressed her thighs together, a helpless attempt at easing the ache growing between them.

Kat noticed and knew full and well what the doting boyfriend she'd witnessed him being numerous would do in this situation. His words from a minute ago were clear.

Do whatever you gotta do.

Just make her cum..

She'd be lying in saying the way the words sounded coming from his growl of a whisper didn't make her walls clench. But she'd ignore it in favor of making Janelle feel good. She only asked her because she liked the way Janelle would stammer when asked to talk dirty.

She was so shy sometimes, it was adorable. Kat hummed questioningly to remind Janelle to respond by licking over her tongue.

"He...he would just take care of me." Janelle mouths.

"You know, massage my back...Rub my legs...Touch me..and stuff.."

Janelle's voice faded as a sudden shyness took hold, but that didn't stop her hand from clenching into a fist, her other squeezing her nipple hard until she gasped.

If she could, she'd be touching herself as she was before, less to answer the question and more to quell the simmering need for stimulation between her legs. Obeying her body, Janelle pulls her trapped wrist from Kat's hold to push it beneath the blanket to cup her pussy. She leans up slightly and sighs in relief at her touch, pressing her fingers against her clit.

With a whine and a bite of her lip, Janelle told her attentive girlfriend all she needed to know.

Pulling away, Kat's gaze falls to where Janelle's hand disappeared under the blanket, lifting her brows slowly in intrigue.

With her tongue poking at the corner of her mouth, Kat looks back up at Janelle's flustered and lustful expression with a smirk.

"Lay back." she chuckles, nodding towards the head of Janelle's bed. She reluctantly obeys, too weak and needy to protest as Kat climbs on to join her. She straddles Janelle's waist, hovering over her to block out the brightness of the fairy lights dangling above them.

The blanket is pulled away completely from Janelle's body, confirming what Jungkook mentioned before leaving them, and her eyes darken.

Unlike her petite and lithe body with just enough curves to be appreciated, Janelle's body type was a little further right on the scale. Full breasts that sagged gorgeously from the gravity of laying back, with the prettiest sand dollar-sized cocoa brown areoles Kat had ever seen.

Her curves were artistic, sloping from her ribcage and bowing out to wide enviable hips that she knew Jungkook loved to hold. Hell, so did she. And her skin was always smooth and supple, even after going pruney in the tub.

"Have your tits always been this big or am I trippn?" Kat thinks aloud with her attention on Janelle's heaving chest. The question catches her off guard and Janelle drops her chin to inspect herself as if she didn't have these boobs for the better half of her life.

Kat's hand slides over Janelle's skin until she's cupping the brown globe in the curve of her palm, watching it jiggle slightly with satisfaction.

"Awww they're so swollen baby. I never noticed them getting like that before.." she adds and the comment alone had Janelle's nipples hardening under her fixed gaze.

"It's ok if I touch you right? I know I'm not Jungkook but I think I can help you feel better the way he did if you'd let me.."

Janelle scoffs in amusement at her words.

"Girlfriends ask their girlfriends if they can touch them?" She jokes and Kat shrugs.

"Good girlfriends do. Plus I want you to be comfortable. We've never done anything like this before. At least not without Jungkook."

Janelle thought about it, considering how she felt about Kat amidst their unique relationship.

To the grand majority of folks on the outside looking in, the idea of two women sharing a man was preposterous. Many stated that the only person benefiting from it of the three was Jungkook, but that was so far from the truth.

Janelle didn't feel like she was sharing Jungkook with Kat. If anything, she was the one being shared, more so that they had equal claims to each other in different ways. Some sexual. Some emotional. But all consensual and understood clearly.

Her relationship with Kat was no exception.

She was attracted to her physically from the moment she saw her creamy tawny complexion freckled with cinnamon all over.  

Her favorite drink...

She was bold and feisty despite her size and Janelle felt safe with her. She was as much a lover as she was a friend, making it easier for her to accept her into her heart and relationship.

She had feelings for Kat in the way she loved Jungkook, which was what made their dynamic work.

But with all of that being said, they'd never had sex exclusively.

Ever.

Kissing, touching, and watching the other get railed by their boyfriend aside.

Kat awaited Janelle's response, keeping her hands above the blanket patiently.

"Of course it's ok. Touch me..please.. " she rushed to say all needy and breathless.

Kat smirks at the sound before running her hand back down to Janelle's open thighs, joining her hand. Janelle moves it and her mouth gapes slowly in reaction to Kat's fingers dipping inside of her, collecting her arousal to rub over her clit.

Janelle tenses and relaxes on contact, arching up from the mattress slightly.

"Ughhh yes.." she shudders. Kat's smirk widens to a grin as she rubbed her fingers over Janelle's stiffening clit. She strums over it with increased pressure and speed that has Janelle panting and moaning as if she were already close to cumming.

She gets extra sensitive before her period starts. Extra wet. Extra horny.

It'll be easy...

Jungkook's voice chimed in Kat's mind. He wasn't lying. Janelle was on the brink of coming undone and Kat had barely done anything to her. Her moans compelled Kat to move down her body, inching closer to the apex of her thighs to get into a sniper position between her legs.

Janelle propped up on her elbows and swallowed heavily as she watched Kat get into the intimate position. Kat could detect Janelle tensing slightly, and she glanced up from her shadowed folds to lock eyes with her.

"Calm down Belly, I got you.." She soothed as her mouth brushed against Janelle's vulva.

Kat's tongue glances over her lips, eyes up and fixed on the way Janelle's jaw slowly slackens. She expected her to taste as sweet as the nickname she'd given her. More than likely due to her hormones, the slick glossing Janelle's folds pulled and dangled from Kat's tongue when she pulled away for a look.

Janelle's petals were just as pretty, blooming the more Kat spread them. Her eyes fell shut as she focused on her taste lingering on her taste buds.

She goes in again, licking her deeper to part her and taste the arousal gathering at her entrance. Janelle watches closely with her hooded gaze fixed on the way Kat's peachy pink pierced tongue disappeared and reappeared between her swollen lips.

When the ball of the tongue ring presses against her clit, Janelle gasps and bites her lip. Kat's eyes opened and returned to her face, but she never paused. She never stops.

One thing about Kat, she knew her way around a pussy. Considering she had one herself, of course, as well as her past experiences with being intimate with women.

Her tongue is wet and fast-moving over Janelle's sensitive bud, rosy pink and swollen from the intense arousal. Every flick felt electrifying and it wasn't very long from the moment she began licking her pussy that Janelle was gasping sharply at the explosion of release.

Her back arched from bed and her legs trembled over Kat's shoulders, her voice frayed and breathy as she came down.

Feeling her relax, Kat's relentless tongue slows to a soothing flat lick up and down Janelle's sex, tasting her cum and easing the delicious taper of her orgasm.

Jungkook was right. That didn't take long at all, and while Kat could have just chalked that up to her skill, she knew it had more to do with how sensitive Janelle already was.

"Good?" She mouths, her eyes on Janelle's drunken expression. Her girlfriend merely nods, her eyelids drooping from deepening fatigue.

"So good...my god.." she sighs weakly, blinking slowly.

Kat's ego swelled with pride at her words, her gaze dropping to Janelle's glistening pussy with another question popping up in her brain.

"Jungkook ever make you cum that fast?" She teased, leaning in to plant a soft wet kiss against Janelle's clit. When Kat's lips latched onto it softly, Janelle's left keg twitched.

"Ah!.. I'm not telling...you for his pride's sake.." Janelle struggled to say as Kat suckled her overly sensitive bud against her tongue. Kat chuckles, her voice vibrating her heat deliciously before she lifts her head.

"Say less.." she smirks knowingly.

Her gaze falls back to Janelle's pussy, which was still throbbing and shiny inches from her face.

"Just so you know..." she pauses to flick her tongue over her clit again just to hear Janelle moan one more time.

"Your pussy tastes really good. No wonder why Kook volunteers to stick his face down here. I can't blame him one bit.." she shakes her head. Janelle rolls her sleepy eyes, finally giving in to fall back against her pillow with a heavy sigh.

"Shut up." she giggles breathlessly, running her hands over her face. Kat watched her fondly, a soft smile parting her wet lips. She starts to lick them when a naughty idea pops in her head

"Im foreal..Here.."

Kat climbed over Janelle's body, pinning her with her stare as she leaned in to kiss her. As if to prove she wasn't joking, Kat feeds Janelle the taste of her cum from her tongue to hers, licking into her mouth as sinuously as before until Janelle pulls away to breathe.

"Oh fuck..that was so nasty and sexy...I can't.." she huffs, making Kat laugh.

"Mmhmm. Feel better?" she asks genuinely after a beat, pussy breath and all, and Janelle looks up at her. She nods sheepishly with her bottom lip caught between her teeth, keeping that perfectly sexy smile on Kat's face.

Janelle blinked, marveling at how beautiful Kat's smile really was. She didn't do it much, sporting a rather sexy RBF the majority of the time.

It was a shame.

She had one of the most beautiful smiles Janelle had ever seen.

Feeling magnified under Janelle's softening stare, Kat's smile fades.

"Um...Well, good."

She pecks her lips once more for good measure before hopping up from the bed. Janelle sat up with a confused frown as Kat fixed her oversized sweats on her hips before raking her nails up her nape as she set off to leave the room.

"Wait...Where are you going?" Janelle calls after her just as Kat reaches the open doorway.

"To cook you something." Kat looks back at her over her shoulder with a hand resting on the doorframe. Janelle's pout drops into a skeptical frown.

"But you don't cook Kat." she narrowed her eyes and Kat's wide and stunned eyes scanned the room.

She was right. Kat couldn't cook to save her life and that was another reason she hopped on the opportunity to move in. Janelle and Jungkook were the cooks of the relationship while Kat gladly cleaned up after.

They all knew better than to allow her near a stove.

"Ok, To order you something then.." she repeats her tone and Janelle laughs.

Her body drops into the pillows and plushies at the head of her bed with a sigh of relief that Kat resented but understood. Janelle yawned before rolling onto her stomach, pulling her fuzzy blanket over her body.

"Thank God. Chickf ila, please? You know what I like.." she lays her head down, hugging the pillow. Kat bites down on her grin as she nodded, wishing she could cuddle up with Janelle some more to play in her hair, suck on her nipples and tease her clit until she came again. Her pussy ached to touch as well and she'd love to feel Janelle's timid touches on her wetness, then offering to lick it off of her fingers after she made her cum too.

Maybe later though. She was already dozing off.

"Anything for my Belly. Go to sleep. I'll be back." Kat rats her knuckles against the door frame before exiting Janelle's bedroom.

[staybabblingbaby]

Soulmate Garden AU Ch.2 (Anemone) a3d2

[Caution: These are not full fics, or even full parts of fics for some, these are part of my writing progress archive!]

Concept: Growing up, you knew Soulmates weren't all that they cracked up to be. So when, on your 18th birthday, your skin is painted with a garden of flower buds, you resolve to hide it from everyone. Who had ever heard of someone with 8 soulmates, anyway?

Or; Reader has 8 soulmates and no issue avoiding all of them. It's up to SKZ to show her that while every soulbond might not be made of fairy tales, theirs certainly could be.

Word Count: 4,218

Notes: I don't feel like the summary completely matches this story anymore. I'm also not really satisfied with this chapter, but I'm too tired to really get into a whole bunch of drafts and edits, I've just really been feeling poorly lately. The archive is for writing progress anyways, it's fine. I'll probably rewrite this whole chapter if I ever get to where I'd be comfortable posting finished versions to Ao3. I'm also just not fond of my writing style somehow. It feels too formal, doesn't flow enough. Problem is that I really talk like that lmao. Idk, I'll figure it out.

Dividers by @saradika

Warnings: She/Her Reader

Leave me comments or questions or anything! Love hearing from folks <3

Masterlist <3 | Prev Part | Next Part

Bangchan clambered into the van behind Felix, Minho and Jisung loading into the row in front of them. It always felt a bit weird to not spend some time swapping seatmates around based on who was clinging to who at the moment, but on days like today it was easier to just board the vehicles as quick as possible.

He's ended up with a relatively quite combination of their cluster today, and Chan was grateful for it as he settled into his seat with a pained grimace.

He wasn’t sure when it had started, but a persistent on-and-off pain had been roaming around his back for the last twenty minutes as they’d said goodbye to Stays and prepared to leave the venue. He’d be more worried about it, except the sharp, needle-like, pains would settle into a gentler ache before kicking back up again.

As it was, Chan was pretty sure he’d pinched a nerve or strained something and would simply rest when he got back to the hotel. Maybe call up the PT. For now, as three of his soulmates settled in around him, Chan was content to leave it be.

Well, almost. Another twinge of pain makes him wince as he twists to buckle in, and Chan decides that maybe it’d be a good idea to know what he was working with. For comfort’s sake, if nothing else.

“Felix,” He prods the blond next to him, “Can you look at my back for me? I think I pinched something.” He motions toward his lower back, where the majority of the pain had been accumulating.

Felix immediately nods his acceptance, their group’s resident massage expert always willing to lend a hand. Especially if it let him lay hands on his very well built soulmates.

Chan scooches forward and rotates around, balancing with his hand on the headrest of the seat in front of him. He helps Felix shimmy his shirt upwards, struggling with it where it gets caught in the seat-belt.

Chan ends up stuck struggling on his own as Felix chooses that moment to direct his eyes and hands to the afflicted area.

“There’s your first issue,” Felix tuts, “You’ve left your concealment tape on. You’ll give yourself a rash one of these days, hyung.”

Chan gives a sheepish smile from where he’s managed to trap himself in a cloth prison. His head is free, and the shirt his appropriately bunched up over his shoulders and around his neck. Unfortunately, he hadn’t managed to free his hands, so he’s got a bit of a t-Rex thing going on right now. It’s fine.

“I forget it’s there,” he confesses with a whine, “I can’t see my own back, y’know?”

Felix rolls his eyes at their oh-so-glorious leader, carefully peeling the thin material away from Chan’s skin as he scolds, “You still need to take it off. We sweat way too much to not at least change it after a performance.”

He’s bunching up the extra-strength tape to maybe toss at Jisung in the front seat (maybe Minho, if he’s feeling very brave), when he spots something off.

More than half a decade into having found each other, the members of Stray Kids were intimately familiar with each other’s soulmarks. Every drop of color, every line, every curve.

So when Felix looks at the freshly uncovered canvas on Chan’s back, familiar trees, bushes, and rocks painting a forested landscape that describes their impact on their eldest, something new immediately catches his eye.

There, on the fallen log that bridged two banks of a crystal-clear creek, was a moss blanket and a cluster little shelf mushrooms. They added life to the previously defunct object, a little bit of color that couldn’t have been said to be missing until it wasn’t.

The closer Felix looked, the more he saw. A mushroom here, a mossy patch there. Little signs of life and decay that he could have sworn weren’t there the last time he looked.

He looks to Jisung, who’s blissfully unaware.

As the first of their cluster to paint Chan’s skin with color, he was the most familiar with their leader’s mark. Jisung had been too young for his own mark to have appeared when he’d met Chan, but that didn’t stop him from influencing their eldest’s. They all knew he’d spent a lot of time studying Chan’s mark (and Changbin’s when it had appeared, already partially colored in) while waiting for his own.

If there was anyone who’d be more than certain of a change in their soulmarks, it’d be Jisung.

Felix swiftly removes his hands from Chan’s back, earning him a little noise of confusion from the prone man, and reaches over to poke Jisung harshly in the side.

Jisung immediately flinches away from the offending fingers with a loud yelp, attracting the attention of Minho, who’d been peacefully scrolling on his phone. Jisung swiftly fixes Felix with an offended glare, ready to retaliate, but is cut off before he can even try.

“Look at Chan’s mark for me.” Felix demands.

“My mark?” Chan echoes, baffled and alarmed. “What’s wrong with my mark?”

“Nothing, hyung,” Felix assures, “I just need to check I’m not seeing things.”

A series of furtive, silent, and, on Felix’s part, urgent, gestures are exchanged before Jisung finally relents and leans around the back of his seat, grabbing Minho’s for balance as the van departs.

Jisung lazily traces his eyes over Chan’s soulmark. All of Stray Kids had huge marks, but Jisung privately thought that Chan had them all beat. His mark spanned his entire back, not an inch untouched by the image. From shoulder to hip was an oil painting of a mark, filled in from what used to be a desolate landscape to what was now a thriving forest.

Jisung used to think it was so overwhelming to be part of such a mark. To be loved so much, and so deeply. It was evident in every brushstroke of the image on Chan’s skin, and in every action of the man himself.

These days, he found great comfort in it.

He’d gotten so lost in thought as he studied his soulmate’s mark that Jisung had almost missed what had caught Felix’s attention in the first place. But sure enough, his eyes catch on the same log that Felix’s had.

“Oh.” He whispers to himself. “Oh.” He says again, as Minho shoves his head under Jisung’s arm to look himself.

“No, yeah, that’s different.” He confirms, Minho nodding against him, having already spotted it for himself. The two of them find their eyes glued to tiny mushrooms, only sparing a moment to glance at each other before returning their gaze to Chan’s skin, each with their own racing thoughts.

“I thought so.” Felix nods to himself.

“What?” Chan questions, becoming more alarmed by the second, “What’s going on? What’s happened? What’s wrong with my mark?”

Felix lays his palms flat on Chan’s back and begins to rub gentle, soothing, circles. Any changes to a soulmark were stressful at the best of times, and they all knew how much Chan treasured his.

“There’s nothing wrong,” Felix soothes, letting the warmth of Chan’s mark resonating with his touch calm them both as he searches for gentle words.

“It’s just,” He begins hesitantly, “Well, the good news is that you haven’t pinched or strained anything.”

“Good news?” Chan echoes, “Is there bad news?” He lets a nervous giggle fall from his lips even as he relaxes into Felix’s hands.

“Not necessarily?” Felix says uncertainly, “It’s just. Well. Your mark has changed.” He pauses a second and pulls out his phone, quickly snapping a picture and then passing it around so Chan can see. “Something’s been added.”

Felix lets the implication of his words sit untouched in the air as the three of them wait for Chan to process what this means.

Ironically, Chan was the least familiar with his own mark out of all of them. His and Minho’s both resided on their backs so it stood to reason that the two of them didn’t see their marks very often. So it was no surprise that it took Chan several, very long, moments to spot the tiny changes.

When he does, Chan pulls in a deep, stuttering breath. The pain is already fading out to an ache now that it’s been acknowledged and Chan isn’t sure how he feels about the extra confirmation.

He carefully pulls his shirt back down, breaking his soulmate’s line of sight like they hadn’t already burned the image onto their retinas. He doesn’t remove his eyes from Felix’s phone.

“I...” He trails off, “I have another soulmate?” His voice is filled with wonder as he marvels at the picture of his mark. He looks up at the rest of his soulmates currently in the van with awe. “We have another soulmate?”

“Yeah,” Minho whispers, voice choked with emotion, “Yeah it looks like it.”

Felix doesn’t wait for Chan to fully turn around before he’s pulling their leader into a bone-crushing hug, giddy, disbelieving, laughter spilling out of him even as tears prick at his eyes.

“Oh my god!” Felix celebrates quietly as Chan wiggles to return his hug just as tightly. “Oh my god.” The other man agrees.

Even as his soulmates celebrate around him, each feeling their own storm of emotions, Chan can’t quite grasp the reality of the situation.

Stray Kids was a uniquely large soul cluster. From the beginning, when it had become evident that Hannie wasn’t his only soulmate, it had caused issues. Then came Bin, and the rest had followed like dominos. Each time their circle expanded he’d thought “this has to be it, right?” and each time there was a little voice in the back of his mind saying, “No, not yet.”

The issue was that that feeling, that little voice saying ”not yet”, the knowledge that they weren’t complete, had never gone away.

By the time they had all met, none of them could spot anything obviously missing from their marks. All of them were completely colored, lines drawn, images complete. And yet, every one of them felt that hollowness of an incomplete bond.

They’d talked about it a lot. Individually, as a group, in pairs and in quartets and seemingly endless combinations. It was hard, as the years went by, to ignore that nagging feeling.

Chan would always remember Jeongin crawling into his bed in the middle of the night, crying and apologizing for not being enough. Could never forget taking Jisung to a rage room so they could both break down their feelings or drinking with Changbin and wondering if it was wrong for them to be so greedy as to want more when they already had so much.

After so many years, they’d begun to wonder if they were just broken. If they didn’t have another soulmate out there after all, and it was all in their heads.

It had been hard. It was hard.

And now that little blank space in his soul was painted with someone else’s colors and Chan felt whole in a way he wasn’t sure he’d ever experience.

It kind of made him want to cry.

He wanted to cry even more when Felix innocently asks, “So what were they like?” An unmatched eagerness in his eyes as Chan pulled away.

That one guileless question triggers a realization in Chan that has his groaning in despair and slumping forward back onto Felix’s shoulder.

“I don’t know.” Chan mumbles into the shoulder of the slighter man.

“What was that?” Jisung questions from where he and Minho were still turned toward him, obviously as curious as Felix.

“I said I don’t know!” Chan wails, wilting further into Felix’s frame.

“How do you not know?” Minho questions incredulously. Felix gasps as he connects dots he’d been too excited to before.

“I didn’t even know my mark had changed before now,” Chan explains miserably, “I don’t even know exactly when the pain started.”

Jisung sucks in a hiss of air, sympathy splashed across his face. “Oh geeze,” he breathes out, “How many people have we met today alone?”

“Ok, well,” Felix interjects, “Not ideal, but we’ll figure it out!”

Minho turns his incredulous stare onto the optimistic man.

"How are we going to figure it out?" He demands, "Because there were tens of thousands of people in that stadium and I know every single one of us shook dozens of hands tonight."

Felix wilts a little bit even as Jisung comes to his defense, "We kind of have to figure it out, hyung," he points out, "And soon. We're back to Seoul soon."

"Okay but how?" Minho challenges, "And don't give me any 'with the power of love and fate' crap."

"We might have to rely on fate." Chan shrugs, dejected. "It's not like I have a description or anything to give out."

"It'll be okay Channie hyung," Felix pats Chan's back lightly from where they're still entangled together, "It'll have to be."

The van descends into silence as the four of them contemplate their new situation. After a few minutes Chan leverages himself up and out of Felix's embrace to frown aimlessly at his knees.

"Well," Felix breaks the silence, "We don’t have any more shows after this, and we have some days of break time, right?”

“Right,” Chan confirms, “We have tomorrow off and then we’re returning to Seoul to start working on the next album.”

“But officially,” Felix hedges, “We have, like, an entire week off, don’t we?”

“Not quite, but sure,” Chan hesitantly agrees.

“Well, we know they were in town for the concert at least,” Felix continues, “So as long as they didn’t leave the city immediately after, I mean, there's seven more first contacts to go, right?”

“Are you saying we should spend our break wandering around trying for first contacts?” Jisung asks, “Because I’m all for searching for them, but I don’t know that aimless wandering is gonna help.”

Chan holds up his hands to halt that conversation before it could devolve into a bigger debate.

“Let’s shelve that for now, and meet up with the others at the hotel,” He suggests, “We should discuss this as a group anyways.”

He receives a variety of agreements and the four of them settle in for the short remaining drive back to their hotel. He absently hands Felix’s phone back to him and retrieves his own from his pocket to ask the others to meet them in his room.

Chan looks out the window, post-concert fatigue all but a memory. As the buildings pass by, he can’t help but hope that their mystery soulmate was looking for them too.

You reaffirm your decision to never ever meet your soulmates as Taylor loads you into the car, arm wrapped protectively around your shoulder the whole way.

It was one thing when your stupidly large soul cluster was just an idea. Knowledge you held, but unactionable in any way.

It was another when you had evidence, in the form of little white flowers burning with warmth on your skin, that they were real, physical, people.

Even worse when you knew that they were a group of very famous musicians.

You hadn’t actually been sick when you’d texted Taylor, who’d thankfully managed to get all of the autographs he’d wanted before he’d checked his phone to try to find you, but you were getting there. Anxiety had nausea creeping up your throat like molasses.

You’re beyond grateful when your roommate doesn’t question your sudden illness, the both of you well aware that you were hale and hearty when you’d left the house.

Taylor just buckles you in like you’re something precious and fragile and takes the wheel.

The two of you drive in silence the entire way home. It’s not awkward, but you can’t deny the weight of something heavy in the air. The buzz of the concert still lingered between the two of you, and it only made the silence stifling and itchy.

When you pull into your apartment complex neither of you speak for a long moment.

“Sorry for ruining the day.” You murmur to the air in front of you. Taylor just reaches over to pat your thigh and unclip your seatbelt.

“You didn’t ruin anything,” He assures, “Don’t sweat it.” He hesitates a moment before continuing.

“I’m not gonna push,” Taylor begins gently, “But you know you can talk to me, right? Whatever happened, I’m not gonna judge. I just wanna be here for you.”

“What makes you think something happened?” You mutter mulishly. Taylor just gives you a look that has you sinking into your seat.

“It’s nothing. I’m just being dramatic.” You admit. He bumps your shoulder with his and climbs out of the car.

“It’s not nothing if it makes you feel something.” He tells you as he goes. The two of you walk up to the apartment in silence, contemplative this time.

You think about telling him as the two of you separate to wash the concert off of yourselves. You think about it as you take turns using the bathroom and as you make dinner side by side. You think about it as you settle in front of the couch at his feet as his hands automatically pull your head to his knees, his fingers digging into your hair just how you like.

You want to tell him, you decide. You do. It's just that. Well...

Your sister was right, in a way. You’d known Taylor for over a year now, but the two of you didn’t really know much about each other. You really were just roommates.

You didn’t know what his favorite color was. You didn’t know the names of his parents, or if he had any siblings. You barely knew what he did for a living. He’d only ended up your roommate by virtue of you responding to his “roommate wanted” ad with full willingness to be murdered on the spot.

At the same time, the two of you knew everything about each other. You knew how he took his coffee in the morning, that he preferred his eggs dry and over-seasoned. You knew the bands he liked and the games he played. You knew his hobbies better than you knew your own sometimes, and more about his friend’s drama that you ever wanted to.

You know the important things, you think.

You know that every word you tell him in confidence will be clutched tightly all the way to the grave.

“I met my soulmate today.” You confess, your cheek pressed to his knee, half-asleep.

The words somehow feel like they were snatched from the darkest depths of your soul as they spill from your lips. You make no move to take them back.

Taylor’s hand, to his credit, only pauses for a moment. Then he treats your hushed admission like any other comment made while you nod off to dramas the both of you know you only watch for him, resuming the soothing movement of his hand and humming lightly to acknowledge you.

You think it’s that casual treatment that lets you find the courage to continue.

“Well, one of them anyway.” You mumble. Taylor hums his interest, but doesn't take his eyes off of the screen and doesn’t stop petting your hair.

“I don’t want to meet them. There’s so many of them and only one of me, y'know? I don’t even know how to love myself, how am I supposed to love eight other people?” Taylor says nothing still, his eyes glued to an episode of a drama you know the two of you have already finished three times over.

“I’m scared I’ll fuck it up. I’m scared they’ll fuck me up.” Your voice cracks as you breathe life into one of your deepest fears. You realize as you say it that you’ve never voiced these thoughts aloud before, even to yourself.

Tears prick at the back of your eyes when you admit, “I’m not ready for them. I don’t think I can be.”

Taylor finally gives in to the seriousness of the conversation and hauls you bodily up onto the couch. You go willingly, but with rag-doll limpness. He rearranges you to his liking and you find yourself in Gossip Position, sitting criss-cross facing him.

“First of all,” He starts in, his usual levity giving way to a seriousness you rarely see from him, “Don’t be mean to my best friend. I’ll hit you.” You ignore his threat in favor of the warm feeling in chest at hearing him call you his best friend.

Take THAT Ma! No friends your glorious behind.

“Secondly, you are literally the most loving person I have ever met in my life. You would fit the entire world in there if you could,” He pokes your chest, right above your heart, for emphasis, “So I’m not that surprised you have more than one soulmate.”

“I have eight though,” You argue, “Isn’t that weird?”

Taylor just shrugs. “I mean, yeah. But weird is basically your brand, so...” He trails off with a teasing smirk.

You shove him a bit in retaliation, but he just grabs your wrists to still you and continues speaking before you can argue.

“I don’t think eight soulmates is enough for you, honestly,” He muses, “I mean it when I say you’re the most loving person I know. I think you’d even try to take care of Danny if he needed you to.” The mention of Taylor’s very creepy second cousin sends a shiver down both of your spines.

The worst part is that you can’t even argue with him.

“But you know, even with eight soulmates, you don’t have to be with them.” Taylor suddenly switches tracks to reassure you, “They’re your soulmates sure, but you’re your own person. They’re for you, it’s not like they are you. You can live without, if you really want to.”

The two of you let that statement settle for a moment. He’s right, you know all too well. Still, the thought leaves a wad of uncomfortable and complicated feelings lodged in your throat.

After a moment’s pause, you break the silence.

“I have too many years of trauma and not enough therapy money to unpack everything I’m feeling right now.”

Taylor cracks first, and giggles come pouring out of the two of you. The joke wasn’t even funny, but you guessed the two of you had been serious for far too long.

Some minutes later, when the giggles finally die down and you return to watching Taylor’s show, you find yourself with your head on his shoulder.

“Whatever you decide, you know I’m here for you, right?” Taylor quietly picks up where the conversation had left off.

“Sure,” you agree, “Like I was there for you when you cried over a boy I told you wasn’t shit.” You completely deserve the elbow to the side you receive for that comment.

“Shut up, I’m being cheesy!” Taylor scolds with a laugh.

“I’m lactose intolerant!” You complain, but obligingly fall silent.

“Seriously,” Taylor insists, “I’ll be here every step of the way. Whatever you need.”

You wrap your arms around the one of his that you’re leaning on and give a gentle squeeze to show your appreciation. “Thanks Tay.” you murmur.

“Of course. You got me front row tickets to a SKZ concert, we’re ride or die whether you like it for not!” You poke his side to scold him for not being serious after just insisting that you be, but end up having to fight for your life when he immediately retaliates by trying to tickle you.

It takes the two of you quite a while to calm down again, Taylor smug in his victory. He holds your ankles in his lap like trophies of war as you stare at the ceiling. The quiet creeps back in quickly, so you speak.

“I’m just not sure what I want, I think.” You tell him, “I don’t want to meet them. But at the same time, I really do, y’know?”

Taylor nods, “Just let the universe do its thing.” he suggests, “If you’re meant to meet them now, you’ll meet them regardless of what you want. But after you meet them, it’s all up to you.”

You nod along, humming your acceptance of his advice. He’s right, again. You can’t really fight fate, even if you desperately want to. But even within that large restraint, you’re a human being with free will. The world is your oyster and all that.

You let your thoughts fade out and just listen to Taylor yap about the drama on the TV as he finally tunes back into it.

It’s nearly dawn when the two of you decide to turn in, post-concert jitters having deserted you and heavy conversations having taken their toll.

“Did you manage to get their name before you bolted?” Taylor asks out of nowhere as you’re walking to your respective rooms. “Your soulmate’s” He clarifies at your confused look.

“Oh, I didn’t need to.” You answer absentmindedly, already opening your door and dreaming of your cozy sheets. “It was Bangchan.”

You close your door on his gawping face, blissfully unaware of the crisis you’d just sent him into.

Perma Tag List: @Mbioooo0000

[bangtanhoneys]

SEOKJIN & GRACE - THE IKEA BOOKCASE

“Maybe we should have asked Yoongi to come and do it.”

The office in the brand new home that Seokjin had purchased two weeks after he was discharged from the military was completely bare apart from four large boxes that IKEA had just delivered. One box had been opened with its contents spread across the floor and one instruction manual which said it was so easy to do and could be easily assembled by two people.

Seokjin had taken that as a personal challenge and after an hour, the only thing he had accomplished was getting one part of the large bookcase somewhat completed. 

Grace stood over her partner as he sat on the floor, flicking through the pages and wondering (not for the first time today) if they had missed something. IKEA that is. Seokjin knew what he was doing.

“I’m not calling Yoongi to help me put together my girlfriend’s bookcase that she has specifically ordered to hold all her books, awards and trophies,” he grumbled. “Just because he bragged about installing 3 bidets back at the dorm doesn’t mean I can’t put together a bookcase.”

“Okay,” Grace drawled as she held up her hands in defeat. It would be easier to leave him to it, to go and organise the rest of the house that was now theirs and come back to him when it was nearly dinnertime when his attention would be off the trickiness of IKEA and on his stomach. Pizza would be a good idea.

In the time between when she had last seen Seokjin and half an hour before dinner, Grace had completely unpacked their bedroom and had sorted their ridiculously large walk-in closet as well as made the bed, putting on new covers and decorated it with the things they had bought together - to match their unique individual styles. RJ had taken pride of place on the chair in the corner of the room. 

The only rooms left to sort were the two spare bedrooms, the office, the two bathrooms and lastly the kitchen. But the kitchen was Seokjin’s department after he had completed the bookcase. Or he’d give up and actually call Yoongi, declare IKEA were wrong and go to the safe haven of his kitchen. 

She peered her head around the doorway, to find the bookcase had been completed but there were parts left over that shouldn’t have been left over. And Seokjin as well as Yoongi, who was on FaceTime, were completely puzzled as to why there were bits still laying on the floor. 

“How about,” Grace started which made Seokjin jump and yelp causing Yoongi to disappear from the FaceTime call completely, “we order food and we both come and look at this after we’ve eaten. You’ve been at it all day.”

“It’s there,” Seokjin sighed as he ended the call and rested his hands on his hips, frowning at the bookcase.

“Don’t frown, love, you’ll get wrinkles,” she giggled as her fingers smoothed out his forehead. “Come on, let’s go and order your favourite pizza and we’ll have a look at it later.”

Her boyfriend grumbled about being defeated by a bookcase but trudged out of the office. The defiant bookcase stood against the wall, complete in all its glory, apart from the few pieces that lay over the floor. It wouldn’t be tackled for another couple of days, when Yoongi would appear and take it apart and put it together again, with no pieces missing.

[thesecretwriter]

more than just friends (part 3) - steve rogers

pairing: Steve Rogers x female reader

warnings: Angst – this part has the least amount of angst from all previous parts, fluff – flasback of how reader and steve use to be, a touching moment between steve and reader, reader being in the med bay at the compound – nothing graphic described.

summary: Things with Steve are still tense, but with the sudden occurrence of you being injured, the tension has lessened. However, Steve is left with life decisions that determine how things pan out for him. You play a vital role for him and having you there is important, even if it doesn’t seem so.

word count: 1.8k

a/n: here’s part 3 – i thought this might be a good ending, but I wanna continue it to at least a part 5. reasons being so that you guys could have a chance in seeing steve redeem himself.

minors/ageless blogs dni.

Masterlists

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5

Your eyes watched as he aimlessly walked around the venue. His eyes roamed around, looking from one couple to another. A tinge of sadness was hidden behind his piercing blue eyes. They eventually made their way to you. The edged of your lips automatically perking up. He immediately started making his way to you.

“I was looking for you,” he said leaning against the bars counter, where you had been seated.

“And now you’ve found me,” you reply happily, running on liquid courage.

Steve watched as you took another sip from your wine glass.

“How many of those have you had?” he asked with an amused smile.

“Not enough,” your chuckle and down the rest of it.

It had been a long day filled with the endless chaos of Tony and Pepper’s wedding. The day started at the crack of dawn and wouldn’t end until the light of the next day.

“It was a beautiful day, hmm?” he gazed at you and then back at the drink in his hand.

“Beautiful indeed,” you look to Tony and Pepper who were lovingly dancing together. You were happy to see Tony finally get the life he deserved, it’s something you wanted for all your friends.

It was no secret that you were a hopeless romantic. You wanted a happy ending one day. With a loving partner, potentially a family and a few pets to keep the happiness growing.

“You ever think about having a happily ever after?” you curiously ask.

The question surprised Steve, but he took time to process the question. He did want the cliché American happily ever after. His friends from the 40’s got their happy endings and now his modern-day friends were getting theirs.

“I guess I wouldn’t mind it. Coming home to a loving wife, maybe a kid or two if we wanted…” he trailed off and met your eyes as you nodded in understanding and continued to gaze at the dance floor.

“How about you? Is that something you want?” he wanted to know what your ideal life would be.

“Honestly… I just want to be loved. I want a life filled with all the predictable cliché stuff; you know? But I think I’d also like a nice quiet life, away from the harsh reality we fight against,”

Your eyes had yet to meet Steve’s – who was looking at you with an unknown emotion. However, a sense of longing was clearly present in them. For once, Steve found himself wanting to share a similar future to yours.

(flashback over)

It felt like an out of body experience as you recalled the memory. That was the beginning of whatever 'relationship' you and Steve shared, till the faithful night of his harsh words.

Your eyes were heavy, and you were struggling to open them. The prominent sounds of beeping could be heard. When you finally did manage to open your eyes, the striking glow of the sun blinding your gaze for a split second.

Someone had been holding your left hand, gripping it tightly, when you looked to see who it was – you were met with an increasing heartbeat that could be heard through the heart monitor. Steve sat hunched over as he slept while holding your hand. As you look around the room, you recognize it as the med bay at the compound. You try to recall the moments leading up to you being here and Steve’s voice echoes through your mind.

“Y/n, sweetheart. I need you to keep your eyes open for me, okay? I want your eyes on me,”

You tried to take your hand out of Steve’s hold to sit up properly and possibly reach over for a glass of water, but your sudden movement caused Steve to stir. His eyes fluttered open as he blinked away his sleep.

The first thing he noticed was the absence of your hand in his.

He looked to you and saw you staring back at him with wide eyes.

“Y/n? you’re awake!... I need to call Dr. Cho,” he went to press the button which would request assistance.

“N-no… not yet,” your words halted his movements. He was now closer to you and looked to you in worry.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

“No, I just need a moment… what happened?” you reached over for the glass of water, but Steve had already gone ahead to give it to you. He placed it back on the side table once you were done and his hand automatically grasped yours again.

“The mission that you and Peter went on was compromised and you got shot. Dr. Cho said it wasn’t critical, but you were unconscious for more than 24 hours,” he explained and fiddled with your fingers, a habit he did to distract himself.

You nodded at his words and watched him carefully. His tone held fear, something you weren’t used to seeing Steve experience.

“Is Peter okay?” you asked recalling the look of sheer panic he had when you were shot.

“A bit shaken up, but he’s okay… he’s a good kid,” Steve commented with a small smile.

“Kid? You know him and I are the same age, right?” you chuckle.

“But he’s not you,”

A day had passed, and you were discharged to go back to your room but were told to use the next few weeks to recover. Peter had taken it upon himself to help you around the compound.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said as he sat on your bed where you were laying, staring at the ceiling.

“I wouldn’t be okay if it weren’t for you,” you moved your head in his direction and smiled appreciatively.

“Steve was the reason we were able to get back to the compound that quickly. Don’t tell him I said this, but the look in his eyes that day made him look like a mad man. He was frantic and wouldn’t leave your side,”

You looked back to the ceiling and began to wonder.

Steve obviously cared for you. He went out of his way to make sure you were okay, even before you got shot. During the ‘professional treatment’ phase, he had resumed back to how he was before your argument. That didn’t hinder your thoughts though, he would have to do more to earn your forgiveness.

Bored.

The perfect word to describe how you felt. It seemed like everyone was busy doing something.

You walked through the halls of the compound, aimlessly wondering and looking for something to do. Your recovery hindered your ability to kill time in the training facility, so you found yourself walking towards the same spot where you set up the picnic.

As you walked closer to the spot, you saw Steve sitting a few feet away on a bench. Feeling the familiar flutter of butterflies in your tummy, you made your way toward him.

“Hey,” you greeted, bringing him out of his daze. He looked in your direction and an automatic smile made its way to his lips.

“Hi,” he smiled and patted the seat next to him.

“What’re you doing out here?” you asked curiously.

“Just taking in some fresh air and thinking. How’s your wound? How’re you feeling?” he asked looking at the spot where you were shot.

“It’s okay, a slow recovery, but its okay,” you smile and assure him.

An awkward silence had surrounded the two of you. The scene before you was a sad contrast of how things once was.

“I uhm…”

“So-”

You both spoke at the same time and then chuckled.

“You go first,” he nodded.

“No, you. I miss hearing our voice,” the words slip passed your lips before you can stop them, but the smile on Steve’s lips quickly erases the feeling of regret.

“Okay… well uhm, I’ve decided to start... therapy,” he said looking at his hands. “I’ve been thinking about it and after speaking to Bucky about how it’s made things better for him… I realized how much of trauma I’ve retained from the war and the adjustment to living in a new age of time,”

You listened intently as he spoke, the vulnerability in Steve’s voice was heart aching.

“I think it’s a good idea,” your tone held encouragement and displayed the concern you felt for him.

“Yeah?... I think so too,” a small smile graced his lips.

You allowed yourself to get lost in thought for a moment. This was a big step for Steve – you knew it took a lot for him to admit that he needed therapy. In fact, it hadn’t crossed your mind before. Your line of work basically requires you to endure events and situations that could only be helped with therapy.

“I think it would be an even better idea if we spoke to Fury about establishing a psychologist or therapist to stay at the compound. For whoever may need it. We deal with a lot from being avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D agents,” you explain to him.

“I’ll set up a meeting with him about it,” Steve nodded and took your hands in his, moving closer to you.

“There’s something else I want to say to you…” he trailed off, his eyes were set on the ground before meeting yours.

“The words I said that night- Y/n. I didn’t mean any of them. My mind was clouded with anger, which shouldn’t have been directed towards you. And I’m not going to blame my issues or trauma on it, because it was uncalled for. I just want you to know that I didn’t mean it. You’re not a second option. You’ve been so good to me since we’ve met and I don’t want to throw that away because of my stupidity,”

Your hands remain in his as each word leaves his lips. You had already established that you knew his words weren’t true, and his apology was genuine. Which is why your next few words were chosen so carefully.

“For me to know you’re true about your words – we’re going to have to go very slow to become normal again. I’m still here for you, I always will be, but right now, you need yourself more than you need me,” you lean your forehead against his and close your eyes.

The intimate moment shared between you two solidified to Steve that there was no one else like you. No one who would say or do the things the way you do.

“I love you,” is all he whispers.

tagging those who reblogged/commented:

@paarthurnax59 @terry2227 @sweater-bee @niffala @superforgottensoul @haruvalentine4321 @steve-language-rogers @slxttyro @themrsrogers

[scenteddelusion5]

"Two households, both unalike in dignity, In our unsightly hell, where we lay our scene," PART 5 (FINISHED)

Vox x gn reader (Alastor's child)

Note: LAST PART!!! Are you ready?!

Word count: 4074

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

Y/n's eyes slowly opened. How long were they asleep? They slowly pushed themselves up. Familiar sheets covered them, it was theirs. Looking around they were on their room, only it looked to be a lot cleaner. All their dirty clothes had disappeared, their box stood newly organised in the bookcase and the dirty cup that usually stood on their nightstand was gone. In its stead stood a beautiful vase with their favourite flowers in it.

Their shoulder was patched up. It hadn't completely healed yet, it still hurt but not as much anymore. Y/n threw his legs out of bed, trying to stand up only to fall down again. They hadn't had any energy left, despite having slept for at least a few hours.

"Where's Vox?" Y/n whispered to themselves.

That's when it hit them, Vox had gotten hurt because of them. their adrenaline pumped up again, giving Y/n the strength to stand up again. They ran, or rather stumbled, out of the room.

"Vox!"

Alastor ran up from his eat when he heard noises coming from upstairs. His child was finally awake. He ran to the stairs and there they were.

"Careful, little fawn, you'll fall." Alastor held them up using his shadows.

"Vox! No, where's Vox?!" They tried to pull themselves away from the shadows. "I have to get to Vox."

"Your... 'boyfriend'... is fine." Alastor said with disgust. "He is coming by later in the afternoon. You should lay down again."

"You aren't going to hurt him?"

"As much as I dislike him, I now see that you two are truly in love." He held them by the arm and let them back to their room. "You've been asleep for two days, the angelic rope had drained a lot of your energy." He sat them down back on the bed. "That noisy picture box of yours had come by six times since he had awoken, even brought you flowers."

"He brought these." They mumbled, reaching for the flowers.

The Radio Demon looked at their child smiling at something as simple as a few flowers like they were the biggest treasure in the world.

"Little fawn, I'm sorry. I tried to protect you to the best of my ability but I almost lost you because of it." He pulled them into a hug. "Please forgive me."

Y/n hugged him back. "I forgive you."

"Now, what would you like to eat?" Alastor pulled back and patted their head. "You must be starving."

"Jambalaya sounds really good right now."

"Good old Jambalaya it is then." He stood up and was about to leave the room. "Oh, I almost forgot, he left you a gift. I put it on your desk." The door closed with a click and they were all alone again.

They stood up again and slowly made their way to the desk. A small unfamiliar, black box sat in the corner. Inside it sat a brand new VoxTech phone, a new phone case and a note:

I'm sorry love but after what happened I kept the tracker on. -Love Vox <3

Picking up the case, it had a cute drawing of a deer in the green woods on the back. Y/n turned on the phone, on it popped the same picture of Vox and them. He had transferred all their data and settings.

Y/n looked at their two contacts; Vox and Velvette. Their finger hovered over the calk button. Alastor said he would came by later anyway... But they really wanted to hear his voice, just to see if he is okay. They clicked.

It took Vox only two seconds to pick up. "Y/n? Are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm doing fine. I just woke up. How are you?"

"Now that I'm talking to you, better than ever doll." His voice deepened, trying to sound cooler. Y/n really loved this dork.

"Sir, the presentation is-" A squeaky voice could be heard through the call.

"Don't you see I'm on the phone." Vox dismissed him.

"If you're busy I can calk later."

"NO! Don't worry about it, I'm not busy, Vox said quickly, "you know what? I'm so not busy I will come over right away!"

"But sir-" The voice spoke again.

"Bye bea, I'll see you in a minute!"

Y/n could only imagine the panic on his worker's face when Vox sprinted out of that meeting. After speaking with him again, Y/n felt their energy recover even more and decided to head downstairs.

Alastor was working on his special Jambalaya in the kitchen. His little, deer tail swaying to the sound of jazz music coming from the radio. Hearing Y/n enter, he turned around.

"What are you doing out of bed?" He asked. "You should be resting more."

"I feel rested enough." Y/n stalked over to the stove. "It smells amazing."

"Of course it does, I made it. I also put in the 'secret ingredient'." He winked. "Even used your favourite."

A knock came from the front door.

"I'll get it!" They rushed to the front door. "Hey Vox!"

"Y/n!" He hugged his lover. "How are you healing up? Does it still hurt? Should I get tou some painkillers?"

Alastor rolled his eyes hearing the TV Demon at the door.

"No need, I'm doing fine."

The two walked back in through the hallway into the kitchen.

"More importantly, how is your wound?" They gently grabbed his arm to inspect the wound. "I'm sorry, I hurt you."

"You didn't do anything! I-I jumped in front of you! It's my fault." Vox slightly buffered as he was talking a mile a minute. "I'm just happy you're fine." He put on his adorable, dorky, little smile.

"Vox, I wasn't expecting you until 5 pm." Alastor's voice sounded irritated but his smile didn't falter.

"Well, Y/n called me. So I rushed over."

There definitely still was tension between the two, a lot of tension. But they weren't openly nor aggressively hostile towards each other. It was progress.

Alastor's smirk grew wider. "Then why don't you join us for lunch. I made Jambalaya." He put down the pot on the dining table.

Vox sat down next to Y/n, wrapping his arm around them. "Sure."

Vox regretted his decision as soon as Alastor pulled of the lid revealing the Jambalaya. A familiar smell reeked from it, there was demon meat inside it.

"You know what, I think I'll pass." Vox laughed nervously.

"I can't believe how rude your boyfriend is being Y/n. Not eating the food I so lovingly prepared." The Radio demon took a big scoop and put it on a plate. "At least take a bite."

"It's fine if you don't want it." Y/n pulled the plate away from him. "I'll finish it for you."

"What kind of man can't even finish his own plate?"

"Those are old-timey values, dad."

"Hmm." Alastor looked him up and down. "It's still disrespectful."

"Like we have ever had respect for each other, you old bastard," Vox said holding up his middle finger.

"See, that's not any way to talk to the father of your partner."

"Dad, stop it." Y/n scolded him. "You don't have to eat anything you don't want to."

Vox looked down to the Jambalaya and then back up to a smug looking Alastor. "I'll try it."

"Splendid!" Alastor grabbed two more plates and filled them up. "Bon appetite!"

Vox slowly used his fork to bring the Jambalaya to his mouth. He had eaten demon flesh before, this shouldn't be any different. Just bite through it.

The TV Demon swallowed as fast as possible. "Blur, that was... sure something."

"Aren't you going to finish your plate?" Alastor challenged him.

And so the lunch went on. Vox almost throwing up with every bite while Alastor was smirking at him every time.

"There, I finished it!" He yelled, victorious.

"Then would you like seconds?"

"Dad! Leave him alone. You've bullied him enough." Y/n was quite surprised by hoe civil the two still were but that didn't mean they had fully forgiven him. "Besides, you had hurt him pretty badly too during my 'rescue'. Don't you think he deserves an apology?" They knew they were pushing the Radio Demon's limits with that one and yet they still wanted to see if he actually would.

Alastor sighed, "Vox."

Was he actually going to?

"My sincerest apologies, I hadn't realized how weak you truly are and therefore used too much force."

"Oh fuck you."

"Now that that's out of the way, we have more important things to discuss." Alastor stood up and brought the dirty dishes to the sink. "You see, after my poor fawn had passed out and Vox decided to be dramatic, I captured the demon behind the attack. I still have him, Paris and the imp in my possession"

"Hmm, you know, I've always wondered what imp tastes like." Y/n cheekily suggested.

"As for Paris, I will have some fun with him and then hand him over to Rosie." Alastor had washed off the dishes and was putting them back in the cupboards. "He's her responsibility. The last Demon's fate is up to you, DEAR future son in law." The nickname was spat out like venom.

"So, who is the fucker that wanted them dead anyway?" Vox enquired.

"It seemed a certain colleague of yours had gotten jealous and decided to take my little fawn out."

"Val," Vox whispered. "I knew he was acting weird."

"How are you planning to deal with him?"

Vox looked at Y/n, their deer eyes staring back at him. He could have lost them forever, all because Valentino couldn't get over being dumped. He had to kill him. Not only to ensure Y/n's safety but also to prove himself to Alastor. To prove that nothing comes before them.

"Do you have angelic weapons here?"

Vox, Y/n and Alastor had wondered deep into the forest on the Radio Demon's territory. Nothing could be heard except for some hellbirds chirping.

"Doesn't this bring you back, little fawn?" Alastor lamented. "I still remember your first hit, we buried his leftovers next to that old tree. Haha, those were the days!"

"Yeah, I couldn't even finish a liver back then!" Y/n laughed.

As terrifying as their conversation was, it could not compare the what he was going to do. He knew Val had to go, for their sake, but he was still an old friend. One HE had to kill. He couldn't even discuss it with Velvette first!

Oh she was going to be so mad, with Valentino gone both their workloads would increase tenfold.

They stopped at a clearing. Vox held the gun in his sweaty hands. Alastor opened a pitch black portal. Out of it he pulled a tied up Val.

"Don't you know how shitty it is in there!" The overlord yelled. "Ah, Voxie baby, thanks for getting me out of there."

Vox held up the gun and pointed it straight at the man's head.

"Wowowow, what's all this about?" Valentino looked around seeing Alastor and Y/n glaring at him. "Are you seriously choosing them over me? You FUCKING need me! YOU NEED ME!!!" He started to approach Vox. "These two are going to get rid of you after me!"

"Goodbye Val." Vox pulled the trigger. An angelic bullet shot straight through the demon's head, killing him instantly. "So, what are we going to do with the body?"

"Don't worry, the animals will take care of it."

A month went by like a breeze. Vox had to find a new face for the V's 'film' department, in the meantime he had to take over as Velvette refused to take on more work.

"Fuck no!" She had yelled when he even brought up the possibility of taking over a little bit of paperwork.

So it all fell on him. This also meant he had less time to spend with Y/n, which they understood. And Alastor got to enjoy the chance to tell him how much of a terrible boyfriend he was for not spending enough time with them.

All and all, things went well.

As Vox's workload got smaller and smaller the couple started to spend more time together, which Alastor loathed. So the man took every chance he got to interrupt the two.

Going to the movies, suddenly there is a power outage. Having dinner at restaurant, Alastor invites himself along. Taking a walk through the forest, suddenly he NEEDS Y/n's help with something.

It became a sort if challenge between the two, who could keep Y/n's attention for the longest.

The couple were laying on the bed in their room Y/n reading a book while Vox was handling some more documents. Door wide upon as per Alastor's rules.

"I swear he is doing it on purpose!" Vox complained. "I mean, he straight up attacked me this time."

"He wants to see what you can do, train you." They turned over a page in their book. "It's his way of bonding. He already likes you a lot better, I swear!

He sighed, "if you say so, sweets. I sometimes just wished we could get along better, not just for my comfort but for yours." Vox set down his tablet on their nightstand and combed his fingers through their hair. "It must be exhausting to have us bicker all the time."

Before Y/n could answer, however, they got interrupted.

"My little fawn!" Alastor walked in. "I have to go to a meeting and I was wondering if you would come with me?"

"Oh." Y/n looked up at Vox. "I think I'm staying here. I haven't had the chance to hang out with Vox in quite some time."

"That's so unfortunate, you see." The overlord smirked. "It's quite the chance to build some steady connections for when it's time to climb up the ranks for you, but oh well!"

"If that's the case, why don't you take Vox with you?!"

"Pardon?"

"He is an overlord too, connections would be useful, right?" They looked the TV Demon in the eyes.

"Uhm well yes, bu-"

"Then this is your chance!" They jumped up from the bed and started pushing Alastor out of the room. "He'll be down in five."

For some strange reason or another, the Radio Demon didn't make a fuss about it. Just accepted that Vox would come with, strange... Very strange...

Alastor and Vox stood awkwardly next to each other right outside the front door.

"So, are we taking a car, or...?" Vox broke the silence.

"If we still lived in my time we would have just taken the trolly," the Radio Demon remarked, "But we aren't so get those legs moving. It's quite far."

The TV glared at the other walking away. "Where are we going, anyway?"

Alastor looked back at the man catching up to him. "Don't worry your ugly little head over it!"

"This 'ugly head' scored your child, motherfucker!" He retorted.

A shadowy tentacle shot out of Alastor's back. The appendage hit Vox right in the middle of his screen, almost cracking it.

"I didn't take you for a gambler," Vox said, staring at the buzzling casino the two were about to enter, "what would Y/n think of you?"

"I don't frequent establishments of this kind often but when I do, I don't plan on losing." Alastor made his way inside, the other following him. "This is your chance to show me what you're made of. Don't ruin it."

Vox followed the demon into the back where a familiar overlord was sitting at a poker table.

"Husker my old friend, I see you are at again!" He sat down at the table and as soon as he did, a few of the denizens that excused themselves. "How about a round? Even brought easy pickings."

"I'm not easy pickings!" Vox yelled whole sitting down, not willing to back of from this challenge.

"Vox, huh, didn't realise you became chummy with the Radio Demon." Husker looked him up and down. "Fine, you can join but remember, we're dealing in souls over here!"

As soon as Vox sat down, chips appeared before him. These chips, however, weren't your usual casino chips. No, these held a soul in them. He couldn't believe this was happening, gambling with souls was very risky and here Alastor, fucking Alastor, was willing to risk it against the overlord of gambling. Not only that, but the man had pulled him along too.

The cards were shuffled and everyone got their own deck. This was insane, losing even one game could mean losing his position as an overlord. Now that Vox was thinking about it, Alastor had planned to bring Y/n along for this.

He was willing to risk Y/n's power and soul for a stupid game! This didn't feel right, Alastor would never. Then maybe, just maybe, the Radio Demon had already secured the win before even starting the game.

Vox looked over at the man, and the face he saw confirmed it. The Radio Demon was smirking even wider than ever before. This was going to be Husk's last night as an overlord. For him this meant to protect his own souls at all costs and let Alastor handle the rest.

"Come on Husker, are you really going to back out now?" Alastor teased, "Maybe you'll win it all back in one last round!"

"I don't have more souls." Husker glared at the giant stack of chips in front of the other two.

"Well technically you do have one more... But I understand why you wouldn't gamble with it." The Radio Demon put on a fake disappointed face while still maintaining his signature smile. "I guess that's it for the gambling overlord."

The two other demons were about to stand up and leave before Husker spoke up, "Wait! One more round but keep in mind that I have only one souls to bet!"

"It's a deal then!" The Radio Demon immediately agreed. "I'll put in all my chips for your singular soul."

"I'm backing out." Vox took his chips and made them disappear. Knowing Alastor, the demon would've taken all his souls too this round if he didn't. Besides, he had even gained a few souls that night.

"Heads up, then?" Husker asked at which Alastor agreed.

It was a brutal sight. The horror in Husker's eyes after he realised he not only lost his position as an overlord but also lost his own soul, all in the same night.

"Well good friend, it's getting late and I have to prove to my little fawn I didn't kill their suiter!" Alastor made all his chips disappear. "Come on Vox, Y/n is waiting on us."

"Right..." Vox was still flabbergasted about what he witnessed that day.

Once outside, he gained the confidence to speak up. "What was that?"

"Just some dealings, shouldn't an overlord like you understand such a simple concept?" Alastor chided. "Or are you as incapable as I first guessed you were!"

"That's not what I meant! You were going to have Y/n gamble with souls?!" Vox stepped in front of him, blocking the way. "You know how risky that would be you lollipop looking FUCKER!!!"

"They would've been just fine," he shrugged, "besides, it's about time they gained more power. I can't always be there for them, especially when they go behind my back." He shot a glare at the other man.

"Then why were you fine with me coming?"

"Hmm, if they're going to be with you, I should make sure you can protect them."

The rest of the way back was silent. Vox mulling over the other's words.

Weeks went by and instead of fighting over Y/n's attention, Alastor started to pull Vox away from them for 'training sessions'. While Vox found them to be tortures, he couldn't deny they weren't useful.

It was Y/n's birthday, the house was decorated with banners and guests were coming over. Vox had already been there since morning, annoying their father. Rosie, Franklin, some other cannibals and even Velvette came over. Gifts stacked on the table, snacks were available next to the pile.

"Oh darling, it's good to see you." Rosie shook their hand. "And another happy birthday!"

"Thanks, Rosie!"

At some point Alastor pulled Vox away from the party into his study.

"I need to talk with you." The Radio Demon filled his cup with whatever was in the ceramic pitcher. "As you know I am quite the traditional man."

"I'm aware," Vox answered.

"Then I probably won't have to tell you this but I just want to make sure." He took a sip from his mug. "If I find out you two partook in any... Usual marital affairs before you two could wed, I will hunt you to the edges of hell and rip your soul apart." Alastor grew twice in size, his eyes turned into dials, and static and symbols appeared all around him. "G̸̟͉̍̃͒̐͝Ö̴͔̫̀T̸̻̹̆ ̶̺͉̻̫̝̯̈̉̅̏̑ ̸̠̞͌͋͛͑͛̉͝͝I̵̖̩̓̃̈͝Ṫ̷̨̧̥̺̤̗̳̹͒̐?!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Great!" In one second the Radio Demon was back to his usual self. "Now let's get back to the party, shall we?"

Guests came and went, until only Alastor and Vox were left.

"So, uhm, the night's almost over but I haven't given you my gift yet." Vox held a rectangle box in his nervous sweaty hands. "Here."

Y/n carefully pulled of the ribbon and the wrapping paper, revealing a box. It was a V-Reader.

"Thank you."

"I wasn't sure you would like it but it can hold of 5 million books, designed it myself!"

"It's perfect." Y/n kissed the screen right between his eyes where his nose would have been.

"Erhmehm," Alastor fake coughed while glaring at the other overlord, "You also haven't received my gift yet." He grabbed their hand, holding it tightly.

Before Y/n realised what he was about to do, pure power started running through their veins from their hand to the rest of their body.

"I got these souls recently and have no need for them. I figured you could use some more power."

"I see, thanks."

The rest of the night was spend with just the two lovebirds in their room, door open of course.

"Dad's been acting weird, don't you think?"

"He has been his some old annoying self as far as I've noticed." Vox ran his fingers through their hair. "Why do you think that?"

"He would've never given me souls if it wasn't for something important and instead of trying to pull me away, he has been 'training' you." Y/n laid their head on his chest, listening for his heartbeat. "He has also been very sentimental the last few days, looking back on childhood memories, cooking together, hunting together. It all feels off."

"Then we'll ask him about it tomorrow, I doubt he would want to worry you."

"If you say so."

They were never able to ask him, because when the two of them woke up without the father yelling at Vox to get out of their bed, the two knew there was something wrong. They looked around the house, Alastor, however, was nowhere to be found.

They went to Cannibal Town to ask around, but no one had seen him there either. Not even Rosie knew where he was. Y/n's worry grew and grew. It got so bad that Vox decided to use his camera's to look all over hell to look for a sign of the Radio Demon.

Nothing, absolute no sign of Alastor.

Months went by, still no sign. Y/n moved into Vox's apartment, for both safety and not to feel lonely in their old home where everything reminded them of their father.

Even after all this time, Y/n still held hope, however, after two years that hope dissolved too. Vox and them started taking over all of the Radio Demon's responsibility.

After a while the two of them even got engaged and Y/n had accepted the fact that their father likely would never come back.

Epilogue

Seven years went by and the love birds were extremely happy, until one day Vox was working in his office and one of his camera's that he had around the princes' new hotel picked up something.

"THAT FUCKER IS BACK!" Vox yelled, staring at the screen showing the Radio Demon casually hanging out at the Hazbin Hotel. "He didn't even tell Y/n. Oh, I'm going to make him suffer for their grieve. I'm going to make you wish you'd stayed gone!"

And that's the end. My next long series is with Zestial, part 1 already out. But if you have any one-shot request for me check out my pinned post with all the characters I write about!

Masterlist/request guidelines

Taglist: @hxzbinwrites

[lilyofthesword-writes]

What Should Be - Part 4 (Batman)

Summary: You have a loving family, a cozy home, a great job - What more could a person ask for? But what do you do when an injured man dressed as a bat shows up in your home in the middle of the night?

Pairing: Batman x Reader (Platonic or Romantic)

Word Count: 1,036

Warnings/Disclaimers: Blood, injuries

Counterpart: Alchemy (Please read first)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |  | Part 5 | Epilogue

Masterlist

You didn’t sleep again, but you weren’t about to let Jesse find out. After you had found the will to stand, you went to bed and laid on your back staring up at the ceiling until dawn broke. You waited for your partner to get up, vaguely wondering why the alarm hadn’t gone off yet.

What day is it?

A cell phone rang on Jesse’s side of the bed. They groaned and answered it. You shut your eyes and pretended to sleep. They kept their voice low to not wake you, but you knew what was being said. It was a Saturday and they were being called into work on some emergency. Well, at least it was less of a chance for them to find you out.

They hung up, rolling over to nudge you. “Hey, babe. Wake up.”

“Mmmm,” you feigned drowsiness.

They huffed amusedly. “I have to go into the office today. Are you okay taking Torri to his friend’s party today?”

You frowned internally. You didn’t remember any party today.

Peeling your eyes open, you breathed, “Yeah… What time, again?”

“One. At Amusement Mile.”

“Heh?” You shot up. “Why there? That’s where—”

Jesse leaned in and pulled you to them into an awkward embrace. “Where, what? That’s where kids have parties and fun? You act like its a criminal hangout.” They laughed when you scrunched your nose. “You’ve got to be joking. Babe, it’s just an amusement park. It’s been around for years. It’ll be great!”

You just nodded. They kissed your temple and left to get ready for work.

Later that day, you got Torrence ready to go and in the car. The drive was fairly quiet, only hearing the road noise and your son playing with a toy in the back seat. He was the one to break the silence.

“Do you think Adrian will like the gift we picked?”

“Of course, she will,” you smiled, glancing into the rear view mirror. “Why wouldn’t she?”

He bounced his heels on the back seat. His bottom lip puckered out in thought. “I mean… She likes Batman… A lot. But she has a lot already.”

“Bat…man?”

Torrence gasped, “You don’t remember Batman?”

He immediately went into describe him, hands going up to show the pointed ears on the cowl, but you couldn’t hear him. Your ears deafened with a loud ringing. You looked up in the rear view mirror and saw him. Batman, still battered, was sitting in the back seat. And he was staring right at you. You turned your body to face him. Nothing was there. Just your son who froze, hands in the air, with a look of terror on his face.

A horn honked angrily. Twisting back, a car going the opposite lane was in your lane. Or rather, you were in theirs. You wrenched the steering wheel to the side, veering away from the car and off the road.

You slinked through the shadows of the warehouses along the wharf. Graffiti littered the building exteriors.You could not afford to be caught by one of the gangs who called this home or what you were hunting.

Maybe you should have told one of the vigilantes you were going to be here or tried to get one to come with you. No. That wouldn’t have worked. They would have never let you leave your apartment if you said anything. They were definitely products of the Bat. You shook your head as you rounded the corner.

There it was. You saw an old ship repair building up ahead. It was the one you had found on one of Gotham’s older maps. Newer ones didn’t include it. The gangs didn’t go near the shabby former business. It was the only one not covered with grotesque spray-painted words and symbols. You made your way inside through a window void of glass.

Much to your dismay, you had to use a flashlight to see anything. The smog was too heavy a filter to let any natural light the moon may have provided. You hoped this didn’t alert your prey. Unsheathing your silver blade in your unoccupied hand, you used it to steady the flashlight beam.

Everything seemed untouched, layers of dirt and sand on the equipment and a constellation of dust in the air. That is… Until you reached the highest floor.

Abandoned boxes of office furniture had been shuffled about. They had left a clear trail across the wooden flooring so desperately in need of sweeping. Rusted gurneys laid strewn about while chains swayed from the ceiling. Your thigh pulsed in time with the chains. It was here. You needed to get to Batman quick. But where was he?

You stuck to the walls, keeping your back against them. A set of double doors settled just down a nearby hall. Your throat constricted. The hairs on your arms stood on end. This was a terrible idea. 

Sucking in a deep breath, you began your power walk down the hall. When you reached the doors, you stopped. No ambush… Yet.

You tried to peer through the glass panels, but the grime and dirt only blockaded your flashlight’s beam. You nudged one of the doors. No squeaks from the hinges. Steeling yourself, you slowly pushed the door open, ready for the old metal to whine. It never happened. You slid past the threshold, gently letting the door fall closed.

There he was.

His gadgets and most of his armor had been strewn about the room. For his sake, his cowl remained on him. Batman was chained, beaten, his suit ripped and torn. A butterfly needle was stuck to his leg, blood slowly drifting through the connected tube and into a sealed container. He was left to dangle from ceiling… In the middle of the room. Cold sweat beaded along your forehead.

Bait.

Yes. You were 100% regretting your decision to come alone.

You pressed yourself against the wall and sidling along in hopes of not being caught off guard. Not that it mattered much. A hand shot out from the shadowy corner you were closing in on, latching onto your throat, touching what little bare skin was available. And you fell into darkness.

[makeitmingi]

Cause Baby You’re My Muse [Chapter 5]

Genre: Romance, Idol!AU, Music, Slight angst

Pairing: Mingi x Reader (y/n)

Characters: Producer!Reader, IdolLyricist!Mingi, IdolProducer!Hongjoong, Idol!Seonghwa, Idol!Yunho, Idol!Wooyoung, Idol!San, Idol!Yeosang, Idol!Jongho, cameo(s) by other celebrities

Summary: You always preferred producing underground, having an unknown face and governed by your own rules. But when you start freelancing for idol groups, you say goodbye to your lone wolf lifestyle as you learn to work with idol producers and lyricists.

Word count: 3.3K

[A/N: I know the Ateez members don’t stay in one dorm anymore but for the sake of this story, let’s assume that they do. Their old arrangement of Matz in one room, Mingi in his own room, San & Yunho in one room and the other 3 in one. ]

After you were finished, you left with Mingi and Hongjoong for movie night at their dorm. But of course, the others demanded that you make a quick pit stop to get snacks before going to theirs. 

“We’re here.” The van stopped in the basement carpark of the apartment complex and you all climbed out. Hongjoong held his hand out to you to help you get down. Mingi didn’t say a word, taking your laptop bag for you so you wouldn’t have to carry it. 

“Thank you.” You smiled at him. You rode the lift with them to the house. Mingi couldn’t even finish putting in the passcode when the door opened.

“Indigo!” Wooyoung yelled excitedly, throwing himself at you to hug you tightly. You caught him, surprised by the sudden attack. 

“Shh, Wooyoung! You’re going to disturb the neighbours. Let’s go in.” Hongjoong scolded. Wooyoung let go of you but held your hand to lead you into the dorm. 

“Glad you could make it.” San smiled. 

“Thank you for inviting me.” You bowed your head. Wooyoung pulled you further into the dorm. 

“Are you okay? Didn’t get chased by paparazzi?” Wooyoung asked, worry suddenly written all over his face. You knew he was referring to the article with Dean. You were a little surprised that they all knew about it.

“Oh, that. Don’t worry, I’m fine. I just went out for some drinks and people were probably excited that Hyuk had emerged again. No one has recognised me so far. Except those who know what I kind of look like, like you guys. Producer Indigo is still a ghost, I’ve not been photographed anywhere else.” You assured him. He let out a sigh of relief.

“Thank goodness. I thought someone would have recognised you or started some fake news about you.” Wooyoung smiled.

“Thank you for your concern.” You gave him an eye smile. 

“Of course, we were all worried for your safety, even asked Eden hyung about it. But he said you’ve been at the studio the whole day with no disturbance.” Yeosang added as he walked past. 

“I’m sorry if I’ve inconvenienced any of you with this. I’ll be more careful in the future.” You turned to whoever was around and bowed.

“Inconvenienced? What are you talking about? Never.” Yunho scoffed. 

“Let me go wash up first since I’ve been at the studio to whole day.” You told them, a little flustered by their affection. Wooyoung led you to one of the bathrooms in the dorm. 

You locked the door and removed your mask to wash your face. Since you were not outdoors, you removed your beanie to put your hair into a loose bun, not wanting your hair to be in the way. Before exiting, you put your mask back on.

“Wow, you really look like Hongjoong hyung.” Jongho stated.

“What are you talking about? Indigo is pretty, don’t keep comparing her to me. It’s insulting to her.” Hongjoong snorted.

“But hyung, you’re good looking!” Wooyoung chased after the captain to the kitchen. You chuckled and walked to the living room area. Yunho and Seonghwa parted to make space for you on the couch. Seonghwa asked you about the progress of the producing today and you gladly shared with him how it was in the studio with Hongjoong and Mingi. 

“I’m excited to work with all of you in the studio when the time comes.” You said to the two. 

“We’re... not the quietest group, if you haven’t noticed. It will not be different even while recording. The chaos is just as bad. That’s why the captain tries to split us up into smaller groups.” Yunho warned. 

“Like that ever works. He puts Wooyoung, Mingi and Jongho together. Might as well send the whole group.” Seonghwa snorted. 

“I’m guessing those are the troublemakers?” You asked with amusement.

“Even ATINY knows. Me, Yeosang and San are the good kids.” Yunho smiled proudly while nodding his head. Seonghwa rolled his eyes, everyone in Ateez had their own kind of chaos.

“Is there anything I can help with?” You stood up when you saw those in the kitchen preparing the snacks and drinks. 

“Nonsense, you’re our guest. Besides, we can handle it. Now go relax in the living room.” Wooyoung placed his hands on your shoulders, turning you around and gently pushing you out of the kitchen. You turned back to look at the kitchen with uncertainty. 

“They say they’re handling it but I swear I smell something burning.” You scratched your head. Seonghwa burst out laughing, patting your shoulder before going to check on those in the kitchen. 

“You can help us pick a movie.” San and Yeosang said from their spots on the ground. They reminded you of kids, it was quite adorable. 

“Sure.” You nodded and headed over, sitting with them.

“We would give you a tour of the dorm but the rooms are too messy.” Yeosang said, a little too honestly, making Yunho hit the back of his head. San also slapped his arm.

“Why would you tell her that?” He hissed.

“I don’t know about you guys but my room isn’t messy.” Hongjoong shrugged, emerging from the kitchen, having been kicked out by Seonghwa.

“Because you room with Seonghwa hyung. He would never let your room get messy.” Jongho said. Soon, Mingi, Wooyoung and Seonghwa came out with trays of snacks and drinks. 

“Can I have an iced tea, please?” You requested, sitting up on the couch. Mingi reached out to take the bottle, pouring it into the glass with ice cubes. What you didn’t expect was for him to take out a straw and put it into the glass, making it easier for you with drink with your mask on. Then he carefully handed it over to you.

“Oh, thank you...” You said, touched by his actions, receiving the glass with two hand and a bow of your head.

“You’re welcome.” He smiled and turned back to the snacks. Instead of sitting on the couch, Mingi sat himself on the ground, in front of you.

“Am I blocking?” He turned back. You shook your head with a thumbs up.

“Can I sit with you?” Wooyoung asked. You nodded, patting the space. He grinned and sat down, draping a blanket over you and himself. The movie that was picked was a Studio Ghibli movie. 

“Everyone comfortable?” Hongjoong asked. 

“Yes!” Everyone replied. Hongjoong went to turn down the lights while San started the movie. 

Throughout the movie, you would sneak snacks under your mask. Wooyoung would sometimes help you lift the blanket to cover the lower part of your face for you to eat, while his eyes were trained on the television screen. It was so comforting you hadn’t realised you fell asleep.

“That was a good movie.” Seonghwa stretched his arms as the credits rolled. Mingi sat up and looked behind to see you and Wooyoung fast asleep against each other. He reached out to adjust your mask first.

“She’s asleep.” Mingi said to the others.

“Jongho ah, go to bed. Go.” Yeosang gently woke his roommate. The youngest groaned, frowning slightly at being disturbed. 

“Come on.” Yeosang pulled Jongho up by his arms and moved him to the room, bidding everyone goodnight at the same time. Seonghwa moved the sleeping Hongjoong to their shared room as well. 

“Should we leave them? Rather than move them and risk them waking up.” Yunho asked. 

“It’s okay if Wooyoung wakes up, not her. I’ll let her sleep in my room. There’s more privacy.” Mingi offered since he was the only one that had his own room. 

“I’ll carry her.” San said. The other two nodded, trusting their member’s strength more than their own. You must have been in deep sleep because you didn’t even flinch as San slipped his arms under you.

“Careful.” Yunho cautioned. Mingi opened his room door and San gently placed you down on the bed. 

“Let’s go.” San ushered everyone out. He draped the blanket over your body and they turned off the lights before closing the door. After that, Yunho retreated to the room while San went to wake his best friend to move him back to his room as well. Wooyoung whined, grumbling as San lifted him up and guided him to his room.

“You can sleep in my bed, Mingi. I can bunk with Wooyoung or Jongho.” San told the taller male, who sat on the couch. 

“It’s okay. Sleep in your own bed. I’ll stay up for a bit more and sleep here.” Mingi patted the couch. San stopped, uncertainty written all over his face but Mingi just waved him off.

“Go on, I’m fine. Goodnight~” Mingi wished. San nodded and bowed before shuffling to his room. 

You jolted awake, looking around at your unfamiliar surroundings. Your hands went to your face and realised that your mask had fallen off in your sleep. While reaching for it, you saw something on the nightstand beside you. 

‘Here’s a new, clean mask.’

You saw the note beside the new mask but no one signed off. Putting the note in your pocket, you wore the new mask. The room had some merch with ‘Song Mingi’ over it so you guessed that you were in his room. But the tall male was nowhere in sight. Opening the door, you poked your head out.

“Ateez?” You whispered but the dorm was pin drop silent. You quietly tip toed out to see Mingi sleeping soundly on the couch, the blanket you shared with Wooyoung last night covering his body.

‘Thank you for letting me use your room and sleep in the living room, as well as the new mask. I owe you one! - Indigo’

After placing your note on the back of Mingi’s phone, which was beside his head, you carefully wore your shoes and left the dorm to go home. 

“What time is it?” You checked your phone as you entered your house. 

‘Thanks again for the movie night, Ateez. It was really enjoyable after a long day of work. I’m sorry I fell asleep, I promise to try to stay awake until the end the next time! - Indigo’

‘Next time?! Does that mean you would come again? - Wooyoung’

‘If you’d have me over. - Indigo’

‘Of course! And don’t apologise for falling alseep, we know how hard you’ve been working in the studio. - Seonghwa’

‘Plus your lack of a sleep schedule. - Jongho’

With a chuckle, you put your phone aside.  You removed your clothes and jumped into the shower since you didn’t get to shower after work. Your intention was to come home after the movie and shower but you feel asleep at Ateez’s dorm. While your hair was drying, you made some breakfast food for yourself, which was french toast. 

“Thank goodness there are off days.” You fell face first onto your bed. Tucked under the blankets, you scrolled on your phone, glad to finally have some time to relax and not need to think about work. 

Mingi was the last one to wake up. He sat up, momentarily forgetting that he was sleeping in the living room. 

“Oh, Mangi, you’re awake.” Wooyoung said, cup of coffee in his hand as he came out of the kitchen.

“Indigo still sleeping?” Mingi asked, stretching his long limbs. 

“Nah, she went home while we were all still asleep. She texted that she was home when we just woke up.” Wooyoung explained before going back to his room. Mingi blinked and picked up his phone, seeing your note. 

“Owe me one?” He laughed. Putting the blanket aside, he went back to his room to see the bed perfectly made. Even he doesn’t make his own bed so neatly when he sleeps there.

“Mingi, want breakfast? The others want eggs and sausages.” Seonghwa poked his head into the room. 

“Sure, hyung... Just save me a plate. I think I’m gonna get a bit more sleep.” Mingi replied to the oldest’s question. Seonghwa nodded and closed the door. Mingi yawned and dove under his covers to get comfortable, hoping to get few more hours of sleep. Luckily there was no schedules today.

“Hmm~” As he scrolled on his phone, he found himself humming the tune that you and Hongjoong were producing yesterday. Chewing on his bottom lip, he opened his notes app and began typing away. 

“Captain, breakfast.” Seonghwa called. Hongjoong sat up, ruffling his hair as he stared into space blankly for a few seconds. He came down from his bed and went to wash up.

“Indigo?” 

“She went back way earlier, hyung. We were all still asleep when she left.” Yeosang said as he set the table. Hongjoong nodded his head. 

“I’m glad she got home safe. I hope she enjoyed her time here yesterday.” He asked as he sat down. 

“Yeah. I think she did, even if she fell asleep. She mentioned a ‘next time’ so that’s a good sign right?” Wooyoung asked, taking his seat beside San. Hongjoong nodded in reply. 

When you woke up, it was slightly after noon. Thankfully you didn’t spend your day off sleeping. You went to the bathroom to wash up and change your clothes. You grabbed your bag, adjusting the cap over your head and the mask over your face. Checking the time once again, you left your house and made your way to the train station. 

“One ticket for the 2:30 train, please.” You went to the counter. The lady nodded and handed you the ticket as you slipped the money under the glass.

‘You’re welcome, I just hope my bed was comfortable enough. No need to owe me.  - Mingi’

‘Also, no one saw your face. I made sure to adjust it. - Mingi’

‘Come on, let me at least buy you coffee next time or a meal. And thank you for doing that. I removed my mask in my sleep at some point and wasn’t sure if anyone saw. - Indigo’

‘I want to assure you that the others and I have no intention of ‘un-masking’ you or taking advantage of you to remove your mask. - Mingi’

‘I know, I trust you guys. - Indigo’

With a soft sigh, you put your phone down and leaned your head against the train seat to look out the window. The train ride wasn’t too far away, it was only a hour’s journey. You took your laptop out to do some work. 

“Hello?” You picked up your buzzing phone. 

“Indigo! I heard you left early this morning.” You heard the captain’s voice.

“Oh, Hongjoong. Yes, when I woke up, everyone was still asleep. I didn’t want to disturb anyone so I let myself out.” You replied. 

“Ah... Don’t worry about that. We can sleep like logs. I hope you enjoyed the movie night with us yesterday, as chaotic as the boys are.” He chuckled, much to the shouts of protest of people in the background. You couldn’t help but laugh, Hongjoong probably had you on speaker.

“After knowing you guys for two weeks and seeing how you are, I think it would be weird to see you guys not chaotic and energetic. It is practically a norm now.” You smiled.

“Thankfully we didn’t scare you off then.” 

“It’s going to take a lot more than that to scare me off. And thank you for having me over, I had a great time with all of you.” You said. 

“We’ll do it again some time-”

“Are you out now? I hear a train!” Wooyoung must have snatched the phone from Hongjoong. You could hear Hongjoong scolding the mischievious boy while Wooyoung ignored him and laughed playfully. 

“Mhmm. I’m on a train.” You nodded, even if he couldn’t see you. You didn’t give too much away as to where you were or where you were going.

“Stop disturbing her and let her enjoy her day off! And give me back my phone!” There was the sound of a tussle and Wooyoung screaming before the call cut. You looked at your phone in shock. You couldn’t help but laugh, covering your mouth with your hand over your mouth to prevent your laughter from being too loud and disturbing the other passengers. 

When the train announced your stop, you got up and exited the train. Although you didn’t get to work during the train ride like you intended, you were grateful for the call with Ateez. 

“Ahjumma.” You greeted as you pushed open the gate. The old lady that was sweeping the ground looked up, a slight frow on her face. But she never said anything more, turning to head into the house.

“Haneul?” You called out. There were little footsteps and giggles from behind you. Bending down, you caught the little girl in your arms, hugging her tight and lifting her up. As she wrapped her arms around you, you inhaled her scent.

“Hi, baby.” You whispered.

“Unnie!” She grinned, both hands reaching out to pull your mask down. You didn’t stop her, just continuing to smile softly at her.

“I missed you.” You pushed her hair away from her face. From the back of the house, you heard a lot more children laughter but decided against going there. You were here for Haneul and Haneul only, she was your priority. You straightened up and held her hand.

“Hold on first, yeah?” You told her to wait as you went into the house. The old lady from earlier sat in front of the television, a bored look on her face.

“Here is Haneul’s living expenses.” You bowed, holding the envelope of cash in front of you. She wordlessly sat up and took the money, stuffing it into her pocket before waving you off. 

Haneul was your cousin, who you decided to care for in their stead. They were going to give her up for adoption but you stuck a deal with the orphanage owner.

While you worked, the lady that owns the orphanage helps you to take care of her. In return, all you have to do is give her money for Haneul’s living expenses and her schooling. Unlike the other kids, Haneul goes to public kindergarten. 

She doesn’t care much but at least she continues to hold up her end of the deal, using your money to care for Haneul and not putting her up for adoption with the other children. 

“Are we going to your house today?” Haneul looked at you. 

“Not today, baby. I’m sorry. Next week, you’ll stay with me for two nights.” You promised. Her eyes lit up as she nodded excitedly. 

“Can we go to the zoo?” She requested.

“Of course, we’ll do anything you want.” You said. When Haneul came to the stay with you, you always made it about her. You brought her to a nearby park and brought her ice cream. 

“Do you like it?” You asked. The 4 year old nodded her head happily. Haneul was your world, she was the only thing that motivated you to continue doing what you do. Soon, you hope to get her out of the system and have her live with you like she’s supposed to. But your job needed you to work 24/7, it would be unfair to her if she was with you and you couldn’t be there for her.

“I love you so much, you know that?” You smiled down at her. She held up her ice cream to you to share it with you. 

“I love you too, unnie. Even if I don’t see you every day, I like that we can still video call! And I like staying over at your house with you.” She giggled while you wiped the ice cream off her lips. 

~

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